Authors: Karin Shah
And then outside of the dark room, she was able to see what she hadn’t before. Ethan was solid.
Alive
. He was alive. She’d steepled her hands over her mouth and nose. Happy tears clawed at her lids, and welled in her eyes, smudging the sharp horizontal and vertical edges of the forest into soft swathes of green, brown, and gold.
She’d hardly had the thought before the creature vanished in a brilliant flare of light and another lion appeared.
It roared, and she’d flinched as the other two answered, the sound was loud, feral, and she’d shivered.
Ethan had dropped his head, his posture speaking of a big cat about to explode into action. His brothers’ taut muscles had quivered in response beneath their wheaten fur. Their black-lined lips peeled back to reveal massive white teeth.
Honey whimpered.
Oh my God. They’re going to fight
. Devon had tensed, the hands still shielding her mouth sliding up near her eyes.
She’d known she had to stop this. “Ethan?” she’d said, hoping the sound of his name might reach him.
An almost imperceptible ripple had gone through him, then he’d roared and whirled, taking off like a golden streak into the thick woods.
As the last glimpse of his bright hide vanished, the lion brothers exchanged a look.
A tiny nervous laugh escaped her at the sight of the human gesture coming from wild animals.
A flash seared her eyes again and Jake appeared. He was naked, but used his brother’s bulk to shield his lower body. His body rivaled Ethan’s in its chiseled perfection, and if she hadn’t been so concerned about his brother she would have thought it a pity he was partially blocked.
She supposed she looked less pole-axed than she felt because he crossed his arms over his broad chest, his head bent in the diffident habit he had, one blue eye peeking out from behind the raven curtain of his hair and said, “You know what we are.”
She shook her head, brushing a strand of hair appropriated by the breeze out of her face. “Not really. Shapeshifters of some sort.”
Jake peered at his older brother then came as close as he ever had to meeting her gaze. “We’re chimeras. We can get, well, lost inside out animal forms. There’s no time to say more. Just go home and lock the door.”
“What?”
“Please.” He readjusted his weight and tightened the muscular arms crossing his chest. “He may not know what he’s doing, making him even more dangerous than a real lion.”
Kyle growled.
Jake nodded. “Or dragon.”
She hugged herself. “Dragon?” If she hadn’t seen the transformation into lion herself . . .
Jake shrugged his shoulders, ripped muscles flexing beneath smooth golden skin. “The man-eating lions in Kenya in the nineteenth century that evaded capture for so long were twin chimeras who shifted early and lost their humanity.”
Devon stuffed her hands in her hair. Lions and dragons and men, oh my. The whole thing seemed crazy, but maybe crazy was the new black, er, reality. “What can we do?”
Jake’s hair slid over his eyes as he glanced at the ground. When he looked up, his gaze pointed over her right shoulder as if he were searching for something in the forest behind her. “If he’s lost himself there’s no coming back. He has to be killed before he kills.”
Chapter 19
“What? No.” Devon took a step back as if she could run from his words. The uncompromising line of Jake’s jaw and the rigid set of his muscular shoulders told her he was deadly serious. That he believed Ethan had already crossed the line into madness.
He dropped his arms, and she got the feeling he was about to change to go after his brother.
She reached out a shaky hand. “Wait. What makes you think he’s lost his grip on his human side?”
He sighed. “In addition to the fact that no one has seen him in human form for three months?” He waved a hand toward the road on the other side of the wall of brush. “He set a trap for us. He threw Ky fifteen feet. I don’t think he planned a family picnic.”
Nothing she said could erase the truth of his words, but there had to be some way to stop this. She groped for something, anything, that might sway the men. “So you’re just going to murder your own brother?”
The lion rumbled.
Jake’s jaw flexed, his brow folded and his eyes flashed gold. “You think I want to do this? He’ll kill anyone he meets. Do you want to hear on the news about missing people? Children?”
“But there haven’t been.”
“Not yet.”
“Please.” Devon stretched out her hand again. She was pleading, but she didn’t care. “Just, just let me talk to him.”
Jake glanced at Ky for a long moment, human gaze meeting lion, and Devon got the feeling they were speaking telepathically somehow.
Finally he looked back in her direction. “We’ll track him from the car.”
Ethan reveled in the feel of the forest whipping by beneath his ground-eating gait. He’d never felt so strong, so powerful. His muscles coiled and uncoiled with effortless ease. Even the twisting pain in his empty belly couldn’t dampen his elation.
