by Vonna Harper
She opened her mouth.
“See what I’ve done, Wilding!” Tau held the feather even higher. “Look at this proof of my greatness. My spirit-given skill stopped the earth’s swiftest creature. You have one choice, slave. Either you show us the way to where falcons nest, or my arrows will find more predator hearts.”
His words no longer made sense. Oh yes, she understood that he was trying to goad her into saying or doing something reckless, but it didn’t matter. Only this horrid reminder of how Raci’s life ended did—that and understanding that nothing would stop Tau.
A blip of awareness alerted her that Nakos was coming closer, his arms extended, perhaps in preparation for imprisoning her. Not long ago she would have relished the surrender of body and mind to him, but he’d become a stranger.
As much of one as the others who called themselves Ekewoko.
Her gaze remained riveted on Raci’s feather. Just the same, she couldn’t stop her lungs from drawing in air that Tau had soiled. Nakos’s ropes and strength had never trapped her as she was now.
Only one thing would assure freedom.
And revenge.
Mostly revenge!
A high, thin cry escaped her throat. Recognizing it as a Falcon’s alarm, she sank into the sound. As she did, her muscles, bones, and veins began to contract and change. She drew in upon herself, arms and legs morphing into something else as she did. Wings replaced useless human limbs, and her vision became keen. Most of all, she stopped thinking as a human does.
Shouts and cries from male throats briefly penetrated her consciousness. Then a sudden wind surrounded and lifted her. Wings widespread to embrace the strong current, she headed skyward. Climbing rapidly, she split her attention between the few clouds above her and the men staring up at her. At first she believed she only wanted to be free, but as she began circling high over the Ekewoko, a human thought tore through her.
A man who believed he was his people’s spiritual leader had murdered her mate and stolen a feather from his maybe still-living body.
Screaming, she tucked her wings tight against her body. She couldn’t bring Raci back to life, but she could make his killer pay. Punish him.
Another scream, and she dove. At the last possible moment, she pulled up and spun so her talons slashed Tau’s chest. Blood bloomed from several gashes. Bellowing, the shaman dropped to the ground and curled into a tight ball. Hovering, she tore at his back. Again her talons sank into flesh. She hung on, dug deeper, screamed. So did Tau.
“No! Jola, no!”
Not Tau but another man’s voice.
“Jola, don’t! No!”
Nakos!
Now suspended over the shaman’s quivering body, she focused first on shredded and bleeding skin and then on her surroundings. Except for Nakos, the men had all backed away from Tau, who sobbed and shuddered. Although the warriors gripped their weapons, they seemed frozen, their eyes disbelieving.
Nakos alone stood next to his shaman, his arms outspread in an attempt to protect Tau. He stared unblinking at her.
“Don’t. By all that’s sacred, don’t!”
As a boy, Nakos had risked his sanity by obeying his grandparents’ desperate pleas. What would he do now, offer his body to save his shaman?
A lonely cry slipped past her beak. Facing the heavens again, she flew away.
23
“What are we going to do?” Lord Sakima asked.
Incapable of uttering a word, Nakos shook his head. Then, because he needed something to do, he lifted the bandage off Tau’s back and reassured himself that the bone-deep gouges had stopped bleeding. The shaman lay trembling on his side with his legs tucked against his middle. He still stared at nothing and, except for crying out as the others had tended to his wounds, he hadn’t uttered a sound. In too many ways, Tau’s behavior reminded Nakos of how he’d reacted after he’d granted his grandparents their awful request. Tau had shut down.
“What happened couldn’t have and yet it did,” Sakima said not for the first time. “She’s more than a witch, more than…”
Because he couldn’t explain what had happened any better than his lord had, Nakos made no attempt to finish what the older man had begun. Even with his eyes resolutely open, he clearly saw everything that had happened starting with Jola turning into a falcon.
A falcon! A killing predator.
