Storm echo, p.12
Storm Echo, page 12
Suspicion had her scowling. It was Ivan. Of course it was. He was looking after her exactly as he’d threatened.
Cat and woman, both of them snorted … but she wasn’t mad. Not when the result had been that haunting scene that had made her forget the blood and the grief for a pulse of time. She did wonder how he was doing it. Then again, the man had literally brought her back from the dead. What connection did that create? What bond did that build?
Her cat prowled inside her, missing him.
Mine, it thought again, and the human side of her unbent enough to admit that he was both wildly pretty and stubbornly courageous. He wasn’t the kind of man who’d ever be comfortable with the label, but he’d been a hero on that street, holding the line under incredible pressure. And the intensity in those pale eyes …
A little shiver rippling over her skin, her body having woken from a long, numb sleep. It wasn’t that she hadn’t met other men over the past months. She had. Some of them had even hit on her. She’d had zero reaction to them; no desire and no anger. Just a physical and emotional blankness.
Neither had ever been an option with Ivan.
But she couldn’t think about her fascination with the deadly Psy who’d found her broken body in the snow, didn’t have time to figure out if her cat’s reaction was some kind of strange imprinting.
The ocelot within snarled, insulted beyond measure.
The human half of her scowled, but both parts of her were in agreement on one point: she had to figure out how to get out of this place without being caught. According to Tamsyn, she was still in Chinatown, so DarkRiver hadn’t taken her to the forested core of their territory.
Good.
The pack was incredibly security conscious when it came to the heart of their lands. The Chinatown HQ, by comparison, was relatively open. It had all the necessary security protocols, but as it was also set up to allow meetings with outside parties, it couldn’t, by definition, be airtight.
She began to get dressed. Whoever had chosen the clothing had done a good job. Too good. The jeans fit snugly against her legs, and the T-shirt skimmed the lines of her body. While the sweatshirt—a dark gray—was loose, it was only fashionably so; Soleil felt exposed, all her weaknesses out in the open.
“Clothing is the least of my problems,” she muttered, bringing herself back to harsh reality.
After finger-combing her hair, she walked out into the room—just as someone knocked on the door. Having caught Tamsyn’s scent, she didn’t hesitate to say, “Come in.”
The healer poked her head just inside. “I wanted to let you know that I’m going to be here for a while, so just holler if you’d like to talk.” A hesitation. “Are you sure you don’t want to tell me why you’re in the city?”
Tamsyn’s gaze was patient, warm as she added, “Are you in trouble? Or scared of someone? We can help you if you are.” The healer sighed when Soleil stayed silent. “I don’t like leaving you closed up in this room, but we need to protect our vulnerable. Just … think about it, okay?”
A shift in the air currents as Tamsyn moved slightly and Soleil’s entire world shifted on its axis, her heart kicking so hard it bruised. Either she was going truly insane, or she’d just caught a painfully familiar scent coming off Tamsyn. It belonged to a packmate. A SkyElm ocelot cub.
She tried to inhale deeper, confirm. But the scent vanished as quickly as it had appeared, a faint thread gone too soon. “I’m sorry,” she said to the healer, her cat too confused to think straight. “I’m not ready to speak.”
Eyes dark with worry, Tamsyn inclined her head. “I’ll be here until about half past seven. My mate’s taken our cubs and two of their friends to dinner at their favorite Chinatown restaurant—spic and span and in their best clothes.” So much love in her voice. “I’m on tenterhooks to see the state of their clothing when they return.”
Another tug on Soleil’s changeling heart, another bite of hunger to join in, be part of a group, part of a pack.
Tamsyn left with one more encouraging smile.
Soleil waited only until the healer had closed the door behind herself before walking over to the window to check it out. It was one of those ones that slid up halfway, allowing her to look out into open air. Given her size in cat form, sliding out would be just doable.
The problem was that the window looked out into what appeared to be a side garden that belonged to DarkRiver. If she was right, this alley garden sat between two buildings owned by the pack.
While she couldn’t see anyone watching her, she had no doubt that either the garden was under surveillance or there were guards posted at either end of the alleyway.
So she looked up.
Ocelots weren’t arboreal by nature—but that didn’t mean they couldn’t climb with feline fluidity. From her vantage point, she saw that she was on the second floor, only one other floor above her. Easy enough to scale to get to the roof. Which was also no doubt under surveillance. Because DarkRiver was made up of cats, and they’d never forget that people could climb. But, she thought, what about the building to the back? That wasn’t a DarkRiver property.
According to her research, that property was a private home. It didn’t back directly onto the HQ, of course, a small buffer of land between, but it was close enough for a cat who didn’t mind jumps. Soleil’s cat had always liked those leaps, liked the sense of flying.
The jump was doable. But would DarkRiver have left that flank unprotected? Was that private home truly private? Or was it just held under a corporate identity that meant it didn’t show up as pack property at first glance?
Since she no longer had her phone, she couldn’t even look it up. The phone had been in a zippered pocket of her daypack. Gone. And with it, the last connection to her life.
