Dammit she’d accomplished her ploy deftly. Chaos brewed strong within her, strong enough to allow her to overcome the Returner’s Creed. The predicament called for greater caution than he had exerted thus far. Further, he could not allow the returner to get to him. He held no immunity to her pull. Yet pull or no, like her or not, she would now give him his parents’ statue.
“I guarantee you,” Ari said, “if you accept this gift the Grand High Oni will tear down Fanaweigh’s Scar to come to you tonight.
More like come to her to start a war. Surely the returner had taken the lie too far.
Lucida clutched the necklace to her bare cleavage.
Perhaps not.
“Will you take the chance?” Ari asked. Her eyes shone, possessed by her delight in chaos. He needed to be away from her. Quickly.
The lady arched a brow. “I will,” she said. “If only to watch that oaf play the fool.”
The two women laughed and Maks rubbed at his eyes. Incredible. If it were not for Frannie’s state Maks would have pitied the ogre king. When he looked over at Ari, the chaos-magick ears and whiskers dissipated.
She poked him in the ribs and gestured for him to get going. As they rose she bid the Lady Goblin-kin a respectful farewell then stopped in the middle of it.
“Oh, before I forget, I have two of your henchmen.” Ari let the shoulder bag slide onto the table, unzipped it and pulled the snoring Corbel out. She laid him down before his mistress—the scars across his face had healed into pink lines. The lady grew still. Her darting tongue tasted the air and she shook her head.
“He’s no longer mine. He belongs to you,” Lucida said. She regarded Ari more closely, leaning forward. “How did it happen?”
“He bit me and got my blood in his mouth.”
Lucida chuckled, furs sliding over skin. “Little buffoon. He should not have tried to capture a bloodline so strong. He couldn’t win. Now he is yours.”
Flustered, Ari glanced at Maks. She’d been taken by surprise for the first time. Ha.
“If you don’t take him he will be a liability. I don’t suffer liabilities,” Lucida said without malice.
Of course. With Corbel subject to the returner’s will, his lady could no longer trust him. Maks touched Ari’s shoulder. She looked back up at him. “I warned you to leave him behind. Now you are responsible for his life.” Her lips parted to protest but Maks shook his head. “You are obligated to take him.”
Lucida appraised Maks on an up-down glance. When she’d finished she smiled in a comely manner. Oh no.
Ari frowned. “All right then. What about Trajan?” She put the first minion back into her pack and pulled out the second. Trajan’s head flopped in a disconcerting manner. Ari’s head followed the flounce and roll of the goblin’s. “His neck’s a bit broken.”
“It’ll heal,” Lucida said.
Unable to lift his head, Trajan’s muffled voice came from an angle. “Cheers to hoping.”
“Take him as well. He’s useless without the other.” The lady flicked a dismissive hand in Trajan’s direction.
“Oh,” Ari sighed. “All right.” Going back into her bag she retrieved a striped scarf. Once she’d wrapped it around Trajan’s neck several times over it became a brace, one end left hanging for style.
“Now, now, I like this.” Trajan peered down at himself over thick layers of scarf. “Give us a mirror, returner.” Ari handed him a compact from within the wonder she called a shoulder pack.
Maks stared, amazed by the never-ending contents. “I’d like a peanut butter sandwich,” he said dryly. Ari handed him one, wrapped neatly in wax paper, and went back to helping Trajan with his new look.
At least the returner came prepared, Maks mused. He sniffed and handed the unappetizing sandwich off to a passing goblin. No honey. No good.
Trajan preened into the compact. “I’m a dapper one. Ain’t I, Corbel?” Silence. “Corbel?”
Ari’s eyes widened. “Um, yeah. Dapper.” She snatched the goblin up by the scruff of his scarf. To Maks she said, “Let’s get outta here.”
“A moment.” Lucida gestured to delay their exit. To Ari she said, “Don’t think me disrespectful, Ariana Golde.”
The lady seduced Maks with her eyes. “The returner clearly plans to claim you for her own, but have you made up your mind, Maksim Medved?”
Chaos. “One match at a time, my Lady Goblin-kin.”
