***

The patchwork Jack had forced on him by wrapping his chest in gauze didn’t please Ryder, but he had eventually had to let the young clairvoyant lead the way, the path bringing them to one of the places in the city where they sold healing supplies and treatments. Ryder was aware of how much humans depended on such places and was once more grateful for his wolf blood that helped him heal fast. It was the same for his whole pack, but that would be endangered soon, too, if he didn’t finish his quest by bonding with Theodore Pembroke.

The store where his mate had bought the incense with the foul smell was a monstrous thing made of metal and glass. It was the name of the city incarnate, and even the people moving inside had an artificial quality, as if they moved by pattern not by free will. One man and one woman tended the floor; they were dressed in impeccable suits and their hair was styled in such a way that it seemed to have been attached to their heads, not to have grown out of them. Their faces were cold and unyielding as Ryder examined them from outside the store.

“Do you see what I mean?” Jack asked. “One look at them, and they can freeze the blood in your veins.”

Ryder snorted. “They do not possess such power. I would have felt it if that had been true.”

“Wow, can you really do stuff like that? You must be pretty amazing,” Jack commented. “So, are you ready to go in? I know I’m not, and I think they might recognize me from another time.”

“You said something about certain challenges you had to complete,” Ryder said politely.

“Challenges? Ah, you mean the dares. Okay, I need to come clean. I like playing the fool a little too often and too much. I basically go with my friends into stores like this and pretend to be interested in buying something. We get these robots--”

“You called them witches,” Ryder reminded him.

“Robotic witches,” Jack said promptly. “Well, we get them to show us the items on offer while talking to each other about how much we’d like this or that, but find flaws at the same time to get on these people’s nerves. Because it’s their policy to help the client, no matter how terrible their tastes, they need to keep smiling like idiots.” The young man guffawed, seemingly delighted with the idea. “I know, it’s silly, but what else can broke people do for fun around here?”

Ryder shrugged. He had no idea what he could suggest that people with no currency in their pockets do for fun in this strange boring city.

“Anyways, I brought you here, so I must now take my leave.” Jack turned on his heel, ready to make a run for it, but Ryder was quick enough to grab him by the back of his jacket.

“Since you’re a clairvoyant, you will come with me. Any sign of foul magic you detect, let me know right away.”

Despite Jack’s struggles, Ryder pulled him along.

Protests kept pouring out of him. “Hey, I’m not a clairvoyant or whatever. I can barely call myself a fortuneteller.” 

“What you call yourself is not important. What you truly are is,” Ryder said promptly, while he pushed open the glass doors to the store and dragged Jack inside with him.

“How am I going to detect foul magic? Does it appear encased in shiny bubbles?” Jack whispered furiously at him.

“You’re the clairvoyant. You’ll know it when you find it,” Ryder shot back matter-of-factly.

“Great. Just great. And how am I supposed to--”

“Hello, how may I be of service?” The woman with the abnormal hair and impeccable suit was standing right in front of them, acting as if she was trying to bar them access to the interior.

Ryder examined her for a moment. Her plastic smile didn’t waver. He couldn’t smell anything on her, nothing that he could identify as being foul magic. Without letting go of Jack’s jacket, he took the fragment of incense he had carried with him from Theodore’s office out of his pocket. “Are you selling this item?”

The woman appeared hesitant to take the fragment from him. She leaned forward slightly, observed the incense and pushed her glasses up on her nose. “It is difficult to tell.”

“You do have it,” Jack interrupted, pointing at a glass box behind the woman. “It’s right over there.”

Ryder looked over the shopkeeper’s shoulder. It was quite a big piece of rock, which meant that these people had to chip at it to break it into chunks. His nose caught something, even though it was hard to tell if he could really smell the incense from that distance, enclosed as it was.

“Phew,” Jack scrunched up his nose, “that thing stinks big balls.”

Ryder understood that the fortuneteller’s fine nose was bothered by the offensive smell, even when the incense wasn’t burning, but the situation was too dire to indulge Jack in his foibles. He needed to observe the thing from up close and then ask questions.

“Sir, sir,” the woman raised her voice, “please, you must leave.” She was jumping up and down in front of him, trying to stop him.

“Why?” Ryder asked. If they didn’t want him to discover the source of his mate’s temporary madness, they had to be involved.

