Rohan closed the distance and pulled me into his arms, pressing a kiss to the top of my head. “It’s all right, baby. I’m not going anywhere.”
“At least we’ve got the hounds under control,” I said. “I want to see if I can heal the others without anyone having to sacrifice their souls.”
“Good plan.”
We made our way to the dining room in time for Ozzie to storm past toward the front door again, cursing. His abrupt proximity made me dizzy for the second time, but it passed quickly. I shook my head in confusion. Perhaps it was just my empty stomach complaining, not the lingering spike of rejection, but the sensation had resonated in a deeper part of me than my empty stomach. It dissipated quickly, replaced by honest-to-goodness hunger. I dismissed it and headed toward the table, my eyes and mood brightening at the sight of the spread.
“What is it this time?” Rohan asked, sliding into a seat and reaching for a huge casserole dish of something aromatic enough to make my mouth water.
The dark-haired Sandor entered with a pitcher of juice, followed by an imposing, white-haired Willem, carrying a small platter of different syrups which he set on the table next to an enormous plate filled with fluffy waffles.
Llyr had a grim look. “Keagan and Bodhi aren’t here,” he said.
“I could’ve told you that,” Sandor said. “They left just before you guys got back. Said they were heading to Bodhi’s house, I think. They took Keagan’s bike.”
Rohan’s brows furrowed and he nodded as though Keagan’s departure were an inevitability. “Knowing Keagan, they’re cleaning out the Dylans’ kitchen instead of ours, which works in our favor. I’m sure he just needs some space.”
“Besides,” I added, stacking several delicious looking waffles onto my plate, “The hounds are accounted for. They came back last night and seem to be obeying my commands. As long as they stay near me and Rohan, they’re not going to drain as much from Willem or Keagan.”
“I take it congratulations are in order then?” Willem asked, giving me and Rohan an interested look. “You’d have to be blind not to see the power flowing off you two. You only see that with mated dragons.”
I couldn’t suppress a smile and was happy to see both Willem and Sandor beaming back at us.
Sandor popped back into the kitchen and emerged again with a champagne bottle. He uncorked it with a reverberating pop and produced several glass flutes from the china cabinet behind him. “Mimosas!” he said, smiling while he poured. “I can’t say I’m surprised after that show you two put on in the store the other day before the attack. And it’s true about the soul-mate bond? It healed the bite?” He darted a glance at Willem.
I jumped up with a muffled sound around my mouthful of food and gestured with my hands at Willem’s midsection. With a laugh, Willem stood up again.
“What is it?” he asked.
I swallowed my food and gulped down a mimosa to clear my throat. “I want to see if I can heal you now that I have a dragon soul.”
Sandor paused mid-pour. “A what now?” He shot a confused look between me and Rohan.
“Our soulless girl is a little less soulless now,” Rohan said. “And has apparently gotten a power-up thanks to my contribution.”
Sandor sat down hard in his seat, mouth agape. “That’s possible? I’d heard of sharing souls but never really believed it. It was always taboo to speak of among the turul. As though Fate would spank us if we tried it with anyone other than our One.”
I shot a glance to Sandor, my skin going cold and my heart sinking. Fate would spank them if they tried. That must have been what Ozzie meant when he said it could never be him. My enthusiasm over the potential good I could do for Willem faded a little, and I took a breath, willing back some of the excitement.
“I’m happy for you, Deva, but I couldn’t heal Keagan’s soul last night,” Willem said. “And Prismatics don’t possess any special healing power other dragons don’t have. Which is to say, we can heal physical wounds and that’s it.”
I glanced at the others, then at Ozzie who’d returned from his fruitless hunt for Keagan, spouting foul curses the likes of which I’d never heard and that even had Rohan’s mouth falling open in surprise.
“One of the Fate hounds showed up wounded last night,” I said. “It had claw marks in its belly, like something big had attacked it. They aren’t made of flesh, but I was able to heal it. Can I at least try to help you?” I gave Willem a beseeching look and rounded the table toward him.
