“Wait,” Sage said. “So Per will be healed. He’ll live?”
“Yes, yes. Big-grumpy-tiger-who-is-also-a-man will be typical self.” The pixie sighed and waved her clubbed hand at Sage.
There was an increasingly loud wailing coming from below them. Sage looked again and saw the savage contortion of Per as he made his change. His body convulsed as if he was having an epileptic seizure. The bits of orange, black, and white fur that was visible under the blood began to fade as he went to his other form. She wasn’t sure if he was fully conscious, but it appeared as though it hurt him immensely.
Sage had seen Emma change once. Sage also had seen herself change but only scattered bits because it was so hard to concentrate on anything when one was in the middle of the shift. However, her eyes were so heavy she could barely keep them open, much less think about Per’s paroxysmal change. She glanced at the other pixie and saw that it was standing up with its arms crossed over its chest.
“Listen, Girl-who-is-also-a-cat,” the pixie said, “time to go nighty-night and when open eyes again, all girl again. After all Dancing with the Stars is about to start.” She paused. “Although being a pixie is much better than being a were.”
Sage fell over again, thinking, How is everyone on Earth so blissfully ignorant of everything else?
*
“Why is she unconscious?” came an urgent, as yet unheard from voice from around Sage’s left ear.
“I don’t know, tiger,” Yale snapped. “No one knows. Those glowy things came. They did a number on you. She said they wouldn’t hurt us. They swarmed, and she fell over. You changed, and boy-howdy, was that a doozy! Then you woke up in a mood. All the glowy things went hasta la lasagna, got my eyes on ya.”
“It’s been a hard day,” the voice said dryly. “I think I’m entitled to a ‘tude.” Sage thought she really liked the voice. It wasn’t exactly a nice voice. It was throaty and concerned. It was concerned about her as if her very breathing meant all the difference to him.
Is that Per?
“We need to leave,” Hawthorne said. “I think the snakes scared most things off, but they’ll be back, especially with all of this blood about. Here.” She heard something; it sounded like Hawthorne threw clothing at Per. It rustled. “I was thinking of you hanging out all naked down here, and when we passed your clothes, I picked them up.”
“The t-shirt was history,” Yale added with a snigger.
“You can put my shirt on the girl if you want,” Hawthorne offered. Sage thought there was a hint of amusement in the offer.
The voice beside her head changed into a growl.
Sage’s eyes fluttered open. The first thing she saw was his face. It was a strongly lined face. His jaw was squared, and his lips flattened into a grim line. But his eyes were gold, just like Hawthorne’s.
Not exactly like Hawthorne’s eyes. No, Per’s seem like they’re glowing. Oh, his eyes are still partly cat. Oh, I should have listened to Emma more.
But those eyes were staring over her at someone else.
Hawthorne said hastily, “Not that I care one way or another.”
And he’s got black hair. No stripes. Sage was vaguely disappointed. Apparently all tigers didn’t look like each other when they were human. More importantly, he smells so…
“Why do you smell so good?” Sage whispered, and Per’s gaze snapped to her face.
Yale sniggered again, and Sage heard something she figured was Hawthorne punching the were in the arm. The snigger cut off abruptly.
“My cologne?” Per said weakly. He shook his head and turned away for a moment. Sage closed her eyes while she went down a mental list of everything. Everything seemed to be accounted for and in a state of perpetual bruising.
“Great, she’s awake,” Yale said. “Let’s get the heck out of Dodge. Under gives me the willies, and well, this experience isn’t changing my perspective.”
Sage got to her feet with Per’s assistance. She felt his hand on her arm like a burning brand. It was pure electricity. “They saved you,” she said, and she felt stupid after the words came out.
“The little green things?” Per said. “I feel almost 100 percent better. Don’t know what they did, but it rocked!”
Sage nodded. She glanced down at her body and was inordinately relieved she was no longer that brilliant green color.
Some dream.
Lena passed a shirt over to Sage. It was the outer shirt she had been wearing. Sage slid it on without thinking about being naked in front of the four other weres.
