A Shift in the Air (25 page)

“
No!” Calling on her own
air, praying she had enough to save Liam, Caitlin sent a blast
towards them and lifted pieces of wood, bits of plaster, and even
the remains of some of the furniture. She had to get to him. Cade
dragged Farren free, his jaws clamped around her ankle, and Mara
stumbled out after them.

“
Liam!”

The overwhelming urge to
take the book and run into the smoldering ruins drowned her.
No
.
You will not control me.
Weakened and
dizzy, his compulsion drew her toward the flames.

Mara tackled her. The two women went
down, knocking the breath from Caitlin’s lungs. A pile of plaster
shifted, and Fergus broke free, shielding himself with
Liam.

“
How could ya fuck this
piece of shite? Did ya really prefer a dog to me? Ya hid from me
for too long, Catie. And ye’re going to pay for that now. I’ve a
lesson to teach ya. Ya remember my lessons, yeah? Now bring me the
fuckin’ book before I take yer punishment out on him.”

Liam sagged against the earth
elemental, his eyes clouding with pain. Blood stained his white
shirt. “Caitlin,” he whispered, battling to draw breath.
“Run.”

With a groan, Mara got to her feet.
Caitlin fought the queasy exhaustion overtaking her, and what small
amount of her element she could grasp, she fed to Mara’s need. The
water elemental’s body vibrated with power, waves of heat and
humidity gathering around her. “Let him go, and no one
dies.”

“
Give me the book.” Fergus
dipped his head and lowered his voice, right in Liam’s ear. Caitlin
couldn’t pull the air to her fast enough to hear his words, but
Liam’s eyes rolled back in his head.

“
You’re going to burn.”
Mara’s voice turned coarse, deep, and the dark tinge sent a lance
of fear slicing through Caitlin’s heart. Red locks of hair rose
around Mara’s head like a fiery halo as her hands glowed white hot.
Waves of heat shimmered. The ground shook with Fergus’s fear, and
he dragged Liam back. Fire and water twisted together like ribbons,
and Fergus, high on his stolen air element, slung Liam over his
shoulder like the wolf weighed no more than a sack of potatoes, and
ran. The house heaved a heavy sigh and caved in, Mara’s powerful
charm exploding the plaster.

Liam screamed, a car door slammed, and
tires squealed. Caitlin couldn’t breathe. She had to get to
him.

Emptiness consumed her as she darted
around the front of the house. A cavernous hole where her element
belonged widened, enveloping her heart in a glacier as she found
only tire tracks in their wake.

“
No.” Caitlin sank to her
knees. “No, no, no.” Utter stillness surrounded her with only the
crackle of flames and the sorrowful drip of water breaking the
silence.

Liam wouldn’t survive. And neither
would she. Fergus would kill them both.

***

A strong hand wrapped around her arm.
“Get up. We have to get out of here and find Liam and that fucking
asshole.” Cade’s deep voice shook her out of her daze.

Oh God.
Six feet of solid muscle interrupted only by scars stood in
front of her, naked. Mara leaned heavily against him, her eyes dull
and red-rimmed, her jaw swollen. Strain tightened her lips. Water
dripped from her hair and eyelashes, weighing down her black
sweater.

Farren braced an arm on the hood of
the car and vomited. “Fuck me. Bastard broke a rib,” she
said.

Hysteria shook Caitlin’s entire body,
and she yanked her arm free from Cade’s grasp. “Liam’s
dead.”

“
You don’t know that.” Mara
grabbed her by the shoulders. “Look at me, Caitlin.” Flashes of
silver and bronze swirled around Mara’s irises. “Fergus ran because
he couldn’t fight all of us together. So what does that tell
you?”

“
That he’s going to kill
Liam. He’ll use him to hurt me as much as he can, and then he’ll
kill him.”

“
No.” Cade pulled a blanket
out of the trunk and wrapped it around his waist. “Mara’s right.
Fergus might be insane, but he’s also a fucking bully. And bullies
are usually cowards at heart. Find him so we can kill the piece of
shit and get Liam back.”

“
How?”

Cade snorted. “You’re an air elemental
linked to Fergus. You tell me.”

