Cougar's Courage (Duals and Donovans: The Different) (34 page)

She suspected her own bite marks and bruises glowed the same passionate color, even the one on her cheekbone that had been completely accidental, an unfortunate collision with the bed frame while they struggled for dominance.

Good thing sorcerers didn’t read such things well.

The question, of course, was whether fae were just as dense.

They’d gone back and forth about how to approach Chenier, how to make contact again. In the end, they simply drove to the village where they’d last seen him, in Cara’s truck. They held hands all the way there, and the feel of Jack’s hand, hard and hot despite the chilly air, eased Cara’s nerves.

They would both have to be someone else for a time, someone convincingly different from the people they really were.

But at the moment, Cara felt more like herself than she ever had, solid and complete and secure to stand on her own, knowing that she didn’t have to.

She loved Jack, and Jack loved her. The thought zinged through her brain and her blood and her pussy, even though they’d talked around the words, talked about them, but hadn’t spoken them, not with everything looming before them. Still, she felt it. She couldn’t deny it anymore, and the knowledge made her stronger in the face of what might otherwise have been overwhelming fear.

“Your touch feels different,” she finally said. “Like it’s reaching inside my soul through my skin.”

He turned to her briefly and smiled the kind of smile that would melt a woman’s heart if he hadn’t done so already. “It is. Your soul is silky. I would have expected spikes, from your aura, but even that seems softer now. Still bright and clashing, but the colors shade in and out instead of having hard edges.”

She squinted at Jack’s aura. “Yours isn’t plaid anymore. It’s swirly. Like Rafe’s, only crazier colors. You’ve got colors I’ve never seen on you.”

“Red, right? A lot more red.”

She nodded. “And some dark blue mixed in with all the brightness. Just the color of my old uniform. I bet I have amber and bright green in mine now.”

Jack squeezed her hand and smiled.

About a mile from the village, Cara pulled the truck onto the muddy shoulder, and they both got out. The world was soggy from thaw, dotted with patches of melting snow, but Cara took a deep breath and smelled rich mud and the promise of green. She couldn’t begin to imagine how wonderful it must smell to Jack.

Spring had come while they were distracted by fighting evil.

And they would prevail over the evil.

Jack sniffed at the air, the cat clear under his human form. “This way. I can smell him.” He led her to a ramshackle farmhouse, its door hanging ajar, broken windows staring eyeless.

Cara insisted on going in first, gun drawn. Once inside the door, she drew a sharp breath. The inside of the house was furnished in quiet luxury, like the study of an eighteenth-century gentleman. Cara squinted, trying to see through illusion, but the beautiful room remained constant. Of course Chenier wouldn’t want to live in a hovel; the dilapidated outside was the illusion. “Clear!” she called from habit, even though Jack had followed close on her heels and they were standing together on an expensive-looking Oriental rug surrounded by warm, leather-bound books, and furniture that belonged in a museum.

“
Sorciére
!” Jack called.

Chenier stepped out of nowhere and said in that archaic accent, “So nice to see you again, my friend who is also my enemy, and who was not who I thought he was. I see your woman problems are solved. She is a lovely creature, though also not who I thought she was. Weaker magically than the flame-haired witch, but that is good in some ways, eh? A woman should not be so powerful she will defy you at every turn.” He laughed like fingernails on a chalkboard as he took several steps closer to Cara. “And beautiful. I have held your woman, cougar, kissed her, felt her body respond to mine. I can see the attraction.”

Jack bristled visibly, then contained himself. “Watch it. She’s mine.”

“As you say, friendly enemy. When last I saw you, you were fighting against me. What brings you here, with her?”

“I hoped that time I could send them all to you, and you’d take care of them. But they made us come along, and the damn witch was just too good. And I didn’t want to die or have my woman get hurt, so I fought. You know how it is. Figured I’d better show up and explain—and bring you a little present. She’ll go to you if I tell her to. And I know you’ve tasted her already.”

