by C. T. Adams
“Oh, okay.” The sullen tone in her voice vanished when she started over from the beginning.
Inch by inch the SUV rose from the ground as Cara’s heels dug in deeper. The oak bark cracked, and sharp branches splintered under the force, cutting through her shirt and wedging into her back. Now her neck muscles were starting to spasm and she wanted to scream from the exertion. When she thought it was high enough, she pressed outward with her magic, searching for the woman with senses she couldn’t explain. Power swelled and flowed, a subtle wind that touched every surface—caressed the blades of grass, each flower and leaf until she touched a leg. She knew it was a leg, but even after years of training, she still couldn’t explain how she could sense a body among the surrounding rocks and branches.
She let the woman fill her mind until every nuance of her body was memorized. The world disappeared as she surrounded the woman with magic, felt the almost sensual tingle as she became one with another living, breathing being. She grieved at the damage to the woman’s legs and went an extra step—one she hadn’t planned—and mended the fractures, attached torn ligaments, and let blood flow again through undamaged veins.
Then, as she felt her arms failing and her legs buckling, she lifted the woman’s form—pulled it from beneath the twisted metal and floated her a few feet, to safety.
Seconds later, gravity won the battle and the vehicle slipped from her hands, crashing down to the ground loud enough to make Brittany scream, turn on the little flashlight, and start to run crookedly toward the tree. “Mommy! Cara! Is Mommy okay?”
Cara took a moment to catch her breath before hurrying toward the girl and stopping her from limping around the back of the SUV. “Your mommy will be okay now. But she’s hurt, so I don’t want you to see her until I wake her up. But I promise you she’ll be fine. Now, you take my big flashlight and give me the little one.” She removed the pen-light from the girl’s hand and gave her the large flashlight. With four D cells, it was heavy enough to force the girl to concentrate to keep it steady.
Tears were flowing freely down the girl’s scratched, dirtied face, and she looked up into Cara’s face with desperation. “Mommy’s okay, isn’t she? Daddy got hurt once and he never came home. I don’t want Mommy not to come home!”
Cara heard a car door slam from behind her squad car, although she hadn’t seen headlights or heard it arrive.
A pleasant baritone spoke from the darkness. “Your mommy is going to be fine.” The girl pointed the flashlight up and smiled when she saw a man wearing a Texas Ranger white hat and uniform walking toward them. She didn’t ask a single question, but just ran over and hugged his leg and walked away to sit down on the ground, telling Mr. Bear that everything would be fine now.
Cara lowered her voice to the lightest whisper and shook her head in amazement. “Y’know, Ranger Kerchee, that’s just weird how you do that magical persuasion thing. I didn’t even see you drive up, and I’m supposed to be the Alpha around here.”
He smiled brilliantly, softening his Comanche-born Roman nose and high cheekbones. “Yeah, you’re the Alpha, but I’m a Wolven agent. We’re supposed to be able to sneak up on other Sazi. And if you’d stuck with the program instead of running off to the police academy, maybe you could do that persuasion thing, too.”
“People here would say you’re a brujo, you know, for the way you can make people see things that aren’t there. A witch.”
The humor dropped away from his face. He glared at her and crossed arms over his chest. The white hat couldn’t hide the darkness—the death—in that gaze. “And people would say you’re She-Hulk.” Cara flushed and glanced at Brittany, only to find that she was frozen in place, mouth open as though to speak, unseeing of everything around her. Damn, he was good!
His voice hissed into the darkness. “What in hell did you think you were doing, Alpha Salinas? I could have your life for the way you’ve fucked up this accident scene. You think nobody’s going to notice there are marks on the ground and on the roof that match up with that woman’s legs, or see your torn shirt and bark in your hair? You think your colleagues are stupid? Think they won’t ask questions—investigate? Maybe even question the girl or find your fingerprints… or finger dents on the SUV?”
