They might still have made it back to Arren’s motorcycle if the moon hadn’t chosen that moment to leap into the one tiny gap in the leafy canopy over their heads.
Too late to run. Its brilliance turned Laine’s brain to scattered shards. She’d been warned, hadn’t she? The moon would demand payment for Her power. She staggered, her eyes locked onto the glowing disk.
What was she so afraid of? The moonlight felt like feathers on her skin, soft and pleasant. She basked, rolling her neck back and letting her mouth fall open. It felt so good . . . Like fire after snow, like a banquet after hunger, like cool, sparkling water after trekking a desert.
Arren, beside her, swayed on his feet. He moaned softly.
She tried to speak. They had to run, to get away!
But those soft silver feathers suddenly dug into her skin, clawed at her eyes. Her thighs trembled. Every rational thought twisted into lust. Every crevice of Laine’s body flooded with cold fire. She turned to Arren, caught his eyes in hers and pulled him to her.
They fell into the rising water.
Laine tasted blood on her lips. Arren’s blood, hot, delicious. She tasted him again, wanting more. Her teeth were sharp and knew what they wanted. The blood of this male. The moon. The water.
The flood lapped higher, climbing her body. Invading her.
She began to tear at her clothes, ripping off her shirt and flinging it aside. Arren snarled, bared his teeth, and ripped her bra off without bothering to undo its clasp. He nipped her breasts, grabbed her hand and shoved it down to his jeans.
This was nothing like the love they’d made back in her room. That had been tender and slow; this was burning, wild, primal. It wasn’t love at all.
Black water sparkled around them. Her mouth opened and the moonlight flooded in, wet and icy down her throat. She swallowed, drinking in the glistening torrent, feeling Arren’s hands almost scorching her skin, stripping her bare as the river swept around them.
She clawed for his body, her mind gone. She didn’t care. Then even the awareness of not caring was gone.
Naked, twined together, they were taken by the river, swept into the savage, frothing power of the water. Laine clung to Arren as they rolled and twisted, and felt him thrust her legs apart and plunge into her, hard and hot. She screamed aloud, gasping air and then rolling under him into the water again.
Her eyes were full of foaming water and blinding moonlight, but her hands knew what they were touching. His skin had turned to sleek hide under her palms, and when her fingers dug in and pulled, she felt the dense prickliness of an animal’s coat. Under that were muscles no human had, moving and growing in ways a horse’s never could.
“Laine,” she heard him choke, “I can’t stop.” He cried aloud, a harsh, inhuman sound, like a tree being torn asunder. She knew he was in pain. She was too.
It was pain she never wanted to end.
The moonlight poured like milk over both of them. The water that had taken them began to recede, draining into channels like shining ribbons that slithered away into the darkness under the black, swaying trees. Laine watched her limbs ripple, stretch and re-form as nausea washed through her; saw her pale skin turn to bronze and her fingers shrink, curl, and transform into hooves. A wrenching, crawling itch infested her bones as they lengthened and hardened. All at once her sight grew dim. She had to blink and shake her head before the world came back into focus.
She could see, but everything looked different: grainy, like ancient newsprint. Was it her eyes, or was it the world morphing into something new?
She gasped for air. Then, in a million metallic shades of gray, everything snapped into brilliant focus. The trees and water, the glittering night sky with the moon like a spotlight.
A nightmare creature sprawled on the ground, shaking water from its eyes. Rivulets drained off it like an opened net of gleaming wires. Arren. It was Arren, in the middle of the change. A new-grown mane writhed down his neck, the hairs flailing as if blown by a wind. He was shifting too fast to comprehend, his body contorting as it grew and changed.
He struggled to rise, thrashing in the wet grass and kicking up clots of earth. His eyes rolled wildly. Still blue. Human, but feral with fear and passion.
Panting shallowly as pain seared her expanding ribs, Laine saw Arren’s torso lengthen and broaden, saw his neck with its black slash of mane stretch and his face shift to the long, bony planes of a stallion. His new hide had the burnished gleam of steel, with highlights of silver along the rippling courses of his new muscles. He shook his head and screamed. With his forelegs he dug into the ground and tried to pull himself upright. Falling back, he bared his teeth and snarled at the sky.
