by Rider, C. P.
"Nice to see you too, Neely. Oh, and my mom and I really want to thank you for giving my sister baking lessons." There was an underlay of friendly snark in her words. "She's been making homemade conchas and mantecadas for us every day. We're all getting fat."
Although Lupita wasn't a teenager, had in fact recently turned twenty-one, she looked like a kid to me. It would be a mistake to underestimate her, though. She'd once held off a pack of alpha wolves to save her younger sister's life.
"Hey, not my fault. I can't help that Ana's a quick study. Also, I'm teaching her how to make orejas next, so be ready for that."
Lupita groaned and patted her flat stomach.
A shot glass hit the wall behind Table Five and roared accusations of cheating drowned out the rest of the noises in the room. Chandra set the three beers on Lupita's tray, rolled up her sleeves, and marched out from behind the bar.
"Someone is going to have a shot glass on their bill tonight. Which one of you fools threw it? Was it your drunk ass, Larry? I told you what would happen if you pulled that shit again, leopard. You've pushed me too far."
"Keep an eye out for flying leopard shifters, Neely. The last time Larry broke a glass, she broke his nose." Lupita snickered as she propped the tray on the flat of her hand and whisked the beers over to Table Four.
I returned my attention to my water, downing half the bottle while Chandra read the riot act to the shifters at the table.
A flash of light in the kitchen caught my eye. A flame. Was the stove on? Chandra had a cooktop back there, but she hadn't used it much. She prepared the sandwich meat for customers' meals in either a slow cooker or the pit barbecue out back. So why would the stove be on?
Maybe she was putting soup on the menu? If so, I was totally behind the idea. I loved soup in all its soupy forms. I swiveled on my stool, ready to ask Chandra what she was cooking.
Unfortunately, Larry the glass breaker had decided he had a death wish and swung a badly aimed fist at her. Chandra proceeded to teach the inebriated shifter precisely why that was a bad idea. The rest of the bar, including Larry's friends, were now taking bets on how long it would take for Chandra to knock the leopard unconscious.
Earp was going to be upset that he missed this. The Gila monster shifter loved brawling. He told me once that he considered it a benefit of employment, the way another person might view a dental plan or stock options.
Earp. I screwed the cap on my empty water bottle. Did the white wolf who'd chased him have something to do with the dire wolf hunting me? I supposed it could simply be someone passing through, but the timing felt coincidental.
My trip to Texas was starting to look inevitable.
I swiveled back to peer through the window between the bar and kitchen. The flame was glowing gold now, and I could clearly see a huge stainless-steel pot on the stove. The scent of cooked sausage, onions, garlic, and spinach permeated the air. If I was guessing, I'd say Italian wedding soup.
Curious, I circled around the bar and strolled into the kitchen. If Chandra was making soup, she had the heat up too high. She needed to stir it, too. Soup should be stirred and tasted and simmered.
I turned down the burner and picked up a quilted potholder and a spoon. With my protected hand, I lifted the lid on the enormous pot and a furred white beast leapt out and landed on the floor in front of me.
"Neely Costa MacLeod. Come with me." The wolf's singsong voice grated on my ears. "Do not be afraid. The leader will remake you in his image."
"W-Who are you?"
"My name is Legion. For we are many."
"It's not real," I gasped. "You're not real. If you were, you wouldn't be able to speak. Shifted animals can't speak."
The snowy wolf opened her mouth. "Our leader can do things you've never heard of, much less thought possible. Come with me. Walk out the door and I'll take you to him."
Dottie's words returned to me:
When someone opens a mental connection with you, they make themselves vulnerable.
"Is that how you want to play it? Because I can play, too." I followed my connection into the white wolf's brain, bypassing the normal steps in a spike, concentrating instead on what lay behind her consciousness.
The white wolf wasn't my focus. She was a distraction. I wanted the wizard behind the curtain.
It was insultingly easy to find the pathway through the white wolf's smokescreen and into the dire wolf's brain—did he think I could be so easily fooled? The shifters in the bar provided me with the energy I needed, and I spiked the dire wolf through his connection to me. The buzzing was worse. A swarm of angry bees flooded between us in an attempt to block our connection.
