Shifter's Storm

by Carol Van Natta

  Her fingers traced the edge of her kraken bracelet that peeked out from under her grease-stained cuff. “Modern family-planning is a great invention.” The corner of her mouth twitched with humor. “But I wouldn’t be here if it always worked.”

  He filed that tidbit away to ask her about later. “I had a lot of time in the demesne’s impossible river to think about what I would do differently if I ever made it back to the real world.”

  She raised one eyebrow. “Never swim again?”

  He smiled at her teasing. “No, the water is life for my sloth.” He rubbed his jaw, where salt made his short beard itch. “For most of my life, I only noticed what I lacked, and neglected everything else to chase it. It’s not the path to happiness, always wanting more. Always looking for worth from others instead of from within. I want to enjoy my bounty and live in the present.” A capricious breeze shook the leaves. “But we both must take the time to be sure. You have many choices, too...”

  He trailed off as a loud scraping sound caught his attention. Chantal stood and faced the still-visible path they’d created when pushing through the dense stand of trees and bushes.

  “Boat?” she asked quietly as he stood.

  He shook his head. “Doesn’t sound right.”

  Glancing at the tall, skinny palm, she grimaced. “Still not climbable.”

  “My sloth is tall if I stand on my back legs, but I’ll drain my reserves if I shift.” As a warrior wanting to be valued, he wouldn’t have admitted that, but he trusted Chantal.

  “Better to stay human.” She snorted. “We’re on a tiny dry island. Your prehistoric sloth would be hard to explain.”

  The scraping took on a syncopated rhythm and increased in volume, then stopped. A sawing sound replaced it.

  “True.” As humans, they could talk their way out of being discovered.

  The rhythmic scraping resumed.

  She gave him a side-eyed glance. “This is going to sound paranoid, but please tell me ekinos can’t survive out of water.”

  “They can’t.” He blew out a noisy breath of frustration. “But Sunscar said it takes them a while to die.”

  “Just great.” She smoothed her hair back with both hands. “I hope it’s tourists.”

  So did he, but he wouldn’t bet his only shoes on it. They had obviously become prime entertainment for the real world’s gods of mischief.

  The sawing sound started again, this time deeper pitched. It was soon drowned out by the sound of something crashing through branches and leaves.

  “We need intel.” Chantal undid two buttons on her shirt, then pulled out the flat, thick pink crystal she’d amazingly kept safe through desperate escapes, hikes, truck rides, and a long ocean swim. “If you’ll hold this for a bit, I’ll go furry and scout.”

  The thought of being separated from her gouged a hollow in his chest, but he squelched it. She was right about needing to know what they were up against. His detection magic was only good for land and water, not living things. Except Chantal. He always knew where she was. He took the crystal.

  In a matter of seconds, a sleek black leopard rose up from her haunches. She looked more slender and graceful than the stockier, shorter-tailed jaguars he’d known in his youth. When she shook, a small cloud of black fur mingled with the shifter-mate magic threads that surrounded her like a golden aura.

  Only after she rubbed her broad head against his thigh, then disappeared into the thicket, did he realize her clothes had vanished instead of shredding.

  In his youth, he’d done it naturally with his first shift. It had taken him months to realize no other shifters in his clan, not even the bull alpha, could shift and return clothes without a magical assist from a spell or charm. At the time, he’d resented it as one more thing that set him apart from the community of seals, but it didn’t stop him from taking advantage of it.

  The sawing and occasional crashing continued, but instead of growing louder, it moved east. The same direction Chantal had gone.

  He didn’t need the prodding of his inner beast to contact her via telepathy. If it’s the ekinos, their spines have a paralyzing toxin, and they can shoot them. Don’t know how well that works on land.

  Good to know. It’s an ekino, but just one. It’s like the ones the demesne showed me, but it’s missing a leg… arm?

  She sent him an image of a battered, slimy-looking ekino using its extended central mouth full of serrated teeth to bite a shrub. It should have had five limbs, but one was a torn stump that oozed yellowish brown ichor, and another looked shredded.

  You said they like meat, so my current plan is to use my feline tastiness to lure it into chewing its way around the island perimeter until it bleeds out.

  Please be careful. He knew her to be confident rather than cocky, but he worried for her anyway.

  To distract himself, he stripped several thin, flexible branches to weave together into a sling. The island had plenty of fist-sized, sharp rocks to use for ammunition. If his sore feet were any indication, he’d probably stepped on half of them.

  This thing stinks like five-day-old fish. In the vision from the demesne, the ekino had a control gem above some of its eyes. All this one has is a gaping hole about the size of my paw. She sent him another image to accompany her words. Four of the ten eyes were missing, too.

  He tried to remember what Sunscar had told him. I think that’s good and bad. Good because no one can see us through the ekino’s eyes or tell it what to do, but bad because there’s nothing to stop it from eating everything in its path and regenerating. It can strip a marine valley in less than a month.

  The sawing sound paused, then started again.

