Tears of the Shaman

by Rebecca Daniels

  Graywolf’s lips parted sightly in a little half smile, and he scooted down comfortably into his bedroll. “Take your pick.”

  Mallory leaned down, trying to get comfortable on the hard, gravelly ground. “She must have been really something.”

  Graywolf lifted his head and peered through the flames at her. “Who?”

  Mallory snuggled down deep into the sleeping bag. “The woman who broke your heart.”

  “Who what?” he snorted.

  “Who made you so bitter, so suspicious,” she elaborated. “You know, broke your heart.”

  Graywolf laughed out loud. “She didn’t break my heart.”

  Mallory rose up on her elbow, looking down at him. “Oh, no?”

  “Hell, no,” Graywolf snapped, laying his head back down. “She betrayed me.” He closed his eyes and rolled onto his side. “Now, go to sleep. You’ll need some rest.”

  “You mean with another man?”

  He opened his eyes and looked across at her. “Does it matter? Betrayal is betrayal.”

  “Maybe,” she conceded. “But I’d still like to know.”

  “A reporter’s curiosity?”

  “Damn it, would you leave that alone?”

  He smiled, satisfied to have riled her again. “All right, if you must know—no, not with another man.”

  “Then how?”

  He closed his eyes again. He tried to picture Susan’s face, but the image was shrouded and blurred in his memory. “She was someone I knew in D.C., someone I was with during...”

  “The kidnapping?” she finished for him when his words drifted. “Was she Navajo?”

  He opened his eyes and turned to look at her again. “A Navajo woman wouldn’t have sold the story to the tabloids.”

  Mallory slowly lay back down and stared up into the night sky. So that was it, she thought, stretching her arms back to cradle her head, there had been a woman in Benjamin Graywolf’s life—a white woman who had betrayed him and left him angry and bitter. Did he distrust all women now? Was that the reason he looked at her so suspiciously? Was that why he was skeptical of everything she did, every word she said?

  Betrayal. Mallory turned the word over in her mind. She tried to picture him with this mystery woman, this woman who had left him so jaded.

  She hadn’t known Graywolf very long, but it was long enough to understand that a man like him would value loyalty above all else. The circumstances would be of little importance, betrayal of any kind, in any fashion, would be the ultimate transgression, the unpardonable sin. He could mend a broken heart, forgive a failing, even overlook weakness. But betrayal...it could very easily wound him forever.

  * * *

  Whatever joy Mallory might have experienced during their short, rigorous climb up the mountain yesterday had all but disappeared now. The afternoon sun seared her skin, and its unrelenting heat had sweat pouring down her face and into her eyes. The pack on her back felt pounds heavier now than when they’d started out this morning, and the straps dug painfully into her shoulders.

  She stopped for a moment, running an impatient arm across her forehead, and blotting at the moisture that dotted her upper lip with the back of her hand. She had given up long ago trying to keep pace with Graywolf’s long stride. While walking in his footprints had been a spirited and uplifting experience yesterday, it was too much now for her strained muscles and tired feet.

  Even though the course they followed was no longer at a continuous climb, it was still rough going. Graywolf had abandoned the idea of following the ridge up the mountain, preferring instead to explore the lower foothills, crisscrossing and searching the small valleys and rocky caverns that Marissa might have reached. Mallory watched as he sprinted along the slope in front of her, the bare skin of his back glistening in the sun.

  How was it he could be so unaffected by the heat, so oblivious to the physical demands of the terrain? It made her want to scream. The constant hiking had sapped her energy and drained her strength, making his stamina all the more insulting.

  She reached for her small canteen, slipping off the cap and letting the tepid water moisten the awful dryness in her mouth. They’d been hiking for hours, and Graywolf had yet to stop for a break.

  Mallory made a face at his powerful back. She was damned if she was going to ask him to stop, admit to him that she needed a rest. She was determined to keep going. Besides, if he could take it, she could take it. He’d warned her it would be rough, and the last thing she wanted was to give him any reason to say “I told you so.” So with a deep breath, she screwed the cap of the canteen down tight and started up the grade after him.

