by Annie Bellet
Magic leapt into the runes coating my palm, hot and ready. Beside me Shaw flexed his hand, fingernails elongating into razor-sharp claws. His skin paled and eyes darkened. Blue veins beat under his flesh.
I smelled patchouli and bergamot, and my lips tingled.
Before his lure sank into my lungs and I melted at his feet, I set off at a run.
A second mournful cry shattered the early-morning air, and I chased the sound. A mile or so deeper into the woods, I burst into a meadow ringed by sapling pines. At the base of a fallen tree a dark hole gaped in the earth, and a massive silver and black wolf prowled around its crumbling edges.
Shaw caught up to me. He stood at my elbow, and that was far too close. I sidestepped an exposed root to put space between us so I could think about something other than the fragrance rising off his skin.
The incubus wet his lips when our eyes met, and my stomach corkscrewed at the hunger turning his penny-bright eyes to white static voids.
I tugged on my collar until the fabric stretched and I could breathe again.
“Rogue?” I mouthed.
Long seconds passed before Shaw tore his gaze from mine to examine the wolf. Coming to the same conclusion as I had, he nodded. We had found our man, er, beast.
“What now?” I asked just as soundlessly.
Not bothering to muffle his voice, Shaw projected his answer. “We find out what prey he’s got penned.”
A throaty rumble carried across the clearing. The wolf had spotted us. He snapped his jaws in our direction. Head lowered, he wrinkled his muzzle while baring vicious teeth. Saliva dripped from his black lips onto the ground.
Shaw stepped forward, making himself the primary threat.
The wolf wasted no time. He quirked his tail and lunged for Shaw’s throat. Shaw leapt to intercept him. They clashed in mid-air, and I ran toward the hole, stumbling when the snarls behind me were muted by a chorus of impatient howls.
We weren’t the only ones who had answered the rogue’s call. The Mayhugh pack was in pursuit.
“Crap. Crap. Crap,” I muttered under my breath.
The wolves sounded like they were nearby, and each heartbeat brought them closer.
I skidded to a stop and whipped my cell out of my pocket. After tapping the flashlight app, I held the phone above the mouth of the hole and saw… Oh God.
A pudgy leg smeared with blood reflected the light.
I dropped to my knees and braced on the lip of the opening. Soft dirt gave under my weight and peppered the small form below.
“Xander?”
A bare foot twitched. “He’s alive,” I called to Shaw. Earth crumbled in my hand, and I flung out my arm to grasp firmer ground and touched damp fur. I raised my head slowly. Fetid breath blasted my face. I stared into the golden eyes of a wolf.
The pack had arrived.
“There’s a boy down there. I can’t tell if he’s hurt.” I dialed up the juice radiating from my left hand. “Back off and let me do my job, or I’ll fry your ass and then I’ll do it anyway.”
With a snort, the wolf grumbled and leapt past me to join the fray.
I risked a quick peek over my shoulder. Shaw tussled with the silver wolf while four others circled them, looking for an opening.
Even though my heart clenched, I forced my attention back to Xander. Shaw in full-on incubus mode was a lethal predator even without his lure. He could handle himself, and he was man enough to call for backup if he needed it.
Times like these I had to trust my partner.
Times like these really sucked ass.
“Xander?” I tried again. “Can you hear me, buddy?”
Please don’t let that be all that’s left of him.
A slow groan.
“Xander? I’m Marshal Thackeray with the Southwestern Conclave. Your mom sent me to find you.”
“Mom?”
My heart broke at the whimper in his young voice.
“Hey, don’t cry. Everything’s okay. I’m going to get you out of there and take you home, all right? Are you hurt? Can you stand? If you can give me your hand, I can pull you out of there.”
“My leg hurts,” he complained. “It’s bleeding bad.”
Until he hit puberty—if he shifted—he would heal any broken bones human-slow.
While I tested the rest of the hole for weak spots, I kept him talking. “How did you get down there?”
“I was chasing fireflies. They were singing to me. Mommy said not to follow them, but Billy called me a liar. He said fireflies don’t sing. He said I had to get proof or my pants would catch on fire.”