“Why would they do that?” Per asked.
“It said it owed me a favor,” Sage said.
“They talked to you?”
The voice wasn’t Per’s. It was Martinez’s. He stood in one of the tunnel entrances and looked at the group of weres.
Per immediately snarled and stepped in front of Sage.
“The green horde doesn’t make too many friends,” Martinez said as Hawthorne and his trackers spread out. Martinez didn’t seem too concerned about their unspoken menace against him.
Sage stepped out from behind Per. She stared at Martinez. He was a handsome man but all twisted inside. Obviously weres had some of the same issues as humans. Some were good. Some weren’t. Some were like Martinez. “They did speak to me,” she said clearly.
“Good, it makes you all the more valuable to me,” Martinez said. “The first moment I scented you at the college, I knew there was something special about you.” He paused for a scant moment. “You’ll come with me. Or all your friends will be slaughtered. You’re mine now.”
Per lowered his head in unconscious imitation of the tiger he was. In a moment, he would be charging the outlaw were and there would be a battle to the death.
Sage saw the other things lurking in all the other tunnels at the same time the other weres did. The realization was startling. Martinez had hidden her in Under because he had friends there. And look here, there they are. All claws, teeth, and what is that? It looks like a set of teeth inside a set of teeth inside another set of teeth. It’s a walking garbage disposal.
“It doesn’t matter,” she said loudly.
Martinez had been looking at Per, having judged the weretiger as the biggest threat. But his head turned back toward her. “What’s that, poca Sage?”
“All of the shifters know you’re here,” she said. Her tone was matter-of-fact. “All of them. Do you think they’re going to let you go after you betrayed your own kind?”
Per’s back tensed, and Sage smiled ominously. “You sold out weres to humans, humans who did experiments on them and worse,” she went on. “I don’t have to be an experienced one to know you screwed up. You said it yourself.”
Martinez shrugged insouciantly. “We’ll go to Mexico. I know places the Council wouldn’t dream of setting foot into.”
“I’ll go with you,” Sage said.
Per snarled again. “No, you won’t,” he growled.
“I’ll go with you,” she said loudly. “But you’ll be looking over your shoulder every minute of the day to make sure I’m not armed with a butcher knife or a 2X4 or even a knitting needle. Maybe you’ll get what you want, but once you’re asleep, I’ll be figuring out how to get out of my bonds, and I’ll be imagining how to bury a knife in your eyes. It’s just like Emma Lucia said. I’m going to take it, shove it in, and scramble your brains into a bowl of oatmeal.” She smiled at him, and Martinez took an involuntary step backwards because he recognized the chilling promise contained within the smile. “Yes, I remember what Emma said to you. It sounds like an excellent plan.”
There was a long moment of expressive silence.
Hawthorne chuckled. “It’s true you can probably take us down with a fight. And it will be a fight. But other weres won’t forget. Especially Emma Lucia and Christopher Wheeler, and I suspect they won’t forget what they think of ‘family.’ Sage won’t forget. You’ve already caused harm to her mate. If you kill him, you might as well slice your own throa
t.”
“Mate?” Martinez snapped, and his eyes shimmered greenly.
“It doesn’t matter what you do,” Sage said. “If I go with you, I’ll kill you. It might not be today or tomorrow, but it will be. I swear it. If I don’t go with you and you follow up on your threat about my roommates and my parents, I’ll kill you. If you look at me sideways, I’ll kill you.”
Martinez took two steps forward, and Per snarled quietly again. Martinez ignored him as he sniffed. His face furrowed into rueful regret. “Me cago en la leche,” he muttered. Then he said something in another language filled with guttural clicks. All of the other things melted into the shadows.
“Too bad, sweet Sage,” Martinez said ruefully. “It seems as though all the good ones are already taken. Perhaps another day.”
“If I see you again,” she said, and her words were a hard-hearted threat, “you’ll die screaming.”
