He gritted his teeth so hard her own jaw ached in sympathy. She knew how to stimulate herself enough to raise the power yet not come and dissipate it before it peaked, but she remembered how difficult it could be for someone new to sex magic.
Through the waves of lust and energy overwhelming her senses, some wicked part of her brain insisted on observing that Rafe obviously knew how to hold off his orgasm. A man who could do that would be a lot of fun.
Damn her brain. She so didn’t need to think about that.
Jude. Think about Jude. Find the silver cord and follow it to him.
She pushed, felt an almost audible click of connection.
“Now,” she cried, wondering if she could be heard over the roaring of her blood and the growling of a big cat who wasn’t Jude.
Her orgasm propelled her, and Rafe’s added force to the magic.
Like the bottom section of a rocket, Rafe was supposed to drop away as soon as she got going.
Instead, he tagged along.
She heard Rafe’s voice in her head, as distinctly as she’d ever heard Jude’s. More distinctly, because he wasn’t trying for silentspeech, just using whatever parts of the brain allowed silentspeech to project his words. “Sorry. Did I confuse the magic by…uh, kind of thinking lustful thoughts about your husband?”
Somewhere, Grandma Josie was laughing her ancestral ass off. Probably while sharing an astral beer with Brendan Donovan, who was famous or infamous for working out most of the male/male red magic in the Donovan grimoires.
As if the situation wasn’t crazy enough, Rafe was bi and attracted to both of them.
Under more normal circumstances, Elissa would have found that tidbit both amusing and arousing. Getting herself off while fantasizing about a three-way with Jude and another hot guy that included the guys getting it on could raise enough power to heat the house through next winter.
But this wasn’t anything resembling normal circumstances, and it was likely to do weird things to this spell. She hoped, as they zipped together through time and space to Jude, they were useful weird things.
Something wasn’t right beyond all the obvious things that weren’t right.
The closer they got to Jude—time and space weren’t exactly relevant in etheric terms, but closer described it as well as anything—the more the link became smeared with something noxious and sticky.
Not just the link. It coated Jude, too, tainting him.
He’d been poisoned.
No, more complicated than that. His body was…changing? The links between lion and wordy were breaking down and trying to reform, causing incredible pain in the process. “Stay back,” she warned Rafe, and tried to slip into Jude’s consciousness. She hit a wall of something stinking and painful and just plain wrong. Sorcerous magic?
While her spirit recoiled, her mind analyzed.
There was dark sorcery involved, but something seemed familiar as well.
DNA tampering, both magical and scientific, on a vast scale. It was too complex for her to detangle on the fly, but it was serious, potentially spirit-affecting.
So far his spirit was untouched—for once, she blessed Jude’s stubbornness—but insidious magic and equally insidious science ate away at his inner strength. It wasn’t designed to kill him, although something this strong and major might. It was trying to possess him. Left unchecked, it would eventually succeed.
No fucking way. He’s mine. She didn’t have a lionside, but she roared anyway, lashed out against the danger with claws she didn’t possess.
For the first time, she regretted not marking Jude, not insisting he take the Donovan name as people marrying into the family usually did. It wasn’t just paperwork. It was a ritual that recognized and marked the spouse as a Donovan on a soul-deep level other users of magic would recognize. The legal name change was merely an outward symbol.
The family elders had been concerned it might cause more problems than it could solve. Spirit-affecting magic worked differently on duals than it did on humans, and sometimes the results could be catastrophic. She and Jude opted not to take the chance.
But even the Agency didn’t screw with Donovans as a rule. The clan was too politically and magically powerful.
Donovans kept what was theirs.
Well, dammit, so would she.
They’d chosen to fuck with the wrong guy’s DNA.
DNA magic was one small area where Elissa excelled. Given how her powers operated and the stress on magical ethics in the Donovan teachings, she was also good at reversing problems that could arise when conducting delicate experiments.
