Chapter 7—Warring Weres

We sorted ourselves out into the vehicles, with ourselves in the first. My three kidnappers, now hooded and roped together, were in the middle one being guarded by half a dozen female dragons who didn’t like them at all.

“Where to?” Mandrake looked to Moth who grinned.

“Moth knows.”

She flitted to the shoulder of the young dragon who was our driver and spoke in his ear. I was impressed that he didn’t flinch. He just grinned at the impudent fae as he engaged a gear.

“How long a journey?”

Mandrake was in full commander mode, and I didn’t know whether to be impressed or kick his shins. In the end I did neither, although I did share a rueful look with Purslane.

Moth and the driver were engaged in a low-voiced conversation and after a minute or two he spoke up.

“It’s about ten miles to the Lyon country estate. In the normal way of things that’d be about a quarter of an hour—even in this beast. But my friend here smells a blizzard on the way, so we can reckon on an hour at least.”

“Okay. You just set a safe pace.”

The driver laughed. “Will do, uncle.”

Mandrake aimed a laughing cuff at his head.

In the end it was closer to two hours because the storm that came screaming in from the east was of the sort that has to be waited out and the three all-terrain vehicles lined up with their backs to the howling dervish of a wind. Instead of snow, this wind brought ice—long daggers of killing ice that hammered against the armoured vehicles as if determined to get inside. I shivered.

“You’re safe in here,” Mandrake said.

“I am. I’m just thinking about the car I was in not so long ago. I have a feeling that me and the rat would have died out here—even if the bears could survive.”

He frowned, then a shiver of his own crossed his whole body and he pulled me into his arms.

“I could have lost you,” he said thickly.

I put my arms around him. “But you didn’t. You rescued me. You and Moth and our dragon friends.”

The tension went out of his body. “We did. And you are warm and in my arms. Although I did want to kill the scum that had you. Was it them who took you from the college?”

“No. It was not. But I wouldn’t bother hunting for whoever did. I think they are probably dead.”

“Dead?”

“Yes. As in dead men tell no tales.”

“That figures.” Then he chuckled. “The bigger bear isn’t at all happy with us. He is swearing vengeance with every indrawn breath.”

I shrugged. “He is a dead thing walking. And if he isn’t bright enough to work that out for his own self…”

“Are you going to kill him, loved one?”

“Probably not. Much though I would like to. My money is on Leonard Lyon.”

Purslane chimed in. “Unless there is a senior bear at the place we are headed. They really don’t take too kindly to failure.”

Mandrake pushed out his lower lip in thought, then nodded briefly.

One of the younger dragons put up a tentative hand, almost like a child at school.

“You have a question, Nettle?”

“I do, sir. If the lady will be so kind.”

“Ask away.”

“If you knew that the bears had the wrong woman, why did you not tell them?”

“In a normal situation that would have been the correct move. However, by the time I realised who they thought they had in their hands there was already a trail of dead bodies behind us. It was pretty clear to me that if they found out I wasn’t the woman they were being paid for they’d have slit my throat and left me for the carrion crows. This lot really don’t care for loose ends.”

Nettle swallowed audibly. “So you were in their power, knowing they were taking you to be killed, and aware that it didn’t matter to them who you were?”

“That about sums it up. Except, of course, I had Mandrake and Moth hunting for me, and both are formidable hunters.”

“They are indeed.” Nettle nodded.

By which time the ice storm had blown away and we could resume our journey.

The Lyon estate was ringed with razor wire fencing, which is fine against normal modes of transport, but our vehicles just pushed over it as if it wasn’t there. The guards that piled out of a couple of low, stone buildings were armed with rifles and heavy clubs—neither of which is any use at all against an armoured vehicle weighing several tons. They weren’t stupid, and most of them went back inside out of the snow which was falling thickly again. A couple of the younger, fitter lycanthropes trotted along beside us like a sort of an honour guard. I hoped the house wasn’t far, because it had to be fragging cold out there.

