Under Her Skin (11 page)

But there was more to it than that.

They were also terrified.

“What was that?” I asked as we made our way to the car.

“A ploy for time.” Kade’s truck beeped as he unlocked it. He reached around my side and opened the door for me.

“Not that. The sheer terror in that room.” Stepping up onto the runner, I swung myself into the passenger side. My voice dropped. “Are they really that afraid of lamias?”

Kade didn’t respond until he was buckled into his own seat. Then he tilted his head and considered as he pulled away from the curb. “More afraid that there might be more than one of you, I think.”

“How likely is it that we’ll gain enough time?” The slight waver in my voice gave away how much the answer meant to me, I feared.

Kade’s hand dropped down on mine on the seat for a moment, his body heat again offering comfort, a sense of safety.

How false was that sense?

Staring out into the darkness as Kade drove me home, I wondered if there really were another lamia out there.

If so, what could he or she teach me about my own background?

And how dangerous might it be to find out?

* * *

I managed to make it through the next day as if nothing unusual had happened, but only because I was distracted by a batch of new intake cases. I turned off all thoughts of lamias and shapeshifters and concentrated on being merely Lindi Parker, Licensed Professional Counselor. LPCs don’t have to worry about being under the protection of Council Shields, or wondering if they might be killed for merely existing—no more than any normal person does, anyway.

I managed to work right through lunch, meeting clients and writing up reports on those meetings.

It was a nice reprieve from the anxiety of the last week.

Too bad it lasted only through the workday.

Moments after five o’clock, my personal phone rang with Scott’s ringtone. I was still holding it in my hand, trying to decide whether to answer it, when Kade walked through the door.

“You going to do anything other than stare at that?” he asked.

I bit my lip. “It’s Scott. I don’t feel up to trying to explain away shifter stuff today. But he might have new information.”

“Or he could be calling to reschedule your interrupted date.” Kade was doing that neutral-tone thing again, but the golden specks in his eyes were beginning to swirl.

The call switched over to voicemail and I flipped the ringer over to silent. “If it’s important, he’ll leave a message.” I placed the phone face-down on my desk.

The unmistakably bright scent of satisfaction rolled off of Kade, and I shook my head. “What are you doing here, doctor?”

“I was going to see if you had heard from anyone else on the case.” He grinned. “But I see you’ve been avoiding your phone today.”

“Is that why you came over instead of calling?” I turned my attention from him as I began to close out my work for the day, saving a few documents and shutting down my computer.

“Nope. I just wanted to see you.” The flavor of satisfaction was fading, replaced with something new—or at least new in my experience with Kade. Hesitation.

Interesting.

I bit the inside of my bottom lip, forcing myself to remain silent as I waited to see where Dr. Mongoose was taking this.

He stared at me for a moment, the increasing churn of the gold in his eyes reflecting some inner agitation. When he eventually spoke, his words gave no indication of what might really be bothering him. “I’m on my way to check in on Kirstie. Would you like to go with me?”

I could play that game, too. If he had something important to say to me, he would eventually come out with it. “Sure. Give me about five minutes to wrap up here. I’ll meet you in the lobby.”

With a nod, the other shifter left my office, leaving the taste of some low-level anxiety dissipating in the air around me.

* * *

The same scent clung to Kade all the way through the drive to the hospital. I waited for him to say something, to tell me what was bothering him.

When he didn’t, I leaned back in the leather seat of his Jeep and stared out the window at the city rolling past me.

At the hospital, Kirstie had been moved from ICU to her own room, not far from the room where Kade had kissed me the first time. In fact, it might have been the same room. I hadn’t paid enough attention the first time to be sure. I’d been too busy pretending not to like it.

Kirstie was awake and alert, chatting with another doctor. When she saw Kade, she brightened. “Hi, Dr. Nevala,” she sang out. “How are you?”

He returned her smile. “I’m doing well. As are you, apparently.”

The little bobcat-girl—
kit
, I reminded myself—chattered away cheerfully, stopping only long enough to catch her breath occasionally. From the seat beside the bed, Rita Bryant glared at me once, then ignored me.