She heard herself whimper and felt the heat of her own blood coursing through her veins. In a huge, expanding gasp she felt her lungs inflate, felt the power of her body swell.
It was horrible, terrifying, intoxicating. She gasped more air, feeding the furnace inside her. She wanted to run. She needed to run, needed to hear the thunder of her own hooves and feel the fiery night air fill her lungs.
But her new legs wouldn’t work. She floundered and scrambled like a newborn colt, her awkward limbs—four to manage, not a mere two—churning clumsily as she slipped in the sodden leaves. The water, its job done, had retreated to leave them wallowing like newly evolved creatures fresh from the primordial sea.
Laine found a tiny piece of her mind still working and hoped fervently that no humans would come across them now. And no cabyll either—especially Jaird Fallon. She and Arren would be helpless as infants.
A tremor ripped through her, and another. The urge to run forced her to keep trying to rise, and at last she found a tentative balance upright on all four legs. She tossed her head and almost fell. A curtain of inky tendrils blocked her vision, and she panicked until realizing it was her own hair. She had a mane and presumably a tail. Bracing her legs, she twisted her long, supple neck around and looked. Yes!
A tail that had a life of its own. It whisked back and forth as she clumsily attempted a few steps.
Something effervescent rose inside her. Could it be elation? Sheer, wild, insane joy? She raised her head to the moon as uncontrollable laughter burst out. Hearing it, knowing it was herself laughing, she sobbed and stumbled toward Arren, who had managed to stand too.
Innis had made it look easy. Fast and easy, beautiful and natural . . . Laine felt anything but natural. Everything was crazy, yet she understood in her new-grown bones that she had entered a realm of power and glory she’d never dreamed could be possible. A longing swelled within her to lunge for the stallion glowing before her and taunt him into running with her. Run beside him and nip his withers with her sharp new teeth, taunt him and tease him until he went mad with desire for her.
Everything looked different. Black, white, gray, metallic. Harsh, clear to her as if it were daylight, every detail of the forest distinct and trembling. Heat ripples rose off Arren’s back and from around his muzzle. She could see the glowing core of blood within him where it neared the surface around his nostrils and eyes. He looked like a beast straight out of hell as he lowered his head and pawed the ground.
All at once Laine knew what to do with her legs.
With a kick of her heels, she twisted away from him and bounded into a gallop. She flicked her tail and felt it flag up and catch the air. A laugh trailed behind her like a silken scarf.
Arren understood now why artists had painted and sculpted the equine form for thousands of years. But could even the finest artist in the world capture the sheer glory that was Laine under the moon?
All the time he’d been struggling to gain control over his new body, he’d been overwhelmingly conscious of her, so close, so beautiful. So wild and hot.
A cabyll ushtey female. His female. He felt a tremor of power arc through his legs.
Her mane and tail were the deep shade her human hair had been, but her new hide was pale and iridescent with dappled watermarks that his cabyll eyes inter
preted as bronze, for they caught the moonlight and augmented it more deeply than a mere reflection. Long neck, slender limbs, rounded haunches. That maddening scent . . .
The faint jaguar-like spots on her rear rippled as she flung her tail high, wheeled with utter grace, and began to run.
Adrenaline filled his veins and shot power to his legs. He knew how to operate this body. He didn’t have to think about it.
Just run. Follow her, catch her. Possess her.
She wove between the trees, moonlight washing her with silver. She laughed: a high, sweet, joyful sound that thrilled him. He stumbled, recovered easily. His lungs were huge, the supply of oxygen never ending. He’d thought his senses sharp before; now the million nuanced scents of the night flooded him and left his brain awash in knowledge and desire. He could run like this all night, but for wanting her. He didn’t intend to chase her for long . . .
No. Let her run, he found himself thinking. Let her feel the joy of her new body and test it, find that it has no limit.
