He’d been the one to discover them, first into their home, and first to raise the alarm.
The first on the trail of the attacker.
Brighton pulled him in for a hug. “Let Brodey and Cail take you home to Mother and Father. I will stay here until the pyre burns down and insure it does not set the entire woods alight.” He clapped his younger brother on the back and handed him off to Brodey and Cail.
Ain didn’t look back, letting his brothers guide him toward home.
* * * *
The here and now, at the jaguars’ compound in Bolivia.
Marston sensed rather than heard the old wolf Seer standing in his open doorway. He stood in front of the window, in a morning sunbeam, his infant daughter cradled in one arm as he fed her a bottle of formula.
So much he’d learned in such a short amount of time. So much had changed since his first children had been born centuries ago.
The good thing was it kept his mind off his grief over losing Mercedes.
“Yes, Lacey?” he asked without turning, his gaze fixed on his daughter’s blessedly peaceful face.
“May I come in?”
“Of course.”
The wolf crossed the room until she stood next to him, staring at the baby. “She is beautiful, Marston.”
“Thank you.”
She reached out and touched one of the baby’s hands with her finger, letting out a sigh when the baby’s fingers closed around hers.
“You know I will keep your secret, don’t you?” she asked.
“I appreciate it. I know my life isn’t worth anything once she’s grown. But after that, I don’t care what happens to me. As long as she’s safe and happy.”
Lacey stroked the baby’s fingers with her thumb and didn’t attempt to pull her own finger free from her grip. “I wish I could fix that for you, but I can’t. You did a lot of dark things.”
“I know. I’m not proud of any of them.”
“Elain Lyall knows where you are. Well, she will know soon enough.”
That was finally enough to jerk his attention toward her. “What?”
“I saw it.” Her eyes met his. “I will do my best to convince her to keep this secret. I don’t know if she will or not, that is beyond my power. But she is a mother-to-be herself now. Perhaps she might see things in a different light.”
“That bloody insane dragon Seer won’t,” he muttered.
“Lina’s far from insane. She’s very powerful and very devoted to her friends and loved ones. And to be fair, in one of her visions she witnessed what you three did to Kael Dalco’s family.”
He winced but didn’t respond.
“My best advice to you is to stay as humble and quiet as possible around Elain when she shows up.”
Lacey cooed at the baby, who smiled at her around the nipple of the bottle in her mouth.
“You really think she’ll come here?” Marston asked.
“Of course she will.” She finally, gently extricated her finger from the baby’s grip. “You deserve whatever tongue lashing she gives you.” She once again focused on Marston. “And you will take it without question, hear me?”
He nodded.
She smiled and patted him on the shoulder before heading toward the door. “Good. Now hurry up and come downstairs. Breakfast is ready.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s morning.”
“No, I meant why do you want me to eat with you? I understand dinner last night was a sort of show for Fiona’s benefit since you’d just arrived—”
She stopped and turned. “Marston. In your arms you hold the reincarnated soul of a woman I loved more strongly than any sister. You are her biological father in this life. I can see in you the desire to be the best father to her that you can, and that you have left your dark ways behind you. That within you still beats a basically good heart once gone astray.”
She shrugged. “Whatever penance you do later on is no concern of mine. For now, I wish to enjoy these days. They are the best blessing I’ve had in a long, long time.”
“It doesn’t hurt that Ortega has Rodolfo down in his dungeon, does it?”
She grinned, showing a little tooth. “Not in the slightest.”
Chapter One
Meanwhile, back in Maine…
Elain Pardie Lyall lay naked in bed and stared up at the unfamiliar shadows cast onto the ceiling. So many things rolling through her brain, so much had happened, and too much to take in and process all at once.
Let’s not forget I’m pregnant.
Yeah, that had been the cap on the crazy day.
She reached up and fingered the tag on the necklace around her neck, the little pawprint tag that matched the ones her men wore. She realized it’d become an unconscious habit, a talisman.
She’d never spent a night in Lacey’s house before, and tried to ignore the occasional noises she heard. She knew the small, old house was simply settling, or creaking, but now knowing far more about the world than she ever cared to, it wasn’t hard for Elain’s mind to jump to more sinister explanations and stay on high alert. Especially since she had the house all to herself.
The nine millimeter, a round chambered and loaded with a full magazine, sat in its unzipped case tucked into an alcove in the headboard behind her.
Safety off.
It only lessened her tension a little.
Worse? The only person she could talk to about all this shit now rattling around in her mind was—here was the corker—the Devil himself, Ryan Ausar.
She would talk to Baba Yaga about it if she could, except she had no way of getting in touch with the old hag without going through Lina or Callie, and she couldn’t tell either one of them what she now knew. Gigi could probably put her in touch, but then word might get back to Callie or the others.
I can’t even tell my guys.
The secrets she now carried held the power to devastate the people she loved most. Her father and mother. Her own husbands and mates. Her best friends. Even her father’s brothers, who she’d yet to meet. Not to mention it could drive a wedge between the tenuous new relations forged in creating the mega-Clan that joined many shifter races.
