Shifters' Storm (2 page)

Looking into the small but shining eyes, she realized they were black instead of brown as they should have been. The bear was fully alert, but it was more than that—an intelligence.

“What are you?” she managed.

“I don’t know if you can understand.”

Shocked, she glanced over at the inert form. The instant she did, she could no longer breathe. Sick and scared, she stared. She barely recognized her strained, “No, no, no.”

“What is it?”

“An elk. Dead.” The inadequate words were all she was capable of.

“Yes.”

“Did you—”

“No.”

Whether she believed the grizzly or not didn’t matter. He might stop her from getting closer to the body, might swipe her out of existence. Despite the danger, she studied the carcass.

The elk lay on its side with its head at an awkward angle. Its eyes were closed, its slender legs useless. Its belly was well rounded. From where she stood, she couldn’t see its sex organs, but its unimpressive antlers told her it was—had been—a young male.

“Not you, Songan,” she managed. “Thank God, not you.”

Despite her relief, cold sweat coated her spine, and for several seconds she couldn’t hear anything for the roaring in her ears. Then, because she needed to know what had killed the youngster, she took three forward steps. The grizzly again rose onto his hind legs, revealing large, dark, nearly hairless sex organs.

Standing the way he was, the beast was close to twice her height, with claws capable of digging trenches in the earth—or her flesh—and startlingly white, potent teeth. His nose twitched, and his ears swiveled toward her, then back. She remained most aware of his eyes. Not only weren’t they the right color, they were larger than they should be and full of depth.

“Get down. I can’t handle this,” she said, her voice dropping at the end. Surprised by her admission, she was slow to comprehend that he was indeed again lowering himself. He wasn’t obeying her, never that. In fact, if she could believe the way his ears were working and his head’s sudden sharp jerk to the left, she’d suddenly become unimportant to him.

Repositioning the rifle so it was at the ready, she strained to locate what had captured the bear’s attention. A sharp crash nearly tore a scream from her. The bear whirled in that direction.

Even before the bull elk with the split-the-forest-size rack burst from the evergreens at the edge of the meadow, Rane knew what she’d see. Just the same, time snagged and nearly stopped. She smelled the rut on the elk, the prime in his thick neck. Clear of the underbrush now, he hammered himself to a stop, every inch shimmering and muscles threatening to burst through flesh and hair. No matter how many times she’d seen an elk up close, their potency awed her. In contrast to his dark brown legs, face and neck, the rest of his body was blond, the hair shaggy. The monster-size bull stood a three-second charge away.

A rutting bull elk’s bugle was a beautiful thing, eerie and erotic all in one, but the sound grinding out of the massive lungs and throat had nothing to do with seduction. Instead, it was all challenge. Letting the grizzly know he was ready for battle.

This didn’t happen in the natural world. An elk, which at his core was a prey animal even though a bull could be five feet high at the shoulder, attacked only to save his life or that of another of his kind. He’d charge another male elk to claim a cow in estrus but not a grizzly.

Again she nearly screamed. Then, chiding herself for almost playing the feminine card, she scurried backward. This was between two wilderness lords. Her only role was as audience.

Instead of charging the again upright bear, however, the elk plodded toward the carcass. His laborious movements were familiar.

“Songan,” she whispered.

Chapter Two

Rage and confusion ran through the nine-hundred-pound elk. He might not know the name of the large, rich brown animal he’d nearly attacked, but something imbedded deep inside him told him the creature was unlike any he’d ever seen. Too big. Too intelligent. Dangerous and a threat.

A threat to what, the bull pondered. He lost the question when the slight, two-legged creature made a noise. He didn’t understand the sound coming from the pale throat. At the same time, it was familiar. Keeping his head high and antlers angled toward the great beast, he tried to make sense of the two-legged one’s smell, but other scents overran it. The fanged and clawed bear stank of challenge and might. In contrast, the wind-borne aroma that had brought him here spoke of surrender. Death. Gore.

Trying to comprehend took so much effort. The death stench warned that the same thing might happen to him, but how could he decide whether to flee or fight when he didn’t know what had stopped the fallen elk’s heart?

