Fire and Ice

Chapter One

Walter Medved, known as Wally to his friends and family, sat in his car across the street and three houses down the block from his target, Lenny’s address. He’d anticipated taking another week off following his trip to Yellowstone, but this was more important. He’d grown up in the old country hearing nightmarish stories of the cockatrice and what they’d done to his kin, as well as kin of other shifter races.

No way in hell he wouldn’t help out, even if it’d been someone besides Brodey calling him for the favor.

After an hour, he was reasonably sure there was no one else in the house. He grabbed his clipboard holding fake political surveys and headed for the house. The tiny front yard wasn’t exactly a jungle, but large, unkempt bushes concealed the front windows and shielded a good chunk of the front porch from view of the street and sidewalk. The house had chipped and peeling grayish paint that looked like it might have once been a shade of pale green.

He knocked, loudly, and waited. Knocking again just to be on the safe side, he waited. Receiving no response, he pulled on a pair of gloves, slipped a lock pick set out of his jacket pocket, and let himself in.

The deadbolt wasn’t locked, just the knob. He found out why upon stepping inside and closing the door behind him.

“Holy shit,” he whispered. The place looked trashed. Upon closer inspection, he realized it wasn’t a robbery because a sixty-inch plasma TV was still firmly attached to the wall, as well as all the electronics were still there.

Everywhere he looked in the small house, drawers were pulled out, closets were emptied, and stuff was dumped on the floor. The searchers had even pulled apart heating vent grates to look inside for whatever it is they were after.

He had a good suspicion what it was they were after. Fortunately, the old book was safe in the dragons’ hands. After a half hour, Wally knew he wouldn’t find anything useful. Had there been anything, whoever ransacked the house had beat him to it. He let himself out, locked the door behind him, and hurried on his way.

Brodey got off the phone with Wally.

Lina didn’t have to use any freaky powers to read his mind. The result could clearly be seen in the frown on his face.

“Well?” she asked anyway.

He shook his head. “The place is totally trashed. Looked like someone turned it upside down, inside out, and hit frappe.”

“We have no idea if they found what they were looking for, do we?”

“We damn sure do know what they were looking for,” Zack said, slapping his palm on the book. “Unlucky for them we found it first.”

Brodey retook his seat at the table. “I have to agree. Whoever was in on this with Lenny had to know about the book.” He looked at his brothers. “I’m going to take her up to meet Lacey. Wally said he’d meet us up there for backup.”

Ain nodded. “Good idea. This is going to get messy really fast, I’m sure.”

“When do we leave?” Lina asked. “I’m up for a road trip. I think.”

Zack smiled. “You do realize you’ll have to fly to get to France, right?”

“I refuse to think about that now.” She shivered. “I’m sure we can find a doctor who will prescribe something to knock me out.”

Brodey laughed. “We have to get you over your fear of flying, kiddo.”

“Yeah, but there’s no rush, right?” She looked at Jan and Rick for backup. “Right? Please tell me we can drive up to Maine?”

Jan smiled. “Yes, we were planning on driving. But it won’t be a leisure trip. It’ll be straight through.” He looked at the others. “I suggest two vehicles. Can we leave one of our cars here?”

Ain nodded. “No problem. Hopefully, by the time you get up there, Jocko will have an answer for us on Daniel Blackestone’s location and know how to get in touch with him.”

Lina breathed a sigh of relief. “Thank you, guys. I really appreciate it.”

Chapter Two

They left the next day, taking two vehicles. Kael, Zack, and Brodey took one, following Rick, Jan, and Lina. Driving straight through, it took them nearly two days. After checking into a hotel on the grounds of the Pack compound, Lina spent the better part of a day sleeping.

The next morning at breakfast, she asked Brodey, “So when do we go see Lacey?”

“Today. I called her when I got up.” He looked at Jan and Rick. “I think it’d be best if Zack and I take her. We don’t need to overwhelm Lacey or Lina.”

Rick looked like he wanted to bristle at that, but Jan immediately nodded. “That’s fine.” He turned to Rick. “She’ll be fine.”

Rick grumbled a little under his breath, and Lina thought she spotted a wisp of smoke emerge from his nostrils, but he agreed.

They pulled up in front of an old wood and stone cottage that looked like it had been built at least fifty years earlier. A white picket fence surrounded a lush flower garden that perfectly seemed to fit the casual mood of the house. Brodey led the way to the front door while Lina followed and nervously clung to Zack’s hand.

He leaned in and muttered in her ear. “She’s not going to eat you, sweetie.”

“I know. I’m just…nervous. What if she doesn’t like me?”

Brodey turned with a snort. “Honey, if Lacey doesn’t like you, I’ll ask Jocko to run her to the doctor for testing.”

A woman Lina could only describe as grandmotherly opened the door. Shorter than herself, and no telling how old, but the bright spark in her brown eyes and straightness of her posture told Lina there were still a lot of years, as well as a lot of strength, left in her body.

“I heard that, Brodey Lyall,” the woman said, smiling. “How are you, son?”

He tipped his head to her. “Very good, Lacey.” He turned and motioned Lina and Zack forward. “This is Lina and her Watcher, Zack.”

Lacey cocked her head in an appraising way as she shook and held hands with Lina. “You are also your flagyer’s Seer now, aren’t you?”

Lina blushed. “Yes, ma’am. That’s what they tell me.”

Lacey laughed. “You don’t need to call me ma’am. Well, come in, come in, all of you.” She led them into her kitchen. The delicious aroma of bread baking filled the air. “I’m terribly sorry about Bertholde,” she said. “We were friends for a very long time. I shall miss her.”

“Thank you,” Lina said, struggling not to tear up. How the hell was she supposed to learn everything she had to learn? Who would teach her?

“I know I’m not a dragon,” Lacey said, “but I have met many other Seers, from wolf packs as well as other races. Always feel free to come to me for advice. Or if nothing else, a friendly ear.”

Lina nodded, hugging herself. “Thank you.”

Lacey studied her for a moment. Then she grabbed Lina by the hand and led her to the back door. “We’re going for a walk,” Lacey said. When the men stood to join them, she held up a hand. “I didn’t mean you two. Lina and I need some alone time. We’re perfectly safe here in the compound.”

Lacey donned a shawl that hung on a hook by her back door. She glanced down at Lina’s shoes. “I’m glad you’re wearing sneakers,” she said with a smile. Then she led Lina out the back door and off the porch. They made their way down a winding path through Lacey’s beautiful herb and flower garden.

“This place feels so peaceful,” Lina said.

Lacey nodded. “Thank you. I have worked very hard over the years to cultivate only that which pleases me and causes me no stress.” She glanced at Lina. “And your men are stressful to you right now. I know they mean well, but their efforts to protect you are misguided. You are feeding off their nervous energy, which in turn only serves to heighten your nervous energy.”

Lina let out a snort. “You’ve got that right.” The path seemed to be going downhill. “Where are we going?”

“My special thinking place. I want to show it to you.”

They continued on for several minutes through green woods. Lina thought she smelled salt air and heard the sound of waves. “We’re close to the ocean?”

“Yes. Very. We’ll get even closer.”

The path gave way from dirt to rocky outcroppings as the woods thinned. They rounded one last turn and the path opened up to rocky coastline. They came to a stop atop an overlook where a steep, rocky path led down to a secluded beach.

“This is beautiful,” Lina said. “I’m used to the Gulf of Mexico, not this.” They were looking across a calm inlet. If Lina looked to the east, she could see where the mist almost totally obscured her view of the open Atlantic Ocean.

Lacey smiled. “We’re not done yet. Let’s go down to the water.”

Lina wasn’t sure that was a good idea considering how treacherous the path appeared, but Lacey started down the path with the sure-footedness of a mountain goat. Lina followed and found the going far easier than it looked from up top. When they finally reached the beach, Lacey led Lina over to a flat-topped rock where they both sat. Their perch afforded them a peaceful view of the inlet.

“This is where I do my best thinking,” Lacey said. “Since this part of the compound is deeded to me, no one but me comes here.” She grinned. “There are perks to the rank and age.”

Lina laughed. She bet Lacey was a pistol in her younger years, considering how fiery she appeared now. “I can see that.”

“When you consider what we do,” Lacey said, “it’s only fair.” Her face grew sad. “I don’t wish this job on anyone.”

“Yeah, I’m getting the idea this can be a real drag.”

“That’s one way of putting it, dear.” She stretched out, leaning back on her elbows. “There are a lot of hard times ahead. For all of us. I’ve been seeing it for a while. This is only the start, believe it or not. It’ll come to a serious head a few years from now. What we’re going through is only the initial skirmishes.”

“How do you see things? Do you dream them or what?”

She nodded. “Usually. Sometimes I have visions when I’m awake, but for the past few hundred years, it’s mostly been while I sleep.”

“Then how do you know what’s a vision and what’s a real dream?”

She let out a snort. “Oh, believe me. I know. There’s a clarity to them, and I completely remember them when I wake up. I rarely dream-dream, the normal kind. When I’m lucky, I can go weeks without any sleep disturbances. But like now, when they come, they’re hard and heavy. Every Seer is different. Some have waking visions only, some sleeping only, some both. Some can only see the future, some can see the future and past.”

Lina picked up a pebble and rolled it around in her hand. “I hit the lottery, I guess. I can see past and future, both asleep and awake. I finally figured out that stuff in the future looks blue. Stuff in the past looks normal.”

“Very good. You’re learning fast. You’ll need that. There are some who would love to have your power.”

“What did Bertholde do to me? Did she give me her powers or something?”

“No, dear. It doesn’t work like that. This life, you just happened to be lucky enough to be born a Seer. She saw your coming from nearly the day you were born. Bertholde had very strong Seer abilities, but she was also dragon-born. She couldn’t shift, but both her parents were shifters. If I’m not mistaken, what she did at your ceremony was take advantage of the circle of love and trust surrounding you to send a sort of psychic jump start to you. She reached out to you, when your powers were the highest and you were most receptive to it, and gave you a nudge, in a way. As clichéd as it sounds, there are few things more powerful than love. You were surrounded by it then.”

“Couldn’t she have just sat me down and talked to me about it?”

Lina sighed as she stared out over the water. “She didn’t know who she could trust. She ordered her brother to stay home because while she thought, based on her visions, that he would be safe, she wouldn’t take any chances. She felt she didn’t have any other choice.”

“You two were pretty good friends, huh?”

“Yes. For over five hundred years. Although when phones, and then the Internet came along, it made communicating very easy.” Lacey closed her eyes and tipped her head back as the sun peeked out from behind the clouds and bathed them in a warm shaft of light. “Ahh. The simple pleasures, Lina. Treasure them. Especially now. If what you think you are about to go through is difficult, it pales in comparison to what happens in a few years.”

Lina was scared to ask this. “What do you see happening?”

“Nothing specific about you and your men,” she said without opening her eyes. “I just see the bigger picture in regards to that.” She smiled. “And the Lyall boys find their mate.”

Lina let out a snort. “Yeah. I saw that, too.”

“They’re good boys.” She opened her eyes and looked at Lina. “But I don’t have to tell you that, do I? Especially now that you’ve all adopted each other.” She playfully smiled. “You went from orphan to one of the pack.”

“Yeah, lucky me. I wish it’d been under better circumstances.”

Lacey sat up and shrugged. “We don’t get to choose our path, sometimes. Even though we fool ourselves into thinking we can. We have free will, of course. But unfortunately, sometimes our will is stymied by the facts of life. You could go run and hide under a rock for the rest of your life, but it would only make you miserable and fearful. And then the forces against you have still won, at that point. Along with taking countless innocent lives.”

“So why can’t I just sit down and wish for the answers to all this bullshit?” Lina asked. “All this power seems pretty darn worthless if I can’t control it.”

“You’re both a goddess and a Seer. But you are mortal-born. Unlike Baba Yaga and her kin, you don’t have your own powers. Your powers come from being part of the triad with your men. Your visions come from being your flagyer’s Seer. You cannot see what you do not know.”

“But what about the stuff about how the tablet was made?”

“You helped make the tablet. You were involved in that. You might not have personal knowledge about who in the cockatrice forces laid their eyes on the tablet at some point. You might not have been present when that happened. Perhaps you cannot see what you did not see. Does that make sense?”

“But Baba Yaga took me to when my parents died. She showed me that.”

Lacey shook her head. “You’d have to ask her if that was her doing, or using your own powers to take you back to watch the events. Like it or not, you’ll have to form some sort of tenuous truce with her.”

“I saw Kael’s family get killed. I wasn’t there for that.”

She shrugged. “Again, you need to ask Baba Yaga. Perhaps you have the power to travel back in time as a witness. Or it was a vision. I don’t know.”

“So what’s with the other powers? The goddess stuff?”

“I’m far from an expert in that area. Focus on what your men can do. That might give you a clue.”

“I can change into a dragon?”

Lacey laughed. “No, not quite. But fire, ice, you should be able to control those things. You can control how you communicate with others. You can transmute yourself from one place to another.”

Lina thought about that. “That means in Yellowstone, I could have blinked myself home and saved everyone a lot of trouble?”

“Doubtful. You had no idea you could do that. Plus your powers are still so new, it’s likely you couldn’t have done it even if you had known how. You only recently realized it was possible.”

Lina had so many questions. Too many. Her brain spun with them.

“I still don’t understand how I helped make the tablet.”

“What do you mean, child?”

“I saw the vision about the tablet when we were at home. It was in blue, meaning it hadn’t happened yet. Then I found the picture in the book. If the memory I have is correct, it was the me from the present that went back and told the me in the past how to create the tablet. How could I have created it if someone else didn’t do it? How could I possibly have done that?”

That actually made her brain hurt.

“I can’t answer that, child. Perhaps you had help you didn’t recognize.”

“But I…” Her voice trailed off as she realized what it meant. “Can you wait here just a minute?”

“Of course.”

Lina closed her eyes and opened them again in Baba Yaga’s kitchen. Lina took a second to feel pretty damned pleased with herself over that.

The maiden sat at her counter with a cup of coffee in her hand.

Lina stalked over to her. “You made the tablet, didn’t you?”

Baba Yaga’s eyebrows arched in a wide-eyed innocent stare. “Me, Goddess? I clearly remember Zaria and her men making the tablet.”

Lina shook her head. “It’s not possible. You did something. I couldn’t come back from the future to the past to make something I made from seeing it in the future if it wasn’t made yet! When I first saw the tablet in my vision, it all looked blue, so it had to be from the future!”

The maiden smiled. “You make no sense, Goddess.”

“Argh!” Lina threw up her hands in aggravation. “Explain exactly why I haven’t blasted you to kingdom come yet?”

“Because you like me. You also need me. Not to mention you couldn’t even if you tried.” Baba Yaga waved her hand. Lina found herself back at Lacey’s side.

“How long was I gone?” she asked the Seer.

Lacey smiled. “Merely a blink. Literally. How is Baba Yaga? I haven’t dealt with her in eons.”

“Aggravating.”

“Ah. Nice to see she hasn’t changed. You will grudgingly come to like her. She has her way of doing things, but she is ancient and has earned the right to be grouchy.” Lacey patted Lina on the thigh. “I know she can grate on you sometimes. Believe me, I’ve had my share of run-ins with her in the past. Just understand she, like you, has a job to do. She is bound by her own set of laws, just as you are. Her way of helping sometimes seems less than helpful. Just keep in mind she is on the side of humanity. Sometimes, even to her own detriment.”

“She and I will be butting heads a lot, I guess.”

“Probably.”

Lina shivered. “I don’t like this job,” she quietly said. “I didn’t ask for it.”

