But Cara’s face softened. Her eyes went from fierce to unfocused.
Jack had seen that expression on her face before. To see it now stabbed him. But even inside the powerful shields, he was frozen, as caught in the sorcerer’s voice as Cara was. He couldn’t move, couldn’t speak.
Lynx nudged Cara. “Sorcerers shouldn’t even try red magic,” the cat said, and from the startled expressions on several faces on the other side, it was audible even to those who hadn’t been able to see the spirit-lynx before she spoke. “You have to be able to put feeling into it, and sorcerers aren’t so good at that. A mortal’s got to know his limitations.”
The Victorian laughed, the kind of laugh designed to melt a woman’s panties and wasn’t doing a half-bad job on Jack’s briefs. After half a beat, the sorcerer’s lackeys laughed with him, a disturbingly tinny echo. “Maybe that’s true for mortals, kitty,” he said, his voice coming clear, though he didn’t stop laughing. “Not for me.”
He waved his hand. Lynx disappeared in a cloud of snarl and fur.
He had just forced an avatar of Trickster to vanish.
Sorcerers couldn’t do that. But he just had. That couldn’t be good.
And then it got worse.
Cara, moving like a robot, stepped forward and into the sorcerer’s arms. They closed around her, encircling her like a lover’s might, but there was nothing of affection or even true desire in the gesture. Jack couldn’t read the sorcerer’s well-schooled expression, but his aura was cold, collected, and the room stank of iron control and the kind of revenge a dual couldn’t understand. The kind that was a dish served not blood-hot but cold as a centuries-old grave. He drew her into a kiss, and she responded, moving as if she was sleepwalking.
For less time than it took for breath to be drawn, for a broken heart to beat, everyone froze.
Sam shook himself free first, letting loose with a multicolored blast of magic, but instead of zinging out and hitting the sorcerer, it fizzled in the air. For an instant, a flag that read DUD! hung in the air before vanishing. Undaunted, he cursed and tried again.
After that, a lot happened more or less simultaneously.
Jude shifted—then stopped in his tracks, roaring but clearly unable to figure out what he could do. In lion form, he could rip the sorcerer in half, but not without risking Cara too. His impressive transformation was enough to make one of the minions bolt and provoked several of them to cast spells that bounced ineffectively off the thick shielding Elissa had woven around her husband.
Elissa and Rafe must have acted, though Jack couldn’t see them from where he was standing. An anaconda, green and golden brown like Rafe’s aura, but plaid like a Burberry knockoff scarf, squeezed at the sorcerer’s throat. Jack beamed. He’d taught Rafe that trick. The illusory snake couldn’t actually strangle its prey, but even if the person on the receiving end knew that, it still felt bad enough to distract even the toughest opponent.
Which it did. The sense that the room was in Mr. Victorian’s grasp faded. Jack found himself breathing freely, thinking clearly, for the first time since they’d walked into the bar.
“Now!” he called, adding a prayer to Trickster. Crows and jays filled the bar, squalling and squawking and cawing and attacking all the bad guys with joyous abandon.
Unlike the snake, whose form was already wavering, these birds were real. The magic was in the way Jack not only called them, but with his guide’s aid, transported them into the building. Once there, they knew what to do, and it didn’t hurt that they were pissed as hell at the sudden disruption in their little avian lives.
They weren’t big, but they could draw blood. If they got a chance, they could even peck out eyes. Wasn’t likely to happen, but they could spoil the enemy’s concentration as they tried. The distraction was really the point. Sorcerers had a damn hard time casting while distracted, since their power was so dependent on focused will.
The shamans had no such handicap. A little chaos was good for shamans, kept them sharp. Luckily there were more sorcerers than shamans on the other side.
Unfortunately one of the enemy shamans had a line of birds too—bigger birds than Jack’s crows and jays. Birds that didn’t look like any natural bird Jack had ever seen, roughly the size of red-tail hawks but with teeth inside their cruel beaks.
