by Ann Gimpel
A determined yank unbalanced her. She fought to hold onto the lyre. She was its new mistress. Out of all of them, it had chosen her. She curled her fingers around the shiny wood set with gemstones. Wood that fit her hands as if it had been made for her.
“Zoe!” Karin’s voice cut like a whip. “Let go. That fucking thing has you in thrall. If you play as little as one note, you’ll be lost.”
Recco grabbed her shoulders from behind and hooked his arms through hers. She couldn’t fight against pressure from both sides. The next time Recco jerked backward and Karin forward, the lyre slipped from her grasp.
“Nay.” The keening howl shooting from her mouth shocked her, but she couldn’t shut up. “’Tis mine. Mine. Give it back.”
Karin threw the lyre into the snow and closed on Zoe. “Listen to yourself.” She clutched Zoe’s forearms hard enough to hurt. “The lyre’s power is insidious. It’s cut you off from your coyote.” Copper eyes stared into hers. “Don’t believe me? Go ahead. Try to raise your bondmate.”
Recco drew her against the solidness of his body, still holding tight. She struggled. He didn’t let go. The pull of the lyre was strong. It called her from where it sat, end down in a softer patch of snow.
Voices rose and fell around her, not making much more sense than the Tower of Babel. She shook her head hard, trying to clear her thoughts of the lyre. Had it truly had her in its clutches?
“You’re all overreacting,” she muttered, but her words lacked conviction.
“Your coyote,” Karin pressed. “Sometimes our bondmates can’t survive competing magic when it’s this strong.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. I’ve been bonded to it since I was a girl.” Zoe bristled. Why the hell was Karin being such a bitch?
“Do what she says.” Recco’s deep voice rumbled against her ear. “We need to get out of here. First, you have to locate your bond animal. If you don’t, you risk leaving its essence here for the Sirens to eviscerate.”
“How could you know?” She tried to turn and look at him, but he held her too firmly.
“My wolf told me.”
Raw sincerity ran beneath his words, and it knocked the last of the lyre’s sneaky suggestions out of her sluggish brain. Suddenly afraid what she’d find, Zoe turned her magic inward, seeking her other half. For long moments, the place her bondmate dwelt was empty, much as it was when the coyote retreated to the animals’ special world.
“Please.” Naked pleading began in her heart and arrowed straight into her soul. “I’m sorry. Come back to me. I never meant to—”
“I know. I know. I’m here.” Weariness underscored the coyote’s words. “I failed you. I understood the danger, and I was helpless to intervene. The lyre contains magic far stronger than mine.”
“Not your fault.” Zoe reached deep. “I love you.”
“We have to be more careful next time.”
Zoe sucked in a ragged breath, grateful there would be a next time. This had been far too close a call. Relief shot through her, so poignant she felt the quick, hot bite of tears—except this time they were genuine. They coated her cheeks with ice, and she sagged in Recco’s arms. “You can let go,” she said. “I wouldn’t touch the lyre again if it held a king’s ransom.”
He let go and stepped aside. Worry for her had carved deep lines into his austere features.
“It contains far more than any royal ransom,” Karin said. “Those gems are worth millions, and the lyre is solid gold.”
“Gold? It felt like wood in my hands.” Zoe glanced at where the Sirens had stood. The spot was empty. “Where’d they go?”
“We were just kicking that question around,” Ketha said. She walked to Zoe’s side. “Welcome back to the land of the living, sister. For a while there, you started to look like the Sirens. Lucky for you, I was scanning with my third eye. Otherwise I’d have missed the start of the transformation.”
Shock hit Zoe like a blow to the midsection. “Feathers and all?” At Ketha’s nod, her stomach clenched into a hard, painful knot. “So ’tis how they make more of themselves.”
“As good a guess as any,” Ketha replied sourly.
Viktor sidled to where they stood. “We should leave while we can. Everyone is free of the music’s spell—at least for now.”
“Yes. Leave,” echoed around them.
