Shifter Planet: The Return

by Reynolds, D. B.

  Aidan didn’t slow, but walked directly to the hut. Reaching high over his head—well above the reach of most adults, including Rachel—he retrieved an ordinary metal key and slipped it into the lock.

  She followed him inside, noting the hut’s sturdy construction and thick insulation. From the outside, it looked like an ordinary, almost primitive, travelers’ hut, but it was more. The shelves were stacked with plain tunics, pants, and soft boots, like those Aidan wore, and there was an insulated food container, which opened with a hiss of escaping air to reveal more of the sugary trail bars, along with what looked like dried fruit and other prepared food stuffs, though she didn’t see any preserved meat or fish. This hut had been built with shifters in mind.

  “Can anyone use this place? Or only shifters?”

  Aidan gave her a curious look. “Why would you think that?”

  “Please,” she said dryly. “I may not have your superb senses, but I’m not blind.”

  He grinned, probably at the compliment to his senses—there was that healthy ego. “Anyone can use it,” he said. “But it’s rare that anyone other than shifters gets this far into the Green.”

  “Rare, but not never?”

  He gave her a searching look, then shrugged and said, “You’re here, aren’t you?” He grabbed a thick bedroll and tossed it onto the floor. “We’ll rest here until morning. There’s only the floor, but—”

  “I’ve slept in worse conditions. I can hear the river nearby. It sounds bigger than the one last night.”

  He nodded. “We’ve reached the Leeward Stream. You’ll want to be careful. This time of year, the spring run-off makes it fast and deep. And no bathing in it, either. It’ll be freezing cold. In fact, let me fetch the water for us, because I don’t fancy having to dive in to save your shapely ass from drowning.”

  She narrowed her eyes at him. “Make sure you don’t fall in, because I’ll be too busy filing my nails to save you.”

  He leaned toward her with a laugh and would have kissed her, but she drew back with a squinty-eyed look of warning. Which only made him laugh harder as he grabbed a wooden bucket and headed outside.

  …

  Dinner was a cold affair that night. There was no need of a fire for warmth inside the hut, and they were both more interested in sleep than a hot meal. Aidan knew that Rachel thought he was tireless, and he didn’t mind fostering that perception. But while shifters had a lot better stamina than norms, and he could function for days without sleep if he had to, the last few days had taken more than the usual toll on him. He’d slept well the previous night, but between the ordeal on the ship, and then the battle to get them both through the swamp alive, his energy was running as low as he could remember it ever being. A second night’s rest would go a long way to restoring his strength, something he was going to need over the next few days as he raced first to warn Clanhome, and then to find the second ship before they did any more damage to his planet.

  Rachel hadn’t noticed, but the key hadn’t been the only thing hidden in the cubby above the door. His cousins had left a message for him, as well. They’d come and gone the previous day, making sure the hut was fully stocked and letting him know that Rhodry was in Clanhome with Amanda, and that they were alerted to the possibility that the crisis wasn’t over. They’d known he’d head for the hut on his way to take Rachel to the city. What they didn’t know yet was that he wasn’t going to the city. Still, he welcomed the news that Rhodry was at Clanhome.

  The trees had grown increasingly restive since they’d emerged from the swamp. It wasn’t yet the kind of shocked fear there’d been after the Earthers from the first ship had attacked the Green and taken him prisoner, but more a sense of dread. Had the second ship done something to heighten the trees’ alarm in the two days since he and Rachel had escaped the swamp? And what about the possibility that Cristobal was a target? Historically, the clans were no great friends of the Ardrigh’s and vice versa. Long ago, Rhodry’s de Mendoza grandfather had tried to seize the throne from Cristobal’s much older grandfather. He’d failed, but the attempt had solidified the break between the clans and the Ardrigh. They understood the role Cristobal played in maintaining order and stability on Harp, but if he died, no matter who caused it, it could set off a whole new dynastic battle, thus reigniting hostilities that Rhodry was working so hard to end once and for all. And if that happened, shifters would die on both sides.

