Seneca's Faith

by Abigail Owen

  “What happened?” Gage asked the Seer.

  She coughed, then grimaced. “The castle was built by magic. The wielder of that magic decided to…undo it.”

  Gage scowled. “Why would Zula do that to her own people?”

  She shook her head as she spit more dirt out. “Not Zula.”

  “Who?”

  “I don’t know her. Also African, tall, slender, weird purple eyes.”

  “Oya,” he muttered. But what purpose did the ancient sorceress have? “Do you see her motives?”

  She shook her head. “She’s a black hole as far as I’m concerned. I can’t see anything about her. Who is she?”

  “The African goddess who’s been helping Zula.”

  “Up till now,” Andie spat.

  He agreed. Clearly something had changed.

  “So now we’re fighting a goddess too?” Andie crossed her arms. “Fan-frickin-tastic.”

  “The same one who bonded me and Seneca together,” he informed her.

  She rolled her eyes. “Even better.”

  Tieryn, who still lay on the ground, let out a small groan and lifted her hand to her head. “What happened—?”

  She jerked to sitting, her face pinched with worry. “Did I get everyone out?”

  Sarai patted her on the back. “You did good, woman.”

  Tieryn’s shoulders sagged. “Thank heaven.” Her words gave way to a coughing fit.

  Gage bent and helped Tieryn to her feet.

  Before they could say or do anything else, they all froze when a new sound echoed around them.

  Dread and resolve settled in Gage’s chest and his hands fisted as the screaming battle cry of mountain lions sounded the arrival of Delaney and his forces all around them.

  Chapter Thirty

  Gage immediately stripped his clothes off to shift. He was a damn good fighter in human form, even better as a cougar, or he couldn’t have earned the position he had in the Nation. Beside him, Zac did the same, massive in his animal form. Andie, Sarai, and Tieryn did not shift. No surprise there, they were all better fighters in their human forms.

  Andie assumed a fighting stance, eyes watchfully trained on what they could see of the mountainside around them through the haze. Tieryn had her crossbow at the ready and a set of pistols in her shoulder holsters. Sarai already had two throwing knives in her hands, which had been stashed in the wicked-looking vest, arm, and thigh sheaths she wore.

  Gage wasn’t worried about the women. If anything, they’d watch his and Zac’s backs. The dust from the crumpled castle continued to settle. Gage found that they stood among their allies, a hundred lions strong along with another fifty of their wolf, grizzly bear, and coyote partners. All were in varying forms of readiness—some as animals, some as humans with and without weapons. All prepared to fight.

  Around them, below and above given the grade of the mountainside, were at least two hundred mountain lions. Some, he knew, may have been friends, certainly acquaintances from his time as Paul McGraw’s second in command. What had him more concerned was the knowledge that there were probably more cougars out there that he couldn’t see. He knew his people. Like cougars in the wild, they preferred to attack with stealth. There was a reason they were called shadowcats by some Native American tribes.

  “Get ready,” Sarai warned. “It’s going to come all at once from all sides.”

  The Seer closed her eyes, a battle technique Gage understood allowed her to fight using her ability to see the future.

  Ears folded back and teeth bared in a silent warning, he hunkered down to the ground, ready to spring. If they wanted a fight, they’d bring it to him.

  “Let them come to us.” Sarai’s yell echoed his thoughts, though her instructions were based on what that decision meant to them later on.

  As one, the African lions roared their own battle cry, making the cougars’ screams, though wild and terrifying, pale in comparison. Tails straight out behind them and ears down flat, the lions charged and the cougars charged. Gage and his small band of friends stayed put, though Tieryn started firing arrows into the fray.

  In the mash up of people and animals, they didn’t have to wait long before trouble sped straight at them as three cougars burst through the pack. Gage narrowed his focus on the one coming up from below on his left. He crouched down, his muscles bunched, and waited for the right moment as the other animal sprinted toward him low to the ground.

