Heart Mates

by Mary Hughes

  “Greed?” Mason walked with her. “In return for protecting the pack, the alpha gets a cut of all pack earnings. Power and prestige play into it too.”

  “Yes, but…if it’s another wolf, aren’t there easier ways to become alpha? Why the whole Challenge Hunt shtick? Doesn’t that seem unnecessarily…provocative to you?”

  “As in provoking? Maybe. But what’s he trying to provoke? Noah’s protective instincts are already fired up. I don’t know what else there’d be.”

  She didn’t know either, but she had a vague, and terrifying, suspicion.

  As they passed First Street, he said, “Where are we going?”

  “Jayden’s. When I said to him ‘I know you’re a shifter,’ he replied ‘I can shift’.”

  Mason’s eyes widened. “Implying he wasn’t born a shifter.”

  “Exactly. If Noah trusts him, I’ll trust him too—for now. The hard part will be getting Jayden to teach me. He’s not the kind of guy who seems naturally helpful. It’d be easier if I had leverage. Say, a big shotgun. Or a cannon. Or a battleship.”

  And then she remembered she had access to the one thing that made Jayden geek. The man who fixed his motorcycles.

  She smiled.

  “Whoa,” Mason said. “Do I want to know what you’re thinking? No, I do not. That smile bodes ill for someone. Not me, I hope.”

  “Not you. Here we are.” She stepped onto the concrete pad in front of the pet store. Though the time was ungodly-thirty in the morning, the door was open, as if they were expected.

  “Don’t you ever sleep?” she asked the swirling darkness inside.

  It resolved into the black-haired, black-eyed, very masculine form of the pet groomer she now knew as Jayden. He put his apron on, and she waited for the sexiness-amnesia to hit.

  Sure enough, the instant the bib settled, she forgot to think of him as anything but a pet groomer. But she remembered the memory of it. “An enchanted apron?”

  Jayden cocked a half smile. “Not the apron.”

  Which of course answered exactly nothing. “So what are you? A vampire? A godling? The rear half of a centaur?”

  He threw back his head and laughed, a full belly laugh. “You’re a proper match for Noah, aren’t you? We’d better get started. We don’t have much time and you have a long way to go.” He started toward the glassed-in area of the grooming salon.

  “Wait. What are we doing?”

  He shot her a grin over his shoulder, absolutely appealing in spite of the apron. “What you came to learn, of course. Shifting.”

  She nearly clapped her hands. “You’ll teach me? Without cajoling or threatening? Who are you and what have you done with Jayden?”

  He laughed. “I assure you, I don’t do everything for gain.”

  “Not buying it. Why? Because you owe Noah’s pack a favor? Because Mason is the only one who can fix your bike? Some hidden gotcha?”

  “None of those, Your Royal Highness. I’ll teach you because it amuses me.” With that he disappeared into the salon.

  Mason whistled. “That can’t be good.”

  She shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. There’s no one else in a five-hundred-mile radius who can teach a witch to shift.”

  “Good point. Look, it sounds like this’ll take a while. I’m going to find Noah to give him an update, okay? Don’t leave until I get back. He’ll have my nuts for Waldorf salad if I leave you unprotected.”

  “You left me this morning.”

  “I’m now walking with a limp.”

  She suppressed a smile.

  After Mason left, Sophia followed Jayden to the grooming area. “So what’s first?” She came into the small room and shut the glass door behind her.

  “Pin this to your underclothes. Make sure some part of it touches your skin.” He handed her a small white-enameled brooch shaped like a wolf. “You’ll be shifting in no time.”

  “And then?”

  “Nothing. It’s a fully contained spell. All you have to do is activate it, so you won’t even be breaking any more of your death seals.”

  She gaped at him. “How do you know about the seals?”

  “Please. A witch who doesn’t do magic? Unless you did a complete Evacuate or the evil Phere Burgot himself sucked it out, there’s no way to keep it from expressing other than death seals.”

  “But…but you said we had a long way to go. I thought this would take all day.”

  “I said that to get rid of Mason. You and I need to talk without wolfie ears, princess.”