“None of us did, or would. That’s what makes us best suited for it. Anyone who would want this job, willingly, is someone who should not be in it.”

“I saw those assholes kill a family. Kael’s family.”

Lacey stared out over the water. “I’m sorry.”

“Me, too.” Lina briefly told her about it. “Even worse, I couldn’t do anything about it. Well, I tried. The only thing I managed to do was knock a goblet out of the third guy’s hand.”

Lacey looked shocked. “Really?”

“Yeah. Was that something to do with my goddess powers?”

“It must be, because I’ve known a lot of Seers, and none of them could ever do anything like that.”

“Great.” Lina thought for a moment. “So, have you seen anything that might be of use to me with this situation? Like did you see who killed Bertholde? Or any chance you know who the third guy might be?”

“No,” Lacey said sadly. “I’m sorry. I’m not going to be of any use to you there. I wish I could.”

“Do you know anything about the tablet?”

“Oh, yes. I helped hide it a few centuries ago.”

Lina hoped her jaw hadn’t gaped. “So you know where it is?”

Lacey laughed. “Heavens, no. It’s been moved several times since then. My guess is that Bertholde left you several clues as to its whereabouts, and that you’ll find it near her home. As she grew older, she kept it closer to her for safekeeping. Several of the keepers had been killed over the years.”

“Who are the other keepers?”

“That I don’t know. Once I left Europe for Scotland, I took myself out of the running. I do know as of last year, at least, that it was safe. Bertholde physically laid eyes on it at least once a year.”

“Is it possible one of the other keepers killed her?” Maybe it was a clue.

Lacey shrugged. “Anything’s possible in this day and age. I highly doubt it, though. From what she told me the last time we talked, about a week before she went to Yellowstone, all of the other keepers were much older than herself and not in very good shape. She talked about passing the torch, but I didn’t know for sure what she meant. I assumed she was talking about a new keeper for the tablet. So very few of our kind even know about its existence anymore.” She looked sad. “Now, I know what she meant. At least I got to have a good talk with her.”

Lina stretched and felt her back pop. “What did you really bring me out here to discuss?”

A coy smiled curled Lacey’s lips. “I don’t know what information Bertholde left for you to give you a history of our kind. Seers, I mean. There aren’t a lot of us. You’re basically born to the job.”

She pointed at Lina. “You were born to the job. You don’t find it coincidental that your father’s family hailed from Eastern Europe?”

“I—” Well, Lina had never given it much thought before. She considered it. “What does that have to do with anything?”

“Seers are sometimes born into knowing families. Families with active shifter lines. It’s not exactly a secret you can keep hidden, especially once a child grows into adolescence and feels the urge to shift. Seers were originally their own lines. Back in the days before history, our kind realized that by pairing up with shifters, our own kind could be protected. As Seers began to mingle and mate with shifter breeds, eventually the Seers became one with the shifter races they joined.

“But sometimes, someone from a shifter line who doesn’t come from a knowing family, call it a recessive shifter gene, if you will, will pop up.”

“You’re saying I’m a shifter? I thought I wasn’t?”

Lacey smiled. “One of my skills that I use for my pack is when a baby is born to shifters, they bring it to me for me to see if it’s Alpha or not, or if it’s even a shifter or not. You, my dear, come from a shifter line. Dragon line, not wolves. I don’t even have to know your history to know this. Bertholde told me she extensively researched your family line. You are from dragons several generations back, on your father’s side.”

Lina didn’t know what to say to that. She had to let it sink in for a few minutes. Eventually, she settled on, “So I’m, what, the baby shifter whisperer?”

Lacey laughed long and hard. “I’m not saying you’ll have that same skill, dear,” she finally managed to get out. “But there’s also something else you should know. It’s not uncommon for shifter lines, by that I mean the shifter races, to intermingle from time to time. For a wolf and feline, for example, to mate. The dragons and wolves have always been close. I don’t know exactly what your origins are, genetically speaking, but it wouldn’t surprise me, based on what Bertholde told me, to find out you have a wolf or two in the woodshed, so to speak.”

Lina blinked in shock, unsure what to say. Finally, she settled for falling back on the rock, staring up at the sky, and screaming until her voice cracked and her throat felt raw and hoarse.

Lacey simply sat there, looking out over the water.

After Lina got it out of her system, she looked at Lacey.

“Feeling better, dear?” Lacey asked.

Lina snorted, then laughed, rolling onto her belly and laughing until tears rolled down her face and her humor had transformed into gut-wrenching sobs.

Lacey gathered her up and let her cry against her. “It’s all right, child,” she soothed. “Let it out before it eats you alive. It is a lot to take in. It must feel like the world has been dropped onto your shoulders.”

“No, it feels like the world just dropped me with a flying kick and then ripped my head off and shit down my neck.”

Lacey laughed. “You are going to give Andel fits. Bertholde would be extremely amused and proud of that.”

“What is the deal between them, anyway?” She told Lacey about the postscript in Bertholde’s note to her.

Lacey laughed. “Andel is her nephew. She loved him, but he surely tried her patience over the years. He once set fire to her house when he was a teenager.”

“Oh. Wow. I guess that would piss a person off. How’d he do it? Matches? Candle?”

Lacey snorted with amusement. “He’s a fire dragon.”

“Ah. Oh.” Lina got the giggles again. “Did she give him the scar on his face? Smack him upside the head for breathing too hard?”

Lacey shook her head. “No. A cockatrice did that.”

That pulled Lina up short. “Oh. Whoops. Glad you told me.”

Lacey looked out over the water again. “They killed many in his family. Not the same way they killed poor Kael’s family. It was in a territory dispute. The cockatrice wanted dragon land and decided to come in one night in a sneak attack and try to take it the good old-fashioned way, by slaughtering the residents of a small village.”

“Nice to see they’re consistent assholes,” Lina grumbled.

“Yes.” They sat there in companionable silence for a few minutes while Lina digested that latest information. “Is there anything else you’d like to ask me?” Lacey asked.

“Yeah, there is. Why does Zack have all his memories and I didn’t get mine back until after I met my guys? And why don’t the guys have their memories of our first life together?”

“That, unfortunately, I cannot help you with. Those are questions for Baba Yaga.”

“Crap. I was afraid you were going to say that.”

They stayed for a while longer, Lina reluctant to give up this valuable time with Lacey. The Seer gave off a loving, peaceful, confident, generous aura Lina felt totally at home in. She only hoped she could achieve that level of peace when she was that age.

Hell, she just hoped she reached that age.

Finally, Lacey stretched and climbed off the rock. “Time for us to go, dear. Your Watcher will have likely paced bare spots through my carpet.” She smiled.

Lina laughed. “I’ll make sure he pays for the damages.”

The climb back up the path to the top of the overlook was a little wearing, but not as bad as Lina feared. Once they hit the path, Lacey linked arms with Lina.

“You’ll do fine, child. What everyone keeps telling you, no matter how trite it might seem, is true. Trust your instincts. Do not second-guess yourself. If you learn to ignore the doubt, you will soon learn the sound of your gut leading you the right way. Don’t get overconfident, of course. Pride truly does precede a fall. Yet don’t let anyone try to convince you that you are anything but a Seer. You were born to this for a reason. Never forget that.”

“Thank you. I really appreciate you taking the time to talk to me today.”

“Ah, it is nothing. And anytime you are here, please come to see me. I welcome the chance to talk with you. I rarely get a chance to meet with other Seers in person. Besides, you’re technically part of my extended family now, anyway. And my own children have long since departed this world.”

Lina felt sad about that. “Are any of your immediate family still alive?”

“Oh, yes. Many. But they are scattered to the wind and rarely get back to the compound for visits.” She patted Lina’s arm. “But it’s all right. Plenty have adopted me as their mother or grandmother. So I’m not lonely, if that’s your worry.”

“Do you mind cross-species adoptions?” Lina snarked.

Lacey laughed out loud. “Not at all. I would consider it an honor.”

As they approached Lacey’s back porch, she spotted Zack’s nervous face in the window of the back door.

Lacey laughed and softly said, “Do not fear, Lina. He truly is happy. Well, and worried like a nervous mother over your health and well-being. Baba Yaga did keep her end of the bargain. Your Zack is right. Baba Yaga does like to mess with people’s minds.”

Lina stopped and gasped. “You know all that?”

Lacey smiled as she tapped her temple. “I am a Seer, dear.” She tugged Lina’s arm. “Come along. I’ll make us all lunch. As long as Brodey hasn’t devoured all the fresh bread. Those wolves tend to eat like hyenas sometimes.”

That gave Lina another thought to ponder. “So what do hyena shifters eat like?” she only half joked.

“Oh, they eat like wolves.” She smiled.

Laughing, they stepped onto the porch.

Chapter Three

After lunch, Lacey asked to see the items from Yellowstone. “I don’t know if I can help, but I’m willing to take a look at them.”

Zack, who’d taken to always carrying the items in a knapsack, laid them out on her table.

When he pulled out the little statues, she recoiled. “Those you can put away, thank you.”

Confused, he put them away. “What is it?”

The Seer rubbed her arms with her hands. “The simple answer is they’re made of catlinite. Pipestone.” She noticed their blank faces. “It’s the same kind of stone Native Americans used to carve ceremonial pipes and stuff out of.”

Lina couldn’t wrap her head around that. “Huh? You’re saying Lenny was a Native American?”

Lacey shook her head. “No, I’m not saying anything of the sort. Anyone could have carved the stone.” She pointed at Zack’s bag. “But what I am saying is I’ve seen something like that before. Several hundred years ago. The cockatrice soaked them in blood during a ritual. You said that’s a spell book?”

Lina nodded.

Lacey reached for the book and started to page through it. They all silently watched her. Nearly ten minutes passed before she nodded. “Ah ha.” She laid the book, open to a page, and pointed at a specific passage. “Right here.”

It was in French. Zack spun the book around and read it out loud in English.

“‘The blood of our enemies captured in stone guarantees victory against others. Use them wisely and well.’ Then it details how to do the ritual to soak the statue in the blood.” He looked a little ill. “If you don’t mind, I’d rather not read that part.” He closed the book and laid it on the table.

“There’s probably no way to figure out who carved those,” Lacey said. “No telling how old they are. But I can’t imagine too many of their kind knew how to do it.”

“They sure are sneaky bastards, aren’t they?” Lina snarked.

“They had to be,” Zack said. “King Elsleng banned their existence. He sanctioned their being hunted down and destroyed after…” He took a deep breath. “After Zaria and her men died, he sort of went on a rampage. He wanted revenge. The cockatrice went underground into hiding. They had to.”

“I guess that’d give me a complex, too,” Lina said.

Zack shook his head. “Don’t even go there. Their kind was small in numbers to begin with, and they chose their path. There was never a case of a cockatrice waving a white flag and saying, ‘Hey, I’m on your side, these other fuckers are nuts.’ They have always tried to start trouble. That’s why they were shunned way before that massive showdown in Hilmelgamos.”

“Don’t start none, won’t be none,” Brodey quipped.

“Exactly,” Lacey said. She looked at Lina. “I know you have a good heart, but remember, there is a very valid reason why the cockatrice have always been persecuted. They brought it on themselves. They have throughout the eons perpetuated a culture of hate and revenge throughout their kind. Less than two hundred of them survived in the entire world following the battle at Hilmelgamos, a majority of them women and children. Most of their virile men were warriors and killed in the battle. That’s another reason their powers declined so greatly. In their race, the lines are passed through the men, not the women. It’s not like any other shifter race. A woman can be born a cockatrice shifter, but she won’t pass the genes down to her children. There was a lot of inbreeding by them to try to replenish their race.”

“Break out the banjoes,” Brodey said. “You ain’t getting me in no canoe. I can tell you that.”

The laugh helped ease the tension.

“But that is why,” Lacey continued, “they have relied so heavily on dark magick throughout the centuries. They are mentally and spiritually deficient. Morally bankrupt.”

“That also explains why Edgar said he hounded Zack and me through several lives,” Lina said. “He made paparazzi look like playful puppies.”

Zack nodded. “Fixated. Obsessed.”

“Whackadoodle,” Brodey said.

Lacey smiled. “Yes to all of the above.”

“Wait,” Lina said as a thought struck her. “Do the cockatrice have a Seer too?”

Lacey shrugged. “I don’t know. They have always been an outcast race. There are several versions of the story, but they all basically tell the same tale. That when the shifters were created, the cockatrice demanded to be put in charge of all shifters, and when that was refused, they decided to wage a campaign against the others.”

“‘Created’?” Lina asked.

Lacey shrugged. “We have a lot of history in our lines, oral and written. But however the shifters came to be, it happened well before the birth of anyone still alive on this planet. Perhaps even before Baba Yaga and her sisters.”

“So, what you’re saying is cockatrice have had major bad attitude from the beginning of time?” Lina asked.

“Yes,” Lacey said. “That’s exactly what I’m saying. That’s what makes them so dangerous. They feel they have nothing left to lose, and everything to gain. They will stop at nothing, as you’ve already seen, to get their way.”

Lina, Zack, and Brodey rejoined the others after lunch at Lacey’s. That evening, they returned to Lacey’s house to pick her up and arrived at the restaurant fifteen minutes early. Apparently expecting them, the hostess led them to a small, comfortable private back room filled by well-padded booths and a few tables, and with beautiful pictures of Maine landscapes hanging on the walls.

Lina wasn’t sure what to expect from Jocko. Lacey was a sweetheart, the grandmother she wished she had in her life.

Well, hell, I guess she’s my adopted grandmother, now.

In fact, with the exception of Zack in her life after her parents died, she’d felt more like part of a family than she had in years. Not that she didn’t feel loved with Jan and Rick, because she did. But knowing there were now a bunch of other people who had her back and welcomed her with open arms was…

Overwhelming in a good way.

She burst into tears.”

“Hey, what’s wrong?” Jan asked.

She sniffled. “I’m sorry.” She looked at all of them. “It just finally all hit me at once how much family I now have.”

Brodey laughed. “You ain’t seen nothing yet, kiddo. Wait’ll the next Gathering. You’ll have wolves falling out your ears as well as dragons.”

Lacey nodded. “We take care of our own, Lina. You and yours are one of our own.”

Rick laid a hand on Brodey’s shoulder and squeezed. “You have no idea how thankful we are.” He sounded a little choked up. It warmed her heart to see her men welcome Brodey and his brood into their lives.

“Hey, she’s special,” Brodey said. “I don’t mean hockey helmet special, either,” he added with a playful wink in her direction.

“Nice. Thanks.” She grinned, sniffling her tears away.

“Hey, what’s a big brother to do if not to pick on his little sister?”

“Just remember I can randomly blow things up.”

“Uh-uh. You promised me no roasted wolf, remember?”

She laughed. “Dang, you would remember that, wouldn’t you?”

“Uh, hells yeah.”

Wally entered. Lina immediately recognized the immense man despite him now being clad in jeans and a long-sleeved, blue chambray shirt.

She stood to embrace him and found herself engulfed in a bear hug inside his huge arms. “There’s our girl!” he said in his thick Boston accent. “How ya doin’?”

“Good, Wally. Thank you again.” She couldn’t help but like the guy.

“No problem. We stick togetha.” He circled the room, eschewing handshakes for crushing hugs with all the men, and an only slightly less heavy-handed hug for Lacey.

Jocko blustered into the room a few moments later with a hearty hello and big hug for Brodey. A tall, large, rotund man, his scraggly red hair was barely touched by grey. “Hello, Lacey,” he said with a deferential nod of his head in her direction. Then he turned to Lina and the other men, giving them an appraising look. “And who be ye?”

