Cougar's Courage (Duals and Donovans: The Different) (26 page)

Chapter Thirty-One

The three Americans had caught up with them at a turnoff from the highway, on the way to the village, and now they all gathered between the two rattletrap vehicles, finalizing plans.

“So do we go in with spells blazing,” Gramps asked, “or try to be subtle?”

“Subtle’s good.” Cara’s brain filled with a loud purr as she said it, so she figured Lynx agreed. “It’s Friday night. Bar’s going to be busy. We don’t want random people getting involved. There must be some magic way to encourage folks to leave without drawing attention to ourselves.”

Jude shook his head. “Dream on. We’re getting attention whether we like it or not. We’re a big group of strangers walking into a small-town bar, and two of us are good-looking women.”

“And one of us,” Elissa said with a nervous chuckle and a pat on Jude’s ass, “is a tall black man with dreads, which around here isn’t exactly inconspicuous.”

Cara looked around. Even in a big city, their crew would make people stare as they entered a bar. Elissa was too pretty, and the guys were too hot. Rafe and Jack at least looked like they might be drawn from the attractive end of the local gene pool, but Jude wouldn’t blend into any crowd unless maybe it was a basketball team. A really, really good-looking basketball team.

And Gramps had his Coyote-and-Roadrunner boxers on the outside of his jeans. Cara hadn’t noticed that before. Maybe they hadn’t been that way before. She wouldn’t put it past Coyote to redress his charge in a way he found more amusing.

“Okay,” she grudgingly admitted, “we might as well go in with spells blazing. But isn’t that going to freak out the normies?”

Coyote shook his head so hard that his entire body trembled with it. “What probably freaked out the normies was a bunch of loups-garous and skinwalkers hanging out in the bar. I bet everyone except the bartender remembered they had somewhere else to be tonight, and the bartender is either part of their crew or he’s Mr. Oblivious and would come up with a reasonable explanation for a herd of intoxicated elephants. Which, come to think of it, might be a good idea just in case I’m wrong about the lack of normies in the bar.”

They couldn’t manage elephants. But Jack managed an illusion of black bears that had apparently found a keg, and he thought that would serve nicely.

The bears might have been illusions, but they were convincing, large, smelly illusions. As they crashed through the front door, several patrons ran into what passed for a kitchen, then presumably out the back door, and one old coot bolted for the bathroom with surprising speed.

The bartender, though, reached under the counter and pulled out an old-fashioned double-barreled shotgun, which he pointed not at the bears, but at Jack and Gramps.

Who thought they were invisible behind a wall of magic.

Everyone who remained in the Moose-Butt Saloon turned to stare at them as the air grew heavy and dense with power. The bears dissipated under the collective force of disbelief.

Jack squinted at the bartender, who wasn’t as tall as Jude but even broader, with a bunged-up face that suggested either he’d played hockey seriously or had been in one fight too many. His aura was cramped, enveloped in a cloud of oily-looking charcoal gray, but underneath that cloud, it was faintly rainbowed. Not a powerful shaman, but he had enough ability to see through another shaman’s illusions.

“Shit,” Sam swore succinctly.

Jack raised his hands in what he hoped was an appeasing gesture while getting ready to do something that wasn’t appeasing at all. “Couldn’t you at least pretend you didn’t see right through our hard work?”

“I know how to do that crap myself,” the bartender said. “Not as pretty and solid as your bears, but I know what to look out for.” His voice was almost genial, but the gun didn’t waver. “And I really can’t stand you fuckers coming here and causing trouble. Go back to your own village and stay out of my bar.”

Several things happened in hellish slow motion.

Sam grumped, “Wait a minute, kid,” and took a step forward. Jack reached for him, hoping to pull the old man back, but he was just out of reach.

Shit. Jack barreled forward, trying to tackle Sam before Sam got his head blown off.

They both careened off a wall of shielding. Elissa’s red and green witch magic encased multiple layers of Cara’s virulent neon plaid and Rafe’s more earthy forest-green and gold and brown swirls.

Good, it was holding, and solid enough to keep them in. With any luck, it would be solid enough to keep everything else out.

