by V M Black
And just then, the beam of a flashlight sliced down into the cabin of the car.
Levi groaned. “Just what we need.”
“That SD card had still better work, because you’re going to need those bank accounts. Restoration’s going to be a bitch,” Harper said.
“You’re not still talking about your car, are you?” he said. “I don’t think that’s our first priority right now.”
“Yeah. First priority’s getting you out of here in one piece,” she said. Her voice was shaking, and for a second he thought it was hysteria. Then he realized that it was the river water—the bite of chill that he found merely uncomfortable would be dangerous to a human.
“Me?” It seemed to him that she was in far more immediate danger.
The car had come to rest with the driver’s side angled toward the bank they’d come from. Levi bent to squint out of Harper’s window. A strip of flattened brush and snapped shrubs marked their path from the stream up to the top of the slope—and there, sure enough, was the second sedan, the headlights shining out over the water as one of the goons pointed a flashlight down at them.
No going back that way.
“I can’t get money out of a corpse,” Harper clarified.
Levi decided to ignore that. “Out my window.”
Putting words to action, he hooked the top of the door with the hand that held his jacket and shot his feet through. His hips and shoulders followed, and he turned as his boots met the sucking mud of riverbed and tucked the pistol into his waistband. The water had finished filling the car. Holding her purse high, Harper half-crawled, half-swam across the bench seat toward him. She came out headfirst, and he grabbed her under the arms so she didn’t go under, pulling her ample body against his as she came through the window and setting her on her feet.
They were safe for the moment, hidden from sight by the bulk of the car.
“It’s only a matter of time before they start shooting,” Levi told her. “If they’ve got rifles with scopes in that car....”
It was hard to tell if she was shuddering or just shivering from the cold. “You don’t have to spell it out,” she said around chattering teeth.
He had to get her out of the water, and fast. He cast a look across the river, his werewolf-sharp vision cutting through the darkness. It was only a few hundred yards across. Easy enough—for him. But what about Harper?
“Can you swim?” he asked.
“Yeah. In clothes? I don’t know,” she said.
“Right then.” He stepped back and handed her his jacket. “Put this on. You won’t do any good frozen to death.”
She just nodded, struggling into the wet fabric and leather before slinging the purse crosswise across her body. The bottom of it dipped into the water—but it was far too late to worry about that now.
Sounds came from the top of the slope—voices and the snapping of branches. The men were headed down to get them.
“Do you still know where we are?” he asked.
“Almost to my cousin’s place,” she said. “It backs up to the other side of the river. It’s like maybe five minutes by car, so two, three miles away downstream?”
“Okay. We’ll head there. Once we reach the opposite bank, you’ll tell me where to go.”
“Sure thing.” Her voice shook. She was losing heat fast. Even if it was safe to stay there—and it definitely wasn’t—she wouldn’t last long in this cold.
Levi stripped off his shirt and thrust it at her with his luger. “I’m going to need these again.”
She blinked and then took them, shoving them into the purse. “You’re shifting?”
“I can’t swim for both of us in this shape. Not far, at any rate.” He stripped off his boots and socks, passing them over. The socks went into the purse, too, but she hung onto the boots.
“Don’t drop those,” he warned.
“I wasn’t planning on it,” she said.
His pants and underwear came next. Without the insulation of the layers of fabric to hold slightly warmer water against his body, goose bumps crawled across his flesh, and he had a slightly paranoid twinge in relation to his more sensitive bits dangling freely and unprotected in the water.
He ignored that as he gave her the last of his clothes. Her purse was bulging, the pants peeking over the top.
The men’s voices were closer now. They’d start shooting soon.
Levi gave her a lopsided grin. “So, Harper, ever ridden a wolf?”
Chapter Eight
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Harper said, forcing the words through her chattering teeth.
But the man standing naked—again—and gorgeous in front of her didn’t seem to be joking.
“I’ll shift, and we’ll stay low in the water, just our heads above the surface. Hang onto my neck on the side away from the car, and I’ll get us to the other bank,” he said.
“And if they shoot?” she asked.
“I’ll dive,” he said. “Bullets shatter when they hit the water, so even six inches under, we’ll be pretty safe.”
“That sounds like a great idea,” she said in a tone that said it was a terrible idea.
“Do you have a better one?”
She didn’t, so she clamped her jaw shut.
“Right,” he said. “I know you’re cold, and I’ll get you out of this as soon as I can. Just...try to stay awake, okay? No matter what, try to stay awake.”
“Okay,” she said because she saw no alternative.
“Right. Here I go.” This time, he didn’t tell her to look away, and so Harper watched. His body sprouted hair before rearranging itself, his jaw and nose elongating into a wolf’s snout, his arms moving down as his chest deepened and his entire body canting forward until he was underwater up to his shoulders, only his head standing above it.
He gave her a nod and a low whine, and she realized that he wanted her to take his neck. Right, then. She zipped up his jacket, hoping that it would provide some small protection from the river, still frigid with the snowmelt from the mountains, and then she braced herself and slid deeper into the water.