Then Elissa said a few words in a strong, clear voice that froze their opponents and damn near froze Jack. He had no idea what she’d said—he assumed she’d spoken Gaelic—but those few words were simultaneously the most erotic and the most terrifying ones he’d ever heard. Everything male in the room turned to stare at Elissa. Jack saw her with new eyes, knowing he saw her as the others did, as a goddess, beautiful and powerful and fierce, both desirable and deadly. He knew her, had watched her grow food for the village, watched her nurse her child and tease her men, seen her drained yet grinning just after giving birth, had laughed with her and fought by her side, and still he was torn between crawling to her feet and running away whimpering.
Even the sorcerer in the old-fashioned clothes stared.
The icy determination that surrounded him thawed, softened, heated.
And as it did, Cara kicked the sorcerer in the nuts.
She jumped back, wiped her hand over her mouth in a dramatic gesture and called her guides, using enough power that Jack saw it ripple the air.
Chapter Thirty-Two
That…thing had touched her.
Had stroked and kissed her.
Had convinced her, for a few short but terrible moments, that she wanted it.
She shuddered, yearning for a hot bath and harsh lye soap to scrub off his slimy caresses.
But she’d learned something important—not encouraging, but important. As soon as she touched him, she sensed that the being in the Victorian suit might have been human once but wasn’t anymore. Pressed against his chest, she’d felt a heart beating and heard the warm coursings of blood under skin, but not the subtle sense of a spirit dwelling within the flesh—something she hadn’t realized she noticed until it wasn’t present. All living things, even animals, had it. Just not this creep. And he smelled like nothing. Nothing at all.
He was alive in the technical sense, but she figured he’d be damn hard to kill.
And no mere illusion would stand a chance against the implacable will he must have to become what he was.
On the other hand, he was flesh and blood of sorts. That meant he could hurt.
She pulled the gourd-shell rattle out from her jacket pocket and gestured with it. The noise sounded tiny and lonely in the bar, and she was pretty sure she wasn’t following any recognizable rhythm, because one of the enemy shamans grunted with laughter.
She forced a smile. “Mockery from idiots is the next best thing to compliments from the wise,” she said, making herself sound more confident than she felt.
She didn’t know how the bluff worked on the skinwalking dickheads, but, somewhat to her own surprise, it worked on her.
If she was completely hopeless, the guy wouldn’t have bothered mocking her. He’d just attack. She must be doing something right.
Her feet, of their own volition, started a shuffling dance like the ones she’d seen her mother do when she was a child. She didn’t bother chanting, though. That would take too long. And she had nothing to offer as a sacrifice to the spirits—no tobacco, no booze, no food.
Help me out, she begged, and you’ll get my pride, on a sub roll with mustard and a side of chips. I can’t do this alone. I’m not looking for vengeance, although a little payback wouldn’t hurt. I’m looking for safety for Couguar-Caché and for all the innocents around here.
She didn’t speak out loud, but she still felt Jack’s approval wash over her like a warm, invigorating wave.
Lynx popped back into the room—claws out, on the sorcerer’s head.
Coyote, in the hideous Carmen Miranda hat, appeared, but he nodded at her and slunk over to Gramps’s side, which was good because the old man was dealing with an enemy shaman and
a couple of the freakish birds and needed all the help he could get.
She heard a low, throbbing growl that rose to an earsplitting, sanity-twisting scream.
Jack’s cougar was in the house in spirit form.
He was bristling, fur ruffled—she wasn’t sure normal cougars did that, but this one did, and it sure looked impressive, making an already huge creature even larger—fangs bared.
He’d interposed himself between the enemies and both her and Jack, protecting and offering his spiritual power.
Mine to work with, mine to fight beside, mine to love. Don’t push us apart again, Cara. It weakens you and Jack and me.
Despite everything, her gut instinct was to argue—and never mind that Jack’s cougar in her head toyed with her senses in much the same way that Jack standing too close in wordy form did.
Then the cougar’s power slammed into her, filling her. No, it was their power, the cougar spirit’s and hers and Jack’s to share. She was linked with the spirit, with Jack, with Lynx, with Coyote, who, predictably, seemed to find the situation hilarious.