  Rather than engage immediately, Gage did a series of backward and sideways hops, always keeping his front facing his opponent. The other cat, for his part, kept trying to get up and under, to go for the throat or the back of the head. Gage took his time, studying his opponent’s moves.

  Then, with lethal surety, Gage struck. Like a viper, he lunged at the other animal, wrapping his left leg up around his shoulders, sinking his claws in, while twisting up and over to get his right arm up around the back. He sank his teeth down on the back of the cougar’s neck and bit as hard as he could. He didn’t get deep enough to kill, but the cat beneath him stumbled.

  Gage let go and backed up to look for another weak moment. Now he stood up tall, hissing at his opponent, showing his obvious advantage in size. The other cougar circled him, blood matting the fur at the back of his neck, the stench metallic in the air, but moved more cautiously now. Another opening presented itself and Gage was in, batting at the other animal with quick strikes while keeping his own belly low to the ground. They danced around each other for several minutes before Gage saw his chance and lunged at the cat’s neck. In seconds the other animal lay dead beneath him.

  Gage turned just in time to see Zac pin one cougar on the ground, while, at the same time, taking another cat by the back of its neck. With a mighty heave, the bear twisted sideways and threw the animal twenty feet, where it slammed against the jagged rocks of the mountainside. The creature crumpled to the ground in a heap.

  A quick check showed Andie engaged in hand-to-hand combat with a man who stood a foot taller and outweighed her by a hundred pounds. In a flash of movement almost too fast to make out, she used the man’s knee as leverage to leap up to his shoulders. She hooked her elbow in his and folded his arm down, then rolled them both to the ground, where she managed to leap away and then bring her elbow down on his windpipe. That was the end of that guy.

  Gage took the break in his own fight to check on Seneca via their bond. Though the worry that constricted his chest didn’t go away completely, it did ease up as he determined she was all right. Frustrated maybe? But all right.

  “Gage, duck!” Sarai yelled.

  He dropped to his belly and covered his head. Half a heartbeat later the thud of a body hitting the ground had him turning to find another cougar behind him, lying on its side with two knives protruding from its chest.

  The five of them grouped together again. Tieryn felled a charging cougar with an arrow to the shoulder. Figuring out who was winning the battle was impossible now, with so many crushed together.

  “What should we concentrate on next, Sarai?” he called.

  She shook her head. “Stay together, and stay here. Let the wolves take out a few.”

  Sure enough, a snarling line of wolves advanced from their position down the mountain, using gravity to speed their decent. Gage barely kept from snarling himself. Wolves had been their enemy for decades, making it difficult to remember they were on his side now. Handy that. Wolves attacked in waves and didn’t stop until their enemies were all dead or the wolves were.

  Gage clenched his jaw. Doing nothing, especially letting the wolves do his job, went against every honorable instinct he had. “My lions need help.”

  Sarai scanned the horizon. “Something worse is coming.”

  Chapter Thirty-One

  She should have found him by now. Where was he?

  Seneca paused and hunkered down behind a set of rocks. Only her skills had kept her from discovery so far. As a lion, Beno blended in with the fighters. She assumed he was still with h
er, and hadn’t been held up. After this was all over, she’d have to get him to teach her those stealth skills of his.

  As for her, the battle raging all around—echoing in her ears in the form of screams, snarls, and roars—was both bane and boon. Boon because no one paid particular attention to the fact that another person was in their midst, though being a tiger, if they had seen her, they would’ve done a double take, so she’d shifted back to her human form, dressed in the clothes in her pack, and left the pack and rest of her gear behind. Most of her old dare wouldn’t recognize her as the latent, submissive little girl they were used to.

  She should have run across her quasi-father by now. Statistically, the fact that she hadn’t told her something or someone was actively preventing her. Or perhaps she was being led.

  She narrowed her eyes. Did she risk being seen to ascertain where she was on the field of battle? Seemed like she had to.

