The Cougar's Bargain (34 page)

Another five minutes or so went by, and the Cougars around all started to relax enough to shift back to their human forms. Darnell sidled up between Hank and Mason and cleared his throat. “I think that one with the white patch on his forehead is the one that clawed me up two months ago in that bar fight.”

“I hope you got a good swipe at him, then,” Mason said.

“I could do with taking another. Can I?”

“No time.”

The magical perimeter they'd been standing at seemed to flex and drive them back a few yards. Lola-Ellery stepped back into it with her hands clasped behind her back and head held high. The “Coyotes” remained paralyzed as if their paws were tarred to the desert ground, but there was fear in their eyes, and Sean didn't think it was just from the goddess at work.

“You have three choices,” Lola-Ellery said.

The Cougars all looked around, likely to determine who she was talking to.

“She's not alone in there,” Hannah said.

“How do you know?” Sean asked.

She shrugged against his back. “It's hard to explain. The same being that makes me an avenger is what makes
Los Impostores
what they are. What I am isn't just because of Lola. It's because of her brother, too, so my senses are probably a bit off from yours.”

“The first choice is,” Lola-Ellery continued, “you take them home. Make them see the errors of their ways, and perhaps you'll rehabilitate them enough to allow them to roam free again. Obviously, that did not work so well the last time we had this problem.”

No response.

“The second choice is them going into that hole.” She pointed to the hellmouth and returned her hand to her back to clasp it once more. “Some of them might find their ways back out, and if they do, perhaps they'll be scared enough from what they saw in hell that they won't want to go back. Those few might do some good for you.

“Brutal,” Sean muttered.

“This is like a WWE showdown crossed with a paranormal telenovella plot,” Hannah whispered.

He snorted.

“The third choice is I'll make them shift into something they can't shift back from.” She paced a bit beside a short saguaro cactus. “Perhaps cows, though I doubt Glenda Foye would want to tend them. Maybe rabbits. Lizards. Snakes. They'd be devoured within a week, but my hands would be clean of doing the job.”

“She's so crafty,” Hannah said reverently. “She really knows how to stay on the knife's edge of those rules.”

Tito grunted. “That's a good thing she does more thinking than acting nowadays. Been a long time since she's been on a killin' spree. I don't think you really want to witness one. She's from a more bloodthirsty time.”

The circle seemed to breathe, the boundary pulsing in and out, and the Cougars all took a few more steps back.

“Fine,” Lola-Ellery said. She started toward the Cougars. “If that suits you. Just so you know, that hole is going to close. Maybe in a week. Maybe in a month. Tell your dogs that.”

She stepped out and kept walking.

Sean and the others all turned back and watched, not quite sure what was happening. The dogs were digging their nails into the Earth, trying to hold on but were being dragged toward the sickly green hue of the hellmouth by some unseen force.

It didn't matter how much writhing and howling they did. One by one, they got sucked in, shifting back into their human forms as they disappeared into the maw, screaming like it hurt.

Screaming like all that noise would make a difference.

Then the last one, the one who'd met Hannah at the coffee shop, hit the barrier. He didn't scream. His gaze was locked on Sean and Hannah, his expression hostile and foreboding.

And then he was gone, sucked in.

“See you later, cousin,” Tito said under his breath before turning on his heel and following his mother.

Cousin?

One by one, other Cougars followed, until the Foyes and Hannah were the last ones standing there, still staring at the open hellmouth and the
nothingness
where the shifters had been.

Mason was the first to break the uncomfortable silence. “Well.”

“Yeah,” Hank said.

There was probably nothing any of them could say that would be much more articulate.

They turned and followed the group, and Sean started to as well, but Hannah clung to his waist tightly enough to keep him locked in place, and he didn't think it was because she wanted a piggyback ride.

“What's wrong?”

“Look.” She pointed to a stretch of nothingness—or a cactus maybe. He looked over his shoulder at her.

Her eyes were round with fright
and pupils focused. She wasn't staring at
nothing
.

It took Sean a moment longer to see what she was. It wasn't until the god stepped out of the circle of Lola's—his sister's—creation did he come into view.

He was tall, for his people, anyway, and had a nose hooked like that of some dangerous bird of the jungle. He had skin that was as dark as Lola's but eyes that were an inkier black. Bottomless eyes.

And he came to them barefooted, wearing a
Real Madrid
sweatshirt with some holes in it, and exercise shorts that didn't quite match.

His gaze tracked over to where Lola-Ellery went, then back to the petrified Cougars in front of him.

“She was always better at this.” His voice was low and tone measured. There was no anger in it, just …
tiredness
. “It is always a mistake to mimic her acts. The products are always crude in comparison. I think she takes pity on me. Every now and then, she lets me have something good.” He shifted that bottomless gaze to Hannah, then to Sean.

“What do you mean?” Hannah asked.

“I checked out long ago, as my sister would tell you. It was a mistake, me not dealing with my shifters before I did … before they started acting on their own whims. This is what they've become.”

“Your son is one?” Hannah asked. Sean assumed she was referring to the man she'd met at the coffee shop. She, like he, was starting to put it all together, how these people were connected.

The god let out a long, weary breath. “Maybe he needs this challenge. I am all out of ideas. Perhaps I should have sought Lola's assistance long ago, but it was easier to ignore the problem. I do not wish to be so hands-on at this point. I simply …
can't
be.” His voice tapered off at the end, and Sean thought he understood what the old god was getting at. After all, Sean had checked out once, too. He understood why someone with so many burdens would want to.

“I stay out of my sister's hair as much as I can, but I am curious sometimes, so I follow and see what she is doing and what she has made.”

“Why am I the avenger?” Hannah whispered. “Why didn't you pick someone who had her shit together?”

