Page 16
Slowly, she managed to force the emotions into an imaginary box where she locked them up tight, then prayed she could keep them there, keep them silent, or she didn’t know how she’d function at all. As it was, she had more than enough to deal with. With the return of her emotions came the memories, a flood of them. Miserable memories, filled with pain and grief. Raw, even after centuries.
Being unable to feel had allowed her to be strong, so incredibly strong. She’d been able to do what had to be done to protect her queen and her race. Feelings—compassion, sympathy, pity—invariably got in the way of that. She did not want to be the woman she’d once been, softhearted, weak. She liked being the warrior, liked being untouched emotionally by what went on around her.
The emotions were back now, in all their miserable color. Most of them, at least. But she would go cold again, once she found Castin. As long as she didn’t allow Fox to soften her more.
She watched him beat at the stone, then run at it, full speed, ramming it with his shoulder. Bone crunched and he grimaced, then returned to his starting point and ran at it again. Over and over, he hit the wall until his shirt was bloody, until the sounds coming from his throat were more animal than man.
He whirled on her suddenly, the fangs dropping from his gums, his eyes turning to yellow animal eyes.
“Fox?”
She swallowed as she stared at his fearsome visage, at the wild male trapped within the stone walls with her, a shifter gone feral, half-out of his mind with the need to tear something apart.
And she was the only thing within reach.
As she watched the fury and struggle war in his eyes, her old gift raised its head once more. The need to ease the torment of others. The last time she’d felt it, when Fox went feral in the woods, she’d ignored it. Calling forth her gift was not something she wanted to do if she sought to turn back the tide and return to the cold warrior she’d been for so long.
But it didn’t appear that she had a choice. This time he didn’t have Jag to fight, and an out-of-control shifter was the last thing they needed. Especially if he started turning those claws on her.
As she started toward him, he shook his head.
“Stay back,” he growled around those fangs.
“I’m not seeking to fight you, Feral,” she said calmly, evenly, staring into those savage eyes. Though they looked more like cat than fox eyes, she was prepared for that. She knew from experience that all shifters, except the vipers, looked the same in this half form, allowing them to fight as equals whether bird or tiger, gazelle or wolf.
“I’ll hurt you, Mel!”
“No, you won’t. ” She approached him slowly, carefully, nerves snapping despite her outer calm. “I trust you, Kieran. ”
His eyes flashed with surprise at her use of his old name, distracting him long enough for her to slip in close and lift her hand to his face, her palm against the soft golden stubble that covered his jaw.
He was shaking in his fight for control, but she called on her gift, wondering if it would even come to her after all this time, especially when she had such mixed emotions about using it. At first, her gift failed her. Though she’d begun to feel it stirring deep inside of her, trying to awaken, it was buried deeper than she’d realized. But she closed her eyes and reached down. As she touched that gift and began to pull on it, her hands against Fox’s cheeks slowly began to warm and she felt a softening inside her, a need to help him that she didn’t want.
The moment the tension began to seep from Fox’s arms and shoulders, she snatched her hands away. Stepping back, she watched as his fangs began to recede, as his eyes changed back from animal to sky blue. She’d done it.
Fox released a shuddering breath, reaching for her and taking her hand. “What did you do?”
“It doesn’t matter. ”
“You stole the fury. ” He lifted her hand and began to pull it toward his mouth as if he meant to press a kiss to her palm.
She snatched her hand away, glaring at him. “We need to get out of here. ”
Fox watched her for several moments more, as if trying to decipher her lightning mood swings, then nodded, once, decisively. But frustration once more leaped into his eyes.
They’d tried. There was no way out.
“You still can’t mist?” he asked, running a hand through his hair.
“If I could, I wouldn’t still be here,” she snapped.
He glanced at her, his expression turning wry. “If you could mist, would I still be here?”
She cut her eyes at him, her temper sliding away. “Tempting as I might find it to be rid of you, Feral, no. I won’t leave you behind. ”
He smiled at her, a quick grin that lit up his face, stealing her breath, and sending the butterflies to flight in her chest. By the mist, his smile flipped her end over end, leaving her with no memory of which way was up.
