Chapter 12
D eclan had never been so glad to see anyone as he was to see Tara return about an hour later. She had an expression of serene triumph, while the groundskeeper who trailed along after her looked like he'd bitten into a lemon. He unlocked the gates leading into the peacock enclosure, and Tara, cooing , opened her arms to Declan as he scurried outside. "C'mere, Bluey! Come right up here into my arms!"
His peacock said Bluey? in distaste, and Declan hissed, Roll with it! in response. With unfortunate literalness, his peacock dropped and rolled around on the pathway, then shrieked in confusion as Dylan said Not like that!!!
Tara was still standing there with her arms out, although her smile had gotten a little fixed. "C'mon, Bluey. Up! Up! Because you're such a well-trained pet peacock, Bluey, " she added pointedly.
His peacock gasped with outrage. I am not a pet! Or well-trained!
Declan groaned. Do you want to stay in that cage forever?
No! His peacock, properly incentivized now, hopped up into Tara's arms, then suddenly shone with delight, so happy its feathers practically glowed. It snuggled its head down into Tara's shoulder as she went ooof slightly with his weight—peacocks weighed about five kilos on average, but he was a big bird even though he was trying to keep himself to a pretty normal peacock size. Having twelve or fifteen pounds of bird jump in your arms was quite a bit, regardless. Especially with all that tail.
I told you she likes getting tail, his peacock said smugly.
That is not what I said! It didn't matter, though: he was safe and snug in Tara's arms, and not in a pen with a dozen true peafowl. He made the nicest chirrup sound he could—which wasn't brilliant, to be honest, but he did his best—and rubbed his beak against Tara's shoulder. Her breath was warm and her mouth was soft as she kissed the top of his head, avoiding the delicate crest feathers. From one eye, he could see the groundskeeper grudgingly accepting that he was, in fact, Tara's bird.
"Get that bird out of here," the man grumbled. "And don't bring it back. I've no time for nonsense like this going in my day." He followed them as Tara carefully flipped Declan's train over her arm so she wouldn't step on its long feathers, and then, to Declan's dismay, kept following them.
Tara, helpless to do anything else, headed toward the gates, but bent her head over Declan's to whisper, "I don't have keys to your car. Do you?"
He nodded, although he couldn't answer any more than that, not in peacock form. Tara took a deep breath. "Can you…give them to me? Without changing back?"
Declan shook his head, and she groaned. "Well, this is going to be awkward, then."
Fortunately the groundskeeper stopped following them at the gate, and although Declan's car was right there, Tara kept walking as if they'd parked farther away. People stared at them: a woman carrying a giant peacock was not normal. Tara gave a high-pitched giggle right above his head. "Where the hell am I going to take you so you can shift? Oh, I know." With another nervous giggle, she headed for the toilets near the entrance, brought him into one of the stalls, and locked the door behind them before setting Declan down.
He shifted to human immediately, which made them both gasp: the toilet stall was remarkably small with two adult humans in it. But then he picked Tara up into an embrace, his face buried against her shoulder just like his peacock had done. "I have no idea how you got me out of there, but thank you."
"Ah sure and it was nothing," she said in a passable attempt at an Irish accent, then laughed a bit hysterically again, hugging him hard. "I called the wildlife park and asked Director Kelly if she could help me."
Declan put Tara on her feet, gazing down at her in awed astonishment. "That was an incredibly good idea. My God, look at you, beautiful and brilliant as well."
"The inspiration of panic," Tara said with visible embarrassment. "I'm just glad it worked. Although I think at least five people saw me bring a peacock in here and now I'm going to walk out with a man. That might be a problem."
"Not unless there are security cameras, and maybe not then," Declan said thoughtfully. "We can brazen it out if there's not. I mean it would be madness for you to have been carrying a peacock around, right?"
"Well, there's that…"
"And if there are cameras…" Dylan glanced upward like he'd be able to see them, even though the stall walls and door went all the way to the ceiling. "How about we burn that bridge when we get there?"
"That actually seems like the best idea," Tara admitted. "You're okay? I nearly had a heart attack when that guy netted you."
