Caged, page 32
Flint held up a hand. “If you’ll permit a suggestion, I don’t think you should do this one at a time. It’s my understanding that the energy of a shift can be contagious, with one setting off another.”
Liam narrowed his eyes. “It is not usually a concern for those with sufficient control, but there is an instinct to follow when another shifts. A tendency to get caught up in the moment.”
“Use that,” Flint suggested. “Gather them all together. Focus on one if it helps, but then let them fall like dominoes.”
Liam’s muscles tightened even further. I watched the conflict play out over his face. He’d planned it this way deliberately. He wanted proof before he allowed Flint into New Moon. New Moon was a sanctuary, a place where his most vulnerable members were kept. Letting anyone in was difficult, let alone him. But the bound shifters were too agitated to be moved, there was no other safe place to do this.
“And what do you want in return for your help?” Liam asked finally.
“A favor.”
I’d known what his answer would be, and it still made me tense. Still made me want to call out, warn Liam not to do it.
“What favor? Be specific.”
I waited for Flint to dance around the question, start tricky negotiations. Maybe try to get Liam alone so he could work harder to manipulate him into a bad deal.
“The same thing I’m going to help you do now,” Flint answered calmly. “Someday I’ll call on you to come and use your alpha’s call. When I do, you’ll come, no questions asked.”
I stared at him, but didn’t speak. This wasn’t my deal to make.
“You want me to be on hand for you to call someone out of beast form?” Liam asked.
“Or call them out of their human form. One way or the other.”
Liam considered that, never taking his eyes off Flint. “To call someone from one form to another is to claim power over them. Doing so with someone not in my pack would be as good as challenging their alpha.”
“I can’t speculate as to the political ramifications, as the situation has not yet arisen.” Flint shrugged. “It is entirely up to you if my terms are reasonable.”
Liam thought about it. A long minute ticked by. Andy remained standing beside us, silent as though hoping to be forgotten. Hoping to observe.
“You intend to…augment my power when you call in this favor?” Liam asked finally.
Flint inclined his head. “I hold that out as an option.”
“That would be cheating. I would risk losing my pack. I won’t put them in danger.”
“It seems to me that without this favor, you won’t have a pack at all,” Flint observed. “If you need to call in another alpha to save them, then that undermines your authority and reputation for strength, does it not?”
Of course he’d have figured that out. I gritted my teeth, wondering how much of his shifter knowledge had been gained after he’d bought me, after I’d brought Liam to his attention.
“I want to know what the circumstances will be,” Liam said firmly.
Flint sighed. “So demanding for someone asking for help. I do not yet have the details you want. I assumed you would feel better asking for my help if I could tell you exactly what I want in return. Since this is all rather last minute, I’ve had to think of the most likely favor I would ask, as opposed to having a task already picked out. If you want to wait until I have a specific task…”
He trailed off, letting the implication hang in the air. How long was Liam willing to let the wolves remain trapped?
“Fine.”
My jaw dropped. “Liam—”
He turned to me, and the rest of what I’d been about to say died on my tongue.
“I don’t need your help making decisions for my pack,” Liam said firmly. “I know what I’m doing.”
I bit the inside of my cheek. I should let him do this. I should let him make this decision. But if he agreed to bad terms, if it turned out later that I could have helped…
“Let me help,” I said quietly. “I’ve negotiated with him already.”
Liam opened his mouth to say something, and I held up a hand to stop him.
“Don’t insult my intelligence by assuming I got a bad deal. I did negotiate. I’m telling you, I can help.”
My hopes rose when Liam didn’t respond right away, but they were dashed a second later when he shook his head. “Thank you for the offer. But you don’t understand shifter politics, or our customs well enough to negotiate for me.” He lowered his voice. “It’s all right.”
Flint watched the entire exchange with unabated interest, his greedy gaze bouncing from me to Liam, soaking in our body language, our tone of voice. Whatever I might think of Flint’s personality, his ability to read people was every bit as good as one would expect from a man born and bred to read a person’s deepest desires.
Liam looked at Flint. “I will agree with two stipulations.”
Flint’s mouth twitched as he fought an amused smile. “Which are?”
“When I call out this person, it will be made clear that it is not a challenge fight.”
“You’re already worried the person I’m choosing will be more powerful than you. You’re afraid you’ll try, you’ll fail, and then this person will see you as easy prey and challenge you for your pack?”
I narrowed my eyes. He’d worked a lot of punch words into that little spiel. Afraid, prey, challenge. Why don’t you just triple dog dare him? I thought bitterly.
“Pride won’t goad me to risk their lives,” Liam said evenly.
Flint tilted his head. “And the second thing?”
“They need to know you’re augmenting my ability. I don’t want it discovered after the fact.”
Flint nodded. “Yes to the first, no to the second. I have no problem making it clear that it’s not a challenge fight. That being said, if it’s not a challenge fight, then my augmenting your ability isn’t cheating, and there’s no reason to make that public.”
Liam shook his head. “Those are my terms.”
“Very well.” Flint turned to me. “I’ll ride home with you. Are you ready?”