Why, he needed to know, hadn’t she changed form earlier? She hadn’t had to endure his treatment of her after all. Instead, she could have killed him.
“We can’t stay here,” Sakima muttered.
Although the others were crowded around them, Nakos wasn’t sure everyone had heard, but maybe it wasn’t necessary because surely they’d all come to the same conclusion. Whenever he looked at the peak’s sheer walls, he shuddered and, although maybe he’d saved Tau’s life, he’d been unable to convince himself that Jola—or the falcon she’d become—wouldn’t return to finish what she’d begun.
She hated Tau. It was as simple as that.
But she didn’t hate him. Otherwise, he’d be dead. That, too, was simple. And unbelievably complex.
“Can he be moved?” someone asked. “Even if he can’t walk, we can carry him.”
Where would they go, Nakos wondered. Yes, it wouldn’t take long to return to their camp, but what about after that? Only one option presented itself. The Ekewoko warriors would make their way to the sea, where they’d rejoin the rest of their clan, all of them refugees, homeless.
Everything Tau had told them about their future had slipped away like ice with the sun beating down on it. Instead of being able to cling to the dream of returning to Ekew, the Ekewoko belonged nowhere.
“He isn’t going to die,” Sakima belatedly replied. “And even if he did, none of us wants to remain here. If we leave now, we’ll be back in camp by dark. Our people—it’s time we return to them.”
“And then?”
Locking gazes with Ohanko, Nakos silently acknowledged his friend’s courage in asking the hard question.
“I don’t know.” Lord Sakima sounded like a weary old man.
When Sakima crouched before Tau, Ohanko nodded at Nakos, indicating he wanted him to join him. The two walked away from the others.
“Of course we’ll go to where we left the women and children,” Ohanko said when they were out of earshot of the others. “Then we’ll tell them that that place must become our new home.”
“No one wants to hear—”
“I know. By the spirits, I know! But what choice do we have?”
“None,” Nakos reluctantly admitted. His lord had looked and sounded ancient, but Sakima wasn’t the only one weighed down by their new reality. Nakos hadn’t felt this beaten since his grandparents’ death.
“Something frightens me,” Ohanko continued. “What if she gathers the other Wildings around her? If they attack…”
“Attack?” Nakos muttered.
“You saw her fury.” Ohanko shuddered. “If it wasn’t for you, she would have killed our shaman.”
Ohanko didn’t have to say anything more for Nakos to know what his friend was thinking. “I still can’t believe what I saw,” he admitted. “For her to be two things, human and predator—”
“She can’t be the only one, can she?”
Although he didn’t have the answer, Nakos suspected Ohanko was right. After all, Jola had told him about the first man to have sex with her.
“Will she and others of her kind let us go?” Ohanko asked. “Or will they tear us apart? Even now they might be gathering—”
“Yes, they might.”
The rest of the Ekewoko had undoubtedly come to the same conclusion Ohanko had because by the time Nakos returned to his people, someone had placed Tau on Farajj’s back. The other Ekewoko warriors had positioned themselves around Farajj and, with Lord Sakima at the lead, were all leaving.
Spotting Nakos, Lord Sakima stopped. “This place isn’t safe,” he said.
“I know,” Nakos agree
d.
“The mysteries here—ha, Wilding spirits are far more powerful than anything our shaman has. I pray Tau will survive, and that his magic will show us what we must do.”
Lord Sakima’s expression said he needed Nakos to agree with him about a shaman’s magic, but how could he when nothing like what he’d recently seen had ever happened? Jola, a woman who’d impacted him in ways he’d never expected, was capable not just of changing into a falcon, but nearly killing an Ekewoko.
“What are you going to do?” Ohanko asked Nakos as Lord Sakima started walking again.
“What I have to, to insure that there won’t be another falcon attack.”
His features grim, Ohanko hugged Nakos. “You think that’s possible?”
“I have to try.”
