Thrall

by Jennifer Blackstream

  “I allow some people to make that choice because they need to find out the hard way that they need a pack,” Liam said, heading for the elevator. “We keep an eye on them when they leave.”

  “So it’s not really a choice,” Scath said.

  “We can talk about this later if you want to,” Liam said tightly. “But right now, we need to concentrate on what’s coming. Well-adjusted or not, it’s unlikely they’re going to be happy to see me.”

  “Then maybe I should talk to them?” I suggested.

  Liam shook his head. “They’ll smell me on you and wonder where I am. It’s better if we’re up front about it.”

  The elevator door opened on that thought, so I didn’t have to think of a response. Liam strode down the hall with all the authority of being the Detective Sergeant of the Cleveland Metropark Police and the alpha of the Rocky River Pack. When he knocked on the door, I half-expected it to swing open of its own accord just out of respect.

  The door swung open to reveal a large shifter. Military buzz cut, thick pants with utility-sized pockets a woman could only dream about, and a T-shirt that told me in no uncertain terms that the man didn’t just take care of himself—he pushed himself. At first glance, I didn’t think there was a single inch of his body I couldn’t have bounced a quarter off of if the urge struck me.

  His hair was either blond or brown, it was hard to tell. But his eyes were green, and they drilled into Liam as if he could push the alpha back with the force of his stare alone.

  “You must be Liam,” he said.

  I held my breath. Beside me, Scath stood with her arms loose at her sides, her feet shoulder-width apart. Ready to leap into action at the slightest provocation. I wondered if she was antsy because our brief confrontation with the Emperor hadn’t ended in violence.

  “You’ve heard of him?” Peasblossom asked.

  Buzz Cut arched an eyebrow. “Hard not to have heard of the local alpha. Especially when he’s also head of the police department covering the biggest stretch of woods within fifty miles.”

  “And you must be Toby Arnold.”

  Toby nodded. “Something I can help you with?”

  “Maybe we could have this conversation inside?” Liam suggested.

  The military wolf leaned against the doorframe. “Here’s fine.”

  Testosterone pooled in the small hallway, to say nothing of the roiling energy bulldozing outward from the two alpha males. I forced a smile, and when I spoke, I made sure to shrug the shoulder Peasblossom was sitting on.

  “We’d only be a minute,” I promised. “I think you’ll be impressed with the laser-like focus of our questions. We’ll get right to the point. Beam right through the chaos of confusion. Put a red line through it.”

  Neither werewolf spared me a glance despite the blabbering nonsense. Which was fine since I wasn’t really talking to either of them anyway.

  Peasblossom slipped down to the pouch at my waist and unzipped it to have a quick word with the grig hiding inside.

  “I generally prefer not to discuss murder investigations in public hallways,” Liam said, his easy tone contrasting with the tension in his shoulders. “I promise we won’t take up too much of your time.”

  “I’m afraid you’d be wasting your time,” Toby said, also keeping his tone at the “we’re all friends” level. “I don’t know anything about a murder.”

  I never saw the red dot from the laser pointer manned by a snickering pixie from inside my waist pouch. But it didn’t matter.

  Majesty saw it.

  The kitten leapt out of the pouch slung around my shoulder, firing himself like a fuzzy grey rocket after the tiny pinprick of light. Toby’s eyes bulged and he straightened as if an invisible puppeteer had given his strings a good tug.

  “Majesty!” I cried out in fake horror. “Come back here!”

  Toby’s arm shot out, blocking me from coming inside. Liam twitched, but I held up my hands, gesturing for both men to remain calm.

  “I won’t come in if you don’t want me to, of course I won’t.” I cleared my throat and tried to look embarrassed. “Only, Majesty can be a bit…unpredictable. I’d hate for him to cause you any trouble.”

  “What the hell was that?” A new voice demanded from behind Toby. “Is that…a cat?”

  “Cursed kitten, actually!” I called over Toby’s shoulder. “Like as not he’ll go off if you startle him, so I’d give him a wide berth. Think calm, peaceful thoughts. Preferably not about large animals.”

