Cougar's Courage (Duals and Donovans: The Different) (30 page)

Chapter Thirty-Six

Grand-mère followed a second later, not by walking through the door like anyone else would, but by materializing just inside the door, which never opened. She looked taller than normal and glowed spring green with energy.

“I rarely see green looking that angry,” Elissa commented to no one in particular.

Everyone except Gramps jumped, even Jack, who Cara thought would be used to Grand-mère’s tricks by now.

But even Gramps looked surprised when Grand-mère said, “Sorry about the dramatic entrance. I forgot I wasn’t corporeal in my hurry to get over here.”

“What brings you here in such a hurry?” Cara asked, although she had a sinking feeling she knew.

“There are certain words that travel on the wind of their own accord. Certain beings whose very names have enough power to stir the air.”

Grand-mère plopped down in Gramps’s ratty easy chair. She seemed to deflate, sinking back not just to her normal size but even smaller, like a spindly sapling. The green glow, though, stepped up, becoming brighter and stranger, reminding Cara of either antifreeze or lime Jell-O. “Children.” Grand-mère sighed. “I have been remiss in not telling you the whole truth. But even an old spirit can be embarrassed to admit her youthful errors.”

They cast wild looks at each other, trying to comprehend the enormity of Grand-mère admitting to error—let alone what the error might be.

“Sit down, children.” Grand-mère gestured as if it was her house. “Mind Sam’s poor hip. You might as well make yourself comfortable. It’s going to be a long night.”

Sam nodded and waved one hand feebly. “Someone want to start a pot of coffee?”

Elissa chuckled, a sweet, surprising sound amid the tension. “I’ll do it. It’s bound to be better than yours.” Everyone joined in the laughter and offered suggestions of things that might be better than Sam’s coffee—from three-day-old Tim Horton’s with curdled creamer to pine sap. Even Grand-mère pitched in with, “Pine sap’s great in comparison. Then again, I’m part tree.”

For a few minutes, as Elissa bustled around making coffee, then took the baby from Jude so she could nurse, things felt blessedly, deceptively normal.

Far too soon, Grand-mère cleared her throat in a way that echoed through the stratosphere. “After waiting for so long, I find myself impatient to tell a story. Settle down, everyone.”

Then Grand-mère began to speak, and Cara didn’t care about anything other than the story Grand-mère told. From the first words, the old manitou’s voice cast a spell—probably literally—over Cara, narrowing the world to Sam’s house but at the same time opening it up to whatever Grand-mère described.

“Since the French first came to this place, there has been trouble, and when the English joined them, the trouble became more complex. The mundane troubles you know from your history classes, children.” She glanced at the Americans. “The details are different in your country, but you know the larger picture. Cultures clashing, one with more material power and the other with roots in this place, with tragic results that linger to this day. Yet among all the ugliness and hate, individuals found their ways to understanding, friendship and even love. What you might not know is that the magics of the cultures interacted in similar ways, for good or ill.”

“Makes sense,” Jude said. “People are people, and at some point they’ll want to fuck each other or fuck with each other. If they have magic, it’s bound to get even messier.”

“There had always been skinwalkers. The first humans here tend toward shamanic gifts, rather than witch’s or sorcerer’s magic, and some beings will always choose the darker path. But faced with new enemies, who had both technology and magic they did not understand, more and more shamans who might have chosen otherwise felt that the skinwalker’s path might give them a weapon against the Europeans. It didn’t work well, but that didn’t keep angry young people from trying.” Grand-mère shrugged like a tree would shrug. “What the skinwalkers learned was that the European sorcerers, called loups-garous in French or weres in English, had more in common with them than either did with their own people. The skinwalkers and the loups-garous joined forces against both human and Different, native and foreigner, because they were rejected by all decent people.”