Wrenching her gaze from his far-too-handsome face, she stared at the stones with consternation, trying to catch her breath. “Sometimes shifters can breach warding in their animals when they can’t get through in human form,” she murmured.
“And if I get out, what happens to you?” He reached for her, tugging lightly on her braid. “I’m not leaving you behind, either, angel. There’s got to be . . . ” A funny look crossed his face.
“What is it, Fox?”
“My gut. ” He turned and strode to the far corner, bending low and reaching his hand straight through solid stone.
Melisande gasped. “So it isn’t real. ”
“Most of it is. Or, at least, it’s solid. ” But when she joined him, he held out a hand, holding her back. “Let me test it first. There could be more warding. ” On his hands and knees, he pushed his arm through up to his shoulder, then pulled back. Meeting her gaze, triumph leaped in his eyes, satisfaction pulled at the corners of his mouth.
And it was all she could do not to stare at those perfectly sculpted lips.
Reaching out like a blind man, he slowly determined the edges of the passage he couldn’t see, then dipped his head beneath and looked through.
“Bollocks,” he muttered and pulled back again. “It’s a way out of the prison, but it’s no escape. We’re definitely in some kind of game. Test it first before we go through. ”
Without hesitation, Melisande knelt beside him, brushing his hard chest with her shoulder as she pushed her hand slowly into the invisible void. Nothing blocked her way or caused her any alarm, so she scrambled through the opening. Pushing to her feet, she found herself within a long passage lined by two stone walls, as high as the prison’s, which appeared to run parallel to one another for as far as the eye could see in either direction.
With a grunt, Fox crawled through after her, then rose to stand beside her. “This place is one big mind fuck. ” He pulled one of his blades out of his boot.
Melisande curved her hand around her sword, and together they started off, shoulder to shoulder, her back and muscles tense with the knowledge that Mage could jump out at them at any moment, without warning.
But not twenty yards in, another path suddenly appeared on the left.
They exchanged wary glances. Fox shrugged, and they followed that path instead—a path that turned at right angles every ten to twenty paces, the stone walls remaining perfectly uniform.
“It’s a labyrinth,” she murmured, a trace of fear scuttling up her spine. “We could be lost in here forever. ” And hadn’t Paenther warned of just that? People disappearing. And perhaps not victims of Mage violence at all, but simply lost in the maze.
“We won’t be. ” Fox’s warm hand slid beneath her braid, curving around the back of her neck, his thumb stroking her, featherlight.
She stiffened at the touch, surprised . . . appalled . . . that she liked it. But of course she did. She was losing the cold veneer that had protected her for so long.
Desperate to cling to her s
hields, she jerked away, and he let her go.
Around the next corner, the labyrinth veered in two different directions, left and straight ahead.
Fox held out his hand to her, and she looked at him askance. Had she not just made it clear she didn’t want him touching her?
His gaze chided. “My gut’s telling me I’ll lose you if I’m not holding on to you, pet. ”
Oh. She wasn’t convinced he was telling her the truth, but neither was she willing to risk it. With a huff of resignation, she slid her hand once more into his.
Sky blue eyes crinkled at the corners, laughing at her prickliness even as his large hand engulfed hers, squeezing gently, his fingers curving around her with fierce protectiveness. And she had no desire to pull away.
A moment later, she was giving thanks to the ancient queens when they passed, suddenly and startlingly, into another world.
“Never thought I’d see you again,” the old Indian said, as Grizz led Lepard into the small antiques shop in Amarillo. Of course, the Indian didn’t look old—he was immortal—but he played the American-Indian card to the hilt with his buckskin pants and vest thick with intricate and colorful beadwork. His black hair hung in a long braid down his back revealing a strong-boned face and skin a shade darker than Grizz’s own.
“I need help,” Grizz admitted.