Through the spirit guides, Cara smelled the sour stench of Jack’s web of lies, but she knew Chenier could not.

As he said it, Cara was following the plan, staring at Chenier like she found him fascinating. Which she did, but fascinating the way a poisonous toad might be. She even ran her tongue over her lips, as if she were unconscious of it.

Jack turned his head, then “caught” her flirting with Chenier. He punched her in the stomach, pulling his blow at the last second so it barely hurt. “You’re mine until I say otherwise. Behave yourself.” Cara glared, a glare she didn’t have to fake.

“I thought a blonde city girl would be softer than what I was used to,” Jack said conversationally to Chenier, “but I think she may actually be meaner than a cougar woman, even if she doesn’t have fangs. And certainly sluttier. Cougars mate, you know. I forgot humans just fuck around for sport—or at least this one does. But she does it well.”

The sorcerer laughed. Magic beat on their shields. Through her connection to Lynx and Jack’s cougar, Cara could even smell it, an acrid, chemical reek.

Jack sighed theatrically. “I got the girl back. Now I don’t know what to do with her. But you did help, so I’m here to keep my side of the bargain. But first, the blonde’s yours for the next few hours. Just leave me enough to have some fun with when you’re done. After that, we’ll talk about what I can do for you.”

This part hadn’t been rehearsed, exactly. She’d expected more lead-in, but she could punt. Putting a lot of whine in her voice, and a hint of real pain, she said, “What the hell are you doing?”

“Picking the winning team, babe. You keep saying how much you hate the village. This is your chance to get out and get even.”

She punched his arm, then jerked away from him. “I’m all for dealing with the winning side, especially if they have indoor plumbing, but you can’t just give me away like that.”

“You stupid cunt!” They’d chosen the code-phrase beforehand, to signal when things were about to get rough. Cara knew it was coming and thought she’d braced for it.

But rehearsing while giggling in postcoital glow wasn’t the same as hearing it snarled convincingly from Jack’s lips. She cringed a little on the inside as she cringed a lot on the outside.

They’d practiced this part too, the part where Jack pretended to smack her hard enough to send her reeling, both of them using their knowledge of martial arts and energy work to make it look convincing without actually damaging her. In their practice sessions, it had worked fine. Here, nervous and slightly addled by magic, she wasn’t as coordinated as usual, and maybe Jack wasn’t either, catlike reflexes or not.

Cara saw stars and tasted blood. It didn’t take acting to raise her hand to her mouth, probing for damage, which thankfully amounted to nothing more than a bitten lip.

Probing for damage and popping a pill into her mouth. The rich taste of blood hid the bitter, musty taste of the pill Elissa and Grand-mère had concocted—so-called magic mushrooms laced with skullcap for vision, damiana for desire, which Elissa theorized would then work better with her own red magic. A bit of catnip, not enough, unfortunately, to improve the flavor or calm human nerves, but theoretically enough to act as a carrier for Jack and Rafe, who might otherwise be unaffected.

And a boatload of witch-magic to make it all hit the system quickly and dispel just as fast.

She choked it down, hiding her disgust behind real and feigned distress and pain.

In a few seconds, all she could taste was magic.

By the time she moved her bloodied hand away from her mouth and turned back to the men, the smear of blood on her hand glowed. She could see the life in it. Could see the life in everything and, more importantly, see the gaping wound where the mortal life in Chenier
wasn’t
.

It looked like a black hole from a science-fiction movie, a door to a dangerous place. A door that needed to be shut, but still a door.

She hoped it wasn’t actually like a real black hole, which would tear you to atoms if you got too close.

Cara looked away, shuddering, and stared at Jack, pretending to be angry and shocked but really just fascinated. Fires of green and tawny amber flickered over him. The cat form coexisted with the wordy. Magic limned his muscles. His fur stood on end. He looked hotter than ever, and she knew without checking that he was straining against his jeans with need. Knew it because she was wet.

