Cougar's Courage (Duals and Donovans: The Different) Read online

  Some part of Cara’s brain clung to hoary truths from a world she already knew didn’t know even a fraction of the truth about their Different neighbors. At least in Canada the ignorance was mostly well-meaning, not like the US with their bigoted laws. “But duals can’t use magic.”

  “Most of ’em can’t. Jack can. So can Rafe. He’s Jack’s other student. You’ll like Rafe. He used to be a cop, in the US.”

  “But how…”

  Her grandfather came to her, gave her a big hug. “Trickster does what Trickster does, and shaman’s magic is a gift from Trickster and the ancestors. And you know what the duals say—Trickster gives a gift with one hand and a smack with a dead fish with the other.”

  Cara had never heard that saying before, but at the moment it made perfect sense. “I sure feel like I’ve been smacked upside the head with something. But if it was a dead fish, it was a huge one.”

  Another hug. “You’re home now, Cara, where you belong, where people know what you’re facing. It will get better. But for now, you look like you could use a drink.”

  “But Jack…”

  A glass of whisky appeared seemingly out of nowhere. “Find him in the morning. Morning’s the best time for starting new projects. For now, have some more stew and a drink.”

  Chapter Eight

  Jack tried to focus on working with Rafe, but today, his magic was as chaotic as his powerful, but half-trained, student’s. His problem, though, seemed to be the opposite of Rafe’s. Rafe had come to his powers literally under the gun, with some US magical police called the Agency trying to turn Jude—then Rafe’s friend and Elissa’s husband and now Rafe’s husband as well—into some kind of freakish mutant super-soldier and not caring who they killed in the process. Rafe could do fine in a chaotic situation where he had to react on instinct, but asking him to do something in a more deliberate manner, like you’d normally do to call game or heal someone, was a recipe for failure. The magic only worked when he was half-distracted and not thinking about it.

  Jack was discovering he couldn’t work when he was half-distracted.

  At least not when he was distracted by dangerously enticing thoughts of Cara Mackenzie.

  The fourth time he totally failed to light a fire in order to demonstrate for Rafe, he threw down his drum in disgust. “What is it with that woman?” he roared, making Rafe jump.

  “Which woman is that?” Rafe asked, although he must know damn well which woman, since he’d been there when Grand-mère commandeered Jack.

  “Your mother!” Half a second later, he added, as close to sheepish as he could get, “Sorry, Rafe.”

  “Now, which mother did you mean, exactly? Because the living mom, I’ll just beat you up over. The dead one, everyone will be beat you up over.” He did his best to be casual about it, but the deadfall both of them had been trying unsuccessfully to light on fire suddenly went up in a blaze that threatened the living pines many yards away from and above the inferno.

  Great. On top of being stuck on the image of Cara naked and lithe and eager, rather than the actual woman he’d have to teach, he’d managed to piss off Rafe.

  “Hey, I’m sorry.” Rafe paid no attention, but that might have been because he was desperately trying to put the fire out before, even in the snowy landscape, it got out of control. Magical fires didn’t have to behave logically.

  Jack had better luck putting the fire out than he’d had starting it. He touched the web of life in the forest, encouraging a squirrel to jump here, a crow to land there, a breeze to blow in a curiously localized way, high enough to touch the snow-covered surrounding trees while passing above the ground and the fire.

  The result was perfect. Great gobs of snow fell on the fire, squelching it more rapidly than the so-called laws of physics should have allowed.

  Of course, a gob of snow splatted onto Jack’s head as well, soaking his hair and slithering down the back of his neck, and never mind he hadn’t been standing under a tree at the time. The same energy he’d used to squelch the fire had created the snow. Shamanic magic did that sometimes. Better than putting the big fire out but setting his jacket ablaze, which could have happened.

  At least it got Rafe laughing, and that made the chill worthwhile. Boy, Jack had put his foot in it that time.

  Rafe’s mother and father had been murdered when he was an infant, and while no one could be sure, Rafe believed the Agency was responsible. A shaman was as vulnerable to random thugs as anyone else if you caught him with his guard down; it wasn’t combat magic except for scaring the piss out of your enemies through bizarre illusions. But Grand-mère’s own daughter should have been tough for just anyone to kill, even if she’d been living across the border in New York, far from Grand-mère’s base of power.

