Wild Cat

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

The figure stretched across the floor, his half-putrefying flesh black against his torn clothes.

“What the fuck?” Xavier asked softly.

“Trap.” Reid folded his arms over his stomach and looked sick. “They set guards compelled to shoot whoever manages to open the gateway. They’re spelled not to leave their post, not even to find food or water. Not even if they die.”

“They carry out their mission even if they’re dead?” Xavier asked. “Why the hell would anyone do that?”

“It’s a hoch alfar thing,” Reid said. “A sick, twisted hoch alfar thing. Suicide mission. Their families are handsomely rewarded.”

“What’s to stop you now, Reid?” Shane asked. “The guard missed, he’s dead.”

Diego moved back to the opening, around which thick mists had gathered once again. “Careful. There might be more than one.”

“Diego, don’t you dare,” Cassidy said, fury in her voice.

“He aimed at Reid, not me. I’ll make sure it’s clear, then Reid can go.”

“No!”

“Me and Xav,” Diego said. He held Cassidy’s gaze with his. “We know how to do this, and we’re the best shooters here. We’re cops, Cassidy. This is our job.”

Xavier drew his Sig and stood at Diego’s back. Even though Xavier’s left arm was still in a sling, Diego knew Xav could outshoot everyone in this cave, including himself.

“We know what we’re doing, Cass,” Xav said.

Diego nodded at Reid. “If any other guards are out there, Xav and I will draw their fire and take them out. Then you run through and get the hell home.”

“No!” Cassidy snarled.

“Cassidy,” Eric said sharply. “They’re right. Let them.”

Cassidy swung on her brother. “Don’t you dare treat them like they’re expendable.”

“I’m not.” Eric sounded more alert and focused than Diego had ever heard him. “I’m treating them like part of the team. We each contribute our strengths. Peigi did her part. Let them do theirs. Our part is to back them up. Now stop emoting and start working.”

Cassidy gave him a look that didn’t bode well for Eric’s future, but she subsided.

But the exchange gave Diego a little more insight into Eric. The laid-back Shifter act was just an act. Eric was a watcher, an assessor, who put together pieces while he pretended to laze. And then he struck. Diego decided he’d hate to be on the receiving end of his strike.

“Go,” Eric said.

Diego focused his pistol and quickly stepped through the thick mists, his foot landing on solid rock.

There was a guard with a crossbow pressed against the wall on the other side of the gate in the dark. Only one.

There didn’t need to be more, Diego’s mind hummed, because the opening led to a ledge about four feet wide that hung five hundred feet above… nothing.

In the split second that Diego saw this, the Fae tried to shoot him. Diego grabbed the Fae’s rotting arm and spun him away as the bolt left the crossbow. The dead man crumpled, then he and the crossbow bolt twirled into empty air and fell down, down, down, to a moonlit river far below.

Diego grabbed a dried tree root to steady himself and tried to duck back through the opening to the cave.

And found that he couldn’t. The rock had sealed up behind him, leaving Diego standing five hundred feet up a cliff face.

Moonlight flowed like water, lighting the rocks, the thin snake of river below, and a vertical wall that stretched upward above Diego’s head. Skeletal, metallic towers leaned over the gorge at intervals, none, of course, conveniently within reach.

Diego recognized where he was, and it wasn’t Faerie. He’d been here before, or at least somewhere around here, chasing a crazy suspect with Jobe, long before he’d manifested a watery terror of heights.

He was high above the Colorado River on the tip of the southern Nevada border, a mile or so below the Hoover Dam. And how he’d get down from this perch in the middle of nowhere, he hadn’t the faintest fucking idea.

“Holy crap.” Xavier jerked back as the rock wall solidified between himself and Diego.

Cassidy threw herself against it. “Diego!”

“What happened?” Reid pounded on the wall as Cassidy dug at it with her claws.

Peigi put her hand on it. “The magic’s gone.”

“Gone?” Reid demanded. “How can it be gone?”

Eric also touched the wall, too damn calm for Cassidy’s taste. “Part of the trap, maybe.”

“Why try to close it once someone’s inside Faerie?”

“Because it’s not Faerie,” Eric said. “Smell is wrong, too metallic. Those poor bastards probably died of iron poisoning stuck up there waiting.”

