I wasn’t dead, was I? I can’t be dead. If I was dead, my body wouldn’t ache so much. My brain wouldn’t pound against my skull. I tried to speak, to inquire about my current mortal state, but all that came out was a croak.
“What is it, baby?” Ryan’s voice thundered inside my skull. “Don’t speak. Just relax. You’re safe now.”
“Whoa, Romeo. I said you need to go easy on her.” It was Kylie’s voice. “I’m not sure if she has any internal injuries. Alex, can you hear me?”
Ryan released his grip on me, ever so slightly. I sucked in a deep breath, my chest aching as my lungs expanded against my ribs. I was dimly aware that I should be nodding, saying something, acknowledging them in some way. But I couldn’t seem to get my body to co-operate with my head. What is wrong with me? Where am I?
“Alex, honey, where does it hurt?” Kylie knelt in front of me, her concerned face leaning close into me. Slowly, I moved my arm to my chest, indicating my ribs. She snapped at Ryan to move behind me, and she lifted my shirt and began to press her fingers against my bones.
Despite Kylie’s protects, Ryan refused to move away from me. He pressed his warm chest against my back, wrapping his strong arms around mine. His scent – earthy and tangy like an ancient oak, musky with sweat from his run through the forest – wrapped around me.
His touch brought me back to the world.
Kylie finished feeling my chest and declared with joy that I did not have any broken ribs. She moved away, and I turned my body to lean against Ryan, resting my head on his shoulder as I stretched my aching legs across the damp ground. I looked over his shoulder. We were in the forest, not far from the edge of the witches’ cemetery. The trees parted, giving a narrow view of the graveyard below. The moon lit the scene, the cold light illuminating the deep, charred crater that now dominated the lot, the shattered stones, the mangled lumps of meat lying about. Three ravens – actual ravens, Ryan assured me, not shifters – circled overhead, picking off the fresh meat from the limbs scattered around. In the distance, I could hear sirens wailing as the police approached.
“It worked,” Kylie said. “The iridium destroyed every one of the shifters.”
“Isengrim?” I asked.
“He wasn’t here,” said Ryan. “He was with me.”
It was then I noticed Ryan’s face. The skin on his cheek hanging down in tatters. One eye was squinting. It was already turning black. There was a long cut across his forehead, and his face and hair were caked in blood. What happened to him?
“Don’t look so sad,” he smiled crookedly. “Isengrim looks worse.”
“Is he dead?”
“That’s too much to hope for,” said Ryan. “But he’s the only one left now. The call is silent, all his vulpines are gone. And judging by the mess out there, I think you got the rest, too. You really did a number on his whole quest for world domination.”
I laughed, despite myself. It was a bad idea – laughing hurt. “He must hate me now.”
“Don’t worry about him,” he wrapped his arms around my chest, and ran his teeth along my neck. “I’ll deal with him.”
My mind was still reeling, trying to process through the weariness that threatened to overwhelm it. “Marcus … where is Marcus? And Miss Havisham?”
Ryan turned around, and I saw the sandy fox sitting under a tree, his paws propped up on Clara’s back, his long tongue licking her face. Curled beside Clara’s feet was a smug-looking calico cat. Her eyes were closed in ecstasy while Clara slowly stroked her matted fur and her whole body shuddered with the strength of her purr. Clara beamed at me when she saw me, and rose to her feet. I rose too, shakily, and went over to embrace her. Her tiny arms slipped around me, her wisp of a body falling against me. A warm paw pressed into my back. Marcus. He stared up at me with happiness, his dark eyes calm, loving, surprisingly beautiful.
“You saved my boys,” she said, wrapping her arms around my neck. “You saved my whole family.” She turned to Ryan. “I don’t know why you wasted so many years of your life on that Melissa girl. I never liked her. Alex is the woman for you. In fact, she might even be too much woman for you.”
“Oh no,” Ryan grabbed my arm and pulled me back to him. He laid a line of kisses across my neck that sent a shiver of delight through my whole body. “She is far too much woman for me.”
