Arielle heard the words in her head in that husky, seductive male voice. The poker sagged further as she stared at the half open window, curious to see what he saw. The night was beautiful. Even through the barely open window, she could see past the shadows to the horizon…
Though she did not know it, her eyes had begun to glow, too.
The bedroom door opened.
“Arielle, before I retire, I just wanted to see if you needed any…” Halfway inside the room, Shelly froze. With an all encompassing glance at the cracked open window, Arielle’s defenselessness, the poker sagging in her hand, her eyes glowing, and the crouched cat and its counterpart massive shadow against the wall, Shelly took in the cogent facts.
The tabby’s hair stood on end as she entered. It spat at her, fangs bared. So did the shadow lion, revealing massive jaws that could crush a skull without effort.
“Stand aside, child,” Shelly said cooly. She picked up a large vase of flowers, tossed the blooms aside and poured the entire container full of water over the tabby cat. Instantly the menacing lion shadow disappeared.
Still rapt, her eyes glowing, Arielle got drenched, too. She flinched as water splattered her in the face. The glow in her eyes died. She gripped the poker more firmly.
With a yowl, shaking vigorously from side to side, the tabby spat one last time, and then in a streak of striped gold, it leaped halfway across the room and landed nimbly on the sill, where it turned.
The look it leveled on Shelly could only be termed inimical. Shelly stared back cooly, pulling something that gleamed gold from her pocket. “You’re not quite as strong as you would be if this were weighing her down, are you?”
Arielle and the cat both fixated on the amulet with equal intensity.
Shelly strode to the roaring fire and flung the amulet on the flames.
CHAPTER THREE
With a shriek of despair, Arielle ran toward the flames, but Shelly held her back. The tabby leaped down from the sill, reared back on its hind legs and began to transform. This time, no shadow menace reified from light’s play upon darkness.
This time, the stuff of nightmares became real.
Before their eyes, the harmless house cat metamorphosed. Tiny paws grew to snowshoe size, as if to prepare the little frame for the weight to come. Then, fast as thought, the small body grew into a huge, muscular chest and legs. Finally, the winsome ruff of orange fur at the house cat’s neck became a bushy golden mane.
A very large, very real lion, its eyes green, stared for an instant between Shelly and the softening amulet almost obscured in the flames.
Arielle was so distressed over her amulet that she struggled against Shelly’s firm hold, uncomprehending at first even as the harmless tabby’s true form was revealed in all its menacing glory. But when the huge cat leaped toward the flames as if to retrieve the amulet, Shelly shoved Arielle aside, grabbed the poker and jabbed it toward the cat to keep it back, putting herself between the cat and the fire.
Liquid gold had begun to run over the wood, bubbling and bursting. Like glittering dreams. Like Arielle’s dreams, hypnotic, mysterious, malleable, and forever out of reach.
With a furious roar that made the dishes on the table rattle, the huge cat turned its attention to the interloper. For an instant, it merely appraised Shelly, head cocked to the side, as if curious about this weak human–a female to boot–who dared oppose it.
With a strength beyond normal human strength, Shelly picked Arielle up in her arms, leaped the ten feet to the door, and deposited Arielle outside, slamming the bedroom door and locking it. Immediately, Arielle began to beat on the door. “No, you can’t! My mother’s amulet! It’s all I have of her. Please…”
The lion stayed put while she evicted Arielle, sitting on its haunches, as if it, too, preferred a private confrontation. It watched Shelly with unblinking green eyes of an unusual emerald hue that would have been mesmerizing to one of a lesser intellect. For an instant, Shelly leaned against the door, her own gray eyes taking on an eerie glow as she stared back, unimpressed.
Far from alarmed, the lion bared its menacing fangs in an almost lazy grimace, putting one massive paw over the poker Shelly had cast aside as if to emphasize her helplessness. .
“I know you for what you are,” Shelly said softly. “You cannot have her. Go, leave her in peace, or face the consequences.” Somehow, she knew the massive feline would comprehend every word. The spirit that inhabited this powerful form was even more powerful. Perhaps more powerful than Shelly’s own alter ego, but she gave no hint of fear as she faced the creature down.