"I'm fine. Nothing bruised but my ego. I should have seen him coming. Peacocks aren't great fliers, but I could have gotten far enough away to shift. But you rescued me anyway." He beamed down at her. "You really are fantastic. My heroine."
"You would have done the same for me." Tara paused. "If I could turn into a peacock, anyway. Or a peahen, I guess. Because it certainly would have been hard to explain if they'd just netted me and thrown me in the peacock enclosure."
Declan laughed and drew her into another hug, exhaling happily as the warmth of her soft body pressed against his. "Yes. Yes, it would have been. And yes, I would have. I tell you, I was looking for a way to cut through the fence, or dig a hole under it, or…"
Nest in a cozy coop, his peacock offered. Apparently it hadn't been terribly worried about being stuck there forever.
We'll go home and nest this evening, Declan promised. You've earned it.
Will our mate come with us?
I hope so.
That seemed to satisfy his peacock, which settled down comfortably as Declan added, "Will we try to brazen it out, then? Should we go out one at a time, or together?"
"Oh! Me first. If anybody wants to know where the peacock is I'll try to be distracting so you can sneak out so they don't notice you were in the ladies'."
"Clever woman. All right, you go. But first!" He dipped his head to steal a kiss, then, distracted, pressed her up against the stall door to kiss her more thoroughly. They were both breathless and smiling when they finally came up for air, and even Declan thought he sounded a little vague as he said, "You'd better go before things get out of hand."
"If we didn't have Colette to deal with…" Tara opened the stall door and scurried out, leaving Declan to sort himself out. He'd almost forgotten about Colette in all the fuss, and hoped the designer wasn't out there pulling peacock tails. Although she couldn't be, unless the school kids were also gone.
With an under-his-breath mutter, he went to the door, peeked through a crack to see Tara in an animated discussion with a couple of other tourists, and slipped out to head back into the castle grounds unnoticed. A quick glance at his phone told him his friends were on the way, so all he and Tara had to do was find Colette—somewhere in sixty acres of castle grounds—and be ready when Seamus and Brian got there.
Tara rejoined him, all lovely bounces and jiggles as she jogged up the path to his side, then heaved a breathless sigh. "Brazening it out more or less worked. I think maybe we should try to wrap it up and get out of here as fast as possible, though. The rest of the peacocks are in their enclosure, but if we get far enough away from that, you should be able to shift and maybe draw her out without drawing attention from the groundskeepers, right?"
"Hopefully. Or we can split up and search for her, then ring the other if we find her?"
Tara put her hand in his and shook her head. "No, thank you. I've had enough adventures in splitting up from you for one day already. We'll find her, we'll…I still don't know what," she admitted with a grimace. "She doesn't seem the type to back off easily, but calling the police when there are shifters involved…."
"You've gotten used to that quick like," Declan said with a smile as they wandered through the castle grounds. "Having to think carefully about who to involve, when shifters are part of the equation. I think I can convince her, though. You said something about peacock gods earlier, right? What if I could make her think I was one?"
Tara's eyebrows climbed and she looked up at him skeptically. "How?"
"Shifters tend to run large, when they take their animal forms, but bird shifters can take it to an extreme. I can get…" He hesitated. " Very big."
His fated mate's mouth twitched, although she struggled to keep her face straight and assumed the most innocent voice imaginable. "Are you telling me that you've got a big cock, Declan?"
Yes! You do! Tell her you do! She'll like that! His peacock sounded thrilled. Declan thought he might die. Voice suddenly hoarse with both embarrassment and desire, he said, "I wouldn't have put it that way…"
Tara's laughter pealed out across the castle grounds, and Declan thought he would be a happy man if he could spend the rest of his life listening to that laugh.
You can, his peacock told him eagerly. Just keep reminding her about your big cock! I'm very big! And handsome! And I can get it up any time she wants me to!
Declan choked on a laugh, then gave up and gave into it, shoulders shaking as he and Tara walked along. This was perfection, he thought. Nothing could be better, except to explain the fated mate bond and live happily ever after. And he would— they would—as soon as they found and dealt with Colette Saunier.
