Runaway (Fox Ridge Shifters Book 1)

by Marianne Hull

  Hugh stirred, still flexing his hands. “I’m thinking of getting the gorilla a skateboard,” he said.

  Luke laughed, relieved at the change of subject. Neal laughed too.

  “A gorilla on a skateboard. I’ll take video,” Luke said.

  “Seriously.”

  “He probably couldn’t ride it,” Neal pointed out. “Since, you know, he can’t stand on two feet.”

  “Yeah, I know, but he likes to push things along the ground. Trucks and things. He could sit on it and push it with his front paws. He’d need a big one. Could you make one, Luke?”

  “He’s such a freaking child,” Luke said, needling Hugh because he was his best friend and could get away with it.

  “He’s not. Adult gorillas play in different ways than adult humans.”

  “True. He wouldn’t fit in at our poker games. Although, with the way you deal, I think he might be there sometimes.”

  “He does like air hockey,” Neal pointed out.

  “Who doesn’t like air hockey?” Luke said. “Hey! When are we going to do over the basement into a game room?”

  Neal and Hugh discussed the relative merits of pool, air hockey, and foosball. All the while, Luke’s thoughts strayed to his new mate. He knew nothing about her, besides what he’d seen at the bar: she was kind, and had a great body with a face to be worshiped. Eva, a girl from simpler times, had been easy to understand. She’d wanted a husband and family, comfort, security, and respectability. She hadn’t wanted a shifter husband.

  “I’m an idiot.”

  He’d said it softly, but both Neal and Hugh had excellent hearing. Neal gripped the wheel with both hands as the car plunged into a pothole, then said, “It took you five hundred and eighty-three years to figure that out? Must be true.”

  “Come on, seriously. I’ve never truly courted a woman in my life. They all chased after me.”

  “Except Eva.”

  “And look how that turned out.”

  “These are different times,” Neal said. “Women are easier.”

  “Not this one,” Hugh said with finality.

  Luke groaned. “Don’t say that.”

  “I’m not guessing. I just Saw it. This is going to be hard.”

  Luke grasped the seatbelt in his fist, crushing the fabric. “What’s going to happen? In the end?”

  “I’ve no idea.”

  “I can’t lose another one.”

  “We’ll help you all we can,” Neal said. “Bobby will. It won’t be like last time when we thought you were being an adorable teenager and everything would eventually work out.”

  Which would be worse? Having another mate reject him as Eva had? Or winning her love this time and losing her to the same horrible death Eva had faced?

  Yeah, definitely horrible death.

  “One thing’s for certain,” Luke said. He sat up straighter and leaned toward the front seat. “Bernie and Franz can’t know I found another mate. Not until she’s safely turned and can defend herself.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  It rested high on the closet shelf, dusty, full of things nine-year-old Crissy had thought of as treasures too precious to leave behind. Nana’s box. Aunt Kathy had told her she had one hour to fill it with whatever she wanted of Nana’s things before she took Crissy away.

  Crissy set the box on the folding table, blew off the dust, and lifted the flaps. It had been a while since she’d done this, but it still gave her the same mingling of happy nostalgia and grief. She would never forget the day she had come home from school to find Nana lying on the kitchen floor, a tray of cookies scattered beside her. Heat blazed from the open oven door. Nana’s heart had simply stopped. She’d been far too old to raise a little girl, but somehow she managed.

  One by one, she pulled out the contents, pausing a moment to examine each.

  The plastic card box full of recipes written in old-fashioned cursive. Thumbing through it, she searched for the ginger snaps recipe Nana taught her to make. She had the oddest craving. Maybe she would make some.

  A cigar box with neatly ironed and folded handkerchiefs. She brushed her fingertips over the one on top, smooth cotton printed with pink roses and yellow daisies. Crissy still used cloth handkerchiefs, but she couldn’t bear to soil Nana’s pretty collection.

  Little jars of dried herbs, now crumbled. The jars themselves were attractive, with wooden lids. Every time she handled them, Crissy told herself she would put them out whenever she settled down.

