Page 25 of Ulune's Daughter

“Where are we with the wards?” Arch asks.

“Val did great. Room’s clear. Lockstone and what feels like an alarm and an obscuration ward on the safe. Everyone ready?”

To soft assents from the remaining team, the ink-mage kneels before the door and draws an elaborate key with a curling handle. My mate leans over his shoulder and blows it onto the flat, black panel on the door.

The ink-mage tugs on the handle and smiles at my mate when the door opens.

The three mages slip inside. None of them look back to see the feline shadow that follows them and slides through before the door closes.

The suite is large and expensively furnished, more like a spa than a hotel room. However, it smells just as all commercial rooms for rent do: of semen and disinfectant. Here, those smells are overlaid by a fake linen scent that wrinkles my nose.

I keep to the edge of the room, where the light from the large window overlooking the city does not reach. My mate’s team moves through the empty outer room quickly. When they reach the closed, sliding door, leading to the rest of the suite, my mate and Vivian draw to the sides and each grasp a door handle. Arch stands in the middle of the doors and draws a glittering ward over himself.

The ward does not stop what plows through the doors when my mate and the ink-mage draw them aside.

The creature’s stink hits me first. Carrion, ripe and rotting. I shake my head to dispel the stench. A rolling, coiling mass of flesh and fur follows the stink. It slams into Arch’s wards with barely a flinch and bowls the Fire-mage over. He thrashes beneath the creature, throwing up his arms to fend off clumsy swipes of its long claws.

The creature lands at an odd angle across the Fire-mage, kicking out with its back feet but not finding any purchase, as though the creature has lost sense of where the ground is.

The ink-mage leans over the thrashing creature, sketching shimmering sigils above its misshapen head. My mate’s hands move in a silent dance, creating a bridge of charms and wards over the twisting bodies. She leans over them and blows the glimmering rainbow onto the creature’s back.

It slumps onto the Fire-mage. He pushes it off with a pained grunt and rolls to his feet.

The creature pats a clawed hand across the thick carpeting. Then it goes still. Its flesh humps and heaves over its bones until a naked man with dark hair lies face-down on the carpet.

He doesn’t smell any better as a man. I sniff disdainfully.

“Fuck,” my mate breathes. “Jakob Maher.”

“Looks like he and Carter are mixing pleasure with their business,” the ink-mage says, looking through the doors into the bedroom.

My mate lifts her wrist and speaks into the black band. “Cami, you were right. It’s time for you to go.”

There’s a long silence before the Seer speaks, her voice small and tinny through the team’s earpieces. “No, I’m okay. I’m staying. I haven’t Seen anything more, but you need someone to keep watch. I’m it.”

My mate and the ink-mage exchange glances. After a moment, they nod to each other and my mate says, “Okay. Thanks, Cami.”

“Let’s tackle that lockstone,” Arch says, after he seals the gouges on his forearms with his Fire-magic.

Healing with fire is the equivalent of cauterizing the wounds. They won’t get infected, but they’ll leave scars. It’s not the way I’d ever choose to heal myself unless my wounds were life threatening and these aren’t, even for a human. Either the mage takes pride in his scars or he doesn’t trust anyone else to heal him. I haven’t seen any indication that my mate has healing magic, unlike my brother, although he is something of an anomaly for an Air-mage, but the ink-mage should be able to heal.

I puzzle over what it means that Arch doesn’t trust his team-mate to heal him as I follow the three mages through the doors into the suite’s bedroom.

There are two naked humans sprawled on the large, rumpled bed that’s the central feature of the room. From their position, we interrupted them mid-coitus, and they’ve been enjoying themselves in other ways. A fruity musk rises from a pile of blue-gilled, white mushrooms in a bowl on the bedside table. A faint chemical odor threading through the humans’ sweat tells me what they’ve been snorting without the need to see the mirror and rolled up bill discarded among the bedding.

I slide back a few paces to the sleeping jackalwere. It’s hard to smell anything over his carrion reek, but after several sniffs, I find the mushrooms’ note in his scent.

No wonder he was disoriented when he attacked. My mate’s team is lucky. If he hadn’t been befuddled with sex and psilocybin, he’d have been a more dangerous adversary. Although Cait fear nothing, we have a healthy respect for the jackal clans.

More evidence that my mate should not be running around without a protector.

As I look at the unconscious jackal, I contemplate ending his threat. He clearly has history with my mate and the fearful Seer. Threats to my mate cannot be tolerated. Beyond that, I have a particular dislike of men who hurt women; women should be cherished, protected.

And his smell offends me.

But I pause to consider, ears twitching as I listen both for signs of the three waking and my mate’s return. My mate’s team has done these three no violence. Even when he was pinned by the jackalwere, Arch only defended himself. Kellan and the ink-mage were careful to knock the jackalwere out, not injure him.

My mate is a clever creature. She does things with reason. She has worked hard to subdue these mortals without injury. If she wants them unharmed, then I will leave them unharmed, despite my instinct to end any threat to her.

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