by Lisa Ladew
She didn’t know exactly what was going on in the booth behind her but for once she didn’t care about the drama, the gossip. She only wanted to catch a glimpse of the ranger’s face. If he was under fifty and wore no wedding ring, she would approach him when things calmed down, if she could. She clutched her box tighter to her chest and decided to go back to her original table and settle in. She would be able to see what was going on from there, maybe order something, check out her artifact, try not to make a fool out of herself with her eagerness, wait for the ranger to be done with whatever he was dealing with.
Her phone buzzed and she pulled it out of her purse. A text from her dean. Cora read quickly, her heart sinking.
Prof. out for English 101 in twenty minutes. Can you cover?
Of course she would cover, if she could haul ass fast enough to make it to the college in twenty minutes. Her tenure hearing was in a week. Until then, she’d be getting Dean Aulander’s dry cleaning, if that’s what the woman required. Dean Aulander wasn’t like that, but she did expect her professors to go above and beyond, and Cora wanted tenure in the worst way. Security and staying in the Five Hills area meant everything to her, and she’d put in so many years at the college already she could practically taste the contentment she was certain tenure would bring.
Cora shot to her feet and headed out the door, texting as she went, her artifact pushed to the back of her mind. She purposely did not turn to look at the man with the yummy voice.
She didn’t want to get a glimpse of what she was missing out on.
***
Jameson waved a hand at Greta, hovering around the table. He could see in her expression that she’d figured out most of what was going on and wanted to help. She came close and he pointed out the young lady at the table, whispering a few words in Greta’s ear. Greta nodded and hurried to the young lady, bidding her to come sit in the booth where Jameson had been just minutes ago. The punk didn’t watch her leave, his scared eyes locked on Jameson’s. Good.
Jameson had made his phone call, and all he had to do was wait for a Five Hills officer to show up, then maybe he and Greta would have more business. Did he dare show her the book again?
The scent he’d notice earlier, of fresh flowers and meadows, stirred again and he looked back at his old table, realizing he’d never had a chance to speak to that woman. His heart seized as he saw her hurrying away from the table, willowy petite figure, long curly brown hair, then out the door. Shit! He’d missed her. Could not follow her.
For just a moment, he thought he saw a green flash shoot through the diner and he frowned as an image arose in his mind.
He grabbed a napkin from the table, ignoring the stares of the punk at his front and the shifter at his back as he plucked a pen out of his pocket and hurriedly sketched the picture he’d seen in his head.
When he was done, he pushed the napkin back slightly, turned it, and stared hard at what he’d drawn. He wasn’t artistic, couldn’t normally draw more than a stick figure, but somehow he’d effortlessly captured on paper the image he’d seen with his mind’s eye.
The three claw marks, exactly as they were in his book, and also exactly like they were on the sign over the door of The Bear Claw. But to their left, one additional slash, this one exactly concurrent with the claw marks, but made by a knife. His shading made it look to him like the knife was glowing… or was that his imagination?
He stared hard, the diner evaporating, everything disappearing but his purpose, as he pulled his book out of its case and laid the napkin over the page that had the impression of the logo pressed into it.
The claw marks fit exactly, and to their left, the knife slash would have been exactly in the center of the page…
This was it. What was missing. The sharp intake of breath from the big cat shifter behind him brought the diner careening back.
He’d uncovered something big, finally. Forward progress for the first time in a century, and that young leopard felt it, too.
Tasks stretched out before him, each bringing him closer to the encounter with his kind that he both feared and desired.
But he would do his duty. Always.
Chapter 4
Shady Pines College
The Last Class of Summer Session
Coralie stared at the dry erase board, hand raised, marker poised to write something she didn’t remember. Her mind whirled with thoughts she couldn’t control as words she’d heard before played through her mind in an uncontrollable loop.
Now here’s what’s going to happen. You’re going to pay the bill, and some of my friends are going to come and pick you up. Depending on your answers, you may or may not be heading home tonight. You will never approach this woman again. You’ll erase her number from your phone and forget she or anyone she knows exists. You got that?
The words weren’t important. The voice was. The man behind them was. Why hadn’t she taken one minute to look at him? To figure out who he was? It was two days later, and Cora hadn’t been able to stop thinking about him since she’d walked out the door of the restaurant into the stifling summer heat.
Now she had no hope of figuring out who he was unless she hung out at the ranger station, hoping to hear each of the men who worked there talk. Which was the stupidest plan Cora’d ever had in her life, so it made no sense at all that she fully intended to carry it out. She only played a mature college professor during the day. At night she was a fucking mess.
She thought he had been law enforcement, thought he had worn a Natanhala uniform, but she wasn’t sure about either. Brilliant. It was the last day of classes and she was heading out to the ranger station that afternoon. She would come up with something to explain her presence there and put her stupid plan into effect.
She had to find him before thoughts of the missed connection consumed her completely. As it was she hadn’t eaten in days, forgetting everything that mattered as she stared out any window she was near at the forest that surrounded them all-
“Ah, Professor H?” The voice was unsure and quiet, but it broke through her haze. Someone coughed nervously. Cora snapped to attention. How long had she been woolgathering? She stared at the blank board and realized she had no clue what she’d been about to write.