The aeries had been stripped of personal items and closed up by the time she made it home, but she’d found a broken bracelet of Yariela’s that had fallen into a gap in between empty drawers, as well as two painted stones the cubs had given her and she’d placed in her garden.
Mere fragments to remember an entire life. Precious fragments now lost.
Her lower lip trembled.
A flicker in her mind, the delicate spiderweb glittering to haunting life … this time in shades of silver shot with a striking pale blue. As she watched, the colors altered to a fiery orange edged with a red as dark as rage.
Wonder caught Soleil’s breath all over again, the beauty of the construct no less beautiful for being edged in a tone so harsh. She clung to it as she considered her options.
“You know there’s only one choice,” Farah said from beside her, her chin propped up in her hands as she perched her elbows on the windowsill. “You need to find out the meaning of the scent on Tamsyn, confirm if it was real or … like me.”
Eyes burning, Soleil didn’t look directly at her friend; she never looked directly at Farah, not ready to face the awful forever truth. “How am I going to get to that other roof, though?”
This building hadn’t been built as a prison, but it had been built with security in mind. There was no trellis that she could climb, no trees close enough for a cat to jump onto. Things a changeling mind had considered during the build.
Farah went as silent as the grave.
Agony tearing at her, Soleil slammed her hands against the window ledge.
That was when her eye fell on something she’d previously discarded: the fine decorative ledge that ran just below the window and seemed to go all the way around the building. It was a ledge far too slender for a leopard—or a human. Even a small human adult wouldn’t be able to maintain their balance with nothing above them but air.
But she wasn’t a leopard. Her changeling form was far smaller and more agile than theirs, her tail half the length of her body and built for balance. She might be too thin right now, in either form, but she wasn’t weak, had made sure of that, her muscles in good working order.
She looked again at the ledge, narrowed her eyes.
Yes, her claws, sharp and curved, could grip it.
Crawling along the narrow space would take time. But it could be done. Especially under cover of darkness, when she could become a dappled shadow against the wall, a shadow that moved so very slowly that it caught no attention at all.
She visualized the climb in her mind, and as she did so, wondered if she’d be able to shift when the time came. Her cat hadn’t emerged since the day everyone died. It had curled up into a ball deep inside her, and there it had stayed … until it saw Ivan.
It stretched luxuriantly inside her at the thought of him, and she felt its fur brush the inside of her skin, its claws prick the insides of her fingers. Oh yes, it was ready to come out again. And though it might be obsessed with Ivan, on one thing both parts of her were united: discovering the truth of what had happened to Yariela and the other survivors.
Chapter 20
Okay, y’all, we’ve discussed the whole wolf/bear food “situation.” If one of those two changelings is your sweetie—or a possible sweetie—and they offer you food, consider it an engagement ring and start booking the mating ceremony venue.
Or, you know, run far, far away as fast as possible.
We jest, we jest! But while food is a powerful courtship ritual for many changelings, away from that context, it’s also an act of pack love and care. The recipes in this edition of your favorite magazine celebrate those acts of love and comfort between packmates.
—From the July 2083 “Culinary Special” issue of Wild Woman magazine: “Skin Privileges, Style & Primal Sophistication”
IT COULDN’T HAVE been more than two hours from the time she decided to make the attempt to the point where she felt she had to risk it. The summer sun hadn’t set yet, the world bathed in oranges and yellows.
Her preference would’ve been to wait till dark, but Tamsyn had mentioned staying around till half past seven and Soleil didn’t want to risk missing her departure. She had no idea where the healer lived, or where she planned to go after leaving the HQ. And the only way to solve the mystery of the phantom scent thread that threatened to break Soleil’s heart with hope was to track her, see where it led.
Another thing that had thrown a wrench in the works was that she hadn’t simply been left alone in her room. First, a short and curvy brunette with subtly uptilted eyes and an open smile had knocked a couple of times, to check that she was all right and didn’t need anything.
It had been strange and wonderful, her cat wanting to make friends with the other woman even though it knew it couldn’t.
Not yet. Not before digging out the truth.
Monroe had always ranted and raved that DarkRiver thought it was too good for everyone else. Though Soleil knew her former alpha had been full of shit, she’d expected far different treatment for the simple reason that DarkRiver was a hugely powerful pack—and she was no one and nothing.
As it was, an older male juvenile with incredible bone structure, his hair light brown under his ball cap, and his eyes hazel with an unusual—she wanted to say almost purplish—tint to them had just dropped off a tray that held a mug of hot cocoa and a huge slice of cake.
“Tamsyn said you need to eat more—your body is close to breaking down muscle in order to fuel itself,” he’d told her in a firm tone that she wasn’t expecting from someone this young—especially when his voice was so clear and pure it threatened to distract her cat with its sheer aural beauty.
With a voice that hypnotic and a face that good-looking, this kid could grow up to be a rock star—or a cult leader.
“I’m no healer, man,” he’d added with a shrug, his expression dubious, “but that doesn’t sound good to me.”
Since Soleil respected Tamsyn and had a weakness for cake, she’d taken the tray and done her best to get through the cake. It had proved unexpectedly heavy, and she’d quickly realized it was made with crushed nuts. Almond or pistachio, perhaps. A good way to pack in a significant hit of energy.
