MemoriesofParadise (2 page)

Blood oozed from a wound on the woman’s head and dripped down his shirt as he climbed his way up to the door. Maybe she wasn’t dead if she could still bleed so copiously.

Making his way to the door, he found Clay on the limb about to climb through the opening. Gently, he pulled the woman from his shoulder and handed her off to his companion. “Take her. When you get her to the ground, put pressure on that head wound. She’s losing blood rapidly. I have to go back for her daughter.”

He didn’t miss Clay’s swift intake of breath. He also didn’t miss the other man’s exclamation. “Oh, my gods! This woman is—”

“I know,” Gunter interrupted him. The woman’s daughter didn’t wait for him at her seat as he’d told her to do. She had climbed up the seats and followed him out—a regular little monkey. His concern got the best of him. If this were the woman’s child, then he would automatically take her beneath his wing, so-to-speak. He supposed the correct analogy in his instance would be beneath his mane.

“Do you think you can climb out here onto this limb?” If she couldn’t, he could easily carry her. However, the idea might frighten her.

“I-I don’t know.” She looked at the limb, then down at the ground a good thirty feet below them.

“Hurry up and make up your mind quickly, little one. I don’t know how stable this is and we must get out of here quickly.”

“Aren’t you going back for the other lady?”

His stomach clenched. “There’s another woman alive in there?” Why didn’t he sense it?

“Yes. She was sitting almost across from us. She woke up and moaned as I was crawling up here.”

Reaching out, he used his shifter strength, grabbed the girl, and yanked her onto the branch with him. “Be careful climbing down. If you don’t think you can manage it on your own, call for Clay. He will help you.”

Carefully, he made his way back down the aisle of the plane to where he found his mate and the girl. Looking to his left, he saw another woman, her fair hair in her face, her leg bleeding from a compound fracture. She didn’t even see him next to her as she moaned from the pain.

“I’m going to have to move you to get you out of here, lady.”

She jerked at the sound of his voice and looked up at him through pain-filled whiskey-colored eyes. “Do whatever you have to do. Just get me out of here. I smell jet fuel. That can’t be good.”

He smiled at her, though most of his attention was on trying to hear Clay tending to their mate outside the plane. “Okay, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

“I won’t, if you don’t say that I didn’t warn you about the pitch of my scream when something hurts me. I’m liable to pierce your eardrums.” She smiled through her pain and Gunter could only smile in return. His people cherished strong women and she was one of the strongest he’d met so far.

Hurry up and get your ass out here,
Clay said through their mind link.
The girl is here driving me insane.

You’re an adult. Handle it.

I might be an adult, but you’ve never had to deal with a teenager who’s afraid her mother is dying. I can’t do anything without the girl criticizing it.

Gunter would have laughed if the situation hadn’t been so serious. “I’m going to try to set your leg on the count of three. Brace yourself for the pain.”

The woman took a deep breath and gave a sharp nod. Her fingers reflexively tightened on the seat in front of her.

“One.”

Her fingers tightened once again. Gunter shook his head. He’d really hurt her if she tightened up much more.

“Two.” Without warning, he grabbed her by the knee and ankle and gave her leg a jerk. He had to try to get that bone back inside her leg. The woman gave an ear-piercing scream before she fainted from the pain. Taking advantage of her unconscious state, he tore the shirt off the dead man lying across the seat in front of her and used it to bind her leg.

After he had her leg as secure as possible, he took a few moments and checked the other passengers. He would never forgive himself if he missed more survivors and the plane caught fire and burned them to death. Returning to the woman after he determined there were no more left alive, he jerked her from the seat and threw her over his shoulder, mindful of her wound.

He’d set fractures before, but never one on a human. He only hoped he hadn’t done more damage than good. The only thing he
did
know was that if he hadn’t been able to get her bone back into her flesh, she would have bled to death before they could get her help.

