by Ann Gimpel
Sarai drew her mouth into a thoughtful expression, lips pressed together. “I’m sure your bondmate is correct about an astrological age drawing to a close. Problem is they last so long, it’s rare for shifters to live through even a single transition, so it isn’t something I’ve paid much attention to.”
“Not just one age.” Jeremiah wanted to make certain she grasped the cave lion’s message. “If I understood correctly, this is the close of an entire cycle of twelve ages, which is what makes it so dangerous.”
“Oh my. That would make quite a difference,” she murmured.
“Anyway,” Jeremiah continued, “we have a fairly narrow window, maybe as little as a year, to unravel the mages’ alliance with vampires.”
“What happens if we fail?” Niall asked, his usual cocky confidence notably absent.
“If we segue into the next age, one ruled by Aries, without fixing this mess, something about a surfeit of psychic emanations will spell our doom.” He slogged down the rest of his wine before continuing, “I didn’t fully understand how that last part would work, or why these supernatural wavelengths couldn’t function in our favor, but the cave lion was most emphatic we had to take an aggressive stance.”
Stephan eyed his niece. “Can you find out more about the zodiac link to all this?”
She nodded solemnly. “Tomorrow. I’ll go to my shop and cull through my reference books. I have a lot of them. Surely, something this major will have gotten some pen-time.”
Niall rose from the table. “Probably as good an opportunity as any to call it a night,” he said, sounding subdued. Nothing like the Niall who’d faced off against Jeremiah and called him untrustworthy after his ploy to mow through a vampire horde had succeeded.
“Want to bunk here?” Stephan asked Jeremiah as he stood and began gathering dishes into his arms.
“Sure, but only if you let me take care of the dishes.”
“It’s a deal. I’ll just carry them into the kitchen, and then they’re all yours. Take the second-to-the-last room on the right.”
Jeremiah lingered over the dishes, soothed by the ambiance in Stephan’s home. The energy was different from being surrounded by mages, but that was understandable. What surprised him was how quickly he took to his new affiliation. He’d assumed there’d be more of a transition period. When he finally lay down in a well-appointed room that looked as if it did double duty as an office, he slept like a dead thing.
He’d meant to be up early and on his way, but he overslept. A commotion out in the yard ended up driving the final vestiges of sleep away. Staggering upright, he peered out a window and saw the sun already high in the sky. A beat-up blue SUV was parked off to one side. The car hadn’t been there the previous night, and he wondered who it belonged to.
He didn’t have to wonder long.
A leggy blonde stood a few feet away with Stephan’s arms around her. The woman’s hair was platinum with golden streaks running through it. Clear, green eyes were widely set and tilted just enough to suggest a hint of Asian blood. Snug jeans vanished into well-worn leather boots, and a stretchy top offered a clear outline of generous breasts as she transitioned from Stephan’s embrace to Sarai’s.
He was staring, but the newcomer was exotic and gorgeous. He itched to make a grab for her high, tight ass. As if in full agreement, his cock rose in a column and pressed against his belly. He hadn’t had sex in so long, he wasn’t sure if the hiatus was measured in months or years.
He’d thought he’d moved beyond spontaneous physical reactions to female beauty, but his hard-on made a liar out of him.
Jeremiah moved away from the window, feeling like a lecherous peeping Tom. Maybe he could just pop out onto the porch and introduce himself. Find out who the knock-your-eyes-out blonde was, but he’d be subtle about it.
It wouldn’t do to fall all over her. Hell, she might have a mate for all he knew. He decided on a generic greeting, one that would give him an easy out, and pushed his hard-on to a less obvious position, masking it with a glob of magic. He’d slept in his clothes, so all he had to do was slide his stockinged feet into his boots and lace them.
Being noisy on purpose, he walked through the house and out onto the porch, letting the door bang a bit. “Morning, all,” he called cheerily, aiming a pleasant nod at the blonde woman. “I really should get moving. No reason to take advantage of your hospitality.”
