by Cathy Clamp
Rachel came farther in the room and sat down on one of the chairs next to the wall. “Dalvin told me that Tristan told him—so take what you will from it—that Ahmad considered him annoying. Think about that. Ahmad considered him annoying, but Tristan’s still alive.”
Papa had talked much of the snake councilman, and when they traveled together to Serbia Anica found him to be very cold and distant. He was demanding and expected everyone to wait on him, including Papa! It was very seldom that Papa used bad language, but she had heard him muttering swears nearly every time he encountered the snake councilman. As for Anica, she truly hadn’t been sure he wouldn’t turn on them all once they got to the caves, and it seemed to her that everyone had been somewhat surprised when he’d followed through.
Only the tiger councilman, Rabi, had been completely confident in Ahmad.
“Ahmad would not stand for anyone being annoying to him.” She couldn’t help but chuckle as a memory popped into her head. “Do you remember the owner of the café in Zlatibor who refused to let Ahmad’s guards search the kitchen for fresh mice or rats?”
Rachel burst out laughing. “O. M. G.! I thought that man was going to come unglued! I didn’t have to speak the language to know what he was saying. Just the sputtering and red face at the hint he would have rodents in his kitchen was enough. It was sort of a shame he kicked us out and locked the door. The food had smelled pretty good.”
It was nice she had shared an adventure with Rachel. They had been able to become very close. “I must agree with what you say. If Ahmad puts up with Tristan, and only holds grudge, Tristan is, as Amber says, a dangerous man. And probably has what you say—control issues.”
Rachel stood and came over to give her a quick hug before leaning on the machine beside Anica. “Give him some time. He’s going to have to come to terms with the mating by himself. Even now, Dalvin sort of freaks out when we have the mental connection. His mom says it took his dad a couple of years to get used to it. If you’re mated back to him, it’ll be worse. Or that’s what I hear.” She shrugged. “It’s okay. There’s time. Don’t rush. Lust is a sprint. Love is a marathon.”
Love. It was not a word she would use to describe how she felt about the blond bear. But it had only been two short days. “Is it bad that I do not feel love for Tristan? Everyone says word ‘mating’ like it is very special and important. But I know so little about him. He is so secretive. I do not even know where he comes from, or who his femily is. How could I love a man I do not know?”
Rachel’s jaw dropped. “Bad? Oh, lord no! Sweetie, it’s only been two days. How could you feel anything for him? Mating doesn’t trump love and love takes time. I’ve known Dalvin since I was six. And I don’t think even Claire and Alek are really in love. They’re definitely in lust, though. I think mating only enhances the feelings when love happens.” She paused and then let out a short laugh that was equal parts surprised and annoyed. “Frankly, I’m amazed you even like Tristan. I think he’s sort of a jerk. No, I like what you said upstairs better. You get to decide what’s right for you. Make him come looking for you. Don’t go chasing him.”
That made sense to Anica. “He said if he wishes to find me, he would. I think for now, I will let him. I will find Bojan and talk to him. Maybe it is time to go home to Serbia. I will miss America, and you, but there is much worry and heartache here. For us and for Papa and Mama.”
“I feel you, girl. I’m looking forward to going home to Detroit too. Scared, but anxious too. I’m just trying to wrap up things here with the Kragans and Dani. I’m supposed to separate myself from their parliament so I can join Dalvin’s group back home. It’s a slow process, cutting ties to this place. Not just the magic, but the people.” She looked around the room and lightly bounced her fist on top of the dryer, like pounding on a drum. “Lots of stuff changing here. I wouldn’t be surprised if the whole town shuts down after we leave. With Alek and Denis moving to be closer to Sonya—”
“Oh! I did not hear what happen on island. They did find their sister?” She opened the door of the dryer to stop it. A lightweight pink shirt was close enough to dry to wear. She stripped off the shirt that smelled of Tristan and tossed it across the room. It bounced off the open lid of one of the washers and dropped inside, while Rachel let out a little chuckle. Anica felt a little embarrassed, but she had to be practical. “I do not want Papa to smell Tristan close to me again so soon. I could explain one time. Two becomes more difficult.”
