by Zoe Chant
The mate-call pulled her through a door and down a staircase. There was another set of doors at the bottom. A double set, one after the other, like an airlock.
Ribbons of plastic sheeting hung down behind the final door. Pushing through them, Rose had a powerful memory of visiting the tropical house at the zoo as a child—ducking through heavy plastic curtains just like these, the surprise of leaving the cold outside and entering a warm, humid wonderland.
It was the opposite way round with these doors. Rose gasped as cold struck her in the face. Her breath steamed in the suddenly freezing air.
This room was tiled all in white, stark and sterile. Three other doors circled it, one per side. Each one was even more heavily reinforced than the doors she’d passed earlier. Thick steel bars ran across them, chained to rings set deep in the walls.
Rose’s heart leapt into her mouth as a deafening crash echoed through the small room, coming from behind the door to her left. It sounded for all the world like a bull had charged full-tilt into it.
The thudding impact came again, with a ringing clash of horns hitting metal. Hooves clattered against concrete as the hidden creature gathered itself for another strike.
“Shh, shhh!” Rose hurried over to the door, terrified that the poor shifter would either injure itself or make enough noise that someone would come to investigate. “It’s all right, I’m here to help. I’m going to—ow!”
She snatched her hand back from the door, sucking at her fingertips. The metal was cold, cold enough to burn. As she watched, ice crystals spread over the surface, sharp and bristling.
“Hungry.” The whisper sounded more like wind over a frozen glacier than any human voice. “Hungry.”
“I’ll get you out,” Rose repeated, though she was no longer sure that was at all a good idea. “Just wait.”
The wind-swept voice chuckled and moaned, like the sounds of a distant blizzard. Claws scratched against metal. The cold followed her as she backed away.
The next door was open. The cell beyond was as blank and featureless as an empty meat locker. Rose didn’t think it had been occupied for some time, if it ever had been.
The final door wasn’t a door. Just a solid lump of blackened metal, fused into the wall. The surface was frozen in lumpy ripples, thicker at the bottom, as though at some point the door had been subjected to such intense heat that the metal had started to melt and run.
The mate-call beat through her blood.
A wide observation window was set into the wall next to the not-door. Ice crystals frosted its surface, hiding the room beyond.
She put her hand to the glass. Cold numbed her palm as she wiped frost away.
Another cell. A narrow bunk, made up with a thin gray blanket. A small desk, bare, with a hard, straight-backed chair. In the corner, a toilet and washbasin sat in full view, unscreened from either the rest of the room or the window.
That was it. Nothing else.
Except him.
He was shirtless, doing push-ups on his knuckles with mechanical, rhythmic precision. His bare back gleamed with sweat despite the freezing air. The tattoo twining around his right arm stood out stark against his pale skin, black ink flexing with every motion.
Her numb, blue fingers pressed against the glass. “My mate,” she whispered.
His steady rhythm faltered. He glanced up sharply. His eyes searched across the window, not focusing on her.
One-way glass. He couldn’t see out. Yet his whole cell lay bare to any onlooker. Not a scrap of privacy.
In one smooth motion, he surged to his feet. He took a single step toward the window, then seemed to check himself. His fists clenched at his sides.
“Corbin.” His voice crackled from a speaker grill set under the window. “You shouldn’t have brought her here.”
Who’s Corbin? Rose wondered. One of his captors, or a secret ally? Irrelevant for now—she was painfully aware that she was on borrowed time.
“No one brought me,” she said, hoping that he’d be able to hear her in return. “I’m alone. I’ve come to rescue you.”
His head jerked up, eyes widening in alarm. “No!”
“Listen, we don’t have much time,” Rose said urgently as he backed away from the window. “How can I get you out?”
He’d retreated to the far side of the small cell, as far away as he could get. His upper body was still canted toward her, though, betraying secret yearning.
“You can’t,” he said. “You mustn’t. I’m the Phoenix. This is where I belong.”
