Hidden Crimes (28 page)

Nate was too shocked to hide his horror. “She
wouldn’t.”

Iseult stroked the dangling tails of her
chainmail belt. “Of course she would. Her little secret makes her
so lonely. I took her to dinner and then to bed. She told me
everything I wanted to know. Someone should tell her all those
anti-hex spells she uses cancel each other out. I barely had to
charm her.”

Nate shut his gaping jaw. “My pack will
figure out I was working your kidnapping plot.”

“What kidnapping plot?” Iseult pouted
prettily, looking for the moment more like her youthful alter ego.
“Mr. White doesn’t know about any kidnapping plot. Neither will
Paul soon enough. My daughter I can handle, and you were kind
enough not to inform your lieutenant, just as requested.”

“You spelled me,” he said flatly.

Iseult shrugged. “Not very hard. You were
disinclined to turn to him already. No, I’m afraid you bringing
Evina here, to your traditional hunting grounds, will look like
more of your rogue behavior. I suppose your pack will be surprised
about you changing without a moon, but there are indications you
have latent alpha tendencies. Dana certainly thinks so, and it
would explain the trouble you’ve been having fitting into your
place. Mrs. Sand here is a psychologist.” Iseult waved toward one
of her female cronies. “She’s convinced that sort of stress could
drive a wolf right over the brink of sanity. I find it . . .
elegant that everything you’ve been working on will be
discredited.”

A muscle in Nate’s cheek bunched. A second
later, he wrenched against the hold Beaumont and the woman with the
brass claws had on him. The attempt came without warning, and Nate
was powerful. The woman was stronger than she looked. She was able
to hold Nate almost without Beaumont’s help. Nate kicked at
Beaumont’s legs, but aside from earning him a curse, that didn’t
gain him ground either.

The straining of his muscular body reminded
Evina—and a few of the other women, apparently—that Nate was naked
and very nicely put together. Iseult seemed to like the visual too,
though for different reasons.

“Just look at you,” she exclaimed. “Who could
doubt you’d turn killer?”

Her comment put an end to his struggling, if
not his defiance.

“If I turn killer,” he growled, the sound low
enough to stand hair on end, “I think you know whose throat I’ll
clamp my jaws on first.”

Iseult laughed, seeming not to mind the
threat. “You hold onto that belief. It will make all of this
easier. Brone?” She turned to the shorter-haired redhead. “Could
you collect Evina’s gift for the detective from our good
doctor?”

Her
gift
was the talon Beaumont had
ripped from her. As Beaumont dropped it into Iseult’s palm, its
edges began to glow. Evina swallowed queasily. The claw was pink
from her blood smearing it.

Brone and Blue must have known what was
coming next. Without requiring an order, they helped Nate’s guards
force him into Iseult’s circle. As he fought, his bare feet scraped
through her markings. The magic she’d put into them was so strong
they immediately reformed. Once he was in front of her, the guards
shoved Nate onto his knees. This wasn’t enough for Brone. His big
hand pushed Nate’s head into an attitude of respect.

“Be still,” Iseult snapped, a strong pulse of
power in it.

Nate grimaced but could only strain in
place.

“Now,” Iseult said, “we’re going to put a
little part of your lover into the heart of you.”

Chanting rapidly again, she held up the claw
like an offering to the redwood’s gods. A beam of sunlight fell
through the branches onto her palm—not by accident, Evina
thought.

Faeries drew power from nature, so she
supposed this was appropriate. Iseult closed her eyes. As if the
claw were a mirror, the sunbeam bent, striking Nate dead center in
his chest. He twitched, his aura igniting the way her followers’
had earlier. Whatever sensations this inspired, he didn’t welcome
them. He groaned, his body straining the few millimeters her
compulsion allowed it.

The light disappeared, sucking abruptly into
his center.

He shuddered like this had hurt. His claws
and both sets of canines were distended. His eyes glowed so
brightly the radiance lit his face.

He glared at Iseult like he hated her.

Her hand was now empty.

“Stay,” she said, giving him the same signal
one would a dog.

She and the four who’d dragged him into the
circle stepped out of it. Nate and the fallen corpse remained in
there alone. Evina looked at Nate, not understanding what had been
done to him, only that it wasn’t good. He’d begun to tremble, his
hands dropping to the ground a few feet before his knees. The earth
his fingers sank in was muddied by the Russian’s blood.

