by Jane Toombs
True darkness was settling over the woods when he sensed someone following. He stopped, probing, rifle at the ready. Long, tense moments later he lowered the rifle with a muffled curse. A violet energy glow.
Why the hell was Wolf following him when he'd been ordered to stay behind to protect the women and children? And, come to think of it, how was the boy able to track him in the dark?
"I know you're there, Wolf," Sergei called.
He swore at Wolf as the boy trotted up to him.
"Liisi's spells keep those at home safe," Wolf insisted when the angry blast was done. "I had to come. I'm the only one who can find Mima."
"How did you trail me?"
"I always know where you are, Grandfather. You and Mima. In my head."
About to order him to return, Sergei paused. Why not use Wolf's self-proclaimed ability? The boy was already in danger simply by being in the woods at night with a beast loose. There was no guarantee he could protect Wolf, though he'd sure as hell do his best.
"All right, prove your ability," he muttered crossly. "Find Mima."
Wolf turned in a slow circle, pausing halfway around.
He stood motionless for a time, then took a deep breath and started off. Sergei followed on his heels.
In the distance an owl called four times. Otherwise there was no sound in the forest except the soft sough of the wind overhead and the crackle of pine needles under their boots. Sergei fought his inner yearning to feel the needles under his bare feet. He longed to test the wind for scent and know exactly what animals shared the woods with him, longed to hear every night noise, no matter how faint, longed to run, hunting, his voice challenging all others.
You don't remember the running, the hunting, he told himself firmly. Only the beast remembers. The longing comes from him. When he runs free you're locked within him, you taste none of the pleasures, know nothing, feel nothing. Yet you're to blame for what he does because you allow him to go free. You have a choice; he has none. You are a man who knows right from wrong; he does not.
It's wrong to loose a beast on the world. Evil.
Wolf set a fast pace. As they climbed into the hills, the pines thinned. Sergei kept glancing up, fearing moonrise. If Mima still lived, and the other beast remained a man, she had a chance.
They came out from under the trees and Wolf stopped. Sergei caught up to him. Wordlessly, Wolf pointed to the jumble of rocks ahead of them, barely visible in the starshine. Somewhere among those rocks, mixed with human energy was a blue flicker. Mima! Alive!
But Sergei also sensed the white glow he'd noticed only one time before. In these very same hills. Before he'd shifted and hunted with the other. Now the other waited for them in his lair.
Sergei was certain the other could sense them so there'd be no way to creep up and surprise him. A direct attack was the only feasible plan. Motioning Wolf to stay behind him, he strode rapidly toward the den he knew must be concealed among the rocks.
He heard a warning growl. Broke into a run. Reached the rocks. A wild-haired, heavily bearded man, naked except for a loincloth, leaped from an opening among them and faced Sergei.
"I'm here, Mima!" Sergei called as he halted.
"His wife's in here with me," Mima called back. "She's having a baby."
The other snarled and the hair rose along Sergei's spine as he saw the man begin to change. His response was immediate--the familiar wrench of his gut. Realizing he couldn't control what was happening to him, Sergei thrust the rifle at Wolf.
"I'm starting to shift," he told Wolf in Kamchadal as he tore off his clothes. "Barricade yourself in the den with Mima as soon as I lure him away." He hoped to God he could remember what his intentions were once he changed.
Free! And the other with him. He lifted his muzzle and howled. The other answered, the howls rising through the night, calling to the moon to shine on them. They needed the moonlight.
The other snarled at the human who scrambled among the rocks. He jumped between the other and the human. Men weren't prey. The other snapped at him but he avoided the fangs. He was bigger, stronger. Older. He was the leader. The other must follow.
With a quick slash he tore a furrow along the other's shoulder. The other whimpered in surprised pain, giving ground. He growled, advancing and the other snarled again but finally crouched, acknowledging him as the leader.
The moon rose and, with it, the blood lust. Run! Run and hunt! He leaped forward and the other, his torn shoulder already healing, joined him. Together they raced down the hill and into the woods.
