Rebel: The Blades of the Rose (5 page)

She slightly relaxed when she recognized the horse and rider. The man waved his fur cap and smiled as he neared. “Mrs. Bramfield!”

Lowering the rifle, she called back, “Hello, Edwin.”

The trapper stopped his horse several yards from where she stood on the porch. Hanging from his saddle and on the back of his mule were the accoutrements of his trade—beaver traps and pelts, black fox skins, snowshoes, and grappettes for navigating ice. She was relieved to see his rifle was in its scabbard on his saddle.

“How are you, Mrs. Bramfield?”

“Very well, thank you.” As she exchanged pleasantries with Edwin, Astrid never forgot that a nude, somewhat wounded, and extremely angry man was crouched beside her bed inside. A man who was hunted.

“Summer's just about over.”

“Looks like it.”

Astrid first met Edwin Mayne shortly after she came to the Northwest Territory. He had been one of the men she'd had to hire to help her build the cabin. Surprisingly, men out in the Territory were among the most respectful of women she had ever met. Even though she lived alone, and Edwin knew it, not once did he or any of his fellow trappers attempt liberties with her person. He might stop by for a moment on his way to set and check traps, but he never stayed long, knowing that she wanted solitude rather than company.

“Mind if I come in?” Edwin asked.

“Oh,” she said, “I don't think so. I just did some washing and I have some…feminine things hanging up.”

Edwin blushed underneath his bushy beard. “A' course! Can't stay long, anyway. I just came to warn you.”

“Warn me?” she repeated. “About what?”

The trapper looked grim. “Wolf.”

“I haven't any livestock in pasture,” she noted. “And wolves don't attack people.” The fairy-tale legends and popular lore often painted wolves as cruel man-killers, but Astrid's time out in the wilderness had taught her that wolves wanted nothing to do with people and stayed well away from them.

“This one did. Gave one of 'em a good bite, got a few more with his paws. Maybe it was sick or wounded. You ought to keep a sharp eye out. I'm trying to track it now. Might be able to get a good price for the pelt.”

“Who did the wolf attack? One of the settlers by the lake?”

“No, ma'am. Some English fellers. Between here and the post.”

Astrid did her best to keep her voice steady, her face betraying nothing, but growing horror crept through her, numbing her at the same time she felt acutely aware of herself and her surroundings. All the instincts she had spent years honing came blazing back to life. She felt again that rift in magic, that encroaching sense of doom.

“I'll be vigilant,” she said. “Thank you for letting me know. I should get back to my washing.”

Edwin looked reluctant to leave, but he didn't press the point. Instead, he touched his hand to his cap in a gesture of farewell. The trapper set his heels to his horse, clicking his tongue, and man and animals started away from the cabin.

Astrid let out a breath and turned to go back inside. The sound of a rifle going off had her whirling around, her own rifle cocked and ready. She heard Lesperance inside, leaping for the door. She only just managed to hold it shut as his body connected with the wood, and was actually grateful for his slightly weakened condition. If he'd had his full strength, there would have been no way she could have kept him back.

“Wait,” she hissed through the door. “It wasn't aimed for me or the cabin.” Lesperance cursed but did as she said.

Edwin, a few dozen yards off, held his rifle across his lap and smiled sheepishly. “Sorry, Mrs. Bramfield. Thought I saw that wolf and took a shot at it. But it was only a shadow.”

Her only response was a nod. This time, she waited until Edwin had ridden far off before she went into the cabin.

Lesperance stood just on the other side of the door. His breath came shallowly, in angry surges, as she closed the door behind her and leaned against it. Less than two feet separated them, and she felt the heat of him, the size and masculinity of him, to the point where she was nearly overwhelmed.

“You could've been killed.” Fury shadowed his arrow-sharp features. “I should have been out there, protecting you.”

“I don't need or want protection,” she answered. “Not by you or anyone. If anybody needs looking out for right now, it's you.”

He scowled at her reminder of his current vulnerability.

“You said at the trading post you were Cowichan.” She edged around him, needing to put distance between them, and set her rifle on the table. “Do you have any other tribal background?”

Her abrupt change of topic puzzled him, but he said, “Another Siwash tribe from around Vancouver Island.”

“Anything from these parts?”

“My great-grandmother, on my mother's side. Stoney tribe. Somewhere in these mountains. Why?”

Astrid swallowed hard as her heart slammed in her chest and a net of old memories ensnared her. Lesperance had no idea. He would never believe her. But he had to. Because it was the truth, and the truth wouldn't allow itself to be hidden away for the sake of convenience or peace.

