Cursed by Destiny (WG 3) (36 page)

The captain and copilot were a nice couple who came out to greet us and explain our flight plan. When they disappeared, Bren cornered me. “What took you so long?” He sniffed. “And why do I smell Misha all over you?”

I’ll just tell them the truth. After all, I’ve done nothing wrong. It’s not like I had sex with the guy—hell, I hadn’t even kissed him. All I did was try to give us some leverage on this suicide mission. What’s wrong with that? I mean—

“Sweetie, what’s wrong?” Emme asked.

“I drank Misha’s blood.”

That drew everyone’s attention; even Tye sat up. Their brows creased in unison. I steeled myself against the inevitable bombardment of questions, screams, and “Why did you do it?”s. Danny came to my rescue before the first stone was cast. “That’s a great idea, Celia. It will help make you stronger on the trip.”

Thank the Lord everyone considered Danny a supernatural expert. His comment mollified everyone’s fears. I sat and attempted to join their conversation. Danny and Emme invited Tye to join us. They were nice like that. I wasn’t.

Tye of course parked his cocky ass right next to me and flashed one of his sexy grins. It was all I could do not to smack him with a barf bag. My claws protruded when he inched closer and leaned into me. Had it not been for the sound of the plane door opening, I would have sliced that damn dimple clean off his face. I almost fell off my seat when I saw who stood there.

Misha had sent reinforcements.

Ying-Ying and Kuan Jang Nim Chang boarded the plane with backpacks and wide grins. Ying-Ying said something in Mandarin at the same time Chang fired off some Korean. Everyone looked to me as if I was the translator.

Shayna bent forward and whispered frantically in my ear. “Do you think he brought his balls?”

“We all need balls to survive this mission,” Bren answered for me.

I stood and bowed to them. “Welcome. Please join us.” I motioned to the chairs with a slight giggle. Team Aric comprised of Taran and the
were
equivalent of Special Forces. Team Celia consisted of a brand-new wolf, a former
lone
, a horny lion, three weirdos, and two non-English-speaking sadists.

And let the adventure begin.

We departed Tahoe sometime after eight. The flight to Amsterdam alone would last nine hours. Bren suggested a poker game to pass the time. I hated playing poker with him because he always won. This time, Tye gave him a run for his money and so did Ying-Ying. It was a real exciting game and kept everyone involved even after most of us folded. Kuan Jang Nim Chang repeatedly gave Bren advice in Korean.

Bren pointed to his cards. “That shit won’t work, Chang. If I place these down, he’ll get me here.” Chang squinted at his cards and patted Bren’s back apologetically.

Shayna stopped looking at Ying-Ying’s cards to crinkle her pixie face. “You understood him?”

Bren scratched his scruffy beard. “Hell no. But I got the gist.”

Shayna’s phone rang, and I didn’t need to hear Koda’s voice to know it was him. Her smile lit up the cabin right before she stole into the back bedroom to speak with him.

I couldn’t believe my eyes when Bren tossed his cards on the table. He took Shayna’s place and sat next to Ying-Ying, at first to help her with the game. It didn’t take him long to flirt, tease, and charm her. Ying-Ying giggled at Bren’s attention. I shook my head. Leave it to him to charm the yoga pants off someone without even speaking her language.

Emme sat next to Tye. He patiently explained his strategy to her while she listened closely and tried to understand. He wasn’t being inappropriate with her, so I couldn’t be mad; in fact, he was actually very nice to her. He caught me watching and smiled. I ignored him to stalk to the refrigerator and grab us more drinks. I’d just filled my arms with water bottles when an uproar erupted from the table. Ying-Ying had won with Bren’s tutelage and walked off with over two hundred dollars.

“Great job, Ying-Ying,” I said. She asked me something in Mandarin. All I understood was Bren’s name and made the mistake of nodding. Her whole face beamed and she bowed back excitedly. I realized I’d done something terribly wrong when she grabbed Bren and led him to the rear of the plane.

Bren saluted me before they disappeared. “Thanks for the good word, Ceel.”

Shayna screamed and raced back to the main area with her hand clasped over her mouth. “They’re, like, going to do it.”

I ignored Emme’s blush and handed Tye a water bottle. “You don’t drink?” he asked.

I shrugged. “Occasionally, but since we’re headed for Africa I figured we need to hydrate.”

“Nice to see all the Girl Scout training has paid off.”

