A Love Untamed (Feral Warriors #7)(58)

Brinlin backed up another step. “I can’t help you.”

Grizz matched his step, stalking him. “Give me her address.”

“I don’t know it.” The smaller man glanced behind him, unable to back up any farther for the stack of blank canvases behind his heel. “She probably doesn’t even have one. She lives in the f**kin’ middle of nowhere.”

Grizz took another step, until less than a foot separated them, his muscles tense, his patience gone. At seven-foot-two, he towered over the other man and used every bit of that height advantage to intimidate. “Then you’ll take us to her.”

“No! I mean . . . look.” Brinlin visibly swallowed, sweat beginning to glisten on his temples, his gaze darting everywhere but Grizz’s face. “There’s a lockbox in the woods where I deliver supplies to her once a month and pick up her list for next month. That’s it. I never see her.”

“When do you deliver the drop-offs?”

“The first of each month.”

Which was still four days away. He couldn’t wait four days. He was already running out of patience. “Tell us how to reach the drop box.”

“I . . .” He swallowed. “She’ll kill me.”

Grizz’s fangs and claws erupted. “It’s either her or me,” he growled.

The man paled so quickly, Grizz thought he was going to pass out. “Are you going to hurt her?”

“We just need her help.”

Despite his obvious shaking, Brinlin scoffed. “Good luck with that. The only time I ever met her, she pulled a shotgun on me.”

“Yet you continue to take her supplies?”

“Providing for Sabine has been my clan’s responsibility for as long as anyone can remember. Centuries. Probably longer. She’s a loner, like I said. Where she goes, someone in my line follows . . . at a distance. My father was out here first, nearly a hundred years. But he got eaten by a grizzly, and I moved out here to take his place.”

“I was told she’s Mage. Why is a Therian clan providing for a Mage?”

“She’s not Mage. Well, maybe she’s part Mage. I don’t know. And I don’t know how the promise to bring her supplies started. It’s just something we’ve always done.”

Grizz felt his claws and fangs retract. He had no control over their comings and goings and wondered if he ever would. “You’re going to give me directions to that drop box,” he said calmly. “Or I’m going to rip out your liver.”

The man blanched. “You can’t tell her how you found her. You can’t implicate me.”

“Directions.”

Brinlin took an unsteady breath. “Right.” He peered at Grizz doubtfully. “How well do you know this area?”

“Not at all. Print me out a map.”

Another shuddering breath. “Okay.”

As Brinlin scurried to his laptop, Lepard asked, “What does she look like? Sabine.”

“Dark hair, reddish. Pale skin. Pretty, I think, but it was hard to tell since she was watching me through the sights of a gun.”

Ten minutes later, map in hand, Grizz and Lepard climbed back into their rental vehicle and left.

“The woman sounds like a real charmer,” Lepard commented.

“Maybe. Or maybe she’s just being defensive.”

“What do you mean?”

“The Indian said she can see into a man’s soul. Sounds like some kind of empath to me.”

Lepard’s mouth opened. A thoughtful moment later, he muttered, “Maybe she senses things about people, and can’t turn it off . . .”

“Which would account for her need to protect her solitude, with a gun if necessary.”

“Can you imagine the loneliness of that kind of life?”

“I’m thinking more of the kind of welcome we’re likely to get. And the chances she’ll accompany us willingly to Feral House.”

Lepard snorted. “Like negative forty? And I thought this mission had failure written all over it. Try goat f**k. In great big neon caps. There’s no way in hell this is going to work. On either end.”

“Probably not. But we don’t have a lot to lose at this point.”

“Considering that the original Ferals are going to wind up killing us either way?” Lepard gave a humorless laugh. “We are one hundred percent f**ked.”

Snow was falling lightly, the air frigid, as Melisande looked around, searching for a more defensible position. Because the damned labyrinth would almost certainly send someone to try to kill her again.

Or some thing.

She didn’t have long to wonder what. Minutes later, the sound of pounding hooves had her turning and staring in rising horror at the beast charging at her from across the snowy plain. The size of a bull, it had a doglike snout with wicked teeth and a thick greenish gray hide. But it was the horns on its head that were scaring her shitless—not two, as a bull would have, but a crown of six, long and narrow, like six short swords ready to cut her into steaks.

She pulled her knives, mentally calculating the beast’s speed and the difficulty of ducking the horns to leap on to its back.

The beast let out a bloodcurdling roar and lowered its head, telling her in no uncertain terms that it meant to kill her, that the labyrinth and its Mage masters would not allow her to leave this place alive. And for one dark moment, she feared that was exactly what would happen. That she’d never see Fox again, never see Ariana or her sisters. Fear curled inside her.