“I’ve got a rifle under the front seat,” Doc muttered.
“Shifters are hard to stop even with a rifle unless you get them right in the heart or the head. You drive. Hear me, Doc?”
“I hear.”
“Come on, then.”
Sierra locked the front door and they headed for the pickup. Ian was scanning the area uneasily, his shoulders tense. He pulled open the passenger door for her while Doc went around to the driver’s side.
Something shot out of the bushes at the corner of the house.
“Ian!” gasped Sierra.
Ian didn’t look around. He just scooped her up, tossed her onto the front seat, then slammed the door on her.
“Doc, go!”
She heard a thump as he threw his boots into the bed of the pickup, then he was rapidly stripping off his jeans and tee. He was commando under the jeans and the minute they were whipped off he went leopard and flung himself at the massive tawny streak barreling toward them.
A moment later a ball of intertwined lion and leopard was rolling on the ground in front of the pickup, kicking and tearing with their powerful hind legs, viciously trying to disembowel each other.
Both Doc and Sierra froze in shock, transfixed by the sight of two snarling, clawing big cats locked in savage battle a yard in front of them. It was something one would have expected to see in a nature program on television, not right here in real life at Sierra’s house in the middle of Colorado.
Then Doc recovered himself. The pickup fishtailed wildly as he got it into gear and reversed as fast as he could.
“No! Doc, stop!” Sierra shouted. “We can’t leave him alone! That’s just what Arrhan wants! To get him alone and kill him!”
“What the hell do you think we can do?” Doc yelled back. “He’s giving us the chance to get away, can’t you see that? He’ll come after us once we’re clear.”
Sierra knew better. Ian wouldn’t break off the fight once they were gone. Arrhan had killed and terrorized his friends. Ian wanted him dead. Arrhan was a lion, which meant that he was larger than Ian and weighed twice as much. But that wouldn’t matter to Ian. He’d just keep on trying to kill him.
Sierra fished hurriedly below the front seat and came up triumphantly with Doc’s rifle. Peter had been shocked when he’d learned that Sierra knew how to shoot, but her mother had been all for her knowing how to defend herself and had got Taylor Weekes to teach her. She had never shot anything live, only targets, but she did know how to aim accurately
Doc had slammed the pickup into forward and was veering away from the raging, battling cats. He jerked around as she wound the window down.
“You can’t shoot, Sierra! You might hit Ian instead!”
Leaning out of the open window, trying to draw a bead on Arrhan, Sierra realized Doc was right. The ball of lion and leopard had broken up into a whirl of slashing fangs and claws. It was easy to see which was black-maned lion and which spotted leopard, but they were both moving so fast that she couldn’t be sure a bullet wouldn’t miss and strike the wrong one.
“We’re going!”
“Doc, stop! There’s another one!”
Another tawny streak was hurtling out of the trees. This one didn’t have a mane.
“It must be one of the Lowes,” blurted Doc, braking involuntarily as he stared. “It’s a female. Maud Lowe, maybe.”
But it wasn’t. The lioness flung itself on the leopard, not the lion. Unprepared for a second attacker, Ian was knocked right off his feet. He rolled desperately and regained his footing in a scrabble of claws just as the lion landed on him. The lioness started to leap forward to join the assault.
“Run her down!” Sierra shouted and Doc tried. The lioness skittered sideways with a roar of fury and he missed.
Sierra didn’t. Leaning out of the cab, she had the lioness in her sights. Ian had said that the only time a bullet would stop a Shifter was when it went right through the head or the heart. She couldn’t be sure of the heart, but she had no trouble with the head. She shot the lioness right between the eyes.
She fell like a stone. The sound of the shot broke the other two apart and brought them whipping around in shock.
“Ian, get in!” she screamed as Doc braked the pickup just past him.
Ian wasn’t listening. He just crouched to throw himself back at the lion.
“Ian, get in the car or I’m getting out!” she shrieked and cracked open the door to show that she meant it.