Jack heard the distinctive sound of a shotgun being cocked and readied for action. Either the bartender couldn’t see the shielding because of the way shamanic and witch magic were layered or he figured the blast would drive them away even if it didn’t hurt them.

The air shimmered like an oil slick, black and gray laced with fuchsia.

“Stand down,
mon ami
,” an elegant voice said from somewhere in the dim reaches of the bar. “We can handle these ruffians in a way that won’t trouble Constable Mervis. You might want to head home the back way, though.”

The lights flickered out behind the bartender’s eyes. He nodded dully, set the gun down on the bar and lumbered toward the kitchen door without even turning around.

Jack shivered. He’d never seen a zombie, but they must look something like the bartender, that dead to the world, that controlled.

“Mighty big of you to send him off like that,” Sam said. “Wouldn’t have expected it of a fucking sorcerer.”

The sorcerer shrugged, the movement Gallic and elegant, drawing Jack’s eyes more than he wanted it to. “He is useful, and he is friendly with the local constable. If only we who do not exist in the eyes of the law are involved in this brouhaha, it will be easier to clean up afterward, no? A man who does not exist cannot be murdered.”

“Phil Renner existed,” Cara proclaimed. “You murdered him. He left behind parents and grandparents, a sister, an aunt and uncle, five cousins and a fiancée. A fiancée who’s a shaman from Couguar-Caché. Hello, dead man walking.” She waved in a disturbingly spritely manner.

Oh shit.

He didn’t know why he imagined Cara would stay with Elissa and fling magic from what might be a safe distance. But suddenly she was right there, hands on hips, defying the Victorian-clad sorcerer and his twelve shabby sorcerer and skinwalker buddies.

She was flanked by Lynx, but they stood outside the protective shielding she herself had woven.

“So you are the stray shaman. I see you’re eager to join your lover in death. How commendable, except that I know you’ve already sought another man’s bed. Perhaps I can persuade you to join me in mine instead. I did not foresee you being beautiful, you see, or I would not have tried to kill you. I prefer not to kill beautiful women, especially not those with power.”

Magic shimmered in the air, but some weird, unexpected kind that Jack couldn’t focus on.

The Victorian smiled. The disturbing thing was that he was a devilishly attractive man. Jack was straight, though not narrow, but the sorcerer in his dark, old-fashioned clothing rang his bells with that thoroughly evil, dangerous, sexy smile. Good thing he and Sam
were
straight, because if the guy affected him that way, he couldn’t imagine how he could weaken the knees of a not-so-straight guy or a straight woman, which covered everyone else in their hunting party.

“Amateur.” Elissa’s voice dripped scorn. Whatever magic the sorcerer was weaving, it apparently was no match for a red witch of her strength. Thank the Powers for small mercies.

But Cara’s face softened. Her eyes went from fierce to unfocused.

Jack had seen that expression on her face before. To see it now stabbed him. But even inside the powerful shields, he was frozen, as caught in the sorcerer’s voice as Cara was. He couldn’t move, couldn’t speak.

Lynx nudged Cara. “Sorcerers shouldn’t even try red magic,” the cat said, and from the startled expressions on several faces on the other side, it was audible even to those who hadn’t been able to see the spirit-lynx before she spoke. “You have to be able to put feeling into it, and sorcerers aren’t so good at that. A mortal’s got to know his limitations.”

The Victorian laughed, the kind of laugh designed to melt a woman’s panties and wasn’t doing a half-bad job on Jack’s briefs. After half a beat, the sorcerer’s lackeys laughed with him, a disturbingly tinny echo. “Maybe that’s true for mortals, kitty,” he said, his voice coming clear, though he didn’t stop laughing. “Not for me.”

He waved his hand. Lynx disappeared in a cloud of snarl and fur.

He had just forced an avatar of Trickster to vanish.

Sorcerers couldn’t do that. But he just had. That couldn’t be good.

And then it got worse.

Cara, moving like a robot, stepped forward and into the sorcerer’s arms. They closed around her, encircling her like a lover’s might, but there was nothing of affection or even true desire in the gesture. Jack couldn’t read the sorcerer’s well-schooled expression, but his aura was cold, collected, and the room stank of iron control and the kind of revenge a dual couldn’t understand. The kind that was a dish served not blood-hot but cold as a centuries-old grave. He drew her into a kiss, and she responded, moving as if she was sleepwalking.

