Wolf at the Door

by Christine Warren

  Startled, she half turned back to see what his problem was, but she never got to ask. All she saw was the look of horror and rage on his face in the instant before his features distorted and stretched and a huge, angry timber wolf launched himself off the linoleum behind her. She saw the streak of charcoal fur, heard the echoing roar of a furious snarl, and felt the rush of wind pass her as Quinn shifted into his Lupine form and threw himself at the threat he detected in front of her.

  Cassidy froze and peered deeper into the darkness. Before her eyes could focus, something slammed into her back and sent her flying into the room.

  It felt like she’d been hit by a Mack truck.

  Her hands shot out to brace for impact. She hit the floor with a smack and a grunt, wincing at the pain that radiated from the heels of her hands up her arms and into her elbows. The force of the push that sent her sprawling would probably have been enough to shatter a bone in a human, but whoever had decided to push her around wasn’t dealing with a human.

  Quicker than thought, she tucked and rolled across the slick, polished floor and into a heavy piece of metal furniture. The breath rushed out of her in a whoosh, and she shook herself briskly to clear away the fog of surprise. Her back against what she guessed to be some kind of cabinet, she scanned the room for any sign of her attacker.

  Her eyes adjusted quickly to the dimness, her pupils stretching into wide slits to allow in any stray shards of light. The din of her crashing into metal had covered up the sound of the struggle at the other side of the room. Now that she held still, she could hear the rustle and snarl and grunt of two adversaries locked in a tense battle a few yards away. The problem was that the crowded room they had been led to contained so much equipment and furniture that Cassidy had no clear view of what was happening.

  She craned her neck to try and get a better view of the room, but no luck. Whatever Quinn had aimed for was on the other side of a long, high work station with cabinets below and, on top, all sorts of equipment that resembled something out of Dr. Frankenstein’s laboratory. She’d need X-ray vision to get a glimpse of them.

  The only light in the room came from the small transom window high above the door, and that didn’t seem to be traveling far. It was enough for Cassidy to see by, but it left her in a room full of shadows with a disturbingly large number of places to hide. One of which concealed whoever had ambushed her.

  She didn’t like where this all seemed to be headed.

  Pulling herself into as small a space as she could, Cassidy took a deep breath and shifted, her body condensing into the fur-clad form of her ancestors. Dark russet fur would be less visible than her pale, human skin, and besides, the smaller she was, the more places she could get in and out of. The creep who had sucker punched her wasn’t the only one who knew how to hide.

  Belly low to the ground, she began to creep across the floor, keeping to the shadows close by the bases of the objects around her. Her leathery pads skidded a few times on the slick tiles, but she kept her progress slow to prevent herself from going flying in an unexpected direction.

  Inch by inch, she made her way across the room, letting her sensitive ears guide her toward the sound of Quinn’s snarls. Then her nose caught the tangy, metallic whiff of blood, and inches became feet as she surged forward in panic.

  A split second after she bolted from her hiding place in the shadows, a huge hand clamped around her tail and lifted her to swing nearly eight feet off the ground.

  From her new vantage point, she could see Quinn looking a little worse for wear as he circled around a hulking shape. He appeared to be breathing hard, and she thought she detected a limp in his gait. Then her gaze landed on his opponent and even in the dim light she could make out a mountain of flesh the color of rich clay, with a sigil—a sorcerer’s sign—carved into the back of one meaty fist.

  Cassidy hated golems. Something didn’t sit right with her around the molded hunks of blood and clay that only moved and acted because some sorcerer with power to spare had breathed magic into them. Golems had been designed as cannon fodder, just lumps of clay without feelings or personalities that were given only enough life force to walk, talk, and follow commands, and she didn’t like anything that couldn’t think for itself.

  Suspended helplessly above the floor, she was reduced to writhing and snapping at the hand imprisoning her, but it didn’t seem to be making any difference. The grip didn’t loosen at all. She twisted enough to get a look at the creature holding her, but what she saw didn’t make sense to her overloaded mind.

