It was weird, because that wasn’t how it’d worked before. I was good at washing that man right out of my hair, to grossly misuse a really awesome musical number. After what Parker had done to me, I’d felt more lingering disgust over that shaman watching than over Parker himself. Yeah, I was furious, and yeah, I wanted revenge and would never forget how it felt — but I didn’t feel dirty. Once I washed enough to get his lingering scent off of me, I was clean. His touch couldn’t stain me. He didn’t have that power.
Matthew apparently did. I didn’t feel dirty or tainted. But I felt different, changed, like everyone would be able to look at me and know I belonged to an alpha. Like I would know, even if no one else could see it.
Any shifter who came within ten yards of me would know, anyway. One shower wasn’t going to remove the scent of that much come.
I lingered in the shower, but at last I had to get out and deal with reality. The bathroom was pretty spartan — not surprising, since Matthew didn’t strike me as someone who wasted time on the small luxuries of life; I mean, the guy drove a used Prius, he clearly didn’t have his priorities straight — but I managed to find a clean towel in a cabinet, a new toothbrush in a drawer, and some Q-tips in a small cup on the pitted blue-tiled countertop by the sink.
Clean ears. Fuck. Clean ears were highly underrated.
I stepped out into the bedroom with the towel wrapped around my waist. Matthew was still snoring. I stood and stared down at him for long minutes. Gods, he was handsome. And strong. And broad and tall and muscled, and everything an alpha ought to be. I could kill him here and now. Nate probably didn’t realize how skilled I was at using the little trickle of magic he'd left me. He thought I couldn’t get away with anything, what with a guard definitely sitting outside the room listening.
And they’d had quite a show. My cheeks burned with embarrassment. I wouldn’t have cared so much if whoever it was had been listening to Matthew force himself on me; that would’ve been par for the course. But they’d heard me moaning like a slut. And that — well, that was private.
Anyway, I could definitely get away with killing him. A tiny bit of magic to make sure he didn’t wake up, and then slit his carotid artery with one of my claws. Quick and easy. It’d take a little work to keep the wound open until he bled out, given his enhanced alpha healing. The sheets and mattress would be soaked. Maybe his dark blue eyes would flicker open and fix, glazed and empty of everything that made him who he was. He’d be choking and gurgling and…
Bile rose up in my esophagus, and I gagged and fled for the bathroom again.
I spat a mouthful of slime into the sink and then straightened, wiping away some of the steam to look at myself in the mirror over the sink. Dark bags under my bloodshot green eyes, like Christmas gone grotesquely wrong. Pale, sunken cheeks, lips even fuller than usual and swollen from Matthew’s kisses, and lank hair hanging in damp blond clumps.
Well. If I’d wondered whether Matthew really wanted me or only wanted me because of the spell, that question had been answered.
I brushed my teeth again and went back to the bedroom, carefully ignoring Matthew’s prone form — though I listened for his soft snores, now weirdly paranoid that he was going to die just from my thinking about it.
Nate’s jeans were beyond disgusting after being grubbed around in a mixture of dirt, tree detritus, and Matthew’s blood, so I snagged a pair of sweatpants and a t-shirt out of a drawer in Matthew’s dresser. The clothes hung on me like sheets on a scarecrow. I did what I could with rolling and tucking, and then I bit the bullet and looked at Matthew again.
I had to decide what to do. I couldn’t kill him. Obviously, since I’d gotten all squeamish and been turned into an idiot by this stupid fucking spell I’d put on us, that was off the table. Also, why go to the trouble of healing him earlier only to kill him now? I was sure I could come up with two or three more justifications, but those would do.
That left — what? Lie down and go to sleep myself and wait for whatever happened tomorrow? The past twenty-four hours had been an epic shitshow, and I knew Parker wasn’t just going to give up and go away.
Particularly since he’d shown up with the Kimballs in tow. After losing their pack shaman and their pack leader in the same night, the Kimballs weren’t going to give up their feud with the Armitage pack. They’d be out for revenge. Between their anger and Parker’s determination to get me back, the Armitage territory was going to be under siege. Hopefully Ian was on the case, but he struck me as less of an investigator and more of an instigator. I wasn’t brimming with confidence.