  Terrific. We need a plan B.

  I have an idea. I’m coming to you.

  Her path would have been impossible to follow if he didn’t already have a sense of where she was. Thankfully, he could walk both fast and quietly as a human. His sloth could be surprisingly stealthy, but not on dry land.

  The angle of the afternoon sun meant the trees cast long shadows, which was where he found a crouching black leopard. One furry ear turned his direction.

  On the other side of a tangle of shrubs, the ekino’s eyes swiveled toward them both. Its chewing stopped for several seconds, then sped up. It was half again as big as Nessireth’s had been. The putrid smell threatened to revive his nausea.

  He touched her tail. “I’ll keep watch while you shift.”

  It only took a few seconds for Chantal’s human form to appear out of a cloud of shifter magic. He’d once been that fast at shifting, and hoped to be again.

  She rolled her shoulders back in a graceful stretch. “What do you need me to do?”

  Each time he saw her, even if it was after only minutes apart, warmth and longing bloomed in him. Was it ever going to be the right time to tell her?

  To cover the upswell of un-warriorlike feelings, he handed her the pink crystal, which she slid into her shirt. “I want to immobilize the ekino long enough to use this.” He held up his wrist with the chain.

  Her expressive face scrunched in thought for a long moment. “I’ve got a fishing line with a set of hooks, but they’re meant for snagging food fish, not six-foot-tall ekinos.” She glanced at the spiny monster, then back to Dauro. “The line could tie up its extended mouth parts, though. Distract it long enough for the charm to do its thing. Can you work your kinetic magic as a human? You’d have to wrap fast.”

  He stumbled over the word she used for his pushing magic, until the meaning tumbled into his mind like a forgotten memory.

  “I think I can handle the line.” In the impossible river, his magic had substituted for fine motor skills his sloth side lacked, but sloths considered speed a waste of perfectly good time. “I don’t know about fast.”

  From the big pocket on her thigh, she pulled out a flat reel and handed it to him. “Hooks are already tied on the outer end.” She returned her gaze to the ekino. “I’d offer to zap it with an energy bolt, but it might not w
ork on hellfrog wannabes, and it would wipe out my magic reserves.” A disgruntled sound came from her. “Next time I go on a rescue mission, remind me not to skip breakfast.”

  “I will.” It pleased him to think they’d still be together when she needed such a reminder. He handed her the chain from his wrist, then started uncoiling the blue-tinted line with its array of sharp hooks. “Hellfrog?”

  “Cross between a frog and an insect, kills and eats whatever the owner points it at, and almost impossible to destroy. A notorious monster-maker named Surasa created them. Based on what he told me, it’s an even-odds bet that she made Sunscar, too.”

  “He told us he was a failed experiment created in a laboratory. He said the rest was none of our business, but I think he was trying to spare us his nightmares.” He tested the strength of the uncoiled line with his fingers and the weight with his magic. It felt lighter than a spider web. “I am deeply worried for him.”

  “Me, too. I hope the flamingos–”

  The ekino hissed and began quivering all over. One of the gaping eye sockets bulged with green puffy flesh and flared magic. A white center morphed into a milky white, pupil-less eyeball.

  Suddenly, a spine shot out from its body and aimed at Chantal. She dodged, but it grazed her pantleg as it went by.

  Instant anger powered his magic. The line flew straight and true and set hooks into the base of the protruding mouth parts. He envisioned wrapping the line like a spider encasing its prey. There was enough extra line to make several loops around the tree trunk the mouth had been chewing on.

  Chantal held up the chain. “Ekino,” she said, then quickly sang the charm’s musical trigger.

  Sorcerer magic flared. The slime on the ekino’s skin hardened and cracked as the creature struggled. The line stretched but held.

  The ekino hissed louder as the oozing yellow blood dried and flaked off. The shredded arm shriveled while the others hardened. Spines shrank and twisted. An unearthly keening sound emitted from the trapped mouth.

  “Die, damnit!” said Chantal through gritted teeth.

  The chain in her hand was glowing red and smoking. The scent of her charred flesh stung his nose.

  Dauro pulled off his tunic to wrap his hand, then picked up the ekino spine. Borrowing strength from his sloth, he hurled the spine like a spear. It impaled the ekino’s body in the wound where the control gem had been.

  The keening cut off with a sharp, strangled screech.

  A strong gust of wind raised a cloud of dust from the creature’s frozen form.

  Dauro pushed the spine with his magic.

  The ekino’s body slowly disintegrated into a pyramid of dust. Another gust blew the dust outward, staining the white sand with brownish gray.

  Chantal stood frozen a moment longer, then relaxed. She hissed as she gingerly pried the chain off her badly charred flesh.

  He took the still-warm, bloody chain from her. “Can you use your healing spell on yourself?” From personal experience, he knew burns could leave permanent scars.

