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

  “If you hadn’t been late, they’d have gotten you. It wasn’t a random mugging. That was why the police couldn’t find any prints, any evidence. They were looking for you that night and killed me just because I was there. You’d have been kidnapped and tortured like those poor kids. That’s what brought me back here, wherever the hell here is. The blood, the ritual…and some really freaky guy talking in French about how the spell would have worked better if they’d gotten you because you’re a shaman. But you’re not one. Right?”

  Despite her rising terror, Cara couldn’t help chuckling. “Lover, even dead you babble when you’re nervous. Geek. What else did they say?” She thought about explaining that she actually was a shaman, or at least a shaman in training, but it hardly mattered now. Not as much as finding out what the threat was, what the French-speaking dirtbag and his equally creepy friends had planned.

  “I don’t know. My French is okay, but this guy talked weird. Not Quebec French but not foreign-film French either. I couldn’t catch everything. The other guys spoke English, but they didn’t say much.”

  “How many were there? Can you describe them?” What was wrong with her? Phil was back—if only briefly—and instead of telling how much she loved and missed him, she was questioning him like she would a witness.

  But he was a witness, the only witness they had to crimes that were horrible in themselves and might be leading up to something even worse.

  “Three the night I died, I think. Two of them were white guys, kind of scruffy. Typical thugs. The third… I know there was a third guy, but it was like I couldn’t focus on him. I actually didn’t even notice the third man until after I died.”

  “And tonight?”

  Phil’s ghost shook his head. “Really blurry. There were guys who looked like dogs with mange, and guys who looked like guys, but they kept changing back and forth. I never saw the man who spoke French, except this vague purplish outline.” His eyes closed, then opened. “I saw the blood, though. Saw what they did to those poor kids. They would have done the same to you, Cara. Trying to open the way into the village, someone said, and the boy was too stubborn to be very useful and the wolf girl wouldn’t be any use because it turned out she wasn’t from there. At least they killed her faster. I don’t get it.” He sighed. “I’m tired, and nothing makes sense. Except that I love you. You seem different now, but I still love you.”

  Cara was frozen, trying to find the right questions, but at the same time feeling her heart break, torn between the cop, the shaman and the bereaved woman experiencing her grief new and raw when she thought she’d finally reached a point where the hurt was bearable. “I am different now,” she said, not sure it made sense to do so but having to. “I’m a shaman. Like my mom and grandparents.”

  Phil had known her mom had committed suicide but hadn’t known the rest. “Why didn’t you tell me about your family? That’s cool, in a weird way.”

  Why hadn’t she? Fear, mostly, and trying to convince herself that she could lead an ordinary life with Phil. But the easiest thing was, “It seemed like a good idea then, and why doesn’t matter now. But now I need to know what you saw and heard tonight.”

  The ghost wavered, became dimmer, ragged around the edges somehow. “Let me.” Elissa tugged on her sleeve, trying to get her attention. “Talking to ghosts is one of my tricks…”

  “He’s my fiancé, dammit.” But how to reach him when he was literally coming apart?

  Lynx nudged at her leg until she finally gave in and opened herself to the obnoxious cat. “Words confuse the dead. You don’t need words. Put your bare hand where his heart would be and open to him, and you’ll learn more. But I warn you it will be rather dreadful.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” she said out loud. It didn’t. It would be no more than she deserved. It was bad enough that she’d put Becky Goulding into harm’s way, but she’d also caused Phil’s death.

  “Not you,” Lynx reminded her. “Others made the choice to do evil. The village was the target, and this poor fellow and the young wolf and Jack’s brother were simply in the way.”

  It was true, she supposed, but it didn’t help. What might help was making sure no one else died here. She shucked her glove and put her hand over the place where she’d rested her head so often, snuggling with Phil.

  At first all she registered was bone-jarring cold, cold that she knew was giving her frostbite or worse.

