But when her limbs formed into supple female thighs and calves, and the powerful rib cage became an indented feminine waist with pretty breasts, his feral gleam changed to male appreciation. He, too, began to transform. Soon enough two naked people stared at one another. Seth’s body was streaked with wounds, but as Arielle stared at his powerful angles and planes, so in opposition to her own curves and valleys, Seth’s wounds began to scab over and heal. As if he found her not only challenge enough for a lifetime, but succor when he had need of it.
Ethan shinnied down from the tree, but took care to retrieve his weapon and stand over Shelly before facing Seth, who stood over Arielle.
The man of science and the being not quite human, not quite feline, stared one another down. Ethan’s mouth quirked. “Somehow challenging you to a duel to protect Arielle’s virtue seems somewhat anticlimactic at this point. Not to mention suicidal.”
“Then move aside. Forgive my presumptuousness, but Arielle’s beauty is for my eyes alone.” He ripped the long coat off Ethan’s shoulders and carefully wrapped Arielle in it.
She looked from the dead deer, the blood spatters in the clearing, to the wounds still healing on Seth’s chest. Her gaze compulsively tracked down his form, then skittered away as she reached his waist. “What happened?”
Seth took the muffler Ethan offered and wrapped it about his loins. When he was finished, he looked exactly like the powerful Mihos warrior god in the drawings in the earl’s study, a loin cloth his only ornament. Even his hair was coarse and wiry like a lion’s mane.
“Luke tried to get you to join him in his killing sprees,” Seth answered baldly. “I stopped him.”
“Why?”
Seth stared at her, that arrogant smile that had so maddened her playing about his lips. “Do you not know? The instincts of the cat and the woman should tell you true. If you’re brave enough to listen.”
Arielle looked away as if she could not bear any more truth, at least not at this moment. Instead she let him help her into Ethan’s long coat. But when he tugged her toward the darkness, she resisted, looking back at Ethan and the great wolf still on the ground.
“Shelly…why do I sense she was here? And who hurt that wolf? I’ve never seen one so enormous…”
Seth and Ethan exchanged a look, but Seth only tugged on Arielle’s arm. “Come. We must go now. He’ll be back. Stronger.”
“And we’ll stop him. Again,” Ethan said. “Is there no way to end his bewitchment without killing him?”
“No. Why do you think I’ve tried to avoid this night? I do not want to kill my own brother, whether we were ever close or not.” Seth’s gaze turned bleak as he stared after the place where Luke had slunk into the night.
Ethan sighed heavily. “You may have no choice. He’s doing all he can to implicate you in the murders he’s committed. Do not go back to your flat. The police are waiting. There are witnesses who placed you at Madame Aurora’s shortly before she was killed.”
Arielle’s eyes widened with fear. “What? But how? Who killed her?” Tears misted her eyes.
“Luke,” Seth said grimly. “Probably right after I left her to find out what had happened during your seance with Bast. To stop your ability to commune with your mother, and to implicate me. Let me worry about that, Arielle.” He pulled her under his strong arm and looked back at Ethan. “For now, take your woman and see to her. Give her my thanks for risking her hide to save Arielle.” And with that, Seth lifted a protesting Arielle into his arms.
All mirth fading from his green eyes, Ethan blocked Seth’s path. “I cannot let you do this. How do I know you won’t also try to turn Arielle? You obviously enjoy being a cat, too.”
Seth looked down at Arielle, his eyes glowing again, but now with a very different, and very human emotion. Ethan recognized it as the look he wore when he stared at Shelly’s cleavage. Desire.
“Because there is one very great difference between me and my brother,” Seth murmured, his strong face transformed. “I don’t want to turn Arielle into a soulless killing feline shapeshifter, neither resident of this world nor ruler of the next, because I’m obsessed with immortality. I want her for but one lifetime of passion. Passion enough to fill nine lives. When she understands what it means to be a woman, the lure of the cat will fade.”