“This is Lina,” Brodey explained, introducing everyone else from Lina’s group, too. He already knew Wally.

Jocko tipped his head in deference to Lina the same as he had to Lacey. “Nice to meet all of ye,” he said. “The Lyalls speak well of ye.” He looked at Kael. “And ye be the dragon that wants to meet with Daniel Blackestone?”

Kael nodded. “Yes, sir.”

The older man pulled out a chair and heavily sat. “I can’t say I’m surprised that the cockatrice are coming after people now. Their kind’s been brewing trouble longer than I ken. They’re worthless, they are.” He shook his head. “One of the few creatures worth less than them no-good Abernathys.”

Lina didn’t have time to ask who the Abernathys were. They all looked at the door as it opened again. Lina immediately pegged the handsome, black-haired, green-eyed man that walked in as a wolf. He held the hand of a red-haired woman who…

Lina stood. “You’re one of them, aren’t you?” she asked without thinking. She didn’t know if it was her freaky new Seer powers or what, but the woman’s very essence screamed power. Then she recognized her. She definitely was one of Baba Yaga’s sisters. She’d been there at the making of the tablet, even though she looked different then. Her energy, however, was unmistakable.

The woman looked startled. The man instinctively pushed her behind him, stepping protectively between them. “One of what?” he practically growled.

Lina shook her head. “Baba Yaga. Whatever she is. You’re one of them. One of her sisters.”

Both of the newcomers visibly relaxed. He stepped out of the way. “You just can’t catch a break, can you, sweetie?” he teased. “No more undercover work for you.”

Neither of them offered clarification for that comment. The woman swatted him on the shoulder before returning her attention to Lina. “Babs is my older sister. And who are you?”

Kael stepped forward. “She’s with us.”

The man’s face lit up. “Kael!” He stepped forward and embraced Kael. They clapped each other on the shoulders. “How the hell are you?”

“I’m fine. Everyone, this is Daniel Blackestone. Blackie, you look good. Who’s this?”

Daniel grinned. “Everyone, this is Callie. My mate.”

Now Lina knew for sure the woman’s identity—Cailleach.

“Yeah,” Jocko said. “We’d all long ago figured the boy wouldn’t find someone. Then here he comes, dragging home this poor woman.” He laughed. “He’s lucky she didn’t kill him in his tracks.”

Daniel looked down at the woman with more than love and affection in his eyes. Lina recognized amusement. “I sure am.”

Callie pushed him aside. “Back off, buddy. I need to give this woman a hug.” She stepped forward and engulfed Lina in a hug before she could step away. “Thank you,” Callie whispered in her ear.

Lina returned the hug. “For what?”

“Long story. I’ll tell you later.” She stepped away, leaving Lina both pleased and confused at the same time. Just like her handshake with Ain Lyall, her hug with Callie left Lina filled with the feeling of gratitude. She was glad all these people felt grateful.

She just wished to hell she knew why.

“So,” Daniel said, “what’s going on?”

They gathered around a table and between them all, told the tale. Daniel looked thoughtful. “So, the cockatrice want the Tablet of Trammel, huh?”

“Apparently,” Lina said. “Although I have a feeling they won’t get the results they’re looking for even if they do find it.”

“But we want them to keep looking, don’t we?” Daniel asked.

She smiled. “Yep. The longer they keep looking, the longer it’ll take them to form an alternate plan.”

Callie laughed. “Slick. I like you, girlfriend.”

“Even better,” Lina added, “if we can locate the tablet, we can protect it and then send the cockatrice on a wild-goose chase and try to figure out who’s involved in their plan.”

Daniel scratched his head. “I haven’t seen the tablet in over a hundred years.”

“Do you know where it is now?”

He shook his head. “No. Bertholde didn’t leave you any clues?”

“Not in the box of stuff she sent. I don’t know if there’s anything at her house. That’s our next stop.” She had brought several of the books to the confab with her. Kael and Zack were translating them for her. She pulled them out of a backpack and set them on the table, as well as the puzzle box and the stone figurines. “We’ve been going through her journals and it’s great background information, but no clues.”

Daniel picked up the puzzle box. In three quick movements, he opened it and handed it back to her.

The room went silent. Lina finally closed her gaping jaw and took the box from him. Inside lay a scroll.

“How the hell did you do that?” she whispered.

He shrugged. “I made it for her. She told me what size she wanted. Didn’t tell me what she wanted it for. Made it for her, oh, over a hundred years ago.”

Kael looked stunned. “Well bend me over and frost my bacon.” Everyone stared at him. His face reddened. “What?”

Zack rolled his eyes. “Yes, he belongs to me. Any questions?”

Brodey cleared his throat. “Not to interrupt or anything, but can someone please take a look at the scroll?”

With trembling fingers, Lina removed it from the box. The bleached parchment felt new, not old. Lina laid it on the table and carefully unrolled it. Written in the same hand as the letter from Bertholde, it was in French.

Jan translated for her.

Dearest Lina,

If you are reading this, you have either met Daniel Blackestone, broken open the box, or some third party has intercepted this.

Although I suppose you might have figured out how to open the box, but that is unlikely since it took me several days to remember how to open it.

Anyhow, your suppositions are correct. I did exactly as you suspect. (Trust your instincts!) You know exactly what I’m talking about. The answers you seek are exactly where you suspect they are. For obvious reasons, I cannot state all here. You are the sole caretaker now, you and your men.

Enjoy your journey, and take care to watch your back, as they say. Lacey’s clan will love and protect you as one of their own. Hopefully, you’ve had a chance to talk with her by now. If not, do so immediately.

I apologize in advance for the squeak.

(And Andel, you can still go fuck yourself. My, I do love saying that! And yes, he knows I still love him.)

Love to you and your men,

Bertholde.

Lina laughed, but the cryptic note didn’t make things clearer. “Okay, so I’m guessing we’ll find the clue to the tablet’s location at her house?”

Brodey nodded as he read the scroll over Jan’s shoulder. “Yep. And I’m guessing she also means she moved it from wherever it was last hidden, so none of the other keepers know its location.

“What the heck does she mean by the squeak, I wonder?” Lina pondered.

Lacey, however, had a wide ear-to-ear grin on her face. “I know exactly what she means.” She looked at Lina and winked. “As soon as you get to her house, call me on a cell phone and I’ll tell you. Any time, day or night.”

“Why a cell phone?” Zack asked.

Lacey shrugged. “We don’t know what we’re up against. I wouldn’t put it past anyone to bug her phone. Don’t worry. Even if they ransack her house, they won’t find what she left for you. I guarantee it.”

Jocko called a brief recess in their discussion to call the server back in for their orders. “While this place is owned by one of our Pack, it still pays to take precautions,” he said.

Daniel ordered a drink and sat back in his chair with a sad look on his face. Once the server left, he said, “I hate those goddamned bastards.” Lina knew if she reached out and touched his hand, she’d feel a wave of sadness from him.

“What happened?” she asked.

“They killed my family and half the goddamned village we lived in. Wiped them out. Everyone except me, my sister, and one of our neighbors.” He finished his drink in three swallows. “She’d just started shifting and my parents had asked me to take her out one night on a run. Keep her safe. We got back just before dawn and found everyone dead. The three of us managed to catch up with one of their stragglers, an orc who’d thrown their hat in with them.” His expression hardened. “We finally let him die the next night after we knew we’d gotten all the information out of him. Unfortunately, by the time we got word to other shifter strongholds and they sent reinforcements, the cockatrice had skittered into hiding like the fucking roaches they are.”

She thought about what Lacey had told her about Andel. “That sounds like a common theme with these asshats. They like to pick on people who can’t defend themselves.”

“It’s definitely one of their calling cards,” Daniel agreed. He looked into Lina’s eyes, then around the rest of the room. “They thought we had the tablet. They’d found out, somehow, that my father was one of the guardians of it.”

“But they didn’t get the tablet?” Kael asked.

“Nope. The tablet wasn’t in the village. Back then, it was never kept anywhere near where the guardians lived.”

“How did you find out where it was?” Lina asked.

“They made me one of the guardians,” Daniel said.

She looked at Lacey. “I thought you said all of them were old?”

Daniel interrupted. “I’m not a keeper of the tablet anymore. I bowed out when I left Europe.”

“Oh,” Lina said, mollified.

Zack opened up the knapsack he’d brought with him and put the book, the figurines, the two knives, and the remnants of the charmed handcuffs Lenny had put on Rick and Jan on the table. “Any of those look familiar to anyone?”

Brodey said, “Sorry I didn’t think to bring the ones he’d used on Lina with us.”

Callie held her hand out, a frown on her face. “Can I see those?”

Zack handed them to her. Now mangled and broken from when Jan and Rick broke the chain before Brodey helped free them, their charmed powers were gone.

Callie ran her fingers over the marks etched in the silver cuffs. “This looks familiar. There used to be a guy in Brussels who did work like this. I thought I’d heard he died, but this sure looks like his handiwork.” She returned them to Zack.

“What about these?” he asked, holding the catlinite figurines.

Lina shuddered at the very sight of them, but Callie took them, turned them around in her hands, and handed them back to him with a frown. “They’re soaked in dragon blood.”

“See?” Lina said. “I told you they were squicky!”

Callie thought for a moment. “There was an artisan, also in Brussels, who used to make all sorts of magickal carvings and talismans, if I remember correctly. In the older days, Brussels was a very popular central location for vendors to set up shop who had dealings with fey races.”

“Fey races?” Lina asked.

Callie nodded. “Nonhumans. Shifters, that sort of stuff.”

“Well,” Zack said, “we can make Brussels our second stop after we get done at Bertholde’s house.”

Chapter Four

As they awaited their flight out of Bangor to JFK in New York, Lina nervously looked at Zack. “I can’t do this,” she said, tears close to the surface.

He squeezed her hands. “Yes, you can. We’re all here for you.”

“But what if I accidentally set fire to the plane or something?” she fearfully whispered. “I don’t want to kill everyone!”

Brodey sat down beside her and slung an arm around her. “Listen, Goddess girl. Remember how scared you were flying to Yellowstone?”

She nodded.

“Remember it was okay?”

She hesitated, but nodded again.

“Okay, then. Do you honestly think we’ll let anything happen to you, or let you do anything to anyone innocent?”

“But what if I can’t control myself?” she whispered.

Blackie stepped over. “Move aside, guys,” he said, offering his hand to Lina.

She reached up and took it, then let him lead her off to the side, to stand beside the windows near their gate.

With his voice calm and low, he looked into her eyes. “I hate to fly, too. I really do. But do you know what I do?”

She shook her head.

He offered her a kind smile. “I have a little ritual. When I get to the door, I always put my hand on the outside of the plane and say to myself, ‘Just one more flight, please. If not, it’s a good day to die.’”

“But I don’t want to die!”

“I know,” he soothed. “Sometimes, however, things are beyond our control. Right?”

She finally nodded.

“Who’s with you today?”

“Huh?”

“Humor me. Who is traveling with you today?”

“Jan and Rick. Zack and Kael. Brodey, Wally, Jocko, and you and Callie. Why?”

“So the people who either love you, or who care a great deal about you, right?”

She nodded.

“You’re surrounded by love. Not many people meet their maker getting to say that. Right?”

“Um, morbid, but sure, okay.”

He chuckled. “You’re a goddess. If you’re really that worried, just envision us having a safe, uneventful flight to JFK.” He snorted. “Then pray that Wally doesn’t rip out someone’s throat in hunger if we’re stuck on the runway while waiting too long for takeoff there.”

That got her laughing.

“Deep breath.”

She took one, then let it out.

“Better?”

“Not really.”

He leaned in close and hugged her. He took the opportunity to whisper in her ear. “We’re flying with Baba Yaga’s sister. If you don’t think Callie is going to make sure we land safe, rest assured Baba Yaga most likely will. That alone should comfort you.”

She laughed, this time taking a deep, relaxing breath. “Okay. I’ll give you that point.”

“So, better?”

Another deep breath. “Yeah, I think so.”

“Good. Just follow my lead and you’ll be fine.”

When they called for boarding, Lina watched as Daniel did, in fact, pause at the plane’s door and pat the airplane’s skin beside the doorway. Then he turned and sent her a wink before stepping inside.

“What’s that about?” Zack asked.

She paused at the doorway and did the same thing. “Never mind,” she said as she stroked the plane’s skin before crossing the threshold and stepping inside.

Fortunately, the flight went smoothly, and they even landed a few minutes early at JFK. Daniel smiled at her from across the aisle as she waited her turn to get out of her seat and retrieve her carry-ons.

“Okay?” he asked.

Lina nodded. “Okay.”

Callie laughed. “Don’t worry when you’re flying with me,” she said. “Perk of the rank.”

Lina could only hope she’d one day have that level of confidence. “Thanks.”

“The only fear you should have,” Brodey softly quipped, “is Wally eating all the food on board before we’re halfway across the Atlantic.”

Wally snorted as he dragged his bulk out of his seat. “Hey, I resemble that remark, fuzz face.”

Not only did the “flight across the pond,” as Jocko called it, go smoothly, Lina managed to get a couple hours’ sleep before they landed in Paris the next morning. The attorney met them at baggage claim and faced a few nervous minutes of careful scrutiny from the men in their group, who would take no chances with Lina’s safety.

Only Zack and Callie stayed back with Lina. “Do you think they’ve grilled him enough?” Lina snarked.

“No,” Zack said. “He doesn’t seem to have shit himself yet.”

Callie evilly grinned. “I could take care of that. Although Wally looks like he’s holding his own.”

Lina laughed. “I don’t think we need to go that far, but thanks for having my back.”

With Rick, Jan, Jocko, Brodey, Daniel, Wally, and Kael finally convinced the man was, in fact, Bertholde’s attorney, they gathered their luggage and followed him to the large rental van he’d obtained for them.

Lina wasn’t sure what she expected, but the drive to a small village east of Paris, near the La forêt Domaniale d'Armainvilliers, was beautiful.

Then they pulled up to a gate in a high wall surrounding an estate. Another car waited there, and the driver and Uncle Andel stepped out. Andel looked aggravated.

“He looks like he’s in a pissy mood,” Rick softly snarked as the lawyer got out to talk with Andel. After a moment, the lawyer unlocked and opened the gate, then drove through and pulled to the side of the gravel driveway to allow Andel’s car to get by. When they passed, he closed the gate behind them, relocked it, and followed Andel’s car up the long, winding drive. The rolling grounds were thick with large shade trees and lush grass.

As the house came into view, Lina felt the breath sucked from her lungs. “That’s mine?”

“Yep,” Jan said. “Lock, stock, and barrel.”

“How big is this?”

“Twenty-five acres,” Jan said. “Not a bad little hovel, huh?”

She playfully shoved him from across the seat.

Made out of reddish stone, the huge three-story house looked nearly as big as the Old Faithful Lodge in Yellowstone. A covered portico one story high and at least three cars wide sheltered the front entrance, but the two vehicles parked in the gravel driveway. Three men and two women awaited their arrival on the front steps when they all climbed out of their vehicles.

The attorney, whose name was James Rieucheaux, motioned Lina over and spoke in very rapid French to the workers. Without her realizing it, Jan stepped in behind her. He started whispering a translation into her ear. The attorney was introducing her and the others, and informing them that they were, under no circumstances, to take any orders from Andel. Andel looked indignant and perturbed at that, but he kept his mouth shut.

Crap. No telling when I’ll get my Rosetta Stone stuff.

“Ask him how far away the hotel is,” she snarked.

He shook his head. “We’re staying here. That’s what he just told them. Frankly, I think it’s a good idea. We can protect you better here, plus no telling how long it’ll take to find the tablet.”

