Heart of a Dire Wolf

by Carol Van Natta

  The new puppet master made him look up and down both sections of asphalt. The only vehicle on his side of the road was a big farm-style truck parked on the shoulder, about fifteen body lengths away. The only sound in the night was the light rain. Wood slats blocked his view into the truck’s cab.

  “Brick, walk toward that big truck,” Landry ordered in his head. “I bet that was his ride.”

  Before Nic could comply, the woman’s voice ordered him to stop and freeze. “He’s a tiger. The driver will likely shoot him.”

  A whistling night wind ruffled his fur and the rain made his whiskers twitch. It was a waste of energy to stand on the side of the road when he could be sitting, so he did.

  “Good riddance,” said Landry. “Cain’t sell him. One less target to hunt down. As a matter of fact, why don’t we just fry him now?”

  Nic swiveled one ear when he heard two rabbits running across the hard ground. The female puppet master had ordered Nic to be cold. He felt smug that he couldn’t. His thick, Siberian fur kept him comfortably warm.

  “No,” said the woman, “not before he tells us how he got out. If he’s as dumb as you say, he’ll probably show us. Bad enough the rest of them got out through the unguarded staff entrance. We need to seal the other breach before Magister Balton gets back in town, or it’ll be our heads hanging in the boardroom instead of those trophy shifters.”

  A memory bubbled up from his far-away man side, of running in unbearable heat, following the slender form of a tireless stilt-legged wolf, who left curiously deep paw prints. Okay, so warmth was good in moderation.

  While the buzzing voices in his head argued, he lay down and rested his head on his front paws, closing his eyes against the precipitation.

  A gust of wind tickled Nic-the-tiger’s ears, carrying faint words. “Nic, can you hear me?” Something about that voice made him open his eyes.

  The man side of him insisted the voice was his mate’s. Nic-the-tiger lifted his head, scenting the wind. Another gust brought more words. “Flick your tail twice for ‘yes’ if you can understand me. Please.”

  Nic-the-tiger did so, because she’d asked so nicely.

  “...take hours, even if we hire the Vegas hyenas. Are you willing to stay on headset the whole time in case he wakes up?”

  “Hell, no. I ain’t pullin’ another double...”

  Nic-the-tiger shut out the irritating head voices and listened for the one that licked his ears and made him wish he could purr.

  “One tail for ‘no,’ two tails for ‘yes.’ Is someone controlling you?”

  He thumped his tail twice and hard, to signal his dislike of it.

  “Can you shift?”

  The man side was closer, but still too far away, too foggy. One thump.

  “Can you come to the truck?”

  One thump.

  The buzzing female voice interrupted. “Shut up a minute, I thought I heard something.”

  Nic-the-tiger chuffed loudly in annoyance, then snuffled to get the dirt out of his nose.

  “Ewww, that sounds disgusting.”

  Nic-the-tiger wondered if he could still cough up a giant hairball on command. Best juvenile prank, ever.

  The voice he’d been waiting for all his life blew in on the next breeze. “Don’t eat the bunny.”

  7

  This was probably the riskiest stunt Skyla had ever pulled, but neither her disapproving father nor her protective older sister were around anymore to stop her.

  The auction house obviously wanted Nic alive, or they’d have killed him as soon as they activated the talismans. She and Mauk could drain them, but one of them had to be touching Nic to get them all at once. Since Nic couldn’t come to her farm-truck illusion, she’d have to go to him.

  She slid out of the passenger-side window into the wind-driven rain, then shifted into her wolf form. She held out a paw to make sure her jackrabbit illusion was holding. She gave a few experimental hops forward, trying to mimic a dimwitted rabbit, looking for whatever rabbits ate. She was usually the one eating the rabbit.

  Once she got about halfway toward Nic’s recumbent form, Mauk followed instructions and blinked the “truck” lights twice, then mimicked the sound of a reluctant starter motor.

  She made a mad, zig-zag dash that sent her barreling straight into Nic’s ribs. Her momentum rolled him onto his side. She shifted to human and sprawled on top of him, frantically grabbing his thick fur to stay in contact. “Now!”