Was it the damiana or Elissa’s magic or simply because all barriers had been blasted open and there was no reason to pretend? In any case, she could use this. Going through that connection, she told him to fall when she knocked him back with her magic, a showy blast that wouldn’t have done much without his cooperation. He did, sprawling onto the floor, pretending to be stunned.

Cara then cocked her hip at Chenier, licked her painful lips as sensually as she could manage and said in a husky whisper that didn’t sound like her own voice, “Like I said, I’m all for dealing with the winning team, as long as it’s my choice. It’s not my mud-hole village anyway. I’m just there because I needed help with my magic. This asshole taught me what I needed to know, and he’s been fun in his primitive furry way, but he just hit me for the last fucking time. And I still remember your hands on me, René. You scare the piss out of me, but you turn me on. Power turns me on.”

Chenier nodded. “Intelligent as well as beautiful.”

“And I know the infrastructure of Toronto. Know who in the police and the legal system are on the take. Wouldn’t Toronto be more your speed than a backwater village?”

“The village is…special to me. But Toronto has its merits.” Chenier ran his hand over the smooth, rich surface of a beautiful antique table. Cara felt the caress on her skin.

It would have sickened her if she’d been more herself, just as it would have hurt to say the words, but it felt as distant as watching a bad movie while doing something else.

This was what allowed her to blow the fallen Jack a teasing kiss and saunter over to Chenier, what allowed her to find the courage to put her hand on his chest, right over the gaping hole where his self should live if he’d been in any way normal.

She put her hands there and
pulled
.

It was like pulling an earthworm out of the garden, only a lot slimier. But after a few seconds, she felt others pulling with her. First Lynx and Cougar, then Jack himself. After that, and to her surprise, Coyote.

And then, distantly, Gramps, through Coyote, and Rafe—through his version of Cougar, she supposed.

Chenier tried to toss her aside, but Jack grabbed her shoulders and helped her stand her ground. His extra weight and muscle helped, but his solidity, his strong physical and magical presence, were what made it possible for her to hang on against Chenier’s struggling, against the writhing embodied evil in her hand.

Just when she thought she was getting somewhere, the wormlike thing grew tentacles, reached out to grab her and Jack. Jack did something—she couldn’t see it, but could feel bracing, fresh energy, saw garish colors—and the tentacles thrashed and winced away. But doubt assailed her. How long could they hold out? This thing was strong. Stronger than she and Jack put together, even with Gramps and Rafe backing them up from a distance. They weren’t going to make it.

Not if she didn’t block the despair that was seeping in through her hands.

Quickly, she imagined protective gloves. They appeared instantly. They were yellow and shapeless, like those gloves people wore for washing dishes, but she felt better immediately. Better yet when she wasted a millisecond of concentration to turn them to her favorite bright red.

But damn, even without the mind-fuck effects, Chenier—or the thing possessing Chenier—put up a fight. It retracted, dragging Cara and Jack closer. Then they’d manage to reel it out more. Lather, rinse, repeat. And all the time, black and fuchsia roiled around them, black and fuchsia and another color that had no name and that Cara was pretty sure she could see only because of Elissa’s pill. The colors were screaming invectives in a language she didn’t understand.

Unnerving, probably a hell of a lot more unnerving if you weren’t a shaman who knew about using illusions to rattle your foes. If only Cara could spare the energy for some distracting sound effects of her own, or falling anvils or anything. But all she could do was hang on and pull—and Jack, despite his years of practice, seemed to be in the same boat.

She was just wondering where the backup was when friendly magic surged through her, a magic that felt nothing liked her own, all heat and cinnamon, with hints of evergreen and herbs and something else…pears, perhaps. Elissa.

The building lurched. No, reality lurched. The ancient wood began to sprout leaves. A huge black-maned lion crashed through the door. Elissa charged in behind him, and Rafe flanked her.

Grand-mère rode on the lion’s back.