His blood ran hot with the sexual need that had driven him for days and distracted him from the question he dimly perceived to be vital. As the sun was rising this morning, he’d stepped into the middle of his harem, not to lead them to the nearby creek but because two cows were licking their sides and sex. They’d briefly tried to evade him, then stopped and set their wide-spread rear legs.

Bugling, he’d approached from behind, reared, planted his front legs along the first one’s sides and curled his buttocks inward. His long, heavy cock first stabbed between the cow’s rear legs and then rammed into the dripping, soft opening. Once, twice, three times he’d thrust deep. As the cow started to collapse, he’d backed away from her and headed toward the second one.

Mating twice had only fed his need to keep spilling himself until he was too spent to stand. Nostrils quivering, he’d been looking for another receptive cow when something beyond the drive to impregnate gripped him. Reluctantly turning his back on his harem, he’d let a sharp distant blast lead him to this meadow.

The retort hadn’t been repeated, but deep inside resided the understanding that he was more than four legs, a heavy rack and hungry cock. That other thing needed answers.

His compulsion to learn the truth had was still so powerful he dismissed both the great newcomer and the two-legged creature.

Not wanting to do what he had to, he approached the dead elk. This one’s antlers were half the size of his. That and the narrow chest and slender neck told him this male hadn’t yet seen its second winter. Dark blood had pooled around a ragged hole behind his shoulder, but although he couldn’t quite make sense of that, Songan had no trouble determining what else had been done to the young male. The sex organs had been removed.

Rage as powerful as any rut urge engulfed him. Whirling, he again faced the oversize creature he now recognized as a bear but with a coloring he’d never seen. He couldn’t save the young elk, but he could avenge—

Pawing the ground so dirt and grass flew about, he lowered his head. The strange bear hoisted himself onto his hindquarters and swung his front legs up and out. Deadly claws raked the air. A sound like thunder burst from the gaping mouth.

The two-legged creature gasped. Out of the corner of his eyes, the elk saw that she—he knew that much—was aiming what looked like a branch at the sky. The branch bellowed, the sound nearly identical to what he’d heard this morning, only much louder. Startled, he turned his attention from the bear to the she-creature. Lowering the thunder-branch, she pointed it first at the bear and then him.

She started chattering, her mouth and throat moving, eyes saying she was afraid but not terrified. Even with everything he was trying to make sense of, he admired her courage.

Her eyes carried more than warning and determination, and as her chattering slowed and then quieted, he studied the huge brown bear. The creature was back down on all fours and staring at the
she
. It tipped its head to the side as if trying to make sense of the now soft sounds. No longer having to concentrate on how much of a threat the grizzly presented helped cool the elk’s blood, but it was more than that. With every breath he took, he dismissed more of the death and bear smells and became more aware of the
she
.

Her. Female. Touching him in ways he needed. Triggering memories.

“Songan,” she said. “Songan.”

Feeling as if she might splinter into a thousand pieces, Rane repeated the shape-shifter’s name in the singsong tone she’d relied on over the years. It could be her imagination, her need to make order out of today’s craziness, but she swore she was getting through to him. One thing she was certain of, the beautiful bull elk who was her friend and sometimes sex partner was focused on her instead of the grizzly or the inert body. Knowing she didn’t dare do the same added to her fear that she might not be able to hold everything together. Dismissing the grizzly could get her killed today.

Determined to put an end to the standoff, she leveled the rifle at the bear while continuing to mutter Songan’s name. Something about the grizzly still felt off. Its—his—eyes hinted at impossible intelligence for an animal. Her stomach tightened as a possibility occurred to her, but that would have to wait.

Taking a deep breath, she yelled, “Go!” at the grizzly. Teeth clenched, she fired, aiming several feet over his body. Her arms jerked upward, and for an instant, she couldn’t see anything. The bear, sounding startled or angry or both, roared.

“You heard me! Go! You’re not wanted here.”

The beast reared and dropped to the ground with a thud. His lips curled back, exposing his teeth.

Willing her arms to hold steady, she fired again. This bullet streaked less than a foot above the bear’s back. The echo went on and on. Instead of attacking her or running away, which was what she was hoping for, she swore the beast’s eyes told her not to panic.

