Wild Wolf (23 page)

Fae worshipped the Goddess too, just a weird aspect of her. Instead of the comforting mother figure, they liked the crone-like goddess who wove dark magics.

Shifter. You are mine . . .

Son of a bitch. Graham scrambled up from the bed. Everything in him wanted to go find the voice, to do as it commanded. He broke into a sweat as he fought the compulsion.

Was this what would happen to all Shifters? The Fae made a connection with the Shifter somehow—as Oison had with the water spell—then used the further connection between sword and Collar to make the Shifter come to him. To obey him without question.

Graham couldn't. He needed to fight with everything he had. If Graham, one of the strongest Shifters alive, could be gotten at this way, what chance did the rest of them have? He thought about Dougal, and went cold.

Well, if Fae had magic, so did Shifters, of a sort. They had mates. The touch of a true mate could heal, and the mate bond could protect against many things.

“Misty,” Graham touched her shoulder.

Misty didn't respond. Her breathing was deep but so soft Graham had to lean over her to catch it.

“Misty. Sweetheart.”

She didn't wake. Graham shook her. Misty's body moved, rubbery, and her skin was cool.

Fear lacing him, Graham shook her again, and again. She was alive, but slumbering deeply. Graham patted her cheeks then harder, but she never woke.

Oison must have done this—maybe the Fae's connection to Misty through the water spell or the sword cut hadn't been completely severed. Graham stopped shaking her and smoothed her hair, his hand unsteady.

“He can do whatever he wants to me,” Graham said in a hard voice, “but he's not having you.”

He leaned down and kissed her, and the mate bond tightened in his heart. Graham kissed Misty's forehead then her lips again, then he rested his fingers on her abdomen. If what they'd done this night and last had born fruit, Graham would at least have that.

Come to me . . .

The voice in his head was louder, more insistent, and Graham's body jerked. The words were in Fae, but Graham understood them.

Moonlight beamed brightly through the window, bathing Misty and Graham in white. “Goddess go with them,” Graham whispered. He touched Misty's face then her abdomen again, and left the room.

In the hall, he called Reid but got his voice mail. Graham growled a message at him and flipped his phone closed. He entered Misty's room again, placed his phone on top of her dresser, then moved to her window and slid through it with Shifter stealth.

The pain inside him lessened as he left the house, the compulsion spell happy that Graham was moving in the right direction.

Graham took Dougal's bike from the end of the driveway and pushed it into the street. The DX Security man stationed here nodded at him, seeing nothing wrong in Graham leaving when he pleased.

Graham pushed the motorcycle quietly around the corner before he mounted and started it, its throbbing loud in the stillness.

Come to me!

“All right, all right, I'm coming,” Graham said out loud. “Shut the fuck up already.”

M
isty woke when early sunshine slid its first rays into her window. Graham was gone, though the bed bore the indentation of his large body, and the covers were a mess.

She smiled, remembering the warmth of him around her, the wild passion of their lovemaking in the garden and later in bed. As her fog of afterglow receded, though, she realized she couldn't hear his voice rumbling through the house, or sense his presence as she often could. She also saw, sitting on her low dresser, the black outline of Graham's small cell phone.

Misty sat straight up. “Oh, God, no.”

She threw off the covers and scrambled out of the bed, and at the same time heard loud voices down the hall. Voices accompanied by frenzied yips.

Misty quickly pulled on shorts and top, finger-combing her hair as she ran out of the room and to the front door. Xav was blocking it, he red-eyed and dark-chinned from staying up all night.

“Misty!” Dougal tried to lunge past Xav, who barricaded the doorway with his body. “You're all right.”

“Yes, why wouldn't I—”

Misty broke off as two tiny wolf bodies hurled themselves at her, Matt and Kyle climbing up her to nestle in her arms and lick her face, their tails moving furiously.

“They came and found me,” Dougal said. “I was in bed at home—they kept trying to say you were in danger. They wouldn't let me go back to sleep until I followed them. They had me worried.” He bent to the cubs. “See? She's fine.”

Kyle lifted his muzzle and howled. Matt nuzzled into Misty's neck, shivering.

“I'm all right, little guys,” she said. “But Graham's gone.”

Dougal's eyes widened, and he glared at Xav, his Collar sparking once. “Gone where?”

