Shifter Planet

by D. B. Reynolds

  It was a grim and bloody task, though not nearly as grim as the thoughts in her head once she got a good look at the wounds themselves. The injuries were narrow and deep, made with something very sharp and hard as diamond. Something that punctured the skin in a familiar pattern of bloody holes dug into the meat followed by parallel rows of torn flesh. Something very much like the claws of a big cat. Her brain reeled at the inevitable conclusion.

  A shifter had done this, had attacked one of his own and left him to die. That just didn’t happen on Harp. Shifters were combative and difficult, big powerful men with the high-strung personalities of their indigenous ancestor. They often fought with one another, inflicting wounds that would have killed an ordinary human ten times over. But there was also a bond among them that went beyond friendship, beyond family. Or there had been.

  Her heart clenched with fear as she realized that only chance had driven her across Rhodry’s path. If she’d headed straight for the Green that first day, if she’d stopped tonight when she should have, made camp before it got dark, before the snow started, she never would have known he was here. He would have frozen to death, or worse. She thought about the hungry hycats. A shifter would have thought about them too, would have known what could happen. Whoever had done this had deliberately left Rhodry out here half dead and unable to defend himself, fresh meat for the scavengers to dispose of.

  It was unthinkable.

  She shivered and looked around the small clearing, suddenly grateful for concealment of the snow and the dark, hoping his enemies wouldn’t bother to check on the results of their handiwork.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Amanda winced in sympathy as she maneuvered Rhodry’s arms back into his shirt, then tugged it carefully down over the makeshift bandages now bulking his broad chest. She’d done the best she could, focused only on stopping the bleeding. His shirt, even shredded as it was, was clingy enough to help hold the bandages in place and that was good, because it was critical that he not bleed for the next few hours. It wouldn’t do any good to move away from the dead hycats if she left a blood trail in her wake.

  Later, when they reached somewhere safe, she’d do a proper job, probably sacrificing another of her dwindling supply of shirts. Especially if Rhodry didn’t shift soon. That was for later. Now was for running.

  The trees had ceased their song of snow, replacing it with muttered whispers of creatures moving in the night, of blood and claw and tooth and the feast of flesh to come. Hungry animals would soon descend on the clearing, fighting over the carcasses, killing each other and creating more meat to fight over.

  She dug into her bra and pulled out a small folded square of silver the size of a thick tissue. Yet another hidden fallback for her trial, in case she lost her sleeping bag. Ripping off the tab, she unfolded it completely until she had a thermal sheet big enough to cover an adult human, and yet so thin that she had trouble shaking it out enough to lay it flat. The tissue-thin material was incredibly tough and could maintain a body’s heat almost indefinitely under optimal conditions—which these admittedly weren’t. It would still provide several hours of protection, which was what Rhodry needed right now.

  Moving with quick, economical efficiency, she lifted her cloak from the unconscious shifter, and gently rolled him off the sleeping bag and onto the thermal sheet. Unzipping the bag until it was flat, she then rolled him back, tucking the sheet around his body as tightly as she could before zipping the bag completely closed, pausing only at the last minute to lean down and whisper directly into his ear, “You’re safe now. I won’t leave you.”

  She didn’t know why she did that, didn’t know if he could even hear her. Hearing was supposed to be the last sense to go before unconsciousness, though. And the first one to return. So maybe somewhere behind those beautiful golden eyes Rhodry de Mendoza was aware of everything happening around him, and unable to let anyone know. She’d be terrified if that happened to her, especially if there was no one around to reassure her that things were all right. So she whispered in his ear, and gave his shoulder a final pat before closing the zipper. Feeling the minutes ticking away, she threw her few supplies into her pack and donned her now blood-stained cloak. Her knife went back into the sheath at her belt and her bow was slung back over her shoulder where she could get to it easily.

