The Druid Next Door Page 3

  Bryce’s temper boiled over again. Christ, hadn’t the man promised to keep out of the wetlands? Well, maybe not in so many words, but he’d said he’d stop throwing bottles. Was he dumping something else in the water, something that was toxic to fish and possibly other species?

  “Hey!” Bryce shouted.

  Mal’s head snapped up, but before Bryce could deliver a more articulate reprimand, Mal toppled face-first into the water.

  “Oh, just fucking perfect. Is he already drunk at this time of day? Bad enough he throws his trash here, now he’s decided to bathe in the . . .” Why isn’t he getting up? Mal was floating on the water, bobbing in the wake from a passing duck.

  Shit.

  Bryce dropped his pack and raced down the path, wading into the water to flip Mal over. He pulled him to the bank and rolled him to his side. All his CPR training fled—a fat lot of good it does if I can’t remember it when I need it.

  Before he could descend into full-fledged panic, Mal choked and retched, bringing up at least a beer bottle’s worth of slough water. Bryce kept a steadying hand on his shoulder until Mal had subsided to wheezing gasps. As he helped Mal sit up, he noticed that the man had a bloody lump the size of a golf ball on the back of his head.

  “Where did it—” Mal coughed again. “Bloody hells, that water is foul.”

  “It’s not intended for drinking, let alone breathing.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind.” Mal lifted his left hand to the back of his head, wincing when he came in contact with the lump. “Shite. Must have been more than one of the bastards. Did you see where they went?”

  Bryce looked around, but the greensward leading up to the back of both their houses was empty, as was the bank of the slough. The only things in sight were a couple of raccoons and a well-fed nutria. “Nobody here but us.” Mal shot a narrow glance at him, and Bryce raised his hands. “Hey. I promise. I didn’t conk you on the head. Although I would like to know what you were doing down here today.”

  “I was . . .” Mal pinched the bridge of his nose and muttered something that sounded like bloody curse. “I saw some suspicious characters down here.”

  “Suspicious, huh? Were they perhaps wearing masks?” Bryce jerked his head at the raccoons peering at them from the underbrush.

  Mal lurched to his feet, and the raccoons bolted toward the woods, the nutria waddling after them. “Bloody bastards. I’ll—”

  “Hold it, neighbor.” Bryce grabbed him before he face-planted in the reeds again. Maybe the bump on the old noggin had done a little more damage than it appeared. “You can’t slaughter the wildlife any more than you can use the slough for your personal trash bin.”

  “I didn’t— They . . .” Mal grabbed a handful of his hair, nowhere close to the lump. “Ah, shite.”

  “Look. I think you should maybe go to the ER. Get your head checked out.”

  “No bloody chance of that, mate.”

  “Then at least come over to my place. Let me patch you up.”

  “I’ll be fine.” Mal turned, but before he could take two steps up the hill, he wobbled and nearly fell on his ass.

  “Sure you will. After you’re patched up.” And see a doctor, if I have anything to say about it. Still, thanks to his grandmother’s training, Bryce wasn’t completely without resources. “Come on. I’ve got everything I need in my kitchen.”

  “Planning to grind my bones to make your bread?”

  Grind? Bones? Wha . . .? Oh. Bryce pulled his thoughts out of the gutter and chuckled. “I’m not a giant, Jack. You’re safe from me. Let’s go.”

  He put a hand under Mal’s elbow, supporting him up the hill and through the French doors so he could park him in a chair at the dining table.

  “Your kitchen has the same bloody appliances as mine.”

  “Of course it does. They’re part of the specs for the development.” Bryce pulled his first aid kit out of the cupboard over the refrigerator. He’d inherited the wooden box from his grandmother, and he still regularly replaced the herbs and ointments with fresh preparations according to her instructions. He sorted through the pots of jars until he found the ones he wanted—the antiseptic soap paste and the antibiotic ointment. “You know, I still think you need to go to the—”

  “No.”

  “Fine.” He beckoned Mal over to the sink, pulling two tea towels out of the drawer. “Can you lean over the sink? You’ll stay dryer than if I try to wash the wound while you’re sitting in the chair.”

