Hot for the Holidays

by Lora Leigh

  ck.

  “Let him go,” she shouted.

  The mountain lion screamed. With lightning speed, he yanked his head around and leapt at Naomi.

  Naomi shot. The boom of the gun deafened her, and several things happened at once.

  Coyote dragged Naomi out from under the Alpha’s flailing claws at the same time Jamison flung the Alpha to the ground. Blood spattered across the snow, but the Alpha rolled away, still alive.

  Naomi’s shot had ripped into his side, but he’d been moving fast, and she hadn’t killed him. Jamison morphed back into his human form with a grunt of pain, his skin scored and bleeding.

  The Alpha stood upright, his wildcat body changing to that of a tall man. But his shape shimmered and changed again, unfolding into something even taller. He was huge, his hair tangled and coarse, his eyes red. An overpowering stench rolled off him.

  “A skinwalker,” the man who’d been a bear rasped. “He’s a fucking skinwalker.”

  “Son of a bitch,” Jamison panted.

  The Alpha clutched his side, blood pouring from it. He snarled, then turned and loped off under the trees. Coyote started after him, but after the Alpha had run five paces, the man vanished. The snow whirled where he’d been, then the storm stopped. The wind died away, and clouds parted to let the sun through.

  Jamison collapsed. Naomi dropped the shotgun and caught him in her arms, kneeling with him in the snow. He was bleeding from many wounds, but his eyes were clear and alert.

  “I’m all right,” he rasped. “A lot of scratches and bites, but nothing too deep.”

  “You’re a good fighter, Jamison,” Coyote said above Naomi. “No wonder he was afraid of you.”

  Naomi turned toward Coyote then immediately whipped away when she saw the man’s very long, flaccid cock hanging right next to her.

  “He’s a skinwalker,” the male bear Changer snarled. He limped toward them, supporting the woman, who was pale but upright. “All this time. We will tell the pack, choose a new leader.”

  The woman looked at Jamison with narrowed eyes. “Do you wish to challenge for Alpha?” She spoke with an accent that told Naomi English wasn’t her first language.

  Jamison shook his head. “I’m staying here.” He glared up at Coyote. “Why did you send me to be trained by a skinwalker?”

  “I didn’t know. I never met the man until today.” Coyote gazed off into the woods where the Alpha had disappeared. “He must be a damn good skinwalker if he fooled you all for so long.”

  “He will not be allowed to return to us,” the man vowed. “We will retreat, and I will care for my mate. We have no quarrel with you, Jamison.”

  Jamison sat up, brushing the snow off his body. Like Coyote and the other two, he didn’t seem to notice the cold. “Then why did you attack me?”

  “On the orders of our Alpha,” the man said. He spat into the snow. “But we take no orders from skinwalkers.”

  Without another word, the man and woman turned and walked together into the woods, each supporting the other.

  “Will they be all right?” Naomi asked.

  Coyote grunted. “They’re Changers. They’ll heal quickly, and the skinwalker will be more interested in coming after Jamison.”

  Naomi looked at him in fear. “But I wounded him. I drove him off.”

  “Temporarily,” Jamison said. “We’d better go.”

  He started to climb to his feet, and Coyote and Naomi grasped his arms to help him. Coyote didn’t have a scratch on him, though the hair on his chest was damp with sweat.

  Jamison walked to the truck without limping, leaving large footprints in the snow. He opened the passenger door and reached for his clothes.

  Coyote pulled jeans and a flannel shirt from under the tarp in the truck bed and started dressing without hurry.

  “Were you riding back there this whole time?” Naomi demanded.

  “Yep.”

  Naomi’s face went hot. She’d let herself scream without restraint when Jamison went down on her, and then she’d happily sucked Jamison off, thinking they were cut off and alone. From the grin on Coyote’s face, he’d heard everything.

  “I figured you’d need me,” he said, his yellow eyes dancing with amusement. “You mind giving me a lift back to town?”

  “Do I have a choice?” Naomi glared at him. “And wipe that disgusting look off your face or I’ll charge you for the gas.”

  SEVEN

  He would be coming. Jamison knew that as they drove out of the mountains, following the flashing yellow light of the plow. By the time they reached lower elevations, the snow had gone, and bare desert greeted them under blue sky.

  Coyote rode in the truck’s cab with them, squishing Jamison between himself and Naomi. Jamison didn’t mind sitting right next to Naomi, where he could rest his hand on her thigh. She was scared and angry, and he wanted her so much he could barely sit still.

  She’d leapt to his defense, damning the rules of Changer combat to protect her mate. The bonding ceremony the Apache had done might have been bogus, but Naomi possessed the courage of a true mate. He’d find a way to bind her to him in the Changer way. He had to.

