Hunted by Magic (9 page)

Lust surged through me at the idea, reminding me that my heat was barely two weeks away. I clenched my teeth as fire spread through my lower belly, hotter and more potent than the blaze in front of me. I already ached to quench it, although I knew it wouldn’t matter. Having sex before the heat peaked didn’t take the edge off – when the time came, it was always explosive and there was no escaping it.

Besides, there was only one person I wanted right now, and he was lost somewhere on these vast plains, close but nowhere near close enough.

“Your friend is very spirited.” The log shifted a little as Aman-Wa, the tribe’s shaman, sat down next to me. Grey streaked his dark hair, though aside from the deep laugh lines on his face he did not look so very old. His more colorful tunic separated his status from the other tribe members – the only person who was dressed more elaborately was the chieftain, who sat on the other side of the bonfire wearing a feathered headdress and beaded tunic, his arm slung across the slim shoulders of his wife as he talked and laughed with a tribe elder.

“Annia has always known how to have a good time.” I grinned at the shaman, but Fenris shifted uncomfortably on my other side. I wondered if he was intimidated by the shaman, or if there was something else that bothered him about the man. My instincts told me Aman-Wa was easygoing and sincere, but then again I didn’t know as much about these people as Fenris seemed to.

“She may have red hair and pale skin, but in spirit she could easily be one of us.” The shaman’s dark eyes sparkled as he watched Annia grab hands with one of the half-naked males and start dancing with him. “Our men have been eyeing her with more interest than perhaps is wise.”

“Well, I hope none of them get too attached,” I half-joked. “Annia is a bit of a heartbreaker, and we are leaving in the morning.”

“To find your mage.” Aman-Wa nodded soberly, turning his head to look at me. His eyes dropped down below my neck, right to where my
serapha
charm rested beneath my shirt. I’d removed my jacket due to the heat of the fire, and alarm raced through me as I wondered if he could see it through the cotton fabric.

Impossible. It’s a black shirt and it’s dark out.
I had to fight against the urge to look down and check for myself.

“The stone you wear beneath your shirt, it holds a piece of the man you seek, does it not?”

I sucked in a breath, feeling like I’d been sucker-punched in the gut. “How the hell do you know that?”

The shaman smiled, and gently took my hands in his. “The spirits allow me to see what most cannot,” he told me. “I know the one you seek is important to you, just as I know that you are not merely a man-beast. There is power inside you that is wild and untamed yet.” He squeezed my hands gently.

I bit my lip as panic crackled through me. “Is this something you hold against me?”

“No,” the shaman said. “While we do not like the mages who rule this country, you are more beast than mage, and your heart is pure. It is for this reason that I offer you advice.”

“Advice?” I asked uneasily, and Fenris shifted behind me. I could practically hear his ears perking up.

“Should the stone fail to lead you to your friend, head in the direction of the mountains.” He pointed to the mountain range opposite the one we’d crash landed in. “A group of white men are camped there, about a day’s journey from where the flying machine crashed near the mountains. Our scouts have confirmed that they are holding prisoners.”

Fenris stared at the shaman. “I always understood that Coazi fiercely defended their lands from invasion. How could there be a camp of white men there? Would you not chase them off?”

The shaman looked grave. “So we would, but they are in the area of another tribe. If Halyma wanted them gone, they would not dare stay there. Nobody defies Halyma.” From his voice, I gathered that this Halyma, who must be the shaman or chieftain of the other tribe, was not a person Aman-Wa would lightly take to task.

Fenris and I exchanged a look of alarm. Had the Resistance bought off this other tribe somehow? If they were in league with the Coazi, that was more bad news.

I wanted to jump to my feet and take off in that direction so I could find out what was going on. Instead, I took a deep breath and squeezed the shaman’s hands, which were still in mine. “Thank you for this information. We will use it wisely.”

The shaman smiled. “I am sure you will. But let it sit in the back of your mind for now. You will have hard days ahead, so relax tonight.” He patted my knee, then took his leave, disappearing around the bonfire to talk to someone else.

I immediately whirled around to face Fenris. “Did you hear everything he said?” I demanded.

“My ears are as good as yours,” Fenris reminded me with an arched brow. “And yes, I heard what he said. There is a group of white men camped out in the plains.”

“
And
they’re holding prisoners!” I hissed, bracing my palms against the log as I leaned forward. “Iannis could be one of them! We have to go check it out.”

“Right now? In the dark? While Annia is high as an airship?”