  She’d died anyway, but she’d used her last burst of magic to make sure her baby was safe with a normy adoption agency.

  Rafe hadn’t known how his birth parents had died until he’d arrived in Couguar-Caché, but now he’d gotten obsessed with finding out the whole story and, if possible, delivering payback. It was why he was working so hard with Jack, although Jack had been the first to tell him the backlash from the magic, if used for revenge, would be bad.

  Now at least he had an illustration. “See?” Jack said, pointing to the pile of snow slowly making its way south from his head inside his coat. “This is funny. But I hardly did anything, and I got paradox. You use shamanism to hurt someone, even in a good cause, and Powers know what might happen. Trickster might think it was hilarious and let you get away with it—or might not.”

  “But when we fought the Agency, I…”

  “You were using the magic how it’s intended. Calling game. Talking to animals to get information. Finding a safe haven. Playing tricks, and just because it was a time when a trick could save your life doesn’t make it any less a trick.”

  “But…”

  He drew closer, into Rafe’s personal space. “Listen, there’s got to be a reason that two cougar shamans were born in one family, in one generation, when as far as we know it’s never happened before. Cougar shamans. I don’t know what the reason is, but we’ve got advantages a cougar alone or a shaman alone doesn’t. So use them. If you have enemies, if your family has enemies, fuck up their heads as much as you can. Baffle them, confuse them, draw them away. Use crows and blue jays and their own house pets to track them down. Drum them up dreams that make their brains ache. Comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable—that’s what we do.” He put his hands on Rafe’s shoulders and literally shook him. “But if you need to kill, be the predator you are and not a fucking sorcerer wanna-be. Kill so you leave the magic clean or don’t kill at all.” He punctuated the four last words with four good shakes.

  Then Jack froze. Either this had been a really good idea or a really bad one indeed.

  The forest became silent, and the silence gathered around the two shamans, a palpable presence waiting to see whether this scene would end in laughter or an explosion.

  To Jack’s relief, because he didn’t feel like getting into a stupid confrontation, Rafe clapped him on the back. “Makes sense,” Rafe said. “Elissa’s magic’s like that, but even stricter. She kills someone, the magic goes away forever or gets completely fucked up. But it’s so frustrating sometimes. I have this weapon, only it’s not really a weapon. And claws are only good up close and personal.”

  “I know, old man. I know. Speaking of claws and up close… Ben, you can come out from under the bushes. I can see your tail. Almost nineteen and you still forget how long that sucker is.”

  Jack’s brother slunk out, looking as embarrassed as he could in his cougar form, which wasn’t very. Jack cuffed him gently on one soft ear. Then he and Rafe looked at each other, grinned and started shifting, shedding clothes as they did. This time, propelled by the need to pounce on his kid brother and knock the tar out of him, Jack went cougarside first, but Rafe wasn’t far behind. They jumped on Ben, who could have gotten out of the way but g
ood-humoredly played along. Snow flew as the three of them wrestled and cuffed. Mostly the two shamans ganged up on Ben, but since it was all in good fun, they also nipped and batted at each other.

  Powers, it felt good to blow off some steam. Probably felt even better for Rafe. New parents were always under extra stress, even when they knew what species their kid was.

  Maybe they were being a little rough on Ben, or perhaps he genuinely felt bad for lurking and spying. Before long, he rolled onto his back in a gesture of surrender. “Sorry,” he silentspoke. “Curious.” He flashed an image of a female cougar joining Jack and Rafe. Like everyone else in the village, he’d heard about the new arrival from Toronto, and like everyone else—especially the single guys—he was dying to get a look at her.

  “Too old for you.”

  Ben sent a series of images conveying the hope that Cara might be a cougar in the current human sense of the word. Jack cuffed him once more, a little harder this time, and shifted back to wordside form. “Go away. Rafe and I have work to do. We’ll catch up later. As for Cara, I’m sure Mom will invite her over for dinner sometime soon. Mom’s even nosier than you are.” Ben snarled playfully, but faded back into the tree line, off to find trouble somewhere else. Probably with a girl involved, if Jack knew anything about his baby brother.