  He roared in pain as the three cattle prods arced through him. Four powerful claws lacerated her thigh. She screamed in agony but held on to him, waiting for Mauk’s confirmation that the talismans were dead.

  Suddenly a more powerful magic surged, coming from Mauk, and aimed squarely at Nic. A spinning funnel of red and black runes formed above Nic’s chest and began to visibly pull life force upward.

  She scrambled to put herself between the funnel and Nic. “Mauk, stop! He’s not hurting me! It was an accident!” The funnel stopped pulling but continued to hover over them. “Drain the talismans!”

  Mauk’s distinctive voice came from the funnel. “Talismans depleted. I must expend excess energy within one minute or it will damage my systems.”

  “Give Nic as much life energy as he can stand, then make your shell big enough to hold a tiger.”

  The funnel inverted itself. She moved aside as it sent magic into Nic. The overflow crackled along her skin and gave her goosebumps. Nic’s furry body shuddered. She rolled off just in time for him to shift into a very naked man with nasty burns on his hip and chest. She crawled over to him on hands and knees to watch his face.

  He took a ragged breath, then coughed twice. “You’re amazing.” His green and gold eyes met hers. “Who are you?”

  She felt the blood drain from her face as she sat back on her heels. “Mauk,” she yelled, “what the hell did you do to my mate?”

  He grabbed her wrist and smiled. “Kidding.”

  She pulled away from him and got to her feet. “Not funny.” She turned away so he wouldn’t see her eyes fill with tears. She didn’t have the heart for combat. It was why her sister stopped taking her to war games. “I’ll be in the car.”

  Her sleeveless summer shirt wasn’t much protection from the damp wind. The sky to the northeast flashed with lightning. She winced with each step she took on her wounded but healing right leg, where the blood still oozed under the shredded flaps of denim. She’d managed to destroy a new pair of jeans in under an hour. A new record.

  Suddenly Nic was in front of her, on one knee. “Skyla, I’m sorry. I was so fucking scared.” He clenched his fists on his thighs. “I didn’t want you to see my weakness.” He looked up at her, his face wet with rain and tears. “You saved me. The last thing I wanted was to hurt you.”

  She let her tears flow as she pulled him to his feet and wrapped her arms around him. “Weakness isn’t being scared. Weakness is giving up.” She closed her eyes and let his warmth and scent soothe her battered soul. “I’ll make you a deal. You don’t give up, and neither will I.”

  He palmed the side of her face, then gently urged her to tilt her chin up. He met her lips with his in a kiss so sweet it threatened to melt her into a puddle at his feet.

  A glint of headlights in the distance reminded her she was standing on the side of a highway, necking with a deliciously naked man in the rain, while her car was glowing and groaning from within and stretching like a movie special effect.

  She slid a hand down to his rounded, muscular butt cheek and gave it an appreciative caress under the guise of brushing off the mud. “Let’s get your gorgeous ass in the car before someone reports us for lewd behavior.”

  To her astonishment, Nic began belting out a blues-rock song about doing it in the road, his raucous voice echoing across the landscape as he picked his way over sharp rocks toward the car. She trotted after him, laughing.

  Her mate was a loon, but he was her kind of loon.

  8

  Nic could h
ave wished for a hot shower, after the cold, rainy one outside, but he appreciated the luxury of stretching out in the back of the new, one-of-a-kind hatchback station wagon that Mauk had created. It had plenty of room for their stuff, and getting into new clothes and shoes from his bag was a breeze instead of a contortionist’s trick. There was even room for Skyla, if he spooned her in tight against him. Every inch of her skin would be touching his, and he could finally…

  “Nic, stop projecting your sex fantasies, or I’ll run us into a ditch.”

  He groaned. Cock-blocked by safety. He rolled to his side, then yelped when he hit the still-tender spot on his hip. But he’d take a dozen burns over being compelled to tromp across the high desert like a marionette. He slid into the flattened front passenger seat, then raised the back so he could sit up.

  Mauk’s displayed map said they would be in St. George by six, after they went through a section of canyons. The rain had turned into a light mist, for now, but a jagged fork of lightning flashed ahead of them, silhouetting the mountain peaks. The windshield wipers set a cadence for the patter of rain.

