by Beverly Bird
Clean lines, smooth skin, vibrant, alive, heated by the sun and cooled by the moon. A different voice began whispering in his head, this one cruel and cunning.
Go ahead. Do it anyway. Don’t think about tomorrow...until tomorrow.
* * *
Shadow thought of the way he had filled the tent yesterday, so male, the raindrops beading on his golden skin, his hair shaggy and wet, his strong, deft fingers working the rubber band out of it. The ache came back to her, settling at all the central points of her, between her legs, in the pit of her stomach, in her throat. A sly, sibilant voice came to her head, one she barely recognized as part of her.
Go ahead. For once, just take something for yourself.
She considered that she wouldn’t actually be left with nothing this time. She would have searing memories. She moaned, sitting up, hugging herself.
Could she do this? Did she dare? She kicked her sleeping bag back, scrambling to her knees, her heart pounding. She moved swiftly and silently down the switchback, out into the canyon, and collided with him solidly.
She started to gasp, but there was no time. His mouth finally came down on hers, even as his strong hands caught her shoulders to steady her. His kiss was bruising, angry, frustrated...and she had known it would be. She had wanted just this, exactly this, had wanted a touch every bit as hungry as what had come to live inside her lately, as what had shown in his eyes at the waterfall.
His tongue dove past her teeth, skimming them before finding hers. He moved his hands to tangle them in her hair, pulling her head back almost painfully, making her open to him even more. He looked fast into her eyes and groaned, then his mouth closed over hers again.
She had to touch him, had to feel his skin, this time beneath her palms. She flattened them against his chest, feeling hard, ungiving muscle and the brush of that near-golden hair. She clenched her fingers, digging them in as sensation stormed through her, frightening but right, somehow so right....
He slanted his head, covering her mouth fully, breathing against her lips. “Let’s just get this over with.”
“Then we can forget about it,” she agreed on a gasp.
“Put it behind us so I can think straight again.”
“I can stop wondering what it would be like....”
“Here, right here.”
“Now. Please.”
She slid her hands down his ribs, to his waist, to his hips. He had shorts on this time. She pulled at them, feeling frantic now that she had made the decision, now that she had finally let herself go.
His hands moved down her back. She wore a T-shirt, big and roomy. He swore impatiently at the obstacle it presented, and pulled it up so he could find skin, warm, smooth skin still pulsing with life. She wore panties. He cursed at that, too, sliding his hands beneath them, cupping her bottom, pulling her hard against him before exquisite pain exploded from behind him, from his thigh.
He gripped her tighter, confused for a moment, feeling like a wounded, savage animal. Then his brain cleared and he understood that something was very, very wrong. Shadow looked up into his face, dazed, then past his shoulder. She screamed.
It was a blood-curdling sound that ripped through him. Mac let her go to spin around, hunkering down slightly in an instinctive fighter’s stance, pushing her behind him. Ready...but there was no enemy to fight, only a hail of arrows, one after another coming down from the eastern rim. They spat and hissed through the air, digging into the sand with little cht-cht sounds, smacking against the rocks, almost faster than a man could shoot them.
Almost, but not quite.
“What the hell?” Mac snarled. He started into their fire. Then something froze him, a thin, mewling sound.
He turned around and looked back at her. She sank slowly to her haunches, quivering in pure terror, her eyes huge and white and stricken. Something happened to his heart. He closed the distance between them again in two long strides, pulling her to her feet.
“Ch...chi...chi...” she began.
“Chindis,” he said for her. “No.” He wondered if he was going to have to hit her to snap her out of it, and prayed to God that he wouldn’t.
On some distant level, he realized that the arrows had stopped. He shook her instead.
“Stop it. Listen to me. It’s over.”
Her eyes darted frenziedly, looking. Arrows littered the ground all around the place where they were standing, but no more flew.
“The legend,” she breathed. “Oh, God, it’s the legend.” She was still shaking badly. She groped for his arms, digging her fingers in to hold on.
“Or someone who wants us to think about the legend,” he corrected. He had guessed that immediately, but he couldn’t for the life of him figure out why. In any event, he’d never convince her of it, at least not now.
“Come on,” he said.
He pulled at her. Her legs were rooted where she stood. He finally scooped her up and carried her back to his tent, putting her on her feet again at the last moment, pushing her a little to make her go inside. “Hey, Sergeant, you’re fine. It’s okay now.”
“Okay,” she repeated hollowly. “Fine.”
She slipped inside, then stood, looking about vacantly as though wondering where she was. He followed her and something tightened inside him again in the area of his heart.
It was something dangerously different from what he had felt when he had finally gone to her, both at odds with that and yet totally a part of it. Real fear slammed into him this time. The little drill sergeant was no longer in control. She had been, very much so, when they had been groping at each other. Later he would have to examine how they had both come to be in that place at the same time, both with the same thoughts, and that would scare him too. But now she was not strong, was not giving anybody orders or pushing them around. Now she was terrified on a primal, inherent level that had nothing to do with practicality and common sense, everything to do with her Navajo upbringing and faith. Right now she was vulnerable and she needed him, and that shook him more deeply than anything that had happened tonight so far. Because he wanted to wrap himself around her as he had when they had gone over the cliff, protecting her from whatever it was she thought she should fear.
