Wicked Wings (Lizzie Grace #5) - Keri Arthur Page 0,1

haunting sound, and it sent a chill up my spine.

Something was wrong.

I spun and ran back down the hall. The cat was in the laundry, staring at the back door. I slid to a halt and quickly looked around. There was nothing untoward visible, and certainly nothing that in any way suggested danger.

The cat looked at me, gave another long, deep yowl, and then pointedly gazed at the door again. Frustration stirred. “There’s a goddamn cat flap next to the freaking door—use it.”

The cat gave me a disdainful look, then, with another flick of his fluffy tail, did so. I muttered obscenities under my breath and spun around. I didn’t get far; the cat’s howling began again and this time held a deep note of demand.

For whatever reason, I was meant to follow him.

“Hang on, hang on.” I ran down the hall to lock the front door and then headed out the back. The cat was sitting on the rear fence, but disappeared down the other side when it saw me.

“If you’re having fun at my expense, I’m not going to be pleased.”

The cat yowled in response. Again, it was filled with urgency, and trepidation pulsed through me. My psychic senses might be attuned to evil, but cats in general were far more sensitive to the other side, and this was no ordinary cat. If evil hunted in the growing haze of dusk, he’d sense it far sooner than me.

I grabbed the top of the fence, hauled my butt over it, and jumped down. Thankfully, Monty’s new townhouse backed onto bush, so I didn’t have to worry about neighbors calling the rangers on me. Not that that would have been too much of a problem in a situation such as this. Aiden, the head ranger, happened to be my lover, and while that didn’t give me a pass to commit any sort of crime, all I had to do was tell him Monty’s familiar had sensed a problem and had wanted me to follow him. The last few months had provided a very steep learning curve for the rangers in general—and Aiden in particular—when it came to witches and magic, but they now trusted us in a way I’d never thought possible.

Of course, they’d also had little other choice. Our magic was all that stopped this place from being overrun by evil, thanks to the presence of a large wellspring that had been left unguarded for entirely too long. Wild magic was neither good nor bad, but it would always draw the darker forces of the world if left in a raw, unprotected state—and the big one in this reservation had.

The cat disappeared into the lengthening shadows crowding the trees, but a short, sharp yowl gave me direction. I followed the sound, the crunch of leaves and the snap of twigs audible under every footstep. Another cry, this time to my right. I ducked under a low-hanging tree branch and ran on, my gaze sweeping the area but seeing or sensing little that suggested there was anything to be worried about out here in the scrub.

Maybe the snotty little creature was giving me the runaround…

I continued following the yowls, but never actually got close enough to spot the damn cat. Sweat trickled down my back and dripped from tendrils of hair hanging over my eyes. Summer had finally slipped into autumn, but apparently no one had notified the appropriate weather gods, because the day had been hot and muggy, and neither had noticeably eased now that dusk was giving way to night. I swiped at a droplet hanging onto the end of my nose and slid down an incline to a creek—one that thankfully wasn’t very deep. I picked my way across the trickle of water, using various rocks as stepping-stones and then scrambled up the bank on the other side and ran on.

The shadows were getting longer as darkness closed in. I paused to grab my phone out of my purse, flicked on the flashlight app, and continued. The caterwauling was at least closer now, but the light threw crazy shadows across the trees and trepidation stirred anew.

Not because of the shadows, but because my instincts were finally kicking in. Something was out here—something other than a cranky cat playing a prank on a witch he disliked.

I crashed through a strand of young wattle trees, gaining scratches across my bare arms, and ended up in a clearing. The cat sat in the middle, his tail swishing from side to