His silver brows drew downward and he nodded. “I’ll accept anything that might help. We were going to have to ask for a recharge if something didn’t give soon.”
With an eager look, Sandor rose and came to stand by Willem’s side. The big dragon settled back into his seat at my urging and pivoted the chair to face me. I crouched between his knees, my gaze fixed on the damaged orb of light and its steady tether of magic that stretched through the air toward Rohan’s room and the hound within.
I pressed my hands to his stomach and closed my eyes, reaching out with my mind for the link I had with the bloodline. Yet I saw nothing but white emptiness.
Focusing harder, I stretched my power. Willem’s soul was right in front of me. How could I not see it within that web of souls I’d been connected to for the past three weeks? After a brief burst of panic, four purple lights finally flared brightly in the landscape behind my eyes—that stretch of darkness that had previously been occupied only with the threads of the connections I shared with all the souls. I couldn’t see the other souls anymore, but the purple brilliance of the hounds was nearby, just in my periphery, so I used them to get my bearings among all that white light until I found what I sought.
Willem’s soul was represented by a bright silver egg-shaped orb, its power an unhealthy flicker growing weaker by the second even with the reprieve my bond with Rohan had given him from the hound’s drain. Beneath my hands I felt the tingle of his soul’s presence and pushed out a measure of my magic, pulling on the newfound source within my dragon soul.
Gradually the wounds began to close and I pushed even more power into the effort until finally the slow trickle of power seeping from Willem’s soul ceased altogether.
I opened my eyes to look, hoping I’d see a pristine, unmarred orb where the damaged soul had been. I frowned at the four dark splotches that remained.
“That can’t be. It was working.”
“It did work, little blackbird,” Willem said. “You did good.”
“No, you don’t understand! I healed the bites, but the scars are still there. Let me try again.”
“Deva,” Willem said, gripping my hands and holding them in his enormous ones. “Stop. You did what you could. I think this is as good as it gets if you’ve been marked by Fate.” He tilted his head to look up at Sandor. “Now we’re equal. We still need to find our One but at least I’ll live in order to do it.”
I fell back on my haunches, defeated and confused by the difficulty I’d had in finding his soul to begin with. I was terrified to try to reach out to the rest of the bloodline again, fearing I still wouldn’t see them. I hoped like hell it was only temporary.
“Finish your breakfast, szívem,” Ozzie said in a gruff tone, finally pulling out the chair at the opposite end of the long table after silently observing me with Willem. “You’ll want full stomachs for the news I have.”
I grudgingly accepted warm hugs from Willem and Sandor, struggling to be happy with that small victory. I sat and dug back into my breakfast, enjoying it a little less now, despite being able to appreciate how much better it was than hospital food.
Ozzie wolfed down a plateful himself and pounded an entire mimosa before standing with a subtle belch and giving the rest of the group grim looks.
“Llyr and I spent the night tracking the hounds, as you guys are aware. You’ve also probably found out that the hounds we were after apparently doubled back and wound up here again. It seems they are loath to stay very far from either Deva o
r their victims, but after what Llyr and I discovered last night, it’s probably better to keep them close.”
Sandor and Willem seemed unfazed by the statement. “Fate hounds were never painted as hostile creatures,” Sandor said.
“And they shouldn’t be, in general,” Ozzie said. “But as my grandmother informed us, Fate has altered their behavior where it concerns the bloodline specifically. The pair Meri originally stole from Fate and broke to obey her commands have somehow reproduced, which we didn’t know was even possible for fate hounds to do, but the pups have picked up the same curse their sires were afflicted with. And with four of them recently on the loose in the city, attuned to Meri’s bloodline, there is also no telling how many prior victims exist.”
“Are you saying there are other victims who survived the scars?” I asked, oddly optimistic by that little bit of news. It meant that Bodhi and Willem and Maddie weren’t doomed to suicide.
