Page 22 of Storm Dragon
“Time for y’all to stop gawking at our happy tails and get your asses back to your group,” Tamsyn warned the Wolves through the telepathic link shared with all Supes who were part of the Council and allies of the Ryder Pounce. “Don’t make me hunt down you, Alpha, or your momma.”
“Yes, ma’am,” they answered in unison, running off with their tails tucked between their legs.
“Ma’am? Ma’am!” Peaches' outrage filled Tamsyn’s mind. “Did those fucking pups just call you ma’am?”
“They damned sure did,” Tamsyn grumbled. “And for once in my life, I’m not gonna let it bother me, ‘cause it confirms what I was already sure of, those boys are too young for anything but peekin’ from the shadows. They wouldn’t know what to do if a naked woman walked up and asked for a good time.”
“Next time I catch that musty scent, I’mma tear a stripe outta their hide just because I can.”
“And I’ll take the pictures,” Tamsyn chuckled.
No sooner had a sense of calm and determination filled her spirit than did visions of the man from her dreams appear. “Little Bobcat…where did you go?”
More persistent, and with an accent that sounded just like Bridgette’s, the man was demanding an answer. Without thinking, Tamsyn instantly answered right back. “Who are you? What do you want?”
“Please… please come to me…” he pleaded, his voice reaching into her soul with an urgency that was hard to resist.
“Yeah, right… and where would that be?”
Of course, she was being a smartass. It was Tamsyn Ryder’s go-to reaction for most things that even had the smallest inclination of being embarrassing–or freaking her out–and this was both.
A disembodied voice calling for help? Her heart ached for the pain she heard in that voice? The unmistakable and unfathomable feeling that she knew the person, or had at the very least met him, and recognized the scant bits of Magic pushing it her way. Was something or someone playing a sick joke on her? Or was it worse? Had her imagination gone completely and totally off the deep end without a parachute or a life preserver?
Uneasy and ready to lock her mental blocks into place with as much Magic and Power as she and Bridgette could muster and toss the interloper out of her mind, a deafening, guttural roar reverberated through the mountain range, sending the smaller animals scattering in panic and the birds heading for the sky with no regard to the impending storm. Ringing through the trees, it was amplified by the raindrops and demanding an answer.
Before she could pinpoint the location of the snarling declaration–or more to the point, the person who’d bellowed, Peaches’ voice shot through her mind. “What the hell was that? I thought you had the Dragons closer to the coastline. That sounded really close. Could be Carrick?”
“I do have the Dragons helping people pack up, board up, and get further inland, and Carrick isn’t here. Luke said he had errands to run and left the mountain,” Tamsyn responded.
“Speaking of that Black Bear,” her sister questioned. “Where is your sidekick? He’s never more than six inches from your hip when there’s trouble.”
“Luke is helping on the other side of the mountain. He knows those trails better than anybody,” Tams explained. “All of that aside, I’m not sure that was…”
Another roar cut through the howling wind and torrential rain, and this time she knew exactly where it was coming from. Taking off as if she’d been shot from a cannon, the Bobcat Queen called to her sister, “Hurry up! I know where he is?”
“He? How the hell do you know it’s a he? What if it’s an It? I don’t want to play around with it, not today. We got too much goin’ on to be messin’ with an It.”
But Tamsyn was in too much of a hurry to play her sister’s word game. In a single beat of her heart, she knew where he was and who he was, and that he needed her help just as much as she needed to help him.
Racing over the path she knew like the back of her hand, Tamsyn jumped over fallen trees, rocks that she and Peaches had scratched pictures into until there wasn’t any room left, and followed the glittering, Magical trail appearing right before her mind’s eye. Taking the Muleshoe Pass, she launched the lithe body of Bridgette’s Bobcat into the air, pointed the tip of her snout at the opening of Dead Man’s Cave, and poured on the Enchantment and the speed. Hitting the patch of dry ground just inside the entrance with her front paws, Tamsyn already knew which winding puzzle of tunnels she needed to take to get to the man, the Dragon, she needed to help even more than she needed to breathe air.
Left, then right, then left again, she wound in and around, reassured that Peaches was still right behind her. Coming to the center of the cave where all of the tunnels intersected, the Bobcat Queen had just made a hard right when a blast of Black Magic hit her square in the chest.
Enveloped in the acrid scent of rotten eggs and fiery brimstone, she refused to be stopped. It didn’t matter that it felt like she was wading through sinking sand with weights on all four of her ankles- she would get where she was going no matter what they threw at her. The man in her dreams, the voice in her mind had asked for help, and she was going to be there come Hell or high water.
The closer she got to Dead Man’s Cave, the stronger the stench of sulfur grew and the harder it became to ignore the sense of dread, or what felt like the knuckles of a massive fist pushing on her sternum. Then she heard it–the unmistakable cackle of none other than the biggest bitch ever created–Hettie V. Zanderghast.
The combination of fury and fear cut through the wall of Sorcery and had Tamsyn running at full speed. She could feel the jagged, icy nails of bewitched devilry trying to dig into her fur and her flesh, trying to slow her down, but the Bobcat Queen continued to run faster with every thundering footstep.
Ready to burst into the cave and let her talons and teeth do the talking, Bridgette snapped, “Stop! Don’t you dare go running in there until you know what you’re runnin’ into!”
Putting on the brakes just short of the mouth of the cave, Tamsyn skidded to a stop. Every instinct she had, and a few she didn’t know she had, tried to push her forward. Her front paws literally moved an inch or two.
“No,” she mentally breathed. Bridgette was right, not that Tamsyn would ever tell the Bobcat Queen with whom she shared her soul.
“I have to get the lay of the land before landing in something ass first without a way to escape.” She needed to know whether Hettie was in there by herself or whether that asshole of a Sorcerer she called a Mate was there too.
“And don’t forget those big assholes Hettie calls Enforcers,” Peaches panted as she appeared at Tamsyn’s side.