Indeed, with a very human-sounding snort of disgust at this foolish bravado, the lion began to stalk Shelly, step by step. She was pressed against the door, with nowhere to retreat. As if determined to terrify her, the lion gave another deafening roar that shook the pictures on the walls. Shelly merely watched him analytically.
Down below near the vestibule, they each heard Arielle’s distressed voice asking for aid. Heavy footsteps began to climb the stairs.
They didn’t have much time.
With arrogant certainty, as if he feared neither man nor beast, the lion stopped, lifted one paw and extended his lethally sharp claws, turning them from side to side. He watched her all the while, as if eager to see her terror at her obvious fate. As if he fed on terror, and needed it more than meat.
Shelly merely lifted her own hand…except the appendage had undergone a curious transformation as well. It was brown, hairy, and claws even heavier and sharper than the lion’s were revealed, one by one. They gleamed in the gaslight as she moved her paw from side to side, mocking his movements, revealing bottom pads. Her hand looked exactly like a wolf’s paw, but a very large, very dangerous wolf’s paw--controlled by human intellect.
The lion froze mid stride, one foot still up, blinking in astonishment.
Shelly’s other hand transformed even faster, leaving her werewolf from her hands to her elbows, but a human face with uncommon nerve stared back. “It’s all a matter of control, you see. You obviously have not yet perfected the art of shapeshifting.”
As if to demonstrate, Shelly elongated her jaw into a wolf’s snout as her gray eyes grew cold with menace. In the next blink, her face was human again. “And I suspect I’ve been doing this much longer than have you. I no longer even need such niceties as a full moon to shape shift. I do so at will. You’ll get the hang of it–just not with Arielle.”
The lion sat down on its haunches, giving every indication that it was listening with total fascination.
The footsteps, wary, attempting stealth and failing miserably, had climbed the stairs and were approaching along the corridor.
“Two footmen, don’t you agree? One carrying a blunderbuss, the other an ax.”
The lion managed to look skeptical.
Shelly smiled. “Ah, that’s right. Your most acute sense is sight. Mine is hearing. There’s the slight scrape of metal against wood. He’s keeping close to the wall.”
The lion seemed to wait for the rest.
She didn’t disappoint him. “The ax? That, I presume. To open the door. It’s kept in the butler’s pantry for emergencies, and no one but the earl has a spare key to this room, so it will be the only way in.”
The lion inclined his lordly head, as if in tribute to her.
But Shelly shook her head with regret. “Pity they’re so ready to come to the weak woman’s rescue. I was rather looking forward to testing you.”
The lion gave a whuff as if of agreement. The cold menace in the green eyes had faded to what could only, in a human, have been termed a twinkle as he watched the ‘weak woman.’.
“Another time.” Going to the window, Shelly used her werewolf paws to rip the bars from the casing as if they were dried kindling. Bowing slightly, she swept a paw politely before her. “A graceful exit will save us both too many confounded explanations, do you not agree?”
The knob rattled, and then the door shook. “Miss Holmes, be ye all
right?” came the frightened but determined voice of the head footman.
The sound of an ax meeting wood echoed down the hallways.
Neither shape shifter seemed rattled as they continued challenging one another with their gazes.
But the lion had apparently tired of the diversion of meeting a truly worthy adversary. With a contemptuous look between Shelly and the easy avenue of escape, it sat stone still, its head cocked to the side, and closed its eyes. As an ax appeared in the door and wood splintered, leaving a hole, the lion began to transform in a most curious fashion.
Before Shelly’s eyes, it lost substance and form, becoming transparent. At first it shimmered, as if body resisted ceding itself to spirit, but by the time the wooden hole had become wide enough for a hand to wiggle inside and unlock the door, the lion was a silvery gray mist. As the door opened, the mist dissipated into a glittering whiff that floated away on the breeze issuing through the damaged window.
The corporeal was now part of the spirit world. At will.