Taking a few steps away from the car
and the smoking destruction of Diedre’s house, Caitlin closed her
eyes and let the soft melody of her element wrap her in a gentle
embrace. Diedre’s brutal charm still wove a tight band around her
mind, but her own power, while unfocused, still functioned. The
ensuing eddy brought Liam’s scent, then Fergus’s, followed by
blood, fear, burning wood, and rain.

Bits of dirt, blades of
grass, and debris tumbled down the winding driveway. Caitlin
prayed.
Please. Let him be alive. Please
let me find him.

Nothing. No pull, no subtle vibration
urging her in any direction. No fresh scent of her mate, the
sweetness of freshly cut wood, the sea air, or the intoxicating
spice of his aftershave. Nothing.

“
If he’s still alive,
Fergus is hiding them.” Caitlin sank down in the mud and let her
head fall into her hands. “I don’t know what to do. They could be
anywhere. I can’t think.”

Mara knelt next to her. “Yes, you can,
Caitlin. You have to. Look.”

Caitlin followed Mara’s pointing
finger to the ground next to the car. A sliver of red leather
peeked out from behind the wheel.

The book. They had the
book.

A grim amusement curved the corner of
her mouth as Caitlin rose to collect their only hope. “I can,” she
echoed, laying her hand against the ancient leather, wishing for
some sign, some responding energy that would reassure her of their
task. No such answer rushed forth, but she refused to allow her
spark of hope to dim.

“
Let’s figure out how you
take your element back.” Mara held out her hand.

The water elemental’s clarity
bolstered Caitlin, clearing away more of the haze from Diedre’s
charm, and she nodded her agreement. “And then we find
Liam.”

***

After a tense phone call with the
rental car representative—who thankfully could unlock the car
remotely—Cade used Caitlin’s phone to call Peter.

“
Where the fuck have you
been?” Peter asked when the four of them huddled in the car around
the phone. “I’ve been calling you for an hour. You’ve got to get
back to Farren’s now.”

“
Fergus took Liam. Diedre’s
dead, but we have what we think is the book. Look, I had to shift
and…well, my clothes didn’t survive the attack. I need you to meet
us in Doolin in back of O’Connor’s Pub with fresh clothes and
cash.”

Caitlin hadn’t even opened the ancient
volume yet. The faded leather threatened to crumble to dust if
handled roughly and only luck had kept the pages intact after the
fire, wind, and water that had buffeted them all during the
maelstrom.

“
Liam? Oh God. I’m sorry,
Cade. I’m so sorry. I…think I know how Fergus found you. Brian’s
dead. Ewan and Tierney and I went out to run right after we talked,
and I found him at the edge of Farren’s property. Well, parts of
him. And when we came back, Colin and Abagail had disappeared.
Colin heard me on the phone with you when you told me about Diedre.
He’d have known that’s where you’d be.”

“
Shite,” Farren said and
slammed her hand against the back door. “Fucking piece of shite. We
grew up together. I’m going to rip his throat out if I see him
again.”

“
Why would he do this?”
Caitlin sat in stunned horror.

“
I…don’t know. But if
Fergus had him for what? Almost two days? Perhaps he compelled him
somehow. Or maybe he’s not the man I thought I knew. He never
respected my job—didn’t like how often I helped the practitioners.”
Farren’s frustration belied deeper pain.

Peter choked out another apology, but
Cade cut him off. “Look, unless you called Fergus himself and told
him where we’d be, I don’t want to hear another word. Not until we
get Liam back and figure out this damn book. Get clothes for me and
for Mara, and meet us in Doolin. Go. Now.”

Cade reached under the dash and yanked
a few wires free. “I’ve only done this once,” he muttered and
started fiddling with the various colored strands. Several minutes
passed in an agonizingly slow progression until the car purred to
life.

As he pulled out onto the main road,
Caitlin lifted the book’s cover. If they were to find Liam, she had
to understand what her ancestor tried to relay in these delicate
pages. She would rescue her mate or die trying.