So this was what Melved Gibbs was talking about. Arren had seen the longing in his dying eyes when he’d tried to explain what it meant to run like this. To run forever with your true mate by your side.
Just as he’d drawn close and was about to catch her, Laine swerved, dodging him. His intent had been to nip her shoulder as a demand for her to stop, but she shrieked a laugh and plunged down a bank, to crash through slender, whipping saplings into a watercourse he hadn’t known was there.
He followed her without hesitation, the shock of water like electric sparks on his hide. She made for deeper water—water which rose around them as if flash-flooding from somewhere far upstream—her hooves churning white froth and her mane tossing pearls into the air behind her.
He began to swim with her, neck to neck, reveling in the foam their hooves spun up under their bellies. Buoyed by the moonlit bubbles, he twined his neck with hers, nipping sharply at her ears. She squealed and bared her teeth at him, and he recoiled, saw the wild excitement in her eyes and nipped again, but more gently this time.
“Arren,” she called, her voice sounding full and deep in his ears, ripe with promise, more resonant than human tones. She was cabyll now, with cabyll senses and abilities.
And cabyll desires. He had them too, an overwhelming rush in his blood, more intense than any passion he’d felt or imagined. The scent of her drove him to ram his huge new body up against hers, thrusting her relentlessly toward the riverbank. She complied after only a token display of resistance and made for land. She was powerful, beautiful, and wild—and she wanted him as much as he wanted her. All doubt and fear were gone from him now. No longer was he a schoolboy overwhelmed by his shifted body.
They reached the bank together, shedding diamond droplets everywhere. The trees and bushes parted for them, and the moon looked down, full and pale and smiling as if in benediction. She watched as he mounted her, rejoiced as Laine screamed her acceptance of him.
At last Goddess Moon wheeled her lustrous disk away and was gone, full of whatever it was she needed from them. The stars returned, blinking shyly into sparks of brightness as the moon’s overwhelming brilliance vanished. The trees calmed and straightened, their limbs whispering quietly, then subsided into silence again. The small night sounds of the forest returned.
Spent and trembling, Arren and Laine walked without speaking together along the watercourse, back the way they’d come. Arren recognized it now as the upper reaches of the River Syn. It had subsided once again into normality, though his vision retained the sharp, almost pixilated clarity the transformation had brought him. It was disorienting, to see the night landscape so clearly.
He shook his head, feeling the weight of his new bones and the strength of his new muscles. Muscles that had been stretched and tested in exhilaratingly wonderful ways.
Laine trod the narrow path slightly behind him; he could feel the warmth of her breath against his rump. He flicked his tail—oh, how fascinated he’d been by tails as a boy, fashioning them from rope pinned to his trousers—and heard her chuff a short laugh. She was all right, thank God—whatever God it was that looked after creatures of the night and guarded them from the mundane world. And protected them from one another.
They found the spot on the bank where they’d first entered the water, and Arren spent a few minutes searching for the clothes they had tossed aside, plucking them from the rocks and branches with his teeth. Some items were gone forever. He didn’t care.
When he dropped the collection at Laine’s feet, she looked up at him. He saw now, in the calm aftermath of their mating, a star-shaped blaze on her face, glimmering softly against the pale bronze luminescence of her hide. Her eyes had a very human look of perplexity.
“Now what do we do?” Her voice was plaintive. “How do we become human again?”
Arren was about to admit that while he had it in theory, he was sadly lacking in practice, when they both turned at a sound.
The crackle of heavy steps on branches. A dim patch under the trees grew black and coalesced into solidity. Jaird Fallon. In his cabyll form.
Though he’d never seen him before, Arren knew exactly who he was. His testosterone-laden scent was unmistakable. Arren bared his teeth and wheeled to stand between the stallion and Laine.
Jaird paced forward, chuckling. “You don’t need to. Become human again, that is. You can remain cabyll until you die.”
His implication was clear. Arren braced himself as he faced the huge creature, calculating his chances, knowing they were nonexistent.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Despite his laughter, Laine could feel the anger coming off Jaird as sharply as a wall of thrown knives.