“I’m going to . . . kill you,” Nate swore
through gritted fangs.

The others were filing out of the clearing.
Two stooped to grab the handles on Paul’s carrier, their shoulders
straining at his weight. Evina didn’t know where they were going;
they took a different path from the one she’d been led in on.
Perhaps they didn’t want to be around when whatever was happening
to Nate finished. Perhaps they had more nefarious deeds to see to
today.

Evina didn’t think she cared as long as they
left her and Nate alone. That they were a team, and maybe had been
one from the start, she sensed in her soul. If the Tiger Queen of
the Universe had offered to find her a bondmate, Evina would have
accepted none but Nate.

Liane’s mother was the last to leave. She
looked back at Evina over her shoulder. “You can run,” she said,
“but it won’t matter. He’ll hunt you down no matter where you
go.”

“
You
run,” Evina retorted, anger
stiffening her. “Nate isn’t the only one who’d enjoy ripping you
limb from limb.”

Iseult’s hooded smile of enjoyment wasn’t
comforting.

Comforting or not, as soon as she was gone,
Evina ran to Nate. She touched his shoulder, which was now slick
with sweat.

“God,” he said, his back contorting
uncomfortably.

“Nate,” she crooned, trying to soothe him.
“Sweetheart, how can I help?”

“Maybe you should go.”

“I won’t! Not when they were stupid enough to
leave us alone.”

He laughed shakily. They both knew Iseult
being stupid was unlikely. When Nate looked up, his eyes were gold,
their normally dark color bleeding into his wolf’s. “Honey, she
gave me your power to change without the moon, and she charmed me
to use it. I don’t think I can stop myself from shifting. She
expects me to kill you.”

“Then she’s doubly stupid. Werewolves aren’t
mindless beasts. Your human consciousness is the boss. It would
never let your wolf hurt me.”

Swallowing a cry, Nate reared back onto
folded legs. Wolf hair rolled in a wave down his chest. In this new
position, she saw he had an erection, which disconcerted her. She
shook off the distraction. The shift affected hormones, and his had
to be haywire.

“This . . . doesn’t feel like a normal
shift,” he said, speaking with difficulty around his changing
teeth. “She sent me mental pictures when she put your power into
me. I don’t think I’m going to be able to hold onto myself. I can
sense the human in me fading.”

He panted, doglike, bones popping in his face
and arms. “Evina, you have to change into your tiger. Your cat is
bigger than my wolf. It can face it down. It can stop me from
hurting you.”

Evina didn’t want to tell him the truth, but
she had to. She cupped the misshapen structure of his cheek. “I
can’t change, Nate. That’s why Beaumont stole my claw. I’m stuck in
human form until it grows back.”

“How long will that take?”

“I couldn’t say. Nothing like this has
happened to me before. I do know my power to heal myself is linked
to my power to shift.”

“Crap.” The word sounded strange in his
lengthening muzzle. He was right about this not being normal. She’d
seen footage of wolves shifting. When the moon was full, it
happened like it did for tigers, in a quick and painless wave of
light.

Nate fumbled in the dirt around him,
searching the mud until his fur-covered fist came up holding the
knife Iseult had used to kill Vasili. Despite knowing how much Nate
cared for her, the intensity with which he gripped it, blade
pointed straight at her, sent a spurt of alarm through her.

“She wants this to look as if she has no hand
in it,” he said. “As if I went crazy, and hunted my girlfriend
down. Take the dagger, Evina. I don’t want your blood on my
hands.”

“I’m not going to kill you!”

Another spasm of pain gripped him. He groaned
as he fought the advancing transformation. The spasm passed, but
not before altering him even more. “Do it for your kids,” he
gasped, barely intelligible. “They need their mother.”

He folded her fingers around the hilt a
second before his hands finished shifting into paws. He fell onto
them, a monstrous half-wolf, half-man creature. He shook his furry
self as if he were wet. When the shaking finished, he was
completely wolf. Evina scrambled backward instinctively. Nate’s
canine eyes had an instant to plead with her. Then, like a curtain
dropping, all the human awareness slipped out of them.