Maks allowed a quick-fire gaze to roam the lady’s body. Goblin etiquette was complicated and he wanted her to feel her attentions were honored if not welcomed. He bowed, Ari nodded, and Lucida dipped her head in return.
Sauntering out behind Ari, Maks did not feel the confidence his stride suggested. He’d followed her lead the entire night. Maksim Medved, sidekick to a returner. His lip curled yet he was forced to tag along. Mitya and Kostya owed him. Dearly.
On their return to the goblin gate Maks refrained from expressing the variety of issues he’d taken with Ari’s antics. She wouldn’t have heard him anyway. The jeep gurgled and bellowed—the saber tooth may have gotten the better of the woolly mammoth this time around.
Before the jeep came to a complete stop Ari jumped out, wriggling fingers in both her ears. Maks exited and waited for the patrol to pull off. He’d asked the driver to drop them a ways from the main thoroughfare, on a side road seldom used. From across the pair of empty fields, on either side of the road, came a buzzing symphony of insects. Maks sensed some type of ward around the area but he had no intention of walking out into the grasses. He wanted seclusion and he’d chosen the location wisely.
When the goblins were out of earshot, and Maks had regained a modicum of hearing ability, he faced the returner down. There was no one around, no one to be harmed by his magick.
Ari stood her ground, her visage wary.
“You are a liar and Wendell is going to kill you.”
“Who’s Wendell?”
“The Grand High Oni.”
“Oh. Heh. Wendell. Ooh, or Mortimer…”
“His name is Wendell.”
“That’s what I said.”
Patience. You’re close. “I see it now. You, Ariana Golde, are the origin of the term gold-digger. You want the Grand High Oni to pay you more to retrieve the necklace a second time.”
He had been tricked by her loveliness, by her kindness and humor. No more.
She shrugged, laying her shoulder pack on the ground. “If you say so.”
Fractals of chaos magick, each particle the size of a rose petal, stormed into being around Maks. The magick encircled him in a churning whirlpool. “It does not matter. Give me my parents’ statue and I will leave you to your deceptions.”
Her lips thinned as she faced him. “Maksim. You know I can’t give you the sculpture.”
One moment fingers and nails, the next paws and claws. “Then I will take it. I am not to be made a fool.” Flecks of chaos jumped in a frenetic pace, mimicking an equalizer fueled by sound.
Ari closed her eyes and breathed. After three deep inhales her countenance softened.
“I’m not making a fool of you, Maksim.”
“You have given the Lady Goblin-kin a necklace belonging to The Ogre.”
Mounting rage brought out his snout and fangs.
She left her pack on the ground and returned to stand before him, laying her fingertips against his chest. “Think. What do goblins do?”
Maks shuddered in were-like form—neither Faeble nor bear. He snatched her to him by the forearms, barely preventing his claws from biting into her skin. With his snout inches from her nose he growled. His rage became a living thing in full possession of him and Bear. The returner somehow brought his emotions to the surface, banishing all control.
She closed the distance between them to a greater degree. “Goblins cancel out returner magick because they appropriate.”
A bit of truth. Not enough.
Ari held his glare, her heartbeat steady in his ears. “The Lady Goblin-kin wanted the n
ecklace once it was offered, Maksim. Not to make the Grand High Oni angry or to get back at him. She wanted it the way any female might seek a gift from a male. Lucida wants to be adored.”
True but still not enough. “Why do this?” he hissed.
Moistening her lips, she looked away from him. Bear shook her. He would not allow her time to work out more lies.
The smaller flecks of her chaos joined his. Combined, the mass swept around them and accreted. The flanking fields churned as the magick spread. A shriek of shattered glass, and the earth shook in a deafening rumble. Chunks of stone erupted, displacing grass, thatch and insects. An angry swarm amassed, boacusts, their chorus sounding off a battle cry.
Fury barred Bear from an appropriate show of concern over the swarm. He shook Ari again. She squared her jaw.
“Something came over me. I can’t say what, but I needed to give her the necklace as much as she needed to take it.”
He snarled, his teeth snapping centimeters from her nose. She neither flinched nor struggled in his hold. Her focus remained locked on his face. When she spoke, a fierce rasp trailed her voice. “If I could give you your parents’ sculpture back I would.”
Truth, untainted. Stunned, Bear pushed her to arm’s length but didn’t let go.
