A Shift in the Air Read online

  The snick of the door woke her. “Caitlin?”

  She didn’t roll over to face him. “Is Mara okay?”

  After a rustle of clothing hitting the floor, Liam pulled back the blankets and climbed into bed with her. They lay back-to-back, not touching, and the pull to turn and wrap her arms around him almost won out over her frustration. “She’s well enough. Cade less so.”

  “If I can break Fergus’s charm and take back my element, I can help Mara. I won’t give up.”

  In the semi-darkness, broken only by a sliver of moonlight from a crack in the drapes, Liam turned over and smoothed a hand down her arm. “Stay away from him, Caitlin. Let me kill the bastard.”

  “I could say the same thing to you. And I don’t want to kill him. He’s sick, Liam. Insane, yes. But I don’t think he can help himself. Using my element hurts him. I need to take my air back, and maybe then he’ll be the boy I once knew.”

  He jerked his hand away. “Do ya still love him?”

  Caitlin cringed at the ice in his words. “No. I never loved him. Not like that. I cared for him, yes. A teenage crush, a fondness. Once he took my air, he changed so much, I didn’t even like him anymore.” She rolled over to meet his hard stare. “I love you. Not him. But don’t I have a responsibility to try to save him?”

  “And what if that responsibility kills ya? What then? Ye’re not going to convince me the arse should live. I’ll kill him. I’m a were—“

  “That’s not going to save you, Liam. I stopped you with one of my charms a few days ago. And I’m weak compared to Fergus. If he sets his sights on you, he’ll make you slit your own throat as easy as that.” She snapped her fingers for emphasis, and then stared up at the darkened antique light hanging from the ceiling. “Don’t you see how foolish this is? He knows you somehow. And he’s angry with you for…I don’t know…stealing me away from him. He wanted to kill you before, and we’d only kissed. Now? Knowing we’re lovers?”

  “Mates.”

  “Even worse.” He cringed at her words. “I’m sorry, but you understand, yeah? He knows I love you, and that’s going to make him even more dangerous.”

  “I won’t let ya face him alone.”

  She turned her head, saw the utter anguish on his face, and wrapped her arms around him. “You don’t have to. But you do need to trust me.”

  ***

  The next morning, after a tense call with Peter, they forced down some breakfast and headed for Doolin. Peter had little new to report from Farren’s remaining pack mates. The wolves railed against Cade’s order to remain inside so close to the moon. Peter placated them by going into town and asking around at the last pubs Farren had talked about. But other than an odd run-in with a senile old man, he’d found nothing. Colin, the injured beta wolf, still hadn’t woken.

  The drive across the center of the country passed in blurs of blues, greens, and grays, the vast rolling hills, clear skies, and occasional rambling stone wall in stark opposition to the tense mood filling the car.

  With every passing mile, Caitlin’s connection with Fergus pulled harder at her focus. The constant low burn of her missing element turned into a roaring flame, threatening to leave her nothing but a hollow shell by the time they arrived in Doolin. Though dread loomed like a dark cloud, fighting him in Dublin gave her a measure of hope.

  What had Mara said? The Rohypnol kept Fergus’s mania in check. Could they get more of the drug? Rohypnol made users susceptible to suggestion. She’d gone to a seminar in college on how to avoid date rape, and the instructor had warned against leaving your drink unattended in bars. If they got enough of the drug into Fergus, could she convince him to help her release the charm?

  Cade’s phone rang half an hour outside of Doolin, and Peter’s tense voice rasped through the speaker.

  “Colin’s awake. He’s refusing to speak to anyone but Liam.”

  “Put him on. Liam’s right here.”

  “In person. He’s locked himself in one of the bedrooms, and unless you want me to break down the door, he’s not coming out until he sees Liam. Fergus beat the shit out of him and Farren outside of Lahinch. That’s all he’ll say.”

  “Is Farren alive? Does Fergus have her?” Liam’s knuckles whitened on the steering wheel.

  “I don’t know. I asked. That’s when he slammed the door in my face.”

  “Fuck. We’re close. Keep tryin’, Peter. If ya get anything more out of him, call me.”

  Liam turned off the main highway onto a narrow two-lane road. The few cars they met passed by with only inches to spare, and low, meandering walls of mottled stones penned them in.