Cara absently ran her fingers over the normally tight bun at the back of her neck to discover it was disheveled and did indeed have bits of bark littering it. She had no excuse and she knew it. He was right. She’d overstepped her bounds—risked her entire pack, their entire kind in fact, with exposure. The Wolven agent had the right, and the authority, to take her life on the spot. It was their way. All she could manage was an embarrassed shrug and a whispered, “She would have been a cripple, Will.”
“And you think she didn’t deserve that fate? She risked her own life, and her child’s, by not wearing seat belts. Have you measured the skid marks in front of that eight-pointer yet? She was doing at least ten over the limit. What gave you the right to change the future she brought on herself?”
She looked up then, met his eyes—accepted whatever fate he would give, and told him the reason, the one truth in her life. “To protect and serve.”
He emitted a sound that shouldn’t be produced by a human throat: the angry, frustrated cry of an eagle denied a dinner. He stalked away, leaving her unable to breathe for a moment. Was he really going to let it go? Would she live to see morning?
He grabbed the buck by the antlers with one hand and pulled the heavy animal to the side of the road as easily as if it were empty skin. As sirens began to fill the air, he turned to her with his face set in cold stone. “Keep your mouth shut and don’t make any excuses or statements about anything. I’ll fix anything strange after the reports are filed. But the three of us will be discussing this tomorrow at lunch. Plan on it being a long lunch.”
The three of us? She opened her mouth to ask, but he suddenly wasn’t there. He was just… gone. But then she heard a sound overhead and realized he’d turned into animal form and flown into the darkness. Brittany was again quietly singing to Mr. Bear. When she looked behind her squad car, there was no sign of another vehicle.
Damn, he’s good.
ADAM MUELLER LET his foot off the accelerator when a flare came into view on the side of the road, causing the car behind him to close rapidly before the driver finally hit the brakes with a quick squeal of rubber. The flashing lights in both emergency lanes and the smear of red on the road ahead started his adrenaline pumping. He automatically slowed even further and started to scope out the accident scene.
“Adam? What’s happening?” Vivian Carmichael’s voice from the backseat was thick with sleep. “Are we there yet?”
He glanced in the rearview mirror to catch her gaze. “Nope. Not yet. Looks like someone hit an animal and flipped. Only county mounties and state patrol on the scene, so we must not be near the city yet.”
She snorted slightly and turned deeper into her pillow. “Well, for God’s sake, don’t stop and offer to help. You’re not a cop in this state, you know—and we’re on vacation. I’m sure they can manage without you. Let’s just get there and find a hotel room. I’m sick to death of sleeping in this truck’s miserable excuse for a backseat.”
A slender young woman in uniform stepped into the road, put out one hand to stop him, and started to wave an ambulance forward. He turned his face just slightly toward the backseat, because he couldn’t seem to take his eyes off the deputy. “They’re moving out the ambulance, Viv. It’ll just be a second and then we can go.”
She just grunted and covered her head with the pillow to shut out the bright red lights that filled the truck’s cab. He couldn’t figure out why the uniformed woman held his attention so completely. She was certainly gorgeous… had that whole Jennifer Lopez thing going on, except more heavily muscled and curved. But no… that wasn’t it.
There’s something about the way she moves. The woman turned when someone in the field shouted at her, and he noticed the back of her uniform was ripped and covered with bit
s of leaves and bark. Adam abruptly wondered what she smelled like… and whether she would taste salty from exertion. But before he could open the window to catch her scent, she’d turned back around and was waving him, and the growing line behind his truck, into the opposite lane to go around. Her movements showed annoyance, bordering on anger, but it didn’t appear to be directed at anyone in particular.
He slowed briefly as he passed her, turned on the interior light, and their eyes met. He nodded as he would to any other officer on duty—with a sense of comradery, but it was more difficult to pull his eyes back to the road than it should have been. A shiver raced through him because her eyes had been those of a predator.
And there was nothing he liked better than a dangerous woman.
Chapter 2
THE DARKNESS IN the woods was absolute, forcing Cara to use her nose to find her way. The clouds overhead had an oppressive weight to them and the scent of rain taunted her dry tongue. She wouldn’t mind if a few inches fell. The crops could use the water, even if her backpack, and the clothes inside, would get wet.