Okay, she worked with plants. The principles remained the same.
It would be easier if she could get to his body. A lot of her magic worked better hands-on. But if she couldn’t go to him, she’d get him to her. At least in spirit.
She began to call.
Chapter Sixteen
The inside of Jude’s mouth tasted of rotten meat and blood. His head throbbed so much he didn’t dare to open his eyes, let alone move. Every muscle in his body ached, including the ones that controlled his ears and tail—and since he wasn’t in lion form, that was bad.
What the hell had happened?
Maybe he’d been hit by a car while running.
He could almost convince himself he remembered it. Certainly something had hit him. He remembered a bright light, fear, a shock of pain. He must be in a hospital. So why was he still in agony?
Perhaps that fake ID that said he was human wasn’t such a great idea. Most of the time it made life easier, but if the hospital had no reason to assume he was a dual, they’d give him human doses of medication, which his faster metabolism would burn through in no time.
Time to see if he could find a sympathetic nurse. There should be a call button somewhere. Eyes still closed, he groped—and found nothing. No call button, no metal rail to keep a battered, unconscious, drugged patient from rolling out of bed. And this bed was oddly narrow, more like a cot.
He opened one eye tentatively. It throbbed, not like the eye was injured, but like he had the worst hangover ever experienced by man or dual, times about six.
Thank the Powers the light was dim. Otherwise he’d be tempted to claw his eyes out because it would hurt less.
That was his first thought. The second was Oh, shit.
This was no hospital room.
This was a cell. A cell that boasted a cot with a reasonably decent mattress and a clean, pseudo-piney disinfectant smell, so he hadn’t noticed it at first. But definitely a cell.
It all poured back into his brain. The weird feeling that Rafe Benedict was in their bedroom, arguing with Elissa, starting to shift without meaning to. The run, meeting up with Dr. Hage.
Getting caught by the Agency. Big men with bigger guns and a smell of sulfur and sorcery.
Getting shot.
Magic. Pain. Someone screaming—probably him.
He forced himself to open both eyes. Damn, the light hurt. But after a few seconds, it no longer felt like someone was sticking ice picks into his eyeballs.
Was this what being shot felt like?
He was naked. His clothes were nowhere to be seen, and there was no place they could be hidden in the cell. It was about six by eight and spartan, furnished with the cot, a toilet and a simple, sturdy chair and table he was willing to bet were fastened to the floor. The ceiling was high, the light fixture recessed behind a metal grate so he couldn’t get to the bulb and use it as a weapon. The only window was in the steel door, and it was tiny and barred—not that he could have fit more than his forearm through it anyway. There was a small, sealed opening in the bottom of the door, just about the size to push a plate and cup through. No natural light at all.
He thought, although he couldn’t have explained why, he might be underground. Maybe it was the profound silence that made the dim light seem weighty, made him feel like he’d been buried alive.
The lion prompted he’d been out for hours, but he had no wa
y of verifying that. He thought he’d be hungry if the pain and dizziness weren’t turning his stomach.
The only good thing was that the place was scrupulously clean. But under the sharp, almost-pine scent of disinfectant, he smelled wolf and despair. You could wash the bedding, scrub the walls and floor, but the air in such a closed space held odors humans couldn’t perceive.
Misery. Sickness. Underneath it, strength unconquered.
And death.
Some wolfside dual had willed himself—no, herself, he determined—to die in this tiny room.
An option a dual could always fall back on. The animalside had such a hatred of being caged that a dual could will himself to die in captivity.
But it wasn’t an option Jude would consider, not unless all hope was lost, and it wasn’t yet. He had a pride to worry about, a pride of two.
With a moment’s queasy concentration, he felt the holy Powers, a distant, soft warmth. The Powers weren’t kind and gentle in the way human pagans sometimes imagined the gods. They were forces of nature, their ways beyond mortal comprehension, sometimes arbitrary and strange and seemingly cruel. But they were always present for a dual in a way they weren’t for most humans, who had to take their deities on faith. The sure, reassuring knowledge that the Powers watched over the world and that there was life after death was part of what made duals what they were.
