by Dante King
Damn, she really did sound like a bratty teenager. Something about her manner made me want to throw her over my shoulder and spank her. I wondered if she’d like that.
“I saw what happened in the conference room,” she said. “Well, the aftermath of it, at least. Those bear shifters attacked you, right?”
Soojin and I shared a look. Oh fuck, I could feel her thinking. This girl’s a witness?
“You’d do well to forget you ever saw that,” I told the girl, rising to my feet. “And stop following me unless you want me to let Soojin go apeshit all over your pretty face.”
Instead of being terrified, the way I’d expected, a smug smile spread across the girl’s face.
“What a perfect choice of words,” she sniffed, smoothing a lock of hair that had gotten mussed out of place as she stood up. “Since it’s ape shifters running the auction for Tallulah Binesi.”
I froze. “How the fuck do you know about that?”
Her smile got even more smug somehow. “I know about lots more than that,” she purred, poking at my chest with a finger. “I know that you’re a mage, on top of being a shifter. That you’ve been trying to hide it all night at the Council of Wand & Claw, but you let it slip out a bit when some mages tried to haze you at cards.”
I couldn’t stop myself. Before the better angels of my nature could seize control, I took hold of the front of the woman’s robes and shoved her up against the wall, lifting her completely off her feet.
“You will forget all of this,” I growled, staring her right in the eye with every bit of intimidation a new clan leader could summon. “Go back into the casino, go on with your life, and give up on trying to… I don’t know, blackmail me or whatever you think this is. Before you get seriously hurt.”
“Blackmail?” The girl snorted. “I don’t want to blackmail you, asshole. I’m here to join you.”
I stared at her flatly, disbelieving. “You what?”
The girl sighed, going limp in my arms. “I fucked this up,” she said, cocking her head to the side. “I kind of have a habit of doing that, to tell you the truth. Can we maybe start this over? With a little bit less pinning me down and having me feel your dick?”
Begrudgingly, I set her back on her feet. “You’re the one who snuck up on us,” I told her.
“Sorry,” the mage said, holding up her hands. “It was necessary. I didn’t want any of my fellow mages to see me leaving the Celesta. I’m… kind of in a lot of trouble, actually. With my own kind.”
“Why am I not surprised?” I asked, staring up at the ceiling of the stairwell. “What the fuck do you want? Usually when a girl as cute as you follows me into a stairwell, it’s because they want me to fuck their brains out.”
The girl’s eyes widened a bit, but otherwise she kept her composure. Good. I liked that—I didn’t need dainty little flowers following me.
“My name is Riley,” the woman said, extending a hand. “Riley Beaumont. I might as well tell you that now, because later you’ll look me up and discover what I am: a washout.”
Both Soojin and Carli looked intrigued by this.
“What was your issue?” Soojin asked.
Riley blanched, her pale cheeks paling further. “Insufficient loyalty to my guild,” she said, doing her best to keep her voice from trembling.
“Of course,” I grunted. “What with all the skulking around and all. And now you want to join me, when you got cast out of your mage group for being disloyal?”
“It’s not like that,” she said quickly. “My guild was up to some bad shit. Still are, in fact. Why do you think I know so much about the auction happening tonight?”
“Because you overheard me interrogating that bear shifter before I threw him off the roof,” I shot back, not taking her bullshit. “Now you think you can capitalize on it and talk your way into my clan. I give you points for boldness, definitely. But this isn’t the way to do it—”
Riley was calm. “Okay. How about this, then. I can help you find Tallulah, and save her. And I can teach you how to use your mage powers.”
I laughed. Yet Soojin looked thoughtful, her thumb against her chin. Even Carli didn’t react like this was some kind of joke. I wondered what both of them were thinking.
“How can you help us locate the thunderbird?” Carli asked. That part made sense, at least—Carli looked up to Tallulah Binesi the way seventeen-year-olds looked up to Billie Eilish. She’d accept help from some random mage if it meant saving her—and winning her gratitude.
