Lions' Pride

by Teresa Noelle Roberts

  “He’s drugged out of his mind,” Maggie explained. “First with the mutagens, then with an antidote to slow those down because they were killing him, then a bunch of tranqs and painkillers after what Shaw did to him—and I don’t know what the hell that was, other than damn near fatal. I tried to quit after that. You see where that got me.”

  Elissa choked on bile.

  Jude, in his wordside form, was naked under a blanket, hooked up to various monitors. Most she couldn’t see except as vague outlines, but a couple glowed with magic. One, Maggie told her, was to monitor if he was about to shift forms—and would, at the observer’s discretion, administer a jolt of pain if he tried. He looked battered, his complexion grayish, his beautiful body somehow diminished.

  Yet something about his expression suggested his last thought before passing out had been something along the lines of, “Gotcha, you bastard!”

  Elissa ran a finger along the edge of his mouth, tracing the half-smile. She couldn’t feel the velvet warmth of his skin with the same intensity she normally could, but she knew his body so well the sensation registered. He didn’t stir, but with all the drugs floating around in his system, that wasn’t a surprise.

  She trailed her hand down, slipped it under the blanket to rest on his bare chest.

  “Can’t believe he’s smiling,” she said to Maggie. “Must be the drugs.”

  “I think it’s just him,” Maggie said. “Grinning that he’s still alive and managed to piss off Shaw. He’s tough, your husband. He almost killed Shaw. Could have. But he didn’t.”

  “Who’s Shaw? You’ve mentioned him before.”

  Maggie’s disembodied voice went flat and cold. “Bastard in charge of this operation. Sorcerer. Ex-Special Forces. Completely bug-fuck crazy, but the kind of crazy the higher-ups like. I think he’d have been just as happy if Jude did kill him because that would have meant Shaw’d won. He wants them to be killers. The taste of human blood sets the changes somehow—the magic’s way beyond anything I can understand—so it’s better if they kill in animal form, but at that point Shaw just wanted to break him and making him kill would have. Shaw’s the one who killed me.”

  The voice stayed just as cold and hard, but Elissa saw a gleam of energy where a tear might fall if a ghost could cry.

  She thought about hugging the other woman. Maggie had already proved they could touch. She got as far as reaching out her arms, but Maggie shook her head. “Not much of a hugger. Much more of a do-something-about-the-problem girl, and since I can’t do much about the being-dead problem, we’ll work on the kicking-Shaw’s-butt problem.” She paused. “Bet he’d like it, though.” She gestured at Jude, a trail of silvery light following her movement to clarify who she meant and what he might like.

  Elissa looked around instinctively at the security guards, the observer. They were looking straight at her…well, at Jude…but they wouldn’t see anything they didn’t expect.

  The good news was she didn’t have to peel the covers back to lie down next to Jude. She didn’t even take up much room on the narrow bed, just sort of melded to him. The even better news was she could feel his heat and hard muscle. He shifted as if snuggling into her, although by rights he shouldn’t know she was there.

  She could sense how the mixture of mutagen and antidote and tranquilizer confused his system. She smelled wrongness, more strongly than she could have from her body. And she could hardly sense the lion, although usually, even when he was wordy and intending to stay that way, the lion would sniff and greet her. Now all she could sense of the lion was a spaced-out snarl. Jude still smelled like warm fur, but like a cat that’d been at the vet, his natural, healthy scent was masked by medicine and sickness.

  Still, touching/sensing/smelling him was exactly what she needed to steel her courage to go on. Maybe exactly what he needed, too; at least she thought his color looked better.

  She snuggled closer, flung one quasi-leg over him.

  Something else felt better, too. Her leg might not be visible to the humans guarding the room, but if they were paying attention, the tent Jude made in the sheets would be.

  Maggie’s face glowed a little. The ghost was blushing.

  For some reason, that—that bit of normality amid the horror—made Elissa break down.