It was only around ten minutes at jogging speed and the three all-terrains formed up into a chevron in the courtyard. We waited.

A few guards formed up around us and one knocked politely on the door of the frontmost vehicle.

We ignored him.

A tall figure in the uniform of some sort of ceremonial guard came out of the portico and stood looking at our silent vehicles. When he had looked his fill he smiled thinly. He took something out of his pocket and aimed it. Mandrake pushed a button on the dash and dark screens came up across our windows. The flash of light would have blinded us had we not had the protective screens, but we did have them. The screens dropped as the functionary with the weapon hit the ground. He seemed to have grown something strange on his forehead—closer inspection discovered it to be the vanes of a crossbow bolt right between his eyes.

“Nice shooting, whoever,” I said.

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.”

Mandrake took back the microphone. “This was not. But the taking of my mate falls just as heavily on you as it does on the traitorous cat. We require reparation.”

“What do you require, sir dragon?”

“Less, perhaps, than we might. You and your confederates are to desist from an abominable scheme that would punish a child for its father’s fault. We will hold you personally responsible for the cessation of such plans. You will also, in addition to your normal responsibility for the conduct of your own weres, stand as surety for the behaviour of House Lyon.”

Mandrake stopped speaking and we waited in silence.

The bear I marked with my claws was first to find his voice. “I claim vendetta against the creature which marked my skin, and against its lizard.”

Wulfric looked at him with obvious loathing. “I forbid.”

“Then I am no longer your bear.”

“You would seriously defy me?” Wulfric was obviously astonished.

“I would.” And once again the marked bear reiterated his defiance. “I am no longer your bear.”

Wulfric showed his teeth. “You are not indeed.”

The blow that caved in the now clan-less were-bear’s skull had nothing about it of science and everything of impotent rage. The second bear tried to run but suffered the same fate as his friend. Wulfric turned a fulminating eye on Lord Lyon.

“You heard the dragon’s terms. Are you prepared to abide by them?”

“Yes,” sulkily.

“I beg your pardon.”

“I said yes didn’t I?”

“So you did. But I think I will have a blood oath of you.”

“I will not give it.”

“Very well, then.”

Wulfric dropped his human form and stood over Leonard in his full glory as a coal black bear.

“What are you doing?”

“If you won’t swear you’ll have to fight me.”

I prodded Mandrake. “We should maybe make sure it’s a fair fight.”

“Good point.”

He whistled into his comms device and armed dragons appeared on the roofs of our vehicles.

“Who are those men?” Leonard called out.

“Let’s just call them insurance, shall we?”

A woman stepped out of the shadows. She wasn’t young, but she was of surpassing beauty and grace.

“Leonard’s ‘mate,’” Purslane spoke with extreme distaste.

“Ah yes. I’ve heard of the lady. Do please keep an eye on her.”

“I shall be delighted.”

The woman crossed to Wulfric and placed one red-nailed hand on his thick fur.

“Surely this is unnecessary,” she purred.

The bear looked at her with something I struggled to understand on his ursine features. “Step back,” he growled.

She smiled up at him, wholly confident in the power of her beauty, and slipped her free hand into the pocket of her richly furred robe. I didn’t trust her a bit, and neither, it seemed, did Purslane. Beauty clapped a hand to her neck before crumpling into a heap on the floor.

“Tranq dart.”

“Good shooting.”

Lord Lion picked up his woman and carefully disposed her unconscious body under the portico out of the snow. As he tidied her robe about her, we all saw him sneak a hand into the pocket she had been going for. Unfortunately for his plan, the Bear Lord saw it too. The sound of bones being crushed was loud and sickening and Leonard screamed a scream of pain and terror and rage. He went for his own pocket and if Wulfric hadn’t crushed the wrist of his dominant hand he might even have made it. But he fumbled the gun he was grabbing for, and it dropped to the ground with a metallic clatter.