“I have no guarantee you can help,” Liam said, the words half-shredded, forced as they were through his teeth. “Show me you can. Help me turn Blake.”
Flint looked down at Blake, then back up to Liam. “And if it fails, and I tell you that it’s possible it would have worked if you’d done as I suggested and used the entire group to build the energy needed, would you have me try again inside? Or would you throw away that chance and walk away? To be clear, if I’m to do this twice, I’ll require two favors. Negotiated separately.”
The veins in Liam’s temples bulged. I knew the answer.
“I’m willing to help.” Flint’s voice grew softer, a hint of his fey heritage smoothing his tone. There was no power in the words, no push, but the line between magic and mundane persuasion could be very blurry with a leannan sidhe.
Very blurry.
“Agreed,” Liam said finally.
My heart twisted, but I kept my mouth shut. As he’d said, he didn’t need my help.
“How does this work?” Liam asked.
Flint gestured for him to lead the way. “Take me to the wolves who need our help.”
Liam led the way inside, his aura pushing ahead like a rolling fog crackling with tension. It must have reached farther than I thought, because when we entered the building, there were three times as many guards at the front desk, and more waiting inside, by the elevator and the stairways, posted at the beginning of every hallway. Dozens of sets of eyes followed Flint as Liam led him inside.
Andy fell into step behind all of us, still silent, still watching everything that happened with those sharp brown eyes.
The infirmary was in the subbasement, as far from possible danger as they could get. Well, before the leannan sidhe arrived. Flint followed Liam, his hazel eyes taking in the cages that lined the walls, the groggy shifters who were already burning through the sedatives they’d been given. Ruth and Brenna were down there, prowling back and forth, checking on the others with soft chuffs and other comforting wolf sounds. When Flint entered, they both froze, putting themselves between him and the cages.
“All right,” Flint said, nodding as if to himself. He looked at Liam. “Which of the bound is the strongest?”
Liam nodded to Blake who remained by his side. “Him.”
“Start with him.”
Flint shifted to stand behind Liam. Liam tensed and a low growl trickled from Blake’s throat.
“I’m here to aid you,” Flint reminded them. “If you can’t trust me enough to let me stand behind you, then this will be more complicated.”
After another moment of hesitation, Liam nodded. He turned to face the cages, giving Flint his back. Flint slowly and carefully settled his hands on the alpha’s broad shoulders.
Liam stiffened again, and for just a second, I was afraid he was going to grab Flint and hurl him over his shoulder. Part of me hoped he would.
“Calm yourself, Alpha,” Flint soothed. “Focus on your wolves. Imagine their human halves. Hold them in your mind.”
Liam forced himself to calm and did as Flint asked. Slowly, the tension seeped away. Between the hot energy rolling off of Liam and my own nerve-induced nausea, there was a very real concern that I would vomit at any moment. I put a hand over my stomach, and Flint chose that moment to look over his shoulder at me. He winked.
Panic spiked inside me, but it had no where to go. It was too late to go back now, Liam and Flint had come to an accord. I didn’t even know what that wink meant. Flint might be toying with me. Again.
Scath chose that moment to prowl into the room. She took one look at me and seemed to sense something was wrong. She padded over to stand beside me, pressing her body against my leg. I wasn’t even surprised. Scath had always come and gone as she pleased, why should a secure floor of a shifter recovery center be any different?
The cat sith looked around, taking in the caged wolves and the leannan sidhe with his hands on the alpha’s shoulders. I’d forgotten she didn’t know what was going on.
I felt Flint call his power, watched the spark turn his hazel eyes into the brown and gold bands of a tiger’s eye stone. Liam’s breath hitched, and his spine straightened, making him seem taller.
He took a deep breath, and another. Each one made his aura expand, pressing out until it filled the room. The increase in energy closed in on me, and I felt like I was sitting in a giant microwave. The need to move seized me, and I had an idea.
I walked over to Blake and knelt beside him, putting one hand on his back. He looked at me with a question on his canine face.
“I’m not strong enough to break the spell, but I might be able to help weaken a single point,” I said quietly. “I’ll do my best. Maybe if we work together, we can give Liam’s power the entrance point it needs to break Kristine’s magic.”
Blake made a sound that I thought passed for agreement. Together we braced ourselves, each of us concentrating on our part.
Liam’s power ripped through the room. I had just enough sense to release my spell, sending the dissolution straight into the bright purple light that held Blake’s human half prisoner. After that, Liam’s power enveloped me in a sauna of sizzling heat, and for a single moment, I couldn’t see anything at all. I blinked ferociously, trying to clear my vision to see the results of Liam’s call.
Blake’s head fell back and he howled, rising up onto his back legs, straining as if he could stand up and escape from his wolf skin. The power built and built, pouring into him as Liam called him out. The howl turned to a scream, and his fur split.
My brain struggled to keep up with what was happening, finally resigning itself to accepting that there was a naked man standing where there had once been a wolf.
As Flint had anticipated, the effect on the other wolves was immediate. The wolf closest to Blake woke with a blood-curdling roar and exploded into human form. Then the next, and the next. With every transformation, the energy in the room rose, until it moved like an enormous fireball, rolling around the room and consuming all in its path.