Maggie had been able to find a phone number for Sam and learned he wasn’t injured or sick, relieving her mind a little. Since, by the time she was done at the accident scene, it was later than she’d planned. She pushed herself along the familiar trail even faster, her claws digging deep into crumbly limestone as she climbed higher up the steep hillside to the stone-and-grass hut the elder Kerchee called home. She couldn’t afford to be distracted, but too many things roiled around in her mind. The rescue team had asked questions—ones she couldn’t, didn’t dare, answer. They’d accepted her calm statements about tearing up her shirt in the mesquite bramble, but there had been more than one raised brow of disbelief. Still, they were pleased enough about the condition of the woman and child that they’d let it drop. But what would the reports say? Who was the third person that Will was bringing to lunch tomorrow, and would she wind up being the main course? What would happen to her pack if she was put down?
She nearly missed the sharp bend at the top of the cliff during her mulling, but caught herself at the last moment. Perched on an outcropping where no sane person would live, the little hut managed to withstand the harsh weather and still look new, even after the more than twenty years she’d known the old Comanche shaman. There was no arguing that the view from the cliff edge was stunning though, especially in spring. It was the sort of landscape painters trekked for miles to use as inspiration. Cara was sorry she wasn’t arriving in daylight She’d have loved to see the stark white cliffs covered with wildflowers. They’d been especially beautiful this year, turning the barren land into a kaleidoscope of color.
Still, I wish he’d put a damned road up here.
She was huffing a little by the time she scented the buckskins she knew were stretched out on frames on the back porch. Allowing herself to revel in the scent, she paused to catch her breath. For the tenth time since she’d stripped and turned into her wolf form, her mind started to wander, this time to something a little more pleasant and, as such, more disturbing. What was it about that guy in the black truck that she couldn’t get out of her head? He’d just caught her eye for a second, like every other rubbernecker in the line had done, but that one look just kept nibbling at the back of her mind—
“Welcome, Sheriff Salinas. Congratulations on your promotion.” She let out a little yip of surprise because she hadn’t even noticed him, nearly invisible as he was behind a massive turpentine-scented juniper. That was twice tonight she’d been caught flat-footed.
She shook her furred head before sitting down on her haunches. “I hate it when you do that, Ten Bears! I’m supposed to notice you first, not the other way around. You really know how to embarrass a Sazi. And I’m only the acting sheriff since Carl had that stroke. The voters will decide whether I go back to being chief deputy in November.”
Sam Ten Bears Kerchee chuckled low and stepped out from behind a tree. “Yes, but in your heart, you know how you wish the citizens to vote.” His prominent nose and broad mouth bore a strong resemblance to Will’s, but his shoulders were stooped with age and his face deeply wrinkled. He walked like a man decades younger, though, without limp or cane. The moonlight broke through the clouds for a moment, making his eyes twinkle merrily. “And while I should apologize for startling you, there are so few people I’m still able to surprise at my age. Any small thing amuses me. But please pass along my sympathies to Sheriff Howersen’s family for his illness.” He swept his hand gracefully toward the hut, suggesting she precede him. “Now, come in before the rain. I know you prefer to use the back door.”
She wagged her tail and huffed lightly, trying not to indulge the thought of holding the title beyond the next morning. Every day she expected to receive the call from Joslyn saying Carl would be back at work tomorrow. Instead, she stood up and stepped past Ten Bears onto the porch, latching onto his final line, not that he’d be fooled. “Only because you insisted on building this place so you have to put one foot off the cliff to get in the front. Have y’all ever used that door?”
He chuckled as he held open the door, letting the subject drop. “Not as often as in my youth, I admit. Still, Will appreciates the door location. He often flies in from Austin to visit, now that he’s working there. He’s a good grandson.”
They fell into their usual routine. Ten Bears helped her off with her backpack, and pulled an elegantly painted rice paper and black lacquer screen from under his twin bed. He carefully unfolded and erected it so she could shift forms and put on her clothing in private. She watched his silhouette step to the other side of the hut and fill two mugs with hot water from a nearly whistling kettle on the two-burner propane camp stove.
