by Ann Gimpel
“I didn’t. It was my coyote.”
“Thank it for me,” Karin said and focused her next words on all of them. “Listen up. Whatever has the others in thrall will fight us every step of the way. I’m going to build a ward. Funnel your magic in and join mine. No matter what, keep power flowing. We can worry about recharging our batteries later.”
“If there is a later,” Ketha muttered.
Zoe wished she hadn’t heard Ketha. “Thank you,” she told her bond animal.
“Welcome. Our magic will make the difference between success and failure. We couldn’t remain on the ship.”
More bile erupted from her rebellious stomach. Zoe ignored it and threaded magic outward, doing her damnedest to make a bulletproof weave with the other Shifters.
Grim-faced, Viktor edged the raft toward shore.
Magic bubbled around them and forged a path through the turbulent waves, making the going not much easier but at least doable. Zoe narrowed her focus to her part of their mutual spell. If she thought about what lay ahead, fear would rise up and choke her. As it was, each breath was a pitched battle.
“You can do this,” the coyote spoke up. “Believe in yourself. You come from Irish warrior stock.”
“Och, ’twas centuries ago.”
“Doesn’t matter. Your blood kin are in there. Channel their energies.”
Chapter Four: Sing a Song of...
Recco blinked stupidly at the interior of the bridge. How the hell had he ended up here? Zoe was still out on the quarterdeck. She needed him. He spun, intent on returning outside until he remembered Ketha and the others were there. Their combination of magics far outstripped whatever he could offer with his neophyte skills.
Besides, they’d sent him away. He drew his brows together, trying to remember. His mind felt sluggish. As if he’d been drugged. Had Zoe chivvied him back inside? Or had it been one of the other Shifters? If it was Zoe, it didn’t bode well. Meant she saw him as weak and ineffectual—
The fog crowding his brain exploded, and all thoughts of Zoe fled. The enticing music was back. He glanced around the bridge. Viktor stood in his usual place at the wheel, thousand-yard stare in place. He often looked like that, so Recco didn’t pay it much heed.
Juan beckoned to him from near the door; Recco hustled to his side. “What’s going on? You do hear the music, don’t you?”
“Si, amigo.” The sharp planes of Juan’s squared-off jaw and chiseled cheeks split into a blissful smile, almost as if one of the gods had blessed him with his spirit.
Juan held the door, and Daide pushed past, along with Boris, Ted, and Sasha—refugees from Arctowski—and all the women. Most of the women were Shifters, but two were human. They’d come from the Polish research station.
“Go on. Follow them. It will be fine.” Juan was still smiling like one of the faithful on his way to holy communion.
“Why? Where are we going?”
“To meet whomever summoned us.” Juan gave him a gentle push, and Recco slithered through the open doorway, feeling like he was sleepwalking. It seemed right in some ways, and very wrong in others.
“Isn’t Viktor coming?” Recco asked.
“Nah. I tried. He can’t hear me.”
Recco knew he was forgetting something. Whatever it was, the overlooked item hovered at the edge of his consciousness—provocative, enticing—but he couldn’t get a grip on it. When he tried harder, something sharp stabbed him between the eyes. The discomfort was so real, he flinched and swatted the air, shocked to find it devoid of pointed objects like knives or ice picks.
What the hell had jabbed him?
Juan dropped a hand on his shoulder, propelling him toward the stairs. “I’m going to launch a raft. Wait with the others at the gangway.”
Recco wanted to ask something. Recognized it was important to dig deeper and not leap into an unknown intent on claiming them. Words jammed together deep in his throat, strangling him. He clawed at the neckline of his parka in an attempt to get more air.
Oblivious, Juan swept past him, his Arctic Pac boots making slapping sounds on the linoleum-covered stairs. Recco followed more slowly. It would take time for Juan to get the raft into the sling affair that lowered it into the water. A flash of memory appeared and was gone, but not before Recco identified the ice sheet the ship had plowed through. Had they truly moved beyond it into open water? If they had, why not slog down the gangway and jump onto the ice?
