Driving Force

by Andrews, Jo

  * * * * *

  Ian watched her walk away, her back very straight and her head high. Not even a truce. She really hated his guts.

  Well, what did you expect, Raeder? You made your bed. Now lie in it.

  Or get plastered. Yeah, that was a pleasant thought. Definitely had its appeal. So he went and got wasted.

  The next day was not so pleasant. Even Shifters were not immune to hangovers and Ian had the mother of all hangovers.

  Annie made a couple of caustic remarks about his condition, but left him a pot of coffee strong enough to strip the paint off the walls. Ian drank it thankfully, his eyes closed against the sunlight filling the house and stabbing into his brain. If someone would do him the kindness of cutting off his head, he’d be truly grateful. That might stop it from throbbing so agonizingly.

  He had gotten to the point where he might possibly be able to stand up without hurling when the long, lanky form of Taylor Weekes, the ranch foreman and Annie’s husband, came into the den. Ian squinted painfully at him. Taylor had on that kind of carefully expressionless face that meant that he was trying not to grin.

  “You do remember you’re supposed to pick up that barbed wire today? We need it if you want us to finish off the fencing on the north range.”

  Ian sighed. He could, of course, ask Taylor or one of the hands to fetch it, but he had never shirked his responsibilities and damned if he was going to now.

  “I’ll go get it.”

  He found the heaviest pair of shades he owned, but even though they were supposed to be wraparounds, sunlight still sneaked in around the edges. His eyes slitted nearly shut, he made it to town and got the pickup loaded, then decided to get another cup of coffee before making the trip home. Hair of the dog would have been better, but something warned him not to resort to that right now. Alcohol was a depressant and he still had too much of it in his system, the hangover making the whole world look stale and pointless.

  I’m tired, he thought, slumping into a seat at the coffee house. It was a bone-deep tiredness that was not physical, a depression that had been growing for a long time. He had stopped fighting that feeling now, simply accepted the fact that this emptiness was not likely to change or get better in the future, just had to be endured.

  “Thanks, Millie,” he said to the elderly waitress who brought him an extra-large mug of coffee without being asked. They knew him here, just as they knew all the hands in the area.

  “Some guy’s been asking around about you,” Millie said under her breath, and he glanced up at her, surprised.

  “Oh, yeah? Who?”

  “Stranger.”

  He didn’t have to ask to know that no one had said anything. The whole town, not just the Shifters, automatically closed ranks against outsiders.

  “What did he look like?”

  “Black hair, yellowish eyes, big, acted kinda weird. I’d have said he was a Lowe ’cause he looks like them, ’cept no one’s ever seen him before.”

  Millie was full-human, so wouldn’t know about Arrhan. But that was who it must have been.

  “Was he asking about just me or my brothers as well?”

  “All of you.”

  That didn’t sound good. He wondered what the guy was up to.

  “Point him out if you see him, Millie.”

  “Will do.” Millie nodded and bustled away.

  He pushed his shades higher, wincing as the person at the next table got up to leave and the sunlight she had been blocking stabbed the side of his eye. Then he glanced over and realized it was Sierra, looking unfairly fresh and clear-eyed. But then she had left the party early and unlike him hadn’t spent the whole night wishing she could take back the last decade.

  She flicked a cutting glance at him without saying a word. But her silence was eloquent.

  “Oh, spit it out, whatever it is,” he snarled. “Don’t hold back.”

  “Hung over again, huh? At three in the afternoon. I wonder how the hands take to a boss who’s useless through most of the day.”

  “The hands and I understand each other.” Ian shrugged. Nocturnal though the Raeders naturally were, they had made a point of adjusting to a diurnal pattern. The occasional day like today happened, but since each of the Raeders consistently did three times the work of any of the other hands, no one resented it.

  “But then Simon’s the responsible one, isn’t he?” she said scornfully. “The one who does the real work.”

