“Fox?”
He felt Melisande’s hand in his fur, felt his animal leap with pleasure at the warmth of her healing gift. And all of a sudden he could shift again. In a spray of colored lights, he was once more standing on two feet.
She gazed at him worriedly. “What happened?”
But before he could answer her, he heard a shout.
Fox’s head jerked up at the sound of the familiar voice. “Kara.”
A moment later, Kara came racing around the street corner half a block up, barefoot and unkempt, her ponytail akimbo, but looking no worse for wear.
“Kara!” He ran toward her.
She flung herself into his arms. “Oh, thank God.” Trembling and pale, she looked up at him with eyes wild with fear. “I escaped. But they’re after me.”
“They’re not going to touch you again,” he vowed. Setting her on her feet and pulling her against his side, he turned to where Castin and Melisande stood watching them. He met Castin’s gaze. “Our Radiant, Kara.”
Castin offered her a shallow bow. “Radiant.”
Kara looked up at Fox. “I know which way to go.” She pulled away, started forward, motioning them to follow. “Come on. We need to run. They’ll be here any minute, and there are too many of them to fight.”
Fox waited for Melisande, relieved to see the battle fire back in her eyes. Side by side, they followed Kara and Castin, throwing glances behind, but Fox saw no sign of the Mage.
Shivers tore through him, goose bumps rising on his arms. Kill Melisande. Don’t trust Kara. You’re going the wrong way.
Bloody fecking lying intuition!
“This way!” Kara called and made a hard left into a narrow alley lined with the rotting corpses of ancient motorcycles. But halfway down the alley, she began to slow. Tears started running down her cheeks. “I’m too tired. They’re going to kill us!”
“Kara . . .”
But as Fox approached her, she lifted her hands as if to ward him off. “Don’t touch me!”
He stared at her. Those bastards had done a real number on her. “Let me carry you, Radiant.”
“No!” She backed away, against the side wall, knocking over one of the motorcycle husks. “Don’t touch me. I don’t want anyone to touch me!”
Fox felt a hard fist of dread. Had they raped her? He frowned. She’d leaped into his arms when she first saw him.
“If the Mage are really coming, we need to keep moving,” Castin said behind him.
Fox heard the rumble a heartbeat before the steel caging shot up out of the ground like twin walls, one in front of them, the other behind, running the entire width of the alley. High above, another piece formed the cage roof, snapping shut with an ominous clang.
Fox met Melisande’s shocked gaze. Caught . . . again.
With a massive creak, the cage walls began to move ever-so-slightly inward.
“They’re going to crush us!” Kara cried.
Fox reached for Melisande’s hand.
Castin shook his head. “Not crush us. They’ll pin us close to the bars, where they can easily reach us.”
“Hell,” Fox muttered. Because a single touch by a Mage’s hand and they’d be enthralled, puppets who would follow their Mage captors without a fight, right to their own doom. Or to the doom of the Feral Warriors.
Chapter Seventeen
As one, Fox and Castin leaped for opposite sides of the cage that spanned the narrow alley in this latest world along the Mage’s labyrinthine gauntlet. Fox gripped the iron bars, throwing all of his weight, all of his strength into stopping the cage from collapsing inward, either crushing them or pinning them so they would be easily enthralled when the Mage came for them. He struggled until the sweat ran down his temples and soaked his back, until his muscles ached from the strain, but the cage wall just kept moving.
Behind him, Kara wailed, “They’re going to kill us!” He was tempted to knock her out just to quiet her screeching.
The thought stopped him cold. He hadn’t known Kara long, or well, but if there was one thing he did know, she was no coward. The Kara he knew would never screech.
His scalp crawled with memory. What had Melisande said? The key could be anything—animal, mineral, or vegetable.
Or Kara?
Holy shite.
Destroy the key, and I destroy the magic.
His scalp went ice-cold. And if he was wrong? If this was the true Kara? The thought that he might accidentally kill his Radiant, Lyon’s mate, had his flesh creeping with horror.
“You okay?” Melisande asked at his elbow.
