Shifter Planet (18 page)

One other thing she knew. The sooner they could start moving toward the Green, the happier she’d be.

Satisfied with her nursing efforts, she straightened Rhodry’s shredded clothing, covered him as much as possible, then tucked her cloak around him and pulled the sleeping bag closed, zipping it only halfway. It was warm enough where they were, especially with her small fire, and she thought the fresh air was probably better for him than rebreathing the air inside the bag. The thin foil blanket she folded into its small square and shoved into her jacket pocket. She’d take it outside and shake it out. And the next time, she’d leave him wrapped in it and take the sleeping bag instead. That way everything would get aired out eventually.

Drawing on one of her gloves, she picked up the canteen and poured a little of the melted snow into her cup. Waiting until both rim and water were cool, she leaned over and held it to his mouth, lifting his head enough to pour a little past his lips. She watched the muscles in his neck work as he swallowed reflexively, and took that as another good sign that he’d wake soon, that he was in some sort of deep healing sleep rather than truly unconscious. She tipped a little bit more water into his mouth, and then a third time before stopping.

It was good that he was taking water, but she’d have to figure a way to get something nutritious into him soon. She still had the little bit of rabbit from her last fire. It should be frozen solid, so it would be safe enough to eat. Or maybe she’d get lucky with her snare. Either way, if she boiled the meat, there’d be broth to drink and the meat would be soft enough to mash up or something.

“Or you could pre-chew it, and feed it to him like a bird
,”
she muttered to herself. Things weren’t quite that desperate yet.

S
he had to force her way through the ice and snow built up around the thicket, only to fall face first into several feet of powdery fresh snow. It took a moment to get herself right side up, and she was still spitting out snow when she finally got a good look at the sea of white surrounding them. Bushes, shrubs, anything shorter than five feet had become a lumpy white swell beneath a low gray sky. It was just good fortune that their hideaway was elevated by the slight hillside, or they’d have been buried along with everything else. The trees she’d escaped through last night stood all around them, spots of color in the otherwise colorless vista. Great drifts of snow had piled around the thick trunks, and the lower branches were so weighted down that they were nearly scraping the ground.

A light snow still fell from the curdled sky, while a brisk breeze set the airy flakes to dancing sporadically, kicking up flurries to skim along the surface, vanishing as quickly as they started. She lifted her face to the cold and laughed out loud at the flakes that clung to her cheeks. It felt good.

She waited a moment more, enjoying the fresh air and the weak sun on her face, then she closed her eyes and listened. The song wasn’t as strong here as it would be in the Green. That didn’t mean it wasn’t there. The forest was still, not so much as a vole disturbed the perfect silence. Sinking deeper, she found the song beneath the quiet, the trees content in their blankets of white, accepting the freezing storm, as they would the warm thaw that came after, as part of the natural cycle. Each had a part to play in the pattern of life and death on Harp. Submersing herself in the flow of the trees’ awareness, she searched for a threat—shifter or animal, both were the enemy for now—and found nothing. Everything that lived was hunkered down, waiting to see what the weather would bring next.

Rising slowly back to focus on her immediate surroundings, she pushed up her sleeve and unwound the coil of wire from around her wrist. With a final glance over her shoulder to the thicket where Rhodry slept unaware, she turned for the top of the hill and slogged through the thick snow to set up a snare. She had to be careful where she walked, an unwary footstep and she’d sink up to her thighs. Though it would be difficult to travel in these conditions, they couldn’t stay here forever. She needed to figure out a better transport for Rhodry and put together some snowshoes for herself. She’d never made anything like a snowshoe before. She’d certainly seen pictures, though, and she understood the principle behind it. While whatever she came up with wouldn’t be pretty, it would work.

Another day or two and the storm would clear. The intense cold would retreat back to the glacier that had birthed it, and the snow would begin to melt. Once that happened she and Rhodry would need to move fast. The others, the shifters who’d tried to kill him, might come back then to make sure he was dead. And when they didn’t find his hycat-chewed bones, they’d almost certainly begin to hunt.

