Her face had gone serious, but her eyes were calm and her tone warm. “No, you’re right. I don’t know what it’s like. But neither do you.”
“Pardonne moi?”
Tahira scooted between the chair and table, and straddled his knees. She took his hands in hers and used every trick of her body to grab his attention. It did, and he couldn’t understand why. “You’ve been bareback riding a wild horse your whole life, Antoine, and the horse is running away with you. I know the visions have been coming more and more often since I showed up. I can see it in your eyes—a haunted look where you can’t bear to even glance at the person who was just in the vision. But people have figured out ways to control horses. There are bridles and saddles, and once the horse is forced to go where you want to go, it becomes a tool rather than a threat. That’s something my grandmother told me about her gift. She said it was like being buffeted in a storm. Everything was too much, too fast to keep her footing. But when she started to enter the storm on her own terms, make the images work for her, make the storms come on her command—”
Antoine shook his head and pulled his hands free. “They can’t be controlled, Tahira. That’s the problem.”
She smiled just a bit, and it was understanding and patient and kind. “If you’ve been fighting them since you were five, you’ve never tried… that is, until you decided to smell the sweater at the same time you wanted to track the woman. While it surprised you, you did take control of that vision. You watched and followed and even touched her. That was a saddle, Antoine. It’s no different from my power well thingy. Granted, I don’t understand it yet, but we did control it somewhat that once. It means it can be controlled. But before you can let yourself control it, you have to free the visions from the chains you have them held down with. They aren’t meant to torment you. They’re meant for you to use. If you know that a person is going to get chained down and tortured—and no, I’m not stupid; I know you mean me—then try to figure out the when and the where. Take control of it. Find that image again and examine it. Don’t focus on the screams or the fear. Focus on the room. Where is it? What are the ways to escape or rescue them?”
He felt a strange realization prickling at his mind. He opened his mouth to speak, but she interrupted him.
“It’s okay to want to plan a strategy to find them. I want to, too. But the visions are a form of strategy—
another tool to use to find Giselle, my brother, and the others.”
He reached out to touch her cheek, to say… something, when he heard slow, punctuated claps behind them and turned to see Ahmad, leaning against the doorjamb, taking in the scene with condescension. Matty was close behind, holding Babette’s leash and carrying a squirming cub under each arm. He looked uncomfortable, and hurried past the other man to set the cubs on the floor in the corner. Then he sat down beside Babette and tried very hard to look invisible.
“Bravo,” Ahmad said with sarcasm dripping from each word. “A very poignant and moving speech, Tahira. Unfortunately, your words fall on deaf ears. A dozen people have told Antoine the same thing, but he chooses to hide behind his wall of torment and play the martyr.” He held up the back of his hand to his forehead. “O, woe is me! My childhood was dreadful and I might end up as mad as my sister. I simply cannot be expected to use my talent to save those in need, or be useful, or lead?” The melodramatic words ended with the cold, hard weight of iron.
He glided across the room with a scornful chuckle and a scent that dripped hate, and then sat down in the easy chair by the far wall so he could watch everyone in the room. “I see I’ve lost the battle for your hand by default, Tahira. Pity. But I wonder if Antoine has let you in on his little secret yet.” He smiled evilly at Antoine. “If I can’t win, then perhaps you shouldn’t either.”
What is he talking about? What secret?
Tahira frowned and stood up so she could see them both. With her hair loose and wild around her shoulders, she did look like a warrior, and Antoine suddenly realized that he would do almost anything to prevent her death. “You aren’t going to win any points with me by slamming Antoine.”
Ahmad shrugged. “Whether the information is good or bad is up to you. I told you earlier that I was remiss in not giving Antoine enough credit for deception. I admit it never would have occurred to me to bed a captive to make her want to stay in prison.” He noticed her confused expression and gave a look of false shock. But his scent was still a dark glee as thick and vile as tar. “Chains have always worked for me in the past, but I might have to rethink my strategy. Your method seems to have certain advantages.”
Antoine lowered his head and felt small hairs rising on the back of his neck. “What are you talking about, Ahmad? Just say it and be done with it. I have nothing to hide.”
