by A. E. Grace
Again, another one of those thoughts snuck past her mental barricades. This time, though, it was a doubt: What are you doing?
What are you doing?
*
He had a wolf on his tail.
Liam grunted with disgust. He knew that wolf, knew his hunter intimately. This wasn’t the first scrap they’d had, but if it came down to it, he was going to make certain it was the last.
He hugged his duffel bag, and began to push through the throng of people. The compulsion to shift into his animal played on his mind, and he grinned at the thought of a train whizzing by a rural Chinese farm house with a bear on the roof of one of the carriages.
That was the sort of sight that birthed fairy tales.
Reaching out to unlock the latch to the door at the end of the carriage, Liam paused, and peered through the dirty glass window. There was someone already out there, a woman, standing on the small ledge, and holding onto the metal rung of the ladder that led to the roof of the carriage.
He studied her, but couldn’t see much through the small window pane. Her back was toward him. She had medium-length, wavy brown hair that whipped in the wind.
He spotted her backpack, tucked away in between her legs. So she was a tourist, a backpacker, but on her own? That was a little unusual.
She was a bigger girl, with a big ass and thick thighs, and he could see all of her shape through the hugging cut of her jeans. It was attractive to him. He’d always liked his girls curvier. He hated it when his hands felt empty.
The train rounded a wide bend as he watched her through the window. The direction the wind was coming from reversed, and his nostrils were immediately filled with a new and amazing fragrance.
It was her smell. The wind carried it through the crack in the carriage door, and he was immediately intoxicated.
“Wow,” he whispered to himself, inhaling another breath. His heightened sense of smell – it was his bear bleeding through into his human form – allowed him to appreciate the world in a way mere humans could not. The information he could discern from smell alone was beyond his vocabulary; words did not exist for what his bear’s olfactory cortex gleaned.
Sometimes, though, he begrudged that as his man he had inherited some of his brown bear’s sense of smell. He could smell a garbage truck when it was still half a mile away.
He took another deep breath, smelling her scent. She was tense, worried. It marred the sweetness of her smell, was like a current beneath the surface. Something was troubling her.
Liam couldn’t explain it, but he felt the compulsion to comfort her, protect her. He blinked away the odd feeling, and searched his mind for a reason, but he found none.
There was something about this woman… something he couldn’t put a paw on.
He needed to talk to her.
*
The sound of the door to the adjoining carriage sliding open made Terry jump. She assumed it was a guard or conductor, walking up and down the train, possibly even checking tickets. Though how he would squeeze through all the people, she didn’t know.
Looking over her shoulder, she did not see a guard. Instead, she saw a man with a hard, handsome, and intimidating face. His tawny eyes sought her out immediately, locking onto hers, like they were drawn by some otherworldly magnetism. The eye-contact singed her, pushed her eyes off of his, and her breath hitched and her heart skipped. She regained her courage, and met his eyes again.
“Hey,” he said, and his mouth pulled into a small smile. A dimple opened up on his cheek, and warmed his whole face. He jerked his head back to the carriage from which he had come, and said, “Smells like shit in there.”
“Ha!” Terry said, nodding. “In there, too.” She jerked her head the other way. “They’ve got livestock in my carriage.”
“In every carriage,” the man said. “It’s how they do it here in the country side.”
“Mm,” Terry said, nodding. She assumed what he said was true. He had the look of a seasoned traveler about him, though his duffel bag that he had pinned against his hip by one muscular arm looked a little more serious than a backpack. It looked military-esque.
“Mind if I stand out here?”
“No.”
He smiled, propped the bag up against the door to his carriage, and then walked along the narrow lip of the carriage until he was beside her. She was standing on the back edge of her carriage, and he the front edge of his. Between them was a gap a foot wide, and in that gap she could see the rusty rail line and wooden boards snatched away by their speed.
Terry felt suddenly quite awkward, as if she was somehow at a disadvantage. She couldn’t place it, but there was something about the man beside her who seemed completely at ease. She’d never been good at chatting with boys… certainly not ones she was attracted to, and, well, this one was a looker.
With him beside her now, it was pretty clear from the fit of his shirt and jeans that he had a rocking body, and there was a mystery to his face… no, in his eyes, as if he was somehow older than – she guessed – his thirty-something years.
He looked at her, and he seemed content to let the moment simmer in silence, and when she could take it no longer, she broke it.
“So, where are you from?” she asked, immediately regretting it. That was just about the lamest opener she could think of.
“I’m Liam,” he said, extending a hand over the gap between their carriages. “And I came up here from Borneo.”
She smiled, took his hand, and the skin on her palms buzzed with electricity. His hand was huge, swallowed hers up.
“Terry, and I came, well, down here from London.” She looked at his olive-colored complexion, his sharp nose with a high bridge, and square jaw with a rigid line. “You’re not from Borneo originally, though, are you?”
“No,” he said.
“You’re going to…?”
“Vietnam,” he said. “I’m going to walk across the border.”
