by Holley Trent
“Shut it, cat.” She clucked her tongue a few times to get the demon’s attention. “Here, boy. Come here, boy. Fresh witch for ya. I know you like that.”
It darted toward her, gaping mouth-hole first, and she jumped sideways.
“Blech. If you ever want to retire from the demonizing gig, maybe you could take up a career in wallpaper removal because your breath could certainly peel it, bud.”
It had gotten way too close, and she knew better than to have let it. She didn’t want that thing’s head anywhere near her nose or anything else on her body ever again. So many distractions, though, with her friends watching and That Cat giving her skeptical stares.
Think, think. She danced around a bit, teasing it from side to side while she thought. The other two Cougars fell in line behind it as if ready to force it back if it tried to retreat.
She’d learned the hard way while out with Gail and Agatha in the past couple of months that noncoporeal demons could start pulling energy off a person without even touching them. He just had to get close. The energy was just an appetizer, though. He’d have her soul, if he had his druthers, but unfortunately for him, she was attached to her soul and wanted to keep it a while longer. Like, forever.
It swooped down at her again, screaming wordlessly like a banshee, and she carved an easy sigil into its chest as it flew over. It wasn’t the symbol she needed to do to send the thing back from whence it came, but it would slow him down … she hoped. And she kinda-sorta needed to remember how to do the take-no-shit sigil soon, if she could even do it with a fucking steak knife. “Ugh. What would Gail do?”
Gail probably could use a bendy straw if that was all she had. She’d learned how to harness her power and push it out through whatever means, but Ellery was still in the down-and-dirty witch learning curve. Agatha was usually the one to finish their demonic assailants off, which was all well and good because it was half Agatha’s fault that the fuckers were out in such high numbers in the first place. She’d kind of picked a little fight with some petty gods and demons, and Ellery and Gail were not-so-innocent bystanders caught up in it.
The Cougars circled around the flickering being, leaping on it when it tried to flee their barrier. It couldn’t get the height to get out of reach now.
Ellery slipped in between two of the cats and stabbed the demon in what would have been its back, had it been solid.
She drew a cross. A circle. Shit. What else?
It turned, dead eyes locked on her and mouth opened wide as if to swallow her whole.
Oh. Right! Toothy thing. She swerved around him and added a point-side-up triangle to the sigil. And there was one more thing …
“Ellery? Your cat is going crazy. What’s going on?” came Agatha’s voice on the wind.
“Uh. Busy right now. There are apparently demons in the desert. Don’t get mad for me asking, but … what’s the last part of that banishing sigil?”
She heard the goddess’s sigh all the way from North Carolina. “Seal it with your element. Wind.”
“Right.” Ellery feinted left, went right, and made the appropriate squiggles.
It froze. Stared at her with those odd, hollow eyes.
“Um … ” She repeated the last part of the sigil, and pushed out all the power she could muster up, which admittedly wasn’t much. “Fucking steak knife.”
Then, as if a mighty vacuum had opened up beyond the pastures and in the desert, the demon was sucked at astounding speed backward into the night.
The cougars turned to her. The one with amber eyes and golden-brown fur walked over and swatted the knife out of her hand.
“You’re welcome, you furry asshole. Ought to make slippers out of you.”
He shifted right in front of her—turned silken gold fur into tan skin. Barrel chest into long, lean torso. Beast to butt-naked man. His brothers followed his lead.
She didn’t even have time to appreciate the feast of manhood in front of her.
Mason got right in her face and crossed his arms. “What were you doing?”
“Taking care of your demon, buddy-roe.”
“You flung it across the desert?”
“No. I sent it back to Hell, all-expenses paid. He won’t come back out until that sigil burns off. Might be a decade or fifty.”
“Why do you know how to do that?”
She rocked back on her heels. “Where’s the humidifier?”
“What?”
