Beast was nearing front steps when something in mind tore with harsh sound. Beast stopped. Stumbled. Fell to snow. In head, deep in mind, Edmund screamed, “My mistress! Dange—” The sound of his cry was cut off. Was sound of agony. Beast froze, lying in snow.
Edmund cry waked Jane.
Beast? Was that Ed?
Beast whirled body and spun to feet. Raced for door, sprinting, leaping, covering twenty feet in a bound.
Ed? Jane whispered in my/our mind.
Edmund screamed. Sound as if heart was being torn out with claws.
Oh no. Oh nonononono, Jane thought. He’s being . . . He’s being tortured.
* * *
* * *
Pain and vertigo and the scent of blood flooded through me. Beast’s paws overlapped and we stumbled, falling hard to our side. Rolled back to our feet. Ed? I screamed for him.
There was nothing. A blank dark hole where the connection to Ed used to reside. I hadn’t even noticed the bond was there, a real, tangible thing. Nor had I noticed the shield between us until it tore, that horrible ripping sound in Beast’s mind. But the absence of the bond, the absence of Ed, was glaring, screaming, like night terrors and drowning and being sucked into a deep, dark hole in an underground river.
I/we staggered, raced up the stairs and inside, through the huge rubber-flapped cat door Eli had installed to the side of the human one. The silver-bell chimes announced our arrival. We raced across the thick Oriental rug of the foyer. Dry heat, artificial light, and the sound of a game on the huge TV screen over the fireplace were like being smacked in the senses, and we skidded on snow-damp paws across the marble flooring as we raced into the noisy office/TV/living area.
Beast had hunter eyes on Alex, sitting at the antique two-sided desk that took up the entire far end of the room. We leaped to cross the space, cat eyes seeing what he was working on while in midair. On three of his screens were files and research about the Dark Queen, and on two others were e-mails from witches about methods to treat magically induced cancer. We landed, slipping again on the slick floor, banging into the splayed feet of Alex’s desk chair. Sending him rolling.
The Kid grunted, pulled himself back into place, and tried to wave us away. Beast reached up and took his hand in her teeth.
The game went silent.
The room went still. Sweat smell of surprise came from Alex. He slowly turned his head and looked at us, long curls sliding across his dark-skinned forehead and cheek. “Jane?”
Eli was standing behind us, weapon drawn.
They think I died and you went feral, I thought at Beast.
She snorted at that thought and let go of Alex’s hand. It tasted of sweat and soot and coffee and an odd chemical under-tang. Beast rose to her back feet, placing her right paw on the desk near the keyboard.
Alex said, “Oh.” He opened the file drawer to the side and pulled out the specially made, heavy-duty, oversized keyboard, placing it in front of us. Behind us, Eli relaxed and we heard the sound of a weapon click back into the Kydex holster.
Beast extruded her claws and turned over the use of the paw to me. Carefully, slowly, I typed. Letter by letter, the words appeared on the small designated screen to Alex’s far left. ‘ed n trouble. where ed?’
Eli grunted in worry, propped a hip on the large oak desk, and pulled out his phone, probably to text Bruiser to get back to the house. My honeybunch was out in the vineyard, checking the youngest vines and the new trellis and the stability of the terraces down the hill from the house. Beast had smelled him on the wind as we raced inside and located him reliably. Bruiser wasn’t alone. He was with Brute, the white werewolf, and Pea, the grindylow. Not things I had consciously noted until I needed to.
Alex slanted sharp eyes at us and went to work, minimizing two of his screens, searching through private vampire sites he was able to access because of my position in Mithran hierarchy, and other sites that were open to the public. Beast dropped to the floor as he worked and pulled the ceramic water bowl to her with a paw. There were water bowls placed strategically throughout the house, all ceramic, since she refused to drink out of metal bowls, preferring toilet water to the taste of steel. Which had been gack until I was able to explain to the humans what was wrong. She lapped water.
The house had been an inn and vineyard that I bought before I left New Orleans. I’d needed a place to lie low while either my human body died from magically induced cancer or I decided to stay in Beast’s form forever. I hadn’t known what I was buying, not exactly. I was just hunting for acreage and I bought a property that had gone into foreclosure after the original owners’ costly divorce. Now it was territory for Beast and a house big enough for my family and clan to live with me. If I survived.
Eli asked. “Did you hear Ed psychically through the binding?”
Beast stopped drinking and looked up at him. I/we nodded once. Deep inside, my thoughts plundered the empty place where Ed had been, a place that was now raw and bleeding and broken. He had been here, inside of us, all this time, bound to me as his mistress. Now he was gone. I needed to help him. I needed to help him now. And I couldn’t.
Beast will hunt for Ed, she thought.
Ed is far away, I thought back.
“You’re all wet,” Eli said. “What’d you do, fall in the creek?”
Beast snarled.
Eli’s face seemed permanently creased with mixed emotions, complex weavings of fury, despair, anger, grief. He seldom laughed these days, and I was the problem. If he could heal me by shooting something, I’d be healthy and happy, because he was going through ammo as if it grew on trees, in the outdoor shooting range he had set up. But he was helpless in the face of a magical disease that no one knew how to treat. A rare moment of amusement lit his face. “You did,” Eli said. “You fell in.”
Beast snarled at him and thought at me, Do not like water. Hate water. Hate cold water. Water helped deer get away. Water stole deer.
I let my thoughts riffle through Beast’s memory and saw her landing in the icy water, plunging beneath. Inside, I laughed but said nothing.
Beast is best hunter. Water stole deer, she insisted.
Okay, I thought.
I hunger. Want to hunt bison in Edmund car.
There were at least three bison ranches within driving distance of Asheville, and we had this conversation multiple times a week. I figured that this time it was to cheer me up, to put my fear for Edmund to the side, but it was more distraction than comfort. I mentally counted to ten.
Ten is more than five. Hunt in Ed’s car, Beast thought, observant and yet cat-adamant all at once.
Ed’s in trouble. Ed’s in danger. So no, that ain’t happening.
Beast hungers. Will Eli give dead cow?
I’m sure he will.