I growled, whipping my head around to find Annia. She was sitting on one of the logs with the man she’d been dancing with, halfway in his lap, with one hand on his broad shoulder and the other splayed across his chest. They were flirting heavily with each other, which was amazing because I doubted they were speaking the same language. But then, lust is a pretty universal emotion.

“She looks a little less goofy than she did before,” I offered halfheartedly.

Fenris gave me a skeptical look. “She’ll be useless for at least a few hours, and after those drugs wear off she’ll be exhausted. Besides, we need sleep too. There is little point in charging into a Resistance camp tired and hungry. We need our wits about us, and you have not eaten enough.”

I sighed, then looked down at my empty clay dish. I’d already eaten two helpings and meant to get more, but in the beginning we’d been chatted up a storm by everyone, including the chieftain, and afterwards I’d been so caught up watching the ceremonial dancing that I’d forgotten about food.

“If I scarfed down a bit more right now and changed into beast form, I could make it there to at least check it out while everyone is asleep.”

“Sunaya.” Fenris placed a hand on my shoulder and met my eyes. “Consult your
serapha
charm. What does it say?”

I closed my eyes and focused in on the amulet. It felt warm against my chest, and I wondered if onlookers would see it glowing brightly through my shirt. The familiar tug sprang to life inside me, and I followed it with my mind, seeking out the direction it was coming from.

I let out a breath that was half disappointed, half relieved. “The amulet is pointing northwest.”

Fenris inclined his head. “Then that is where we will go. Finding Iannis is our priority. The camp the shaman was talking about may well be the Resistance, and it’s plausible they may have captured some of the delegates. But if Iannis is not with them, we cannot waste time going there first.”

“I hope this means he escaped when the Resistance came in and captured everyone.” If that was even what happened. “How did they know to be here, though? This is only one of many territories that the airship was flying over. Did the Resistance somehow bring down the ship from the ground?”

“I know as much as you do,” Fenris said regretfully. “Which unfortunately is very little. I doubt we’ll get any answers until we find Iannis and he explains what happened.”

“All the more reason to locate him, then.”

“Yes. But for now, you should do as the shaman says and enjoy the celebration they’ve put together for us.” Fenris smiled and patted my thigh one last time before he removed his hand. “I’m reasonably sure that venison is calling your name, and just because you can’t get high doesn’t mean you can’t dance around the fire.”

“In that case, I think you ought to take your own advice,” I said, grinning a little as I grabbed Fenris by his hands. He yelped as I pulled him to his feet, and with more than a little glee I dragged him out to dance with me by the bonfire.

“
P
lease remind
me never to smoke a Coazi pipe again,” Annia groaned, clutching her head with one hand as we trekked forward across the desert plains. “I don’t know what the hell they put in that thing, but it’s lethal.”

I snorted as Fenris shook his head at her. “At least they have a remedy for it,” I told her. “Pretty sure we wouldn’t have been able to revive you if we hadn’t forced that hangover concoction they gave us down your throat.”

“Yeah well it’s no wonder the stuff worked.” Annia glared at the water skin clutched in her hand, which the Coazi had filled with more of the herbal potion to take on the journey. “This stuff tastes so horrible it would wake the dead.” But she lifted it to her lips and took another swig nonetheless.

I simply shook my head and returned my attention to the landscape in front of us, glad that I was a shifter and that my system was unaffected by narcotics. If we’d all been as incapacitated as Annia was this morning, it would have slowed us down significantly.

Ahead, the rolling plains began to disappear into clusters of evergreen trees that encroached on either side of the vast landscape, leaving only a small stretch of plains in between the two forests. The sight ahead made me nervous, because people could be lurking within the darkness and safety of the trees, and we would be sitting ducks if we passed through the open space there.

Thankfully, the necklace tugged me toward the trees on the right side of the plains, so I led Fenris and Annia in that direction. After a quick consultation with Fenris, we both changed into beast form before venturing into the forest – we could move more quietly on paws than on booted feet, and could sneak up on anyone lurking beneath the evergreen limbs.

The shade of the forest was welcome after the hot sun that had continuously beaten down on us from the plains. The scents of woodland creatures met my nose, and I could hear them scampering around, both overhead as tree branches rustled and on the ground, darting between the meager shrubbery. The trees were spaced far enough apart that it was easy enough to walk a path through them, although there was still plenty of cover provided by the branches. If not for my keen sense of smell, we could easily walk past someone and never know about it.

I took the lead, with Fenris bringing up the rear and Annia in between. She had her short sword out and was scanning the trees with her dark eyes, forced to rely on her sight rather than the elevated sense of smell and hearing Fenris and I possessed. It was strange to be in a position where Annia actually envied me – usually I was jealous of her for leading the easy and relatively uncomplicated life of a human. But this time my shifter abilities gave me a clear advantage over her.