I didn’t hurt your child
, I wanted to say. But today was clearly my day for biting my tongue, and I refrained from speaking at all until Kade said his goodbyes and led me back out into the hospital corridor.

“I take it the antivenin worked,” I said.

With a nod, Kade began striding toward the elevators. “Better than I had hoped it would, in fact.”

Despite his patient’s recovery, anxiety still rolled off him. As the doors slid closed behind us, I finally couldn’t stand it any longer. “What is bothering you, then?” I demanded. “You’ve been jittering ever since you walked into my office.”

Kade stilled, watching me through narrowed eyes, then nodded as he came to some decision. “You need to begin training.”

“Training? To do what?”

“To fight. As a shifter.”

I turned my hands palm-up. “What if I don’t want to learn to fight? Anyway, why does that have you so agitated?”

“If the Council knew I was training you, they might kill us both.”

“Are you sure no one will see us?” I whispered.

“We’re still in the car. You can speak up.” Kade’s golden eyes laughed at me, though his mouth stayed suspiciously straight.

After he threatened me in the elevator with death-by-Council, I had firmly refused any training he might have to offer. Yet, by the time he dropped me off at my office, he had arranged to pick me up at home an hour after sunset.

I still wasn’t sure how that had happened.

Damn mongoose pheromones. Or maybe those golden eyes.

In any case, I went with him when he showed up at my doorstep and got in his Jeep for an hour-long drive to a state park.

“Are you absolutely certain that no one will be out there to catch us shifting?” This time I spoke loudly on purpose.

The mongoose shifter shrugged, his gaze still dancing with amusement. “And say what? Oh, no, there are terrible animal-people in the state park? Anyway, at this time of night, there won’t be anyone else around. We all use the park on a pretty regular basis, though we make the wolves do their full-moon runs somewhere else.”

“Full-moon run? Is that thing about werewolves and the full moon true?” The rest of his sentence caught up with my brain. “Why do the wolves have to go other places?”

“Slow down. You can’t learn everything about us all at once. But no. Werewolves don’t have to turn on the full moon any more than you and I do. But they really like to. They can’t run at the state park because it’s too close to the wildlife park. And the wildlife park is full of various kinds of prey animals—deer, antelope, zebras, mountain goats, and the like. All it takes is one wolf who can’t control himself, and the whole pack could go into hunting mode.” He rolled his eyes. “Group hunters. They can’t seem to help it.”

I glanced out at the empty land running by the spot where we had pulled off of Highway 67. “So where do they run?”

This time Kade did grin. “You’re not supposed to know.”

“But you do?” I examined the end of my ponytail, trying to look uninterested. Cool. Not like I was hanging on every word he said.

“I’m on the Council,” he said, his tone matter-of-fact.

I glanced out the window into the darkness, realizing that the conversation had distracted me from my anxiety. “Okay. Your little ploy worked. I’m ready.”

Kade’s grin flashed again. “Good. Let’s go.”

We left the truck about a mile from the park entrance. The park was still and silent as we skirted the entrance gate. A light was shining in the guardhouse, but I couldn’t sense anyone inside. A little farther down the path, next to the gift-shop, towered two life-size dinosaur replicas.

“What if someone catches us?”

I had gone back to whispering, but Kade answered in his normal tone. “There are people around. The park has campsites and hiking trails. We probably won’t see anyone, but even if we run into any Park Rangers, they won’t do anything worse than warn us about wandering around at night, tell us to go back to our campsite. Maybe ask to see our permit.”

“Which we don’t have,” I pointed out.

“We can try to hide, if it makes you feel better.”

I nodded, and Kade chuckled. “You ever been to Dinosaur Valley before?” he asked as we slipped into the sparse coverage of the foliage by the side of the road leading up to the main parking lot.

“Dad brought me when I was younger to see the dinosaur tracks,” I said absently, concentrating on testing the air around us. Flickering my tongue out of my mouth, I drew in the night air. From our left came the taste of the river, the molecules tumbling across my tongue as the water danced through the shallows, then slowing as the river pooled in the deep swimming hole I remembered from my childhood.