  “‘Wound’? I wouldn’t dignify it with the term.” Mal stood up and walked around the breakfast bar into the kitchen. “It’s not that bad.” He touched the back of his head and seemed stunned when his fingers came away coated in blood. “All right, then. Bugger it.” He crossed his arms and propped them on the edge of the counter, his head over the sink.

  The way Mal’s jeans fit over his ass as he shifted from foot to foot, the play of his back muscles under the wet cotton of his T-shirt, made Bryce swallow convulsively and edge away. Mal hadn’t shown any overt signs of sexual preference, but he’d definitely shown signs of finding Bryce annoying. Not a recipe for a successful hookup, even if the man was gay. Besides, now was not the time, regardless of inclination.

  Bryce cleared his throat as he unscrewed the lid of the soap, releasing the scent of mint and apple. He’d always been glad that his grandmother’s remedies weren’t overly floral, and he imagined Mal would appreciate not smelling like a nosegay while he healed as well. “Did you get hit anywhere else other than your head?”

  “No. Didn’t drown either, thanks to you.”

  “Well, I’m opposed to littering the slough, so didn’t have much choice.” Bryce filled his cupped hands with warm water and let it trickle over the back of Mal’s head. He froze when Mal twitched and groaned. “Sorry. Does that hurt?”

  “No. Feels bloody marvelous.”

  “Good.” He smeared a fingertip of soap onto the wound, and Mal shot backward as if Bryce’s touch had been red-hot.

  “Shite, man. What in all the hells are you doing to me?”

  “Just washing off blood.”

  “With what?”

  Bryce held up the pot. “It’s just a homemade herbal soap. Perfectly safe.”

  “Like bloody hells it is.”

  Mal strode to the table and pawed through the first aid box, tossing the contents onto the table, occasionally holding a packet or pot up to his nose. “Rosemary. Vervain. Rue. Faugh.” He flung the packet across the kitchen and it burst against the refrigerator, scattering fine brownish-green powder across the floor.

  For a moment, Bryce couldn’t do anything more than goggle, his jaw sagging like a freshman non-major in his geomorphology class. But the destruction of hours’ worth of painstaking work finally refired his motor neurons.

  “What the devil do you think you’re doing?” He took two giant steps across the kitchen and yanked the box out of Mal’s reach. “If this is how you repay hospitality, no wonder you never leave your fucking house. Isn’t polluting the wetlands enough for you? You have to destroy my property and vandalize my kitchen too?”

  Mal swept a half-dozen pots off the table with his right forearm, the first time Bryce had seen him use his disabled arm for anything. One pot, an opaque white glass holding an insect repellent, shattered, sending blobs of yellow lotion in a blood-spatter spray against the cabinets. The others rolled across the floor as if they were fleeing Mal’s temper. “Who sent you? Was it my brother-in-law? His busybody aunt? The others in her circle? Did one of them give you this shite?”

  Anger curdled Bryce’s belly and tightened his chest. He could count the times that he’d lost his temper in his thirty-two years on one hand, and three of them had been in the last twenty-four hours, the direct result of Mal Kendrick.

  “For your information, this ‘shite,’ as you put it, is mine—made by my own hand from recipes I learned by the time I turned twelve.”

  Mal crowded up against Bryce, but Bryce refused t
o back away, putting them almost chest to chest, nose to nose. “Was it the Queen, then? Are you her spy, sent to make sure I’m working my cursed arse off to return her Consort to her in all his traitorous glory? Well, you can tell Her bloody Majesty—”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Bryce ground out between clenched molars, “but I’m trying to help you. Although I’m beginning to think that’s beyond my abilities. Or anyone’s.”

  Mal sounded positively deranged. And I was so blinded by a pretty face that I invited him into my home without knowing anything about him. Brilliant, just brilliant. If his students ever found out, he’d never live it down.

  Although perhaps living through this should be his immediate goal—he’d worry about living it down later.

  A druid, damn it to all the bloody hells. He had a gods-forsaken druid for a neighbor. How likely a coincidence was that? Not one Mal was willing to believe.