Arielle stopped her struggling and caught her breath. The last of the crazed haze faded from her eyes as she stared up at his face, as if finally, she recognized it. Saw it fully and opened herself to its appeal. For the first time, that most powerful of emotions between men and women appeared in her eyes, a pearly glimmer of a beginning: trust.
Seth shifted her more comfortably in his arms and said softly, as if talking to Ethan still, but staring at Arielle all the while, “This is the gift Isis wants me to bestow on her, and bestow it I shall. I suggest you do the same with Shelly.”
And thus Seth Taub carried his burden and his treasure into the night.
Like the honorable man he was, Ethan stood aside and let him carry her off. Arielle either went to her salvation or her ruin, but he was fatalist enough to know this moment had been inevitable from the day Arielle was born. No one could deny their heritage, or their destiny, and Arielle had to choose between her human half and her feline instincts.
He stared down at the still figure on the ground, his thoughts now finding voice. “Not even you, my very dear Miss Shelly Holmes, can deny the destiny that brought us together.” And then, after trotting to the road to hire a cab, Ethan hurried back with a carriage blanket, pulling a pouch from his pocket as he ran back to his were woman.
Whatever this night brought, whether his own death or their mutual fulfillment, Ethan knew he’d never get another opportunity like this one for which he’d prepared himself for some time. He had to take it, or she’d continue to hold him–and her own emotions--at arm’s length. Now, while she couldn’t protest, was his only chance to whisk her off to his lair. There, he’d imprint himself upon her in both the way of the man and the wolf.
A smile playing about his uncommonly wide, flexible mouth, Ethan sprinkled the wolf’s bane on a kerchief and held it to the werewolf’s still snout, anticipating the titanic battle of wills to come.
A mere half mile away, Luke’s wounds throbbed as he huddled beneath a weeping willow, so weak that he was having a hard time maintaining the transformation. He’d licked the great slashes Seth had left on his shoulders and legs, and those had begun to heal, but he couldn’t reach his back and the upper part of his chest. They bled profusely, weakening him.
The blood loss was accelerated by the fierce thumping of hatred in his heart. Seth, his brother. Seth, who had always been bigger, stronger, smarter. But the frequent use of his own powers in the hunt had strengthened him just as he’d hoped. He might even have been able to defeat Seth tonight if the earlier battle with that were creature had not tired him. And Arielle had been so close to turning to him, so enthralled by the scent and taste of death…
Luke looked down and saw that one of his appendages was feline, and the other fully human. If he’d had a mirror, he knew he would be shocked at the pathetic figure he made, a weak man aspiring to a god’s immortality. An immortality he would have already achieved, his consort by his side at table and at the kill, if not for Seth.
Seth…
Fury strengthened him. With a great arching of his back, he roared, feeling strength returning to him. The ugly man’s hand grew sleek and feline again, tipped with murderous claws.
The unearthly sound carried over the hillside, to the cottages with cheery, blazing windows. At more than one table, mother and father hurried to comfort crying children, their own hands trembling as the hideous sound of despair and fury came again, louder.
The priest in the village crossed himself and fell to his knees.
The magistrate grabbed his gun and ran outside, looking around wildly.
He never saw the great cat that leaped at him out of the darkness. He knew the shotgun was ripped
from his grasp, felt the heavy weight on his back. Then, with one instant of searing recognition and pain, his last thought was that he’d be the latest obituary at the hands of the cat creature.
He heard strange words, guttural hissing words, as if the thing that uttered them were not human. “The slaughter-block is made ready as thou knowest, and thou hast come to destruction. I am Mihos, who stablisheth those who praise him. I am the Knot of the god in the Aser tree, the twice beautiful one, who is more splendid to-day than yesterday.”
Then the magistrate knew nothing, for his heart was ripped from his chest.
And the thing that had been Luke Simball, brother to Seth, son of Fatima, fed and grew stronger. Though he did not see it, brown tufts of werewolf fur had begun to grow along the ridge of his back and between his paws, and his acute hearing was now so sensitive it was almost painful.
