by Franks, LE
By tomorrow the ranger station would be looking for him—he was scheduled to check in with them by today—but they wouldn’t be missing him until the afternoon. Maybe he’d get lucky and someone would spot that stupid lion with his pack. That should get some attention.
He almost missed the mangy thing.
Almost. He settled his legs more firmly around the trunk, tucked his freezing fingers into his vest pockets, and leaned his face against the pine bark to wait.
Chapter Four
Kevin was going to be one sorry-ass kitty by the time he was finished. Jamie swore as he stubbed his big toe on a rock as he kicked over his third befouled nest. This time the acorns were both sprouted and peed on.
Jamie ran a hand through his own thick russet hair, a match to his squirrel pelt, and considered his options. Nair might be the ticket. Kevin was a sound sleeper, probably wouldn’t even notice before it was too late and he woke to one very hairy blond pillowcase.
Probably.
He stepped away from the destroyed cache and walked in a circle, spiraling out in an ever-widening arc as he tried to decide what to do next. He still had that itch at the back of his skull—his squirrel chittering away, maddened by the scent of big cat hanging in the air—making it almost impossible to think.
Why was Kevin doing this? Maybe he didn’t know? Maybe he didn’t care?
What a horrible thought. It would be the end of his home if it were true.
His place in the Cat House was tenuous at best—he was only a foster, not formally adopted by their entire clan. He was there under sufferance, and it seemed like Kevin was done suffering.
Jamie paused, resigned, and a shiver raced down his bare back. It was getting late in the day for these asinine hijinks—but the animal inside was demanding more, so more it would have. Without further hesitation he shifted and turned west in the direction of the canyon trail. He had one more location to check, and then he’d head to the cabin, pack his car, and drive to San Francisco for a summer of couch surfing and mama lion avoiding.
* * *
Squirrel brain didn’t lend itself to detailed calculations at the best of times. He defined territory by landmarks and scent marks that were easily erased—the reason Kevin’s actions were so elementally offensive—and he’d never paced off the area, not really. Usually he was shifted the entire time he foraged, so this back and forth between skin and fur was a little disconcerting. If he had to guess, he’d gone another mile up the trail, and it was getting late. Already the shadows were stretching long and skinny across the rocky path, the sun hovering over the rim of the canyon. He’d have another couple of hours before the mountain chased everything but the ambient dregs of daylight away. Twilight was no time to be out on his own, not with the uncertainty of his place back at the cabin. Normally he’d be hearing them calling him back, but now the only sounds were the wind blowing the tops of the trees and the occasional cry of a hawk.
He was about to give up and turn around when a flash of color farther along caught his eye. High above him, among the dark green of the pine canopy, was the unmistakable flutter of blue.
Excitement flooded him. He had to get closer. Jamie flew up the trail, leaping from tree to tree as he went, until he was near enough to observe the distraction coming from atop an ancient pine leaning precariously over the side of the canyon.
Well, almost atop.
From where Jamie waited, defying gravity as he clung upside down on a nearby tree, it appeared that three-quarters of the way up the pine, someone had tied a denim work shirt to a narrow branch, where the wind caught and whipped it like a flag at full mast during a gale.
His animal side was entertained by the novelty, enjoying the way the flapping fabric cracked the air like a whip, while his human side struggled to regain some sense. This was not normal.
His grip faltered, and he slid back into squirrel. Maybe he’d been right earlier... maybe there were tree shifters and this was one of them.
He dropped to the dirt and loped forward along the trail, anticipating a satisfying climb to the top would solve the mystery of the tree-who-wore- clothes. Fun!
Eau de Kevin brought him up short. Again. This time the tree fairly reeked of cat urine, and it wasn’t anywhere near Jamie’s last store of nuts in this area of the mountain. Worse were the claw marks gouging the trunk and the pheromones that hung like dime-store perfume even against the miasma of old piss.
He took a running leap and tore into the pine as much to avoid Kevin’s over-the-top marking as to discover what was hidden among the pine needles above. Up he flew, barely noticing the broken and bent and missing boughs until one failed under his slight weight, breaking off only to spin into the open sky over the canyon. It was enough to slow him down.
Which was good because Jamie would have hated to miss the big reveal in his squirrelly haste: there, just above him, off to the left, was an angel.
Jamie realized in some compartment in his brain that this wasn’t literally an angel, just as he was now pretty sure that the tree wasn’t actually a shifter, which made more sense as the flapping shirt probably belonged to the blond tucked into the vee of the nearby branch.
It was an easy mistake—the angel part. He had a golden nimbus crowning a head of glorious pale blond hair, and he wore a black vest over a white thermal long-sleeved shirt. And even through animal eyes, he was beautiful. Straight nose, almost patrician features, glacier-blue eyes.... The grim line of mouth was a shame—almost ruining what was really a very pretty picture.
Squirrel-Jamie and human-Jamie were finally in accord for the first time today: they both wanted to snuggle beneath that undershirt and lick the man. So of course squirrel-Jamie hopped right on over, startling the man as he settled on a branch just inches from the man’s nose.