She tipped her head back to look up at the house. “This is all mine? Seriously?”

Jan laughed. “Yes, sweetheart. All yours.”

“Ugh.”

“Very ugh.”

The staff showed them all to their rooms. They didn’t bat an eye over her and Jan and Rick sharing a room, or over Zack and Kael. Apparently the house had twenty bedrooms, and the one Lina and her men were given was the largest and on the second floor, but it wasn’t the one Bertholde had used, much to Lina’s relief. Despite the age of the house, modern IKEAesque furniture decorated their room. Sleek, honey-colored wood dressers and matching bed frame and end tables formed the center of the scheme. A matching armoire held a large flat-screen TV, DVR, and cable box.

“Cable? We have cable?” Lina turned on the TV, disappointed to quickly realize most of the programming was in French.

“Crap.”

Rick laughed. “Sorry, sweetie. Don’t worry, we’ll be too busy for TV most of the time anyway.”

“And he doesn’t even mean sex,” Jan added. “Between finding what we came here for and looking into matters, we’ll be busy.” Lina hadn’t missed that Jan didn’t specifically mention the tablet.

“Who says I don’t mean sex?” Rick said as he pulled her into his arms.

“Watch it, buster. I’m crampy and crabby.”

He kissed her on the nose and released her. “Your wish is my command, love.”

The attorney stepped into the room and got Jan’s attention. They spoke briefly, then the attorney left. “Your presence is requested on the first floor, madam,” he playfully said. “He wants to open Bertholde’s room.”

“What do you mean open it?”

“It was sealed.”

They assembled downstairs in a hallway outside a door. Not only was it locked, but the keyhole had been covered with red wax and sealed with the same seal on the letter Bertholde had sent Lina.

She fought the urge to tear up. “She knew,” she softly said. “She did this before she left for Yellowstone.” She reached out and touched the wax.

Jan translated for the attorney. The man nodded. “Oui,” he said, handing her a brand-new, sharp utility scraper. He motioned for her to break the seal.

She did. He handed her a key, and after taking a deep breath Lina unlocked the door and opened it.

The light was dim. Heavy curtains had been pulled across the large windows. When Rick went to open them, he laughed. “Hey, look at this.” He pointed at the window sills. Bertholde, apparently wanting to make sure no one could get in unnoticed, had also placed several drops of wax at various locations on the windows.

All of them looked intact.

Lina sadly smiled. “Smart lady. She wanted us to know for sure we were the first ones in here since she left.”

Andel glanced around and turned to the attorney, then spoke to him in French. This time, Rick translated the exchange for her. Andel wanted to know when the will would be read, and the attorney assured him it would be in a few minutes, and that Bertholde had indicated that Lina had a message for him from her.

Lina looked startled. “I do?”

Jan turned, an eyebrow arched at her. “The scroll and the letter?”

“Oh.” She dug into her messenger bag and pulled them out, then let Andel read them. First, his face grew red as he read the letter, then he exploded in laughter and had to sit down.

He shook his head. “I loved her very much,” he said when he composed himself. “She put up with a lot of grief from me when I was young.” As he smiled, Lina patted him on the shoulder and felt the wave of melancholy and grief from him. No, he didn’t have anything to do with his aunt’s death. She’d bet her life on it.

She also still felt that grey fog around him that she’d first noticed when they were in Yellowstone.

He looked up at her and smiled after reading the scroll. “Very well, this is her wish. As you are our Seer, I defer to you.” He looked at the attorney and spoke to him in French. She didn’t need a translator to interpret the relieved smile and nod the attorney gave Andel in reply.

He’d obviously told the attorney he would offer no more objections to the proceedings.

Lina looked around the room, which definitely felt like Bertholde. No nonsense, nothing frilly or froufrou about it. But warm and inviting nonetheless. Soft, deep-blue carpeting covered the floor. The double bed was made up with several decorative pillows and a warm, fluffy comforter. One corner of the room was a reading nook, with floor-to-ceiling shelves full of a variety of books in several languages. This room had a fireplace, as well as vents for modern central heating and air-conditioning. She walked over to one shelf, where pictures and knickknacks shared space with still more books. On one shelf holding a collection of carved stone knickknacks, she saw an open gap. Closer inspection revealed four clean spots in the light coating of dust that no doubt would perfectly match the four little carvings tucked into her purse.

“It used to be the library,” Jan interpreted for the attorney. “She got tired of climbing stairs.”

Lina turned her attention from the shelf. A doorway opened into a large bathroom. It was obvious from the newer style of door and framing that it had been added later, after she’d decided to turn the room into her master suite. Another door, which from its location Lina assumed led to the hallway, was locked with a sliding bolt from the inside. No way someone could have snuck in that way, especially since the hinges were on the inside of the door.

Lina turned. “Let’s get this done,” she said. “I want to get the will read, then I need to eat and sleep.”

“The staff is preparing brunch for us now,” Rick said.

The attorney led them into what appeared to be the new library from the quantity of books lining the walls. They sat. As Rieucheaux started to read the will, with Jan translating for Lina, a wave of aggravation overcame Lina.

“I can’t believe I can do all this shit, and I can’t understand a fucking word he’s saying!”

She froze as she found herself in Baba Yaga’s kitchen.

“Holy fucking crap on a cracker, are you kidding me?” Lina screamed.

Baba Yaga, in her matron form, was sitting on her couch and sipping something out of a mug while watching Dirty Jobs on TV.

“What?” the matron asked. “I happen to like Mike Rowe.”

Lina let out another frustrated screech.

“What exactly is the problem, Goddess?”

“I didn’t ask to come here! I was sitting there listening to the attorney read Bertholde’s will. All I said was I couldn’t believe with all my powers that I can’t understand French!”

“But you can.”

Lina blinked.

Then she blinked again. “Huh?”

Baba Yaga smiled. “What have I been telling you?”

“Can you just tell me, because if I have to sit here and recite everything, it’ll be all damn day, and frankly I’m too fucking jet-lagged and crampy to think about it right now.” Her stomach chose that moment to grumble. “And I’m hungry, too!”

Apparently, Baba Yaga either had a DVR or was watching a DVD. She picked up her remote, hit pause, and Mike Rowe froze just as he was taking a step into something that looked horribly disgusting.

“I’ll simplify it for you. Your answers are in your past.”

“What?”

“You’ve spent several of your lives speaking either French or an older style of French. You’ve spoken many languages. German, Dutch, Japanese, Mandarin—shall I continue?”

“So?”

“So, sit down, clear your mind for a moment, with Zachary guiding you if necessary, and think back. You’ll no doubt be rusty at first, but I’ll bet if you open your mind, you’ll soon see you do understand French.”

Lina jabbed her finger at Baba Yaga and started to yell at her when she found herself standing in the library, shouting at the corner.

Everyone else let out a startled exclamation. She took a deep breath, turned around, and said to Rieucheaux, “Excuse me for a moment.” She grabbed Zack by the shoulder of his shirt as she passed where he was sitting, and he barely had time to get to his feet and follow her.

She shut the library door behind her and leaned against it.

“Okay, sweet cheeks. What happened? Another Baba Yaga interlude?”

“Yeah. Get this, she says I can understand French. And a bunch of other languages. She’s flipped!”

Instead of agreeing with her immediately, he stroked his chin. “Well,” he finally said, “that does make sense. Some of my languages are rusty, like I haven’t spoken Vietnamese in over two hundred years, but we were in France in the late 1900’s.”

As exhausted and stressed as she was, Lina felt tears of frustration spring to her eyes. “Help me, please? She said you might be able to.”

“Oh, sweetie. Come here.” He enveloped her in a hug as she sobbed against him.

“I’m sooo tired. I’m worried about all of…all of this, whatever this is. I’m hungry and I just want a bath and want to go to bed after I eat and that bitch is driving me crazy, and—”

He stroked her hair. “Honey, shhh, it’s okay. We’ll figure it out.” He sat on a nearby loveseat and pulled her into his lap. “Relax.” He held her so her forehead rested against his. “Close your eyes and listen to me…”

He took her on a journey to the past, telling her some of their life together, their younger days growing up in a small village outside of Lyon. Of how their parents were best friends, how they grew up together.

“I called you mon ange,” he said.

“My angel,” she whispered.

“Very good.” His voice grew softer as he told her stories. In a few minutes, he said, “Est-ce que l'aide?”

She smiled. “Oui. Oh, holy crap! I understood that!”

He laughed and helped her up, out of his lap. “Let’s go in and test you, kiddo.”

Everyone went quiet as they returned. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Je regrette.”

“Holy crap!” Rick and Jan said together.

She smirked. “Yeah, I now remember how to speak French. I think. Let’s get this over with.”

The attorney warily eyed her, but continued speaking in French. This time, Lina understood nearly everything he said. If there was something she didn’t understand, she had one of the men translate it into English for her.

The reading of the will didn’t take long. Everything—the house, all its contents, and all her assets—went to Lina. There was a sealed letter for Andel, which the attorney handed over to him.

And that was it.

“Are there any other questions or concerns?” the attorney asked.

She glanced at him, then at Andel. “Is he…one of us?” she softly asked him in English.

Andel smiled. “James is from dragon lineage, if that’s your question.”

“Ah.” She started to ask Andel something else, but he politely raised a hand to stay her. “Let me read this first, please. Then I will spend all day and night answering anything you wish to ask me.”

Lina nodded. “Of course.”

He broke the wax seal on the envelope and withdrew the single page. As he read it, his eyes brimmed with tears. Then he burst into laughter. When he finished, he smiled and returned the letter to the envelope. He produced a handkerchief from his pocket, dried his eyes, and blew his nose. “I’m sorry, my dear.” He looked around. “There is…an object we need to discuss.”

“The tablet.”

He looked startled. “I don’t know if it’s a good idea to discuss this openly.”

Daniel arched an eyebrow at him. “Andel, you’re about the only one in this room, with the exception of Perry Mason, here, who hasn’t been in the loop about the tablet.”

That seemed to confuse him even more. “What?”

Jocko waved him down. “Relax, Andel. It’s under control. Get comfy, it’ll be a whopper of a story.”

Lina let the others do most of the talking. She didn’t want to talk. She only wanted to eat and sleep. Sitting still for more than a few minutes in her fairly comfy chair, she found herself dozing off.

A gentle nudge to her shoulder startled her awake. Callie. “Hey, want to go eat? We’ll let the guys finish up here.”

Lina wearily nodded and hauled herself out of the chair. They followed the delicious smell of food through the first floor until they found the dining room, where a long sideboard had been covered from one end to the other in chafing dishes and platters full of nommy goodness.

“They must have told them Wally and the wolves were coming with us,” Callie joked.

As Lina grabbed a clean plate from the stack at the end of the sideboard, a ridiculously stupid thought hit her.

She turned to Callie. “You’re Baba Yaga’s sister.”

A puzzled smile crossed Callie’s face. “Yeah?”

“Her sister.”

Callie nodded. “Uh-huh. You okay?”

Lina blamed it on accumulated stress, exhaustion, jet lag, and her period. “I’ve spent all this time bitching about her, when I’ve got you right here!”

Callie’s eyebrows arched as she realized where Lina was going with her point. “Ah. Well, I hate to disappoint you, but while yes, I do have powers, my powers are far less than Babs’. On a scale of one to ten, she’s a ninety-seven, and I’m around twenty-five. Now Brighde, our other sister, she’s older than me, but younger than Babs. She’s about a forty-two.”

Lina blankly stared at her for a moment as the disappointing news sank in. She burst into tears.

Callie looked alarmed. “Hey, it’s okay.” She put her plate down, took Lina’s from her and put it down as well, and hugged her. “Hey, I’ll help you as much as I can. But this is Baba Yaga’s gig, honey. I can only do so much. I’m also bound by certain laws, anyway. If I went willy-nilly, I’d get slapped down in a big way.”

“I thought I was so close to answers!” Lina sobbed against her.

“Hey, believe me, no one has all the answers. Not even Babs. She’s as hamstrung in a lot of ways as any of us are. She’s just…a lot sneakier.”

Without a word, one of the housekeepers brought Lina a cloth napkin and left them alone again.

Lina laughed and blew her nose. “They’re efficient.”

Callie laughed. “Seems so. How’s it feel to be the lady of the manor?”

“I don’t know yet. Ask me in a few weeks, if I haven’t been committed to an asylum.”

They filled their plates and settled in at one end of the long table. The housekeeper filled their coffee cups and water glasses for them and silently disappeared again.

“I wonder if I change my hair color,” Callie said, “if it’d spook her?”

Lina nearly choked on her scrambled eggs as she laughed. “You can do that?”

Callie snorted and, before Lina’s eyes, went from a curly redhead to straight black hair with purple highlights.

Lina’s eyes widened. “Holy crap!” she said.

“Yeah, but—”

“Ahem.”

Callie flinched and turned to see Daniel standing in the doorway, a wry expression on his face.

Lina wondered at the immediate change in Callie’s demeanor. Callie lowered her head. “Sorry, Sir,” she softly said.

He laughed and walked over to her. Smiling, he gently tipped her chin up so he could lean in and kiss her. “It’s okay,” he said. “I heard Lina’s comment. I know you were just showing her.”

Relief filled Callie’s face. Her hair immediately changed back to its previous deep-red hue and curly texture. “Thank You, Sir.”

Lina’s eyes narrowed. “Not that it’s any of my business, but what the hell’s going on here?” She immediately felt protective of Callie. The irony wasn’t lost on her, since Callie was probably far more powerful than Lina could ever hope to be.

Callie laid her hand over Daniel’s, where it rested on her shoulder. She smiled at Lina. “It’s okay. Do you really think a wolf could do something to me that I didn’t want done?” She looked up at Daniel with love in her eyes. “He’s my Sir. I love Him. He’s the first man in my entire life who understood what I wanted and needed.”

Lina knew that look. Lovesick puppy. Every man in her house wore that look at one time or another. Hell, she probably wore it a few times herself.

That wasn’t a look easily faked.

“You’re into, what, that freaky stuff?” Lina asked.

Daniel laughed. “Yeah, and having two dragon mates is totally vanilla. What we do is totally consensual. I wasn’t sure if I’d make it out alive from our first date. I only knew she was my mate and I loved her.” He looked down at her and stroked her hair. “I’d kill and die for her, believe me. Just like I’m sure your mates would for you.”

Lina’s face reddened. “Okay, I got it. Touché. Sorry.”

“No, it’s all right,” he said. “I appreciate that you feel protective of her like that. That’s the mark of a good friend.” He reached out a hand to Lina to shake with her.

Lina accepted it. “I think she’s probably going to do more to save my bacon than the other way around, but thanks.”

Daniel walked over to the sideboard to fill a plate. Callie smiled at Lina and leaned in close. In a low whisper, she said, “Besides, Sir is fucking hot in the sack.”

“I heard that,” he playfully said from the sideboard. “Wolf ears, pet.”

“Who says I didn’t mean for You to hear it, Sir?” she innocently shot back.

His amused laugh vaguely reminded Lina of a wolf’s howl.

The rest of the group, minus the attorney, made it into the dining room a few minutes later. Zack took point on the discussion after they sat down. “We figured you’d probably want to get some sleep first,” he said. “But after that, I’m guessing you want to start that search?”

Lina nodded after glancing at the housekeeper, who silently stood inside the doorway, ready to refill drinks or food. She didn’t need him to hit her over the head with a sledgehammer. They would ixnay the alktay about the ablettay while the staff was around. “Yeah. After I’ve had a nap would be good.”