“I know where it is,” Cassidy said. The fact that Diego hadn’t actually been pulled into Faerie didn’t stem her panic. “I run up there, sometimes.”

“Where?” Xavier demanded.

“The Colorado River gorge. In the cliffs up there. I don’t know exactly where Diego is, but that’s the area.”

“Shit,” Xavier said. “Well, let’s go get him, then.”

Xavier strode out without another word, not looking back to see if any followed him. Cassidy ran after him. She heard Eric calling out for her, but too damn bad. This was Diego. This was her mate.

She climbed into Xavier’s truck as he started it up. Xavier deftly maneuvered the truck around to go back down the mountain. “I bet you’re going to tell me Diego’s not in a place that’s easily accessible,” he said.

“Maybe, if you’re a Shifter. Maybe not even then.”

“Damn it. I’ve been in those cliffs. Hell of a trap.”

Cassidy clutched the seat as Xavier rocketed the truck down the hill. “They made Reid think he’d found the gateway,” she said, thinking it through. “They put guards there to doubly fool him. They put the other side of the ‘gate’ in so remote a place that humans never see the guards, alive or dead. Probably even mountain goats don’t find them. If the guards don’t kill Reid when he steps through, he falls to his death. Or gets stuck on a cliff to die of exposure.” Cassidy swallowed, thinking of Diego clinging to the side of a cliff face. “Diego doesn’t like heights.”

“I know he doesn’t. Those meth-heads we arrested in Mexico did that to him. Diego was fearless before that.” Xavier thumped the steering wheel. “Damn him. He can’t stop being everyone’s older brother.”

Cassidy thought of the story Diego had told her about taking torture so that Xavier would be released by the gang leader. Her heart burned. Diego did that for people, went into danger so they didn’t have to.

Maybe that was the reason she loved him so much.

“This is going to take forever.” Xavier’s jaw clenched as they wound down the track, still a long way from paved roads.

Cassidy said nothing, because there was nothing to be said. They had to drive all the way down the mountain, back through the city, across the desert on the other side, and then to the roads around the dam.

No public roads led to those cliffs along the river. The area was patrolled, but probably not patrolled enough that anyone would notice Diego, in the dark, on the side of a cliff.

As soon as Xavier’s truck rocketed onto the highway, he had his cell phone out. He steered down the straight road with the hand of his splinted arm while he punched numbers on his cell with this other thumb.

“Hey, Sheila, this is Escobar. The younger one. Diego’s got himself into deep shit, and I need backup.”

Cassidy heard the woman on the other side give a startled exclamation.

Xavier went on. “We need to comb every road to either side of Hoover Dam and south of it. Can you get me sheriffs’ departments on both sides of the state line? Diego’s stuck up on one of the cliffs. We need to get him down in one piece.”

I’m on it. Cassidy heard the woman’s voice buzz through the phone.

Xavier hung up and called everyone he knew. Eric would be doing the same behind her. Rallying his trackers, Nell, all of Shiftertown if need be.

Cassidy’s heart warmed in spite of her frantic worry. They were coming, they were helping, they wouldn’t let Diego die.

But only if they got to him in time.

Diego clung to the tree root and refused to look down. Panic poured through him in waves, sometimes receding enough to make him believe he was over the fear, only to have another wave buffet him a second later.

The wind kicked him around as well. The gorge of the Colorado, made deeper by the dam that collected the river upstream, was a giant wind tunnel. The river was nice when you were down on the beaches beside it, when you took a day off to fish or just laze around on a boat. It wasn’t its best when you clung to the side of the cliff far above, trying to find handholds.

No way in hell was Diego going to let a gust of wind lift him and send him over the edge. He would climb the hell out of here and call for help. Right?

How the fuck did I get into this?

Helping Reid. Because I felt sorry for him. Teach me to have compassion.

No, this was the fault of whoever had persecuted Reid. Their trap was perfect and cruel. They’d give Reid the hope that he’d found his way home, and then kill him up here.

Two thoughts chased that one: Sadistic bastards and What the hell did Reid do to garner this treatment?

Maybe nothing. Some people were simply cruel, like Enrique. They practiced brutality because they could. They liked to watch people twisting in the wind, like Diego was now.

A gust blasted Diego, and his toes lost their hold. “Son of a bitch!”

