Hot Blooded (Jessica McClain #2) 0

“Let’s stay right. It’s the only information Eamon has ever given us.” Tyler took a handhold and hoisted himself up. “Are you sure you can’t feel anything yet? Any energy or some other mysterious mojo? Selene’s power should be in abundance here. I don’t get it.”

Other than the feeling of dread, like we were taking too long, I didn’t feel any centered energy. “She’s probably masking it so it feels like something else.” I closed my eyes. I had no idea if I could project feelers out or not, but it was worth a try. Do you know how to do this? I asked my wolf. She lifted her snout and scented the air above her, tracing her head back and forth slowly. I copied her movements, pulling the air in over my tongue, tasting and sampling as I went. Can you taste or smell power? She yipped and stilled, cocking her head to the right. I sensed a strangeness. “I can taste something different. It’s not Selene, but the air is different over there,” I said, pointing along the rock face to the right. “I’m not sure if it’s power or something else, but it’s very faint. I also smell animals and the scents are mixing. Does anyone smell wild sheep or goat and something like that?”

Danny took in a deep breath. “I can scent them. They must be mountain goats of some kind. They smell ragged and dusty, but I don’t smell anything else.”

Tyler tilted his head upward. “I scent animals all the time, but I parcel them away without giving them any thought. Let me see.” He inhaled, nostrils flaring. His eyes sparked yellow for a moment, triggered by something that had caught his attention.

“What?” I asked. “What’d you find?” I took another breath in to see if I could figure it out myself.

“There’s something odd wrapped in the animal smell,” Tyler said. “Almost a warning of some kind.” He took more air in. “Decay.”

“I thought so too,” I said. “But I don’t understand all the animal markers. They mix for me.” I inhaled to full capacity and blew it slowly out my nose.

Tyler was right. Something was wrong with the goats.

I tasted it this time. Their earthy smell was mixed with something that shouldn’t be there, something sharp. “Can you see where they are?” I backed up on the tiny ledge, careful not to step off, and craned my neck upward.

“There they are.” Danny pointed. “Look there, to the right.”

“I see them. Are they moving?” Tyler said.

“They’re not moving, as far as I can tell,” I said. The goats all stood, but none were animated. “That’s strange. Maybe goats sleep standing up? Are they nocturnal? They still smell like they’re alive. If they were dead they wouldn’t be upright, correct?”

“Just our luck. Bloody possessed goats,” Danny groused. “Killer bats, spiders as big as cats, and sea wraiths weren’t enough of a sampling of the animal kingdom? She had to add goats?”

“Wait a second.” I paused. “Eamon said the entrance appeared as something else. Selene wouldn’t want to announce it to the world, so what better way than to disguise the actual entrance with a bunch of goats? A natural piece of the landscape. The smell of power is very faint, so she’s obviously trying to mask her magic though the goats. As beings, they can absorb some of her power. It’s not like the Scorpers, which she created with a spell. The goats aren’t coming after us; they are our ticket inside.”

“We have to go through a goat to get to her?” Tyler asked. “You’re kidding me.”

I chuckled. “It’s petty ingenious. I bet there’s a gatekeeper goat. There have to be at least twenty of them up there.” Tyler started his ascent.

I shrugged and followed my brother toward the tricked-out goats.

“When we reach them, they’ll attack; make no mistake,” Danny muttered as he came from behind. “I hope they’re not weregoats. Does such a thing even exist?”

“I’ve never heard of one,” Tyler called. “But that doesn’t mean much. I had no idea wereweasels existed before one attacked you.”

“That was a wicked little thing,” Danny replied. “I hope the Goddess doesn’t have a cache of them at her beck and call. Their teeth are like shards of broken glass.”

“Werewolves are so damn egocentric,” I complained as I climbed. “If you guys had paid attention to the world around you once in a while, you’d be better versed and better prepared to battle what might come your way.”

“Nobody is stronger than us,” Tyler yelled from his point twenty feet above me. “Not even your cat. There is no need for us to worry about what’s on the bottom of the food chain. It’s like a shark worrying about the small fish. Why bother?”

I snorted. “Yeah, that works until that guppy grows fur, a pair of wicked incisors, and comes after the shark with a million of his little pals. One wolf is no match for an army of anything.”

