Cougar's Courage (Duals and Donovans: The Different)

by Teresa Noelle Roberts

  “Enough about that, old man. I don’t want to hear about another male thinking of Cara that way. Any male.” Jack’s voice was a dark growl that set off all Cara’s internal dangerous-freak alarms even while it shivered over her skin and infiltrated her clothes to tease her clit—and that set off her alarms even more.

  Cara had managed, barely, to contain her anger at her grandfather, but this possessiveness, and at such an inappropriate time, tipped her over the edge into fury. “Enough. Both of you, enough! Jack, I like you and everything, but I’m not your furry soul-mate—and if I was your furry soul-mate, I’d pop claws and bloody your nose for talking to my grandfather that way. And Gramps, I understand what you meant to achieve by hiding my gun, but this is hardly the time…”

  “It’s the perfect time,” Gramps and Jack said in eerie unison. “Trust the magic.”

  Shouting as if she was as crazy as they were wouldn’t help, Cara told herself. But how could you deal rationally with crazy people?

  By playing their own game.

  “I’d be willing,” she said, her voice straining for calm, “but how am I supposed to trust the magic when it doesn’t work half the time and one of my guides is too busy leering at me to be useful?” That was true whether she meant Jack’s cougar or Coyote. All her rage and frustration—with the idiot males of all species in her life, with her own lack of magical progress, at the violence that threatened the village, with the fact that she had to worry about this insanity at all when in a properly organized universe she’d be a non-magical Toronto cop preparing for her wedding to a refreshingly sane if rather boring man instead of whatever and whoever she was becoming—bubbled out. “Am I supposed to do stuff blindly and believe it will work, and it will? This is, believe it or not, a semiserious question.”

  “Pretty much,” Jack said blithely.

  “Sometimes,” her grandfather countered, “but not now. One does not go into a battle an empty shell, just you and maybe your spirit guide, without the forces of the universe behind you and your magic at the ready. Stop this rattletrap, Jack.”

  “Rafe, Jude and Elissa are right behind us.”

  Gramps laughed. “You know as well as I do they’re doing their own preparations, and the guys will be silentspeaking you for directions as soon as their brains stop leaking out their ears from getting Elissa’s red magic charged up. Must say I envy those boys. That sounds a lot more fun than thumping magic into the heads of baby shamans. Which I really need to start doing, oh, yesterday.”

  “Okay, okay.” Jack pulled over abruptly. “We’ll do it your way, old man.” His voice softened. “Because you’re probably right. We’ve pulled it off before without prepping because we had to, but it won’t hurt to prep and might help.”

  “More than that,” Gramps said. “Jack, when I couldn’t finish your training, a healing shaman had to do what I could not. But Marla Whitehorse couldn’t teach you Trickster’s darker magics because she didn’t know them herself. For generations, we’ve passed on those magics without using them. When you came of age in a time of peace with no one who could teach you properly, I thought it was a sign you’d never need those magics. But we’re being pulled back into the larger world and its dangers. You and Cara will need all of Trickster’s gifts. Rafe will too, but he has manitou blood more strongly than you do, and a red witch who loves him, and he’ll find his own way.” Gramps shrugged. “You kids need to find your own ways too, but I can at least scratch you a map in the dirt.”

  That all pretty much flew over Cara’s head, but Jack nodded like he knew what Gramps was talking about. “I was hoping I’d never have to go that deep,” he said, his voice more serious than Cara had ever heard it. “I hoped I could get through life without channeling Trickster through my own body. Then again, I’d hoped I’d never kill something that wasn’t edible. We know how well that’s been working lately.”

  Gramps ruffled his hair. “It sucks to be an adult, Jack.”

  Cara ventured to speak. “I have no idea what you guys are talking about, but it sounds ominous.”

  “More lessons,” Jack said, “for both of us.”

  “No time for anything but the basics now. Basics Cara probably doesn’t know and Jack hasn’t practiced enough. Follow my lead. Then follow your guides and your heart.”