All emotion dropped from the snake’s face until it was a cold, unreadable mask. “You think not? Very well. Did you or did you not have direct orders to hold Tahira a prisoner in this house until further instructed, and deny her family entry if they arrived?”
“What?!” Tahira’s voice was filled with such hurt and anger that he couldn’t look at her immediately. But he could feel her eyes bearing down on him and her scent was a wall of emotion that pressed against him with the weight of the ocean. Instead, he kept his attention focused on Ahmad. The slow smile that came to his face unnerved the cobra.
He flicked his eyes toward Tahira, who was waiting for a response with pained disbelief on her face.
“Ahmad is absolutely correct. Those were my orders.”
She reached out fast and hard, but he caught her hand before she could complete a slap across his face.
“I can’t believe … I trusted you! You … bastard! If one of your precious people hadn’t been captured, would you have—”
Antoine growled low in his chest and glared daggers at Ahmad’s smug expression. “Tahira, I haven’t lied to you. You can smell it. What I was trying to say is that I was instructed to hold you captive, and have been disobeying those orders—at great personal risk to myself, I might add.” He loosened his grip on her hand and locked his gaze with her flashing eyes. “Please believe me when I say that I don’t believe all orders are meant to be followed. Sometimes, you have to trust your instincts.”
Tahira’s back straightened and she got an odd expression on her face. The confusion in her scent was being replaced with something completely different. It was a combination of odors that made Ahmad hiss low. He couldn’t help but smile.
Tahira had just opened her mouth to reply, when the doors burst open at that moment, and Ahmad’s two guards came rushing in. One of them was still wearing his winter jacket and gloves.
Ahmad stood in a flash. “What has happened?”
The tall, thin guard whom Antoine knew as Hakeem sneered. “Nothing has happened … yet, my lord.”
With lightning speed, the other guard, Bahir, threw his arm toward Ahmad and the cobra immediately froze with a startled expression. He slumped to the floor with glazed eyes. While Antoine was watching a trio of darts that reeked of some horrid, bitter scent hit Ahmad’s leg, Hakeem threw himself forward toward Antoine. He turned and moved, but looking at Ahmad had cost him precious seconds. A metallic rattle filled the air and then searing burns on his arms, neck, and chest tore a roar of pain from his throat as shiny chains were wrapped around his body and locked together with a padlock. Now he understood the reason for the gloves. The chains were silver and were burning his skin wherever it wasn’t covered by clothing.
Bahir kicked Antoine in the face, causing pain to blossom in his mind and the rich copper scent of blood to fill the air. A nearly deafening cougar snarl was cut short when a second kick caught him in the stomach. As he wrestled against massive links as big around as his thumb, the pair raced to grab Tahira. But she didn’t plan to be taken that easily. She jumped over the table with blinding speed and ran to the center of the room where there was more space to fight. Babette moved to her side protectively and roared loud and long.
Matty was also moving. He picked up the kylie and boomerang he’d carved, along with a spray can of some sort, and held them up threateningly. He might be human, but he had been raised with snakes. He knew their tricks.
With both Ahmad and Antoine out of the way, the two traitors felt no need to hurry, and apparently didn’t have a high opinion of either Tahira or Matty. They did shy away from Babette, moving so that there was furniture between them and her. It gave Antoine an idea.
He stopped struggling against the chains and concentrated for a moment. It took agonizing seconds to ignore the skin that was crisping under the silver. He just had time to scream, “This is going to hurt, Tahira!” before he threw a blast of power that shot across the room and hit her in the chest. The effort left him heaving for breath and caused the chains to dig in deeper.
Luckily, Tahira remembered him saying the same thing in the van when the police were behind them and leapt backward behind Babette just before she dropped to the floor with a scream. Babette had seen people shifting form too many times to be startled by it, but Antoine reached outward again, felt for her mind, and pressed the impressions of protect and fight with images of her cubs, Tahira, and Matty. She flicked her emerald eyes to him, and then to the cubs, huddled together in the corner. She snarled once and then roared again. With a powerful leap, she vaulted the furniture and grabbed Hakeem by the arm while her extended claws raked down his chest with a thick, wet sound. The air was filled with his screaming.