“You have a point, of course,” Danny added. “But guppies don’t ever come around, so it’s easy to forget they exist altogether. I haven’t encountered anything to give me pause in more than a century. A hundred years is a long time to get comfortable with your life. No wars, no enemies, no issues. It’s been grand.”

“Then I’m christening this the ‘Dawn of the Guppy’ because I have a feeling the small things are going to throw the biggest punches.” We all pulled ourselves steadily closer to the statuesque goats. None of them had moved during our entire climb. Danny had edged farther right and had positioned himself directly under them, while Tyler and I had stayed more left.

“I’m pushing ahead of you both,” Danny called. “One of us has to investigate the bloody beasts and I pick myself to be the lucky winner.”

Tyler and I stopped climbing and watched Danny steadily close the gap between himself and the goats. We were all waiting to see what was going to happen. When he was within ten feet, he placed a single foot on the ledge directly below them and a decisive power shift flowed over me in a hot, prickly wave. “Danny!” I yelled. “Be careful. Something just happened. You must have triggered a boundary line.”

A single bleat echoed in the air.

“Bloody hell, did you see that?” Danny yelled back. A snowy white male with long ragged hair and two sharp-looking horns moved its head.

Then it took a single step forward.

“I see it,” I answered.

As we watched, it angled its head toward Danny, blinking once as a slow fire ignited in the center of its eyes.

It bleated again.

Then, one by one, they all turned their heads slowly, like possessed animatronic fiends.

All of their eyes blazed a fiery red.

21

“This doesn’t look good,” Tyler said. “We can’t fight off twenty, two-hundred-pound possessed mountain goats in our human form and there’s no place to change safely. There’s barely a foot clearance in any direction.”

“Wait. Maybe we don’t need to fight all twenty,” I said. “They’re all starting to move except one. Look.”

The red-eyed monsters started to pace agitatedly as fierce angry sounds erupted out of their snouts. They milled back and forth like army sentinels, except for one who was pushed up tightly against the rocks.

“I see it. That one’s different. It’s bigger,” Danny called as he pointed where we were all looking. “And from here its eyes aren’t lit and it hasn’t come alive quite yet like the others.”

“That’s because I’m pretty sure it can’t. Tyler, can you isolate the scents?” I asked. “And pinpoint which goat smells exactly like what?”

Tyler eased himself onto a small rock that jutted out above my head. The mountain angled steeply from where we were positioned, so we had a good view of the goats. Tyler shifted his head back and opened his mouth. I did the same. As the air crossed over my tongue, there was a startling difference. Now that the goats had become animated, power zapped over my tongue and sizzled my taste buds. There was no doubt we were in the right place. Selene’s magic signature was all over.

I took in a deeper breath, trying to catch the specific scent of the stationary goat. It was hard to do. Smells in general still overpowered me with their complexities and notes, because of all the layers. All the scent information flooded into me and I had trouble sorting. “Are you having any luck?” I asked my brother. “Everything just tastes awful and powerful at the same time.”

“Yes,” Tyler said. “I can’t taste the power like you can, but I can smell the differences in the air. The goats have a rancid undertone, almost undetectable. The stationary one smells clean, almost artificial.”

“I smelled the stink too,” I said. “It’s definitely carrying on the air now that they’re moving around. But is it some of their kill and not their actual smell?” I curled my nose.

“Goats don’t kill for meat,” Danny called, hearing me perfectly. “They’re vegetarians, as far as I know. They forage around, eating shrubs and roots and things.”

Of course regular goats were herbivores—but I could see rabid, possessed goats with red eyes eating meat, preferably while it was still alive and struggling. They probably required fresh blood on the hour. “They aren’t vegetarians if they’re weregoats, right? These aren’t normal goats; these are—”

“Dead goats,” Tyler said grimly. “They have been reanimated somehow. Selene must be able to wield some sort of necromancer enchantment. They wake when they detect a threat, and stay stationary the rest of the time.”

“Well, that explains why their eyes are red,” I said. Red was Selene’s spell color. “But they can’t last that way forever. Goats are living things, so even with a strong enchantment they will fully decay over time.”

Tyler inhaled. “This must be a relatively new batch, because I’m picking up only a little decay. They must get really nasty over time.”