Highland Shapeshifter (12 page)

Toren had to live.

“I’ll be alright.” Judith patted her granddaughter’s hand. “I’m not exactly without my own contacts among the magical wielders. I’ll call in a few favors and get to the bottom of what those creatures are and where they came from. I’m not thrilled about those youngsters toting strange guns around either.”

“Not to mention why all of them are bent on attacking young Col here.”

Both women looked over at him. He’d like those questions answered as well.

Judith smiled tightly. “Your grandfather cut his meeting short in D.C. He’s on his way. His contacts are a little higher up the official governmental chain than mine. They may know something.” She rolled her eyes. “Don’t worry. We’ll get to the bottom of this and keep Charity safe with us.”

Lenore nodded.

“Good.” Judith looked sideways at Col. “You. Watch over my granddaughters. Both of them.”

Col nodded. Nothing would get past him to harm either of them.

Judith kissed Lenore’s forehead. “Go to your sister and don’t let her do anything rash. And you, sweetheart, don’t be reckless either. I’ll call you as soon as I know anything. We’ll meet up at Charity’s place in a few hours.” She squeezed Lenore’s arm.

A horn blasted outside. “There’s my taxi.” She handed Lenore a small ring with smaller keys on it. “Take my car.”

~~~

Lenore watched the taxi pull onto the street. Grandma was unlike anything else and she was so grateful for her. Well into her nineties, she was as fit as an active sixty-year-old. Then again, as Grandma liked to remind them, if a healer can’t keep herself and those she loved healthy and in tip-top form, what good was she?

She slanted a glance to Col. The lost and lonely sorrow in his eyes physically hurt. He’d lost his family, everyone he loved. As eager as she was to get to Charity and keep her sister from jumping down the rabbit’s hole, she hurt for Col. One brother had gone to the dark side and his sister was a casualty of World War Two. She knew how she’d feel if she lost Charity. Which was a stark possibility if they couldn’t get to her in time.

She huffed.

Time. It all boiled down to time and whether they could change whatever had already happened.

And what of Col? The moment they changed Charity’s intended course of action, would he simply disappear from this time? Just vanish. Beside her one moment and gone the next as though he’d never existed? Would she even remember that he’d been here?

Or since it would never have happened…?

Her pulse sped up.

She didn’t want that.

She didn’t want to not know him, to never know that someone like him existed somewhere. It wasn’t fair.

A shiver shook through her body and her belly cinched up tight. More than anything she didn’t want to lose Col.

More than her sister?

She didn’t know. She just didn’t know.

She took her phone out and punched in Charity’s button. Col watched her curiously.

“She’s still not picking up,” she explained, holding the cell tighter while she listened to Charity’s recording of
leave a message after the beep
. “Char, as soon as you get this, call me back. It’s important. Really important. I’m heading to your place. If you’re there, don’t go anywhere.” She paused, chuffed a breath. “I mean
anywhere
.”

Chapter Fifteen

“What are we going to do now?” Lenore’s hands squeaked on the leather steering wheel. She’d just turned into Charity’s apartment complex and stopped the car.

The bloated troglodytes were everywhere, mostly in shadows and between parked cars or behind the dumpsters, a few pressed flat on the roof lines. The darkening sky gave their dark flesh good camouflage. Several more were by Charity’s door. They weren’t doing anything, just waiting.

For them?

For Charity?

They could already have Charity for all she knew. Charity wasn’t answering her phone. Dread tied knots in her stomach.

“How close can this
car
get me to that door?”

Lenore jerked a look at Col. His face was grim, jaw set and terrifying. He was going to go in after Charity, regardless of how many monsters were between him and her sister.

“You’ll never make it.”

He was already tugging the shirt over his head, grinning when his dark hair emerged. “Not in this form.”

The temperature suddenly plummeted or maybe it was the blood draining to Lenore’s toes. This was crazy, but she gripped the wheel tighter. She’d get him right to the front stoop if she had anything to do about it. “As close as you need.”

A smile tugged at his features. “I suppose ye will. Ye’re a spirited lass, Lenore Greves of Seattle.” A shadow passed into his light eyes. “I—“ He took her hand, curling her palm beneath his larger one. “I’ll miss ye. I’ll keenly miss ye.”

The muscles around her heart constricted. Or perhaps that was her heart itself ripping in two. “But you won’t.” Her voice was small, the most fragile of sounds. “If this works, you’ll be back in your time, never have come here, and you won’t know me. I won’t have even been born yet.”

They both stared out the windshield at hulky shadows of monsters between them and the means to unmake the past couple of hours, which Lenore was beginning to realize she didn’t want unmade at all.

Col nodded, coming to some indefinable decision. “If this moment is to be undone, then let us speak plainly.” He did look at her then, forcing her to also turn to him by the sheer magnitude of his will. “There is something between us. I know ye feel it too. I do not understand it, but…”

Plainly then. He wanted the truth and since this would all be erased, what did it really matter? The past day would be a cosmic do-over. “It frightens me.”