  She pulled on her gloves, and quickly discovered they made it too difficult to get a good hold on the slick fabric of the sleeping bag. While a few minutes without them soon convinced her she was risking frostbite. So she pulled them on again, smoothing the worn leather over her fingers, then rubbed her gloved hands on the wound of a broken branch, coating the palms and fingers with sticky sap. They were her favorite gloves, worn soft in all the right places, hugging her fingers and palms perfectly…and she’d never get them clean after this. The sap would sink in and stiffen the leather into uselessness. She didn’t hesitate. She got them good and sticky, because pulling the sleeping bag over the uneven ground would be difficult enough, without having to constantly fight for a firm hold on the bag.

  Once she’d found someplace safe, or as safe as they were likely to get, she’d rig something better. A travois maybe, like she’d seen in books. Of course, she didn’t have a donkey or even a dog to pull it. Maybe some variation on the theme. In any event, she didn’t dare take the time to do it now. Standing up, she gripped the leading edge of the sleeping bag and pulled.

  It took a while to get started. The ground inside the small clearing was churned up from the fight and littered with hycat bodies and blood. She had to bend almost to the ground to make any headway, but once she got going, momentum grew until she was moving quickly out of the clearing and back among the trees. As soon as she hit the new-fallen snow on the almost invisible game trail, Rhodry’s shifter weight made for easier going as the top layer melted beneath the friction of the heavy, waterproof bag.

  Unfortunately, if his enemies were still around somewhere, she was leaving a clear trail for them to follow. It would have been better to leave the well-traveled path and forge her own way through the brush, with its twisted tree roots and congested undergrowth. That was, of course, impossible while trailing an injured shifter behind her. Besides, the most important thing right now was speed, not concealment.

  Twenty yards out, she paused, leaving Rhodry in the sleeping bag tucked under the snow-heavy boughs. Walking their back trail, flashing her penlight from side to side, she looked for signs of blood mapping their escape. As she’d feared, the bag itself was leaving a track in the new snow that a two-year-old child could have followed. The good news was that hycats and ice bears both tracked by smell, not sight. The bad news was that all the bags and blankets in the world wouldn’t stop a predator from scenting their passage if the wind came up the right way. She was counting on the plentiful meat in the clearing to occupy any creatures who might think to follow, hoping they’d ignore an obscure scent trail in favor of the readily available, fresh and bloody carcasses lying out in the open for the taking.

  She hurried back up the trail and paused long enough to press a hand to Rhodry’s shoulder through the bag, letting him know she was still with him. Then she grabbed the bag once again and set off through the trees.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  One foot at a time. That became her mantra as she plowed forward, back bowed and aching, gloved hands frozen into claws inside the stiff leather. She concentrated on her legs, on her knees pumping up and down. Her booted feet barely cleared the surface of the deep snow before disappearing again as she forged her way forward, slow step by slow step. Traveling in a haze of fatigue, aware of nothing beyond the next few feet of trail, it was several yards before she realized that something had changed.

  She paused, waiting for her tired eyes to focus, staring, without seeing, at her thighs where they emerged from the knee-deep snow. She blinked. For the first time since beginning this hellish march, she could actually see that her leggings were brown beneath their crust of icy white. The sun
had finally risen. She looked up to see little more than a blur of silver in the congested gray sky. Her relief was so great it almost drove her to her knees, almost succeeded in doing what the long hours of toiling in the pitch black night had not. She bit back of sob of utter exhaustion, rubbing away the tears before they could freeze on her cheeks, scraping skin left raw by the freezing air.

  She had no idea how far they’d come, didn’t know if they were even going in the right direction. More than once she’d looked up to find the barely-made-out rock formation or fallen tree she’d been aiming for had disappeared beneath a white sameness that made it almost impossible to navigate. She could have gotten turned around and doubled back on herself a dozen times without knowing. Her little penlight had been comforting, and of little real value—too cold to hold in her teeth and useless hanging on its strap around her neck and pointing downward.

  She’d soon turned it off, choosing to save battery power instead. She’d forgotten how dark it could get in the forest at night.

  In her worst fears about the Guild trial, she’d never contemplated traveling through a snowstorm in the dead of night with only her penlight, while pulling some three hundred pounds of injured shifter behind her. She was freezing, wet, tired, and sore down to the marrow of her bones. If kindly Orrin Brady had dropped out of a tree at this moment, and given her the option of quitting, she thought she might have taken it. Might have.

