“Let’s not make that any harder than it has to be,” Ruger suggested—and when she didn’t quite get it, he nodded at the gear bag. “A little luck and your cell will have a signal.”
Not likely, and she knew it, too. But she rummaged in the gear bag to pull out her phone, flipping it open long enough to confirm that even at this local high point, she had no bars, and then turning it off to preserve the battery. Ruger started walking the high ground—cutting over to follow in Mariska’s earlier track, and moving quickly enough so he wasn’t hunting precise sign so much as he was assessing the lay of things, seeing what Mariska had already absorbed not so long before.
She waited, letting him get that feel for things without comment. When he returned, she said, “I think we’re going to have to circle wide to pick up any sign of them. Things here are too much of a mess.” She made a face, wrinkling her nose in a wry sort of dismay. “Earlier today, I couldn’t figure out what they were up to—all that effort to leave a mess of tracks and lay down scent. And the skunk! But now I get it.”
“They knew we’d come looking,” Ruger said, looking out over the woods as if he could see straight to wherever Forakkes was hiding. “If any of us survived. They knew we could find them.”
“They planned ahead,” Mariska said—agreeing with him, her expression still full of dismay.
But Ruger quite suddenly felt no dismay at all, following through to the implications of Forakkes’ precautions.
He grinned out at the woods, now recovering from the shock of the explosions. Room for a bear to roam. To hunt. A flock of pine siskins tumbled past, flashing yellow against the lower branches of the ponderosas and scolding the world with wheezy, nonstop twittering. Overhead, the gathering clouds had turned glowering, and offered the first mutter of thunder. “It was more than just planning ahead,” he said. “It was fear. It means that they’re here to find—that they’re close enough to find.”
Room for a bear to chase down his prey.
* * *
Mariska took another look beneath Ruger’s shirt, wincing at strong, smooth muscle marred by the slashing, shallow wound. It wasn’t any kind of a threat; his body’s accelerated healing would likely leave it alone to heal at a natural pace. And barring the miraculous appearance of Ruger’s field kit or a tube of miracle salve from the sky, he was right enough—there was little to be done.
She wondered if the amulet effects still dogging her would fade away, or if they were a mere harbinger of what might be to come. And she barely heard Ruger as he surveyed the landscape surrounding the facility and then pointed randomly along one ridge.
Or not so randomly.
“They may have tromped the hell out of this area,” he said, “but they’re still human. Wherever this second hideout is, they needed decent access to construct it. And it’s not so far from here that they weren’t willing to trudge over on foot for their little attack.”
“You’re thinking of the logging road,” Mariska said.
“And wherever they came from, they took the easiest path to reach this place. They might not even have thought about it. They just did it.
“Let’s see if we can’t pick up a track along that ridge.” He tipped his head, invitation in his eye.
Mariska grinned at him. “They should have left us alone,” she said, forgetting about the aches and cuts and bruises. “We’d have been too busy deconstructing that facility to come looking for them.”
“They should have left us alone,” Ruger agreed.
The look in his eye had nothing to do with healing at all.
Chapter 15
An hour later, Mariska found herself still smiling—at the growl in Ruger’s voice, the look in his eye...the set of his jaw as he sent that glare of a warning out to the woods.
Now he led the way across the ridge—diagonal slashes up and over, hunting sign on both sides of the crest. Slow going. And if they found nothing...
Even as she thought it, Ruger stopped, looking behind them, his expression pensive. Darkening clouds grumbled above; a gust of rising wind briefly lifted the open shirt from his back.
No, not pensive. Primal. A bear on the hunt, the unusually softened high altitude light sliding along cheek and jaw, leaving his eyes dark, his brows drawn and expressive. Mariska caught her breath, yearning and wistful at the same time—knowing that the simple physicality of what they’d first shared had become complex and uncertain and infinitely more important to her.
She cleared her throat, as if none of that mattered at all. “Maybe one of us should take the bear...try scenting.”
He nodded, still looking out over the woods. “It’s all yours.”
She handed him the gear bag without hesitation, remembering the invigoration of the last time she’d taken the change—how it had pushed aside the amulet’s effects. She reach for her bear, welcoming the energy that surged through her aching fatigue, welcoming the feel of the earth against her pads and her sturdy bear legs, ready to amble.
She wasn’t expecting the little sting of nerve pain that shot from her spine down her legs, from between her shoulders down her front legs and all the way to her toes. Her back end quivered and gave out on her; her bear ass smacked down on the ground.
Ruger jerked as if he’d felt some echo of the sensations, turning on her with an intent he just couldn’t seem to help. She curled her expressive bear lips and sent him a coughing bark of warning, stopping him short; he stepped back, opening his hands in capitulation.
::I’m all right,:: she told him in the still moment that followed.
“You’re not,” he said, too sure to be guessing.
::Fine, I’m not. But it’s passing.::
“It was the change,” he said, still eyeing her—but respecting his limits, if not the ones she’d set.
::Don’t know that.::
“We’ll find out,” he said, tipping his head at her—an oblique reference to the fact that she’d need to change back sooner rather than later. Then he turned away—not in the least shaken or alarmed at the ferocity or teeth she’d shown him. Not even bothering to call that bluff. She grunted dissatisfaction and got to her feet.