“I get that. I’d probably do the same if it was my father and he could smell things like yours. Anyway, Alek and Claire might have found Sonya. The problem is the girl they found doesn’t, or at least says she doesn’t, remember much about when she was little, and the translator wasn’t able to speak English as well as they’d hoped. Claire thought there was something fishy about the whole thing, but Alek was convinced. Amber says she knows of a seer who can see the past and can dig through memories to find out what’s real. It’s called hindsight. I don’t know about that, but I do know Denis is not going to be happy about moving. I think he was hoping they could move to a city when they left here, not to an even smaller town on a remote island in the middle of the ocean. I don’t see him handling it very well.”
Anica had opened her mouth to reply when a low-pitched siren began to wail. It rose in volume and pitch until it made her ears hurt. She covered them with her hands and shouted over the sound, “What is that noise?!”
Rachel looked suddenly concerned. She moved to the wall and looked up through the window. “Tornado siren. We need to go upstairs and see what’s happening.”
That didn’t make much sense. “If it is tornado, shouldn’t we stay here under the ground where it is safe?”
Rachel grabbed her elbow and pulled her out the door. “It’s not a tornado. It’s just a tornado siren. It’s how the police and mayor alert the whole town at once. We hardly ever get tornadoes up here, but the siren can be heard all the way out at the lake. Everyone can know there’s a problem at once. I can’t see anything outside through the smoke. But they wouldn’t use it unless there was a big problem, so we need to find out what it is.”
“Should we go out by tunnel?”
That stopped Rachel. She glanced at the very washer Anica had pulled back. “How do you know about that?”
“A sock fell back there. Where does it go?”
“It comes out in the forest. Forget you saw it. It’s complicated. We need to use the stairs.” Rachel took the stairs two at a time, while Anica followed behind more slowly, wondering about her friend’s dismissal of what she’d found and watching for signs of trouble. Rachel opened the door to her apartment, but Amber and Claire were gone. So were Bojan, Scott, and Dalvin next door. Anica followed Rachel at a sprint to the front door and then down the steps.
Frantic activity had transformed the already-busy courtyard into something close to a riot. “Go, go, go!” A man in a fireman’s yellow jacket and a helmet with a large gold shield on the front slapped the top of a jeep crowded with people. The back of his jacket was covered with thick gray dust. Noticing the young women, he pointed at them, shouting to be heard over the wailing siren, “You two—find a vehicle! The town’s evacuating. We have ten minutes, tops, before the fire turns this place to ash.”
Anica didn’t even need to inhale to smell the growing fire from the north. The heat pressed against her like a wall that made her eyeballs hot and dry. She looked around, searching for people she knew, but everyone was a stranger, most of them smelling fully human.
“Holy crap!” Rachel grabbed Anica’s arm, holding her tightly for a moment. “C’mon. We need to stay together and find your father and brother and my alphas. Bitty and her brothers are powerful, but they’re old and they don’t move too fast anymore, at least with their legs.” Rachel turned in a circle, hopping up in the air. “Damn it! It looks like someone already took my car. I knew I shouldn’t have left the keys in it.”
It was hard for Anica to see throug
h the wave of people. It felt like the airport in New York City, where everyone except her seemed to have been taught a special dance to get through the crowds. Even Papa and Mama had been able to spin and dance past people with their bags, while Anica was constantly stepping on feet, or being stepped on, or getting bumped or knocked into a wall.
She tried to stay with Rachel, but they were separated in seconds. Pushed by the crowds back to the apartment building, Anica climbed the steps to be able to look over people’s heads. She searched for Rachel’s bright shirt and pom-pom of dark fuzzy hair, but her friend was nowhere to be seen.
