Arcane Kiss (Talents Book 1) Read online

  Power filled the truck cab, and every hair on Jake’s body bristled with the electric tingle. The psychic scent of tiger and ozone flooded the cab, much stronger than the Feral magic Kurt normally radiated. It felt more like Fred or Dave, people who’d completely melded with their Familiars. Jake’s heart sank, knowing what that must mean.

  If Kurt and his tiger had melded, Stoli was dead. Now his friend was going to have to deal with sharing his human body with his cat’s spirit. Having witnessed Dave’s struggles -- not to mention what had happened to Bobby -- Jake knew it would be a painful transition. And it could be downright lethal for innocent bystanders.

  He caught his friend’s shoulder. “Kurt? What’s going on? What happened?”

  Kurt straightened and looked at him, his eyes dazed, his expression devastated and grieving. “Sniper. There was a sniper. He shot me! Stoli’s dead.”

  “Shit!”

  “A bear Feral attacked Dad. He’s been hurt. Hurt bad.” He grabbed the door handle, scrabbled as if he couldn’t quite make his fingers work. “We’ve got to get in there. They need us!”

  He wrenched the door open and bolted out of the cab.

  “Damn it, Kurt, wait!” Jake paused just long enough to grab his M&P SHIELD pistol from the glove compartment, then jumped out after him.

  A bear Feral? Jesus, he wished the little nine-millimeter semi-auto was something with a lot more punch. Like maybe a surface to air missile.

  As he raced after his friend, Jake shot a worried glance at the empty patrol car. In the distance, sirens wailed closer. Apparently the Sarge had decided they needed more backup after all.

  Jake was no longer sure that was a good thing.

  Bad as this situation was, it could get worse. When a cat spirit first entered a human host, the man had to deal with all the animal’s power and instincts intensifying his own. And that could be incredibly fucking dangerous.

  Just look at Bobby and Dave.

  Given time, Ferals usually adjusted, but in a situation like this, all bets were off. And the cops knew it, which could make the situation even more dangerous. It was going to take all Jake’s leadership skills and talent for bullshit to keep this mess from detonating. I shouldn’t have called it in.

  Too late now.

  Jake poured on the speed, fighting to catch up to his best friend. Who, God help him, seemed to be running faster than an Olympic sprinter. “Damn it, Kurt, slow down! You’re going to get shot -- again!” For someone who’d just had a grand mal, the bastard could move. Has to be manifesting his cat’s magic.

  This is going to suck.

  * * *

  Genevieve paced the length of the clinic hallway in worry as the sense of dark magic grew denser. Outside, a chorus of feline anger and fear rolled over the park: everything from the thunderous roars of lions, tigers and jaguars to the screams of pumas and the smaller cats. They all knew something horrible had happened.

  Goddamnit, I have to do something. There’s an Arcanist out there working a really nasty spell.

  And she’d just heard Fred scream in agony.

  For God’s sake, they’re tigers, her common sense argued. They can take care of themselves. You, on the other hand, could get yourself killed -- by a bear!

  She was also her parents’ daughter. No kid of Martin and Diane Reyes was going to sit on her ass while people got hurt. But what could she do? The kind of healing magic she performed was no good for major trauma; it took too long.

  An electric tingle built in the back of her brain. She’d thought the healing had drained her, but at the thought of Fred in danger, facing God knew what… Sheer adrenaline brought her power blazing to life.

  Fuck it, I’ve got to try. She slammed through the door and stopped, listening. Her thoughts raced. Could some Caliphate terrorist have tracked Kurt back to the sanctuary looking for a little payback?

  But that was crazy. The Caliphate’s Ferals had access to lion and tiger Familiars, but the Arcane Corps, the Chinese and the Russians were the only ones who bred Feral polar bears. This guy couldn’t be a Caliphate sorcerer.

  Still, someone had cast a major spell at the sanctuary. And like it or not, Genevieve was the most powerful Arc in town. She might be the only one who could deactivate whatever the hell it was.

  Reaching out with her magic, she got a fix on the malicious working and started toward it.

  * * *

  Kurt skidded to a halt. Fuck. Oh, fuck.

  A Sheriff’s deputy faced off with Dave over his father’s body. The tiger lay on his belly several feet away from Fred, but the officer still looked thoroughly freaked.