  Another small box, leather-covered, with a few pieces of jewelry. Crissy had sealed the whole box with packaging tape for several years after finding her little cousin walking around with Nana’s oval locket around her neck. She flicked the locket open. Inside rested a tiny lock of wheat-blond hair. Baby hair from her grandmother. With one hand she raised the chain around her head and let the golden oval rest on her chest.

  And at the bottom lay the large, hand-written book of magic, covered in darkened green velvet. Crissy drew it out. She couldn’t curb the tingles of excitement she always felt when she handled it, no matter how much she told herself she wasn’t a witch. As a girl, Crissy had spent hours paging through the book, reading the text and the spells over and over until she memorized them through sheer repetition. Some she still knew. You’re too young to do magic, Crissy, Nana would say, but not too young to learn.

  The springs of the bed creaked and groaned as she sat cross-legged on it and spread the book open in front of her, something she hadn’t done in years. She leafed through the pages of thick paper, the edges foxed from generations of use. How to Banish Pests from Your Home—one of the few Nana taught her and let her use. Crissy had no trouble with mice wherever she went, although she still chastised Milton when he didn’t catch any outside.

  The spell she wanted was an amped-up version of the little cord-cutting spell she’d tried at the bar.

  “Ugh.” It required a circle, something Nana let—no, made—her practice. Over and over. She could still draw one, but she flipped to the instructions. Whoever started the book wrote it in a logical progression of more and more advanced spells and techniques, beginning with a childish hand that grew tidier and more elegant with every page. Information in different hands and colors of ink filled the end of the book and even the margins. The book was a true treasure, and even at nine she’d had the common sense to take it. Aunt Kathy had watched and rolled her eyes.

  Right at the beginning, a large scrawl spelled out the instructions for circles; she’d read them so many times, she could decipher every word. It required chalk, which she didn’t have. She could make the circle with marking pen, but she didn’t think the landlord would appreciate it. Crissy scanned the room. Mechanical pencil? No, too thin. She got up and rummaged through her cabinets. Salt could affect the magic, but she found a bag of flour. Messy, but it was inert enough to work.

  After pushing the bed and card table against the wall to clear an area, she drew a flour circle on the vinyl floor large enough for her to sit in and another circle one foot outside of it. From the box she took her great-grandmother’s compass. Using it to find the cardinal points, she drew a straight line toward each one, connecting the two circles and quartering the space between them. In each of these four quarters, using the mechanical pencil and in her neatest handwriting, she wrote a prayer to a different goddess.

  As a child, she used the ones Nana suggested. Older now, and more educated, she chose her own favorites. Ceridwen, for wisdom, Tyche for luck, good or bad, Din for power, and Brigid for success in her endeavor. She could have used a god or two, but girl power all the way.

  Then for the offerings. She stood and contemplated her cabinets again. It needed to be something flammable or edible, because when she finished she would burn them so they could never be used for anything else. An alternative would be to take them to the woods and leave them to nature. To reuse an offering would be a desecration.

  “Don’t tell me I have to go out to the store. It’s freezing degre
es out there.”

  She spied a bottle of her favorite Cabernet atop the refrigerator. It would be perfect. Having no wine glasses, she resorted to pouring the wine into four bowls. These she placed in the quarters with the prayers. The cracked vinyl tiles were now a mess, but the floor would wash.

  Sitting cross-legged in the center with the book open in her lap was a simple matter, but Crissy hesitated. Nana told her many times she possessed the gift for using magic, yet without proper practice and training she didn’t consider herself a witch. She bit her lower lip as a cold sliver of nerves slid down her back. This would be the biggest spell she ever performed, the first time using a circle for magic. She had no idea what would happen if she did it wrong. Suddenly, all of it—the circle, the book, the worry over the cord—felt ridiculous.

  “What am I doing?” She regarded the cord stretching from her chest to a point somewhere to the north and west. Somewhere out there was a man who had done this to her. She stopped chewing her lip and set her jaw with a hardened determination. She could do it because she must. No way would she let him get away with it, no matter how cute his infatuation was.