I
t was cold where he was, icy cold, and fresh with the scent of new snow. Rhodry loved the smell of fresh snow. It reminded him of the mountains and home. But he wasn’t home.

The air around him stirred and he heard a voice. Amanda. It was her voice he’d been hearing for hours now, although it seemed as if he’d just remembered. She’d slept next to him, kept him warm,
protected
him. It was an odd thing to think of a woman protecting him now that he was fully grown, especially
this
woman. It was even more odd to have his memories suddenly appear in whole cloth, as if they’d been waiting just over the horizon for him to climb a hill and find them.

She’d been outside somewhere. Her voice brought with it the scents of forest and freshly cut wood. He smelled the bright spark of a match. And then nothing.

“I
’m home,” Amanda sang out gaily. She threw several pieces of wood ahead of her, then crawled inside and dragged the rest in behind her, one piece at a time. Finding the deadfall among the trees had been the easy part. Digging her way through several feet of snow in search of food, with only her gloved hands and her blades, had been a lot tougher. The rewards, on the other hand, had been great.

She glanced over at Rhodry. He didn’t seem to have stirred while she was gone, though he seemed more peaceful than before, his face less creased with pain. Once again, she thought how much easier it would be if he’d wake up and take animal form like a sensible shifter. She was increasingly worried that he
couldn’t
, that his injuries went beyond what she could see.

What would happen to a shifter who couldn’t shift? She had a feeling there was only one answer to that, and it went counter to all of her efforts to save him.

“How about some dinner?” she asked, talking to him as she’d done all through the night. “I found some goldbud and stickberries. They’ll help your head too, I think. And there’s a rabbit roasting on the fire outside. You should be able to smell it soon.” She was working as she talked, breaking up the deadwood into pieces she could use, cutting into the bark with her knife so the wood would burn more efficiently.

“The snow’s a little lighter today, although it looks like there’s more weather coming in. Maybe tonight. I can smell it on the air. Not that I mind so much. If we’re snowed in, so is everyone else, including whoever did this to you, and I’d really rather have you on your feet before anyone finds us.

“By the way, I’d like to take credit for finding this perfect shelter. Honestly, though, it was dumb luck. When I dragged us in here this morning, it could have been an ice bear den, and I wouldn’t have known the difference. You probably know all about snow survival, don’t you? Coming from the mountains and all. I’ve never been to your mountains. Too busy getting ready for all of this. Someday, I’ll get there.”

She struck a match and blew the small flame into a fire. The wood was dry, and it caught quickly. She settled her snow-filled canteen into the flames, topping it off as the snow melted in what by now was a well-practiced routine. When the water was hot enough, she dropped some of the herbs and berries she’d found into the cup, covered them with water and set it aside to steep.

As predicted, the scent of roasting rabbit soon drifted in from outside and combined with the fragrant goldbud in the tea to fill the small space. It was surprisingly soothing, and Amanda found herself smiling as she ducked back outside to begin the unfamiliar task of constructing a pair of snowshoes.

Chapter Twenty-Five

R
hodry woke all at once, his brain suddenly alight with the knowledge that something was badly wrong. His body felt like he’d been run through a thresher, his head was throbbing, and he was weak as a kitten. Memories flashed rapid-fire. He’d been ambushed. Betrayed by shifters, by his own cousin. He’d fought back, and he’d been… He felt someone move against him and he froze. What the hell?

He inhaled, drawing in the familiar scents of the forest, along with another scent, this one known, and far less familiar. He cracked his eyes open slowly to the dim glow of a tiny banked fire, and saw Amanda fast asleep right next to him. She’d saved his life. He remembered now.

She stirred again, curling her legs up, her butt pushing against his thigh suggestively, tensing his body in a way that it could
not
follow through on, even if they hadn’t been wound up together in some sort of… Where the hell were they?