She turned around quickly. Last day. It didn’t matter. The class wasn’t being monitored by Dean Aulander, thank goodness. She was safe. The simplest solution was to let everyone go early and get out of there herself. But first to play off her mistake.
She turned. “Sorry, I was trying to decide if I should let you go in five minutes, or when class ends.” She glanced at the clock. Thirty minutes left in the hour and a half class, but it was the last day. And she was useless. “I think everyone who is still here deserves to get out early on this fine summer evening, how about you?”
A few students whooped, but most just looked bored. One sharp-eyed male in the back of the room watched her like he didn’t believe a word she was saying. Carthage. If he managed to make it to class, he always watched her like that. Like a hawk would watch a mouse on the forest floor as it dove with its talons open; like it expected the mouse to do anything, and it would be ready. He was a rough-looking male with intense multicolored hazel eyes who looked older than his registration paperwork said he was.
Peter, a dangerously-close-to-failing jock whose place on the football team depended on his final exam score, spoke up. “No extra credit today?”
Right. He would care about every chance at extra credit he could get. She’d started on a whim the first day, as it worked perfectly with her “Victorian Literature” curriculum. Extra points to anyone who could pick the themed accessory she wore to class each session. She had enough of them to dole out for a whole year, not that they needed to know that. “I almost forgot. Give me your best guess, Peter.”
He screwed up his face. “Is it an unfair one? Earrings or rings or something us guys would never notice?”
His girlfriend elbowed him in the ribs. “You noticed fast enough
the day she wore that buckle-up leather vest.”
Peter flinched, then smiled as he rubbed his midsection. “That was pretty awesome, Professor H. You looked like Zoe from Firefly.”
Nicole rolled her eyes, then examined Cora up and down. “I give up. What is it?”
Cora looked around the room. “No one?”
Carthage spoke up, but he didn’t need any extra credit. He was getting a 110% in the class, and Cora fully expected his final exam to be perfect, too. He was so good he was creepy, could have been teaching the course himself. “Your choker. It’s a nod to Dracula.”
Cora swallowed, not liking his intensity, and mentally flipped him off. She was in charge of this class. She tilted her head to expose her black velvet choker to her students. Two red crystals were sewn into the fabric, set to one side above her jugular. “You young geniuses had to know it was coming. I told you our first day it’s my favorite book in the world.” The class shifted in their seats. A few yawned. Only Carthage and Nicole met her gaze.
Cora sighed. “Okay, everyone out. Enjoy the rest of your summer.” They filed out, none of them sticking around to say a word. That was ok. Now she had plenty of time to make it across campus to meet Lynessa for dinner. Honestly, what had she even been thinking, scheduling a class for Thursday evenings?
You were thinking you’d be able to take Fridays off. Cora grabbed her bag and closed the classroom door behind her. Eight weeks of three-day weekends had been worth the hassle.
She stepped out of the liberal arts building and into the failing light, streetlamps buzzing to life above her head. She hurried across the quad in her low heels, straightening her earrings and pulling her long brown hair around to the front of her body so it wouldn’t become windblown. Cora felt she needed to look put together all the time and wasn’t taking any chances, at least until her damn tenure hearing. She needed tenure.
But wait! Where was the carving that she’d gotten from Thorn? Shit! She’d forgotten all about it after the diner. Hadn’t even checked her email to see what excuse Thorn offered for standing her up. It had to be in her car. Maybe showing it to Lynessa would kindle her excitement to where it usually was when she got a new artifact. She switched directions and headed for the parking lot. She blamed the guy with the sexy voice from the diner for her forgetfulness. Something about him…
Cora pinched herself hard on the arm, preventing the daydreams about what he might look like from starting again. Get ahold of yourself, girl. You aren’t so hard up you can’t stop thinking about this guy. You aren’t.
A group of students gathering in the grass to her right caught her attention. Which was strange, normally there were no students out and about after Thursday evening summer sessions.
No. It wasn’t the students that she was interested in. Her attention was drawn solely to what they were gathered around. Something or someone she couldn’t see, that she nevertheless felt the strangest, most uncomfortable pull toward. Like it was a magnet covered with razor-sharp spikes and she was full of iron filings, unable to avoid a collision course with what was sure to hurt her.
Whatever it was seemed to pulse through the space between the onlookers like sunlight through the jungle foliage, calling her. She could almost hear words, and they made no sense. Kill him. It is your destiny. What you were born to do.
Words became vibrations, thick tendrils of emotion tunneling their way through her chest and throat, making it hard to breathe and swallow. She slowed to a walk, fluttering her hands to her torso. Was she having a heart attack? Why did she feel so panicked, so horrified, like someone had murdered a puppy just to make her watch?
A white sign with black lettering hung between two lampposts in the hot, dusk air, moving with the breeze. Meet Your City Council, it read. Cora swallowed hard and tried to focus on the words. The words made sense. What was going on in her body did not.
