A large creature loomed in front of her. Some twisted combination of shape-shifter and human, with horns sprouting from a broad forehead, the blunt nose of a swine, the claws of… a cat. Claws as large as her own. Millicent launched into the air, aiming for the thing’s throat. The creature went down beneath her, already dead before it hit the ground.

She looked up in surprise. An enormous bear stood beside her, his claws bloody and his mouth open in a grimace of teeth, the closest Bran could get to a smile in were-form.

The cavalry had arrived.

Millicent grunted her thanks and leaped forward again, leaving Bran to face another one of Ghoulston’s minions. She must get to Nell. Surely, she had to be close. The ball of fire had fallen…

A ring of blackened bodies surrounded an open space, the earth scorched a dusty gray. At first, Millicent could not understand what she saw. A bundle of black wings covered the upper part of a small old woman lying on the ground. Nell had shifted back to her human form, a natural reaction to a loss of consciousness. Or a loss of life? Her legs lay twisted at an odd angle, her skirts charred about the edges.

Millicent screamed yet again, her throat aching with the sound.

The were-bat glanced up, wings pulling away from their shroud around Nell. Selena’s pointed teeth dripped with red, red blood.

That red color grew in Millicent’s gaze until it lay like a shadow over her eyes. She stalked forward, every muscle quivering, every inch of fur on her body bristling with fury.

Selena sat frozen, fear clouding her eyes.

Millicent glanced down. Perhaps a bullet had killed Nell before she hit the ground. Perhaps the fall had killed her. She would never know. Selena had finished whatever life Nell might have had left. The were-bat had always lusted after the firebird’s blood, as if it held some special flavor that could not be found on any other human or shifter. Even with all the dead and dying bodies surrounding them that Selena could have drank from, she had gone after Nell.

Millicent had not realized until this moment how much the vamp truly hated her.

And had not realized she could ever be capable of returning such hatred.

Millicent leaped, landing on Selena’s wings, which she had curled over her head for protection. But nothing could stop Millicent. Not Gareth’s shout from behind her. Not her reluctance to kill if she didn’t have to.

Selena had taken her Nell. The only person she had ever cared for. The nature of the beast always lurking within Millicent—even in human form—took over and she did not even try to control it. She struck blindly, mindlessly ripping and tearing with teeth and claw. Snarling and growling in unchecked fury. The were-bat tried to fight back. Then tried to run. She left half a wing behind to break free, but managed only two steps before Millicent fell upon her again.

Nothing but red. Nothing but the feel of skin and muscle shredding beneath her claws. Screams and then whimpers.

And then the hated thing beneath her lay still. And she heard the voice of her mate. Calling. Commanding.

Millicent spun. The cat recognized the scent of her mate. It soothed the beast until she could regain some control once more.

Millicent shifted to human and ignored the remains of her cat’s fury, and focused her gaze on Gareth. The red haze slowly cleared.

He looked… stunned. “Millicent?”

She tried to wipe her hands on her bodice, but so much blood thickened the cloth she only spread the gore around. “This is what I am. A beast. A creature of the Underground, born in blackness with a soul to match. You! I am not like you, Gareth. I am not some valiant white knight full of honor and vows of chivalry—”

“Millicent.” He took a step forward.

She growled. “Do not come any closer. You are responsible for all of this. I should have left you with Ghoulston and taken my Nell away from this place. But no, you influenced us all with your grand ideas of interfering in matters better left alone. What do I care of the world above? When has it cared for me?”

She tore her gaze from his and settled it on Nell. White, broken. Dead. “I have lost her because of you.”

He made some strangled noise, had the audacity to take a step closer to her. But the small bundle of woman that had been Nell suddenly began to smoke, then to burn. Licks of orange fire cradled her face and body, as it did when she took her were-form. Those flames grew taller, until a column of orange-red fire grew upward, nearly touching the cavern ceiling. Silver tinged those flames. Silver and gold.

Millicent had not noticed the sounds of fighting until they suddenly stopped. Until she could hear the crackle of flames in the silence. The heat from that cyclone of fire made her step back again and again. She shielded her eyes with her arm, glanced away to see that Bran and his gang had managed to conquer the duke’s army of guards. Most of the creatures left standing were shape-shifters.

