He forgot, for too many minutes, that he should be in a hurry at all, giddiness keeping him busy on cloud nine. Cole bought Penny a postcard and almost bought her a scarf at the next table. But then he felt too much like a tourist and made his way back down the couple blocks.
He forgot which brownstone was Penny’s.
This kept him busy for another couple of minutes as every brownstone seemed exactly the same and they’d parked on the corner. He’d had his eyes on Penny the whole time. Was hers the one with the Japanese Maple in front? Had they crossed the street? Was she on the other side? The gyros got cold as he grumbled to himself, eventually discovering that some of the brownstones had nameplates, although not all of them did. He got turned around and he forgot which way he’d come from. Eventually, he found a nameplate that said Sax and chortled to himself, shaking his head.
Cole saw nothing wrong at first. He was singing to himself. He went to the kitchen and found plates and started laying out the food, smiling in anticipation of eating with Penny and then marveling about how something so simple could make him happy. He poured them sodas and assumed she was in the bathroom and busy because she hadn’t come out yet.
“Penny!” His holler echoed through the house and heading into the hallway, he saw Henry’s door open. He knew at once that something was wrong at the sight of the door haphazardly thrown open. A big, heavy looking canon thing was toppled over on the floor and coupled with the silence of the house it now struck him oddly like a crack of thunder.
“Penny,” he said flatly, and went past the open door to Penny’s room and the bathroom, both empty. There was a third bedroom, her parents’ old room he supposed, and he threw open that door and found only a couple pieces of furniture, a lot of packed-up boxes, and some exercise equipment. Storage, he assumed. He went back to Henry’s room and though the place looked generally like a serial killer’s disaster area, there also seemed to be signs of a struggle; a desk chair toppled over and broken glass everywhere.
He saw it all in a flash. They’d grabbed her. She’d fought them because, of course she would. He’d taken his time, happily browsing postcards painted for tourists and scarves he thought she would like. He’d known the danger as well as she had, and he’d left her alone to be taken by the terror that was her brother. He found a cloth on the floor and carefully sniffed it. The chloroform had already evaporated but he could make out the faint ether-like scent with his bear shifter’s nose and knowledge of chemicals.
“No,” Cole muttered. “No, no…”
His mate. His sweetheart. Not again. This could not happen again. How had he been so foolish?
He had not lost control of himself since Louise’s death but now the depth of his rage overtook him and involuntarily, he found himself shifted into his bear form. Roaring with enough power to shake the windows, he lost all sense and began tearing up the room with his massive claws. He tore up every garment of Henry’s clothing and ripped his bed to shreds. He knocked over all the remaining glass jars and splintered his desk. His human self fought from inside of him. This wasn’t doing any good, the human said.
Penny is in terrible danger and we must find her, his inner human insisted.
He could smell her, he thought dimly. If he tried, perhaps he could track her to wherever they’d taken her. If they hadn’t killed her first.
Neighbors must have heard the terrible roars coming from the Sax house, but they may also have thought he was playing strange music too loudly.
He could track her, he thought again. And how far would he get in Brooklyn as a bear? He could smell better than most as a human but it had nothing on his bear’s sense. Then they would chase him down; a giant Kodiak in the middle of New York, they would tranquilize him when they found him.
Penny!
Delilah
“I turn my back on these doofuses for one minute!” Delilah cried, running down the sidewalk in the direction of the car that had just turned a corner away from Penny’s street.
She felt the Oracle should have known to warn her. Wasn’t it sort of omniscient about these things? It had known how Penny and Cole were feeling in the car. How had it known that and not thought to warn her that Penny’s evil brother was coming to kidnap her?
Now they were getting away and they’d taken Henry’s laptop with them and Cole had no idea where they were going. But she did because the Oracle had told her right after they’d gotten away. Which was not very helpful.
Delilah was not meant to intervene too directly. She was supposed to “nudge,” to subtly cajole her targets towards both each other and a great act of goodness via backstage ploys. But now she was stumped and had no better idea than to stand dumbly on the sidewalk, catching her breath, watching the SUV get away with that good-hearted restaurant hostess inside.
Delilah had not been insulted when Katz had called her cynical. In her time on earth, she would have considered it a compliment. Now though, she found herself genuinely worried for Penny Sax and doubly worried that the pain of losing another mate, even one he’d come to care for so quickly, would throw Professor J. Cole Montgomery into a downward spiral from which he might never recover. She was triply worried that she was worried at all and told herself it was only about the mission which needed to be accomplished for her own good. It was all self-interest really.
Even by human standards, it would be stupid if she couldn’t make these dummies happy.
Delilah stood there on the sidewalk and tried to think up another plan. She had, so far, been pretty good at coming up with clever little ruses to get her targets back on track. Yet now she was coming up blank. There was no way to tell Cole where to go without actually telling him where to go. For the first time she could remember, Delilah felt helpless. The sensation tasted like sour milk in her mouth.
Delilah whipped out her Oracle and said, “I have to help Cole. I mean, actually help him. I don’t know what to do.”
The Oracle turned red. It was speaking on behalf of the Council and the Council was saying not to intervene.