Part of why humans feared them, too, more than likely.
Humans thought they were arrogant, as if they thought they were God’s gift to the world. But that wasn’t it at all. It was more they knew for a fact the world was the gods’ gift to them.
Lord of the Hunt, Lady of the Wild, Trickster whose children we are, be kind to this cousin, he prayed. She’s already been welcomed back to the universe. If it suits your plans, let her next life be a long and pleasant one, because she got a raw deal on her last turn of the wheel.
He didn’t get an answer. He didn’t expect one. The Powers did what they would. But he knew he had been heard, that it was known someone in the mortal realm mourned this death and honored the unknown wolf’s courage and spirit.
That was all the answer he needed, and it gave him courage to fight for his freedom as she had had courage to die for hers.
First, though, he had to stand. That might be easier said than done.
He rolled over onto his side, every muscle in his body protesting.
No one area felt injured, although some spots were more tender than others. Nothing he could see was bandaged.
But he remembered shots.
He gathered his strength. Rolled again, pushed himself onto his hands and knees.
Again, he couldn’t feel an obvious gunshot wound. Plenty of pain, but it was diffused, all over. Naked as he was, a bullet wound would be hard to hide.
Some kind of tranq gun? Made sense. He’d never been unlucky enough to test the theory, but it made sense anything strong enough to knock out a dual was strong enough to leave you feeling awful.
Feeling awful or not, though, he had stuff to do—like getting the hell out of there. And his wordy body wasn’t the best body for the job.
Jude concentrated, called upon the lion, imagined the flow of sinew and muscle and fur over bone, the strength and power, the fangs and claws of his wilder self.
He smelled everything more strongly, and the dim light in the room became brighter, the edges of things sharper. A roar tried to surface, choked back because, in his human state, he couldn’t roar properly, even when his body prompted it.
He felt the first shudders of the change.
Without warning, a sharp, terrible pain pierced him, as if someone drove a sword into his skull.
At least kill that would you quickly. This agony went on and on.
His muscles locked. He fell to his side, arched backward so he contorted crazily, his head pushing toward heels that drummed on the pallet. He bit his tongue and the inside of his cheek, tasted blood. He forced his bloodied mouth open and tried to scream, but his lungs couldn’t force out the air.
This was death.
No, some flash of painful insight told him, this was a drug, something worse than Drozz or Parvan, something designed to separate his sides so harshly he’d break down completely, though for what purpose he couldn’t yet imagine.
But the lion was still in there, aiding his wordside, even if he couldn’t get his body to change. He was whole, though damaged. He could fight this.
Stubbornly, he reached again for the lion.
As the pain flared worse than before, he clung to that thought. He would beat this…
If the convulsions didn’t rupture something vital first. Going down fighting was a sort of victory, but not as satisfactory as the image that pushed past the agony filling his brain: lion claws tearing out Agency throats.
He couldn’t speak, could barely think past the pain. But he managed to engrave one sentence on his brain: I will eat your hearts if that’s what it takes to get back to Elissa.
His vision went first red then dark. Moisture ran down his cheeks. He couldn’t tell if it was tears of pain or blood.
Trying to scream, trying to roar, unable to do either, Jude plummeted into blackness.
Chapter Seventeen
Jude snapped awake on a mountainside. Stunted evergreens and granite boulders and the high, clear call of unfamiliar birds, hawks circling overhead. He knew he knew where he was, that it was home, but it was nowhere he recognized from waking life. Not the second-growth forests of the Finger Lakes, where he’d spent most of his life, not the damp green of coastal Oregon, where Elissa’s family lived. Not the game-rich veldt he dreamed sometimes in lion terms, wordless and rich in smell and sound, or the place with green mist and silver standing stones he’d arrived at once after a particularly intense session of sex magic with Elissa. He dreamed, but he was conscious he dreamed, and in the way of dreams, it made sense he knew something and didn’t know it at the same time.
