by Andrews, Jo
“Where is he?” Doc interrupted.
“My place.”
“I know where that is,” said Doc before she could give him the address. “I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”
The connection cut off before she could thank him. But he was coming. Sierra let out a little breath of relief.
She looked down at Ian’s still face and stroked his hair involuntarily. It was surprisingly soft and silky under her hand. She didn’t want to move him, but she couldn’t leave him that way, half in and half out of the house. His torso was lying on the scatter rug at the front door. The rug would slide easily on the polished wood of the floor, so he shouldn’t be hurt if she moved him. She slid out from under him carefully, easing his head down, then caught the edge of the rug and pulled it and him delicately backward until his heels crossed the threshold and she was able to shut the front door.
She bent to check his condition and was relieved to see that she didn’t seem to have done any damage. After sliding a cushion from the couch under his head, she went to get a blanket to keep him warm—and also to cover him up. All that gorgeous male nakedness was doing unfortunate things to her libido. She shouldn’t be thinking that way, with him hurt as he was, but she couldn’t help it. He was just too beautiful.
Doc’s ancient pickup pulled to a stop in front of her house just as she began to worry that he wasn’t coming. She whipped the front door open and beckoned urgently to hurry him up.
“Take it easy, Sierra,” he said. Doc was over sixty, with a shock of white hair and an unshakably placid manner. “Haste makes waste.”
He crouched down stiffly to examine Ian. Oddly, he didn’t seem at all surprised by Ian’s injuries.
“Yup,” he said at last. “Done a good job on himself this time. It’ll take a while to mend. Got another blanket, Sierra? We’ll have to get him up onto a bed before I can patch him up. My knees are too old to keep squatting down like this.”
“Is it okay to move him?” asked Sierra, hurrying to the linen closet. “I think there are bones broken.”
“Couple of ribs, yeah. But he’s tough as whipcord,” said Doc callously. “He’ll heal. My arthritis won’t.”
He grinned at the reproachful look she gave him, then took the blanket from her and spread it out on the floor beside Ian. Sierra watched worriedly.
“Give me a hand here,” he said, and together they maneuvered Ian carefully onto the blanket.
“We’re hurting him!” she exclaimed as Ian made a little sound of pain.
“Can’t be helped. Grab the blanket at his feet and I’ll take this end.” For someone over sixty, Doc was surprisingly strong. “Man would have to weigh two hundred solid damn pounds. I suppose I should be glad he isn’t Nikolai Korda. Now there’s a giant.”
They got Ian into the bedroom that had been her Mom’s but which Sierra had now made into a guest room, and eased him up onto the bed. Doc nodded with satisfaction.
“Get my bag, will you, Sierra? And I’d really appreciate some coffee. Need the pick-me-up.”
“Uh, sure.”
Sierra brought him his bag, then went to get the coffee started. She got back just in time to see Ian’s eyelids flutter.
“You with us, boy?”
Ian’s eyes opened. He stared dazedly up at Doc.
“How’d you get so banged up?”
“Rapids,” Ian said with difficulty, his voice slurring.
“That explains most of the damage. But those gashes?”
“Tell Kurt…Arrhan…”
“Mmm. Think he already knows. There’s been ructions.”
The crease between Ian’s brows deepened. “S-serious?”
“Some. But it’s being taken care of. You just lie there and heal. Won’t be good for damn all for a while. I’ll call Simon and he’ll take care of you.”
“No!” Ian caught his wrist. Doc winced. “In Wyoming. Got enough on his plate. Don’t bring him back!”
“How about Neal?”
“Seattle.”
“Okay. I’ll find somebody else. Gonna give you a local and stitch you up right now. You just lie quiet for the next few days.”
“The ranch…”
“Taylor Weekes is a good foreman and can keep the ranch going until you’re on your feet again. Don’t be fussing about that, son. Whoops.” Doc chuckled. “He’s out again. That’s good. Gives me a chance to stitch those gashes so he won’t bloody up the bed of my pickup when we get him out to it.”