It could also alienate Lacey, her friend and the Clan’s former Seer, from everyone else.
Marston Hill, alive and well and under the protection of the jaguars in Bolivia. Raising his infant daughter, the one he’d had to cut from Mercedes’ body after she was mortally injured by a cockatrice.
Did that information fit in the larger puzzle comprised of the cockatrice threat? Or was that nothing more than a tragic distraction?
It felt like the more she knew, the deeper she fell into a tar pit of the past, events conspiring to drive her insane at the current rate.
I don’t even know how much I don’t know.
All she felt certain about was the fact that she’d been unwillingly saddled with responsibilities she neither wanted nor felt qualified to deal with.
Even trying to look at it logically didn’t help.
I wanted to be a journalist, to get to the heart of meaty stories. Never in my wildest dreams did I ever anticipate anything like this.
She rolled onto her right side and closed her eyes again. No telling how many miles she’d run earlier that evening while shifted, crossing back and forth through Clan territory there at the Maine compound, streaking through the woods without being distracted by any of the animals scurrying out of her way.
Running to the point of exhaustion, until she finally dragged herself back to Lacey’s, rinsed off in the shower, and collapsed onto the guest bed.
The exercise, unfortunately, hadn’t tired her brain.
I don’t want to be a Seer. I don’t want to be in the Triad.
I just wanted to have a family.
Well, she had that in spades, at least. With a baby on the way, as well as a baby brother, courtesy of her mom and dad.
Eventually, in the predawn hours, she gave up trying to sleep. She sat on the edge of
the bed and swung her legs over the side, staring down at her ankles. She wiggled her toes.
Guess I’d better stare at you guys while I still can.
Even that thought drew little more than a smirk from her.
Missing—one sense of humor.
Elain wondered if this was why Baba Yaga’s two sisters felt alienated from her. Maybe for this very reason, the weight of knowledge bearing down on Baba Yaga so heavily that she couldn’t connect with them any longer.
I know I can’t connect with Mai and Lina right now.
If anything, she needed to keep her distance from them. Kind of hard to do when Mai and her men still lived in the same house with Elain, and Lina and her guys would all soon be moving down to Arcadia from Tampa.
Standing, she pulled on sweats and headed out to the kitchen, where she turned on the TV mounted under the upper cabinets. An early-morning news anchor droned on about the world’s problems. Insurgents in the Middle East. Suicide bombings. The kidnapping of a soccer player in South America. Another political scandal out of DC.
The same ole shit.
As Elain measured out coffee, her mind wandered.
How much of what I’m listening to is caused by stupid, greedy, or evil people, and how much of it is really caused by cockatrice?
Elain had seen the vision Lina had picked up from Baba Yaga. By holding on to her friend’s arm and tuning in to Lina’s thoughts, she’d seen it play through Lina’s mind. A nuclear bomb being set off in a populated area. One set by the cockatrice.
Then there was the book to be thought about, the one from her vision. The evil cockatrice spellbook still floating around out there, a match to the one they had and likely in the hands of the cockatrice.
If they didn’t get their hands on that book, if the wrong people took possession of it and used it…
With her arms braced against the counter, she stared down at the floor.
“I’m not ready for this,” she quietly said to the empty room.
“Of course you are.”
Elain screamed, wheeling around at the sound of the woman’s voice. In the doorway stood Baba Yaga, in her matronly form. She wore what looked like Vera Wang and a wry smile. What looked like an amethyst amulet peeked through at her neckline before she reached up and adjusted her collar. With her arms crossed in front of her, she leaned against the frame.
“What the fuck are you doing scaring me like that?”
“Sorry. Want me to go outside and knock?”
“You’re lucky I can’t throw fireballs.”
The Immortal shrugged but otherwise didn’t move. “Who says you can’t?”
“I…” Elain stared at her for a moment before a smile broke out across her face. “Yeah, riiight. Nice one. I’m still pissed off at you for scaring me.”
“I’m serious. The three of you made a house disappear as if it’d never existed. Nice job, that, by the way. If you honestly think a fireball is beneath you, think again.”
Elain’s throat went dry. She tried to swallow, but heard a dry click.
“Oh, come now,” Baba Yaga chided as she stepped away from the doorframe and across the kitchen toward Elain. “Yes, your powers are still in their infancy, but the three of you together have already achieved things our Triad never would have imagined at this stage.”
“Together,” Elain said. “That being the key word. All I can do is see things and sense emotions when I touch someone. Lina’s our human flamethrower, not me.”
“Yet. You just need to have courage and try.”
Elain stared at her, sure the woman must be yanking her chain. “You’re kidding, right?”
“Absolutely not. Do I strike you as a jokester? That would be Loki’s realm, not mine.”
“Lok—” Elain’s jaw snapped shut. Nope. I don’t want to know if more mythical beings are actually real. “Don’t suppose you want to give me any instructions, do you?”
She shrugged. “I cannot.”
“Of course not.”
“No, I mean I do not know. Just as we had to find our own way, so must you. Not because I don’t wish to help you along, but in this case, I simply do not know. They are your abilities. You must learn them. It’s not like teaching someone how to drive an automobile. There is no one right or wrong way.”