He was lionside and the lion was happy in the cool, game-scented forest, among the tall trees. He took a deep breath. Rabbits and coyote, but not nearby, and deer and maybe pine marten. His wordy side, who was dreaming this dream no matter what form he wore, wondered how he knew how a pine marten smelled when he’d never been near one.
A rabbit bounded past and he chased it half-heartedly. Fast little bugger. He didn’t expect to catch it, but felt he should try on principal.
The air carried new scents to him.
No, not new. Familiar and beloved. Warm female musk and basil and pears and something that was purely her. Purely Elissa.
He ran toward her at top lion speed.
He came over a rise. Sun glinted off the coppery waves of her hair. He tried to approach her at a dignified stalk, but ended up bounding like a gangly half-grown cub, all energy and oversized paws.
Elissa sat in the shade of a tree larger than any in the area. A gigantic redwood, he realized, an Oregon tree. She’d brought a bit of her own dreamworld with her. She wore the long white and green robe she sometimes used for the most serious workings of non-sexual magic, workings that were more ritual than spell, and she looked like some ancient priestess.
Waving, she rose, and he ran toward her, shifting as he ran so he was a naked, eager man, ready for her embrace. Sharp stones and twigs cut his human feet, a detail he wouldn’t have expected in a dream, but he didn’t slow down.
He wrapped his arms around her, pulled her close. How tiny she was, yet how strong. It struck a blow to Jude’s heart every time he held her after even a brief separation, and this separation, with the threat that it might not end in this lifetime, seemed longer than it had been. She seemed too solid to be a dream, but he was willing to accept the notion of a hallucination, to accept that whatever drug he’d been hit with was messing with his mind considerably. If it gave him escape, however illusory, from his prison and brought him Elissa in a passable facsimile of the flesh, maybe the drug wasn’t all bad.
Her body melded to his, hot and p
liant. Her arms twined around him and her hips canted forward, making sure his cock felt the heat between her legs. She raised her face, stretched, kissed him as if he was water and she was stricken with drought.
Her lips tasted of green and cinnamon, of life itself burgeoning, and his cock swelled in response. But there was an undertaste, one hauntingly familiar but not right.
Pine and forest smells, like the air around them, amber and male feline musk. For all it didn’t belong around his woman, let alone on his woman’s lips, it went straight to his cock and balls, adding to his desire. He ached sweetly for things he hadn’t known, had barely dared to imagine.
A hand gripped his shoulder, large and heated and firm. Not a threat, but a gift, he sensed. The scent of sage, already on the wind, already on Elissa, grew stronger.
Reluctantly, he turned from Elissa.
Into Rafe’s waiting arms.
Rafe stood, fully human, naked as Jude himself. He was shorter than Jude, but strong, muscled. Perfect copper abs tapered to narrow hips and a cock Jude felt hard against him, but didn’t dare to look at.
Instead, he met the other man’s eyes and saw the cougar, tawny and alert and curious, in the same spot where the human-seeming Rafe stood. The lion responded as he would to a beautiful lioness, or to the lioness the lion perceived Elissa to be despite her human body.
All kinds of questions rambled through his head, too many to ask.
“We’ve found you,” Elissa said. She pressed against him, her arms around his waist, her breasts soft against his back. “We’re going to get you out, my heart. No matter what.”
“Elissa…” He tried to turn, to look into her eyes, to tell her not to risk herself. That he’d be fine—even though he had no idea how he would be, poisoned and imprisoned and in the kind of pain that would eventually break his mind.
Rafe had left his hand resting on Jude’s shoulder as if it was the most natural thing on earth. He placed the other over Elissa’s on Jude’s hip, so his fingertips brushed Jude’s skin, the sensitive low belly, perilously near Jude’s swollen dick.
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