by Anna Leonard
Safer to be in Mustang form. But he could not find the energy to shift.
The rut, absent for long enough that its return was almost a shock, rose in him again as her hand touched his face. She lingered there, gently, and then moved down his torso, lightly touching his skin, searching for injuries, unaware of the pain she was causing him with that touch.
The rut sparked and surged, filling his cock with blood and his veins with fire. If he had the strength he would have rolled her over onto the ground, covered her body with his own, ground dirt into their skin as they made love in the cornfield, the sky spread out blue above them, the smell of honey in the air and the sound of birds around them.
The smell of honey was Elizabeth, he decided, and hoped that he hadn’t said that out loud, too.
“You’re hurt. I don’t know if I can move you... Maggie!” she called over her shoulder. “Get the first-aid kit from my bag!”
Of course she had a first-aid kit. His Elizabeth was always prepared.
Maggie came through the stalks and knelt beside him as well, her dark eyes as worried as her sister’s. There were leaves and twigs tangled in her braids, pulling strands of hair out of the once neat plaits, and a streak of mud across one high cheekbone. “Is he gonna die?”
Yes, he tried to tell her. I’m sorry.
“No.” Elizabeth was definite. “But he’s pretty banged up. I need to stop the bleeding.” She opened the kit and took out a sterile gauze pad, tape and a pair of tiny scissors. “Now we’ll see how useful that Girl Scout badge was,” she said. “Brace yourself, Josh. This is probably going to hurt.”
She put one gentle hand on his shoulder, and with the other, pulled the bloodied cloth away from his skin.
His teeth clenched, and the world swam. When he was able to focus again, his shirt was in shreds on the ground next to him, and there was a clean white bandage on his side. The tape felt oddly cold.
“I think you’ve got at least one cracked rib, and a concussion,” she told him softly. “And there may be internal bleeding, things I can’t see or deal with. But we have to get out of here. We— You and Maggie sent them running, but if they come back with more of those...things...” She shuddered, and Josh found the energy to reach his arm up, to capture her face in one hand and coax her down so that he could kiss those lips again.
Honey. Definitely honey. Alfalfa honey.
She let him kiss her, her own lips softening under the touch, heedless of her sister beside them, but then pulled back. Exhausted, he let her.
“Can you stand?”
He couldn’t, but he would try. Because the alternative was to stay here, and to stay was to die. Every instinct he had agreed with her on that.
“Will it be easier for you, in your other form?”
He considered that, staring up at the blue sky overhead, and forced his voice to work consciously.
“Maybe. Not sure I can shift, though. Too tired.”
“Damn it. I can’t carry you. Not without making things worse.”
“Tell him to shift.”
“What?”
Josh blinked up at Maggie, who was staring at him intently. Her eyes were telling him something, but he couldn’t hear her. She could only call him when he was in Mustang form.
“Tell him to shift. He has to listen to you. You’re the lead mare.”
Elizabeth looked at her sister as though she had lost her mind, and then gave a shrug as though to say what could it hurt. “Josh, we need you to shift to your other form. It’s the only way to get you to safety.”
He heard her, but still couldn’t bring himself to do more than pull up his legs, as though getting ready to stand up.
“You have to boss him around,” Maggie said, her voice urgent.
“Josh. You will shift!”
Her voice wavered, but there was enough there to move him. Maggie was right. She was the eldest female, the wisest of them, even if she wasn’t Mustang, and so he obeyed. Muscles melted and flexed, the strange ebb and tide of blood and bone that came with every shift, and he was scrambling to his feet, swaying a little as he did so. The scent of the monsters came back to him, and he tried to go on alert, to protect his herd, but he did not have the strength to fight again.
Warm hands touched his neck and hindquarters, and his skin shuddered in pleasure at the touch, the rut mingling with something else, smoothing it out into a pleasurable burn. These were hands he knew. They were loving hands, healing hands, and he let them guide him, his head hung low with exhaustion, out of the cornfield and back into the open.