  Her grandfather’s words made a curious kind of sense, a sense she could approach only walking backward and looking in a mirror. That seemed to be the right way to approach anything to do with her magic, since she’d given up any hope she could beat it into submission with a stick.

  “What are you waiting for?” Gramps said, opening the door and stepping out of the truck. Cara and Jack followed.

  The two men drew a circle in the muddy earth.

  Gramps pulled a gourd rattle from one of his many pouches and handed it to Cara. A drum appeared from somewhere. Cara wanted to believe it had been hidden in the folds of his jacket, but it seemed at least as likely he’d pulled it out of another dimension. Jack drew forth his flask of whisky and a wooden flute from the inner pockets of his coat. Gramps had tobacco, which didn’t even pretend to be there for solely mystical reasons; rolling papers fell out of the pouch as he opened it. He poured some tobacco onto the earth, lit it, then began to drum a beat that sounded like a great heart. The sound was louder than the small drum should have produced, resonating through the forest.

  “What now?” she asked Jack, since her grandfather’s face was intent, his eyes focused outside the physical world.

  Jack poured whisky onto the earth near the little tobacco fire but not close enough to drench the tiny flames. “You’ll know.”

  That was what she got for asking.

  She was about to say that too, when Jack began to play the flute.

  Although it seemed to meander on its own lonely path, the music blended with her grandfather’s rhythm, forming a whole out of disjointed parts.

  Cara’s hand began to move of its own accord, shaking the rattle in a way that rose up and wove in with the drum and flute, even though she was sure that in another, less magically charged setting, she would have sounded off-tempo and random.

  When her grandfather started to chant, she realized she knew the words. She’d always known the words, that she’d heard her mother singing them time and again as a child. She didn’t fully understand them—she suspected a lot of the words were deliberate nonsense to loosen the grip of logic so magic could slither in.

  The part she could understand was calling on the Powers for strength and inspiration and on the spirit guides for support and…she wasn’t quite sure what the right translation would be. Maybe nerve or outrageousness or chutzpah. Something Lynx could offer in abundance.

  “Not that chutzpah’s English either, dear,” Lynx said, only a little snark in her voice. “But if you want outrageous, you need your other guide as well.”

  She sensed a great cat standing between her and Jack, a cat connected to both of them.

  No. She and Coyote had a deal. Besides, Lynx had mentioned outrageousness, and that was definitely Coyote. She turned her attention to the avatar she knew was with her grandfather.

  A canine form wavered in and out of sight. She couldn’t be sure, but she thought it sported a Carmen Miranda headdress.

  “Help me out,” she implored flatly, not trying to dress it up. “I’m stuck. I don’t know what to do here. I don’t know how to fight without my gun. In my old life, I almost never had to draw it, but I always knew it was there in case I needed it. And the magic doesn’t help me much. What good does it do to put moose ears on a murderer?”

  She didn’t expect a serious answer from a coyote in a Carmen Miranda hat. She wasn’t sure she even expected a frivolous answer.

  Instead, the fruit basket disappeared, and Coyote trotted close, standing next to Lynx, forming a phalanx of fur and power. “Moose ears humble. Moose ears shame. Moose ears make someone who isn’t fully committed to their path stop and, with any luck, think. Clown noses and over
sized golf pants are good for that too. What more do you want?”

  She spoke without hesitation, without thought. “Blood. I want their blood. I want their deaths.”

  “For shame, dear.” Lynx rubbed up against her like a big house cat. “You’re letting your anger rule you. That’s no fun at all.”

  Jack spoke out of turn. “Cara’s a cop trying to protect the innocent, to restore order the only way she knows how. How can she uphold the law in a place with no law? By eliminating the threat.”

  She hated to admit Jack was right, but he was—and he put it more clearly than she could have managed. Thank you, she mouthed at him. “I don’t want to kill them in my saner moments, but I don’t know how else to stop them. They don’t seem the type to listen to reason, or to scare easily.” She turned, first to her guides, then to her grandfather, then, last of all, back to Jack, forcing herself to study each face. “The magic I’ve learned so far would probably get a small-time thug to run away, maybe even to rethink his choices. But these guys are way scarier than gangbangers and petty drug dealers, and they have magic of their own. Moose ears seem more likely to piss them off than to slow them down.”