“No idea,” Xav said. “Never said a word to me. I saw him take the bike.” He gestured out the door where Dougal's motorcycle had been replaced by the small pickup Dougal must have driven to get here. “I assumed he'd gone home. He left of his own accord, looking fine to me.”

“And you didn't think you should tell me?” Misty joined Dougal in glaring at him.

“You were asleep,” Xav said impatiently. “Until Dougal came charging over, I didn't figure he'd done anything but gone back to Shiftertown.”

Misty's heart pounded and her head ached. She knew Graham was in trouble, though she didn't know how she knew it. But the hollow in her heart, where the warmth had been, told her she needed to find Graham and find him now. The cubs had sensed the same thing, had herded Dougal over here to ask Misty what to do.

Dougal was watching her, worry behind the hard-faced, bad-boy look he tried to maintain. He was waiting for Misty to take care of him, of the cubs, of the situation. The cubs themselves clung to her. Even Xav waited, though warily, for Misty to decide what she would do.

McNeil needs you
.
You can save him, but it has to be your choice.

The words of the odd man, Ben, whom Paul had brought to see her, echoed in her head.

I can save him how?

Misty had no idea. She was a florist—she knew flowers and plants and how to sell them. Other than that, her specialty was feeding boys and absentminded fathers, and not being offended when they never acknowledged what she did. She'd known they'd appreciated it, in their own way, but had been too caught up in their own worlds to say so.

Misty wasn't a warrior, or a being of magical power, or even a Shifter. She didn't know anything about Fae—hadn't even heard of them until one had tried to take her and Graham.

“Oh, yeah,” Dougal said, reaching into the back pocket of his jeans. “I forgot. Reid told me to give you this.”

He handed her the little book of flower spells Misty had let Reid borrow. Misty shifted the cubs' weight to take it, clutching the familiar leather cover between her fingers.

Her heart beating faster, she stepped into her living room, still carrying the cubs. Dougal leaned on the wall in the hall, watching her with Xav.

Misty opened the book. Inside, she found the sticky note on which Ben had written his name and telephone number the day he'd come to the shop. She was sure she'd left that sticky note in her office, but here it was, inside the book on the vellum that separated the picture from the title page.

Beneath Ben's handwriting was another.
Call Ben,
it said.
Ask him to help you.
It was signed,
Stuart Reid.

Misty stared at the note for a long time. Still looking at it, she went numbly into the kitchen, fished her cell phone out of her purse, and started tapping.

 • • • 

G
raham looked around the shallow cave he and Misty had found when she'd been trying to take him back to the Fae one. He'd left Dougal's motorcycle near the shack at the bottom of the little hill and hiked his way up.

All the while, Oison kept up the noise in Graham's head.
You are mine, battle beast.
Come to me.
Graham gave up trying to shut it out and fighting the need to go to him. He hadn't been able to ride the motorcycle anywhere but here without being in excruciating, dizzying pain. He'd explained everything carefully to Reid in the phone message—Graham could only wait and hope Reid did what he was supposed to.

For now, Graham stood in the dry, shallow cave, the temperature rising outside.

“I'm here,” he called out. “Where the hell are you?”

Change.

Graham didn't want to. He wanted to stand upright and tell Oison what he thought, right before he strangled the fucking Fae.

“I've come to kill you,” Graham said. “I'm going to beat down your body then drag it back up, and beat it down again. Sound like fun?”

Shift!

The command flashed through Graham like the worst of the Collar's shocking pain. Without him willing it, he started peeling off his clothes.

His body began to shift before he was finished. The last of his shirt and underwear fell in shreds from him as his wolf limbs took form, and Graham landed on all fours, a huge black wolf. He snarled, then lifted his muzzle and howled.

The mournful wolf's cry echoed through the small chamber. At the same time, the wall at the rear cracked, shards of stone rattling down to the cave floor.

Then the wall disappeared entirely and so did the dry cave. A black, glassy obsidian floor swallowed up the dirt one, the trickle of the fountain pounded into Graham's brain, and flowering vines flowed toward him, their scents strong. Graham backed up, but the vines reached him and twined around his feet, climbing up his legs.

Graham fought them, but the vines grew tighter, flowing back as soon as he pushed any aside. One wrapped around his muzzle, and he bit the vine in half.

These plants were relentless. In Misty's yard, he'd thought her flowers pretty, but the ones here were terrifying. Trumpet flowers opened like mouths, and the puffball-like flowers grew until they were smothering pillows.