  “Is that Kurt Snyder I hear?” Liam called.

  Toby’s shoulders twitched with the effort to keep facing us when there was a cursed kitten loose in his home. With a look in my direction that said he wouldn’t underestimate me again, he stepped back and gestured for us to come inside.

  “Get your cat,” he said.

  “I’ll certainly try.” I stepped inside and planted my hands on my hips. “Majesty. Now you get back here right now.”

  Majesty ignored me.

  I frowned and shrugged at Toby. “He doesn’t seem to be listening. That’s the problem with cats, you know. Just can’t trust them to follow orders. Not like dogs.”

  I might have been pushing it too far now, but my brain was boiling in shifter energy and I needed to let off a little hysteria.

  “Why don’t you tell me what you want?” Toby asked finally.

  Liam positioned himself in the corner of the room near a window, so he could see Toby, the door, and the man sitting in the recliner catty-corner to the large television set. I assumed he was Kurt, and he’d been enjoying some sort of sportsball game on TV before the kitten darting around the carpet had become more relevant to his future.

  “Oh, dear, he seems to have disappeared.” I scratched my head. “Anyone see him? He’s never gone invisible before, but that’s not saying he couldn’t have figured it out.”

  “I’ll find him,” Scath said, a smile twitching at the corner of her mouth. She headed for the back room, making a kissing sound as if trying to summon the kitten.

  Toby opened his mouth, looking like he would stop her from going any further, but Liam cut him off.

  “A woman was murdered two nights ago in a courtyard less than three miles from here. Gutted by a werewolf.”

  “So you come to the local rogues?” Kurt snorted.

  “I come to the apartment where a psychometrist told me I’d find the killer. A former military officer named Connor.”

  Kurt and Toby shared a look. “Psychometrist?”

  “He’s also a detective. And he had a clear vision of your brother gutting Jamila Samaha.” Liam leaned forward, and even from ten feet away, I felt the flex of his aura as he focused it on the other two wolves. “Where’s Connor?”

  Toby narrowed his eyes. “He’s not here. He hasn’t been here since the night you mentioned.”

  “But that doesn’t mean he did it,” Kurt added.

  “According to one of our witnesses, Connor has a bit of a temper.” Liam tilted his head toward the rooms at the back of the apartment, listening. “Seems he has a tendency to go out looking for fights. Gets an…itch. I see it a lot at New Moon.”

  Kurt got out of the chair. It wasn’t menacing, and he didn’t come any closer to me or Liam, but the effect on the alpha was instantaneous. His energy flared. Not just rising a few degrees, or rumbling a little more against my skin. It flared over the room. A flex of power. A reminder of who they were dealing with.

  Kurt put one hand on the back of the chair he’d just left. “Connor’s not a bad guy. He’s just having a rough time adjusting.”

  “Not so rough that he needs New Moon,” Toby added. “He’s our brother, we’ll handle him.”

  “We just lost our jobs, and Connor’s having a harder time adjusting to civilian life,” Kurt added.

  Liam frowned. “What do you mean lost his job? My file says he left the marines two years ago.”

  “That’s when we all went to work for Underhill,” Toby confirmed. “B
ut they shut down a few months ago. No warning, no two weeks’ notice. One day we had a job, next day we didn’t. Our jobs weren’t exactly sedentary, and it’s been an adjustment. I think you can understand why Connor would be a little antsy.”

  My blood turned cold. Underhill. The private military company formerly owned by Unseelie sidhe Ian Walsh. The man who’d had to leave town because of me. The man I’d been pursuing when poor Peasblossom had nearly lost her wings for good.

  “That sort of shift can take a toll,” Liam said carefully. “Especially on someone who doesn’t have the resources to deal with it.”

  “We’re his resources,” Kurt snapped.

  “And yet he’s been missing for forty-eight hours.” Liam shook his head. “This wasn’t on you. It couldn’t be. This is what pack is for.”

  “Don’t.” Toby held up a hand. “Don’t try to sell us on the family package.”

  “Fine. I’ll leave as soon as you tell me where I can find Connor.”