The bodies were gone. He could smell their foul taint lingering in the air, see the depression in the grass where he had fought them, smell the blood—human-not-human blood—staining the grass, but they were gone. His senses told the story of what he had missed: a vehicle had driven up, stopping there, and humans had taken the bodies away.
“Come on,” Elizabeth urged him, her hand still on his neck. “Come on. This way. There’s a farmhouse a little way down, Maggie says. We can get help there.”
No. It was too dangerous. He could not let them go into danger.
But his legs, moved by instinct, followed her even as his mind argued. She was lead mare. He would follow her anywhere.
Chapter 12
Not far from where he had fought the beasts, there was a wide graveled road, thankfully empty of any traffic. The three of them staggered down the slight slope onto it, and headed the way Maggie had said they should go. He didn’t know how she knew—maybe she had sensed domesticated animals there? But the teenager seemed certain, dashing from his side to run ahead a few yards, then coming back like an overexcited puppy.
The Mustang could feel his body shaking more with every step, until he was leaning as much on Elizabeth as he dared without knocking her over. Unlike Maggie, she was a steady presence at his side. Her hand stayed on his neck, and her soft voice murmured nonsense into his ear, keeping his mind focused on her. The rut had faded under the mutual onslaught of physical pain and her comfort, and his body kept moving forward to follow her lead. He could only manage a slow, plodding walk, but it covered the ground at a pace Elizabeth could match without trouble.
When they came to a sturdy-looking fence, clearly meant to keep livestock in rather than intruders out, surrounding a small farm with a large, neat-looking barn and a house with white siding and blue shutters, she told him that it was all right to shift back now.
The moment he was back in human shape, he collapsed, and only Elizabeth’s quick hands saved him from going face-first into the dirt. She eased him to the ground, leaning him against a fencepost. The wood scratched uncomfortably against his bare back, but sitting down felt so good, he almost didn’t mind.
“Ribs...definitely broken,” he said.
“Yeah.” She sat next to him, her hand taking his own and holding it gently.
“Josh?” Maggie came racing back to them, her pretty features scrunched up in worry.
“Go run on ahead, baby,” Elizabeth told her. “See if anybody’s home up there. We’re going to need some help getting him the rest of the way.”
She nodded, and turned to run through the gate and up the drive to the house.
“I actually feel better,” Josh said, while they waited for Maggie to return.
“Liar,” she said, squeezing his hand.
He did feel better, though. Her presence soothed him, although the physical wounds were severe and he would have gone face-first to plead for painkillers, if there were any available. Even his near-constant erection was less of a demand and more of a promise, although he couldn’t let himself think of that. In the shape he was in right now, just kissing Elizabeth would kill him. Didn’t mean he couldn’t close his eyes and imagine it, though.
The farmhouse was owned by a middle-aged cou
ple who apparently took one look at Maggie, muddy and bedraggled, and melted. Twenty minutes after she had run off, an old Jeep drove up to them, and Maggie and a bulky, balding man got out, leaving the door ajar in his hurry.
“Oh, the poor thing, you poor things,” the man said. “Lou,” he called back to the Jeep’s driver, “get the medical kit out of the back.” He knelt down next to Josh, across from Elizabeth, and took a small penlight out of his pocket. “It’s all right, boy. I’m vet-trained, but I did some medic work back when. You’re in good hands until we can get you to the hospital.”
The idea of a vet coming to his rescue amused Josh, and he managed not to flinch when the man shone his light into his eyes.
“Good response,” he said. “Good. Has he been unconscious at all since the beating?”
Elizabeth shot a glance at Maggie, as though to ask what story she had told them, then shook her head. “No. He’s been groggy, but awake the whole time.”
“Good, good. You did this bandaging? Good work. I won’t disturb that ’til we have him back in the house. Nasty bruise, that, and these cuts, those are nasty. What did they hit you with?”
“A pitchfork,” Elizabeth said quickly. “They swung it at him, and he couldn’t get out of the way soon enough.”