  She plodded along, placing one heavy foot in front of the other. The natural path they followed had narrowed, hugging the mountain on one side and dropping to a steep gully on the other.

  Mallory stepped as cautiously as she could, staying as close to the side of the mountain as possible. But the ungainly pack made moving awkward, and her overworked muscles had rendered her legs clumsy and uncertain. When she stepped onto a small patch of loose gravel, the unexpected shift had her scrambling. But her reflexes were too slow in coming, too weak to be of much help. With a helpless realization, she felt herself start to slip. The pack shifted, pulling painfully against her shoulder, working like an anchor to pull her down. Helplessly she fell, her arms grabbing wildly at anything that could save her.

  Graywolf heard Mallory’s strangled cry and turned back just in time to see her slide down off the narrow ridge and disappear from sight. Dropping his pack, he ran for her, but it was as if his legs had grown heavy and the air had turned thick.

  “Mallory,” he shouted. He couldn’t seem to move fast enough. All he could think of was that deep gully below them with its jagged rocks and broken boulders, and Mallory lying torn and broken among them.

  “Oh, God. Oh, God,” he cried, panting, terrified of what he might see. “Mallory!”

  Finally, after what seemed like a journey measured in miles instead of just a few feet, he reached the ledge over which she’d fallen. Peering over the ledge, he saw her perched precariously along the cliff, clutching frantically to a dried scrap of manzanita, with the backpack dangling off one shoulder.

  “Help me,” Mallory whimpered, her face streaked with fear. “Graywolf, please, help.”

  “Oh, God,” Graywolf groaned again. He felt both relieved and horrified. Her eyes were filled with terror, and all the air had emptied from his lungs. “Okay, now, listen to me,” he said in a calm voice. “Listen to me and don’t move.” He dropped to his belly, stretching over the precipice and reaching for her. “You’re going to have to help me now, are you listening?”

  “Graywolf,” she cried, tears streaming down her face. “Please, help me. Graywolf, help me.”

  “Mallory, I’ve got you. Can you hear me?” he said in as soothing a voice as his terror would allow. Reaching out, he grabbed her by the wrists. “I have you. Let me pull you up. You have to trust me, let me pull you up. Let go of the bush.”

  “I—I’m scared,” she stammered, frozen with fear. In a panic, she tried to get a toehold with her foot, but the dry earth gave way beneath her boot, sending gravel and dust falling down the face of the cliff.

  “I know you’re scared,” Graywolf said. “But you have to trust me. Let go of the bush.”

  She looked up at him, seeing the emotion in his dark eyes, and felt some of the fear slip from her like the gravel slipping down the cliff. Trust. Yes, she would trust him—with her life, with anything.

  With a small cry, she let go her death grip on the bush and allowed Graywolf to pull her to the top of the ridge.

  “Are you all right?” he asked as he pulled her to her feet. “Are you hurt?”

  “N-no,” Mallory sobbed, shaking her head and pushing back a lock of hair from her face. “No. I—I’m sorry. It—it just happened. I was walking and...I was trying to be careful. I didn’t mean—”

  “Stop it,” he snapped, pulling the pack off
her and dropping it to the ground. What did she think he was going to do, scold her? She’d nearly fallen to her death, and she was apologizing to him as though it was somehow her fault.

  He glared down at her—hair disheveled, face streaked and dirty, clothes marked and torn, knee bruised and bleeding. She was a mess—sobbing and upset, and yet she’d never looked more beautiful. Had she really thought he was going to be angry at her? Did she really think he’d be upset? She was alive—alive!—and he said a silent prayer for that.

  He cursed himself for having pushed, for having continued on even when he knew she was struggling with the pace and was in dire need of a break. The thought that his foolishness had nearly gotten her killed tore at him. The picture of her slipping out of sight over that cliff would haunt him for the rest of his life.

