by Zoe Chant
“You came,” his father said, a slight hesitancy in his measured tones. “I take it this means Ivy spoke with you.”
“She did,” Hugh growled. “But don’t worry. I’m not going to punch you in the face in front of a crowd of guests. Must keep up family appearances, after all.”
Something flickered across his father’s eyes. Relief? Disappointment? It was gone too fast for Hugh to identify, his father’s face freezing back into its usual icy mask.
“So she kept her word,” his father murmured. “Why are you here then?”
“I’m looking for Hope,” Hugh said curtly. “Have you seen her?”
“The charming young lady in the wheelchair? Only briefly.” His father tilted his head, a small frown curling his mouth. “She seemed happy enough, but broke off our conversation abruptly. She said that she’d thought she’d spotted someone she knew, but she needed to get a closer look to be sure.”
Disquiet prickled down Hugh’s spine. “Was it—wait, where did he go?”
“Who?” his father asked, but Hugh was already pushing past, heading for the staircase down to the ballroom.
There! His unicorn lowered its head, pointing out a door across the room. It should have been firmly closed and locked…yet now it stood fractionally ajar.
Hugh hurried through the crowd, regardless of the white-hot shock as he brushed past people. The door creaked as he pushed through it, into the shadowed corridor beyond. He was just in time to catch a flicker of movement, the edge of a black jacket whisking round the corner ahead.
“Hey!” he shouted, breaking into a run. “You! Stop!”
EYES! His unicorn reared, horn blazing. Beware his eyes!
Swearing under his breath, Hugh squeezed his own tight shut. If the basilisk shifter had brazenly strolled straight through his front door, he couldn’t risk meeting his stare.
He sped up, trusting in scent and hearing and his unicorn’s sense of the man’s vital energies to guide him. Even blind, he was faster than the intruder. He’d grown up in this house. He knew every inch of these corridors—
An unexpected obstacle caught his ankle, sending him sprawling. On pure reflex, his eyes flew open…and the world dissolved into crimson.
Chapter 19
He came back to pain. Red pain. Pounding through every part of him. His blood had been replaced by liquid agony. He would have screamed, but he couldn’t even feel his mouth. Just pain.
“Feeling returns first,” said a light, amused voice. “Then hearing. Hello, Hugh Argent. Or should I say Hugh Silver?”
The voice was an anchor in the sea of pain. He clung onto it, letting it pull him back into his body.
Slowly, he became aware of other sensations. The low snarl of a car engine. The coldness of metal around his wrists. The shallow, jerky rasp of his own breath in his throat.
“This will be rather a one-sided conversation for a while longer yet, I am afraid,” the voice continued. “Though your sight should be coming back right about…now.”
His eyes felt like stones in his head. With great effort, he blinked, and the black-red haze across his vision thinned.
The ‘blind’ man from the party had replaced his dark glasses with mirrored shades. His tuxedo jacket hung open, tie loosened casually. He lounged opposite Hugh with an ankle crossed over one knee, a whiskey glass in his hand. He looked for all the world like he was on the way home after a particularly extravagant stag night.
“I’d offer you something from the minibar, but you’d only choke on it.” The man took a sip of his own drink. “Or spit it in my face. You know who I am, of course.”
The crimson agony was slowly ebbing away, but he still couldn’t move more than his eyes. He swiveled them, trying to take in more of his surroundings. Dim blue lighting. Wide leather seats. A smoked glass privacy screen behind Gaze, separating them from the driver. He was in a…limousine?
Well, at least I’m being abducted in style.
More importantly, he didn’t see Ivy. Nor did he have any sense of her being hurt. Even though they weren’t fully mated, he was certain that he would have been able to feel if anything had happened to her.
He let out a ragged breath, relief overwhelming him despite his own predicament. Ivy was okay. He had a vague sense of distant fear and rage, but Gaze clearly hadn’t managed to capture her as well.
“Something funny?” Gaze asked.
His smile widened. “You,” he managed to croak.
One of Gaze’s eyebrows rose above his mirrored sunglasses. “Oh? Please, enlighten me.”