We emerged from the trees at the top of the trail that crisscrossed down the slope to the river below.

“What did you think of the place then?” Kade asked, pausing to lean on the rail overlooking the swimming hole. A metal pipe pointed directly at the one fossilized dinosaur track preserved just under the water, allowing viewers to pinpoint the track’s location. The reflection of the moonlight on the water didn’t provide enough illumination now, but I remembered staring at it intently as a child. Later, I had swum up to the edge of the track’s shelf, Dad warning me against adding to erosion by touching it, even as I marveled at the difference between the enormous three-toed track and my tiny hand.

Even in the midst of that awe, part of me had wondered if I was somehow descended from the dinosaurs.

Maybe Kade knew.

Maybe someday I would ask.

“It was impressive,” I said simply.

Kade turned and led the way down the path to the river, sure-footed even in the darkness. We passed just above the outcropping with the print, the water low enough that I could see the ancient outline of the print, pressed into mud eons ago, then buried and turned to stone.

Past the swimming hole, the path swung upward again, then took us to manmade stone steps leading down to the river, where we crossed on giant boulders. As a child, Dad had held my hand when we walked across. When Kade reached back to make sure I stayed balanced on one of the slippery rocks, a similar sense of absolute safety encompassed me.

Which was stupid. We were out in the middle of a state park, illegally, in order to hone my fighting skills. “Why did we have to come all the way out here?” I asked once we reached the far bank. “We could have gone out to my parents’ ranch. There aren’t any park rangers or other people out there.”

“You’ll see,” Kade replied cryptically.

“We’re going to shift, right? What if some camper sees us?” I slid into the shadow of a tree leaning out from the bank above me, tempted to scamper from one dark spot to the next.

“Because reports of shapeshifters are always taken so very seriously.” Kade peered into the underbrush. “Come on. It’s not far now.”

We walked close to the water. Reflected moonlight lit the limestone cliffs that rose up on either side of the river, showing their sharply defined layers where the river had cut down into stone over the centuries. Soon, the cliffs petered out, the riverbed widening as the water ran shallower.

“Here,” Kade said, turning away from the river and pushing through tangled underbrush and into a dense copse of trees. We emerged on the other side in a small clearing. Striding to the center, Kade closed his eyes and held out his hands, palms down. “There,” he breathed. “Feel that?”

“No.” I glanced around the empty space. Tall native grasses bounded the area, but nothing grew in the clearing itself. Only light, rocky soil covered the space, about eight feet across. It was so perfectly circular that it looked intentional. And for all I knew, it might be.

I had no idea what Kade meant, but I was willing to give it a try, so I held out my own arms and closed my eyes, trying to feel whatever he meant.

Nothing. I dropped my hands to my sides.

“Try this,” Kade said, moving around behind me. Taking my hands in his, he lifted our arms together.

I felt something then. I felt Kade, pressed up against me, the heat of his fingers touching my skin as his breath stirred my hair.

That probably wasn’t what he meant, but it was all I could think of in that moment.

When I closed my eyes, I imagined I could feel his heartbeat through our shirts where his chest barely brushed my back as our breathing synchronized.

Wait. That really was his heartbeat.

My eyes flew open, and the sensation disappeared. “What was that?” I asked breathlessly.

Kade dropped my hands and stepped around in front of me again, grinning. “I thought you might be able to sense it. Not all of us can.”

“Sense what?” But I didn’t really need an answer. Now that Kade had pointed it out, I was attuned to the feeling.

Power.

Thrumming up through the earth at my feet, spilling out into the circle where we stood.

“Where is it coming from?” I asked.

Kade shook his head. “No idea. As far as anyone can tell, it’s always been here. There are other spots, too, all over the world, but this is the closest one to us.”

“Can we use it somehow?” The sensation intensified, swirling around me.

“Try,” Kade said with a smile.