The tug in my chest grew stronger, and I huffed out a breath through my nostrils as a sensation not unlike heartburn began to spread through me.
“We’re getting close,”
I told Fenris.

“Excellent.”
His excitement was palpable, and I picked up my pace, eager to find Iannis. Could he sense my approach through his matching charm? I lifted my head as we trotted through the forest, peeling back my lips so I could probe the air with my scent glands. Surely if he was close, I’d be able to scent him by now? But maybe he was masking his scent with magic to keep predators away. The thought made me scowl. It figured that Iannis would somehow have to make this even harder – nothing about him was ever easy. Why was he even in this forest, anyway? Had he been taken in by the Coazi, who Fenris had said sometimes made their homes in the forest? The place didn’t look inviting, but perhaps somewhere in all this greenery there was a clearing large enough to set up their huts.

As the tug grew stronger, I still didn’t scent Iannis, but the sound of trickling water reached my ears. A few minutes later, we emerged onto the banks of a small stream running through the forest. Fenris and I stopped to lap from it while Annia refilled her canteen.

The charm’s pulse was very strong here, the strongest I’d ever felt except in Iannis’s presence. Once I was done drinking, I sat back on my haunches and changed back into human form so I could talk to Annia.

“What’s up?” she asked, propping a hand on her hip. “How much farther do we have to go?”

I pulled out the
serapha
charm from beneath my jacket and scowled down at it. It was blazing white and hot to the touch. “According to this thing, I should be standing on top of the Chief Mage right now. But I don’t see or scent him anywhere.”

A worried look entered Annia’s dark eyes. “Could he have lost the charm somehow?”

“I don’t see how that’s possible.” I sucked in a breath through my teeth, looking down at the glowing charm. “They’re not supposed to be able to be removed by anyone except the wearer.”

“Sunaya,”
Fenris’s voice was heavy with dread, and I turned to look at him as nerves prickled along my arms.
“Look up there.”

I followed to where his snout pointed, and my heart sank into my shoes. High up a tree across the stream, there was a tiny glowing stone winking from an empty nest.

“No. No, that’s not possible.” I took a step back as denial ripped through me. “That can’t be right.”

“Do you want me to retrieve it?”
Fenris asked gently.

“No.” I set my jaw. “I’ll get it.”

I leaped across the river, my booted feet landing firmly on the other side, then with a running jump grasped one of the lower-hanging, but sturdy branches. With a grunt, I hefted myself up, then continued climbing until I reached the branch the nest was sitting on. Tears filled my eyes as I recognized the thicker, more masculine silver links glittering between the small twigs and feathers of the nest – it was the same chain Iannis had put around my neck, and later his own, when we’d made these charms back in Solantha.

I took a deep breath and blinked the tears away, then reached out and carefully untangled the necklace from the nest. Instantly the throbbing pulse died away, only to be replaced by a hollow feeling of despair as I stared at the charm resting in the palm of my hand.

I’d thought that Iannis was going to be at the other end of this chain, but I was wrong. He’d taken it off, and now he was gone.

“
S
unaya
, you need to calm down.”

“Calm down!” I whirled around, a snarl on my lips as I shot Fenris a death glare. He and Annia had been waiting for me to settle down so we could plan our next move, standing by as I paced furiously beneath the trees.

But I didn’t want to calm down. My beast was close to the surface here, furious that I’d failed in my quest to find Iannis. The one advantage we’d held, the
serapha
charm, had proven to be utterly useless. Worse, from what I understood, the only way Iannis would have been separated from the charm was if he had taken it off voluntarily.

“Why would he take it off?” I raged, turning on my heel again so I could continue pacing. I wanted to punch something, and at the moment Iannis’s face would have been the preferred target. What the fuck was he thinking, taking off the charm? “Did he decide that he didn’t want to be found? That doesn’t make any sense!”

“It is possible the charm was taken by force or trickery,” Fenris said, his voice steady.

I turned again to face him. “How? Iannis said –”

“I
know
what Iannis said,” Fenris snapped. “In case you’ve forgotten, it was my suggestion that he use the
serapha
charms in the first place. And while they generally cannot be removed by anyone other than the wearer, an unusually strong mage could find a way.”

“What, you mean like by torture or mind control?” The very idea sent a shudder through me.

“Those are two possible options, yes.” Fenris’s voice calmed again. “I don’t believe Iannis would willingly get rid of the charm, not when it’s his only link to you, and the only way for you to seek him out.”