“Will be a tetanus shot for you then, boy. Come on, carefully now. Lou, you drive home, while this young lady and I handle the boy in back. You, missy, ride in front with Lou. And drive slow, you!”
His partner, a shorter, dark-haired man with deep laugh lines around his mouth and eyes, looked heavenward as though asking for patience, and then shooed Maggie back into the Jeep ahead of the others.
* * *
The trip back was as gentle as Lou could make it, but Elizabeth felt every jolt and jounce in the road, and could only imagine how bad it was for Josh. He lay in the back of the Jeep, his legs on her lap, while the doctor—Kit, he said his name was—tended to the lacerations. It was crowded in the backseat, but the older man’s hands were steady and sure, and Elizabeth whispered a tiny prayer of thanks to whoever might be listening that, of all the houses they might have come to, they had chosen this one. At the same time, she was aware that they couldn’t stay too long; she would not bring trouble to these people, for the crime of kindness.
“What did you tell them?” she asked her sister in a low whisper.
“Bad men,” Maggie whispered back in a sad, quivering voice. “My sister and her boyfriend and I were hiking, and bad men came and beat him up.”
Well, it had the virtue of being far more plausible than the truth, and had certainly done the job. The couple seemed personally affronted by Josh’s wounds.
At the house, Kit half carried Josh inside, his bulky frame handling the younger man’s form without any obvious difficulty.
“You girls go in and wash up,” Lou directed them, as he picked up the medical kit and ushered them inside. “Bathroom’s that way, just inside the door. Don’t you worry, if Kit needs help he’ll call, but I’m betting your friend won’t want witnesses when he’s in pain. God forbid we see them as mere mortals.” One of his bright brown eyes dropped a wink, and despite her exhaustion and worry, Elizabeth felt herself smiling at him in response. “And we’ll have him fixed up just fine, don’t worry. Kit knows what he’s doing.
“And we’re quite well guarded here. Nobody will get in as we don’t allow it.”
Maggie, ahead of them on the steps, stumbled a little at that, then recovered and went inside, but Lou had noted that, too. Elizabeth was starting to think that there wasn’t much he didn’t see.
“Kit and me, we won’t ask you questions,” Lou said quietly, adult-to-adult. “Some things we don’t want to know. It’s enough you’re in need of help, and that we can offer it.”
“Thank you.”
“Go, girl. Wash. I’ll see if I can’t find you a new sweatshirt—that one’s all over in dirt.”
Fifteen minutes later, her face and hands had been scrubbed until the last of the dirt and blood was gone, and she was clad in a mint-green cotton T-shirt in place of her muddy, bloody top. There was an oversized mug of tea waiting on the kitchen counter when she emerged, while Lou ran a brush through Maggie’s unbraided hair, picking the leaves and twigs out with a distracted tsking, the way one might groom a dog. Maggie, her lap full of squirming kittens, seemed perfectly content.
“Now there’s a homey sight,” Kit said from the doorway. He wore a dark blue lab smock over his clothing, and wiped his hands on a towel. “Your man’s asleep,” he said to Elizabeth before she could even ask. “With luck he’ll stay that way for a few hours. The scratches were bad but treatable, and there was only one cracked rib. No other damage that I could find.”
Elizabeth stared at him, not sure if she should be pleased or disbelieving. She had seen the damage. She had felt the blood flowing out of his body, heard the crunch of bones when he tried to move. How...
A calico kitten escaped from Maggie’s lap, stalking over to its mother, who was grooming herself in the corner, seemingly unconcerned with the fact that her babies had been lap-napped. Maggie, under the guise of rearranging the remaining kittens, caught her sister’s attention.
“Magic,” Maggie mouthed, and Elizabeth nodded, reluctant but, finally, accepting. Magic. Impossible, and yet how much more impossible than a man who shifted his shape in the first place? How much more impossible than monsters with the forms of animals and the faces of humans? A girl who could call animals with her thoughts? If she was going to accept some of it, she had to accept all of it.
