by McKenna Dean
“Knight used an artifact to create the illusion of monsters. Giant insects, that sort of thing. Arturo’s men ran, and the Redclaw agents went in pursuit.”
“Yes.” To my ears, Knight’s agreement was too swift not to sound suspicious. “That’s what happened.”
I jumped when the owl flew in and landed on a tree limb with a loud hoot.
I turned to Knight, but he’d moved off to one side, taking himself out of the conversation. I couldn’t begin to imagine what was going through his mind. Even though I’d known betrayal by someone I loved, it wasn’t the same. Regardless of how things ended, at least I’d known my father really loved me. Knight didn’t even have that small comfort.
My father hadn’t died right before my eyes, either.
The moon came out from behind the clouds and bathed Knight in its clear chill light. He stood with his hands shoved into his pockets, looking utterly lost.
The wolf and leopard padded up; their progress almost silent as they arrived through the woods. Yellow lights came bobbing toward us from the road, causing me to stiffen and bring the ray gun up to bear, but the relaxed postures of the surrounding predators made me realize it was the help we needed.
The cavalry was here at last.
Chapter Twenty-One
Once the medical personnel had Russo’s care well in hand, Ryker delegated tasks to the various teams. Those in shifter form he left to secure the perimeters and to make sure no one from rival organizations made a move onto the property. Ryker selected four armed agents in human form to join us as we guided the team back to the hold. Ryker asked questions as we went, teasing more details from me. For some reason, Knight seemed as reluctant to spill the beans on the dog as I was, and so I was able to keep the dog’s shifting abilities out of it.
The little dog looked woebegone when I made him stay at the top of the ladder into the hold, but I had no choice. I lacked the means to carry him down.
“We must be careful,” I warned before we began our descent. “There’ve been at least two parties, other than Redclaw, interested in these items, and for all we know, they’ve come back.”
But there wasn’t anyone inside the cavern. Not even the dead. Someone had stripped bare the hold, save for a single, empty packing crate in the center of the room. Knight’s handheld lantern illuminated an envelope of heavy cream-colored paper lying on top of the crate. The letters R and S were entwined like snakes on the red sealing wax. The letter was also addressed to me.
I broke the seal and pulled out the thick writing paper.
My dear Rhett, it read.
I want to thank you for leading me to this tidy haul of objects destined for Redclaw’s lockdown and storage. My half-brother has no feel for the good these artifacts can do the shifter community—nor their economic value—and I think I can put them to far better use than him.
I trust you won’t feel too badly about their loss. As I see it, they were lost to Redclaw already, you merely failed to recover them. I took the liberty of cleaning up the mess left behind after your altercation with the competition. I want you to know I would never have set thugs of that sort upon you, nor was it my intention to let you die at their hands. It seems you are not without resources after all, and someday, you’ll have to tell me how you managed to hide a dinosaur in your clutch.
I look forward to meeting you again in the future.
Rian Stirling’s bold and spiky signature sprawled across the bottom of the page.
“Let me see that.” Knight snatched the paper out of my hands and held it up to the torchlight as he poured over the words. “That sleek devil. I might have known.”
With a sigh, Knight handed the letter over to Ryker, who read it over.
“I see.” Ryker handed the letter back to me. He didn’t—quite—grind his teeth. “Damn him. He acts like this is some big game in which he’s scored over me once again. He’s putting me in a hell of a position. It’s not just about the technology. I hope the Council—” He shook his head, as if thinking better of completing that sentence.
“It’s not a total loss. M-Margo....” Knight stumbled over her name. “Margo took a bag of select artifacts with her to show her buyers. We recovered that.”
“Oh.” I looked down to turn an ankle sideways. “And I have these shoes. I don’t know if they were part of the cache or stolen from one of the neighbors, but they were here at any rate.”
“Hmph.” Ryker didn’t look impressed. “What about this dinosaur mentioned in the letter?”