~ ~ ~
Chapter Twelve
All cats are bad in May. - French Proverb
Per transferred his avid gaze to Sage the moment Martinez vanished into the blackness of the tunnels. Looking at her attractive features, he thought, Diffident? Unsure? Lost? Emma wasn’t talking about this Sage.
“What did Martinez say at the end?” Sage asked.
“I don’t know what he said to the creatures,” Hawthorne said, “but the other phrase was Spanish. Basically he said he had bad luck.”
“It literally means he shit in the milk,” Lena commented. “I guess you might call that bad luck.”
They began to work their way back to the surface. Hawthorne had made other connections, and soon some other odd creatures joined them, escorting them the rest of the way out. They appeared as fox-like humans and were called kitsune people. A type of shifter, they were thickly furred and had long bushy tails.
Per trailed uncertainly behind Sage and thought about what to say to her.
Yeah, the m word. Well, it’s not like it’s written in stone.
I know a great sushi place not far from where we came into Under.
I’m sorry I wasn’t there sooner.
“Crap,” he muttered. The basic conclusion was when the going got tough, Sage cowgirled up. Sure, he had killed one of the snake creatures, but she had chased off the rest. Then her association with the little flying green insect things had returned him from being half-dead. Finally, Sage had literally scared Martinez off even though he’d had the benefit of sheer numbers. Whatever else Martinez was, he wasn’t brain-numbingly stupid.
The human girl might have been tentative, but the weregirl is bad-ass. She’s Chuck Norris bad.
Killian and Wheeler were going to kill themselves laughing when they heard about the part about little green insect things saving his ass. Ulric was going to buy an adult-sized pair of footie jammies with Tinker Bell on them and leave them prominently on Per’s bed. He was going to hear jokes about it for the next six months, possibly for the rest of his life.
“What did Hawthorne mean by what he said?” Sage asked Per.
Per saw Hawthorne’s back go rigid. The Alpha was probably trying to keep himself from giggling.
“Which part?” Per asked even though he knew already.
“When he said Martinez had already caused harm to my mate,” Sage murmured.
“Sometimes weres know when we’re destined to be with someone,” Per said, wishing he was on that island he’d thought about previously. This wasn’t going to go over well. It sounded lame in his head, and it sounded lamer coming out of his mouth. “Emma and Wheeler are mated. He knew she was it the moment he scented her, but he took his time with her.”
“Emma didn’t talk about that,” Sage said.
“Emma didn’t really?” How did Per explain Emma didn’t know about what being a mate meant, much less, that she couldn’t have explained it to a brand-spanking-new changeling? Emma could explain it now. Maybe I should call her as soon as we get topside. Hand the phone right to Sage. Yeah, that sounds better and better.
“Didn’t what?”
Per looked ahead and saw Yale wrapping his hands over his stomach to keep from shaking while he walked. Even the kitsune people were quiet and resolutely staring ahead. Lena glanced back, and he saw she was biting her lip in abject amusement.
“Emma didn’t realize what it meant to be mated,” Per said quickly.
“It’s like we don’t have a choice?” Sage asked quickly.
Per looked at the ceiling of the tunnel. Nope. No answers up there. He thought about her question. “We all have choices,” he said quietly. “No one is going to make you do anything you don’t want to do.”
“I want to finish college,” Sage said.
“Weres go to college,” Per said. He hadn’t but others he knew had. Wheeler encouraged education. It wasn’t a hardship. Best of all, there were lots of good colleges and universities in the Denver area.
“Emma implied some clans don’t treat females well,” Sage said.
Is that a question? Okay, it is.
“No, some of them don’t,” Per answered honestly. “The Colorado Cat Clan isn’t one of them. Neither is the L.A. Clan for that matter. Lena, for example, has as much status as any of the male shifters here.”
“I do,” Lena confirmed.
“She does,” Yale added, as if the situation wasn’t his favorite thing to discuss.
“I don’t like men who overpower women,” Sage said.