  Skyla cleared her throat. “You need to know something. About me.”

  The serious expression on her face sobered him quickly. “All right.”

  “You haven’t seen my true form yet.”

  He opened his mouth to protest, but hesitated. She knew he’d seen her wolf for hours as they’d made their escape to Santa Barbara. “Okay, what is your true form?”

  “Have you heard of the La Brea tar pits?”

  Not the direction he was expecting. “Yeah. A bunch of prehistoric predators got trapped. Humans have been digging out the bones.” He dredged up more memories. “Like sabre-tooth tigers. Big-ass lions. Really big-ass bears. Animals from the Ice Age.”

  “Like dire wolves.”

  Her voice was so quiet, he almost missed it. Distant thunder rumbled.

  He’d have suspected her of an elaborate joke, but it wasn’t her type of humor. “You’re a dire wolf? What do you look like? And how do you hide… never mind, stupid question. Your magic.” The magic he’d assumed was an inherent part of her but was probably a spell.

  She seemed calm, but her hands had a tight grip on the wheel. “My true form is charcoal black and two hundred and twenty pounds of wolf built like a tank on thick long legs, with strong jaws and very big teeth.”

  Those all sounded like assets, which left him perplexed. “Why the elaborate illusion? Why do you hide who you are?”

  More thunder rumbled.

  “Dire wolves were super-predators in their day, like the others you mentioned. We scare the pants off humans and shifters, and we can’t be dominated by any modern alpha we’ve ever run across.” She heaved a noisy sigh. “It doesn’t go over well with packs, clans, or prides. Or alphas, for that matter.”

  “I’d like to see you.” He belatedly remembered to pull on his seatbelt, glad Mauk had repaired it. “Not right now, but when it’s safe.”

  Her shoulder hunched toward her face, and she winced. “I don’t want to scare you or your tiger.”

  “My tiger isn’t afraid of…” He trailed off. Talking smack to his buddies at the pool hall was one thing, but Skyla was his mate. It wasn’t right to honor her courage with bluster.

  “I was going to say ‘not afraid of anything,’ but it’s not true. The auction house scared me every damn day. Being controlled terrified me, especially when I thought they’d make me hurt you. A feral polar bear shifter nearly ate me as a cub, so even the nicest polar bears make me wary. Thunder and lightning do, too.” He blew out a gusty breath. “So, I won’t promise that your bad-ass Ice Age wolf won’t scare me or my grumpy tiger, but if she does, we’ll deal with it.”

  He wished he knew of some better way to reassure her, but the proof would have to wait for the actual experience.

  “My sister says…used to say it was their problem, not ours, but she was the real bad-ass. I’m not a very dire wolf. I’m just your average grad student, hoping for a teaching job in some place exotic, like Paris.” She tossed him a quick, come-hither smile and shimmied her shoulders. “I’d settle for Quebec, though. You could teach me French.”

  And there went his brain’s blood supply, rushing toward his dick, which had obviously recovered from his recent ordeal faster than the rest of him. “I don’t know why you don’t think you’re amazing, ’cause you are.” He snorted. “If you’re an average grad student, then all our kids are going for advanced degrees, whether they want them or not.”

  “You want kids?” Her eyes widened and she gasped. “What the hell?”

  He followed her gaze ahead to what looked like night-time road construction about a mile up the road, but was only a few bright white lights, and one person in a vehicle.

  Except it wasn’t a vehicle, it was a red sleigh with ornate runners, right out of an old-fashioned Victorian Christmas illustration, sitting on a mound of melting snow. And the person in the sleigh looked suspiciously like Mrs. Claus. She smiled and waved.

  Skyla stepped on the brake. “Mauk, deploy displacement… Shit, I forgot to change it back from the farm-truck illusion.”

  “Turn around,” said Nic. “Maybe we can find an off-road trail.”

  The car’s speakers sparked to life. “Hello, Skyla.” The warm, sweet woman’s voice laughed. “This is going to sound just like a children’s story, but my name is Tinsel, and I’m here to take you home.”

  Skyla made a rude sound. “Yeah? Not going back.”