  The last thing she expected was for the woman who’d declined a hug to put a supportive transparent hand on her shoulder. “Let it out. This sucks and you need a good cry. Get it out of your system now, because we have work to do.”

  Whether it was the sympathy or the acknowledgement of how little time she had to let herself get hysterical, Elissa pulled herself together again. She kissed Jude on the forehead, then on the lips, stood and said, “Let’s go. We need to figure out how I can get into this place again with my body with me.”

  “I think I can help with that. With luck, I can even help you do it so you don’t wind up like me.”

  Maggie admitted that when she was alive she’d been a flaming coward. Dead, though, she had nothing to lose.

  No one had taken the lab key card from her desk or the files from her computer. No rush to do that. After all, she was dead and ghosts could interact with the physical world in only the most limited way without a medium or a keeper of memory to help.

  This was cause for much excitement until it turned out Elissa couldn’t really assist. With her help, Maggie could use her touchpad mouse and press keys on her computer keyboard, but when she got too close to the computer it went crazy. When the monitor turned itself off and on to flash alternating pink-and-green plaid and a picture of two chubby gray tabby cats, Elissa pounded her hand against the desk. It passed smoothly into the surface.

  She sighed in exhausted frustration, wishing she could sit properly or better yet lie down, even on the cold and not too clean-looking tile floor. Being out of body like this was wearying, and she was already tired.

  She was wearing herself out further for nothing.

  Elissa wasn’t powerful enough to allow Maggie to open a door or do any of the things Elissa had hoped a ghost would do for them. Maggie’s form had become more solid as they’d spoken, but she’d still be invisible to someone who wasn’t attuned to ghosts. A living person might feel her touch, but it was as insubstantial as a cold blast of wind.

  Just what Elissa deserved, she supposed, for backing away from being a keeper of memory. She was too rusty and there was too much about ghosts she’d never learned.

  “It’s no use,” Elissa sighed. “There’s nothing we can do to hack into the system here. I can’t even get the damn keys.”

  Maggie laughed a loud, braying guffaw—Elissa knew no one else could hear, but she still looked around nervously. “Not like this. But I’ve been thinking. It would be better if you had IDs, but if you’ve got a good memory, I can give you passwords and door codes out the wazoo. Network passwords, too. If you work fast, you might be able to download my files as evidence.”

  “How?”

  “Honey, you’ve got your very own socially dysfunctional genius on your side. I can remember just about anything, as long as it’s not where I parked my car. Extra points if I wasn’t supposed to know it in the first place and only found out because I’m a nosy little fuck.”

  As Elissa tried desperately to remember them as she would a spell, Maggie rattled off not just her own door access codes and network passwords, but those of six other mid-level Agency employees.

  “I can’t get you into the labs; those need door cards, and for the inner labs you need retinal scans. Unless you want to take my eyeballs. I sure don’t need them anymore. I don’t think they’ve dumped my body yet. It’s supposed to snow tonight and that’ll make the accident more convincing.” She sounded altogether too calm about it.

  Elissa tried to picture herself scooping out the dead woman’s eyes and shuddered. Too close to necromancy for her taste, even with the former owner’s permission.

  “No. Just…no. We’ll figure something out or we won’t. Once we’ve go
t your files, we can cause the Agency plenty of problems. The most important thing is getting Jude out safely.”

  Maggie nodded, a barely perceptible movement of her ectoplasm. “I’ll get you into the lab. I seem to fry computers pretty well now. I bet I can blow up some of the security cameras, too, so I’ll run interference. Who knows? By then I might figure out how to open a door.”

  That was all Elissa needed.

  Once they could get into the cells, they’d have Jude.

  And once they had Jude, the ass-kicking could commence.

  She smiled dreamily, although if someone had asked her, she couldn’t have said if the dreaminess was from thinking about her husband kicking Agency ass or falling asleep back in her body.