He grabbed for another handhold, his fingers bleeding, toes desperately scrabbling for a crevice. He managed to lodge one foot on a protruding rock. Hanging on to the tree root, he swung the other foot back to the ledge. Scrambling and swearing, Diego got himself on the narrow ledge and wedged his body back against the rock.

The overhang helped with the wind a little, but it trapped him. He couldn’t climb out above, and without rappelling gear, he couldn’t descend.

He had a cell phone. When Diego was at last able to tug it out and open it, he of course couldn’t get a signal. He left it on, though, in case they could find him through the GPS inside it.

It looked like the sky was lightening. Diego didn’t remember that much time passing, but the eastern horizon definitely was a little grayer.

No, wait, the sky itself hadn’t lightened. Mist shimmered about six feet away from Diego’s ledge, right in the middle of empty air. And damned if two more Fae-not dead this time-didn’t just raise bows and aim through the mist at him. Not crossbows, longbows, as though Diego had landed in some kind of Renaissance Fair.

Diego brought up his Sig and fired. The Fae ducked aside faster than Diego had ever seen anyone duck, then they stared at him in amazement.

The gun’s kick nearly dislodged him, but Diego held on and shouted, “This is steel. That’s made from iron. Want a piece?”

More staring. Then the Fae shot. One arrow ripped Diego’s cell phone from his hand and sent it spinning away down the cliff. Diego dropped to the ledge, breath snagging in terror as his face looked into nothing.

He felt a sudden, sharp pain and looked down to see an arrow sticking out of his side.

It shocked him more than it hurt, but he knew pain would come. And blood loss, and weakness. Then death when he tumbled over the side from all of that. He brought up his pistol and fired again.

The Fae ducked back but they nocked arrows to their bows again.

“Damn you, I’m not Reid! I sprang the fucking trap by accident.”

Didn’t look like they cared. Who the hell guards a gate for fifty years? And why do they hate Reid so much?

“You’re hoch alfar, right? I’m human.”

They hesitated when he said hoch alfar, but obviously they didn’t understand any of his other words. Probably wouldn’t make any difference if he said it in Spanish. Maybe if he knew Gaelic.

I really should have bought that audio course.

Diego aimed his Sig again. “Stand down or this bullet goes into your chest.”

Fire spread through his side. He was going to die up here.

The second Fae nocked another arrow and shot, his fingers a blur. Diego fired at the same time. The Fae he aimed at went over backward, blood on his mail-shirted chest.

So, they could die. But then, so could Diego.

The arrow that had left the bow glanced across Diego’s hip, missing because the second Fae had jumped when his colleague went down. Diego aimed again and shot.

The second Fae knew enough to duck aside. The air shimmered and the gate closed.

Diego lowered his aching arm, trying to catch his breath. Would it open again? Would they send more to kill the man who’d just shot one of their own?

His side hurt like hell. He knew an artery hadn’t been severed only because he was still alive. Either that or the arrow was holding the blood vessels closed.

Maybe his gunshots had drawn attention. But the wind was hard, blowing sound away. Echoes could come from anywhere. Diego didn’t dare keep firing in case the Fae returned and he needed the ammo. He had half a magazine now in his gun and that was it.

Find me, Cassidy.

She had to be crazy, telling him to stay away from her. For his own protection. Right.

Love didn’t work that way. That’s what for better or for worse meant. You didn’t run off when times got tough. You worked through it. You helped each other with whatever crazy problems happened and celebrated the good stuff on the other side.

You found your lover when he was stuck on the side of a cliff with an arrow in his side.

Dizziness swirled through him. Perfect. Just effing perfect.

He was going to pass out. When he did, there was nothing to say whether he’d lay here quietly or whether the next gust would send him plunging over the side.

The air shimmered again. When the mist cleared, Diego was staring down his gun at five more Fae.

They had rope. They had a grappling hook-not iron. It looked, as it flew toward the ledge and missed, to be hard, carved wood.

They were going to try to pull him into Faerie.

Not a place he wanted to go.

Diego raised his Sig, his hand shaking like holy hell. “Me and my iron,” he said. “It comes with me.”

Another throw, and this time the hook stuck on a nearby rock. Diego reached over and plucked it out.