“You’ve got a hideout, right?” the mage asked.
Carli’s eyes narrowed, but the mage continued: “You’re a legendary shifter operating without clan sanction. You’ve got to have some hidey-hole full of advanced tech. There’s only a handful of places in the city where the ape shifters could be having the auction—and if you get me access to your scanner, I can narrow it down to just one.”
Carli stood up a little straighter, turning to me. “If she can really do that, it might be worth hearing her out,” the Raiju shifter said.
I held up a hand, slowing things down before we could get ahead of ourselves.
“Hold up,” I said, staring down Riley. God, she was cute. And trouble with a capital-T. “You still haven’t explained to me why you want to join this clan. Or what the fuck you were doing stalking me through a parking garage in the dead of night—”
“Impressing you,” Riley said, flashing a smile that was quite impressive in and of itself. “If I managed to get the drop on your group—imagine what a few well-trained mages or shifters could do. You won’t truly be safe until you learn to use your magic as well as you do your Dragon powers. And you want to keep your mage powers as quiet as possible for as long as possible. Sure, everyone is going to find out eventually, but you want to be powerful enough by then so that it doesn’t matter. Which means you need someone you can trust to help you master the ways of magery. Someone like me!”
It was a good argument, I had to admit. Except it came with one massive hole.
“I already have someone who can show me how to be a mage,” I said, shrugging my shoulders. “Did you forget? Her name is Raya Sinclair—she’s my mother.”
Suddenly, Riley looked supremely awkward. “Hmm,” she purred, chewing on one side of her mouth. “How do I put this in a way that won’t offend you…”
“You should be aware,” Soojin said harshly, “that Raya Sinclair is a very good friend of mine. So anything you say that would offend Derek has a very high probability of offending me, as well.”
“Shit,” Riley whispered. “I stepped in it, didn’t I? Alright, let me put it this way. Raya Sinclair is a highly respected figure in the field of magic. But Henry Ford is respected, too, and there’s not too many people still driving Model-T’s around…”
I cocked my head to the side. “You think she’s old.”
“How old are you?” Soojin asked, a little heated.
“Eighteen,” Riley snapped, glancing down at her cleavage as if she’d just noticed her feminine charms. “I turned eighteen two weeks ago. So I’m legal, in case you were wondering.”
Sheepishly, Carli raised her hand. “I was wondering,” she confessed with obvious interest, her cheeks coloring a bit.
“Ugh, is that all you people think about?” Riley groaned. “I mean, this is your whole clan, so I guess I get it. But you’re going to have to expand sooner or later.”
Her words made sense—of a sort. Yet I knew very little about this mage, this Riley Beaumont. One thing she’d said was absolutely correct: I needed to look her up soon.
“Are mages even allowed to join shifter clans?” I asked, pushing forward my final technical reservation. My personal judgement of Riley herself remained to be seen—but if she had information that could save Tallulah, I was open to working with her at least temporarily.
Riley snorted, blowing a lock of auburn hair out of her face. “Ordinary clans might not have mages,” she shot back. “But you’re anything but or
dinary. You’re a legendary shifter, the son of a famous mage, who walks around with his two shifter girlfriends like he owns them. And you’ve got magic powers you don’t want the rest of the supernatural world to know about for as long as possible.” She grinned from ear-to-ear, as if she knew she’d already won. “Given everything else that they’re saying about you, you really think adding a mage to your stable is going to cause that much comment?”
All three of us were grinning now. “Why, what are they saying about me?”
Riley rolled her eyes. “That you’re a disgusting poon hound. That if you and Carli make kids, and that, by some slim chance, one of them happens to be a combination Dragon/Raiju shifter, then it’s going to be terrifying to behold. That Soojin over here is robbing the cradle by fucking you, but every woman her age in the supernatural realm would gladly trade places with her in a heartbeat. And that no one’s really sure if you’re going to fix the problems plaguing mages and shifters or send us into open war.”