He kept his expectations low. Hell, he’d have been delighted if the woman introduced herself, but her actions knocked him off balance. Magic shimmered hotly around her, clothing shredded, and an enormous eagle took shape. Screeching like a mad thing, it flew around everyone’s heads in uneven ellipses. Right before her shift, he thought he’d picked up on telepathy alluding to a lion, which might mean him.
“It appears your bondmate is acquainted with Jeremiah’s.” Stephan grinned broadly at the eagle flapping madly overhead. His words clinched Jeremiah’s suspicion the lion was indeed him.
“Bond animals, I swear.” Niall snickered.
“Can’t live with ’em, can’t live without ’em,” Sarai agreed, adding, “Sprinkle some of that Aquarius charm around, Renee. Might calm your eagle down.”
Renee. The blonde woman is named Renee.
Before he could react to the tableau unfolding around him, the bird made a dive for his shoulder and latched on, talons pinching through flesh. He resisted the temptation to smile and say something like, “Honey, you can latch onto me any old time.”
This wasn’t about him or sex. The eagle knew his lion. What that meant remained to be seen.
“We are shifting,” the lion informed him. “The eagle is a very old companion of mine. Would you prefer to salvage your clothing?”
“Thank you for offering me a choice.” Suddenly shy, he glanced at the house.
Stephan caught on fast—or maybe he’d been listening in—and trotted up the stairs and onto the porch. He held out an arm. “Land here,” he told the eagle in a tone that didn’t leave any space for disagreement “We will offer privacy for Jeremiah to shift. It’s far from second nature for him.”
With a disconsolate squawk, the bird spread its wings and coasted to Stephan’s extended arm.
Jeremiah’s shoulder hurt. Blood dripped from where the eagle’s talons had cut through his flesh. He ignored it and hurried inside, shucking and folding clothing as soon as he was on the other side of the door. Naked, he opened himself to magic and reveled in the sense of wonder that accompanied altering his form. Now that he understood what the sensations meant, where they’d lead, he didn’t fight the transformation.
The pain he remembered from his first shift in the cave never materialized, only a few minor discomforts as bone, muscle, and skin rearranged themselves. A phalanx of questions filled his mind, but a lot of them would be answered soon. No reason to bother his bondmate.
He padded toward the front door, enjoying the fluid grace in his animal body. The lion directed a small shot of power, and the latch released. Between paw and snout, it muscled the door wide enough to sashay through.
Stephan had moved back down the steps and stood in the yard, the eagle still perched on his forearm much as a hunting hawk would have. Niall and Sarai lounged nearby. Jeremiah tried to glom onto the sense of belonging that had filled him last night, but it was elusive.
Right now, balancing from paw to paw as he moved down the steps, he felt like an imposter. The fastest way to get over it was to face it, but he’d deal with his issues later. The bird launched itself off Stephan’s arm and circled, landing with its feet on the lion’s broad back. The beast took off at an easy lope, heading for a band of forested hills beyond Stephan’s farm.
“Who are you?” rolled through his mind.
At first, he figured it was the eagle, but why would it care? The animals didn’t have names, which meant it must be the woman.
“Can you not hear me?” the same voice asked. A pleasant contralto, it reminded him of heavy cream, rich and silky.
“Sorry. I’m sorry,” he replied. “This is all so new to me. Not telepathy, but the shifter side of things. I’m Jeremiah Fuller. Up until a couple of days ago, I was a mage.”
“What? But that’s not possible.” The honeyed tone vanished, replaced by strident disbelief.
“How do you think I feel about it?” he tossed back, quickly adding, “Not that I’m not humbly grateful, but still, it’s a rather large change.” Magic flared between lion and eagle, so he figured they were holding a conversation of their own.
“Are you one of the mages that joined with vampires?” Suspicion lined her words.
“Oh hell no. It was only a few of the Mages First group who fell off the rails.”