  Using all her senses, she determined no one was within striking distance of her. Cautiously, she inched her head above the rock outcropping, which formed a semi-circle around her. The closest person or animal to her was at least thirty feet away. Confident she could fend off an attack, she hopped lightly to the top of the rock, though she remained in a crouch. No one turned her way, so she stood straight up and did a three-sixty, taking in the scene from her raised vantage point.

  A gunshot whizzed past her head, and she dropped back behind the rock and, using it as cover, moved away from her position quickly, in case the shooter decided to come find her. All the while, her mind whirled with the information she’d gathered. The good news…she’d found Rick. The bad news…he was in the center of the fighting.

  But that gave her an idea.

  “Beno,” she hissed, knowing the lion had to be lurking close by.

  His tan head popped up just above a rock a few yards away.

  “Think you can pretend to fight me through the battlefield?”

  His ears flickered back and forth for a moment, and she assumed he was using his senses to listen to the fighting behind them. Then he rose fully to all four feet and came around the rock to stand in front of her.

  “No taking your tiger issues out on me. This is just pretend.”

  His tongue lolled out of his mouth, but she couldn’t tell if the expression was agreement or laughter.

  “Okay. Let’s go.”

  Immediately, he lunged at her. Reflex kicked and she dodged the move. Thus began a dance of moves and countermoves designed to appear like the real thing. Unsurprisingly, she in her human form and Beno as a lion were unevenly matched. In her tiger form, it would be no contest, she’d win hands down, but as a lion he had close to three hundred pounds on her.

  She got in a couple of good shots, mostly to his ribs. The second time he clocked her with his huge paw, she saw stars, and was mighty grateful he’d sheathed his claws. There was an almost playful light in Beno’s usually brooding golden gaze. If the situation hadn’t been so dire, she would have enjoyed the novelty of seeing the big cat at play.

  Their ruse worked. No one disturbed them or stopped them as they made their way steadily closer to where she’d seen Rick. Other fighters locked in their own battles frequently blocked their path—including a massive grizzly bear who’d taken on three cougars on his own—which made their route a winding one. But eventually she got close enough to her target to smell him. Old socks. At least, that’s how Rick had always smelled to her. Now that distinctive scent got stronger as they moved.

  While the smartest choice would be to take Rick Delaney out while he was unaware of her presence, she couldn’t do it. She preferred to look her enemy in the eyes. Besides, he was surrounded on all sides by four burly bodyguards—two in human form and two as cougars.

  “Hello, Father.” She spat the words across the distance between them.

  His guards, two of whom she didn’t recognize, bristled. The two humans aimed their guns at her heart.

  “Stop.” They lowered their weapons at their master’s bidding. Rick turned to her slowly, almost casually. His eyes narrowed as he eyed what she was wearing—kick ass woman clothes. “So the prodigal returns. And with a little lion friend.” He flicked a glance at Beno, who stood quietly at her side.

  “Only I’m not a son. I’m not even your daughter.” She’d waited a long time to reveal that fact.

  He scoffed. “How could a submissive latent be my child? I’d never thought of you as mine, anyway.”

  That would have hurt once, but a desire for a father figure in her life had long since been supplanted by a hatred of everything this man was. “Not submissive. Or latent.”

  That at least earned her a disbelieving frown.

  No matter. “Your mother was a lying whore and you’ll die just as easily as she did.”

  Pain ripped through her. “You killed my mother?” She’d never believed her mother had been killed by a bear during a hunt. But she’d had no proof.

  He cocked his head. “When I discovered she was an assassin, and one sent to kill me, I struck first.” He shrugged.

  Seneca tightened her lips against the stream of words threatening to burst forth. She knew from past experience talking with this man would get her nowhere anyway. Time to end this. Time for him to die.

  She reached behind her for the sai strapped to her back—two long, pointed knives with two shorter curved prongs on either side.

  “What do you think you’re going to do with those, little girl?” Rick sneered.

  “Kill you.”

  “You’ll have to go through me first.” She’d been focused on Rick, and had missed Lareina’s presence.

  Rick smirked and turned away to melt into the crowd.

