Page 26 of Bound to the Minotaur
“What?” I growled, crossing my arms over my chest and giving first Jackson, and then Liz, a glare. Jackson had been joined by the other male, the newcomer, and the new deputy. A gargoyle, which meant he was as innate a protector as I was, but he was also green as can be, and I did not know him. When I turned my gaze from the pair of cops to the woman who ran this town, I felt a hint of tension uncurl in my gut. Something had shifted with Kess, changed. Was it better or worse? I wasn’t sure…
Grandma Liz had a much softer expression in her sharp eyes now. It bordered on something I’d want to label as pity, but itwas probably closer to compassion. Even shaped as a man rather than a bull on two legs, the impulse to snort in discontent was strong. It blasted two plumes of white into the air, as warmth collided with cold.
“Listen,” she said as she stepped off her porch barefoot and padded out of her front yard to meet me. “Jackson went in to test their numbers, to see if your mate was all right. She’s unharmed, Greg. Unharmed, you hear me? We’ve got a moment to plan.”
With a sharp gesture of her hand, Jackson came forward and huddled closer to explain, in quick, succinct sentences, what he’d seen. “The weretiger is there?” I roared. Why was that duplicitous male there? We’d tangled with him once, when he had come with his masters to steal Rosy’s land and awaken the ancient evil buried there. They had failed, though the evil had vanished, and we did not know if that was good or bad. This blasted weretiger was one of the few who had escaped, and now he was meddling with my mate? Unforgivable.
But as Jackson laid out the situation, his carefully sketched plan made sense. I did not like to be patient when Kess’s need was so urgent, but I was not bulletproof, either. If I charged in without care, they’d shoot me on sight. I could heal from a lot, but a dozen bullets would be too much. Jackson had seen the guards with machine guns. They’d melted out of sight at his approach, but they’d been there, armed, watchful, waiting.
We were also fighting a force of humans, so we couldn’t go around and shift as easily as we would were we fighting our own kind. That didn’t mean that none of Romano’s forces were supernaturals. I’d sniffed out something that smelled suspiciously like a snake shifter, and Jackson had agreed withme. He’d smelled it in the room with Kess and her father, though he hadn’t been able to identify which man it was.
“What about Chardum?” I asked as we finally started moving again. He had not been part of Jackson’s plan to surround the cabin and pick off Romano’s men one by one. The massive, golden dragon had the name “The Destroyer” for a reason. He’d vanished twenty years ago, but until then he’d been the town’s biggest protector. Now he was back thanks to his mate, Rosy, and I wasn’t too proud to want such a thing as a dragon for backup.
Jackson gave me a wary, somewhat frustrated look, the kind I knew came from running into obstacles. It was Lizzie who answered; our mayor was striding along the cracked pavement at my side, still barefoot and with her chin tilted at a fierce angle. Two shifted wolves slunk behind her like a silent pair of sentinels, guards. One was the silver form of Ted; the other, smaller, was Lizzie’s granddaughter. To have them this out in the open, in daylight, on Main Street, was quite something, even for our town.
Our few human residents were in for a bit of a shock if they saw us. But only Halvers, in his faded B&B, stared with distaste as we passed his gleaming windows.
“Chardum was called away abruptly by the Taoiseach,” Grandma Liz said with a snarl in her tone. “Apparently, one of those goons caught him on camera before we silenced them at your maze.” I winced. That was bad. I had been out in the open, fully shifted, just like him. I hadn’t even thought about the possibility of being filmed, not until it was discussed in Jackson’s plan of action a moment ago.
“How bad?” I asked, wondering what the Taoiseach would do about such a breach. I didn’t think it had gotten out, and nowadays a dragon on film could just be good graphics, a gag. It didn’t mean Chardum had given away the big secret, but the Taoiseach was the leader of a huge swath of territory, including ours. It covered pretty much all of Iowa, and of late he’d become meddlesome, picking at packs, at factions, enforcing rules more sharply than he ever had before.
Jackson hissed, a soft whistling noise. “Chardum will be fine. They know each other.” I had not considered that, but the dragon had once been the keeper of a very important prison, and the Taoiseach would have known about that. He’d been ruler of this territory about as long as Chardum had been warden of the prison, after all.
“Fine,” I snorted. “We’ll follow your plan.” We turned into one of the smaller side streets of the town, where more houses stood empty and abandoned than not. Jackson said it was a cabin at the back, and now that we were closer, I could smell it: Kess, her father, the dozen or so bodies of Romano’s forces, and yes, a tiger and a snake.
