You look good, she sent finally in reply. A little too good.
He laughed out loud. Ivan heaved a vocal sigh and laid his ears flat. “Off me, Ivan,” Emma said, extracting her feet from under Ivan’s belly. “I’m gonna help clean up before I fall over and pass out. And no one,” she added as everyone got that look on their faces, “Is going to stop me.” She looked around, glaring especially hard at Leah and Red Sun. “Are we clear?”
“Yes ma’am,” Red said. Leah might have muttered something about men being pushovers, but Emma was too busy trying to get her feet back in her boots and keep the sleeping bag wrapped around her shoulders at the same time.
Away from the fire — as in, only a few feet away from the fire — the night was freezing cold. And Emma couldn’t stay wrapped up in the sleeping bag, she needed her hands free. Even through her parker and thermals, the cold bit at her skin and set her teeth chattering, and it only got worse when she insisted on going down to the river with Leah to wash what few utensils they’d used and brush her teeth. By the time she got to the riverbank, the headache had returned full force, too. Ivan surprised her by loping out of the woods and splashing down into the shallows so he could press himself to her hip; when she tried to push him away and out of the water, he mouthed her hands gently with teeth that could crush a man’s skull.
Once they got back to the woods though, she really did have to shoo him off. “Ivan, thank you, but I gotta pee.” She could’ve sworn his sneeze was a laugh.
By the time Emma returned to camp, her teeth were chattering and her bones felt like icicles. Ivan, still in wolf shape, followed Emma and Fern to their tent without being asked. Emma was doubly grateful; not only did he mute the pain in her skull, but he provided much needed warmth as well.
They had a problem though: it wasn’t enough.
27
Emma had never been so cold in all her life. The first hour in the tent was okay — three bodies, one of them giant and furry, created a lot of heat — and Emma dozed a little. But that heat dissipated fast as the temperature dropped. Soon Emma was shivering too hard to stay asleep. Fern was freezing too, and Ivan couldn’t keep them both warm.
When Ivan slipped out from between her and Fern, Emma gasped at the terrible cold that enveloped her. Fern scooted closer but couldn’t make up for the lost heat. Then there was a flash of white light at the tent opening and Ivan’s thickly accented voice murmuring in low tones. A moment later he drew back the tent flap again.
“Devotchka , come out, we cannot keep you warm in there.”
Fern sat up as Emma did, teeth clicking. “Not gonna be much better out there.”
“We’ll see.” The pale smudge of Ivan’s hair disappeared from the tent opening. Emma and Fern both paused to get their boots back on, hands shaking and fingers numb, before crawling out with their sleeping bags around their shoulders and their breath clouding in the frozen night air.
Emma was about to straighten and come to her feet when she found herself looking up into the face of the biggest bear she’d ever seen. Standing on all fours it was big enough to ride. The bear’s coat was a rich red brown, turned copper by the firelight, its eyes were unbroken amber, and its huge face was grizzled with a multitude of tiny scars.
Even freezing to death and in pain, Emma had to clench her fists against the urge to reach out and touch that velvety, scar-lined face.
You’re not gonna freeze to death, Red said, his voice in her head deeper than usual and burred, just a touch, with a hint of his ancestral Scottish accent. And there’ll be plenty of time to touch me later, he added, butting his head against her shoulder before padding around behind her to shove her to her feet.
You wish, Emma shot back with a hell of a lot more sass than she felt as she shuffled forward. Red shook his ears once in amusement, shambling ahead of her to the fire where Shadi and Leah both sat cleaning and tending to their various non high-power weaponry, pretending not to be concerned that Emma was going to perish of hypothermia on their very first night in the wilderness. She didn’t need to be telepathic to read that in their faces.
The heat from the flames was so delicious it hurt, but for some reason the warmth made Emma shudder even harder, until Red parked himself next to her. Then some of the shakes subsided.
