“What in the world is a ‘spunkie’?”
“A will-o’-the-wisp,” Intuition said. “Remember reading about those in that book of Scottish folklore?” She blew out a rare, barely audible sigh. “Magic courses through your veins, but it is latent, and I am unsure how to help you tap into it.”
Now it was Calia’s turn to sigh. “That’s one of those ‘you have to believe in it to make it work’ kind of things, isn’t it?”
“It is.”
“Then I need to start believing.” She resettled her footing as if about to go through her self-defense exercises. “The brightest and most magical moment of my life was when Mathison and I exploded into the in-between as soon as we spoke our binding vow. I’m going to concentrate on that. Especially on the blinding white light that surrounded us. Do you think that might amp up my glow to provide some light in here so I might see a way out?”
“What is amp up?” the gruff-voiced Legion asked.
“Add strength to. Like throwing more wood on a fire to make it burn brighter.” If anyone had told Calia that she’d be standing in pitch blackness, talking not only to the voice in her head but also to what appeared to be a herd of ghosts, she would’ve called them crazy. Well, by golly, she had wanted a change from all the pain she’d found in Tennessee, and this was most definitely a change. “Be careful what you wish for,” she muttered, then spoke louder. “Let me concentrate. Don’t anyone talk to me, please.”
With both hands fisted to her heart, she closed her eyes and relived the moment she and Mathison were in the in-between. She felt the warmth. The peacefulness. Dare she say it? Yes, she dared. She felt the love return and wrap around her like a favorite blanket and hold her close, promising her she was safe. Breathing in deeply, Mathison’s comforting scent steadied the memory even more. Everything felt so real that she squinted against the blinding brightness and almost cried out.
“Open your eyes,” Intuition whispered.
As soon as Calia did, she wished she hadn’t. “Damn.”
The light from her memory beat back the impenetrable darkness, revealing glistening walls of black stone rising so high she couldn’t tell where they stopped. This was indeed what some might call a bottomless pit, and at its center stood a pair of jagged spires with winding staircases wrapped around them. The stairs led to narrow platforms perched at their tops. But it wasn’t their jaw-dropping height that bothered her most. It was the deep mounds of bones piled around their bases. An incalculable number of empty-eyed skulls stared out into nothingness. Innumerable bodies lay twisted and broken. Legion’s remains. Sent to a plunging death for their loyalty.
“So we weren’t placed on either of the platforms but at the bottom of the pit.” Calia scrubbed her arms. The grisly sight made the place seem a great deal colder.
“Strange, indeed,” Intuition remarked. “I wonder why?”
Then it came to Calia, clear as day. If she’d fallen to her death, she couldn’t try to send Mathison some sort of telepathic plea to come save her, if such a thing existed between shifter mates. “I am definitely the cheese in the trap. They want me to lure Mathison here.” Under no circumstances would she do that. Somehow, one way or another, she would get out of this hellhole all by herself—well, and with the help of her inner wolf and a bunch of ghosts.
Chapter
Thirteen
His rage unchecked, Mathison rode hard toward the clan seat of the wildcat shifters. He wished he could shift to cover more ground, but feared he might need his mount once he recovered Calia. Until she learned how to assume her wolf form, she was dependent on other means to carry her through the forest at a decent pace.
The encounter with the feline shifter Abicas and her young one had not been mere happenstance. Nay, the conniving wretch had been sent to delay them, stall them in one spot outside the protection of Wraith lands until Calia could be taken.
He clenched his teeth so hard that his jaws crackled with the effort. They had played right into those damned witches’ hands. Carman had to have done it. While powerful in her own right, Bansys did not possess the energy it would take to sweep another shifter into nothingness.
Before he’d left the clearing where the vile incident had taken place, he’d willed Tanpip to fetch Otto and return the pup safely to Wraith Tower. Under no circumstances would he allow anything ill to befall Calia’s loyal beast. His dear one had experienced enough heartbreak without adding that pain to her troubles. Tanpip had quickly appeared, swooping into the forest in his owl form, then shifted to his human form to ride Calia’s mare with Otto clutched on the saddle in front of him. The man understood his duty and would not fail.
As Mathison pounded across the wildcat clan’s lands. Their guardian wards hissed and spat at him, sounding the alarm of his trespassing. He ignored them, concentrating on contacting Calia with his mind, the same as he had willed his thoughts to Tanpip. But all that met his efforts was an ominously dark silence that tightened his gut even more. Either they had placed some kind of barrier around her, or she was…
“No!” He gnashed his teeth, spitting against that possibility. He would not entertain the thought of her being ripped out of his life. Not when he’d just found the missing part of his soul and felt complete for the first time in existence. He allowed Horse to slow his pace as they neared the sprawling lair house of Chieftainess Yellis and Chieftain Thunden.
“Kill anyone ye wish,” he told his aggressive mount as he leapt from the saddle before the animal fully halted.
Horse tossed his head and pierced the air with a deathly scream. The beast enjoyed wreaking havoc and doing his part to take down their enemies.
Yellis, Thunden, and their personal guards stepped out onto the broad stone stoop at the front of their keep in their human forms. They were as long, lean, and tawny as their feline spirit animals and held their spears at the ready.
Mathison didn’t slow. He charged toward them with a deadly growl.
“Yer mate is not here, mighty Wraith.” Yellis hefted her spear higher, readying it for the throw. “Abicas had no choice but to cooperate with Bansys and the Shadowmists. They held her child captive until the deed was done.”
“Her young one was with her.” He had neither the time nor the patience for lies. “Tell me where my wife is, or I shall send yer clan into extinction by ripping out each of yer throats with my bare hands.”
“Grenzie is the eldest of Abicas’s young ones. They took Tyen, the youngest.” Yellis turned and waved someone forward. “Explain yerself to the mighty Wraith. Show him.”
With a small, wailing child clutched in her arms, Abicas strode forward, her golden eyes flashing with a mother’s rage. She turned the bairn to face Mathison, revealing that the poor wee one, who couldn’t be more than a year old, bore an angry red, freshly branded symbol, the symbol for ‘slave’, on the curve of her plump little cheek. “They swore not to harm her if I cooperated with them. Look what they did to her! Look what they did to my child!”