The bear stood back and showed his long yellow teeth in a contemptuous snarl.

“Make the change, pussycat, or I will kill you where you stand.”

Leonard threw back his head and roared, but he didn’t take his lion form.

“What’s he playing at?” Purslane wondered.

“I don’t know.” Mandrake sounded just as puzzled.

I stared at the writhing figure of the Lion Lord. There was something badly wrong with him, evidenced by his body squirming almost as ineffectually as the weres we bound with silver.

“Oh my goodness,” I said softly. “He isn’t making the change because he can’t. Look at him. It’s like he’s a half-were.”

“A half-were?”

“Someone who can’t fully make the change to his or her beast. But that’s ridiculous because I’ve seen him Change.”

Wulfric Bear glared at us before shifting his human face onto his bear body. “What have you done to the Lion?”

“Nothing.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. Of course I’m sure.”

“Well. That only leaves one option doesn’t it.”

He walked over to the unconscious female and dropped back into human form. One large hand curled around her throat, and even though she was unconscious, she struggled against the sudden constriction. I knew what he was doing, and it made me feel sick, but I could also see why he thought it necessary.

“What does bear do?” Moth asked.

“He’s closing her airway so she can’t breathe,” I felt a constriction in my own throat and for a second I too laboured to draw breath.

“It’s cruel pretty fae. But look at the Lion.” It was Purslane who spoke, and her voice pulled me back into the here and now. I was grateful.

Leonard Lyon stopped fighting in his own body and pulled his beast about him. He shook his orange mane and roared. For a second or two his right front paw hung lifeless, but the superior healing powers of his best took over and he soon stood four square.

Wulfric loosened his hold on the unconscious female’s throat, and she stopped struggling. He changed back into his bear and the two lords glared at each other.

Leonard spoke first. “What has been happening here?” he growled. “My beast is disgusted with me.”

“Well he might be. We seem to have been being manipulated.”

“Manipulated?”

“Yes. Put a rein on your beast for a moment and think.”

The lion shook his mane again before prowling up and down the steps in front of us.

“This could take a while,” Purslane remarked, “Leonard Lyon isn’t among the brightest.”

We waited. Leonard prowled. Wulfric cleaned his claws. The unconscious female muttered and twitched as she dreamed.

All around me, hard-won patience was wearing thin when a lioness came quietly out of the house. She sat down and looked about her in some hauteur. Leonard hustled his golden self to her side and made to rub his face in her fur. She snarled and snapped her teeth very close to his nose before standing up and making the change, albeit very slowly and with an obvious effort.

It was almost as if an older version of the female unconscious on the steps stood before us.

“Well husband,” she said in a voice with quite the cutting edge of my best dagger. “I think you have some explaining to do.”

Leonard struggled back into human form, but he said nothing only hung his head like a child expecting chastisement.

The lioness turned her face to Wulfric. “Perhaps you have sufficient control of your tongue to offer me an explanation.”

He showed his teeth and I scented ancient enmity. “I might,” he replied, “but then again I might choose to spin you a parcel of moonbeams.”

I decided this was going nowhere fast, so I took a hand, sticking my head out of the window and whistling sharply. The lioness’ head snapped round.

“I believe,” I said carefully, “that the creature on the floor may hold the answers to both your questions and my own.”

Lady Lyon stalked over to where beauty lay and stared down at the creature. “It is,” she said, “passing strange to see another wearing your face.”

“I expect it is.”

The lioness looked at the female who was wearing her face with real loathing. “What is it? Is it the True Shifter? She who is the enemy of all lycanthropes.”

Mandrake took the megaphone from my hand before I could blast the lioness.

“Where do you get that idea?”

“Why. From…” Something must have clicked in her brain. “From a young human woman engaged by my husband to teach our cubs the ways of humans. I remember talking with her and sharing wine. Then nothing until I awoke just now.”