In human form his reflexes, hearing, and other senses were excellent, but now they were perhaps a magnitude ten better. He could hear birds launching into the air in advance of his approach, hear and smell the rabbits and deer bounding away, as well as smell their spoor.
His enhanced senses should have overwhelmed him. There were hundreds of smells, sounds, and other sensory information pouring into him from every quarter, but the lion could separate and identify every piece.
He weaved through the saplings and older growth trunks springing up from the forest floor. Air rushed in through his open mouth. His large heart and lungs pumped with rhythmic precision.
He should stop running. His rational mind knew that. You couldn’t lead a hunter away without letting him keep up, but the exhilaration of fully extending every part of his lion’s body intoxicated him.
He roared at the thrill.
Freedom
, the cat whispered.
At last
.
The man had known nothing but pain, rejection. There was no pain here, just the rolling woods and the pleasure of exercising powerful muscles and razor-sharp senses.
That’s it
, the lion beckoned.
Let me take control. I know only the joy of sating my body’s needs, food, sleep, mating. No one will hurt us again.
In the distance he could hear a car on the road. Its brakes squealing like an animal in its death throes. The sound drew him and he skidded to an abrupt halt.
Car doors slammed and seconds later he could hear feet running and then large bodies crashing through the springy growth fringing the road.
A dog got there first. A young healthy female, she leaped toward him, tail wagging. Her scent called to him. There was something familiar about her, but his need overwhelmed all thought.
His hunger was a creature of its own, clutching at his stomach with talons of glass. How long had it been since he’d filled his belly?
He shook his shaggy mane as if to shoo flies. A lion had no need to measure time.
Here was an easy meal. He would take it. He crouched to spring at the dog.
Devon froze as she saw the lion prepare to charge Honey. Ethan was going to kill her dog!
Horror iced her veins. “Ethan!” Her voice rang through the forest, the last syllable high-pitched with panic.
He shook his massive head, ears and mane flapping, then stopped, his golden gaze fixed on her with lethal intensity.
The lions beside her growled. The density of the growth had forced the three of them to squeeze through a narrow gap. She could feel the brothers’ muscles bunch.
They were going to strike.
“No,” she said under her breath. She stepped forward.
That feral gaze didn’t falter. An atavistic chill skated up the back of her neck.
What if Jake was right? They were the experts on chimeras. Maybe Ethan wasn’t in there at all.
She took a deep breath. No, she wasn’t going to believe that. Not without proof. “Honey.” She willed her voice not to show her fear.
The dog whined and trotted over to her. Devon pushed Honey behind her and took another step.
Ethan chuffed, a sound that jellied her joints and raised the hair on her arms. She couldn’t breathe. She gulped down the lump in her throat and forced herself to walk two more steps forward.
Oh, God. Oh God.
She held out her hand as if to a stray dog.
Yeah, but if a stray dog bites you, you still have a hand.
Devon took a deep breath, brushing away the unhelpful thoughts. “Ethan?”
The lion padded toward her, making no sound despite the carpet of dead leaves littering the forest floor, its focused gaze hard as topaz and just as unreadable as stone.
She stood stock still. At this range, he could kill her before his brothers could twitch.
He lifted his enormous head, pointed chin in the air, ears flattening, black-rimmed eyes squinting, and scented the air around her.
A low grunt issued from his barrel-sized chest. He moved closer to nudge her with his thickly furred body, rubbing his cheeks, chin, and neck against her ribs like a huge housecat. He was purring.
Relief almost knocked her feet out from under her.
“If I come any closer, he’s liable to attack.” Jake had gone human behind her. “See if you can get him to shift to human form. Remind him who he is.”
Devon blew out the breath she’d been holding and sank her hand into Ethan’s tangled mane. She sifted through the burnt caramel strands. The texture fascinated her, soft and coarse at the same time. This was Ethan, but at the same time a wild animal. The freaking king of beasts, for God’s sake.
The sense of explosive power tamed sent a shudder rippling through her. A giddy laugh bubbled up from her diaphragm that this marvelous creature would allow her to touch him.
She kneeled in the grass and buried her face in the long fur on his neck. He tilted his head, rubbing his cheek against hers, nuzzling her. She closed her eyes, savoring the caress, the plush softness of the fur on his cheek, the wiry prickle of his whiskers, then slid back and cupped his face in her hands, peering into those beautiful eyes. “Ethan. Are you in there?”