Chapter Three

Clay left the girl holding his shirt over her mother’s head wound. She wouldn’t stop pummeling him with her slight fists until he did. He shook his head as he climbed the tree, to help Gunter once he made it back to the opening.

If what the girl told him was true—and he couldn’t see why she would lie—the woman Gunter went back for had a compound fracture. That wasn’t good. She had most likely lost a good portion of her blood. While they had a small amount of human blood in Paradise, they didn’t have much. There weren’t many humans in town to warrant storing large quantities.

Clay called into town, as Gunter had ordered him to do on his way into the plane. The sheriff was on his way with the town’s rescue team. When he reached the limb, he moved forward, stopping just outside the aircraft. He didn’t want to add any more weight to the plane. One spark could set the thing aflame and there was no telling how much more weight it could hold before it shifted.

Leaning over, he looked into the opening just in time to see Gunter heft the woman over his shoulder and start climbing. He used the seats like ladder rungs on his way up through the interior of the fuselage. Three survivors on a flight that held how many…forty, fifty?

Steadying himself over the gap between the limb and the plane, he steadied Gunter as he climbed out and leapt to the limb.

“We have to get out of here. If this plane catches fire we’re dead.” He looked around them. “The damned thing has left a fuel trail and the entire woods are going to go up.”

“That’s unacceptable.”

The fact that Paradise was surrounded by such dense forest was one of the reasons they were able to stay secluded. If they lost the forest, this massive power of nature would not be there to help seclude them from the world. While they didn’t mind associating with humans, they didn’t want humans constantly sticking their noses into Paradise where they didn’t belong.

The last thing they needed was for someone to find out that most of the people who lived here in Paradise weren’t quite human.

“Follow my steps. I’ll direct you to the safest path down. Remember to rest your foot where my hand is once I move it.”

With a sharp nod, he and Gunter began the treacherous climb down out of the tree that was already wounded by the plane.

“Is Sheriff Hunter on his way?”

“Yes. He said he was going to swing by and bring Doc Parker as well.”

“I hope they bring one of the water trucks to help dilute this fuel,” Clay said as they reached the ground.

“Pick up the woman and follow me. We have to get the hell out of here before that fuel catches a spark.”

Clay looked back at the plane, glad that the surrounding forest was covered with snow. If a fire did start, perhaps the thick, blanket of snow would keep it from spreading to the entire forest. He could hope so, anyway.

They had gone less than a mile when they heard the sound of snowmobiles and a siren. Apparently, the sheriff was too impatient for them to carry the wounded out. Either that or he thought there were more survivors than they had found.

The lead machine skidded to a stop sideways as Hunter dismounted and threw off his helmet. He looked at the five of them and shook his head. “Only three survivors?”

“Only the three, though you’re welcome to go look for more,” Gunter replied as he looked down at the woman in his arms. “This woman has a compound fracture.” He looked at Clay and added, “The woman in Clay’s arms has a head wound. We aren’t sure what else. Normally, we wouldn’t have moved them, but the smell of jet fuel persuaded us to get them out of there before the thing caught fire.”

The sheriff nodded. “Good idea.” He jerked his thumb back to a few other machines that towed snow gurneys behind them. The snow gurneys were nothing more than beds on sleds with thermal blankets and heating devices beneath the mattresses to keep the injured party warm.

“Where’s Doc Parker?”

“He was out when I got there. Both he and his son were on a house call up on the mountain. With any luck at all, they’ll be home when we get there,” the sheriff replied.

“Then we’d better get them secured in a hurry.” Clay followed Gunter to the sleds behind the snowmobiles and gently laid his burden down on the narrow bed. Carefully, he belted her in and looked up at the driver. “Be careful.” Looking down, he gently brushed the blood-soaked, auburn hair out of her face before he looked back up at Matt Stewart, the sheriff’s truebond mate. “Be
very
careful. We don’t want her to sustain more injuries.”

“So that’s how it is, huh?” Matt grinned at him. “So now the great pride has its lioness?”

