Mate Bond

“Damn it,” Bowman yelled. “Stop!”

Pierce was right behind him, shouting as well. Cristian came running, but Jamie bound past them all and reached Ryan and Gil before the others could.

Ryan cried out as the sword pulled at him. Gil held him, but the sword tugged hard, lifting Ryan’s arms straight out. Jamie reached them and wrapped his arms around both Gil and Ryan, trying to pull them back.

The mists whirled, and a wave of thick fog poured into the clearing, obliterating everything.

Bowman waved his hands in front of his face in the sudden whiteout, calling for Ryan. Cristian, beside him, yelled for him too, as did Cade.

“Aw, shit!” Ryan’s voice rose high and shrill above them all.

The fog shrank back, as though Ryan’s cry had slapped it apart. The dense whiteness lessened until it was nothing more than a dampening mist, and trees, Shifters, and Turner’s trailer swam back into view.

Ryan kept swearing, using words Bowman hadn’t known he knew. Bowman reached his son as Jamie and Gil set him down. Pierce was standing over Ryan in a towering fury.

“You dropped it?” Pierce yelled. “You dropped the Sword of the Guardian into an unknown, out-of-reach, magical world?”

The sword was gone. Ryan didn’t have it, Jamie didn’t have it, and Gil looked as baffled as the other two.

Ryan stared up at Pierce without flinching. “Not on purpose,” he said, meeting Pierce’s gaze. “Obviously.”

“Shit!” Pierce swung away, fists clenching, his face draining of color.

Cade scrubbed his hand over his short hair. “This can’t be good.”

“We must retrieve it,” Cristian said. His scowl was fierce, the man more troubled than Bowman ever remembered seeing him. “There is too much magic in the sword for it to be safe there.”

“No kidding,” Bowman said. “But how the hell do you propose to get it back?”

“Aw, crap.” Gil’s exclamation dragged Bowman from his irritating uncle-in-law.

Bowman’s impatience turned to fear a second later. Gil was standing by swirling mist, and Ryan was gone. A sweep of the clearing showed that his son was nowhere in sight—the others were looking too.

“He was standing next to me,” Gil said, stricken. “And then he wasn’t. Bowman, I’m sorry. I had him . . .”

The mist cleared again, revealing the trees beyond, as they’d stood in that woods for centuries. Tall, serene, silent, dripping as the sun began to dispel the early-morning frost.

The mists had taken Ryan, and now he too was lost.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

“Mom!”

Kenzie lifted her head, which she found difficult. Grief was tugging her, profound grief, wanting to embrace her in its darkness.

Don’t give up, not yet, she told herself fiercely. There is a way out, a way back to Bowman. You’ll find it.

Shifters found grief debilitating. Loss was something they’d had to learn to live with, but getting through it was tough, and sometimes the Shifter didn’t make it.

Kenzie knew it could not be Ryan’s voice she heard. She’d seen the vision of Bowman and Ryan three more times, both of them waving madly to her and looking puzzled when she didn’t run to them. Each time, it had broken her heart.

Turner was dead meat.

“Mom! Hey! Help me!”

Kenzie closed her eyes. There were bad things in the mists, Brigid had told her—bloodsucking vampire-like creatures and other evils she’d never heard of.

“Geez, Mom! You can’t be that mad at me.”

Kenzie’s eyes popped open. Sure sounded like Ryan.

Brigid was alert, peering into the warm darkness. “I hear,” she said. “Resist. Do not go to it.”

“I’m stuck!” Ryan yelled. “In lots of mud. Sucking me down. I need someone with longer arms than mine. Mom, what is wrong with you?”

Kenzie took a few steps into the trees, the darkness closing around her like a glove. She heard things out there, faint snarls, saw a flash of red eyes.

Ryan’s voice cut through the night. “Shit, what is that? I thought Dad said zombies weren’t real.”

Kenzie’s heart pounded as she quickened her pace.

“Aw, man, this would never happen to Harry Dresden.” Ryan coughed. “No, wait, this would totally happen to him.”

Kenzie ran forward. “Ryan! Keep talking. I’m on my way!”

Brigid dashed after her. “No. Kenzie!”

The Fae woman, surprisingly fast, seized her by the arm. Kenzie shook her off, and the mists closed around them both.

Kenzie almost fell into the bog that opened at her feet. Only Brigid grabbing her again kept Kenzie from plunging straight into it.

Ryan was up to his neck in mud and goo, both hands wrapped around a low-hanging branch. His eyes were round, his face frozen with fear. When he saw Kenzie, tears trickled down his cheeks, cutting through black filth.

“Hold on to me,” Kenzie said swiftly to Brigid.

Not waiting for Brigid to answer, Kenzie threw herself on her belly and inched forward into the bog. Brigid’s strong fingers gripped her ankles, the Fae woman cursing in her Celtic-sounding language.

“Let go of the branch,” Kenzie commanded Ryan as she began to sink into softer ground. “Grab my hand.”

Ryan didn’t want to release his desperate hold of the overhanging limb. He was terrified, and the distance between it and Kenzie’s hands was a stretch.