“This rule is stupid!” Delilah said, stomping her foot. “What are you going to do if I intervene anyway? Demote me again? To what? The Department of Minor Acquaintances?”
The Oracle flashed red.
“Well, screw you too!” Delilah said. “Look, you told me where they’re going, what difference does it make if I tell Cole? I won’t actually save her myself, I’ll just help him save her-”
The Oracle flashed red.
“What is the point of this job if I can’t help people!” Delilah said.
She realized what she sounded like and thought to herself that she didn’t so much care whether or not Penny Sax lived or died, it was only that she’d been sent to complete a mission and the rules she’d been given to complete it were...stupid.
“Screw it,” Delilah said and spun on her heel, running full speed to Penny’s house. The Oracle, which seemed to know her intentions, kept flashing red. She stuck it in her pocket where it buzzed against her leg, and ignored it.
Delilah heard the window-rattling roar of an angry Kodiak before the house was even in sight. She hissed, worried about what she might find. She just hoped she could get to him before he ran off in bear form. He wouldn’t make it to Central Park to save Penny in bear form, she thought. They’d catch him on the bridge, if nothing else.
Delilah found Cole the bear in the hallway, his fur up on end, his eyes wild. When he saw Delilah he reared up on his back legs, his mighty claws in the air. Delilah clapped her hands to her ears as he let go another thunderous roar.
“Cole!” Delilah shouted. “You gotta chill!”
Cole fell to his front paws again and the floor shook, sending Delilah stumbling back. She put up her hands in a gesture of surrender, realizing that the big, scary bear had no idea she was on his side.
“Cole! I know where Penny is! You have to calm down!”
Cole shook his big head and grunted and pawed at the floor.
Stupid human
s, she thought. Or shifters. Whichever.
She spoke as loudly and clearly as possible as if trying to make a stubborn child understand.
“I will help you find your mate!” Delilah said. “But you have to shift back! Just concentrate, man! I need human Cole right now, okay!”
Delilah tried to ignore the struggle she saw come over Cole. He clearly understood her as he didn’t roar again or rear up on his haunches. He shook his great head, grunting and snorting, and then he tensed and begin to shift. The shift seemed slow and painful. Delilah had met plenty of shifters back in her alive days and afterward. It was usually a pretty quick transformation. But she also knew that shifters sometimes changed without meaning to if put under enough duress. He must have been having great difficulty if he couldn’t just instantly make himself human again.
Finally, Professor J. Cole Montgomery stood before her, breathless and no less imposing in human form than he was as a bear.
“Who are you?” Cole said, glowering at her.
Delilah was petite yet generally did not feel intimidated by larger people. But Cole had several inches on her and also appeared to be flexing every single one of his impressive muscles. Even the walls seemed to swell a little around him as if the strength of his anger and energy could not be contained merely to his body. Delilah was glad she had some power but did not particularly want to hex the guy she was supposed to be helping. She was legitimately uncertain as to which form she found more dangerous; Cole the human or his bear.
“I can’t really tell you that,” Delilah said, trying to sound calmer than she felt.
Cole growled.
“Okay, okay! I really can’t though,” she insisted. “Think of me as...a guardian angel.” She felt the Oracle buzz in her pocket and cleared her throat. “I’m definitely not a guardian angel or anything like an angel. Just think of me as something...like that. Look, it doesn’t matter who I am. I know where Henry is taking Penny. We have to go now and we have to hope your little shifter buddies are in the city.”
“They are,” Cole said. “Where do I send them?”
“Central Park,” Delilah said, grabbing his hand. “The Alice in Wonderland statue! Let’s go!”
Penny
Penny woke up and couldn’t see or move. She was in a car, she knew that. Or rather, she was in some big vehicle. A van, maybe. She tried to scream but her mouth was gagged. She had to calm herself down to breathe through her nose.
Penny considered that she had some time on her hands to think, since she had nothing she could possibly do now but attempt to break the hard plastic bonds holding her wrists together behind her back. Plastic handcuffs, she supposed. She was panicking which was making it difficult to focus on one breath after the other and it was making her heart pound. She wanted to get her hands free but she felt as if she were about to break her wrists and when the pain became unbearable for the third time as the car swerved around a corner, she felt tears sliding down her cheeks.
Think, think.
But she couldn’t think of anything, not anything that was useful anyhow. She could think of Henry as a little boy and look back on the several occasions when he had done something strange or scary. She could think about when she was ten and she had started to tell people at school that Henry was not her brother. She said he had been left at their door by wicked fairies. Hell, maybe that was true, considering. When he was five, he’d pulled a thick lock of her hair so hard, he’d yanked it right out of her scalp. The adults agreed that Henry was strong and didn’t know his own strength. But she had seen the way he smiled as she was sobbing.
They should have done something, she thought. But what they could have done, she didn’t know.