  They arrived in Magellan as the sun set, the tattered clouds to the south streaked brilliant red. The Ghost Train celebration would begin in a few hours. All businesses in Magellan closed for it, including Hansen’s Garden Center, so the parking lot was deserted when they reached the house.

  Coyote went straight to the refrigerator and started rummaging around until he came out with a can of beer.

  “You’re staying?” Jamison asked him.

  “You need me to.”

  “I know.” Jamison stripped off his shirt as he went into the downstairs bathroom. Naomi followed.

  Her worried look turned to one of surprise when she saw that Jamison’s torso had almost healed. The long scratches on his skin already had closed and scarred over. Jamison dabbed off the remaining blood with a washcloth.

  “Why do you and Coyote think the skinwalker will come back?” Naomi asked him. “We defeated him, didn’t we?”

  “Not quite. He wasn’t fighting to kill. He was fighting to see what I could do. What I would do.” Jamison dried himself and twined his loose hair into a braid. “And now we know his secret. He’ll have to return and kill us.”

  “Why? If he disappeared, how would we know how to find him? Who would we tell?”

  “The Alpha, or whoever he is, is crazed about honor. You and I and Coyote made him lose face as well as control over the pack.” Jamison nodded grimly. “He’ll recover, and then he’ll come.”

  Naomi slid her arms around him, and Jamison pulled her warm body close. “I never realized what you went through,” she said softly. “Thinking of what they did to you makes me so angry.”

  Jamison buried his face in her neck, kissed her skin. He knew he’d never have survived without the memory of her. He’d think of how good she smelled when she first woke up, warm and sweet, her sex juices scenting her from whatever arousing dream she’d been having. Making love to her in the morning had been the best thing in the world.

  The idea that, after he’d left, some other man might have made love to her as the sun rose, had also kept Jamison alive in the cage and determined to get back to her. To fight for her, if necessary. Two years hadn’t made much difference in the savage possessiveness that spiked in Jamison every time he saw her.

  “I kept going because I wanted to come back to you,” he said. “Whether you were waiting for me or not, I wanted to see you again.”

  Coyote darkened the doorway, and Naomi broke the embrace. Jamison didn’t want to let her go, needing the feel of her body against his.

  “Ready for the Ghost Train?” Coyote asked. “Sounds like fun.”

  Naomi bit her lip. “Maybe we shouldn’t go. Julie shouldn’t, anyway. Nicole needs to keep her in Flag.”

  “Nah.” Coyote shook his head. “Julie’s been looking forward to it all year, and she’s invited me spec
ial. Don’t disappoint her.” He gave them his pointed-toothed grin. “Me, I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

  aomi still had misgivings, but the thought of being somewhere bright and cheerful surrounded by friends appealed to her.

  “Skinwalkers hate light and fire,” Jamison said on the way over. “And crowds. We’ll be safer there than at home right now.”

  Magellan’s railway depot was typical of those built in the Southwest during the great railroad boom of the end of the nineteenth century. Crafted from wood and stucco, the depot was one long, narrow room, with a station office in the back. It had been built in 1890 to service tracks that connected the main line in Winslow to the mountain and mining towns to the south. In the 1930s, the service up to the mountains had been discontinued and the depot closed. Over the years the railroad company had removed the rails and ties from the railroad bed, but the raised bed was still there, empty and unused.

  Then an enterprising town planner claimed he’d found a story of a “ghost train,” which rumbled through Magellan each Christmas. He’d started a celebration on Christmas Eve to greet the ghosts as they rode past. The depot was restored, the event planned, word sent out. It worked. The Ghost Train celebration had become a Magellan tradition, and people came from all over the Southwest to see it.

  By the time Naomi, Jamison, and Coyote arrived at the depot, it was lit from top to bottom, and a huge Christmas tree glittered in one corner. Candles flickered inside luminarias on the depot porch and the low walls surrounding the platform. The poinsettias Naomi had provided were holding up well, lending brilliant color inside and out.

  If skinwalkers didn’t like light and fire, they wouldn’t like this place. Naomi nervously watched the dark desert beyond the depot, but nothing more frightening came out of it than a few rough-looking bikers, riding up to join in the celebration.

  Julie, unhurt and unworried, ran inside with Naomi’s friend Nicole and hugged Jamison. Maude McGuire was already there with her husband, Magellan’s chief of police. Maude walked around with a large cookie jar, taking donations for the historical society. She greeted Naomi with a wave and a smile, but the smile didn’t reach her eyes. Her daughter Amy had been missing for a year now, with no word whether she was dead or alive.

  “I might know someone who can help them,” Jamison said into Naomi’s ear. She jumped, still nervous.

  “Help who? The McGuires?”

  “I know a woman, a half-Navajo from Many Farms, who investigates mysterious happenings. If I talk to her, she might be able to look into their daughter’s disappearance. If nothing else has helped, it’s worth a shot.”