  She bowed her head. “I don’t know what to do here. Help me. Help me find the way to fight them like a shaman. I have a few ideas, but I don’t know if they’ll work, and I’m scared to fail and let you all down. I need to see a different way, think a different way.”

  Her grandfather drew her into a hug. “You’re ready, Cara. You’ve reached the next step. You’ll be able to go farther now—and once you and Jack and I have a chance to do some real work, you’ll go farther yet.”

  He smelled of tobacco and wood smoke and her childhood. Cara let herself relax.

  Another pair of arms snaked around her. She stiffened, expecting Jack to do something rude, something erotic, something to disrupt the moment.

  But he didn’t. He just held her. It wasn’t brotherly by a long shot, but the raw sexuality that came through every time Jack touched her was contained, buzzing inside a warm layer of affection and pride. “I’ve tried to guide you,” he said quietly, “but that only works when you’re ready for the journey. You wanted to learn, but it’s all so new to you, your brain could only take in so much. But now you’re ready for more.”

  “So show me already.”

  And, Coyote and Lynx leading the way, they did, in a way that Cara knew she could never put into words.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  The three Americans had caught up with them at a turnoff from the highway, on the way to the village, and now they all gathered between the two rattletrap vehicles, finalizing plans.

  “So do we go in with spells blazing,” Gramps asked, “or try to be subtle?”

  “Subtle’s good.” Cara’s brain filled with a loud purr as she said it, so she figured Lynx agreed. “It’s Friday night. Bar’s going to be busy. We don’t want random people getting involved. There must be some magic way to encourage folks to leave without drawing attention to ourselves.”

  Jude shook his head. “Dream on. We’re getting attention whether we like it or not. We’re a big group of strangers walking into a small-town bar, and two of us are good-looking women.”

  “And one of us,” Elissa said with a nervous chuckle and a pat on Jude’s ass, “is a tall black man with dreads, which around here isn’t exactly inconspicuous.”

  Cara looked around. Even in a big city, their crew would make people stare as they entered a bar. Elissa was too pretty, and the guys were too hot. Rafe and Jack at least looked like they might be drawn from the attractive end of the local gene pool, but Jude wouldn’t blend into any crowd unless maybe it was a basketball team. A really, really good-looking basketball team.

  And Gramps had his Coyote-and-Roadrunner boxers on the outside of his jeans. Cara hadn’t noticed that before. Maybe they hadn’t been that way before. She wouldn’t put it past Coyote to redress his charge in a way he found more amusing.

  “Okay,” she grudgingly admitted, “we might as well go in with spells blazing. But isn’t that going to freak out the normies?”

  Coyote shook his head so hard that his entire body trembled with it. “What probably freaked out the normies was a bunch of loups-garous and skinwalkers hanging out in the bar. I bet everyone except the bartender remembered they had somewhere else to be tonight, and the bartender is either part of their crew or he’s Mr. Oblivious and would come up with a reasonable explanation for a herd of intoxicated elephants. Which, come to think of it, might be a good idea just in case I’m wrong about the lack of normies in the bar.”

  They couldn’t manage elephants. But Jack managed an illusion of black bears that had apparently found a keg, and he thought that would serve nicely.

  The bears might have been illusions, but they were convincing, large, smelly illusions. As they crashed through the front door, several patrons ran into what passed for a kitchen, then presumably out the back door, and one old coot bolted for the bathroom with surprising speed.

  The bartender, though, reached under the counter and pulled out an old-fashioned double-barreled shotgun, which he pointed not at the bears, but at Jack and Gramps.

  Who thought they were invisible behind a wall of magic.

  Everyone who remained in the Moose-Butt Saloon turned to stare at them as the air grew heavy and dense with power. The bears dissipated under the collective force of disbelief.