He closed his eyes again and concentrated, letting his senses roam, hearing the soft drip of melting snow, the scratch of a squirrel’s feet along a branch far overhead, the rush of wind through the trees. Closer in, there was the snuffle of a vole poking through some bushes, dry and crackling.

The smell of blood was strong, his own and, fainter, definitely there, hers as well. She’d been injured badly enough to draw blood, and like his own wounds it was at least a day old. Maybe more. Beneath the smell of blood was the musk of the vole he’d heard rooting nearby, the slightly dusty smell of dirt and old brush, and the fresh, welcome scent of new snow. A thicket of some sort, then. Sensible woman, she’d found a dry place to shelter them from the weather.

And knowing that, he realized they were in a sleeping bag. Hers, of course. She’d have needed one for the Guild trial, having no fur of her own, although he didn’t remember seeing it. Her head was very close to his, her breath light and steady with sleep. As injured as he was, he knew it must have taken a tremendous effort on her part to get them to this safe place. What was it Fionn had said about her? That she was remarkable.

He lifted his head slightly, bending his neck to see her, his shifter eyes dilating to see in the near dark as he looked down the long line of her body, lying so close to him beneath the thin covering. A sharp stab of pain threatened to send him under once again, and he let his head fall back, closing his eyes.

“You should lie still,” she said. Her voice was heavy with sleep and beneath that an uneasiness, maybe embarrassment. They were lying as close as lovers, and yet they barely knew one another. Survival demanded practicality sometimes. She stiffened minutely so that their bodies were no longer touching with such intimacy, and he heard the rip of a zipper being undone. She rolled away and sat up, placing a cool hand to his forehead in the darkness.

“How do you feel?” she asked.

“Alive,” he croaked, then coughed, surprised by the roughness of his voice. She put a canteen to his mouth, and he drank gratefully. The water was cool and soothing. “Thank you.” He sounded pitifully weak to his own ears and he frowned. “How long have we been here?”

She didn’t answer right away, focused instead on stoking the fire. He caught the scent of cooked rabbit and his nostrils flared with hunger. The flames jumped, then steadied, and she glanced over her shoulder.

“We’ve been here,” she gestured at the cave-like enclosure, “for most of a day. It must be nearly midnight by now, and we crawled in a few hours after dawn this morning. If you’re asking how long since you were attacked, I’m not sure. I found you soon after, I think. You weren’t dead yet.” She slanted a quick grin at him, then sobered to add, “The hycats were circling. It took me most of the night to patch you up and get us this far.”

“I remember the cats. How did you get rid of them? They don’t usually—”

She turned completely and gave him an expectant look. He stared back at her.

“You killed them,” he said, not quite believing. “All of them?”

“I let the youngster run home. The three adults… I thought it unlikely they’d be willing to let you go otherwise.”

“You really did save my life.”

“Ouch, huh?” He could hear the smile in her voice, though she’d turned back to her fire, and he couldn’t see her face. “What hurts worse, the bump on your head or admitting that to me?”

“A difficult choice,” he admitted grimly.

She laughed, a carefree sound that was incongruous with their circumstances. “I bet,” she said. “I roasted a rabbit earlier, and I made a sort of tea with goldbud and stickberries. You drank some of that already. If you’re up to it, you should eat some of the rabbit. Your body needs more than tea if it’s going to get better. Speaking of which, I’d like to check your wounds before we do anything else,” she added.

When he didn’t say anything, she gave him a quizzical look. “Do you mind?”

A
manda met Rhodry’s gaze, his eyes shining like hot, melting gold in the firelight.

“It’s a bit late for modesty, I imagine,” he said drily.

She stared, unable to look away. “You have the most beautiful eyes I’ve ever seen,” she said, and felt her face flush.
What an idiot
. “Sorry, it just struck me. I don’t think I’ve ever seen eyes like yours, not even on another shifter.”