The Fae on the other side snarled and started talking in their own language, but not to Diego. A technique to show they had the upper hand. Don’t talk directly to the victim or listen when they talked back. Victims were nothing.

The next thing they threw was a net.

Ropes tried to entangle him. Diego fought, pain rippling through him. Finally, he managed to pull the damn thing off him and drop it over the side.

That made the Fae angry. They started shouting among themselves, and then here came the longbows again.

Diego fired at the Fae. They boiled apart, the air shimmered, and the gate closed again.

Diego sighed and slumped to the ledge, waiting for the next round to begin.

Cassidy held on as the truck rocked over the pitted washboard road. Xavier led the way up the hill with a string of sheriffs’ cars behind them, lights flashing. Diego’s GPS signal had vanished, and Cassidy tried to stem her panic.

The signal had come from a place on the Nevada side of the river, Xavier was told, in a section where no roads led. They’d drive as close to the cliffs as they could, then they’d have to search on foot.

In the dark, Xavier said glumly, hours from daylight. He hoped Diego could hang on.

Cassidy didn’t need roads or light. As soon as Xavier reached the end of the road, Cassidy was out of the truck and tugging off her shirt.

The road was literally at an end; a giant rock wall with boulders strewn at its base rose like a monolith in front of them. Red and blue and yellow lights from the patrol cars and construction trucks swirled across its face.

“Hey, what are you doing?”

One of the sheriff’s deputies trained a flashlight on Cassidy as she stood there in her bra, hand on her waistband. Xavier slammed his truck’s door and put himself protectively in front of her.

“Leave her alone. Let her do what she’s good at.”

“Stripping?”

Xavier moved the deputy’s flashlight so Cassidy was no longer in its beam. “She can help. Go on, Cass.”

Cassidy growled, too far gone to reply. The shift was coming upon her, and she had to get out of these damn clothes.

Cassidy shoved her jeans down and kicked out of her shoes at the same time. She unsnapped her bra as she ran, and flowed out of her underwear as her wildcat took over.

She hit the ground running on all fours. One of the deputies whistled as she bounded up the desert hill. Below her, Xavier started shouting about search patterns and dogs.

Cassidy leapt on up the mountain, trying to get away from the smell of exhaust and the dogs. Rocks slid under her feet as she scrambled to the top.

She couldn’t call out in her wildcat form, and she couldn’t take the time to shift back to do so. Calling wasn’t going to help her. Scent was.

Below, she heard Eric arrive. He’d brought Shane and Brody and his other trackers. Cassidy distanced herself from them, shutting out their scent and focusing on finding Diego’s.

She loped to the cliff tops. Below her, far below, the river flowed, released from its confinement by the dam and Lake Mead. It snaked southward in the moonlight, serenely making its way toward Baja, where what was left of it would empty into the gulf.

Diego could be anywhere along the miles of cliffs. They’d narrowed the search to this side of the river, but that was still a lot of ground to cover.

Cassidy covered it for an hour, which soon became two. Her paws hurt from the gravel and hard ground. Behind her, the deputies, dogs, Xavier, and Eric’s trackers fanned out, going over ground she’d already covered.

She smelled it at the end of the second hour. The faint but acrid odor of Faerie.

Cassidy dashed to the next cliff top and looked down. She saw nothing but blackness, but the scent came to her. Mint and smoke-definitely Fae.

Gray mist formed in midair about a quarter mile from her position. The stink of Faerie came to her on the wind.

Galvanized, she dashed along the cliff edge. When she was parallel with the opening, she saw ropes float out of the mist and attach themselves to something on the cliff wall.

She heard Diego’s shout, then the boom of his gun, and she smelled the scent of gunpowder. Cassidy frantically looked for a way down to him, finding only a tiny crevice in the cliff that was nearly vertical.

Cassidy picked her way down this as quickly as possible, her wildcat’s balance taking over, Cassidy ceasing to think. She leapt the last six feet to land on top of the trussed form of Diego, her mate.

“Shit!” he yelled.

The ropes went taut and yanked Diego off the ledge. Cassidy clung to him, her claws digging deep, Diego clenching his teeth against the pain.

I’m sorry. I’m sorry, my love.

Diego didn’t unclench as they swung over empty space and were hauled up onto the muddy ground of Faerie. The misty gate snicked shut, and the dry desert cliffs were gone.