  “I didn’t attack Fred.” Dave sounded utterly calm, despite the shaking gun trained on his head. “He’s my friend.”

  “Then what are you doing out of your cage?”

  “I came to investigate when I heard the fight.”

  “Bullshit. You’re probably the one who took the bite out of him!”

  Fred’s head lifted weakly, yet his voice thundered, augmented by his magic. “Idiot, it was a Feral bear!” The amplified roar silenced absolutely everyone, even the sanctuary’s agitated animals. His head dropped back to the sand, and he panted from the titanic effort.

  “Dad!” Joy surged through Kurt. Forgetting the cop, he started for the gate.

  The deputy snapped around, and Kurt broke step as the man aimed his gun at him. “Back off!”

  Jake grabbed Kurt by the forearm and hauled him back. “Do you want to get shot?” he hissed before snapping at his fellow cop, “Holster your weapon and let this man talk to his father.”

  “This is a crime scene, Nolan. For all we know, he was involved.”

  “No, he wasn’t, because I was with him at Potions when his father was attacked,” Jake snarled. “Call dispatch and have them send an ambulance.”

  A hot flush colored the man’s face, and he sneered. “You’re not my sergeant, Feral. Hell, you’re barely out of the Academy.”

  “Yeah, I am a Feral, which makes me better equipped to deal with Ferals than you. Go outside, wait for our backup to arrive, and then look for the damned killers,” Jake said, enunciating every word. “We need to clear the park and make sure those bastards aren’t still here.”

  They glared at each other savagely a long moment before the deputy’s nerve broke. “You’d better be right, Nolan.” Growling a curse, he turned and strode from the arena.

  “Kurt?” Now Fred’s voice sounded faint, broken and raspy. He’d evidently used the last of his strength to defend Dave. “Son?”

  Kurt bolted into the arena and fell to his knees beside Fred. The smell of blood was choking this close. No surprise; his father’s gore-soaked shirt lay in shreds, and there was a horrific wound over his belly. He must be in agony.

  “Dad! Jesus!” He jerked his knit shirt off and pressed it to the deepest of the wounds, still sluggishly seeping blood.

  Kurt was dimly conscious of Jake calling dispatch for that ambulance.

  “Let me do that.” Dave shouldered him aside. Generating a manifestation to block the blood, the tiger told Fred, “You shouldn’t have used all that magic talking to him.”

  “Couldn’t let him shoot… you,” Fred gasped, somehow managing a strained smile.

  “Don’t talk. Save your strength.” With an effort, Kurt managed to keep his voice level. Judging by his father’s pale, sweating face, Fred had to be in shock. Especially given all the blood soaking into the arena sand. “The ambulance is on the way. Just…”

  “Listen… Listen to me. Fuckers trapped me… Heard a bear… roar…” Fred wheezed. His eyes rolled as if he were looking at something that wasn’t there. “Found him… in the arena. Polar bear. Arc trap…” He fell silent, panting with effort.

  Kurt stroked his Father’s bloody forehead, his heart squeezing in his chest. “I’ll make the bastards pay. They won’t get away with this.”

  Fred didn’t seem to hear. “Some kind of spell. Couldn’t get out of the arena. Fought�
� I saw the Arc shoot… you… Bear ripped me up… Vanished… Spooks… Fucking spooks…”

  “Dad, save your strength. Stay with us.”

  Fred’s eyes rolled as he tried to cling to consciousness. “Sorry… Sorry about what I said… about girl…”

  “What girl?”

  “Gen… vieve…” His voice dropped to a cracked whisper. “Want you… be… happy… Love… you…” Fred sighed, a long exhalation. His eyes slid out of focus, going fixed.

  Panic stabbed Kurt, Stoli’s fear adding to his own. They’d both loved Fred. “Dad!” Closing his eyes, he stared hard with his magical senses just as his father’s spirit -- that familiar Feral meld of lion and man -- whirled away into the night like sparks from a campfire.

  “Dad!”

  But it was too late. Fred was gone.

  Kurt sat staring blindly after him. Dad couldn’t be dead. Not like this. Not murdered. Trapped by a witch, batted around by a damned bear, ripped open when the Arc shot Kurt.

  Those fuckers had come into Kurt’s territory and killed his father.