He hesitated for a long, trembling, furious moment, then snarled viciously and flung himself into the bed of the pickup. The pickup rocked as his weight struck it. Doc took off at once, flooring the gas pedal, tires screeching as he tore down the dirt track and toward the main road. Looking back, Sierra saw that the lion was staring at her. She shivered at the rage and pure malignity in those glaring yellow eyes.
Ian had shifted out of cat and was reaching for the clothes he had flung there before the battle. Sierra turned away hurriedly from that beautiful naked form.
“Looks like I’ve got more embroidery work to do,” muttered Doc, glancing at him in the rearview mirror.
Ian was ripped up again. But then so was Arrhan. Sierra had caught sight of some vicious claw marks on the lion’s belly and sides. Arrhan might outweigh Ian twice over in lion form, but any leopard was a wickedly lethal fighter.
She slid open the rear window as Ian pulled his tee on, covering up the slashes. “You’re hurt!”
He shrugged that away. “Just cuts, not internal injuries. Doc can stitch me up and it’ll all be gone by tomorrow. You shouldn’t have interfered.”
“Two against one wasn’t fair! They’d have killed you.”
“I wouldn’t have let them.”
“Yeah, right.”
“You’ve gotten yourself involved now.” He rubbed a hand despairingly over his face.
“I was already involved.”
“Not the way you are now! Before, you were just some human who had the bad taste to help out. Now you’ve killed one of them. Now it’s personal.”
“Them,” said Doc. “It’s not just one lion. There’s more.”
“Yeah. I’ve got to tell Kurt. There could be a whole pride out there. We don’t know how many. It isn’t just some ambitious male trying to seize the lordship. It isn’t just the usual power grab. It’s something more.”
“We should have guessed there was more than one,” Doc muttered. “Those Shifter homes were all fired ’round about the same time. One man wouldn’t have been able to do it. We didn’t think.”
“Too fazed. This kind of thing has never happened before. Sure, there have been wars between prides and packs over the centuries. Territorial disputes are as common as mating fights. But we always keep below the radar as far as humans are concerned. Don’t want them to know we exist. This madman doesn’t care. Setting so many homes on fire, which makes the cops think of arson and gets them investigating those affected. Attacking in lion shape in full daylight where any human passing by might have seen. He’s a danger not only to us, but to every Shifter in this world.”
Kurt Lowe agreed. Sierra gathered that when she came into the ranch office as Ian was speaking to him over the phone. Ian glanced past her to check that she was alone, then went on with the conversation. Sierra was pleased that he trusted her as much as he did Doc, who was busy stitching him up while he spoke to Kurt.
It seemed Kurt had hoped in the beginning that talking to Arrhan would make the man see sense. That had changed to a kill-on-sight order to his pride after Arrhan had attacked the other cat species in Wade County. Now the word was going out to every pride, pack or clan existing—Arrhan and his people were to be considered
dasari
.
“Rabid,” translated Doc in an undertone, seeing her puzzled face.
Outcasts, even outlaws, he explained, were accepted by Shifters, who were outcasts from human society themselves. A Shifter who broke the law or harmed other Shifters was dealt with by the friends or relatives of their victims.
Dasari,
however, were threats to the race and every Shifter’s hand was against them.
“Is it any good my telling you to rest for today as well?” Doc grumbled, scowling at the latest patchwork of hatch lines on Ian’s hide as Ian hung up the phone and pulled a fresh tee over his head.
“Yeah, I will.” Ian yanked the tee down to hide the stitches on his torso, then put on a shirt as well. He left that open and hanging, but it did cover up the claw marks on his arms. “Don’t have a cow, Doc. You know I’ll be fine by tomorrow.”
“You’re still not really recovered from the first attack.”
“So I’ll rest. Didn’t I say I would?”
“I know you,” growled Doc.
Ian ignored that. “Kurt’s sending over one of his people. You don’t go anywhere without that guy beside you. Hear me?”