The buzzing battle cry escalated. The swarm approached. Their locust heads and snake-like lower appendages dodged the flecks of his and Ari’s seething magicks as they flew.
Clockwork.
Trust him to have chosen the field infested with boacusts, insects that devoured plants and small animals in an unceasing wave of destruction. Enough of them could take down larger creatures, as well. And trust the combo of the returner and him to have broken the wards holding the insects at bay without even trying.
He cursed. From within Ari’s pack, a few feet away, Corbel shouted, “Oh now, that’s not right.” Trajan screamed, “I’m allergic to stingies, ain’t I?” The bag roiled, emanating a different buzzing than the din made by the boacusts.
Bear looked at Ari for a mere second. Her confusion echoed his. They turned together, the zipper at the center of the pack peeled back, and amber bees rushed from the opening. His mother’s bees. They’d taken attack form, their bodies more freakish wasp than maker of honey.
The two swarms collided in a chitinous tumult. The boacusts wrapped snaky bodies around the bees and crushed. Crushing proved ineffective against amber. The bees clamped down on their opponents with mandibles and sunk extended stingers through the boacusts’ scales. Insect screams met stinger strikes and boacust bodies littered the landscape. It took only moments.
His mother’s bees. They had not lived since Valentina’s abduction. He clutched Ari tighter. “You have done this?”
She gifted him such a gentle smile. “No. We.”
Shifting her left arm Ari dipped her fingertips into the whirlpool of rose flecks still encircling them. The eye of the tempest realigned itself and began to flow backward, soaking into Ari’s palm when it reached her. His mother’s bees followed the flow but broke off to take orbit around the pair. Contented buzzing surrounded them. Ari hummed in concert.
“You guys were amazing,” she said, her gaze darting to follow one, then another. “Rest now.” The swarm floated lazily toward the bag. Upon reaching it they disappeared inside.
“There go my hopes of a quiet evening,” Corbel said from within the depths.
Ari snorted. “Close things up for me, Trajan. Please.”
A miffed squeak escaped the bag. “That’s what I’m here for, Madame Bossy Bits.” Zzzupp. The zipper sealed.
Ari took a breath and regarded his were-bear face. His lip curled to greet her. She sighed. “Sometimes I lie. My parents and I don’t call it lying but deception is our family business. Everyone knows this.”
Her face scrunched and relaxed several times. “My nose itches.” She shrugged in his grasp. “Can you help me out?”
Bear licked her, the roughness of his tongue meant to ease the itch. Her expression wasn’t grateful. She looked incredulous and lovely. Damn her. And she tastes good too.
A pause followed by a frown, then she went on: “I lie well but not often, and I don’t know how to trick folks into their greater good the way Okaasan’s kitsune and Baba do. I fail. I try. I fail more spectacularly. Like the time I tried to help Granny Ridinghood get her granddaughter to come over for a visit. Grandma got eaten. I stopped trying.”
Bear froze. A conundrum: should he lick her again for comfort or fling her from him? She grunted in frustration. “That’s got to be crazy embarrassing for my parents. Can you imagine? Two great, tricky gods with a fox-child for a daughter who can’t even carry on their work.”
Ari moistened and chewed her lower lip. He could lick or bite that lip for her, so it wouldn’t distract her anymore. Lovely, kind, treacherous vorovka. With Bear in control Maks had lost the ability to make up his mind where the returner was concerned. He snarled at himself. She thought he’d meant it for her.
“Why do you think I chose a job completely devoid of dishonesty?” Ari snorted at herself. “Lying is a part of me, Maks, but my parents and I never deceive each other. It is a rule in our family. And I don’t lie to you either.” Her tone and expression begged him to understand. “Do you see? All I give you is truth.”
Bear jerked her closer, searching for trickery. No fraud showed.
She kissed his black nose with a soft mwah sound. He drew back quizzically. The paws clamping her arms had become hands again. Bear receded from Maks’s physical appearance but remained fully conscious, regarding the woman from the ports of his eyes, tasting her scent and judging it good. The hunt, his purest animal instinct, was upon him and Ariana Golde was prey—no, not prey but craved.
