Page 45 of Wolf of Ashes
The panthers’ eyes widen, and the males lower their heads in an aggressive stance, their lips drawing back from their teeth. The female hisses at us like the big cat she is, her teeth gnashing and catching at the shadows.
I quickly follow up with a hopeful: “Some kind of attack dog, of course. Big and scary as fuck.”
The female stops hissing, but her eyes narrow dangerously at me.
Diavolo studies his fingernails, the light playing around his hands. “If they don’t want to be dogs, we could make them cats. But they’d have to be housecats.” He watches them from beneath his eyelashes. “I wonder if they’d prefer to be housecats?”
The panthers yelp and recoil and the female hisses again, a threatening sound that would make most supernaturals run for their lives.
“Dogs, then,” Diavolo announces, sitting completely upright while the coils of energy grow thicker around his fingertips. “But what kind?”
I run through the list of big-dog breeds Mom warned me about and discover it’s quite short. “German Shepherd? Rottweiler?” Then I snap my fingers. “Doberman Pinscher. They’re sleek, black, fast, and around the same size as the panthers are now.”
“Good,” Diavolo replies. “The closer the illusion is to their natural form, the longer it should hold. After all, we don’t want it wearing off while we’re out in public.”
Without waiting for the panthers’ reaction—not that it would matter now since they seem resigned to accepting their fate—Diavolo extends his hands toward them and closes his eyes.
“Sleek. Black. Fast,” he murmurs beneath his breath as sapphire light wafts gently across the air and coils around the panthers’ bodies.
The light flows over their forms from their tails to their heads. Their tails shorten, but their black fur remains much the same, shortening only slightly. Their bodies elongate a little but are no less muscular-looking, while the biggest change is to their faces.
Their snouts become longer, their heads narrower, and they lose their whiskers. Finally, their eyes turn from silver to the darkest brown, practically black.
The final change is the addition of a patch of russet fur on each of them. One of the males has russet fur across his front right paw. Another has a patch across his right shoulder. The third male wears a russet patch on his chest. And the female has a russet snout.
They stare at each other as they rise to their feet and then turn their heads to consider their own bodies as best they can. The female panther finally looks up at me. She growls in the back of her throat.
It’s a distinctlycaninegrowl instead of a feline snarl.
She coughs, growls again, and then shrugs her shoulders before she settles back onto the sand with her pack.
“Not as bad as it could be, huh?” I ask, grinning at her.
They look fearsome but entirely normal. They’ll be protected this way.
“I’ve poured as much staying power into the magic as I think is safe,” Diavolo says. “Let’s see how long the illusion holds.”
He settles back onto the blanket, lying down and folding his hands behind his head.
In the distance, the lightning has died down, but not completely. It flickers at the corner of my eye, reminding me of the immense power Diavolo controls.
He lifts his left hand toward me and beckons me to come to him. “Come. Sleep while you can.”
He gestures to his side, as if he wants me to lie there. A tempting position. It’s been a long time since I could snuggle against another living creature. My pack instincts are growing stronger by the second, but logic tells me that huddling up against a being like the keeper is a dangerous move to make.
“It’s winter on this side of the hemisphere,” he says, the corners of his lips twitching upward as if he reads my mind. “It’s warm right now, but the temperature is bound to plummet during the night. Don’t stay over there, where you’ll freeze in your underwear. Come over here, where it’s warm.”
Said the predator to his prey.
I’m sure there’s a human nursery rhyme warning of these situations.
I grin right back at him because I’m also certain there would be nursery rhymes warning of creatures like me.
CHAPTERFIFTEEN
Slipping across the blanket, I curl up against Diavolo’s side.
He immediately catches the edge of the blanket behind me and pulls it over us both. A second later, the male panther behind me relocates even closer to me, plunking himself down at my back and pushing me even closer to Diavolo’s side within the blanket.
