Masked By Danger by Christa Wick

Chapter Seven

Dressedin a stranger's bra and panties, Iris sat on the tub's edge and tried to push down the questions constantly hammering inside her head. Several wrestled for supremacy. She had heard the word "latent" several times since the kidnapping and had been referred to as one.

So…what exactly were latents and could that be what had always been wrong with her? Did they go into heat like she-wolves? Could they speak witch's tongue?

And what the hell had happened among the clans in the last twelve years that a witch and a wolf had become a bonded pair?

Shield yourself now, get answers later…

"Right," she mumbled, rubbing at her cheeks as she glanced one last time to make sure the bathroom door was locked. Satisfied it was, she extended a finger and placed the nail's tip against her thigh. With her other hand, she reached for the sink and turned the cold water on at full force to dampen the volume of her words.

She started chanting, the finger motionless until the nail tip started to glow.

With the blue light came heat. She scratched purposefully at her leg, lightly singeing the flesh with an image of a raven's claw.

Next came the crude shape of a hammer's head topped by horns. Still chanting, she changed thighs. The silver in the nail polish pitted magic against magic and would prevent the wards she had just drawn from healing for several days.

As the skin on her legs cooled, Iris marked her forearms with the same images just below the interior bend of each elbow.

Finished, she turned the water off and pulled on the borrowed slacks and sweater. Rooting through the duffel bag, she found a pair of dress socks and put them on before sliding into her own shoes. Then she unlocked the door, still swearing inside her head for retreating into the bathroom instead of a bedroom with an escape-worthy window.

Not that running would do any good. Cade was right about what would happen if she tried to return to her life in Syracuse. Nothing but the truth would satisfy her superiors.

Exposing any of the clans to the police was untenable. Mankind wasn't ready to find out an entire sentient species had evolved alongside it, a species that possessed superior strength, lived longer on average, could heal most wounds in a few minutes, and sprouted fangs, claws and fur when its fight-or-flight mode was engaged.

Mass panic among the humans would ensue. Anyone who had ever acted a little odd would be labeled unnatural and shot by their trigger-happy neighbor. Parents would drown infants in tubs for being born with excess body hair.

Atrocity would stack upon atrocity.

Iris had seen enough everyday lunacy as a homicide cop to entertain even the smallest hope that the human population could handle the news in a rational and calm manner.

So, she wouldn't do it—and the shifters would fight like hell to make sure she couldn't. Cade, already so full of promise the last time she had seen him, now vibrated with all the power of his inner wolf. And the other wolf, the one that had arrived with the witch and was clearly her mate, was just as powerful.

The entire clan would unite in the effort to hunt Iris down.

Well, almost the entire clan, she thought, her upper lip curling in a snarl as she remembered the sleek, silver-haired she-wolf who had dropped more than a little "juice" around Cade before he had hauled the girl out to a truck. That was one shifter who wouldn't impede Iris's escape.

Feeling her flesh ripple at the memory of the wolfling's arousal, Iris stroked her hands along her arms. She should have added more wards, but she didn't want to draw attention to what she had done by staying in the bathroom too long. The running water wouldn't have completely blocked the sound of her words from a wolf's hearing, but neither of the men would be able to tell the witch what was said. The words were too slippery for them.

Leaving the bathroom, Iris heard Cade's voice first.

"Tell me you didn’t intentionally send us into a Hunter ambush? They were already in position on at least one roof with a sniper rifle."

"I told you the energy was all off." The woman's tone sounded as if she had repeated the defense more than once while Iris was in the bathroom drowning in anxiety. "I just don't understand them wanting her dea—"

The statement evaporated as the witch spotted Iris standing in the hallway. Her brow furrowed as her gaze skimmed first across Iris's covered thighs then landed on one arm. Leaving her spot on the couch, she closed the distance, gently wrapped a hand around Iris's wrist then pushed the sleeve up before Iris could protest.

"I'm Esme, by the way. And that brooding gingery hunk is my mate, Denver. The cub in his arms is Oscar." Seeing the wards Iris had carved into her skin, the witch shook her head. "Cade told me about the chanting. You're the first wolf to cast since—"

"I'm not a wolf." Iris pulled her arm from the woman's grasp as Cade growled.

She matched the growl then retreated to the nearest wall, her senses reaching out to determine if Cade had allowed anyone else into his home while she was in the bathroom.

That they had brought a child in was bad enough. The cub's presence was nothing but an underhanded tactic to temper her responses.