Good, Bear whispered to him. A match. She’d merged with his chaos and calmed Bear. Maks could not refute it. He resisted anyway.
No. Liar. Vorovka, Maks answered, tampering down urges he had not expected to feel, hungers that demanded both his compliance and Ariana. Although Bear no longer transformed his features, the hunt thrashed and yearned in a way it had not before. Maks had far less control than he liked.
She smells good. Tastes better. Hunts. Fights. Has power. Good. A match. Bear’s desires fed the hunt.
Ari observed Maks silently. Once again, she waited without impatience or demands.
Chaos is nothing to play with, Bear. We will cause destruction together.
Bear ignored him. The hunt within them saw no problem with deception. In the forest they called it survival. Outsmarting others kept you alive. Stealing didn’t matter either. Their ancestors stole honey and thievery made it sweeter. Bear did not care about chaos. Not when the returner’s body should be underneath him; he knew how wonderful her moans would sound in the hush of a forest, and he already dreamt of the good strong cubs she would bear him. Against desire and the hunt, trepidations about chaos were lame. With these things in mind, Bear calmly invited Maks to kiss his furry brown ass.
Chapter Six
When Maks released her Ari nearly swallowed her tongue in relief. Kissing an enraged bear required a special brand of crazy. That. Had been. Intense. Crazier still, the peck on the nose likely saved her backside. If his eyes were any indication, she’d come a snapping jaw from being eaten, and not in the way she wanted.
Although Maks had let her go, he hadn’t gone back to his normal restrained self. His breath gruffed from deep inside his chest, his eyes vivid as flame. Tense fingers mechanically flexed and folded into fists. Repeat. And again. Somewhere inside he struggled against a beast different from the bear she had seen before. Or something had transformed the bear and brought out the predator in him.
She’d been forced to tell Maks the truth. Scared into telling it. Well, most of the truth. She hoped he wouldn’t notice she’d distracted him from the question of “why?” by revealing her feelings for him. Those feelings took precedent anyway. Despite her trembling, Ari wanted to woo Maks. To make him want her. To love him. T
oo bad he’d introduced fear into the equation.
She’d shown aplomb and hidden the rabbit’s beat of her heart, but Ari wasn’t sure how to deal beyond her facade. Aplomb was just another word for bullcrap. Right now she wanted her okaasan. Ari wrapped her arms around herself. Actually, she wanted to be held by her okaasan while sucking her thumb and rubbing a blanky against her cheek—and she didn’t even own a blanky.
Maks’s breathing slowed but his eyes smoldered with barely banked embers. Ari whistled in an effort to relieve the tension. Her phone vibrated and jumpy fingers clicked the hands free on.
Inari spoke without the benefit of a hello. “Your baba is still out and I remain bored. So yes, I am calling you again. No, it is not separation anxiety.”
Ari eyed Maks, hoping he’d come back to himself soon. Bending at the knees, the way she would when sneaking away from a job, she crept over to her discarded pack and sagged when she reached it.
“Oh Mommy, Mommy, Mommy,” she whispered after she’d gotten a hold of and fully extended her staff. Her lethality with the weapon and the texture of the wood comforted more than any blanky.
“What is it, daughter?” Inari asked, concern lacing the question. Gathering power zapped through the connection and coiled around Ari.
Oops, her mother might kill Maks. Could slay him without difficulty. That would be bad. Ari collected herself, lightening her tone. “Hee hee. Oh nothing. Everything’s copacetic. A good time to be had by all. Happy, happy, joy, joy.”
“Are you tossing clichés at me?”
“Hahaha.”
Inari’s robes rustled and Ari knew she’d stood up. “You sound very much like a lunatic. Should I come for you?”
“Hahaha.” Ari rolled her eyes at her own ridiculousness, but she didn’t know what else to say.
“It is best you understand, uttering this noise again will make me come to you.”
One look at Maks as he stood struggling to bring himself under control reordered Ari’s thoughts. He rubbed his eyes, one arm pinned beneath the opposite elbow. The pose exposed vulnerability in him she hadn’t seen. Maks’s unease reconnected her to him, and Ari felt him with the same intensity she had on the Orient Express. Distracted, she barely noticed the swipe of her knuckles across her nose.
Chaos Tryst Page 6