Charred Hope (#3, Heart of Fire) (5 page)

She opened her mouth to ask what the hell he was talking about. The sound of a deep growl emerged.

Startled, she looked around, past the body of a massive lioness she didn’t recall being on the ledge with them to the rocky wall of the peak. She opened her mouth to ask Mason what was going on.

Again, the growl emerged.

Oh, shit.
Skylar looked down at herself. She took in the massive paws and their claws, the long, sinewy legs and thick, black fur covering her body.

Mason rubbed her on the head, tweaking one of her ears. She swiped at him with a huge paw, but he danced away deftly.

Climbing to her feet, she tested her new body by pacing a short distance away and was amazed at how effortlessly she moved. She felt as strong as Mason appeared in his lion form.

Do I have a tail?
She turned, catching a glimpse of it, then began circling, trying to catch it.

“Omigod, Sky, stop!” Mason was laughing so hard, he’d doubled over.

She stopped chasing her tail and gave a long yowl of complaint, unable to figure out how she’d been turned into a giant cat or what to do now that she had.

He dropped to his knees, unable to stop laughing. She nudged him with her massive head, bowling him over. Mason held up his hands as she pawed at him.

“Okay, okay!” he said, reining in his amusement. He shoved her back.

Skylar sat on her haunches, trying hard not to panic.

“Where to start …” Mason stood once more. “You shifted last night. Had I known it would work, I would’ve warned you. It’s
painful.
You get used to it after enough times but when you’re new at shifting, it feels like you’re being shredded from the inside out.”

She bared her teeth at him.

“So you passed out and finished shifting then just … slept,” he finished. “I think it’s a good thing. It got down close to freezing last night. I shifted just to keep warm.”

She had the urge to pace or run or hunt or something. The animal instincts weren’t hers, and neither was she able to fully figure out what they were. She recognized Mason as being a fellow lion, but the idea of a griffin passing low enough for her to slash its wings with her paw and drag it down for a messy, bloody kill …

She yowled again.

Mason smiled. “If you shifted into a lion, you can shift back,” he reasoned. “Do you feel the magic still?”

Skylar rose and walked the length of the ledge, striding back and forth, wishing she had the space to run somewhere and that she wasn’t stuck on a mountain.

“Focus, Skylar,” Mason called. “Do you feel the magic?”

Even if she did, did she really want to feel that pain again? The creatures made it look so simple to change forms, when she’d just experienced how awful it really was.

“Sky! Focus.”

She turned to face Mason again. He was having trouble hiding his amusement.

“Find the magic. Tell it to turn you back.”

She continued to pace but sought out the cool thrum of magic in her blood.

Turn me back!
She screamed internally.

Pain shot through her.

She froze. Her tail twitched, and she twisted to face it again, fascinated by the appendage that almost seemed independent.

“Concentrate,” Mason urged her.

She turned away from her entrancing tail and focused on the magic in her blood. The more she did, the greater the pain became. She sat on her haunches then lowered herself to her belly, leery of the edge of the peak a few feet away. The harder she thought about shifting, the hotter the pain got.

“Shift fast. The faster, the less painful,” Mason advised, squatting a short distance from her. “Come on, Sky. You can do it.”

She growled at him.

The fire grew and with it the agony. Skylar grated her teeth and closed her eyes, willing the pain to be over quickly. Her skin began to ripple as the bones and muscle beneath took on a different shape, while she felt the fur retract into her body.

Her senses grew duller, until she was no longer able to smell the world around her, aside from pine trees, and the cold wind brushed her skin. There was a snap of pure anguish and then it was gone.

Skylar sagged against the ground, gasping and shaking. She lifted her head from the cold stone beneath her. Her dark hair fell in ringlets to her human arms.

“Oh, thank god!” she breathed.

“Welcome back,” Mason said with another laugh.

“You are a dick, Mason.”

He said nothing.

Shivering, she accepted her clothing from him with a glare, vowing to whack him with a huge paw when she had the chance. Skylar pulled on her clothes but still couldn’t get warm. Her fur had trapped her body heat and kept her comfortable. A coat seemed … flimsy in comparison.