“Leave. Leave. Be gone.”
“Be gone, and be cursed for you have forever altered something man has no right to tamper with.” The message held none of the beauty of the Sirens’ earlier words. None of their grace, and also none of their hypnotic pull.
As if it didn’t want to be left out, the lyre began to play on its own. Sour, bitter, discordant notes spewed from it until it belted out a reel that would have shamed a blind drunk.
The rest of the group had already left for where the rafts were, slipping and sliding as they tried to run. Recco gripped one of her arms, Karin the other. Zoe started to protest she could manage on her own, but the lyre snagged her gaze out of the corner of one eye. Even though it spit poison, it still glowed softly, and she understood full well it was begging her to tame it, save it from itself.
Nay. ’Tis only one more trick to hold me here.
Zoe dragged her gaze in a semicircle and let Recco and Karin guide her away from the place that had almost sundered her bond with her coyote. Anger burned bright. She ached to run back and stomp the lyre into splinters, all the while recognizing it as folly. The instrument was scarcely wood like it wanted her to believe. Gold wouldn’t break apart, no matter what she did.
“I’m going to throw you in the Amundsen Sea when we get back to it,” Karin muttered.
“It’s not polite to help yourself to my thoughts,” Zoe retorted, trying for a scrap of dignity.
“It is if my intrusion saves your life.”
When they reached the rafts, the one with the mountain lions and half a dozen others in it was already on its way back to Arkady. Zoe wondered why the Sirens were letting them leave. Maybe their magic wasn’t bottomless.
“Why didn’t they fight back harder?” she asked Karin.
The other woman shook her head. “I have no idea, but I’m not in the habit of kicking a gift horse in the mouth, either.”
Recco snorted and helped them into the remaining raft. Daide and everyone who hadn’t snatched a ride on the first raft looked more than ready to leave. “It’s look a gift horse in the mouth,” he corrected her. “You can tell how old a horse is by its teeth, so when you looked in its mouth, you could tell how much of a gift the horse actually was.”
“I knew that,” Karin muttered, followed by, “Goddess preserve me from veterinarians.
“Of course you did.” Zoe stuck up for her friend and settled against a pontoon. The adrenaline was fading, and she felt as if she could sleep for days.
“When we’re back on Arkady”—Ketha skewered Zoe with her gaze—“I expect a full recounting of exactly what happened back there with the lyre.” She hooked a thumb at the rapidly receding shoreline.
“How about if I take a nap first.”
Ketha shook her head. “Absolutely not. It will dull your memories.”
“Okay. You’re on.” Zoe swallowed hard. Reliving shame wasn’t at the top of her list. Maybe after she’d detailed her swan dive from grace, she could put it behind her and find a way to move forward.
Chapter Six: Team Players
Recco marched from one side of his cabin to the other, shedding outerwear as he went. He’d always liked things neat and hung his red jacket and black bibs in their customary place. His mitts and hat lay atop the desk, so they could dry. He’d had to toe off his boots to remove the bibs, but he slid his feet back into them. He unzipped his fleece jacket, stopping shy of getting rid of the insulated garment. It wasn’t particularly warm in his cabin. He kept it on the cooler side on purpose.
He smothered a snort. He and Daide were mirror opposites in terms of their preferred methods for arranging things, something they�
��d butted heads over for years. Daide would wait until the end of a busy clinic day and then sort instruments into the sterilizer, while Recco took care of business after each patient. They’d ended up with enough equipment to fill two veterinary clinics, but at least they never ran out of anything.
Their clinic had been looted in the first months after the Cataclysm. He and Daide had been Vampires by then, and protecting their turf hadn’t been high on their lists. Survival—and avoiding blood as long as they could—overshadowed everything. By the time he’d finally settled into being a Vampire for long enough to be rational again, his first stop had been their small clinic tucked into Ushuaia’s hills. The sight of broken windows and the splintered front door told him all he needed to know, but he’d gone inside anyway. Not much was left, so he’d torched the remains.