For less time than it took for breath to be drawn, for a broken heart to beat, everyone froze.

Sam shook himself free first, letting loose with a multicolored blast of magic, but instead of zinging out and hitting the sorcerer, it fizzled in the air. For an instant, a flag that read DUD! hung in the air before vanishing. Undaunted, he cursed and tried again.

After that, a lot happened more or less simultaneously.

Jude shifted—then stopped in his tracks, roaring but clearly unable to figure out what he could do. In lion form, he could rip the sorcerer in half, but not without risking Cara too. His impressive transformation was enough to make one of the minions bolt and provoked several of them to cast spells that bounced ineffectively off the thick shielding Elissa had woven around her husband.

Elissa and Rafe must have acted, though Jack couldn’t see them from where he was standing. An anaconda, green and golden brown like Rafe’s aura, but plaid like a Burberry knockoff scarf, squeezed at the sorcerer’s throat. Jack beamed. He’d taught Rafe that trick. The illusory snake couldn’t actually strangle its prey, but even if the person on the receiving end knew that, it still felt bad enough to distract even the toughest opponent.

Which it did. The sense that the room was in Mr. Victorian’s grasp faded. Jack found himself breathing freely, thinking clearly, for the first time since they’d walked into the bar.

“
Now!
” he called, adding a prayer to Trickster. Crows and jays filled the bar, squalling and squawking and cawing and attacking all the bad guys with joyous abandon.

Unlike the snake, whose form was already wavering, these birds were real. The magic was in the way Jack not only called them, but with his guide’s aid, transported them into the building. Once there, they knew what to do, and it didn’t hurt that they were pissed as hell at the sudden disruption in their little avian lives.

They weren’t big, but they could draw blood. If they got a chance, they could even peck out eyes. Wasn’t likely to happen, but they could spoil the enemy’s concentration as they tried. The distraction was really the point. Sorcerers had a damn hard time casting while distracted, since their power was so dependent on focused will.

The shamans had no such handicap. A little chaos was good for shamans, kept them sharp. Luckily there were more sorcerers than shamans on the other side.

Unfortunately one of the enemy shamans had a line of birds too—bigger birds than Jack’s crows and jays. Birds that didn’t look like any natural bird Jack had ever seen, roughly the size of red-tail hawks but with teeth inside their cruel beaks.

Then Elissa said a few words in a strong, clear voice that froze their opponents and damn near froze Jack. He had no idea what she’d said—he assumed she’d spoken Gaelic—but those few words were simultaneously the most erotic and the most terrifying ones he’d ever heard. Everything male in the room turned to stare at Elissa. Jack saw her with new eyes, knowing he saw her as the others did, as a goddess, beautiful and powerful and fierce, both desirable and deadly. He knew her, had watched her grow food for the village, watched her nurse her child and tease her men, seen her drained yet grinning just after giving birth, had laughed with her and fought by her side, and still he was torn between crawling to her feet and running away whimpering.

Even the sorcerer in the old-fashioned clothes stared.

The icy determination that surrounded him thawed, softened, heated.

And as it did, Cara kicked the sorcerer in the nuts.

She jumped back, wiped her hand over her mouth in a dramatic gesture and called her guides, using enough power that Jack saw it ripple the air.

Chapter Thirty-Two

That…thing had touched her.

Had stroked and kissed her.

Had convinced her, for a few short but terrible moments, that she wanted it.

She shuddered, yearning for a hot bath and harsh lye soap to scrub off his slimy caresses.

But she’d learned something important—not encouraging, but important. As soon as she touched him, she sensed that the being in the Victorian suit might have been human once but wasn’t anymore. Pressed against his chest, she’d felt a heart beating and heard the warm coursings of blood under skin, but not the subtle sense of a spirit dwelling within the flesh—something she hadn’t realized she noticed until it wasn’t present. All living things, even animals, had it. Just not this creep. And he smelled like nothing. Nothing at all.