“They run in my mother’s family.”

She muttered a wordless acknowledgment, suddenly embarrassed, and scooted over to his side, thinking it was far safer to consider him a patient than a handsome man with beautiful eyes. She gave him a single warning glance, then flipped the covers back and began lifting his shirt up over the many bandages. He hissed, whether in surprise or pain, she didn’t know. “I’m sorry. You were cut up pretty badly. I had to put a few stitches in.”

He looked down at his chest, his scowl turning to alarm when she unfastened his loose pants and tugged them down toward his groin. “Stitches?” His voice went up a few octaves, and Amanda had to fight the urge to laugh.

“Stitches,” she managed to agree somberly. She ran her fingers lightly over the wound high on his chest. “Don’t worry. I’m well-trained and actually rather proud of the job I did on you, given the conditions. I’ve never sewn on a shifter before.” She looked up to find him watching her. She blushed nervously and joked, “We’ve got to stop meeting like this.”

He gave her a puzzled look, obviously unfamiliar with her mother’s old movie collection, which only made her blush harder. “Never mind.” She began pulling his clothes back into place, slapping away his hands when he tried to help. “Save your strength, big guy. You ready for something to eat?”

“I need to go outside.”

“Sure. Maybe after you’ve eaten something. It’s dark—”

“I need to go outside
now
.”

Her eyes widened. “Oh! Right. Okay.” She backed away toward the opening, cursing herself for not thinking about this before. Not that they had many options. “This is going to be a tight fit. You need to let me help you.”

“I can—”

“Rhodry,” she said, forcing him to look at her. “You need to let me help you.”

His handsome face took on its usual scowl as he gave her a grudging nod of acceptance.

It was more than a tight fit to get him outside without ripping any of his wounds open or inflicting any new ones. She reached down and helped him sit up, wrapping her cloak over his shoulders.

“Let’s just rest here for a minute.” She was panting nearly as hard as he was. “When you’re ready—”

“I’m ready.”

Amanda blew out a frustrated breath. Damn shifter pride. “Okay. I’m turning this on,” she said and clicked on her flashlight, careful to turn it away from his eyes. “It’s for me, not you. I’m blind out here. Now, the snow’s deep, so I’m going to help you.” She shoved her shoulder under the arm opposite his injured pectoral and stood up, taking him with her. It had to hurt like hell, and she gave him credit for doing little more than grunting, though she’d never tell
him
that.

Naturally, the minute they stood, he tried to shake her off, taking a determined step away. She grabbed his arm. “Watch your step and stay on the hill where the snow’s not so bad. I’ve cut a path, so we’ll go that—”

“I know how to take a piss in the woods on my own, woman, and I’m familiar with the concept of snow.”

“Yeah? Are you familiar with the concept of falling on your ass? Because that’s what’ll happen if I let go of you.”

He was breathing hard, his face already sweat-soaked with effort. His mouth tightened irritably, and he must have been feeling really crappy, because he let her help him, all the while grimacing in pain and, probably, disgust with himself. She wondered if he’d ever been helpless before. Big bad shifter.

When they reached the trees set beyond the top of the hill, she turned her back as a courtesy and pretended not to hear anything. She waited until she thought he must be finished, then looked over her shoulder cautiously. He was slumped against a wide tree trunk, his head thrown back on the rough bark and his eyes closed.

She hurried forward. “Rhodry? Are you all right?”

His eyes opened long enough to locate her, then shut again. “Yes. I needed the air, the open space. I miss this in the city.”

“I understand. I feel the same way. I can’t spend two days in the city without going back out into the Green. It’s as if my lungs seize up and I can’t breathe anymore. Too many people, too much noise.”

“And the smell,” he added.

“And the smell. Though it’s probably worse for you.” She watched him a while longer. “Can I ask you a question?”

“I owe you my life.”