  Now her half-sister stepped into her path—her perfume alone should’ve been a dead giveaway she was near. The musky scent was a constant cloud around the woman. Lareina never got bitten by bugs, and Seneca had always secretly thought the bugs couldn’t survive the fumes to get close enough to bite. Even in the midst of a raging fight, Lareina was dressed in a slinky red outfit and stilettos. On a volcanic rock mountainside. In stilettos.

  Seneca rolled her eyes. “Hello, sister.”

  Lareina’s lips pinched. She’d always hated the reminder that they were related, though god only knew why. She’d certainly never told Seneca why she disliked her. But they were still related by blood, sharing the same mother, so Seneca couldn’t kill her.

  Her sister’s gaze honed in on her, her lush lips parted, and she spoke, her voice a siren song. “So you mated my ex-fiancé.” She wrinkled her nose delicately. “I can smell him all over you.”

  Seneca didn’t bother to respond.

  Lareina cocked her hip, confidence dripping from her every movement. “You won’t harm our father. Or me.”

  Those in their immediate vicinity stopped and turned, entranced as Lareina released the fullness of her powers as a Seducer on Seneca.

  “You will join our cause,” she continued to instruct in those sultry tones.

  Even Beno seemed taken in by her.

  Seneca gave a mental shake of her head. For whatever reason, she’d never been susceptible to Lareina’s powers. Perhaps because they were sisters. Or perhaps because of her own powers. She believed she wasn’t vulnerable to the Seductress, and so she wasn’t.

  With a flick, Seneca flipped the sai in her grip so that the pointed end aimed toward her elbow, the blade lying flat along her forearm. Then she did a right hook, slamming her closed fist into the side of Lareina’s head. Her sister dropped to the ground, out cold.

  She couldn’t kill Lareina. But a black eye never hurt anyone. Her sister would come to with a nasty headache, but maybe she’d think twice about using her power on people.

  Those around her who’d been under the Seductress’s thrall, shook their heads and stared around in a daze, blinking their eyes at where they were and what they were doing.

  In fact, now that she looked closer, many of the cougar shifters were doing that. Not all
of them but at least a third. Suddenly she knew that those confused souls had been under her sister’s command this entire time.

  Satisfaction rolled through Seneca in a wave. She’d just taken out a third of Rick’s army.

  Now to take out the man himself.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Gage paused in thrashing a cougar he’d faced off against when the animal stopped suddenly, shook his head, then looked around with what Gage could only describe as a dumbfounded expression. Hard to tell behind fur.

  The cougar shifted. Gage didn’t recognize him.

  “Why are we fighting?” the man before him asked.

  Gage shifted himself, remaining crouched. “You mean you don’t know?”

  “I don’t remember.” A descending scowl accompanied those words as realization sank in for both of them.

  Someone or something had had this man under a spell or influence or whatever. That was for sure. Satisfaction thrummed down the connection from Seneca. That weird mind-reading moment struck, and he knew, without a doubt, that she was responsible.

  “If you’re not in the fight, then stay out of it,” Gage advised.

  Before he could do more, Jaxon and Shane appeared out of thin air with Neah, Tieryn’s mother. “Protect my daughter,” the doe shifter instructed Shane before she disappeared just as silently and swiftly as she’d appeared.

  Jaxon’s sharp gaze landed on Gage. “Where’s Andie?” the Alpha demanded.

  “They’re all over there.” Turning to point behind him, Gage caught sight of the situation. Without waiting for Jaxon or Shane, he shifted back to his cougar form and sprinted off to where he could see Zac, a cougar on his back and two in front of him.

  Another of Sarai’s throwing knives embedded into one of the two facing off against the polar bear, and it dropped to the ground with a heavy thud. At the same time, Gage used the incredible leaping skills that came with his cougar, and tackled the cat on Zac’s back to the ground. They landed with Gage on top and his weight slammed the animal’s head into the rock on which they landed. The cougar went limp beneath him.