He put an awkward hand to the back of her neck, kneading away the knotted tension there. For the first time in his life, he realized that he really didn’t know how to be kind, how to give care. He had never needed to learn.
“Sit down, sweetheart. There, right there. That’s it.”
She did it hard, dropping onto the chest, her teeth clacking together. She followed his movements with wide, stricken eyes.
“What are you doing?” she whispered.
Good, he thought, she was aware of her surroundings now.
“Following an age-old remedy for shock,” he answered. “I don’t know if your medicine men teach it, but it’s always worked where I come from.” He found a small flask of brandy he kept in his duffel bag and went back to hold it to her mouth.
Shadow chugged it gratefully, then she sputtered. He wanted to laugh, but there was a tender spot at the base of his throat that wouldn’t let him. He started to hunker down in front of her, then fresh, blazing pain caught him up short.
He reached around behind him. He remembered being hit now. His hand closed over an arrow protruding from the back of his thigh.
“Damn it.”
“What?” she breathed. Her eyes were clearing.
“You’re going to have to snap out of it now, sweetheart. I need you to do something for me.” That, he realized, was probably the best way to bring her back—giving her something to do, putting her back in charge. For the moment he would allow it because they both needed it.
He stood and turned around, looking back over his shoulder to watch her. Her face blanched, but then a grim set came to her mouth. More color came back to her face.
“Oh, my God. One got you,” she muttered. And he had carried her here. But she would think about that later. She pushe
d the flask back up at him. “I guess you’re going to need this worse than I do.”
Mac took it and swallowed. “All right. Go ahead. Pull.”
“I can’t.”
He looked around at her again. “Are you going to wimp out on me, Sergeant?”
Something flashed in her eyes. “I never wimp out.”
“Then pull the damned thing.”
“Do you want to lose half of your leg in the bargain?” she snapped. “It’s in deep. I’m going to have to push it through. But it’s got barbed feathers on the nock end. I need a knife.”
He moved to get one, then winced as she began cutting the feathers away, pain searing through his leg with even the scant pressure she applied.
“I’m sorry,” she said tightly. “It’s the only way.”
He realized that he was suddenly, profoundly grateful she wasn’t the type to faint or weep. He took another strong swig.
“All right. I’m ready. Go for it.”
He waited for the pain, but there wasn’t any. “Oh, my God,” she breathed instead.
“Now what?”
“Wait.”
Suddenly she was up, dashing through the door. When she came back with a handful of the arrows her face was white again, her eyes glassy. She looked down at the little pile of feathers she had cut away from the arrow in his leg and examined the chipped metal points of the ones she held. Mac noticed that they were slightly misshapen. The feathers were black and red.
“I’m not in the mood for guessing games right now, Sergeant. What in the hell are you doing?”
“These arrows...” she breathed. “The lead. I’ve seen some like this before.”
“So?”
“In museums. In private collections. They’re...Mac, they’ve got to be over a hundred years old.”
Chapter 7
“Let me see that.”
Mac grabbed one of the arrows out of her hand and carried it closer to the lantern. After a moment, Shadow got a grip on herself and followed him.
“Look,” she said hoarsely. “Here.” She pointed to the tip. “And here.” She drew a finger down the shaft.
“Okay. So?”
“Imperfect.”
“It’s an imperfect world, Sergeant.”
“It was even more so a hundred and forty years ago,” she snapped. Then she took a deep breath. “Come on, Mac. You’re an archaeologist. You know what I’m talking about.”
He did; he just didn’t know what to make of it. The shape of the points was irregular, not stamped out by a machine. Navajo warriors had once had to melt lead down and pour it into their molds by hand, so each one they made had been marginally different. Like these. And the lines and the feathers on them were clearly handpainted.
He touched a very gentle finger to one of the feathers. It was incredibly fragile.
“Someone shot artifacts at us?” he said disbelievingly.
She had to think about it more, but on a gut level Shadow couldn’t accept that that was what they were. “So to speak,” she whispered, sitting on the chest again carefully.
Mac made a rude, snorting sound. “Forget your legends, sweetheart. These things are real, not ghostly.” But he closed his hand around the one he held as though to make sure.
Shadow laid hers neatly on the floor. “Whatever,” she said quietly. “I’ll get that one out of your leg now.”
She didn’t believe him, Mac realized. He could tell by the easy way she spoke, accepting too readily that their problem was real, not supernatural. She never accepted anything that easily. When she got a bee in her bonnet, she didn’t give it up without a good fight.
Well, they could argue about it later. He realized with an odd sensation—half sinking, half a lurch of his gut—that he couldn’t let her go back to the switchback now. It had little to do with what had happened between them, everything to do with what had happened to them. He wasn’t sure if someone had meant to kill them and was just a very bad shot, or if someone had only been trying to scare them. But either way, he wasn’t comfortable having her out of sight, beyond shouting distance.
Tomorrow she was going to have to go home.