  Majesty gave up on the laser pointer in favor of rubbing up against Kurt’s ankle. The shifter stiffened, then visibly forced himself to relax. “What did you say that this is?”

  “Basically a ball of chaos,” Peasblossom said. “Concentrated evil.”

  Kurt bent down, and I threw up my hand. “Don’t pick him up!”

  Two things happened at once.

  Kurt threw Majesty at Liam, the glint in his eyes telling me it wasn’t panic, but a distraction. I turned my head in time to see Toby had drawn a weapon, though Goddess only knew where he’d gotten it. I had a split second to make my decision. The cat or the gun.

  I screamed. Magic poured upward, surging through my throat and out my mouth, sailing straight for the shifter with the gun. If Toby hadn’t been a shifter, hadn’t had such fantastic hearing to begin with, it might not have been enough. As it was, he shouted in pain, and the hand holding his firearm jerked to the side.

  It wasn’t enough to make him miss Liam.

  Chapter 7

  Liam grabbed a handful of Majesty’s fur, drawing a hiss from the kitten. Horror blossomed in my chest as I realized something was wrong. Instead of hurling the kitten away from him, Liam’s fingers were still curling around him, muscles flexing as he prepared to throw. He moved as if the air around him had grown denser, and he had to fight for every inch. The mewling kitten had plenty of time to wriggle out of Liam’s grasp, claw his way up the alpha’s arm, and leap to safety behind the couch.

  Kurt grabbed Toby’s arm and jerked him toward the door. Blood dripped from Toby’s ear to leave a red stripe down to his jaw line. I’d broken his ear drum. The commotion hadn’t gone unnoticed, and Scath bolted out of the back room, running for the door where the shifters had disappeared.

  “No!” I shouted. “They’re—”

  Too late, she’d made it out the door.

  A gunshot rang out.

  My heart seized as Scath fell back through the still-open door, her eyes squeezed shut, her mouth twisted in a grimace that showed sharp white canines. Blood seeped from her chest.

  “Peasblossom!” I screamed.

  The pixie was already on it. I dove for Scath while Peasblossom sailed through the air to land on Liam’s shoulder.

  “I don’t know what kind of bullets they were using,” I yelled. “If they’re silver, Liam needs stabilized until I can wrap the wound. The shot was a through and through, and Toby missed his heart, so with his natural healing he should be fine.”

  I fell to my knees beside Scath. If the bullets were iron, Peasblossom’s fey magic wouldn’t work to stabilize her from the iron poisoning, but mine could slow it down.

  “I can’t tell if it was silver,” Peasblossom wailed. “Whatever that miserable beastie did to him, it’s slowing his whole body down. I can’t tell if he’s not healing because it’s silver or—”

  “Not…silver,” Liam ground out.

  I pressed my hands against Scath’s chest. She pried her eyes open, green orbs rolling toward the door as if still thinking about going after the mercenaries. She tried to shove me away, but her hand missed me.

  “It was an iron bullet. You need to let me look at the wound.” I used my best witchy voice, the one that sounded like a teacher telling a kindergartner to sit down for the third time. Gentle, but with the implied threat that further disobedience would end in no-recess tears.

  The blood seeping out of her wound made the injury appear far too close to her heart for my comfort. Already my fingers were sticky, and my hands trembled slightly as I ripped her shirt open to see where the bullet had entered.

  Fortunately, close only counted in horseshoes and hand grenades.

  “He missed your heart. Let me see…” I helped her turn, and she hissed, rocking back on instinct. I strained to keep her from falling onto her back as I searched the back of her tunic for signs of a bullet hole.

  “Blood and bone,” I swore. “The bullet is still in there.”

  Liam lurched forward. Mid-stumble, whatever force had been slowing him down released him. He shot forward three feet, and if he’d been a little less graceful, he’d have gone tail over tea kettle. As it was, he regained his balance in time to kneel beside Scath without driving his kneecaps into the thin carpet.

  “Peasblossom, go out the window, see if you can catch them leaving the building,” I ordered. “And make yourself—”

  “Invisible, right. I’m on it!”