It was a turning point, one that made it clear his old life was gone. Looking back bought him nothing except pain—and anger.
He was still pacing. Six steps in one direction, and then back again. It had been damned hard to bid Zoe farewell at the top of the gangway. She’d held such a trashed, defeated look, it made his heart hurt. He hadn’t wanted to intrude, not that he would have had much choice in the matter. Ketha and Karin had settled Zoe firmly between them and rushed her off somewhere.
Protectiveness surged. He got it under control fast. Before his wolf could chastise him. One of the surprising factors to this Shifter business had been the bond animals not only knew one another, but their relationships had developed over hundreds of years. Maybe thousands. They shielded their own with a fierceness bordering on obsession.
And now I’m one of them.
The thought warmed him and made him wary at the same time. This was way more serious than signing on with the military, something he’d done as a young man fresh out of high school. This commitment was for life, and he’d damn well better be worthy of the honor.
An approving woof sounded from his wolf.
Recco stopped at the sink and bent low to sluice water over his face, drying it with a nearby towel.
“Thanks,” he told his bondmate and draped the towel back over its hook.
“No need to thank me. You’re making progress.”
Praise from the animal was so rare, Recco savored it. A glance out his porthole told him the storm was still raging. Viktor had been going to move the ship to put some distance between them and the Sirens. Whether he’d accomplished it or not remained to be seen. Recco hadn’t heard the screech of the anchor chain, but it didn’t mean much. The wind squealed like a herd of Banshees on the loose, obliterating almost everything.
Recco sat in the room’s only chair, knowing he wouldn’t remain there. Too edgy to sit, he wrestled with an uncomfortable in-between place, one he recognized all too well. Exhausted, but too keyed up to sleep. Having something to do would help settle his racing thoughts. They bounced from the lyre to the Sirens and back to Zoe.
His physical reaction to the Siren had shocked him. He’d read about them yet hadn’t been prepared for the wave of lust that sucked him into its hungry maw. And it hadn’t been only him. Ted and Boris had practically had sex in front of everyone. If he’d been by himself, he wasn’t under any illusions about the outcome. One of the Sirens would have waggled her hips his way, and he’d have succumbed.
“You underestimate me,” his wolf said dryly. “I’d have forced a shift before I allowed any of those sex-mad bitches access to our body.”
“Good to know.”
Recco dragged his hands through his untidy hair and walked out the door. He wasn’t certain where he was headed until he took the stairs leading down to Deck Two. After swinging by the empty galley and snapping up a piece of leftover cornbread from breakfast, he trotted to the lab, chewing thoughtfully. The door had been propped open, and Daide bent over one of the microscopes.
“Hey there.” Recco strode to his side. “Find anything interesting?”
Daide straightened. Dark circles etched beneath his eyes, and he scrubbed the heels of his hands down his face. “I’m afraid I’m not present enough to do much good here. It beat hanging around my cabin, bouncing off the walls, though.”
“You too, huh?” Recco hooked his boot into the bottom of a nearby chair and pulled it close, settling into it.
“Did you stop by the bridge?”
Recco shook his head. “Nah. If Juan or Vik needs us, they’ll let us know. I’m not even sure they moved Arkady.”
“They did, but not far. You can’t see shit out there, so I looked on a map. This channel has several islands to the south. We still have land masses on both sides, but we’re not as protected as we were.” Daide arched his back to the accompaniment of cracking bones.
Recco slapped his shoulder. “You never did have the patience for lab work.”
Daide smiled crookedly. “Busted. I guess we don’t have many secrets.”
“After all the time we spent in the same office, amigo? You must be kidding. You’re worse than a wife.”
“Nope. You were the wife. Always cleaning up after me.” Daide chuckled, but his mirth faded fast. “I may have been staring at the slide on the stage”—he tapped the microscope—“except all I can think about is what an easy mark I was for those creatures. Did you—? Er, were you—?” Color rose from the open neck of his dark-green, fuzzy jacket.