A stupid question. Of course he was in there. Otherwise she would be lion chow by now.
He pushed closer. His body heat warmed her, while his deep purr vibrated in her chest. The wild scent of him rose to her nose, heady, rich, and not the least like what wafted from the lion enclosure at the zoo.
A twig snapped behind them, bringing the lion to instant attention.
Devon pivoted on her knee. Jake had shifted back to lion sometime during the encounter.
Ethan muscled past her toward the sound, roaring at the two lions behind her.
Her scalp crawled. This was not the sound of a tame creature.
Playtime was over.
She shuddered. Despite Ethan’s size he was rangy and weak from months of starvation, his bones jutting near the surface. And there were two of them. It was no contest. If she couldn’t bring him back to himself they would kill him.
Chapter 20
Ethan roared at the two lions. The woman was
his
.
His
mate. He would kill them before he surrendered her.
“Ethan.”
His mate made a noise. Though the sound made no sense, her voice wicked some of his aggression away. He turned his shoulder toward her, but didn’t take his attention from the other lions.
She made a string of noises and the other lions backed away. He watched them until they were out of sight, then walked back to his mate.
She was still kneeling. He butted her with his head.
“Ethan.” She knotted her fingers in his mane. “I know you’re in there. I need you to come back.”
Something stirred inside him. The lion shrank away from it. That way lay rejection, confusion, pain.
She slid her hand down his front leg and put her hand on his paw. She made more noises and against his will they resolved into words. “You’re beautiful in this form, spectacular, but I can’t hold your hand.”
She, Devon, that was her name, just as the word she’d said earlier was his, leaned forward until he could count every eyelash, immerse himself in her scent. He felt like rolling around in it like a kitten in catnip.
“I can’t see the face I fell— I can’t see your face.” Her breath whispered over his whiskers. “I can’t kiss your lips.”
A tear streaked her cheek and she dashed it away. The lion didn’t understand the meaning of the tear, but the man did. He was causing her pain. He growled, a low soft exhalation that seemed to cut through the quiet woods like a buzz saw.
She sagged, her slender frame folding almost in half and buried her face in her hands, shoulders shaking.
This wasn’t the anonymous grief easily spared for a wasted life. She cared. For him.
To her he wasn’t an obstacle, a convenience, or a means to an end. He wasn’t too disreputable, too angry, too big, too scary.
He couldn’t allow the lion to take over. Because of her he didn’t have the luxury. Damn it, didn’t want it.
Remembering how he’d released the lion, he formed a picture of himself in his mind’s eye. How he looked. What it felt like to balance on two legs. The sensation of grasping things with his hands.
In less than a second, he stood before her kneeling form. The breeze was cool on his naked skin, but somehow he couldn’t work up a drop of concern.
“Devon.” The lion was still strong in him and his voice sounded as rusty as if he hadn’t spoken in a months which, truthfully, he hadn’t.
Her head came up and the look on her face when she realized he was human again lit a flame in his chest. Her lovely eyes were wide, like a child seeing a rainbow. Her peachy mouth curled upward at the corners. Never in his life would he have imagined someone could look at him that way.
He reached down and helped her to her feet. Her hand was small and warm in his. He brushed his thumb over her soft knuckles, enjoying the satin of her skin.
Such a small thing, touch, but after the long months—hell, years—of deprivation, the sense bowled him over. As thrilling as embracing his lion had been the sky and the ground had stayed firmly planted, but now, down was up and up was down.
She lifted her pert chin, biting her lip, and her sherry-brown gaze met his. The corners of her eyes crinkled in a small smile. Her long red lashes swept down and then up. “Hi.” The word landed light and airy as a butterfly wing. And almost as tentative.
“Hi.” He had no idea what to say, but at that moment words seemed unnecessary. For several seconds he simply stood there, her hands clasped in his, staring into her eyes.
A beam of sunlight turned her hair into a halo of fire, a smattering of tiny freckles sprinkled her nose, her wide eyes seemed to sparkle.
He supposed he looked like an idiot, standing there bare-assed in the middle of the forest, drinking Devon in, but he didn’t care. After so long without touch, her hand was a rope thrown to a drowning sailor.
The pop of broken twigs swiveled his head. His brothers, in human form, came into view.
Ethan was on them before even he knew he’d moved.
Pain exploded in his fist. Jake’s head snapped back. He recovered, tilting his head and then roared. The sound rolled through the woods, silencing the insects and birds.