  “What? Why?” This was why she didn’t trust the lying, secretive, conniving buzzard.

  “I know that,” he said.

  “I beg your pardon?” She stared at him. “Did you just read my—”

  “Oh please. Your expression shouted that you don’t trust me. Besides, you’re a smart woman, or you are now. Of course you don’t trust me. You shouldn’t trust me, or anybody.”

  “I trust Noah.”

  “Who originally didn’t tell you about the hex that turns him into a puffball doggie.” He scanned the store behind her.

  “I understand why,” she said. “It makes him vulnerable. But you—”

  “Princess, I’d love to bicker all day,” he said in a voice she’d use for backed-up drains. “But there’s something else Noah isn’t telling you. Something big. If you don’t get it out of him before you try to lift the hex, wear a shit-proof mask for when it blows up in your face.”

  “There’s a pleasant image. If this secret is so important, why don’t you tell me?”

  He jerked one shoulder, grimacing. “Not mine to tell. But do yourself and him a big favor. Bribe him, wheedle, coerce him—whatever you have to do, get it out of him.” He raised one brow. “Me? I’d use sex.”

  “Why…you…I’d…”

  “Yes dear, I know. Away you go, now. You have twenty-four hours to figure out how to break the hex—and more importantly, how to break Noah.” He used two hands to shoo her, crowding her out of the grooming booth through the store. “Oh, and somewhere in there you may want to experiment with shifting. Walking as a wolf isn’t as easy as I make it look.”

  “Wait!” She dug in her heels at the exit and held up the brooch. “How do I activate this?”

  “Same way you get to Carnegie Hall. Practice.” He grinned as he shut and locked the door behind her.

  “You have a better tribute this time?” Rodolphe, the wizard known as X, stepped into the trailer of the insipid wolf Killer.

  “Yes, master.” The wolfman pointed at a fur-bitten female lying like a sack of potatoes on an even lumpier couch. “And though it nearly cost us our lives, the blade has been blooded as you instructed. Twice.” The wolfman, looking a bit the worse for wear, handed the stiletto over. He muttered under his breath. “A better weapon than that siphon.”

  “Killer, you’re an idiot.” With the flick, Rodolphe activated the deadly blade—and plunged it into the sacrifice. The drugged-up creature barely mewled. “You don’t understand how marvelous an invention this siphon is. Let me tell you a story.”

  With the other hand he slapped the siphon against the bitch’s temple and activated it. “Once upon a time, witches held their rightful place as rulers of the earth. Ignorant mundanes painted them as power-hungry monsters in fairy tales. The slaughter of witches in fairy tales paralleled witch hunts in real life.”

  The female barely gave a sigh as her head collapsed. Rodolphe moved the siphon to her breastbone. “Instead of rising up in retaliation, witches, led by goody-goodies Jean-Dion d’Avignon and Nostradamus, created the Witches’ Council.”

  Rodolphe funneled the wolf’s magic into both himself and the blade. Killer’s eyes were glued to the female, wide in what, for any other being, would be horror. Killer, horrified. As if. “Then a truly great wizard—call him X—arose. He deve
loped the siphon.”

  The siphoned magic curdled the blood on the blade, creating the magical poison. “The siphon let X take cast magic from the namby-pambies who didn’t deserve it.”

  Rodolphe twisted the knife to get out the last drops of suffering. “The short-sighted Council, rather than laud him, tried to lock him up. Asses.”

  He pulled out the knife and wiped it on the dying female. “Then X refined the siphon to not only suck cast magic but to seize it directly from beings of magic.”

  Killer roused. “Shifters, master?”

  “Yes, Killer. Shifters. But it still wasn’t enough.” The last of the power flowed into the siphon. “X developed a siphon which latched onto cast spells then sent suckers which swam up the spell-stream to the mage, to suck magic directly from mages. Take their power for his own. Now, most mages aren’t more than a mouthful. Shifters are more substantial. But when X heard of a royal dual child, he knew he at last had the perfect power source.”

  “What’s a fuckin’ dual?”

