LIAM (The Rylee Adamson Epilogues, Book 2) (6 page)

She turned her head to us, big eyes blinking. She flicked her tongue out once.
I will wait as long as I can. I will need an hour at least to rest before I can head home.

I put a hand on her side. “Thank you. Hopefully we can make this happen fast.” I said the words but I think we both knew there was no way I was going to find a female ogre, convince her to come with me, and do it in an hour. Without causing any other problems along the way, at least.

Even my luck was not that good.

She bobbed her head, eyes clouded with concern.
Rylee would not be happy if I left her mate, without even trying to wait for him. If nothing else, I will do a sweep of the city for you before I leave.

I laughed, then realized she was serious. “You have no faith in me?”

As we flew I recalled that I have heard of this ogre tribe, but I assumed they would have gone in with the rest who were killed. They are . . . violent is too mild of a word. They are masochistic in the way they treat one another, and they treat outsider supernaturals as chattel and food. They are incredibly dangerous, Liam.

“Great,” I grumbled. “Anything else?”

She squinted her eyes in thought.
They are stronger and faster than the rest of the ogres out there, which is partly why they cut themselves off from the rest of their species. They are the ultimate killers.

I’d faced ogres before. Most were over seven feet in height and had a musculature that would rival the biggest body builders. They were fast, and they loved nothing more than a good fight.

So if this tribe was even more dangerous . . . as Rylee would say . . . fuck me. I drew in a breath. “Numbers?”

Many, many. I don’t know exactly, I only heard about them from those who’d passed by. But they are a big tribe from all accounts. A big mob. And if they have a mage . . . that will make your task multiply in difficulty like rabbits in the spring.

I scrubbed a hand over the back of my neck. We were into midnight hours with maybe six more before dawn broke, and every minute that ticked by was against me. This was no time for a long goodbye.

“Thank you, Ophelia. For everything.”

She winked one big eye and laid her head on the sand.
Be careful.

“We will.” At least as much as we were able to in the situation.

I sniffed the air, the smell of a multitude of animals, most not natural to the area, coursing back to me. I frowned as I plucked through the different scents. Too many animals in one place: my first thought was that it could be a holding pen for the ogres’ next meals.

“Come on, Levi. This way,” I said.

He shivered beside me in the dark, his eyes downcast.

Ophelia lifted her head a few feet.
One last thing. Don’t die. I don’t want to be the one to take that news to Rylee. She would never forgive me for letting you die.

I grimaced, wondering for a moment if Ophelia felt like that toward Rylee. Like she would never really forgive her because Rylee had been with Blaz when he died. He’d been protecting her, as was his job, but he’d left behind Ophelia and unborn children. I wisely kept my thoughts to myself, though.

Levi flinched as if she’d smacked him.

“She doesn’t mean that, does she?” he asked, his eyes barely lifting to mine.

I shrugged. “Death is something we deal with all the time.”

He frowned. “No, I mean would Rylee really not forgive her?”

I glanced at him as I walked up the beach to the tree line. “Rylee would forgive her. She has a heart that can’t hold a grudge.” But I knew what he was really worried about was if I died while with Levi, would Rylee let him come back. Levi and his sister had only been with us a few days, but I had no doubt it was the first time in their short lives they’d been safe and able to sleep at night without waiting for their door to bust open. His face was an open book: he didn’t want to lose that safe place if I didn’t make it through the ogres we were going to have to face.

“Don’t worry about Rylee. If anything happens she won’t blame you, kid.”

Faris was proof enough of Rylee’s ability to see all sides of the story.

I could almost feel the vampire laughing softly and I frowned. He was gone, his soul having crossed the Veil to the other side when the sunlight burnt him out of his body.

But . . . now and again, I could still feel Faris, almost like a ghost only I could sense. It was another thing I wasn’t prepared to talk to Rylee about. At least not yet. I wasn’t sure if it was his memories coming through the synapses of a brain we’d shared, or my imagination.

Not your imagination, you know that
, he whispered as if he stood beside me.

I hurried through the trees, picking my way easily in the dark, ignoring his voice. My eyes adjusted, but of course—behind me Levi crashed to the ground.

“Sorry. I can’t see,” he mumbled.

I turned, adjusted the bag on my shoulder, and opened it. At the bottom was a small flashlight. I pulled it out, flicked it on, and pointed it at the ground. “Keep it away from my eyes and yours.”

He took it with a nod. With him and the light behind me, the way ahead was clearer yet.

We moved—well, not silently—but quickly through the trees. I had to give Levi credit, he didn’t complain, not even when I heard him stub his toes, or stumble into a hole he didn’t notice. He just got back up and hurried to catch up. We cut across the green space, heading west toward the scent of animals that called to the wolf in me. What the hell were those fucking ogres up to?

I paused as the trees thinned and drew in a deep breath.

My wolf stretched forward, identifying everything I picked up on. Every kind of mammal, birds, reptiles, the numbers were staggering. I shook my head. That wasn’t possible. I had to be getting something wrong. I hurried forward, drawn by a curiosity that detoured me from the reason we were there.

Or perhaps the wolf in me knew something I didn’t. I was betting on my wolf. He was a tough bastard.

A large fence grew out of the forest, wrought iron, twelve feet high, razor wire at the top. I stared at it, thinking. Was it possible that the ogres had a second compound within this green space and we’d stumbled on it?