More power than she knew how to harness, but the way it invaded her, filled her, was almost as good as sex with Jack. The power was linking her to Jack as well as to her guides, and she didn’t have the faintest idea what do with that little twist. She threw a desperate glance at Jack, who looked as puzzled as she felt.
“Wind,” she heard as clearly as if someone spoke the word in her ear. She wasn’t sure if Jack, the guides, or her own instincts suggested it, but it was a better idea than she’d had before, so she decided to go for it.
Jack, Rafe and her grandfather all seemed to have the same notion. Together, the shamans conjured up a gale that began just in front of their lines. The wind ignored their avian allies but tumbled the creepy not-birds ass-over-tail-feathers onto the ground, where Jude, gleeful as a house cat with a crippled sparrow, crunched them. The wind flung tables and chairs, not to mention their smaller enemies, in its wake.
As the manufactured wind howled, Elissa added her own magic to the mix. Cara didn’t dare break her concentration long enough to see what the witch was doing, but when she smelled sex and spring, she knew Elissa was up to something. Jude was doing what Jude apparently did best in these situations, which was killing things. And the birds continued to harry the enemies who’d managed to stay on their feet.
“Cease!” the French sorcerer screamed, a noise far too loud to come from his body in any normal way.
Cara froze, locked into place. She could move her eyes enough to see the others, at least the ones in line of sight, were in the same fix.
She couldn’t talk. Neither apparently, could anyone else.
The only one seemingly unaffected was Jude, whose lion form must offer some defense over sorcery. He sprang for the sorcerer’s center of mass.
The sorcerer gestured and tossed Jude aside to land in a seethe of sorcerers and shamans. He landed in a fury of teeth and claws, but the blood and screaming that ensued wasn’t all their enemies. They were hurting Jude too.
“You are all stronger than I imagined, my very dear enemies.” The sorcerer smiled, and his smile was evil and sexy, and some traitor part of Cara that hadn’t entirely shaken off his earlier spell found him attractive even while she contemplated how much better he’d look covered in his own blood. “Time for the kid gloves to come off.”
With a showy gesture, he removed his white leather gloves and tossed them aside.
When the gloves hit the floor, the magic bowled over Cara and the others, jagged fuchsia and slimy black waves. They stank of old blood and sulfur, but the first waves bounced off the shields.
The shields rang with the impact, a tortured bell that reverberated through Cara’s body. It rattled her fillings, vibrated her bones, threw her off balance. The energy worked its way through her body and ended up in her gut, leaving her queasy.
Thank the Powers for good shields. If that was just an echo, diffused by the magic she’d woven with Rafe and Elissa, she’d hate to feel it straight. Rafe and Jack, their hearing feline-keen even in wordy form, covered their ears.
Jude must have heard it even more clearly, but if it hurt him, the lion didn’t let it show. Instead, he roared defiantly and sprang for the sorcerer, an elegant, arching leap that took him through the plane of the shield.
In mid-jump, ice surrounded the great lion. He crashed to the floor, encased in a layer of ice. Even through the ice, Cara saw the fear in his eyes, the panic of a wild creature trapped, of a creature of the veldt freezing. His flanks heaved, and the ice moved with him but didn’t crack.
That couldn’t be good.
Cara thought fast. What melted ice? Fire. Controlled fire.
Cara had gotten good at huge bonfires. This time she thought of lanterns and altar candles, and set a flame delicately licking at the barstool next to which Jude had crashed.
That lasted for about a heartbeat before one of the skinwalkers gestured. A cheap plastic pitcher flew from behind the bar into the air, then upended over the fire. The pitcher had been empty, but water poured out of it, dowsing the flame.
Elissa called forth her own spell, something red and amber and warm enough to heat Cara as it passed.
The sorcerer beckoned nonchalantly.
The energy veered toward him. He sucked it in greedily, a lecherous smile blossoming on his face. “Delicious,” he said, licking his lips. “I may allow you to live for a while, little witch, after I win. But enough of this.”