We were all too exhausted to move, so we sat on the ridge and watched the police set up their crime scene at the graveyard, rolling out tapes and bringing in huge floodlights so they could meticulously photograph every broken stone and severed limb. I floated in and out of consciousness, my eyes fluttering shut, my body falling into the warmth of Ryan’s embrace, losing myself in his delicious wild scent and strong arms. For the first time in several days, I felt truly safe.
As officers with baffled expressions began to sweep the woods for more clues, Ryan declared that we had to move again. Marcus remained in his fox form, and he carried Clara on his back. She wrapped her tiny arms around his thick neck, and he carried her with a smooth, quiet dignity. Even for a large fox, her tiny frame was a heavy burden, but he bore her onward without complaint, never once letting her fall. I felt I was seeing a new side of Marcus.
Ryan alternated between piggybacking Kylie – who had no shoes to protect her feet against the sharp sticks, slippery earth, and wriggling bugs of the forest floor – and carrying me in his arms like a bridegroom lifting his beloved over the threshold for the first time. Miss Havisham trotted along in front, keeping up a steady stream of conversation as she listed the injustices she had been subjected to at the hands of Melissa and her cronies.
It took us a few hours to walk back to Raynard Hall. We had to circle right around the valley, because the police had set up blocks on the road up to the cemetery and were expanding their search into the forest. I don’t know what they thought they were looking for. The landing site of a flying saucer? A group of teenagers dressed in the garb of a satanic ritual? A portable meth-lab staffed by reanimated corpses?
The moon was high in the sky, so we stuck to a path that meandered along the thin stream where Ryan and I had first encountered Isengrim. We had to stop often for Kylie to rest or Clara to adjust herself on Marcus’s back. Luckily, the water in the stream was cold and clean, and tasted amazing on my parched throat after breathing in all that strange fog. Despite my injuries and my ringing ears, I walked with a spring in my step. I felt light, elated, which surprised me since I had just viciously taken dozens of lives. But after spending more than ten days fleeing from this or that danger, and watching news reports of kids being mauled in the forest and dogs being skinned, I felt no sympathy toward Isengrim’s pack. None at all.
We’d nearly got rid of the shifter threat. All we had left to do now was find Isengrim, and then Crookshollow – not to mention the entire human population of England – would be safe.
The sun was just starting to rise in the sky when we finally traipsed through the overgrown gardens at Raynard Hall and rang the bell. Clara slid off Marcus’s back and leaned against the stone pillar at the edge of the landing outside the front door, her eyes hollow, her lips blue with cold. Marcus wrapped his body around her, his long fur keeping the cool air away from her skin. Ryan set down Kylie and she too slumped to the ground, her legs no longer able to hold her up. Miss Havisham darted up a tree.
While we waited for Simon to answer, Ryan wrapped his arms around me and planted a kiss on my waiting mouth, his lips parting mine so he could slip his tongue inside. I breathed in the smell of him, sweaty and earthy from our walk, and felt my body beginning to respond. When we were walking, I couldn’t imagine anything but slipping into a hot bubble bath and then collapsing into bed, but now that we were waiting just outside the doors, I could feel desire sliding through my tired limbs, rekindling the fire within me. Perhaps I could be persuaded to share that bubble bath ...
While we waited for Simon to move through the large house, Ryan entwined his tongue with mine. His fingers slipped beneath my
torn shirt, creeping up over my stomach to cup my breast. I sighed as I gave over my body to him, letting the warmth of his touch steal away my aching muscles, my stinging cuts. My worn, malnourished form came alive again under his–
Simon threw open the door, slamming the large wooden panel against the wall. I screamed as Ryan jumped, and his hand slipped. He punched me across my breast, adding another bruise to my growing collection. Miss Havisham leapt down from the tree on to Kylie’s shoulders, causing her to scream. Clara snapped her neck back, hitting her head against the stone pillar. Marcus darted forward, snarling at Simon. Ryan snapped. “Simon, geez! Don’t startle us like that.”
Simon’s thin, gaunt face was red with anger. “Don’t tell me what to do when you come home in the early hours of the morning after I’ve been looking for you all day? Where have you been? I’ve been crazy with worry. You wouldn’t believe what the news reports have been saying about ball lightning. The witches’ cemetery is completely destroyed. They found animal carcases everywhere. I thought…”
Ryan grinned, and hugged the old man. Simon looked surprised, then reached up with crooked fingers and tentatively patted Ryan’s back.
