“The dark magic,” Hawke continued, “was designed to force the spirits to choose the morally weakest—the most evil—of each animal line. The falcon spirit fought hard against that dictate and managed to choose the one she wanted. Others probably did, too. But we already know Maxim was pure evil, so some of the animal spirits failed. Bottom line, there were no accidental markings. The new Ferals are each either the best or worst of their respective animal lines.”
“How do we know which is which?” Lyon demanded.
Hawke shook his head. “We don’t know.” He glanced at Jag. “As we’ve seen, you can’t always judge a man’s soul by his actions.”
Jag gave a rueful shrug. From what Fox had been able to piece together, Jag had been the resident bad boy, driving his Feral brothers to murderous intent on a regular basis, until he met Olivia.
“Then we have no choice.” Kougar’s voice was cool as ice. “We collect all seventeen in the prisons.”
Hawke’s hold on his mate tightened.
Kougar’s gaze slid to the female Feral, a cutie with dark, blue-tipped hair and a killer smile. “Sixteen. Not Falkyn.” Though Falkyn was one of the newly marked seventeen, she was soon to be Hawke’s mate, and there was no doubt in any of their minds that she was the one meant to be marked.
Kougar turned to the others, meeting each man’s gaze, one after the other, ending with his chief’s. “Then we start over.”
Start over. Kill them.
Falkyn wrenched free of Hawke’s protective hold. “Grizz fought the darkness to help you. You voted to trust him.”
Jag grunted. “That was before Rikkert accused him of murder.”
Three heads jerked toward Jag, then Paenther as he explained the altercation in front of the house a short time ago and how Grizz hadn’t lifted a hand against his attacker.
Hawke frowned. “What makes a man take a beating like that without defending himself?”
“Guilt,” Jag, Fox, and Kougar said simultaneously.
Hawke nodded. “The evil don’t feel guilt. Not like that. Only those with a fully functioning conscience. We’ve seen his anger-management issues. It’s probably no surprise that he’s caused trouble before. But we’ve seen evidence of honor in the male.”
“Are you willing to stake her life on it?” Kougar’s gaze flicked to Falkyn. “And ours. Because if we make one mistake, if we allow one evil Feral to remain within our ranks, we’re compromised. Inir will find a way to use him to destroy us. And if we go down, the Daemons rise, and the world as we know it will be over. Everything we’ve fought for will be lost.”
Lyon lifted his hand, drawing all attention back to him. “We can’t start over until all seventeen are accounted for.”
Jag snorted. “As soon as word gets out that the new Ferals are all dead men, none will come near this place, good or bad.”
“Then word can’t get out,” Lyon said.
Not for the first time, Fox thanked the goddess that he wasn’t one of the seventeen. The return of the lost animal spirits should have been a godsend. Instead, thanks to the Mage, it was turning into a nightmare.
Fox opened his mouth to tell him about his gut instinct, but Lyon began to lay out a plan, and Fox remained silent. What good was West Virginia? The last thing they needed right now was a wild-goose chase courtesy of the newbie. If only his gut would offer him something useful.
“Where’s Lyon?” Grizz demanded as he strode into the foyer, eyeing one of the Ferals’ brides. Tall and attractive with a gun strapped at her waist, her name began with a D. Delaney.
“His office, I think,” she said. “I heard voices in there a moment ago.”
With a brief nod, Grizz headed toward the closed office door. After the run-in with Rikkert, he’d started toward the rocky falls, then forced himself to return to Feral House. The situation was fucking impossible now. He’d lay it all out for Lyon, let the Feral chief decide how he wanted to handle it.
It was too fucking bad that there was no unmarking a Feral Warrior once he was marked because he’d do it in a pig’s breath. He wasn’t a team player and never had been. He didn’t want this fucking job.
As he reached for the knob to Lyon’s closed office door, voices carried to him, low but audible. His hand froze.
“Rikkert will be easy to take down. He hasn’t come into his animal. Grizz is going to be the problem. How in the hell are we supposed to get a monster grizzly into the prison without losing limbs? He’s not about to go willingly.”
