Defender Raptor (Protection, Inc: Defenders, #2)

by Chant, Zoe

  Seized with new hope, he ran to the phone. He picked it up, then remembered the truffles and ran back to the kitchen. He’d roll them in their appropriate toppings, box them up, and drive to her apartment with them.

  Merlin had almost finished rolling the truffles when there was a knock at the door. His heart leaped at the knowledge that there was only one person for whom it would make sense to come over rather than calling at this hour. He dashed to the door, then remembered that there were in fact a couple of other people who might knock on his door for much less friendly reasons. Merlin checked the feed on the camera Carter had installed outside his window.

  Dali stood outside his door.

  Merlin flung open the door, only barely stopping himself from flinging his arms around her too. She stood a little awkwardly, her body language closed off, without her usual confidence and sensual ease.

  She hasn’t come to tell me she’s changed her mind, he thought. She’s just come to talk.

  But that realization didn’t dampen his hope. Once they talked, maybe she would change her mind.

  “Dali, come in. I made truffles. I was going to bring them over to your apartment, but you beat me to it.” He spun around, rushed to the kitchen, quickly laid them on a plate, and presented them to her. “The one covered in light cocoa powder are milk chocolate, dark cocoa powder are dark chocolate, the ones with a bit of candied Buddha’s palm are lemon, the crushed peppermint candy are peppermint—of course—and the ones with the green square on top are pandan.”

  Dali stared at them like they were alien artifacts. “Panda?”

  “Pandan,” Merlin said, making himself slow down. He must’ve been talking way too fast for her to mishear that word.

  She gave him another blank look, then said, “I don’t want candy.”

  They’re not “candy,” they’re homemade truffles, his raptor said, sounding aggrieved. How can she not want homemade truffles?

  Shush. She’s probably too upset to eat.

  “Sorry,” Merlin said. “Bad timing. Would you like something else? Hot chocolate? Hot tea? A glass of water?”

  He could hear that he was babbling, but there was something so strange about her, it was throwing him off. The way she stood... her expression, something about her expression...

  “I want to talk.” She was still standing at the door. She hadn’t even closed it behind her. It was a cold night, too.

  “Sure. Want to sit down?”

  “No, I don’t want to sit down!” She sounded so angry that Merlin felt the force of it like a slap.

  She’d spoken loudly enough to alarm Blue. He started growling and yelping from the bedroom. There was a thud as he banged into the door, then a bunch of nails-on-chalkboard sounds as he scrabbled against it with his blunt claws.

  “Sorry,” Merlin said again. “I had to lock him out because I was cooking with lot of hot ingredients, and he was all over the place. I was afraid he’d get hurt. Shall I let him out?”

  “No.” Dali was as beautiful as ever, but her eyes were cold, not warm. So cold that he couldn’t feel the sexual heat that had always crackled between them, from the first moment they’d met. “I came here to tell you not to contact me. Ever. When I say it’s over, I mean over.”

  This isn’t right, his raptor broke in.

  I know, Merlin said silently. It was the least right moment of his entire life.

  “I don’t want you in my life,” she went on, each word as precise as a dagger of ice to the heart. “I want a man, not a boy who’ll never grow up. There’s no room in my life for you and your lies and your ridiculous stories.”

  There was a moment of dead silence. Absurdly, Merlin found himself fixated on her eyebrows. Those marvelous, expressive eyebrows of hers that had never moved once since he’d spotted her on the closed circuit camera.

  She turned to go.

  Merlin grabbed her arm and yanked her back inside, kicking the door shut behind her.

  She stared at him, eyes wide and eyebrows unmoving, then let out a distinctly fake-sounding scream.

  “Don’t bother,” Merlin said. “Who are you, and what have you done with Dali?”

  The person wearing the shape of the woman he loved glared at him. But it wasn’t Dali’s glare.

  Once the penny had dropped, it was obvious. Merlin couldn’t believe she’d fooled him for even a few minutes. Her body language was all wrong. She’d looked puzzled when he’d mentioned Buddha’s Hand and pandan. She’d refused his truffles and hadn’t even looked tempted by them. He’d seen her beauty, but he hadn’t wanted to kiss her or touch her; the spark between them was gone.