  Aidan lay on the hut floor, his arms around Rachel where she lay curled against him, and listened hard to the trees’ whispering, searching for something specific that would answer his questions. But there was nothing except an overwhelming sense of impending disaster. There were times when Aidan would have traded all the protection afforded by Harp’s atmospheric anomaly for a simple two-way radio.

  “Is something wrong?”

  Rachel’s softly voiced question surprised him. He’d thought she was asleep, exhausted from their long day. Not for the first time, he realized he’d underestimated her. Amanda would have chided him for letting stereotypes influence his perceptions. But he didn’t need a lecture from her to be disappointed in himself. He’d been raised in the clans, among women who were far tougher and more capable than their city sisters. There was no place in the mountains for a woman who sat and waited for a man to solve her problems.

  On the other hand, he couldn’t exactly tell Rachel how he knew something was wrong, beyond the suspicions they already shared. Shifters weren’t Harp’s only secret. The Green itself, with its network of semi-sentient trees that sang to each other, was perhaps the most important secret of all. The Earthers would swarm the planet if they knew about it, destroying in their zeal the very thing that they claimed to study.

  “My cousins left a message,” he said finally. “There’s something ominous happening farther north. Details are sparse, but it seems likely your fr—that is, the other ship has made itself known.”

  “No more waiting, Aidan,” she said urgently, pushing up onto one elbow. “You have to go on without me. I know you don’t think so, but I’ll be fine. I’ve done this before.”

  “Not here, you haven’t.”

  “Damn it, this isn’t the only place in the universe with—”

  “Rachel,” he said, and she must have heard something in his voice, because her protest died. “I don’t doubt your skill, but you don’t know Harp. You don’t know how close our ancestors came to dying before they figured out how to survive here, and they were colonists, prepared for the worst. Promise me you’ll wait here until one of my cousins arrives.”

  “Aidan—”

  “Promise or I won’t go.”

  She punched his gut. “That’s blackmail.”

  He squeezed her tightly. “Promise, Rachel.”

  “Fine. Asshole.”

  He sighed in relief, then dipped his head to kiss the soft skin below her ear. “Sleep while you can. We’re both going to need it.”

  …

  It was still dark when Aidan shook Rachel awake. She scrubbed her face with some of the cold water left from the night before, then stepped outside to see he’d lit a small fire.

  “Tea,” he said, handing her a battered metal cup. “And there’s fish on the fire. I caught it this morning.”

  Rachel took the cup carefully, sliding her sleeve down over her fingers against the heat of the metal. The hot liquid was welcome, and he’d added a lot of something sweet, like honey. She crouched down to the fire and pulled a piece of white flesh off the fish roasting there.

  Aidan was sitting perfectly still, his gaze distant, and his head lifted, as if listening to something she couldn’t hear. Using his shifter senses, she assumed. She waited, taking the opportunity to study him unawares. Without his natural charisma working to charm anyone within reach, he seemed oddly more, rather than less. More handsome, more dangerous. His big personality was just a cover for something even more deadly than his charm.

  He returned to himself from one breath to the next. His post
ure relaxed and he turned to her with a smile. “Did you ask me something?”

  She walked around and crouched next to him. Threading her fingers through his hair, she leaned in and kissed him then pressed her forehead against his. “You need to go, Aidan. I’ll be fine.”

  Aidan realized something as he stood and pulled Rachel into his arms. Early on, he’d dismissed her claims of experience in the wild, but she was as good a partner as he’d ever had. They’d fought their way through the swamp, side by side. Had each other’s backs more than once. Saved each other’s lives. He knew she’d be all right without him, that whichever cousin he dispatched would keep her safe, and if not, she’d damn well take care of herself.

  For all that, he hated to leave her. “Give me a kiss,” he demanded.

  She raised her face with a grin, and he kissed her thoroughly, gratified to see she was more than a little breathless when they finally broke apart.

  “I need to shift,” he said, almost reluctantly.