“Yeah,” Doc sighed, heading out of the room to wash his hands.
“And that goes for you too, Sierra,” Ian said, glancing over to where Sierra was standing, frowning at him. “You don’t go anywhere unless I’m with you.”
“Any one of your ranch hands…”
“No. It has to be a Shifter. Humans can be taken out too easily. I’ve told Taylor and Annie there’s a crazy after you. As long as you’re on the spread, there’s gonna be people around looking out for you. Too many for Arrhan to be able to sneak past. Of course, that will count for nothing if he decides to make a full-scale attack, but I don’t think he will.”
“Surely Kurt’s the one he wants.”
“Yeah, but you and me, we’ve just made number two on his hit list, right after Kurt and before even any of the others of the Lowe pride. If he gets a chance at either of us, he’ll take it, and you’re vulnerable when you leave the spread. I wish Simon and Neal were here. They could have helped bodyguard you. But they’ve got their own problems and I can’t call them back from that.”
“I don’t want you to!” Sierra exclaimed. “I think you’re overreacting as it is!”
Ian shook his head grimly. “You have no idea how vicious a pride war can get. You’re not going anywhere without me. You want to go someplace, you wait ’til I’m free and can come with you.”
Sierra opened her mouth to object. Then she remembered the malignant hatred that had been in Arrhan’s eyes and closed it again.
“And don’t go sneaking out for some dumb reason. Everyone’s been told that you don’t step out of this house without me. They’ll just stop you.”
Sierra glared at him. “So I’m your prisoner?”
He spread his arms. “Is this a prison? Don’t you like your room?”
What was not to like? The room she had been given was huge and beautiful, with every possible luxurious amenity provided. The whole sprawling ranch house was the same way—an eclectic mix of comfortable old furnishings and the new high-tech toys that guys liked to play with. But what it spoke of was wealth. Maybe unobtrusive and taken for granted, but still wealth. She was conscious of it now as she had never been before, because she had tried so hard never to think about Ian Raeder.
His home, his family, his heritage made her acutely uneasy. They were so out of her league.
Old money accrued through generations of hard work on the land. No wonder Ian would rather die than be driven out. The Raeder assets were in the house, the land and the livestock, none of which were something they could just pick up and take with them to another state.
She couldn’t ignore all of that. The Raeders kept their heads down and didn’t make with the fancy clothes, cars or bling, cash flow always being a problem with ranchers. But it was still a long way from the Wallaces. Sierra’s dad had been in construction. Her mom had been a healthcare worker who had worn out her heart fighting to keep a roof over their heads and food on the table. Sierra herself was just barely making ends meet with her pottery. This place only stressed the gulf between her and Ian that Sierra had started to forget about back at her place.
But maybe it was a good thing to be reminded of that gulf. It was another reason why letting herself become involved with Ian Raeder would be a huge mistake.
“The room’s just fine,” she muttered and knew she sounded ungracious. “It’s very big.”
“It used to be the master, but none of us had the heart to move in after Mom and Dad died, so we turned it into a guest room.”
“How did they die?” She’d left Castleton before that had happened and had only heard they were gone when she returned.
“Semi skidded on an icy road and T-boned their car. They were both killed outright.”
No time for the healing fever that might otherwise have saved them. She could see from the darkness in his eyes that he had been as affected by their deaths as she had been by her own mother’s.
“I’m so sorry, Ian.”
“It was no one’s fault, really. These things happen.” He changed the subject quickly. “Let’s see. Annie’s a wicked cook, so I don’t think you’ll mind the food. There’s a sunroom at the back that nobody’s been using since Mom died. It’ll make a perfect studio. I’ll have a couple of the hands bring over your stuff tomorrow and we’ll get everything set up for you. You won’t have to stop working even temporarily.”
She shook her head. “You don’t need to do that.”
“You said you had orders to fill. Bad enough that your life’s in danger because you’ve been dragged into our war. I don’t want you to lose out in any other way.”