  But if the twisted magician wasn’t part of Cassie’s coven, and if he hadn’t been sent to spy for the Queen . . . Gwydion’s bloody bollocks, could his tree-hugging neighbor be in league with the Unseelie thugs who had attacked him this morning? An unaffiliated druid was worse than a dozen loose cannons.

  Shite, he should have known the word of his helplessness would spread. He shouldn’t have tipped his hand by winging that redcap yesterday. He should have remembered it would have pack mates.

  Mal’s vision dimmed around the edges, sharpening everything in his direct line of sight, a sure sign he was falling into battle-trance. Good. This bastard deserved it.

  “Who’s paying you?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Come off it. No wonder you’re arse-deep in this bloody green-construction shite. The recycled building materials—you use them to tap into the earth, don’t you? Draining power from their old life as well as the new.”

  Bryce drew back, his eyebrows bunched over his glasses. “Listen, I’m willing to cut you some slack because of the head injury, but—”

  “Stop evading! I’m not an imbecile.”

  “I never said you were. But your head. A possible concussion—”

  Mal shouldered Bryce against the wall. “Shut. It. Did you cast a summoning? Blood magic? Something to lure my brother-in-law to buy that gods-be-damned house? I should have known he’d never have chosen it on his own.”

  Bryce shoved Mal’s chest with respectable force, but Mal hadn’t spent the last two hundred years swinging a broadsword for nothing. Druids might have unfair advantage with their theurgic charms and potions, but when it came to brute strength, Mal had the upper hand—even if only one of them worked.

  His right forearm blocked Bryce’s windpipe quite nicely though. Mal leaned in, but not with his full weight, not yet. He still needed answers, and for that Bryce needed his breath.

  But not that much of it.

  Mal bared his teeth in a battle grimace. “You have one more chance. Who.” He jerked his arm against Bryce’s throat and felt the man’s Adam’s apple spasm. “Paid.” Another jerk, and Bryce’s brown eyes widened and watered behind his glasses. “You?”

  “Fuck you,” Bryce croaked, and pain burst in Mal’s bollocks as Bryce grabbed and squeezed.

  Goddess. He dropped his arm, scrabbling at Bryce’s wrist, attempting to loosen that deadly grip, but his fingers flopped uselessly against the corded muscles. Left hand. Left hand. He dug his fingers into the tendons at the base of Bryce’s thumb, both of them sweating and grunting with pain and effort.

  “Shite, man. Let go.”

  “I will if you will.”

  Mal nodded once, teeth clenched, and released Bryce’s wrist. Immediately Bryce dropped the grip on Mal’s balls.

  “Flaming abyss, man. Did you have to try to neuter me?”

  Bryce snorted and rubbed his throat. “Seeing as you were about to strangle me, yes.” He moved to the other side of a heavy antique maple table, countering Mal’s staggered movements so the table remained between them, blocking either of them from another assault. Probably a good idea.

  “Air. Pfaugh. Not as necessary as bollocks.”

  “Listen. I’ll forgo pressing assault charges this time, but only if you agree to go to the hospital. Get checked out. Because I have to tell you . . .” He shook his head and pulled the wooden potion box across the table, laying a protective hand on its lid. “You sound fucking insane.”

  “I told you. No hospitals. But if it makes you stop hovering like a ministering angel with a homicidal streak, I’ll give my brother-in-law a call. He’s a nurse. Or almost.”

  “Nope. You get official help. If you don’t, I’m reporting you to the police and the homeowners’ association as a danger to both the public and the community.”

  “I—”

  “No negotiation. Show me the discharge orders tomorrow or it’s the police.” He rubbed his throat again. “No doubt I’ll sport a very nice bruise that’ll match your handprint to help them with their case. Now get out.”

  “No fear. The less time I spend in your presence, the better I’ll like it.”

  Mal managed to maintain his dignity—and a marginally steady gait—until he exited the blasted druid den. Then he gave in to the pain and limped across the grass and through his own door.

  Shite, what a disaster. Unseelie thugs stalking him with intent to kill. A fragging unaffiliated druid living next door. Bollocks that felt as if they were on fire.