Not this time, pal.
I busted through the metaphysical bee barrier only to find myself floating in space without a spacesuit or oxygen. An airless, vast emptiness—cold and lonely and lifeless. I spiked harder, searching for something, anything to hold onto.
The white wolf gripped her head with her front paws. "You're killing him. Can't you hear the screaming? Release him."
I spiked harder, energy sparking hotly through my veins and bursting like fireworks beneath my skin. I was spiking to kill, and it felt good.
So deliciously good.
"Neely?"
Distantly I heard someone call out to me. I tried to open my eyes, but they were sealed shut. The voice tried again, and again. Finally, I managed to pry open my eyes. I wasn't spiking anymore, in fact, all the energy had drained out of me. The white wolf was gone, and I was flat on my back on the floor of the storeroom staring up at Chandra.
Or was it Chandra? The dire wolf had fooled me before.
"Take it easy, now. I don't know what you're seeing, but this is me. Chandra Smith. Your friend."
How could I be sure? "Are you real?"
"Yeah." She gazed down at me, her expression grim. "I'm real."
"Why are you making soup?" I whispered.
"Soup? There's no soup in here. I serve sandwiches, you know that." She reached out to brush my hair away from my eyes. "I serve them on the mini bolillos you bake in your panaderia."
I jerked back. Everything she'd said was reasonable, but Guillermo had said a lot of reasonable things before he attacked me. Besides, everyone in Sundance knew Chandra was my friend and that I owned a panaderia, so her saying that told me nothing. The wolf could easily be taking her form in my mind.
Unsure, I began to draw energy from nearby shifters again.
"You're pulling power from me, aren't you? And the others, too." Chandra sat up, glancing over her shoulder at the bar room behind her. "Give yourself a moment to get your bearings. The dire wolf was playing with your mind again. Don't do something you might regret."
Regret? If she was the wolf creature in disguise, I'd regret nothing.
"Neely?" Chandra lowered her voice, peered over her shoulder. "How close are you to spiking me right now?"
I rolled away from her and sat up, stared at the cold stove. It wasn't a gas stove, but an old electric model. Chandra was in the process of replacing it and the cord was lying on top of one of the burners. The big pot was gone, there was no flame, and the only thing I smelled was the metallic tang of my own blood.
This wasn't an illusion.
After mumbling an apology to Chandra, I shoved a bar towel under my bleeding nose and ran out of the Dusty Cactus.
How close are you to spiking me right now?
The answer to that question had me chilled to the bone.
I went home, grabbed the keys to my Mini, and drove out to the tower. If anyone could help me to not hurt someone, it was my witches.
As I stared at the broken yellow line on the interstate, I considered trying to call Lucas. He was still out with Carter, and even though he'd told me I could get a message to him through Amir if I needed to, I found I wasn't yet ready to face him. I needed to think, to plan. And in the meantime, I wouldn't be spiking anyone dead. Not when I couldn't trust my own mind.
The parking lot was qu
iet and empty, aside from a few bunches of beachball-sized tumbleweed. Quick glances over my shoulders told me no one was following—at least, no one that I could see—as I hurried up to the tower.
The heavy wood door creaked open and Dottie stood before me in a red Hawaiian print muumuu and black and white cow slippers. "Neely? Is everything all right?"
"I almost killed Chandra tonight."
She nodded grimly. "Come in."
Dolores sat cross-legged in the middle of the living room. The furniture had all been shoved to the room's perimeters, and in the center of the stone floor was a star symbol—not a pentagram, but a lopsided star. The chalk lines were crooked but appeared to be purposely drawn that way. A stone with a white rune painted on it lay at every point, and seven lit candles of varying sizes were inside the star.
"Hey there, kiddo. What's the good word?" Dolores asked.
Dottie gave a sharp shake of her head. "No good word. Neely almost killed Chandra tonight."
"Oh, I doubt it. That hyena is tough as nails."
"I spiked her. To kill. Because I thought she was the dire wolf." I dropped my head into my hands. "The creature was in my head again. I can't get away from him, so I came here. Maybe it was wishful thinking, but I was hoping the tower could help keep him away. Let me rest for a while."