  Bending her back to the task one final time, she took firm hold of the sleeping bag with its cargo of injured shifter and started walking again, riding a false burst of optimism that she knew wouldn’t last. It helped get her moving, helped her persuade her legs to take one more step and then another. She needed food and water. She needed to get warm again, and she needed to sleep. And that meant she needed to find someplace safe, if only for a few hours.

  With the last of her strength, she made her way toward a trio of fallen trees. They’d been blasted by lightning long ago and now lay collapsed on one another just below the crest of a small hill, their thick trunks blackened by fire and hard as stone after years of harsh weather. A dense thicket had grown in below them, sheltered in the pocket created by their collapse, protected from the wind by their bulk.

  She lowered Rhodry to the ground, then dropped to her hands and knees and pushed her way past the prickly branches into the cave-like space beneath the huge trunks. It was high enough for her to sit almost upright, with sufficient width for them to stretch out fully, which would make it a lot easier on the injured Rhodry. She did a quick sweep with gloved hands, clearing away small stones and chunks of bark, then reversed her course through the thicket, grabbed hold of the now-filthy sleeping bag, and dragged Rhodry in behind her.

  He was the lucky one. All wrapped up in his nice little cocoon while she’d had to endure the whip-thin sting of branches against the exposed skin on her face, the wet slide of ice down her neck as a clump of snow somehow found its way beneath her layers of clothing.

  Clumsy with fatigue and cramped in the narrow space, she slipped her short bow over her head and let the straps of her backpack slide down her arms to the ground. Her overworked muscles immediately began to ache in earnest, as if now that she’d stopped, they felt free to protest her abuse. She stretched her back in a fruitless effort to relieve the strain of hours spent hunched over in the dark. Her brain was already beginning to shut down, her eyelids so heavy it was an effort to keep them open.

  She roused herself with an effort, wanting to check on Rhodry before she slept, needing to make sure he was breathing and that his color remained good. A little voice in her head kept saying it didn’t matter, that there was nothing else she could do for him anyway. It was a message she’d been ignoring for all the hours she’d already struggled to keep him alive, and she no longer heard it.

  She unzipped the sleeping bag one more time, her blurry eyes seeing him better in the wan light of dawn through the thicket than she had since finding him.

  “Hello, again,” she said softly, talking to him as she’d done every time they stopped to rest during the long, endless night, letting him know she was here, that he wasn’t alone, that he was still alive. “We made it, you know,” she continued. “The sun’s up. I can see my hand in front of my face. Or your face,” she added, her fingers reaching out to stroke the fine arch of one dark eyebrow.

  He had a good face, despite his perpetual glower—at least whenever she was around. His skin was a natural golden brown, with a broad brow and sharp cheekbones tapering to a strong chin. His lips were full and, she knew from experience, surprisingly sensuous. And now that he was sleeping instead of scowling at her, and those beautiful eyes were hidden behind closed lids, with long, thick lashes that lay against a cheek rough with stubble…

  What the hell are you doing, Amanda? She snapped her hand back, staring at her fingers as if they belonged to someone else. She was tired, that was all. Tired and feeling protective of the man whose life had been entrusted to her care. It was perfectly natural.

  She checked his bandages quickly, schooling herself to remain clinical and impersonal as she drew the stretchy shirt up over his chest. He was warm, not hot, a healthy warmth courtesy of that wonderful shifter metabolism. Her primitive bandages were holding well enough, soaked with blood that was dry and black, which meant for now at least the bleeding had stopped.

  She couldn’t trust herself to do anything more than check him right now. She was having trouble simply focusing her eyes, and as long as he was stable, they’d both be better off if she grabbed a couple hours’ sleep first. Just a short nap. She was so tired, every muscle aching. Her eyes tried to close, and she forced them open one more time.