“Damnation,” Shelly muttered. “Now that ability, I envy.” The vampire Serena, who had almost put a period to Shelly and her friends Max and Angel, had possessed the same ability. But Shelly had no time for recollection, for she had scarcely a second before the door burst open.
In that second, she took one of her own claws and scratched the back of one hand until it bled. Then, faster than thought, because the skills were wedded now to her subconscious instincts as well, Shelly transformed her paws back into hands. She positioned herself, as if half fainting on, appropriately enough, the fainting couch.
Someday, perhaps, she would get the dubious art of feminine frailty perfected, Shelly vowed as heavy footsteps entered the room. She tried to look helpless as the head footman warily peeked around the wall. In his hands he held a blunderbuss.
Outside, Seth Taub expectantly watched the whiff of mist gently float down to the ground. He was careful to be very still, to hold his breath, and to shrink back into the cloak of a weeping willow. Luke’s senses, at times, seemed even more acute than Seth’s own, perhaps because he suffered fewer pangs of conscience in using them. Luke had tried, so he claimed, since embracing his alter ego a year or so ago, to totally throw off the rags of remorse at the acts he sometimes had to commit in fighting the ancient battle of his ancestors.
Sometimes, frail humans got in the way. Other times, they fed growing predatory instincts. Instincts ever harder to control with each day fading into the limitless nights that ruled his kind. Seth still battled his instincts; Luke did not.
Seth watched the mist that was Luke take the form of a tabby and slink away into the darkness. Seth debated transforming into his favored shape, the lion, and trying to surprise Luke, but for now, he preferred that Luke not realize he had been observed in his battle and humiliating retreat.
Besides, the time was not right, for Seth’s task here was not yet performed. As much as his deepest, most primitive instincts demanded he follow the civet, Seth forced himself to calmly remember why he had come, why he had risked discovery a few nights ago when he broke into the crypt.
He hated violating Isis’s rest that way, but had no choice. With the original amulet under lock and key, he needed the tangible link between mother and daughter to allow Isis’s communications to counteract Luke’s foul influence. Luke fingered the hard amulet in his pocket, feeling the calming raised image of Bast under his sensitive touch.
He’d had no choice but to melt down the breastplate and diadem Isis wore to recreate the amulet she’d left to her daughter. The jewelry had passed down from mother to daughter since time immemorial, back to the days of Cleopatra herself. Only its golden allure was strong enough to defeat the powers of death and darkness. As long as she wore it, Isis would be safe, or so he hoped.
Two footmen peered out Arielle’s window, interrupting his bleak thoughts. . Because Arielle was not in the room, Seth’s psychic link had been too weak for him to close his eyes and visualize what had transpired in that room to make Luke flee, but from his vantage he had certainly seen the bars ripped from the window with superhuman strength.
From the inside. With hairy brown, enormous paws that looked for all the world as if they were attached to female arms.
This woman, this companion of Arielle’s, who and what was she? On mere reputation, Seth had already suspected she was not a normal woman. From recent observation, he knew so. Not only from the arrogance of her stride and bearing and intellect, but she walked with a lightness that scarcely disturbed a blade of grass, and her eyes occasionally glowed in the darkness.
Given what he’d witnessed, his last doubt faded.
She was one of them. A dweller of both worlds. How and what shape she took Seth did not know, but he vowed to find out. This night, she had apparently risked her life to save Arielle from Luke’s enchantment. While Seth was grateful to her for that, he was even more grateful that she had proved to be such a worthy adversary. Few beings, no matter which world they favored, had ever faced Luke in a fair fight and won.
Perhaps that could be useful.
The woman bore watching. At the right time, with the right handling, she could be made his ally. For the battle to come, he would need every ounce of strength he possessed, every advantage and weapon he could muster to win Arielle’s love and send the other one permanently to the spirit world where he belonged.
Luke, the enemy.
Luke, his brother.
The head footman peeked around the corner and then rushed into the room, his chest puffed out in self importance. “Be ye harmed, Miss?” he asked anxiously, setting aside the blunderbuss to help her up.