  Most of all, she’d been cruel to him. Dali would never be cruel. Even when she was breaking up with him, she’d done her best to be gentle and not blame him. Her tears had been as much for his pain as for her own.

  And she loved his stories.

  What had this person done with her?

  Make her talk, urged his raptor. Let me take over. I’ll bite her till she gives in!

  Merlin was seriously tempted. But it wasn’t necessary. The air shimmered and the arm he held seemed to squirm unpleasantly within his hand. Then he stood facing a middle-aged woman with white hair and cold blue eyes. She wore something halfway between a doctor’s white coat and a psychic’s flowing robe, embroidered in black with magical and scientific symbols.

  “You’re a wizard-scientist,” Merlin said. “Why am I not surprised?”

  “I am Morgana,” she said. “And I have come to make you an offer.”

  Tell her to fuck her offer, said his raptor. Tell her if she doesn’t tell you where Dali is, this second, you’ll bite her head off. Literally.

  Merlin wanted to do that so much, he actually had to bite his tongue to stop himself. But he’d had a lot of practice reading people’s faces, and what he read in Morgana’s, in addition to arrogance and cruelty, was intelligence. This woman was a planner, and she was a good one. She hadn’t charged in with all guns blazing, she’d walked in wearing his true love’s face.

  He had absolutely no doubt that Morgana had already set up some kind of fail-safe in case he did the obvious thing and threatened her. She had to have a gun to Dali’s head. And much as that image put him into a near-blinding rage, it also made him hold his tongue.

  If he wanted to save his mate, he couldn’t just be aggressive. He had to be smart, too. Her life might depend on it.

  “What’s the offer?” Merlin asked.

  Morgana looked down at his hand like it was covered with watermelon frappuccino. “First, release my arm.”

  Merlin was glad to do that. He wanted to touch her about as much as he wanted to pet a slug. “Well?”

  She smiled. It wasn’t a nice smile. “How are you feeling tonight?”

  Furious, said his raptor. Protective. Scared for Dali. Is she locked up? Is she tied up? Is she hurt? Is she afraid? Stop talking and bite Morgana’s head off, now now now now now!

  Merlin bit his tongue again. This time he actually tasted blood.

  Stop it, he told his raptor. Do you want to save Dali? Then stop yelling and help me think!

  To his surprise, his raptor promptly said, She didn’t expect you to recognize her. She must’ve been planning to twist the knife and go. And maybe come back again as herself, with her offer? She wanted to make you miserable, and she wanted to make sure you wouldn’t call Dali and find out she never said those things.

  “Lousy,” he said. “My girlfriend dumped me. Kind of takes the shine off saving the circus.”

  As he spoke, his mind was racing. Who’d sicced those inspectors on them, anyway? He suspected that the culprit was standing right there in front of him.

  “Yes, you did save the circus.” A sour expression crossed Morgana’s face, then melted into pleasure. “It will go on. But you will never be able to go back to it again.”

  That genuinely startled Merlin. What had she done? But he pushed that curiosity aside. He didn’t want her monologing for ages abou
t whatever clever plan she’d concocted to ruin his life; he wanted to get to Dali as quickly as possible.

  But Morgana was already talking. “Remember how friendly Rosine Richelieu was, and how she promised to speak to her friends on your behalf? That was me, raising your hopes and making sure you’d assume you had help instead of campaigning on your own behalf.”

  “Shit!” Merlin blurted out. He hadn’t realized she’d infiltrated the circus. Had she harmed anyone there?

  Morgana smiled, no doubt assuming he was upset about her undermining him as heir. “The trapeze? That was me. And Fausto, poisoning your coffee?”

  Merlin winced. He didn’t like Fausto, but nobody deserved being falsely accused.

  “Me.” The wizard-scientist’s smile widened. “And when you went to Fausto’s room to tell him you’d made up the whole story and poisoned your own coffee, and gloated over his downfall? That was me, too. And guess who overheard?”