  “Do you know everyone on the Navajo Nation?” Naomi asked. “In the entire Southwest?”

  Jamison allowed a smile to touch his eyes. “Janet Begay went to school with my youngest sister. Janet moved off to Flagstaff, and I haven’t seen her since, but I can track her down. And it’s my mother who knows everyone in the Southwest. She just tells me all the gossip.”

  Beside her, Julie squealed. Naomi swung around, heart pounding, but Julie was waving madly to Coyote. He smiled at Julie, a friendly look that softened his face, and he lifted Julie up on his shoulders.

  Naomi glanced around the bright depot, which seemed warm and safe. But after the celebration the town would grow dark again, lying vulnerable to attack.

  “Julie can’t come home with us tonight,” she said.

  “No,” Jamison agreed.

  “Will she be safe if she goes back with Nicole?”

  “Safer than she will be at home. But I want you to stay in Magellan with me.”

  Naomi looked at Julie laughing at Coyote, her hands moving in quick signs. “Because you think the skinwalker will come after me if I’m separated from you?”

  “I wouldn’t be able to keep you safe. And if you’re with Julie, he’ll take her too.”

  “Damn it.”

  “I’m so sorry, Naomi.”

  His eyes were dark and grim, and Naomi touched his shoulder. “I’ll help you defeat it. I’m scared as hell, but I’m not letting it hurt my mate.”

  Jamison gave her one of his warm, sinful smiles. At the same time someone cried, “The Ghost Train is coming!”

  Everyone hurried out onto the platform. Jamison and Naomi followed more slowly, and Coyote came behind them, Julie holding his hand.

  The night was clear, the mountain storms having stayed in the mountains. Stars filled the horizon in an opaque sheet of white. It was so beautiful, but Naomi had learned how much evil the empty desert held.

  Naomi’s cousin Heather shushed everyone. “Can you feel it?” she said. “The heat of the steam? Can you hear the wheels on the track?”

  “Yes,” someone else whispered. “The Ghost Train has returned to Magellan.”

  Coyote stared at the empty track bed and then back at Jamison. “They’re crazy,” he murmured. “There’s nothing there.”

  Jamison shrugged. Julie signed silently to Coyote, We know, but everyone likes it.

  Coyote threw back his head and laughed, which earned him glares. After a few minutes of people murmuring about the Ghost Train’s presence, Heather sighed. “It’s moving on now. Shall we send it on its way?”

  As one, everyone on the platform waved as though they were seeing off old friends. “Good night! Merry Christmas! See you next year!”

  “Time to go,” Coyote said. His laughter was gone.

  Jamison explained to Julie that she’d be going back to Flagstaff, but they’d come for her tomorrow to open presents and make the journey to Tucson to her grandparents’ house. He spoke with confidence that by tomorrow, everything would be all right.

  Julie wasn’t stupid. She looked anxiously at Naomi, then signed to Coyote that she expected him to take good care of her mother and Jamison.

  “I will,” Coyote said. He leaned down and kissed Julie’s hair. “I’ll keep them safe, sweetie. Promise.”

  Jamison put his arms around Naomi as Julie got into Nicole’s SUV. “She’ll be fine with them. And if anything happens to us, your folks will take care of her.”

  Naomi’s heart beat faster. She knew her family would help Julie more than Julie’s own father would, but the thought of leaving the little girl alone made her crazed.

  She turned in Jamison’s arms. “Let’s get this bastard.”

  Jamison smiled and kissed her. “That’s my girl.”

  hen they reached the house, Coyote in tow, Jamison flipped on all the lights, inside and out. The flood of light made him feel better, but he knew it wouldn’t last. Coyote seated himself next to the Christmas tree in the living room, snapped the shotgun open, and started to clean it.

  Naomi decided to make sandwiches while they waited, and while she was occupied, Jamison went out to his studio. He unlocked it, turned on the lights, and looked around. The wrought iron project he’d started two years ago still hung on the wall, his equipment ready for use.

  Jamison wrapped the unfinished stone mountain lion in heavy cloths and carried it out. He didn’t lock the studio this time, and he set the padlock on the ground inside the door. When he reached the house, Naomi was still making sandwiches. Coyote had put aside the shotgun and turned on the television.

  Jamison took the sculpture upstairs to Julie’s room and placed it on a shelf in her closet. He smiled at the clutter of little-girl things in her bedroom: magazine pictures of current male stars, posters of unicorns and ballet dancers, and stuffed animals all over the bed. Books spilled off shelves and lay in piles on the floor, from the latest young adult novel to classics like the Narnia series to the Navajo sto rybooks Jamison had given her. In Julie’s silent life, books were her connection with the world.

  Naomi set a plate with a sandwich on the breakfast bar, and Jamison leaned on the counter to eat it. He wasn’t hungry, too keyed up, but he knew he shouldn’t drain his strength.