  Caitlin rested her hand on Liam’s thigh, trying to comfort without offering empty words. When the road straightened, he’d drop his hand and link their fingers, squeezing tightly, or lift her hand to kiss her knuckles. Sadness rolled off him in waves, each stronger than the last.

  “That’s Farren’s,” he said and pointed. Ahead, an old castle, restored to the glory of a long-forgotten time, towered against the graying skies.

  Peter met them at the door, and the next few minutes passed in a cacophony of protests, pleading whines, and sharp words. Cade took control, ordering Farren’s wolves to calm down, find rooms for them to stay in, and bring Liam and Caitlin to see the beta, Colin.

  He’d locked himself in one of the upstairs bedrooms at the end of the hall, and Tierney led the way. “I’d never seen a wolf so bloody,” he whispered. “We didn’t think he’d survive.”

  “I thought shifting healed you.” Caitlin tightened her grip on Liam’s hand.

  “Some injuries are too severe. Or a wolf can be too weak to heal fully.”

  “Colin, Liam’s here. Let him in,” Tierney said, pounding on the thick wood. The young wolf stood almost as tall as Liam’s six-foot-four, though his lithe frame packed little muscle.

  The door swung open, and a haggard man with shaggy brown hair, pale blue eyes, and a face full of bruises stood before them. His boxers and t-shirt hung off of bony shoulders and hips, and he glanced between the two wolves and Caitlin. “Liam. Alone.”

  “Caitlin can help with the pain, Colin,” Liam said. “And she knows Fergus. She stays.”

  With a muttered curse, Colin tried to shut the door in their faces, but he stumbled and pitched sideways. Liam caught him easily and half-carried him back to the bed in the corner of the room.

  Her charm settled over him, though Colin struggled against the calm. “Get her the fuck away from me,” he grunted. “She caused this, Liam. Ya need to have someone turn her over to Fergus and run.”

  She flinched. Of course he’d hate her. He’d been tortured. Dark bruises stood stark against pale arms and legs, and his right eye didn’t open the entire way. Still, she’d help him if he’d let her. “You want to be in pain? That’s up to you.”

  “Is Farren alive?” Liam asked as he took a seat at the foot of the bed. Caitlin backed away and curled her legs under her in a plush chair next to the window.

  Colin collapsed back against the pillows and covered his face with his hands. “I don’t know. We went to Hen and Boar in Lahinch. One of Farren’s contacts told her Fergus frequented the place. No one would talk to us, but we stayed until closin’ in case he showed. Before we reached the car, something hit me from behind. I think the whole buildin’ came down only steps from us. Farren screamed, and then I couldn’t breathe. All of the air around me…gone. Fuck me, Liam, I tried to get to her, but I passed out. When I came to, I hurt. Ribs, legs, arms…he’d broken them all. I shifted, and then everythin’ gets fuzzy. Images. I never had as much control over my wolf as you and Farren did. But he tried to kill me. Said somethin’ about how he’d kill everyone ya loved for what ya did to him.”

  “I’ve never met the arse. How could I—“

  “Ya stole his love. He’s obsessed with her. Kept mutterin’, ‘She’ll be sorry. When she comes crawlin’ back, I’ll show her how much I need her. She’ll never leave me again.’” Colin reached for
a bottle of water next to the bed, but his unsteady fingers couldn’t work the plastic top.

  “Let me.” Liam handed him the open bottle, then looked to Caitlin. In his gaze, she found depths of sadness and guilt she’d never seen—except when she’d looked in the mirror. “Did he say anything else?”

  “Nothin’ I could understand. He kept popping pills. Two and three at a time. He’d calm then, leave me alone for a few minutes, an hour or two, but he’d come back more mental than ever.”

  Caitlin wrapped her arms around herself. “I’m sorry. I didn’t want anyone else to get hurt.”

  “That’s rich.” Colin grimaced as he tried to sit up straighter. “Farren’s probably dead, ya know. All because she knew Liam.”

  “Easy, now. I know ye’re hurting, but don’t disrespect my mate.” Liam glanced over at Caitlin. “She didn’t ask for this.”