More jagged, sawtooth bolts of energy shot toward them.
This time, they sawed through the elaborate, lovingly constructed shields.
Cara dove for the floor so they zinged over her head. Rafe, using the same ingrained cop instincts, also hit the floor, pulling Elissa with him. Her red hair flew up as she went down, and the spell zinged through it. A smell of burning fur filled the air.
Jack and Gramps weren’t so quick. Jack let out a cougar scream from his wordside form and shifted without grace or regard for his clothes. His fur looked singed. The big cat swayed and staggered, whimpering in a way that didn’t sound right coming from that form.
Gramps clutched his lower belly and keeled over, not even making a sound.
“Gramps!” Cara crawled toward the fallen old man. Another round of jagged bolts crashed through what remained of the protective dome.
This time, the sorcerer aimed low.
Rafe curled himself around Elissa, taking the bolts himself, shielding his wife. Cara threw herself on the helpless Gramps. As she did, she flung a hasty shield in Jack’s general direction, a rough dome made of her gaudy plaid magic.
As the sorcerer’s spell struck, impaling her on bright pain, she thought maybe she should have let Jack take his chances.
Then she pretty much stopped thinking.
Chapter Thirty-Three
It was hard to think when something was peeling her skin off and ripping out her womb. Hard to think when Gramps began choking on the blood—her blood and his—that filled his nose and mouth, threatening to drown him. Hard to think when, through the blood in her eyes, through the bright waves of agony, she saw Jack’s heart torn from his body by an invisible hand.
She heard Elissa and Rafe scream their daughter’s name, and Jude let out a roar of anguish. A baby’s wail was cut off abruptly with a squishy gurgle.
They’d lost.
And it wasn’t bad enough that they were paying the price for losing. Somehow the bastard had gotten his hands on Jocelyn.
Bleeding, gutted, Cara forced herself up onto one hand. Spells from all the accomplices whizzed around her, but she didn’t care. A few struck, but, deep in shock, she barely registered the pain. The sorcerer-leader was standing back, his hands covered with blood, watching the show as if he was watching a rather boring movie.
Jocelyn dangled from one hand, a broken doll.
Cara could barely focus on him through the blood that dripped into her eyes from where her scalp used to be, but s
he gathered what energy she could and pictured the sorcerer on fire, burning as if he’d been drenched in gasoline and torched.
Then she pulled more energy, taking what she could not just from the earth under the building, the sky overhead, the air itself, but from her own failing body.
They weren’t going to get out of here alive anyway. He and his minions would just finish off anyone the spell hadn’t killed.
Fire, aid me now. Burn this vileness from the earth, and if we all burn too, it doesn’t matter.
Jocelyn was dead. Jack was dead. Phil was long dead. She couldn’t tell if any of the others were alive or not, and in her current condition, she wasn’t going to make it long enough to get help. “Why not go out in a blaze of glory?” she said out loud, using the last of her energy to pull all her magic, all the energy of her soul, into a blast to take out the sorcerer and his accomplices.
She could set him on fire, then blow up the propane for the stove and make sure no one escaped. They’d all die too, but at least no one else would get killed by these bastards.
A great paw she couldn’t see knocked her hand aside. A wet blanket—an actual wet wool blanket—fell on her. The fire she’d been accumulating smoldered out.
She fell over, unable to hold herself up without the pressure of magic giving her energy against the pain. “What the fuck? Thought you’d agree he should die, Cougar. Why you stopping me?”
“Because the magic you’re attempting is enough to kill you, and the explosion will kill Jack and everyone else. Including me, because I’m Jack. And possibly the people in the nearest houses, who have nothing to do with this.”
Wait a second. The cougar spirit who talked to her was part of Jack, which meant…
She forced herself to look.
No, still gutted, his heart torn out.
Just like his brother’s had been.
It made no sense.
Her strength left her. She fell back, closed her eyes and waited to die.
A great, rough tongue licked her face. Once, twice, three times it licked, paying special attention to her eyelids.
Cougar's Courage (Duals and Donovans: The Different) Page 20