Ohanko shook his head, then nodded. “You’re right. Only you stand a chance of reaching her.”
“If she’s in human form. But if she’s a falcon…”
“I will pray for you. So will everyone else.”
Although she’d been at the top of Raptor’s Craig and in human form for hours, Jola’s muscles were still energized. After gathering the Falcons around her, she’d told everyone what had happened, starting with the Ekewoko’s discovery that no human could climb Raptor’s Craig. Chief Cheyah had pressed for details about the damage she’d inflicted on the shaman, but she’d kept her explanation brief. No one had argued that she shouldn’t have attacked Tau; everyone understood why rage and grief had turned her from human to predator.
“Maybe peace will now fill your heart,” her chief had said. “From now on, you’ll look forward, not back. Raci’s death has been avenged.”
Grateful for her chief’s understanding, she’d nevertheless expressed concern that the Ekewoko might not feel the same way. Agreeing it was possible, Cheyah had ordered his oldest son, Dai, to locate the Ekewoko and report back on what he found, which he’d done a short while ago.
He’d learned nothing that concerned her, Jola reassured herself as she sat by herself watching the sun begin its downward journey. According to Dai, the Ekewoko had shown no sign of planning an attack. Instead, they were hurrying back the way they’d come from, taking their wounded shaman with them.
“I meant it. I believe we have nothing to fear from the strangers. In fact, they reminded me of mice or rabbits scurrying for cover.”
Pulled out of her thoughts by Dai’s unexpected voice, she looked up at her fellow Falcon. Dai, who was next in line to become chief, sat down across from her. “I didn’t say this before because only you need to know.”
“Know what?”
“That one Ekewoko remained behind.”
Her full attention on Dai now, she waited for him to continue. Dai, who was several seasons older than her, had lost his mate to a wasting disease, but before her death they’d raised one brood, and those children had given Dai a reason to go on. After Raci’s murder, she and Dai had talked about how vital the love of those around them was in the face of grief. Some, her mother among them, had wondered if she and Dai might mate, but with Raci’s death so new and raw, she hadn’t been able to concentrate.
“You saw me watching over you after he captured you, didn’t you?” Dai asked before she could respond.
“That was you?”
Dai, who in human form had little hair and big feet and buttocks like his father, nodded. “If I’d believed your life was in danger, I would have done what you did to Raci’s killer.”
“Knowing I wasn’t completely alone helped.”
Dai was silent for several seconds. “I wasn’t there all the time, but enough that I saw what took place between you and your captor.”
Remembering her and Nakos’s frenzied sex, she lowered her gaze. “Ah, you said not every Ekewoko left.”
“Yes.” Dai drew out the word. “He remained behind. What, if anything, are you going to do?”
A million possibilities swirled through her. Most of all, she wished Dai hadn’t told her what he had. Then, her emotions shifting, she wished Nakos had left with the others because the last thing she wanted was to see him again, to hear his voice or look into his eyes, to remember his skillful handling of her body and her wild responses.
“What are you going to do?” Dai repeated.
On the brink of shrugging, she took note of her hands. Her short, smooth nails showed no sign of having penetrated human flesh and striking bone, but she clearly remembered her frenzy as she’d avenged Raci’s death. These slender female hands also served as claws. They had two roles, two purposes.
Standing, she walked over to the edge of the craig. When she lifted her arms, a sharp wind tossed her hair into her eyes, but it didn’t matter because in a moment, she’d change.
It had to be her.
One arm lifted to shield his eyes, Nakos studied the small shape circling high overhead. Even as his heart raced and his throat threatened to close down, he admitted he’d never seen anything more beautiful.
Beautiful and deadly.
His fingers twitched. If she maintained the same measured pace, he could aim an arrow at her before she reached him, but not only could the lazy float turn into a breath-stealing dive in a heartbeat, he couldn’t shoot. Not her.