  “Neither did Farren. I should’ve protected her, Liam. Instead, my alpha’s probably dead, Brian’s missing, and I can barely walk. Ya need to leave the lass and run back to the States as fast as ya can.”

  “He’s right.” Caitlin didn’t want Liam to go and didn’t think he would, but with his childhood friend on her side—despite his apparent hatred for her—maybe Liam would listen. “I need to fight Fergus, but you don’t have to. You could go home with Cade and Mara, and I’d find you when this is over.”

  “We’ve had that discussion, luv. I’m with you until the end. I know ye’re strong. But that doesn’t mean ya don’t need help.” He pulled her up out of the chair and wrapped his arms around her. “And the moon rises late tonight.”

  “I had to try.”

  “He’ll kill both of ya.” Colin pulled the blankets up over his legs and winced. “He’s too damn strong.”

  An idea tumbling around in her mind broke free. “Wait. You said the pills calmed him.”

  “Yeah. For a bit, he’d be almost sane. Even apologized to me once, I think. But they didn’t last long. Time didn’t mean much to me there. I couldn’t see the sun, and I passed out more than once.”

  “What are ya thinking, luv?”

  Caitlin pulled away and started to pace in front of the window. Out behind Farren’s house, a wolf ran circles around a large expanse of meadow. “The three years that I spent in Dublin, when I thought—hoped—he’d died, he spent most of that time in a mental institution. Presumably, they medicated him, and that’s why I couldn’t feel his presence.”

  “What did they use? The same thing the elders used on Mara?”

  “Yes, I think. The last day before I went to the cliffs to ‘die,’ I found an empty bottle.”

  “Whatever he’s takin’ now doesn’t last long. Every time the pills wore off, he’d get meaner.” Colin eyed a wrist that had turned several shades of purple. “But he kept saying something about how he needed his pills. ‘Why won’t they work?’ That sort of thing.”

  “If he’s trying to medicate himself, if he wants to, then he knows he’s losing control. He’s actively trying to dampen his power.”

  “So we could overdose him? Or try to convince him to take enough Rohypnol to knock him out, yeah? Werewolves burn through drugs and alcohol like nothing, but do elementals?”

  She raised a brow. “You mean you don’t remember picking me up off the floor that first night?” His chuckle teased a weak smile from her lips. “I’ve never taken anything stronger than aspirin. But the elders drugged Mara. And knowing that, I think…maybe.”

  Colin sat up straighter. “He chewed those pills like candy.”

  “Air purifies. That’s probably why. But if he’s taking so much, then he’s in bad shape. A little more might be able to take him down.”

  “What do ya mean?”

  Caitlin took Liam’s hands and smiled. “I know how to trap Fergus.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Cade leaned forward with his elbows on his knees. “We can’t hesitate. If we do this, we hit him hard and fast. Drug him, get him to tell us where Farren and Brian are, and then kill him.”

  “Agreed. Mara, ya said the elders—“

  “We can’t kill him.” Caitlin leaned against an imposing fireplace set into the far wall of Farren’s living room. Two leather sofas gathered around the cold, darkened hearth. Cade, Mara, and Peter had claimed one sofa, with Tierney and Liam on the other. Abagail and Ewan clamored about in the kitchen, preparing some food for the weary group.

  “What?” Cade glared at her.

  “Fergus didn’t lose his mind until after he absorbed my element. What if taking my air broke something inside him? And what if we could reverse the process? If the boy I once knew is in there somewhere, we have to try to save him.”

  “Like hell we do.” Cade looked to Mara. She stared into the cold hearth and fiddled with the leather pouch around her neck. “Mara, what is it?”

  Mara met his gaze. “The elders—Siobhan at least—said that absorbing Katerina’s fire would kill me one day. But before she went to get you, Eleanor whispered something to me.”

  “What?”

  “If I can find my balance, I can be restored.” Mara shrank back against the leather sofa and chewed on her lower lip. Something about her vibrated off-key. Exhaustion or an imbalance in her elements perhaps.

  “So Fergus could be ‘restored’ too.”

  “Maybe? Look, I don’t really want to risk you—or any of us. But I don’t like the idea of killing him unless we don’t have a choice,” Mara said.

  Liam ran a hand through his hair. He’d left it loose, and the motion sent locks tumbling over his shoulders. “This is ridiculous.”

