Page 36 of Love Spell (Witches of London #3)

Noah tackled Brant around the shins, slamming him face-first into a drift at the side of the walkway.

“Hey!”

“You son of a bitch!”

“You’ll pay for that, asshole!”

Everything started happening so fast, Noah had no idea who was who among the three, or how far they dragged him away.

Still, it never crossed his mind to shout while he was within shouting range.

If he’d yelled, his father may or may not have heard, may or may not have come out, but Caleb would have heard and he’d have turned around.

Noah kept his teeth clenched while they dragged him through the stunted forest and snow, out of all sight of town lights, trying to land a few blows of his own in the dark while they pinned his arms.

“You like seeing other guys naked, faggot?”

Even as they kicked him over and over, Noah trying to protect his head while his ribs broke and his nose fountained blood, he was more scared for the loss of his parka and gloves and hat and boots than for his bones.

They didn’t really strip him. They didn’t need to.

Losing just a parka could be enough to kill a person out here if he was disoriented or blind or too slow on the uptake at reaching a heat source.

Noah was all three by the time they left, laughing and throwing snow at him, their jeering voices slurring with the pickled jubilation of their own accomplishment.

He couldn’t think through the pain, couldn’t catch a breath, like being trapped in lava, the broken bones crushing in at him, from eye socket to hand to ribs folded like a smashed egg, to the ankle that they’d violently twisted while forcing his boot off.

That ankle might or might not be broken, but he certainly couldn’t walk on it.

Even if he could walk, he had nowhere to walk to.

Not when his eyes were swollen shut, one bashed back into its socket with the broken bone.

He was gagging and suffocating, every movement a new scream that he couldn’t scream, a new death that he couldn’t die, while he longed to die, prayed to die, begged for the cold to numb him so he didn’t have to feel this kind of pain that he’d not known could be real.

He thought people blacked out on pain like this.

What if they found Caleb?

No, they were too drunk and happy by the time they stumbled away.

They’d go for him tomorrow, though. Noah had to find him, to tell him.

Caleb had to go home to Austin. He had to go now.

How would Noah tell him that if Noah died in the snow in the night and no one found him for days because it was snowing and it would cover him by morning and the ravens and foxes would scavenge him before he’d finally be spotted days later?

He might have wept or screamed or vomited, but he couldn’t move or breathe through the pain and he only lay there, colder and colder, until the numbness did start to take him and he began to feel that hint of winter’s relief. He’d always thought freezing to death would be a good way to go.

It was when he stopped shivering that he knew he’d gone too far. Stop shivering and you needed emergency help. Stop shivering and you’d moved from cold to critical.

But he had to get back because of Caleb. If he didn’t get back, Caleb would be next.

Which way had they brought him? It didn’t matter since he no longer had a sense of direction and was totally blind.

Follow the trail. But they’d all run off. He could follow the wrong trail.

No, they’d been dragging him for half the time. There’d be a massive drag trail in the snow like a dog sled. It was snowing, but if he moved now he would still easily be able to feel the trail his own body had made until it returned to the shack’s trenched path.

His legs, arms, and face were completely numb. He couldn’t feel his broken hand anymore, although his cheekbone or eye socket or whatever was broken in his face kept throbbing from the inside like a furnace.

He had on two thick wool socks and glove liners. His snow pants were still on over fleece ones and long underwear, plus a base layer and second wool layer. Not enough to survive in this, but it was enough to keep from freezing and get to his shack if he went about it the right way.

He had to feel around with his arms and elbows, blundering for enough sensation to tell if he was at a drag-path while sharp gasps of pain, tiny screams, escaped his lips from pain of his flexing ribs.

Incredibly, he found the trail, then reached his parka.

He couldn’t get it around himself, but got it under him, his hands in the sleeves, his good hand supporting him as he crawled along, broken hand reaching ahead in its sleeve to feel where there was no snow resistance.

That parka saved him from losing his fingers that night.

Noah never knew how long it took him to crawl home, crawl until he started calling out for his father, calling for help, crawl more, call out, gasping and shuddering against the pain, certain all the time that he’d gone in the wrong direction, that he’d imagined the trail.