  Mallory looked up at him. She knew she was talking crazy, but she couldn’t seem to help herself. She was frightened, and he was staring down at her with such a strange expression on his face—strained and intense. She remembered the look in his eyes when he’d reached over the cliff for her, remembered the dark intensity of his eyes, and felt a rush of emotion swell in her heart.

  * * *

  She forgot about the fall, about the close call she’d just survived. It was as if everything else had just faded away, vaporized into thin air. For her the world had narrowed to a stranger with dark, haunting eyes.

  “Graywolf,” she whispered, unaware she’d even spoken until she heard his name escape her lips. “I...I...”

  But she had no idea what it was she wanted to say. Her words drifted off, scattering like the dust on the wind. Graywolf’s hands had slid from her shoulders to her hips, and she could think of nothing but his touch, nothing but how much she wanted it.

  Graywolf pulled her to him, her slender body fitting next to his like a long-lost piece of a puzzle. It was as if conscious thought no longer existed, as if mundane issues such as consequence or repercussion were no longer of concern. He was responding to something far more basic, something primeval. There had been no vision, no sense of things to come, and yet standing there, staring down into her eyes, he’d never felt closer to the natural balance of things. He was where he should be, where he wanted to be.

  “Mallory,” he murmured, slipping his arms around her waist and pulling her close. He liked the sound of her name on his lips. It no longer mattered that he was Navajo and she was biligaana. All that was important at that moment was that he was a man, and she was the woman he wanted.

  Mallory’s hands pressed flat against the hard wall of his chest. His skin felt smooth and supple, yet she could feel the strength and the power that lay beneath. Feelings seemed to spring from some primal part of her being—strange, unfamiliar sensations she’d never experienced before. She thought she knew what it was to want a man, but she realized in that instant just how much about herself she had left to learn.

  Mallory Wakefield—the twin with the golden touch, everybody’s sweetheart, the girl voted most likely to succeed—wanted Benjamin Graywolf. It didn’t matter that he hated everything about her, that he had nothing but contempt for who she was and what she did. She wanted him. She wanted him in a way she hadn’t known existed, in a way that made not having him seem cruel and unnatural.

  He touched something basic in her, something feral and uncivilized. He made her aware of the rhythm of nature, made her cognizant of the harmony of the earth. He was as strong as the mountain, as wild as the harsh wilderness that surrounded them. He was a savage, primitive and exotic, but it had nothing to do with his Navajo heritage, or his Indian blood. It came from the fierceness in him, from the sensuality that reached out to her soul. He spoke to her on a lustful, carnal level that made her a savage, too.

  “Mallory,” he growled, bringing her mouth to within a whisper of his. Maybe she was white, maybe she was an outsider, maybe she did represent everything he’d convinced himself he hated, but all that didn’t matter now. He’d gone through all the motions to convince himself he didn’t care, that she meant nothing, and that he had no desire for her. But the fact remained that she was in his arms, her delicate body pressed against his hungry one, and he knew without a doubt he wanted her more than he’d ever wanted a woman in his life.

  His mouth captured hers, the contact causing a violent shudder to pass through him. It was as if the world had suddenly stopped, as if the moment had become frozen in time—crystallized, pristine, pure. She tasted warm and rich, like everything he’d ever wanted, everything he’d ever hoped to have. Dizzily he remembered the dream, of the two of them together in the stream. He’d thought then he’d known what it was to want her, to feel desire, and hunger, and need. But the fantasy paled when compared to the real her. Nothing could have prepared him for this—no dream, no vision, no omen of things to come.

  He felt her body tremble, heard a small groan escape her lips, and his body turned hard with desire. She felt delicate, her slender body seemingly fragile and ethereal, and yet the force with which she pulled at him belied her fragility. He wanted her strong, wanted her sure and determined. He was drawn to her strength, just as he was to her pale skin and haunting eyes. He pulled her more tightly to him, deepening the kiss and feeling his world spin out of control.

  Mallory couldn’t think, she could only react. For the moment there was nothing else in her world, nothing except the man in her arms, and the desire spreading like fire through her veins. She clung to him, holding on as though he were a lifeline, a savior. She’d known him for such a short time, and yet it was as though she’d been waiting her whole life. For her it wasn’t a matter of what was right or what was wrong, what was prudent or what was foolish. It was what was meant to be.