“Billy is your brother?”
“Yeah. He’s bigger than me. And he was being mean, so I got a snack box and went hunting.”
Freaking monkeys. The boy hadn’t been chasing fireflies but a will-o’-the-wisp. Wisps lured the unwary away from civilization, the better to lead them to their death. They were nasty buggers, and the conclave monitored their activity closely.
Humans were fair game, a policy I heartily disagreed with, but moving in on fae children…that would get me a warrant. Or some magical pesticide. I was good either way.
“Your mom is right. Not all fireflies are the good kind.”
“The ones that sing are bad? For real?”
“For real,” I agreed. “And don’t believe everything your big brothers tell you, okay?”
Now I wondered if Billy hadn’t been the one snacking in Xander’s room. Was he worried for his kid brother? Or was he scared of his mom’s reaction when she figured out why Xander had ignored her warning in the first place? Probably a little bit of both.
While Xander absorbed my sage advice, the noise from the fight cranked up a few notches.
“What’s happening?” his small voice asked.
“A couple of wolves—wargs, like your mom—are having an argument.”
He accepted their aggression without fear. “Is Dad arguing too?”
Telling a kid his dad was MIA seemed like a bad idea, so I hedged. “He’s helping us look for you.”
“Why? Dad knows where I am.”
“How does he…?”
“He stayed with me until you got here.”
The freaking rogue warg was Jim Dobbs? The accountant? The one no one thought could shift?
“Is your dad the pretty silver and black wolf?”
“Yes.” Excitement edged his words. “He shifted. Isn’t that cool? Dad always told us he couldn’t, but then he did it.” A thoughtful silence. “Mom said we might not be able to shift because Dad couldn’t. But now he can, so we can too. We’ll all be real wargs now.”
I bit my lip. “Hold that thought, okay? I need to talk to my partner.”
I had to save Jim before his in-laws turned him into kibble.
“Don’t go.” Xander reached up for me. “It’s scary down here.”
“Here.” I dropped my phone down to him. “That will give you some light. You can watch Netflix if you want. Just don’t lose my spot on Gilmore Girls. I’ll be right back. I promise.”
“Cool.”
He didn’t make another peep.
“Shaw.” I backed away from Xander, and what I suspected was a sinkhole, not a den. “We have a problem.”
The warg that was Jim had pinned Shaw to the ground under his wide paws.
“Kind of busy here, Thierry.”
“Don’t hurt the warg.” I scrambled toward them. “It’s Dobbs.”
“What?” He grabbed the wolf by the throat and flung it backwards. “How do you know?”
“Xander told me.”
Dobbs skidded over the ground and smashed into a tree. He sat up on his haunches, shaking his head.
That’s when the other wolves rushed him.
“Hey,” I yelled. “Back off.” I raised my hand, and power seeped into my runes. “Last warning.”
“Stand down,” a rich voice thundered across the clearing.
I whirled around to find Decatur Mayhugh standing over
the hole where I had left Xander.
“What are you doing here?” I snapped.
He cocked an eyebrow. “You’ve got a piss-poor way of showing gratitude.”
“I appreciate the assist.” I freaking curtsied. “Now what are you doing here?”
Lips twitching in an almost-smile, he knelt by the hole and reached down for the boy’s hand.
“You can’t move him. He broke his—”
Too late. Mayhugh slung the boy up into his arms and stood. “Jim, come.”
Jim, the newly shifted and apparently alpha-caliber warg, went.
As Mayhugh walked away, he carried one of the grandsons he had never bothered to meet.
With disgruntled chuffs, the other wolves followed, leaving Shaw and me alone in the woods.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Wargs move fast, even on two legs. Mayhugh beat us to the Dobbs’ house by a good ten minutes. A trio of wolves lounged outside on the neatly clipped lawn, acting as babysitters while the Dobbs’ kids bounced on their backs and urged their “horsies” to giddyup.
A fourth wolf guarded the door like one of those lion statues you see on museum steps.