“He…he didn’t want to go to the hospital,” said Sierra hesitantly. “He freaked when I mentioned that.”
“Who’s the doctor around here? He’ll go where I take him.”
“But…” Sierra didn’t know whether to feel relieved or sorry. Ian really did need to go to the hospital, but he had been so upset at the thought. She didn’t want him to end up thinking she had betrayed him.
“How’s that coffee coming along?” asked Doc.
She went to check and was just pouring a cup when she heard a reverberating snarl from the bedroom. It sounded like…
She ran down the hall, then stopped dead in the doorway to the guest room. There was a leopard on the bed.
“Damn!” said Doc. “I was hoping to get him to my place before he did that!”
Sierra’s breath left her in one great whoosh. She fell against the doorjamb and leaned there, staring.
The leopard snarled, then flexed violently. Fur receded, muscles shifted, bones cracked and rearranged themselves. Then it was Ian lying on the bed, naked once more because the blankets had fallen away. A moment later, he spasmed again and the leopard was back. The entire transformation took only a few seconds either way.
Sierra’s legs gave way. She slid down the doorjamb until she was sitting on the floor.
“Put your head between your knees and just breathe,” said Doc.
Numbly, Sierra obeyed. When the world stopped spinning and she raised her head again, the leopard was gone and Ian was back.
“What…what is he?” she whispered.
“They call themselves Shifters.”
“They? It’s not just him?”
“Nope.”
“His brothers.”
“Yeah. And a few others.”
“How many…?”
“I don’t know and I wouldn’t tell you if I did. Let him tell you if he wants to. Not my business.”
Sierra jerked around suddenly to stare at him. She had known Doc nearly half her life, but after this revelation anything seemed possible.
“Are you…?”
“I’m human, just like you.” Doc smiled at her reassuringly. “I found out about it forty years ago, exactly the way you’ve done today, when a wounded cat I stumbled across and was trying to help went into the healing fever in front of me and suddenly started shifting. They can’t control it when they’re hurt. That’s why he doesn’t want to go to the hospital.”
Right. She could just imagine the hysteria. If they didn’t kill him outright, he would be chained up and subjected to every test and cruel research that the government and the scientific communities could devise. And the media! Panic in the streets if word of this got out, people terrified and suspecting everyone else of being a werewolf. Well, werecat. Whatever.
“Never thought werewolves exist,” she mumbled.
“They don’t. Werewolves are supposed to be humans who partially change into animals on the three or four nights that the full moon forces it on them. That’s the way the books and the movies have it, right? Brainless monsters attacking everything in sight, the condition caused by being bitten by another werewolf.”
Sierra ran a hand over her face. “I guess…”
“Well, these are Shifters. Shape-shifters. They change body shape whenever they want and retain their full intelligence while in that form. And you have to be born a Shifter. Won’t turn into one if you’re bitten.”
“Doc, if you could just hear what you’re saying! It’s insane!”
D
oc pointed at the bed. The leopard was back, writhing in pain where it lay.
“Think that’s a hallucination?”
Sierra wished it were. She watched bemusedly as the cat turned back into Ian.
“I think my brain’s shorted out.”
“They don’t hurt anyone,” Doc said. “Never have. Just want to live their lives. From what I understand, they were driven into this world from another. Not all in a bunch. In ones and twos over thousands of years. Stayed under the radar with their heads down, multiplied a bit, but not all that much, keeping their numbers low on purpose. They may not be fully human, but they’re not a danger, Sierra. Never have been. You gonna tell?”
She looked at the man lying on the bed. That was Ian. Ian whom she’d known for the last ten years. Ian whom she both hated with a passion and desired. Ian who had teased her and annoyed her and been the bane of her life. But Ian the individual who had never harmed her or anybody else that she knew of. Not some unknown monster. A person.
“I won’t tell,” she said.
“That’s my girl,” said Doc with profound relief. “Knew I could count on you. You’ve always been level-headed, Sierra.”