Soleil’s stomach, however, could only hold so much, and she ended up leaving half the slice uneaten. It made her sad that she couldn’t take it with her. Wasting cake was sacrilege—but she couldn’t carry anything in her feline form.
A burp spilled out of her, an odd little rumble of a sound that made her cat rear back and pretend it didn’t know her. Nope, not this creature that made such inelegant sounds.
She could almost hear Farah’s giggle as she rubbed at her stomach. It remained concave, even though it felt as if she was full to her throat.
Stomach heavy or not, this was the best opportunity she’d get—DarkRiver usually gave her a half hour to forty-five minutes between checks. She’d have written it off as a security measure except they kept giving her things!
Cake, an extra blanket, a hot drink.
It bewildered her, how worried they seemed about her. She was, after all, an intruder.
Lucas is the son of a healer. … Doesn’t matter what you do or don’t do, he will never touch you in violence.
Heart aching for the boy the alpha had once been and confused by what to think of the man she’d considered a certain murderer only a day earlier, she walked to the window. Despite the lingering summer light, the world outside was quiet, haunted by all that had taken place so recently. No one was in the mood to be out and about.
The only other thing that might work in her favor was her cat’s coloring and the pattern of her ocelot coat—this close to sunset, she should be able to become just another part of it against the pale tan of the external wall.
After stripping with quick efficiency, she made sure to put her clothing items in the laundry basket placed in one corner of the bathroom. Her parents might have been loners who embraced freedom above all else, but they’d also often packed up and left at a moment’s notice.
As their child, Soleil had learned to be neat and tidy so as not to accidentally have her possessions left behind. And it would be rude to leave a mess, especially when everyone had gone out of their way to be kind to her.
“Ready?” she murmured to the other half of herself, still a little afraid the cat would balk. But it stretched, flexed its claws … and the world shimmered with light as her body broke into a million particles before re-forming into her other skin: a small cat of gold and orange with dark black patterns on its fur.
Her markings were distinctive, the black dots so close together they turned into lines in places. Twin black stripes ran down to the inner edges of large eyes designed to see the smallest movement, her ears erect and cupped. She was much smaller than a leopard or a jaguar, but that just meant she could slide through gaps that, to them, were impassable.
She had her scar in this form, too, a jagged line that bisected the fur of her face.
The cat shook itself to settle its fur into place, flicked the tail ringed by bands of black, then sniffed the air—and got a heavy wave of leopard scents in return. It reared back but didn’t retreat.
Her cat had never been a coward.
Scared and sad, but not a coward.
Jumping easily onto the window ledge, she poked out her small and elegant head, then reached out to test the ledge with a single paw. Satisfied it was wide enough, the cat eased itself out onto that narrow strip. Part of its paws edged over the very side, but it ignored that. This was instinct, its focus on getting out of here—and to Ivan.
The human part no longer ascendant, Soleil rolled her eyes inside her furred skin. He’s not our priority, she said.
The cat took a moment to yawn. But despite its desire to go to Ivan, it was the cubs that were at the forefront of its mind. Two tiny babies it had protected and shepherded around the forest more than once, amused by their antics even as it tried to be stern and teach them the proper way to do things.
Soleil padded slowly, oh so slowly, along the edge. And when she heard movement below, she froze. More leopard scents, heavy and strong. Would they smell her? In her favor was that she’d been around leopards the entire time since she was brought into the HQ.
She’d also slept for hours in a space thick with their scent.
It might give her just enough of a shadow scent that the people below would shrug off the part that didn’t belong. Regardless, she didn’t take the risk of moving.
Her ears pricked as voices began to drift up. She didn’t dare alter her balance by attempting to look down, see them.
“No hits on her fingerprints or DNA,” a male voice was saying. “Lucas says she’s a cat, he’s sure beyond any doubt. He just can’t pin down the species.”
“What about facial recognition?” Another unfamiliar voice, this one a woman.
“Still running,” the first speaker said. “I’m hitting every database I can. Even managed to hack into the DMV.”
“You’re going to get arrested someday.” A dry comment.
“Please, I’m too good to get caught. But even if she is in there, it’s going to take some time. Facial rec takes a ton of computronic power.”
“She still not talking?”
A grumble. “Healers. Obstinate as all hell and twice as bossy.”
Laughter. “You’re just grumpy Tammy put you on bed rest after that injury.”
The grumble and the affection both startled Soleil. Those two were dominants, a wave of primal power in the air that made her cat’s nostrils flare, but she could swear they considered Tamsyn their equal or maybe even more senior than them—and that they loved her.
Her cat wanted to whimper, need clawing at her. It hated being alone. Dreamed of a family like this one.
The voices faded as the cat fought its need to give voice to its pain, the two dominants wandering down toward the front of the building.
Soleil didn’t worry about their hunt for her identity. They wouldn’t find her in the DMV database. She’d never learned to drive—a lack that she’d cursed herself for many times over since she began her grief-maddened quest, but she still hadn’t been able to make herself take that step. She didn’t mind riding in cars, but to drive, to take control of a vehicle … No, she couldn’t do it.