“There are Stoney legends,” she said at last, “of people who can change their form, change into animals. Perhaps you've heard them.”

He nodded guardedly, unsure where she was headed. “When I was allowed to see her, my mother told me stories she had heard from her grandmother. The people who ran the school didn't like her filling my head with ‘heathen' tales. After a while, she wasn't permitted to visit anymore. But I remembered what she said. A legendary race of changers lived in the sacred mountains.”

Astrid shouldered past the pain she felt for him to be separated from his family at so young an age. All that mattered at this moment was now.

“The race of changers are called Earth Spirits,” she said. “I have heard the legends, too. But I learned long ago that there is much more truth to legends than society would have us believe. Often, the truth surpasses the legend.”

He stalked toward her. She had no desire to be chased like a rabbit around her cabin, so she held her ground as he loomed over her. “Tell me what the hell you're suggesting,” he demanded.

She looked up at him, careful to keep her own gaze steady and serious. “I'm
suggesting
nothing. I am
telling
you.”

“Telling me what?”

She stared at him for a moment, understanding full well the implications of what she was about to say. Not only would his life change completely, but hers would as well. Damn.

“
You
are an Earth Spirit.”

Laugher. Anger. Astonishment. Astrid expected any one of these reactions from Nathan Lesperance after revealing to him that he was not a mere man, as he had long believed, but a shape-changing Earth Spirit.

Instead, he stalked around her cabin, throwing open her cupboard, hauling up the ticking-covered mattress so that the bedding tumbled everywhere, shoving books out of her bookcase.

“What the hell are you doing?” she demanded.

“Looking for whiskey,” he growled over his shoulder. “Either you're drunk, or I need to be.” He threw more books onto the floor, heedless.

Astrid stomped over to him, determined to keep him from wrecking her once-orderly home. She grabbed his arm. “Stop it.”

He whirled to face her, and only a few inches separated them. “Thank you,” he said, low and fierce. “I didn't say that before. Thank you for finding me out in the wilderness and bringing me here to your cabin. I probably would've died if you hadn't taken me in. I know you don't want me here. So, don't think I'm not grateful, because I am. But
like hell
will I be lied to or mocked. You think I'm a stupid Indian—the way they all do.”

“That's not what I think,” she shot back. “I'm not lying. I'm not making fun of you.”

He glanced down to where she still held his arm, his eyes narrowing at the sight. His arm was tight and hewn with muscle. Warmth flooded her, and she pulled her hand back.

“Explain yourself,” he rumbled, “before I smash this cabin into matchsticks.”

She cast a quick look around, as if actually assessing whether he could reduce her sturdy cabin to kindling. At the moment, he was so ferocious, she almost believed it was possible.

“When I found you,” she said, “you were covered in cuts. Not little scratches, but actual wounds that might need stitches. And now look”—she gestured to his chest, forcing herself to consider the sleek contours of his skin—“they are practically vanished. Healed within hours.”

“Always been a fast healer.”

“No one mends that quickly. Not without some assistance.”

He shook his head. “So my wounds are almost gone. That's not enough to convince me I'm some kind of man-beast.”

“I did not say you were a man-beast. A man who can change into an animal. That is different.”

His bark of laughter held no humor. “Stupid of me not to see the difference.”

Astrid held up her hands. “I know this is difficult to comprehend—”

“Difficult?” His mouth twisted. “Try ridiculous.”

“But it is true,” she persisted, clenching her teeth. “Edwin, the trapper who was outside, said a wolf attacked a group of Englishmen. The wolf bit someone and clawed them. You had blood in the corners of your mouth and under your fingernails. Blood that wasn't yours.”

This made him pause, but for a bare moment. “Still a damned far leap to make. Maybe an animal attacked
me
when I was wandering around.”

Astrid wanted to pummel him. She had not spoken this much at one time in years, and the effort cost her patience. “Somewhere, buried in your stubborn head is the memory of your abduction and escape. In that memory is the truth.”

He swung away from her, gripping the blanket to his waist. “The laughable truth that I—me, a man—can shift forms into a wolf—an animal.”

“Exactly,” she said.

“Not ‘exactly,'” he fired back. “You may consider me some ignorant heathen savage—”

“I never said that!”

“But the stories my mother told me are just that, stories. I knew it as a child and I know it now. This is a world of steam engines and gunpowder. Magic isn't real.”

