Mate Bond

by Jennifer Ashley

  Sure he does. Kenzie trained her glare on the balcony.

  The older couple from the bar had been joined by two younger ones, and even the honeymoon couple emerged. All turned eagerly toward the staircase and gallery.

  They waited. The large case clock in the hall struck half past one, then ticked on toward two.

  One of the men behind her let out a long sigh. “He’s not going to show. I’m going to bed.”

  He started to move, then his wife gasped, and Pierce said, “Whoa.”

  Gil was there, on the balcony at the far end of the hall. He hadn’t been a second ago, but Kenzie blinked and then saw him in the shadows.

  He was dressed in the old clothes he’d worn in the photo, including the rather battered hat, and stood so that the indirect light made his outline a little fuzzy. His smooth face was blank, his eyes strangely still as he gazed straight ahead, not looking down into the hotel. For a ghost reputed to be checking on his adopted family’s home, he seemed not to notice it.

  “He’s really here,” a woman whispered. The click of a phone’s camera went off. “He’s so lifelike.”

  Kenzie hid a snort and cupped her hands around her mouth. “Hey, Gil,” she called.

  He was good. Gil never looked at her, never moved his ghostly hand from where it rested on the railing, but Kenzie saw him start, saw his eyes flicker.

  With a suddenness that had the rest of the guests jumping, she launched herself down the length of the hall, past the polished check-in counter, and up the gallery stairs.

  “Shit,” Pierce said, and banged out the front door.

  The innkeeper trotted futilely after Kenzie. “Wait—you can’t go up there.”

  Gil performed to the end. He slowly lifted his hand and took a step back . . . and vanished.

  Gone. Just like that. Kenzie blinked. Was he really a . . . ?

  No. Ghosts didn’t exist, just as zombies didn’t. There’s no such thing as the walking dead, Bowman had growled.

  Gil had to be using magic. Some kind of shaman magic that confused the eye, maybe, or a glam, as Ryan had speculated. Kenzie’s skepticism helped her see a flutter of movement at one of the doors, and hear a click as a latch caught.

  Kenzie ran down the gallery to the door. It was locked. The manager came behind her, her voice distressed. “You can’t go in there!”

  Kenzie could go anywhere she wanted. The door was solid, but Kenzie was strong. A few well-placed kicks, and she was through. The manager shrieked and headed back to the stairs, no doubt to call the police.

  The room Kenzie found herself in was old, dusty, and used for storage. The only light came from behind her—the yellow glow of the downstairs chandelier, dimmed for the night—but her Shifter sight let her see well enough. French doors on the other side of the room were closed, but a cold draft told Kenzie they’d been open moments before.

  She dodged haphazardly placed furniture and boxes and flung open one of the doors. Modern ones, she saw, with shiny brass fittings. Someone would need a new key to get in from the outside.

  The French doors led out onto a balcony. The night was so quiet she easily heard a thump below as someone landed on dirt, then the sound of feet running away.

  “Ghost, my ass!” Kenzie shouted after him. “When I catch you, Gil, you will be a ghost.”

  She leapt to the balcony’s railing, balanced on it a moment, and sprang off into darkness.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Cade watched Bowman, a worried look in his bear-brown eyes. Bowman growled in irritation and continued to shove Turner’s books to the floor.

  They’d reached the trailer house in the woods to find no one home. The front door had been locked—Bowman remembered the keypad on the inside—but the doorframe was weak enough for a Shifter to pull off. Cristian had done that, in fact. Bowman also remembered Turner boasting about electrifying the windows, but Jamie found the junction box and made short work of the wiring.

  Most of the papers fluttering out of books and folders—charts with such labels as “Diaspora,” colorful bar graphs, and what looked like mathematical equations—meant nothing at all to Bowman. Cristian kept picking things up, saying, “Interesting,” and not bothering to explain why.

  Bowman searched for something he could use, such as a recorded payment to a sniper, or receipts for supplies to breed a monster, but he found nothing. Turner’s desktop computer booted up without a password, but there was nothing on it—according to Jamie, who was clicking away with the mouse. Pierce would be better at determining that, but right now Pierce was looking after Kenzie.