The bleak certainty in his voice made her throat constrict with pain. What had they done to him, what lies had they fed him, that he could think that this was how he had to live?
“That’s not true,” she said fiercely. “No matter what your animal, you’re still a person. There’s no justification for treating anyone like this.”
He shook his head. “Shifters have to be contained. Controlled. For the safety of humanity.”
“Is that what they’ve told you? The men in robes, the…wizards?”
“Warlocks,” he corrected, as though it was a perfectly normal, everyday concept. “They find feral shifters, bind them. Harness their power for the good of all.”
“It’s not good for the shifters!”
“It’s better for them than the alternative,” he said, though he looked a little sickened, as though he didn’t really believe what he was saying. “At least here, when they go mad, they don’t hurt anyone.”
“The warlocks are the ones driving them mad. Can’t you see that?”
His throat worked. He took a step forward, and another, hesitantly approaching the window. He put his hand flat on the glass, precisely over her own.
“I’ve never spoken with another shifter before,” he whispered.
He couldn’t see her, yet their fingers perfectly aligned. She could feel his heat even through the thick double glass.
“Well, now you have,” she said. “I’m a shifter. I’m your mate. And I’m not mad, or dangerous, or a wild beast to be locked up in a cage. Everything they’ve taught you here is a lie, Blaze.”
He closed his eyes, leaning his forehead against the glass. Across the width of the window, frost curled into steam.
“I don’t even know your name,” he said.
She pressed her hand harder against the glass, willing it to melt away like the frost. “Rose. Rose Swanmay.”
“Rose,” he repeated softly. Longing shot through her at the way his mouth caressed her name. “You have to go. Now. This isn’t safe.”
“I’m not leaving you here. Please, just trust me—”
“It’s you who cannot trust me.” His hand fisted. Some of the red, angry-looking scabs edging the black tattoo on his forearm broke open, fresh droplets of blood welling up. “You may claim that other shifters are not mad, but I am mad. From the moment we met, my human will has been burning up. I am more dangerous now than I have ever been.“
“You won’t ever hurt me. We’re mates.”
“Mates,” he repeated, as though it meant nothing to him. “Why do you keep saying that word?”
She stared at him through the glass. “You really don’t know anything about mates?”
His eyebrows drew together. “Do you mean the sickness? Corbin told me about that. A breeding madness that afflicted some shifters, allowing animal instincts to overcome human reason.”
Rose was beginning to think that whoever this ‘Corbin’ was, he’d better pray that she never caught up with him.
“It’s not a sickness.” She opened her soul wide to him as she spoke, hoping that he would be able to sense the truth in her words. “That’s another lie, Blaze. What you feel is right, and natural. A mate is—”
A siren drowned out her words. She leaped back from the glass as a flashing red light turned the white room the color of blood.
“They know I’m here!” she shouted over the alarm.
“No,” Blaze gritted out through clenched teeth.
His left hand gripped his right forearm, as though his tattoo was burning him. “Temperature alarm. Too hot. Out of control—go!”
Rose rushed instead to the cell door, her hands searching for some gap or crack in the fused metal. “Not without you! How does this open?”
“It doesn’t, Corbin portals in!” Blaze’s fist slammed against the window, leaving a bloody smear on the glass. “Rose, they’re coming, hide!”
Booted feet clattered down the stairs. Too late, Rose bolted for the empty cell.
“Freeze!”
Rose whirled, and found herself staring down the business end of a gun. Not one of the harmless, nonlethal tranquillizers carried by the entrance guards, but a semi-automatic assault rifle.
“Hands on your head,” barked the soldier training the weapon on her. “No sudden movements.”
“Rose!” Blaze hurled himself at the window.
Across the room, the unseen creature in the other cell was howling and snarling as well, throwing itself against its door. One side of Rose’s face was numb with cold; the other, as hot and flushed as if she stood next to a raging bonfire. In her soul, her swan beat its wings frantically, trying to claw its way out of her skin.
Slowly, shaking from head to foot, she raised her hands.