“I think you have answered at least part of your own question.” It was Purslane who had stepped out onto the roof of the all-wheel. “Lioness,” she said coolly, “you have choices to make here. You can kill the creature who stole your face without ever letting it wake up. Or you can awaken it and question it closely.”

Leonard opened his mouth, and his mate turned on him.

“You be quiet.”

He subsided into silence, as did Wulfric Bear—although I did spot signs of unholy amusement in the unnatural rigidity of the Bear Lord’s posture.

“How can we safely awaken this creature?”

“You must bind it with silver.”

“We must?”

“Unless you would risk it overtaking your mate’s mind once again.”

The lioness beckoned and Leonard came forward, kneeling on the cold stone at her feet. She put a hand on his head.

‘She listens to his mind,’ Moth was in my head as ever, and she sounded quite impressed. ‘Mothwing does not know that other creatures can make the mind link.’

Mandrake must have heard her too because he explained. ‘It isn’t a real link such as we have. It is to do with the blood bond in carnivorous mates.’

I felt Moth’s revulsion, but she made no comment. Mandrake looked uncomfortable. His mind voice was troubled.

‘I worry that beloved fae will suffer when my dragon must feed.’

There was a flutter of wings and Moth leapt from my shoulder to his.

‘Be not worry, loved dragon. Your beast will not link with Mothwing unless danger is known.’

I felt Mandrake’s puzzlement. “The bond is between our human forms and Moth. The reason she remains linked to me no matter what form I take is because I only borrow other creatures’ forms. Underneath I remain myself. Lycanthropes have two true forms which are separate, even if the same entity uses them.”

I hadn’t realised I was speaking out loud until a thickly-built fighter came to my side. He had tears running down his face.

“Thank you,” he said, “you have just explained something that has weighed on my mind for four centuries. My life mate was half-fae, and we had the mind link—even at great distance. But I didn’t hear her dying words. That has haunted me. I was in my dragon form when she died, and I thought myself just too caught up in battle to have heard her last farewell.”

Moth fluttered over to his shoulder. “Not your fault dragon fighter. Will you lend Mothwing your beloved’s name?”

“I will. She was called Horsetail.”

Mandrake gripped my shoulder and I put my hand over his. “Be tranquil, our beloved knows what she is doing.”

I could feel Moth pulling in her Will, then the air was filled with a subtle scent that reminded me of new mown hay and warm lambs. The face that floated on the air was homely enough although her eyes were like jewels. The dragon fighter put out a hand as if he would touch her and, for the briefest instant, a square, brown hand slid into his massive palm.

“Blame yourself no more, beloved. It was none of your fault. Hear me now, though. I love you and I am waiting for you beyond the rainbow.”

Then she was gone. Moth wilted like a flower in autumn, but before either Mandrake or I could get to her, the grizzled fighter lifted his hand and gently touched her hair.

“Will you draw strength from one whose gratitude knows no bounds?”

She leaned into him, and I felt her grow stronger with every breath.

Outside, the lioness had finished her trawl through the memories of her mate. As far as I could see she was about as pissed off as it’s possible to be without killing someone—and I wouldn’t have bet on all the players in the drama getting away with whole skins.

Mandrake must have thought the same, because he grinned a vicious grin. “Right now, I’m very glad I’m not a lion.”

Lady Lyon stepped forward and stood at the edge of the top step.

“I am embarrassed, and I am angry. I will do what I can to make reparation.”

To my internal amusement, Purslane elected herself spokesdragon.

“Perhaps we might awaken sleeping beauty there and ask it some searching questions.”

“Indeed we might. I will have our gaoler bring silver manacles and secure it before it is awoken.”

“Sounds like a plan to me,” Mandrake muttered, and I understood by his tone that he was rather pleased by Purslane’s boldness. He kissed my face and spoke proudly in my head. ‘I trained her, and what a fine dragon she has become.’