“Not surprising,” Willem said in his deep basso voice. “Humans tend to live in a state of entropy. To the ones who have established routines it’s probably easy enough just to continue going through the motions of their daily lives. I already have Sandor so I have an advantage at least.”
“Yes,” Ozzie said. “However, those four hounds are not the only ones in this city right now. While we lost track of them last night—since they were here in the last place we’d think to look—we found another hound. One who doesn’t answer to Deva.”
“Another hound?” I sat up straighter. “Maybe there are other pups that haven’t found me yet. I can try to summon them with Agnes.” My fingertips already tingled at the memory of the magic that flowed through them when I’d played the magic guitar that Sandor had given me. We’d used the guitar to summon my hounds to me and capture them, a stunt I regretted now that I knew more about the hounds.
“I’m afraid that would be the worst idea,” Ozzie said. “The last thing we want is for this other hound to come near us. You control the rogue hounds, but it was quite clear this one was under Fate’s control. When we tracked this hound we witnessed it brutally attack and kill two different humans. The first one had a clear tether of magic linking it to a hound that lay somewhere in the direction of this house. The other had no tether, but Llyr was able to confirm the woman had been bitten by your diamond-marked beast. So we have every reason to believe that Fate has commanded its hounds to destroy anyone bitten by these rogues. We can’t discount the possibility that they’d go after any member of the bloodline, bitten or unbitten.”
My blood chilled and I glanced at Llyr. In a brittle voice I said, “The day I left the Haven that’s what I saw. Their lights being snuffed out, all those souls destroyed within moments of me linking to them. It wasn’t these hounds was it?” I asked. “It was never these hounds killing them at all.”
As if summoned by my need to protect them, four violet, four-legged creatures came trotting silently into the room. Sandor and Willem both stiffened, but neither Ozzie nor Llyr flinched when the hounds all moved to settle by my seat.
Then the worst thought hit me and my blood turned to ice water in my veins. “Keagan and Bodhi. And Maddie, too. We need to get to them now.”
5
Keagan
I didn’t have a clue what all the gear was that Bodhi had me help him load onto the roof of his truck and its attached camper shell. I was no stranger to outdoorsy hobbies. I was a fucking ursa, after all. I grew up running around naked in the woods. But Bodhi’s gear looked distinctly aquatic, which made me nervous. Not so nervous I was ready to chicken out and go home, but at least apprehensive about what his plans were for distracting us from the turn our lives had taken.
Some of the gear was only camping gear at least. Beneath the shelter of the camper shell that covered his truck bed were bins and bags that he said he kept ready to go at a moment’s notice, because he never knew when the wanderlust would strike. Today was a perfect example of needing to run, and I was intensely grateful we were of one mind on that detail.
But the gear that went on top consisted of a pair of huge fiberglass monstrosities that I’d have thought were surfboards, only they had several stiff rubber attachments. Then he handed me a pair of long poles and nylon bags that stretched almost the length of the truck.
“You planning to string me up as an offering to Neptune?” I asked, only partly joking.
“Windsurfing, brah,” he said with a huge grin, as if it was the greatest thing since peanut butter.
We only stopped once at a grocery store on the way up Pacific Coast Highway to fill a couple coolers with food. The cashier’s brows slipped high up her forehead when she saw the bottles of lube tossed in with several cases of beer, about five pounds of steak, and a couple gallons of hard liquor. Bodhi surprised me by giving the girl a flirty wink before smacking me hard on the ass. It was a challenge not to break into laughter at the cashier’s beet-red transformation, but her eyes remained as big as saucers as she watched us leave.
After that it was all about putting as much distance as possible between us and the bullshit back home. I had no idea where we were headed, only that Bodhi had his favorite destinations and he knew where he was going. Beyond that, I didn’t much care.
The constant, uncomfortable tug in the center of my chest was still there, but faint and fading the farther we got from Malibu. I didn’t want to think about why it had grown so weak during the night. I’d gone from feeling like my entire essence was being sucked out of me by an enormous cosmic vacuum, down to nothing more than a slight twinge, like someone tugging lightly on the hairs just there at the base of my ribcage.