  “That he is,” he agreed, amused. He was so accustomed to being misunderstood by her that her disdain had no power to sting anymore. He just wished things were different, that was all.

  She bit her lip, clearly irritated that she hadn’t gotten to him. Then she shrugged with elaborate carelessness and bent to scoop up the shopping bags at her feet.

  “What? No comeback?” he mocked.

  “I have nothing to say to you.”

  “Running away already? We’ve barely even started. You’re losing your resilience, Mouse.”

  “I don’t have time to waste, even if you do,” she snapped and stalked off.

  “Pity,” he called after her. “It’s so much fun getting your goat.”

  Because anything from her, even hatred, was welcome.

  “Way to go, Ian,” said Millie dryly as she topped up his coffee mug. “Why don’t you ever try to charm her the way you do every other gal?”

  Yeah, right. The time for that was ten years ago.

  “Wouldn’t be quite as entertaining. I like playing games.”

  “Games, is it? Seems more like a defensive reaction to me.”

  Ian’s hand jerked to a stop in the middle of raising the mug to his lips. Hot coffee slopped over the rim and he cursed, grabbing at a paper napkin.

  “Nothing of the sort!”

  “Nobody’s noticed but me,” said Millie soothingly.

  He gave her an appalled glance, then gulped the rest of his coffee. “Gotta go.”

  Shit, shit, shit! If Millie had noticed, maybe other people had too. The day was just getting worse and worse as it went on.

  He got back to the ranch and was nearly run over by Simon when he opened the front door. Simon had a suitcase in his hand and city clothes on.

  “What the hell?”

  “No time to talk,” said Simon hurriedly. “Gotta catch a flight to Wyoming. Mara was in a car crash. Don’t know how bad.”

  Ian didn’t like Mara, who had kept Simon dangling on a string for too long. But their own parents had died in a car crash a couple of years back and he knew the fear that must be racking Simon now.

  “Right. Go.”

  “I haven’t got the accounting for the week done. I’ll do it when I get back.”

  “I’ll take care of it.” He gripped Simon’s shoulder reassuringly. “She’s gonna be all right. Stay as long as you like. There’s nothing here we can’t handle. Anything she needs, you get her, whatever her clan says.”

  Simon nodded, his jaw set hard, then shot out of the door. Yeah, the day was really going south for everybody.

  At least nothing got worse and the rest of the week stayed quiet. The Lowes were in an edgy mood. They had found no trace of Arrhan, which on the one hand was a relief and on the other was a serious concern. It was puzzling how one Shifter could hide his tracks from more than twenty others hunting him. But Arrhan might have tricks up his sleeve that they weren’t aware of. It was entirely possible new ways of concealing oneself had been developed back in the other world over the last hundred years.

  It was also possible the guy had left the area and was targeting some other pride now he had failed with the Lowes. For that reason, Kurt Lowe decided to send out warnings to every Shifter pride everywhere, friend or foe. He wanted no one taken by surprise. How they chose to handle Arrhan was up to them. Kurt let it be known that he would prefer to talk to him, but would understand if some other clan were simply to take him out permanently. Arrhan’s fate was in his own hands.

  The end of the week brought a ful
l moon like a spotlight in the night sky, so bright that one could almost read by it. Ian felt his heart lift just looking at it. The week’s work was done, even Simon’s abandoned accounting cleaned up. There were no more duties to be taken care of, no obligations to bind him.

  It was past one. No one would see him this late and he needed to run free in that black-and-silver night. He removed his clothes, shifted and went out of the window in a fluid glide.

  He slid through the shadows, carefully staying downwind of the stables so the horses wouldn’t catch the scent of leopard. With the ranch and its outbuildings finally behind him, he settled into a ground-covering run.

  His human side, with its human worries and concerns, fell away. His animal side surged up, living in the moment. All his senses woke and he was exquisitely aware of every detail of the world around him. The thousand intense, intoxicating scents carried to him on the wind. The acuity of his night vision, which lent everything he saw a piercing, silver-shot beauty. The feel of the wind on his pelt, of grass and earth under his rushing paws. The squeak and rustle of small animals going about their business in the dark.