“Try downhill,” Ruger said, looking down a slope slippery with pine needles and crusted with protruding rock. The wind flapped at his shirt and died again. “If there’s scent to be found, it’ll have drifted down. All we need right now is that confirmation; we don’t need to track footsteps.”
True enough. The first step was to know they’d come the right direction; after that, they had only to maintain a decent orientation to the scent.
“By the way,” Ruger added, returning his attention to the ridge, “if you smell water...”
She huffed a quiet response, knowing their need as well as he—dehydration was just as much a threat as the Core in this high desert clime.
With her legs steady beneath her, she headed down the slope—a foothills slope in nature, the same as those cradling the installation behind them. Rugged and challenging, the descent nonetheless put her only a hundred feet below him. She softened her focus, no longer thinking about her footing—letting it take care of itself while her attention went to her sense of smell.
The air filled her sinuses with the dry scents of pine and disturbed dirt and Ruger and... She flared her nostrils, stopping her own progress to cast her head back and forth at the scent. ::Hold your ground a moment,:: she told him. ::Let me go ahead.::
Not that she couldn’t readily distinguish Ruger’s scent from any other she might encounter. But as long as it was there, it filled her mind so completely—hard body beneath her touch, deep rumbling groan in her ear, big hands smoothing her hair, loving her curves, tightening on her hips as he lost himself to her—she couldn’t think of anything else.
Besides, he disturbed the ground. She needed to move away from that influence on the scent pool—then if she still scented fresh disturbance, that would mean something, too.
He responded with an inner vocalization that s
ounded more bear than human, and she had to stop and gather her thoughts in the wake of the wave of pleasure it gave her to have that common language—to know he’d used it without second thought.
Once she started to move again, she soon found what they needed. He’d been right from the start—the Core minions had come this way, heading toward a second location that had, decades earlier and just like the first, been constructed off the old logging access road. Mariska slanted upward, silent in her concentration—knowing Ruger would understand this, too, that she’d found enough to work toward a track.
In fact, he came down off the ridge, still hanging behind her in a slow and methodical search for sign. The moments passed in companionable silence—the faint shuffle of paw against ground, the trickle of dislodged rock...the forest creatures going about their own business, less disturbed by bear than they were by man.
It didn’t seem like long before Mariska caught the hot, direct scent—one of those she’d run into that morning, a man with the clinging taste of Core corruption. The discovery came far too soon, in fact—while she was still happily immersed in being herself, Ruger a silent teammate. Reluctantly, she withdrew from that tight focus and reoriented to the rest of the world, discovering herself high on the slope with Ruger behind and just above as he crouched to examine the ground. Thunder rumbled overhead, and she discovered the clouds towering dramatically overhead, a roiling mass of blue-black shapes with startling white tumbles of contrast.
::Big one coming,:: she said to Ruger.
His satisfaction at finding the trail turned grim. “We need to do this thing before it hits—find Forakkes and get out from under this damn cone of silence. Ian and Sandy need help.”
::I’m a bear,:: she said, giving him a toothy mental smile. ::I won’t even feel the rain.::
But when the skies opened up, she was quick to change her mind. The rumbling thunder broke into a sharp, simultaneous flash of light and sound; she ducked her head and hunched her shoulders, and still wasn’t prepared for the sting of heavy rain on her face. ::But I’m a smart bear!:: she cried, loud enough in her head to overcome the follow-up thunder.
So was Ruger—and he was already stripping off his wet shirt and jamming it into the bag. He tossed the bag out ahead of them and leaped into the bear, the energies splashing out around him in a flickering echo of the lightning.
Even as bear he looked disgruntled, with water dripping off his brow and beading on his muzzle. ::We can’t track in this,:: he sent at her, dropping off a modest outcrop to slip carelessly over stone and needles. ::Head for cover!:: Mariska followed, heading for the hint of leeward overhang ahead—between that and the slant of the vicious rain, they would escape the worst of it.
But only if they poured on the speed. Typical big storm, black clouds spewing first rain and then hail as it opened up from full bore to something beyond. Ruger swore in mind-voice just as a pea gravel of hard and stinging force bounced off Mariska’s nose, and hit full speed. Mariska broke into a lumbering run behind him, scrambling sideways on the steepening slope—and slamming into the marginal shelter close enough on Ruger’s heels to call it a collision.
With no small amount of huffing and grunting, they arranged themselves into an efficient huddle, black bear and great brown. Mariska blew a final drop of water from the tip of her nose and said, ::Well, any rain is a good rain, right?::
Ruger coughed bear laughter, dark as it was. Yes, their friends were fighting to survive, half-buried; yes, Forakkes had developed a devastating weapon and had to be stopped; and yes, he’d blocked them from all contact with their people, leaving them hurt and sick and trying to track him down under impossible circumstances. But still, Ruger added the inevitable response: ::It’s the desert. Any rain is good rain.::
They curled together with the hail rattling through the trees, a vicious squall that increased to a frenzy and then slowly eased back to a pounding rain. The wind shifted, blowing back spatter and spray into their shelter.