Jake struck with blinding speed, his fist driving Ethan back off his feet. Broken twigs and sharp vines bit his flesh.
Another hair-raising growl cut the air and a yellow streak slammed onto Ethan. Air burst from his lungs. Sharp hooked claws pierced the skin of his chest. Thistles, twigs, and dried leaves pricked his back and ass.
“Ky! No!” Jake wrapped both arms around the lion on top of Ethan and tugged him back. The sinews in Jake’s arm bulged and he grasped his other wrist, his arm pressing against the animal’s throat.
Kyle snarled, writhing in Jake’s grasp. His golden eyes held the merciless focus of a predator. Hot breath swept past white flesh-ripping teeth and feathered Ethan’s face.
Ethan struggled to breathe beneath his brother’s crushing weight. Rage and fear sang to the lion inside him. Only his need to confront his brothers kept him human. He glared up at Jake. “Why bother? Go ahead, let him kill me now. It’s your plan, isn’t it?”
“Ethan!” The sound of his name from Devon’s lips made him freeze, but he couldn’t risk a glance in her direction.
Jake slammed his large, hard fist into his brother’s mane, once, twice, three times. Each blow landed with the muffled
thwack
of solid contact. “Kyle! Stop. Stop!”
The lion shook like a wet dog, throwing Jake into a nearby bush, and leaped forward, driving the air from Ethan’s lungs as he pushed off. He flew over Ethan, landing on the other side and turned, roaring.
Ethan jumped to his feet. Jake came up on the other side.
One set of golden eyes warred with blue and hazel.
A loud crack spilt the air. They stiffened.
Devon flinched as the sound came again, eyes wide. “Someone’s shooting. But this is posted property.”
“Poachers?” Jake looked in the direction of the noise. Another shot rang out. “Whoever they are, they’re getting closer.”
“Do you think they heard the roar?” Devon asked.
The crash of branches breaking announced the arrival of a small blond child. Only a bit older than a toddler, he peered up at them with big blue eyes and took a step toward Ky. “Kitty! Daddy! Come see the kitty! Daddy!” he yelled.
“Well, they’ll definitely hear that.” Jake jerked his head in the direction of the rental house. “Let’s get out of here.”
Devon took Honey by the collar and dragged her away.
Ethan and Jake followed, but the child seemed to transfix Kyle, who remained in his lion form.
“Ky . . .” Jake paced back and buried his fingers in his brother’s heavy scruff. “Snap out of it.”
The boy was getting braver, creeping ever closer to the massive, bristling lion.
Ears flattened, Kyle bared his white inches-long fangs. For a moment, Ethan thought the kid was about to become a snack, but Kyle shook again and in a brilliant flash, a man stood panting in front of the child.
“Sam!” someone called, his voice near enough to make them jump. “I told you not to get out of sight!”
“Come on!” Jake grabbed his oldest brother’s arm and took off, dragging the sweating, shaking man behind him. Ethan took Devon’s extended hand and ran after them.
Back at the car, Jake popped open the hatch and yanked on a pair of jeans, then tossed a pair each to Ethan and Kyle, following up with T-shirts. “Cover up, before I puke.”
Ethan dropped Devon’s hand and caught the jeans. Considering the men planned to kill him, he didn’t know what to make of the gesture. “Thanks.”
A half a grin quirked the side of Jake’s mouth. “Covering your ass is thanks enough.”
Ethan turned away to yank on the clothes, hiding the almost overpowering tangle of emotions his brothers’ camaraderie evoked.
When he was dressed, he turned. The brothers stood shoulder-to-shoulder. He angled Devon behind him and fisted his hands at his sides. “If you’re going to try and kill me, let’s get it over with.”
The pair shared a brief glance, and Jake raised a hand, broad palm out. “We don’t want to kill you. We never did.”
Ethan narrowed his eyes and crossed his arms. “Bullshit. I heard you in the car.”
Jake sighed. “Look, I think it’s safe to say you have no idea what you are. We do. Come with us and we’ll explain everything.”
Ethan studied his brothers. Whatever their intentions had been, they didn’t feel like a threat, at the moment. The bracing flow of adrenaline from the fight retreated.
He took a step forward, and the world spun, moving around him as if he’d been rolled over in the surf. He staggered, reaching for the solidity of the SUV and felt hands close around him, supporting him on all sides. His brothers and Devon, he sensed, but their assistance couldn’t steady him. The ground heaved up to meet him and everything went black.
