themselves, they’d been joined by Morgana le Fay and Eva Roman, Smoke’s wife. Apparently the kitty’s third form was a hot Sidhe warrior.
Cheryl eyed Eva warily. The pretty, brown-eyed brunette had manifested a pair of ghostly stag horns with little sparks leaping between the tines. Which was even more weird when you considered Eva was a werewolf. A decade ago, during the battle with a werewolf sorcerer named Warlock, she’d merged with Zephyr, a powerful elemental who inhabited the body of a stag. Then Warlock ate him, and Eva had merged with Zephyr’s vengeful ghost, gaining both horns and impressive powers.
Between Kel, Smoke, Morgana, and Eva, Cheryl was beginning to feel like Custer at the Little Big Horn. So no, she wasn’t stepping into that fricking circle.
“Look, it really isn’t going to hurt you,” Morgana said, as if speaking to a recalcitrant toddler who didn’t want to eat her vegetables. The note of condescension made Cheryl long to give her a ringing slap. “The circle is designed to bypass whatever spells Gaia may have cast on you. It will merely allow you to speak the truth.”
Like what Gaia told me about the…
For a moment, it was right on the tip of her tongue. Then… nothing.
Realization hit. Oh, crap, she blanked my memory. Why did she do that? What’s she hiding? What are we hiding? “In other words, it’ll pry me open like an oyster.” Cheryl folded her arms and glowered. “Sorry, not in the mood to get shucked.”
“You’re assuming you have a choice,” Morgana said in a silken voice.
Cheryl eyed the witch. “You know, I’ve never particularly liked being bullied.”
“Then don’t make it necessary to bully you.”
“Okay, that’s it. Coming up,” Smoke said from Cheryl’s feet, and leaped.
Cheryl caught the cat automatically, as he must have known she would. Something about his warm, furry weight made her want to pet him. Forget it, I’m not that…
He started rumbling a comforting vibration, and she found herself cuddling him. “Purring? Really? That’s dirty pool, you manipulative little flea farm.”
Huge blue eyes gazed into hers, hypnotic and earnest. “You keep saying you know us. If that’s true, you know we’re not the bad guys.”
“I also know magic doesn’t always act the way you expect. Remember Cherise Myers? She died of anaphylactic shock before you could figure out the Magekind were allergic to werewolf bites.”
Cheryl thought Morgana flinched a little. “Merlin designed that reaction to protect his werewolves from us. This spell is nothing like that.”
“Look,” Smoke put in, “I’m not going to let her do anything nasty. If you cooperate, we can get this over with and you can go back to Earth.”
He sounded like he meant it. And an eight-hundred-pound magical tiger would make a formidable protector, even against the Magekind’s answer to Lucretia Borgia.
But he could also overpower Cheryl. Hell, they had enough magical firepower in the room to do whatever they wanted to her. Back home, she could hold her own, but here… She just wished she knew what the hell kind of game Gaia was playing. The spirit had known this was coming, or she wouldn’t have made Cheryl forget… whatever the fuck she’d forgotten. There were some big holes in her memory. Not good.
Unfortunately, they could put her in their circle any time they wanted, and there was nothing she could do about it. “Okay, Goddamnit.” Cheryl dropped the cat on the floor and stepped over him into the circle, ignoring his injured sniff. “Ask your questions. Not that I…” The words choked off as an iron vise clamped down over her skull. Her legs buckled and she crashed to her knees. She barely felt herself hit the stone floor.
“Cheryl!” Smoke’s alarmed voice seemed to come from miles away.
“She’s fine.” Morgana sounded just as thin and distant. “Let’s just get this over with. No matter what that creature has compelled her to believe, the circle will get the truth.”
Silence fell, seeming to thrum. She swayed forward to brace her palms on the floor, feeling as if her brain was suffocating in layers of cotton.
“What’s all that… crystal inside your body?” Morgana asked.
“Crystal?” Cheryl stared down at a weird draconic glyph. It glowed against the dark granite of the stone floor, its iridescent colors shifting. She wondered vaguely what it meant.
“Crystal webbing surrounds your bones and muscles. It even has tendrils throughout your brain. What is it?”
She didn’t want to answer, but Morgana’s question seemed to dig into her mind. Cheryl set her teeth as the pressure turned crushing.