  Who was haring around after Gil. Kenzie would get him—Bowman knew she would—and Pierce would help her. That’s my girl.

  He hated the thought of Pierce out there with her. Once upon a time, Pierce had touched Kenzie, kissed her, listened while she laughed at him in her dusky, sultry voice . . .

  “Bowman?” Cade asked. “You all right?”

  Bowman found himself standing in the middle of the room, the papers in his hand shredding under his twisting fingers. He cleared his throat.

  “I’m fine. Keep going. I want everything he’s ever written gone through. Then we track him down.”

  “Yeah.” Cade’s concern didn’t go away. Bowman’s rage had mounted to a place where he’d soon lose control; one spark from his Collar confirmed that.

  He needed to find Turner and beat answers out of him, then find Kenzie and let her soothe him down. She was the only one who ever could.

  * * *

  Kenzie landed on her feet, the impact jarring, but she was up and running in seconds. She might not be as graceful as a Feline, but out of all the Shifters, Lupines made the best hunters. Or so Uncle Cristian always said.

  The back of the hotel gave onto a small empty lot. Kenzie dashed across it to an alley that led between stores in this touristy part of the town. She scattered a clump of cats who were investigating trash cans in the shadows and ran out into the street beyond.

  A flash of movement took her attention to the right. Gil was still trying to cloak himself, to blend into the white mist that was rising in the dark. He couldn’t hide from Kenzie’s Shifter sight, though, and she wanted to laugh as she sprinted after him.

  The road Gil ran down ended in woods, which Gil plunged into. Kenzie dashed after him.

  A motorcycle roared up behind her, Pierce’s back tire skidding as he stopped. “Kenz, wait.”

  Kenzie flung off her jacket. “I’m going after him. Either stay here and guard my clothes or come with me.”

  “Damn it, if anything happens to you, Bowman will take my head off.”

  Kenzie ripped free of her sweatshirt, kicking off her boots. “Tell Bowman you tried to stop me, and I fought you. He’ll believe that.”

  She started running even as her jeans slid away. She tossed her underwear behind her, becoming wolf before she went another three strides.

  The woods here were so thick snow hadn’t made it to the forest floor. The carpet of old pine needles and mud was frozen, cold and slick under her paws.

  Kenzie had been raised in dense woods in the Transylvanian mountains—wild country, and remote. She’d roamed far and wide as a cub, fearless in her innocence.

  Even now, she was more at home in woods than in towns. She craved clear air; to feel the ground, not concrete, beneath her feet; and untainted wind rushing through her fur.

  Gil’s distinctive scent lay in a clear trail before her. Foolish man—or whatever he was—to think a Shifter couldn’t track him. Out here it was even easier, with fewer human scents to get in her way.

  Gil could run, though, Kenzie gave him that. He was moving almost as fast as a Shifter could. But not quite.

  She burst through the trees, terrifying smaller creatures who huddled in the night, and caught sight of Gil ahead of her. Kenzie rejoiced, the wolf in her ready to land on the man and tear into him. The human part of her that abhorred murder and wanted answers was almost as furious.

 
Gil was pounding along a narrow trail, nothing ghostly about him . . . until he disappeared again. Kenzie put on a burst of speed, determined not to lose him.

  She slid to a halt on the edge of a ravine, her paws backpedaling, dirt and pine needles raining over the edge into the darkness.

  Crap. Had Gil gone down this? Fallen to his death? Or did he know a secret path?

  Kenzie howled. Partly to let Pierce know her location, partly in frustration.

  She could still see and scent pretty well, so she started picking her way along the edge of the cliff, testing ways down into the ravine. She heard water below, one of the many rivers and creeks that crisscrossed the mountains. Rushing water, not frozen, meaning a fair-sized stream.

  She sniffed, catching a tang of scent that might be Gil’s. But it was confused now, damn him. He’d known exactly where to go to elude her.

  After a few false starts, Kenzie found a path that was solid, somewhat dry, and led downward. She had no way of knowing how far she could go before the trail petered out, but she took the chance. If she turned back now, she might never find Gil.