A half-were with a vaguely leonine face and rather a lot of bodily hair appeared carrying a set of wrist and ankle chains. He wore heavy leather gloves but even then he only breathed easily when he had chained the female and was able to step away. I felt the poor creature’s pain, but knew it was not mine to heal.

Purslane winced. “We dragons forget how painful silver is to most lycanthropes. I have often wondered why we are not so affected.”

Moth looked soberly at her. “Must never touch silver in dragon form. Never.”

“A dragon touched by silver when flying is likely to fall from the sky,” Mandrake explained. “We pay for being able to deal with silver in human form by being the most vulnerable of all when we ride our beasts.”

I recognised the lurch in my stomach as fear for my beloved, and I rode the pain.

Purslane swallowed audibly. “I am not sure I needed to know that.”

Moth flew to her shoulder. “Did need to know. Friend of Mothwing must take care. Now wake up creature.”

Lady Lyon pulled the dart from beauty’s neck and Purslane’s second dart landed alongside the first wound.

“Antidote should work quite quickly.”

It was only a couple of minutes until the creature stirred. Lady Lyon rolled it onto its side, and we watched as the face it wore sort of melted, leaving something that hovered somewhere on the not human spectrum, but I wasn’t sure where.

Moth hissed. “Is face-borrower. Bad creature. Can copy humans. Is stupid but has much malice. Will be servant of something powerful. Creature mustn’t see Mothwing.”

She contracted herself until she could fit into Mandrake’s pocket and disappeared.

Meanwhile the counterfeit lioness writhed and wriggled in its bonds. It snapped, snarled and swore foully, vowing vengeance on all about it. Wulfric put up with its behaviour for about two minutes before striding over and wrapping a hard hand about the now less lovely neck. He squeezed and it became still and quiet.

“You see how it is,” he snarled. “This can be hard or easy. It doesn’t matter to me which you choose. What say you?”

He loosened his grip slightly.

“Easy,” it muttered grudgingly.

“I didn’t hear you.”

His hand must have tightened slightly, because the creature spoke louder and with an edge of panic to its voice.

“I said easy. I choose easy.”

Wulfric took his hand away.

“Right then. Talk.”

“Will answers buy my life?”

Lady Lyon snarled. “No. But truth may buy you an easy death.”

The creature seemed to sink into itself. “What would you have me say?”

“Shall we start with who sent you here?”

“My master is…”

The air around the creature shimmered and grew opaque. The smell that emanated from the fog was nauseatingly rotten. While I retched and tried to hold my breath, the face-borrower fought desperately to get away, but to no avail. It screamed once, high and agonised, before the life left its body. A sardonic laugh cut the air, and I was chilled to my bones by the feeling of unalloyed malice, before whatever it was that had done the killing was gone as quickly as it had arrived.

I was beyond angry at casual killing and the manipulation of living creatures without a touch of conscience or empathy, but I had more pressing matters to deal with; my dragon companions were about to lose control.

Mandrake was right on the edge of assuming dragon form, as were all the wing. I felt powerless against their need to hunt the killing thing, but Moth was strong. She struggled out of her hiding place and flew to my shoulder.

“Dragons hold,” she cried in a voice that seemed too large to come from her body. “Be still and await the orders of your Wing Leader.”

I could feel her urging me to go to Mandrake and grasp his hands. I held on as strongly as I was able and poured my love into him through our joined hands. For a few seconds his palms felt scaly and his fingers spasmed as if they were growing claws, but he pulled back from the chasm.

“Dragons stand down,” he ordered and the power in his voice rocked me to my toes.

As the atmosphere around us eased he leaned down and kissed Moth’s curls.

“Thank you,” he said Moth preened herself. “I did brave.”

“You did indeed. You pulled us back from making a horrible mistake.”

“It was hard. But now I will ask my sisters if any have smelled that sending.”

I hate it when Moth talks to her fae sisters as it makes my head ache and my stomach churn. Mandrake took me in his arms, and I suffered through a mercifully short communication.