Her men didn’t need to ask her if she was in the mood to fool around. They were asleep almost before their heads hit the pillows. She lay there for a moment staring at the ceiling. This felt surreal. A week ago, she was in Yellowstone. Now, she was in a house—her house—outside of Paris.

Okay, their house, because even if it was hers, she considered it theirs.

She closed her eyes. Immediately, she found herself standing along the side of a rural road. She got the distinct feeling from local trees and vegetation that she was in Florida, confirmed when she spotted the wrecked car on the other side of the road. The tag on the back was for the Sunshine State.

It looked like the accident had just happened, from the way steam still rose up from the front end. As she approached, she realized there were two occupants in the front. Both appeared dead.

The scene changed. She was still there at the wrecked car, but now there was a tow truck driver preparing to winch the demolished car onto the back of a flatbed wrecker. Three men who looked identical and distraught stood there, talking with a Florida Highway Patrol officer. The Lyall brothers…

Lina opened her eyes. She was safe in bed between Rick and Jan.

She was way too tired to think about it right then. What she wanted was sleep. Just good old dreamless, boring sleep. She closed her eyes again.

By the time Lina awoke seven hours later, she felt reasonably human again. Jan and Rick were still softly snoring on either side of her. She carefully climbed out of the bed via the end and made her way into the bathroom. There, she drew herself a hot bath and settled in for a relaxing soak. She’d already finished and dressed when Rick and Jan dragged themselves out of bed.

“I’m going down to Bertholde’s room,” she said.

“Do you want us to come with you?” Rick asked.

“No. If I’m not safe in this house, then I’m pretty much screwed. I want some alone time there.” She took her cell phone with her. Around her, the house felt quiet, no sounds of the others stirring yet. She made her way downstairs and found Bertholde’s room again.

She shut the door behind her and threw the curtains open to let light into the room. She sat on the bed and called Lacey. The Seer answered immediately.

“There you are. I was beginning to worry.”

“Sorry. I had to sleep.”

“Where are you?”

Lina looked around. “I’m in Bertholde’s room. Sitting on her bed.”

“Good. Get up and go to the back staircase.”

Lina stood and walked out into the hall. She didn’t know where the back staircase was. She assumed it was in the opposite direction of the main staircase.

“Let me find it.”

“Okay, tell me when you do.”

Lina made two more turns and found it. “I guess this is it.”

“Is it anywhere near the kitchen?”

“I don’t think so, but then again, I’m lost.”

Lacey laughed. “What’s it look like?”

“Stairs.”

“No, dear. Carpeted, banister color, that type of thing.”

“Oh. No carpet, just wood.”

“That’s it, then. The service staircase by the kitchen is carpeted. Slowly ascend the stairs. One step at a time. Do not rush.”

“Um, okay.” Lina took the stairs one at a time.

“Anything?”

“What am I looking for?” Various pictures and photographs lined the wall. Was it something hidden behind a picture?

“Listening for, Lina. Listening.”

Ten steps up, she heard it, a slight squeak. She continued on to the top of the staircase. It was the only step that squeaked. She returned to it and sat on the step below it. “I think I found it.”

“Grab the step and pull out.”

She did. With a little tugging, it gave way. Inside the riser she found a secret compartment containing an envelope sealed with Bertholde’s wax seal.

Lina lifted it out and closed the step.

“Well?” Lacey asked.

Lina’s name was written on the envelope in Bertholde’s handwriting.

“I found it,” Lina softly said. “How did you know?”

“She must have planned it. She mentioned to me at least five different times the last several times we talked about that squeaky step. Obviously, she was leaving a clue for you and for me. Good luck, dear. Call me if you need me.”

“Okay. Thanks.” Lina hung up and stared at the letter. Instead of opening it there, she found her way back to Bertholde’s room and locked herself in.

She opened the letter. In it, a very short message.

Put the animals back on their home. Carefully. And exactly.

Lina sat there, thinking. Then her eyes fell on the gap on the shelf. That has to be it. She said “on” their home.

She bolted upstairs for her room, ignoring Rick and Jan’s questions as she rummaged through her shoulder bag for the little figurines. Finding them, she ran back downstairs, nearly plowing over Zack in the process. He followed her back to Bertholde’s room and watched as she painstakingly put the little figurines back on their matching dust spots, exactly as they had been aligned.

“What’s that supposed to do?” Zack asked.

She shushed him and stood there, looking at them. They were, from left to right, the wolf, dragon, unidentified cat, and bear. Lina studied them from various angles.

Nada.

After ten minutes, and Jan and Rick arriving and silently watching after Zack shushed them, Lina sat, dejected, on the bed.

“What, exactly,” Zack said, “are you doing?”

She handed him the note she retrieved from the step.

“Where did this come from?”

“There was a secret compartment under a step. That’s what she meant by the squeak in the other letter. Lacey knew what the squeak meant and pointed me to it.”

“Oh. That’s clear as mud.”

“The step squeaked.”

“Okay.”

The four of them stared at the animals for another ten minutes. Lina felt close to tears. “I don’t understand what she’s trying to tell me!”

“Calm down, lovely,” Jan soothed. “We’ll figure it out.” He studied the figurines, then turned, slowly looking around the room, his eyes scanning from floor to ceiling. He stopped, a wide smile breaking across his face. He looked back at the shelf, then at Lina.

“I’ve got it.”

“Well, explain it to me, please.”

He walked over to a bookshelf on the far side of the room. On a shelf exactly across from the figurines sat several pictures. Jan reached over to one and picked it up. A group picture, it featured Bertholde and four older men, apparently taken at some sort of meeting, or maybe a past Gathering.

Jan carried the picture over to Lina and handed it to her. “That’s Jim Aruks, Paul McThomas, Jayden Aslo, and Davis Cannady.”

“Yeah, so?”

Rick grinned and pointed at each man in turn again. “Wolf, dragon, panther, and bear shifters.”

She stared at him, then turned the picture over and popped the back off the inexpensive frame. Behind the picture, she found a small piece of paper.

“This is getting old.” She took it out and unfolded it.

On it, a single, hand-drawn symbol.

%

“What the fuck is that?”

Zack took the paper, smiled, and walked over to the windows. He looked outside for a moment, then turned to them. With a fake, pompous British detective accent, he hooked a thumb under his armpit and said, “I do believe, Watson, that I have solved the mystery.”

“I’m hungry and crampy, Zack,” she groused. “Don’t piss me off.”

He laughed. “It’s the apothecary symbol for the ounce.”

She blinked. “Huh?”

“Ounce. You know, ‘O-Z. Oz.’”

“Sorry, Zack,” Jan said. “I’m not following you, either.”

He grinned and waved them over to the window. “‘Follow the yellow brick road,’” he chanted.

Outside, a path of pale pavers with a yellow hue to them led the way to gardens behind the house.

“No,” she said. “You really think she’d keep it that close to her?”

He shrugged. “Maybe she moved it without anyone else knowing.”

They all headed outside. The paving stones didn’t look big enough to be the tablet. And there were literally thousands of them.

“This will take forever,” Lina said.

“Look,” Zack interrupted, “let’s eat dinner first. Keep this to ourselves until we have a chance to fill in everyone else. Once our tummies are full, we’ll come back to it.”

Before dinner, she had time to get Brodey alone for a few minutes. “Can I ask you a personal question?”

He gave her an appraising look. “I’d hope so, sugar, after all we’ve been through.”

“Feel free to tell me to go fuck myself, but how did your parents die?”

His face clouded. “Car wreck. Highway Patrol declared it a one-car wreck.”

“But you aren’t convinced?”

“Nope. Why?”

“I had a dream.”

“Did you see who did it?”

“No. I saw the immediate aftermath. But there’s got to be a reason I saw it in the first place. It was just a brief flash. I wanted to know if it was your parents.”

“Okay. If you see anything else—”

“Absolutely.”

He nodded and gave her a strong hug, then hurried outside for some fresh air.

She suspected he wanted to get himself under control.

After dinner, they led the others outside to the pavers. Zack explained. “We’re not even one hundred percent sure this is the place she was pointing us to, but we’re going with it.” They spread out and took separate sections.

It was nearly dark when Lina found it. At the edge of the walk, half concealed by a bush, lay one paver set a little differently than the others. Lina called for the rest of their group. Brodey knelt down and pulled it out of position, flipping it over.

A roughly chiseled V had been embossed in the bottom.

“What does that mean?” Lina asked. “What does ‘V’ stand for?”

Zack shook his head. “Put it back exactly the way you found it, Brodey.”

He did. “Now,” Zack instructed, “tip it up, toward the bush.”

He did. Now the V pointed down the path. Lina set off ahead of the others. At the end of the walk was a gravel circle ringed by low bushes. In the middle of it, a sundial. On top of it sat a V-shaped pointer.

“I don’t get it,” Lina said.

Callie laughed and stepped over the bushes and into the circle with her. Carefully tipping the sundial over off its pedestal, she then moved the pedestal. Beneath it lay four pavers surrounding a fifth, which had totally been concealed by the sundial’s pedestal.

Daniel joined them in the circle and pulled up the center stone. He turned it over and held it up. “Is this what you’re looking for?” He grinned.

In his hands, he held the Tablet of Trammel.

The entire events of its creation rushed back into Lina’s mind.

Lina fainted.

Lina awoke in a sitting room. Someone had carried her inside and laid her out on a comfortable sofa. Zack knelt next to her and placed a cold, wet cloth on her forehead. “What the hell was that about, sweetheart?”

She felt woozy. “I don’t know.” She seemed to have developed an annoying habit of fainting unexpectedly. “I hope I’m not turning into one of them damn fainting goats,” she grumbled.

Jan and Rick, standing nearby, both laughed. “No chance of that, sweetheart,” Rick said.

She carefully sat up. “The tablet? Where is it?”

“Right here,” Brodey said. Someone had brushed the dirt off of it. It now sat on a towel in the middle of a table.

Lina stood, wobbled on her feet for only a moment before she felt steady again, and made her way over to the tablet.

It seemed hard to believe that just a few days earlier, she’d taken part in the creation of it. It looked weathered, some of the engravings a little smoother than they’d originally been, but in good shape overall. Running her fingers over it, she felt none of the power present at its creation.

It was just a rock.

The giggles started deep in her throat, bubbling and rising up until she had to lean on the table for support she was laughing so hard.

“Um, you okay?” Zack asked.

She nodded even as she continued laughing. It was several minutes before she was able to regain her senses. “We’ve been worried…about…that!” She broke out into another giggle fit.

She realized everyone was exchanging worried looks. She waved them away. “I’m not crazy, I swear.” She took a deep breath, let out one final round of snickers, then turned to face everyone. “It’s just a rock now. At the time, it was a powerful spell, yes. After the battle ended, it became meaningless.” She ran her hands over it again.

Nope, nothing. She could get more sensation from concrete block. Still…

“We need to take it back to America with us,” she said. “We can hide it in the Pack compound in Maine.”

“Are you sure that’s wise?” Zack asked. “You want to hold on to it that long?”

She nodded. “What are they going to do, steal it and break it?” She picked it up. Part of her wanted to drop the damn thing on the floor and watch it shatter. The other part of her wanted to honor the memory of the three lovers who’d given their lives to save their people.

Even if she was one of the three lovers.

She handed it to Zack. “Please keep it safe for me until we get it back to the States.”

“Do we tell people we found it?”

She smiled. “Found what?”

“I hope you have a plan,” Jan said.

“I do.”

Later that night, before heading to bed, she found Zack. “Bring the tablet,” she told him. He went back into his room. She heard him briefly speak to Kael, then he returned with the tablet.

“What are we doing?”

“Come on and I’ll show you.” She led him downstairs and outside to the garden, to the path of pavers. She pulled one up a few yards down from where they’d found the paver with the ‘V’ etched on it. She flipped it over so she could see the dirty side.

“What are you doing?” Zack said.

She knelt down, smiling as she ran her hands over the smooth stone. “Looks pretty close to the original, doesn’t it?”

He looked puzzled. “Um, well, not really. It’s larger, it’s a slightly different color, and has no writing on it.”

“Ignore the color. What if it had the same writing on it?”

He snorted. “Fine. Do you know someone handy with a chisel who can do rock forgeries?”

She grinned. “I don’t need a chisel.” She stood, grabbed the real tablet from him, and laid it on top of the other paver.

“What are you doing? Or do I even want to know?”

“Watch and learn, grasshopper. Watch and learn.” She closed her eyes and ran her hands around the edge of the tablet. This felt right. Really right.

Baba Yaga told me to follow my instincts.

She traced the edges of the tablet with her fingers, touching the stone beneath it as she moved her hands. Then she ran her fingers over the surface of the tablet, smoothing them over the etchings and envisioning the rock below taking on the same appearance.

She knew even if the cockatrice did manage to find and destroy the real tablet, it wouldn’t render the spell obsolete. It would take the spell being reversed.

And the people it had affected being not dead.

Since she had no desire to reverse the spell, and even if there was a way to resurrect the dead she wouldn’t do it, there was little to no chance of that happening. The tablet itself, however, no longer contained any power even though the cockatrice believed it did.

The power was in her, the Goddess, and in her men.

Lina, however, didn’t like to take chances. Maybe, just maybe, there was a slim chance of the cockatrice stopping their slaughter of innocent people in search of this hunk of rock if they got their hands on it. Well, on the forgery. Which they wouldn’t know was a forgery.

Lifting the original tablet, she returned it to Zack. Then she examined her handiwork. It looked nearly identical to the original. All anyone who wanted it would be interested in was if the runes and symbols matched.

She took a deep breath and let it out as the memory of the original spell returned to her mind.

Instincts.

She smiled and let her mind guide her. She placed one small extra symbol on the duplicate tablet.

May the destruction of this duplicate only serve to further solidify the original spell.

Hee hee hee.

She flipped it facedown and returned it to place in the path where the paver with the V on it had been laid. The paver with the V, she put in the place of the modified paver. To the average eye, no one would notice anything amiss.

Lina stood and brushed the dirt off her hands.

“Happy?” Zack asked.

“I will be once we stop these fuckers.”

Chapter Five

Callie, Daniel, Brodey, and Wally set out to do some investigations and run down some information on the cockatrice first thing the next morning after breakfast. They got a rental car and would join the rest of them later at the hotel in Brussels. Everyone else loaded into the rental van with their luggage and hit the road with Uncle Andel following in his car. With a stop for lunch, the drive took less than five hours.

They checked into their hotel in Brussels. Lina tried to steel herself for the meeting with the other shifter bigwigs. Many of them hadn’t made it to the Yellowstone gathering. It took them an hour to drive to the estate outside of Brussels, which made the place she’d just inherited from Bertholde look like a cheap-ass slum.

A crisply uniformed butler led them through the house to a large drawing room. There were already twelve men there, one of them who looked older than dirt. He sat, shrunken by age and dwarfed by his wheelchair, but his flinty grey eyes looked hard, cold, and fully aware.

Without any formalities, Andel started. “The cockatrice are back with a vengeance,” he said. “They’re behind the murders of several people, including our Seer, Bertholde.” The room rumbled, but silenced when he spoke again.

“They’re after the Tablet of Trammel,” he said, which started another round of grumbling.

Lina watched the old man in the wheelchair. She didn’t like him, even though he hadn’t said a word yet. When his eyes fell on her, she didn’t blink and refused to back down. Eventually, he looked away.

Her gaze narrowed. Good, you should fear me, old man.

She didn’t understand why she felt an instant dislike for him, but she damn sure wouldn’t cower before him.

After a brief retelling of the recent events, leaving out the part about them finding and relocating the Tablet, the old man spoke.

“We are in modern times,” he said with a strong voice that totally didn’t match his withered body. “The Tablet is a myth, nothing more.”

