Mac politely ignored the second part of what she said and concentrated on the first.
“You’ve got to check it out. As a matter of fact, it’s sort of wonderful that you’re new to town. I’d love to see it all for the first time myself,” he mused.
“You’ve been here a long time, then?” she asked.
He nodded.
“My whole life.”
“Do you ever want to live someplace else?” she heard herself ask him. It was a silly question. Wolves always came home.
He didn’t answer right away though.
She looked up to find that he was gazing at her pensively.
“I always thought it’d be nice to travel more,” he said. “See the scenery.”
Bonnie could have sworn he was talking about her. She tried not to blush.
He really was good-looking, and definitely her type. Why wasn’t she into him?
He slipped out from behind the counter.
“Let’s take these in the living room,” he said.
She grabbed her beer and headed after him, her boot catching on the edge of the carpet in the living room.
As if in slow motion, an arc of her beer flew out of the bottle as she clambered to stay upright.
Mac spun and caught her so easily, that most of the beer fell back into the bottle.
He was so close, his eyes on hers, the light wolfy scent of him washing over her. His arms were warm and he was real. A valued member of the Tarker’s Hollow pack and a nice, smart, handsome guy.
So Bonnie was horrified when a very loud growl escaped her throat as he bent to kiss her.
They both froze in surprise, and then Mac righted her and backed up a step.
“Uh, sorry, I didn’t mean to over-step…” he trailed off.
Bonnie gaped at him, red-faced.
Inside, her wolf was pacing angrily.
Why? Bonnie wailed.
My MATE, the creature’s heart replied.
Oh boy.
“I’m so sorry, it’s been a long day, I’m not sure why…” she began.
“No problem, I’ll take you home. Unless you still want to see those artifacts?” he asked her doubtfully.
No she didn’t. She wanted to go home.
“Yes, I do,” she replied.
Again they stared at each other, surprised, but he recovered graciously and walked over to the glass case in the foyer.
He swung open the back panel and gestured for her to help herself.
“Most of the Lenape items are on the third shelf,” he explained.
Bonnie gazed at the objects inside.
Most were basically trinkets, though there were several arrowheads, and a pipe.
But there were also one or two really lovely pieces of smooth red clay pottery.
And was that…?
“A tomahawk,” Mac explained.
A well-worn stone tomahawk.
It was all very interesting, but nothing really spoke to her. She wasn’t really sure what she’d expected.
“There’s a little more on the shelf below,” Mac offered.
Bonnie bent slightly, and spotted something wonderful.
Tiny animal figures carved from wood lined the shelf - a bear, a wolf, a rabbit.
A fox.
“Wow,” she breathed.
“What do you like?” he asked.
“The little animals, they’re lovely,” she said, kneeling to study them more closely. “What were they for?”
Mac frowned as if he hadn’t thought of that question.
“I don’t know if they were for anything,” he replied. “I just thought they were art. Or maybe children’s toys.”
“May I?”
Mac nodded.
Bonnie held the fox in the palm of her hand, stroking the smooth grooves of fur carved into his back.
It seemed to warm in her hand. It had to be her imagination.
She put him down, wanting to slip out her phone and take a picture, but knowing that she’d already been super weird with Mac.
When she stood, she caught him glancing at the clock on the mantel.
“I guess I should get home,” she ventured, getting to her feet.
“I’ll walk you,” he offered.
“No,” she said immediately. “I’m not far, and it’s late. I’ll see you later, Mac. Thanks for dinner.”
“Anytime. But are you sure you don’t want me to walk with you?” he asked, looking at bit concerned.
“If anything weird happens you know I can take care of myself,” she assured him, hoping her smile was warm, given how frantic she was to leave.
Chapter Nine
The cold air soothed Bonnie’s still-burning cheeks as she stepped down MacGregor’s walk and headed home.
It was a challenge not to scold her wolf out loud for that inappropriate growl earlier, but she figured the human population did not need to see her talking to herself.
The stars shone above the trees and her boots tapped the sandstone sidewalks smartly. Soon, the fresh air and exercise got to Bonnie and she began to get over her embarrassment.
Her thoughts turned to the fox carving. She could almost feel it in her hand, still - smooth and warm - an enigmatic expression forged on its little face. Was it beginning to smile, or beginning to frown?
It’s a wood fox, she told herself sternly, it’s not beginning to do anything, it was carved that way. And now you’re encouraging your crazy wolf.
Nonetheless, the long day was getting to her, as were the sounds of her boots on the sidewalk, tapping a rhythm, almost like a song.
Beginning to smile,
Beginning to frown,
Beginning to smile,
Beginning to frown…
Bonnie realized that she had forgotten to take the turn at Elm and was heading toward the campus.
Instead of feeling exhausted and frustrated with herself, she let out a breath of relief.
It was late, but she had the next day off. She was thinking about the amphitheater anyway. She may as well just stop by. Just to get her eyes on it one more time.
The wolf pricked her ears up.
