“Come now, unicorn. Pretense cannot save you now. I know exactly what you are.”
“Oh?” Even though it hurt to move his face, Hugh copied Gaze’s raised eyebrow, mockingly. “Well, I hope you wanted a paramedic. Because that’s what you’ve got. That’s all you’ve got. As long as I don’t shift, I win.”
“You do realize I could simply kill you,” Gaze observed, as though commenting on the weather.
“Then you’d have a dead paramedic.” Like most shifters, unicorns reverted to human form when they died. “Good luck finding a buyer.”
Gaze tapped the rim of his sunglasses meaningfully. “There are ways of encouraging you to shift.”
Hugh let out a short, painful rasp of laughter. “Go ahead, basilisk. Knock yourself out. You really don’t know anything about me, if you think that torture is going to work.”
Gaze leaned forward, still smiling. He pressed a button on the central console.
“Oh,” Gaze said, as the smoked privacy glass behind him sank silently down, “I wasn’t planning on torturing you.”
Bound and gagged in the front passenger seat, Hope’s panicked eyes met his.
Chapter 20
It was a nightmare. Her worst nightmare. Ivy felt like she was underwater, lead weights hanging from every limb. Every sound seemed muffled, apart from the terrified pounding of her heart.
“The police are on their way.” The Earl’s face was grim and cadaverous. Behind him, security floodlights bathed the entire front grounds in stark, brilliant white. “The staff are still searching the property, but I don’t expect they’ll find anything.”
Ivy was shaking so hard, she could barely get words out. “Did the security cameras catch which car they left in?”
“Vehicles were going in and out of the front gates freely, dropping off late arrivals.” The Earl clenched his fist, looking as if he too was having to fight down the instinct to simply run blindly into the night in search of his son. “I have my people scrutinizing the footage and cross-referencing against the guest list, but it’s slow work.”
Lady Hereford hurried up, her high heels unsteady on the graveled drive. “I’ve told the guests that there’s a bomb scare, and that they need to stay put. They’re all locked in the ballroom.”
“What about the injured?” the Earl asked his wife. “The ones that monster caught on his way out?”
“The paralysis is wearing off. They’re confused and distressed, but don’t seem to be hurt.” Lady Hereford’s pale face crumpled suddenly, like tissue paper. “Edward, I let him in—he had an invitation. This is my fault.”
The Earl wrapped his wife in his arms, holding her firmly as she clung to him. “His false identity was rock-solid. You couldn’t have known.”
“I did know,” Ivy said numbly. Every part of her felt cold as ice. “I sensed it when Gaze attacked. But I was too far away to get back in time.”
There was no one who could hold her and tell her that it wasn’t her fault.
Because it was.
The Earl looked at Ivy over the top of his wife’s head. “You’re his true mate. Can you track him?”
“We aren’t fully mated. All I can tell is that he’s alive. He’s hurting,” oh God, “but he’s alive. So
’s Hope. But I know someone who can track them. You need to call the Phoenix. Fire Commander Ash, of the East Sussex Fire and Rescue Service. He’s got a pegasus shifter named Chase Tiernach in his team. We have to get him out here.”
It was a slim hope—she knew from experience that Chase’s pegasus senses could only track people over about five miles. But she clung onto it anyway. If Gaze was taking his captives back to his home base in Brighton, Chase might intercept him on route. Or the pegasus shifter might be able to fly a search pattern and pick up the trail that way.
And if that didn’t work…her mind shied away from even contemplating that.
“If you know these shifters, wouldn’t it be better for you to call them?” the Earl asked, his brow furrowing.
“They won’t talk to me. But they’ll come for Hugh. They’re his friends.” Ivy turned away. “And anyway, I’m going to be busy.”
She rippled into scales, letting the strength and rage of the wyvern fill her. In a single leap, she was airborne. A few of the staff searching through the parked cars nearby turned their heads, blinking in the wind from her wings, but their eyes passed over her unseeingly. Mythic shifters were invisible to ordinary humans, although she noticed that the Earl’s gaze did follow her emerald form as she spiraled into the sky.
Her wyvern wanted to head in the direction of the main road. Spit, kill. Destroy everything, until we find our treasures.