He shrugged. “The Fates whisper, and I listen. They told me what you'd be—resilient and spirited—and I'm sorry about the path you had to walk to get there. You got a little dinged up. Life's tough, huh?”

She let out a breath.
Understatement.

“Hey, I do okay with molding what's already created, but I can't and shouldn't make anything new. I just claimed you and gave you a little power. I didn't make you what you are.” He looked to Sean. “Or you.”

“What am I?”

The old god chuckled and stepped back through the invisible wall Lola would probably obliterate later. Sean couldn't see him, but his voice was there. “You think there could be a woman who could get angry enough to righteously avenge your glaring without there being someone to guard her heart? I think that could be a full-time job.”

“The dreams!” Hannah called after him frantically. “Can you make them stop?”

His laughter stopped. “You get rid of one gift and you might end up with one you like less, Avenger. You sure you want to risk it?”

“You call that a gift?”

“It's yours. You always had the capacity for premonitions. I just focused it. Our world can be a violent one, and that is why you often see savage things.”

“The dreams are gorier than before I became a Cougar, and I want to sleep. I want to be able to close my eyes without worrying that's what's going to wake me up. I'd honestly prefer to get up at three AM to fight a demon coming out of that hellmouth than be rendered paralyzed by one of those dreams.”

Sean squeezed her wrist. “You sure? Maybe we could figure out how to shape them.” If it was hers, he didn't think she should be so quick to get rid of it. She might need that gift some day. “You know they're not real and that I'm not going to let anything happen to you.”

She twisted the end of her braid and looked from Sean to the desert back to Sean again.

“You know what they are now, so you can get help with them. Ellery's gotta know a few psychics. Maybe she can find someone who could help both you and Steven.”

“Yeah.” She dropped her braid and looked to the desert for a while. “I guess I was weird even before I came here,” she whispered.

“Maybe that's why you fit in.”

Swallowing hard, she waved to the man in the desert who Sean couldn't see. “Never mind.”

“If you need me,” the god said, “tell Lola to call my name.”

Although Sean couldn't feel the god disappear or see him, Sean knew he was gone. He'd gone back to his probably quiet life somewhere where he was getting his head on straight and figuring out what he wanted to be when he grew up.

Sean wondered if he was right and if Hannah's heart did need guarding. Gods knew nothing else about her did. She had resources for dealing with her weaknesses, or would soon.

He turned and looked down at her—she had that same wide-eyed expression that wasn't from fear, this time, but perhaps uncertainty.

He opened his mouth to ask her if she needed him, but decided he didn't want to give her the chance to say no. He just took her hand, and got her moving toward the houses.

It was time for him to claim his mate.

Hannah tried her best not to think about all the people still lingering on ranch property, or her brother in town who was probably waiting on a status update, or even wonder if Miles was still cooped up in the hayloft. It was hard enough to keep her anxiety at bay with each slap of Sean's feet against the floor in his curtain-darkened house, the clicking of locks, and the strong hold of his fingers around her hand.

He moved her through the living space she'd yet to familiarize herself with, setting things in order that he'd been unable to see to in the past few weeks. He flipped the calendar page and stared at the notes for the week. He sorted through the pile of mail on the counter. He deleted voicemails after listening to a cursory five seconds of each.

Then he pulled her along quietly down the hall.

The next room he illuminated was the bathroom. He turned on the shower without a word, fetched a few towels from under the sink, and set them atop the toilet lid.

She moved instinctively into the tub when he pulled the curtain back, and he followed her.

She'd never been in the shower with a man before and wasn't sure what to expect or what to do.

He seemed to, though. He handed her a bar of soap and turned her around to face the spray.

Oh.

While she lathered, he freed her braid of its elastic and detangled the plait as if she'd forget to do it herself.

She didn't mind him doing it, though. Sometimes, it was nice to let someone else make decisions. Being steered wasn't such a bad thing if it was done gently.

He handed her a bottle of shampoo next, and she handed him the soap. While she lathered her hair, he soaped up her back. His strong, rough hands made electric prickles chase down her spine that seemed to collect down below and make her stand up straighter and pay attention to her quivering sex.

She rubbed her wet thighs together, hoping to slake some of the carnal neediness, but Sean slid his hands up her belly and cupped her breasts, and she gave up on it.

He was going to torture her, and she threw her head back onto his shoulder to endure it.

Back down his hands went, pausing at the bends between her thighs and her lower lips.

His erection pressed urgently against the small of her back, so at least she could take some comfort in knowing that for as tightly wound as she was, he was suffering, too.

And he wants
me
.

He pressed his hot mouth to the crook of her neck and half kissed, half bit his way down to her shoulder, rendering her so heady and disoriented she hadn't noticed his finger falling over her slit.

The sharp frissons that tightened her core and made her toes curl were impossible to ignore, though.

He rubbed and stroked, teased at her entrance, and needing more—needing
everything
—she hooked her leg back around his knee to improve his ease of access.

Her balance was fucked, but she wanted to be, too.

“Bedroom,” he whispered. He didn't free his hands from her, though—not yet. He gave her nipples hard tweaks that very nearly knocked her feet out from under her.

How does he know to do that?

No, I don't want to know
.

She might have to go on a killing spree like Lola in days gone by, if she did know.

He turned off the water, pushed the curtains back, and grabbed a towel for each of them.

They didn't do very much drying off, though.

They kissed and groped their way into his bedroom, and fell into heap onto his bed that somehow managed to be both desperate and graceful.

Perk of being a cat.

He put his hands beneath her armpits and heaved her up so her head was on the pillows, and his mouth crushed hers. His kiss was hungry and searching, and so were the thrusts of her hips against him. She wanted him so badly—wanted to go
there
and have that first time out of the way so they could really play.