Jocko got in the man’s face. “Ye’ve seen the bloody thing yerself. And ye ain’t modern, who ye kiddin’?” He jabbed his finger at the man. “Don’t ye bloody bastards still have an outstanding blood oath against yer own kind, this many centuries later?”

“That’s none of your business!”

“Anythin’ affecting my Pack is my business, Rodolfo Abernathy!” Jocko fiercely growled. “An’ I’ll tell ye somethin’ else. Ye come sniffin’ around my Pack or my Clan, I’ll take yer bloody nose off!”

There were assorted grumbles and growls from around the room, but Jocko squared off against them. His massive form commanded attention. “I’ll tell all ye the same thing, too. I’ve lost too many good, innocent people over the years. To the cockatrice. To damn blood oaths. To sheer idiocy and greed. Ye all have, too, but apparently I’m the only one with the stones to stand up to this stupid old man. It stops here, and it stops now!”

“You do not tell me how to run my Pack,” Abernathy said.

Jocko wheeled around on him. “I will tell ye to stay outta my Pack!” He stood over the other man, his voice low and growly. “I know damn well ye had somethin’ to do with the deaths of Charles and Ellie. Ye were pissed off they helped people escape yer dirty clutches. And when I prove it, I’ll rip yer damn throat out myself!”

Andel grabbed Jocko by the arm and pulled him back, whispering to him to calm down. With Zack’s help, they got him settled in chair in the far corner. Lina decided if she was the Seer, it was time for her to nut up or shut up.

She stepped forward, ignoring Abernathy. “With or without your help, we are going after the cockatrice.” She glanced at Abernathy. “Anyone who gets in our way will be dealt with. Don’t piss me off. I’m hormonal and emotional and looking for an excuse to blow someone up.”

After twenty minutes, it was obvious none of them had much in the way of helpful information. Well, Lina suspected Abernathy knew more than he said, but he wasn’t giving it up if he did. Jocko and Andel were able to pull together some information from the other shifters that might prove helpful on finding the local cockatrice nest.

Just as she was about to go after Abernathy to find out what he was hiding, Callie and the others showed up.

With some relief, Zack pulled Lina aside with a suggestion. “Why don’t I take you back to the hotel now that they’re back?” he said.

Callie spoke up. “I’ll do it.”

“Cool. Okay, thanks.”

Out in the car, Lina looked at Callie. “We’re not really going to the hotel, are we?”

She laughed. “Hell, no.”

Callie found a place to park in an old part of town. They walked for a few minutes as Callie got her bearings.

“This looks familiar,” Callie said.

Lina followed Callie down a dingy, narrow cobblestone street. “You sure this is the right way?” Lina nervously asked.

“I think so.” She slowed at a corner and studied the buildings. “It’s been a long time, but these buildings are really old. It looks right.”

“You realize Rick and Jan are going to want to spank me for coming out here without them, right?”

Callie turned and grinned. “You lucky girl.”

Exasperated, Lina groaned. “Some of us don’t like to be spanked!”

“Hmph. Well, that’s all right. You have other nice qualities.” She took off down another street.

Lina rolled her eyes and followed Callie. After three more turns and ten minutes of walking, Lina grabbed Callie’s arm. “Explain to me again why we aren’t driving?”

“Narrow streets. Crappy traffic. And last time I was here, there weren’t any cars and we traveled on foot or horseback. Wait! That’s it!” She pointed to a wood and whitewashed plaster building kitty-corner across the street from where they stood. Callie took off with Lina in tow.

Outside the dingy front window, Callie looked at a dusty display of stone and wood statues in a wide variety of shapes, sizes, and subjects stacked on several risers covered with a velveteen black cloth covered in what looked like cat hair. Lina looked up at the sign. It was in French, but she didn’t understand it.

“What’s that mean?”

Callie looked up. “Loosely translated, it’s ‘Carving Artisan.’ Come on.”

An anemic-sounding bell tinkled when they stepped into the cramped showroom, but no one appeared at the small counter in the back.

“Bonjour?” Callie called out. Lina didn’t miss how when Callie stepped forward, she seemed to instinctively keep Lina directly behind her in a protective manner.

No one answered her call.

Slowly weaving through dusty displays to make their way to the back of the shop, Lina felt her phone buzzing in her pocket. She grabbed it and answered. It was Zack.

“Where the hell are you two?”

Lina gave him the address. “Callie says this is the place.”

“I’ll be right there, give me five minutes. Do not move.”

“Where’s Rick and Jan?”

“They and the rest of them went with Kael to check out a lead on the nest.” He hung up on her.

Callie glanced back at her. “Mother hen?”

“Yep.” They stood at the counter.

Callie tapped a small bell set on the corner of the counter for getting the clerk’s attention. “Bonjour?” No response.

Callie arched an eyebrow as she stared at the closed curtain covering the doorway behind the counter.

“Stay here,” she said. Before Lina could stop her, Callie had quickly stepped around the counter and through the curtain.

Lina wanted to call out a warning to her to be careful, but then she heard her friend’s gasp. “Lina, come here.”

With dread, Lina made her way to the back of the shop. The small, cramped work space held three benches covered with various tools Lina assumed were used for carving. A small grinding machine was set up on a stand in one corner. There were also several saws and tumblers she guessed were also used by the artisan.

She also assumed the dead older man lying curled on his side on the floor in a pool of his own blood was the artisan in question. “Shit.” From his color, and the fact that the blood had started congealing and drying at the edges of the puddle, she guessed he’d been dead a while.

Callie knelt down to try to get a better look at his face. All Lina could tell was he looked to be in his seventies and had grey hair and a walrus mustache. “Do you know him?” Lina asked.

Callie shook her head. “No. I don’t think so. This isn’t the guy I knew. Might be his son or other relative.” She looked up and pointed at one of the shelves. “Look at that.”

Lina stepped around the dead man. She wondered that she wasn’t getting upset over stumbling on a dead body, but then she suspected she knew exactly who had killed this man. And why. On a top shelf, partially hidden by some small boxes, sat raw chunks of catlinite.

Callie stood and looked around. “Well, we’re not getting any answers out of him. Let’s see what we can find.” She opened a file cabinet and started rifling through it.

Lina looked around, not sure what she was looking for. When the front doorbell rang a few minutes later, she jumped. They both looked at each other. Callie had started for the curtained doorway when they heard Zack call out.

“Lina? Where are you?”

“Back here,” she called.

Seconds later, he ran through the doorway and barely had enough time to skid to a stop so he didn’t step on the dead man. “Holy shit!” He glared at Callie. “What the hell did you do that for?”

She gave him a disgusted look and planted her hands on her hips. “Why the hell do you just naturally assume I did anything? We found him like that. He’s been dead for hours. Duh.”

“Oh.” Zack did, in fact, look more closely. “Sorry.”

“Believe me, when I kill someone, it’s a lot more creative than stabbing them in the heart. Besides, that’s a typical cockatrice trick. Signature move.”

Zack and Lina exchanged a look, and at the same time said, “Son of a bitch!”

“What?”

Zack said, “I’d bet dollars to doughnuts that whoever killed Bertholde killed this guy, too. That’s how they murdered her. They stabbed her in the heart.”

“They didn’t leave a knife this time,” Lina pointed out.

“Doesn’t matter,” Callie said. “Stabbing someone in the heart is something peculiar they do. I never learned what the significance is, but it’s just their thing. Like the mob leaving a horse’s head in your bed.”

“Great,” Zack said. “We should get out of here.”

“We haven’t finished tossing the place yet,” Callie pointed out.

“I don’t care. We can come back later and do it. I want Lina out of here.”

“Lina’s a big girl,” Callie said. “We’ll keep her safe.”

“Hello,” Lina said. “Lina is right here.” She waved her hand in Zack’s face. “Goddess wants to stay and play Sherlock Holmes,” she snarked. “I’m tired of feeling helpless.”

“Fine. Let’s do it fast and get the hell out of here. What are we looking for?”

Lina grabbed an empty plastic shopping bag and retrieved the uncarved catlinite. No surprise, she felt nothing when she picked up the stone.

Into the bag she dumped it. Callie handed her some papers from the file cabinet before she started rifling through the desk. After ten minutes, Zack smacked himself on the forehead. “Anyone look at his wallet?”

The women stared at him for a moment. “Just fucking shoot me and get it over with,” Lina said.

Callie smacked herself on the forehead much as Zack had and stooped down to rummage through the dead man’s pockets. She stood up, his wallet and phone in her hand. “Let’s take them. He’s not going to need them.”

Lina wasn’t sure she liked the dark humor, but she also couldn’t disagree with the logic. Into the bag they went.

Callie returned to the desk, and when she reached the bottom drawer on the right-hand side, she found it locked. “Fuck this,” she mumbled, and put her hand on the lock.

With a bright flash of light and puff of smoke, the lock exploded. Callie opened the drawer and started exploring. After a moment, she emptied the drawer onto the desk and tapped the bottom of it. “Hmm.” They heard the sound of wood cracking, then Callie let out a low whistle.

“What?” Zack asked.

“Boys and girls, we’ve hit the jackpot.” She pulled something out and turned so they could see it.

It looked like an exact copy of the cockatrice spell book.

“Fuck me,” Zack said.

There was also an address book and a small journal inside the false bottom. They took them, returned the drawer to its place, and dumped the remaining items back inside before closing it. “Now let’s get the hell out of here,” Callie said.

“Agreed,” Zack concurred.

They started for the curtain when they heard the bell on the front door tinkle. The three of them froze. They stared at each other, holding their breaths.

After a minute, they didn’t hear anything. Zack shrugged and peeked through the curtain. “No one there,” he said.

They all stepped through the curtain. Sure enough, the showroom was empty.

“Weird,” Callie muttered. “They must have changed their mind about coming in.” She led the way to the door and peeked through it. With the way apparently clear, she opened it and they filed out, Callie taking the lead and Zack bringing up the rear.

They turned the opposite way of how they arrived. “We came that way,” Lina said, tapping Callie on the shoulder.

“I know. I’ve got a feeling. We’d better go this way.” In fact, she led them across the street and as she started to pick up the pace, Lina had a flash.

“Wait. Hold up.” She pulled Zack and Callie into the doorway of an empty store and peeked out, down the street.

She felt dizzy. With the exception that it wasn’t blue, it was the scene from her vision of the third killer.

“This is it,” she whispered.

“What?” Callie asked.

“Lina, honey? You’re scaring me,” Zack said.

“Shut up,” Lina ordered. They stood there, waiting. A few minutes later, an older man, heavyset and with greying hair, emerged from a wine store a few doors down from the other shop.

It was him. She’d bet her life on it. He looked older than he had when he’d committed the murder, and had packed on some pounds, but it was him.

Lina poked Zack in the arm and frantically motioned to him. He carefully peeked around the corner. The man started toward the artisan’s store but Lina felt anger overcome her as she remembered how Kael’s family had died. Before either Zack or Callie could stop her, she shoved the bag at Zack and stepped out of the doorway.

She screamed at the man. “Hey, fat boy. Remember me?” She felt rage coiling and building in her gut.

The man stopped. Then, as he got a good look at her face, shock and fear washed over his expression.

“That’s it,” she said as she crossed the street, oblivious to the cars that screeched to a stop to avoid hitting her. “Stand right there.” She raised her right arm. This felt right.

Really right.

Let’s see if I can not-so-randomly blow something up. Like barbecued bastard.

She felt the fireball congealing in her right hand when he seemed to regain his senses. He drew a revolver from his pocket and started shooting at her.

Letting out a frightened squeak, she immediately waved her left hand in front of her. A wall of ice formed, sprouting cracks where the bullets harmlessly bounced off it. “Hey! That’s assault with intent, fat boy!”

Lina was vaguely aware of Zack screaming her name when the guy turned and ran. She waved her hand and the ice disappeared. The bullets harmlessly hit the cobblestones. A car pulled around her and she tried to vault over the hood, but she stumbled on the other side and hit the sidewalk flat on her face.

By the time the three of them reached the alley the man had turned down, there was no sign of him.

“Son of a bitch!” she screamed.

Callie turned, startled, as the sound of sirens reached them. “Gendarmes. Come on. We need to go!” She grabbed Lina’s arm.

Lina tried to shake her off. “We need to go after him! That’s the guy I saw help kill Kael’s family! And he was probably at Yellowstone!”

Zack grabbed her other arm. “No, we need to get the hell out of here before we’re arrested.”

“What about the car?” Callie asked.

“Fuck it, we’ll get it later, when things calm down.” They hurried down the street, breaking into a run as they rounded the next corner.

Callie took the lead. “This way.” She led them down a series of allies until they emerged inside a market. They stopped as she got her bearings. “Come on.”

At a small café next door, they got an inside table and nervously watched out the front window. After twenty minutes and eating a light lunch of cheese and soup, they relaxed. “I think we’re safe,” Callie said, low enough no one else could hear.

Zack looked down at his cell phone. “Jan and Rick are on their way in the rental car to pick us up. They’ll pull up out front.” He motioned for the check. “Let’s sit here until they say they’re close.”

They timed it perfectly. Jan and Rick pulled up to the curb, and the three of them dove into the backseat. Rick, behind the wheel, got them turned around and heading away from the café.

“Okay, what the fuck is going on?” he asked. “And do the three of you have anything to do with the hellacious roadblock a few streets over?”

Lina blushed. “Um, sort of.”

Jan shook his head. “Don’t tell him while he’s driving. He’ll get us killed. We’ll be back at the hotel in a few minutes.”

Zack pulled the books out of the bag they’d taken from the shop. “Well, at least we have one question answered. If not the dead guy, someone in the shop had something to do with carving those statues.”

“What dead guy?” Rick yelled.

“Shut up and drive,” Jan snapped. “I asked you not to do that, Z.”

“Sorry. He was already dead when the girls got there.”

The car swerved a little as Rick tried to look into the backseat. “What? Why weren’t you with them?”

“Stop it!” Jan yelled.

“Who are you yelling at?” Zack asked.

“Both of you! Let’s get back to the hotel safely then we’ll talk.”

Lina thought she saw tufts of steam wisping from Rick’s nostrils, but he clamped his jaw shut and pressed down a little harder on the accelerator as he wove through traffic.

They looked over the books. Callie, Zack, and Daniel took the address book, cross-checking addresses and info with the Internet to see which ones were still good.

So far, they were striking out.

“He obviously didn’t make the cuffs,” Callie said as she sat back and stretched. “He wasn’t a silversmith. I didn’t see any evidence of it there at his shop.” They’d sent Wally, Brodey, and Jocko to the man’s house to scope the place out and were waiting to hear back from them.

Lina was pouring through the small journal. The first entry was dated 1 March, 1879, and it had been only sporadically updated from that point on. The last entry was only three years prior from the current date, and at least a quarter of the pages were still blank.

Most of the notes didn’t make sense. They seemed to be formulas, or material lists, or even random comments. She finally handed it off to Jan and Rick, who’d been working the phones with Andel to get more backup.

“My brain’s fried,” she said. She flopped back onto the bed. “I can’t handle this. I can’t believe I couldn’t fry Fat Boy’s balls. I am such a sucky Goddess! That fucktard is still running around loose out there somewhere!”

“Stop it,” Jan said. “Quit talking like that.”

“Well, that’s exactly what happened. He got away because I didn’t fry his ass. No telling how many more people he’ll kill.”

Uncle Andel sat down on the bed next to Lina and shooed Jan away. “Lina, listen. No one is blaming you for anything. You are expecting far too much from yourself. Quit beating yourself up so much.”