"That's a great idea. This is the perfect test for our magnificent tower." Dottie guided me to the sofa and then took her place across from Dolores on the floor. She lowered her generously proportioned body into a cross-legged position as gracefully as a prima ballerina.
"Yeah, Dot and me were throwing it a curveball tonight with an off-kilter spell. Since it's doing so well defending itself against frontal attacks, we decided to train it to better respond to sideways attacks. You know, like the ones the dire wolf is throwing at you. Sneaky ones."
I kicked off my shoes and, stretching out on the sofa, pulled the crocheted afghan draped over the back on top of me. It was always cold in the tower, and though tonight there was a warm fire burning in the living room, I wasn't close enough to it to get a lot of warmth.
Or perhaps I was still chilled by what I'd nearly done.
"Is Earp okay?" I asked Dottie. "Chandra told me he had an encounter with a wolf."
"He's a little worn out, but all right."
"I saw the white wolf tonight. It's connected to the dire wolf—to Alpha Juan's brother."
Dolores whistled. "This gets more complicated by the second, doesn't it?"
"Indeed." Dottie relit a candle that had blown out.
The witches chanted for a few minutes, then blew out the candles and rearranged the stones. My eyelids drooped.
"How was your date tonight?" I asked Dolores.
"Good. Alvin's a pretty cool cat. We listened to music and had a picnic in the lavender garden, which was nice. Only thing was, Alvin doesn't drink wine because of his blood pressure medication. Also, he had to leave before it got dark due to his eyes not being what they used to be. Still, we had a good time."
"He's a handsome gentleman," Dottie said, "and very polite."
"Yeah. I liked him. I've got another date next week with a tall fella with one of them Friar Tuck haircuts, which is almost as good as bald. Name is Herbert."
The picture she was painting wasn't an attractive one, at least to me. "Another man? Why? I thought you liked Alvin."
"I do, but I'm only seventy-nine. Not ready to tie myself down. Still got a lot of life left to live, you know?"
If I had one wish, it would be to have Dolores's confidence magically funneled into my body. "How do you do it?"
"Do what?" Dolores asked. "Attract good-looking men?"
"No. I already know how you do that. You're amazing." I toyed with the edges of the afghan. "I'm asking how you manage to stay so positive when life feels anything but."
"Wouldn't say I'm positive. I just don't see any point in bellyaching about what I can't change is all."
"I'm really tired of second-guessing myself all the time," I said.
Dottie flicked a glance at me, tilted her head. "Everyone second-guesses themselves, dear. Even my assertive sister here. It's our nature."
"Unless you're a narcissistic sociopath," Dolores said. "You know, we met one once—more than once, if I'm being honest, but there's one who came to mind right away—Lamont Jacoby. You remember that fella, don't you, Dot?"
"He was the fox shifter who thought he was a mystic, right?"
"No, he was the mystic who thought he was a fox. The stone-cold variety." Dolores rolled her eyes. "Tried to come on to both of us to get a discount. You should remember, you were married at the time."
"Oh yes, Lamont Jacoby hired us to bring his father back to life so he could ask him where the old will was. Seemed he'd been cut out of the new one." A nostalgic gleam lit up Dottie's blue eyes. "Our first necromancy spell."
"Yeah." A similar gleam lit up Dolores's eyes. "And we did it, too. Brought the old man back to life for that creep."
"It's really too bad that his father was so enraged at the sight of him that his corpse dragged Lamont into the grave and choked him to death."
"He knew the risks going in, Dot."
It was disturbing how many of the witches' stories ended like that.
"I heard you did a necromancy spell for Lucas and Chandra after I was kidnapped," I said. "Wish I'd been there to see it."
"Goodness no." Dottie frowned. "It's not a good idea for the victim to lay eyes on his killer immediately after being brought back from the other side. They tend to get violent. We learned that lesson with Lamont."
"He'd murdered his own father?"