The icy water closed like a vise around her chest as she slid in up to her neck, knocking all other thought from her mind as her muscles locked up. But she shoved forward off the muddy bottom of the stream, and her legs reluctantly obeyed, sending her against the shaggy body of the wolf. She wrapped her arms around his neck, burying her fingers deep in his fur.
“This is seriously crazy,” she muttered.
The wolf made no reply, merely starting forward through the river, angling downstream to pass under the bridge. Harper pushed, too, digging the toes of her boots into the mud, doing a kind of slow-motion run in the water. The purse, heavy with the ammo and his clothes, dragged at her neck. As they cleared the bulk of the car—oh, God, her Baby, sitting on the river bottom—she looked back over the roof and made out the shapes of two men, approaching the shore.
The flashlight danced inside the car again. At their distance, there was no mistaking that the car was empty now, and the men’s curses rang out across the water.
Harper felt a surge of satisfaction at their anger and dismay. Of course, being sure that their prey wasn’t in the car only meant they’d realize where she and Levi had gone that much sooner....
The stream got deeper, and Harper’s feet pushed her along at increasingly more vertical angles. A strange peace settled over her, a peculiar sense of the hard, brittle beauty of the night. Hanging over the river, the full moon gilded the water’s tiny ripples beyond the shadows of the bridge. A car rocketed by on the road above, the sound tossed down as a roar that broke the silence of the night into a thousand pieces. As they reached the edge of the bridge, Harper realized that Levi was swimming, his strides having changed to a paddle so smoothly that she hadn’t even noticed.
“Are you sure you can swim the whole thing?” she asked softly.
But Levi made no reply.
Then Harper’s foot reached out to take
the next step, and it met nothing but water. She tightened her grip on Levi’s neck before she could slip under the water, and after a moment’s panic, she filled her lungs and let her body float out behind her, kicking herself along as best as she could in her boots with the heavy purse pulling her toward the bottom of the river.
Levi didn’t sink an inch or slow down, continuing to swim at a strong, steady pace. Harper realized she wasn’t shivering anymore. She didn’t know why, but she decided not to question it, since she couldn’t do anything about it one way or another.
Then came the sound that Harper dreaded. Another shout from the shore, and this time, the words sent terror into her knotted stomach.
“There they are! Under the bridge. Shoot them!”
Harper’s arms squeezed convulsively around Levi’s neck—which was just as well, because at that moment, she felt him change. The hair shrank back, the bones and muscles remodeling themselves as his skin turned smooth. She gasped, and an instant later, she was thrust underwater as he dove toward the river bottom.
The cold hit her face like a slap, and she lost her grip on his boots. He pushed her with his body, sliding her across it so that she was on his back instead of dangling to one side. She forced herself to loosen her hands and shift her grip his shoulders. Her eyes were wide open, but she could see nothing in the murk, only feel his shoulders under her hands, the muscles working as he took long, broad strokes that pulled them down and across.
There was a noise, made muddy by the water, and she realized that it was the report of a gunshot. She braced herself for the sting of a bullet, but none came. There was another shot, and another, and still no ball of lead came slamming into her.
A tremor of elation went through her. Levi was right. The men couldn’t hit them, not there, under the water. But her glee evaporated as the burn in her lung grew and Levi made no move to head toward the surface.
The pain was real now, a throbbing need for air. Her hands tightened on his shoulders, but he gave no sign of noticing. How long could he stay under? Longer than she could, she was sure, and she had no chance of breaking the surface again on her own, not in her layers of clothes and with the purse around her body and the heavy shoes on her feet.
Lights began to dance in front of her eyes. Out of the water or under it, she was going to have to breathe soon. She exhaled slowly, trying to make the air last as long as she could. The sound of another shot came—or was that her heart, thudding in her ears? The last whisper of air left her, bubbling past her lips. The lights were getting brighter now, the pressure of her lungs unbearable. She felt her hands loosening as she fought with the last ounce of her strength not to take the water into her lungs—
And then Levi exploded from the water, and she sucked in air hard, with the desperation of the drowning.
The gun’s report was unmistakable this time, and it reached her ears at the same time as a loud crack close by. The darkness and exploding lights receded from her vision as she panted, and she realized that they were on the other side of a concrete pylon on the far side of the bridge. The bullet meant for them had smacked into the other side.
Levi was still in human form, holding her up as he treaded water. She tried, faintly, to add her own small effort, but her legs wouldn’t obey. Instead, it was all she could do to cling to him, taking deep, fast breaths, sending oxygen roaring back into her starved body.
“We’re going to have to go under one more time,” Levi said, and she realized that he, too, was breathless. “They can’t see us here, don’t know where we are. But we have to get beyond where they’re looking.”
Harper shook her head, unable to speak. Please, no, I can’t—
But if he could feel what she was doing, he gave no sign. Instead, he said, “On the count of three. Breathe as fast as you can—hyperventilate to get as much oxygen into your blood. One. Two. Three.”