So far, she thought she was doing quite well on that front. No hysterics, no foolish and time-wasting denials.
But, someday soon, she was going to sit down and have a nervous breakdown.
“These men,” Kit said, tossing the towel into a hamper and pulling off his smock to reveal jeans and an old shirt underneath. “You think they’ll be coming back for a second round?”
Lou tsked disapprovingly at his partner, but he shook his head and waited for Elizabeth’s answer.
“Most likely.”
“Then we need to have you on your way before then” was all he said, as he sat down and picked up the newspaper.
And that, as far as Kit and Lou were concerned, was that. The girls were given a room with a twin bed that was piled high with comfortable-looking pillows, and covered by a quilt that had clearly been handmade.
“Shall we flip a coin for the bed?” Maggie asked, trying to be cheerful, but her expression didn’t match the forced lightness of her words.
“I’ll take the pillows, you keep the mattress,” Elizabeth said. There was a thick rug on the floor; she suspected it would be more comfortable—and cleaner—than the mattress in the motel, if not the pine bower.
When they came downstairs, Kit reported that Josh was still sleeping, which was exactly what he needed in order to heal. Dinner was simple but filling, and the conversation skirted, as promised, around anything more weighty than the weather, the number and personalities of the kittens, and Maggie’s least favorite topics in school. There was a pear cobbler for dessert, the adults had coffee and by the time the outside air had turned dark, Maggie was sleepy-eyed and yawning. Elizabeth sent her off to take a bath and go to bed.
When Elizabeth went up to say good-night, she was struck by how young and innocent Maggie looked, lying there, her hair dark against the white sheets, the pillows piled on the rug next to the bed.
“Baby, I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay,” her sister said sleepily. “I’m all sorts of tired. I don’t even think I’ll notice there aren’t any pillows.”
“That wasn’t what I meant.”
“I know.” Maggie yawned, her jaw practically cracking with the effort. “Go on, check on Josh. Tell him I said good-night, too.”
When Elizabeth went ba
ck to the main room, Lou had settled on the sofa with a book, the lamplight picking out the silver in his brown hair, his face set in contented lines as he turned the page. Not wanting to disturb the other man, Elizabeth went quietly down the hallway to the room where Josh had been put.
Kit was there, putting away his stethoscope and looking slightly concerned but not worried.
“How is he doing?” Elizabeth asked softly.
“Better than he has any right to do,” Kit told her. “I suspect he will be up and around in a few days, which considering the way his wounds looked just a few hours ago is quite remarkable. I’ve known a few fast healers in my years of practice, but whatever it is in his system, I’m tempted to bottle it and make myself a snake-oil fortune.”
Elizabeth had a flash of concern—had the doctor somehow figured out that Josh wasn’t what he seemed?—but no, Kit was taking it all at face value, that Josh had not been hurt as badly as first inspection suggested, and just recovered quickly.
Or, as Lou had said, they weren’t the type to ask questions.
“Elizabeth.”
Josh’s voice was hoarse, and nowhere near as strong as it should have been, but it drew Elizabeth to the side of his bed like a steel cable. His skin was chalky, and there was a line of sweat on his forehead, plastering his hair to his scalp. She reached backward and pulled a straight-backed chair away from the wall, close enough to the bed that when she sat down, her left thigh was pressed against the mattress. “Hi, there,” she said.
“I’ll leave you two alone then,” Kit said, already fading from Elizabeth’s awareness. All that she could see was the sheen of pain in Josh’s brown eyes, and the way that his fingers lay on the blanket, as though asking her to lace her own with them. So she did.
“Maggie found us a veterinarian,” she told him lightly, watching as his pale fingers tightened around her own darker-skinned ones, and then looked back up to his face to see some of the lines on his face ease away at the contact.
“I’ve probably heard all the jokes already,” he told her, but managed to smile. “I’ll be all right. We heal quickly, my family.”