  Mist rose as she descended. The ledge on which the path ran widened, keeping her from having to walk too close to the edge, which was fine with her.

  The mist was clammy rather than cold, as though she’d left winter behind as she descended. That made no sense—the mountains here were in the five- and six-thousand-feet range, not like the Alps, or the Rockies or Sierras. The change in climate from top to partway down shouldn’t be that radical.

  A thicker mist suddenly engulfed her. Kenzie sneezed as warm air flowed past her nose.

  She heard her name. “Kenzie!”

  It was Gil, shouting at her, his dark voice suddenly near. Kenzie whirled around, but she couldn’t see him in the mists.

  “Kenzie! Shit, don’t . . .”

  Don’t what? Kill him? Drag him back to Shiftertown so Bowman could play jump rope with his guts?

  “Kenz.” Gil’s voice was softer, breathless, but Kenzie still couldn’t find him. The mists obscured everything.

  She tried to retrace her steps, to move toward his voice, but she couldn’t see a damn thing. Her paws slipped in mud and she fell.

  “Aw, crap,” Gil said. “I can’t . . . reach . . .”

  His voice faded, and the mists cleared. Kenzie could see the woods again, but the trees were different, deciduous rather than evergreen, the forest floor covered with dead leaves, not pine needles.

  But this was all wrong. It smelled wrong, felt wrong, looked wrong. Kenzie’s throat closed up in sudden panic. The stink around her, the magic squeezing her, made her dizzy and sick.

  “I think he meant don’t go in there,” a cool, crisp voice said in the clearing mists. A female voice, speaking English but with an accent Kenzie couldn’t place. “Did not your grandmother in Romania always tell you to keep away from the mists?”

  * * *

  “What do you mean, you lost her?” Bowman heard himself roar in fury and fear.

  Pierce gave him the steady-eyed stare of the Guardian. They were in the clearing at Turner’s place, the trackers still going through his house and the small sheds on his property. Cade and the others paused to listen, uneasy.

  Bowman’s gut clenched in his growing fear. Pierce wouldn’t have come to find him unless something very bad had happened to Kenzie.

  “She went down into the ravine, gone before I could get there,” Pierce was saying. “You know Kenzie. She wouldn’t stop. She wanted Gil. And then she just . . . disappeared.”

  “Show me where. Now.”

  “You won’t find her,” a man’s voice said. “Not like that.”

  The now-familiar timbre and smooth inflection had Bowman’s Collar going off, snapping pain into his neck. Gil stood not six feet from him, his expression quiet, the surprised trackers quickly surrounding him.

  Bowman bellowed. He grabbed Gil by his shirt and had him up against the wall of Turner’s house before Gil could say another word.

  “She was hunting you.” Bowman cracked Gil’s head into the wall. “Why won’t I find her? What the fuck did you do with her?”

  “I didn’t do anything with her.” Gil’s words were choked, his eyes wide, the man finally showing fear. “There are bad places in that woods. I never meant for her to fall into one.”

  “Bad places? What bad places?”

  “Ancient passages. Gates.”

  “Gates?” Bowman hated the sound of that. “You mean gates to Faerie?”

  “Faerie, yes. And other places even worse.”

  “What other places? There’s here. There’s Faerie. There’s the Summerland, where you are very close to heading. That’s it.”

  “Not true,” Gil struggled to say. “There are places even the Fae are afraid of. They open on the ley lines, but not on every ley line. They flick in and out. There’s evil there, and people can be trapped.”

  Bowman sensed his Shifters closing around them, Cade now in his grizzly form, his warm bulk reassuring. Jamie next to Pierce, the two looking much alike with their brown red hair and lithe bodies, Pierce’s sword glittering on his back. Cristian, quivering in anger as he listened to Gil explain that his beloved niece was lost.

  Kenzie. My mate.

  “Trapped,” Cristian said when Bowman was unable to speak. “You mean in a pocket?”

  Gil’s gaze flashed to him, and he nodded the best he could with Bowman’s hand on his throat.