Dear Lord, he was enormous. Emma had never once been up close with anything so massive and wild in all her life. Wolves, jaguars, jackals — Red Sun’s beast dwarfed them all. And those claws …
Red walked his arms — or front legs — out until he was lying stretched alongside Emma, and put his giant head on his paws. She managed to stop herself from reaching out to caress those round, velvet ears. Instead she pulled the sleeping bag down around her shoulders and looked for Fern, and found him standing a few feet back from the fire, his expression determined.
“C-c-c’mon,” she gestured with a jerk of her head.
“Red and Ivan can keep you warm. I don’t provide enough heat. I’ll be warm enough by the fire.”
“But you can’t sleep that way, and you’ll get too cold.”
He shrugged. “I won’t sleep all night. Don’t need to.”
Emma opened her mouth to argue but needn’t have bothered — Ivan flashed to wolf and uttered a deep bark in Fern’s direction. When Fern gazed down at him with nothing in his black eyes but curiosity, Emma thought Ivan had misjudged and was about to find out that not much scared Fern except losing her. Then Ivan trotted up to Fern and cocked a leg.
Fern was by Emma’s side in less than a heartbeat. “Never seen you m-m-move so fast,” Emma said to him.
“Never been so motivated.” He shot a disgusted glare at Ivan, whose tongue lolled out in a satisfied grin — or a threat. If it was a threat, it was empty, because a few moments later they were all stretched out in front of the fire together, the flames high and hot and finally warming Emma. She and Fern were sandwiched between Ivan and Red, Ivan curled with his back against Fern’s and his tail folded neatly over his nose. Even curled up, Ivan was still as long as Fern’s torso. A double layer of sleeping bags protected them from the cold ground and another was draped over them; Emma lay on her right side, Fern spooned behind her and with Red’s hulking form stretched out in front of her, his sides heaving with slow, deep breaths. Emma’s headache was a dull throb behind her eyes; Ivan was muting some of the pain through Fern. Didn’t do as good a job as when he was in direct physical contact with her, but far better than nothing.
After a moment of hesitation, Emma tucked her hands beneath Red’s armpit — or what would’ve been his armpit if he were in human shape. He was baking hot and rumbling like an idling Harley, and his pelt was unbelievably dense, long and coarse, not like the jaguars. Made sense. Bears were built for winter and snow, but jaguars were jungle creatures.
She couldn’t get over how weird it was seeing him with two arms.
He opened one eye to look at her. Technically they ain’t arms, he said in her mind, voice lazy with heat. He rumbled all the while he talked via their link. They’re legs.
She poked him in the ribs. They’re limbs. And there are two instead of just one. Doesn’t it bother you?
So frustrating not being able to read his expression. What is it that bothers you? That now I have two, or that I usually have just the one? His mental voice was bland.
Emma was too tired and too sore for games. She withdrew her hands from his warmth and tucked them beneath her head. Fine. Don’t talk about it. We both need sleep.
The rumbling stopped. Behind her, Fern’s breathing deepened, and in her head and heart his presence softened into sleep. Some knot inside her loosened with relief and she regretted snapping at Red. But he’d kinda deserved it. He knew she didn’t see him as weak or less-than because of his difference. Didn’t he?
He sighed and turned his face away on his paws. I do know. And it bothers me. Bothers me that you don’t care.
Emma watched his ears flick back and forth. If you think I don’t care what happened t
o you —
Not that, he cut in. That’s not what I meant.
She let her other hand join the one that was nice and toasty warm beneath Red’s side. I can’t be the first person you ever met who didn’t care that you only have one arm.
No, you aren’t, he agreed. Just the first person whose opinion I gave a damn for.
Emma didn’t know what to say. Absently she realized she was combing her fingers through Red’s luxurious fur and she stopped. He wasn’t a pet; he wasn’t even an animal, he just looked like one. Of course, that was just as true of his human shape — he wasn’t human, but he looked that way, too. In truth he was thousands of years old, cursed and immortal and wild, yet for some reason he cared about what she thought of him.