So: go to bed, deal with whatever Matthew did when he woke up, deal with Ian and Nate and the pack council…terror warred with anticipatory exhaustion warred with anger. But what other choice did I have? I couldn’t leave. The spell was still binding me to Matthew, and I’d get sick myself, given that my magic was low enough to leave me vulnerable until I got far enough away, or Nate got distracted enough, for the draining spell to break.
Unless I took the spell off of him and then left.
My heart gave a stagger and lurch and then started to pound triple-time.
Unless I took the spell off of him.
I glanced sideways at the open window, a square of blackness with the whole world right beyond it. There were Armitage pack members patrolling the woods out there, I had no doubt. And by now, Nate would’ve put wards on the territory boundaries.
But they didn’t know my shifted form, they didn’t know my real scent, and I was quick and clever and quiet in a way no wolf could ever match or anticipate.
It all depended on whether or not I could draw enough magic to undo the spell without alerting Nate.
Good thing I liked a challenge.
I perched on the edge of the bed, my hip pressing against Matthew’s thigh. The contact was grounding in ways I didn’t want to think about, especially when I was about to give it up permanently. My heart gave another painful lurch, but I ignored it, and I gingerly laid one hand flat on his chest. His heart thumped under my palm, and I spread my fingers, feeling the texture of his chest hair through the thin cotton of his white t-shirt, feeling the banked power of his muscles. I closed my eyes and went inward.
The strand of spell that bound us was twisted and frayed, damaged by my time spent without using magic to maintain it. No wonder it was so fucked-up, to use what any shaman would have recognized as a technical term. Undoing it wasn’t terribly complicated, but it would take a steady, slow, measured application of magic, and if I ran out of reserves before I finished? Well, fucked-up would be worlds better than what would happen then. We could both go insane, or both die. Or some fun combination. We could end up bound even more tightly than we were now.
Examining my own store of magic wasn’t easy without pulling on Nate’s draining spell, but I did it carefully and ran some calculations.
I could do it. I was sure I could do it. And if I failed at this, after all the failures I’d stacked on top of each other over the past weeks, well — I might as well just give up and go climb on Parker’s knot, since it would prove I wasn’t any fucking good for anything else.
Unraveling the spell between us wasn’t too difficult, though it took a little while. I tried not to remember that Nate or Ian could walk through the door at any moment; I couldn’t let my concentration slip. Once the untwisting was done, I started to gently detach the strands from me and from Matthew, one at a time, and alternating so that the remains of the spell wouldn’t go out of balance and snap in one direction or the other. First me, then Matthew. Then me, then — not Matthew, because the strand linking his emotions to mine was fucking stuck. I tugged a little harder. Matthew stirred and let out a small pained sound. Fuck. I fed a little more of my rapidly dwindling magic into him to keep him quiet. Sweat beaded on my hairline and gathered in the small of my back. My clammy hand was leaving a damp patch on his shirt.
At last it came free, and then the rest followed in quick succession. The spell withered i
n my inner sight, shriveled, and blew away like dirt on the wind, vanishing into nothingness.
I slumped back, breathing hard. I’d done it. I’d actually done it. I wasn’t tied to Matthew anymore, and Matthew — the realization hit hard, and I flinched. When Matthew woke up, he’d hate me. Not love me and hate me, want me and hate himself, but hate me, with no qualifications.
I had to get the fuck out of there.
Since I was going to shift, I pulled off Matthew’s clothes and dropped them on the floor. He’d probably want to burn them since I’d touched them, anyway — although what he’d do about his dick in that case was worrying. And also his fucking problem.
I stood by the window and let the shift come. It flowed through me, as naturally as breathing, from my head — now fuzzy — down to my toes — now small and clawed. The room appeared to expand around me as I shrank down, compressing into my feline body. Shades of red and pink morphed into greens, and the room was brighter, the one lamp nearly a beacon in my lynx’s sight.