“Whoa! Friendly little guy, aren’t you?” The pretty man recovered, leaning back so slightly that only the squirrel part of him noticed. Jamie just twitched his whiskers and scampered to another branch that provided the stranger with some personal space without giving up his front row seat to perfection.
“When I sent up a prayer that help would come, I didn’t expect it to show up wearing a fur coat. You’re cute, though....” He smiled, and Jamie couldn’t help the giddy twirl he performed at the compliment.
“And you’re much less likely to eat me than the first critter I met today. You don’t happen to have a cell phone or a fifty-foot ladder I can borrow, do you?” The grim line melted into a grin. “I must be delirious. Now I’m talking to squirrels.”
The mention of other critters brought Kevin to mind, and Jamie regretted his current inability to swear... or speak. Kevin had crossed a line this time, and he would pay.
Chapter Five
Sawyer watched the little squirrel, bemused. He’d apparently been stuck in this tree so long that he’d become part of the local fauna and adopted by it—though if he had his zoology memorized correctly, this little guy was as far from home as he was. This particular species of red squirrel should be stealing chips from tourists picnicking across from Buckingham Palace, not scavenging pine nuts in California.
He scratched his chin and rubbed his arms briskly to generate some extra warmth. The sun was dropping quickly, and if he wasn’t rescued soon, he’d find himself spending the night here. Not exactly the kind of wood he liked to wake up next to, that was for sure.
Sawyer watched the squirrel behave... oddly. It had spent the past ten minutes racing up and down the tree he sat in, sometimes stopping to chitter at him before racing away once more. He waited until the latest lap was complete and the squirrel returned to address his latest concern.
“You’re not rabid, are you? I mean, it’s not like you’re foaming at the mouth but—” Sawyer would swear the creature was offended. As soon as the word “rabid” had left his mouth, he was at the receiving end of beady eyes and ears laid back against its skull.
“Sorry. But can you blame me?” Sawyer trailed off. The squirrel frozen in pla
ce stared at him with contempt, or at least the animal kingdom’s version of it. He felt guilty, and it was enough to make him pull out his baggy of snacks and hold out a peanut, which the little shit took as his due. Sawyer stuffed the last of the jerky in his mouth and offered over two more nuts while he chewed.
The squirrel sat there watching him until he tucked away his bag of food, then proceeded to ignore him, licking his paws and cleaning his whiskers as if Sawyer no longer existed.
“Hey! If you’re not busy, can you at least fetch my phone for me? It’s right down there in the rocks....” The words were barely out of his mouth when the squirrel leaped from the branch above and raced down the tree.
“I—” He had no words. He could only cling to the barest scrap of his sanity as the little red squirrel reappeared on top of a pile of boulders in the vicinity of where his phone lay and promptly began sniffing around. It wasn’t possible that it was looking for his phone.... He couldn’t actually see much of what the squirrel was doing, not without risking his neck, but the idea, the hint, the suggestion that a woodland creature had understood him well enough to follow a complex command....
Dehydration. It must be.
He tried to remember if hallucinations were a symptom, then gave up. Time to face facts: his mental faculties were already impaired, and no figment of a friendly vermin was going to rescue him.
He was spending the night in this tree.
Hunkering down seemed like the best—well, only—option. Sawyer reached for the slender branch he’d been using as a flagpole, dragging it close enough to free his shirt. He donned it and tried not to think about the night to come.
Chapter Six
This wasn’t impossible, not entirely, just difficult. Jamie had made the trip down the tree to find the man’s phone, and he had found it—just not in one piece. There would be no rescue coming from that quarter, which was too bad. Jamie would have shifted out of sight and made the 911 call in an instant if he could. Now he was left with only one choice—he’d have to get his angel down himself... one broken branch at a time. And the only what he could do that would be to shift—thirty-five feet up in front of a freaked- out civilian.
Fun.
Fun, fun, fun!
His squirrel brain echoed the word from where he’d stuffed it deep inside. Now was no time for excitability.
As he scampered up, he retraced the route he’d need to guide the man over in order to get him down in one piece. The worst were the missing limbs near the bottom—given the raw splintered wood and oozing sap, it was obvious they’d been sacrificed in his climb to avoid Kevin.
Once climbing, panic probably drove him as high as possible, trashing his escape route as he went.
Jamie finally settled on a sturdy limb within a few feet of the blond and examined him. Gone was the relaxed humor of earlier. Now the blond was stressed and stinking of adrenaline. He’d donned his denim shirt, buttoning it over the top of his vest, which was smart. But his fingers had a death grip on the branch above him, and his ankles were locked to keep him in position.
He was stiff and unpredictable, and at this moment anything that spooked him could send him hurling off his perch into space. So exposing himself as a man in a squirrel suit shouldn’t be a problem.
Right?
Right.
Jamie would be happy when he could actually sigh out loud. And swear. And opposable thumbs would go a long way toward throttling Kevin, who’d apparently been full of malicious mischief all day....
“You’re back.” The voice was flat, void of emotion—the same as his eyes. “My hallucination. Great.”
Shit.