Tristan, however, was easier to spot, or maybe it was just that she could smell him even over the smoke. He’d changed clothes and was dressed head to foot in colors that nearly were the same shade as the log buildings around him. Even the stocking hat on his head matched. Most people ignored him, especially because he was moving toward the fire. Why would he do that?
She watched until she was sure he was out of the crowd and edged around the back of the buildings until she could see him again. The wind created by the fire blew his scent toward her, so she was able to stay out of sight as she trailed him past the police department, the town hall, and the post office. He seemed to be heading for the diner.
When her nose detected a new scent, near the ground, Anica stopped short. It was the same perfume her attacker had worn at the house. The problem was the wind was getting so strong that the perfume could have come from a long distance away. But why was it at ground level? Was the woman in snake form again?
She lowered her head so she was bent nearly double. The air was clearer closer to the dirt, so it was easier to track the scent for long moments, until it disappeared. By the time she looked up again, Tristan was long gone. And so were most of the people in the center of town. She was between the diner and post office, out of sight.
Alone.
She tried to think, but the ever-growing roaring sound in the distance, louder even than the siren, made it hard to focus. The sky began to turn orange, then red, as the air heated and the smoke became a choking cloud. She started coughing and dropped to the ground near the foundation of the post office. It was coming too fast. She wasn’t even sure where to go to get out of the way of the firestorm.
“What the hell are you doing here?!” Anica’s head snapped around to see Tristan and Bobby. It was obvious they were planning something together. The dark man from South Africa—no, wait; Amber had told her it was Mozambique where he came from—was dressed in black cargo pants and a patterned shirt like hunters wear. Tristan was furious, but his anger wasn’t mad anger; it was fear anger, born of worry. “Are you trying to get yourself killed?”
“No! I just lost track of—”
Bobby grabbed her arm and then Tristan’s, so tight she could feel the pulse of his magic like fingers digging under her skin. The feeling of panic overwhelmed her. She tried to pull away but couldn’t break free of the magic. “It doesn’t matter why. We’ve got to get out of here!”
He pulled her up and they all ran, at a pace that made her legs feel like rubber. The fire was closing in on two sides now, forcing them to move away from the main road. She pointed to their right, already struggling to breathe through the smoke and heat. “We can make it to the lake! The water is deep and cold.”
“We don’t have much choice!” Bobby yelled over the roar that had drowned out the siren. Anica had never run so fast in her life. The landscape blurred and then she was being pulled along in the two men’s wake. It didn’t even feel like her feet were touching the ground.
When the familiar boat dock came into view, they were ahead of the flames, but just barely. The hollow sound of the wooden dock under their feet echoed as they pounded toward the water, then gave way to sudden silence as dry land ran out. “Fill your lungs!” Tristan didn’t need to say it, because Anica was already pulling in a great breath, filling her chest to nearly overflowing. The three of them hit the water hard, arm in arm. The two men pulled her down deeper into the water. It was hard to swim with her pants and shoes on, but she didn’t want to risk taking them off. Fish flashed past silver in the corner of her vision, just far enough ahead that she couldn’t tell what sort of fish they were. And without being able to inhale, she couldn’t smell. It wasn’t until they leveled out and the red glow of the surface no longer brought heat that she noticed the strange way the men were swimming. Like fish. They didn’t kick their legs like she did, so their clothing didn’t slow them at all. Their whole bodies were moving like big fish, side to side. It was both elegant and soothing. They effortlessly moved down to skim the bottom. The longer they were under, the tighter her chest was getting. She could hold her breath a long time, but Tristan and Bobby weren’t even trying to surface for air.
The tightness soon turned to burning in her lungs. She had to get air soon. She started to pull away from the men, heading toward the surface. Even if there was fire above, she should be able to get a sip of air and then dive back under. Tristan shook his head and dug his fingers into her arm, pulling her farther down. He pointed ahead to an odd structure, like a large container covered with window screen. She pushed a thought into his head.
I have to breathe, Tristan! I can’t go any farther.