  Rafe shifted wordside, laughing as he brushed melting snow off his bare skin. “Powers, I needed that. Remind me to thank your bratty brother later.”

  “Just smack him upside the head. He likes it.” Half-dressed, Jack gave his cousin a quick hug.

  And Cara Mackenzie materialized out of nowhere—not literally, although people were known to materialize out of nowhere around here. “Am I interrupting something? Your personal life’s none of my business, but I’m supposed to be here for lessons.”

  Rafe scrambled for clothes, but Jack had more important things to worry about. Cara’s tone was snippy and her aura crackled with self-righteous annoyance. Bad… Self-righteousness could be deadly for a shaman. To her credit, she looked from one man to the other several times, then to the evidence of the three-way cougar wrestling bout in the snow. She blushed as if she’d just realized why they’d been half dressed and now felt like a dork. Which she should, but the blush was pretty. And she still had that bristling self-righteousness in her aura.

  “First lesson: self-righteousness is fixed and rigid,” Jack said, smiling. “Shamans by nature are fluid, flexible and chaotic. So a self-righteous shaman is creating a bad mix. Oil and water. No, oil and fire. Or fire and dynamite. Things that go boom, anyway.” Her eyes widened, and her sensuous, wide mouth actually hung open for a second at the seeming non sequitur. Which was exactly the right reaction, as long as it got her to think.

  Unfortunately those red lips, parted as they were, made him ponder how great they’d feel around his cock, making him grateful he’d gotten his pants back on before she showed up. Which said something about how hot she was, because her eyes and her aura weren’t exactly screaming I want you. Trickster must hate him—or s/he loved him a great deal and was showing it in Trickster’s usual weird way.

  “You,” she said with great dignity, “aren’t making sense.” Then she blinked. “Wait. That’s the point, isn’t it? It’s like a Zen koan, deliberate paradox to make me think. Either that or you’re being a dick.”

  “Zen koan’s pretty close.”

  “And he is an utter dick at times. As I am. As you’ll probably be too. Goes with the shamanic territory.” Rafe, who’d covered all the bits a human would consider naughty, extended his hand. “Hi, I’m Rafe Too-Many-Last-Names, Jack’s cousin.”

  “Right. Is this pick-on-the-new-girl hour?” She shook Rafe’s hand, and her grip looked strong and sure despite the puzzled expression on her face. “The naked welcoming party was one thing—I mean, nice view, but it threw me until I figured out you’d just shifted—but I’m sure that’s not your actual name.”

  Rafe and Jack both laughed, making clouds in the cold air with their hot breath, and after a second, Cara joined in.

  “Seriously,” Jack said, “that’s what we’re calling him now. How many are you up to?”

  Rafe showily counted on his fingers. “Six—the one on my driver’s license, my husband’s, my wife’s, my birth-parents’ English name and their Native one. I think my mother had a name in her people’s language, but I can’t begin to pronounce it. At this point, Too-Many-Last-Names is easiest. That way no one’s offended I’m not using whichever one of the names they’re attached to.”

  “Obviously,” Jack drawled, “there’s a story here. But nights are long in winter up here, so I’m sure you’ll get to hear it. Unless…” His flirting instinct took over from his better judgment. “I can offer you something more exciting to do with your nights than hanging out with my cousin and the rest of the Rafe-Jude-and-Elissa-plus-baby show.” He felt like he was standing ten yards away from himself, watching himself put on his most practiced seducer’s smile and spew the ill-chosen words.

  He didn’t know whether to be disappointed or relieved, though he was some of both, when Cara said, “I think you’re supposed to be mentoring me, not dating me, so unless your exciting nights aren’t what I’m reading into them, I’ll stick with the Rafe-Jude-and-Elissa-plus-baby show.” She turned to Rafe with a smile that Jack would have to qualify as delicious in its own right. “So, you’re the other cougar shaman?”