“No way, me too!” Terry blurted, grinning. “You done it before?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Many times.”
“Huh. It’s my first time in Asia.”
“You like it so far?”
“It’s okay. Only really experienced Hong Kong and, you know, the bits along this path of China.” Terry shrugged. “Food’s good, but I’m not exactly having a blast yet.”
“Vietnam is a really nice country,” he said. His eyes didn’t leave hers, and Terry felt as if he was weighing her up, considering her, breaking her down. She felt put on the spot.
“I’m sure you’ll love it,” he said, smiling briefly. “Lovely people, many things to see, great food.”
“There’s a little Vietnamese restaurant that I used to go to,” she said. “Love the spring rolls. Can’t wait to try them here.”
“Are you traveling alone?” he asked.
His eyes wiped up and down her body, followed the outside curves of her thighs, breasts, and then settled at her neck. She fiddled with her hair unconsciously.
“Uh-huh,” she sounded, nodding. “Just myself.”
“That’s brave of you,” he said.
Terry grinned. “I’m sure it’ll be fine.”
“It will be. You don’t have to worry in Vietnam. If you go traveling through the country, you might need to watch out a little in Da Nang, it can be a bit seedy.”
“Thanks,” she said. “I’ll keep that in mind. Though my guess is I’ll probably have more trouble from other foreigners trying to scam me. You know, all those time share scams they do? I read about it online.”
He nodded. “Yeah, they’re around.”
It was her turn to ask him, “Are you traveling alone?”
His hard eyes went to hers. He looked guarded, or maybe suspicious, she couldn’t tell.
“Yes,” he said, leaning out over the railing and looking up and down the length of the train. It was as if he was scanning for something.
“What are you looking for?”
“Nothing, Terry
,” he said, clasping his strong hands together. “Just looking.”
She got the distinct impression that he had just told her a lie, but shrugged it off. Like it was any of her business, anyway.
Again his eyes went to hers… it was as if he couldn’t keep them off hers. She felt her gaze drawn to him, too. There was just this odd sensation between them, like they were tied together by an invisible string.
It was clear as day that he wasn’t much of a talker, nor much of a socializer. She let herself look up and down his body, noticed the tension with which he held himself.
“You like Vietnam, then?”
“Yeah,” he said.
“You’re going for a holiday?”
“No. I’m, uh…”
“On business?” she offered.
“Yes, something like that.”
The mood had changed considerably in just a few short moments. Some of the buoyancy was lost. Or had she imagined that there was any buoyancy to begin with? Was she asking too many questions? A torrent of doubts flooded her mind.
“Is something bothering you?” she asked. She knew it was a forward question, but this whole backpacking excursion was an attempt to be more forward in her life. She may as well start with the first person she encountered during the early days of her travels who spoke fluent English.
“There is,” he said.
Terry blinked. She hadn’t been expecting that. “Oh.”
“It’s not you,” he said. “Definitely not you, don’t worry. But I can’t talk about it.”
“It’s okay,” she said quietly. “Everybody’s got secrets.”
*
Stay away. She doesn’t know what you are. She doesn’t know what’s hunting you. You’ll put her in danger!
The thoughts raged a storm in Liam’s mind, but still he couldn’t take his eyes off her. There was something special to her, something he knew his human form would not glean, only his bear form would. He wanted to shift and smell her scent then, and understand her so much better for it. His bear’s brain could decipher so much more than his human could from smell alone. Not all the information would pass back into his human consciousness – during the shift, there was a filter – but some of it would.
Being a shapeshifter, Liam needed to rely on his instinct to guide him. He trusted his instincts, and they told him that this woman, Terry Spencer, was someone he should keep an eye on.
It didn’t help that she was a beautiful woman. The fact that she was oblivious to it endeared her to him more. She probably read too many magazines, but then again, he didn’t sense the dark specter of low self-esteem around her. Perhaps she fancied herself a realist. But no matter what she thought of herself, he knew what he thought of her.
But if there was ever a time that he didn’t want a distraction, this was it. He had to keep her at arm’s length, no matter what his base desires were telling him to do.
Terry stood on the dusty, empty train platform, hands on her hips, peering around the dilapidated station. She seemed at once a multitude of contradictions. The way she fidgeted told him she was nervous, unsure, uncertain. But her smile was bright, eyes alive, brimming with a reserve of confidence that perhaps even she did not know she possessed.
A turbulent storm of conflict wracked his thoughts. He couldn’t deny his attraction to her. She was a beautiful woman, with full lips and a great smile. She had wonderful, wide eyes that seemed to sparkle in the sun, and a button nose that was cute, and fit her face perfectly. And her body… her body was delectable. Curves, fullness, it was sexy…
Liam blinked. They’d only just met and already he had mentally undressed her. In fact, he’d done so when he first laid eyes on her back on the train.