  Grief and rage tore through him, with Stoli echoing it until fury built fury like a stream of gasoline spraying across a forest fire. Opening his eyes, he grappled for discipline, sweat streaming down his face.

  Dad’s gone. They murdered him! Emotion thundered against his fraying self-control like a sandblaster. Kurt threw back his head and roared.

  Chapter Four

  “Look, I’m an Arcanist! Somebody cast a spell in there,” Genevieve snapped. “I need to break it. Let me by!”

  The beefy young cop glared down at her, one hand resting on his belt, not quite on his gun. “And how do I know you didn’t cast the spell? Maybe you set that guy up to get ripped apart by that bear…”

  “Fred? Fred’s hurt? I can help!”

  “Or you could make it worse.” The deputy’s eyes narrowed with frustrated anger under cropped, prematurely thinning hair. He curled his lip in a sneer. “Witch.”

  Oh, great, a Humanist. “I’m a healer,” she gritted. “Maybe I can help him, if you’d just let me. Or we could just stand here while he dies.”

  The cop glared at her for a long minute. She glared back -- until, to her surprise, he started looking unnerved. “Fine! Go! Hell, he’s just a fuckin’ Feral. No skin off my nose if you kill him.”

  Outrage tightening her mouth, Genevieve hurried past him before he could change his mind. He thought I was going to hex him. But as she walked, a growing sense of evil rolled over her consciousness, and the hair on the back of her neck began to rise. No wonder the Humanist was so damned paranoid.

  When she’d first arrived, entering BFS had felt like plunging into a river of magic from all the Ferals, human and otherwise, not to mention the purely animal cats. But now the energy had a leaden quality to it, a sense of seething darkness she knew indicated a very sinister spell.

  Genevieve followed the psychic stench along the gravel path as fast as she dared. Fortunately, the walkway was brightly lit; she didn’t have to worry about crashing headfirst into a tree. As she trotted along, she was conscious of glowing eyes watching her from the surrounding enclosures.

  Fred’s cats.

  The roar rolled out over the park, a shattered cry of fury and grief. It seemed to stab right past Genevieve’s twenty-first century intelligence to her inner small mammal. She jolted to a stop -- and found herself staring at a sign reading “BFS Educational Arena.”

  Spotting an open gate through the octagonal fence, Gen ran through it. And stopped dead, staring in sick horror.

  Kurt knelt beside a body lying crumpled in a pool of blood. Dave stood beside him, his ears flat, his golden eyes too wide.

  Oh, crap.

  “You bastards!” Kurt leaped to his feet, magic snapping sparks around him. “I’m going to fuckin’ kill you!” His tiger manifested in a golden explosion, forming a glowing shell of magic.

  Ice slid through Genevieve’s blood. Oh, God, he’s going to kill somebody.

  Gen wasn’t the only one who was freaked out. Dave tensed, though whether he was going to run or do something to stop his friend, she had no idea. A blond man in a Deadpool t-shirt stood on the other side of the cat, watching Kurt as though he expected to be attacked.

  There was a gun in his hand.

  Kurt roared again, his tiger’s rearing shell surrounding him, balanced weightlessly on its hind legs in a way that would have been impossible for a flesh and blood animal.

  She had to do something or that blond guy was going to have to kill him.

  “Kurt!” Even as she started toward him, Gen realized what a monumentally bad idea this was. She kept going anyway. It was too easy to imagine how she’d feel if Dad had been sacrificed in an Arcanist spell. “Kurt, I’m so sorry…”

  “Lady, what are you doing? Get back.” The blond man’s gaze flicked to her, and he brought the gun up, aiming it at Kurt. He spoke in the dead flat tone of a man whose world had exploded as he desperately tried to contain the fallout. “Get out of here.”

  Dave slunk toward her, his gaze on Kurt’s. “Go. He’s out of control. He could hurt you.”

  “No, he won’t.” Her gaze locked on Kurt, silhouetted against the blaze of his manifestation. She reached out to him, using her own power to brush his aura. His grief slammed into her consciousness in a battering wave. The impact of it rocked her back on her heels. He’s in so much pain…

  “Kurt’s tiger is dead,” the blond man said in a carefully controlled voice. “I think he’s trapped in a feedback loop.”