His woman had been stolen. The woman he’d been stalking and courting, the woman he’d sired and planned to harvest for his herd. She felt her legs urging her to turn and bolt, but her head and her heart joined forces and made her step up beside Arren.
He tried to force her back. “Run, while you have a chance,” he ordered, his voice a throaty rumble in her ear. “I can delay him for a while.”
She ignored him, watching the creature who claimed to be her father. Her last pretense that it was just a claim vanished now. He was her sire; she knew it in her blood, the kinship between them beyond the shape they both wore: a kinship of bloodline that stretched back in time to a long-ago rift in the magic controlling these islands. Flowing, ancient, in her blood was the salty sea, and a moon that had once circled the Earth more closely than she did now.
It was amazing what the air could tell her. A deep inhalation brought information in molecular form that her brain knew how to interpret.
She knew what Jaird was about to do. He was going to kill Arren, and though she was certain that Arren would fight as hard as he could, she was also certain he had no chance against this time-tested killer. Jaird had murdered many times, his victims both human and cabyll, and had grown to like it. He would enjoy demolishing his new-fledged rival.
Now or never. “Trust me,” she whispered into Arren’s ear, and saw it twitch. Before he could react any further, she paced quickly up to Jaird, stood before him and lowered her head. The scent of earth and grass clogged her nostrils.
The black stallion was fully alert, his legs spread wide, his deep chest expanding, and his muscles corded like twisted steel. She knew better than to look him in the eye.
Summoning her courage and praying Arren would understand, she said, “Father, I understand now. I’ve seen what it means to be cabyll ushtey.” Calling him Father made her wince inside, but she could tell he liked it. His neck arched, and he snapped his long, ebony tail.
Did she detect a slight relaxation in his posture? “I was foolish to run from you before . . . but I was frightened.” She raised her head modestly and cast a quick, wary glance into his eyes. “I need to learn cabyll magic from you, Father. I want everything you can teach me.” Was she laying it on too thick? Laine thought she saw a sly, jaded cast to his expression. That
an equine being could have expressions was a new idea to Laine-the-human, but it was so. Jaird’s broad, scarred face had human elements as well as a horse’s aloof disinterest. She thought she could learn to read it.
He must hear her heart thumping in her chest. He must feel the fear—he liked it, damn him—but could he sense her lie? Could Arren?
Too late to change tactics now. She had to convince Jaird that she was on his side, just long enough to escape. Somehow.
From the corner of her eye, she saw Arren stumble and go down on his forelegs. His head bowed to the ground. It almost looked as if he were kneeling before Jaird, but she knew better. She could detect the moiling chaos in his blood, the burning and stretching. He was starting to shift back to human form. Not now!
Laine made herself step closer to Jaird. The hum of connection between Arren and herself was faltering, weakening as his cabyll form flowed like water from him. His limbs shortened, his tail disappeared as his buttocks narrowed, and his horse’s barrel slimmed back into a man’s pale, thin-skinned chest. Arren-the-human looked so terribly vulnerable and small compared to Arren the cabyll stallion . . . She heard the harsh sound of his breath weaken and hiss between his teeth as he tried not to groan.
This time, going the other way, his body shifted fast, perhaps because human form was natural to him. He’d worn the shape for so long, forbidding his alter ego to come forth. Now that shape, so long denied, was betraying him.
What would happen when Jaird had his rival sprawled naked before him, wearing tender human flesh? He’d slice Arren open like gutting a fish.
She began to circle Jaird, flicking him with her tail. He turned to follow her, watching avidly.
Her own cabyll shape was holding firm so far; in fact, she was hoping fervently that it wouldn’t be permanent. Just permanent enough. But what had triggered Arren’s reversion? And why now?
But perhaps Arren would have a better chance as a pitiful, useless human. Prey not worthy of Jaird Fallon, leader of the Blackhorse herd. If Arren could gain control of his human self quickly enough to vanish into the night . . .
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