  He caught Naomi as she turned away. He skimmed his hands up her back and kissed her lips, unable to keep from touchi
ng her.

  “So we just wait for him to attack?” she asked in a quiet voice.

  “It’s better this way. We have a base here, and it will be safer than going out to hunt him. He’ll come tonight.”

  He kissed her. She melted into him, her fear and adrenaline flowing up to him. He wanted nothing more than to take her upstairs, bury himself in her, draw strength from her for the coming fight.

  From the way Naomi kissed him back, she wanted it too. She pressed her thumbs to the corners of his mouth, put her tongue inside. Her hips rose to his, rubbing his hardness, which itched for her.

  “Nice,” Coyote said. “Want to fuck while we wait?”

  Jamison eased away from Naomi in regret. “It might not be a good idea.”

  “I meant with me,” Coyote said.

  Naomi gave him a withering glance. “Don’t you wish.”

  “I do wish. That’s why I asked.”

  “Keep your paws off my mate,” Jamison said, torn between amusement and possessiveness. Trickster gods.

  “I meant with both of you.”

  “No,” Jamison and Naomi said at the same time, and Jamison laughed.

  Coyote shrugged his massive shoulders and turned away. “TV it is, then. You have HBO?”

  EIGHT

  The skinwalker struck just after one.

  Naomi lay against Jamison on the sofa, her warm head on his shoulder, while he and Coyote watched an old horror movie. Coyote had laughed all the way through the movie, pointing out flaws in the plot, claiming no werewolf would act like that. And anyway, there was no such thing as werewolves, he said; only Changers who could take wolf form.

  Jamison didn’t notice the movie, listening for every noise outside.

  He knew the skinwalker had arrived when the house suddenly went black. The television noise ceased abruptly and the pinprick lights on the Christmas tree died. Jamison picked up a flashlight from the coffee table and pressed it into Naomi’s hands. He heard Coyote reach for and lift the now-loaded shotgun.

  Something scraped on the boards of the porch. The door-knob rattled then there was more scraping, then silence. Jamison saw Naomi’s eyes glitter in what little moonlight penetrated the windows, saw the glisten of the shotgun’s barrel, held steady by Coyote.

  They heard a quiet splinter of glass in the back door’s window, then the latch clicked and the hinges creaked. A huge creature stood in the open doorway, blocking the light outside.

  His stench was overpowering. Jamison’s sense of smell had developed sharply since his Changer ability had manifested, and the odor made him want to vomit.

  Beside him, Naomi clicked on the flashlight and shone it full on the creature. He must have been eight feet tall, his skin crusted with blood from his earlier wound. His eyes were huge and red, teeth jagged. He was a far cry from the clean-shaven, controlled Alpha Jamison knew. Skinwalkers could take the shapes of their victims, so he must have killed the real Alpha a long time ago and stepped into his life.

  The skinwalker roared and charged into the kitchen. Coyote brought the shotgun up and fired.

  The gun’s roar blotted out all other sound. The creature moved fast, spinning away from the shot, and Jamison couldn’t tell if he’d been hit. A second later the skinwalker was back on his feet and crashing toward them.

  Jamison shoved Naomi at Coyote. “Get her out of here!”

  Naomi screamed as Coyote grabbed her and hauled her to the front door. Jamison began ripping off his clothes, willing the change to come.

  Changing without stilling his mind could be painful and made him nauseous, but he had no choice. His limbs jerked as they became the strong legs of a mountain lion, his face aching as the shift took him.

  The skinwalker lunged, trying to get past Jamison to Naomi. Jamison knew the strategy: Kill the mate, weaken the Changer.

  Jamison leapt, twisting to plant all four paws into the giant creature’s chest. The skinwalker’s foul stench nearly overwhelmed him, but he held his breath and raked his claws across the being’s flesh.

  The skinwalker wrapped two huge arms around Jamison and threw him across the kitchen. Jamison regained his feet, running back at the skinwalker as soon as his claws touched the floor.

  His full-on attack gave Coyote time to get Naomi out the front door. The skinwalker threw Jamison aside again and charged after them.

  The lights of Naomi’s pickup sliced across on the skinwalker’s body, and he threw up one hand to block the glare. The truck roared at him. Coyote hunched over the wheel, Naomi next to him with the shotgun.

  The skinwalker leapt into the house again, shoving Jamison in front of him. The truck’s tires squealed as it turned at the last minute.

  “Jamison!” Naomi shouted, then Coyote gunned the truck into the street, carrying Naomi to safety.

  “Just you and me now,” Jamison said.

  Skinwalkers could move fast. Legend said they could keep up with speeding trucks, even fly, and Jamison’s heart beat wildly in fear that the creature would simply turn and chase Naomi. But the skinwalker stalked Jamison, flicking into the human form of the Alpha Changer Jamison had known for two years.