Not exactly.
A closer look didn’t reveal tigers or bobcats or even wolves. There were no endangered owls or gorillas. There weren’t even any of the peacocks Ethan had told me about when he gave me a lift home. At first I couldn’t comprehend what I was seeing. I didn’t know what I was looking at, but it was nothing so simple as animals in cages. And it should have been impossible.
Never mind the way fire could start at the touch of my hand, or my imaginary werewolf—this was something else entirely. The noise alone was disorienting: the rattle of metal bars and chains, the pacing of great beasts, the roar of some enraged creature I couldn’t see. The ones I could see fixed their eyes on me both pleading and predatory, both sad and savage.
I blinked, then blinked again, but they didn’t vanish.
There was a lion with eagle wings, a man covered in fur who clearly wasn’t a man at all, a creature of stitched animals like some crazed quilt. A cross between a giant lizard and a giant bird hissed at me. I stumbled back a step, even though it was in a cage and there was an electric security fence between us. My fingers trembled, clenched into sweaty fists until my skin burned. Tiny burn blisters throbbed on my fingertips.
A mad part of me wanted to set them free. There was too much intelligence, too much suffering in each of their impossible faces. And then the hissing and spitting faded under a growl, a single sound so near it had to have come from my side of the fence. Mouth dry, I turned, adrenaline spilling through me so violently I felt sick.
Not ten feet away, a wolf watched me, crowned with a low-hanging branch of cedar. This was no ordinary wolf; it was too big, and its eyes were incongruously human, down to the round black pupils. I’d never seen anything more disconcerting than those human eyes in a wolf’s face.
The creatures in the zoo paced their confines frantically, pressing against the iron bars. The chorus of howls and hisses made the hairs on my arms prickle as if they’d turned into needles. The wolf growled, dark lips lifting off large pointed teeth and hackles stiff with warning. The muscles bunched under pewter-gray fur as it prepared to leap at me. Something snarled behind the fences.
I was trapped between monster and monster.
“Ethan,” I said, my voice cracking, hoping he could understand me in this form. The wolf gave one sharp, furious bark, and my heart leaped right out of my chest. I had no idea where it landed—under my spleen, behind my knee—for all I knew, it was still hurtling through the air even now, a wet, thumping mass of muscle and fear. “Ethan, don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
His voice, so cool and sharp behind me, was the last straw. I’d thought the voice was coming from the wolf. But there was Ethan, blond hair ruffled by the wind. I felt as if I was held together by electricity. Smoke curled out from under the soles of my boots, catching in the undergrowth around me.
“Kia.” He approached me slowly. “Don’t move.” He eased in front of me while I gaped idiotically at his perfect profile. His arm crossed me protectively, resting on my hip bone. He was close enough that I could see a tiny nick of a faded scar on his jawbone and the tail of a more jagged vicious scar under his collar. Tiny flames licked at the dry needles on the ground between us. Ethan looked at the wolf, but I noticed he wasn’t making direct eye contact. “You know me,” he said. “Remember.”
I could have sworn the wolf rolled its eyes. Its pink tongue lolled out of the corner of its mouth, hackles flattening into regular fur again. “But…” I remembered scratches on his arms, blood on his hands, the rabbit torn open at my feet. “But…you’re the werewolf.”
His glance was gentle and disdainful, as if I’d amused him. “Werewolves don’t exist, Kia.” I pinched him as hard as I could, until he frowned at me. “Ow,” he added.
I didn’t say anything, just pointed to what looked like something out of an encyclopedia of mythical creatures. Or one of my comic books. His mouth actually quirked, as if he was going to smile. “That’s just a wolf,” he murmured.
I knew a lie when I heard one.
The electric fence shuddered loudly, shooting sparks. Ethan tensed. His hand tightened on my hip. The wolf swung its head away from us, snarling.