Probably lots of reasons. Who knows how thick it is. On the other hand, the raft can’t sail through ice—
The music made his spirit soar. He felt purified, and confused. Why was a simple exercise in inductive logic so hard? He stopped at the landing for Deck Four and rubbed his mitten-clad hands down his face. The rough fabric hurt, but it also yielded a brief flash of clarity. The music might be beautiful. It was also why he couldn’t think.
He’d reacted to it when he was outside with the women. It was when they’d sent him packing. They must’ve viewed the melody as a threat, and they’d been trying to protect him. It made him feel about three inches tall. He was a man, goddammit. Men took care of women. Not the other way around.
Annoyance bit deep. Fine. They’d banished him. He’d prove them wrong, by God. He’d figure out what the fuck was going on with whoever was behind the tantalizing song. Driven by a combination of humiliation he hadn’t been deemed competent enough to remain with Zoe and the others and a need to demonstrate he was better than they believed, he loped to the gangway.
A long, low laugh bubbled through him, counterpart to the music. Juan ground his jaws together. Had he been played by a skilled puppeteer manipulating marionette strings in the background?
Before he could dissect the thought, it crumbled to nothingness. He made a grab for it; his mind went blank, lulled by trilling notes. The others were climbing down the gangway, on their way to Juan and the Zodiac. A quick glance downward to check for ice made his skin crawl. Not only was the area around Arkady clear, the seas had quieted. Alarmingly so. How could the waves have altered from a raging inferno to one-foot swells in less than half an hour? Weather patterns changed fast here, but this was ridiculous.
“Bondmate!” thundered through his skull.
“No need to shout. I never went anywhere.”
“Yes. You did. I’ve been trying to break through since you entered the bridge. Pay attention, or you’ll sink back into the trough.”
“What trough? What are you talking about?” Recco reached the bottom of the gangway and stepped onto the Zodiac’s pontoons and then into the raft.
“You all right?” Juan eyed him, hazel eyes flaring with suspicion.
“Fine, amigo.” Recco looked away and grabbed a seat on a pontoon.
“Perfect. Do not let them suspect you’re not a hundred percent onboard with their plans.”
Recco glanced about the raft. Seven of its occupants were female Shifters from the crew who’d been trapped in Ushuaia. Tessa, Moira, Becca... His normally sharp reasoning capacity was buried in layers of cotton batting. “The women,” he started and then tried again. “Where are their bond animals? Why aren’t—”
“They’re with me. Same problem.”
“What problem?”
“Do things seem normal to you?” the wolf countered.
For some reason, the question gave him pause. Recco started to answer automatically, say everything was fine. The time-worn phrase pinged sourly off his common sense. “I guess not. What’s wrong with everyone?”
“Same thing that was wrong with you until five minutes ago.”
“You’re being pretty cryptic.”
The wolf didn’t comment.
The roar of the Zodiac’s motor pounded Recco’s ears, accompanied by harsh grating as the craft moved through ice parting ahead of them. He glanced over a shoulder, and alarm sluiced through him along with a metallic taste he associated with adrenaline. The path opening ahead of them closed as soon as the raft moved through it. Ice stretched
between them and Arkady. Whether it was robust enough to walk across was anyone’s guess. It didn’t matter. There’d been about a fifty-foot gap of open ocean around the ship. Manageable to swim if the water remained quiescent, but he had an uncomfortable feeling the same mechanism chopping a path through the ice would ensure returning to the ship turned into a death sentence.
“Are you going to say anything else?” he demanded.
“Safer if I don’t,” his wolf responded.
Juan’s head snapped up from where he manned the craft. Confusion screwed his face into a shocked expression. “Jesus. What are we doing out here?” His gaze skittered from one of them to another. “Aura. Where is she?” He stared at the ice, still splitting to offer them passage, and his face morphed from shock to horror. His mitten-clad hand shook where it rested atop the tiller, and the Zodiac bounced from one side of the ice channel to the other.
Recco intuited the other man’s thoughts. He wanted to turn the raft around, except it was impossible, the channel far too narrow. The engine must have a reverse setting, though. Why wasn’t Juan using it?