Black eyes flashed. “Never thought I’d hear those words from your mouth. ” He turned away as if dismissing him.
Grizz’s temper, always a volatile thing made all the more hair-trigger since he’d been marked a Feral, exploded. Fangs dropped from his gums, claws erupted from his fingertips. Gripping the edge of the nearest table loaded with junk, he flipped it, sending dozens of ceramic tchotchkes flying in a crash of breakage.
The Indian whirled, his face a mask of outrage that quickly morphed into one of shock. “You’ve been marked. ”
“You don’t want to cross me right now. ” The words came out a growl.
A flicker of fear lit those black eyes. “Never did. ”
Grizz stepped through the breakage, ceramic crunching beneath his boot. His fangs and claws receded as he leaned his hands on the top of the glass case separating him from the Indian. “Do you know of any way to tell a good man from an evil one—a man born with evil in his soul?”
The Indian held his ground, his mouth tight as his gaze flicked to the wrecked store, then back to Grizz. “Which animal marked you?”
“The grizzly. ”
The Indian snorted. “Figures. ”
“Well? Can you help?”
The Indian shrugged. “I know of someone who might be able to. But she won’t do it. ”
“Tell me more. ”
“She’s ancient. ”
“That’s not helpful, old man. Is she Therian?”
“Mage. Part Mage, at least. It’s said that Sabine can see all the way into a man’s soul. ”
And what exactly did that mean? “Tell me where to find her. ”
“Last I heard, she was living up north. The Rockies. ” The Indian held up his hand, forestalling Grizz’s anger. “I know someone who might know where she is. He’s an artist. Lives in Montana. I hear he saw Sabine a while back—sixty or seventy years ago, now. ”
“His name?”
“Yarren Brinlin. ” He pointed to the painting of wild horses that hung above the table Grizz had overturned. “That’s his work there. I bought it from a gallery in Bigfork. Ordered it over the Internet. You can probably track him down without much trouble. Don’t tell him who gave you his name. ”
With a brief nod, Grizz turned and left.
When they were back in the car, Lepard peered at him, a hundred questions in his eyes. “Can you trust what he says?”
“I wouldn’t have asked if I couldn’t. ”
“There’s bad blood between you. How far back do you go?”
“All the way. He’s my father. ”
“Shit. ” Lepard sighed. “So we’re driving to Montana, now?”
For the first time in a long time, Grizz smiled. Lepard was okay. “No. There’s a jet charter outfit near here. I know one of the owners. ”
“Thank the goddess. So we find this Sabine and take her back to Feral House?”
“Got a better idea?”
“No. But if the original Ferals can’t tell if we’re good or bad, why are they going to trust the woman we bring back? They’ll probably toss her in the prisons right along with us. ”
“That’s assuming she’ll help us. ”
“That’s assuming we can find her. ” Lepard ran a hand through his hair. “This mission has failure written all over it. ”
“You’re welcome to leave at any time. ”
Lepard turned away, staring out the window. “Let’s go find this witch. ”
Yeah, they’d find her. And she’d tell Grizz his soul was black as tar. But he already knew that. It wasn’t himself he was determined to save.
It was Rikkert.
Fox’s pulse pounded in his ears as he stared at the impossible sight. As cleanly and suddenly as they’d walked into the labyrinth, they’d left it again. But not for the woods. He didn’t know where in the hell they were.
Shops lined the street in both directions, pedestrians scurrying through the light rain over the wet cobblestones, covered in worn peasants’ cloaks and hats from centuries past. A man driving an oxen cart yelled at them as he neared. Fox yanked Melisande back out of the way, the cart splashing them both with dirty rainwater.
Melisande turned to him with eyes as wide as saucers. “Have we actually time-traveled?”
“I’ve no bloody idea. ” But it smelled like it—the fish and rotting meat, the excrement, the unwashed human bodies interspersed with the tang of sea air and the sweet scent of the flower seller’s bundles of blooms. Dublin in the early eighteenth century had smelled just like this.