  Crissy read the instructions once again. Simple, quick. This should be easy.

  Okay. Here goes.

  Holding out her trembling right hand, palm down, she reached for the magic in the room and drew it to her. So much of it swirled around her, an electric warmth that raised the hairs on her arms and sent prickles to her fingertips. Alarmed at the unexpected flood, she almost let it go, but she firmed her concentration and focused on her hand. When she recited the words to the spell, careful with her diction although Nana always said the intent was most important, her hand glowed white with leashed magical potential. With each word, the glow intensified, until she fought the urge to shield her eyes. So much magic, more than she even knew existed.

  At the last word, she shaped her hand into a blade and swiped it through the blue cord. It resisted, thick and tough like sawing through a rope of taffy. That shifter had somehow performed serious magic on her while she wasn’t even aware. She pushed harder, and the pain began. At first a mild ache in her chest, it intensified until it burst like a heart attack at the moment the cord severed. She clawed at her chest in a panic, panting for air.

  What had he done to her? Spots formed before her eyes, and she squeezed them shut. Pain radiated from her chest, stabbing at her shoulders, and running an aching weakness down her arms. Mostly, before she passed out, she felt an overwhelming, crushing sense of loss.

  ###

  Stabbing chest pains awoke Luke in the middle of the night. He lay there in the dark for a moment, confused and hurting, until he realized something was wrong with the mating cord.

  “Neal!”

  He thrashed in the bed, screaming and clawing at his chest. “No! Not again!” Something had torn the mating bond out of him.

  Neal slammed his door open. “Luke! What’s wrong?”

  Hugh’s steps thundered down the hall, and he entered a moment later. “What’s going on?” He squatted by the bed and placed a palm on Luke’s back. “Luke?”

  Luke barely heard him. “She’s dead. It feels like when I lost Eva.”

  “What?” Hugh turned to Neal. “What did he say?”

  “He says she’s dead. You’re speaking German,” Neal said to Luke, leaning over him from the opposite side of the bed from Hugh. “He can’t understand you.”

  “Gone. Just like Eva,” Luke said, his accent thick.

  “How do you know?” Hugh’s own English accent came out under the stress.

  “The pain in my chest. Just like Eva. Loss. Sorrow.” He raised his head at a sudden thought. Hugh could see a little into the magical realm. “Hugh, what do you see? Is the bond gone?”

  “No.”

  On the verge of dissolving into a blubbery mess, this shocked Luke back to rationality. “What?”

  “It’s a bit wavery, but on the whole it looks like it did last night. How do you feel?”

  Throwing off the covers, he sat up on the edge of the bed. The ache receded. The tearing pain left. “Better, actually.” He frowned. “Something happened. Something terrible happened to her. I have to go to her.”

  Neal took charge. “It’s the middle of the night, and you don’t even know where she lives.”

  “We could call Bobby,” Hugh said.

  “I forgot. Neither of you have been mated before. I could find her no matter where she was.”

  “It’s the middle of the night, Luke,” Hugh said this time.

  Luke stood and walked to the chair where his clothes lay in a rumpled heap. He jerked them on, barely noticing if he had the buttons in the right holes of his shirt or whether he remembered socks.

  “She could be injured. You’ve both been around long enough to know these things. I’ll feel it when she’s badly hurt, and I could find her at the ends of the Earth. And you also know me well enough to know there is nothing you can do to stop me.”

  “Then I’ll come, as well,” Hugh said.

  As Luke fumbled in his pockets for his keys, Neal sighed and said, “I’ll come too.”

  At four in the morning., the dead of the night, no cars passed them as they drove the deserted streets through the center of town. Even Stray Cat Alley, where the deputies parked and watched traffic, lay empty. Luke pulled into one of the diagonal spaces in front of the darkened hardware store but left the engine running. Streetlight reflected dimly off the windows. Nothing moved inside. Luke tapped his hand against the steering wheel with pent-up, raw anxiety.