The other occupants of the Zodiac barely blinked. They were clearly caught up in the music’s spell. The same trance had snared him when he stood on the quarterdeck with Zoe. At least the women’s magic had been strong enough to fight back. Had Juan’s mountain lion broken through? Was it what brought him around?
Recco started to ask in clumsy telepathy, but he was afraid he might endanger them further. Clearly, his wolf viewed any type of communication as risky. Maybe a method not reliant on magic might be safer. He wished he knew more about how magic worked. Now wasn’t the time for a crash course, even if his bondmate were up to the task.
Recco moved across the raft and settled next to Juan. He started with an innocuous question so the others wouldn’t pay any attention to them. “How can you tell when we’ve reached land?”
Juan regarded him through eyes narrowed to slits, as if he were delving for ulterior motives. When he replied, his voice was gruff. “In this instance, it will be when whatever is cleaving through the ice quits.”
“What happens then?”
Juan inhaled audibly, harsh and ragged. “I have no idea.”
“Seems to me,” Recco went on, hoping to hell the music maker wouldn’t rise through the ice and kill him, “once we’re over land, we could spin the raft around.” The words were no sooner out than the same ice pick between the eyes sensation he’d experienced inside the ship, blasted him. Except this time, it was worse by a factor of ten. A headache bloomed, pounding through his skull. He dropped his head into his hands, hitting pressure points as best he could, given his thick mitts.
“Of course we don’t want to turn the raft around. Where’s your spirit of adventure, amigo?” Juan’s jaunty tone held a frayed undernote, as if he was holding himself together by the thinnest of margins.
Colors flared in front of Recco’s eyes as the peak of the pain subsided. Christ. No wonder his wolf had cautioned him against talking. At least the other abominations they’d faced hadn’t toyed with them. It was all-out war from the gate. This time he felt like a cornered mouse facing off against a pissed-off cat that wasn’t in any hurry. He squinted, meeting Juan’s gaze, and the other man shook his head in a small, barely perceptible motion. Hope flared. At least two of them had broken free of the Kool-Aid everyone else seemed to have drunk.
The Zodiac’s bow bounced against a shallow ice shelf.
“Looks like this is the end of the line,” Juan said in his best tour guide style. “I’ll get out first and secure the anchor rope with ice screws.” He dug in the wooden box next to him and extracted ten-inch long silvery bolts with threaded ends and flattened tops. Next, he killed the motor and tilted it into the raft where the propeller wouldn’t drag.
Boris tossed a leg over the side of the raft.
“Hang on!” Juan said. “This time, you’ll all exit the same way I do. Ice is solid beyond the bow. If you go over the edge, you may end up in water to your waist.”
“Thanks.” Boris’s reply was muted, as if he were talking from underwater.
“Not the weather to get wet,” Juan agreed in the same cheery tone as he crossed to the front of the raft and vaulted over the pontoons, rope in hand.
“Oh, it’s not so bad.” Ted spread his arms expansively and draped one around Boris. “This is almost balmy for Antarctica.”
Recco held onto a neutral expression. The calm seas and the lack of wind had to be products of magical manipulation, which meant they could shatter between the space of two breaths. A gradually rising expanse of white spread before them. Once they were all out of the raft, he and Daide helped Juan drag it onto the ice.
Daide elbowed him. “You’re quiet.”
Recco shrugged. “So are you. So what?” Everyone except for the three of them had taken off across the frozen headland, presumably guided by the same force that had lured them off Arkady.
A gust of wind battered him in the ass, and he ground his teeth together. “Guess it’s our sign to get moving.”
“I’d feel better about this if I had some idea where we were going,” Daide spoke up, sounding like himself.
“When you got into the raft, it didn’t matter to you.” Recco tested the waters, curious what his friend would say.
Daide lowered his voice. “My coyote showed up.”
“Funny. So did my mountain lion,” Juan said. “It was like being doused with a bucket of ice water straight out of the Amundsen Sea.” He twisted a corner of his mouth downward in a pained expression. “I’m appalled I left the ship at all. Doubly so without Aura.”