  Cade nodded. “Hell, yes.”

  “No. Hear me out.” Caitlin’s element stirred the air in the room and a burning pain scorched her heart. Fergus’s pain threatened to overwhelm her, but she understood now. The rantings, the odd times when a bit of the boy she’d had a crush on would return, and the violence when the fits overtook him once more. Everything made sense. “You didn’t know him. His father…hated him. His mother didn’t let on that she had elemental powers until after Fergus’s birth, and when his father found out, he left them both. His mum died, and Fergus didn’t have a choice. He had to go live with a man who despised everything about him. I knew him before his father got a hold of him. I remember the good in him. He only wanted power so he could escape his family.”

  “He hurt ya, Caitlin. So much ya had to kill yerself to escape him!” Liam jumped up and crossed the room in three strides. He grabbed her hands and held on tight. “I won’t forgive him, and I’m not goin’ to let him live. We had this discussion last night.”

  Jerking her hands away, Caitlin stood up as straight as she could. She didn’t think she could pull off imposing—not in front of Liam—but anger had her trying. “We can’t just go around killing people!”

  Liam’s lip curled into a snarl. “What about all the people Fergus killed?”

  Lowering her voice, Caitlin gazed at the floor. “What about all the people I killed?”

  “That’s not the same thing, luv.”

  She raised her eyes to meet his gaze. “No. But also yes. I hurt people under Fergus and Katerina’s compulsions. Fergus is hurting people because he’s sick. The insanity could be reversible. We have to try.”

  Liam raised a brow. “And what then?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe we’ll have to kill him in the end anyway. But this is the humane thing to do, yeah?” Caitlin twined her fingers with Liam’s. “If we can save him, get him the help he needs, and take back my element…”

  “Then we’d know how to save me too.” Everyone looked to Mara. She drew her knees up to her chest and balanced her heels on the edge of the sofa. “We need the book. But if we can break the charm that binds Caitlin and Fergus, maybe my two elements won’t kill me.”

  Cade dropped his gaze to Mara’s hands clasped around her knees. An emerald ring winked on the third finger of her left hand.

  “We can try,” Liam said. “He’ll be our guin
ea pig. Cade, ya don’t want to lose Mara to some charm we’ve never tested.”

  With a heavy sigh, Cade nodded. “Fine. We do this.”

  ***

  Caitlin splashed cool water on her cheeks in one of Farren’s upstairs bathrooms. They’d convinced Colin to join them downstairs to figure out how to drug Fergus. Tierney and Peter left to try to buy some Rohypnol in Shannon, and Cade, Mara, Liam, and Caitlin planned to try to find Farren. Colin remembered a few landmarks he’d seen after he’d escaped, and he thought he’d been somewhere close to Knockaskeheen, a tiny parish fifteen miles away. Caitlin’s element weakened with Fergus’s proximity, but she thought she could locate Farren if they got close.

  When she emerged, Liam leaned against the wall across from the door. “Are ya all right, luv? Ya didn’t say much while we planned.”

  “I feel him under my skin all the time now. I want him gone.” She tried to brush past him on her way to the bedroom they’d claimed on the top floor.

  He spun her around and pressed her back against the wall. The heat of his lips seared her neck, and the scrape of his teeth sent a wave of arousal through her so strong she feared she’d drown. “I won’t lose ya,” he whispered against her ear, and then nipped at the tender skin along her throat. His hand skimmed her side and pressed firmly between her legs, and she barely held herself together against the onslaught of need.

  “Liam. God. We…can’t.”

  He pulled back with a half-lidded stare and traced her jaw with a knuckle. “I know. But the moon rises tonight. The mating…shite, Caitlin. I can’t think. All I want to do is lose myself in ya.”

  Cupping his neck, she urged his mouth to hers once more and poured her entire soul into one, desperate kiss. Her body thrummed with heat, and his arousal pressed firmly into her hip. “Don’t do anything stupid,” she managed when they broke apart. “If Fergus is there, you have to trust me. I can probably shield you for a short time. Long enough for Cade drug him. Or rip his throat out. Stay behind me. He’ll try to hurt me, but I don’t think he’ll kill me. He will kill you.”