Being a true shifter isn’t the blessing it may seem. But through pain and darkness Perdita seeks to find her own life despite the ambition of others…
Mandrake grunted and gave our driver a signal. The vehicle started up and began moving slowly and inexorably towards the building. The other two fell in behind us. At first, there was no reaction, but as the first all-terrain began to ascend the steps the sound of cracking marble must have been as loud as gunfire because a massive were-lion in a red velvet robe ran towards us waving his arms. It was the Lion Lord his own self and he seemed seriously disturbed.
“What are you doing?” he screamed.
We drew quietly to a halt and Mandrake passed me a microphone.
“We are here because I’m displeased with you Leonard Lyon.”
He drew himself up to his full height. “Who dares to chide the Lion in his own place?”
I laughed. “The person who is about to order her vehicles to drive right through your pretty house if you can’t find your manners.”
He stomped about a bit but he really had no room for manoeuvre.
“Very well. What do you want?”
“A few moments of your time. And some amelioration of your behaviour.”
He didn’t like that one little bit and I was beginning to think of suggesting the vehicles inched forward a little further, when a hulking brute dressed in black leather ambled quietly out of the house.
“Give it up, Leonard. Whoever this is has you by the balls.”
I started to laugh.
“What?” Mandrake was right on the verge of being cross.
“Sorry love. That’s Wulfric. He’s the big bear.”
“Oh. I see. Should we give him back his children?”
“Yes. In a minute. I’ll speak to him first though.” I toggled the microphone switch. “I don’t know what you are laughing at Poppa Bear. I’m no more pleased with you.”
“And why would that be? I have no truck with females.”
I switched off the microphone.
“Mandrake, can you have his creatures evicted from the all-terrain, please?”
Mandrake whistled into his radio. A few seconds later a door opened in the belly of one vehicle and three figures stumbled out. They were no longer bound in silver, but they had spent so long halfway between forms that their bodies didn’t know whether to be human or animal. The resulting mess of heaving lumps and bumps, and odd clumps of hair, and unsuitable fangs and claws, might have been pitiable had I not personally suffered at the hands of the grim trio.
Wulfric laid hands on the two bears, which enabled them to solidify in more or less human forms. The rodent was less fortunate as, after watching his struggle for a moment or two, the big bear broke his neck and dropped his corpse in the snow.
The two were-bears stood silent under the regard of their master. He didn’t look too pleased to me.
His first words were accusatory. “Who dared mark the face of a bear?”
“One whose face he marked. In partial reparation for unnecessary cruelty to one who was bound and helpless.”
This wasn’t at all what he expected and he growled angrily before taking another verbal slash at us.
“I see your vehicles carry the mark of the Dragon Queen. How comes it that you are here in direct defiance of her orders?”
Mandrake took the microphone from my hand.
“Which orders might that be Bear Lord?”
It was Leonard Lyon who answered in a voice filled with glee and bloodlust. “The order not to interfere between houses Lyon and FitzRoy. An edict I received direct from the queen’s own lips.”
Mandrake allowed himself a chuckle. “We are not in defiance of such an edict.”
Wulfric, being a little more intelligent than Leonard, began to smell a rat. He turned to his frightened weres and placed a hand on each head. When he had listened to their thoughts he bowed his own head.
“Mea culpa,” he said, and I could hear the words burning in his throat like acid.
Leonard turned on him. “What is the matter with you? Why are you apologising to renegade dragons? I see what it is now. They have the girl. And now they have to hand her over or risk being declared wolfshead by their own queen. All that their intervention has done is make it worse for Demoiselle FitzRoy when I have her in my claws.”
“They don’t have the girl. They have the woman your agent kidnapped from the college. But. It. Is. Not. FitzRoy’s daughter.”
Leonard stared at him. “Don’t talk rubbish, man. The college principal assured me that the girl was in the hands of The Collector.”
“Well she lied to you.” He cracked his knuckles and the noise was very loud in the snowy air. “It’s a pity you had her killed, or we could have asked her what she was playing at.”
“You are seriously suggesting we had the wrong female.”
“I am. And we are in so much trouble.”
Leonard scoffed. “If the female lives, we must hand her back to her father with no harm done. And we go and get the FitzRoy girl ourselves.”
Wulfric grabbed him by the collar and shook him until his teeth rattled. “She’s a dragon mate, you stupid fragging pussycat. We are within inches of being declared prey.”
“Prey?” At last Leonard seemed to be grasping the edges of just exactly how deeply he was sunk in his own ordure. “Surely they can’t do that.”
“Can and are very likely to. Between us we are responsible for the abduction and ill-treatment of the mate of a battle dragon who would also seem to be a wing leader.”
“Battle dragon? Wing leader?”
Wulfric was relentless. “Yes. All that and, from what those two have in their brains, pissed off in the extreme.”
“But who is the female to dare to mark one of your enforcers.”
While he was talking, Leonard was moving towards the fallen fighter with the light weapon. Mandrake handed me the microphone and slid a small window open. As the Lion Lord made to grab the fallen weapon, Mandrake flamed briefly.
Leonard screamed and Wulfric spared him a glance. “Shut up pussycat, you aren’t hurt. Although whatever it was you were after has been melted into a puddle.”
The Bear Lord bowed towards our vehicle. “My apologies. This treachery was not of my making.”
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