“I don’t know that last one, either,” I said with a shrug. “I am a poon hound, though. Good thing for you I’ve already got two gorgeous women at my beck and call.”
Riley crossed her arms beneath her breasts. “Yeah, about that,” she said, her voice taking on a hard edge. “This is a business arrangement, do you understand? I join your clan, add a little mage spice to your shifter group—but if you think I’m going to join your freaked-up polygamy situation, you’ve got a whole other thing coming.”
Interesting. Her words said no—but her body showed more and more interest. I’d run into girls like her before: beauties with naughty thoughts in their head who didn’t dare act on them. They were far more concerned with being perceived as ‘good girls’ than was healthy—so much so that they concealed their lust almost as hard as I concealed my magic.
I guessed it wouldn’t take long for Riley to start showing off her wild side. But I’d let her come to that in her own time: there was no need to push her. Besides, I had Soojin and Carli to keep me company.
“Suits me,” I said with another shrug. “Like you said, I’ve got two women already. I’ll tell you what—you come with us, you help us save Tallulah. If everything works alright between us, I’ll think about making you an official member of the clan. Deal?”
“Holy shit,” Riley whispered, looking stunned. “You’re actually going to do it?”
I held up a finger. “As long as you prove yourself,” I told her. “I expect more loyalty than you showed to those mages. You can skulk around all you want—hell, I like skulking around—but you come at me or mine again, you’re out on your ass.”
She nodded smartly to show she understood.
“That’s no problem,” she said, grinning. “Those mages were assholes, anyway!”
You’ve called me an asshole about a dozen times since you’ve met me, I thought, but didn’t bother saying. Whether Riley joined us or not, the important thing was her helping me find the auction and stop Tallulah from being sold. Taking down another clan of wicked shifters was just the icing on the cake.
Chapter 24
Carli’s hideout looked exactly the same as we’d left it. No one had cleaned up after we left for the Council of Wand & Claw, so the place had a bit of the air of a frat house about it. Wine glasses sat atop the coffee table, with random pieces of clothing thrown over the ends of Carli’s couch in our rush to get headed to the Celesta.
The fact that the place was as we’d left it told me one thing: my mom hadn’t returned. I thought that maybe she was back at home, but I’d tried her cell and it wouldn’t connect. Soojin had said that Mom was likely still involved in whatever secret business had whisked her away before the council. I just hoped she wasn’t still sick. Either way, without her, I would have to handle things on my own.
“Nice place,” Riley said, her voice echoing as she stepped into the cave. “You really live down here all by yourself?”
“Yep,” Carli said, leading the young mage on a quick tour of her apartments. “I mean, probably not anymore—now that I’m in Derek’s clan, there’s probably going to be people going in and out of here all the time. It’ll be hard to keep it a secret, actually.” The shifter grinned guiltily at me. “I know we haven’t talked about where we’ll set up a clan base, but this place is probably our best option, right?”
I slipped an arm around Carli’s waist and gave her a squeeze. “Absolutely,” I said with pleasure. “There’s lots of room, too. In case we need to build out more living space. More bedrooms, maybe a pool…”
“A nursery or two,” Carli teased, practically swooning with delight.
Had I known she had her heart set on turning her hideout into our clan’s base, I would have agreed to it sooner. Carli’s batcave truly was about the best operations center I could possibly ask for. As our clan grew, it would no doubt grow right along with us.
“We’ve got to get a foothold first,” Soojin said, adding a touch of worry to our joyous decision.
Unlike the rest of us, Riley had no need to be concerned with those things—not yet, at least. “Sure, sure,” the mage said, stepping through the living room toward the section of the hideout filled with Riley’s gadgets and scanning equipment. “No worries. I know you three will land on your feet—you make one hell of a team. I mean, standing up there without flinching while the Crescent Clan executed one of their own? Not even Tomas Karkosa himself could manage that…”
Riley’s ramble hit a snag as she spotted Carli’s array of computer equipment. “Here we go!” the mage laughed, climbing into the chair next to the array and making herself at home. “Help me get this rolling, Carli. It might take me a while, but once I’m done, we’ll be able to narrow down the energy signature that the auction will be putting out. It’s a week away, but if we can get it sorted early, I can spend the rest of the time training Derek.”