He turned around in front of her again, tensing his jaw hard as she worked the arrow through the fleshy part of his thigh. He took another deep chug of brandy and almost laughed in spite of the pain. This time he was thinking about her deliberately to get his mind off what she was doing to his leg.
Pound your head with a hammer, and your smashed thumb doesn’t hurt anymore.
He raked a hand through his hair, wondering at the insanity that had led him down to the switchback earlier. God, what hormones could do to a man’s brain! Maybe that old adage was right—maybe all his thought processes were centered right down there between his legs.
Well, he was thinking with his brain now. He was thinking how incredibly grateful he ought to be for that idiot’s perfectly timed assault. It had saved him from himself.
“It’s through,” she said softly and he flinched at the sound of her voice—steady in spite of everything, though with a certain reedy thinness that made her still seem vulnerable, which she probably was. It threatened to undo all the nice, practical thinking he had just done.
“Do you feel all right?” she asked.
“It hurts,” he answered tightly. “About what you’d expect.”
“No light-headedness, any odd stinging sensation at the point of entry, nausea—that sort of thing?”
“None of the above.” He scowled. “You’re thinking something was on the arrow tips? Some poison?”
She murmured a sound of agreement. “Lay down, give me the rest of that brandy, and grit your teeth,” she ordered.
“Yes, sir, Sergeant.”
When he was down on his sleeping bag she splashed more of it in than she had to. He ground his teeth at the extent of the sting.
“Roll over,” she snapped.
“I’ll do the other side myself, thanks.”
“Fine. Then you can bandage it yourself, too, while you’re at it. I’m going back to my camp.”
“Not by yourself, you’re not.”
“Watch me.”
She ran. The little minx ran, knowing he wasn’t up to speed. Anger pounded at his temples and Mac launched himself to his feet to go after her, cursing at the pain. He caught her at the point of the switchback and swung her around.
“We can do this my way, or we can do it your way. It’s your choice, Sergeant.”
“What’s your way?” she asked too compliantly.
“I’ll throw you over my shoulder and carry you. Or you can pack up your stuff as neatly and precisely as you do everything else and bring it back to where you spent the first couple of nights.”
“Chivalry ends at your tent door, huh?”
He felt something squirm in his gut. “That’s right.”
“You think the bogeyman’s going to get me, but you don’t care enough to let me in? That’s a pretty deep paranoia you’ve got going there, friend.”
His jaw turned to granite. “I don’t spend the night with women. I told you that. It’s one of my rules.”
Why was she pushing it? Shadow thought wildly. It didn’t matter.
But it did.
“Nothing happened between us, Mac,” she said more softly. “Not really. A night between us would be totally nonsexual.”
“The hell it would. I wasn’t kissing myself out in that canyon. You’re staying in your own sleeping bag, Sergeant.”
She took a step backward, feeling her skin color, feeling as if he had struck her. “I don’t remember being the one to suggest otherwise,” she said tightly. “I’ll sleep in my own bag in my own camp.”
“On second thought, I don’t give a tinker’s damn what you do,” he snarled. “It’s your skin.”
He turned on his heel and returned to his tent. After a long time Shadow went on to her own camp. She crawled, shivering, back into her sleeping bag.
It was a long time befo
re she remembered her gun and got up to make sure it was within reach.
* * *
Mac was a bear in the morning.
Shadow woke from a drowsy half sleep when his broad shoulders blocked out the first sun of the day. She sat up and looked at him groggily.
He was standing over her, holding the arrows. “We have to decide what to do with these,” he said tightly.
Her brain felt sluggish. She hadn’t slept well. There was that bizarre assault, of course, but more than anything she had thought about those few moments when they had touched, of the wild heat that had flared, of the shattering potential that had been promised...potential unlike anything she had known before.
Granted, she had limited experience. Maybe that was why she had gone running to him like some kind of sex-starved fool.
Oh, God.
She scrubbed her face with her hands. “I need a toothbrush. Coffee. Then we’ll talk.”
He went on as though she hadn’t spoken. “I think you should drop them off at the nearest tribal-police subagency when you leave here. I think there’s one right down the western slope in Chinle.”
“I’m not leaving,” she murmured, standing.
His gaze moved down her legs. He thought of pushing that T-shirt up the previous night, of the warm skin he had found underneath, of sliding his hands beneath her panties....
Impossibly, he felt himself begin to harden again, like a teenager, like a fool, like a man who couldn’t keep his mind on what was important and off what was not.
“Yes, you are,” he growled huskily.
“No. I’m not.”
She was about to bend over to find her toothbrush. He caught her arm to stop her. He couldn’t take anymore.
His grip almost hurt. Shadow felt her heart squirm. “You have no right to tell me where to go and what to do,” she managed. “This is a free canyon. I’m camping here whether you like it or not, so leave me alone.”
“We have a problem,” he retorted.
“We have a lot of problems,” she said softly. He dropped his hand as though she had burned him.
“I have coffee on,” he said rigidly. “Go brush your teeth, do whatever you have to do, then come and have some. We’ll discuss this like two civilized adults.” When you’re dressed.