“Go, please. I don’t want to kill you, so just get the hell out of here!” Like her puny deer rifle could bring down a thousand-pound monster.

What she was tempted to interpret as a frown pulled the grizzly’s eyes together. His attention flicked to Songan, then back on her. She swore he sighed before slowly and regally backing away. After a final look at Songan, the mass of muscle and bone turned and loped away. Moments later, he’d disappeared into the close-growing evergreens marking the end of the meadow. Despite that, his essence remained. He was still in the area.

Now that the immediate threat had been dealt with, Rane waited for relief to weaken her muscles. Instead, regret closed around her. Irrational as the thought was, she wanted the beast to return. If he did, she imagined herself slowly approaching, reaching out and touching the great body.

As far as she knew, the elk shifter hadn’t moved while she was dealing with the bear. Accustomed as she was to Songan’s behavior when he was in elk form, she knew not to expect much of him intellectually. Right now all that truly mattered was whether he knew she was part of his world.

After a final look in the direction the grizzly had gone, he approached the carcass. His graceful head topped by a massive rack hung as if he was reluctant to acknowledge what couldn’t be denied. It took effort for her not to touch Songan in sympathy, but experience had taught her to have patience when he was like this. Shifting her gaze, she noted that the dead elk had been shot in the side behind its front legs. Seeing lacerated flesh where its sex organs had been again made her sick to her stomach.

“Who did this?” she muttered around clenched teeth. “What kind of bastard…”

The bull elk she’d come here in hopes of finding stepped between her and the carcass. She wondered whether he was more concerned with protecting one of his kind or shielding her. His eyes darkened, and he again lowered his head as if the weight of his antlers was more than he could bear.

“I’m sorry. This was the work of poachers, damnable killers. I can’t call them human.”

Until now she hadn’t had time to consider that whoever had shot the young elk might still be around, but with the grizzly no longer constituting a threat, if it was, she was able to concentrate on other things. If the hunter or hunters hadn’t put considerable distance between themselves and what they obviously had no more use for, they’d heard her shoot. They might have even heard her cry out. Songan and she were vulnerable. Maybe as much as her mother had been.

“It’s too late to wish I’d been quiet,” she told Songan as he continued to regard her. “The damage is done. Oh, I’m so sorry I said that.” She jerked her head at the carcass. “That’s real damage.”

The magnificent elk, who was much more than that to her, looked down at what could have been one of his offspring.

“Do you know what I’m thinking?” she continued. “Do my words make sense?”

With her attention fully on him, she searched her memory for what Songan had looked like the last time she’d seen him like this. Her mother still lived—had lived—in Forestville, and Rane had tried to see her every few months. Each time she did, Songan and she
hooked
up
, but if her memory was right, she hadn’t seen him as an elk for a couple of years.

“You’ve matured,” she told him. “All bulked up. You’re also full of fire because it’s
that
time of the year.” She reluctantly nodded at the inert form. “I’d hoped I’d find you here. The meadow’s a favorite place for the herd this time of year. But I wasn’t sure—I know what bulls are like during rut. Nothing takes them from the females. Not even death.”

The elk continued to study her. His eyes made her think of wet and impenetrable obsidian. Suddenly weary, she lowered her rifle to the ground. Then she pressed the base of her hand to her forehead. Memories of the days and nights with Songan washed over her, and pressure of another kind ground into her. Maybe her sexual awareness was nothing more than needing to distance herself from the nightmare she’d been living and responding to Songan’s high testosterone level. Maybe.

“I’ve been looking for you. I need your help.” Feeling exposed by her admission, she ran her hand into her hair, disrupting the thick, shoulder-blade-length mass as she did. “Maybe human concerns mean nothing to you this time of year. Maybe you don’t know what happened.”

Only a few minutes ago, she’d considered herself part of the world she’d grown up in. Now she felt as if she’d lost touch with everything except pure male animal. She’d stare at him as long as he stared at her, and when that was over and he’d gone back to being nothing except a bull elk, what? Return to her mother’s empty house? Continue to be alone while the desire for justice overwhelmed her.