Ahmad always surrounded himself with lesser alphas, but they could still shift form at will. Bahir changed to a snake in a burst. He opened his mouth with fangs extended, intending to inject deadly venom in Babette’s neck, but a whooshing sound was followed by a hard crack and he was suddenly flailing on the floor.
It took Antoine a moment to recognize the chunk of wood that clattered to the floor in front of the fireplace. Matty had actually used his kylie to take down an opponent! Both Tahira and Matty pressed the small advantage as Hakeem continued wrestling with Babette. Tahira pounced on the snake and bit down again and again as he hissed and desperately tried to sink his fangs through her thick mane.
Matty yelled for Tahira to hold Bahir still, and she pulled backward and wedged the cobra’s body between the couch and table. The snake hissed and spit a long string of venom, which Matty barely avoided, but while the mouth was open, he sprayed a long stream of product from the can. The cobra gagged and shuddered and began to twitch, “Wasp spray, mate!” Matty said to Antoine as he quickly backed up. “My cousins hated the stuff when my mum doused them for biting me.”
Antoine didn’t have time to warn Matty before Hakeem broke free Babette’s grasp with a wash of blood and flesh. He did have enough time to throw a shield of magic up so that when Hakeem hit Matty hard on the back of the head, Matty went down in a heap but would survive. Hakeem raced forward and picked Babette up from the floor and threw her against the bookshelves hard enough for the entire wall to shudder. Antoine protected her, too, by softening the blow with a cushion of energy. Books rained down on her and the cubs as she shook her head and tried to right herself. But Hakeem had grabbed another two darts from a pocket and was coming up behind Tahira. Antoine was quickly growing tired, but he had to warn her.
“He’s got darts!” Antoine shouted, and she moved in a blur. He struggled harder and harder, ignoring the blinding pain and scent of charred flesh as the chains cut through his clothing and skin. He began to feel the metal stretch, and he let out a roar of frustration and anger.
But Hakeem was expecting Tahira to move as she did, and managed to sink both of the darts into her side as she passed by.
“Antoine!” she screamed as she hit the floor, and then she was limp.
Bahir slithered over to Antoine and extended his hood with glittering eyes. “I ssshould kill you now, but time is sssshort.” Antoine glared at the snake but didn’t move. He wouldn’t show fear, even as Bahir sunk fangs into his thigh repeatedly. But as the snake turned into a man once more, he threw a blast of power that caught Babette in the chest and toppled her again.
As he had seen in his vision, Antoine could only watch helplessly as the two men dragged Tahira from the room. He didn’t dare continue to force power into her to keep her in form while unconscious. It might start a power drain that he wouldn’t be able to stop, and he needed every bit of energy he had. He could feel the men nearly drop her still form as she changed back to human, but then they continued on into the snowy night.
While they were still connected, Antoine steeled his will and flung the door open in his mind. He tried to connect a vision with her, but all he could see was a wall of rock and a creek that flowed out of it. Then a horrible pressure on his chest made him nearly pass out before air filled his lungs again. Torches burned in a massive cave that felt somehow familiar, but he’d never seen it before. There were whispers in the darkness that grew into chants in a language he’d never heard before. A guard walking by suddenly became alert and peered into the shadows where he stood, searching for a threat. Then he shuddered and backed away, moving closer to the orange circle of light on the floor.
“Hang on, mate!” Matty’s voice seemed to come from a great distance. But to his great surprise, he opened his eyes and found his friend holding a pair of bolt cutters to snap the chain, the vision didn’t disappear. It became superimposed over the reality of the library. He could still smell the pungent trickle of fear and pain from the torchlit chamber, and see figures moving in shadows no matter where he turned his head.
Babette was lying against his side and nuzzling his cheek, chuffing nervously. As Matty unwound the long length of chain from his body, he winced at what he saw. Antoine couldn’t disagree with the reaction. As the metal pulled away from him, the outer layer of skin, still black and smoking, went with it. The raw, bloody stripes that crisscrossed his body were painful, but he’d endured worse. He sat up to make it easier for his friend to remove the chain, and once his arms were free, he helped the process along.