“So what is the purpose of your visit, other than scaring the crap out of me?”
“Twofold. The first being that should you wish to contact me, you simply tell yourself you’re at my home, and there you shall be.”
Elain eyed her. “Just that easy?”
“Just that easy.”
“And the second point?”
“I’m going on a…walkabout, as it were. So should you try to contact me in the immediate future, you won’t be able to locate me. I’ll notify you upon my return.”
Elain stared at her for a moment before arching an eyebrow. “Really?”
“What?”
“You come here to tell me how to get in touch with you, and then tell me that you’re not going to be around for a while?”
“Well, when you put it like that, I do suppose it sounds rather odd.”
“Exactly how long will this little walkabout of yours last?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. I haven’t decided.”
Elain turned to the cabinets to find a coffee mug. “It sounds like there’s a reason you don’t want me contacting you.”
The Immortal didn’t answer. When Elain turned around, she found herself alone in the kitchen.
“Oh, come on!” she screamed at the ceiling. “Really?”
* * * *
It was still a little before dawn as Elain sat on the back porch, sipping coffee as she stared through the garden and toward the woods behind Lacey’s house. One of Jocko’s nephews was stopping by a couple of times a week to check on things, weed, and keep the grass mowed until winter set in.
The old wolf Seer’s presence filled the house and the garden, but that didn’t provide Elain with any answers.
Not far away, here on wolf Clan land, lay two graves. One dug with care, the other simply to conceal the two cockatrice bodies within.
It was the first grave she thought about now, the one that wouldn’t leave her brain.
What she’d seen yesterday when she sat by the grave and placed her hands on the relatively fresh dirt.
Her visions.
Closing her eyes, she stared into the darkness and spoke aloud. “Tell me what I’m supposed to do.”
In her mind, Mercedes appeared. Not impaled on a branch as she had died, but whole, the way she’d looked in Yellowstone.
Except she wasn’t pregnant in this vision.
Behind Mercedes, the blackness of Elain’s mind faded into a mentally reproduced view of Lacey’s backyard. The woman turned and pointed toward the sundial, where underneath lay the Tablet of Trammel, hidden to appear as if nothing more than another paving stone.
Mercedes looked at her and shook her head.
Next, another vision appeared in Elain’s mind. She saw Ryan Ausar and Lina, together, standing by the sundial. Then Elain’s mind flashed back months earlier, to the night they were all discussing how to remove Callie’s curse and the two of them disappeared from the Florida house for a while. Lina had returned a short time later looking shell-shocked, but had revealed very little about what happened or what she and Ryan had discussed.
Elain’s eyes opened, but Mercedes still stood in the middle of Lacey’s garden, the beam of the security lamp mounted on the back of the house passing right through her.
This time, she smiled. “I can’t stay long.” She walked over to the sundial. “It’s not here, you know. Not the real one. Not anymore. This is a garden of secrets. More than just that one. Many more.” She pointed to Elain. “I can’t do anything else now. But you can.”
The image of Mercedes faded into the predawn darkness.
In a flash, Elain knew what she had to do even though she didn’t know why. She slung
the dregs of her coffee off the porch and ran inside, barely taking time to put the mug in the sink. After changing into jeans, a T-shirt, and sneakers, she ran down to Lacey’s basement and found exactly the things she knew she’d need.
Grabbing her car keys, she loaded the stuff into her trunk and headed back to the fire road where she’d parked the afternoon prior. Dawn was just starting to make its appearance. Going to the trunk, she removed the gardening gloves, shovel, tarp, and a roll of duct tape.
She deserves better. I can’t leave her out here.
Hiking in, in less than an hour she found the grave and dumped everything onto the ground a few feet from it.
What am I doing? This is crazy.
She pulled on the gloves and knelt beside the grave. Across from her, Mercedes appeared again, also kneeling.
“We’re a lot alike,” she whispered to Elain. “Our mothers were taken from us by Rodolfo Abernathy.”
Elain stared at her, wondering if this was just a vision or really happening. “Rodolfo was your father.”
Mercedes nodded. “Unfortunately.”
Elain fell back on her ass, eyes wide.
Mercedes smiled and picked up one of the smaller rocks that marked the outline of the grave, lifting it in her hand, her expression sad. “Marston tried to save me. Wanted to save me. I had to beg him to cut her out of me.” Her expression turned hard and cold. “Fucking cockatrice.”
“You’re a cockatrice,” Elain managed to whisper, certain now she was about to lose her mind, or had already lost it.
“Half,” Mercedes said, chucking the rock over her shoulder. “Half-wolf. Almost.” She pointed at Elain. “I had the benefit of knowing who I was from the start. But I didn’t have the benefit of loving parents.”
“Your brothers killed Lina’s parents.”
“Edgar did.” She picked up another small rock. “Lenny knew about it but wasn’t in on that part of it.” She stared at the rock. “And Lina was grown. Not like us. Not a newborn.” She chucked that rock over her shoulder, too, and picked up a third. “And if I knew then what I know now…” She didn’t finish.
“What’s that?”