“How many is a few?” Her tone remained glacial. “And who the hell are Mages First?”
He recalled the enmity between their people, certain she did as well. “Mages First is who’s left from the ones still steeped in bitterness from our old war. Perhaps as many as a hundred remain, which is a fraction of their original number. We’ve captured them as we found them, separating them from their magic.”
“Why not kill them?”
“Could you murder a kinsman in cold blood?”
His answer seemed to sink in because she hesitated before saying, “It wouldn’t be easy.”
He considered telling her the whole story about the vampires and the poison, but it felt too convoluted. She might take the same tack Niall had and decide he’d been foolhardy and put shifters at unnecessary risk to carry out his secret agenda.
He had no idea why, but how she viewed him was important, and he didn’t want to make things worse.
“How is it you’re a shifter?” she asked after they’d been silent for a while.
The flash and flare of magic as he ran with the eagle clinging to his back suggested the bond animals were deep in talking or catching up or hatching plans. He supposed he could have figured out a way to listen in—maybe—but Renee had asked him a question.
Niall kept his answer simple. “I was gravely ill, close to death. One of your healers saved my life. Only thing I could figure was I absorbed enough of his magic through the healing to turn the tides. According to my bondmate, our magic springs from common roots.”
“I know that. I’m one of the old ones.”
He wanted to ask where she hailed from. If she had family. If she had a mate. But she didn’t seem in the mood for small talk—or trading histories.
“Sorry,” she added. “That was surly, and there’s no call. I have to trust you’re walking the good side of the street. If you weren’t, the cave lion would never have bonded with you.”
“How did your eagle know about me?” he asked, genuinely curious.
A rippling snort was followed by, “It didn’t know about you, only that your bond animal had forged a linkage. You’re why I’m here. I was sound asleep in my bed in Glasgow, Montana when the eagle woke me and told me we had to find you as fast as we could.”
“It’s the vampire thing, huh?”
“Yup. I’m not sure how much you know about being a shifter—”
“Very little,” he broke in. “Only what Niall and Sarai told me yesterday.”
“Some of this may be a repeat, but the animals all know one another. They inhabit a special world that’s closed to everyone but them. All of them, bonded or not, can meet and converse in their world, but they cannot effect any changes here on earth unless they’re bonded. Something about the shifter bond enables their magic, moves it from philosophical possibility to reality.”
He was considering the ramifications of that when she started talking again. “From what my bird told me, the lion has long sought a worthy bondmate, which was why I assumed you’d be a very powerful magic-wielder.”
“I am, just not of the shifter variety.” He stopped there. Her implication that shifters were the only ones with potent magic rankled.
The lion wheeled, changing directions and heading back toward Stephan’s farm.
“Are you affiliated with other mages? Or do you work alone?”
Her question caught him off-guard. “I live with several other mages.”
“Mmph. Bet they all want bond animals now too.”
“They don’t know about me. Not yet.”
“Why not?” Her words held barbed edges.
“Not for the reasons you’re thinking.” He hated being backed into corners, and defensiveness ran through him in a thin, bitter tide.
“How would you know what I’m thinking?”
“I hear it in your tone. You assume I’m ashamed of my new magical status, but that’s not it at all. I’ve been a shifter for a grand total of less than forty-eight hours. For the brief period when I was home, either no one else was awake, or they weren’t there.”
He clammed up. He didn’t owe her a thing. Not explanations. Not excuses. Nothing. So what if her bondmate and his were old chums?
He picked up the pace, and the lion didn’t fight him. Once he started moving faster, the bird took off, winging skyward until he couldn’t see it anymore. When they trotted into Stephan’s front yard, he kept right on going up the steps. A judicious blast of magic opened the door, and he cruised through intent on shifting, dressing, and leaving.