  That sadness and sense of futility that dogged his human existence vanished in a rush of sensation. They would come back in the end, of course, but right now he could thrust that aside and simply be, yesterday and tomorrow forgotten in the now.

  Human intelligence never left him. He knew to avoid roads, houses and people. He went after a rabbit just for the sheer joy of the chase, following it through all its desperate twists and turns, then letting it go at last. He wasn’t hungry and had pursued it only for the pleasure of feeling his muscles respond to the challenge. Later he went after a mule deer for the same reason, drunk on motion and power.

  No kills tonight, though. Just abandon. Just the pure delight of running free.

  The round, white eye of the moon looked down at him. Deep in no-man’s land, far from human hearing, he looked back at it and roared, the sound vibrating outward from the depths of his chest to fill the night with wildness and frighten all the little animals into frozen stillness in their burrows or under some bush.

  Only one thing would ever be better than this. But that he would never have.

  At last, a sleepy chirp from an early bird warned him of the passage of time. It was an hour before dawn. He was far from home and it would take him at least that long to reach it. His leopard speed, though, would get him back before the concealing darkness melted away completely.

  He turned back, running swiftly along the top of the cliffs, enjoying the cool feel and smell of stone and night. Far below him, the river wound like a python, brown and muscular, patterned with white from rapids or small cataracts. Here, one could see how treacherous it really was, unlike downstream where it spread out deceptively smooth and placid.

  A flare of green light and a blast of enormous force exploded in his face.

  Almost flung off his feet and blinded by ghostly afterimages, he whirled in a circle, slashing out at nothing, disoriented by shock and disbelief, struggling to make sense of what was happening. It was some kind of attack. Explosives? But there was no smell of chemical combustion.

  A body slammed into him. He roared as pain raked down his side. Then he was falling.

  He hit stone, then water that seemed equally hard, the way he was splayed out when he smashed into it. Went under, gasping and choking and unable to breathe. Struggled back to the surface only to be swept along like a leaf by the rapids, battered into every rock and boulder on the way.

  He almost shifted to human but restrained himself in time. Being human right now would only make him more vulnerable to the blows, the cold and drowning. His cat body could withstand much more harm. Then his head struck a rock and consciousness left him.

  He came back to himself clinging to a clump of splintered branches, deadfall swept into a hollow of the bank by the current. The river had flung him against it and was now trying to pull him away. But his claws had sunk deep into wood and bark, held him fast against the drag.

  He fought his way up onto the tangle, then struggled over it to the bank, sliding, slipping and almost falling in again as it bobbed and twisted under his weight, pieces breaking off and swirling away in the current. Only his claws kept him from following them.

  He made it to the safety of the bank and collapsed. The world swam in front of his eyes, then spun away into blackness once more.

  The sun was burning down at him when he came to at last. It was past noon, he guessed, his eyes watering as he squinted painfully at it. He had been unconscious all morning.

  He was badly hurt. He could feel that some of his internal organs were damaged and at least a couple of ribs had been broken by being battered against the rocks. But he couldn’t stay where he was. Any human coming across him as he lay in leopard shape would shoot him on sight. Yet turning human right now would only mean he would die of his injuries sooner. He had to stay a cat. Find a hollow or burrow where he could hole up and hope his Shifter healing would repair the worst of the damage.

  He staggered to his feet. The slashes down his side where his attacker had clawed at him had clotted a little while he was unconscious, but now they tore open and started to bleed again. Not badly, just oozing, but the blood loss would weaken him even more as it went on.

  He had to find somewhere to lie up. The river would have carried him down toward Castleton, but he had no idea where he was and no hope of making it home unseen. He had to find cover, but even putting one foot in front of the other was almost beyond him. He moved away from the river, struggling through underbrush that provided neither concealment nor shelter, only impeded him.