  She nodded and stepped back.

  He cupped her face with both hands and kissed her again. “Don’t die,” he ordered. And then he shifted and leaped for the trees.

  …

  Rachel would never get tired of seeing that. Aidan’s shift was a beautiful sight in and of itself, with the concealing swirl of light and shadow. But when it was over, a magnificent hunting beast stood before her, and it was everything she could do not to reach out and stroke his golden fur. She knew exactly how soft he felt, how the individual hairs glided like silk through her fingers. But while he’d welcomed her stroking when they lay next to each other, petting him now like a big tabby cat didn’t seem…appropriate. Respectful.

  She sighed inwardly. Being a responsible scientist was a pain in the ass sometimes.

  It was too late, anyway. Aidan was already nothing but a blur of pale, golden fur as he launched himself into the nearest tree—a standing jump of at least twenty feet straight up. He didn’t make a sound, either, not even when all three hundred plus pounds of him landed on a thick tree branch, or when his sharp claws dug into the bark and he began climbing for the treetops.

  Fast, quiet, and deadly.

  She watched until there was nothing to see, until her eyes watered from searching, and then lingered longer to listen. The Green was eerily silent. Nothing moved. No rustle of leaves up above, no scratching of claws in the dirt, not even the frantic peep of some small prey. She nodded to herself, then walked slowly back to the hut to wait, closing the door behind her. Once inside, she did a quiet inventory of her pack, checking her medical supplies, re-stocking the nutrition bars they’d eaten, with trail bars from the hut’s supplies. Those had seemed too sweet at first, but she’d begun to prefer the shifter version over her own, once her palate adjusted, admitting that the fruit and honey made them much tastier.

  She also packed an extra set of clothes for Aidan. She only wished the hut supplies included clothes something closer to her size. The ones she had on were hopelessly stained, and the ones in her pack, while they’d been rinsed thoroughly, were even worse. Under normal circumstances, she’d have tossed every bit of it into the rag pile. But that wasn’t an option. She wasn’t a small woman, but it seemed shifters were uniformly big men, and their spare clothing came in only one size—too big. But it wasn’t as if this was the first time she’d been dirty on a trek. She grabbed an extra tunic, anyway, thinking she could use it as a nightgown someday. A memento of her time on Harp. The thought made her sad, that someday she’d leave Harp, and Aidan, far behind.

  Shaking the thought away, she shoved the tunic deep inside and leaned the resupplied pack against the wall. She checked her weapons next. She’d never seen Aidan carry anything more than a knife, but it seemed as if some shifters carried bows. Either that or they stocked the hut with other travelers in mind, because there was a good supply of arrows in one corner. None of them would fit her crossbow, unfortunately. She still had a few bolts remaining, she’d just have to make them count.

  Taking a few more minutes, she used her LED flash to check her map one more time, then folded it away, opened the door a crack and peered out, listening as much as looking. Satisfied, she grabbed her empty canteen and made the trip down to the water’s edge, where she lay on her belly to fill it from the fast-moving Leeward Stream. The stream’s bank was muddy, but she didn’t care. She’d be a lot muddier before the day was over, and that was assuming it was a good day. There were a lot worse things she could be covered with.

  Pushing to her feet, she walked back to the hut, where she paused for a moment, once again searching the trees, listening for movement. The eerie silence that had surrounded Aidan’s departure was gone, replaced by the familiar sound of every tropical forest environment she’d ever visited. Oh, sure, there were differences. Every forest was unique, with its own prey, its own predators. But they were never silent unless an apex predator was on the prowl. The noise told her that he was well and truly gone, that he hadn’t done a sneaky double back to be sure she stayed put.