She forced deep breaths into her lungs. No pain in her chest. No nausea in her gut. Oh, but her muscles were tight bands under her skin and her jaw was clenched so hard her teeth hurt. Sweat beaded on her forehead and a roar sounded in her ears, so loud she could no longer hear the chatter of the crowd. She wanted… something. Something dark and unspeakable. Extermination.
Ahead of her, three students peeled away from the crowd, creating an opening through which she could see what they’d been gathered around.
A tall, pale man in a suit wearing a politician’s careful smile and practiced charm.
A man she hated, even though she’d never seen him before in her life.
She started forward, unable to do anything but move toward the man, her thoughts thick, sucking pools of death and torture she didn’t want to examine. But she was helpless to stop.
Kill him, her traitorous mind chanted again as premonitions of his dying screams echoed in her ears, pleasing her like the sweetest sonnet ever written.
She warmed uncomfortably. Some horrified part of her brain watched her body move as if being forced by some larger being; her conscious mind had no say in what she was doing.
Some base instinct propelled her through the hole of students while she felt in her purse for something. A… weapon?! Anything would do, really, as long as she could plunge it into the man’s flesh. If she had no knife, she would go for his jugular, concentrate her energy there, pierce the soft skin of his throat with her fingernails and fill him with her hatred. Murderous thoughts that couldn’t belong to her spun through her mind and she was as helpless to not think them as she was to stop moving forward.
Her hand touched then rejected her phone, wallet, pepper spray, a comb, a notebook. No weapons.
Of course there are no weapons! I am not a killer! Stop! I don’t want to do this! But her body didn’t listen. There, at the very bottom, her fountain pen. A gift from an old boyfriend. He’d been a privileged jerk, but he’d always given the very best presents, and this fountain pen had been no exception. He’d had “The pen is mightier than the sword,” engraved on the side in flowing script. How ironic that right now she’d prefer the latter.
But she only had a pen. She curled her fingers around the shaft as hate turned to something stronger inside her. Something with purpose. Her personality, indeed, her entire life up to that moment, was pushed aside.
Time to die, councilman. Cora rounded the table he was standing behind, lifting her hand over her head, fountain pen curled in her fingers. The man turned to her. They locked eyes and she saw recognition there. Recognition, and a calculating coldness that would have made her want to kill him, if she didn’t already.
Cora’s thoughts were cut clean off as a man who could only be a linebacker for the Carolina Panthers tackled her from the side, slamming her over the table. The crowd screamed and ran in all directions.
“No!” Cora shouted, twisting to see her prey, ignoring the hundreds of pounds of bulk smashing her into the stage. Another massive guy had her prey by the elbow and was pulling him away as if his life were in danger. Which it was.
Cora fought, snapping her teeth at the thick arms that held her down, clawing her fingernails into the footballer’s face, intent on clawing his eyes out. “Get off me, fucker! He has to die!”
She managed another look from her squashed position on the ground but could see only empty stage.
She fought harder, kicking, biting, trying to stab the guy on top of her. Anything to get to the councilman!
A second male joined the first, dropping on top of her, driving the breath out of her lungs and causing her vision to blacken.
Fuckers! She was tiny! They were going to kill her!
And still she fought, until she didn’t move anymore.
Chapter 5
A Hidden Location in the Nantahala Forest
Carick the Steward woke like a shot, his eyes opening wide in the dark, the stale smell of centuries-old air assaulting his nostrils. His body woke more slowly than his mind had, muscles screaming with tension and disuse as he craned his neck to see around the cave.
Something wrong. No Keeper at his side, smiling solicitously, attending to any needs, and bursting with news? That had never happened before in a thousand years of Keeper/Steward duties.
Indeed, his resting place was empty, save him.
So very wrong. He had to get to the surface immediately! An image of worldwide holy war, of glowing females flanked by males more animal than human, marched through his mind. In his vision, the couples were clashing with a bloodthirsty army at the floor of the valley beyond his cave. Was it happening now? Or had it already?
The question agitated him to new heights. He lurched to a sitting position on the edge of his rough bed too early. Nausea. His head swam, his vision blurred. He groped for the precious chain around his neck. Still there.
He stilled, elbows cocked on knees, head lowered, hand on chain and cross, deliberately sending out emotional feelers. The rough magicks of his protections sparkled, invisible to any but him, patting his cheeks and ruffling his hair with the care of a mother’s kiss, soothing him.
What had woken him if there was no Keeper there? Had he woken too early? Too late? The thoughts made adrenaline rush through his system, feeding the urgency in his body, swirling it into a lead ball in his belly.
Stumbling to his feet, Carick rolled his shoulders and blinked his eyes repeatedly, urging his tear ducts to work. He patted down his torso. What was this? He was naked. No clothes at all. He'd gone to his rest in a simple tunic and loose breeches, but now he wore nothing.
The everweft spell placed by his switches had degraded, but how? An everweft spell didn’t last forever, but the ones his eldest daughter had woven lasted a hundred years. Her voice rang in his head as a memory, admonishing the younger switches to never create a spell without an endpoint. “One hundred years is perfect for all but love spells and hairdos,” she would say, whenever anyone mentioned a spell that lasted forever.