“Shut up, Stewart.” He flicked a glance toward the woman’s daughter who stared at the two of them, obviously confused. “This is the woman’s daughter. Do you think you can give her a ride in behind you? I don’t think she’ll want to leave her mother.”

“Sure.” He scooted forward on the seat and removed his helmet. “Put this on and climb on behind me.”

Taking the helmet, the girl put it on, fastened the clasps, and mounted the snowmobile as though she’d been doing so all of her life.

“Wait a minute!” Clay called as they began to move away. Taking off his coat, he gave it to the girl who didn’t waste any time putting it on.

“Thanks.” She frowned. “Aren’t you going to be cold?” She looked as though she didn’t want to be grateful. However, Clay couldn’t imagine why she could be upset with him. He had done nothing but help save her mother.

He pointed to Gunter. “He has a thermal blanket in a package in his pocket. I’ll be okay. You go on ahead.” He waved them off as she turned her attention back to Matt.

“Is my mom going to be okay?” Clay heard her ask as Matt put the machine in gear and throttled up.

“Sure she is, little one. Don’t worry. We have the best doc on this continent waiting for her back in town. I wanted to bring him out here with me, but he was on his way back from a house call up on the mountain. He should be back by the time we get to town.”

Clay watched as the two machines hauled the women toward the road. Turning to Gunter he rested his hands on his hips. “I don’t know about you, but I’m going into town right now. To hell with the wood.”

“In any case, we have to go back and get our gear. We can’t have kids finding it and cutting off important body parts.”

“That’s true.” He sighed, then prepared to shift into his lion. “Last one there has to split all of the wood when we get it home.”

Clay should have known better. Gunter had always been faster, but he didn’t care. He wanted to hurry to their mate and this was a good way to push both of them to their limits—as though their mate lying in a sick bed wasn’t reason enough.

They both shifted into their lions on the fly, racing toward their equipment. Snow flew about them as they leapt through the powdery flakes, their lions leaving deep troughs through the snow. Gunter, the larger of the two always managed to move faster, but this time, his size was a hindrance. His weight caused him to sink deeper in the snow as Clay managed almost to fly over it. When they reached the last leg of their race to their equipment, Clay threw himself down the slight downgrade, sliding on his belly to the chainsaw, axe, and their snowmobiles.

Shifting back into his human form, he concentrated on dressing himself using his magick as they unhitched the small trailer full of wood from the back. “We have to hurry. If she needs blood, I want it to be ours.”

When they reached the doctor’s home, which doubled as their hospital when needed, they rushed to the front door. Mrs. Parker held the door open for them as they ran up the porch steps. “Matt said to expect you.” She grinned up at them. “So, Gunter has finally found his mate and, as his turn, your mate as well?” Mrs. Parker asked, referring to the fact that Gunter had given him his blood, making him a lion shifter as well as being the other man’s responsibility.

“Yes, ma’am,” Clay replied as they followed her into the house.

The entire town would want to know the answer to
that
question. Clay and a group of rangers came to Paradise several years ago to help their friends, Matt Stewart and Merrick Hunter protect their mate. When the doctor discovered that the men on their teams were part shifter, most of them decided to stay in Paradise and become full-fledged shifters by accepting a transfusion from another.

Generally, the people of Paradise didn’t change humans unless they were mates, but the alpha, Adam Greer, was in accord with the idea of repopulating Paradise with shifters he could trust—especially those with military training. As retired Army Rangers, they were assets to the town and all of them, to a man, stood ready to protect those who couldn’t protect themselves.

Gunter had provided the blood that brought Clay over to full shifter. It gave the other man a certain amount of control over him and it made Clay a lion, the same as Gunter. It was probably a good thing, since lion shifters were few and far between—that was true as far as anyone in Paradise could tell. For all he and Gunter knew, the lion shifters could have a town just like Paradise out there somewhere.