Something was loose inside the zoo. The creatures went wild, and their shrieking made me nauseous. Fire raced toward the fence, sending more sparks into the air. A shadow coalesced, all teeth and sharp edges. It was as big as a horse but with a lion’s mane and coloring. Its face was disturbingly humanlike. Ethan jerked his head toward the woods. “Go!” He grabbed me tighter when I tried to run. “Not you.”
The wolf streaked into the trees as I jerked out of Ethan’s grasp. “Are you nuts? Let’s get the hell out of here!”
“You can’t run blindly,” he said grimly. “That’s a manticore.”
“Is that a nickname for big-ass monster?” I said.
“Just stay behind me.” He took a step back and I had to do the same, since his arm was still across my waist.
“Why?”
“Because they eat human flesh.”
“What?”
“And worse.”
“There’s worse?”
“They shoot poisoned quills from their tails,” he added, shoving me back so suddenly I sprawled on the ground. I spat out a mouthful of burning pine needles. Luckily, he didn’t seem to notice. Poisoned quills were a little distracting. One of them slammed into the dirt next to my face and quivered like a plucked guitar string.
I jerked away. “Your dad couldn’t keep regular lions like other billionaires?”
He grabbed my hand and pulled me along. “Stay down.”
Quills shot through the air over our heads. Ethan launched himself over me. We lay in the pine needles and smoke, Ethan’s body over mine. He rolled his head back so we could keep track of the quills and the manticore ripping at the fence with his paws and teeth. Electricity sparked around him, but he was too maddened with the need to hunt to care.
“This is insane,” I whispered. Ethan was still on top of me, pressing so close I could see the muscles tensing in his jaw and feel his heart thumping in his chest, beating so hard I could confuse it with my own heartbeat. The manticore roared so loudly we both jumped. The sound of metal screeching on metal made my teeth hurt.
“Son of a bitch,” Ethan breathed. “He’s going to break through the fence.” The manticore was using his teeth, flinging saliva and quills as he worked feverishly at the metal. “If he breaks through, we’ll never outrun him.” Ethan’s hand clamped over my wrist, and he hauled me up, shoving me forward through the trees. “Go!” he yelled. “Go, go, go!”
A quill shot between us, nearly grazing Ethan’s shoulder and my cheek. I threw myself behind the nearest tree. Ethan rolled into a bush. “Kia!” he shouted. “Are you hit?”
“No,” I panted, trying to catch my breath.
“Make a run for the castle!”
“What about you?”
“I’ll be right behind you.”
He was going to make a shield of his body for me. He was risking poison and pain for a girl he sneered at, a girl who was every bit as freakish as the creatures behind those bars. “Like hell,” I muttered. I turned slightly, glaring at the manticore through the branches. His fur was golden, his stature arrogant and majestic. Under different circumstances, he would have been beautiful, even with those eerie humanoid features. Sparks showered over him from the wobbling fence. The smell of burning fur was unpleasant.
It was about to get a lot more unpleasant.
Mr. Yang would say act, don’t react. Screw that. I was going to react all over the damn place.
I concentrated on the sparks, willing them to burst into flames, willing them to burn and scorch the fence, the ground, anything between the manticore and us.
Nothing happened.
So much for Solar Flare, rescuing the day.
I tried again, even as Ethan started yelling at me to run. I barely heard him. The world narrowed and narrowed until it was just me and the sp
arks, flinging like fireflies. Just me and the sound of fire and air pushing into each other. Just me and the crackle of dry needles and leaves, the hiss of electricity arcing off the fence, the hot tingle of my palms as I rubbed them together, willing them to remember what fire felt like. My throat was parched, my skin feverish. Ethan slid into the undergrowth beside me. “What’s the matter with you?”
He probably thought I was frozen in panic. It didn’t matter; I just needed one more second. One more burn of lava under my skin, searing my veins, filling the air with wavering heat.
The manticore screamed. He jerked back, paws blistering with burns, fire racing along the interconnected metal grid of the fence. Flames licked around the perimeter of the zoo. An alarm sounded, screeching.