  She hated it when hunters played sick games with their prey. She had to assume the woman could hear anything in the car. She made a one-eighty motion with her finger, to tell Nic she was taking his advice to turn around.

  “Oh, no, dear, I’m not a hunter, I’m from Kotoyeesinay. I have a portal.”

  The woman in the sleigh gestured. Magical winds buffeted their car and blew up a fog of ice crystals. The lights blazed blindingly bright and formed an arc. The highway and canyon walls on the other side of it changed colors and shape. And had no rain.

  Skyla had never seen a portal big enough to drive a car—or a sleigh—through. The tremendous amount of energy felt like tiny static electricity shocks. She slowed the car to a crawl. “How did you know where I’d be?”

  “When you were five, your parents made a deal with the Read ’Em and Weep Oracle Service to keep you and your sister on their Little Terror watch list. They’re overbooked, so they asked me to help.”

  The tourist-gimmick name sounded just like what she remembered of Kotoyeesinay, the one time she’d been there. Back when her family was still alive.

  She flicked a quick glance at Nic. “What about my companions?”

  An icy breath of magic danced through the car. Mauk’s display brightened and faded. “All are welcome as your guests.”

  Skyla stopped the car about fifty feet from the glowing portal and turned to Nic. “What do you think?”

  He jutted out his chin. “Oracles make me crazy. Polar fairies”—he pointed a thumb toward the woman in the sleigh—“hate wizards almost as much as they hate arctic elves, so she’s probably not working for the auction house.” He checked the latch on his seatbelt. “I say go for it. The real hunters know where I am and will be here soon enough.” His lips curled in distaste. “I don’t want that asshole Landry in my head ever again.” He took her hand in his. “What’s your take?”

  “It feels on the level. I want us in a sanctuary, where the auction house can’t get us.” She caressed the top of his hand with her thumb. “There’s probably a bed on the other side of that portal. I want to lick every inch of you, then make love with you and see if we really are mates.”

  He put her hand on the front of his pants, over the iron bar of his erection. “You make me forget my own name for how much I want to be yours, and have you be mine.”

  Desire thrummed her core so hard and fast she had to gasp for air. She really was in wolf heat for the manly tiger next to her.

  It t
ook everything she had to look forward again and put her hands on the wheel. “Okay, Tinsel, what will we owe you?”

  Lightning forked in the sky.

  “It’s all prepaid, dear. Just drive on through, and you’ll be at the Kotoyeesinay border. I’ll be right behind and close the portal after us.”

  Skyla swallowed her doubts and started forward again. “Mauk, deploy your kinetic shields, just in case. I hope that will keep you safe.”

  “Deployed.” The center display went dark blue, with only the time and date showing. Mauk probably couldn’t both shield and hit the GPS satellites.

  A crack of thunder made her shoulders hunch and Nic twitched. She didn’t like thunder and lightning, either. She drove around the mound of snow and the cheerfully waving fairy in green velvet and white fur, and accelerated toward the portal. The sooner they got to sanctuary, the better.

  Just as they passed by the glowing line, lightning struck the gate, sending a web of plasma energy fingers all over the car.

  Skyla’s thoughts ground to a halt as time stretched…

  ...slowed...

  ...then snapped back with a roller-coaster rush of howling wind and ice crystals in her face.

  Inexplicably, she flew forward into a bank of snow.

  She sat up, hoping the world would stop spinning soon. Remnants of portal magic felt like static electricity. The only thing she could see in the dark was more snow, under her, all around, everywhere. No road, no smart car, no sleigh-riding fairy named Tinsel, no sexy Nic. She couldn’t feel him at all.

  A frigid wind gust made her shiver with cold. She’d soon freeze in her human summer clothes. Fortunately, her true wolf had a coat thick enough to survive the Ice Age. She shifted.

  Unfortunately, her superior wolf senses provided no new information on where she’d been ejected from the malfunctioning portal. She wasn’t a survival challenge devotee like her father and sister had been, but she knew enough about the wilderness not to stumble around in the dark.

  Since she didn’t have an igloo, she used her wide paws and powerful shoulders to dig a little mound of snow, then bury all but her snout under it. Snow and fur made good insulators, and she was exhausted.