She sat and hugged her knees to her chest.

“So now for the real test,” Mason said. “Did that do anything to help you sense others?”

“That was insane,” she whispered. “Was I really a lion?”

“Yeah. A huge one.”

“Bigger than you?”

“Almost. If you knew what you were doing, you’d do some serious damage,” he responded. “I think it’s safe to say we cracked the code.”

“Oh, god,” she said, ducking her face to hide it from the chilly wind. “That was awful.”

“It’s not
awful
. Your gift is amazing,” he corrected. “C’mon. Give me a few more minutes before you give up on being a shifting queen.”

She didn’t answer but concentrated once more on her ability to locate others. They Protector senses were stronger. She was able to identify Mason faster and …

There were others, like blips on a radar screen. They were everywhere.  

“Yeah,” she said. “I can sense them. Well, some of them. Maybe close ones?”

“Awesome. Who you got?”

“I’m really hungry, Mason.”

“Shifting does that. It’s really taxing on the body. You get used to the hunger, too.”

She rolled her eyes, beginning to understand why Chace was always in a foul mood if he was always hungry. She sighed and tried to identify whose signatures she was picking up.

“I think the people at your compound,” she said. “There are like twelve of them. I can’t tell who they are yet. There are another six east of here.”

“Where?”

She pointed vaguely over her head. “East. As far as your people are, I think.”

“What else?”

“There are more …” She puzzled over the sensations, like small bursts of warm and cool in her thoughts. “I don’t know. But there are more. In the mountains.”

“Two kinds of creatures like mountains: dragons and griffins.” The concern in Mason’s voice made her look up.

“I can’t tell what they are,” she admitted.

“Can you tell
where
they are?”

“Not far.” She shrugged.

“Hmmm.” He was pensive for a moment. “There’s a chance that everyone you can locate, can also sense you.”

“Oh, god, I’m so tired!” she said and drew a deep breath. “Are we stuck here until night fall?”

“Or later. When you piss off a woman like Freyja, there’s no telling when she intends to come back.”

“What’s her deal anyway?”

“I imagine there’s some jealousy involved. She dated Chace for a while.”

“For reals?”

“Yeah.”

“So I stole her man
and
I can shift into a dragon bigger than her?” Skylar started to smile despite her exhaustion. “That makes me happy. The minute I’m close enough to steal her magic, I’m so kicking her ass.”

“Nice. You don’t want to find Dillon or defend the shifters. You want to put the smack down on Chace’s ex.” Mason shook his head.

“The dragon that took away my family? You can deal with Dillon. You made that mess,” she snapped.

“The shifters need a Protector, someone who can keep people like Dillon and Freyja from hurting the community.”

She ignored him. Even if he was right, she couldn’t help thinking she’d love taking care of Freyja a little too much.  

“My only question is this: do I need to be touching a shifter to steal its magic?” she mused aloud.

“Why don’t we try it a few times?” he suggested.

She flinched, recalling the pain.

“You’ve always been the bravest person I’ve known, Skylar. Don’t chicken out now. It’s exhausting and painful, but if you can get it down where you can shift out of instinct, you will be so far ahead of everyone you run across,” Mason said.

She nodded. Her thoughts went to her mother, and she wondered again why Ginger had never learned to shift. Did Gavin keep it from her, or did he not know? She felt guilty thinking badly of him, if he didn’t know, and even worse knowing her mother could’ve survived, if she had learned to shift in time.

Maybe she was too busy with me to try.

Guilt raced through her at the idea she’d somehow prevented her mother from escaping or hiding. The more she learned about who she was, the murkier the circumstances around her mother’s disappearance became. Did any one person know what actually happened that day six years ago, when Caleb came to get her?

                                             Chapter Five    

“You’re sure about this?” Chace paused to steady his breathing. Leaning back in his harness, he eyeballed Gunner, who was a much slower climber than he was. Shortly after midnight, Gunner had sprung out of his seat with the wild claim that he knew where Skylar was.