He growled at me. I growled harder. He tucked his tail and let us pass.
The heart of the action was taking place in the living room. Xander was stretched out on the couch with his broken leg elevated while his mother hovered over him raining kisses onto his dirt-smudged cheeks. His father stood across the room. Even if I hadn’t seen Jim as a wolf minutes earlier, I would have known he shifted by the fact he was entertaining guests while naked as a jaybird.
Either Jim’s wolf didn’t like having strange wargs in his home, or he was experiencing other technical difficulties, because Mayhugh kept a hand clamped on his shoulder. That point of contact seemed to be the only thing keeping his curled lip from quivering at the sight of Mayhugh’s remaining pack mates—also shifted—standing naked so close to his wife and injured child.
The wargs ignored us, which didn’t work for me. I wanted answers.
I planted my feet and crossed my arms over my chest. “Who wants to explain what the hell happened out there?”
Apparently no one did. But Jim shouldered the responsibility of explaining his actions.
“I don’t know.” He dragged his gaze from his wife. “One minute I was searching for Xander in the backyard and the next…”
“It was a stress shift,” Mayhugh finished. “Jim must have panicked when the boy went missing. His wolf decided it could find Xander faster, so it took over.”
Jim stared at his mud-stained hands. “I didn’t know I had a wolf.”
“An alpha at that.” Mayhugh looked like a kid on Christmas morning. “That means the boys’ odds of shifting successfully just doubled.” Pride bowed his chest. “There’s a good chance the dominance streak runs strong in them too.”
After absorbing what her father had said, Marilynn Dobbs raked her gaze over Jim like she had never seen him before, and also a little like he was the icing on top of a cupcake she wanted to lick.
I guess dominance turned her on. Or maybe it was the shifting. I don’t judge.
“This solves the mystery of the rogue.” What happened next—with Jim and the pack—was their business unless he appealed to us for protection, and that didn’t seem likely, as awestruck as Jim was by the late emergence of his wolf. “That leaves us with one last issue. Jim, you damaged Mr. Brum’s property when you destroyed several of his chicken coops and ate the occupants. You owe him recompense for his equipment as well as the birds, including a rare cockatrice that escaped through the hole you dug under the fence.”
“The pack will cover the expenses,” Mayhugh volunteered magnanimously. “I’ll smooth things over with Brum myself.”
I glanced back at Shaw to make sure this was a conclave-approved course of action and found him leaning in the doorway flashing a dimple that heated my cheeks. He had confided a hundred times he liked watching me work. Maybe there was something to the dominance thing after all.
When he gave me a nod, I made the proper goodbye noises to the Dobbs and the Mayhughs.
We left the happy family behind to finish their reunion and walked out to Shaw’s truck.
“Well, I guess that’s that.” I shoved my hands into my pockets. “Lost boy found. Rogue warg adopted by the local pack. Vandal brought to justice. Local economy stimulated.” I squinted up at him. “Did I leave anything out?”
“What about the cockatrice?”
“Let Dobbs—the pack—whoever pay for it.” I shrugged. “That bird is long gone, stolen or eaten by now.” Wink wasn’t exactly the safest place to live.
Shaw walked me backward until my butt hit the truck’s fender. “What happens now?”
“You drop me off at Brum’s so I can get my car. Then you pick up something tasty for lunch and meet me back at my place.” I rested my hands on his chest and wiggled my eyebrows. “After that…”
Shaw bent down to press a hot kiss to my lips. “I’ll hold you to it.”
Being held accountable by Shaw would be the highlight of my day.
***
Shaw set out on his mission to secure food and left me standing near the front gate leading onto Brum’s farm. My banged-up car sat right where I had left her. I pulled out my keys and hustled toward the driver’s side door, wrinkling my nose the whole way. The property stank of cockatrice, so much so you’d think he bred flocks of them instead of owning just the one bird.
I slid behind the wheel and coughed. It stank worse inside, if that was possible. I leaned over and checked the bottoms of my shoes to make sure I hadn’t tracked cocka-poo onto the mats, but the soles were clean.