“Hot to trot? Yup. They’d have had me like a trussed pig.”
Daide made a face. “Not a very attractive visual.”
“My wolf informed me it would have taken over before the Sirens ravished me or ate me for dinner.”
“Aw geez. Yours too?” Daide twisted so he faced Recco directly. “My coyote started giving me hell the moment it broke through the enchantment.”
“When exactly was that?” Recco was curious since his wolf had punched through before he’d even left Arkady.
“Not until after the first Sirens showed up. I swear, it was like a pitched battle inside me.” He rubbed his midsection. “The pain was excruciating, like someone had cut into me without anesthesia. Something about Juan and Aura shifting seemed to give my bondmate what it needed. I’m not certain, but I believe it’s when everyone shook off the spell that dragged us off the ship in the first place.”
Recco exhaled sharply, inhaled, and did it again. “I actually figured it out before we left the ship. Juan did too, once we were in the raft. We kept quiet.”
“Why? You could have helped the rest of us.”
“My wolf said it was dangerous to do anything other than lie low.”
“Did it say why?”
“No. I figured it didn’t want to draw the Sirens’ attention any closer than it already was. If they looked too intently and realized two of us had escaped their spell, it might have destroyed our slender advantage, assuming we had one. I wish I understood more.”
“You think?” Daide set his mouth in a hard line and regarded Recco intently. “At this rate, I assume we’ll make McMurdo. It’s not far. What are your thoughts about the women’s plan to sail all the way to Siberia?”
An undernote in Daide’s question activated Recco’s internal alarm system. “Why are you asking?”
Daide looked away. “It’s not that I don’t want to be a team player and all, still it seems to me McMurdo is as good a stopping point as we’re likely to find. If the rest of the world looks like the part we’ve seen so far, the odds of us transiting the globe south to north aren’t good.” He scowled.
Concern for his friend stabbed Recco, and he leaned toward him. Before he could open his mouth to ask what was wrong, Daide continued. “Damn. My coyote just called me a coward.” A defiant expression blazed in his dark eyes. “Maybe I am, but I prefer to label it as practical.”
“None of this is second nature, amigo. Hell, I never got used to being a Vampire. Resigned, perhaps, yet neither of us embraced it.” Recco took a measured breath. “The way I read things, we need time—and practice—to come to terms with our new abilities, except we don�
�t have either. So we’re constantly forced into spots where we’re reacting—and making mistakes.”
The strained expression around Daide’s eyes deepened. “As usual, you called it. I made a bunch of assumptions before we left Ushuaia. None of them have played out, and I’m not liking where the ball ended up.”
Recco rolled his eyes. “What a mish-mosh of mixed metaphors. How the hell did you deal with our transition to being Vamps?”
“Enough familiar was left, I only looked at the parts I wanted to.”
“You know, I was thinking about our clinic before I came down here. When I saw it in ruins, it was a moment of truth for me. This might sound hokey, but it symbolized our lives. They’d never be close to the same, and I stopped expecting things to change.”
“Even if I’d seen it, it wouldn’t have helped. You’ve always been the practical one of the two of us. I was the dreamer.”
“We have complementary strengths.” Recco shrugged. “Probably why none of our various attempts at domesticity lasted. The women always felt they were competing with a bond you and I developed in vet school.”
An emotion Recco couldn’t interpret rippled across Daide’s face. “That life is gone. I can’t look back—at any of it. Today proved it. I have to seat myself squarely in the middle of now, or my ability to be any help to anyone—including myself—will be compromised.”
“A Zen approach never hurts.” Recco jerked his chin at the microscope. “What were you looking at when I got here?”
“The stained slides from earlier.”
“The ones with the archaea on them?” Recco stood and angled his head around Daide’s shoulder to peer through the eyepieces.
“Yeah. They’re pretty much the same.”
Recco adjusted the optics for his vision and examined the red and violet-stained sample. He waited. Nothing so much as twitched.
Daide butted his shoulder into him. “Let me get up so we can trade places.”