Lian/Roch (Bayou Heat) (10 page)

Chapter 7

Sage ran her fingers over the glyphs, desperately trying to ignore the vicious roars and occasional snarls of pain that filled the air.

She didn’t have claws or teeth. Or even a damned gun.

For now, the only way to help Lian was by concentrating on the scrolls.

She was so close, the symbols forming into words in her head as a tingle of power raced through her blood.

This wasn’t a history of the Pantera as she’d first assumed. Or even a detailed explanation of how to destroy Shakpi as Lian had hoped.

This was…magic.

Lost in her thoughts, Sage didn’t sense the approaching man until he lightly tapped on her shoulder.

She jerked her head around to discover a tall man with milky brown skin, blue eyes and dark hair that was closely buzzed to his scalp.

Xavier was the Geek she’d been in cyber contact with for the past four years. Of course, she’d assumed he was another researcher, not a mythical puma shifter.

“What are you doing?” the man snapped, his expression grim as he towered over her. “You need to evacuate.”

“No.” She turned back to the scrolls to point toward a hieroglyph shaped like a bluebird. “What does the word Hielar mean?”

With an effort, Xavier leashed his obvious desire to be in the clearing below with his pack mates.

“Hielar?” His brow furrowed as he searched his mind for the answer. “In the old language it meant ‘come.’”

Sage felt a flicker of hope.

Was it possible she was on the right track?

“Come or summon?” she demanded.

“What are you suggesting?”

“I think this is a spell.”

Xavier stiffened, suddenly offering her his full attention. “A spell to get rid of Shakpi?”

She gave a shake of her head. “No. To summon someone.” She bit her bottom lip, touching her fingers to the glyphs. The strange prickles continued to race through her body, as if urging her to speak the words, but the symbols remained frustratingly out of focus. “Or something.”

“Dammit.” Xavier glared at the scrolls in frustration. “I was so certain these could help.”

“I think they can,” she insisted.

He shook his head. “Dr. Parker, I appreciate you traveling here and trying to decipher the scrolls, but the last thing we want is to risk summoning some unknown spirit.”

She flinched as she heard a heavy body crash into a tree below.

She was a scientist at heart. The sort of person who depended on logic and fact. Which was why she’d tried to suppress the magic that bubbled deep inside her for so long.

Since arriving in the Wildlands, however, she’d allowed herself to lower her barriers and ‘see’ the scrolls with her emotions, not the eyes of a researcher.

At the beginning she’d thought she’d sensed the lingering echo of the goddess because she assumed Opela had written the scroll.

Now that she realized it was a spell…

Well, the only reasonable explanation was that it was meant to summon the elusive goddess.

“Even a spirit that has the same power as Shakpi?” she asked.

Xavier made a sound of impatience. “There isn’t any.”

“Her sister.”

Not surprisingly, the large male glared at her as if she’d just committed sacrilege. Even though it’d been centuries since Opela had disappeared from the Wildlands, the Pantera deeply mourned her loss.

“Opela sacrificed herself to imprison Shakpi,” he said in harsh tones.

Sage reached out to lightly touch his arm. She didn’t mean to offend Xavier, but she didn’t have time to do this in a more diplomatic way.

“You don’t truly believe she’s gone,” she insisted.

He scowled, no doubt assuming she was arguing semantics. “Not completely gone, but—”

A loud yelp sounded from below. Lian. Sage pressed a hand to her heart. She could physically feel his pain.

“Oh hell,” she breathed, sending Xavier a pleading glance. “We have to do something.”

He hesitated for less than a heartbeat before giving a sharp nod of his head.

“Say the spell.”

That wasn’t what Sage had been expecting.

“Me?” She blinked in confusion. “I’m not Pantera.”

“You have the magic,” he told her, his gaze boring into her with a fierce determination. “You’re the only one who does.”

She stepped away, wrapping her arms around her waist.

It was one thing to be asked to translate the scrolls. She had full faith in her abilities to decipher even the most obscure languages.

But what did she know about magic?

A big fat nothing.

“What makes you think I can cast a spell?” she rasped.