Two deer, drinking from the creek, sprang into flight when he and the other burst from between the trees. He
chose the male, knowing the other would follow him. Together they'd run down the prey, taste the sweet hot blood at the kill and then feast.
Caught up in the blood lust, he was hardly aware of the men until he heard the crack of rifles. Behind him the other howled in pain and rage. He glanced over his shoulder. The other writhed on the ground. Wounded. The red suffusing his mind faded and disappeared. He turned to go back to the other.
Again the roar and stink of guns. A bullet stung his upper back leg, slowing him. The other struggled to rise, got to his feet and wobbled toward the cover of the woods. Men followed him, firing their guns.
If he tried to reach the other he risked being shot again. He wanted to help but, if too many bullets found him, he'd die. He turned away and, making a wide circle to avoid the men with guns, fled toward where he'd met the other, knowing there was a den among the rocks.
Through the woods, up the hill. To the rocks. He halted abruptly. Humans. One outside the den. No gun. He snarled warningly as the man started toward him. Not prey but enemy. The man advanced, crooning to him. He crouched to leap. To kill.
Froze. Too late he realized the man's words wove an unbreakable net around him. The man came on, still chanting. He touched the beast's head with something metal. Pain pierced through the beast's skull and he howled in agony.
Sergei found himself standing in the moonlight wearing nothing but his steel amulet. Which he hadn't had on when he left the house. His left thigh throbbed from a bleeding wound. Wolf stood beside him, rifle in hand. Sergei glanced from the rifle to his injured leg.
"I didn't do that," Wolf said hastily.
"But you did put the thong of the amulet around the beast's neck--and lived to tell about it. How in hell--?" "Grandmother taught me the right words." Wolf glanced to the east. "I heard shooting--was it the posse? Did the other beast get hit?"
"If I was wounded, he must be." Sergei donned his discarded clothes as he spoke, ignoring the blood seeping through his pant's leg.
He sensed Mima in the lair and another human. The other's wife. He had no idea where the other was now, even though he was sure his beast self must have run with him. Obviously they'd met up with the posse.
"If he's not too badly injured," Sergei said, "he'll return here to his den."
Using his special ability, Sergei scanned the area, sensing a weak starshine energy. The beast, wounded. He also sensed five humans. The posse. All approaching from the east.
What now?
As if reading his mind, Wolf handed him the rifle.
"His wife can't have her baby," he said. "Something's wrong. Mima says that's why he brought her here--to help. But she needs medicine and it's at the house."
Sergei had forgotten the woman was about to deliver a child. Good God, another shifter?
Thinking quickly, he decided what must be done. "Can you find your way back to the house?" he asked Wolf.
Wolf nodded.
Sergei pointed. "The beast and the posse are coming from that direction. "Go the opposite way and take the woman and Mima with you to the house. Hurry!"
Moments later a young Indian woman crawled awkwardly from the den opening with Mima behind her. "She's Morning Quail," Mima said to Sergei as Wolf helped the woman to her feet.
"You've got to get her to the house before the beast o
r the posse get here," Sergei said. "If you can make her understand, tell her she may die otherwise."
Terror distorted Morning Quail's pain-wracked features and he realized she knew what he'd said. Leaning on Wolf and Mima, she hurried away with them, walking surprisingly fast, considering her grossly distended abdomen and her labor pains.
Whatever happened, he'd done the best he could for her. Taking a deep breath, Sergei strode down the hill to the east, rifle in hand.
By the time he reached the beast, the posse was so close behind he expected to see them at any moment. The beast dragged himself along on three legs, the bones in the fourth leg shattered with splinters poking through the blood-soaked fur.
He had no chance. Yet Sergei knew how difficult a time the shifter would have dying, no matter how many times the posse shot him. Sergei reached for the leather pouch in his pocket. Froze. The pouch was empty.
Belatedly, he realized that Wolf, aware how silver poisoned him, must have loaded the rifle for him. He brought up the barrel. Aimed for the heart. At the last moment the beast looked up, fixing its golden eyes on him.