Then we ran as fast as we could, feet pounding the ground, hearts racing. The wind filled my ears, layered over a distant, soft kind of humming, almost like singing. I stumbled. It was pretty. Ethan’s grip tightened. “Keep running,” he ordered. “Don’t listen.”
“But…”
He pulled so hard my shoulder snapped, pain flaring briefly. It was enough to snap me out of my momentary distraction, and I burst into a run again. Smoke tickled my nostrils, rasped the back of my throat. Sunlight flashed between the trees as we leaped over a log, skirted an impenetrable cedar. We finally made it to the stone wall without being eaten. We crashed through the gate, and I bent over, hands on my knees, trying to remember how to breathe.
“The guards are coming,” he panted.
“So?” I gasped. Spots danced in front of my eyes. “Won’t they put out the fire and fix the fences?”
He nodded. “And they’ll see you.”
I straightened as my lungs stopped feeling like wrinkled fruit left too long in the sun. For some reason, he sounded every bit as upset over that as he had at the possibility that we might get skewered and devoured by a manticore. His eyes closed briefly as we heard the distinctive sound of footsteps crashing through the forest toward us. “Too late,” he whispered.
And then he kissed me.
A kiss implied an introduction, a kind of conversation unwinding between two people. Usually two people who could actually stand each other’s company. This was like being thrown into the middle of the ocean when you’d never even set foot into a creek before.
He spun me around, pressing me against the stone wall as if even gravity was too much of an interruption, as if he couldn’t spare a single scrap of energy for standing, not when he could be kissing me. My knees wholeheartedly agreed. Gravity ceased to exist; the fire burning in the woods, the monsters breathing in our scents, none of it mattered.
It was just our bodies, already flushed from running, breathing each other. Air was unnecessary, dust and ash. His mouth was every kind of sweet drink and every bite of dessert I’d ever had. It was chili peppers and chocolate, cinnamon candies, cherry cupcakes. We tasted each other, hip bones touching, hands sliding over skin. I was burning, but it was an entirely different kind of fire. I nipped back, eager to make him forget himself like he was making me forget everything that wasn’t his mouth. I’d never reacted like this before, never truly felt as if I was made of fire in this way. He made a sound in the back of his throat, kissing me harder. I was nearly dizzy with all of the feelings and sensations crowding inside me. I wondered how there was space left for my bones, for my very blood.
I’d forgotten why we were actually there until the gate creaked open beside us. Ethan ended the kiss leisurely, as if we’d been doing nothing all afternoon but this. He turned his head to look at the security guard, but his hands were still caging me against the stone, his body still shielding me. “What?” he asked lazily.
The guard cleared his throat. “Trouble in the woods, sir. Best to stay here.”
Ethan smiled, and it was all insolence and satiation. “I wasn’t planning on going anywhere.” He leaned down and kissed me slowly, teasingly.
The guard cleared his throat again, hiding a grin. When we were alone, Ethan straightened abruptly. “He’s gone,” he said, stalking away.
I stared at him, lips tingling. He kept walking. Even though my body was sighing, my brain went straight into name-calling. Bastard. You didn’t just kiss a girl like that and then leave. Asshat.
He stopped under the mermaid fountain and looked over his shoulder. I wondered if I’d said that last one out loud. He raised an eyebrow. “Are you coming, or what?”
I pushed away from the wall. “Only because I have a few things to say to you,” I muttered. “And you have a hell of a lot to answer for.”
We didn’t go back to the castle, like I’d assumed. Instead he went through the herb garden off the back of the kitchen, into a grove of pine trees growing in a circle. The needles scratched our arms as we pushed our way into the quiet, private center. There was a plastic bin under one tree. “You can’t tell anyone, Kia.” Ethan didn’t turn around to face me.
I felt absurdly disappointed. I shouldn’t have been surprised. In his world he was the son of the lord of the manor and I was a servant’s granddaughter. He’d never pretended to feel otherwise. He’d saved my life, and I might have saved his back, but he didn’t know that. He didn’t know the fire was my doing. And anyway, saving each other didn’t equal frolicking in the wildflowers and singing cartoon hearts.