“You haven’t thought this through.” His tongue was still stiff and heavy, making his words thick. “You think that you’ve captured some great prize. But you’ve got nothing.”
“Come now, unicorn. Pretense cannot save you now. I know exactly what you are.”
“Oh?” Even though it hurt to move his face, Hugh copied Gaze’s raised eyebrow, mockingly. “Well, I hope you wanted a paramedic. Because that’s what you’ve got. That’s all you’ve got. As long as I don’t shift, I win.”
“You do realize I could simply kill you,” Gaze observed, as though commenting on the weather.
“Then you’d have a dead paramedic.” Like most shifters, unicorns reverted to human form when they died. “Good luck finding a buyer.”
Gaze tapped the rim of his sunglasses meaningfully. “There are ways of encouraging you to shift.”
Hugh let out a short, painful rasp of laughter. “Go ahead, basilisk. Knock yourself out. You really don’t know anything about me, if you think that torture is going to work.”
Gaze leaned forward, still smiling. He pressed a button on the central console.
“Oh,” Gaze said, as the smoked privacy glass behind him sank silently down, “I wasn’t planning on torturing you.”
Bound and gagged in the front passenger seat, Hope’s panicked eyes met his.
Chapter 20
It was a nightmare. Her worst nightmare. Ivy felt like she was underwater, lead weights hanging from every limb. Every sound seemed muffled, apart from the terrified pounding of her heart.
“The police are on their way.” The Earl’s face was grim and cadaverous. Behind him, security floodlights bathed the entire front grounds in stark, brilliant white. “The staff are still searching the property, but I don’t expect they’ll find anything.”
Ivy was shaking so hard, she could barely get words out. “Did the security cameras catch which car they left in?”
“Vehicles were going in and out of the front gates freely, dropping off late arrivals.” The Earl clenched his fist, looking as if he too was having to fight down the instinct to simply run blindly into the night in search of his son. “I have my people scrutinizing the footage and cross-referencing against the guest list, but it’s slow work.”
Lady Hereford hurried up, her high heels unsteady on the graveled drive. “I’ve told the guests that there’s a bomb scare, and that they need to stay put. They’re all locked in the ballroom.”
“What about the injured?” the Earl asked his wife. “The ones that monster caught on his way out?”
“The paralysis is wearing off. They’re confused and distressed, but don’t seem to be hurt.” Lady Hereford’s pale face crumpled suddenly, like tissue paper. “Edward, I let him in—he had an invitation. This is my fault.”
The Earl wrapped his wife in his arms, holding her firmly as she clung to him. “His false identity was rock-solid. You couldn’t have known.”
“I did know,” Ivy said numbly. Every part of her felt cold as ice. “I sensed it when Gaze attacked. But I was too far away to get back in time.”
There was no one who could hold her and tell her that it wasn’t her fault.
Because it was.
The Earl looked at Ivy over the top of his wife’s head. “You’re his true mate. Can you track him?”
“We aren’t fully mated. All I can tell is that he’s alive. He’s hurting,” oh God, “but he’s alive. So
’s Hope. But I know someone who can track them. You need to call the Phoenix. Fire Commander Ash, of the East Sussex Fire and Rescue Service. He’s got a pegasus shifter named Chase Tiernach in his team. We have to get him out here.”
It was a slim hope—she knew from experience that Chase’s pegasus senses could only track people over about five miles. But she clung onto it anyway. If Gaze was taking his captives back to his home base in Brighton, Chase might intercept him on route. Or the pegasus shifter might be able to fly a search pattern and pick up the trail that way.
And if that didn’t work…her mind shied away from even contemplating that.
“If you know these shifters, wouldn’t it be better for you to call them?” the Earl asked, his brow furrowing.
“They won’t talk to me. But they’ll come for Hugh. They’re his friends.” Ivy turned away. “And anyway, I’m going to be busy.”
She rippled into scales, letting the strength and rage of the wyvern fill her. In a single leap, she was airborne. A few of the staff searching through the parked cars nearby turned their heads, blinking in the wind from her wings, but their eyes passed over her unseeingly. Mythic shifters were invisible to ordinary humans, although she noticed that the Earl’s gaze did follow her emerald form as she spiraled into the sky.