I could remember Rohan’s relief when we’d visited the Dylans and learned the fate hounds stopped draining him while Susannah and Gus were at the peak of their happiness. They’d just gotten married, who wouldn’t be happy after finding their soul mate and bonding so closely?
Maybe I could come to grips with it after a few nights of oblivion with Bodhi. Maybe I’d fucking drown in the Pacific and it wouldn’t fucking matter anymore. Deep down, I knew I should be happy for Rohan. And for Deva . . . fuck if I didn’t want that girl to find whatever it was she was looking for.
“Cut it out, dude,” Bodhi said, shooting me an irritated look across the cab. Out the windows the sun hung high above in a cloudless blue sky and an endless stretch of beach and ocean extended ahead of us to the west.
“Cut what out?”
“That fucking incessant sighing. You sound like you’ve sprung an intermittent leak and I can tell it’s thoughts of her that are poking holes in you.”
“Don’t tell me you’re not thinking about her too,” I retorted.
He shot a sideways look at me and gave me a helpless shrug. “Guilty, but this whole trip is supposed to be a distraction. Get us out of our heads, you know?”
I twisted slightly in my seat to face him. “Yeah? And letting me fuck you is going to help you do that?” He kept his eyes fixed on the road but his entire body shifted upward from the force of his glutes involuntarily tightening. I laughed. “We don’t have to do that if you really aren’t into it.”
“Honestly, I’m kinda game for anything that’ll get her out of my head,” he said. “Even for five minutes.”
“Something just feels wrong about running. I feel like a goddamn pussy,” I grumbled, looking back out the windshield toward the gentle curve of the highway that stretched ahead with ocean on one side and bluffs on the other. The spring rains had turned the inland hills that vibrant green of new life, the kind that had the most power to any Stonetree ursa. As a Sundance, Spring wasn’t my season, though. I reveled in the dry intense heat that came in late August and September, and the chilly bite of Fall.
“Should I turn back?” Bodhi asked. “I’ll admit I wasn’t keen on leaving Mom, but you saw her all but kick me out earlier. My aunts and grandma all have her back. I’d just be under foot anyway.”
“Nah. Deva’s got the others there if she needs anything. They’ll keep
her safe,” I said, though my hands involuntarily flexed into fists at the thought that she needed to be kept safe. Where had that thought come from?
“Safe? Is she actually in danger? You think those hounds would take it out on her?”
“Something at the party the other night . . .” I trailed off trying to remember the night of Bodhi’s grandmother’s wedding celebration. I’d had too much to drink in my effort to avoid noticing Deva’s increasing closeness with Rohan. Then the whisper of a memory sank into my mind and I sat up straighter. “Llyr, that fucker!”
“What?” Bodhi asked, darting a look my way. “Am I turning around?”
He almost sounded like he wanted me to say yes. I glared at him. “Fuck no. I just remembered something from the party. Llyr was there later in the evening. I thought he’d left but he cornered me in the bathroom and . . .”
The memory filtered back in pieces, some of which made no sense.
“And what?” Bodhi asked.
“And we made out, I think. Asshole,” I muttered, realizing that I’d left myself open for manipulation simply by not holding my liquor that night.
“What, did he force you to kiss him or something? Are you not into him? I admit I’m not really sure how dude etiquette works when you’re sexually fluid. I mean, I guess he’s hot, in a purely objective sense.”
I lifted a brow at the contortions he was going through in his head, then laughed.
“The dude is more than objectively hot. He’s literally a step down from a sex god. And no, I would not kick him out of bed for eating crackers. I’m pissed because he used me. Satyrs can read your thoughts and emotions by sampling your bodily fluids. Like saliva from a kiss . . . or other stuff. And I don’t know if you’ve checked out his eyes, but they’re fucking dangerous mind control tools if you’re not on your guard.”
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