  “She’s in there?” Hugh asked.

  “That’s where I feel her strongest.” She’s alive, he thought. And the warm feeling trickling through the mating cord wasn’t the happy, fuzzy kind. Crissy was pissed as hell.

  “There’s an apartment behind, isn’t there?” Neal asked.

  “Yes, and not a very nice one, if I recall,” Luke said. “I don’t like the thought of her living there.”

  He backed out and went around the corner to the alley running behind the building. The truck rolled along, the tires making little noise, although everyone up and down the street probably heard his big diesel engine. He parked beside a door and a lit window.

  “She’s in there.” He exited the truck, shutting the door with a soft click. For a moment he stood in front of the apartment door, held back by an attack of nerves. This would piss her off and damage whatever wary acceptance she had for him. He knew from his own sorry experience a human mate could ignore the mating bond. Eva had ached with longing. He felt it every day of the three years she lived after their mating, but she did it anyway.

  The window curtain jerked to one side, and Crissy stood there, glaring out at them. She held up a cell phone.

  “What are you doing here at this hour?” she yelled through the window.

  What the hell do I do now? Didn’t think this through very well, did you, Baumann?

  “Uh. Mmmm.”

  “Bobby called us,” Neal said. “He was worried about you.”

  “If Bobby was worried, he would have come down here himself. Go away.”

  “Look,” Luke said. “Something happened. Something bad. I know it did. What is that on your face? Is that blood?” Red coated her face and something white matted her hair. “Let me in,” he said, frantic. “Please.” He grabbed the doorknob and shook it. “Crissy!”

  “No. Do I need to call the police?” She raised the phone.

  “Sure,” Neal said. To Luke, he whispered, “We’ll call Santiago.” Santiago was a shifter deputy sheriff. “We’ll call a deputy if that’ll make you more comfortable.”

  She folded her arms and, if possible, her glare deepened. “In a small town like this, I’m sure they’re all your friends.”

  Luke lowered his voice to its deepest register, and said barely loud enough to be heard through the window, “Crissy, please. Something happened. I felt it, and by the looks of you, you felt it too.”

  She stared at h
im, expressionless for a moment, then drew the curtain shut. Luke’s heart fell, but a second later the door opened the width of the security chain.

  ###

  “I don’t want any part of you.” Hair a mess, clothes rumpled—how could a man be so haggard yet still so handsome? she thought with a twinge of annoyance.

  “What happened?” Luke asked.

  “What did you do to me?”

  “I didn’t do anything. Did you do something?”

  She watched him through the crack of the door, his profile lit by the soft glow escaping her apartment. Why did she want to trust him?

  He ran his hand through his hair, and the expression on his faced begged her to open the door for him. It tugged at her sense of pity.

  “Please. It’s cold out here. Couldn’t we come in and talk for a minute?”

  “Wait.”

  She shut the door and dialed Bobby. He answered on the seventh ring, grumpy and groggy.

  “What?”

  “Bobby, your three friends are on my doorstep.”

  “So? Wait, at...four thirty in the morning? What happened?”

  “I was doing a little spell, and it backfired.” No use hiding her magic from a shifter. “Somehow they sensed it.” More likely Luke sensed it. She wondered if it was as painful for him as it was for her, and she cringed at a big slice of guilt.

  “Let them in, Crissy. You’re the last person on Earth Luke would ever hurt. Or Neal or Hugh, for that matter.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Absolutely. You’re perfectly safe.”

  “Okay,” she said, still doubtful.

  “I promise. Do you want me to come over?”

  “Would you? These guys make me nervous.”

  “Sure. I’ll be there in a few minutes.”

  She bit her lip, standing there for a few seconds, gathering up her courage, before returning to the door, opening it with the chain still on. “I called Bobby. He’s coming over.”

  “Sehr gut. That’s fine,” Luke said.

  “Okay, then.” She closed the door, leaned her forehead against it, slid back the chain, and let the men in.