"There she is," Tara murmured, almost as if she'd heard his thoughts. "I'll go say hello and you—oop!" The last was to Declan as he took a quick look around and shifted. The designer was in a clearing, scowling around as she searched the ground, probably looking for peacock feathers. She glanced up at the sound of Tara's footsteps, and her eyes narrowed greedily when she found Declan parading a few feet in front of her.
"I see you got one out of captivity for me," Saunier said. "Whisper its tail to bits for me, love, I don't want to muck around in the damp any longer than I have to. My shoes are ruined." She lifted a foot a few centimeters, showing off suede that looked water-stained and manky indeed.
"I've told you," Tara said irritably as she walked around Declan to try to get Saunier to listen. "It takes time and trust, and you need to understand that?—"
Declan interrupted with a deliberately harsh shriek, drawing both women's attention. He shook his tail purposefully, not yet lifting it, but making the feathers rattle and watching more avarice light in Saunier's eyes. He wanted her completely focused on him when he put his plan into action.
Although he had never tried shifting from one size to another without stopping off at human in between. Now, advancing on Colette Saunier, was a bad moment for him to suddenly wonder for the first time if it was even possible. He said, Do you think we can ? to his peacock.
Our mate will be very impressed, his peacock—promised, maybe, or maybe it was trying to convince itself. Since Tara was in Declan's line of sight, her eyes wide with anticipation, he had to agree with his peacock: she would be incredibly impressed if he shifted directly to the unbelievably huge bird that he could become.
It's just a shift, right? he asked the bird. Just like any other. No reason we have to be human in the middle of it. We're still changing shape…
He wasn't quite sure he believed it, honestly, but his peacock let go one of its raucous screeches, and between one step and the next, made the shift.
It felt weird . Both of them thought so: it felt weird , not quite unnatural but certainly unusual, to go directly from a more or less normal-sized peacock to one who stood four meters at the shoulder. And peacocks weren't quite so long-necked as swans, but Declan was suddenly looking down at Colette from pretty close to sixteen feet off the ground. She looked remarkably small.
Like a bug , his peacock said with delight. We could eat her .
We can't, Declan told his bird firmly. She's already scared enough.
That's nothing, his peacock said with arrogant confidence. This female won't like to see us get it up. Watch this . As it spoke, it raised its train, rattling it, sending the hiss of swishing feathers spilling across the whole castle grounds. That tail had to be a good twenty feet in height, all told: absolutely massive, impossibly large and threatening. Declan honestly wished he could see himself. He stepped forward again and Colette shrieked, but seemed rooted to the ground, unable to even flee. For nearly the first time ever, Declan also wished he could talk in this form: some kind of dramatic speech telling the woman to leave peacocks—and other animals—alone seemed like the right thing to do in this moment.
Colette whispered, "Wha, wha, what, what are you," in a series of breathless stutters. "Are you—what are you, a—a god ?" She sounded as if she thought she might be losing her mind, and managed to cast one beseeching glance toward Tara, like she hoped the other woman would verify what she was seeing.
Tara crinkled her eyebrows down in concern and in a very convincing tone of worry, said, "Colette? Are you all right?"
" Aren't you seeing this ?" Colette shrieked. She gestured toward Declan, who watched Tara's gaze turn to him, although she seemed to be looking at his knees. Then he realized: she was looking where a normal peacock's head and body would be, not up and up and up like Colette was.
Tara, very gently, still looking at Declan's peacocky knees, said, "I see a peacock, Colette…"
"No! No, it's a—it's a peacock god , it's a—it's huge, don't you see?—?!"
The peacock, with a note of absolute glee in its voice, said Watch this again, and took another step forward.
A shudder ran through Dylan as they moved forward. It felt almost like shifting, but not quite; it felt more like their unusual shift from small to enormous, but not quite that, either. It sent a chill through his whole body, like he'd stepped in snow, and his tail feathers shook and rattled even more as the peacock let out a truly thunderous shriek that had to be audible for miles.
To his complete astonishment, Colette Saunier's eyes rolled back in her head and she collapsed in a faint at his feet.