Col’s lips firmed into a hard line and he nodded. “Aye.”

That he could admit his own fears about it, somehow made it better, eased a bit of her own uncertainty. “I’m scared that it’s a false feeling born only of magic, yet now, I’m afraid I’ll never feel it again. I’m also afraid it is real between us. Very real and powerful and something so rare and precious that very few people experience a connection like this and I’m so very afraid to lose it, that I’m just letting it go, letting you go, and that will be the worst mistake of my life.” She pulled their joined hands to her heart where it beat crazily.
 
“I know what has to be done for both of our families, but…” She shook her head. “I don’t know what is the right thing to do.”

His other hand cupped her cheek and slipped into her hair. “I don’t know. I don’t know either.”

They stared hard into each other’s faces. Lenore wondered if she memorized his features hard enough if she could somehow lock him into memories that in reality she’d never make.

“I—I’m sorry. I can’t lose Charity.”

He nodded as though he’d known that was the only choice all along and whispered gruffly.
  
 

“All right. Let’s go get your sister.”

His hands slid away from hers, warmth to cold air. “Get me close, and then leave. I cannot protect ye both.”

“I’m not—“

“Lass.” He clamped his lips tight and shook his head. “Nay, I do not believe ye’ll heed me on this. Charity is yer kin. I understand.” He focused a soft puppy-dog look at her.

Geez, way to get under a girl’s defensives. She was hopelessly lost to him. And honestly, if he asked her to walk away from this and leave Charity to her own devices, she would probably wouldn’t have the strength to deny him, though she knew Col would never ask it.

 
“Give me a few moment’s lead. I may be able to get by them without interference. Does that window lead to Charity’s rooms?”

Lenore narrowed her eyes at the high small window of Charity’s bathroom. “It’s double-paned and latched from the inside.”

“Have ye never heard of the Open Stone?”

Of course. Part of the Highland games where brawny Scots swung an assortment of things around from large stones, long spherical shaped hammers and even tree trunks. Throwing, always throwing. The Open Stone was a simple toss from one hand to measure who could throw their silly boulders the farthest.

She saw where he was going. “We’ll need a pretty big rock.” Wait. This was her grandmother’s car. Judith Greves was anything but the typical conventional grandma. Leaning over Col, Lenore opened the glove compartment, her side brushing across his chest and she froze, closing her eyes tightly when he leaned closer, letting his chin rub the top of her hair. Did he just inhale? Tingles surged rapid-fire quick through her body. It took everything in her to focus on the task at hand. Oh, yeah, glove compartment. Charity. Monsters.
 

She searched through it and came up empty.

Okay. Not giving up, she rooted around beneath the driver’s seat and…yatzhee, came up with a shiny revolver. Thank you Grandma. She checked the chamber for bullets. Fully loaded. Grandma didn’t mess around.

Lenore grinned. “You want in through the window, big guy? Here’s your first class ticket.”

Col’s forehead scrunched like he didn’t have the foggiest what she was talking about. Yeah, right, gun meet ancient Highland warrior.

“Trust me.”

At his nod, she melted. Just like that, he took her word that she knew what she was doing.

She hoped to hell his confidence wasn’t wasted. “Ready?” She turned the engine over. Outside, the Morlocks faces swiveled toward the sound. Game on.

Col nodded again and instantly shimmered with light, a glowing pulsing nimbus outlining his form, filling the car with brightness. If the Morlocks didn’t see that, they were truly blind beneath those yucky eye scarring.

Col’s transformation was beautiful. He was beautiful. Like looking into his soul again only this time from the outside. She should know. She’d been inside him.
 

He looked like tiny bursts of light pulsing, changing in shape like a mass of glowing honeybees, forever fluctuating and shrinking.

And then he was gone. The light simply blinked out, plunging the car back into a velvet gloom.

A dragonfly hovered above the pool of Gabe’s clothes that had dropped in the seat. The sneakers lay on the floorboards. Wings buzzing, the dragonfly floated toward the closed window. It was amazing that all that Col was, his huge force of spirit, could fit in such a tiny miniscule thing.

“Kay, hang on. I’m going in.”

She didn’t know if Col could understand her, but, he floated down and landed on the seat. Lenore had the sudden crazy thought that she should buckle him in, which was ridiculous—adrenaline hysterics?—so she checked the gun instead, hit the button to roll down the windows and took a steadying breath. Shapes moved in front of the windshield, the beasts must have noticed Col shifting after all.

Holy Geez, what was she doing?

She felt like the getaway driver-slash-bodyguard for a dragonfly. How cartoonish was that?

Lenore punched the gas, shifted into gear and the Lexus shot forward. She hit two monsters head-on, screaming at the thunk of bodies on metal as they sailed over the car. Lexus’s were designed for being aero-dynamic after all. One hit the windshield and bounced off, leaving spider web veins in the glass.

Lenore sped on, hitting the brakes and sliding sideways into a jeep parked in front of Charity’s door.

Morlocks dropped off the buildings, swarming over both vehicles.