It was getting late, and nothing Jamie did as a squirrel could convince the man that (a) he was real and (b) he was strong enough to help him down. Not to mention that (c) the man was the stuff of fantasy come to life, and not in the “hey, baby” kind of way he’d gotten used to with the guys at school. He’d hate to scare him off.
There was nothing to be done about it, so Jamie settled himself strategically so when the change came it wouldn’t throw him out of the tree to his death—which had the added benefit of obscuring him somewhat from the terrified blond.
He let go, metaphorically, and shed his fur.
Sawyer was resigned. He wouldn’t let his mind drift there, wouldn’t let slip the last few unbroken threads of hope. There was nothing to say that he couldn’t last the—
He shut that thought down hard.
He tried to relax his muscles, stiff and frozen in place from inactivity, tried to remember the breathing lessons from yoga to quell the anxiety swamping him, and wished he still had his pack with its emergency blanket, water bottles, and flares. The leftover peanut butter and strawberry jam sandwich sounded like heaven, even if he couldn’t muster up enough saliva to drool over the thought of it.
He’d been digging in his pocket, hoping to find another piece of jerky to suck on and keep his mouth occupied, when his furry companion reappeared.
Maybe he’d have some company, at least for a while. Hoping to draw the little creature closer, he reached back into his vest, his searching fingers tangling in some lint as he tried to extract a small lump from the depths of his pocket. He almost cheered when he pulled out half a peanut.
Gingerly holding it in his fingertips, he was about to offer it to the little squirrel when he saw a brilliant flash from the corner of his eye. It was gone too fast to light the pine, but when he looked up his world collapsed, and he with it.
Chapter Seven
“Hey, Blondie, you okay?” The voice was soft and persistent.
“Go away, ’m sleeping.” Sawyer couldn’t find his blanket when he reached out, but he rolled over anyway. “Shit!”
He was jerked upright—the fist twisted into the front of his shirt and vest was both holding and shaking him.
“Don’t do that again!” Then, “Open your eyes, Blondie, and stay very still! You’re killing me here!”
Sawyer didn’t recognize the voice, couldn’t guess where he was, or whom he was with, until he opened his eyes and nearly fainted again.
There was a naked man sitting on the branch next to him, using his very long muscular legs to anchor them both to the trunk of the pine. He looked so young and earnest leaning close that he could be one of the fae stepped out from an illustrated fairy tale.
Sawyer tried to pinch himself awake, but his fingers were locked in a warm, rough palm, the stranger gripping his wrist so tightly he could almost feel the bruise forming.
“Whoa! Nope, you can’t go all dreamy on me, friend. In case you can’t tell, we’re stuck in a tree, and if you fall out, you’ll really ruin an already sucky day.”
Sawyer had never heard of a hallucination with a physical manifestation, though having this one pressing against him for any reason would be worthwhile.
His hair was the color of maple leaves just after the fall, and it hung in thick waves around his face. His eyes were a gorgeous brown so dark they looked ebony in the fading light. Best of all was the creamy pale skin on display, a perfect contrast to the rough brown bark of the pine he was pressing against. It looked so smooth that it made Sawyer want to stroke it with his fingers to see if the texture was soft like velvet or slick like silk.
His thoughts drifted to the profane, and he was about to test his theory on the tactile nature of illusion when his hand was slapped.
“Stop that!” Despite the annoying tone of voice, for a vision, he had a lot going for him.
“You’re not real.” Of all the things Sawyer knew to be true in the world, this statement topped his list.
“Really? You think not?” The man leaned in and flicked Sawyer on the nose with an elegant finger. It stung.
“Nope. You’re an illusion. I’ve been in this tree for about five hours now. I’ve been chased by a bloodthirsty predator, shot my adrenal system all to hell, so my internal chemistry is obviously out of whack. I’ve been sitting virtually in one position, constricting the h
ealthy circulation of blood, which, coupled with dehydration, has adversely affected my brain, causing hallucinations. So, not real.”
“Then why are you arguing with me?” His mouth quirked up on one side, and Sawyer had the impression that his delusion was trying not to laugh.
“I’m thirty-five, maybe forty feet in the air—what else is there to do?”
“Where did I come from?” His voice was musical, fitting with his original idea that he’d been plucked off the pages of a fantasy novel.
“Honestly, from what I can recall from my human biology course, you must be manifesting from some damage to my visual cortex....” Sawyer trailed off at the look of utter disgruntlement thrown at him.
“Great. What’s your name, anyway?” the redhead asked.
“Don’t you know? You’re a figment of my imagination....”
“Well, that sounds like a promotion... but... humor me. My name’s Jamie.” The redhead let go of the trunk and stretched out his free hand, and Sawyer stared at it like it was a snake about to bite him.
He decided it didn’t matter—no one would know that he’d gone around the bend—so he answered. “Sawyer.”
Finally he nodded as if a decision had been made. “Just do me a favor and sit still while I explain a few things.” And he began, and Sawyer was struck again by the similarities to stories told to him at his mother’s knee.
“There is another kingdom in the natural world, one that not many... people are aware of, though it is a vast and fertile populace found in every corner of the earth. It is a species that picked a different evolutionary road from that of Homo sapiens.”