  He was weaving now as he walked, his head hanging. Consciousness started to slip again and he yanked it back with an effort. He couldn’t afford to pass out here.

  A scent entered his awareness. Just a thread, the scent of something that felt so right. His brain was so foggy that he couldn’t identify it, just that it seemed familiar, seemed to be where he should be going, where he wanted to be. He followed that lure, moving blindly toward it, falling over his own feet, his vision blurring in and out of focus.

  The scent pulled at him. He homed in on it unthinkingly, instinctively, found in a moment of consciousness that he was moving toward a house. An ordinary little one-story bungalow set all by its lonesome in the middle of the woods. Not a Shifter house. A human one. The worst place in the world to go. An utterly wrong thing to do. But he couldn’t stop himself.

  He staggered up the worn wooden steps to the porch, then reared onto his hind legs against the front door, remembering just in time to shift into his human form before he fell against it with a thump.

  There was an exclamation from within, then the sound of swift footsteps.

  What am I doing? he thought. This is insane!

  The door opened. Without it to hold him up, he fell. A slender body caught him, broke his fall, went down to the ground with him under his weight. His face was in the curve of a cool shoulder, arms were around him, that familiar scent surrounded him.

  He was where he wanted to be.

  “Mouse,” he said. “Mouse, help.”

  Chapter Three

  Oh my God, she had her arms full of Ian Raeder. He was sprawled across her lap, his face against her breast and his legs stretching out of the front door. And he was naked! Like, totally naked!

  Impressively so. Sierra’s gaze shot down to exactly where she shouldn’t be looking if she wanted to keep her sanity. Whoa, Mama! No wonder every girl in the county threw herself at him. Even at rest, the man was hung like a stallion.

  She dragged her gaze away from that riveting cock and realized he was seriously wounded. There were five deep gashes down his left side from his armpit to halfway down his thigh, he was battered and bruised all over and from the shallow, rasping way he was breathing, he had internal injuries as well.

  “Ian! What happened to you?”

  His breath shuddered against the V-neck of her
halter top as he tried to speak. “Fell…”

  “Oh God, we’ve got to get you to a hospital! My cell. Where’s my cell? I have to call 9-1-1.”

  “No!” He grabbed weakly at her as she started to pull away. The movement might have been weak, but the strength of his grip was shocking, holding her where she was. “No hospital! Can’t go there. Doc. Call Doc Howard. Just him. He knows.”

  The pupils of his eyes were of different sizes. He probably had a concussion on top of everything else.

  “Ian, you need a hospital!”

  “No!” He looked up at her, his eyes glazed with pain. She didn’t think he was actually seeing her. “Mouse, please…”

  He had never said please to her before. It showed how important this was to him. She could see the desperation in those unfocused eyes. She couldn’t refuse him, and at least Doc Howard had the authority to force him into hospital if necessary.

  “All right,” she said, then gasped as he suddenly went limp against her. He had been holding on to consciousness solely for that reassurance from her and now it had been given, he had allowed himself to pass out.

  She looked around and saw her cell lying on the hall table. She inched her way carefully backward, her arm under his neck so he wouldn’t be jarred when his head slid down into her lap. She just managed to snag the phone with her fingertips as she strained toward the table and she let out a little breath of relief. She didn’t know Doc’s number offhand, but 4-1-1 brought it up and dialed it for her. Doc answered himself, which was a surprise.

  “Doc, this is Sierra Wal—”

  “Yes.” Doc Howard’s voice sounded hurried and impatient. “I’m sorry, Sierra. We’re having a crisis and this is not a good time.”

  “Ian is hurt,” Sierra cut in hastily. “Real bad. He won’t let me call an ambulance and he won’t see anyone but you. Doc, please come.”

  There was a sharp silence. Then, “Ian Raeder? What’s wrong?”

  “He’s all busted up.” Sierra’s voice shook. “And he’s been clawed right down his side. It looks like a mountain lion attack. I know that sounds crazy, but—”