Trust me. It seemed Bobby was also headed toward the container with purpose. In seconds, she realized why. There was a scuba tank and face mask attached to the container! Why in the world was there an air tank at the bottom of the lake? Did the men put it there, knowing they were going to need it?
Tristan put the mask over her face and she gratefully took several breaths of clean air, blowing the old air out through her nose. Once she had her lungs full again, she nodded and he handed the mask to Bobby, who did the same. Only after they had both gotten air did Tristan take the mask. When he put the mask back on the container, he smiled at her, his teeth surprisingly white in the blueness of the water.
She heard, or perhaps felt, a rumbling that surrounded them, vibrated through her body for a few seconds. The fish began to panic around her, swimming around as though searching for cover as the red above intensified, seemed to try to burn the very water.
They stayed underwater long minutes, sharing the air in careful sips, until the red above turned to yellow and then to light blue. When they finally surfaced, the landscape was oddly patchy. Some trees were charred to sticks, while others just a few feet away were barely singed. Smoke was thick in the air, hovering like fog just inches above the water. Hot ash blew sideways, like snow in a winter blizzard, and stuck to her skin and hair, and even her eyes, like glue. Anica ducked under the water to clear her vision. Tiny flames dotted the beach where grass had once grown, making the shore look like a vast campground for fairies. She looked in the direction of town and sniffed the wind. There was barely a hint of the acrid black smoke that wiring and paint made. Had the town somehow survived the fire? And what about the people? “Do you think everyone made it away?”
Bobby nodded as they bobbed in the water, which was warm like a bath. “I think so. We had already evacuated the fringe houses. I was just coming back to town when the siren started. We’ve been keeping an eye on the Forest Service reports all morning and started moving people when the fire jumped the road to the north.”
“The perfumed lady snake had been right where you found me. I was trying to track her smell when you pulled me away. Now that fire is past, I must go back to find it again.”
Tristan let out a harsh breath. “Anica, I don’t want you chasing this. It has nothing to do with you.”
Bobby pursed his lips and raised his brows but wisely stayed silent and began to swim for shore. She spun in the water and stared at Tristan with rising anger. “Has nothing to do with me? She tried to kill me. And Bojan. Yes, I will chase her. I will chase her and find her and then—”
He interrupted her, splashing his palm down on the surface of the lake, causing a spray of water to shoot into the air. “Then what, Anica? You have no idea who
you’re dealing with. These are vicious people … ancient and powerful. You’re nothing but cannon fodder to them, a mosquito to be slapped and brushed away.”
If he thought that was a way to make her back down, he didn’t understand her very well. He tried to push his way into her head and wrap his magic around her to keep her still, but she did not want him there, so, though he knocked on the door, she did not open. Instead, she used her voice so he would hear her outrage.
“Do you not think I know they are vicious?” Anica wanted to scream at him, but instead, she kept her voice low and quiet, which seemed to unnerve him more. “I have scars of evil like theirs … many of them.” She stretched her sopping-wet shirt, pulling the neck to reveal the ragged scars down her collarbone that had dug deep into the tissue of her breast—daily reminders of the bears who nearly killed her. Not a day went by that she didn’t look in the mirror and feel angry.
“You see? So I know. And yes, they are ancient, and powerful. But I am powerful too. I am stubborn and do not give in, or give up.” He was frowning now, his mouth a tight line under narrowed eyes. “Mosquitoes are quick, Tristan. And also vicious. Even the greatest of animals fears the tiny mosquito. They prey on things larger than them and can kill … kill with the tiniest bit of their spit.” She turned her head and spit, then hit herself on the chest with her palm, just like he had done with the water. “So I am proud to be mosquito. I am not easy to slap … and do not think I can be easily brushed away.”
Instead of waiting for him to decide how to yell at her next, she started to swim to shore. He was more than welcome to chase Lagash. She wanted to get back to town to check on their house and to try to find the snake’s perfume scent. Lagash was not who she wanted to find. He was not a woman and he had not hit Bojan with a bat.