  Pulling his shirt back down, she tucked the silvery thermal back around his body and pulled the sleeping bag over on top of him. She was reaching to close the side zipper when she paused in mid-reach, running her gaze down the length of the sleeping bag and back up again. She could wrap up in her jacket and cloak and be reasonably comfortable on the bare ground, especially protected from the wind as they were now.

  On the other hand, he would probably do better if she slept right next to him, drawing both warmth and comfort from her presence. And the sleeping bag was designed to hold more than one person in a pinch, although he was far larger than the designers had ever intended, and it would be a tight fit with both of them. She surveyed the cold, hard ground and remembered his warm skin beneath her frozen hand. She looked up as the thicket trembled suddenly in a fresh gust of wind.

  It was, after all, her sleeping bag.

  Taking off her cloak and spreading it on the ground to dry, she scooted down into the sleeping bag next to Rhodry, careful to avoid jostling him any more than necessary. After placing her weapons where she could reach them easily, she pulled the top of the bag up over both their heads and zipped it almost completely closed. Lying on her side, her back to Rhodry, she finally let herself relax one muscle at a time, feeling the heat from his body seep into her frozen self. He didn’t move, didn’t acknowledge her in any way, either untroubled or unaware of her presence.

  Most likely the latter. He’s probably concussed, maybe in a coma. I should stay awake, check on him every hour, make sure…

  Behind closed eyes, Rhodry’s awareness stirred, sensing his own injuries, smelling blood, shifter blood. His blood. So much blood it was difficult to smell anything else. He reached instinctively for his animal self, for the shift that would begin the healing and return his strength.

  Nothing. Not even pain.

  His thoughts stuttered in confusion and he tried again, stretching out as he’d done a thousand times, ten thousand times over his life, feeling the glide of muscle over bone…

  And still nothing. Fighting panic, he forced himself to concentrate, to take stock of his situation.

  It was obvious that he was badly injured, much worse than he’d first thought. But he wasn’t alone. Someone was curled up next to him, breathing evenly, sleeping. His own blood scent wa
s too overwhelming for his nose to tell him who lay next to him. One of his cousins most likely, letting him know he was with clan, cared for, protected. His animal wasn’t within reach, but it was still within him. He could feel it sleeping deep inside. So he would sleep too. And when he woke, he would shift.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Amanda froze, not understanding for a single terrified moment where she was, why she couldn’t move, why there was no light. Memory returned and she stifled a groan, having hoped it was all just a horrible dream, a nightmare brought on by exhaustion.

  Unfortunately, while the exhaustion was real, the nightmare was too. She was stuck inside a sleeping bag in the middle of freezing nowhere with a badly injured shifter who, when he wasn’t kissing her crazy, pretty much hated her and everything she stood for. If that wasn’t a nightmare, she clearly didn’t know what the word meant.

  She’d pulled the zipper nearly closed earlier to conserve heat, and now she fumbled blindly for the double pull, thinking her plan had worked a little too well. If she didn’t get some fresh air soon, she was going to start screaming, probably not the best wake-up call for her current bedmate. Her fingers found the sturdy tab just in time and she yanked it down, taking a deep breath of the cold air that rushed in. She rolled out of the bag in a hurry and re-zipped it halfway, tucking it around the injured shifter, but leaving his face uncovered. If she’d been stifling, he probably was too.

  Although not quite warm in their hideaway beneath the tree trunks, it wasn’t really cold either. The scruffy thicket had been mostly bare when she’d pushed inside before, but it was now almost completely encased in a layer of snow and ice. Perhaps the wind had shifted or some critical mass had been met on the hillside above. Whatever it was, the compressed snow made a very effective insulator against the freezing temperatures. A little bit of light filtered through, enough to let her know it was still daylight, and the muffled quality of sound made her think the heavy snow continued outside. But they were warm and dry, and fairly well hidden in here. What Rhodry needed most, what they both needed most, was a place to hunker down and rest for a day or more. And while the storm trapped them in place, it also prevented anyone from coming to look for them. In most cases, that would be a bad thing, but when the people looking for you were your enemies, the very ones responsible for your predicament, that changed the calculus somewhat.