Asil waited until the sound of Bran’s SUV died away beforehe opened the lioness’s cage—which had not been locked. She walked out of the cage with a regal grace only a little marred by a slight limp. There was no sign of the wound now, but she hadn’t come out unscathed from the fight any more than the rest of them had.
“Doña, are you certain the zoo suits you?” he asked. “I can take you wherever you want to go.” He had already offered her his home or accommodation with his pack.
She butted him gently with her magnificent head.
This was to be my dying gift, she said.To find the people taking our young. I expected to find a coven of witches or even one such as I was in my youth. This…She gave a chuff that sounded like a disapproving grandmother.This was banal and stupid.
In his head, her voice was very faint, reflecting the flame of magic that burned low, like long-banked coals.
“There were no goddesses here,” he agreed. “Save only yourself.”
Amusement touched him.Flattery, she told him.Were I a goddess, do you think I would have been caught by that thread of witchcraft wrapped around my neck?
He was pretty sure that she’d been worshipped as a deity. He was usually right about such things—and she had not said she was not a goddess. She had asked him a question, which was not the same thing at all.
“I wouldn’t have expected the collar to work on you,” he said. It was not an answer to her question, nor was it—quite—a question of his own.
She answered it anyway.
Too old.Her voice was a breeze in his mind, carrying the scent of rich earth and growing things, with a touch of sorrow.He knew then that he had been right about what she was, and that she was ancient even by his standards.
“You were not too old tonight,” Asil said, because she had gotten her wound when the male tiger made his presence known by landing on Asil’s shoulders. “For which I thank you, Doña.”
He had already thanked her—and reproved her—for healing him. She had not looked this bad until she’d spent her magic helping his along.
You are too old to turn your back to your enemy, she chided.
“Yes,” he said, rather than argue about the difficulty of facing in all directions at the same time. “But today was not my day to die. Tomorrow? Tomorrow is another day.”
The lioness’s sweet laughter raced through his body, and he wondered if she could hear his thoughts as easily as she heard his voice.Death is coming for us all, old wolf. For some sooner than others. I think I will enjoy the zoo for a while, a place where I am cared for and no one expects anything more than death from an old lioness.
“Cheerful,” he commented.
She chuffed, then shook herself.
The broken collar that had originally controlled the tigress fell from her and landed on the floor with a soft sound.
Like the other collar, it was a pretty thing to carry such ugly magic. The witch’s spell had been broken when he’d ripped it from the tiger’s neck, but its remnants clung to Asil’s fingertips with a familiarity that burned into his spine and tightened the skin around his eyes with useless tears he did not allow to fall.Mariposa.
Though he wanted nothing more than to fling the cursedthing away, he tucked it into his slacks. Even broken it was too dangerous to leave lying around.
The lioness bumped him.
Mariposa was dead. He—and the lioness—lived. And he thought that might be an interesting thing to do for a little while yet.
“Seattle,” he told her, “is a very long drive. We should begin.”
We could listen to another story about lions, she told him.
He laughed. “I will see what I canfind.”
Asil’s ThirdDate
Asil and the Not-Date
The old wolf ran, leaping over drifts of snow, his dark brown coat indistinguishable from black in the night. In the summer his coloring meant he could easily run unseen in the Montana forests, but the snow made that an effort he didn’t bother with.
It was cold and the silence was deep in these woods, so different from the wilds of his youth. But Asil had been here for years now, and he ran most nights to excise the demons of memory and to calm the raging wolf who shared his skin. Even the cold that made the snow squeak under his paws was an ordinary and familiar thing, though he had been born to much warmer climes.