“Where’s the humidifier? Did you forget about the unattended baby boy with the chest gurgle? Also, there’s boiling water on the stove. I hope it’s boiling by now. I’m so fucking hungry I could eat a cactus.”
He blinked. Hissed.
“Ingrates.” She turned her back to him and caught her friends staring at her, slack-jawed. “I can explain,” she called out.
“That’d be nice,” wide-eyed Miles said, nodding.
Ellery jogged toward the door. “I didn’t mean to—”
“Let’s explain one thing at a time,” Mrs. Foye interrupted. She nudged the women back into the house. “Right now, I think the demons are the more dangerous party.”
“Dangerous is subjective,” Hannah said. “Maybe you’re blind to it, but I’m sure not. I mean, they’re all equally dangerous in my book. Men who turn into wild animals, and demons? And a woman who wades into it and comes out unscathed? Um, hello?”
Ellery cringed. Put like that, she actually sounded competent. “Are you okay?” Miles shouted over Hannah’s grumbles.
“Yeah. Are you?”
“Just scared. What’s happening? Are they going to let us go home?”
“I think that—”
One of the Foye brothers hopped onto the porch and shut the door before Ellery could get the words out.
She huffed. “Okay then. Well. I guess the party’s over.” She started for Mason’s house with its unattended baby and hot stove, letting out some crazed laughter as she went.
This could only happen to me. Kidnapping and demons and surly Cougars … At least the Wolves had some graciousness.
She called over her shoulder, “Your mama needs to teach y’all some manners. Used up all my dang energy with that, and I didn’t have much to start with. You could at least be a little appreciative.”
“Thanks for the help,” the Foye she thought was called Hank called after her.
“Whatever.”
Wrong Foye. Yep. Mason was a furry asshole indeed.
CHAPTER SIX
Mason grabbed his clothes and set off after Ellery without a word to his brothers.
Hank shouted, “What was that about a humidifier?”
“Shit.” Mason turned on his heel toward his mother’s house. She reopened her door as he approached the steps. “Mom, do you have a humidifier? Nick is congested and the witchy one thinks it would help.”
Mom gave him the silent, long stare treatment.
“What?”
She swallowed. Rolled her eyes. “It’s in the attic. Keep an eye on the girls for a moment, and I’ll go get it.”
The ladies eased away from the door as Mom pushed it in and edged around them, but their stares were locked on Mason.
Sighing, he stepped into his jeans and fastened them.
He knew his brothers had moved in closer without even having to turn and look. He could feel their animalistic energy lapping against his, even in their human forms.
Sean leaned against the stair rail and crossed his arms. “Thinking your pick might have been a little hasty now, huh?” He smirked.
“Go on and yuk it up.” Mason concentrated on tying his bootlaces.
“I don’t think you can handle a girl like that. Shit, I’m not sure if any of us can.”
“But I’m sure you’d like to try, huh?”
Sean shrugged and looked at the doorway. “There are always consolation prizes.”
The blond—Hannah—charged at him. “You fucking—”
Mason grabbed her by the waist before she could land a bl
ow on his jerk of a brother and set her on the other side of the threshold. “Don’t let him rile you up.”
Her eyes went comically wide. “I’m trapped in an episode of the goddamned Twilight Zone, and you’re concerned about him riling me up? No, it wouldn’t have anything to do with the fact we got forcibly snatched and driven to the middle of nowhere only to learn that our captors are some kind of oogy-boogy shapeshifters and that my fucking best friend is apparently a witch or a sorceress of some kind.”
Sorceress. Ha. She did kind of look like one, with all the twigs in her hair, though.
Hannah poked him hard in the chest.
“Ow.”
She rolled up her sleeves. “Just ow? I’ll make you hurt worse than ow, dude.”
“It’s all right.” Mom squeezed through the clump of bodies and held out the dusty machine. “We’ll talk everything over in the morning when clearer heads prevail.”
He took the humidifier and stuck his tongue out at one of his brothers’ might-be bride. “If I’d known your best friend was some kind of sorceress, as you put it, we might have just left you be.”