What the fuck? Grizz pulled his hand away from the knob, his head beginning to pound. He was not hearing this.
“He won’t go easily, that’s for damn sure. Lepard might. He allowed himself to be captured once. He might again.”
A grunt. “Not if he figures out he won’t come out of the prisons alive.”
Grizz’s blood ran cold.
“He might. They’re all the best or the worst of their lines. If we can just figure out how to identify those who were meant to be marked, we won’t have to kill them. Not the good ones.”
The best or . . . the worst? And what was he? Not the best. Definitely not the best. But the worst? Hells balls.
“You do realize that it could be months before we can round up . . . or at least account for . . . all seventeen.”
“What choice do we have?”
“We’ll have to lure Grizz down there first. He can’t be warned. If he shifts, we’re grizzly food.”
“When?”
“Tonight.”
Grizz had heard enough. He turned away from the door and strode down the hall to the foyer, his footfalls silent despite his size, his head pounding. The fuckers were going to kill the new Ferals! Wipe them all out. And dammit to hell, he’d been afraid of this because it was exactly what he’d do in their position. Kill the infected ones and hope the next lot were the ones meant to be marked. Especially now when they’d figured out that some were the worst of their line and might be true evil.
He entered the foyer and headed for the door, veering at the last minute toward the hall table and the wooden bowl where he’d seen some of the Ferals drop their car keys. He’d get nowhere on foot, not with Hawke and Falkyn hunting him from the air.
He grabbed a set of keys with a tag marked FORD ESCAPE and was five strides from the front door when a sound caught his ear and he turned to find Lepard coming out of the basement, his face flushed with sweat, his short, newly white hair plastered to his scalp. Another of the newly marked seventeen, Lepard had been ensnared in the dark magic and had followed the evil Feral, Maxim, to Poland where he’d been forced to help in some kind of ritual to aid Satanan and his Daemon horde’s efforts to rise. But he’d fought the darkness, allowing the good Ferals to capture him. He wasn’t the worst of his line, Grizz would bet money on it. Would he bet his life on it? Yeah, maybe he would.
“Come with me,” he told the snow leopard.
Lepard looked at him with confusion. “Where are you going?”
“I said . . . come.” He’d grab Rikkert, too, if he thought there was any chance the male would come with him willingly without trying to kill him. There wasn’t.
Lepard glanced down at himself. “I’m a little . . .”
Grizz said nothing, just stared at the man, conveying . . . hell, he didn’t know what he was conveying, but Lepard seemed to hear it anyway.
“I guess I could use some air.”
Yeah. Air. And survival. Something the snow leopard might not get if he stayed. Grizz led the way out the front door, spying the Ford in the wide, circular drive amid the impressive collection of other, far more expensive, vehicles.
Where he was going or what he was going to do, he had no idea. Something. Overheard words replayed in his head. If we can just figure out how to identify those who were meant to be marked . . .
That was the key. Even if he knew he wasn’t one of them.
Maybe, just maybe, something good could come out of his fucked-up life. Even if it turned out to be the last thing he did.
When the meeting ended, as they left Lyon’s office, Fox caught up with Paenther. “May I have a word?”
The black-haired male nodded, led him into the empty war room, and closed the door.
“This is probably as useless as a chocolate teapot,” Fox began. “But I’ve always been a bit of an intuitive, and my gut’s offered me a truth.”
Paenther’s eyes sharpened, making Fox feel pressure to give him a gem. If only he had one. “West Virginia,” he blurted. “That’s it. Nothing more specific.”
The male stared at him, his eyes narrowing. “The Cub, your predecessor, had almost the same intuition, only with him it was the mountains of western Virginia. He led me straight into Mage captivity.”
Feck.
“He also led me straight to Vhyper, whom we’d been searching for.”
“The fox line has always been intuitive.”
Paenther nodded. “Sly’s intuition was sporadic, but when it was on, it was dead right.”
“Another of my predecessors?”
“The one before the Cub.” Paenther eyed Fox shrewdly. “Do you think Kara’s in West Virginia?”