Never taking his eyes off her, the soldier tilted his head to speak into a small radio clipped to his collar. “Intruder in the cold room. Specimens highly agitated. Orders?”
A tinny voice crackled from the speaker. “Eliminate the threat.”
The soldier’s finger tightened on the trigger.
“No!”
The world went white.
For a split second, Rose was convinced that she’d died and gone straight to hell. Incandescent fire swirled around her. She dropped to the floor, burying her head in her arms, but the furious light still scorched through her closed eyelids. Heat seared through her body, her mind, her very soul.
“Rose. Rose. You have to go.”
The light faded a little, to merely eye-searing. Rose blinked, tears streaming down her face.
Blaze knelt in front of her, his right arm crimson from elbow to wrist. A stench of molten metal hung in the air. His cell door was a wreckage of red-hot, twisted steel.
There was no sign of the guard.
“You have to go,” Blaze said again.
She clutched at his arm, gripping tight. “Not without you.”
Black flames filled his eyes, the only darkness in the blazing inferno raging around them. “I can’t! The binding—”
He stopped dead, staring down at his blood-slicked arm.
“The binding,” he whispered. “It’s gone. I’m free.”
He pulled away from her, standing up. Tipping back his head, he flung his arms wide.
“Free!” he cried, in a voice that was no longer human.
Rose flung up a hand to shield her eyes as he went up in flame. His body vanished, utterly consumed in seconds.
From the fire, the Phoenix rose.
He filled the room with fire and fury. Every feather burned, white-hot at the base, flickering yellow at the tip. Concrete and debris exploded outward as he spread enormous wings, shrugging off the ceiling as easily as cracking an egg.
Rose reached inward for her swan. Her animal surged up eagerly, wrapping her in ebony feathers. Shakily, she got to her webbed feet, stretching out her own wings.
The Phoenix’s crested head bent to hers. For a moment, the great golden beak caressed her own.
Then, together, they flew.
Chapter 7
This is nice, Rose told herself firmly.
The man sitting opposite her was certainly nice. Jim—or was it Tim?—had nice eyes, a nice body, nice…everything. Even his voice was nice, a pleasant, gentle tenor. He liked cats and gardening and long walks on the beach.
Rose had never been so completely, utterly, mind-numbingly bored.
She became aware that Tim—or possibly Jim—had paused, looking at her expectantly. She jerked herself back to the present, trying to remember what he’d been talking about. Something about hiking in the Lake District?
“That sounds…nice?” she ventured.
His nice mouth curved in a nice smile, showing nice teeth. She could sense the shy hope kindling in his heart. “It’s so good to finally meet a woman who shares the same interests. I wasn’t sure about coming to this event tonight, but now I’m glad that I did.”
Rose’s polite smile was so fixed, she feared she might never change expression again. She desperately wanted to look at her watch.
To her intense relief, the shrill blast of a whistle broke the awkward pause. “Time’s up!” announced the organizer in a bright, cheery voice. “Gentlemen, please find your final lady!”
Tim-maybe-Jim gave her another of those shy, sweet smiles as he rose. “I’ll definitely be marking your name down on my form, Rose. I hope you’ll mark mine?”
Rose forced out a strained laugh. “Oh, you know it’s against the rules to talk about that now. And you still have one date left. You might like her even more than you like me, Tim.”
His face fell a little. “Jim.”
She winced. “Yes, sorry. Too much chatter in here.” She fiddled with her pen, pretending to write on her form. “Anyway, it was nice to meet you.”
She gusted out a long sigh, slumping in her chair as Jim-not-Tim headed for his next date. Morosely, she followed his retreating back. It was a perfectly nice back. He was a perfectly nice man.
Not our mate, said her swan.
“Oh, be quiet,” she muttered under her breath. “We’re not looking for a mate, remember? Just a nice, normal man.”