“No you wouldn’t have,” Mom said.
Mason cut her the evil eye, but as always, she was entirely unaffected.
She was right, of course. He hadn’t had a choice. Besides, Ellery was an alpha’s wet dream, even for an alpha who didn’t want to be one. Strong mates made stronger alphas. Mom was the reason his dad had been able to keep a strong grip on the glaring. She’d taken no shit and hadn’t let Dad, either. Maybe that was what Mason had been missing for the past five years. Someone to make him want to be a better alpha. At the moment, though, he’d be satisfied with someone who merely didn’t make him want to yank out each and every one of the hairs on his head.
Again, he started for his own house, keeping an eye on the desert that demon had skittered across. What the hell had she done? It had seemed to be heading toward the hellmouth, but Ellery couldn’t possibly know where that was. He’d thought she’d tossed it away from them—made it someone else’s problem. The fact that didn’t seem to be the case flummoxed him.
The Cougars couldn’t do that—banish a spirit or demon. They could only chase it back to the hellmouth and encourage it to return to its own domain. Once it went back through the portal, it wouldn’t have the strength to immediately return. The local witches said it took a hell of a lot of energy to enter the mortal plane.
But to send it back for years? How had she known how to do that?
He found her in the kitchen breaking spaghetti noodles into the pot. She didn’t even look up at him.
“Nick’s asleep. Fill that thing quietly and go plug it in. Maybe it’ll keep him from coughing throughout the night.”
“Ellery, I—”
“Make sure there’s no rust in the parts.”
He ground his back molars. She’d gone and done it again, telling the Alpha what to do. His reaction would always be to go on the defensive and prepare for a confrontation.
“Are you waiting on me to say please and thank you? He’s your son.”
The cougar part of his brain backed down moments before the man part did. She wasn’t a threat, at least not imminently, and it wasn’t like she was wrong … just snippy. He headed into the utility room, and rinsed the grimy humidifier parts in the deep sink.
“Is there any mold or mildew in it?”
He turned to find her leaning in the doorway with her arms folded over her chest.
“No. Not that I can see. Mom wouldn’t have put it away damp.”
“Might want to disinfect it tomorrow, anyway.”
“Yeah.”
She went away.
He gave his head a shake and turned back to the sink. At least she wasn’t quite so snippy. She probably believed he wouldn’t have thought of the mold on his own, and, well … she was right. He just didn’t think about that stuff. Lacked the common sense for it, maybe. It was just like being alpha, only instead of overseeing the glaring, he was caring for his kid. No less worrying with just the one person to concern himself with, though.
As he worked, calm enfolded him and released him from his high alert. His cougar instincts overrode his man’s untrusting proclivity. Cougar didn’t care if Mason wasn’t the one in charge in the house. Cougar wanted to get out of her way, but not too far. He didn’t want his mate to run. It was his other part of the brain that had all the hang-ups.
Being the one in charge all the time kind of sucked, and he wouldn’t dare tell his brothers how sick of it he was, but he suspected they already knew. Hank kept begging to take some of the burden from him. As Mason’s Second, being observant to his needs was part of Hank’s job, but Mason didn’t even know where to start delegating. “Alpha” wasn’t just an honorific. He had to mediate disputes, see to the welfare of the very young and very old, protect their safe areas, act as ambassador between the clan and the humans—and other supernatural groups—around them. Investigate weird shit beyond the purview of the local sheriff. No one in his right mind would volunteer for the job, but the job had belonged to the Foyes for so long that Mason hadn’t seen where he had a choice but to claim it. Every time he fought to keep it, he wondered why he bothered.
He filled the humidifier chamber, assembled the machine, and carried it into the nursery.
Nick didn’t stir in the slightest bit as Mason plugged it in. Nor did he move when Mason adjusted Nick’s neck from the odd contortion he’d somehow managed to twist it to. He slept like his Uncle Hank. Bent out of shape and still as the dead.