Recco braced himself, but nothing attacked them. No one rolled on the ice clutching their heads. Maybe the thing couldn’t split its attention, and at the moment it was focused on the group moving briskly toward god only knew what. He remembered the blast of wind. “We have to follow the others. Last thing we need is to draw attention to ourselves.”
Juan straightened from where he’d secured the raft to the ice screws. “Yes, and we need to shut up. My bond animal was most specific about it.”
Recco slipped and slid, running across the slick surface until he caught up with the tail end of the line. Daide flanked him on one side, Juan on the other. The music was back, except this time it lacked the mesmerizing effect. Magic boiled around the group. If he looked through his psychic view, colors collided in a mass of wicked-looking sparks. Was the alien magic doing its damnedest to keep theirs at bay?
The vista was oddly hypnotic, drawing him into kaleidoscopic imagery until an urgent growl from his wolf refocused him. A sense of urgency surrounded him. “We’re getting close,” he mumbled.
“My take too,” Juan said.
“We may shift,” his wolf said. “If I commandeer our body, do not fight me.”
“Understood.”
Recco wanted to stop and strategize. Anything unusual—like not moving in the same direction as everyone else—would be a dead giveaway three of them weren’t playing in the same court, though. The magic they faced had to be both ancient and powerful. Right now, they held the element of surprise. It wasn’t much, but he couldn’t afford to be picky. Or ignore any potential advantages.
The distant roar of a Zodiac reached him; he exchanged pointed glances with Juan and Daide. It had to be Viktor and the women. Or at least the women. Viktor had been sunk deep in some kind of trance.
Juan touched a finger to his lips in the universal sign for silence. The other raft had a chance—so long as whatever wanted them badly enough to go to all this trouble didn’t notice it. Once it was discovered, the channel in the ice would close, crushing the Zodiac—
“Have faith.” His wolf punctuated the words with a snarl. “We can more than match any power conjured up by the other side.”
Recco wanted to know what the other side was, but he’d find out soon enough.
Dead ahead, the undulating plain of ice and snow developed a definite upward cant
. At the head of the line, Boris and Ted took turns kicking steps in steepening snow.
Recco glanced over one shoulder. At least their trail would be easy to follow. They’d dug a trench in the snow as they traversed the tundra. Should they slow down to increase the odds of connecting with whoever rode in the second Zodiac?
Probably not. Any divergence from what everyone else was doing would draw attention to them. Ketha, Zoe, Karin, and Aura were safer if the music maker’s attention remained focused on Boris and Ted and the others a few yards ahead.
Light flashed, yellow edged with black, and a section of the hillside directly in front of Boris vanished. One moment it was there. The next, a gaping maw stood. The music swelled, pounding against Recco’s resolve to ignore it. Warm, seductive, tantalizing, enchanting. All he had to do was walk through the hole in the ice, and every dream he’d ever had would come true.
He’d never want for anything again. Ever. Never have to worry about the Cataclysm’s destruction. Or Vampires. No. He’d remain here. Safe. Protected. Every need met. The secrets of the ages revealed.
Daide closed a hand around his arm and gripped hard.
Recco understood. He had to be strong. Had to wrench his focus away from the insidious suggestions eroding his determination. Breath rasped in his throat as he forced his lungs to inflate.
Boris hesitated, and decorative multihued lights flared around the yawning hole, almost as if their host recognized the need to make the entrance less threatening. Boris leaned into Ted, wrapping his arms around him. Angling his head, he kissed his lover squarely on the mouth. Normally, the men kept their relationship subtle. Not anymore. Sexual heat flowed from them, surrounding them in red-tinged concentric circles. Maybe one of the music’s promises had been they’d never have to hide their connection from the world again.
Footsteps thudded from behind Recco. How the hell had the second raft’s occupants caught up so fast? He started to turn. Juan hip-butted him from the other side, no doubt as a warning to do nothing to alert the music maker others would join them soon.