“Trust me,” Astrid said darkly, “it is.” And she had the loss to prove it.

He glowered at her. “Trust. You're asking me to trust you. Based on what?”

She should have expected resistance from him. After all, a person wasn't told he was a supernatural being every day. Even so, his stubbornness was a stone wall she battered herself against. How unlike gentle, soft-spoken Michael this man was. But then, she realized belatedly, Lesperance was much like her. She always demanded proof, would never give her trust readily, even before her husband's death. Michael had been the one to believe, to befriend everyone, while she guarded herself and him like a tigress. Lesperance had the same wariness.

“You said it yourself,” she countered. “I could have left you to die, but I did not. Even if your wounds did heal quickly, you were in the wilderness alone and dazed.”
And naked,
she silently added.

“If I
could
turn into a wolf,” he said as though humoring a fanciful child, “I think I'd know. I've never done it before.”

“Things change,” she said, grim. “People change.”

“But not into animals,” he countered. “Just find me some damned clothes and I'll get the hell out of here. I don't care how beautiful you are, I'm not going to listen to you—” He stopped, tensing, then inhaled deeply.

Her heart, already racing, began to knock forcefully in the cage of her chest. “What is it?”

His eyes met hers, ebony to steel. “Trouble.”

“Can you hear something?”

“I smell it.” He drew in another breath through his nose. “The men who captured me. It's their scent.” A moment's rare bewilderment crossed his face. “I don't know how I know, I just do.”

Astrid did not doubt him. She took a spyglass from her pack, still resting on the floor, and darted to the window. As Lesperance watched in puzzlement, she drew back the curtain, then pulled herself through the window.

“There's a new invention called a door,” he said drily as she stood on the windowsill.

She ignored him, instead climbing up onto the roof. The pitch of the roof was not very steep, so she easily held her footing. Her hands, however, shook slightly as she trained her spyglass on the lone pass leading into the meadow. She would not be visible to whoever tried to breach the lea, and had a good enough vantage to see whoever dared disturb her isolation.

What she saw caused her heart to seize. Curses or swears refused to come to her lips. Instead, a cold sense of inevitability threaded through her. She could not see the faces of the men riding in the pass, but she was able to count their number, and knew them at once from their posture. A sense of entitlement radiated from them like noxious vapor. The world belonged to them, and whatever was not already in their possession soon would be.

She knew these men, knew them almost as well as she once knew herself. They were a blight upon the earth, an engine of destruction and enslavement that she had once foolishly thought she could stop. Until the day when Michael was taken from her. Then she no longer believed whatever she or any of her friends did made any difference. Their enemy was and would always be stronger, more ruthless. She had tried to leave them, and her friends, her work, behind. Yet even here, in this wild place, the enemy had found her and even now was less than a half an hour from her home.

The Heirs of Albion.

Balanced on the roof, balanced on the cusp of her own conscience. What to do? A few, far too few, options. She could get her rifle, wait for the Heirs to come within range, and then pick off as many of them as possible. But there were too many. At best, she could hit two or three before their own shooters took her down. No, she refused to throw her life away for a petty victory.

It isn't me they want.
The Heirs wanted Lesperance. He was their objective, not her. Years she had spent nursing her seclusion, far from everything and everyone who meant anything to her. The deprivations she had suffered just to carve out a corner of the world where she could be alone.
Do nothing, let the Heirs take him. Reclaim your peace.

Impossible. She cursed at her integrity. No matter how much she wished, her honor rejected the idea of allowing the Heirs to capture Lesperance. Even if he possessed the ability to shift into wolf form, he could never face the Heirs by himself. They were far too powerful, too brutal. And his survival in the wilderness, alone, was next to impossible. He didn't know the terrain. Without a guide, without protection, he would be vulnerable to the wild and, most of all, to the Heirs. She had to get him to safety.

She was down from the roof, inside her cabin, within seconds. She did not spare a glance toward Lesperance. “We have to leave immediately,” she said. She dashed around the single room, throwing gear together for a longer trek into the wild. Her mind and body switched far too easily into a mode of being once thought forgotten. Everything became clear and precise. Uncertainty led to hesitation, which led to death. So, no uncertainty.

A revolver's hammer clicked behind her. She spun around.

Edwin stood near the open door, his gun pointed at her. To one side lay Lesperance, dazed, struggling to sit up amid the splintered remains of the chair. Astrid immediately deduced what had happened. The trapper was a big man, incredibly strong. It was a wonder Lesperance wasn't completely unconscious.