“Mmm. I was never a Girl Scout. We’ve never even been camping.”

Tye almost choked on his water. “Tell me you know how to build shelter and fire.”

“Nope.”

“You do hunt, though, right?”

“No. I eat meat, but I like animals too much to kill them.”

Tye glanced around the cabin, horrified. “What can you do, then . . . any of you?”

My tigress barreled to the surface. “Who the
hell
do you think you are?”

Emme frowned. It always impressed me how she oozed cuteness even while fuming. “I’ll have you know we’re all excellent fighters—”

“Well . . .” Danny interrupted.

Emme’s blush returned. “Except for Danny, but he’s smart and an excellent researcher.”

My head jerked toward the bedroom. “Um . . .”

“And, well, Ying-Ying, too.” Emme’s blush deepened.

Tye appeared ready to vomit. “Ying-Ying can’t fight, either?”

Shayna held her hands out. “No, man. But her yoga skills are . . . superb.”

“She’s here to do
yoga
?” Tye let out a string of swearwords. “This is a nightmare! How are we going to get the stone if I’m busy babysitting?”

“We’re not inept,” I hissed. “We’ve fought our way out of many dangerous situations.”

“I’ll believe it when I see it, sister.”

“I am
not
your sister.”

Tye growled. “No. You’re not. You’re just the one I’m destined to be with.”

Tye grabbed a blanket and pillow and threw himself across the couch with his back to us. Turned out he wasn’t so impressed with me after all.

Chang muttered something in Korean as he watched Tye get comfortable. I nodded at him, agreeing. “Yeah, I know. What a total asshole.”

I turned on my heel and prepared for bed. Sometime around one in the morning West Coast time, I woke up. Emme and Shayna lay in bed with me. To my surprise and relief, Shayna hadn’t woken up screaming. She sometimes twitched and whimpered, but she would settle and return to sleep.

I moved slowly to avoid waking my sisters and slid open the window shade. From what I could see out the window, it appeared we’d just landed in Amsterdam. A team of men in safety orange suits rushed to the plane and prepared to refuel the jet. Our captain stepped out and spoke to one of the workers, smiling. His pleasant demeanor reinforced that all was well.

Next stop: Tanzania.

“Why do you sleep with them?” Tye sat on the couch opposite us, his clear blue eyes appearing to glow from the subtle light in the cabin.

I didn’t understand why he was asking, but I answered anyway. “There’s not a lot of room considering Bren and Ying-Ying hogged the back.” I covered Emme’s back with the blanket when she shivered. “Besides, it’s not a big deal. We grew up sleeping together.”

Tye leaned forward, causing the sheet around him to slide to his waist. “Didn’t you have your own rooms?”

“No. Our parents slept in a pullout sofa in the living room when we were little, while we shared a bed in a small bedroom. In our first foster home we were separated . . . but that just made us want to be together more.” I didn’t elaborate and hoped he wouldn’t ask for details.

“You were in foster care?”

I nodded.

“What happened to your parents?”

“They were killed during a home invasion.”

Tye’s frown relaxed into something that resembled shock. I guess no one had bothered to tell him anything about me, except that we should have cubs together. “You said ‘our first’—how many foster homes did you end up in?”

“Just one more. Ana Lisa, our foster mom, kept us and gave us a real home. Her house had only two bedrooms so we went back to sharing a room.” My fingers traced along the sill in an attempt to distract myself from my rising discomfort.

“Four girls in a room together and you didn’t kill each other?”

“No, we’ve always been close.” I scooted off the couch and disappeared into the bathroom, well aware of Tye’s gaze following me.

I waited outside the bathroom door when I finished. Tye now lay across his bed, supporting his weight on one elbow. He watched me, as if expecting something extraordinary. I returned to bed without a word, hoping he’d get the hint that I no longer wished to discuss my past or anything else. He continued to regard me with interest. I ignored him and tried my best to fall back asleep.

Our plane soared through the skies for ten more hours before landing in a small airport in Arusha, Tanzania. It was eleven in the morning in Tahoe, but nine at night in Arusha. Evil, it seemed, had no sympathy for jet lag. We grabbed our packs and hurried off the plane. Just because it was night didn’t mean we could stop to rest.

I rubbed my skin, feeling sticky from the dry heat digging its way through my pores despite the absence of sunlight.

“How far is it to Ngorongoro Crater from here?” Danny asked Tye.