As the contracting cage forced him back another step, he leaned close to Melisande’s ear. “I don’t think she’s Kara.”
Melisande looked at him with surprise, her gaze turning thoughtful. “I think you might be right. I never felt like slapping the real one, not even when I hated all Therians. In fact, I kind of admired her.” She frowned, then mouthed, “The key?”
“What if we’re wrong?”
“What if we’re not?” Melisande stroked his back, pleasing him utterly. “Is there a way to test your theory?”
Goose bumps rose on his arm, and he shivered. Feck. He was about to get another mishmash of intuitions. She’s the real Kara. She’s the key. Lie down and go to sleep.
Damned useless intuition.
Taking a deep breath, he attempted to calm his mind. He’d been at Feral House such a short time, he didn’t have the history with Kara that might have afforded him information the Mage might not have. And perhaps there wasn’t anything the Mage didn’t know since they had access to the real Kara and, possibly, her memories.
But would the soulless Mage remember what it was to love a mate? And, goddess help him, he was beginning to think he did.
He turned away from the caging and his futile struggle to keep it from moving. Striding to Kara, he grabbed the screeching woman’s arm roughly. “Lyon’s furious with you for running away from Feral House, you bitch.”
She gasped, cowered. “It wasn’t my fault! They took me against my will.”
No, this woman was not Kara. Lyon worshipped the air his mate breathed, and his mate knew it. The real Kara wouldn’t believe, even for a second, that Lyon was angry with her.Goddess help me if I’m wrong. He pulled his blade and, with one vicious swipe, cut off her head.
“Fox!” Castin lunged at him, then stopped abruptly as the woman, the cage, and the town disappeared, leaving them once more standing among the trees on the mountainside where they’d started.
Castin stared at him, the shock of Fox’s action still in his eyes. “How did you know?”
“Once you meet our Radiant, you’ll understand.”
“Look,” Melisande said.
Fox turned to find a fortress sitting high on the mountainside not more than a quarter of a mile away. His jaw dropped, a smile lifting his mouth. “Inir’s stronghold.”
He held out his hand for Melisande, and together, the three started toward it. But they’d traveled no more than a dozen yards when shouts echoed in the distance as dozens of Mage sentinels began to flow out of the fortress’s main gates.
The three of them exchanged glances.
“We broke their toy,” Fox murmured.
Melisande grunted. “So much for the element of surprise.”
This was not a battle for a Feral who wasn’t healing, an Ilina who couldn’t mist, and a shifter who couldn’t shift. If he could be certain that the temporal cage had been disabled for good, he might try to find Lyon and the others before breaching the fortress. But the labyrinth could reset at any time, the other Ferals could be anywhere, and the real Kara needed them. Now.
“Any plan on how to get in there?” Castin asked.
Fox was about to shake his head no, when something about the rocky terrain far below the fortress caught his eye. A tree formation he’d seen before. And suddenly he remembered. The flashback he’d had on the beach, the one where he’d entered a tunnel through the rock. Sly had stolen into some place he shouldn’t have been, desperate to reach a woman he’d been in love with. A woman, he’d realized too late, who had already had her soul stolen. Fox had felt Sly’s heart cave at the realization, and been privy to his thoughts as he’d chosen to go forward anyway, to steal her away and try to help her reclaim her soul. A task at which he’d obviously failed.
But this was the fortress Sly had breached. And whether or not they could do the same, and not get caught, was anyone’s guess.
There was only one way to find out.
“I can get us in there.”
Castin glanced at him curiously.
Melisande, too. “You’ve seen it in one of your flashbacks.”
“Aye. I know of a hidden entrance in the rock far below the castle. If it’s still there, and still open, I can find it. What I don’t know is if the Mage have it guarded.”
Castin shrugged. “I don’t have a better plan.”
“Me, either,” Melisande said, glancing at Castin. Fox watched her look at the other male, saw the way her brows dipped, confusion in her eyes where before there had only been raw hatred.