  At least he could do something about the last one. He minced his way to the refrigerator and pulled a flexible ice pack out of the freezer. Since David had outfitted the place, it had every first aid supply in his nurse’s bag of tricks, and despite being the adopted nephew of the local arch-druid, David always stocked human remedies, not magical ones.

  He didn’t need them, after all. As an achubydd, he was a walking first aid station all by himself.

  Come to think of it, he could use David’s healing touch right about now—on his skull, not his bollocks. If Alun found out Mal had asked David to touch him there—even if the touch was metaphysical, not hands-on—his brother would finish the castration Bryce had started. Besides, Alun would consider the pain Mal’s own damn fault.

  Mal settled on his sofa and eased the ice pack over his crotch. Shite, Bryce has a grip on him. He pulled his cell phone out of his pocket and speed-dialed David, who answered on the first ring.

  “It’s a good thing you called,” David said, no hint of his usual cheerful teasing tone, “or Alun was going to take steps.”

  “He doesn’t scare me.”

  “He should.”

  “Fine. He scares me, but only because I never know what self-righteous stunt he’ll pull on me next. I’m surprised he doesn’t make me wear a chastity belt in your presence.”

  “You’d look hot in one, especially if it was all you were wearing.”

  “Thanks, love, but don’t let Alun hear you say that.” He winced and rearranged the ice pack. “Although I’m not sure any sex restraints will be necessary for at least a while. My bollocks are in recovery from a run-in with my neighbor’s fist.”

  “What? He punched you?”

  “That would have been too easy. No. I think he mistook them for a stone and was trying to extract a little blood.”

  “Oh my god, Mal. Do you need me to come over?”

  “I do, but not for that.”

  “There’s something else?”

  “I got hit in the head.”

  “He hit you in the head too?”

  “Not him. An Unseelie redcap ambushed me in the wetlands and his cronies nailed me in the back of the head with a sling full of elf-shot.”

  “I’ll be right there.”

  “Wait, David. There’s more.”

  “More? What else can there be?”

  “I think my neighbor is a druid. An unaffiliated.”

  “Is that bad?”

  “Ask your aunt. And be ready to duck.”

  “Oookaaay. I’ll swing by to pick her up, t
hen. Can you lure him to your house?”

  Mal shifted on the sofa. “I don’t think he’ll be amenable to an invitation from me.”

  “Why not?”

  “Well . . . I kind of tried to choke him.”

  Silence. He could imagine David’s eyes narrowing and hear his foot tapping. “Was this before or after he crushed your balls?”

  “Kind of during. Although I suppose my part came first.”

  “Mal . . .” The exasperation in David’s voice carried clearly over the call.

  “I know. I’m not the Enforcer anymore. I can’t kill anyone with impunity, including the Unseelie swine lurking in the fragging swamp behind my house.”

  “It’s not a swamp. It’s a wetlands reclamation project.”

  “Considering I swallowed half of it this morning, I can tell you without a doubt—it’s a swamp. I’ll see you when I see you.”

  After one of his grandmother’s pain remedies, washed down by two tall glasses of ice water, Bryce could finally swallow without wincing. He swept up the spilled herbs from the kitchen floor. Useless, damn it, and his herb garden wouldn’t be ready to harvest for at least another month. He’d have to hope he wouldn’t need the rue before he had a chance to replenish his supply.

  He should have known that Mal was unstable after the bottle-flinging event yesterday—although he’d never have imagined the guy would go so far as to attack him. And that rant about—well, whatever it was. The man was clearly paranoid and probably more than half-crazy.

  Bryce paused, the paper of meadowsweet in his hands. Paranoia. Was that a symptom of subdural hematoma? Should he have allowed Mal to go home without ensuring that he’d go to the ER?

  He wasn’t even sure the man owned a car. He’d only ever seen an enormous Harley, which Mal had never actually ridden. He’d just let it idle in the open garage, polluting the air with exhaust.

  Oh. His hand. He probably couldn’t ride the bike anymore. His disability must be pretty recent if he hadn’t figured out how to function with it yet. Maybe some of his anger was post-traumatic—and now Bryce had exacerbated it by adding borderline genital mutilation.