The blonde might be a knockout, but she had too many prickly edges for his taste. She’d said she was one of the older shifters. It meant she’d lived through the long-running war between his kin and hers. Losses on both sides had been crippling. Just because he’d found a way to come to terms with it didn’t mean she had.
He dressed quickly and was halfway out the door when Stephan, Niall, and Sarai trooped up the front steps.
“You’re not leaving,” Stephan said. “Not yet, anyway.”
“We want to know what the animals came up with,” Sarai chimed in.
“Aye. We went hunting for Renee but couldn’t find her,” Niall said. “Her car’s here, so we figure she’s still flitting about in her bird form.”
Jeremiah wasted all of five seconds feeling pleased Renee hadn’t left. He shut it down fast—she certainly wasn’t hanging around because of him—and nodded pleasantly at the trio staring at him. “I’m not sure what the animals discussed, but I’d be glad to ask the lion.”
Stephan sent a strange look scudding his way but stopped short of chastising him for not giving the animals’ conversation top priority when it was happening.
“You do that, son.” Stephan dropped into one of the chairs scattered around the porch. “Take a load off and let us know what your bondmate has to say.”
Jeremiah hooked a boot around the bottom of a chair and positioned it for sitting. He turned his attention inward. “Everyone’s waiting,” he said. “Tell us what happened.”
“I will share what you need to know. No more. No less.”
Jeremiah opened his mind and heart, encouraging his bondmate to begin talking. He’d show the pesky, sanctimonious eagle shifter mage power wasn’t to be trifled with. Or discounted. He was here. She wasn’t. It gave him an edge, and he was shameless enough to grab the advantage and run with it.
Chapter 4
Renee had been listening to the eagle’s conversation with half an ear, so she missed a whole lot of whatever it kicked around with the cave lion. When her bondmate had mentioned the words cave lion, she’d sketched out a mental image that didn’t come close to doing the beast justice.
It was magnificent. Huge and regal with a golden mane that fell around its shoulders. Silvery flecks made its eyes luminous, and its paws were the size of platters and tipped with black claws four inches long. Riding on the creature’s back felt like an honor—until the magic wielder attached to it revealed he’d been a mage until something like thirty-five seconds ago.
What the unholy fuck? A mage?
Mages held inferior magic. They were the po’ folk cousins in her magical lineup, and she’d never had much truck with them. Her interest in the hunky blond man turned into suspicion, and she peppered
him with questions.
Most of them verged on rude, insolent enough she’d forced herself to apologize at one point but hadn’t been happy about it. The mage, or shifter, or whatever the hell he was, had become testy.
She didn’t blame him, but it was beyond the point.
She still rode on the lion’s back but was increasingly anxious to leave. Finally, she turned her full attention to the eagle, hoping to hasten their egress. At first, its part of the conversation felt disjointed, like it wasn’t a match for the lion’s comments.
“Touché,” the bird squawked, sounding irritated.
“Not it at all,” the lion countered. “You missed my point.”
“No. You missed mine. You’ve lived in our other world too long. Your ideas may have worked a millennium ago, but not now.”
“You can’t know that.”
“Aye. I can. Damn it. You’re every bit as stubborn as you’ve always been.”
“And you’re not?” the lion asked in a patronizing tone.
Protectiveness for her eagle blasted through her. They weren’t accomplishing anything here, so she made a grab for command of the bird’s body, surprised when it didn’t lodge a complaint as she spread its wings and pumped them, gaining altitude quickly.
Renee didn’t mince words. “I missed the first part of that. What did the lion want to do that you disagreed with?”
“It thinks we should gather all the bond animals and storm the vampires’ central location. Except there isn’t one. Not anymore.”
She hadn’t been aware vamps even had anything like a headquarters. Hundreds of years ago, their powerbase was located in Transylvania, but that time was long past. Vampires hailed from central Romania, an area bordered to the east by the Carpathian Mountains. Others with magic had avoided it, even if it was inconvenient. Once the war with the mages heated up, she’d all but forgotten about vampires.