She smiled. She’d read enough Harp history to know that the mountain clans prided themselves on their somewhat rigid sense of honor and duty. “Nothing so drastic as that,” she said lightly. “I was just wondering why you haven’t shifted yet.”

R
hodry reached deep within himself, looking again for the shift, and uttered the most foul oath of his mountain upbringing, one his mother would have been horrified to hear him speak in front of a woman.

“Rhodry?” she asked in alarm.

“I
can’t
shift,” he spat. He caught her look of pity, and rage burned away the embarrassment.

“Is it the head injury?” she asked. “Because I’m sure that will—”

“Not my head. They fed me rockweed.” It was in the trail bar, he knew that now. He’d wondered at the sweet taste, probably honey added to cover the familiar herb.

“Rockweed?” she repeated, then frowned in thought. “I remember that one from my studies; it’s an anti-seizure medication. I didn’t read anything about—”

“No,” he agreed, hating the weak sound of his own voice. “You wouldn’t have. It grows wild in the mountains. We use it to ease the transition through puberty for young shifters. In small doses, it—” He struggled for the right word. “It
dulls
the urge to shift to animal form.”

She stared at him, her eyes growing wide. “Why would—”

“In larger doses, it prevents the shift altogether. They poisoned me so I’d be unable to shift and fight back or even heal myself afterward. They knew this storm was coming. They wanted me dead, and the evidence destroyed. And they would have succeeded, if not for you.”

“Who are
they
?” she demanded. “And why would they do this? I thought you shifters—”

“Politics, woman,” he cut her off, and saw her stiffen angrily.

“Look, de Mendoza,” she snarled. “I may be only a woman, but I’m the woman who saved your mighty shifter hide, and I’m also the one who’s stuck with you until we get out of this. I’m not going to pretend I know everything that’s going on, though I sure as hell don’t need
you
to tell me that those wounds were caused by another shifter. Maybe more than one. You’ve got defensive wounds on your hands and arms, so you put up a fight, and someone must have decided you were a little too lively, because they whacked you on the head for good measure.

“Now, I’d like to think that whoever did this is already dying a slow, painful death somewhere. Since that’s unlikely, I need to know what the fuck is going on, or you can just lean against that tree for the rest of your natural life, because you’ll never make it anywhere else without my help! And stop calling me
woman
!”

He studied her in the darkness, her features as clear to him in the clouded moonlight as they would have been in full sun. She was angry as hell, her fair eyes narrowed to slits, her plump mouth set in a tight line. And she was right. He wouldn’t make it two steps without falling on his face. He did enjoy watching her temper flare, though. She was a lovely woman with smooth, even features and a lusciously full upper lip on her soft-looking mouth. And she was far too smart for her own good.

He smiled slowly. “You’re right.”

“I’m… What?” She’d clearly been all ready to lay into him some more. His agreement had surprised her.

“You’re right,” he said simply. “And I’m sorry. Sorry for being an asshole since almost the day we met, sorry for being rude, sorry you’ve been dragged into this mess, and sorry there’s no getting you out of it. Not until we’re back in that stinking city anyway.” A wave of exhaustion swept over him and he closed his eyes again. “I’m tired. A few lousy steps in the snow and I’m tired.”

“Let’s get you back inside,” she said immediately. She came to his side, slipping her shoulder under his once again, her arm around his waist. He let himself lean into her support as they started back down the hill, questions about traitorous shifters, rockweed, and everything else forgotten. At least for now.

A
manda took pity on him once they’d maneuvered down the hill and back inside their makeshift shelter. He was in such obvious pain, and his inability to shift had to be frustrating and more than a little terrifying. He didn’t say anything to her as she settled him back into the sleeping bag—after making him wait while she took everything outside and shook it out in the fresh air. He was almost pale with exhaustion by then, and his hand when he raised it to cover his eyes shook visibly.

“How long before the rockweed wears off?” she asked quietly.