She looked at him. His amber eyes focused on her. She tried not to focus on the scar splitting his face from between his eyes to below his chin. “How can you say that to me after what they did to you?”

He kindly smiled. “Listen to me, what happened to me and mine happened many, many years before you were born. You bear no responsibility for that. The cockatrice are to blame, pure and simple. From what Zack and the Cailleach—”

Across the room, Callie cleared her throat at that.

“Excuse me. From what Zack and Callie told me—”

“Thank you,” Callie said.

“—you performed admirably.”

“I let him get away.”

Zack let out a celebratory hoot. “I think I found something!”

“What?” Callie asked.

“I think I found our silversmith. And good news, looks like he’s still here in Brussels.”

They all piled into the rental van and headed for the address. The house was located just outside the city, in a rural area. On a couple of acres of land, it was relatively isolated from its neighbors.

Just as they pulled up to the drive, Jan’s phone rang. “Yeah… Crap. Okay. No, we’re out on an errand. We’ll meet you back at the hotel in a little bit… Okay, thanks.” He hung up. “That was Wally. They struck out. The house was ransacked, and they barely got out of there before the police arrived.”

They all looked up the drive at the house. “We need to do this,” Lina said, anxious to get up there, to obtain any clue to finding Fat Boy again.

“Yeah, but we don’t want to walk into a trap,” Zack said.

Uncle Andel let out a sigh. “I’ll do it.” Before anyone could stop him, he hauled himself out of the front passenger seat and walked up the short drive. At the front door he knocked, waited, and knocked again. After a minute, he walked around the house, out of their sight for a moment. When he returned, he waved them up.

“Here we go,” Rick said as he pulled the van up to the house.

“Yeah, this isn’t inconspicuous,” Lina snarked. “We look like a geeky SWAT team.”

They all piled out. Andel tried the front door and found it unlocked. “You two stay here,” he said to Lina and Callie.

“Excuse me?” Lina said.

“He’s trying to be chivalrous,” Zack said. “Give him the win.”

“Fine.”

The men disappeared into the house while Callie and Lina kept watch. After just a moment, Zack called out to them. “Come on in.”

They walked in and stopped in the foyer. The house was a disaster. And not in a Hoarders: Buried Alive kind of way, either.

Lina was afraid to ask. “Is he…?”

“Yeah,” Zack said. “Very.”

Callie and Lina followed the sound of his voice. A man lay dead on the kitchen floor.

Lina didn’t want to see. She walked outside and got into the van, Callie on her heels. She felt numb.

Christ.

A few minutes later, the men wordlessly returned to the van. Rick climbed behind the wheel and they departed.

“Find anything?” she finally asked.

He shook his head. “You don’t want to know.”

“I…” Lina shut her mouth. She suspected what they didn’t want to tell her. “How many kids?” she whispered.

Zack found his fingers suddenly very interesting. “Three,” he softly said.

“Was this our guy?” Callie asked.

Rick nodded. “Yep. No doubt about it. He had a setup and tools in his basement. He was definitely a silversmith.”

They rode back to the hotel in silence. When they reached their floor, Lina headed for their room. Zack tried to stop her, but she shook his hand off. “Please, I just need to be alone for a while.”

“Okay.”

She let herself into the room and collapsed facedown on the bed, where she cried herself to sleep.

The next morning, after breakfast, they all gathered in Zack and Kael’s room. The men looked grim. “We think we know where one of the cockatrice are, based on info we recovered,” Kael said. “He lives about twenty minutes away. Name’s Gunther Hodgson.”

“We’re working on locating the nest,” Jocko said. “We think we’re close.”

“Nest?” Lina asked.

“That’s what they call it,” Kael said. He looked like he’d eaten something sour. “You know, like a nest of rats, or roaches.”

“How do we know this guy is one of the cockatrice?” Lina asked. “Are we sure? Did you see him sprout feathers?”

“Don’t worry,” Kael assured her. “We won’t hurt him unless we’re sure.”

“I can tell,” Callie said. “Send me in.”

“Without a doubt?” Lina asked.

She nodded. “Without a doubt.”

Lina refused to be left behind. She didn’t want to risk missing Fat Boy again. “We’re going to kill him if he is, aren’t we?” she asked. Part of her had a hard time wrapping her head around that notion.

Part of her wanted blood when she thought about the nightmare of Kael’s family’s murder.

Zack nodded. “Yeah, honey. We are. Cockatrice are worse than mobsters crossed with cockroaches. They have no priority except self-preservation and reproduction. If you don’t stomp them out completely, they keep coming back. That’s the only thing that stops them.”

“But only if we’re sure?” she asked.

Callie nodded. “Only if we’re sure.”

“Then let’s go.”

They took both the van and the car. Kael, Daniel, Callie, and Wally went in first. That left Lina sitting in the van with Jan, Rick, and the rest of them and nervously drumming her fingers on her thigh.

“Why haven’t we heard back from them yet?” she nervously said.

“It’s only been five minutes,” Zack said. “Calm down, sweetie. They’re fine.”

They waited another five minutes. Finally, Zack’s phone rang. “Yeah?... Okay. We’re on our way.” Jan started the engine and they drove to the house.

The older house looked run-down. Weeds and scraggly bushes controlled what little yard there was.

Inside, a young, angry-looking man she assumed to be Gunther Hodgson had been tied to a chair. His left eye was swollen, and someone had put duct tape over his mouth. Callie stood next to him, flexing her right hand. “You punched him?” Lina asked.

She smiled and nodded. “Yeah. Felt good, too.”

“Did he tell you anything?”

Kael emerged from another room, a cell phone in his hand. He held it up. “Contacts are in here. He’s one of them.”

“You’re sure?”

He nodded and hooked a thumb over his shoulder. “Go look. We didn’t even need Callie telling us he was to know.”

She walked back into the room he’d emerged from. A laptop stood open on a desk. She bent over and looked at it. The screen showed his e-mail, which was open to a message dated yesterday.

Whoever had sent the e-mail was confirming that both the carver and the silversmith were dead.

No witnesses.

Apparently Fat Boy’s a liar as well as a killer. He’s covering his ass about us seeing him.

They spent the better part of an hour there, going through Gunther’s contacts and cross-checking them to the information they obtained from the carver’s phone book and information they’d retrieved from the silversmith’s house. Several of the contacts in his book were also in the carver’s phone book, only this guy had updated information.

Lina pulled a chair up in front of him and ripped the duct tape off his mouth. “Why can’t you assholes just give up and live in peace?”

He spit in her face.

Before Lina or any of the men could react, Callie punched him squarely in the nose, hard. His head rocked back. “That’s why,” she said as she wiped his blood off her knuckles onto his shirt. “Because they are animals. Worse than animals.”

Lina wiped the spittle off her cheek with a wet cloth Zack brought her. “Why hasn’t he shifted yet?” Lina asked. If she was perfectly honest with herself, she was hoping he would so she could try firebombing his feathered ass.

“He’s a younglin’,” Andel said.

“Fuck you!” Gunther yelled.

Callie decked him again.

“Cockatrice,” Andel continued as if not interrupted, “aren’t like the rest of us shifters. Every other shifter, as long as nothing has prevented their shifting, start when they’re adolescents. Late teens at the most, usually. Cockatrice have to be mature to start shifting, at least fifty or sixty years old, usually. He might not ever be able to shift if his genes are weak. A lot of their kind can’t shift anymore, even though they have other abilities.”

Gunther started coming around again. This time, Lina punched him.

Callie high-fived her. “See? It’s fun, isn’t it?”

Lina shook out her fist. “Yeah, it sort of is.”

“Can we kill him now?” Callie asked Daniel.

“Not yet, my bloodthirsty little mate,” he said.

Kael walked over and slapped Gunther so hard his head rocked back again. Kael started questioning him in something that sounded like rapid-fire German. Lina realized she could understand a little of it, but Kael was speaking far too fast for her to understand it all.

Gunther sneered at Kael.

Before she realized what he was doing, Kael reached out and grabbed the man by the throat. A blank, unreadable expression on his face, Kael squeezed harder and harder until Gunther’s eyes bugged and he tried struggling in the chair against his bonds.

Then, with a sickening pop, Kael’s fingers punched through the man’s throat. Gunther’s shoes beat a quick, staccato beat on the hardwood floor for just a moment before he went limp. Blood flowed down his neck from the wounds, where Kael’s fingers impaled him.

Kael’s cold expression nearly frightened Lina. He let go of the cockatrice and wiped the blood and gore off his hand on the dead man’s shirt. Without a word, he left the room. They heard the sound of water running, followed by the unmistakable sound of retching, followed by Kael’s gut-wrenching sobs.

“I’m on it,” Zack said, a grim look on his face as he hurried after him.

“I suggest,” Andel said, “that we grab his computer and any other information we can and get out of here.”

Daniel nodded. “Yep.” He went after Zack and returned a moment later. “I gave him the car keys. Let’s let them have some time. They’ll come back later. We can all fit in the van.”

Quietly, they all returned to the van with the gathered items and drove back to the hotel, where they assembled in Lina’s suite to go over everything. As far as they could tell, neither the carver nor the silversmith were cockatrice. They were, however, longtime associates of theirs, paid well for their work. Now with Edgar and Lenny both dead, and with the other shifters races out for vengeance, the cockatrice were cutting their losses to protect their nest.

Zack and Kael returned an hour later. “Where are we at?” Kael quietly asked.

“Actually,” Jan said, “we think we have another lead on the nest. They’re running drugs.”

Zack snorted. “Doesn’t surprise me.”

“I have an idea,” Callie said. She looked at Daniel. “I need Sir’s permission, though.”

He looked at her oddly, but nodded.

She smiled. Before Lina could blink, Gunther stood before them. “How’s this?” Callie asked, but it was Gunther’s voice that came out.

Wally’s eyes widened. “Fuckin’ brilliant!”

Using Gunther’s cell phone, Callie placed a few calls and arranged a meeting with some of Gunther’s cohorts later that night. With the calls complete, she sat back and they were once again staring at Callie.

Daniel grinned and walked over to her. “And who says you’re not a shape-shifter?” he said with a laugh.

She arched an eyebrow at him. “I never said that. I’m not a wolf.”

“I couldn’t care less if you’re a damn drunken fruit bat,” Wally said, “that was amazing.”

She shrugged. “Perk of the rank.”

Chapter Six

Despite Daniel’s reservations, he let Callie, disguised as Gunther, go in with Wally, who she passed off as an American supplier. Andel and Jocko had called in reinforcements. They had two dozen wolves and dragons awaiting the signal to attack. The meeting was being held at a warehouse in an industrial section of town that would be nearly deserted that time of night.

As Lina sat in the shadows of a nearby shipping container, she closed her eyes. She found herself in Baba Yaga’s kitchen.

Apparently expecting her, Baba Yaga stood there in her matron form. She slid a mug of coffee, already prepared, over to Lina.

“Here you go, dear.”

“I can’t be here right now. I need to be ready.”

“You will be, don’t worry. Drink your coffee.”

Lina took a sip. Perfect, of course. “Tell me we’re doing the right thing?”

Baba Yaga shrugged. “I will not usurp free will.”

“Zack told me they’re like cockroaches crossed with mobsters.”

The matron smiled. “That is not an inaccurate description.”

“I don’t know what to do. I don’t want to kill innocent people.”

“Like the three children and the man’s wife killed at the silversmith’s house? They weren’t involved in his dealings, yet the cockatrice, or their accomplice, didn’t hesitate to kill them.”

“I know.”

“Your parents?”

Lina clamped down on the seething rage that threatened to overwhelm her. “Yeah.” She took another sip of coffee.

“There are others. Believe me. You said you wanted to see how your parents died so you wouldn’t ever forget what the cockatrice are capable of,” Baba Yaga reminded her. “Remember that?”

Lina grimly nodded. “Yeah.” She took another sip of coffee and set her mug down. “Thank you.”

She opened her eyes to find Zack looking at her. “So, how is Baba Yaga tonight?”

“Helpful.”

Zack smiled. “Good. About damn time.”

Daniel stood up from his hiding place closer to the front entrance and waved his hand. Around the building, the signal was passed and everyone advanced. Lina pushed her way to the front of the attacking force despite Zack’s best efforts to grab and hold her back. She shouldered Daniel out of the way and charged through the door first.

Callie—disguised as Gunther—wheeled around and saw Lina charge through the door. Callie let out a squeak and grabbed Wally. She pushed him down to the ground and threw herself on top of him. Lina, seething with rage by the time she spotted the eight young men there for the meeting, hurled two large balls of icy mist at them.

The blast knocked all of them off their feet and coated the warehouse’s concrete floor in ice. Before they could regain their footing, they’d been swarmed and disarmed by the shifters.

Zack put his hand on Lina’s back. “Babe? You okay?”

She set her jaw. “I will be shortly.”

Callie, who was now back to looking like her normal self and helping Wally to his feet, shouted at Zack. “Get her out of here. Now! She’s going to kill them!”

“There’s a problem with that?” Lina asked as she shook off Zack’s arm.

“Yeah, that’s a problem,” Callie said. “We need to interrogate them first.”

Lina felt her rage dissipate. “Good reason.” She allowed Zack and Brodey to lead her outside.

“Wow,” Brodey said. “I think you’re getting the handle of this Goddess gig,”

Zack agreed. “I think you’re overthinking stuff. When it comes to needing to do something, you seem to instinctively know what to do—”

A shout of surprise from inside was all the prompting Lina needed. Before Zack and Brodey could stop her, she dodged past them and back inside the building. One of the cockatrice was trying to shift while Wally and one of the dragons wrestled with him.

Instinctively, Lina raised her right hand. A fireball formed over her palm. The cockatrice completed his shift and now stood nine feet tall. He slung Wally and the dragon off him. As the cockatrice raised his head to howl, she hurled the fireball at it, vaporizing him before the final echoes of his cry even silenced. Nothing remained of him except a sooty pile of ash that settled gently on top of his discarded clothes and shoes.

All the other cockatrice and most of the other shifters froze and looked at Lina.

She had another fireball ready in her palm. “Any of you other fuckers want to try something like that?” she said to the cockatrice prisoners.

The remaining seven cockatrice shook their heads. They all looked young, even younger than Gunther.

She let the fireball dissolve. Wally and the dragon both climbed to their feet. “Glad you’re on our side, Lina,” Wally quipped.

They interrogated the other cockatrice. When they finished, Jan and Rick looked at Zack and Brodey. “Take her back to the hotel,” Rick said. “We’ll handle this.”

“I want to help!” Lina protested.

“We don’t want you helping,” Jan said. “You don’t need to see this. I’m afraid what it’ll do to you.”

She started to argue with him when Callie grabbed her arm. “I’ll take her.” Lina was going to argue with her, too, when Callie dug her fingers into her upper arm. “No, you listen to me,” Callie said, storm clouds brewing in her expression. “The guys are right. Let them handle this. Please.”

Something in the way she said it brought Lina around. She quit fighting her. “Fine.” On the way back to the hotel, Lina said, “I thought you were on my side.”

Callie smiled. “I am. Do you really think we’re going back to the hotel? Have you learned nothing from me yet?”

Lina stared at her for a moment before she broke into peals of laughter. “Where are we going?”

Callie’s face turned grim. “To the nest.”

They drove for twenty minutes, into a dark rural area that looked like it was more farmland than anything. Callie switched off the headlights as she turned onto a dirt track that didn’t resemble a road so much as it resembled a really long, rutted mud puddle. She let the car coast to a stop and shut it off.

“What are we doing here?” Lina asked.

Callie smiled and reached up to switch off the dome light. “Hope you don’t mind a short hike.”