"Forgive me," Sergei whispered as he pulled the trigger. His bullet pierced the beast's heart, dropping him
in his tracks.
The posse arrived to find Sergei standing over the naked body of a young man with scabbed, dirt and blood smeared
skin and a tangled mass of uncut hair and beard.
"That him?" McQuade asked incredulously. "That's the beast?"
Sergei nodded. "He'd taken Mima to a den in the rocks-- I sent her home with Wolf before I tracked him."
One of the other ranchers, a stocky red-faced man named Porter, slapped Sergei on the back. "Good shot. We winged him but he got away." He squinted down at the body. "Some kind of wolf man, I guess. Could've sworn we was shooting at an animal."
"There was two of the damned things," Renwick insisted. "I saw two with my own eyes."
"You and that rotgut you swill," McQuade told him.
"It's a wonder you didn't see four." He bent over the body. "There was just one and here he is. Christ, the man's full of bullets. Look at that leg with the bones sticking out. Don't see how he got this far, shot up like he was."
Porter spat. "Hell, he don't hardly look human. Lived like an animal. He ain't gonna feel pain like a normal person."
"You hurt?" McQuade asked Sergei, his gaze on the blood- stained pants leg.
Sergei gestured toward the body. "His blood. Got
it on me when I knelt to make sure he was dead."
"Anything else in that den of his?" Renwick asked. Sergei shook his head.
"Mima all right?" McQuade asked.
"She was lucky," Sergei said. Fatigue from the shifting, the pain in his thigh and the guilt in his heart made him wonder how much longer he could keep up his casual front. "He didn't hurt her, didn't even rape her."
Porter laughed. "Must be that black skin of hers put him off. Never fancied nigger gals, myself."
"We ought to bury him," Sergei said.
Renwick scowled. "Leave him for the animals to eat, that's what I say."
They finally decided to drag the dead man to his lair, shove him inside and block the entrance with a rock. When they'd finished, Sergei bowed his head.
"May you rest in peace," he murmured.
Renwick frowned at him but McQuade nodded.
No one heard Sergei's final, silent words to the dead shifter. I saved what I could, compadre.
I saved your child.
Chapter 25
"Thank God you're home," Liisi cried when Sergei, close to exhaustion after the shifting, reached the house. "Quick, in here." She all but dragged him into the kitchen.
Morning Quail lay on a blanket on the floor, her eyes closed, her dusky skin an ominous gray. Mima knelt beside her. "The baby lies wrong," she told Sergei. "Crosswise. The waters have already broken."
He peeled off his jacket, rolled up his shirt sleeves and washed his hands in the basin of water on the floor beside the laboring woman.
"Bend her legs at the knee and hold them apart," he ordered.
When Liisi and Mima did as he told them, he knelt between Morning Quail's legs and eased his hand inside her. He found the neck of the womb open and, reaching farther, felt the baby's shoulder. He groped until he touched its feet and grasped them, turning the baby so the feet entered the womb's opening. He tugged gently.
As he pulled, Morning Quail's muscles contracted, shoving the baby into the birth canal and allowing Sergei to deliver it, feet first. A boy, smaller than normal.
Luckily. Otherwise he might not have been able to get the baby out. As it was, the child wasn't breathing.
He thrust the baby at Mima. "Do what you can," he snapped. Then he shouted for Wolf.
The boy came running.
"Hold Morning Quail's left leg the same way as Liisi's holding her right."
Wolf obeyed. Another strong contraction delivered the afterbirth. Sergei, looking at Morning Quail's still distended abdomen, frowned, a dark suspicion clouding his mind. He palpated her abdomen with gentle fingers between her continuing labor pains. What he felt confirmed his fears.
"There's another," he said, hoping his voice didn't show the horror he felt. Another set of male twins!
The second baby eased out head first. When he finally held it, squalling, in his hands, he stared down in pleased surprise. A girl. His father hadn't warned of any danger with fraternal twins, only identical males.