And overhead, the full moon glowed, beaming down a malevolent smile on Luke’s new becoming.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Arielle had never felt so queer. Ethan’s long coat was wool and lined with fleece, so it was uncommonly warm, but the wind had become blustery, winnowing through the carriage’s cracks and crevices. She should be freezing, naked as she was beneath the coat.
Instead, she felt heated from head to toe, even her exposed feet. Every sense was alive to the man and the moment. She tried to keep her gaze away from his all but naked body, clad only in a wool loin cloth, but she found him fascinating in the fitful carriage lantern light. He had always looked sleek in his somber clothes, but without his shirt, the curvature of his muscles, limned in golden hues from the lantern, was mesmerizing. He truly did look as if he’d stepped down from the wall of an Egyptian tomb, lacking only the magnificent golden lion’s mask.
Even the long scratches and bite marks marring his muscled flesh, fading rapidly, added to his allure, for they were visible signs of how much he wanted her, of how determined he was to protect her.
This being, part man, part beast, had just risked his life for her. She had only disjointed memories of the last few hours, but she had inchoate images of two great lions fighting, one with a golden mane and green eyes, the other with a black mane and golden eyes.
Luke and Seth. She knew finally that her tormenting dreams had been prognosticators of the choice facing her now. One of the dark, one of the bright. She’d believed Luke to be the one of the bright, the kind one, Seth the dark, arrogant one, but she remembered enough of the night’s events to comprehend now that it was Luke who had seduced her into killing.
And Seth who risked his life to pull her away from a feast of blood and death that would have condemned her to her mother’s brutal choices…
He’d wrapped her in Ethan’s coat even as he absorbed her with a predatory hunger that somehow did not frighten her any more. Still, with a newfound strength whose source she was too nervous to explore, she drew the coat down over the exposed legs which he found of entirely too much interest. “You’re taking me home, yes?”
“No.” He continued to appraise her as if trying to decide which body part were tastiest. However, this particular expression was purely male, and purely human, and it inspired a like reaction in her femininity.
From somewhere she mustered resistance, not at all sure she was ready to be swept away by this man, whether he’d risked his life for her or not. How did she know he didn’t want her for his consort, too, and was manipulating her now, just as Luke had done? She narrowed her eyes at him. “I demand you take me home. My father will be worried.”
“Ethan will tell him you’re with me.”
“Indeed. I fear that may be the case.” Her father had already made his approval of Seth clear. He’d probably be delighted if she were forced into marriage after…after…She had to look away from those glowing golden eyes that were evocative of her past--and the present and future that could be hers if she were bold enough to follow that alluring golden promise.
While she was still grappling with confusion and temptation, an even more troubling thought came. Which of them, in her dreams, had inspired ecstasy with his rough caresses, even bringing blood and forcing her to lick? Her heart skipped a beat as she remembered the powerful sensations inspired by those tiny scratches. They had not hurt at the time, quite to the contrary. The tell tale wetness between her legs was testament enough to her reaction.
Then and now.
She squirmed, trying to calm the surging in her blood, but her resistance was wavering. He looked too good, smelled too wonderful, even sweat emanating from him appealing to her on the same instinctive level that made her see in the dark and revel in the smell of fear. Deep inside, she knew it was too late for the innocent girl who had been Lady Arielle Blaylock.
She was becoming, as her mother had become. But unlike her mother, would she be able to master these atavistic, primitive urges and rule them with her will, or would she become a servant to their dark power, unable to control the need to kill and feed?
It was Arielle, the lioness of God, whom Seth and Luke wanted. And it was Arielle, snow leopard, she wanted to be even now fully human, with blood beneath her fingernails and dotting the corners of her mouth. She licked at the dried blood, and at first the residual taste of the deer was ambrosia.