The other night, she had been preoccupied chasing the shadow in the woods. Tonight, she walked the path to the top of the hill, slowly enough to notice the darkness more fully.
She passed no one, of course. Even during the day this part of campus was quiet. Now it was like a tomb
Soft moonlight bathed the stone monuments.
Bonnie felt the same hum of electricity in the air she had the night before - a haunting feeling, but somehow not a dangerous one.
Carefully, she stepped down the rows of benches, to the stage below.
Her pulse quickened. She felt as if she were in the dream again, though the biting cold reminded her she was very much awake.
Her eyes darted along the line of shadows at the edge of the trees, but nothing stirred.
Maybe she was taking this too far. Maybe she just needed to go home and forget about the whole thing for a while.
A quick movement in the shadows cut short her thoughts.
Bonnie was surprised to feel relief rather than fear.
A small shape made its way toward her along the line of shadows.
She kept as still as she could, holding her breath so as not to startle her visitor.
Before her eyes, it stepped out of the darkness on spindly legs, ears back. The perfect shadow of a doe.
In her periphery, another shadow hopped into the circle of light on the grassy stage.
A winged shape appeared to glide across the grass.
The woods were alive with the silhouettes of animals.
Bonnie’s wolf lifted her nose excitedly.
The fox was coming.
She turned to see him approach from the steps above. Had he been following her, instead of staying with the other shadow creatures in the woods?
A trick of the light seemed to change his shape, making him appear taller.
No. Not
a trick.
He was shifting.
By the time the shadow reached the stage, he was no longer the shadow of a fox, but the shadow of a man.
Bonnie waited, her mind swirling. The amphitheater, the menagerie of shadow creatures, the whole world dropped away.
There was only this man.
She held her breath as the shadow stepped into her.
Chapter Ten
Bonnie’s world disappeared.
A rush of sounds and smells assaulted her. Different places. Different times. She stood in an airplane terminal, waited in a train station with a huge clock, rode in a taxi cab, then a horse and carriage, mounted a galloping horse with the wind in her hair, crested the peak of a huge mountain. Voices called to her, crowds screaming, children laughing, a single wolf howling in the trees.
Everything went black.
Then she opened her eyes.
She was Tokala.
Somehow, he had transported her to his world. His time.
But there was no chance to take in the feel of the world through his eyes.
Ice ran in their shared veins.
Their tribe was being wiped out.
They had survived the famines, the attacks of the other tribes, the arrival of the men from across the sea. They had resisted the great migration.
And now, they were all dying.
Just a few hours ago, Tokala had heard the scream of the watchman, a grandfather of a man, who taught Tokala to set traps when he was a boy and who loved nothing more than to sing the old songs.
He would sing them no more.
As the tribe shivered inside the meeting house, the chief and his head warrior had gone out to see what was wrong. There were no screams at all. Only the thick silence of the thing outside, a black cloud, swirling and hungry. They glimpsed it through a crack in the door.
And so they had turned to Tokala, the shaman, the clever fox, to save them from their plight.
Tokala who showed such promise. Tokala who was kind and brave.
But the cunning of the fox could not save them from the hunger of the evil swirling at the door.
Under Tokala’s instruction, the remaining members of the tribe filled their packs with supplies from the stores of the meetinghouse.
Tokala’s own pack held no food. He knew in his heart there would be no need. None of them would escape this day.
Instead, he filled his pack with wooden animals, small, hand-carved and lovely.
And a stone tomahawk. It was a gift from his father, the shaman before him.
The pack was both heavy and comforting in the cold night.
Tokala circled the small group as they ran, keeping them close.
One or two were taken right away.
The young woman who nursed the sick stumbled on a stone and fell to her knees.
The cloud devoured her in an instant.
When her spirit animal, the beautiful dove, rose from the place where her body had been, the cloud plucked it from the air and inhaled it with a hiss.
Tokala’s heart shattered in anguish at the heresy. A death of the spirit animal was the ultimate death. It meant a loss of all connection with the human and spirit world.
It was unthinkable.
As Tokala watched in horror, his own cousin, a hunter, threw himself at the cloud with a terrifying roar, intending to take back the dove.
Another sinuous tentacle of black smoke wrapped itself around the hunter and he was gone.
Tokala herded the others away from the sound of his cousin’s coyote screaming into nothingness, and pushed them through the woods, toward the fields that were being razed on the other side.
They had to find Benjamin Wharton. The Quakers would help them, and there were a few shifters among their ranks as well as… magical people. One of them might know what to do.
The alternative was unbearable.
The death of the last Lenape to walk the homeland.
But the evil moved too quickly. The screams were already fading and they were nowhere near the camp where Wharton’s group stayed.
Bonnie gasped inside Tokala’s head as she recognized the hillside clearing they had approached, and the ring of stones at its center.
In Bonnie’s time, they formed the base of the amphitheater.
Tokala looked around at what remained of his tribe. Thirteen adults and one papoose.