  I let Liam take Scath’s weight, and his muscles flexed as he gently lowered her back to the floor. Blood still dripped from his wound, but it didn’t seem to bother him.

  “It’s healing,” he said, noticing my stare.

  “Good.” I fumbled for the zipper of my waist pouch, almost getting it stuck when I tried to rip it open too fast. “Bizbee, I need tweezers.”

  The grig popped out of the pouch. He thrust the tweezers aloft with his chest puffed out, looking almost like a mini-insectoid King Triton. His beady eyes narrowed as he took in the entire scene, including Liam’s injured shoulder, and Majesty sulking underneath the couch.

  “Have ye ever considered a less dangerous hobby?” he asked me, handing over the tweezers.

  “Like witching?” I asked.

  He snorted. “Point taken.”

  Scath gritted her teeth, swallowing any sounds of pain, even though I knew the iron had to burn like hell. Liam put his hands on her shoulders and held her down so she didn’t squirm.

  “Go after them,” she forced through clenched teeth, glaring at Liam.

  Liam shook his head. “I’m not having a shoot out in an apartment complex where innocents could be hurt. We’ll find them.”

  “Then I’ll find them.”

  Scath tried to sit up and make good on her threat. Then tendons in Liam’s bare forearms stood out as he exerted a little more pressure to hold her down. For a split second, I realized that when it came right down to it, I didn’t know which of them would win a wrestling match. Mostly because I still wasn’t a hundred percent sure what Scath was.

  I’d had difficult patients before, and if there was one thing I’d learned about the tough ones, it was you couldn’t give them an inch.

  I put my free hand on Scath’s chest right beside the bullet wound and pushed down. Hard. She hissed and bowed her spine, writhing in pain as the pressure tugged on the iron-kissed wound. Liam kept her shoulders against the floor.

  “You’re going to let me get this bullet out, and then you are going home to rest while the poison works its way out of your system.”

  Scath glared at me and opened her mouth.

  “And if you refuse, I will put you to sleep myself,” I continued, talking over her attempted protest. “And when you wake up, you’ll be in Mother Hazel’s tender care. How does that sound?”

  The sidhe froze. For a second, she stared at me, studying my face for some sign I was bluffing.

  “She’s two hours away,” she said finally. “That’s four hours wasted.”

  “Not wasted. Not
when it could save your life.”

  Scath snapped her mouth shut and looked away. I gave her what privacy I could, concentrating on getting the bullet out, and then bandaging the wound. Bizbee had gotten to be an old hand at helping me with first aid, and he already had the bandages, poultices, and surgical tape read to go. A Cinderella spell took care of the blood and ruined clothing.

  When I finished, Liam started to pick her up, but the death glare Scath leveled on him made him drop his arms, holding out a hand to help her up instead. Scath ignored that too, getting to her feet herself. Just to let us know how little she needed us, she walked over to the couch and fished Majesty out. She was white as a sheet when she stood, with sweat glistening on her forehead and temples, but neither I nor Liam said anything.

  Liam went first out of the apartment, making sure the coast was clear. Scath marched down the hallway, sniffing the air with the distinct attitude of someone hoping to find trouble, despite the fact she was in no shape to enjoy it if she found it.

  When we got outside, Peasblossom landed on my shoulder, blinking back to visibility.

  “They got in a car,” she said. “I got the license plate.”

  “Good work, Peasblossom,” I said, beaming at her. “What would I do without you?”

  “You’d drink more soda,” Peasblossom mused. “And you’d forget to add honey to the grocery list.”

  Liam got on his phone to call Blake to run the license plate as we made our way back to his truck. I opened Scath’s door for her and when she looked like she’d protest, I stuck my tongue out at her. Her eyebrows shot up. Then she shook her head and got into the truck. I winked at her and closed the door.

  “Blake’s putting out an alert on the license plate,” Liam said, putting his cell phone away and starting the truck. “We’ll take Scath back to your place first.”

  Scath still looked pissed, but she must have taken my threat seriously, because she didn’t complain. As a thank you, I let her enter the building herself without an escort to make sure she actually went inside. A show of trust I hoped I wouldn’t regret.