  “Killer, you ignorant ass.” Rodolphe switched off the siphon and slid it into his inner pocket. “A dual is the product of a forbidden mating between shifter and wizard. A being both possessing power and made of power. The perfect food.”

  Sheer revulsion twisted Killer’s face.

  Rodolphe slapped him. “There’s always a price to be paid for great advances. The trick is to make it come from someone else’s wallet. Now, where was I? Oh yes. The dual escaped and hid from X among the wolfpacks, but X had attached an etheric eye to the child’s familiar. Or as mundanes would say now, he ‘bugged’ the boy’s raven. Then X developed a brilliant plan to flush the dual from hiding.”

  Rodolphe smiled, snapping on a rubber glove. Killer thought Rodolphe was helping him. If only he knew what a pawn he was.

  “X allied himself with a brilliant former member of the Witches’ Council who’d propitiously stripped all the private information he could before absconding…including the magical community census.” Rodolphe carefully rubbed a deadly nightshade compound onto the blade. It sizzled as the death magic absorbed it. The venom was complete. “That gave X the location of every pack on the continent. He instructed the ex-Council wizard to develop minions in each pack, to give the nudge at the proper time.

  “The dual, challenged before he’s ready—he’d have to use his wizard’s magic, you see? The familiar feels the surge of magic, follows the trail, finds the dual and voila! X has him.”

  “So you’ve found the fuckin’ dual, master?”

  “N-no.” Rodolphe sputtered it. “Not yet. But the crow’s on the move. It’s only a matter of time.” He pointed the poisoned knife at Killer and punctuated each word with a stab.

  Killer blanched quite satisfactorily.

  “And when the crow finds the dual—” Rodolphe retracted the blade with an angry flick and tossed it at Killer, who barely caught it, “—I’ll be there to claim my reward.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  In the shelter of the pet store’s entrance, Sophia unbuttoned her blouse, pinned the enameled brooch to her bra strap, and buttoned back up. Then she headed for the bookstore, where she hoped Mr. Kibbles would help her learn how to shift.

  True, Mr. Kibbles was a cat and she’d be a wolf. True again, she’d never seen Mr. Kibbles as anything but a cat. As children, she and brother Gabriel had tried to make him change, taunting him unmercifully and hiding his food dish. She felt bad about it now, but they’d just been kids. Besides, Mr. Kibbles’s reaction was to wash a forepaw or smooth his already perfect coat and generally indicate that frankly, children, he couldn’t give a damn. He may have been a familiar, but as a haughty cat, he was darn near typecast.

  But he could help her best because he changed forms, not as a shifter did with magic shifting muscle and bone and cloth, but as a spirit did, smoke to smoke, the only creature she knew who did. Well, aside from Jayden, who’d been as helpful as grease on a climbing rope.

  “Yip, yip!” A small bit of fluff marched toward her up the sidewalk, glaring. She knew what that glare meant. You didn’t wait for Mason.

  “Sorry. We both thought I’d take longer at Jayden’s. How’d things go at Bonnie and Clyde’s?”

  The dog looked away with a disgusted grrr.

  “That’s too bad. But I have good news. I can shift. Or I will be able to. I just have to practice.”

  She started again for the Uncommon. Noah marched alongside her, from his stiff gait only partially mollified.

  At the store, she unlocked the door, then turned to him. “Look, I’ll need Mr. Kibbles to help me. Since you two don’t get along…” She quirked a half smile, a sorry-but-could-you-stay-out expression.

  Noah huffed the doggie version of a sigh. He yipped, If I have to. As Sophia opened the door, he started walking the perimeter of the building.

  She went inside, strangely reassured. Sure, the wards were up, but no one would attack her unannounced while the little dog with the big heart was outside.

  In the kitchen, Mr. Kibbles was intent on his post-breakfast grooming.

  She got rid of the newspapers she’d laid down for King then dropped into a half Lotus opposite the cat and studied him closely. He stood and gracefully stretched, his muscles sliding easily under gleaming fur. He was all that was animal. She wanted to move like him, lithe, fast. To be like him, her senses sharp and living totally in the now.