He rolled onto his side, turning his face and belly away from her but closing the distance between them so she was wedged against his back and had to put her hand against his side if she didn’t want it squashed. After a moment’s hesitation, she buried her fingers in his pelt and relaxed against him. He was warm and solid against her. Fern breathed deep and even behind her. Somewhere on the other side of the fire, Shadi and Leah were taking the first watch while Horne patrolled their small territory in jaguar form — his clothes and weapons in a pile by the fire.
It is safe to sleep, flower, Red said, and started rumbling again.
She did.
When she next woke, she surfaced slow, and with the deep disorientation that came from having slept long and well for the first time in too many nights. It was still dark, but copious birdsong suggested dawn wasn’t far off. The air was so cold it hurt to breathe it in, and Emma stuck her face back under the edge of the sleeping bag; she’d rolled onto her left side in the night, and so had Fern, and she was nestled against his back in a reverse of the position they’d fallen asleep in.
The sounds of the men’s breathing, deep and regular with sleep, ebbed and flowed over her in a lazy tide. She’d started to drift back to sleep when it occurred to her that her head no longer hurt. Which could only be a good thing. Maybe it had just been exhaustion, after all. And maybe the bone thing that Fatima had felt with her rudimentary healing gift was just some quirk of being merged with Fern, or her new freaky regenerative powers, or something. Probably nothing. She felt a little stupid for flipping out over it the night before.
There could be no more freakouts like that one, she decided. She had to get her shit together. She was the weakest link in their chain, and if they were going to achieve anything out in the wilderness rather than merely babysitting her and keeping her out of range of the serpent priesthood, they couldn’t afford to indulge her every time she jumped at shadows. To them she was a baby, she knew: young, human, weak and scared. Didn’t matter how scary her Caller of the Blood stuff could get if she couldn’t walk more than half a day without getting a migraine.
Was it really gone? She shifted position, stretching her neck, which was when she realized her head was cushioned on someone’s gigantic bicep.
Red Sun.
He’d changed back to human shape at some point during the night, probably in his sleep. Emma turned her face toward Red’s arm and her nose brushed bare skin. Which meant that the body spooned against her back was naked.
Okay. This would be okay. She’d just lie there pretending to sleep until Red woke up, or someone else woke him up, and then he’d get up and get dressed and it would be fine. Of course there’d be no more sleep for her, but that was fine too — it was almost dawn anyway. It was going to be fine.
A wry voice spoke up in her head. I thought you said no more freakouts? He’s only naked, for Chrissakes. You spend most of your time surrounded by unreasonably attractive people in various states of undress.
But Red was never one of them. And it was one thing to admire the view from several yards away as he waded in the river yesterday, but another thing entirely to have his naked body spooned against hers. His breath warm against the top of her head. His scent of leather and pine and male heat thick enough to take a bite out of.
The main problem, however, was how much she wanted to roll to the right and look down the long, hard line of him. How much she wanted to see the plane of his hip taper down to the thick column of his thigh; how much she wanted to glimpse the hollow in the bend of his knee. It was a stupid thing to want, but she did. She wanted to watch him sleeping, naked and disarmed.
She wanted him. The way she wanted Alexi. But wanting Alexi had never made her feel this guilty.
Her stomach turned over and her pulse took off like a startled horse. I am not a good person.
Fern stirred in his sleep, and Emma realized that her emotions were on the verge of waking him. She forced herself to take a breath through her nose, and out again slow, and eased the volume down on their mental link. It wasn’t shielding; it was more like a subliminal lullaby. He calmed. She caught a glimpse of dream — furry, many-legged bodies and jungle. Dreaming of his people.
She could sense Fern’s dreams because they were bound to each other. Could she do the same with Red? Did she even have the right?
No, she didn’t. But Red didn’t always play fair with her, did he? He was thousands of years old and more powerful than anyone really knew.