Graham kept fighting. He didn't notice Oison until the Fae was standing in the middle of the cave, near the fountain. Oison wore his chain mail and silver cloak again, with the sword in his hand, his white hair hanging in braids to his waist.

He spoke in Fae, but Graham understood every word. “If you think your
dokk alfar
will help you, think again,” Oison said. “You tipped your hand, playing your ironmaster too soon. I fortified myself against him. There he is.”

Oison pointed with the sword. At one end of the cave, which Graham could barely see through all the damn flowers, was a wall of ice. The ice floe was huge, hundreds of feet high and at least fifty feet wide. In the middle of it was a dark smudge, only just discernable.

“
Dokk alfars
are beings of earth,” Oison said. “They master it. I trapped him with the element
I
master—water. The
dokk alfar
is still alive, enjoying every pleasure of being frozen almost to death inside ice.”

Graham snarled, still fighting the vines. He made himself shift back to his human form, though it hurt like hell. His Collar went off, driving pain into him, but Graham forced himself through, ending up on his human feet.

Fighting the flowers and vines was easier with his hands, and he managed to drag them from his face.

“I'm not fighting your wars for you,” Graham spat. “Forget it.”

“Not war. Not yet,” Oison said, sounding far too calm. “My colleagues are right that it's too soon for war. But they're wrong that it's too soon to bring in the Shifters. You will pull others to me—you have a hundred of what you call Lupines under your command, do you not? I will train you to obey and to submit. You will also breed new Shifters for us. Once you have multiplied, in a few generations, then it will be time for war. Good thing we made Shifters to be long-lived.”

Graham snarled, pulling another vine from his face. “Not gonna happen.”

“Yes, it will.”

Graham kept up his defiance, but his body felt as icy as the wall that encased Reid. The vines wove relentlessly around his limbs, pulling him down to the black floor. They doubled in speed, pinning his body to the ground, spinning over him in a mesh that soon blotted out all light.

 • • • 

M
isty unloaded Dougal and the cubs from her truck, unlocked her store, and let everyone in. No one had come to work on the place this early, but Misty could see that DX Security and the Shifters had done a great job so far. The broken glass and ceramic had been swept away, the shelves rebuilt. The front doors still needed to be replaced as well as the main counter, but the store was coming along.

Xav had accompanied her, not wanting to let Misty out of his sight. He was responsible for her, he said. His job. He'd brought several security guys who stationed themselves around the front and back in the parking lot.

Misty took the cubs into her office and set them on the desk. “All right, you two. You said you were playing in that basement in Shiftertown, and all the sudden you were here, in the back of a car.” She leaned closer to them. “Tell me now, how did you get there . . .
really
?”

The wolves looked up at her, innocent-faced, and Dougal growled at them.

One of the wolves shifted. He had hazel eyes—Matt. He hunkered down, hiding his body, but Misty had the feeling it was out of shamefacedness, not modesty.

“We hid in the car,” Matt said, his voice small. “Kyle said you and Graham would be mad, so we had to hide. The car was unlocked.”

“Was it?” Misty asked, giving them a skeptical look. The guy who'd been driving it had sworn up and down he'd locked it. He worked for a top security firm and was careful about things like that.

Matt glanced at Kyle, who was still a wolf. “Maybe Dougal taught us how to break into cars,” Matt said.

“Hey, you little monsters . . .” Dougal began.

“Not important.” Misty raised her voice. “I need you two to show me
exactly
where you came out.”

“Okay,” Matt said, and shifted back into a wolf.

He and Kyle scrambled from the desk, their bodies wriggling as they tried to land softly. Matt yipped when he hit the floor, but was up again, racing to the door to scratch on it.

“I didn't teach them to break into cars,” Dougal said as Misty opened the door so the cubs could scamper out. He didn't look Misty in the eye, so he might be lying, he might not. “How to pick locks, yeah, but different kinds.” He hesitated. “Don't tell Graham.”

“I don't have to.” Misty gave him an exasperated look. “Just . . . don't teach them anything else, all right?”

Dougal sent her a grin that showed he might in time become as hard and fearless as Graham. “I'm their honorary uncle. I'm supposed to be a little wild.”

Misty patted his arm. “You're awesome, Dougal.”

“Aw. You're just saying that.”

The cubs, let into the main part of the store, immediately ran to the unlocked front door, pushed it open with body weight and determination, and started racing across the parking lot.