“I’ve no idea. Maybe it’s a West Virginia license plate we should be looking for. Or it might be the home of my next girlfriend.” He shrugged. “It’s likely nothing useful at all, but I thought I should let someone know.”
Paenther eyed him shrewdly. “And not create chaos.” Which would surely happen if Lyon thought there was a chance that he knew where Kara was. “I’ll have our allies focus their attention on West Virginia.”
“Paenther . . .” He didn’t want to make too much of this.
Lyon’s second clasped Fox on the shoulder. “At least for now. It’s something, Fox, when we’ve had nothing at all.”
And if it turned out to be the useless fluff it probably was?
They wouldn’t be any closer to finding Kara.
Chapter Four
Three hours later, after an intense workout in the gym beneath the house, Fox strode toward the stairs, sweat soaking his hair, his T-shirt plastered to his chest. Jag and Tighe had been working with him on his shifting, which he still didn’t have under control. He could shift into his fox without much trouble or concentration, but the size he ended up was the problem. While many of the cat Ferals could downsize their animals, making it possible for them to pass themselves off as housecats, Fox tended to shift straight to supersize. A fox the size of a Great Dane wasn’t necessarily a bad thing in battle, but it was a bit problematic if he had to shift anywhere near humans. The bottom line was, he needed to be able to control the shift, to be able to move in and out of his animal form smoothly, in the size he needed, without thought or effort. Especially with them on the verge of war.
And right now he couldn’t.
Wulfe strode in the front door, looking as exhausted as he probably felt. “Any news?” Wulfe was one of the biggest of the Ferals, second only to Grizz, his face a mask of scars.
“Nothing.” Fox wasn’t about to mention West Virginia. “You’ve been searching?”
“Tracking with my nose, yes. I was hoping to pick up a familiar scent, even just a Mage scent, but I found nothing. Lots of humans. I couldn’t even scent the Mage who must have dragged Kara and Lynks into the vehicle.”
“Makes you wonder how much Lynks struggled, doesn’t it?”
Wulfe nodded. “Makes me wonder if he’s the one who took her.”
Fox frowned. “Maybe he was.” He told Wulfe about Hawke’s revelation, that the new Ferals were all the best or the worst. “So even if he was cleared of the dark magic, if he had a black soul . . .”
“Dammit to hell,” Wulfe muttered. “Unfortunately, this doesn’t change anything. It doesn’t help us find her.”
The scent of pine wafted through the foyer, and a moment later, two Ilinas materialized not six feet away. Fox’s wayward pulse lifted, then settled again when he saw that neither was Melisande.
The taller of the two caught sight of Wulfe and gasped, her eyes widening with something akin to revulsion. Wulfe scowled, turned, and started up the stairs.
“Cressida!” the other one hissed.
“Sorry, Phylicia!” Cressida grimaced. “He startled me. How does he have scars like that? Is he not immortal?”
“He’s immortal,” Fox assured them, though he’d wondered the same about Wulfe. He turned on his charmer’s smile. “And what can I do for you lovely ladies?” He’d seen Phylicia in the prisons a couple of mornings ago. Kougar had called her to attempt to clear Grizz of the darkness in the traditional, carnal, way. It had failed, though the attempt had steamed up the underground chambers.
Phylicia had watched Fox hungrily then, as she was now. Sex sirens, Kougar called them. Some, not all. As Fox eyed Phylicia’s sleeveless tunic, which revealed more lush, lovely curves than it hid, he believed it. With her raven hair falling to her waist and her eyes the inhumanly bright blue of most Ilinas, she was a beauty, to be sure.
But it was another Ilina he longed to see. A blonde with sapphire eyes.
Phylicia met his smile with a sultry one of her own and sidled up to him. “I was hoping I’d run into you.” She slid her hand up his damp chest, the invitation in her eyes neon bright.
“Were you now?” He grinned, in his element. “And did you come just to see me, lovely one?”
“We’ve come to relieve the watch,” Cressida explained. “But we’re early.” She eyed him as hungrily as Phylicia did, moving to his other side. “Phyl said you were delicious.”