Then he heard the banging of the door and his father’s voice and he tried to wave, still blind, and heard the running boots crunch new snow. He would be able to warn Caleb.

“Noah? Noah! What happened?” Warm hands, worry and panic, but strong, solid help from a man who often seemed to forget he had a son. Not right then. Right then he was all care and comfort, all worry and love.

Noah said, “Moose.”

“Oh Christ — out at night? You should have had the Winchester with you. Christ — come on. I’ve got you, Noah. I’ll get the doctor here.”

The next day, Caleb came to find him since Noah didn’t show up for his pancakes.

Noah had told the doctor and told the police and told the neighbour bringing chicken soup that it had been a moose, all tracks having been wiped out to smudges and trails that could have been anything by overnight’s snowfall.

Only with Caleb did he cry while saying it had been a moose.

Caleb bent over him, sitting on the edge of Noah’s bed, clutching Noah’s good hand to his face, also crying.

“You have to go home to Austin. Go home and finish high school and get into a good college that you actually care about.”

“You can’t stay here either. Come with me.”

“To live off your mom? I’m going to Fairbanks. I’ll stay with my mom and Sarah until I’m ready for school in Seattle or New York or somewhere. Maybe I’ll take a gap year or two. It doesn’t matter. You will leave?”

“Not when you’re like this. You’ll take months to recover.”

“I can’t recover if I have you to worry about,” Noah gasped against the pain, clutching Caleb’s hand, able to see only through a slit in his relatively good eye.

“The doctor wants me in the hospital in Fairbanks anyway. They’re flying me out.

I’ll be fine if I know you’re leaving. I promise.

But I’m not going anywhere until I know you’re on a plane for the lower forty-eight. You promise me that.”

Caleb didn’t ask. He didn’t make Noah insist that it was a moose, didn’t make him keep lying or challenge him.

He only gripped Noah’s hand and said, “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I’m sorry,” over and over until Noah extracted a promise from him that he would call his mom today and leave on the first available bush flight out.

They both flew to Fairbanks, Noah for days of hospitalisation before going home to the care of his mom and Sarah, who loved having him there, and Caleb to catch a flight to Anchorage, then Dallas.

Noah never saw Caleb again. Nor did he ever try to.

Just like he never told. Never came out.

He avoided people, avoided making friends, got into black-and-white photography as a hobby, finding something to do that calmed, that he could control and escape into without another human involved.

Eventually, Noah got a job in Seattle, where he bought a thumb-sized cactus to look after and remind himself how much bigger the world was than stunted pines and reindeer moss.

He took a self-defence class and still lived his life jumping at every shadow, his pulse racing at the sight of two men so much as holding hands in Belltown, terrified for them.

He’d never even kissed another man besides Caleb by the time he started school in New York.

It was another year replete with panic attacks before he even set foot in a gay bar, gradually allowing a small circle of friends in his life, then what might have been called one or two very short-term boyfriends.

Noah always managed to find a way to run before long.

Even New York wasn’t far enough away to escape the memories and nightmares.

After another between-year working and applying for overseas universities, Noah made his way to London.

By then he was in his mid-twenties. He was starting over, had to be the master of his own life, not mastered by three young men in a blur of blood and snow and darkness, still laughing at him.

He had new cultural clashes in London and enjoyed simply exploring and talking about history, watching people from a safe distance and working more in IT part time while he studied.

He didn’t have time for a boyfriend and, since he didn’t have a boyfriend, he didn’t need to be out.

At least he could daydream about a future with a romantic partner. One day. Not yet.

If he ever was out, if that day arrived, it would be because Noah met the right person to walk hand in hand with him at the back of the parade with sunglasses on.

It would be a careful thawing, a careful partner, a slow decompression for the sake of, and with the gentle reassurance of, someone he loved.

If that person never happened, “one day” would also become never.

Never might be a painful prison, but at least no one but Noah got hurt, and at least that hurt wasn’t as bad as the alternative.