She stared down at her list of names. All of them had been nice, normal men. Mostly a little nervous and awkward—as was to be expected at a speed dating event for the over forties—but perfectly pleasant. None of them had had tattoos, or even the slightest hint of danger.
None of them had had dark eyes filled with leashed fire.
With a grimace, she banished Ash’s still, intent face from her mind. If she was going to insist that her swan stop pining after their long-lost mate, she could hardly cling onto a silly crush of her own.
Squaring her shoulders, she forced herself to think positively. She still had one more date to go this evening. There was still a chance she might feel a spark of attraction.
The chair opposite her scraped against the floor. Fixing a welcoming smile on her face, Rose looked up at the man who’d just sat down.
“Wayne?” she said incredulously.
The graying wolf shifter flashed his teeth in what she assumed was meant to be a smile, but looked more like a rictus snarl of pain. “Hello, Rose,” he mumbled, not meeting her eyes.
She blinked at him, completely taken aback. She’d deliberately picked this speed dating event because it was human-run. Shifters tended to organize their own versions of such things, with much larger numbers. When you could recognize your true mate on sight, there was no need for five minutes of getting-to-know-you chit-chat.
“I wasn’t expecting to see any other shifters tonight,” she said, lowering her voice. “What are you doing here?”
Wayne shifted uncomfortably in his chair. “He told me to come.”
“He?”
Wayne jerked his head in a strange, convulsive motion. A sharp, bitten-off whine escaped through his teeth. “Can’t. Can’t talk about that.”
Is he drunk? Rose wondered. Her sense of him was oddly foggy. He was such a dense, swirling soup of contradictory emotion, she couldn’t get a fix on him.
“Wayne, are you all right?” she asked in concern.
“No.” He twitched again, and she sensed a jagged lightning-bolt of pain shoot through the roiling turmoil of his aura. “Yes. Yes. I said yes!”
“You’re hurt,” she said, noticing a bandage wrapped around his right wrist. Fresh red spots were spreading across the dirty gauze.
“New tattoo,” Wayne said, his aura darkening with a
peculiar sharp, stabbing splatter of black humor. His left hand closed over the bandage, hiding it from view. “Still getting used to it. Don’t ask me questions.”
Rose knew the old wolf well enough not to pry any further. At least, not right now. He was a proud, stubborn man, and a hard life had taught him to lash out rather than admit weakness. Whatever trouble he was in now, she’d only be able to help him if she was patient enough to let him come to her in his own time.
“Got a question I have to ask you, though,” Wayne continued. “What are you doing here, Rose?”
“Looking for a date, obviously.” Rose raised her eyebrows at him. “And please don’t be offended, Wayne, but I’m not interested in getting involved with a shifter.”
“Specially not me, huh?” Wayne let out a growling laugh. “It’s all right. You’re not my type either.” He eyed her sidelong. “Thought there was one shifter you were interested in, though.”
“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean,” Rose said, in the chilling voice she normally reserved for aggressive drunks.
Wayne should have known better than to mess with her in that mood. Nonetheless, to her surprise, he persisted. “Thought you were sweet on the Phoenix.”
Rose narrowed her eyes at him. “I’ve told you before to mind your own business, Wayne. Keep your nose out of other people’s private matters.”
If Wayne had been in wolf form, she was sure that his ears would have been flat against his skull and his tail plastered between his legs. “Can’t. Have to ask.” Wayne’s bloodshot eyes fixed on hers, oddly pleading. “Rose. Is there anything between you and Fire Commander Ash?”
“No,” Rose bit off, curtly. “And if you ever want to drink in my pub again, Wayne, you’ll drop this at once.”
Some of the tension drained out of his lean shoulders. “Good. Good. That’s good. Don’t…” He twitched, his hand tightening on his wrist. “Don’t—just don’t. I’m sorry.”
“Sorry for what?” Rose said, utterly baffled. “Wayne, what’s going—Wayne?”
She was talking to his retreating back. Rose started to get up to follow him, but the speed-dating organizer was already chasing Wayne herself, waving her clipboard.