As if shaky on her feet, Shelly half leaned on him, careful that he noticed her bleeding hand. With a tut-tut of his tongue, he took a less than clean kerchief from his pocket.
Hastily Shelly dabbed at the cut with the tail end of her pristine white blouse. “A veritable scratch. He did it on the way to the window.”
Warily, both footmen inched over to the gaping window and looked down, three stories, to the ground, as if hoping to see a body. “Don’t see anything.” The footman turned to her. “He, miss? How do ye know the critter be a he? It were a lion, from the sounds of it.”
Shelly looked back at the footman with closer attention. Not the usual dull sort. “A rather small lion, perhaps,” Shelly lied. “But, ah, when he reared up, I saw his, uh, nether quarters.” She gave a very good imitation of a blush.
The footman didn’t have to imitate. Red as a new sunset, he circled the room, obviously looking for damage and proof of the lion’s presence. But he found nothing, as Shelly well knew.
There was a scuffling in the hallway and then Arielle rushed in, followed quickly by a lackey who was rubbing his shin with a wounded look at her. Arielle scarcely glanced at the torn open window, but she gave a quick encompassing look at Shelly.
Apparently reassured of her companion’s relative well being, she ran to the fire so fast she scarcely limped, staring down at the burning logs now spattered with glittering dots of molten gold, all that remained of her amulet. “Mother,” she whispered.
The ache of loss in her voice made Shelly put an arm about the slim shoulders. “Arielle, it’s for the best. That necklace was drawing you away from us.”
“Perhaps I’d be happier there, and you’d all be better off.”
Shelly turned her to face her. “Nonsense! And no matter what you think, or what the voices that call to you in your dreams say, your mother would not wish such a fate on you.”
“How do you know?” Arielle shrugged her off.
“Happy women do not kill themselves,” Shelly said with indisputable logic. “By all accounts, your mother was as torn between two worlds as are you.”
“We don’t know that! My father tells me very little of her.”
“I suspect, dear child, he knew little of her inner turmoil. He cannot relay what he does not understand.”
With a little moue of distaste, Ar
ielle indicated her agreement of that. “Father has never been a person of much…imagination. I never understood why they wed. Except…except…”
Shelly nodded. “Yes, the drive to mate is primal, even among ‘civilized’ men and women.”
Arielle looked at her. “Your irony is showing, my dear Miss Holmes. Am I to infer that you don’t consider man civilized, or you doubt the strength of the primal need to mate?”
“You, my dear Miss Blaylock, are far too astute.” Not wanting to have to answer the question even to herself, Shelly gave Arielle a brisk hug and then set her aside. “We can debate the continuation of the species another time, but one truth is immutable and indisputable: your father loves you. For his sake, if not for your own, you must fight this enchantment.”
Arielle nodded, still staring at the amulet and parroted, “I will fight.”
“Would you find it…comforting if you knew why your mother had…”
“Yes! It haunts me, waking and sleeping. That is why I’m so drawn to her. I feel as if my spirit will not rest until hers does. And it’s my duty to help her.”
Unsurprised, Shelly continued evenly, “Have you any writings of hers? A diary, letters, even instructions to servants.”
Arielle shook her head, despondent again. “My father burned them all. Or so he said when I was twelve and asked for them.” Then, going to the ewer on the stand, Arielle dabbed a clean wash cloth into the water. Holding Shelly’s hand over the bowl despite Shelly’s protests, she gently, thoroughly cleaned the wound. “I’m sorry you were injured trying to protect me, Miss Holmes.”
“Shelly, my dear. Please. And this is nothing. Why, when I was seeking the yeti in Tibet, I fell down a crevasse and almost died. Had it not been for my Sherpa guide…”
The sadness faded from Arielle’s expression as she listened. Task accomplished, Shelly inwardly cogitated on the immediate challenge. As she recounted the oft-told tale with enough verve to engross Arielle, Shelly eyed the window, thinking of the strange encounter with the lion that was obviously no mere lion.
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