  Merlin, horrified, didn’t have to guess. Morgana clearly went for whatever would cause the maximum pain.

  “Mom.” His voice came out choked. “Oh, my God.”

  “Yes. Well, your mother plus a few witnesses. I had to be sure she wouldn’t cover up her beloved son’s crimes.”

  “She wouldn’t,” Merlin whispered. “Not if it meant convicting an innocent man.”

  “Yes, you’re quite correct,” said Morgana. “It turns out that all it takes to destroy a mother’s love is to discover that her son committed an unforgivable crime out of greed. The entire circus hates you now.”

  Merlin felt like the floor had crumbled under his feet. But he forced that feeling aside. No matter what happened to him, he had to save his mate.

  His frustrated anger escaped in the sound of a low hiss as his raptor very nearly took control of his body. Merlin only barely managed to wrest back control and stay human.

  Morgana flinched slightly, but stood her ground. “Keep in mind that if I don’t report back to my minions within a certain timeframe, they’ll kill your mother and your ex-girlfriend.”

  The entire world seemed to white out in a blinding flash of incandescent fury. When he came back to himself, Morgana was holding up her hand in a mystic gesture, and the air sparkled around her in what he assumed was a magical shield. His knuckles were bruised and bleeding where he’d apparently slammed them into the shield. When he forced his fists to unclench, he saw that his fingernails had bitten into his palms.

  I knew it, he thought. It’s useless being stronger than her. I have to be smarter than her. I have to trick her, somehow. But how?

  Nothing came to him.

  “Dali,” he said. “I’ll listen to your offer. But I want to see Dali first.”

  Morgana gave him a sharp look. “She doesn’t love you, so what do you care?”

  Merlin gritted his teeth. Why couldn’t he have been targeted by a different type of wizard-scientist? The one who’d gone after Pete had turned into a pteranodon and attacked him. Merlin would have much rather dealt with that than with this manipulative woman who knew all his weak points. It was almost as if she’d been designed to frustrate him—even her power was similar to his.

  His power.

  The power he’d recently gained some control over, at least enough to tell if it was off or on. It was off now. But what if he could get it to turn on?

  Morgana already knew him. His power should be completely useless against her.

  But he had a feeling that maybe it wasn’t. Maybe, just maybe, he’d never been able to make it work the way it was designed to.

  Help me, Merlin thought. For Dali.

  For our mate, his raptor agreed. Unexpectedly, he added, You needed the mate bond to make your power work right. I know that now. When they tried to sever the bond, it fractured your power. But now the bond is strong. And so are we.

  Of course, Merlin thought. No wonder he hadn’t had any trouble recently getting his raptor to agree on what size to become. He was in tune with his truest self now: the self who could love and be loved. And, he hoped, that would enable him to unlock the limits of his other power too.

  Together, they reached deep into themselves. Merlin could feel how to turn his power on now. But he needed to make it work just a little bit differently, give it that little twist that would enable it to get past the difficulty of a person already knowing him. And then one more twist, to make it not about perceiving him as the person she expected, but as the Merlin she expected...

  He looked into Morgana’s cold blue eyes, willing her to see the same chill in his own. Willing her to believe that he was the man she wanted him to be—the one who would betray everything and join with her.

  “I know she doesn’t love me,” Merlin said. “But if I’ve lost everything—if I’m maybe going to leave everything—then I want to know for sure where I stand. Take me to her, and then we’ll talk.”

  She examined him carefully, then gave a brisk nod. “Fine. Just keep in mind what happens to her if you try any tricks.”

  “I’m not trying anything,” Merlin said, holding up his bloody knuckles. “Once was enough.”

  He followed her out the door, his mind whirling. Had she forgotten about poor Blue, still locked in his bedroom? Blue, whose barking must have been trying to warn him?

  In a flash of realization, he understood why Blue had appeared in the tunnel where Morgana-as-Fausto had poisoned his coffee. His smart, loyal, magical pet must have been trying to warn him about her.