With a roar of sound that rocked the cavern, the flame gave one last pulse, a flow of liquid fire curling and twisting up through that column, then quickly falling back to earth, winking out of existence as suddenly as Nell’s life had been extinguished, leaving nothing of the old woman but a small pile of silver ashes.

Millicent shifted back to panther and lifted her head, hiding within her beast, allowing the cat to scream her anguish until her throat grew raw, until she could scream no more.

Gareth strode over to the small silver pile of Nell’s ashes and collapsed to his knees, his head bowed, his shoulders hunched. He laid his hands around the ashes, as if he sought to cradle old Nell once more.

Millicent caught her breath on a sob, turned, and ran.

Thirteen

Gareth materialized in a dark room no larger than a water closet, with a tarp for a ceiling and worn wooden planks for flooring. He could hear muted laughter coming from beyond the rickety door. The occasional clink of glasses and the sour smell of ale told him he stood within Bran’s tavern, where Millicent worked. A dark shadow in the corner of the room stirred, and he turned toward the panther curled up on a pallet of old rags.

Millicent.

She had kept to her were-shape. He wondered if she always slept in her beast’s form, and had stayed human when they slept together only because of him. With drunken louts only a few feet away, perhaps she felt safer with tooth and claw at the ready.

Or perhaps the events of last eve had allowed her beast to completely take over her humanity.

Gareth still felt a sharp sense of loss at the death of ladybird, so he could only imagine what Millicent might be feeling. She professed to be incapable of great love, yet if he could manage to make her love him half as much as she had loved her Nell, he would be a lucky man… which might now be an impossible task, since she blamed him for ladybird’s death.

His eyes had adjusted to the gloom, and he could make out the glossy sheen of the panther’s coat, the powerful grace of leg and shoulder, the beauty of those slanted eyes, long lashes closed in sleep. Ah, how he loved his Millicent and her beast. But would she ever be able to accept his love enough to return it? For he had thought he only had to capture her heart. He hadn’t realized until yesterday that his obstacles might be insurmountable.

How could she love him, when she did not love herself? When she thought of herself as some kind of monster, a creature of darkness? He could see the goodness shining within her, the light in her soul that called so strongly to his own. So she had killed Selena… he would have done the same. That did not make her a beast; it made her human.

Gareth opened his mouth, then snapped it closed. Words. All he had to give her were words, and he had already given her many. They would never be enough.

With one last glance at the sleeping panther, he quietly slipped out the door into the hall. Although the exterior of the pub had been constructed with quarried stone like most of the buildings in the Underground, the interior walls had been made with wooden boards, with enough of a gap between for him to catch glimpses of the public room. A long, polished bar with rows of twinkling bottles behind, scattered tables with a ramshackle assortment of chairs surrounding them. More than half the chairs were still full, mostly with shape-shifters.

The tarp that made up the ceiling occasionally fluttered, and he imagined it had been put there for privacy, for the denizens of the Underground did not need to worry about snow or rain.

What an odd world to grow up in.

He entered the taproom and all eyes turned to him. Gareth sauntered over to the bar, faced the man who had helped rescue his beloved, and gave him a deep bow. “My lord, I thank you again for your aid—”

“Eh, none of that,” interrupted Bran. “Shape-shifters may style themselves as lords up above, just because our nature honors us with a title. But we don’t hold to none of that in the Underground. Just Bran will do.”

“Very well. My thanks, Bran. And a word, if you please.”

The tavern keeper raised his abundantly bushy brows, scanned the interested crowd in the room, and cocked his head toward a door behind the bar. “In here.”

Gareth followed him into a room that apparently served the dual purpose of storage and living quarters. When Bran settled his bulk upon a crate of whiskey bottles, Gareth took a similar seat opposite, the slats creaking in protest.

“You found Millicent, then?” A rhetorical question, since she had obviously returned to the Swill and Seelie, but the relic had sucked Gareth back in before he had a chance to find her himself. And he didn’t quite know where to start the conversation. He had met men like Bran often over the years. No matter the life fate chose for them—whether landed gentry or peasant farmer—men of substance like the were-bear commanded respect.