Mason turned on the baby monitor, shut the door to keep the steam in, and returned to the kitchen. He couldn’t help but feel a bit like he was marching off to the gallows to meet his maker. She was going to ream him out, and he deserved it.
Why the hell had he slapped that knife out of her hand like that? She couldn’t really hurt him with it when he was in his cougar form, and she wouldn’t make much of an opponent for him in his man form, either. He had a longer reach, stronger grip, and catlike reflexes. He could suppress her in seconds.
Maybe his cougar side knew more than he did. Maybe the cougar wasn’t so dumb he’d underestimate what she could do with a knife a little ingenuity. Cougar didn’t want her to run. Mason could certainly understand why.
He took the seat at the table facing the stove, and watched her work.
Draining. Saucing. Plating.
She slid a dish and a fork in front of him, and ate hers at the counter.
“Come eat with me.” With his foot, he nudged out the chair across from him.
“Nah.”
“You don’t have to like me to eat with me.”
“In that case … ” She carried her plate to the table and sank heavily onto the seat. Tired. But of course she was. It’d been a long day for them both.
“So … how’d you learn to do that?” he asked.
“What? Pour sauce over noodles? I think that’s been part of my abundant skill set since I was eight or nine.”
“No. I meant with the demon.”
“Oh.” She sighed, set down her fork, and locked her tired brown gaze on him. Darker than chocolate. He could barely tell where her pupils started and irises began. The bewitching dark eyes suited her. Made him think of impenetrable portals. About mysteries he had no business wanting to solve.
Well, she was a mystery, all right. Seemed funny that Miss Type A Alpha’s Match had been ripe for the picking at a national park campground. Seemed too convenient. Almost like a trap. Or … a test? Maybe he wasn’t really awake. Maybe the last year had been just one long, terrible dream.
Hmm. He reached across the table and pulled up a bit of her thin wrist’s flesh.
“Ow!” She gave his hand a hard smack.
“Just checking.”
“What was that for?”
“Nothing.” Shit. That smack had hurt, so he was obviously awake. That didn’t mean something else wasn’t in play. He’d heard of La Bella Dama putting Cougars
through such tests to test their courage, but he didn’t need courage. He needed a handful of Motrin and a vacation.
She rolled her eyes. “Look, bud, suffice it to say I’ve encountered a few demons recently,” she said.
“You just happened to bump into them?”
“No, and don’t take that snotty tone with me. I don’t court trouble. It finds me.” She flicked her napkin at him. “And the demons, they tend to attack people I’m associated with.”
“Witchy friends doing dirty deeds? Really, what kind of witch are you besides a natural one?” Maybe she actually was a sorceress. Probably even had a fun costume to wear when she was performing her acts of ball shriveling.
She fiddled with the edge of her placemat and stared at her noodles.
“She’s being coy.”
Mason jumped at the sound of the new voice. He shoved back his chair and was already in a fighting stance when he spotted the stranger woman standing by his utility room door. She set down an overweight orange Persian cat and locked an unearthly silver gaze on him.
So not human. His fangs descended, claws broke through, and a hiss rent from his throat.
She pushed up one eyebrow, and suddenly an artificial breeze stirred the kitchen. Or at least, he thought it was artificial until he remembered there were no fans on anywhere in the house. The wind tickled his cheek, agitated his inner cat as it strengthened. Pelted him.
“What the fuck?”
“Stop,” Ellery whispered. She picked up her fork and swirled some noodles onto it. “There’s a little boy asleep in one of the bedrooms. If you want to kick his father’s ass, please do so outside, preferably away from the windows. That baby should have been put to bed hours ago.”
Was she judging him? He was pretty sure she was judging him.
“As soon as I’m done eating, you can take me home. Between the two of us, we should be able to wrangle Miles and Hannah out of here.”
The wind stopped, and he realized the stranger woman was the one who’d made it.