The scents of sweat and sex sharpened, becoming almost unbearably thick. I wrinkled my nose and forced myself not to pad over to the bed and take a sniff of Matthew where the scent was strongest, a disgusting impulse for which I hated myself.
I took a last look at him. I’d probably never see him again, and that was for the best. At least I’d gotten my cock sucked.
Fuck.
I hopped up onto the windowsill and peered down. It was a long drop, but it wasn’t just a myth that cats always landed on their feet. It was true for me, anyway. I bunched my legs, made sure my toes had traction, and leapt down, landing with a soft but jarring thump on the grass two stories below.
There wasn’t much magic left to me, but what there was I deployed to cover my trail and make me even harder to see than I already was, slinking through the darkness.
And then I ran.
***
Leaving the Armitage territory felt momentous. It’d taken me nearly an hour to reach the boundary, since I’d had to pause a few times and wait silently for one of the pack to pass by ahead of me. There were bobcats in this part of California, although they’d often avoid a wolf pack’s land, so if they caught a faint trace of my scent it wouldn’t be too unusual.
And I didn’t smell like a shifter — I just smelled like your forest-variety bobcat. I’d made sure of it. It had led to a couple of awkward encounters with real bobcats — the female who thought I’d make a nice father for a litter of kittens stood out, though luckily I’d convinced her otherwise — but in general, it worked.
Finally I stood poised right inside the wards. I could see them, a faint glow of magic in a long, looping strand. Nate had done a good job.
I could admit that in the privacy of my own head, at least. If he asked, I’d tell him how his technique wasn’t up to par…
Not going to happen, though, because I wasn’t going to see Nate again any more than I was going to see Matthew.
My emotions weren’t quite the same as a lynx — or at least, my ability to parse them wasn’t the same. Right then, I was grateful for it. The world was simpler. Whatever complicated mess of regrets was stewing in the back of my head, it’d wait until I was on two legs again.
Speaking of which. I had to cross the boundary. It didn’t really matter if Nate felt the disturbance, although he wouldn’t; my spells hid more than my scent. I’d feel like any other wild animal trotting through the woods, unless Nate was much, much more skilled than I suspected he was. He’d get there eventually, but years with Jonathan Hawthorne would’ve stunted anyone.
I had to cross the wards. I had to leave. There was no going back now, even if I wanted to; there was nothing forcing them to keep me alive, now that Matthew wouldn’t die if I did.
I didn’t want to go back, of course. Cats didn’t cry, but my eyes stung, and I rapidly opened and shut both of my sets of eyelids.
Putting my paw over the line broke something in me, and I ran and ran and ran, trying to escape something that wasn’t going to be left behind, no matter how fast I went or how far I fled.
Hours later, it was clear that there wasn’t going to be any pursuit — or if there was, it wasn’t going to be effective. I was far enough away that if they’d come howling after me, I wouldn’t have heard it anyway.
The fresh, light scent of running water drew my attention, and I veered off course to find it. A small stream flowed through the redwoods, rushing over polished rocks and gurgling between pine-needled banks. I stopped and drank deeply, savoring the cool of it on my tongue and in my belly. My paws ached. I needed rest, but I didn’t think I was far enough away to completely relax yet. This wouldn’t be a bad place to take a breather, though.
I sat back on my haunches and worried a fragment of redwood needle out from between my toes with my teeth.
There. Much better. Now I could evaluate.
I’d headed northwest, going on instinct and not really thinking about it too hard. Now I had a choice: keep going, which would take me into the larger local town of Lancaster, or veer to the east to avoid it, circling around and continuing north once I’d cleared its outskirts. I didn’t want to go west, certainly, since that would take me straight into the Kimballs’ territory. And I definitely didn’t want to go farther east than I needed to, since that would take me toward Parker’s territory — hundreds of miles away, but still. Nevada was off-limits for me forever, and I wasn’t too upset about it, either. I mean, it was Nevada.