But then she caught sight of her own face. The bright carriage lantern reflected off the window glass, showing her a girl she almost didn’t recognize: neither human nor cat, but her eyes glowed with predatory needs. Fear leaped in her stomach like a live thing, and suddenly the inevitability of her fate was too much. Nausea built in her stomach and she had to hold her hand to her mouth and swallow back the tastes of blood and raw meat.
“Arielle,” Seth said soothingly, moving beside her to take her into his arms. “This is the hardest part of the transformation. This battle between your civilized code of behavior and the urges of the cat is quite normal. The trick is to allow the power of your human intellect to control the baser instincts. Shelly has obviously accomplished this. I went through this, and you can, too.”
“You’re stronger than I am.”
“No I’m not. Not mentally, not emotionally. Why do you think Luke has tried so hard to seduce you into his twisted ways? He needs you and the power you’d bring to him as his consort. You’ve just been so sheltered and smothered by your father that you’ve never had a chance to be who you really are. The last direct descendant of Cleopatra, the daughter of Bast.”
“And what curse is this? Dear God, what if I can’t control it? My mother couldn’t.”
“You’re stronger than your mother.” He rubbed her soothingly on the back as he spoke. “You must read the history of Cleopatra again. She changed the face of the globe with nothing but her feminine wiles and her will.”
“My father tried to keep me away from all things Egyptian.”
He leaned back to frown at her. “You never even read Shakespeare’s Anthony and Cleopatra?”
She shook her head.
“Pity. I think the bard captured her better than any of the many playwrights who have been infatuated by her beauty and power.”
“I have heard that she was not beautiful at all.” She peeped up at him, and that arrogant little smile playing about his lips that had so infuriated her was now comforting. The nausea had faded in the warmth of his embrace. How could something that felt so right be wrong?
She was past struggling against him, even though she felt the bare brush of his leg against hers. It was a strange feeling, the hairs on his leg rough and pleasurable, stroking against her. He rubbed his head against her like a great cat inviting her petting.
Her fingers curled with the need to respond.
A soft purr emanated from his lips, and he finished a breath away from kissing the side of her neck, “Shakespeare said of his Queen of the Nile: ‘Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale her infinite variety; other women cloy the appetites they feed, but she makes hungry where most she satisfies.’” His warm breath was the precursor to the kiss on th
e side of her neck. “Satisfy us both, Arielle. You know you want to.”
She shivered, thrills running down her spine as he nuzzled her hungrily, with nose and lips and finally with the graze of gentle teeth. He said between kisses, “He might have been writing about you. It’s time you stopped struggling against your birthright. Cleopatra toppled two dynasties because she lived life to the fullest, with passion and a refusal to be conquered.”
“And men died because of her,” she managed over the thumping of her heart. The queer feeling that had assailed her since she awoke in his arms was growing stronger. She looked up at him, her mouth apart with her quick breathing, hoping he’d take the choice away from her and kiss her senseless.
But he pulled back, reaching for the door, saying only, “True. But a new, better world grew from the ashes of their defeat. Join me, Arielle. Together we can defeat Luke and stop these senseless killings. But first you have to be mine.”
Only then did Arielle realize the carriage had rolled to a stop. Seth jumped down, and she saw they were in a small clearing that held a thatched cottage. Behind it was a bubbling spring, steaming in the grayish hue of incipient dawn. She recognized the mineral smell emanating from the steam.
They were near Bath and the hot springs. Another dream come true.
He had brought her here for one reason.
But just when she was so close to accepting her destiny at his side, for she was certain now he was the good one, the one of brightness despite his dark hair, he’d withdrawn his mesmerizing kisses and tempting warmth. She looked from his somber expression and outheld hand, to the windows glowing with welcome. He had planned this, obviously. Just as obviously, he was offering her a choice. A conscious choice.
His hand began to tremble a bit, and she sensed the power of his need for her, a need that went beyond desire to a deeper level, as if she were his only hope of an earthly soul mate.
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