  He looked like a man, only he stood well over nine feet tall and radiated the sort of unearthly magnetism that only the Fae had ever possessed. But this man would never be mistaken for Fae. He had the appearance of something very different.

  His skin looked as if it were made of the shadows that surrounded him, an inky blue-black that should never have taken on the elastic sheen of flesh. But it had. It stretched over muscles roped thick around his frame. From her vantage point, Cassidy could hazard a pretty good guess that he wasn’t wearing any clothes, but judging by the warmth of the hand wrapped around her tail, he didn’t seem to need them. He generated his own heat that surrounded him like an aura. He was also generating some kind of power that kept her from shifting.

  Now that took some seriously bad juju.

  Cassidy squirmed again and managed to get a good look at his face. He should have been handsome. She remembered thinking that. His features were firm and regular and pleasingly sculpted, but he was saved from attractiveness by the glow of malevolence that shone in his eyes. Little pools of flame burned where the irises should have been.

  “Well, well,” he rumbled in a voice that made it sound as if breaking glass coated his throat, “I think this hunt has turned up a fox and a hound, hasn’t it, Ryan?”

  Cassidy watched as the X-ray technician stepped out of the shadows and bowed before the figure who held her captive.

  “Yes, master,” the young man said, his voice somehow both fawning and devoid of life all at once. His name badge had flipped around and Cassidy could see a rosary that looked a lot like the ones Quinn said the Lightheads wore, only this one had been broken and reassembled with the cross hanging upside down. It would have been trite if the situation hadn’t been so creepy. “I have brought them to you. How else may I serve?”

  The string of invective Cassidy tried to fling at the kid’s head came out as an unsatisfying series of high-pitched yips.

  “Help the golem with the wolf. We want both of them.”

  Cassidy had no idea what the creature meant, but she didn’t want to hang around and find out. Drawing on every last scrap of energy, she swung back toward her captor and sank her sharp little teeth into the nearest bit of flesh she could reach.

  She heard a sound between a roar and a laugh, tasted something like acid on her lips, and saw the wall flying toward her head.

  That was the last thing she saw before the blackness took her.

  Twenty-seven

  When she came to, the first thing Cassidy noticed was the lingering ache in her lower back.

  The second thing she noticed was that whatever she was lying on felt rough and cool against her cheek. She was back in human form and completely devoid of fur. Someone had forced her to shift back while she slept.

  That shouldn’t have happened. That shouldn’t have been able to happen. Shifting was a physiological function. It wasn’t like a spell that someone could break if they knew the right words. Forcing a shifter to change was nearly a form of possession. It required taking total control of mind and body. And someone had done that while she slept.

  “Oh, no. This is bad.”

  It got even worse when the echo of her own soft words sent an ice pick gouging into her temple until her brains leaked out.

  Groaning, she lifted a hand to her head and tried to hold everything in. She heard a rustle to her left, followed by a grunt, and then a big, rough hand lay across her forehead.

  �
�Are you hurt?”

  She forced her eyes open and squinted against the pain of the dim light in her sensitive eyes. It took approximately six and a half centuries to turn her head, but it was worth it when she saw Quinn. He leaned over her, an intense look of concern on his face. She couldn’t have stopped her weak smile if she’d tried.

  “No,” she said, and started to shake her head, but that didn’t last long. The jackhammer in the base of her skull served as a heck of a deterrent. “Not seriously, anyway. A few aches. You were the one who was limping.”

  “Broken toe. Toes, really. Three of them. But they healed up when I shifted back. I’m fine.”

  “Right. So why do I get the feeling we’re not back in my apartment getting ready to call out for Italian?”

  Quinn chuckled and reached for her, gently helping her to sit up and brace her back against the wall beside him. “Quite likely that would be because we’re not. We’re in what looks like a storage room in what smells like a wine cellar. They threw us in here about an hour ago.”

