The Cougar's Wish (Desert Guards) (35 page)

Just wait it out and wait for the choking to stop—wait for them to get bored and go away.

It probably only took five minutes for Ellery and Hannah get down the path on a four-wheeler and across the desert to the hellmouth, but to Belle, it seemed like forever.

Five minutes was a long time for a person devastated by the fact they’d broken a promise. While Belle hadn’t promised Steven in explicit terms that nothing bad would happen to him, no one had explained about those soft arteries. They hadn’t had a chance to, and none of them could have expected that Steven would stumble onto one less than an hour after arriving at the ranch.

Stomach unsettled, Belle paced in front of the portal and waited for someone—anyone—to open it enough for her to get through.

“Why are you stalling?” she shouted at the cluster of people standing nearby. “Just crack it open.”

Sighing, Ellery stepped forward holding her athame by the blade. “Belle—”

“Open it.”

“Don’t panic. Remember, there aren’t that many things in there that can actually hurt him.”

“I don’t care. He doesn’t know what they are. He’s going to freak out. I’m trying to keep him from freaking out. This is my fault. I brought him back here because I’m selfish and I couldn’t bear to be separated from him. I should have left him where he was.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Hannah said in a voice that, under normal circumstances, would probably have been described as soothing, but at the moment, Belle found it grating. “No matter where he goes, trouble is going to find him. That’s his lot in life. It’s probably better if that trouble finds him here and not somewhere where a bunch of folks don’t know the score.”

Ellery tossed the dagger in her hand, from blade to hilt, caught it, and let out a breath. “And you weren’t selfish. You behaved as any Cougar would have, and in the end, he came along voluntarily.”

Without even knowing what he would get on this end.

Belle raked a hand through her hair and shifted her weight. “Let me in. Please.”

“Maybe someone else should go in,” Mom said.

Belle turned on her. “Like who?”

“I only meant that—”

“No, it’s
my
job and he’s my mate. Don’t tell me what I can and can’t do. I know him. He’s gonna ... He’s gonna be freaked, and ...”

Hannah grabbed her by the shoulders and gave her a little shake, and Belle stopped prattling. “Don’t do anything stupid. Don’t worry about anything that’s down there right now but Steven.”

“I don’t need that warning. I don’t care if the archangel Raphael is down there chained to a huge rock. He can stay there and have every single one of his feathers plucked out like Dawn. In and out.”

“In and out,” Hannah repeated.

“In and out,” Ellery said, and then tossed the dagger through the film she probably couldn’t even see anymore. They’d certainly been there enough times that she’d know where it was, though.

Charged with her magic, the portal parted where the knife had sliced, and Belle brushed her mother’s hands off hers and ran through the slit.

On the other side, she grabbed the dagger and waved at the cluster of people on the other side. “In and out,” she called to them. “Ten minutes. If I’m not out—”

“I’m coming in,” Ellery said.

Mason sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. It wasn’t like he could object. No asshole would tell his mate that she couldn’t go rescue his sister.

“I’d like to prevent that,” Belle said. “This is my job, not yours.”

With that, she turned on her heel and quickly oriented herself. Steven had gotten sucked into the portal artery near the old homestead which was near the northernmost part of the ranch, so she ran down a cavern path that headed north, her sensitive hearing tuning out sounds that didn’t matter. The ever-present hiss that seemed to live in that in-between realm, the shouts both near and far—some right up close to her ears—but at that moment, nothing dared touch her. Maybe it was because she had Ellery’s dagger, or maybe the look on Belle’s face bore a dare no entity with common sense would toy with.

She heard Steven’s voice nearby. Not screaming, but yelling. Swearing, mostly. She urged her feet to move faster and her brain not to let her down so she could navigate without stumbling—without becoming bait for whatever things in there that thought she was worth the trouble.

“Steven!” she called out as she neared the cavern he was in, and his yelling stopped.

She stepped into the room in time to see him open his eyes. The things around him turned to look at her, but she didn’t stop to assess who or what they were. Maybe there were some beings in there she needed to concern herself with, but at the moment, the most important thing to her was her mate ... and helping him learn how to deal when that kind of shit happened.