  Soldiers caught in feedback loops had been known to kill their teammates. Oh, hell. We’re screwed.

  And yet… Sometimes she could touch another’s aura, reduce the pain, as she’d done for Parvati. She might be able to help Kurt, too. There wasn’t time to draw the kind of intricate spell that would force him to calm down, but if she could reduce his pain enough, he could regain control.

  Of course, if it doesn’t work, he may kill me.

  Licking dry lips, Genevieve moved slowly forward, sketching sigils in the air to focus her magic. Extending her hands, she sent her aura sliding over his in a gentle brush. “Kurt? I can help you if you’ll let me. I can help you control it.”

  The big man’s eyes glowed from the burning mask of his tiger. The manifestation’s mouth opened, displaying mystical teeth that could rip into her skin every bit as efficiently as the physical version. “Genevieve?” The voice sounded inhuman, reverberating as it did with his power. “He’s dead, Genevieve. Dad’s dead.”

  “I know, Kurt.”

  “Lady, back off!” Deadpool Shirt started toward her. Judging from the glow of his eyes, he was a Feral too.

  Kurt’s gaze whipped to him, hot and direct with aggression. He growled, the sound so deep it was almost subsonic.

  The man swallowed, but kept coming, broad shoulders tensed to fight. “This is that girl, Genevieve? The witch you like, right?”

  “Mine!” Kurt sprang, covering ten feet in an impossible leap as his magic drove his human body forward. Genevieve yelped, startled. His arms snapped around her like a trap clamping shut, and he jerked her against his side.

  Gen found herself looking out at the world through the glowing tiger mask. Crap!

  In a blur, Deadpool Shirt shifted his aim to follow his friend. “Kurt, stop. Don’t hurt her. Don’t make me shoot you.”

  “No!” Dave snapped, a rumbling growl rolling beneath the words. “Holster that weapon before you set him off.”

  “I’m not… going… to hurt… her…” Kurt growled.

  “Step away!”

  “No.” He bared his teeth, and the huge fangs of his manifestation echoed the expression. “She’s mine, Jake!”

  “Kurt, you don’t even know her! That’s your cat talking. Let her go!”

  “It’s all right,” Genevieve said, touching the powerful arm around her waist to draw his attention. He felt like Michelangelo’s David cast in heated steel.

>   “No, it’s not.” Kurt met her gaze, his face limned in the glow of his manifestation. The mouth that should have looked sensual twisted in pain until her heart ached for him. “It can’t get any less all right.”

  “It can if you hurt her.” The muzzle of Jake’s pistol tracked him steadily, but there was anguish in the Feral’s eyes.

  “Don’t threaten me. This is my place. She’s mine.” Kurt tensed, focusing on his friend with the alien gaze of a cat on the edge of exploding into violence.

  I’ve got to talk him down, or we’re all screwed. “Look at me, Kurt.” She poured her aura over his, using it to slow the furious churn of his power. “They’re not going to hurt me, and neither are you.”

  He stared at her, nothing at all human in those golden Feral eyes.

  * * *

  Rage clawed for control, and Kurt grappled with it, trying to fight his way out the feedback loop. I don’t have the luxury of losing my shit. I’ll hurt Genevieve. He could feel her magic coiling around his, cooling, soothing. Slowing the feedback of his grief and rage. Reducing it just enough to let him fight it.

  He had to fight it.

  An image flashed through his mind: Bobby Nolan’s Feral eyes, wide and insane, framed by the blaze of his lion manifestation as he reared over Dave Frost. Dave had still been human then. Still been alive.

  Kurt brought his rifle up… And hesitated, unable to shoot his best friend’s kid brother.

  Bobby lunged for Dave’s throat. Kurt fired. A heartbeat too late.

  He fought the chaos ripping at his consciousness, staring down at Gen’s lovely features, trying to concentrate on her, on the stakes of losing control. Reflected light from his manifestation painted the pretty contours of her face in gold, kissed the curve of her lips.

  ”You’ve got to be the master of your body, boy,” his father told him, a stopwatch in his hand, timing him with dispassionate eyes. Kurt’s hand burned, buried deep in a bucket of ice. He’d clenched his teeth, fighting the impulse to jerk it out. “People die when a Feral loses control.”

  He’d been eight years old. Some of the later lessons had been even worse.