  “They?”

  “The golem and the . . . other one. They must have felt like a drive, because they loaded us up in a truck and brought us here.”

  The room finally stopped spinning around Cassidy, and she sighed in relief. “Here? Somewhere in Connecticut?”

  “Not sure. We might be, but the ride took a little while. We could be back in New York, too. There’s no way to tell.”

  She groaned and let herself slump against his shoulder. “So long as we know where we stand.”

  He chuckled and wrapped his arm around her, settling her snugly against his side. “Exactly. Count your blessings, as my Aunt Rosemary would always tell me. Usually when I was being punished for something.”

  His hand stroked over her hair, which probably looked as though a nest of gophers had taken up residence, and somehow his touch almost made her headache go away.

  Almost. She was smitten, not brain-dead.

  “So what do we do now?” she asked. “What do you think is going to happen?”

  “Nothing either of us would like, I’m certain. Generally, kidnappers don’t abduct someone with the intention of granting them the key to the city.”

  “Good. I’m not dressed for a black-tie affair.”

  He grinned, but the expression didn’t last. “Neither of us is.” He paused. “Cassie love . . .”

  His voice trailed off hesitantly, which was enough to make her look up at him. Quinn and the word “hesitant” didn’t quite belong together. “What is it?”

  “Have you thought about the fact that we seem to have walked straight into some sort of trap? Someone obviously knew we were coming.”

  She frowned. “I suppose so. I mean, it would be a hell of a random coincidence.”

  “Exactly. And who knew we were coming?”

  His questions were leading her somewhere, but she couldn’t quite see the trail ahead. “Well, the Council, obviously. And the orderly, who I’m now more than a little miffed with. I should have let you thump him when he came down to meet us.”

  “You should always let me thump men who smile at you like that. But that’s beside the point. Cassidy . . . do you know what it was you sensed that was odd about that boy?”

  She shook her head. “Actually, no. I never managed to put my finger on it. Right before the passing-out portion of the program, I thought I saw him wearing a Lighthead rosary, but even if I wasn’t hallucinating, that doesn’t explain anything. He smelled . . . different. Not human, but not not human, you know?”

  “I do know.” He paused again, almost as if he were bracing himself against something. “Cassidy, the boy was human, and he could have been a Lighthead before, but he’d been demon-touched.”

  Say huh?

  “Demon-touched?” She gave a weak laugh. “Quinn, there aren’t any demons. There haven’t been for centuries. Millennia, even. The Fae banished them eons ago.”

  “There was no banishing involved,” he said, shifting so he could look at her more directly. “My pack is one of the few to maintain the position of guth. Most of the others have phased it out, and with it, they’ve phased out the tradition of storytelling. Which means a lot of them get the stories wrong.”

  Cassidy shook her head and made a confused sound. “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m talking about the fact that the story of the Fae and the demons that you’ve heard isn’t what we might call ‘true.’ ”

  “Then what’s the real story?”

  “In a nutshell?” He sighed. “First off, you have to understand that the ideas we have about demons are a lot like the ideas the humans have about us.”

  “That they’re monsters?”

  “Right. You’d think that we, of all people, would know there’s no such thing as a monster. In modern culture, the words ‘demon’ and ‘devil’ have become nearly synonymous. They’re both words for evil entities that exist only to wreak havoc on the mundane world.”

  Cassidy folded her arms over her chest. “If being touched by a demon turns a human into someone like that Ryan kid, I’m failing to see the fallacy there.”

  “The fallacy is in the assumption that they’re all the same,” he explained. “It’s like saying all Fae are good-tempered, ethereal, merrymaking sprites who live to sing and dance all day long, forgetting about the Unseelie Court entirely. One only exists because of the other.”

  “You mean there’s such a thing as a good demon?”