Now that she knew the truth, and Fox believed Castin had told it, would she have feelings for the male again? Was it possible to hate someone for so long, even mistakenly, then begin to care for them again? He didn’t know and was pretty sure he didn’t want to find out.
Ignoring the twist of jealousy as he did the pain of the cut on his chest that still hadn’t fully healed, he started forward, Melisande falling into step beside him, Castin beside her. He took Melisande’s hand, relieved when she grasped his tightly, and together the three made their way toward the mountain and their one chance at reaching Kara.
Halfway to their destination, the magic swept through him without warning and he shifted into his fox. Dammit. Worse, he lay down on a pile of dead leaves and pine needles and, struggle as he might, could not force himself to stand.
Panic flew through his head. Deep inside, he felt his animal spirit cry out. The darkness was getting too strong.
“Wulfe! To your left!” Lyon’s voice rang across the beach, over the shouts of the half-naked painted warriors bearing down on them in growing numbers.
They’d battled more than a dozen of them already, but they just kept coming.
Wulfe pulled his sword from the neck of the dead warrior at his feet and turned, ready to take on more. The stuff this mind-fucking world threw at them just kept getting weirder and weirder. Kougar assured them the savages weren’t real. Or shouldn’t be real, at any rate, which was of little comfort when they were trying to dig the Ferals’ hearts out of their chests.
Knees soft, swords gripped tight, Wulfe prepared to take on the leading edge of the enemy. Suddenly they were gone. In the blink of an eye, the savages, the sand, the beach were all gone and the four Ferals were once more standing in the woods, on the mountain. Back in West Virginia, by the looks of it.
“What the fuck just happened?” Jag demanded. “Not that I’m complaining.”
Kougar sheathed his sword. “If I had to guess, Fox found the key and disabled the magic.”
“Go Foxylocks,” Jag cheered.
A structure of some sort, far in the distance, caught Wulfe’s eye, and he started up the hill to get a better look at it. As he cleared the trees, he saw what had caught his attention and whistled low. “Come see this.”
Far in the distance, high atop a rocky cliff, sat a mammoth stone mansion.
“Inir’s stronghold?” Jag asked, coming up beside him.
“Probably,” Wulfe replied.
Lyon wasted no time. Shucking his jeans and sword, he shifted into his lion and took off at a run, his mane flying back from his ferocious, determined face. Kougar lunged for Lyon’s jeans. As he shoved them in the backpack Wulfe and Jag stripped and tossed him their pants as well. Kougar strapped their swords on his back, then, as one, the three shifted into their animals in a spray of colored lights and took off after their chief.
In his head, Wulfe heard Lyon call to both Kara and Fox. He heard no answer, but they were still several miles from the stronghold.
They’d traveled less than half a mile when Wulfe did begin to hear voices. Voices he’d heard before.
I’ve collected more than four dozen humans for your consumption, my lord. Will that be enough?
Adequate, yes. My horde will disperse the moment they’re free.
The voices faded. Wulfe’s scalp went cold. His horde. Satanan. It wasn’t Inir and a minion he’d been hearing, but Inir and Satanan? Holy. Shit. And suddenly the earlier discussion he’d overheard made a terrible kind of logic. Chills snaked down his spine, turning his blood ice-cold.
I sense one of mine.
That’s not possible. The Ferals killed them all.
Not one of those. This is different. Blood calls to blood.
Wulfe swallowed, his stomach twisting in on itself, forming a lump the size of his fist. No one needed to know. But for the next mile, his conscience flayed him. He had to tell them.
I’ve been hearing the voices again, he told his friends. Just now. And earlier. I think one of them is Satanan’s.
Three large animal faces swung to stare at him.
He’s been freed? Jag exclaimed.
I don’t know, but his horde hasn’t. He said they’ll disperse the moment they are.
Kougar joined in. Satanan isn’t free, then. At least not physically. I’ve suspected for a while that the essence that infected Inir was stronger than most. And Inir, or Satanan through Inir, has been working to strengthen it. It’s not unreasonable to think that Satanan is now fully conscious within Inir.