Free Bear Fire: Bear Shifter Paranormal Romance (BBW) (Pine Ridge BBW Bear Shifter Paranormal Romance Series Book 4) by Belinda Meyers Page B

crumpled form of the whip-wielder. The whip itself had
vanished like smoke. “Jeremy there planned to torture me to death once Walsh
was finished with you.” He said this last word with his attention on Jackie.
    “‘Jeremy’,” Matt snorted, with a
shake of his head. “I guess ‘Wormtongue’ was taken. Anyway, Jackie said
something about a prison …”
    Tannenbaum nodded. “Since he’s
unconscious and unshielded, I will have no trouble transporting him.”
    “To the prison?” Jackie said.
    “Well, a holding cell to await
trial. Then prison, yes.”
    Tannenbaum clapped his hands and
Jeremy, if that was his name, vanished. Matt whistled.
    “Some trick,” he said.
    Jackie sucked in a breath, and Matt
could see that she was starting to get nervous. Her face had gone tense and her
eyes were fixed on Tannenbaum. The mage raised his eyebrows in anticipation of
what she would say, and Matt could see him start to brace himself. The time for
the business of the day had come. The time to get what Jackie had come for.
    In a strained voice—she was
obviously having to force the words out—Jackie said, “I have the item. The
ring. Do you still want to help me restore my fire?”
    Tannenbaum patted the chair with
long-fingered hand. “You mean, did my treatment under Jeremy’s care make me
reconsider your request? No. No, it didn’t. If anything, it pissed me off and
made me more likely to help you. In fact, I’ll cut my price in half. Just for
you.”
    Jackie let out a long breath and
sagged backward, clearly hugely relieved. Matt threw an arm around her
shoulders and she flashed him a grateful smile.
    “I have the ring here,” she said,
tapping her purse.
    “I didn’t have time to gather all
the ingredients for the spell before Jeremy showed up.” Tannenbaum moved to the
tavern’s bar and picked up an object there, and Matt almost laughed to see it
was a fanny pack. The dude had his magical whatsits in a fanny pack! Strapping
it around his waist, the mage said, “I’d selected most of them, but I’ll need
the spores of a certain fungus to finish.”
    “Where’s this fungus?” Matt said.
    Tannenbaum grimaced. “In the tower.
At the top.”
    “Like a greenhouse?” Jackie said.
    “Well, maybe a magical greenhouse,” Tannenbaum said. “But to get to it we’ll have
to navigate our way past those golems, and I don’t like our chances.”
    Matt made a fist. “I like our
chances just fine. One bear and two magic-users. We should be able to tackle
just about anything.”
    “The golems are resistant to most
forms of magic,” Tannenbaum said.
    Jackie nodded. “I tried an ice
spell on one, but it just shrugged it off.”
    Matt stifled a curse. “Well, we’ll
just have to be sneaky then. I mean, it’s either that or wait for Walsh to show
up and finish us off, right? And if we can give Jackie back her fire, we might
stand a chance against that asshole.”
    Tannenbaum tapped his chin
thoughtfully. “Well, we do have his ring. He relied on that to steal
dragonfire, and I’m willing to bet not having it will impede his efforts to do
it again.”
    “ Impede ,” Jackie repeated. “Not stop ?
I hadn’t been sure, but I had been hoping it might stop him altogether.”
    “I’m not sure, either, my dear, but
I would suspect not. He is very powerful and will probably have an alternate
way to extract dragonfire—a backup, if you will. But it will be slower and
clumsier, otherwise he would use it and not the ring. At any rate, I will be
there to distract him. And our bear friend here, too. So yes, I think we stand
a chance of defeating him.”
    “Will it mean killing him?” Jackie
said, and Matt could hear her reluctance to end the man’s life. After all he’d
done, and she was still hesitant to do it.
    Matt decided to take the burden of
guilt off her shoulders; she had enough problems as it was. Speaking before she
had a chance to, he said, “ Fuck that
guy. He’s not human, not if he can take