“I can’t explain it,” Gunner said with a grunt. “Just bam! I could pick her up. And you.”

If Cabin hadn’t acted on his friend’s words, Chace might’ve doubted it was possible. “Dragon daddy said the shifters could sense the Protector and her dragon. It just seems odd that it kicked I like that.”

“Yeah, well, it works.”

“Why now?”

“Like I have any idea.”

Chace smiled. He tried to imagine Gunner working as a doctor in a hospital with his abrupt, surly bedside manner. After being a patient to the panther shifter that had no mercy on someone in pain, he didn’t think Gunner had lasted long in that line of work.

Or maybe it was just me he treats like that. Like cabin throwing all my clothes on the floor again this morning.
He had a lot to make amends for. Thank god, the people he cared most about were willing to give him a second chance, even if it was rough to earn back their trust.

They climbed in silence. Chace’s muscles burned from exertion, his head aching from dehydration. He’d thought to bring canteens but not place them where he could reach them easily. The result: he wasn’t about to fall a few thousand feet to his death to grab a sip of water.

Spotting a break in the rocky ascent, he maneuvered his body slowly towards the cave. They both needed a brief rest after their ten hours scaling this peak, and he was too thirsty not to stop for water.

“I am … so sick … of climbing mountains,” he breathed, hauling himself over the edge of a shallow, tall cave big enough for him and Gunner.

“
You
hate it?” Gunner grunted in return, his head popping up over the edge. “What about me?”

I need to fly again.
Chace tugged free a couple of protein bars. He waited until Gunner had settled on the other side before tossing one to him. They ate quietly and caught their breath. Chace’s attention went to the sky outside the small cave.

“You sure about this?” he asked.

“I wouldn’t be climbing a damn mountain if not,” came the panther shifter’s disgruntled response.

“You can sense her. Why can’t I?” Chace grumbled. It was more than his frustration about his stymied magic. It was the knowledge that the shifters were able to sense Skylar – and he wasn’t. He was cut off from her completely, despite the cabin using magic to bring them to the foothills of the mountains where Gunner’s shifter GPS told them to go.

“Something will work out,” Gunner said. “It has to at this point. You were too powerful, and Gavin is gone. My magic returned soon after.”

Chace said nothing, knowing his magic wasn’t responding for a different reason. He had to
earn
it back after callously giving it up. The cabin had returned, but he was still unable to reach the shifter fire locked deep within him. One of the women in his life had forgiven him. The other hadn’t yet.

What would it take? Watching everyone he cared about die?

“How much farther do you think it is?” he asked restlessly.

“Not far. Feels like she’s right on top of us.”

The bellow from some large creature bounced around the mountains. Chace and Gunner froze, the panther shifter tilting his head.

“Smells like a cat,” Gunner said. “Big one. Lion.”

“As long as it’s not a griffin,” Chace said. He leaned out of the cave and looked up. The sound had come from an unseen ledge near the peak of the mountain they were scaling. “Is that where we’re headed?”

“Yep.”

Chace considered how big the creature was that made such a sound then shrugged. “You can speak cat. We’ll be fine.”

Gunner said nothing.

After a few more minutes, they replaced their packs and began the last part of their ten-hour ascension.

Chace went first, gripping handholds with tired fingers. He felt himself fall into the zone, the rhythm of his movement calming his thoughts. Hand, foot, foot, hand. The grey rock before his eyes was streaked with white, black and peach, and he followed the crisscrossing veins of color with some interest.

Gunner was quiet as he climbed a few feet away, the two of them connected by a thick blue rope.

I have no idea what I did to deserve a friend like this.
Chace thought, aware of how much felines hated heights and mountains.

A shadow crossed over them.

“Think we got company,” Gunner said quietly.

Chace looked from the rock wall to the sky above. With his precarious balance, he wasn’t able to lean back enough to see what it was. “Can’t see it. Can you smell what it is?”

“Feathers,” Gunner growled.

“You gotta be more specific.”

Another shadow fell over them. A second roar followed it from the great cat on the peak above.

Chace balanced himself and risked bending back farther than usual to get a good look at the sky.