I let out a breath as shame swept through me. Fenris was so calm and controlled, but the truth was he had every reason to be just as upset as I was. He’d known Iannis for much longer, and the two of them were very close. If he could keep his head under these circumstances, then so could I. I was letting my emotions get the better of me, and blaming Iannis for losing the charm wasn’t going to help us find him.

“I guess now would be a good time to track down that Resistance camp the shaman was telling us about?” I asked as I fastened Iannis’s chain around my neck. I’d considered stowing it in my pack, but wearing both charms together felt right. It helped settle the unease in my chest, and as the charm came to rest against my skin next to the other, a comforting feeling washed over me.

“That does seem to be our only option, yes.” Fenris pulled out a compass from his pack and consulted it. “We’ll likely be walking through this forest for a while yet. Perhaps you and I should change so we can make better use of our senses.”

“How about one of you stays human for once?” Annia complained. “That way at least one of you can communicate with me if something goes wrong.”

“Very well,” Fenris conceded reluctantly. “I will remain in human form while Sunaya changes.”

After I’d quickly shifted into panther form, we moved forward, using Fenris’s compass as a guide to navigate the forest in the proper direction. I trotted through the forest silently on four legs, and though there was the occasional crunch of a twig or leaf beneath Annia’s or Fenris’s boots, for the most part we traveled soundlessly. There was evidence that humans had passed through this area, from footprints on the ground to the occasional bead or button from a piece of clothing. We even passed by the remains of a campfire in a clearing that was a few days old. I spent several minutes sniffing around the blackened wood and stones, hoping to catch a whiff of Iannis’s scent, but his familiar mix of musk, sandalwood, and magic was nowhere to be found.

We made it several miles into the forest before I caught the fresh scent of humans, and I stopped dead. Fenris and Annia went still behind me as I lifted my head, trying to discern where the scent was coming from and any other information I could glean.

“There’s a group of humans up ahead,”
I told Fenris.
“At least three of them, all men.”

“It might be a scouting party,”
Fenris warned. “
We must proceed with caution.”
He relayed the message to Annia.

“You two wait here,”
I said.
“I’ll go ahead and check it out.”

“You shouldn’t go alone,”
Fenris protested.

“I’ll be fine on my own against a couple of humans, and I want you here with Annia so I can report back to both of you on what I find. Besides, I doubt these humans will think I’m anything other than wild animal.”

“They may try to kill you,”
Fenris warned
. “Most humans see wildcats as a threat.”

I gave him a slow wink.
“Then I’ll just have to make sure they don’t see me.”

I slunk through the trees, silent as a wraith as I followed my nose toward the strangers. The sound of their voices grew louder as I approached, and a tingle went down my spine as I realized they were speaking Northian, not Coazi. Were these men from the camp the shaman had told us about? Or could they be some of the missing delegates?

I crouched behind a tree, peering through the leaves into a clearing. Three men dressed in dirty khakis sat with their backs up against the trees, legs extended as they munched on what looked to be an early lunch. They boasted red armbands tied around their upper right arms – the classic mark of Resistance members. My heart sank: so it really was the Resistance behind Iannis’s disappearance.

“Say, d’you think we can finally get back to camp now?” the fellow closest to me asked around a mouthful of food. He had curly blond hair and a scruffy, tobacco-stained beard. “I figure we’ve combed these woods long enough. There’s no one out here but us.”

I held back a snort at that, glad that this particular scouting party didn’t seem to have any shifters in it. If it had, they would have scented us already and we’d have been forced to fight.

“We gotta wait until Daresh’s done sniffing around,” another of the men said. “You know how fussy he is about this crap. Wants to make sure no stone is left unturned.”

The blond rolled his eyes. “Can’t we just leave his tiger-striped ass here? Surely he can catch up with us on those four legs of his.”

I froze. So there
was
a shifter in their party after all. My senses went on high alert, trying to determine if there was a tiger shifter in the area, but I didn’t scent or hear anyone other than the three humans before me.

“Fenris,”
I called as I began to creep away from the clearing.
“We need to get out of here. There’s a tiger shifter on the prowl, and if he finds us –”

The wind shifted, and I stiffened as I caught the scent of a tiger male. The rustle of a bush was the only warning I got before he sprang out of the undergrowth, claws extended and mouth open in a ferocious snarl. I leapt to the side, and he sailed past me, landing a good ten feet away. Heart pounding, I took off running at full speed before he had a chance to turn around, making sure to head away from Annia and Fenris. There was no way I was going to stand and fight a shifter who was three times my weight, when I was three times faster at top speed.