His huge body vibrated with the need to join the battle, but easily sensing her rising panic, he reached to grasp her upper arms in a light grip.

“Do you remember the first time we met?”

She licked her dry lips. “In the chat room?”

“Yes, I sent a fellow Pantera a message in our private language. Imagine my shock when you managed to translate it.”

The internet chat rooms she’d discovered after becoming an adjunct professor had proven to be a godsend.

She might be too introverted to mix easily with people in public, but she’d been astonishingly capable of joining in the numerous debates and scholarly exchanges in the various rooms.

“I thought it was a brainteaser,” she confessed, easily recalling the strange conversation that had popped up on her screen. It’d taken her several hours, but she’d eventually worked out the basic construct of the unknown words and sent a message back to Xavier in the same language. “But a talent for translations doesn’t equate to mystic abilities.”

“No, but over the years I sent you more and more obscure texts, most of which were nothing but gibberish to me.”

She arched her brows. “Were they Pantera texts?”

He shook his head. “They’d been written by a Shaman.”

“Oh.” Suddenly she realized that this man had been subtly testing her over the years. He’d suspected all along that there was more to her than just another scholar. “That’s why you had me brought here.”

“I’d hoped you could decipher the scrolls. I didn’t know they were a spell,” he readily confessed, his fingers tightening on her arms. “Will you help?”

What could she say? She didn’t know how or when it’d happened, but she knew with absolute clarity that Lian was now the most important thing in her world. She would give her life to protect him.

“I’ll try.”

“That’s all we can ask.” His eyes glowed with a lethal lust for blood as his cat broke free of its leash. “I have to go,” he growled, already shifting into a huge black puma before he was pouncing across the balcony and over the railing.

Savagely squashing the need to follow behind Xavier, Sage instead turned to place her hand flat on the scrolls.

This was how she could help.

She couldn’t allow herself to be distracted.

“Okay, Sage, you can do this,” she muttered. “Lian needs you.”

Emptying her thoughts of everything except the hieroglyphs, she allowed the magic to flow through her blood and softly spoke the words that felt like fire on her lips.

It took several minutes to complete the entire spell that was spread over five scrolls, but reaching the last glyph, she straightened from the table and sucked in a deep breath.

She didn’t know what she’d expected.

Lightning. Earthquakes.

The sky falling.

Instead, she smelled…fresh grass as a misty shape formed and floated out the French doors.

Was that the goddess?

With a shake of her head, Sage was headed toward the door. She’d done everything possible with the scrolls.

Now she intended to be with Lian.

They would face the danger together.

* * *

Lian snarled as he watched the tall man with a lean face and dark hair braided down his back raise his hand. Chayton, the one-time Shaman, was looking decidedly worse for wear with deep claw marks down one side of his face, and a bloody nose. But while his body was human, he was infected by the spirit of the goddess who had the sort of magic that was making it impossible for the gathering Pantera to completely halt his progress across the large clearing.

To prove his point, the man released a bolt of energy that slammed into the charging golden puma.

With a pained yip, Raphael was tossed into a nearby tree, the crunch of bones making Lian wince.

Shit.

Even in his puma form, he understood that things weren’t going well. Unfortunately, they didn’t have any choice but to try and keep the spirit contained in the Wildlands. If Shakpi managed to get past their borders she would disappear and they would once again be under constant threat of attack.

There was a blur of black as Xavier leapt through the air and hit Chayton from behind. The Shaman muttered a curse before he reached over his shoulder and blasted the clinging puma with enough force to knock Xavier unconscious.

Ignoring his shattered ribs and painful wounds that had been scorched into his flesh, Lian leaped forward, his jaws wide as he went directly for Chayton’s throat.

He managed to get close enough to scrape his elongated canines across the bastard’s shoulder, but before he could latch onto the flesh, he felt fingers close around his neck to bring him to an abrupt halt.

With an inhuman strength, Shakpi held him off the ground, studying him with glowing eyes.

“Why do you fight me?” the goddess demanded, an unmistakable frustration etched onto the lean, bloody face. “You can’t possibly win.”