Per stopped in his tracks. Sage heard him without turning and paused as well. He had the feeling Sage wasn’t just talking about Martinez. The thought of someone hurting Sage like that made his guts twist into a tense knot. It occurred to him he owed Wheeler an apology for thinking the Alpha waited too long for his mate.
Sorry, Wheeler. I totally get it now.
“Emma will square you away,” he said neutrally. “She has martial arts/self-defense classes for all the weres but especially the females. Especially self-defense. Offensive if you want. She’s good with her knives, too.”
“Am I going to need those classes?” Sage asked as if they weren’t walking through Under, a place with more paranormal creatures waltzing about than in a SyFy original movie. It was as if she hadn’t been kidnapped, attacked multiple times, and on the verge of death more than once. They could have been sitting at Starbucks drinking lattes having a polite conversation.
Per grimaced. He wasn’t going to lie to her. “Yeah. Also a good gun helps.”
“These things don’t happen every week,” Hawthorne said helpfully. “Most weres are basically extra-special people with typical jobs and an extra support system.”
Seems like they do happen every week. Per started walking again. Sage let him catch up to her and walk beside her.
“What happens next?” Sage asked, her voice just a thread.
“We’ll go back to Colorado. You can go back to school if you want. The clan has a good educational program for its members. You can live with your roommates if you want, or you can move up to the compound.” Per congratulated himself on sounding perfectly normal. What he wanted to do was insist she get on a plane with him immediately and move her cute little butt up to the mansion where she would be safest. He would wrap her up in cotton if he thought he could get away with it.
And if I even so much as imply any of that, I’m history.
“Will my parents and my roommates be safe from Martinez?” Sage asked, instead of answering his unspoken demands.
“There are others hunting Martinez,” Hawthorne answered instead. “He won’t be interested in your family or friends.”
“I agree,” Per said. “It doesn’t benefit Martinez to go for petty revenge; otherwise, he would have had his ‘friends’ attacking us no matter what you said. He’s probably planning a run for Mexico so fast that his tail will catch on fire.”
“As soon as we get in range of a cell phone tower,” Hawthorne said pleasantly, “he won’t be getting over the border of this country or any other.”
Sag
e digested that while they walked. Occasionally they would see other things lurking in the distance. Nothing seemed interested in challenging them, and soon they came to a stone arch with a door.
One of the kitsune people said, “This leads to Over.”
Hawthorne spoke quietly with the kitsune people while Sage brushed her hands off. She looked at her dirty legs revealed under the end of the shirt and ran anxious fingers through her hair. Obviously, she wasn’t looking forward to having other people seeing her in this condition.
“We’ll stop at the L.A. Clan’s headquarters first,” Per said. “You can shower there, and I’ll get some new clothes for you.”
Sage shot him an angry glance. “Why are you being so nice? If we’re ‘destined’ to be together, you’ve already got an in, so why bother?”
Per stepped back. He sighed. I knew this wasn’t going to be easy. Would I want the demure Sage? Would I want the one who doesn’t talk back?
She was staring at him. Hazel eyes glittered in the lantern’s light. Her hands perched on her hips as if she was about to lecture him on something or other. She looked…
Fi-ine. Who cares if Wheeler and Killian laugh until Christmastime?
“No, I don’t have an in,” he said calmly. “Even if I did, I wouldn’t take you for granted. You’ve saved my life, and the least I can do is respect your decisions.” Even if it kills me every day for the rest of my life. Per, you stupid shithead.
Yale snorted. Immediately, there was another sound like knuckles hitting a raw steak and he said, “Oww. I need that arm. Dammit, woman.”
They walked out a standard steel door into a Little Tokyo alley. The stars glittered above in a satin black sky. Auto engines chugged and purred from a nearby street. Distant conversation from people intent on nighttime activities floated toward them. The garbage smelled like trash and spoiled meat. When Per turned to look back at the door they’d exited from, he saw it was gone.
Hawthorne was already making phone calls on his cell.
Blood Moon Cat Clan Page 9