“So that’s part of the story,” Jack mused. “An old enmity that’s lasted until today. I can see where a bunch of bad-ass sorcerers and broken shamans might gang up on everyone else. But this is more personal. Someone in this village pissed someone off royally.” He screwed up his face. “I wish I could remember more of my conversation with Chenier. I know he dropped clues about what his deal was. There was definitely history with this village—but the fae magic must have wiped some of the details away, and the duals and word-magic thing took care of the rest.”

Grand-mère made a face that might have passed for a smile to someone who wasn’t paying attention. “I shouldn’t complain that my children are perceptive enough to see three chapters ahead in the story. But let me tell it in my own way.

“Now among the English and French people who came to this land, there were a greater number than the norm of Differents—witches, sorcerers, duals. I suppose they hoped to find, in the new society forming here, a more accepting place than the rigid old world, or at least a place where a wolf could run in the forest or a witch could work her craft far from interference. Inevitably, these Differents met those who were already here. Sometimes the results were tragic, but, more often than with the ordinary humans, they learned to live together.

“In due time, through fighting and fucking and talking and a few wars I never bothered to follow, a new society formed here, and a new country that called itself Canada instead of Nouveau France.” Cara inwardly gasped to realize how much history Grand-mère had condensed as if it had taken no more than a few weeks.

From Grand-mère’s ancient perspective, perhaps it hadn’t.

“Somewhere during this tumultuous time—I couldn’t tell you exactly when—a manitou who was certainly old enough to know better met a young French sorcerer named René Chenier.”

“That’s him!” Jack exclaimed. “He gave me his real name, which means he’s either damn arrogant or figured I wouldn’t live long enough to use it against him.” He blinked slowly as realization hit him. “But how is he still alive?”

Grand-mère turned her face away. The air around her became hot and red, as if it blushed from the force of her embarrassment. “I fell in love with him, or thought I did, and I shared his bed.”

Chapter Thirty-Seven

“Grand-mère!” Cara couldn’t keep her mouth shut. “That’s disgusting. He’s not even human!” She realized what she’d said and backpedaled swiftly, aware she, as a human, was in the minority in the room. “Which is fine if you’re not human in the first place, but Chenier was and isn’t anymore, and that’s nasty.”

Grand-mère shook her head. A vestige of a smile played on her lips, but it didn’t reach her eyes. “Ah, child, he was human, then. Human and handsome, as you and Elissa may have noticed. In those days, I’d had little contact with sorcerers, and I was intrigued by his powers as well as his person.” Her brown face turned several shades redder and more barklike. “In turn, he paid me court, as if he was madly in love with me. I knew it wasn’t precisely the truth, but he played the game well, and I enjoyed it.”

The air flushed even darker around her. “In those days,” she added, “I chose to appear different than I do now.” Her appearance briefly shifted to a much younger version of the Grand-mère they knew—deep green hair instead of green-streaked white, unlined face, features of inhuman but undeniable beauty. Jude gasped at the sight, and Rafe reached out his hands as if in recognition. “Too much work to keep it up these days. I’m sure you girls understand, and you just have to deal with makeup, not magic,” she said casually as she faded back to her normal appearance.

Both Cara and Elissa obligingly laughed, but internally, Cara called bullshit. Low-maintenance was one thing, but no female of any species would choose to look decrepit instead of beautiful unless there was some damn good reason. Probably something complicated and deeply personal and echoing a world of pain.

“Don’t lose track of the story, Grand-mère,” Rafe urged, polite as always.

“Yeah, get on with it,” Jack echoed, a twinkle in his dark eyes. Grand-mère threw a handful of dry leaves at him. The leaves turned into wasps that buzzed around him menacingly. He kept swatting at them, unable to actually make contact.

The tension in the room dissipated briefly at his squirming and batting at the air, especially when the wasps turned back into leaves and fell on his head.

But when Grand-mère began to speak again, her voice was strained, dark, barely audible and all thought of laughter fled.