  Probably the latter. Time to go before something bad happened because she was too tired to keep the spell going. She had what she’d come for…and the sooner she jotted down those passwords the better.

  “Gotta go. I’m losing the connection,” she said to Maggie.

  She zinged back to her body in the least graceful way possible. Coming out of etheric travel wasn’t supposed to feel like falling off a cliff, dammit.

  She sat up and blinked at how late it was. She and the ghost must have been together a long time, longer than was probably smart even if she’d been better rested and more experienced at that trick.

  Time to write those passwords down before she forgot. She attempted to stand.

  Instead, she made a classic cat-with-hairball noise as her body showed its resentment of everything she’d put it through. She crawled drunkenly forward a few feet and ended up vomiting on the floor next to the Alberta spruce, having just enough strength and self-control to miss the magically charged plant.

  Calling up the focus-at-any-odds ability she’d learned—though she’d rarely had to use—over years of magical training, Elissa repeated the passwords over and over to herself as she heaved out her guts. After a while, nothing came up, but she couldn’t control the gagging, the trembling, the feeling she needed to purge herself of everything, including her internal organs.

  Finally, the storm of illness passed. No sound came from downstairs the whole time. Either she’d yakked quietly or Rafe, in one form or the other, had fallen asleep. Either way she was relieved he hadn’t bounded up to find out what was wrong.

  Some things you don’t want to share with anyone, especially not a new friend. Especially not when he’s in cougar form and might sniff at the vomit.

  Still shaking, the taste of bile bitter in her mouth, she crawled to the bedside table, pulled herself up using the bed clothes and found a pencil and an old takeout menu. Using her last bit of strength, Elissa wrote down the hard-won security codes and network passwords, hoping as she did that she still had enough functional brain cells to get them right.

  She tried to make herself move after that. Go downstairs, find Rafe and discover if he’d learned to shift back yet—always a useful skill—and take those next vital steps. The ones she didn’t want to think about.

  Instead, she flopped onto the bed. Just for a minute, she told herself, but even as she told herself, she knew it was a wasted effort. The bedding snuggled her. Jude’s pillow grabbed hold of her like a hug.

  The room blurred. For an instant Elissa thought it was some weird magical side effect, then realized it was, in fact, a very straightforward magical side effect: exhaustion. Her body refused to do anything more until she allowed it some rest.

  Her last vaguely coherent waking thought was of Jude.

  Once she slipped into unconsciousness, she was with him and nothing else mattered.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  By the fifth change-cycle, Rafe could confidently shift from human (wordside, he reminded himself, not human) to cougar in a controlled fashion. Cougar to wordy was trickier. Being a cougar overwhelmed him, in a good but confusing way.

  All the smells. All the colors slightly different from human perception. Moving so differently. Having a tail. He loved his tail, but he kept smacking into things with it.

  Once he turned cougar, he half-forgot why he’d want to go back to being bipedal and furless. The cougar thought the human body was silly. In human—no, dammit, wordside—form, the word he’d use was limited, but the cougar expressed its opinion with an image of a human male trying to lick his balls and instead throwing out his back.

  Yeah, cats were definitely more flexible. Rafe bet the claws would be useful once he figured them out better. Assuming they got through their current mess, he’d have to buy a new sofa for Elissa. And pay to get the floor refinished where he’d scratched it. At least he’d made it to the bathtub when he couldn’t figure out how to switch back and he’d needed to pee. Housecat accidents were stinky enough; a quart of cougar piss was not what a carpet needed.

  How much time had passed while he was trying to figure out his new body?

  He glanced around until he saw a clock. Ten AM?

  Where was Elissa? She’d been upstairs for three hours. How long did it take to contact a ghost, anyway?

  What if the ghost hurt her?

  Ghosts couldn’t actually harm you, that was what everyone always said—but “everyone” was wrong about a lot of things. Like it took weeks if not months for Drozz to clear your body. Like the Agency, although it sometimes made mistakes, meant well.