  Jack squinted at the bartender, who wasn’t as tall as Jude but even broader, with a bunged-up face that suggested either he’d played hockey seriously or had been in one fight too many. His aura was cramped, enveloped in a cloud of oily-looking charcoal gray, but underneath that cloud, it was faintly rainbowed. Not a powerful shaman, but he had enough ability to see through another shaman’s illusions.

  “Shit,” Sam swore succinctly.

  Jack raised his hands in what he hoped was an appeasing gesture while getting ready to do something that wasn’t appeasing at all. “Couldn’t you at least pretend you didn’t see right through our hard work?”

  “I know how to do that crap myself,” the bartender said. “Not as pretty and solid as your bears, but I know what to look out for.” His voice was almost genial, but the gun didn’t waver. “And I really can’t stand you fuckers coming here and causing trouble. Go back to your own village and stay out of my bar.”

  Several things happened in hellish slow motion.

  Sam grumped, “Wait a minute, kid,” and took a step forward. Jack reached for him, hoping to pull the old man back, but he was just out of reach.

  Shit. Jack barreled forward, trying to tackle Sam before Sam got his head blown off.

  They both careened off a wall of shielding. Elissa’s red and green witch magic encased multiple layers of Cara’s virulent neon plaid and Rafe’s more earthy forest-green and gold and brown swirls.

  Good, it was holding, and solid enough to keep them in. With any luck, it would be solid enough to keep everything else out.

  Jack heard the distinctive sound of a shotgun being cocked and readied for action. Either the bartender couldn’t see the shielding because of the way shamanic and witch magic were layered or he figured the blast would drive them away even if it didn’t hurt them.

  The air shimmered like an oil slick, black and gray laced with fuchsia.

  “Stand down, mon ami,” an elegant voice said from somewhere in the dim reaches of the bar. “We can handle these ruffians in a way that won’t trouble Constable Mervis. You might want to head home the back way, though.”

  The lights flickered out behind the bartender’s eyes. He nodded dully, set the gun down on the bar and lumbered toward the kitchen door without even turning around.

  Jack shivered. He’d never seen a zombie, but they must look something like the bartender, that dead to the world, that controlled.

  “Mighty big of you to send him off like that,” Sam said. “Wouldn’t have expected it of a fucking sorcerer.”

  The sorcerer shrugged,
the movement Gallic and elegant, drawing Jack’s eyes more than he wanted it to. “He is useful, and he is friendly with the local constable. If only we who do not exist in the eyes of the law are involved in this brouhaha, it will be easier to clean up afterward, no? A man who does not exist cannot be murdered.”

  “Phil Renner existed,” Cara proclaimed. “You murdered him. He left behind parents and grandparents, a sister, an aunt and uncle, five cousins and a fiancée. A fiancée who’s a shaman from Couguar-Caché. Hello, dead man walking.” She waved in a disturbingly spritely manner.

  Oh shit.

  He didn’t know why he imagined Cara would stay with Elissa and fling magic from what might be a safe distance. But suddenly she was right there, hands on hips, defying the Victorian-clad sorcerer and his twelve shabby sorcerer and skinwalker buddies.

  She was flanked by Lynx, but they stood outside the protective shielding she herself had woven.

  “So you are the stray shaman. I see you’re eager to join your lover in death. How commendable, except that I know you’ve already sought another man’s bed. Perhaps I can persuade you to join me in mine instead. I did not foresee you being beautiful, you see, or I would not have tried to kill you. I prefer not to kill beautiful women, especially not those with power.”

  Magic shimmered in the air, but some weird, unexpected kind that Jack couldn’t focus on.

  The Victorian smiled. The disturbing thing was that he was a devilishly attractive man. Jack was straight, though not narrow, but the sorcerer in his dark, old-fashioned clothing rang his bells with that thoroughly evil, dangerous, sexy smile. Good thing he and Sam were straight, because if the guy affected him that way, he couldn’t imagine how he could weaken the knees of a not-so-straight guy or a straight woman, which covered everyone else in their hunting party.

  “Amateur.” Elissa’s voice dripped scorn. Whatever magic the sorcerer was weaving, it apparently was no match for a red witch of her strength. Thank the Powers for small mercies.