“Alex did it,” Ryan said. “She found a way to destroy Isengrim’s entire pack. You should have seen it, Simon. It was incredible!”
Kylie yawned, sinking against the doorframe. “Can we continue to extol Alex’s many virtues inside, where there is food, and warmth, and coffee?”
“Yes,” Clara piped up. “We need coffee!”
Miss Havisham removed her claws from Kylie’s shoulders and darted inside, keeping up a steady stream of cat profanity as she hurtled down the hall toward the kitchen. Ryan bent down and helped his mother to her feet. Simon held open the door for us all, frowning at the dirt we tracked across the gleaming marble floor.
We trudged into the kitchen. I slumped down into a stool, my filthy elbows leaning on the gleaming marble counter, smearing it with dirt. Simon busied himself in the pantry, gathering leftovers from the fridge and setting out bowls and plates on the island. He heated up a stew on the stove and, pulled out an old-fashioned apple crumble from the fridge. “Yes, please.” I said, my mouth watering. A few moments later, he set a bowl of custard and apple crumble in front of me, steam rising from the warm spiced apple. I let the tantalising aroma waft across my nose, my stomach growling audibly. My reward for slaying Isengrim’s shifter army. Right now it was more precious than all the gold doubloons in the world.
“We have a problem,” Simon said, his face grave as he started spooning leftover stew into a bowl for Kylie. “There’s been a break-in at the art gallery.”
I froze, my spoon halfway to my lips. “My gallery?”
Simon nodded. “That loud man from your office called early this morning, to assure Ryan that nothing had been damaged and his exhibition was still going ahead. Apparently, one of the security guards was mauled by a wild animal, and—”
Ryan sighed. “Let me guess – a large, grey wolf?”
“Isengrim?” My blood turned cold. The sweet crumble in my mouth tasted like sawdust. “He knows about the messages in the paintings?”
“He knows.” Ryan looked down at his bowl. “It’s my fault, I was … careless. When he took Clara I got so angry, I couldn’t control myself. My thoughts were raging around in my head, and when he touched me … I could hear him in the call, which means he could hear me. He knows about the exhibition. He knows the paintings are messages.”
“But I thought the call didn’t work between shifters of different species?”
“Psychic connections don’t always follow the rules,” Clara croaked, gulping back a glass or orange juice. “Strong emotion can act like a fuel, pushing images and communications from one mind to another. Both wolves and vulpines communicate telepathically with their packs, so their minds are attuned to sending and receiving messages. Ryan’s anger probably pushed his thoughts into the wolf’s mind.”
“Can we hear Matthew’s message?” I asked Simon. He tapped the message button on the answer phone. Matthew’s voice blasted from the speaker. It was the first time I’d ever heard him sound scared.
“Is that Ryan Raynard’s office? Yeah, this is Matthew Callahan over at the Halt Institute. Listen, I don’t want to alarm you so close to the exhibition, but there’s been an attempted break-in here at the gallery. They didn’t get far – we think they used a large, aggressive dog to neutralise our security staff, but then they tripped the alarm system and the cops were on the scene in minutes. Listen, I know this looks bad coming so soon after your exhibition coordinator’s dismissal, but I can assure you that the Raynard exhibition is completely safe, and you have nothing to be concerned about. I have everything under control, and am personally taking care of the final details for the opening–”
The exhibition coordinator’s dismissal? So I had been fired. I’d worked so hard to get the job at Halt, and I’d been thrown the greatest bone of my professional career with the Raynard exhibition, and now it was gone. All gone.
It was odd, but the knowledge that I was no longer gainfully employed didn’t really upset me as much as I thought it would. There was nothing like single-handedly slaying an army of malicious shape shifters to throw your whole worldview into a new perspective.