I waved a hand. “Oh, that. Knight fiddled with his image projector and made it look as if a dinosaur was about to attack. The wolves fell for it and ran.”
I’m not sure why I was so determined to keep the dog from Ryker’s notice. Perhaps because I knew as an ‘artifact’, the little guy would spend the rest of his life caged in a secret vault inside Redclaw. It didn’t seem right. Or maybe on some level, I agreed with Rian Stirling. At least as far as the dog went.
“Interesting. Despite not smelling anything of the sort?” Ryker tipped his head with a faint, disbelieving smile.
“Knight’s illusions are extremely realistic.” My glare dared Knight to say otherwise.
“I’d like that image projector back. I believe you’ve done quite enough with it, Dr. Knight.”
“It got smashed in the fight.” Knight shoved his hands in his pockets, looking unhappy at the thought. No doubt he realized he’d be on a short leash from now on.
“Very well. Not a total loss then.” Ryker’s lips twitched, doing a poor job of concealing a smile. “I’ll contact the teams and send them on a search of the general area. Who knows, we might get lucky and get a line on Rian’s whereabouts, though I suspect he’s long gone. I’ll take charge of the recovered artifacts. I trust you can make your way back to the city? I’ll want a full report on my desk by Monday. That goes for you, too, Knight.”
“Actually.” Knight spoke in that aristocratic drawl I knew oh-so-well. “I’m not going back to Redclaw.”
I refused to look over at him, no matter how much I wanted to do so.
“Oh?” When it came to haughty superiority, Ryker could match Knight vowel for vowel.
“With Margo dead, the threat to me is over. I can’t see her organization—what’s left of it—continuing their attempts to force me to work for them.”
“I see.” Ryker didn’t quite stroke his beard, but I pictured him doing so just the same. “While I don’t entirely agree with your reasoning, you’re forgetting one important thing.”
“Which is?” The irritation in Knight’s voice chafed like sand in a shoe. I winced despite myself.
“Redclaw can use someone like you. At the very least, your skills won’t go to waste.” Ryker shrugged. “Think it over. You don’t have to decide right away.”
Knight didn’t respond. He remained uncharacteristically silent as we left the hold and returned to the pavilion where the little dog greeted us as though we’d been gone for days. Knight’s frosty silence continued after we joined the rest of the teams back at the clearing. Redclaw had removed the bodies, wiping any trace of what had happened that evening to prevent unwelcome questions from the locals. Knight’s rigid lack of reaction made him hard to read. Was he upset Redclaw had disposed of Margo’s body without his input? Did he still care for her, despite everything she’d done? Barring that, did he just need to say his goodbyes? Or, as I thought about the things I’d learned about my father after his death, a chance to speak his mind? Even if it was to a corpse.
Russo, still in bear form, had been loaded into the back of a van, the interior of which glowed with light and activity. Fluids dripped from a glass bottle suspended above him into a line taped to one massive leg. How the medics had found a vein under all that fur was beyond me. Stepping forward into the light spilling out of the van, I was surprised to find Betty Snowden in charge of his care. Wearing a crisp, white lab coat spotted with blood, for once she looked confident and capable as she administer
ed an injection into the fluid line and checked his vitals. She seemed satisfied with the results when she did so, a small smile curving her lips as she replaced the syringe in her leather bag. She stroked the massive bear’s head with a gentle hand.
“Is he going to be okay?”
She looked up, freezing like a rabbit on being startled. Recognizing me, the fear oozed out of her, but it was replaced with a polite disapproval. “He’ll do. I was able to remove the bullets.” She held up a small jar and gave it a little shake, causing the stained pieces of metal within to roll around with a clatter. “His blood pressure is back up again, and the healing is progressing nicely. A few days in bear form and he’ll be right as rain.”
“Good.” The relief was almost too much. My lip quivered as I tried to speak. “I didn’t mean...it wasn’t my intention...oh hell. I’m sorry he got hurt because of me.”