  “There are all kinds of demons. Good, bad, and indifferent. Just like there are all kinds of Others, and all kinds of Fae and all kinds of people. Demons originally existed as messengers. They were the ones who could most easily cross between the worlds. They served a purpose and they did a job, but they never did get along with the Fae. The old stories say that in the beginning, the humans looked at the Fae as gods, and the demons were the ones who told the humans otherwise. I think it led to some bad feelings. So when the Fae decided to leave the human world permanently, they forbade the demons from carrying their messages into Faerie. The demons refused to give up their traditional duties, so they declared war with the Fae.”

  Cassidy stared at him. “You’re telling me that a war that changed the course of Others history started over a fit of pique?”

  “Is it really so hard to believe?”

  Okay, so maybe he had a point. “Still, I’m not quite getting what that has to do with our current situation.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “Haven’t you stopped to wonder what it was that caught you so easily and managed to keep both of us from shifting no matter how hard we tried?”

  She felt her eyes widening. “You mean the big blue guy. That was a demon?”

  “You were thinking maybe pixie?”

  “Watch it, buster. There’s only room for one sarcastic malcontent in this relationship.”

  He saw her sour expression and laughed, lifting her hand to his lips and kissing her knuckles. “I’m sorry, love. I’ll try to remember that. Especially since it means you’re admitting we’re in a relationship.”

  Her smile faded, and she sighed. “So, we know what we’re up against, but have you managed to figure out why?”

  “That’s what I’m still having trouble with,” he admitted. “The conclusions I’ve been able to reach don’t make that much sense to me, but then, when do the plans of a demented villain usually make sense?”

  “Is that who we’re dealing with? A demented villain?”

  “Is there another sort of villain?”

  She wasn’t so beat up she couldn’t manage to smack him one. “I’m being serious. Who are we dealing with?”

  He sobered. “I’ve been trying to put the pieces together since I came to, but they just don’t seem to fit. We have the Light of Truth, the Council, Ysabel, Alexandra Thurgood’s accident and subsequent disappearance, your grandmother’s kidnapping, a demon neither of us have ever seen before, and a barely voting-age former zealot who’s been enslaved by it. I ca
n fit some of the pieces together, but not all of them.”

  Cassidy’s heart clutched at the mention of Adele. “God, Quinn. I hope she’s okay.”

  “I know, sweetheart. I know.” He folded her up in his arms and brushed a tender kiss over her hair. “But she’s a tough old fox. And we’ll find her. As soon as we get out of here. I promise.”

  The creak of the opening door made both of them look up. Light flooded in from the hallway before being quickly blocked by a huge, bulky form.

  “You know,” Quinn said, his voice calm and conversational, “I’m developing quite a distaste for golems. How about you, love?”

  “Absolutely. I think I’m all golemed out.”

  Too bad the golem didn’t seem to be taking suggestions. He lumbered silently into the room and pointed a stubby piece of wood at them. Cassidy took one look at it and the glowing set of runic symbols carved into the surface and swore.

  Or she tried to, but the words never got out. The golem muttered something unintelligible and the wand flashed with brilliant orange light just before she felt her shoulder blades make impact with the concrete wall behind her. She heard Quinn roar and then thump back beside her before her entire body went limp and numb.

  She was right.

  She hated golems.

  Twenty-eight

  The next time anyone asked Cassidy to do something for the good of her community, she was going to laugh in their face and go catch a movie. A double feature. After this past week, she figured she’d fulfilled her civic duty for a couple of lifetimes or more. She felt justified in tacking on an extra incarnation for the part where she was bound tightly and dumped on a hard wooden floor from a six-foot height.

  If she’d been able to shift, she would have landed on her feet, but the rope binding her made that impossible. If it hadn’t been for the burning sensation the cords caused where they touched her skin, she would have assumed it was Faerie rope. That stuff was stronger than steel and lighter than silk and bound power as securely as it bound limbs, but it definitely didn’t irritate the skin. The demons must have come up with an equivalent of their own. These guys were resourceful.