His wolf was staring at her now.

Its lips pulled back, its hackles rising in a
clear threat display. It seemed huge, like maybe her tiger wasn’t
that much bigger.

Her fist tightened on the knife. Carefully,
so as not to make his wolf think she was attacking, she pushed onto
her feet.

Nate’s ears flattened, his growl trailing
down into decibels only a beast could hear.

Evina’s heart pounded with a complicated
panic. She couldn’t end his life, not on the chance that he might
kill her, maybe not even if his teeth had been at throat. Her
attitude might be ill considered, but he was still Nate to her.

“I love you,” she said, far from sure he
could understand. “I hope you’ll forgive me if this turns out
badly, but I just can’t kill you.”

His golden eyes held no comprehension, only a
predator’s sharp focus. Unable to choose differently, Evina did the
very thing she knew was a bad idea. She spun around and ran,
instantly turning herself into prey.

~

Adrenaline was an amazing bracer. Though she
couldn’t change, it pumped Evina up to nearly her normal vigor.
Firefighters trained to stay in shape physically. Evina was glad
for that, though—admittedly—most of her running on two legs was
after the twins.

She also didn’t spend much time leaping over
fallen trunks or ducking low branches.
I should
, she
thought, trying to hold onto her sense of humor.
This is an
amazing cardio workout
.

The thought of putting her crew of macho
tigers through it cheered her up a little.

Nate’s wolf seemed to follow her without
effort. Wolves loped, she remembered, covering ground steadily
rather than at a run. Because of this, Evina could get ahead of
him, though he always caught up again. He never seemed winded when
he did. In truth, his wolf appeared to be enjoying the pursuit.

Evina was pretty sure he could keep it up
longer than she could.

She tried disguising her scent along the path
of a brook. All she accomplished was giving him a chance to slake
his thirst. The part of him that was Nate remembered her smell too
well not to pick it up again.

Evina’s weary legs began to scream at her.
She considered climbing a tree and trying to wait him out. Maybe
someone would find them, or Iseult’s spell would wear off. Then she
discovered she couldn’t change even enough to extend her remaining
claws. Without them to dig into the bark, she doubted she’d haul
herself very far. She was too tired now to do it with human
hands.

She didn’t bother cursing herself for not
getting the idea sooner. She just wished Nate wouldn’t look at her
like he was checking an oven’s window each time he caught up to
her.

Piping hot cherry pie wouldn’t have
distracted him from her now.

She thought she heard him in the distance,
his paw pads not quite silent on the forest floor. Tigers liked to
lay in wait for unsuspecting prey, hoping for a chance to pounce
onto it. Wolves used surprise as well, but were just as good at
chasing an animal until they exhausted it.

That thought pushed Evina from her latest
breath-catching pause. At first, she’d tried to run toward the
parking lot. Each time she had, Nate’s wolf had steered her deeper
into the woods. Now all she knew was that she was heading generally
north.

She couldn’t remember how many acres Wolf
Woods enclosed. Thousands, she had a sick feeling.

A small bird startled from the thick
undergrowth, brown wings whirring as it took flight. Evina stumbled
but caught herself on a vine. The sound of Nate’s paw strikes
suddenly thudded faster, like he’d decided he’d tired her out
enough, and it was time to close in.

When she tried to put on a burst of speed,
her trembling thighs simply refused her.

Come on
, she exhorted.
Do this for
Rafi and Abby. Do it for Nate, if it comes to that
. She
couldn’t imagine how he’d live with the knowledge that he’d eaten
her. He’d go mad, precisely as Iseult hoped.

Before the pep talk had a chance to help, the
forest parted before her, taking her and her shaky muscles by
surprise. She skidded to an awkward halt on the gritty shore of a
dark green lake. The lake wasn’t big, maybe a hundred feet in
diameter. Trees enclosed it, pines and redwoods, their canopy
broken up by patches of velvety blue sky.

Goosebumps rolled across Evina’s otherwise
overheated skin. In the center of lake sat a large white boulder.
It looked like raw marble, its sugary surface unstained by the
water’s rich green algae. She half expected to see Excalibur
sticking out of it. This wasn’t an ordinary swimming hole in the
woods. This was one of those spots where the veil between
Resurrection and Faerie thinned.