Wildfire Griffin (Fire & Rescue Shifters: Wildfire Crew #1)(75)
“Well, we might be able to help anyway.” Edith could feel from the mate bond that Rory was stifling a grin. “We’re pretty good with animals.”
The woman swept her hand round in an inviting gesture. “Be my guest. The poor thing has been crying for its mother for hours. It’s been breaking all our hearts.”
Rory cocked an eyebrow round at them all as the woman rejoined her crew. “Huh. Just as well we came this way. Well, let’s see what we can do. Fenrir, you’d better hang back a bit.”
The hellhound grumbled, but lay down. The rest of them tagged along at Rory’s heels. The ‘tangle’ that the woman had indicated was a solid wall of brambles with wicked, two-inch thorns. Rory crouched, trying to peer through it.
“Callum?” he asked. “Sense anything?”
Callum’s eyebrows drew down. “Yes. But it’s…odd.”
A soft, plaintive call came from the heart of the thicket.
“Oh, poor thing,” Edith exclaimed. “Whatever it is, it’s just a baby.”
“I think I see how it got in there.” Rory pressed even closer to the ground. “None of us are going to be able to fit through, though.”
Wystan was already unslinging his medical kit. “If we fire up the saw, we’ll terrify it. It could hurt itself even further. Can you call it out, Rory?”
“Only one way to find out.” Rory dropped his voice into a soft, gentle purr. “It’s all right, little one. We won’t hurt you.”
There was a pause. The strange, chirping call came again, sounding uncertain.
“That’s it.” Carefully, Rory reached into the brambles. He used the thick sleeve of his protective jacket to hold the cruel thorns back, widening the gap. “We’re friends. We want to help. Come out.”
Brambles rustled. Slowly, tentatively, a white shape emerged.
It wasn’t a deer.
“Wystan,” Rory said, as they all stared at the trembling baby unicorn. “I think this one’s for you.”
*
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Have you read the first Fire & Rescue Shifters series? If not, find out where it all began in Firefighter Dragon… featuring the parents of the Wildfire crew!
Keep reading for an extract…
Bonus Extract - Firefighter Dragon
The first thing Virginia Jones had learned in her very first lecture as a college student was that real archaeology was nothing like archaeology in the movies. “We do not,” her professor had declared as he swept the rows of eager young faces with a withering stare, “break into foreign locations with crowbars and dodge deadly traps in order to find lost golden treasures.”
If he could see me now, Virginia thought with black humor as she levered the crowbar, the old man would have an aneurysm.
Admittedly, the foreign location was a construction site in the south of England, and the deadly traps were a couple of CCTV cameras, but Virginia was pretty sure her old professor would still have disapproved. Particularly as she was technically—OK, very definitely—breaking the law. Along with the site’s side gate. If she could manage to get the stupid thing open.
Next time I have to break and enter in order to protect a site of major historical interest, I’m bringing an angle grinder. Virginia threw her full weight against the crowbar, and was rewarded by the creak of complaining metal as the gate twisted on its hinges. Taking a firm grip on both her nerves and her metal detector, Virginia wriggled through the gap.
In the green static of her rented night vision goggles, the construction site looked like a lunar landscape, with deep ruts and craters where the bulldozers had already scraped back the topsoil. Virginia scowled, anger flooding through her at the sight. Whatever vestigial burial mound might have remained would have been thoroughly destroyed, and precious information along with it. She could only hope that she wasn’t already too late to save priceless artifacts from being crushed and desecrated beyond hope of recovery by the uncaring machines.
Checking the compass on her cell phone, Virginia rotated to orient herself. Far below her to the south, she could see the distant lights of Brighton, strung out along the seaside. Up here on the rolling chalk hills of the South Downs, the city looked like a glittering handful of jewels in a cupped palm.
An image of what it would have looked like over a thousand years ago flashed through her head—just a few tiny sparks from the hearths of the Saxon settlers, surrounded by vast, forested darkness. Had one of those settlers looked up at the looming hills where she now stood, and planned how he would be buried there so that he could watch over his descendants as they multiplied in the new home they had named after him...?
“I hope so,” Virginia muttered to herself.
Unslinging her metal detector, she set to work. The chalky soil slid under her boots as she methodically quartered the site, swinging the metal detector with a steady rhythm. For the moment, she kept out of view of the CCTV cameras that guarded the scattered bulldozers parked at the center of the site. Her heart leapt at every squeal and click in her headphones, only to plummet again as her searching fingers uncovered nothing more than a stray nail or discarded Coke can.