The next few minutes passed in a blur of technical talk. Carli and the newcomer Riley were two peas in a pod when it came to technical details, and they talked to each other like sorority sisters. I felt pleased that they’d hit it off so quickly—even though Carli’s interest in Riley looked far more physical in nature than Riley’s for her.
Finally, a wireframe image of the city appeared over Carli’s console, shimmering like a mirage in the desert. “The scan is running,” Riley said, her voice filled with pleasure. “When the auction happens, we’ll know about it. We can leave it running for the whole week and see if it picks up anything else interesting? This is kind of like what the hunterwaves use, but with some extra special functionality. Until then, I have something else for you.”
She reached into her robe, and Soojin and Carli instinctively tensed. I, on the other hand, wasn’t frightened in the least of whatever this barely legal mage wanted to show me. So I wasn’t surprised when she pulled two narrow scrolls of paper out from the interior of her cleavage, each wrapped with a slender red ribbon.
“Spells,” I said, nodding at the pieces of paper. “Your mage friends let you take those with you when they threw you out of the guild?”
“My mage friends have no idea I have these,” Riley said with a grin. “And by the time they figure it out, you’ll already have eaten them. These are my offerings to you, oh Alpha of the legendary shifter clan. Two brand new spells for your arsenal. And a mage who can teach you how to use them.”
It sounded like a good deal. Yet, despite sensing no falsehood from Riley so far, I had to be on the lookout for traps. I took the scrolls from her and broke the seals on each, squinting at the squiggly text on the parchments.
“What do they do?” I asked.
“One’s a damage spell, and one’s more of a support,” Riley said, not wanting to give the game away too soon. “Come on, you don’t want me to actually tell you, do you? That’s no fun! Go ahead, down the hatch.” The mage looked around the apartment with a skeptical expression. “Do you all have something for this guy to drink?”
Soojin brought me a bottle of water
from the mini-fridge, and I managed to choke down the two scrolls of parchment. Nothing untoward happened—that is, if you don’t count the natural aftereffects of eating a broadsheet’s worth of paper.
Almost immediately, new knowledge began to blossom in the back of my head.
“I can feel them,” I said, sitting on the edge of the couch. “It’s like someone opened up a can of soda and poured it in the back of my skull. Fuck, I don’t ever think I’ll get used to that feeling…”
“It can get addictive,” Riley confided with a giggle. “Come on, Alpha. Let’s go find a safe quarter of the cave to practice your new powers in.”
Neither Soojin nor Carli looked particularly pleased to see me traveling to the other side of the hideout alone with Riley. As much as it was for their own protection, they’d both clearly have come along for the ride.
“We’ll be right back,” I told the pair, giving both of them a kiss on the cheek. “Hold down the fort for me while I’m gone, alright? Keep an eye on the computer—the auction is still a ways off, but who knows, you might find something interesting.”
“Sure thing, babe,” Carli said, a strange look entering her eye. “Don’t worry about me and Soojin. We’ll just be hanging around waiting for you. Isn’t that right, Sooj?”
“It is,” the older woman said with that enigmatic smile.
Oh great, I thought, letting Riley lead me away. What am I in for now?
It was fifty-fifty—they’d either have some epic prank set up for me when I got back, or they’d both be in lingerie waiting on their knees with their mouths open for fucking.
I knew which one I’d prefer.
Riley led me into the darkness, stepping around a natural rock outcropping a stone’s throw away from the edge of the apartments. Whatever heating and cooling system Carli used to keep her hideout so warm must not have been able to affect the entire cave, as the air temperature dropped rapidly the further we got from the developed section of the hideout.
Eventually, Riley stopped. The mage whispered a few words as she spread her arms, summoning a ball of light that floated toward the top of the high, cavernous ceiling.