Her wyvern wanted to head in the direction of the main road. Spit, kill. Destroy everything, until we find our treasures.
Ivy kept control over their shared body, reining in the beast’s murderous instincts. Tearing apart random cars wouldn’t help to find Hugh and Hope. Instead, she arrowed toward the boundary of the estate.
We hunt, she told her wyvern, picturing the black backs of the hellhounds.
It was clear now that the pack had been deliberately drawing her away from the house while Gaze infiltrated the ball. But she might be able to turn the tables on them, if she moved fast. Her sense of smell was keen as a snake’s, and hellhounds had a very distinctive sulfur-and-wet-dog reek.
Which, she suddenly realized, she could smell right now.
A large canine shape sat in plain sight, right outside the front gates to the estate. It was howling like a wounded wolf, over and over, flames showing in the back of its throat.
She practically fell out of the sky in her haste to land. The hellhound sprang back stiff-legged as she crashed next to it in a spray of gravel. The next instant, she had it by the throat, her jaws pinning it down and her tail poised to strike.
*WHERE ARE THEY?* Ivy snarled telepathically.
The hellhound stared up at her, fiery eyes wide in non-comprehension. Cursing herself, Ivy realized that it hadn’t heard her. Hellhounds were a type of faerie creature, just different enough from mythic shifters that they couldn’t easily communicate mind-to-mind.
Ivy released the hellhound from her jaws, though she kept her stinger arced and ready. The other shifter made no attempt to escape. It just rolled onto its back, whining and showing its belly in an obvious display of submission. There was something gangling and adolescent about its long legs and slightly too-big paws.
Never taking her eyes off the hellhound, Ivy shrank back into her human skin. She jerked her gloves off the instant she had hands again, showing the cringing hellhound the venom glistening on her palms.
“Don’t get any ideas,” she warned. “I can kill you just as easily in this shape. Now shift so that we can talk.”
The coal-black shape shimmered, shrinking down into an ebony-skinned girl, her hair braided into close cornrows. White dust from the gravel marked her black motorbike leathers. Her hands shook as she raised them above her head in surrender, but her full mouth was set in determination.
“You!” Ivy recognized her—it was the girl who’d been watching Hugh’s house, the one Hope had claimed was her friend. “You’re…Betsy?”
“Betty.” The girl’s voice quavered, but her hazel eyes met Ivy’s without flinching. “Though only Hope calls me that. I'm Jezebeth Black. Don’t kill me, I’m here to help you!”
“Like hell you are.” Ivy didn’t lower her hands. “You’re the one who lured Hope into Gaze’s clutches in the first place.”
Betty’s shoulders hunched in her leather jacket. “No, I never meant—I didn’t know he was going to—please, there isn’t time for this! You just have to trust me!”
Acid filled her throat. “Give me one good reason.”
“Hope’s my…that is, I think she’s…“ Betty squirmed, her voice dropping to a reluctant, sullen mutter. “Look, I’m pretty sure Hope’s my mate, okay?”
Ivy stared at her.
Betty glared back, her jaw setting in teenage stubbornness. “Don’t you dare tell her.”
The girl’s clear mortification convinced Ivy more than any fervent declaration of love ever could have. Shifters usually couldn’t recognize their true mates until they were full adults, but there was a hardened maturity in Betty’s direct gaze that Ivy recognized. She’d seen it in the mirror when she’d been seventeen. Betty might be young, but life had clearly made her grow up fast.
Ivy dropped her hands at last, straightening from her combat crouch. Part of her was gibbering in denial—Hope’s seventeen! She can’t have a mate! She’s supposed to be focusing on her studies, not dating!—but there wasn’t time to freak out about that now.
“Okay,” she said. “We’ll uh, talk about that later. Do you know where Gaze is taking Hope and Hugh?”