Unable to stop him, Harper obeyed, breathing as deep and fast as she possibly could, taking one last, frantic breath just before her face went under. She felt Levi’s body bunch, his legs tangling in hers for an instant as he reached forward with his arms. Then he shot forward, a powerful thrust against the pylon augmented by a stroke of his arms.
Harper just focused on hanging on.
This time the pressure started sooner, the burning even worse. She exhaled slowly to ease it, but she knew it would do no good. The long motions of Levi’s arms pulled them through the water, but it didn’t matter. It didn’t matter that she wasn’t going to be shot, not with lungs full of water, because she had to breathe, she had to breathe right now.
Harper dug her fingers into his shoulders even as a different kind of blackness spread over her vision. The bubbles of her life breath tickled her lips. She was going to die, going to die, die, die, die—
And then her head broke the water again. This time, there was no treading water—Levi was standing, his legs planted firmly on the streambed. Which was just as well, because just then, the cold and oxygen deprivation became too much, and her hands let go.
Levy caught her before she could slide under the water, pulling her around him and into his arms.
Harper’s face barely cleared the water. She didn’t care, though, because she didn’t feel cold at all anymore. Instead, a strange kind of lassitude filled her, and her head felt like a balloon floating above her body. She knew she was breathing fast, her body sucking air, but somehow, it was almost as if it was happening to someone else.
Distantly, she realized that Levi was cursing. He must have realized that she’d dropped his boots.
“I’m sorry about your boots,” she said dreamily. “But you owe me a car.”
Vaguely, she was aware of him moving through the water, pushing toward to the line of trees on the opposite shore. But in her vision, it seemed to dance like a distant star, never growing closer.
“I’m sorry,” she repeated again, a low murmur like the sound of the river around her body. “Sorry.”
And then her head dropped to his shoulder, and the dark waters closed over her mind.
Chapter Nine
Levi’s heart dropped as Harper’s body went limp in his arms. Swearing, he forged ahead through the water, making for the shore as fast as he could.
“I told you to stay awake,” he whispered harshly.
She didn’t stir. He had to get her warm—and fast. Or else he might lose her.
And the idea scared him more than he cared to examine.
The stream still came halfway up his chest, and her body was losing heat every second it was in the water. He held her ample body high and pressed onwards, as fast as he could make his legs move through the water, no longer angling downstream but heading straight toward the shore across the current.
In the distance, his werewolf-sharp hearing could hear the two men on the far shore, but even he couldn’t see them under the bridge and across the stream in the darkness.
“You think we got them?”
“Had to. You saw them go under, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Did they come up again?”
“I don’t think so.”
“So unless they’ve learned to breathe underwater, they’re dead, right?”
“Well, he’s a werewolf—”
“Right, a werewolf. Not a freaking weretrout. They’re dead, okay? We’ll wait for Guttmacher to catch up, and we’ll search the shores in the morning. We’re not going to find anything in the dark.”
“If you’re wrong, it’s going to be our asses.”
“I’m not wrong.”
The water now reached Levi’s waist, and only Harper’s round backside still dragged in it. Then the water dropped to his hips, his thighs, his knees. With every step, the shore drew closer, until finally, he stepped from mud to grass.
Harper’s breath was too slow, too shallow against his chest, but still he couldn’t afford to do anything about it. He jogged through the marshy brush up the gradual slope until he reached the treeline, then
a dozen yards more before he could risk stopping.
Levi laid her on the ground gently, then set to work stripping her methodically—first, freeing the purse across her body, then his jacket and her shirt, boots, and pants, even rolling her panties off and releasing her breasts from her bra. Anything that might hold cold water against her body had to go.
These were not, he thought grimly, the circumstances in which he’d dreamed of taking off her clothes. As it was, though, his stomach clenched with the cold clamminess of her flesh. He put a hand against her chest just below her throat and was reassured by the tiny, fluttering breaths.
Still she didn’t stir, her generous body lying pale and unresponsive in the moonlight that filtered through the trees. Levi knelt in the weeds and leaves next to her, taking one of her arms and chafing it rapidly with his hand until the skin was warm under his fingers. Then he did the same with the other arm—avoiding the slice across her bicep, pale and bloodless now, where the bullet had kissed her skin.
He chafed her legs in turn, rubbing the skin until it was pink. And then he lay next to her on the cold earth and pulled her body against his, rolling her so that her chest was pressed into his. Her cheek was against his shoulder, her arm tucked between their bellies and her side protected from the cold ground by his arm. Only her hip touched the leaves—he pulled her lower thigh so it nestled between his own, hooking her other leg up over his hip. He rubbed her back in long, slow motions with his free hand, trying to get some more warmth into her body from the flat of his palm.
At first, Harper’s skin was so cold that his own flesh shrank away, but gradually, she warmed against him. Her breathing, butterfly-light at first, slowly deepened, and she started shivering violently. And as she thawed, so did the part of him that was frozen in fear. And, predictably, something else began to stir at the presence of all those lush curves pressed naked against his body, circumstances be damned.