Lian shifted to his human form, using the abrupt change to free himself from the brutal grip.

“Not alone,” he snarled, backing toward the edge of the clearing. Maybe if he could piss her off enough, he could lure the evil bitch away from his people. “But we are pack. You can’t defeat us all.”

“I don’t need to defeat all of you.” A smug smile touched Chayton’s lips. “Just one.”

“One…” Realization smacked into Lian. Shakpi wasn’t trying to escape the Wildlands, because she was convinced that the key to her ultimate destruction of the Pantera was the child. “Raphael,” he shouted toward the golden puma slowly rising to his feet. “She’s after Soyala.”

Raphael’s roar made the trees tremble as he raced across the grass to the house he shared with his mate.

At the same time, Lian was charging forward to halt Shakpi as she tried to follow the fleeing puma.

He wrapped his arms around Chayton’s slender body, intending to knock him to the ground. But clearly tired of playing with him, the goddess pushed him away with a jolt of her power.

“No, nothing can stop me now.”

Instantly Lian’s entire body was filled with a shocking pain that forced his heart to a shuddering halt and wrenched the air from his lungs.

Fuck.

He was going to die.

There was no way to survive the massive injuries to his inner organs.

The thought had barely formed when the enticing scent of lemon teased its way past the fog in his mind.

No.

He wasn’t going to give up.

Not when Sage needed him.

With a groan of agony, he opened his swollen eyes, discovering Shakpi standing over him.

“Why?” He forced the question past his numb lips. “Why do you hate us?”

The glowing eyes filled with envy. “You are an abomination.”

The goddess truly was mad, Lian acknowledged in horror.

“We’re the children of Opela,” he ground out.

“She should never have created you. It was a mistake.”

“She loves us.”

“No. She loves me.” With a burst of fury, Shakpi reached down to grab Lian by the throat, yanking him back to his feet. “She promised to love me.”

“And I do,” a soft, lyrical voice said.

The fingers on Lian’s neck tightened as the goddess turned to study the small cloud of mist that hovered a few feet away.

“Opela?”

“It is I, sister.” The soft voice came from the mist that shimmered in the late afternoon sunlight, the air suddenly filled with the scent of fresh grass. “What have you done?”

Lian blinked in confusion.

Could this truly be Opela?

It was certainly as good an explanation as any other.

Awe spread through Lian even as he struggled against the shattering pain.

“Release him, Shakpi,” the female voice commanded.

Shakpi shook her head. “This is a trick.”

“No trick.” The scent of grass thickened even as the misty shape floated closer. “I’ve come for you.”

The hand that was squeezing Lian’s throat eased, as the goddess concentrated on the shadowed form standing directly in front of them.

“You tried to destroy me.”

Lian could actually feel the sorrow that pulsed from Opela. “I would never wish to hurt you, my sister.”

“You locked me away,” Shakpi hissed, the earth quaking beneath her remembered sense of betrayal.

“I couldn’t allow you to attack my children.”

“You should never have created them.” Shakpi glanced toward Lian, her eyes filled with hate. “They took you away from me.”

“I have always been here for you.” The mist swirled, expanding to touch Shakpi.

The evil goddess dropped her hand from Lian, but not before he felt the sheer love that was gently wrapping around her.

A love that was as vast as the universe.

“You left and I was alone,” Shakpi whispered.

“Come with me, sister.”

Shakpi shook her head. “I won’t return to the prison.”

“Let’s go home,” the female voice gently urged.

The lean face softened with a yearning that came from the very soul.

“Home? You swear?”

“Yes, Shakpi. It’s time.”

Chayton’s body trembled and then collapsed as the dark shadow of Shakpi’s spirit left The Shaman’s body to join with her sister.

Barely capable of standing, Lian dropped to his knees, instinctively reaching to feel for Chayton’s pulse before he glanced up at the mist that now shimmered with a dazzling display of color.

“You’re leaving?”

He felt something like the brush of a finger over his swollen cheek, offering a warmth that seared away the most grievous of his injuries.