“What are you doing?” Astrid asked, even though she knew perfectly well what Edwin was doing.

To his credit, the trapper looked contrite, though he didn't lower his weapon. “I'm sorry, Astrid. They offered me too much money to say no.”

She didn't have to ask who “they” were. The Heirs. Her mind raced. It wasn't the first time she'd been on the dangerous end of a gun, especially that of one of the Heirs' hired mercenaries. Her own revolver was still in her gun belt on the table, her rifle by the door. She could go for the knife in her boot.

Astrid was still calculating odds when a gray, snarling blur leapt onto Edwin. She barely saw the movement. One moment, the trapper had his gun aimed at her, and in the next, he rolled on the floor, screaming, as an animal attacked.

Not any animal. A wolf. Huge, much bigger than any wolf she had seen in these parts. And merciless as it tore into Edwin.

Astrid ducked as the trapper's revolver fired, the shot going wild and slamming into the wall. When she looked up, it was all she could do not to turn away in horror. The wolf had Edwin by the throat. The trapper gave another scream, then the sound collapsed into a wet gurgle. Blood splashed across the wooden floor and stained the wolf's maw, crimson on the silver fur. Edwin's limbs twitched, and he went still.

Wolf and woman stared at each other.

The wolf snarled from his crouched position over the trapper's body as Astrid took a careful step forward. Dear God, it was enormous. At least thirty inches at the shoulder. Silver and black fur bristled with aggression. A mouth full of white, tearing teeth. Eyes of glinting topaz.

It was those eyes into which she stared, searching for the man within. “I am your friend,” she said slowly, hands upraised. “I am no threat to you.”

The wolf relaxed slightly from its crouch, its snarl easing. It tilted its head a fraction, as if considering her.

“Please,” Astrid whispered, drawing nearer even as her mouth dried and her hands grew slick. What if he was too far gone to recognize her? She would die beside traitorous Edwin Mayne, her blood mingling with the trapper's, as the Heirs neared. “You and I are in danger. We must leave at once. I am your friend,” she repeated, holding out one trembling hand. The wolf leaned closer, cautiously sniffing her palm.

She expected, at any moment, to have her hand torn from her body. Instead, the air shimmered. A vapor gathered around the wolf, silvery light gleaming through the mists, like clouds covering the moon. The vapor swirled, then dissolved, revealing Nathan Lesperance on hands and knees where the wolf had been. Blood smeared his mouth. He glanced down at the trapper's corpse, then lurched upright and back until he connected with the wall.

Lesperance stared at her, utterly, profoundly shocked by what had just happened. He brought shaking fingertips to his mouth and started when they came away wet and red. He did not seem to care that he was completely nude. What was modesty compared to the incredible, awful truth?

Before he could speak, Astrid crossed the cabin to him. She stepped over the splayed, still form of Edwin, unconcerned that she tracked his blood over her formerly clean floor. From her back pocket, she produced a kerchief. Lesperance reared back when she reached for him, knocking his head into the wall behind him.

“Easy,” she murmured, bringing the square of fabric up to his mouth.

“Don't want to hurt you,” he said hoarsely.

“You won't.” She carefully wiped the blood from his lips until it was completely gone. The kerchief was ruined, though, and she tossed it to the ground.

“I've never…” He swallowed hard, then shut his eyes when he tasted blood. But he was strong, because he opened his eyes a second later. “I've never killed anyone before.”

Astrid turned away. “It doesn't get easier.”

 

Considering that Astrid Bramfield had just watched him change into a wolf and rip a man's throat out, she was damned calm. Nathan, buried in layers of shock, watched her bustle around the cabin with a levelheaded precision that would have shamed the most seasoned soldier.

“Help me strip the body,” she said, tugging on the dead trapper's buckskin coat.

Nathan normally bridled at being told what to do, but in this instance, he couldn't bring himself to be angry. At least
someone
was thinking clearly. He moved to follow her command, helping her to pull off the trapper's coat, deerskin leggings, wool shirt, and boots. Blood stained the coat and shirt, blood that was still wet because Nathan had taken his teeth to the man's throat and torn at the flesh until the man died. Holy hell.

“Lesperance.” Astrid Bramfield's voice cut into the downward spiral of his thoughts. “Don't travel that road. Put the clothes on.”

Numb, Nathan did so. The garments were ill-fitting, cut for a heavier, taller man, and they still held the warmth of the trapper's body. Soon, the body would be cold.