No, even my luck wasn’t that good. Logic kicked in and I knew exactly what we were looking at, and it wasn’t an ogre compound.

“That looks . . . bad,” Levi said. I reached back, grabbed him around the waist by his jeans and threw him up and over the fence. He screeched in mid-air and an answering screech from a nearby aviary burst through the night like a series of gun shots.

“Shut up,” I snapped as I climbed up the fence, pausing at the razor wire. I swung my bag first, covering the worst of the wire. Hanging by my hands, I swung my legs up and over, landing on top of my bag. From there, I leapt down on the inside of the fence line and landed inside the enclosure.

I climbed back up the wrought iron and pulled my bag down. There was no guarantee we were coming out the way we came in.

“Seriously, a little warning would have been nice, dude,” Levi muttered, brushing himself off.

I shrugged. “We’re in a hurry, I didn’t need a vote to tell me what I was going to do.”

The signage as we hurried along the path stopped him in his tracks. “If we’re in a hurry, then why are we going through a zoo?” he asked, not a drop of heat in his voice. Very unlike the other teenagers I knew. Then again, he’d had the shit beaten out of him regularly by his father. That didn’t leave much room for defiance in any soul.

I didn’t have an answer for him, not really. Why the hell
was
my wolf taking me through a damn zoo? I didn’t have a clue, but it felt right. Almost as if someone called to me.

“Turn the flashlight off,” I said.

He did as I asked, again without question.

I let the deeply rooted instinct in me take the lead. I followed my nose past enclosures of various kinds, some heavy with bars, others barely chicken wire, depending on the type of animal behind them. I barely saw the animals, though I could have named them by their scents. Zebra, chimpanzee, peacock, bear, and cougar. We passed the giraffes, and they blinked at us from well above our heads, their eyes following us.

Levi kept close. “What are we doing here?”

I answered him truthfully. “I don’t know.”

“Great.”

I wasn’t bothered that we were in the zoo, other than the time it was taking away from my search. But I’d learned with Rylee that there was a reason things happened, and while we were on a time crunch,
something
had brought us this way. The why of it was yet to be answered, but whatever it was calling to me hadn’t let up yet. I felt it like a pull through my soul, and my wolf wasn’t about to be denied. The tension grew, like elastic being pulled taut, ready to snap at any second.

I didn’t have to wait long to see where we were being led.

We followed the curving paved path around a sloping corner and came face to face with a large cat enclosure. There were wide flat stones in the middle of it, sand, a few scrub bushes, all made up to look like an African savannah. A slow rolling man-made river flowed around the edge of the structure, and I wondered if there was a crocodile or two floating about. For authenticity, of course.

I drew in a deep breath, tasting for the first time a scent that was all fire, as if the sun suddenly had a scent all its own.

Lions.

My wolf all but nodded. I approached the enclosure, taking it in. There was a small fence hip height to keep the public at a reasonable distance. A green space of maybe ten feet, and then there was a second, taller fence easily fifteen feet high of solid steel mesh. Beyond that was the actual enclosure itself with a third fence even higher and the makeshift moat six feet across.

It seemed overkill to me, and I wondered about the lions, why the enclosure would be set up this way.

I slipped off my coat and handed it and the bag of weapons to Levi. “Don’t lose this. If someone comes, hide.”

He raised an eyebrow as he took the bag, a flash of personality finally coming through the abuse. “This seems a bad time to commune with nature, if you ask me.”

My lips twitched. “Thanks, I’ll take it into consideration.”

Although, I asked myself the same question. What the hell was I doing? I was here in Seattle and my first task was to find a female ogre, not go to the zoo to check out the lions.

But that pull was still there, and my wolf all but shoved me forward. Whatever was going on, I needed to get in that lions’ pen.

Stupid, a part of my head warned me. Very stupid.

I ignored it, and hopped over the first fence. I strode across the green space, noting there were tiny depressions in the ground. Sensors of some sort? I bent and brushed a finger over one. It was a sensor with a red light that went out when I touched it. So I could short-circuit whatever it was. Was that good or not?

I stood and headed to the second fence. The steel mesh was an easy climb, but I took note of certain things that made me think perhaps my wolf didn’t know as much as he thought he did.

Like the thin wiring that wrapped around the mesh that looked suspiciously like electric shock wires.

A cold sweat broke out along my spine as I climbed. The electricity could come on at any second, and while there was a chance I would short circuit it just being supernatural, there was a chance the current was strong enough it could still work on me. Which brought the scene from
Jurassic Park,
where the kid gets blasted off the fence, to mind rather suddenly.

I hurried my climb.

At the top, I swung a leg over and dropped on the other side into a crouch. I held still, feeling the air thicken, not unlike the ozone in the clouds right before the lightning struck. I scented the air, drawing it over the back of my tongue. A low growl rumbled out of my chest without warning.

The heavy sun-filled, hot incense that was uniquely lion filled the air, growing stronger with each passing second.

The heavy thud of padded feet approaching kept me where I was in a crouch. From the back of the lion enclosure emerged a male easily twice the size of any normal African lion. His mane was black, his body a brilliant gold that glimmered even in the dark of night, and his eyes . . . his eyes were silver.

He was a Guardian.