Betty’s eyes flew open wide at my language, but then narrowed as she studied me. “If you’re going to be part of a team, you have to act like it. You can’t go around leaping into frying pans and expecting someone else to put out the fire.”
Tears blurred my vision. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t think. Or I did, but...I wanted to prove myself to Redclaw. To all of you.”
She wiped her bloody hands on a cloth as she studied me. “You say you wanted to prove yourself. That’s fine. I get it. You want to help. To be an ally.” She tossed the cloth aside to stand with fists akimbo on her hips. “But you’ll have to do more than be sorry. Listen. Learn. Educate yourself. Give more than just lip service to being part of a team.”
I blinked hard. “You’re right. You have every right to be upset with me. Maybe this team thing isn’t for me.”
She leaned out of the vehicle to pat my shoulder, showing more graciousness than I would have were our roles reversed. “That’s your choice. But there’s lots of good reasons to be part of something.” Seeing my distress, she straightened and relented a little. “This showdown would have happened either way, once we knew about the auction. But it’s better to plan a response than react to a crisis.”
She was right. Of all people, I should have known better. But I’d never known what it meant to be a part of a team. Not until now. When it was perhaps too late.
Nodding, unable to speak for fear of embarrassing myself further, I stepped back into the shadows. Ryker stood on the far side of the clearing receiving reports from several agents checking in; an odd mix of human and shifted beings. I had no idea how the shifted agents communicated with him, but no one seemed to have any trouble understanding one another. I looked around for Knight. He was in the general area where he’d tackled me, swinging his lantern back and forth above the leaf litter. The little dog trotted alongside as I approached him.
I let the keys dangle from my fingers. “Looking for these?”
With a grunt, he pocketed them. “Russo?”
“Betty says he’ll be okay. As long as he remains a bear, or something like that.” The terrier sat at my feet and looked up with bright attention at Knight.
“Must be nice. To heal like that. A bit hard on the grocery bill, perhaps. Do they have to raid trash cans for him or what?”
His heart wasn’t in the banter, I could tell. That felt sad and wrong, but I had no idea how to fix things between us. Or even if it could be fixed. The hand in his pocket jingled the keys before he spoke again. “I’m going back to the city. I’m sure someone will give you a ride to Em’s house, and she’ll see you catch a train back to town on Sunday. Under the circumstances....”
“Yes. Of course.” The last thing he wanted to do, no doubt, was hang around the rest of the weekend pretending to be my date while I attended a bridal shower. It was the last thing I wanted to do as well, but I couldn’t let Em down. “Don’t worry about me. I’ll find my own way back.”
“I have no doubt. Self-reliant Bishop, that’s you.” He took out his pipe and a small pouch of tobacco, going through the motions of filling the bowl and tamping it down before striking a match. The flare lit up his face as he drew on the stem, shading the clean lines of his face, accentuating the sharpness of his features and the shadow of stubble along his jaw.
“There’s such a thing as being too self-reliant, you know.” I watched him as he pulled in that first heady draw of nicotine, wishing for a moment for a cigarette myself, though I rarely smoked.
“My dear, you wouldn’t be you if you were anything else.” He removed the stem from his mouth, cradling the pipe in his hands as he stared down at it.
“It’s a long drive back to the city. You could wait until the morning.”
He made a small sound, possibly a snort, though it was hard to tell. When he looked up, his eyes were in shadow, making it difficult to read his expression. I had no difficulty reading his voice when he spoke, however. Pain and unhappiness marred his usual light tenor.
“I was in love with a monster.”
I shook my head. “You were in love with a false image designed for the sole purpose of fooling you. What she did was unspeakably cruel.”
“You may be right, but the fact remains that she did fool me. I can tell myself I was young and naïve, and know it’s the truth. Until I met her, my life was my work, and my work had led me down some dark paths. But it galls me to realize someone assessed these weaknesses of mine and played on them. To recognize my judgement in these matters is terribly flawed. I’m supposed to be the smart guy, after all.” His smile was painful to witness, brittle and sharp, like glass on the verge of shattering. “Working with you these last few days...I’d started to think—” He put a hand up as if to stop himself. “It doesn’t matter. I can’t do this right now. I have to go.”