These babies would be carriers, not shifters. Although that was bad enough, at least he had them here, under his control.
As he rose to his feet, something clinked onto the floor. He looked down. The bullet from his thigh, thrust from him by his rapid healing. He picked it up and tossed the bullet into the kitchen slop bucket. He needed no extra reminder of tonight--the other's twins would be more than enough. Or at least the girl. He wasn't sure the boy would live despite Mima's efforts and, at the moment, he was too tired to care.
In the morning he found Morning Quail in one of the upstairs bedrooms, sitting propped against the headboard of the bed, holding one of the babies. Mima sat on the side of the bed holding the other. Apparently the boy had survived. Morning Quail had made a remarkable recovery. He hadn't realized she was so young, hardly more than a girl. An attractive girl with her sleek black braids, light brown skin and dark eyes. After one quick glance, she didn't look at him again.
"Show him the cross," Mima said to her.
Morning Quail slipped her hand under a pillow and held up a metal cross about the length of his index finger. He took it from her gingerly, expecting the cross to be silver. When he found it was tin, he tensed, examining the cross closely.
Many years ago he'd bought a tin cross, not having enough money to afford silver or gold. He'd had initials engraved on the back. Holding his breath, he turned the cross over.
EMA/UK. Esperanza Marie Alvarado/Ulysses Koshka. Every hair on his body stood on end.
It wasn't possible! He looked from the cross to Morning Quail.
"Where did you get this?" he asked hoarsely.
"She tell you." Morning Quail spoke so softly he barely heard her. She nodded toward Mima.
"She's shy about speaking to men," Mima said. "The cross came from him. Her husband. It was his, brought with him to the tribe."
"My God," Sergei muttered.
The cross belonged to the shifter. Brought with him. Sergei swallowed. This was the same cross he'd given to Esperanza Alvarado, the best present he could afford at the time.
"Did Morning Quail tell you anything more about her husband?" he asked Mima.
"She said he was a gift from the gods, brought home to a Miwok village by the husband of a woman who'd lost her child. The cross came with him. The Miwok family raised him but when he grew to be a man the tribe cast him out, then fled their village.
"Last year he stole Morning Quail from her people to be his wife. He confessed what happened to him during a
full moon and gave her the cross. She was to hold it up to him if he tried to hurt her when he became a beast. Apparently the cross worked."
"Crosses never affected me," Sergei said.
Mima shrugged. "He believed this one to be a gift to him from the gods."
Sergei shifted the cross from hand to hand as he tried to piece together what must have happened. Don Rafael had told him that the son Sergei and Esperanza conceived had died. But what if, unknown to Don Rafael, she'd delivered twin sons and only one died?
He wouldn't put it past Tia Dolores, devious as she was, to conceal the truth from everyone. But she'd be too afraid of compromising her mortal soul to kill a baby outright.
It wouldn't be beyond her, though, to expose the living twin on a hillside to live or die as God willed. And there the bereaved Miwok father would find him. With the cross.
He thought he'd come close to the truth--the explanation of why another shifter existed. Tears pricked Sergei's eyes. He'd fathered him. And last night he'd shot a silver bullet into the heart of his son.
He stared from one baby to the other.
His grandaughter. And another grandson. Two more Voleks.
And he was the man who'd vowed never to father a child. After a long silence, he glanced at Morning Quail and saw she slept. He hesitated, then took the baby Mima held into his arms.
"Which one do I have?" he asked.
"The girl."
"Has Morning Quail named them?"
Mima shook her head.
"Then I will. The boy's name is Stefan, after his great-grandfather and the girl--" He paused. "Samara," he said finally.
The baby puckered up her tiny face and wailed.
Looking down at her, Sergei had the irrational thought she resented being burdened with the name of the ancestress who'd brought doom into the Volek line.
A surge of protectiveness flooded through him. He rocked Samara in his arms, crooning an old lullaby he remembered from his childhood.
"Sleep my little one, my pretty one..."
Samara's sobs diminished and ceased.
"You sang that song to me once," Mima said softly. "On the riverboat."