"Honey, you're a wolf," Esme sighed. "I remember rumors that you had never shifted, even though you were about sixteen when you left. I'm almost certain my mother visited you once. You might remember. Her name is Camille Stone. She has the same coloring as me but is—"

"All sticks and bones, with beady eyes and a shriveled heart," Denver finished.

A sliver of a frown crossed Esme's face, but Iris recalled Camille Stone and had to agree with the witch's mate.

"Mostly it was the clan's healer, but your mother tried once to diagnose my…malady," Iris said before snorting at the memory. "Basically, it was an entire day of crystals and chanting…like there's a cure for not shifting. As I remember, that was—"

"Two weeks before you left," Cade finished for Iris. "Did Camille say anything to you? Was that why you left?"

Esme rubbed at her eyes, witch light crackling from her fingertips. "I don't even want to think about the possibility, but Camille could have spelled her."

Taking a seat as far from Cade as possible, Iris lifted a brow in Esme's direction. "Spelled me so I left? I'm certain that's not it. Or did you mean something else?"

Standing next to her mate, the woman reached down and stroked the black hair of the little boy. He looked up and smiled softly, his eyelids offering a sleepy dance of dark lashes before his head settled against the big wolf's chest.

Iris frowned at the exchange. She only half-minded Esme using the boy as an excuse to delay answering the question. But something else about the cub's presence made Iris itch.

She could feel her skin growing hotter from head to toe, and her fingertips buzzed with the need to release energy. But even the smallest zap of magic would be suicide around the witch's overprotective mate, more so with the cub in the room.

Pressing her palms flat against the seat cushion, Iris returned her attention to Esme, both brows raised this time to prod the witch into responding.

Esme rolled her lips a few times before her head dove in a short bob and she started to blink.

Six years working homicide had imbued Iris with an innate sense of when a woman was about to cry.

Looking at Esme, she forced her expression and her voice into something softer and far more understanding than she felt. "Please, I need to know what your mother might have done to me."

"No telling." Esme shrugged, her hand briefly erasing a stray tear. "No asking her either. She escaped almost four months ago while being transported to the Witches Council for breaking her blood oath."

Iris let the news roll over her. Breaking the blood oath usually meant death.

"We don't know what happened during the escape. The two wolves guarding her were..." Esme let the words fall away. She glanced down at the cub, ensuring his eyes were closed and his face relaxed before she drew a finger across her throat.

Iris leaned in, her professional interest awakened despite the day’s events.

A powerful enough witch could easily kill one or two wolves. If the murders occurred away from other shifters, the witch might even escape to live another day—or at least four months given the stated passage of time since Camille's escape.

"We know she was spelling me for a long time," Esme continued. "Weakening my magic so I couldn't help the clan as effectively. Most recently, she kept me in a coma to prevent me from healing Denver after Hunters captured and tortured him. It is also clear that she is more powerful than she ever let on."

Esme nodded at her mate. Iris looked at the gingery wolf. The topaz eyes glittered with frost, sending a chill down her spine and forcing her to look away.

Her gaze landed next on Cade, the last place she wanted to look.

She couldn't read his expression, only felt the intense heat rolling off him despite the distance that separated them. Part of her wanted to join him on the other couch, the warmth of his muscular body offering a façade of safety.

Truth was, being next to him was the most dangerous place for her to be. Basking in his wolf's energy, she would come undone.

He would want to know why she had left.

And why she hadn't returned on her own.

Forcing her attention back to the witch, Iris tilted her chin up to control the building panic inside herm as she said plainly, "Not healing your mate sounds like it could have just been personal. Why do you think she would have done something to me a dozen years ago?"

"There were Hunter artifacts hidden in her home. Some writings and energy crystals that I believe enabled her to communicate with them. I can feel the passage of time in her handling the stones and see it in the notes she wrote in the margins. I think she joined the Hunters before I was even born." Esme moved from standing by her mate to sitting on the couch.

Her hands captured Iris's arm, one thumb rubbing against the sleeve and flesh below in a comforting gesture. "Other than the All-Mother, I've never felt a she-wolf with energy anything like yours, even without the magic. If Camille was working with Hunters and sensed what was waiting to bloom inside you—"

"Why did you leave?" Cade blurted out finally, his voice a deep, pained rumble. "It can't be coincidence that she visited and two weeks later you were gone."

Iris closed her eyes. Images swelled inside her head as pain and fear clawed a familiar pattern through her gut.

Hank Mercer.