The key twisted in the ignition after a slight hesitation, and the engine complained more than usual about the whole cranking thing. My ride was older than I was. I needed to invest in some new wheels. One day.
With visions of glittering pickup trucks dancing in my head, I threw the cantankerous car in reverse and rolled backward.
Bam.
Had I backed into something…? I glanced over my shoulder.
Bam.
My head whipped forward in time to see the mass of black feathers and scales ram my car for a third time. Wings beat the windshield. Talons gripped the wipers and yanked. A tail cracked on the hood hard enough to dimple the rusted metal.
“You’ve got to be kidding me.”
Unsure what to do, I gunned it to put distance between me and the pissed-off cockatrice to see if it would go away. No such luck. In fact, it seemed even more ticked off by my escape attempt. That was when I spotted the mound of dried leaves and weird blue-green rocks centered between my tire tracks.
My predator scent must have spooked the cockatrice yesterday when I set out to track it. After I stopped chasing it to help Shaw look for Xander, it must have gone home to roost.
I threw the car into park, fished out my cellphone and dialed Brum’s number. No surprise, he didn’t answer. Next I called Shaw, who laughed himself silly but promised to circle back and rescue me from the deranged dragon-bird scratching up my windows.
I was safe enough inside the car, so I turned off the engine and waited for the cockatrice to get bored. It didn’t take long. Two or three minutes later it hopped off the hood and disappeared under the car.
Ha. I had watched enough horror movies to know how this ended. I wasn’t opening the door, and that damn bird wasn’t flogging me with its spurs as I tried to escape.
Scratching noises coming from behind me made me paranoid enough to twist in my seat. The cockatrice had flown onto the rear of the car and was giving it a similar treatment. Pecking the rubber sealant. Scratching the glass. Denting the trunk. When the muscles in my neck twinged, I turned forward and adjusted the rearview mirror so I could keep an eye on it.
Frustrated by its reign of terror, I honked my horn, hoping to scare it off or draw Brum outside. It worked. Too well. The cockatrice startled at the noise, glanced up and met my
gaze in the mirror.
“No.”
Its beady, black eyes turned opaque. The bird shot as rigid as a statue and toppled backward.
I shoved open the door and rushed around the car, but it was too late. The cockatrice was dead. It had died the second it saw its own reflection in the mirror.
“What’s all the ruckus?”
“Really?” I spun on Brum. “Now you show up?”
He ambled toward me, hesitating by the nest. “Heard your caterwaulin’ over the TV.”
“Mr. Brum.” I dug deep for the tattered shreds of my professionalism as I stood with the dead cockatrice cradled in my arms. Tears leaked down my cheeks, but that was from the smell, not sentimentality. “I’m sorry to tell you this, but Ringo—”
“Whee-doggie,” the farmer crowed as he lifted a rock. “Would you look at that? Ten eggs. Ten.”
“Eggs?” I glanced at the dead bird. “But Ringo is—”
“Damn shame.” He spared a frown for the bird. “Least now I know why he wasn’t laying before. Been trying to squeeze eggs out of him for two years. No one told me they had to be free range.”
The rumble of Shaw’s engine made my shoulders sag with relief. Brum didn’t even notice.
I extended my arms toward him. “What should I do with the, uh, remains?”
“Leave ’em there.” He waved a hand. “I’ll dress ’im for dinner later.”
My mouth fell open. “You’re going to eat it?”
The stink almost curled my nose hairs, and this guy was going to fry it up and put it in his mouth?
Brum scratched behind his ear. “What else would I do with it?”
“I—” I had no idea. “Enjoy your dinner, Mr. Brum.”
Brum didn’t respond. He knelt in front of that nest and kissed each egg as he lifted it as though they were made of gold.
Heck. For all I knew, they were filled with twenty-four karat yolks.
From the safety of his truck, Shaw hammered the wheel with his palm while a grin split his face. But I wasn’t laughing. I smelled like the devil’s armpit thanks to my cuddle with the cockatrice, and I was ready to go home.
I settled the limp body on the ground and got in my car before something worse happened.