  Probably all the magical pets had showed up at the performance to try to warn their owners about Morgana. They’d been captured and imprisoned by the wizard-scientists, so they probably knew their scent or auras or something like that. If only he’d had the sense to try to figure out why Blue was there, instead of dismissing his presence as simple loneliness!

  “I’ll send a minion to collect your beast,” Morgana said casually as she unlocked her car. “I don’t want him shedding all over the back seat.”

  Merlin had to think fast. His power was making him more believable, but he still had to say things she’d find it possible to believe. Would the wavering-on-the-brink-of-the-Dark-Side Merlin be willing to sacrifice his pet, or was that a bridge too far?

  “What are you going to do with him?” Merlin asked.

  “Nothing harmful,” she said. “You saw yourself that the magical creatures in our lab were well-fed and in good health.”

  Well-fed, healthy experimental subjects, he thought with an inward shudder.

  “How about this, then,” Merlin suggested. “If I decide to take your offer, Blue is part of the deal. I keep him, but if you need any blood samples or fur snippets or anything like that, you’re welcome to them.”

  He caught the flash of greed in her eyes at that. Once your mark started saying stuff like “If,” they were already in your pocket. They just didn’t know it yet.

  “Agreed,” she said.

  He didn’t know if she was lying or not, and didn’t care. Whatever got him to his mate.

  Morgana drove on, taking him deeper into the dark night and whatever dangers lay ahead.

  CHAPTER 26

  Dali sat alone in an empty warehouse, alternating between worry for Merlin and fury at Morgana.

  As soon as Dali had realized that the person she was with wasn’t Merlin, Morgana had revealed her true form and paralyzed Dali with a weird magical gesture. She’d been forced to sit in the car, silently seething, until Morgana parked and a couple of big men unloaded her and carried her into a warehouse, where they handcuffed her to a chair; apparently the paralysis went away as soon as Morgana stopped actively maintaining it.

  Dali had entertained a brief fantasy of being able to escape by removing her prosthetic hand, but unfortunately neither Morgana nor her minions had failed to notice that she had one. She was handcuffed by her right wrist, and the chair was bolted to the floor. Which was alarming all by itself.

  Even worse, the warehouse contained several empty cages, one large enough for a big
dog and several sized for kittens, all secured with locks made of an odd silvery metal. That must be the shift-silver Merlin had mentioned, which prevented mythical shifters from shifting and stopped magical creatures from escaping. Cloud was imprisoned in one of them, sticking her paws through the bars and alternating between pitiful meows and ominous howls.

  Cloud let out a particularly nerve-shredding yowl, making both the guards wince.

  Much as Dali didn’t want to attract the guards’ attention, she had to comfort her kitten. “It’s okay, baby. I’m here with you. Just sit tight.”

  Sure enough, the guards sneered at this. One repeated her words in high-pitched mockery, and the other said, also imitating her voice, “Don’t worry, baby, the crippled woman handcuffed to the chair is going to save you!”

  Dali took some satisfaction in looking at the bloody bites and scratches on the guards, which they’d gotten while transferring Cloud from her purse to the cage.

  But it didn’t last long, lost in a tide of worry about herself, about Cloud, and about Merlin. Sure, Morgana wanted Cloud. But Dali was convinced that the wizard-scientist wanted Merlin, too. For all his strength and skills and cleverness, could he evade a woman who could look like anyone in the world and paralyze you with a snap of her fingers?

  The door opened, and Morgana walked in with Merlin at her side. The sight of him gave Dali a rush of totally irrational relief, followed by fear for him.

  But most of all, what she felt was love. Every moment they’d ever had together came back to her with a piercing clarity, along with the desire for more moments. She wanted so much to jump up, throw her arms around him, and never let him go that she almost believed that the force of her desire would allow her to rip the chair up from its bolts.

  Dali realized then that she’d left him not out of love, but out of fear. She’d known they were both far too willing to make sacrifices of their own lives for the sake of others, and she’d been so afraid that they’d do it again that she’d walked away from the greatest love she’d ever known.