“Belle,” he said, calmer now. His clutch on the wall eased, and he stood a little more upright.

“That’s right,” she said. “What’s your brain telling you right now?”

He drew in a deep breath and swatted away the hand of one of the amorphous things reaching out to him. “Not too much of anything, kitten.”

“Take my hand.” She held it out and motioned it over. “They’re no match for you, and you know it.”

“I’d rather them bother me than bother you.”

“That’s sweet, but they don’t want me. They want to bother you because you’re a beacon and they think you can get them out.”

They turned and looked at her, malevolence in their eyes—the ones of them that
had
eyes, anyway.

“Trust me, you’re better off here than in our realm,” Belle said with a smile. “You think you’re hurting here? Well, you’re gonna hurt even more there.”

The fine hairs on the back of Belle’s neck stood on end. She didn’t have to turn to see that someone or something had joined them in the cavern, because she felt them.

Could
smell
them.

“
Impostore
,” she whispered.

It grabbed the back of her arm and yanked her around to face him.

Steven ran forward and pulled her to him. “Get away from her. Maybe I’m wrong, but I get a sneaking feeling that if I pull my knife and stab, you’re gonna bleed. Ain’t that right?”

Tito’s cousin pushed his chin up and looked down at Belle. “Get the hell out of here, and don’t think I’m letting you go out of the goodness of my heart. I bet you got a bunch of folks at that opening waiting for you to emerge, and I’m not stupid. I’ll bide my time, but I want you to pass along a message to my cousin and my dear auntie.”

Belle couldn’t help but to notice that Steven was moving her slowly toward the path and the
Impostore
was following along. For once, Belle was the one who was transfixed, so hypnotized by the words coming out of the demigod’s mouth.

He tapped his temple and narrowed dark eyes at her. “You tell them I’ll remember.”

“I doubt they’ll forget.”

“They forget whatever pleases them to forget, and I’m not going to be forgotten. When I get out, I’m gonna make them remember some more, too.”

“Take it up with your father, dude,” Steven said, walking them right through a cluster of spirits lingering on the path. “Shit,” he muttered, obviously realizing what he’d done, but he kept them moving.

Just like that, Steve.
This was something he knew how to do. It wasn’t so different than being a cop on the surface.

“From what I heard,” Steven said, jabbing the dagger in the guy’s general direction to make a point, “your daddy stood idly by while Lola sucked y’all into that hole. Now, I was busy doing other things at the time and couldn’t witness the party myself, but it seems to be a clear-cut case of your auntie picking up the slack because your daddy was too soft to discipline you the way you needed.”

He kept Belle moving, and although there was absolutely nothing funny about the situation at hand, a laugh bubbled up out of her anyway.

“What’s funny, kitten?” he asked her.

He kept walking backward, and the
Impostore
followed with his faced fixed in a perplexed mien.

“Back where I came from, if some kid’s aunt or uncle had given them the whoopin’ of the century, that kid didn’t get mad at their aunt or uncle. They got mad at themselves or maybe their parents if they were in a certain kind of mood.” He clucked his tongue and turned his back on the guy, pulling Belle along by the hand.

The signal was clear—
I’m not watching you, but you’re not going to try anything
. It was dominant posturing, and Belle knew that well because that was what her brothers were. That
Impostore
would certainly recognize it, being an alpha shifter.

Steven glanced over his shoulder. “Cat got your tongue? And I don’t mean
this
cat. I don’t think you’re her type, but hell, apparently, I’m her type, so I don’t know what that says about her.”

Belle rolled her eyes.

Steven yanked her closer when some noncorporeal entity swooped down from the ceiling but, after a moment’s hesitation, pointed the dagger at it and said, “Nope.”

His adrenaline was spiking wildly and heart thrashing, so it was clear to Belle he was putting up a good front, but that was a marked improvement of where he’d been before.

“You make an enemy of me by speaking to me with your back turned,” the
Impostore
said.

“Hey, scruffy, I’m just walking home. Sorry I can’t stay to chat, but you know how it goes. I’ve been driving for the better part of three days, and I just want to go home and curl up with my cat.” He stopped and turned to Belle. “Assuming I have a place to sleep.”