“Chenier wooed me, and he won me. He was attractive and intriguing and seemed as fascinated by our differences as I was—a European sorcerer, ruled by logic and rigid magic rules and conceiving the Powers as sort of divine mechanics, and a nature spirit who knows all the Powers intimately, Trickster as much as the Lord and Lady. I was old enough to see that we would have difficulty being together for long. I told myself I would not let myself fall in love with him. I’m sure you can guess how well that worked. When he begged me for magic that would keep him young and healthy longer, I didn’t think twice. Why wouldn’t I want to keep my human lover young and handsome and by my side?

“Then he asked me whether I would have a child for him. He guessed that I could have a child with someone who was not my species. He wanted to see what powers the child of a sorcerer and a manitou might have, what such a child might look like—whether he could use such a child to become more powerful himself. It was, in his mind, purely an experiment and a source of power. He did not care for this would-be child, nor, I realized, for its mother. He was just curious. I said no, of course. And then the fighting commenced.”

Across the room, Elissa gestured in what Cara guessed to be a warding off of evil. Misusing sexuality and making a child just to experiment with it had to be anathema to a red witch. To any sane person, really, but especially to a red witch.

Grand-mère caught the gesture and nodded. “Evil indeed, child. Yet I could not bring myself to end his miserable life. Time and the hazards of life in the wilds for a man bred in a city would take care of that, I thought, and perhaps he might learn the errors of his ways before he died. I thought I withdrew my magic from him as we parted ways, but power calls to power, and his was strong. Enough of my spell lingered to extend his life. He spent years trying to win me back, or to somehow capture me and force me to bear his child. When I chose Rafe’s grandfather and we had children together, René went mad. Maybe he was mad to begin with and I hadn’t realized, because European ways were strange enough to me I might not have noticed.”

“Chenier killed my grandfather,” Rafe said starkly.

“Chenier captured him, tried to use him to blackmail me to his bidding. Golden Panther died rather than let himself be so used. Chenier told me about it in great detail, mind to mind so I could not kill him. I didn’t even have a body to burn.” The room grew misty as Grand-mère cried for her dead husband. “Chenier thought of duals as animals. He couldn’t believe I’d chosen one over him, as he saw it. He’s been trying to get revenge ever since—get revenge and get his hands on one of my descendants to torment and study and breed and eventually sacrifice to feed his dark magic.”

“Now I get it!” Jack exclaimed, “Elissa was right. He thought I was Rafe. I couldn’t figure out why he targeted me, but some of the things I half remember him saying make sense now if he thought I was you. And he thought the woman on my mind was Elissa. The good news is this means some of his information is foggy, but…” Jack hesitated. A look of horror crossed his face. “Forget that. There’s no good news. The bastard knows about Jocelyn.”

Rafe cursed, the air shimmering with his power, which rippled in darker, angrier colors than usual. “He’s responsible for my parents’ deaths, isn’t he? Because he wanted to get his filthy hands on me. I have dual blood as well as human and manitou, so there’s more power for him to play with. And now he wants our daughter.”

“In a lovely example of irony,” Grand-mère said, “you are alive and free now thanks to the very Agency that tormented you three so. You and your parents were living across the border at the time. René’s people had attacked some unfortunate woman who resembled my daughter’s human form and stole her baby, then killed it when they realized it wasn’t the child they sought. The Agency was tracking the sorcerers. Probably the RCMP had alerted them, because there had been other crimes in Canada. The Agency alerted local authorities there might be a magical serial killer in the area, and the local police brought a sorcerer of their own with them when a neighbor called about a suspected home invasion. If they hadn’t, they too would have died and so would you.”

“How did I end up in a human orphanage? Wouldn’t the sorcerer have known what I was? Elissa knew I was dual right away, even if she didn’t know the other part.”

Elissa kissed him. “My magic is keyed to the body, the physical world, so I can sense things like that. Sorcerers can’t always read auras. They use logic. And logically, you looked human. Your dad really was human, and your mother chose to look that way. The Agency might not have even known why your parents were targeted, since the other victim was a normy.”

Grand-mère nodded. “And I suspect my daughter’s last magic was spent greasing the wheels of possibility to hide you from the enemy.”