  Then the images started, disjointed and crazy. Two men—scruffy, unremarkable-looking men, but with bristly fuchsia-and-black auras that matched the magic staining the snow—forcing their way into Phil’s car. Pain, bright, fierce pain as they tried to make Phil say where they could find her. Phil’s terror mixing with his utter determination not to give in. She’d never known Phil was so brave, and it was the particular courage of someone who was utterly fucking terrified, hopelessly outmatched, but was fighting anyway to protect someone else.

  Fighting to protect her, and she felt all his love in that moment, keeping him fighting, but she also saw herself through his eyes and didn’t recognize herself at all. Saw herself blonder than she was, and as white as Phil, a woman who liked to lie with him by a fire, but not one who liked to spend the day snowshoeing or skiing beforehand. He saw her in softer colors than she saw herself, pastels, not primaries. Phil thought she might want to quit being a cop to be a stay-at-home mom, and his mental image had no brush of the Different. He loved her but didn’t really know her.

  And that hurt almost as much as the horror.

  A third figure appeared in the vehicle, but he was all malicious aura, no proper physical form at all, and his outline was funny, human, she thought, but with something else to it she couldn’t place. The figure said, in a heavy French accent, “End it. Couguar-Caché has other bastard children. We will find one who is more careless and less loved. The veil of silence will break soon, and your work is not quiet.”

  A great roar that she recognized as a gunshot far too close, a shock of horrible pain, and then sudden peace. In that peace, a glimpse of the third figure, pale, dark-haired, handsome in a Gallic way. He muttered, “Less foolishly brave and you might have lived, mon ami.”

  Then darkness and a whirl of stars and a light too beautiful to bear.

  Cara fell to her knees, retching, but the images kept coming.

  Flinging back from that place of peace and luscious light to a dark forest, flickering lights—flashlights, torches, some that Cara recognized as spell lights, though Phil did not. At first she saw, through Phil’s ghost eyes, a cougar and a wolf. They killed Becky quickly, slitting her throat while she was still in wolf form. But they were not so kind to Ben, hurting him in elaborate ways. When the hurting started, Ben began shifting back and forth, helplessly, so he was in wordy form, naked in the snow, when they finally cut out his heart.

  The shadowy figure from the night of Phil’s murder was there again, solid this time but still unrecognizable, and he was chanting something as waves of angry power rose up. There were about a dozen men with him, forming a circle, echoing the chant, taking turns helping with the torture.

  Cara couldn’t understand the chant. Couldn’t make out anything that Phil’s ghost hadn’t already passed on. Could sense only a dreadful determination and a hatred for Couguar-Caché so strong it caused a reek in the air as strong as that of blood and death.

  But she felt each cut they inflicted on Ben and Becky. Felt the knife open her throat, felt the hot blood gushing and the awful awareness that she was still breathing, but for all practical purposes dead.

  Felt her heart cut out from her living body.

  She fell over then, welcoming the embrace of the dirty snow because she couldn’t feel it if she was actually dead. But it was getting harder to breathe, and she was so cold, so very cold…

  And suddenly a glowing cat was licking her nose, which jarred her back into her icy body, and a man was holding her, chanting something too low to catch. She started to relax into his warmth.

&n
bsp; He spat something between his teeth at her. A mist of whisky, she recognized. “Don’t you dare!” a strangely familiar voice exclaimed. “Your grandfather will kill me if you die on my watch!”

  She placed the voice. Placed where she was and inferred what must have happened. Even had a guess why he’d spit whisky on her—some kind of earthy shamanic magic.

  Remembered everything.

  She wanted to cry, to vomit, to run screaming, to beat on Phil’s ghost with her fists and to kiss him until her lips and heart turned to ice.

  Instead, she wiped the whisky off her face with her left hand, the one that wasn’t frostbitten. “Thanks, Jack. If you have any of that left, I could use some more—and not in the face.” She took a slug from the flask, then stood, shrugging off all offers of help.

  She’d fall apart later. There was work to do. “I saw them,” she said, trying to sound stronger than she was. “It was too dark to make out faces, but maybe if I describe it, someone who knows more about magic than I do can figure out what they were doing.”