“Sleep? Sure.” She added in a mutter, “Assuming that’s all you want to do.” She got him moving again. The end was in sight, and she could hear Foye voices on the other side of the veil.

“Since we’re passing messages and stuff,” Steven said, “tell your friends down here that the next time somebody tries to drag me into this place just ’cause they’re dying to gaze upon my pretty face to just send me a text message or something. I’ll send you some selfies.”

At the portal entrance, he drew a slit down the invisible veil—the one thing that probably appeared to be more prominent to him than to Belle—and pushed Belle through it.

She couldn’t get back through. She pressed her hands against the thrumming, solid, invisible area and shouted at him. “Steven!”

“I’m right here, kitten. Don’t get your fur all bunched up.”

“
Steven
,” she growled.

“Just give me a moment.” He pushed his arm through the portal and extended the dagger, hilt out.

Perplexed, Ellery took it.

He pulled his arm back in.

Hannah joined Belle and squinted at the place where Steven should have been, but she probably couldn’t see him either. “What in the fresh hell?”

“He’s right there with Lola’s nephew.”

Suddenly, the group moved in unison toward the opening, ready to fight.

Belle sighed and pressed the seal a little harder, not that it was going to do her any good. “Calm down. It’s just the one, and I guess Steven is lecturing him about the villain speech.”

“It wasn’t even a good one,” Steven called out.

The guy growled and shouted something in pidgin Spanish. He kept yelling, but his voice got softer and softer.

Must be walking away.

Steven stepped through the portal and looked back toward it. “Damn. It really is like Jell-O.”

He straightened his baseball cap and shoved his hands into his pockets.

Then he looked around at them all, as if he couldn’t be sure who he wanted to start with.

Belle swallowed.
What the hell just happened?

“Uh. I was going to tell you about the arteries. We don’t know where they all are, but Claude said they’ll seal on their own. He compared them to plant roots. If you yank a plant out of the ground, the soil will be soft where the roots were until the earth has been compacted. Same principle with hellmouths, I guess.”

Steven nodded slowly and rocked back on his heels. “So, you’ve got those things all over the property.”

“Well, no,” Ellery said. “Just in a certain unidentified radius from where we stand. Claude would be able to say for sure, but it shrinks every day, so it’s pointless to mark it off.”

“So ...” Mason said, crossing his arms over his chest. “You wanna tell us what happened?”

Steven grunted and turned toward Glenda’s house where he’d parked his truck. The thing was going to need an oil change after all that driving and towing of the moving trailer. Belle would get one of the ranch hands to take care of it.

“Nah, I’m going to bed,” Steven said. “Y’all can stand around chewing the cud all you want.”

Hannah jogged after him. “Ste—”

He threw his hand up in a wave. “Night, sissy. Belle, you following me?”

Belle unrooted her boots from the ground and caught up to him. “Yeah, I’m following you. Again.”

He threw an arm around her shoulders and pulled her close, pressing a scorching kiss on her lips that left her breathless and with legs that didn’t want to work. The jackass had the gall to grin at her when he propped her up, and all she could do was stare and blink.

“Yeah. You know, I’ve always been more of a dog person, but I think cats are okay, too.” He squatted a bit and tapped his back.

She hopped onto it.

“I think I’ll keep you, kitten.”

“You forget who you’re talking to, obviously, because you seem to think you have a choice.”

“Gonna be like that, huh?” He tucked his chin atop her hands and gave her a hard bounce that probably bruised her tailbone.

“Ow!” She gave his hips a punishing squeeze between her thighs.

“Keep on with that and I’ll think you’re making overtures.”

She rolled her eyes and then laughed. “Well, maybe it does count as foreplay in my book.”

“Damn it.” Steven increased his lazy speed to an outright jog.

“I thought you were tired,” she teased.

“I am, but it doesn’t matter. I’m gonna talk gibberish for about an hour about what just happened to me, and you’re gonna pat my arm and say ‘there, there,’ and I’m gonna lie and say I’m okay. You’re gonna help me fake it until I make it, right?”