  “What the hell is a pocket?” Jamie asked.

  “A piece of a world beyond,” Cristian said, “where anything might be. Or so my mother claims. She’s always telling me to never go into the mists. Romanian folktales, as I said.”

  “The pockets are real,” Gil broke in. “They open and close. One can lead to many different places or to other pockets. Some are stable, most are not. Even the Fae are afraid of the mists.”

  Bowman’s voice was harsh. “You’re saying Kenzie is in one of these?”

  “Maybe,” Cristian said, at the same time that Gil answered, “Yes.”

  Bowman yanked Gil from the wall by his frayed shirt. “You will show me exactly where you lost her. And if you’re lying, and if she’s dead, you will come to understand the meaning of pain.”

  “That means no more haunting for you,” Pierce said with cold humor. “Your mutilated body would scare all the guests in your little hotel away.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  “Who the hell are you?” Kenzie called.

  She peered between the trees and wet leaves of fernlike plants, searching for whoever had spoken. She’d turned human as soon as she heard the voice, but her sight wasn’t as good in this form, and Kenzie strained to see. It was lighter here, as though the sun were rising, but that couldn’t be. It was still the middle of the night.

  A woman stepped onto the path in front of her. She was as tall as Kenzie, had a sharp, rather pale face, very dark eyes, and many braids of white blond hair that fell to her waist. She was beautiful—in a frightening sort of way.

  The clothes she wore had once been rich—velvets, brocades, and fur, cut to flow with her every move. But the brocade was fraying, the velvets torn, the fur damp and matted. The entire ensemble—long tunic and cloak over breeches and soft leather boots—was stained with mud and what looked like dried blood. Kenzie also noticed that though the woman’s voice was cool, her scent broadcast her fear.

  “Who the hell are you?” the woman returned. “More fodder for the trials? I have told him, I’m a hunter, yes, but not a killer. A clean hunt for food and feasting is one thing. Murder to harvest organs is something else entirely.”

  Kenzie’s mouth sagged open. The woman was angry, scared, and arrogant. She was also Fae.

  “Harvest organs?” Kenzie repeated.

  “To create the mythological beasts. Why stop at Shifters? Why not the griffins, unicorns, and manticores of legend?”

  Kenzie folded her arms, suddenly cold, though the air here was warm. “Who wants t
o create them? Gil?”

  The woman frowned and shook her head. “I know not this Gil.”

  “Who do you know? Who are you? And why is a Fae in the woods in North Carolina?”

  “I know not this Northern Carolina either. My mother warned me of the mists, but I forgot in the excitement of the hunt. If I had been a fine young lady and followed the rules, I would be at home weaving tapestries instead of trapped in the mists.” The corners of her mouth turned up a little. “I might be, as you say, bored out of my mind, but I’d be safe.”

  Kenzie had to smile. She’d feel the same. “I’m Kenzie,” she said. “And you are . . . ?”

  The woman shook her head. “You Shifters. So quick to give away names.”

  “We don’t have a big hang-up about them, no. Though I understand the idea about true names being used for magical control. You have a name you let people call you, don’t you? Even if it isn’t your real one?”

  She conceded this with a nod. “Brigid. You may call me that.”

  “Good. So, Brigid, where the hell are we? And why are you here? Instead of home weaving tapestries?”

  Brigid gave a little shiver. “That I do not know. I was hunting with my sisters. I chased my prey into a misty dell and quite suddenly found myself in this wood. I called for my sisters, but they never heard me.”

  “Are we in Faerie? Not someplace I want to be.”

  Kenzie’s voice was steady, matter-of-fact, but inside she was tight with worry. A Shifter stumbling through a gate into Fae realms might never get out again. She could be hunted, captured, killed, her wolf skin hung up like a trophy. Or she could be enslaved as Shifters had been of old, used as a fighting and hunting beast.

  The best thing Kenzie could do in Faerie was get out. Fast.

  “I do not know where this place is,” Brigid said. “It might be the inside of a gate between the real world and another place, perhaps many places. I am stuck here, released only when he comes for me.”