“I am quite sure you cannot afford anything we sell here,” the shopkeeper said, wringing her small hands. “So I must ask you to leave.”

“I have no intention of buying anything,” Ryder assured her. “But that thing over there,” he pointed at the glass box, making the woman follow the direction of his arm with her eyes, “must be destroyed.”

The woman gasped in disbelief. “I am going to call security right away. If you do not listen to me when I’m asking you nicely, I’m afraid you will have to be thrown out.”

“Not a good experience, man,” Jack said, pulling at Ryder’s sleeve. “It has happened to me before.”

“And you, young man,” the woman directed her barely contained anger at Jack, “we have you on camera, and you will be reported.”

“What did I do?” Jack complained. “If you guys don’t like people walking into your store looking for stuff, maybe you should close shop.”

The shopkeeper appeared unimpressed by Jack’s words and began talking rapidly into a small device wrapped around her wrist.

“We should make a run for it, man, I’m not kidding,” Jack whispered. “These guys are no joke. You might be a big fellow, but it’s not pleasant to be thrown out on your ass.”

Ryder hadn’t come all this way for nothing. Without releasing Jack, who had to hurry to keep up, he was by the glass box in six big steps. The box didn’t appear to have a lid or a door of any kind, which left Ryder with just one possibility. Making his free hand into a fist, he smashed through the glass top.

“What are you doing?” the woman shrieked.

Ryder grabbed the big rock while Jack made all sorts of gagging sounds by his side, sounding like a vomiting cat.

He noticed the two burly men rushing toward him a moment too late. They smacked into him so hard that the rock went flying. The shopkeeper was not making any sense now, she had become too hysterical, and the large incense rock lay broken into pieces on the polished floor.

Something poked him in one side, while a nasty smell coming from a bottle one of the men was holding invaded his nostrils. With a growl, he pushed his two attackers away, sending them flying across the room, smashing into an arrangement of other glass boxes standing on their individual pedestals. The woman’s cries had now gone from angry to pitiful.

Ryder had no time to waste. Jack was on all fours and rapidly crawling away. Ryder moved fast and grabbed him again, preventing his retreat.

“Oh, no, man, I can’t become a criminal,” Jack moaned. “I can’t go to jail, just look at me.”

“You will not go to jail,” Ryder assured him. Pulling his clairvoyant along, since Jack was no longer bothering to walk and let himself be dragged, he grabbed one of the broken pieces and went for the woman.

Her hair was now in disarray, although Ryder couldn’t imagine how that happened, and she was backing away from him with a wild look on her face. The guards were still on the floor, but they were pulling themselves back together. Since he didn’t want to hurt humans, Ryder needed to get out of there fast.

“This thing,” he growled, pushing the lump in his hand into her face, “where did you get it?”

“Someone sold it to us,” she growled back.

For each step she took backward, he took another step forward.

“Fuck, she’s going to call the cops,” Jack warned him.

The shopkeeper turned fast, rushing for her desk. Without thinking twice, Ryder threw the large fragment in his hand in an attempt to block her path. The desk actually bent under the impact, the incense shard stuck right in its middle.

“Damn, Ryder, watch out.”

The sudden blow to the head dizzied him. He turned slowly. How had he been so unaware of his surroundings? There had also been a man tending the floor when he and Jack were still outside the store, looking in.

The male shopkeeper had an ugly smile on his face as he lowered his arm. The thing in his hand looked like something Ryder had seen before – a wooden weapon, used by a long-forgotten pack.

The blood pouring down his temple was real. It wasn’t easy to hurt a wolfshifter. But with the right weapons, it was possible.

Jack’s voice reached him, but it was muffled and sounded like gibberish. However, he was well aware that the clairvoyant was trying to tug at him, make him get up. How had he ended up on the floor?

Rage flowed through him. He growled and bounced back up on his feet. His attacker fell backward, shaking his head in denial, anticipating what would come next. The other two men were back on their feet and running toward him.

“Things just got hairy,” Jack shouted at him.

Police sirens could be heard in the distance, Ryder realized. He was supposed to be keeping a low profile while here in the city, and his wolf had almost come out to teach these humans a well-deserved lesson. He turned and grabbed Jack, stashing him under his arm. To escape unharmed meant they had to flee.

***