  Like you couldn’t fall in love at first sight—especially not with two people.

  Heart thumping in his chest, cougar struggling to get out and defend/attack/do something that involved pouncing and clawing and rending, Rafe raced up the stairs.

  If a ghost had followed her back, he’d punch its ectoplasmic nose. Then he’d shift and tear it to little transparent shreds, which should at least slow it down.

  Which room? All the doors were closed. He looked down the long hallway with its worn, fur-covered Oriental runner and couldn’t tell.

  “Elissa?”

  No answer.

  The cougar negotiated with the wordside.

  He ended up in wordy form, with cougar senses and claws at the ready, prepared to shift fully to one side or the other in an instant. How come no one had ever told him duals could do this? It would be so useful as a cop. Maybe they didn’t want to think about useful duals.

  With a cougar’s stealthy grace, he stalked down the hall, listened and sniffed at each door. The first smelled empty, unused—a guest room, probably. The second smelled of soap and cleaning products and a little bit of Elissa—the bathroom.

  The third smelled green and musky and he heard soft breathing. No sounds of distress. Might be good, might be terribly bad.

  The door could be pushed open, obviously for the ease of Jude’s lion form. Rafe eased it open a crack and peered in. He couldn’t see Elissa.

  He pounced.

  Clear red and green light like Christmas surrounded him, drew him in. It wasn’t as weird as being sucked into the kitchen—no traveling through walls or anything this time, thank God—but one second he was jumping into the room and the next, he was on the king-size bed.

  Under the covers and next to Elissa.

  Lucky he’d gotten good at retracting his claws. Quickly as he could, he shifted back to his more familiar form.

  Moving quietly so as not to wake her if she was simply napping, he lifted the covers and checked her out.

  No blood or bruising or other signs of injury. Breathing normally. Pale even by her standard, which meant about the color of newsprint before the ink hit it, and with deep circles under her eyes. She stirred, and her closed eyes twitched as if she pursued an image in a dream. She seemed unharmed, but she didn’t seem to want to wake up, either.

  She must be exhausted. He’d let her sleep a while longer. A nap would do her good. He’d try waking her in half an hour. If he couldn’t, then he’d panic.

  Meanwhile, he couldn’t imagine any place more wonderful—or more dangerous—to be than naked next to Elissa, guarding her as she slept, although guarding her from what he couldn’t say.


  Maybe himself.

  Elissa rolled over in her sleep, snuggled up, laid her head on his chest.

  Rafe held his breath. The idea of sex with her drove him crazy, but this was worse. This tenderness, this trust—it wasn’t meant for him. Deeply asleep enough to not realize who was there, she was seeking warmth.

  Seeking Jude.

  He had to keep perspective. Had to keep in mind he was here because she’d put some kind of magical compulsion on him and because they needed to work together to bring her husband home, not because he belonged here.

  But damn, he felt like he belonged, so close to Elissa their auras blended—and when had he started being aware of stuff like auras anyway?—both of them enveloped in Jude’s scent.

  No harm in enjoying the comforting fantasy. Was there?

  He snuggled closer, drank in Elissa’s warm smell of herbs and female juiciness.

  He got a mental image of a cougar trying to slip into a lion pride and being driven bloodily off. But was it the cougar or his human experiences talking to him?

  And why did he feel more at home here, more connected to Elissa and Jude, whom he hardly knew, than he’d felt at any point in his attempt to live a human life?

  Comfortable as he felt, comfortable as the bed and Elissa’s warm presence were, Rafe couldn’t sleep. But although he was hungry and thirsty and badly in need of coffee and a shower, he couldn’t bring himself to leave Elissa. His senses—both feline and ones he still thought of as human—prickled. His body tensed, but not in a fearful way. More like the nervous anticipation he felt when he was after a dangerous suspect. You needed to watch your partner’s back at such times, and Elissa was his partner in this.

  And not in anything else, buddy. Remember that.