  Oops. She’d almost committed a faux pas there. What she’d taken for two guys groping each other was two cousins giving each other one of those goofy guy-hugs. Which humans wouldn’t have done mostly naked, but duals, who had no nudity taboos to speak of, would.

  Why had she been so quick to jump to conclusions?

  And why would it have mattered anyway if Jack had been making out with the other guy? She didn’t give a damn about people’s sexual preferences, as long as they involved other consenting adults.

  Maybe, her pussy suggested, because she’d had a little too much fun imagining Jack indulging in consenting-adult type behavior with her, and the suggestion he might bat for the other team had made her bitchy.

  Jealous, even.

  She blushed and hoped it would pass as a flush from the wind.

  “Am I that famous?” Rafe asked.

  “My grandfather mentioned you. Plus he dragged me along to breakfast with Elissa and Jude this morning, since he’s apparently conned the entire village into feeding him. Elissa and Jude were great to a confused refugee from the normy world. So hospitable, in fact, that I ended up staying for lunch as well as breakfast. Your baby’s adorable. Very alert and aware for such a new one.”

  “Aw, I was hoping my fame had spread worldwide. Apparently not so much.” Rafe grinned. He didn’t look much like Jack except for the coloring and the general level of insanely good-looking, but that smile brought out their resemblance. The roguish grin wasn’t quite as convincing on him, though. There was something solid about Rafe. He came off as a genuinely nice, straightforward guy. Not what she expected in a shaman, based on her limited experience. Maybe there was hope for her sanity yet.

  “My grandfather,” she said gingerly, looking in Jack’s dark eyes and trying to pretend that the heat surging through her body had nothing to do with lust, “said you’d be teaching me. It looks like you and Rafe are in the middle of something.” She opted against saying goofing off, but she was thinking it. “When do you want to get started?”

  “We already have. You might as well hang out and watch. Later, we’ll go back to square one, just you and me.” Jack sounded about as thrilled with that prospect as he would be with taking a belt sander to his balls. “You’ll pick up a lot watching Rafe. He came to his powers late too. It’ll be good to see how your powers play with you while you’re learning to play with them.”

  She glanced at the other dual. “If it’s okay with Rafe…”

  “Every budding shaman in town has spent a few hours watching the crazy American set his tail on fire. At least you�
��re not a pimply twelve-year-old. Or Jake’s younger brother, who’s not even a shaman, just nosy.” Rafe smiled. God, he was a good-looking guy. A good-looking, pleasant guy, unlike sexy but abrasive Jack. Too bad Rafe was married. He’d be a good candidate for the post-trauma stupid fling that her body seemed to think was due. Jack wouldn’t be, even if her body thought otherwise.

  Still, Jack was teaching her. She ought to be grateful, since his tutelage—grumpy or not—might save her life. “Thank you. And Jack, thanks for agreeing to teach me.”

  “I didn’t actually agree. I mean I’m happy to do it,” he added quickly. His aura flared bright, and she thought that deep down under the grumpy exterior he meant it. “I’d hate to see Sam’s granddaughter come into her powers without someone to guide her. But me doing it? That was all decided by the spirits. You and I are just along for the ride.”

  “That explains so much.” And it did. He’d been railroaded into this by forces out of his control. It wasn’t teaching her he resented, but the sense that he was being swept along by fate.

  And God, she understood that feeling.

  She meant to say more, but something stabbed her through her brain. She put a hand to her head because it felt so much like a huge icicle should be protruding from her skull.

  No such luck that it would be something as ordinary as a freak accident. Not in her life, not right now.

  “Help.” Her voice sounded faraway and squeaky, like a Looney Toons character helplessly watching the anvil plummeting from nowhere toward her.

  The forest spun. Her leg snapped, a volley of agony that pitched her over into the snow.

  Jack and Rafe each stepped toward her, Jack’s hands outstretched as if he offered comfort, or more likely cast a spell.

  Before either man could reach her, something black and low-slung and scary burst out of the trees. They looked vaguely like wolves but not really—neither ordinary wolves or the wolfsides of duals, which looked like the animal but moved with more purpose and intelligence. These were wolves seen through a lens of acid after reading Stephen King.