As they had talked on that train, blood had surged to his loins, and it was only because he was leaning over the railing that his bulge had not been obvious. She hadn’t dared look. In fact, she had been adorably awkward, and he knew why. People always knew when they were talking to shifters, even if they didn’t know that was the reason. It was an instinct – one of the few that humans still possessed. When something is off, people always become aware of it.
Shapeshifters were simply different, and became more so the older they got. Liam carried the experiences of a life that already tripled the average human’s. There was simply no way a personality could not be shaped by all of that.
And people always knew. They picked up on odd inflexions or vocabulary, or if a shifter was careless or socially unaware, perhaps even anachronisms.
She had felt, on an instinctual level, that there was something different about him, and it had tamed her conversational courage, though she might not have realized it.
But he was putting her in danger by talking to her. Despite his attraction to her – and assuming she felt similarly about him – he knew it was a bad idea. He would make her a target. He couldn’t make her a target. She was just an innocent, a regular human, ignorant to the secretive paranormal world of shapeshifters. For her to get caught up in his own private war… it would be irresponsible, unfair.
But he wanted to get to know her. Oh, how he wanted to. He felt as if he was meant to, as though he were being guided toward her by some cosmic puppeteer. He couldn’t place the odd and entirely unique feeling, but he knew that its intensity was too great to ignore… to deny.
It wasn’t as if he could simply tell her he was a shifter, though…
He blinked.
Why couldn’t he? Why was it some immutable law that all shapeshifters hold their tongues, never reveal themselves? He sighed. There was a pile of easy answers he could pluck from. Humans would be afraid. If shapeshifters were revealed to the world, they would be hunted like they had been in the past.
Or they would be captured and weaponized by governments, or worse, private military corporations. Or they would be experimented upon, made into zoo animals, on display for the medical community to scratch their chins over.
These were all sensible, if a little paranoid, concerns. Humans had warred with shifters in the past. Shifters had been subjugated before, beaten by sheer numbers. The clans of shapeshifters that once existed had long since been extinct, and while much of it could be attributed to petty civil warfare between the animal clans – for it was in the animal’s nature to be fiercely territorial – humans had also played a part.
The myths and legends of werewolves and other such monsters were born of those olden days, before history was reliably recorded. The nobility who were shifters – and there were many, once upon a time – would have hesitated to spell it out, lest they lose everything they owned to the mob with pitchforks.
Slowly, shifter numbers dwindled. Now, only a handful remained, dotted across the globe. They numbered perhaps in the hundreds, maybe less, and none of them knew how or why the shift chose them, how or why they were amenable to the shift. Nobody knew whether it was some genetic predisposition, mutation, or merely an otherworldly force that science could not yet quantify. Or maybe never could.
In his long lifetime, Liam had only met a few shapeshifters since he had lost everything. The wolf who had taken his past life from him was the very same one hunting him down now. He had gotten away then, as just a young cub, and the wolf was looking to tie up loose ends.
“It’s hot today,” Terry said. She beamed a wide grin at him. “You know, you always hear about the humid heat, but it really takes it out of you.”
“All year around it’s like this,” he said. “Hot, wet, sticky. That’s the subtropics for you.”
“So what business exactly are you here for?”
Liam grimaced. “To settle an old debt.”
“That, uh, sounds a little shady,” she said.
“And you? Are you on a holiday?”
“I guess so, yeah. I wanted to come to Vietnam. I quit my old job, just upped and left. Thought I’d go backpacking through Asia, you know? Maybe not just Asia. Maybe I could see Australia or even America if I want to keep traveling.”
; “That’s a pretty brave thing to do,” he said, impressed. “You just left your life behind?”
“It wasn’t much of a life, admittedly,” she told him, sighing.
“Why do you say that?”
“Oh, I just wasn’t happy. That’s all.” She offered him a brief smile.”
“Why did you choose Vietnam?”
“I’ve only heard good things about it.”
“There’s got to be a better answer than that. You pack up, drop everything and go traveling by yourself for the first time to a place because you ‘heard good things’?”
She hummed, and then gave him a sheepish smile. “I don’t know. It was just the first place I thought of when I decided that I was actually going to do this trip. I can’t explain it. It was… it was just… I knew this was where I had to go? A little like an instinct, or a force. It was just telling me… go to Vietnam!” She tilted her head to the side, squinted at him for the sun was at his back. “Does that sound stupid?”
“No,” Liam said, pushing his lips together. “Not stupid at all.” He did wonder, though, what exactly she meant by knowing she had to come here. He was reminded of being on the train… of suddenly feeling the irresistible urge to shift, and that urge guided him to the sliding door of his carriage.
But why had he gone to that side of his carriage? Why not the other? And as soon as he’d seen her, the urge to shift had faded… as if whatever spell was placed upon him was lifted. It was as if his urge had took him to her, to Terry.
He remembered an old superstition among shifters, that there were forces beyond comprehension that pulled like tides and carried like currents. They brought mates together. Fated mates.
He dismissed the notion. Liam had never been one for superstition.