Chapter Twenty

Thick, coppery sweetness threatened to
choke him. Pain. Darkness. Liam tried to raise his head, but his
world pitched from the effort, and he collapsed again. A dull roar
filled his ears. Blinking his eyes, grit scraped against his
swollen lids. The floor under him bounced, and his forehead hit
solid metal.

A groan escaped his bloodied lips. The
bastard locked him in the trunk of a car. Fergus had hit him with
some fucking compulsion charm in mid-swing, and he’d stood in front
of the man like a trained dog. He’d gotten a few good licks in
before that, though, and Fergus had to be injured.

Liam groaned again and tried to assess
his own injuries in the confines of the tight space. Then again, he
might be in worse shape. He reached up and touched his neck,
hissing out a breath. Below his collarbone, a deep slice bled and
soaked his shirt. His hip ached with a fiery pain that shot down
his leg and into his back. A roof support had slammed into him and
cracked his femur. His right leg felt fine, but when he tried to
straighten his left, the pain brought an intense fit of nausea, and
he fought not to vomit. More than a single break, then.

He had to shift. He could
heal his injuries and rip Fergus’s head clean off afterwards.
Trying to relax as the car’s shuddering intensified the pain of his
injuries, he reached for his wolf, a constant presence hovering
under his skin, ready to break free at a moment’s notice. The
animal railed for his freedom, clawing and fighting his way to the
surface. And then he shrank away, whimpering. No, that noise came
from Liam.
What the hell? Why can’t I
shift?

Fergus whispering in his
ear,
“Yer wolf will obey. Ya will not
shift—I forbid it.”

Fuck
. If he couldn’t heal the broken bones, he’d never survive the
crazy bastard. And where would that leave Caitlin? He’d passed out
before Fergus had shoved him in the trunk of the car. Had Caitlin
escaped?

“
Caitlin!” he roared,
banging on the trunk roof until his knuckles bled. “Ya fuckin’
arse, what did ya do to her?” The car lurched, tires squealing, and
Liam rolled forward until his broken leg twisted, and white-hot
pain drove him out of his mind.

His wolf howled inside of him. The
moon approached, and the animal yearned to be free. Liam tried to
hold on to the vision of Caitlin smiling, the memory of her touch,
but as the motion of the car aggravated his injuries, he drifted in
and out of consciousness. The pitch of the engine lowered, and the
bouncing intensified as the car transitioned from pavement to dirt
roads. Occasional plinks of rocks and branches hit the
undercarriage, startling him awake and sending raw waves of pain to
swamp him whenever he jerked.

Broken bones didn’t usually bother
him. Hell, every bone in his body shattered when he shifted, but
healed right away. The blood loss left him too weak to do much more
than raise his head. His shirt stuck to his skin from his collar to
his navel, and lying on his back, more blood dripped and trailed
along his neck. If he couldn’t stop the flow soon, he’d
die.

They lurched to a stop, and Liam
rolled and slammed into the front of the small enclosure. Muffled
footsteps approached, and the trunk popped open. The light blinded
him. A hulking figure laughed, a thin, rasping sound. “She’s mine,
wolf. And you’re going to pay for what you did to her.”

Fergus’s punch knocked his head back.
He yanked Liam up by his arms and then slammed him against the
wheel well. As Liam’s head hit the metal, he got a clear look at
Fergus’s eyes. Wild desperation hovered in the pinpoint pupils, but
a deadly calm infused his words. “No one touches what’s mine.” Tiny
dark spots blossomed in Liam’s vision until everything faded into
darkness.

***

Caitlin’s head ached from the day’s
battle, compounded by the lingering effects of Diedre’s cast. She’d
opened the book’s cover, but between her shaking fingers and the
bumpy ride, the miniscule text, written in a crude hand in
Goidelc—an ancient form of Gaelic—didn’t make any sense to her.
Farren suggested they attempt to see if Paddy still hovered in some
dark corner of O’Connor’s. “If anyone can make sense of those
scribbles, he can.”

Caitlin fought to train her eyes on
the road. Peter paced behind O’Connor’s Pub as Cade eased the car
into the alley. Caitlin smoothed her hand over the book in her
lap.

“
Cade, what happened?”
Peter said as the four of them eased their aching bodies from the
car.