  She looked toward Phil’s ghost, now ragged and dim. She loved his bright good humor, generous heart and unexpected courage when it counted, would always treasure his memory—and knew, deep down, that if he’d lived and they’d gotten married, they’d have been divorced within five years. If they’d even made it as far as the wedding, because he so couldn’t have coped with a shaman in his life. He’d have tried, because he was a good guy, but part of his appeal had been that he was the most normal of normies, a contrast to her crazy family.

  In which she firmly belonged, as it turned out.

  That didn’t make the hurt any less. If anything, it made the pain worse, knowing that he shouldn’t have been in a position where he could have been used against her in the first place.

  Phil dimmed, and so did Cara’s connection to him. In fact, everything seemed foggy. She swayed on her feet, sagged. Jack caught her and, without even thinking about it, she let herself settle against him. Strong, solid. He felt right holding her. She thought Phil said something, and Elissa replied, but she couldn’t make out the words. Words were hard. She could hear the beating of Jack’s heart just fine, the murmur of his breath, maybe even the flow of blood—all the life bright in him after the touch of death—but nothing else.

  A gentle hand brought her back into focus, and brought pain with it. “It’s time for me to help Phil find his way back to the Otherside. Time for you to say good-bye for now.”

  Cara blinked. “Phil…” There was so much she wanted to say, but at the same time, words were superfluous. They’d been inside each other. He must know her love and her grief and at the same time, know her life was reshaping itself without him.

  The ghost reached out one hand but didn’t try to touch her. “I’ll see you again…but it better not be soon. Be careful. Those people are bad. Dangerous.” He looked at Jack, and though the ghost was faded, the expression in his eyes was keen, analytic. “You deserve to be happy. To be loved. Don’t stay alone.”

  Cara choked, and Jack’s arms tightened around her. She nodded at the ghost and whispered, “Thank you. I love you. We’ll get the guys who did this, I promise.” Then as an afterthought, she added, “Don’t wait up for me.” The same thing she’d always said when she was on an overnight shift. With luck, he’d listen better than he had then; she’d come home, as often as not, to find him dozing on the couch with the TV still on.

  Elissa stepped forward and asked, “Phil, are you ready to go?”

  “Don’t know. That guy may still want to kill Cara. Can’t do much to help like this, but I want her to be safe.”

  To her surprise, Jack said, “I’ll watch her back, as much as she’ll let me. Cara’s my friend from when we were kids, and she’s my student now. I won’t let any harm come to her. And I’ll help her see to it that these bastards pay.”

  “Good man. She’ll be a handful, I warn you.” The ghost looked to Elissa. “I’m ready, then. It’s not comfortable here when you’re dead.”

  Elissa spoke a few more words of what Cara thought must be Gaelic and did something that Cara literally couldn’t see.

  A trail of light broke through the darkness, and the light was echoed in the ghost’s sudden smile. He rose, following the trail of light, and dissipated into a cloud of what looked like glowing snowflakes that lingered on the air for just a second.

  Then there was nothing but a dim forest clearing, bloody snow, and the bodies of a boy and girl who’d died horribly because Cara hadn’t been around to be sacrificed in their place.

  And a large, glowing lynx sitting by Cara’s feet. Mustn’t forget the glowing lynx, she thought. Some part of her wanted to laugh hysterically about that, which she figured was a sure sign of too much stress.

  Grand-mère, who’d been silent during the conversation with the ghost, piped in, “Boys, Elissa, get Cara to Nella. She’s frostbitten and in shock, even if she can’t feel it yet.”

  Jack gave Cara a quick squeeze, then released her. “Go on ahead. I’ll be slow.” He crouched down and lifted Ben’s body. It must have been heavy—Ben was tall and muscular, like his brother, though not as filled out—but Jack did it as if the boy weighed nothing at all.

  Rafe, without any hesitation, did the same for Becky Goulding.

  Cara turned away, unable to watch, and began to walk in what she hoped was the right direction.