I tried to stop him. “What about...Redclaw?”
He lifted both shoulders in a helpless little shrug. “I just don’t know.”
He walked off without another word, without a single look back, puffing on his pipe as he went down the road toward his car.
I felt a paw on my foot and looked down. The little dog stared up at me, his whole body aquiver. Shifting the ray gun to my left hand, I knelt and ruffled his ears. “I guess it’s just you and me, kid.”
He licked my fingers and followed with a jaunty step as I went in search of a ride.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Although after midnight when I stepped out of a car at Em’s, I still beat her and Eddie back to the house. Halling let me in without commenting on either the lateness of the hour, the state of my torn and blood-spattered dress, the absence of my date, or the fact I had a dog with me.
“Mr....er...Day...was called away on business. He won’t be returning. Please have his bag brought to my room. I’ll take it back to the city with me.”
“Very good, miss.” He hesitated, no doubt torn between professional duty and humanitarian concern. “Is everything all right, Miss Henrietta?”
I shook my head. “No, but it’s not something you can fix.”
He gave me a small, understanding nod. I hoped the Prentiss family knew what a treasure they had in Halling.
No footman guided me to my room. The terrier trotted up the stairs with me as if he’d been following me his entire life. I watched him in the mirror as I removed my makeup and raked the snarls out of my hair. Setting aside my brush, I called him over. “Here, you.”
He looked up from where he’d been cleaning his paws and bounced across the room toward me with the odd skipping step I associated with small muscular dogs. I examined his collar. As I’d thought, it didn’t come off. At least not by any means I could tell. “We’ll have to get some sticking plaster or something and cover up the name. The last thing I want anyone to do is call you by your dinosaur name because of word association.”
His little stub of a tail wagged furiously.
“Oh, no, you don’t,” I admonished when he leapt up on the bed and settled himself on my pillow. I hesitated throwing him off at first. Even as a dog, he had sharp teeth. But instead of defending the position he
staked out, he went limp as a noodle when I tried to scoop him up, melting into the counterpane when I moved him. He forced me to drag him by his legs to the side of the bed so I could set him on the floor. Before I’d even turned around, he was back up in a flash.
This time, I scooted him to the foot of the bed. “Compromise, okay?”
He curled into a little ball with a sigh and tucked his nose into his paws.
The dress was a total loss. Knight’s little trick with the knife had made it functional, but it would never be the same, even without the bloody paw prints—both dinosaur and terrier-sized. I wiggled my toes as I slid off the ruby slippers and tucked the shoes into my suitcase to take back with me to Redclaw on Monday. Exhaustion turned my limbs to mud as I washed my battered feet, changed into silk pajamas, and crawled into bed. When I switched off the lamp, the blackness wrapped around me as thick and enveloping as a comforter. After a moment, I spoke into the darkness. “We need to come up with another name for you.”
There was no response from the foot of the bed.
“How about Buddy?”
Not even a twitch.
“Asta?” It amused me to consider calling him the name of the terrier in The Thin Man movies.
Nothing.
I yawned, closing my eyes. “It has to be something worthy. Suitable.” The words slurred as sleep crept over me. “Captain.”
He lifted his head. Padding up to my side, he sniffed around and then turned in a circle several times before settling against the back of my legs.
“Captain, it is.” I smiled in the dark at the soft snore.
I fell asleep minutes behind him.
The next day, I did all the socially appropriate things. Took Captain on a long walk over the estate and down to the beach. Had brunch with Em’s family. Did the bridal shower thing, playing the silly games and enthusing over the gifts. Em, I was pleased to see, had begun taking charge again, vetoing several of the more insipid proposed activities, and ordering Halling to serve mimosas. That loosened things up, even to the extent Milly laughed out loud a time or two, earning a vicious glare from her mother that didn’t appear to bother Milly one iota.