His arm still lifted, he widened his stance. She was little more than a speck, a piece of nothing in a pristine sky. Maybe the wind toying with him didn’t reach that high. Otherwise, wouldn’t she be tossed about?
Questions about the nature of things at Screaming Wind flowed out of him because, against all odds, he’d hoped this would happen, that the two of them could talk once more—but what if she refused to shake off her predator body?
What if she hadn’t satisfied her need for revenge?
This ability to change from one thing to another was a gift from forces the Ekewoko knew nothing about. How ignorant he and the rest of his people had been to think they had a right to come here.
But Tau’s dreams and spells—
She was now so close that he could make out her beak and the claws pulled up against her body. Those same claws had nearly killed his shaman and might do the same to him.
His lips pressed together, he watched as she settled to the ground a few feet away. In contrast to a falcon’s deadly dive, her slow landing had been magical, but maybe he only thought that because the woman living inside the predator body had captured his soul.
After shaking herself so her feathers shimmered, she folded her wings. She was small and deceptively fragile looking. If he was quick enough, he might be able to strike her before she could react. Protect himself.
Then she shimmered again, and nothing else mattered.
There Jola was, inch by naked inch. Watching her emerge from the sudden mist that had been a predator numbed his legs while lifting his cock. He should have guessed she’d be nude, should have prepared himself for lean arms and legs and full breasts. Instead, gaping, he stared at what was both familiar and new.
Her dark hair floated over her cheeks and against her throat. Staring at her neck, he cursed himself for having placed a rope around it. Then he turned his attention to her hands and memories of those slender wrists hidden beneath loops of rope filled him with self-hatred.
But if he hadn’t restrained her, would her fingers have become claws?
“What are you doing here?” he asked, belatedly finding his voice.
“I wanted to ask you the same thing.”
She seemed to have disconnected herself from her body. It was as if her physical form didn’t matter. He, on the other hand, had all he could do to keep from cradling his too-heavy cock.
Damn her! She was responsible!
“What am I doing here?” he finally responded. “Maybe because I believe I deserve an explanation.”
“You what?”
Realizing she wasn’t as in control as he’d initially believed allowed him to relax a bit. She wasn’t going to kill him, because if that had been her goal, she would have already torn him apart.
&
nbsp; “An explanation,” he said. “Why didn’t you show me what you’re capable of at the beginning? You didn’t have to submit—only, it wasn’t submission, was it? You wanted sex as much as I did. Maybe more.”
Her eyes seemed to be narrowing. If she started changing again—
“That’s it,” he threw at her. “For reasons I don’t understand, you wanted me. My body anyway. Maybe you were going to prove how superior your kind—”
“We’re Falcons.”
Falcons. Of course. “All right. Your intent was to beat me down. Make me believe I was in control when all along it was the other way. What was it, you were going to throw my supposed superiority in my face? Then you’d return to your—to the Falcons and tell them what fools Ekewoko are?”
“I wouldn’t do that.”
“Why should I believe you?”
“You’re right. You shouldn’t.” She ran her hands down her sides, then folded them over her belly as if she didn’t know what to do with them. “Do you know why I did what I did?”
“Change into a Falcon, you mean?”
Looking weary, she shook her head. “I had no control over that. It happened, it simply happened. As for why I remained a woman until today, near Raptor’s Craig is the only place Falcons can leave one body and enter another.”
“Why should I believe you?” Even as he spoke, he regretted his outburst. But his emotions were wild things, maybe as wild as she was. “I should thank the spirits that you didn’t rip me to shreds.”
“Maybe you should.”
“If I’d known what you were capable of, none of this would have happened. From the beginning, I would have known how wrong Tau was to believe he could control—”
“Would you have told him?”
The conversation was making his head pound when he had all he could do to control the knots in his belly and between his legs. “I don’t know.”
“Is he going to live?”
“Do you care?”
“He killed my mate,” she whispered. “When I saw the feather on his chest, I knew.”
“You nearly killed him.”