"Yes, but we didn't know that until after the elder Mr. Jacoby pointed to his son and shrieked, 'I wouldn't tell you where my old will is if it was my only ticket to the pearly gates, you ass-faced, two-bit con artist, father murderer,' and then dragged him into his grave." Dottie shrugged in a c'est la vie sort of way. "After that mess, we either bring along someone strong enough to protect us or cast a containment spell when doing necromancy work."
"Also, you're wrong, kiddo," Dolores grumbled.
"Wrong?" I yawned and stretched my arms over my head, then pulled the blanket up to my chin. "How am I wrong?"
"We didn't do the spell for the tiger and hyena. We did it for you."
Dolores had a way of going straight to my heart when I needed it. "Thank you, my sweet friend."
"Sweet? Me?" She snickered, then returned her gaze to the lopsided chalk star. "Now, relax and get some rest. The tower will watch out for you. So will Dot and me."
As I lay on the witches’ sofa, my mind spinning, the sound of the witches' chanting slowly lulling me to sleep, I considered my next move. Spiking the dire wolf dead was too risky, trying to save him by myself was suicidal, and he was far too powerful to ignore.
I was officially out of options.
Chapter Eleven
Five a.m. Sunday morning, I said goodbye to the witches and drove home.
The feral cats I kept fed and watered were lounging in the winter shelter my uncle had set up for them in a corner of our small parking lot last year, secure in the knowledge that as long as they stayed near the bakery they were safe. No shifters would dare hunt them so close to town.
I'd have to ask Ana Cortez to come feed them while I was in Texas.
Feeling dispirited, and angry at the world, I let myself into the bakery through the back door and switched on the kitchen lights. The ever-present scent of vanilla, yeast, and coffee welcomed me, enveloped me in a warm, nostalgic hug that made me miss my tío so much tears sprang to my eyes.
La Buena Suerte Panaderia was my home and I was a person who craved home in all its wonderful flavors. Places, friends, family. Lucas Blacke was also my home. He was my heart, he was my confidante, and he was my future.
Long term, not short. My immediate future involved taking down yet another paranormal hellbent on possessing me due to my being a spiker.
Sometimes I wondered if
it would ever end. Lucas, Chandra, even the witches, believed the answer was for me to join Lucas's group. They felt my belonging to the Blacke group would serve to deter the more respectful Alpha leaders, and give me more protection from the dishonorable ones.
Even if that were true, who would protect them?
Because as long as the dire wolf hunted me, he was a danger to everyone in Sundance. What's more, I didn't think he'd come alone. He'd given me the world's biggest hint the first time I encountered him.
My name is Legion. For we are many.
Flicking the lights off with my elbow, I started up the stairs to my apartment. Goosebumps prickled the skin on the back of my neck and I froze halfway there. Blood iced up in my veins. My heart stuttered, then went into overdrive.
The back door swung open and Amir Gamal stood on the threshold.
"Amir?"
"Stop it." The eagle shifter slapped at his head as he stumbled into my kitchen. "Neely? Are you here?" He sniffed the air, peered around the kitchen. "I can't see anything in this darkness—damn bees are everywhere."
He was remarkably calm for someone who was being illusion-attacked by bees.
"I'm right here, Amir." I dashed down the stairs, came to a stop in front of him.
"Neely?" He yelled.
"Amir, I'm here—"
I put my hand on his arm and he jolted back and tripped over the doorjamb, shifting to eagle form as he went down, his wings expanding, lifting him into the air so that he never actually fell, but merely skirted the ground as he took off. His golden brown-feathered body twisted sleekly, buffeted by a gentle desert wind. He rocketed up until he was little more than a speck in the sky.
Slamming the kitchen door behind me, I ran into the parking lot and stared up the sky, willing Amir to fly back down. Slowly. Safely.
"Grrr."
The hairs on the back of my neck pricked up. I turned slowly. There, standing between me and the doorway, stood a large coyote. Not a Pleistocene coyote, thank the gods, but a fully shifted, extremely angry coyote.
"Dan?"
Neely.
The voice of the dire wolf called to me, not through the normal channels of human hearing, but inside my head. It was as if he had a link directly into my brain. As if he had spiked into my skull.