Ryan looked at me in concern. He knew how much that job meant to me. I should be crying, panicking, dialling Matthew’s number and begging for my job back. I scooped another spoonful of crumble and ice cream into my mouth and shrugged. After everything I’d discovered, and everything I’d dealt with in the last week, suffering through Matthew’s bullshit just seemed like a joke. I would find another gallery job. Alternatively, I would work in an art supply shop, or I would sell portraits on the street, like Ryan did when he lived in Belfast. That actually sounded fun, come to think of it. I’d find a way to keep a roof over my head. The real problem was how to keep the exhibition safe without access to Halt.
Matthew’s message ended. I turned to Ryan. “What do we do now?”
He placed a hand on my shoulder, his brown eyes kind. “We can’t do anything now. We’re all exhausted. You need to finish your food, and go to sleep for a few hours. When we’re all rested, we can figure out what to do about Isengrim.”
“But the gallery–”
“Isengrim’s attempt to get in was an act of desperation, fuelled by his anger at the destruction of his pack. You heard Matthew’s message. They’ve doubled security at the gallery, and all the guards are now carrying mace. Isengrim won’t attack in the same way twice. We can’t do anything more today, Alex.” His deep brown eyes begged me. “Please, just sleep.”
“OK.” I finished my dessert, then helped myself to a bowl of chilli, and a slice of Simon’s sweet potato, sundried tomato, and feta frittata. After a few days staying at Raynard Hall, I was getting awfully used to having a manservant around. It was starting to seem normal to have delicious, homely food available 24 hours a day.
Our appetites sated, we could now move on to the important task of getting clean and rested. Simon led Kylie, Clara, Marcus and Miss Havisham off to the guest wing where they could shower, sleep and primp to their hearts’ content. Miss Havisham – who lapped up a saucer of milk in record time and disappeared into the depths of the house – returned, dragging a floaty lilac sundress in her mouth. She must’ve stolen it from Melissa’s closet, although how she knew about the closet’s existence I didn’t want to guess.
I followed Ryan to his suite of rooms. He led me into his bathroom – a gleaming marble expanse larger than the living room at my flat. In the centre stood a long bath made of black granite, like an enormous lustral basin hewn directly into the earth itself. Ryan turned on the taps, filling the bath with steaming water, and added a few drops of something that smelled amazing, like an Indian spice shop mixed with a medieval herb garden.
He tossed me the bottle. “Clara makes this. It’s amazing. She sells them at some of the local witchy shops.”
I
scanned the list of herbs and oils on the beautiful, hand-lettered label. “Your mother is quite something,” I said.
“She is. But I don’t want to talk about her at this moment.” He stepped closer, placing his hands on my hips and pulling me against him. My skin tingled where he gripped me, “I don’t think I properly thanked you for saving her life. For saving everyone’s lives, Alex. You are amazing.”
I felt my face heating up, burning with a combination of embarrassment and pleasure. Even after all we’d been through together, when I stood this close to him, and gazed up into those deep brown eyes, and heard him praise me in his deep, sexy voice, I couldn’t believe that this was Ryan Raynard who wanted me. Me. It was as if I was in a fairy tale. “I did what I had to do,” I murmured. “What you would have done.”
He sighed, and pulled his arms from me. I glanced down at the bath, now nearly overflowing with mountains of sweet-smelling bubbles. Steam rose from the water, filling the whole bathroom with tantalising warmth. Ryan reached down and pushed an enormous, fluffy towel into my arms, then turned to leave.
“Wait …” My body ached all over, partly from the pain of our ordeal, partly for need of him. “Don’t you want to join me?”
He lifted one eyebrow playfully. “Do you want me to?”
I stood on my tiptoes and kissed him, my lips lingering on his, enjoying the heat that passed between us. My skin flushed with warmth as the kiss swept over me, awakening all the dormant desire within me. For the last few hours, I’d been pushing myself forward on autopilot, putting one foot in front of the other because I had to do it. But now, though the ache of my muscles and the sting of my many cuts and bruises, my body called out to him, yearning to feel him inside me once more. My mate. I never got tired of those words on my tongue.
Ryan pulled me closer, wrapping me in his heat. His cock pressed against my thigh, hard with want of me. His kisses grew more intense, ravenous, and unrestrained, as though he longed to devour me. I met his intensity, my tongue wrapping around his, and fell deeper into wanting.
Crookshollow foxes box set: The complete fox shapeshifter romance series Page 25