Quieting her thoughts and closing her eyes, she reached out along the warm, invisible pathway that connected Red’s mind to hers. She didn’t expect it to work, but it did. His sleeping mind was full of rain and darkness. Flashes of light illuminated the house. There was a smell of burning ozone in the air, and a phantom was coming out of the mist, and then it coalesced into human form and Emma almost didn’t recognize herself; hair wild, eyes huge and dark, her face empty and painful to look at.
Emma jerked back from the link. He was dreaming of the night Telly left — the storm, the rain, the lightning that Telly called down. Emma coming upon them and watching, too late, as Telly pulled a Star Trek “beam-me-up-Scotty” and disappeared from this dimension altogether.
The flavor of the dream was guilt. Emma wasn’t the only one with nasty stuff on her conscience. But why would he feel guilty for Telly leaving?
Well, the answer to that was simple. He would only feel guilty for Telly leaving if he’d played some part in it.
Explained a lot, she thought, blinking into the graying gloom and not knowing how to feel. His sense of responsibility towards her, for one.
How hard it must have hit him, when Alan got to her in Russia, and all that happened after.
Red made a sleep-muffled sound and rolled closer to her with a sigh, and the weight of his arm slipped over her side. She was going to be squashed eventually if she didn’t —
She stopped breathing.
Something was very wrong.
With mounting dread, Emma turned her head to the right and lifted it off Red’s left bicep to see over the edge of the sleeping bag. She looked down the length of her own blanketed shape. Red was indeed naked beside her, but the captivating suggestion of his nude body in the fading dark was eclipsed by the fact of the right arm he wasn’t supposed to have but which Emma could see he very much did have because it was curled possessively around her waist.
Her shock brought Fern awake in a heartbeat and he twisted up from the blankets, shouting her name, which woke Ivan and Red and probably everyone. Ivan — still wolf — sprang up and Emma threw a hand out and shouted, “No!” at no one in particular. “I’m okay! Nothing’s wrong!” She sat up; Red was on his hands (his hands , Emma thought stupidly) and knees with the sleeping bag tangled around one leg, staring at her with so little humanity in his deep brown eyes it was hard to tell if he even saw her.
“Red, it’s okay,” she said again. “Nothing’s wrong.” She licked her lips. Sensed the moment when Fern actually saw, when he woke up enough to hear her thoughts instead of just reacting on instinct.
Ivan sneezed; he’d figured it out too.
Beyond the banked fire, the others stood with wide eyes and weapons at the ready, but they’d believed her when she said n
othing was wrong. Emma could tell when they realized what was different. Their postures went from tense to uncertain, and Leah took a few steps forward, but Emma gave the tiniest shake of her head because Red still didn’t know.
He said nothing and his face was expressionless — he thought he was still in the shape of his beast. He just looked at her. She’d told him nothing was wrong but Fern had shouted her name; that meant something was wrong with Emma, that’s what the look on his face said.
Then Red frowned, and blinked, and opened his mouth like he’d tasted something bad. He coughed. “God.” His voice was gravel. “Em, what hap—”
He’d looked down. He blinked again. A look of apprehension too pure to be fear stole across his face, eyes going wide, nostrils flaring. Then he disappeared in white light and the enormous bear rose out of the tattered remains of the sleeping bag, up, up on its hind legs, ears curled flat to its skull and muzzle lifting away from huge white teeth. Then Red scared the living fuck out of everyone as he slammed his front paws to the ground and roared a challenge at them all.
From across the fire, Leah spoke, voice no louder than a whisper. “Can’t you calm him down? With your, you know, thingie?”
Emma stood, wrapped her arms around herself against the cold. “You mean my powers?”
Leah nodded.
Red grunted, shook his head, lumbering away. “I think he’s okay,” Emma said with more confidence than she felt. “I think he just needs to walk it off.”
White light flared and Red was suddenly there, human-shaped — and what a shape it was — and somehow more naked with two arms than he’d looked with only one. He held the right out in front of him, hand shaking, and stared at it. The new arm looked different to the old, and after a moment Emma figured out why — the right arm bore no scars.
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