Lancaster. Charlie Fenwick ran Lancaster with a petite freckled fist, and it was crawling with vampires. He kept them in line and kept them off the local human population, but I’d be fair game, even if I wasn’t recognized.
And Fenwick wasn’t an ally of mine. If Nate made some of those glittery fan posters, I doubted Fenwick would want one.
On the other hand…I couldn’t run forever. I needed information, and I needed somewhere to get a few things — a lot of my magic didn’t need spell components, but anything more complicated might require a shopping trip.
A shopping trip made at night during hours when the store was closed and not involving the exchange of money, but details.
And Parker was still out there.
That was really the rub. I could hope he gave up after I disappeared, or hope to evade him if he didn’t, but — I was tired of running. I wanted to kill him.
While he was here, distracted and not on his home turf, would be the best possible opportunity.
Lancaster it was — and then, once I was supplied with what I needed and not simply on the run with nothing but my relatively small claws, I’d scope out the Kimball territory, find Parker, and kill him with extreme prejudice.
I took one last slurp of the clear, cold stream water, told my hungry belly it’d need to wait, and set off to the northwest.
Chapter 12
On the Hunt
Even if you ignored the infestation of vamps, Lancaster was a shithole. Okay, sure, it was supernatural-friendly, and it had an all-organic grocery store — which just pissed me off, because it made me think of Matthew’s Prius. But it was a shithole all the same.
Laceyville, the even smaller town a couple of miles from the edge of the Armitage territory, didn’t even qualify as a shithole. More of a shit stain, since that was all that was left. The paper mill closing had killed it.
Lancaster, on the other hand, had a thriving cannery and a few vineyards (the latter all owned by Fenwick), and there were campgrounds that brought in tourists of the more bearded and smelly variety. The cannery didn’t strike me as a particularly desirable place to work, but at least it kept the locals mostly in beer money.
Gods, but I wanted a beer.
It’d taken me two full days plus a few hours to reach the edge of Lancaster, about forty miles from the edge of the Armitage territory. Part of the first day after escaping had been spent hunting and resting; I’d left in the middle of the night, and I’d been flagging by mid-morning.
But I’d made it. It
was approaching dawn on the third day, and I needed to find a place to hole up and make a plan.
At the moment, I hadn’t gotten past perching on the roof of a gas station’s convenience store at the top of a small hill, where the main road from the east dipped down into the town. I was doing my best to pick out landmarks, but I hadn’t spent much time in Lancaster while working with the Kimballs. Lancaster was Fenwick’s territory.
I knew that Fenwick had a large, fancy house somewhere on the northern edge of town, and he owned businesses all over it. There could be vamps anywhere. And it was absolutely guaranteed that Dor had warding up — one reason why I’d stopped at this gas station, which sat just outside the city limits. I was hoping Dor hadn’t bothered with wards beyond that boundary.
Opening myself up to my magical senses, I extended my vision as far and as deeply as I could. The day before, knowing that by morning they’d have been certain I was long gone anyway, I’d used up the last of my reserved magic to break Nate’s spell, which was attenuated and weak from the distance I’d traveled.
The snap of it had given me an instant headache; I wondered if Nate had felt the same effect.
But I was free of it, and I had all my magic at my disposal after sleeping for a while and devouring a rabbit I’d hunted in a forest clearing.
I couldn’t see Dor’s wards, though. I tried again. Nothing. I could see sparks of magic around the town, the life force of Fenwick’s vampires pulsing darkly, a couple of green blobs that had to be gnomes, and a blur of pastels that would’ve shown me all the humans in the town, if I’d had the strength and focus to separate them all out.
But no magic that looked like Dor’s — and no Dor or Fenwick, either, though I’d have been shocked if they’d left themselves open to being spied on like that by other mages.
Which left me taking my chances. I’d have to depend on the spells I’d used to conceal myself and hope shifting within the borders of Fenwick’s territory didn’t trigger anything.
Captive Mate (Mismatched Mates Book 2) Page 11