She had time, now, too, to think about Cole. The thought of him pulsed in her blood and brain. She couldn’t stand to think of him losing another mate. There was no justice in that. At least they had only just met. As strong as their connection already seemed to be, she had to think he might be able to move on fairly quickly after only a day. She imagined him finding the empty house and wondering where she had gone. Maybe he would assume she’d gone off on her own to stop The Salvaged. She fantasized about him coming to save her. But more than that, she hoped for his sake that he would wait. Somehow it was a more comforting thought than the idea of him in danger. Who knew what else The Salvaged was capable of?
He would wait for her and Henry would probably kill her and it would hurt him so badly but he would go home and be sad for a little while. But he’d be okay in the long run, she was sure. She hoped he’d find another mate someday.
Keep him safe and happy, she thought at nobody. Keep him safe and happy, please.
Forget me, Cole, she thought desperately. Go home and forget me.
In her head, she heard a little voice that sounded like Cole saying, “You don’t know much about shifters.”
One more kiss, Penny thought to herself. I wish I’d had one more kiss with him.
She wished a lot of things now. She wished she’d convinced Henry they should sell the brownstone. What Henry would have done with his half of that kind of money, she didn’t like to think. Although it likely could not have got any worse than it was. But she could have taken her own money anyway and found that place in the woods or heck, maybe she could’ve bought her own little piece of property and had something built; a cabin type of house with a studio just for her painting. It was hard not to imagine the place as being just like Cole’s with a little bit of her own boho sensibility; woods and plants, a million throw blankets and rugs and a bear lamp. Penny had never seen an actual bear lamp but she had to believe one existed. If it didn’t, she would make one. Or she would have, if given the chance.
She had all kinds of things to think about. She couldn’t think about what was happening to her because it was too frightening and she couldn’t find a way out of it. She now thought herself ridiculous for ever thinking it was weird or bad to be a man who could turn into a bear. Even for a second, it was a stupid thing to think. If she could turn into a bear, she could break right through the stupid plastic handcuffs and attack her captors.
She wished she was a bear. Having learned about things like shifters and wizards and potions, she shut her eyes and wished by whatever magic existed, that she could turn into a bear or anything else that could get out of this.
It didn’t work.
I should have been a painter, Penny thought, and then she began to pray.
She’d never really believed in a god or anything beyond the universe itself which had always been enough for her. But now she wished for some kind of divine intervention and felt deep within her a passionate desire to survive, to show Cole he could love again, and to not miss out on the rest of a life she deserved. She wanted to go back to the woods and see Cole shift, to see his impressive Kodiak bear rolling around in the mud and leaves. She wanted to feel his thick fur between her fingers.
The car swerved and went over a bump that jolted her. The boys were talking about their “Reckoning” and how everyone was going to see and how they’d all been mistreated by the world. She could hear Henry, now. He was talking about how society was going to hell in a handbasket if promising young men like them weren’t treated like the royalty they were.
The ride was long. She could tell when they were stuck in long periods of traffic. The handcuffs dug into Penny’s wrists. Her feet and knees were bound too and she was in an awkward position on the floor of the car. If she lay her head down, it hurt her neck. If she raised her head, it hurt her neck. It wasn’t extremely painful, but it was so uncomfortable and frustrating, she couldn’t help but cry.
“You alright back there, sis?” Henry called out from the front seat. Whoever he was with cackled beside him. “Are you excited!”
Penny bit down on her gag, if only to find a little bit of release from the anger and tension coursing through her.
“It’s not gonna hurt!” Henry was saying. “Seriously! Truth is, you won’t even know the difference!”
The car lurched to a stop suddenly and threw Penny half on her face. She was trembling she was so scared. She prayed to God again. Just on the off-chance there was one. A guardian angel would be nice about now, she thought. And after all, if there were bear shifters and magic and wizards, why couldn’t there be guardian angels too?
Henry and his friend were laughing. She heard the slap of hands that sounded like high fives. She heard a mechanical sound and a pinging; the trunk of what sounded like an SUV opening. Rough hands were grabbing at her and she squirmed and tried to kick Henry and his buddy away. She could at least go down fighting, she thought. Her blindfold was ripped off and she blinked in the sudden bright light, squinting. Henry was in her face, glaring at her. He looked like he was dying and now she wondered if the dark magic he was using was having a physical effect on him.
He spat on her face and she twisted away. “If we transform you with everyone else, you won’t know the difference,” he said. “Or we could kill you slowly and painfully. Don’t think I won’t. Quit fighting.”
A little part of her died then. As strange and frightening as Henry had always been, he was still her brother. She supposed she’d been waiting for him to come to his senses or to suddenly realize he was hurting her. But she was dead to him; just another human who he thought had made his life miserable.
She stopped moving, and they unbound her feet and her knees. They left her gagged and handcuffed and pulled her out of the trunk. She staggered to her feet, chest heaving as she tried to catch her breath and get her bearings. It was fully dark now and cold enough outside that she was shivering without a jacket. Although, she wasn’t sure how much was cold and how much was fear. She assumed they were in Central Park since that had been the plan and she recognized the spot they’d driven to. There were a few people about, and they walked on either side of her, trying to hide her cuffs, and draped her in a giant hooded sweatshirt so that the hood covered most of her face. She stumbled along a cobbled walkway, as Henry and the other boy half dragged her.
Secrets & Dark Magic Page 10