  Graywolf felt the emotion growing in her, felt it like waves pouring over him. He tore his mouth from hers, burying his face into the sweet blanket of her golden hair, pressing kisses into her neck and shoulder.

  “Graywolf,” she murmured, his name on her lips sounding raw and full of need.

  He wanted her. But there had been something in her voice, something frank and completely exposed, something he felt in his heart and in his brain. Something that had him pulling back, pulling away.

  He stared down into her eyes, seeing the need and the hunger in them. What was he doing? What could he be thinking? This wasn’t his woman. He had no right to stir those kinds of emotions in her. He didn’t want her love, and he could never give her his.

  Reality came back to him in one stunning blow, like flash-floodwaters sweeping through a desert wash. He dropped his hands to his side and stepped away.

  “What?” Mallory whispered, dazed and confused. “What is it? What’s the matter?”

  She searched his face, but it was the face of a stranger. There was no trace of warmth, no intensity of emotion, no hint of desire. She stared at him, feeling sick and alone.

  “Graywolf?” she murmured again. “What is it? What’s—”

  “Look,” he said abruptly, cutting her off. “I’m...I’m sorry. I was...out of line.” He turned and took a few steps. “You need some time to rest. We’ll head out when you’re ready.” He reached down and handed her the pack, then walked away.

  Mallory stood there for a moment, feeling stunned and confused. A swell of anger surged through her system. What kind of a cold bastard was he? What kind of game was he playing with her?

  She watched as he reached for his pack, slipping his arms through the straps and anchoring it into place. He didn’t like her, she thought as he started up the path without her, and he didn’t think much of what she did. He’d made his feelings crystal clear on that. But he’d made his feelings clear about something else, as well, something she didn’t think he was terribly happy about. He may not like it, and he could do anything he wanted to deny it, but the truth was the truth. And the truth was that Benjamin Graywolf wanted her.

  Chapter 10

  Graywolf stopped suddenly. Turning around, he looked at Mallory. “Did you hear something?”


  Mallory ambled slowly to a stop, still nursing her scraped knee, and listened for a minute. “I don’t hear anything.”

  Graywolf muttered to himself with a scowl, and slowly shook his head. He couldn’t trust anything anymore—least of all his senses. First he’d made a fool of himself with that kiss, and now he was hearing things. He turned and started out again, shifting the straps of his pack to a more comfortable position. But after only a few steps he abruptly stopped again.

  “You don’t hear that?” he demanded, frustrated, giving her a curious look.

  “Hear what?” Mallory snapped.

  “It sounds like,” he murmured. “Like...”

  “Like what?” she prompted with an impatient motion of her hand.

  “Like...singing.”

  But just as he said it, something drifted past her ear. It was a sound—low, muffled, and very, very faint. But as she stood there, straining to listen, she slowly began to realize that what she heard was indeed the voice of someone—someone singing.

  “I hear it now,” she whispered, her eyes growing wide.

  “Singing, right?” Graywolf asked, looking to her for agreement.

  Mallory nodded her head. “Yeah,” she said, concentrating hard. “But...different,” she said as she looked up at him. “Almost like a...”

  “Child’s voice,” Graywolf interjected.

  She looked up at him and nodded her head. “Yes, that’s it. A child’s voice.”

  “This way,” Graywolf said, suddenly heading up the steep slope on a run. “It’s coming from over here.”

  Mallory didn’t dare hope as she stumbled up the grade behind him. She didn’t even dare think too hard about what it might mean. She’d gotten her hopes up before, only to have them cruelly shattered. Still, as she reached the dry, dusty plateau at the top of the incline, she couldn’t deny the feeling of nervous apprehension.

  “There,” Graywolf said, pointing across the mesa to an outcrop of rock, jutting out to form an alcove in the mountain.

  There, in the distance, below the overhang of rocks and earth, sat a small child feeding sticks into a fire and singing quietly to herself.