“Pretty damn far. We have another plane ride to the Manyara airstrip and then a two-hour drive on gravel roads to the park.”

Shayna threw her pack over her shoulder and peered at Misha’s jet. “Why don’t we just refuel and keep going?”

“The jet’s too big and too damn obvious. The Alliance greased a lot of palms to avoid stopping at Kilimanjaro International, but we still need to be smart and lie low.”

Emme ran next to me in order to keep up. I placed my arm around her lower back to help her along. We stopped in front of a small white plane, large enough to seat about ten passengers. My eyes scanned the desolate hangar. “Where’s our pilot?”

Once more Tye’s dimple made an appearance. “You’re looking at him, dovie. Like Makawee said, I’m a
were
of many talents.”

My sisters and I exchanged glances before following him onto the small aircraft. It wasn’t a new plane, nor was it fancy or sleek like the jet. But it seemed in working order and thankfully rust-free.

Tye asked me to ride shotgun. I obliged in an effort to be civil, but didn’t plan on socializing much. I relaxed when I saw how he flipped the switches with ease and adjusted the controls as if he’d done it a thousand times. My anxiety returned as the small aircraft sped down the runway and ascended into the pitch-black sky, leaving the bright lights of the runway behind. I had no clue how he knew where to go. Despite my tigress eyes I couldn’t detect anything in the horizon.

Tye laughed. “You didn’t strike me as the nervous sort until now.”

I disregarded his comment and tried hard to find a landmark. “How do you know which direction to fly?”

“My grandmother used to fly all over the world. She started teaching me around the time I was six. I know my way around the air, sometimes even better than on land.” His fingers fiddled with a knob before turning the control and tilting the plane slightly toward the right. “Africa and I are old pals. I’ve flown here at least a dozen times.”

I watched his motions closely, knowing if it was up to me to fly the small aircraft we would all just have to die. “Why?”

“Because I enjoy it.”

“No, I mean, why Africa specifically?”

“I’m a lion, dovie. I wanted to trace my animalistic roots. Haven’t you ever thought about returning to the motherland?”

“My motherland is Jersey.”

That earned me another laugh. “So there’s a personality deep beneath that tough exterior.”

“I’ll have you know I’m pretty hilarious once you get to know me.”

“So are you saying we’ll get to know each other after all?” He waggled his eyebrows.

“Not in the way Destiny intends.”

“You don’t believe in Destiny?”

“It’s hard to believe in someone who wears a dead weasel around her neck and zebra cowgirl boots.”

Tye grinned. “She’s not so bad. She’s actually a nice girl, just a little quirky.”

“You
know
her?”

“Yeah, we grew up together.”

It was hard for me to picture Destiny as a child, although she seemed very infantile in her own way. “So in addition to Africa you’re also old pals with Destiny?”

“Yeah, we are.” He smiled fondly as if remembering, but then his smile vanished as he spoke. “My parents are pures and have always rubbed elbows with the elite. Destiny’s parents are famous witches. When she was born, they knew right away she was a Destiny.”

My head angled toward him. “You mean they knew Destiny should be her name?”

Tye regarded me like I’d missed something important. The creases in his brow softened when he realized I was genuinely awaiting his response. “Destiny is not her name,” he said slowly. “It’s what she is. About once every century an especially gifted baby girl is born from a union of two witches—a sort of soothsayer. The extra talents she’ll possess vary from each individual, but the common trait is her aptitude to predict the future. It’s tradition to name her after the original soothsayer, but she’s always referred to as Destiny.”

I adjusted my position as much as the small area would allow, but the so-called cockpit was too cramped to permit much movement. “That’s kind of strange. If she has a given name, why don’t people use it?”

“Because it’s Trudhilde Radinka.” He shrugged. “If it were me, I’d sure as hell go by Destiny.”

I blinked back at him. “No kidding.”

“Give her a chance, Celia. She’s a good girl with a heavy burden on her shoulders. Since her birth, her parents have always thrown her power in people’s faces. It’s been hard for her to make friends.”

I never thought I could relate to Destiny, but I did then. Friends weren’t a gift that came easy for me. I hadn’t stopped to think how someone like her would fare. “She seems so peculiar. Between her style of dress and my experience with her in vamp court, she’s not someone I’ve longed to approach. But . . . if you consider her a good person, I’ll make an effort to be nice if I see her again.”