The Thing About Weres

Come to me.

Free me.

Across the mist, across the pond, across the gap of time and experience, our gazes caught and held. Sparks started to turn in a lazy circuit in his eyes. Little nameless comets with white-blue tails spun until his eyes glowed, and emitted a wide fanning beam of Trowbridge blue. There is no other way to describe it—it was a hue even deeper in tone than the waters of the Mediterranean.

My heart—that poor organ that’d had such a workout over the last ten minutes—started to do another impetuous quickstep in my chest. I reached for an answering flare. Willed a spark to turn. Felt the burn.

His flare waited for mine. A test … Oh shit. A test.

Tears welled, blurring my vision.

I’m out of juice.

The flare in his sputtered out and died.

Trowbridge measured the distance, rapidly evaluating the number of feet he’d have to leap to get to me. Then, he looked down at the murky water. Grim turned to something fouler.

“They pulled the log out last month,” I called helpfully.

“Why are you tied to a tree?”

“It’s a long story.”

My true love shot me a hurried look that could be best described as enigmatic. He went back to frowning at the water. I probed inside myself, hopeful that I’d find a little something not used up so I could return a belated flare.

Nothing, I’m dry.

The Fae’s bowler hat sat low on his head, tilted so that it brushed the ear that sported the long dangly earring. He said something to Trowbridge in my mother’s tongue, to which my mate snapped, “You’re on my land now. We speak English here.”

The Fae was about thirty, maybe thirty-five, with a long nose and a spill of blond hair that fell to his waist. With a tight frown, he noted, “The Black Mage’s men are expert trackers. We can’t linger here.”

“I don’t intend to,” said Trowbridge. “We’re going to make a leap for it.”

“Across the water?” The Fae had a light accent.

“No, we’re going up there,” said my nonswimming boyfriend, with a toss of his head toward me and my tree.

Disbelief crossed the Fae’s face as he examined the cliff’s crumbling handholds. His gaze roved the gathering place. Not much to see, really. Knox backing away from the cliff. A mostly empty field—from that angle it was doubtful the Fae could see Cordelia, Biggs, and Harry going through their change near the edge of the forest. A few mounds of clothing and a few clumps of shoes, all placed strategically far from any bush or tree. His gaze lit on me and indifferently moved on. Which was damn well annoying—hello, over here, chained to a freakin’ tree—but it was clear my damsel-in-distress situation wasn’t half as fascinating as Casperella. The Fae took in her ghostly awesomeness with the squint-eyed approval of a trophy wife looking at a pair of Jimmy Choos.

“Move back, we’ll need a running start,” said Trowbridge. “We’ll go on three.”

The Fae pursed his lips as Trowbridge crouched to slip the rope from the wolf’s neck. “I can bring the portal closer.”

“How?”

The blond gave a fleeting sidelong glance at the golden chain binding his wrist to Trowbridge’s. “I’ll need my arms free,” he said.

“Not going to happen,” said Trowbridge.

“As you wish,” Bowler-hat said with a cocky smile. He lifted his free hand and flicked his fingers—a mirror of the way I do—in the direction of the glowing green sphere above Casperella’s shoulder.

His magic hit mine with a hiss.

Trowbridge’s head snapped back in surprise. He fought for control, and then said in a thick voice, “What is that—”

“You taste Fae magic through my skin, wolf. Nothing more.” The Fae with the hat, and the balls the size of melons, said to my mate, “If you cannot bear the feel of it on your flesh, you should release me.”

“You’re not in Merenwyn anymore,” Trowbridge growled. “You take orders from me now, Shadow.”

Bowler-hat retorted, “And you are not in Merenwyn anymore, Son of Lukynae. Call your pack. Show me that your leadership skills here are equal to those you claim in my realm.”

White teeth flashed. “I don’t need to tell the wolves of Creemore that I’m home. In a few minutes, every one of them will have caught my scent and know that Robson Trowbridge is back.”

The Fae grew stiller than a mouse facing a stout lady with a sturdy broom. “Trowbridge?”

“Robson Trowbridge, son of Jacob, grandson of Stephen. Last of a long line of Alphas.”

Bowler-hat offered his traveling companion his profile as he half turned toward the Stronghold ridge. He had a long nose. A little pucker appeared at his lip as he eyed the silver outline of the trailer. Then, his mouth firmed. He looked over his shoulder toward the gates then spared the full moon a quick, sharp glance. “Will you be able to hold against the call of the moon?”

“I will hold,” Trowbridge said through his teeth.

“If you change while I am bound to you, I will use this magic to smite you.”

My guy lifted his lips, and growled, “Not before I smite you.”

Trowbridge said “smite”?

“There’s no time for argument,” said the blond. “Know that I could kill you with the magic I have seething in my hands. I could, but have not. Consider that. Perhaps I mean no ill to Robson Trowbridge and the Weres of Creemore.”

He returned his attention to Casperella and my magic. A glittering bead of green swelled at the point of contact on the sphere bobbing above her shoulder. The Fae squeezed his eyes shut, his expression fierce as he concentrated. The hole widened, and then magic bits began to stream out of the ball in a thin, supple line of green fluorescence.

Who the hell is this guy? It didn’t surprise me that I couldn’t see his magic—that was just an inherent fact about the Fae gift; you can only see the visual proof of your own talent—but the realization that he could see mine well enough to steal it was downright shocking.

Thief.

“No!” Casperella cried out, heartfelt and pathetic.

Without remorse or hesitation, the Fae drained the ball until it was nothing but an empty sheath that turned itself inside out, before it, too, disappeared into the end of the rope of magic. At that, my friendly ghost dropped her hands and issued a faint moan. Casperella’s expression was tired, tragic, and angered all in one as she melted in front of us, thinning from a three-dimensional corporeal shape to something far more translucent. A moment later, her gray dress turned back into a shroud, her face became a blur of white, and then, with a final, silent sigh, she disappeared altogether.

The Fae rolled his neck and with one fluid wrist flick of his right hand he sent a bullwhip of magic streaking toward me. I let out a high-pitched screech and turned my head away.

Thud!

Gad, I flinched from my own magic. Eyes squeezed shut, I waited for the pain. I had been dodging hurt all night; the odds were against me that he would miss. After the lapse of what probably had been two seconds, I whispered, “Four thousand.” It wouldn’t have hurt me, would it? “Five thousand.” I waited for my hands to heat, my skin to blister.

“Six thousand.”

No payback misery. No dizzy swelling of Fae inside me. No discomfort at all, actually, other than the fact that Ralph had chosen to burrow out from under my hair, and was using a loose hank of it to rappel to the top of my head. His little golden feet bit into my scalp as I cautiously lifted my cheek.

Huh.

“Who is he?” I said in awestruck tones to Ralph.