“I saw him tonight. Will, that is.” Cara concentrated on her human form and felt the transformation begin. It was never easy for her, even after so many years. Some alphas could shift from form to form without a second thought. Boy, not her. Shifting into wolf form wasn’t too bad—mostly it made her jaw pop for a few minutes and her toes tingle where the nails turned to claws. But the shift back to human became like the deep ache of old joints on a cold wet day, combined with a sinus headache from a slender muzzle shortening to her normal nose. She had to take a deep breath and blink a few times before she could concentrate enough to complete her thought. She knew Ten Bears would wait for her to finish. He always did. “But you probably already know that.”
She coughed to clear her throat and stretched her arms high over her head to ease the muscle spasms. She heard the slow clinking of a silver teaspoon against the ceramic mugs and smiled. The real silver was one of the few luxuries Ten Bears allowed himself. The thought was pleasant and soothing after the mad rush to get here.
“There are disturbing things going on in both the Sazi and human worlds, Carlotta. It’s true I’ve had many visions lately, and know of your encounter with my grandson. I didn’t call you here tonight merely to share your company over tea.”
She paused, her hands still behind her back hooking her bra, trying to imagine what things the Sazi police force would need to be involved with in her state. There were only a dozen Sazi families in the entire state of Texas, and a mere eight members of her far-flung pack shifted with the moon. “Do these disturbing things involve my pack? Is one of us in danger?”
The old Comanche didn’t answer. He just kept stirring, apparently waiting for her to finish dressing so he could look her in the face. Her mother had always said being around Ten Bears was like trying to watch the blossom on a flower unfold. It always did, but you never saw it happen. Since he was fully human, he couldn’t rely on scents to tell him what she was feeling or thinking, and he kept his own emotions enough in check that Cara couldn’t smell anything over the strong scent of his homemade wild rose hip and clover tea.
She hopped out from behind the screen, still putting on the last moccasin, her curiosity strong enough that it should be visible in the air. Ten Bears held out a box of tissues as she approache
d the small wooden table. She gratefully took one. A few snorts and sneezes cleared her sinuses and she carefully folded the tissue and tucked it in her pocket. He didn’t have trash pickup and there was still a burn ban in effect.
Next to the steaming, oversize pottery mug on the table was a small bag of mixed dried herbs and she smiled in relief. The bag smelled strongly of sage and pepper, along with things she couldn’t easily identify. She’d never been foolish enough to question the contents for fear of insulting him. Clutching it to her chest briefly like the lifeline it was, she tucked it in her pocket. “Thank you, Ten Bears! I don’t know that it’ll last for a full month, but I’m grateful for even this small amount. Are you out of supplies? Do you need some money for more? I know you’ve always made my tea for free, but I don’t mind paying—really. I’d pay nearly anything to keep getting it. This is the first remedy that’s actually worked on my condition.”
Ten Bears pulled the spoon from his mug and tapped the liquid off on the rim before setting it carefully on a folded piece of paper towel. He fixed her with a piercing gaze. His dark eyes were a little more cloudy than the last time she’d visited. He really needed to visit an eye doctor to get those cataracts checked. “You were very merciful to save that woman, Carlotta. While I may not say why or how, your kindness will be returned tenfold in the near future.”
Cara breathed a sigh of relief. If Ten Bears said it, that’s what would happen. While he wasn’t a Sazi seer in truth, because he was full human, his gifts had served her pack well for many years. “Thank God! Could you maybe tell Will that when you see him next? I’m pretty sure he was ready to put me down on the spot.”
His head cocked slightly, and the thick, sweet scent of his confusion and curiosity slapped her nose just as a roll of thunder sounded overhead. In seconds she understood why he was bewildered. “And how would my vision help you avoid your punishment, Sheriff? You made a choice, knowing the consequences. Wrong done for pure motives is still wrong. Does the reason for a crime matter when you’re arresting a suspect?”