I closed my eyes and held out my hands again, letting the strange energy twine up my body and around my fingers, caressing me as it slid up my face and through my hair.

When I opened my eyes, a white haze shivered in between me and the world.

But when I tried to close my hands around it, the power ran through my fingers like water, dropping back to the ground, leaving me trembling in the night air. “Wow.”

“Good. Now call it back and shift,” Kade said, watching me intently.

I usually stripped before shifting. But I wasn’t about to take off my clothes, not with Kade Nevala watching me like that. The thought brought my nipples to attention, though, and Kade tilted his head, narrowing his eyes at me thoughtfully.

I told myself it was the magic of this place, even though I knew better.

Shifting in my clothes, then. I’d done it before. I ignored the fact that most of the time, it left half of what I was wearing ripped and torn.

Naked now, or torn garments later?

Turning my back on the were-mongoose, I pulled my shirt over my head, pretending I didn’t feel him watching every move. When my panties and bra were neatly folded on the stack of clothing on the ground, I prepared to shift.

Closing my eyes, I concentrated on pulling that throbbing energy back around me. When it encircled me entirely, I drew my arms down to my sides slowly, allowing the twitch of muscle to become a ripple that ran through my back and out to my entire body.

I opened my eyes when I felt them begin to shift. Something about seeing the change from color vision to black-and-white always made the transformation move more quickly. Once my eyes had shifted entirely, the haze turned to a light sheen with thousands of sparkling lights dancing within it.

I dropped down to the ground as my arms and legs flowed into one long, muscular body, and for the first time ever, I didn’t feel panic.

For the first time, the shift felt right. Natural.

The sparkles faded from my eyes, though I could still feel the thrumming magic in the ground below me.

I reared up to watch Kade as he, too, shifted, and realized that this was the first time I’d seen him in his mongoose form.

He had undressed as I shifted, and I had just a glimpse of his muscular human shape before he, too, pulled the magic around him and began to shift.

Watching it from outside, I could see the way the tiny, star-bright motes of light flew not just around the shapeshifter, but through him, sparking changes everywhere they touched. When the twinkling lights faded, Kade the mongoose stood in front of me.

I’ve always thought that the word “mongoose” was silly.

The animal in front of me was anything but.

He looked fierce.

The golden-brown color of his fur matched the color of his human eyes. In his animal form, those eyes were darker, but still swirled with golden flecks. His body was compact, lean, muscular, again much like his human shape.

I found myself sizing him up as an adversary. His ears were squared off, close to his head, leaving no points to grab.

And then he moved. Flashing toward me, he raised one paw, struck the side of my head, and was gone. Instinctively, I struck out toward him, only to find that he had danced away.

Damn, he was fast.

We spun around again, striking at one another. Kade didn’t touch me again, but I didn’t touch him, either.

And then he pulled on the magic in that circle. I saw it happen, saw the glittering lights begin to sparkle around him, but I didn’t know what he was doing until those twinkles became one long smear of light and he was pinning me down to the ground, one paw on my head, the other on my back. I thrashed and pulled, but the magic apparently granted strength as well as speed. Kade held me there easily.

Not until I went entirely limp did he let go of the extra power. I saw it drain out of him and back into the ground below us. If this had been a true fight, I would have attacked then. Instead, I simply pulled back and watched as Kade withdrew his paws carefully and jumped away.

It wasn’t until he was already mid-shift that I realized that when I retook human form, I would be standing in front of him without any clothes.

My snake-brain didn’t care, but some part of my human self whimpered in the back of my mind.

Nothing to be done about it, though.

It wasn’t like he wasn’t standing in front of me in his human form now, perfectly naked.

And oh, I did mean perfect.

When the sparkles from my own transformation cleared, they didn’t drain away immediately. Instead, I stood in the center of a circle of power throbbing around me. The moonlight glinted off the remaining flickers of light, like magical dust motes dancing in the air. I found that by concentrating, I could pull them in and through me, sliding across my skin and then sinking into my body until they infused me with their extra power. When I glanced down at my arms, they glittered with it.