“It’ll…take some getting used to.”
Doc laughed a little. “Oh, yeah. Move back out of the doorway for a moment. I have to get something out of the pickup and I don’t want to leave you here alone with him.”
Sierra realized she was still sitting on the floor. She flushed and scrambled hastily to her feet. Doc came out of the guest room and shut the door behind him.
“Don’t go in there without me. I’ll only be a minute.”
Sierra leaned against the wall and tried to get her whirling thoughts together. Doc came back at last carrying two pairs of metal manacles, each connected by a short length of heavy chain. She stared at them in horror.
“Do you have to put those on him?”
“Yes. I have to stitch him up and I don’t think the cat will take to that. I was hoping the fever wouldn’t have got to him yet. Not until I could get him home to my place and into restraints. But from the looks of things he’s been hurt more than a few hours and the fever’s taking over already. He’s going to shift back and forth a lot.”
He was snapping the shackles onto Ian’s wrists and ankles as he talked. Sierra looked at them in distaste. It seemed so wrong to be putting those ugly things on Ian.
“If he were in his right mind, I wouldn’t have to do it,” Doc explained. “Even as a cat, the human intelligence is there and would let me stitch him. But he’s out of his head right now and tranquilizers aren’t very dependable on Shifters. Their metabolism reacts unpredictably to sedatives. He could come to as a cat and take my throat out without ever meaning to.”
He injected Ian with a local, swabbed the gashes, then started to stitch them. Ian shifted into leopard, but Doc just kept stitching and after a few minutes he shifted back to human again. Sierra was starting to get used to it.
“Those gashes are claw marks. Did one of his own kind do this to him?”
“Shifter business,” said Doc evasively. “Some sort of upheaval in their community right now. Ask him once he’s healed.”
He set the last stitch in place, gave Ian a couple of different injections, then stepped back. Sierra looked at him in surprise.
“Right,” he said. “I’m going to need your help getting him into the pickup.”
“But…what about his ribs?” she asked in dismay.
“Can’t put a cast on ribs, even with humans. They have to move for a person to breathe. Can’t even wrap them to prevent him from breathing too deeply and perhaps puncturing a lung with the broken ends. His cat chest is different from his human one. Any bindings would get in the way when he shifts.”
“And the other internal injuries?”
“Don’t want to mess with Shifters, Sierra. They refuse to let me research them the way I want to, so I don’t know enough about them. Might do more harm than good. I’ve given him painkillers and antibiotics. They should help and I know they won’t harm. But his own Shifter healing has to do the rest. Just like with the others.”
“What others?”
Doc sighed and Sierra finally saw how weary he looked. “Told you there was trouble. There’s others of them hurt as well and I’m the only doctor in town who knows Shifters exist. Kinda run ragged here.”
To her own surprise, she found herself saying, “Then why don’t you leave him with me?”
She should be totally freaking out. Maybe she would have if Doc hadn’t been with her when Ian had gone leopard. Doc acting as if it were all in a day’s work and completely natural made her calm down and think instead of screaming hysterically and running for the hills.
Doc bit his lip, frowning. “Don’t know whether that’s such a good idea.”
“Does he need special care?”
Doc shook his head. “Nothing we can really do for him. He has to heal himself. All we can do is keep him comfortable and swab him down with cool water if the fever gets too high.”
“I can do that. Mom worked at the care facility for seniors, remember? She did show me the basics. And I nursed Peter a couple of times when he was sick.”
Doc looked her over thoughtfully. “Must admit I could use your help. I’ve got too much on my hands already. He’ll probably get more attention from you than I’ve got to spare for him. He’s going to shift a lot. Does the leopard scare you?”
“Yes, of course, but that won’t incapacitate me. I’ll still be able to function.”
Doc smiled. “You always were a sensible child. Don’t go near him when he’s in cat form. Too dangerous. And never take those manacles off until I tell you, no matter how much you dislike them.”