  Smiling, she went back to the hut one last time, pulled on her jacket, stowed the canteen in her pack, then picked it up and walked outside. Using the key that Aidan had returned to the ledge above the door—like he thought she hadn’t noticed?—she locked the door and replaced the key, then shouldered her pack and headed out. A quick look at the map told her the second landing site was several days’ walk away, and rather than wait for Aidan’s cousin to come all the way to the hut, she figured to meet him along the trail, saving them both some time. She knew Harp was dangerous, and she’d never have started off on her own at night, but she had confidence in her own skills. A confidence backed up by experience in some of the most dangerous environments in known space. And, knowing Aidan even as little as she did, she knew his cousin—who would, of course, be a shifter, and thus able to travel much faster than she could—would no doubt meet her before the sun passed its zenith. And if she was wrong? If Aidan’s request was delayed? Then, she’d climb a tree and hunker down for the night. It wouldn’t be the first or the last time that she’d gone without sleep on a trek.

  But the one thing she wasn’t willing to risk was missing the opportunity to confront Guy Wolfrum. He’d violated every tenet of scientific discovery, betrayed every researcher who’d ever worked with him, looked up to him. But more than that, he’d made her complicit in this most heinous crime, and she wanted to know why. She demanded it.

  Checking the position of the sun, she turned in a northwesterly direction and started walking.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Near Clanhome

  Aidan raced along the intertwined branches of the tree road high up in the Green’s canopy, his paws barely touching the wood. He’d run all the previous day and through the night, driven by a sense of urgency that had no words. The Green’s warning was muted, almost puzzled, as if the trees couldn’t make sense of whatever the Earthers were doing, but his instincts were screaming, telling him that the Green’s confusion was even more ominous. Maybe it was because he had more information, because he knew something that the trees, for all their semi-sentient awareness, couldn’t possibly understand. He knew about Wolfrum’s presence and what it meant for shifters. He knew what that ship was really after and what they’d do to get it. What if this second ship had mounted a new weapon? Something targeted at the forest? The Green was a unique living force, but there was so little technology on Harp. If the Earthers were smart, they’d just sit there, not taking any offensive action, until they were ready to launch a truly devastating attack. By the time the trees blasted out a warning, it would be too late. Of course, the people on that ship shouldn’t know about the Green’s unique nature, but if Wolfrum was there, and if he knew about shifters, he could easily know about the Green, too.

  If Aidan’s reasoning was correct, then time was running out. He had to get to Rhodry and rally a shifter force to stop the second ship before it could launch whatever attack they had planned. He had to warn Clanhome, h
ad to make sure that every shifter on every patrol was accounted for. And if there was any chance that Cristobal was in the area, he had to be found and warned.

  And then they’d eliminate the threat once and for all. No second chances. Not for anyone on that ship, but especially not for Wolfrum.

  All of his senses pricked abruptly with the awareness of another shifter nearby. Without slowing, he changed trajectory to cross paths, knowing the other shifter would be doing the same. He sensed his cousin Santino before he saw him, relieved that it was one of his blood cousins, rather than a shifter from one of the many extended clan families who were honorary relations. Santino was a younger cousin on his father’s side, which made him a Devlin. He’d passed his Guild trials a few years back but had only recently been allowed to run patrols alone.

  Aidan slowed as they drew closer. As the younger shifter, Santino would find him, not the other way around. And besides, he didn’t want to be panting for breath like an old man when they met.

  Santino shifted mid-jump between one tree and the next, coming to a stop next to Aidan with a grin. “Aidan! I’m glad to see you’re still in one piece. Rumor has it you were nearly made a rug on some Earther’s hearth.”

  Aidan scowled. Where the fuck had that come from? “Who the fuck told you that?”

  Santino stilled, as if hearing something other than the expected embarrassment in Aidan’s voice. “Aidan?”

  “Something’s going on, something bad. I need to get to Rhodry, but first—”

  “He’s at Clanhome,” Santino said eagerly. “He and Amanda both, because of her—”

  “Yeah, I get the picture. They’re still there?”

  Santino nodded. “Staying a few days, I think. Do you want me to—”

  “I’ll head for Clanhome. I need you to follow my back trail and escort a woman—

  Santino opened his mouth to protest, but Aidan cut him off.