“Come close,” he told them, as calmly as he could.
They gathered quickly, though they were frightened.
Only seconds remained.
Tokala pulled the wooden carvings from his pack. Thirteen figures, one for each.
He dropped them quickly in a circle around his loved ones, and then stepped into the circle himself.
The incantation was like a song.
When the evil poured down the hillside like a waterfall, it was hard to keep singing.
But Tokala thought of the watchman and sang loudly.
Before he finished his incantation, the smoke beast broke into the circle.
It split itself into thirteen equal parts, each one quivering and humming with evil, each funneling toward a person Tokala loved.
He pulled the tomahawk from his pack. It glowed with the anger of Tokala’s own heart.
He fought the darkness that threatened to envelope him. At the touch of the axe, it weakened. With another blow, it was no more, and Tokala moved toward the next.
But he was too late, his people were already dying.
Tokala dropped the stone axe and took up his song again.
His own mother collapsed in death. Her rabbit leapt from her body.
Through his pain, Tokala kept up his song.
Before the smoke could inhale the rabbit, it was sucked into the small wooden rabbit that formed the circle. Fingers of fog probed the wooden figure, and then pulled back, as if it were hot to the touch.
As his family died before his tired eyes, Tokala sang, and his song guided their spirit animals into totems, beyond the reach of the darkness.
The evil spirit shrieked with anger at his defiance.
At last, none remained but Tokala.
The smoke formed into one beast again, and flew at him.
There was a moment of bone shattering pain.
Then there was only darkness.
Chapter Eleven
Bonnie awoke in the snow at the base of the amphitheater as the first pink of morning stained the sky above.
Her body was cramped and she felt like she had a hangover.
There was no sign of shadow creatures anywhere.
There was no evil swirl of billowing black.
There was only Bonnie, aching and sad. The remnants of Tokala clinging to the webs of her memory.
She managed to get to her feet, and brushed herself off.
There was no point staying here when his presence was gone.
She was numb, from more than the cold, as she climbed the steps to the top of the amphitheater.
She looked over her shoulder once, before turning back to the path. She could almost see it as it had been. The first half-ring of stone benches in a full circle at the bottom of a hillside.
The campus was nearly empty, students liked to sleep late. But as she reached the construction site, there was movement.
She knew some of the crew, one or two waved to her. Sam had been at the Barry White Diner last night, too.
Bonnie waved back, cringing at the thought that now they all knew she had been out with MacGregor. This definitely looked like a walk of shame.
She supposed that was marginally better than if they’d known she slept in the snowy amphitheater, dreaming that she was a Lenni Lenape shaman.
Only it wasn’t a dream. She knew that now.
It was a cry for help.
By the time she returned to her apartment, she was more convinced than ever that she would do anything to aid Tokala and his people.
But how could she help with something that happened so long ago?
Sh
e peeled off her clothes and stepped into a steaming shower.
Above the squeal of the pipes she heard the cry of a dove.
She pulled on pajamas and made a cup of hot soup. She stood over the sink to drink it, feeling the weight of Tokala’s pack at her back.
She had never felt so tired.
She crawled into bed, hoping that a few hours of real sleep would bring her back to herself.
Chapter Twelve
Bonnie awoke in the late afternoon.
She was covered in cold sweat, and she could still smell the acrid scent of the evil cloud billowing.
She showered again, got dressed, and drank a cup of coffee down fast, as if it were medicine. Then she asked herself again.
What could she do to help?
She didn’t have a clear answer, but she had an idea where she could start.
She picked up her cell phone.
Taking a deep breath, she pulled up MacGregor’s text from last night and called him.
The phone rang twice, then his deep voice answered.
“J.D. MacGregor,” he said.
“Hey, Mac, it’s Bonnie.”
“Oh, hey, uh, how’s it going?” he asked in a surprised way.
“I had a really nice time last night,” she lied.
“No, I don’t think so,” he said with a small chuckle. “But that’s very polite. Now why are you really calling?”
His voice was warm and welcoming. No accusations or hurt feelings. She may have missed the romantic connection last night, but she was starting to think she might have found a good friend.
“Okay, you know those wooden animal figures you have?”
“Yes, the Lenape carvings.”
“How many are there?” she asked.
“Seven, I think,” he replied.
“But there were thirteen,” she worried out loud.
“I’ve only ever had seven.” He sounded confused, but interested. “But I know where we may be able to find more.”
“Where?” she asked.
“Listen, it’s complicated and I want to know what you’re up to if I’m helping. There’s been too much going on in Tarker’s Hollow lately. I need to be sure there’s no danger to you, or the pack.”
He was right, of course. And he was a good wolf. It was nice to remember that she was never really alone. Not with her pack mates behind her. She was beginning to realize that this was why the Tarker’s Hollow wolves didn’t mind living among the humans. As long as they had each other, they would always be a pack.
Shifter Wonderland: Twelve BBW Paranormal Holiday Shape Shifter Romances Page 16