Devon rubbed her thumb against her palm, as Jake and Kyle hefted their unconscious brother into her house and through the bedroom door. As soon as Ethan lay on the double bed, she rushed to him, kneeling at his side and checking his forehead for fever, her throat raw with worry.
She turned toward Jake and saw Kyle speaking on his phone. “Oh, good. You’re calling 911.”
She could hear a musically accented female voice say over the line, “What? That can’t be . . .”
“. . . possible,” finished the voice, but she heard it from her kitchen, as well as over the phone.
Kyle ended the call and slid the cell into his jeans pocket. “I called someone better.”
She stood and hurried to the doorway, finding a tall, dark, harsh-featured man and a whippet-slender, East Indian woman standing in her kitchen. The woman, attractive but not in a memorable way, her long hair plaited in a thick black braid ending at her waist, raised a hand to her head, bangles jingling, the jewelry incongruous with the jeans, blue tank top and unbuttoned white shirt she wore. “Wow, what a rush. I guess it
is
possible.”
The other man inclined his head, in Old World fashion. Devon almost expected him to click his heels. “I’d better get back. Call me when you’re ready to leave.” And with that, he disappeared. Not out the door, or into another room. Vanished, as if he had never been there.
Devon fumbled for words. The woman, Kyle, and Jake watched her, as if waiting for her to react.
Darn it. Her mouth was hanging open like a beached trout, wasn’t it?
She snapped her jaw shut as the woman extended her fine-boned hand.
“Sorry about bursting in, but Ky sounded urgent.” She smiled. “I’m Anjali.”
Devon revised her opinion of Anjali’s beauty. Few people exposed to that flashing smile would forget her. She shook her hand. “Devon.”
Jake swept Anjali into his side. If he’d appeared any prouder, Devon would have thought he’d made her himself out of modeling clay. “Anjali is my fiancée. And a doctor.” He glanced down at her and nodded in the direction of the bedroom. “Ethan’s in there.”
Devon shadowed Anjali inside. The brunette took his pulse and lifted each of his eyelids, then straightened. “He doesn’t seem to have a concussion. I suspect his state has to do with being without water and food for so long.” She pinned Devon with her ebony gaze. “Do you have any sports drinks in the house? Plain water will work, but a jolt of sugar and salts would be faster.”
“I don’t have any sports drinks. Will lemonade work?”
Anjali nodded, and Devon trotted to the kitchen to rustle some up, while the brothers loomed in the corner near the bedroom door, watching. The stark expression on Ky’s face as she brought the lemonade to Ethan struck a chord in her. She’d seen it reflected in a mirror when her mother had slipped into a coma at the hospital before she could reach her. Guilt.
She handed the cold glass to Anjali. Jake lifted Ethan’s shoulders so the other woman could pour the drink in his mouth. She frowned when he didn’t stir as the liquid flooded his throat. “If he won’t wake up, we’ll have to get him to a hospital for an I.V.”
She tried again, coaxing him on as she filled his mouth, “Come on, Ethan! Wake up and drink this.”
Ethan choked a little and opened his eyes. He started to struggle, but Devon was there.
She reached across Anjali to touch his rough cheek. “Ethan, it’s okay. You have to drink this.”
He nodded, and when Anjali put the glass back to his lips, he took it in his hand and chugged back the whole thing, then thrust the empty glass at Devon and said, “More, please.”
Ten minutes later, Ethan sat at Devon’s kitchen table with Jake and Kyle. Devon had whipped up an enormous mound of spaghetti and he dug in, savoring the tart taste of the sauce and finally easing the constant tearing hunger. He slanted a glance Devon’s way. She observed him from next to the stove, gaze grave and intent, as if he might vanish or go up in flames.
Anjali hovered next to her, having helped with the clean up.
“So,” Ethan asked around a mouthful of tangy pasta, “how is it I’m still alive? I know survival. Three days without water and I should be dead. It’s been three months.”
Anjali tapped her chin. “Absolutely. For humans. I suspect chimeras may be able to go a little longer, but even so, I think the disembodied state reduces calorie and water requirements. Were you awake the whole time?” Her tone gave the impression the white-buttoned down shirt she wore was really a lab coat.
Ethan swallowed a knot of spaghetti, closing his eyes to savor the warm, filling sensation, then shook his head. “I wasn’t aware for long periods.”