Midnight Wolf (Shifters Unbound #11)(91)

Tamsin stepped back, the carpet feeling tacky under her booted feet. Angus remained in place, partly shielding her from whatever was about to happen.

Lady Aisling’s hair was flame red, a more intense red than Tamsin’s, and must be very long, because the looped braids wrapped several times about her head and then hung to her shoulders. Delicate pointed ears pricked from among the braids. Tamsin resisted reaching up and touching her own ears. They were ever so slightly pointed at the tip, but she’d always thought that came from being a fox.

Lady Aisling’s eyes were a brilliant green, unlike most Fae’s, which were dark, like Ben’s. The color was brighter than any jewel and glittered in the drab room.

Outside the vehicles halted, doors opening. A man spoke through a bullhorn. “Very slowly, come outside, hands on your heads, and kneel on the ground.”

“How rude,” Lady Aisling said. “I would get very dirty.”

“Now,” the man said. “Or we will open fire.”

Tamsin twitched, anticipating bullets entering her back. Angus stepped behind her as though to shield her from the humans outside.

Tamsin ducked past him to the door before he could stop her and lifted her forefinger to the mass of police outside the trailer. “Can you all wait just one minute?” she called. “We’ll be out in a sec.”

“Tamsin,” Angus said in exasperation.

Whether Tamsin had startled the cops or they weren’t in position yet, the bullets didn’t fly, and the man with the bullhorn was momentarily mute.

“Tamsin, would you like to assist me?” Lady Aisling asked.

“How?” Tamsin turned to her in bewilderment. She didn’t know anything about breaking molecular bonds in gunmetal.

“I will teach you. Take my hand.”

Tamsin caught Ben’s expression, a warning. Lady Aisling didn’t notice, only held her hand out, somewhat impatiently, to Tamsin.

Tamsin slid her fingers around it.

“Now,” Lady Aisling said.

And Tamsin could see. Everything. What it was made up of, bone and muscle, metal and wallboard, iron and steel. The lattice structure of every single thing imprinted itself on her mind, showing her the world as a series of geometric shapes, from cubes to tetrahedrons to spheres, like the rain. Even the raindrops outside the door coalesced into crystal lattices.

Lady Aisling herself was a frame filled with pure power. The red-haired woman in gardening clothes was not her, Tamsin suddenly understood, but the image she projected.

Everyone in the room appeared like that. Ben’s human form was transposed over something huge and dark, bigger than Tiger or Zander, its essence stuffed down into Ben’s shorter frame. It was ugly, monstrous, but at the same time, Ben’s compassion and sense of fun emanated from it.

Zander shared his human space with a giant polar bear, bear’s and human’s dark eyes glistening as they focused on her.

This must be how Shifters could shift, Tamsin realized with newfound clarity. They were two-natured, both forms taking up the same space. Her own body was transposed with that of a red furred fox with slender dark legs. Shifters simply became more of one than the other when they chose, she abruptly understood. Anything in the way of that space, like clothes, got torn apart.

Tiger was the oddest, as there wasn’t much difference between his human and tiger forms, which were occupying almost the exact the same space. No wonder he shifted so easily—his two natures molded and flowed into each other without impediment.

And Angus . . .

He was a black wolf through and through, his human shape and wolf very close in stature. Dark fur rippled as he moved, his gray eyes narrowing identically in both forms, which made Tamsin want to laugh.

Angus also contained a flame deep in his chest that burned blue white. It matched the glow that shone from within Tamsin herself, and then she saw the silver threads that stretched between them.

“I didn’t realize.” Tamsin touched the strands, her voice dropping to a whisper. “The mate bond is a real, physical thing. Not just a metaphor for Shifters who fall in love.”

Tiger nodded, gazing straight at the shimmering silver threads as though he saw them too. So did Ben. Zander, who obviously couldn’t, frowned.

Tamsin put her hand on Angus’s chest, right over the glow. It wasn’t hot, but soothing somehow. “Mate of my heart,” she said, a tremble in the words.

Angus covered her hand with his and then leaned to her and kissed her lips. “Mate of my heart,” he said in a gentle rumble. “We’re about to be arrested.”

Tamsin grinned at him, kissed him one more time, and turned back to Lady Aisling. “Let’s do this.”

Lady Aisling gave her an it’s-about-time look, raised Tamsin’s hand in hers, and gazed down at the weapons.

She didn’t say a word, didn’t chant, didn’t sing. A jolt went through Tamsin as Lady Aisling simply willed the stiff cubic forms and polyhedrons of the bonded elements in the weapons to revert to their natural state.

Whatever heating, cooling, pouring, or molding had been done to make the guns and the ammunition now came undone. The weapons radiated heat, metal protesting being broken apart, the objects creaking and groaning as they struggled to stay together.

Then they weren’t weapons anymore—guns, rifles, the strange avocado shape of the grenades—but parts, shapes, pieces held together with pins, rivets, or the melting of metals. They all shook apart, crumbling, dissolving.