I heard a bark of surprise and turned in time to see Sonar, her German Shepherd glamour shattered. The magic hit her and suddenly she was human too, standing on all fours on the floor, shoulder-length brown hair falling around her shoulders and blue eyes wide with surprise.
I thought I recognized her, despite only having seen her once through a veil of hair while Blake carried her, right after St. John’s threshold spell zapped her. I didn’t have time to dwell on that. Not when another transformation was happening right beside me.
Scath stood braced on all four paws, her green eyes on fire, her mouth open in a snarl that revealed all of her sharp teeth. Her black fur rippled like the surface of a disturbed lake in the middle of a moonless night, and there was no mistaking the fury in the roar that bellowed from deep in her body. Fury and resistance.
My mouth fell open as I realized what was happening, helpless to do anything but stare as Scath fought against the pull of Liam’s magnified power to transform—
And lost.
Black fur sank beneath human flesh, and her arms and legs softened into putty before reforming with a careless grace beyond that of any shifter I’d ever seen. Black hair stuck out from her head at wild angles, looking as if she’d attacked it with a pair of dull scissors. Green eyes burned with pure rage, and in that second, I recognized her as the woman from the astral plane, the one who’d helped me defeat the spinner.
“You’re not a cat sith,” I whispered hoarsely. “You’re sidhe.”
Chaos continued around me. The women in the cages screamed, some in anger, some in despair. Two of them sat there staring at their surroundings, pale and struck silent with shock. I was vaguely aware of Liam rushing to his sister’s side, embracing her and making sure she was all right before turning to open the cages.
Sonar spit out a word that sounded like “Merde,” and some distant part of my brain recognized her accent as somewhere between French and English.
But I couldn’t think about her. Not when the spiky-haired woman in front of me remained on all fours, looking for all the world like she didn’t know how to stand up. Not when she looked so…angry.
Not when Flint came to stand beside me, his hazel eyes still bright tiger’s eye gems set in his too-handsome face.
“How…interesting,” he murmured.
I stared at Scath with the leannan sidhe’s voice ringing in my ears, my mind frantically parsing through what this might mean. What I could learn about who Scath was, why she stayed with me, why she’d kept what she was hidden.
What Flint would try to do if he thought he could get to her through me. A memory roared back to the front of my mind. Flint winking at me over his shoulder. My panicked response to the tease. Scath’s sudden appearance. She always seemed to show up when I was in trouble. Could she sense it? Had Flint suspected? I stared at the leannan sidhe, his fascinated expression. He’d planned this. He’d lured Scath here, knowing she’d be caught in Liam’s energy.
“Bloody. Hell,” I whispered.
Chapter 29
Normally, I don’t drink coffee after seven o’ clock. It’s not the caffeine so much as the fact that drinking a diuretic right before trying to get seven hours of sleep is a bad idea.
I was making an exception tonight.
Scath sat in an overstuffed chair in the corner of my apartment, the streetlights from the window beside her casting weird shadows over her face. One of New Moon’s wolves had provided her with sweatpants and a cotton T-shirt. The clothes didn’t make a sound when she moved. Not that she’d moved much. She seemed content to just sit there in the chair.
Staring at me.
I closed my hand around the handle of the refrigerator, trying to collect my thoughts before opening it to retrieve the milk. I couldn’t take much more of the staring.
“Say something to her,” Peasblossom hissed into my ear.
I rolled my shoulder to ease the prickle of goosebumps down my arm, then shoved the fridge door closed hard enough to rattle the whole appliance. “She doesn’t want to talk. She’s made that painfully clear.”
I took a deep, slow breath and poured the milk into my coffee, watching the swirls of white invade the dark liquid.
“Flint’s gone, maybe she’ll talk now,” Peasblossom insisted.
“That’s not what the evidence would suggest.” I picked up the mug and cradled it in my hands, ignoring the fact that it was too hot. The burn against my palms gave me something to concentrate on besides the pulse of panic fluttering in the back of my mind. The voice screaming at me that I’d had a sidhe practically living with me for months now, helping me without asking anything in return.
Building up favors.
That was the thing about the fey. Just because they didn’t ask for something in return outright didn’t mean you weren’t indebted. Humans had been learning that hard truth for centuries, and most of them were still ignorant enough to find themselves on the wrong end of the deal.
I’d never thought I’d be one of them.
“He left four hours ago,” I continued, talking over the voice in my head. “Since then, I’ve tried to talk to her, you’ve tried to talk to her. Before he left, he tried to talk to her. Back at New Moon, Andy tried to talk to her. She responds with one or two word answers when she deigns to respond at all, and in the meantime she just sits there glaring at me!”
I pressed my lips together, holding back the hysteria bleeding into my voice. There was no point in whispering, I knew Scath—or whatever her real name was—could hear me regardless. And I’d lost the patience for subtlety after the first futile hours of questions. Let her get offended. Maybe she’d say something.
“She saved your life,” Peasblossom said quietly. “She’s been helping you for months.”