::I should take the human,:: Mariska said, only half-kidding. ::There’d be room enough if I hid behind you—:: But unexpected, startling fear clutched at her, rising from deep within her own mind.
Ruger was quick enough to pick up on the change; he nudged her with a wordless inquiry.
She couldn’t respond—not right away. Not through the fear, a primal thing so deep that she wasn’t even sure of its origin. Not until she went back to her own half-joking comment.
I should take the human.
::Ruger,:: she said, hardly daring to put words—even private words—to the thought. ::I don’t know if I can take the change. It doesn’t feel...right.::
::Do it,:: he said instantly. ::Do it now.::
::But the amulet—::
::Must still be working at you. Do it!::
She hesitated, thinking of their confined quarters and mixing energies—but Ruger swung his massive head to her shoulder and closed his jaws down with the slightest shake, just enough pressure to rattle her into action.
She reached for the human, a spurt of panicked response. The energies rose around and within her, pushing at her like an unfulfilled yawn—and just as quickly faltered. Panic sliced through her chest.
The amulet. He’d been right; her previous discomfort had come from the change going wrong and now she couldn’t manage it at all. She was bear and she was stuck and she was going to lose herself—
::Reach for it,:: Ruger told her, pushing at her. ::Hang on to it!:: He flooded her with images and impressions—his first glimpse of her at the Celtic fair, his instant interest. Her expression as she hesitated in the town house doorway—her eyes gone dark, her lips slightly parted—her invitation clear. The heat of his response, the speed with which he roused—the moment he’d curled his fingers around her hips and the shock of pleasure as they came together.
::Mari,:: he said, sending her remembered hurt and fury, a hint of her expression gone stubborn, a perfect memory of the set of her shoulders...the perfect memory of her face, flushed with pleasure and asleep against his arm, bottom gloriously round against his thighs. ::Mari Bear, reach for it!::
Reach for it. It was the human who’d embraced Ruger, who gloried in his strength and the chance to be her uninhibited self. The human who’d thrown herself open to the glory of being just who she was, with just the man she wanted.
The human who’d fallen so very hard for that man and all his strengths that she’d scared herself into doing one challenging thing after another just to see how he’d react. Reach for it, the energies rising hard and fast, tangling with emotion and flaring brightly against the rock, whirling and changing and splashing against Ruger, her very human form falling against him just as hard.
“Mariska,” he said, as changed as she. His arms closed around her shoulders, pulling her in close to his bare chest, stroking down her spine.
Naturally she burst into tears. Embarrassing tears, full of weakness and defeat.
He only held her closer. “There,” he said, as if the rain didn’t surround them, glancing off rock and scattering drops into a hard and swirling mist. “Mariska.”
After a few moments of stupid crying, she pulled herself together for a deep if tremulous breath and held her hand out into the spray, gathering enough water to swipe over her burning face. “Now I guess you’ve seen it all.”
He grunted, deep in his chest; she felt more than heard it, and felt the shrug in it. “You train hard, you run hard...you cry hard.” He still held her close, pushing back hair that had become disarrayed to clear her cheeks for a nuzzle of a kiss. “You love hard, too.”
She managed a wry expression. “You noticed.”
“Noticed,” he said, and kissed her again, the distinct gentleness of a big man, “would be an understatement.”
“About that.” She couldn’t bring herself to pull away and look at him—not to meet his gaze and not to lose his touch. “I didn’t mean to be so pushy about everything. I didn’t mean to—”
“Yes, you did,” he said, and this time the sound in his chest was a hint of laughter. “That’s the whole point. You are fearsomely, awesomely you.”
She shivered, tucking herself in just a little smaller. “You say that like it’s a good thing.”
“It gets to my temper,” he admitted. “But I’m beginning to think I like that.”
She thought on it a minute, thunder filling the silence around them. “It makes you angry.”
“It makes me alive,” he corrected her. She shivered again; this time he joined her.
“Your back,” she said, realizing it. “You don’t even have a shirt. I think we lost the bag—”
“It’s not far. Hold on.” And to her astonishment, he left her there, bolting out into the weather. She squinted out into the driving rain, hugging herself tightly, the storm-cold air a slap against her wet skin. In moments Ruger was back, bag in hand—but he didn’t dive back into the shelter. He worked with quick, deliberate movements, yanking things from the bag, doing something beside the outcrop—fumbling a little in the wet and cold until he quite suddenly joined her again, soaked and shivering, and still without the shirt.
“What?” she asked.
“Water,” he told her. “There’s a small pool in the rock—I tore up the shirt to wick water into the bottle.”
“That shirt was for you,” she told him with some asperity. “You should take the bear before you get any more chilled. Besides, I have every intention of sheltering with you if you do.”
“I can’t be the bear right now.”
The ferocity of the storm eased up; rain pattered more gently around them, no longer spraying them with water. Mariska looked askance at him, perfectly aware that she wasn’t going to like whatever he had to say.
A smile settled at the corner of his mouth in response—an acknowledgment. “I do my best healing work as the human.”
She snorted. “You’re not doing any healing work at all, as I recall. Or have you forgotten what happens when you so much as try?”
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