“Fine.” I crossed my arms over my chest, striving to sound nonchalant. I’d die before I let him know I could still feel his kiss. “It was just a kiss, Ethan. I’m not hiring a skywriter, so get over yourself.”
“What?” He turned around, frowning. I raised my eyebrows. “Oh.” I could have sworn the tips of his ears went red. “That’s not what I meant.”
Now I was the one who felt like blushing and I wasn’t even sure why. “What then?”
“The manticore. The zoo.”
Right. “Like anyone would believe me.”
“You especially can’t let my father know that you saw it. He’s very…private.”
“Yeah, but he’s actually consistently nice to me. Unlike you, I might add.”
Ethan advanced on me so suddenly I instinctively took a step back. His hands closed over my shoulders. The lazy smirk was gone, the haughty arrogant glare. He went from breeze to storm without warning. “Please believe me, Kia. He can’t know.” He looked a little wild. “He can’t.”
“What the hell is going on? What is that place?” The numbness from the shock of discovering a zoo of monsters and then being attacked by a manticore wavered under the fear he was trying to hide. I was back to being a smart-mouthed girl covered in bruises and dirt and stinking of smoke.
He let go of me and jerked a hand roughly through his hair. “Dad’s always been into exotic animals.”
“Snow panthers and rare white tigers are exotic animals. This is something else entirely.” I remembered what he’d told me about Abby rescuing Holden’s peacocks. My eyes widened. “Abby knows,” I realized slowly. “That’s why she’s here. Why she gave up being a vet.” Why she left her granddaughter to move hundreds of miles away.
I was still trying to process that when Sloane eased between the branches. “A little help here?”
I blinked at her. “Sloane?”
“Yeah?”
“You’re naked.”
“Ouch. I noticed.” She shivered lightly. There was blood on her feet and leaves and twigs in her hair. Ethan was already lifting the lid off the bin and tossing a dress at her. She caught it and dropped it over her head, taking his place by the container. She rummaged for a sweater and socks and a pair of moccasins. “That manticore’s a bitch,” she said, pulling out a bag of beef jerky. “I’m starving. I hate shifting in this weather.”
My brain made the kind of noise a car makes when it stalls.
Sloane tore into the dried meat, her eyes the same blue as the eyes of the wolf.
“You’re the werewolf?” Just when I thought my head might stop spinning. “But…it’s daylight.”
“The moon’s visible to
day,” Sloane said. I couldn’t tell what she was feeling. “I have to turn when it’s full, but there’s more to it than that. If I have strong emotions under moonlight, I can’t always control the shift.”
“You’re a werewolf.” It needed to be said again.
“Isn’t she caught up yet?” She looked at Ethan accusingly.
“Little busy, Sloane.”
“Yeah, busy making out.”
“Shut up,” Ethan muttered. “We had to.”
Sloane and I both turned to stare at him. Something about our expressions must have warned him. He winced. “Excuse me?” I said calmly.
“Oh, Ethan, duck,” Sloane advised through a chortle.
“That kiss saved your life,” Ethan insisted.
Sloane choked. I tilted my head. “Did it really?”
Ethan groaned. “What is it about you that makes me an idiot?” he muttered.
I smiled for the first time that day.
“Look, no one can know you saw the bestiary, or the manticore. Especially my dad.” He glared at Sloane. “Back me up.”
“He’s right,” she admitted begrudgingly.
“He usually thinks so, anyway,” Tobias agreed. I hadn’t even seen the branches move—he was just suddenly there in the grove. I jumped but only a little. There wasn’t any room left for any kind of surprise. Ethan and Sloane nodded at him.
“Is this a Cabal thing?” I asked quietly.
“How do you know about that?” Ethan demanded.
I shrugged one shoulder. “I saw you guys. The night of the fire.”
“We’re not Cabal,” he said fiercely. “Not like the others, anyway.”
“Is this why there’s so much security around here?” I asked.