Following a sharp gesture from Lizzie’s hand, her two wolf companions split off and disappeared down side streets. They’d circle around and come at the cabin from the back, meeting up with Mikael and our local troll. Luther melted out of the shadows from behind a half–fallen-down fence, his sharp face wreathed in a grin that was all malice, fangs glinting as he nodded my way.
“Leave no survivors,” Lizzie ordered coolly. Then she led the charge, shifting herself in an explosion of soft, warm pink. Her wolf was large, hackles raised, tail lashing the air behind her,maw bared with rows upon rows of sharp fangs. No, she was no sweet old grandmother now, and I was glad she was on my side.
I shifted with a last look at Jackson and his eager young deputy, and then we slipped into the front yard, my horns finding a target in one of the two guards that flanked the house, shouts going up like music all around. Yes, my love, this would soon be over, soon, my Kess would be safely back in my arms, never to fear for her life again.
***
Kess
I was on my knees on the rug at my father’s feet, my hands tied behind my back and tape over my mouth. He thought he had silenced me, and that once he’d dragged me bodily back to New York, I’d fall in line. That just showed how little he knew me and how much he was convinced of his power. Luca stood at his shoulder, his sharp eyes gleaming with excitement as he stared down at me. That man was getting off on seeing me degraded this way, and my father didn’t care.
Staring into his cold blue eyes, I wondered if there had ever been any warmth there. I tried to remember what they’d been like when Mom was still alive, but I couldn’t. But there was this memory of his laugh—warm and rich—mingling with my mom’s high soprano. Images of the two of them dancing to old ballads played from a gently spinning record surfaced. That man was as dead as my mother; maybe he had only ever been a mirage.
“So, Sunworld wants to acquire local property, but the locals are being difficult, huh?” my father drawled to the man whowas a stranger; a rogue card in a den of wolves. The man, Kiran, bared his straight white teeth, amber eyes sparkling with beautiful yellow and gold tones, a trick of the light, or something else, perhaps. In light of my father’s evil, I was surprisingly all right with the thought thatotherthings hid beneath a façade of human skin.
“That is so,” Kiran agreed with a cultured drawl. He shifted from foot to foot, not in a nervous manner, but as if he was limbering himself up. His pose was that of a fighter as he squared off with my father. “These locals, as you might have noticed, are a stubborn lot.” His extraordinary eyes flicked in my direction, something flickering in their depths that I couldn’t decipher, amusement, perhaps.
My father laughed, the sound low and derisive. Then his eyes went around the room to settle on the various armed men who stood around it. That included the guy who had abducted me from the maze, who had taken some serious damage to his suit—and probably his skin—courtesy of Avis’s claws.
I did not know where the cat had gone. He’d slunk out of sight, silent as a wraith. He was there, though, watching. I was certain I could feel his sharp blue eyes on me, a warm weight of assurance that I was not alone.
“I’m certain the stories are exaggerated,” my father said dismissively, and men shifted uneasily, casting uncertain glances. So they’d seen things they couldn’t explain, but my father did not believe in myths or fables. “But this is not our turf. What makes you think we can help you? Why would we care, huh, Kiran?” He gave the man a stare that was all daring, all coldand cutting. The kind that would make a lesser man shake in his boots, or fancy black leather loafers, as was the case.
“Perhaps,” Kiran agreed mildly, drifting closer to where I knelt on the expensive Persian rug. “But you are here now, and Sunworld always pays well.” He rubbed his thumb and forefinger together, and my father’s eyes locked onto the gesture. I saw the assessment behind his eyes, the greed. I hoped he said yes. It would be a grave mistake, and it would mean staying here longer, and giving Gregory the chance to find me.
My father rose slowly, straightening his suit jacket and tugging the gun holster beneath his coat into alignment. He shrugged as if nothing Kiran had said mattered, but then he approached, expensive shoes sliding over the rich carpet. They stood right beside me, those two, their heads bent close together as they hammered out terms.
I held my breath, my ears open wide as I tried to catch their whispers. Which was probably why I heard the creak of the front porch step, which I otherwise would never have noticed. Was someone there? Was it one of those gun-wielding guards who must have miraculously disappeared when the sheriff visited earlier? Or was it someone else?
The brush of Avis’s tail against my arm nearly made me jump out of my skin, but then his warm weight settled against my side. My dad hadn’t noticed the sudden appearance of the large gray cat, but the tigerite eyes of his verbal sparring partner flicked down, just once.
Luca raised his voice, having noticed too. “What the hell?” he demanded, his feet slapping against the floor as herushed toward me, eyes gleaming again with something sharp, something that changed the shape of his pupils, stretching them, narrow and slitted. Unnatural.