  But after a few steps, she turned back. “Let me take her, Rafe. Becky was a little bit of a thing, and smaller as a wolf. And I was the only one here who knew her.”

  Rafe laid the body of the young wolf in her arms.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Cara had maintained tight, silent control throughout the trudge back to the village and the awful moments of bringing Ben to his parents and Becky to Grand-mére’s longhouse. Jack guessed from her rigid posture and robotlike gait that she had to work hard at it. He didn’t intrude by looking at her aura, but he didn’t need to. This wasn’t the quiet of someone who was dealing with tragedy in a restrained, inward way. It was the quiet of someone who was waiting for some privacy to break down, or considering some act of shocking violence to release her anguish.

  He wouldn’t blame her for either response. He planned to let go as soon as he could himself, let all his rage and grief loose. His concern was that once Cara let herself go, she wouldn’t be able to stop.

  “I don’t need a doctor,” Cara insisted, her wide mouth set in a stubborn line, the first words she’d spoken since they’d left the awful clearing. “I’m not hurt, just freaked out. Let me go inside and be alone.”

  “Grand-mère said to,” Jack insisted, “and we’re going to. It always pays to listen to Grand-mère where magic’s concerned.” He took her arm at the elbow.

  Cara winced enough to be visible even in the dusk and jerked away from his touch. “I listened to Grand-mère, and trouble followed me here. Becky’s dead because of me. So is Phil. And your brother died because you were with me instead of with him. I’m leaving in the morning, before someone else gets hurt. I’d go now, but I couldn’t find the way in the dark. Thank you for trying to help me, but it’s better if I just go. If I let the magic win.”

  “Oh no you don’t.” Jack took a few steps closer. She took the same number of steps away. Lather rinse and repeat until she was backed up into the nearest building, which happened to be the Gambling-Bears’ cabin.

  Good. An argument wouldn’t disturb the Gambling-Bears. Hell, they could take the argument inside the cabin and not disturb the Gambling-Bears. The bear-dual family was hibernating, and it would take all-out war to wake them up before spring.

  Jack put his hands on either side of Cara’s shoulders, pinning her in place. He had no particular illusions this was a good idea. He was bullying her, pure and simple, and Cara seemed capable of kicking him in the jimmy or pulling some martial arts trick that would leave him gasping for breath in the snow.

  But she did neither, just glared at him with amber eyes tha
t looked like frozen maple syrup.

  “Listen to me!” Jack restrained his voice to a hard-edged whisper, though he wanted to shout. “This is not your fault, or Grand-mère’s or anyone but the murderers’. I was supposed to be hunting with Ben tonight, except you and I ended up in bed. So part of me feels like it’s my fault Ben died—but I also know it’s just as likely if I’d been with him, there’d be two dead Long-Claws, not just one. And I know I can’t bring Ben back, so I’m going to find who’s responsible and make sure they never hurt anyone else. I understand why you might want to leave this place and never come back. But if you stay, you have skills that can help us catch the killers.” He figured that right now, that would be more important to her than little things like staying here is your best chance to not go crazy and then die. Right now, self-preservation wasn’t too high on his list, and it was probably even lower on hers.

  She nodded tightly. It was anyone’s guess what part of his rant she was acknowledging.

  “It’s your choice what you do. But if you leave tomorrow, promise me one thing.”

  “What?” The only emotion he could read in that flat voice was distrust.

  “Promise me that you’ll find someone to train you. Your first spirit guide turned up tonight and helped us, but you’ve still got a long way to go before you’re safe.”

  “Why do you care? We hardly know each other. We fucked because someone was messing with our heads.”

  Jack considered shaking her. He thought better of it just in time. It might jar some thought into her head, but it might also break her.

  And it was way too close to violence for his own precarious control. Or maybe to sex. The predator in him wanted blood, and, failing that, it wanted fucking so he could forget, for a little while, his brother’s tortured body in the snow and the ghost of the man Cara Mackenzie had planned to marry.