Lina followed Callie out of the car and across the darkened field. Clouds obscured the moon and stars, but as Lina’s eyes adjusted, she easily found herself following Callie.

After a few minutes cross-country trekking, they hunkered down behind a low stone wall near a farmhouse. Inside the house was dark with the exception of a light in one window on the end closest to them.

“That’s the nest?” Lina whispered. It looked like a normal house.

She nodded. “Sir’s going to spank the crap out of me for this, but it’s worth it.” She looked at Lina. “I saw this address come up in the stuff we got at the carver’s. It was there again in the silversmith’s stuff. Delivery address. And one of the phone numbers we pulled off Gunther’s phone is registered to this address.”

“Do we tell the guys?”

She grinned. “Fuck, no. Why do you think we’re here? This is their next stop, but I have a feeling if those yokels at the warehouse don’t report back sooner rather than later, these assholes are going to bug out.”

They crept across the farmyard. Lina’s heart pounded in her chest. She was armed with a sadomasochistic immortal, sarcastic wit, and unreliable fire and ice skills.

She was no longer sure this was such a great idea.

Callie pointed up to where an electric line entered the house near the roof. Lina wasn’t sure what Callie wanted her to do. Then Callie made a motion at it like she was tossing something.

Lina got it. Taking a deep breath and trying not to think about it, she held out her palm as if holding a softball and envisioned throwing a fireball at the wire. To her shock and amazement, it worked.

With a shower of sparks, the electric line burst into flame and fell from the wall, where it started arcing on the ground.

Inside the house, they heard several male voices shout. Callie whispered, “I’ll get the front door,” before dodging around the house.

Lina waited there. As two men rounded the corner from the back of the house, she threw fireballs with both hands. One took out one man, the other went a little wide and caught a barn on fire.

“Ooops!”

She didn’t have time to think, because the other man immediately began to rip his clothes off as he shifted into a cockatrice.

Answers that question. No doubt about his identity. She lobbed another fireball at him, which he dodged. Then she was standing face-to-face with a fifteen-foot-tall cockatrice even uglier than Lenny and Edgar had been.

“Fuck!” She heard Callie engaged in a fight on the front side of the house. She tried another fireball, which the cockatrice ducked. Then she had an idea and lobbed an icy mist at its feet.

It laughed at her, but when it took a step it slipped and fell right on the downed power line, which still arced in the grass.

The cockatrice let out a horrific screech as it shuddered and shook, the current frying the evil clucker where he lay.

Lina dusted off her hands and with a pleased smile turned to help Callie.

A really angry looking woman stood there behind her. Before Lina could react, the woman launched herself at Lina, swinging with both hands and screaming epithets in something Lina thought was Dutch, but she couldn’t be sure.

Lina fell to the ground under her assault. As the woman sat up to punch Lina in the face, a shot rang out and a hole appeared in the middle of the woman’s forehead. She fell back, dead.

Lina scrambled out from under the woman’s body and turned, ready with a fireball in her hand. Zack ran up carrying a rifle.

“I’d kick your ass for this,” he said, “but I suspect Rick and Jan are going to beat me to it. Come on!” Before she could ask him how the hell he’d followed them, he dragged her around the back side of the house.

He chambered another round in the rifle. “Callie’s got two on the front side of the house she’s wrangling with. You go around the far side, I’ll go this way, and we’ll pen them in between us. Got it?”

She nodded, her adrenaline pumping and her body on automatic pilot. With a fireball in hand, she took off running around the far side of the house. By the time she rounded the corner, Callie was actually engaged in battle with a third cockatrice, who’d shifted, as well as two men who hadn’t.

“Hey, cluckhead!” Lina screamed at the shifted one. When it turned its feathered head to her, it had just enough time for its eyes to widen in shock before the fireball engulfed its head. Zack shot one of the men, and as the other turned to flee into the house, Callie kicked his feet out from under him and bashed his head in with a rock.

They all stood there, no noise except for the sound of the barn behind them engulfed in flames. Then, Zack started to laugh. Callie joined him.

Lina, not sure what was so funny, finally caught the giggle bug from them both and sat down, unable to stand she laughed so hard.

“Come on,” Zack said to Callie. “Help me pull them into the house.”

“Why?” Lina managed to ask as Callie stood to do it.

“Because,” Zack said, “you’re going to burn the house down.”

Ten minutes later, they were trudging back to the car with the sky behind them lit in a golden glow from the house burning. A motor scooter was parked behind the car.

“So that’s how you trailed us?” Lina asked.

“Duh. It belonged to one of the guys at the warehouse. Did you honestly think I wouldn’t keep tabs on you, sweet cheeks?”

Callie smiled. “I knew he was back there. I saw him tailing us.”

“And you didn’t say anything?” Lina asked.

She shrugged. “Why? What was there to say? ‘Hey, your Watcher is right behind us’? Duh, he’s your Watcher. It’s his job.”

Lina was going to say something when the shakes hit her as an adrenaline crash set in. She collapsed to the ground, trembling, then crying. Sobbing was more like it, and both Zack and Callie surrounded her and tried to comfort her. That’s where they were five minutes later when Jan, Rick, Kael, Brodey, Jocko, Andel, and Daniel pulled up in the rental van.

Her mates ran over to her. “What the hell’s going on?” Jan demanded. Other shifters also pulled up in different vehicles. “Lina, are you okay?”

She nodded and sobbed even harder as she collapsed into his arms. He and Rick took over the job of comforting her while Daniel eyed Callie.

“Anything you want to say, pet?” he sternly said to her.

She looked down. “Sorry, Sir?”

He started to shake his head. Then he laughed and opened his arms to her. She raced to him and he engulfed her in a huge hug.

“Okay, so what the fuck happened?” Kael said, pointing at the burning house across the field. “That’s the nest.”

“Not anymore,” Zack said. “We took care of it. Or, I should say, Callie and Lina took care of most of it. I just helped with the cleanup.” He winked at Lina.

She guessed he was going to leave out the part about him saving her bacon so as not to freak out Jan and Rick.

She winked back.

Later, back at the hotel, everyone reconvened in Lina’s room. “The bad news is,” Brodey said, “with the place burned to the ground, we lost any intel evidence they might have had.”

Daniel shot Callie a dark look. “It was Zack’s idea,” she said, pointing at him.

“The barn was already fully engulfed,” Zack said. “I figured it was only a matter of minutes before a fire brigade or someone showed up to investigate. Hell, you could see the fire from miles away.”

Andel nodded. “He has a valid point. Besides, we got plenty of evidence from the ones at the warehouse. This was only a small nest, and its sole purpose was running their drug operation in this area.”

“We still haven’t found Fat Boy,” Lina grumbled. Try as she might, she hadn’t been able to produce any more visions of him. When she’d tried asking Baba Yaga, the matron had dismissed her with a smile and a wave of her hand.

Callie had tried to explain it to Lina. “She isn’t allowed to get in the way of free will.”

“I’m not asking her to deliver him to me. I just want his fucking name. Is that too much to ask?” She looked at Callie. “Can you find out his name?”

“Not the way you’re thinking. I don’t have the powers she does. I told you that. I’m as hamstrung as you are.”

“Why couldn’t he have been one of the assholes at the nest?” Lina griped. “That would have made life easy.”

“Because I don’t think he’s part of that nest anyway,” Kael softly said. They all looked at him. “He’s one of the three who killed my family. We know this because of Lina’s visions. The group we took out today were mostly younglings and half-breeds, but they were all cockatrice. Fat Boy, as she calls him, isn’t even a cockatrice. Cockatrice won’t let outsiders into their nests. They might have to work with outsiders, but their nests are sacrosanct. They’re too distrustful and closed off to allow any non-cockatrice in. Even humans they’re mated to.”

Lina looked at Callie. “What do you think he was?”

“I was too busy trying to keep us from getting arrested or run over to pay attention,” she said, “but no, he wasn’t a cockatrice. They have a distinct…aroma. Well, to me they do. I don’t know if you all can smell them the same way I can.”

Brodey smiled. “They smell like chicken to me,” he quipped.

Lina snorted with laughter. “Crispy?”

He gave her a high five. “You know it, girl. Definitely crispy. The crispier, the better.”

Chapter Seven

Before they returned to the States, Lina wanted one last talk, alone, with Uncle Andel. She met with him for coffee downstairs in the hotel restaurant before she and the others headed for the airport. Andel would head home from there by train.

He gave her a sad smile. “Seer, you have a specific question for me?”

“How could you tell?”

He shrugged. “I suspected.”

She looked down at the table, where she slowly turned her coffee mug around in her hand. Their coffee wasn’t as good as Baba Yaga’s.

The thought nearly made her laugh, but she clamped down on it.

“When we first met in Yellowstone,” she said, “I noticed this grey cloud sort of surrounded you. It’s still there.”

He nodded, a sad smile on his face. “Yes. It doesn’t surprise me.” He took a sip of his coffee.

“And?”

He let out a deep breath. “I’ve had a lot of good years on this earth, Lina. Seen a lot of things, had more than my fair share of love. I’m tired. And, unfortunately, I’m not immune to things.”

“Cancer?”

He nodded. “It’s in my bones. Metastasized. I’ve had it for a couple of decades now.”

“Decades?”

“Being a dragon, it’s slowed the progress of the disease. Being half human, however, left me vulnerable.”

“You can get treatment though!”

He snorted, amused. “I’m part dragon, Lina. I don’t intend to spend the remaining years of my life locked up and being experimented on, or in hiding.”

“But, don’t we have doctors or something who are one of us? Or who are at least shifter of some sort, who can help you?”

“Sure we do. And I was given the option of trying treatments in hospitals where they couldn’t guarantee my safety, or living my life the way I wanted. I would rather the cancer take me with dignity than die as an experimental lab rat.” He glanced around and lowered his voice. “My wife, Ella? She was a beauty. We had a lot of good years together, more than any human ever has a right to expect. Our kids grew up and left home. Do you know how I lost her?”

Lina shook her head.

“She died in the bombing of Hamburg in 1943. She was trying to help her cousins escape.” He looked down at his coffee cup. “I spent a lot of years feeling bitter and angry. At the Nazis. At the Allies. At everyone. We didn’t have a side in the battle, we were simply trying to survive and keep our families alive. I found out about the cancer twenty-three years ago, when my first grandchild was born. Beautiful little girl. They named her after my Ella.”

He looked back up at Lina. “I made an active choice to live for that little girl. The Nazis are long gone. So are the RAF and others who bombed Hamburg. They are no threat to my little Ella. There are many dangers in this world, but there is only one danger that has directly sworn to try to kill her and others of our kind, as well as other shifters.”

“The cockatrice,” she whispered.

He nodded. “My hate is directed only at them now. I will do everything in my power to keep our people and others safe from those bastards. I will die fighting them, if I have to. Once I decided that, I felt a peace in my life I haven’t felt since losing my Ella.”

“Does anyone else know? About your cancer?”

“Bertholde did. She promised not to tell anyone. She’s the one who came to me and told me to get it checked out. That I was sick.” He shrugged. “I will die a happy man if all Ella has to worry about in the future are the same things the rest of the world usually must worry about. Only the cockatrice are deliberately out to harm her.”

“I won’t tell anyone.” Lina reached out and laid her hand over his to give him a gentle squeeze. Instead, her vision went blue. She was standing with Jan, Rick, Zack, Kael, and several others in a funeral home. She turned and at the front of the chapel she spotted a bronze urn. Next to it sat a picture of Andel looking a few years older than he did now. She realized she held something in her hand and looked down.

The program. On the front, the same picture of Andel, a made-up birth year that put his age approximately right, and the date of his death.

In seven years.

Her vision cleared and she was once again sitting in the booth in the hotel restaurant with Andel. He stared at her, curiosity on his face.

She let go of his hand and quickly tucked hers in her lap, under the table.

He laughed. “Don’t tell me. You saw how long.”

She forced a smile and nodded.

He sat back with a sigh. “I don’t want to know when. I’m guessing not right away?”

“No. There’s a while, yet.”

“Good. Plenty of work left to do.” He finished his coffee and left money on the table to pay their bill. He climbed out of the booth and helped her to her feet, giving her a hug. “Take care of those boys of yours,” he said with a smile. “The fanged as well as the furry ones. I’ve got to get checked out of the hotel and to the train station so I can go home. Safe journeys, Goddess.”

She smiled. “Safe journeys, Uncle Andel.”

He laughed. “See? Family is family. Adopted or not.”

She headed back to her room where Jan and Rick were struggling to get all the luggage stacked on a cart so they could make it downstairs in one trip.

“What are you two doing?”

Rick looked up. “It’s not obvious? We’re taking rumba lessons.”

“I’m the Goddess of Snark, buster, not you. I meant why not take two trips?”

Jan grinned. “I bet him he couldn’t do it in one.”

She rolled her eyes. “You two are like a couple of kids, you know that?”

“And you love it,” Rick said. “We’re never boring.”

“Nope, boring isn’t even on the top twenty list of adjectives I apply to the two of you.”

At the airport, before they boarded, she glanced at Daniel and took a deep breath as she stepped up to the doorway.

Just one more flight, please. If not, it’s a good day to die.

She stroked the aircraft’s skin as she stepped through the doorway. Daniel smiled and nodded to her when she glanced back at him awaiting his turn to board.

Lina had to admit she loved it at the Pack compound. She sat on the thinking rock and stared across the water. This early in the morning, the rising sun threw beautiful colors on the sea mist and gave her a gorgeous show.

She heard something at the top of the overlook. When she looked, Lacey waved down at her. Lina waved back and sat there as the Seer made her way down to the rock.

Lacey climbed up next to Lina and smiled at her. “I wondered if that was your car,” she said. “I take it the tablet has a new home?”

Lina smiled out at the water. “Yep.”

Lacey laughed. “That old thing has certainly been a pain in the ass, hasn’t it?”

“Yep.”

“Was it worth it?”

“Was what worth it?”

“Whatever it was you had to do to take out the cockatrice nest over there?”

Lina felt a cloud descend on her thoughts. “It had to be done.”

Lacey nodded. “Unfortunately, I believe you’re right.” She frowned as she stared out over the water. “It’s going to get bad.”

“Yep.”

“You see it, too?” Lacey asked.

Lina nodded. “Yep.”

“Do you want to talk about it right now?”

“Nope.”

Lacey chuckled. “Fair enough, dear. We do have at least a couple of years to worry about it.”

“Yep.” Lina sighed. Two years, if her latest visions were right. How much happiness could she cram into that time before the shit started to hit the fan again?

She decided she would start with getting to know her adopted wolf family better and spending more time with all her chosen family and not at work. She didn’t need to be at the office every day. Paula could run the place without her and Zack there.

After a while, Lina’s stomach grumbled. She’d set out on her task before breakfast, driving over to Lacey’s by herself before dawn, doing what she needed to do, and then coming down to the thinking rock.

“I baked some banana bread before I came down here, dear. Would you like some?”

Lina smiled. “Yes. I’d like that very much.”

They strolled back to the house together. On the way, Lacey stopped in the back garden. “Oh. I didn’t notice that before.” She stared at the sundial Lina had set up on a pedestal, the assembly sitting on several stone pavers. “Did you bring that?”

Lina smiled. “It’s a present.”

Lacey hugged her. “Thank you, dear. It’s lovely.”

Lina shrugged. “Time’s short, even in a really long life. I’m going to enjoy every minute of it. Thank you for teaching me that. Bertholde, too, but she’s not here for me to thank.”

Lacey cocked her head at Lina, curious but apparently not wanting to quiz her any further. She smiled. “You’re welcome, dear.”

They headed inside to eat.