“I promise.”
He handed her a tube of ointment. “Put that on those cuts and bruises once he’s human, but don’t put any Band-Aids or such on him. Don’t want them pulling on his fur when he turns. I’ll be back tomorrow to see how he is and take those stitches out.”
Sierra looked at him in surprise. “They’ll be ready to come out that soon?”
“They should. Shifter metabolism is amazing and shifting between forms speeds the healing process. The gashes should knit by tomorrow. It’s the rest of his injuries that’ll take time.” Doc frowned down at Ian. “Problem is the constant shifting and the fever. They’re necessary, but they can take a toll, weaken him too much before he can fully heal. It’s always a race which one wins, the fever or the healing.”
“Is there anything else I can do?”
“Not much. He’ll be thirsty. Give him as much water as he wants. Swab him down every now and then to keep the fever from getting too high.” Doc shrugged helplessly. “The rest is up to him. Call me if it looks like it’s getting worse.”
“Right.”
She walked Doc out and locked the door firmly after him in the unlikely event that some unexpected visitor might come barging in. The last thing she wanted was for someone to find a leopard in her guest room. Try explaining that!
Ian was back to being the leopard again when she reached the bedroom. She leaned on the doorjamb and stared at him. It was hard to believe she wasn’t dreaming. She pinched herself and it hurt. That had been a silly thing to do, but the whole situation was so crazy.
Six feet of pale-gold cat with black rosettes lying on its side on the bed. The yellow of its fur had shades of brown and red mixed in as well. Well, that explained his hair. And there was a tail now, almost four feet long.
She inched over to the foot of the bed and very carefully, at the full stretch of her arm, reached out to touch the white tip of that tail. It was solid and palpable under her hand, soft fur over firm bone. Nope, no way she was dreaming this.
The tail twitched away from her grip, then lashed, hitting her hand with a hard thump. Real, and the reaction the same as that of any cat whose tail is grabbed. Sierra backed away hastily.
The leopard rippled and turned back into Ian. He was pantin
g through his open mouth, his profile against the pillow gaunt and strained, the one eye she could see clenched tightly shut. Despite the painkillers Doc had given him, he was hurting. She moved warily around to stand beside the bed where she could see his face better, wishing she could do something for him.
His eyelid shuddered and opened, then he turned his head a little on the pillow to stare up at her, frowning.
“Mouse?” He was still not seeing clearly, she guessed.
“Yes, I’m here.”
He reached out abruptly and shoved her hard with his shackled hands. She staggered backward, then recovered her balance.
“Get away!”
“Ian…”
“Not safe…” Then he saw the manacles on his wrists and made a little sound of relief. “Good.”
He went under again, his body sagging. He had been worried about hurting her. Sierra drew a little shaky breath. He didn’t want to hurt her, wouldn’t hurt her. She moved back to the bed with more confidence and bent to lay the back of a hand against his forehead. He was burning up. Doc had forgotten to tell her what temperature would be too high, but surely he wasn’t supposed to be this hot.
She fetched a basin of cool water and a sponge, swabbed his face tentatively. The deep crease between his brows eased. She was doing the right thing. She pulled a chair up beside the bed and began to swab him down, the sponge running in slow, soothing strokes over his skin. He sighed and turned to it as it moved over him.
After a while she saw a ripple go through him. She jumped hastily to her feet and backed toward the door. Sure enough, he changed to cat. She was starting to recognize the small signs that the transformation was beginning. She now had that moment of early warning. She stayed in the doorway until he finally shifted back to human once more, then returned to the bedside and picked up the sponge again.
She had never touched him before. For all their years of running battles, flinging insults and snarky comments back and forth—cat fights, she thought in amusement—they had never once laid a finger on each other. Now as she ran the sponge gently over him, she was intensely aware of that beautiful body under her hands. The smooth satin of his skin, the resilient swell of muscle, that totally lickable six-pack. Superb definition all over. Running around as cat must really keep one in shape.