“Got to run!” Bran waved a packet of surveys at us. “Thanks for the maps.”
Mist swirled and he was gone.
Curran roared.
Chapter 21
When a lion roars next to you, at first you think it’s thunder. That first sound is so deep, so frightening, it couldn’t possibly come from a living creature. It blasts your nerves, freezing you in place. All thoughts and reason flee from your mind, and you’re left as you are, a helpless pathetic creature with no claws, no teeth, and no voice.
The rumble dies and you think it’s over, but the roar lashes you again, like some horrible cough, once, twice, picking up speed, and finally rolling, unstoppable, deafening. You fight the urge to squeeze your eyes shut. You turn your head with an effort that takes every last shred of your control.
You see a seven-foot-tall monster. It has a lion’s head and a lion’s throat. It’s gray and furry. Dark stripes dash across its tree-trunk limbs like whip marks. Its claws could disembowel you with a mere twitch. Its eyes scald you with gold fire.
It shakes the ground with its roar. You smell the sharp stench of urine as smaller monsters cringe and you clamp your hands over your ears, so you don’t go deaf.
Finally Curran’s roar rolled to a close. Thank God. I thought of pointing out that Bran couldn’t hear him and even if he could, he probably wouldn’t faint in mortal terror, but somehow this didn’t seem to be the right moment for clever observations. The lion’s face quivered and snapped into the familiar chimera of lion and human I knew as Curran’s half-form. His voice boomed across the yard. “Search the Keep. Find out how he got in and what else he took.”
The shapeshifters cleared with record speed, all except Jim.
I needed to get to Bran. Time was short, the flare was almost on us, and I wanted to find Julie and her mother before it hit full force. But there was no way I could enter the mist with the monisto in my hand. Morrigan’s Hound wanted it. There was no way I could leave without it because the Fomorians wanted it, also. They would come for it.
What to do?
Jim looked at Curran. “We have bait. He likes her. He might come to visit her.”
Bastard. He screwed me over again and again. Why the hell was I always surprised? I looked to Curran. He was considering it; I could almost see the wheels turning under that mane. “Don’t do this. I have to find Julie. I can’t stay here waiting for that idiot to pop out of thin air.”
Jim reached out to me.
“Put your hand down or lose it.” I didn’t bother looking at him. “You know me. You know I’ll do it.”
“We don’t need anyone’s help,” Curran said.
Jim withdrew his hand.
I took a deep breath. I saw a way out of this mess, but it was the kind of way that only a desperate fool like me would take. It was either incredibly smart or incredibly stupid.
I held out the monisto. “The bowman wants this. I saw him looking at it. I trust the Pack to safeguard it for me until I need it.” I put it into Curran’s clawed hand. “I trust
It was a gesture of utter faith. Everyone knew Bran had breached the Pack’s security three times. The fact that I trusted Curran with the monisto would mean more to him than any revenge. I had made it personal. If he accepted it, he would die to protect it.
The golden eyes looked into me. “You have my word,” he said.
“That’s all I need.”
I was free to do as I must. I could keep Bran occupied, assuming I found him, and no reeve would ever best Curran.
“I’m going to the bouda house to check on my friend and then I’m off to look for Julie.”
“I’ll get you an escort as far as the hyena’s territory.”
“I can find my own way.”
Curran shook his head. “Don’t argue with me right now.”
Two minutes later I rode a horse to the bouda house, accompanied by four somber-faced werewolves. They left me at the invisible boundary. As one of them kindly explained, each shapeshifter clan within the Pack had an expectation of privacy in their meeting place. The privacy wasn’t easily breached by members of a different beast clan.
The same bouda that promised to smile when she crushed Jim’s bones waited on the porch. She watched as I dismounted and got Esmeralda’s books out of the buggy still abandoned by the house.
“You’re back,” she said. “I peeked in on your chickie while you were gone. She’s hot. Does she like girls?”
“I honestly don’t know.”
“So what’s her kick, candy, music? What does she like?”
“Guns.”
“Guns?”
“Yep.”
The bouda frowned. “I don’t know anything about guns. This isn’t going to be work, is it? Bummer. Now I don’t know if I want to bother.”
She made me think of Curran again. “Men are dumb bastards,” I said.
She nodded. “Women aren’t much better. Whiny bitches, most of them.” She thought about it. “Guys can be fun. I recommend Raphael. He’s the most patient one we’ve got, so he gets lucky more than the others. Although I think your chickie has his complete attention at the moment.”
I found Andrea and Aunt B in the kitchen at a small round table, drinking tea. The sight of Andrea bringing the teacup to her hyena muzzle struck me as hilarious. I clamped my mouth shut and tried not to laugh. It had to be nerves.
If she asked for biscuits, I’d lose it.
Andrea saw me and visibly stiffened. “How did it go?”
“With what?”
Aunt B sighed. “She wants to know if Curran’s coming to kill her.”
“Oh. No, he isn’t interested in murdering you. Believe me, right now you’re the least of his problems.”
Andrea exhaled.
“Please tell me there is coffee.”
Aunt B grimaced. “They’re already crazy. If I let them have coffee, they’d be bouncing off the walls. We have herbal tea.”
I put my books on the table.
“You look like you need some sleep.” Andrea put a steaming cup before me.
I needed to find Julie, find her mom, convince a sociopath to donate some blood for the good of mankind, and deal with a tentacled atrocity swaddled in cloth and his rabid mermaids. I needed coffee.
A male bouda sauntered into the kitchen. He wore black leather pants and a leather vest baring a chiseled chest. He wasn’t conventionally handsome, the opposite actually: his nose was too long and his face was too narrow, but he had intense blue eyes and black hair combed to shiny perfection, and he used what he had to his best advantage. You knew by some sort of natural female instinct that he would be good in bed, and when he looked at you, you thought about sex.
He glanced at Andrea with an odd longing on his face, switched his attention to me, and offered me his hand. “Sorry about our…altercation in the buggy. I was only playing. I’m Raphael.”
“The one who likes the hurting.” I moved to shake his hand and he reversed it and kissed my fingers instead,