  She closed her eyes and focused inward. Slowly she opened her third eye. It was easier now that she’d unlocked part of her magic. When she was ready she looked at Mr. Kibbles.

  He was so brilliant on the etheric she was nearly blinded. Squinting reduced the flare of light to a nimbus of pure gold. Whoa. She’d never looked at him this way before. That nimbus signaled a being of immense power and wisdom.

  How do I use this? she asked the cat, mentally tapping the brooch attached to her bra strap.

  Puny human. The haloed cat looked down his nose.

  No need to diss me.

  His eyes widened, green glowing gems. I’m not. Humans live inside their skins. Muffled. The field of self is meant to be larger; life is larger. Grow beyond your limitations, Sophia.

  She pushed her boundaries as he continued.

  Greater speed and strength and sharper senses are yours when your self is outside your skin…yeow!

  The cat was a windmill of scrabbling limbs, disappearing so fast there was a black hole in the nimbus where he’d been.

  Wondering what had spooked him, she closed her mental eye and opened her physical.

  She saw no difference. She still sat on the floor, although she now noticed the specks of dirt between the aged tiles, small motes of dust bouncing along in the eddy of air current…

  Wait. She wasn’t sitting on the floor. Her eyes were simply the same height as when she was sitting.

  She was standing, on four furred, pawed, legs.

  Ooh. Pretty fur too. Not your typical gray wolf, she was pure white.

  Maybe because of the white enamel brooch, but she admired herself for a moment. Her limbs were slender but strong, her loins sleekly muscled. Her tail was bushy and her coat shone with health.

  Hey, this wasn’t nearly the problem she’d thought it would be. She smiled, felt her mouth open and her tongue loll. Ah yes, a wolfie grin. Deserved. This was going to be easy.

  She strode for the door…using her hind two legs like a human. Her front legs tangled. She fell. Her muzzle hit tile, teeth cracking together.

  Her spirit self was an inch outside her skin, and she scraped off a few layers of Sophia. “Ow!” she said only it came out “Yip!” It reminded her of poor King. Poor Noah, rather.

  Mr. Kibbles snickered.

  Know-it-all familiar. You try changing from a simple left-right to coordinating four paws and a tail in two minutes flat. She cautiously got her
paws under her and tried again.

  It took her hours just to learn to walk. Taking off her shoes and walking on her toes helped. Eventually Mr. Kibbles stopped snickering so she moved on, trying a trot. Her trailing front leg hit her surging rear, and she tripped and went down.

  Mr. Kibbles started snickering again.

  She lay on her side and growled at him. He jumped to a higher perch…and continued snickering. Stupid familiar.

  She rested her head on the ground for just a moment. Mr. Kibbles’s water dish was in her line of sight. Tired, hot and thirsty, that water dish looked good. She rolled slowly to her feet and went wearily to the bowl to lap cool bliss.

  Her long tongue darted out, slapped water and splashed it all over. She tried again. As much went on the floor and splashed onto her muzzle as went in her mouth.

  She was a failure as a wolf. She could barely walk and to make matters worse, was a slob. It was discouraging.

  She tried to cry, but even that didn’t work. Her nictitans—third eyelids she didn’t even know wolves had—closed instead and she only ended up with well-lubricated eyes.

  The noon siren blew and Mason limped in. “I am not leaving you this time, no matter what you say.”

  She contracted to human. “Didn’t Noah tell you he’s guarding me?”

  “Noah’s taking a break. I’m your guard for the lunch hour.” His brown eyes darted around the kitchen and his belly rumbled.

  “Want lunch?”

  He gave her a sheepish grin. “Sure.”

  She fixed them tuna sandwiches. The task reoriented her. Five hours left and self-pity wouldn’t help Noah. She’d learn how to do this if it killed her.

  “Sunset is at eight fifty.” Mason bit off half the tuna sandwich. “Will you be ready?”

  “Yes.” She bit off nearly as much of her own sandwich and barely chewed before swallowing. She hadn’t done anything this physical since mock-dueling in college. She washed the sandwich down with milk. “I can walk and even trot if I concentrate. Cornering is still a problem, though.”