Betty nodded eagerly, pulling a cellphone out of her pocket. “Gaze doesn’t know about me and Hope. I was real careful to constantly complain about having to hang out with her, so that he wouldn’t suspect the truth. Anyway, I was able to find out his plan, and get a place with the group that was assigned to distract you. He’s taking them back to his most secure location. It’s an old warehouse on the outskirts of London. Here, look.”
Ivy swore under her breath as she studied the map on Betty’s phone. The marked address was a long way from Brighton, and Gaze had the advantage of a head start. Even flying at top speed, there was no way Alpha Team would be able to get there in time.
But no one was faster in the air than a wyvern.
Chapter 21
Hope squirmed as Gaze’s thug slung her over his shoulder. Her legs were paralyzed, but her upper body and core muscles were strong thanks to years of hauling herself around. She managed to get in a solid head-butt, although it left her own ears ringing.
The thug grunted in pain and annoyance, but didn’t pause. “Stop thrashing, kid. You’ll only make things harder on yourself.”
Naturally, this only made Hope redouble her efforts. But with her arms handcuffed behind her back and her mouth gagged, it was difficult to do anything to resist as the Gaze’s henchman carried her after his boss.
“Here we are,” Gaze said, as warmly as if welcoming them to another Christmas party. “Please don’t consider trying anything foolish, Hugh, or our young friend here will regret it.”
The world spun about her head as the thug dumped her onto the cold ground. He snapped a chain onto her handcuffs with a quick, practiced motion. The other end was secured to an iron ring set into the concrete floor.
Rolling onto her side, Hope managed to prop herself up enough to look around. A chill ran down her spine.
Large steel hooks hung from thick chains above their heads, half-visible in the gloom. The concrete underneath them was marked by old, rusty splotches. A gutter ran down the middle of the long room. It must have once been some sort of abattoir or meat-processing plant, but now the air smelled of mold and dust.
There was new thing that was clean and new, though. It gleamed in the middle of the dimly lit space, stark and ominous.
A cage.
“In you go.” Gaze shoved Hugh into the cage, still smiling brightly. “I apologize if it’s a little small. I had to guess at the dimensions.”
Hugh straightened. Despite Gaze’s words, there was plenty of room in the cage even for his tall, broad-shouldered form. It could have held a large animal l
ike a horse or a bull.
Hugh looked around at the bars with the jaded air of a business traveler confronted with yet another bland hotel suite. “Charming. I’m sure I’ll be very comfortable.”
“I’m afraid not.” Gaze glanced at the henchman still standing guard over Hope. “Wait outside. Don’t let anyone in. And don’t come in again yourself. No matter what you hear.”
The goon nodded, his craggy face not betraying a hint of curiosity. “Yes boss.”
“You shouldn’t listen to him,” Hugh called as the man headed for the door. “He’s cheating you out of a fortune. I can pay you far more than he is.”
“Yeah.” The henchman didn’t even pause. “They all say that.”
The thick steel door slammed shut, leaving the two of them alone with Gaze in the gloom. It was the best chance they were ever likely to have. Hope wracked her brain, staring frantically around at the rusted equipment in search of inspiration.
There has to be some way I can hurt him. Or at least delay him. Ivy’s on her way, I know she is, she has to be…
“Well now.” Gaze strolled over to a wheeled metal table placed next to the cage. Hope was too low down to see what was on top of it, but given that it bore a suspicious resemblance to a surgical trolley, she was betting it wasn’t anything good. “Shall we begin?”
Hugh folded his arms, looking bored. “You still can’t force me to shift. You don’t have any leverage.”
That’s right, Hugh, Hope silently urged him. She didn’t know if he could use his mythic shifter telepathy to pick her thoughts out of her mind, but it was worth a try. Keep stalling him. Don’t worry about me.
She still couldn’t help flinching as Gaze gestured in her direction. He had some kind of surgical tool in his hand. It looked something like a power drill, except that it had a serrated saw blade sticking out the front.
“Oh, I think I have all the leverage I need.” The saw blade whined into a lethal blur for a second as Gaze idly pressed a button. “You know, I’ve often wondered how the torment of being trapped in my stare compares to more traditional forms of persuasion. Shall we find out?”
