Hour of the Lion

grave.”

Alec rubbed his face, sighed, and then asked, “What do the guards outside know?”

“They’re Vidal’s thugs. And they didn’t see anything,” she answered. “You’re safe. There’s nobody left who-”

Calum glanced at the handler. “Just one.”

Victoria stiffened. “Calum. No.”

He studied her for a moment. She’d burned the information, saved Alec’s life. Hope tried to ease past his barriers as he looked at her. She’d used all those military skills to help the Daonain today. Maybe, just maybe, she wouldn’t have to pay the penalty. His voice soft, he said, “Victoria, return to Cold Creek. We’ll talk. Perhaps-”

She interrupted, “What are you planning to do to him?”

“He cannot retain his knowledge of us.”

Her appalled expression grew. She looked over at Alec. “You said it worked good on one-time spottings. More than that, and you destroy big chunks of their memory. You can’t do that to him.”

“Vicki, there’s no choice.” Alec held his hands out. “He’s with the government. They’ll try to exterminate us.”

Her face turned cold. “No. It’s not a risk I’ll allow.”

Calum felt the tiny splinter of hope die.

“Vicki,” Alec said softly, “don’t. You can’t win against both of us.”

She slid a pistol out of the small black bag beside her.

Calum looked at her easy grip, the tilt of the automatic, and sighed. One more skill she possessed. “I do not think you will kill us.”

Her finger tightened on the trigger, loosened. “Probably not.” The pistol dipped lower, pointed directly at Alec. “But if you figure it’s okay to damage Wells’ mind, then I guess it’s okay to blow out Alec’s knee. It’d cripple him for life, Calum. There’d be no bone left there to heal.”

Calum tilted his head in acquiescence, his heart turning to ash inside his chest.

She stepped backwards. “Bring your car to the front, Wells.”

Silent as a cat, the man slipped out the door. Too soon, the hum of an engine came from outside the house.

Calum caught her gaze. “You are a shifter, Victoria. We’re your people.” Please hear me. Don’t do this to us all. “If you leave with him, I will have to call for your death. Is this truly what you want?”

She started to speak, then shook her head. As she backed toward the door, tears filled her eyes.

But the pistol never wavered.

* * *

Daylight was breaking when Vic finally decided she’d driven far enough. She was high in the mountains, almost to the Canadian border, and miles down a tiny fire road. With a sigh, she shut the engine off and rested her forehead on the steering wheel. She’d cried enough, cursed enough…grieved enough.

After leaving the farmhouse, she’d dropped Wells off in a convenient town. When she told him she was keeping his car, he’d shrugged and called it a fair trade for his life. He’d said, as if he’d just discovered the fact, “You really are a werelion.”

Almost able to smile, she’d given him Lachlan’s words, hearing again the young voice saying, ‘Some people call us Daonain or shifters. Me, I prefer werecats.’

Then Wells had asked her what she’d do. His open concern felt…odd. Nice.

She slid out of the car and heard the engine ping as it cooled. She’d told him she’d be all right. Maybe, eventually, that wouldn’t be a lie. She’d made errors over the past months, stupid mistakes due to her background, her fears. People had been hurt because of her poor decisions. She’d been hurt.

Breathing in the cold, clean air, she stripped, locked her clothes in the trunk, and gave herself a good scratch. She itched all over-apparently Alec hadn’t bullshitted about the effects of being surrounded by metal. After pulling off her bandages, she checked the bullet hole. The bleeding had not only stopped, but the wound looked a couple of days old. Shifters healed fast. Good.

Time to move on. She’d fixed everything she could. Now she had to confront her own fears and decide what came next.

Through the long night’s drive, she had remembered what Calum had said in the cave of the hot-springs, ‘The silence of the mountains serves me well when I am troubled.’ Now, tilting her head back, she looked upward where the rising sun lit the snow-topped peaks of the huge mountain range.

And she shifted.

Chapter Twenty-seven

Calum paced around the shelves, unable to settle. At the front of the bookstore, Thorson sat at his desk, listening to Alec. With a jolt of pain, Calum saw how the newest grief had aged the old man. Last week, when he’d heard about Victoria’s betrayal from Angie, Thorson had disappeared into the mountains.

He’d only returned today.

Calum paced back to the counter as Alec related the events at Vidal’s farmhouse. “…after Vicki and Wells got away, we burned the building.”

Thorson leaned back in his chair with a disbelieving expression. “You two couldn’t catch a car on a dirt road?”

“We tried,” Calum said. “Almost caught up, and then she threw something out the window. What did you call it, Alec?”

“A flash-bang. Good name for it.”

Thorson snorted out a laugh. “I’ve read about them. Blinding light, deafening noise?”

“Precisely.” Calum rubbed his ears, the memory still painful. “In cat form and at night, it’s quite intense. By the time we could see again, they were gone.”

“She’s a cool cookie,” Thorson said.

Alec slammed a fist on the counter as his temper, so long under control, ignited like the bloody flash-bang. “Damn you, Thorson, she’s not a cool anything. She betrayed us. And that spymaster she saved will do everything in his power to hand us over to the government. She chose him over us.”

Calum understood his reaction. Seeing Victoria choose the enemy had knotted his guts like a meal of rotting carrion. And yet…

Thorson turned his head away, his face tight.

Calum leaned against the counter wearily. Too many sleepless nights. He’d tried to get over the pain of her loss, to see past his anger. The clan waited for him to declare Victoria’s life forfeit, and he…couldn’t. Something bothered him, kept him from taking that step, and he couldn’t tell whether his emotions were swaying him or if he’d missed an essential fact. “If you don’t mind, Joe, I would like to go through this together. I am not seeing clearly, I fear.”

Thorson’s face tightened, increasing Calum’s guilt, and then he nodded. “All right. Start with when she first appeared. With my Lachlan.”

“Swane and Vidal had captured him,” Alec said. His hands were still clenched, but he was making the effort.

Calum moved up beside him, shoulder rubbing shoulder, and felt his brother’s anger diminish. “Did she truly assist in Lachlan’s escape or fake it to gain her entry with us?”

Thorson shook his head. “Lachlan Gifted her. The boy had the ability to read people. He wouldn’t have made a mistake, and an enemy wouldn’t have stood still for the ritual. Truth, Cosantir. It was a true Gifting.”

Thorson would not have been fooled. “Yes.”