  His tunic looked as clean as when Rosinette had made it, so he unwrapped it from his hand and put it back on. Better to be too hot than a have hundred new scratches from the cursed shrubs. Too bad it wasn’t long-sleeved like Chantal’s stained but seemingly indestructible shirt.

  “Yeah, but I’m going to be really sorry I didn’t eat.” She sighed. “If I faint, don’t tell anyone.”

  He dropped to one knee and patted his leg. “It will be our secret.” Hastily, he slipped the chain in his chest pocket, then opened his arms.

  She hesitated a moment, then sat on his thigh and snuggled into his loose hold. “You smell way better than ekinos.”

  He chuckled. “You do, too.” Her scent gave him hot thoughts again, but he wasn’t passing up the chance to be almost skin to skin with her.

  She held the wrist of her injured hand with her other hand. At the top of a deep breath, she closed her eyes. Powerful magic flowed, bathing her hand in concentrated shifter magic and electrifying the threads of shifter-mate magic.

  It also sent desire racing through his veins, flushing his chest. Heat coalesced in his groin, raising him instantly to hard and ready.

  The sloth side urged him to find out if her taste was as perfect as her scent. His primitive human side wanted to know if her almost pointed ear tip was a pleasure zone. His hips thrust forward involuntarily.

  With a temple-pounding effort, he doused all their fantasies with the cold reminder that hunters were still after them. He owed her protection, not lust.

  Her magic subsided, leaving only a red stripe across her palm where the flesh had been blackened and oozing. She slumped against him. “Dizzy. Give me a minute.”

  He tightened his hold. “I’ve got you.”

  At the encouragement of his sloth, he whispered a shifter warrior chant from long ago that allowed him to share magical strength with her. Shifter-mate magic threads danced in response, forming brief complex patterns before falling apart.

  She shuddered in his arms. “Your magic revs my engines every time.” Her arms snaked around his waist. “I’ll forget my own name in a minute.”

  “Same.” Nuzzling into her hair, he drew in her scent mixed with sea salt and feminine arousal.

  She pulled back to meet his gaze. “I know we’re playing with matches near a drought-stricken forest, but I’m dying kiss you.”

  He cupped the side of her face. “Yes.”

  Her lips met his halfway.

  The taste and scent of her imprinted themselves in every cell of his body. He groaned, or they both did. He wasn’t sure. Her tongue engaged him in a slow, sensuous dance for two. His hips twitched forward when her thigh grazed his erect hardness. He had no control around her.

  Breaking off the kiss, she gasped for air. “Wow.” A smile stole across her face. “You are the best kiss…”

  Her expression morphed from blissful to confused as she put her hand to her chest. “The crystal is pulsing.” Her other hand cupped the bottom of her breast. “So is the portal pearl.”

  A gust of wind blew up sand and dust, making him squint. Beyond the trees, over the big island of Vieques, white clouds moved too fast to be natural. “Trouble.”

  She looked to where he pointed at the expanding funnel of blue and gray. “Dammit.” She blew out a noisy breath as she stood up. “Too far for me to sense, but I’ll lay odds it’s one of the demesne anchors. Maybe the last one.”

  A stronger gust of wind, almost chilly, blew more sand through the trees. He rose to stand just behind her, not liking the feel of the air. His warrior days were long gone, but the instincts still operated.

  Her hand flattened against her shirt, over the crystal. “I suck at telepathy, but I think this thing is trying to talk to me.” She turned to face him as she pulled the crystal out to offer it to him. “Or to you.”

  The moment he touched it, Sunscar’s telepathic voice came through loud and fast. Chantal! Dauro! The fairies opened a new portal. The demesne is dying.

  Slow down, thought Dauro. He caught Chantal’s other hand with his to strengthen the connection between them.

  Why did the fairies need a new portal? asked Chantal.

  I penned up the hunters in the castle with the fairies. I was going to give you another day, then quit terrorizing them so they could leave.

  He sent a montage of terrified hunters running from him, fearful and angry hunters standing at the castle entrance, and the walkway and lawn full of their big, empty trucks.

  The river started sloshing like a bathtub, and the castle sent a statue to ask me for help. The fairies linked with the hunters’ wizard to punch a hole through the castle to create a new portal. The castle says the demesne’s magic is bleeding out.

  Can you leave by the same portal? asked Dauro.

  Might not be safe, said Chantal. The storm over Vieques could tear him apart. She sent an image of the ominous, tornadic clouds laced with lightning.

  I wouldn’t go anywa
y. Sunscar’s thoughts sounded almost sheepish. I promised the castle I’d help.

  Okay, thought Chantal, here’s my off-the-wall idea. Sunscar asks the castle and the demesne if they can redirect the new portal to our little island. I use the pearl and my magic to stabilize it. Dauro contacts Nibi to tell her what we’re doing, then we go in and ask the demesne and the castle to tell us how to help them.

  Sunscar was silent a moment. The castle agrees. Activate the portal pearl so the demesne can find you. I’m going inside the castle. I’ll contact you when we’re ready on our end. His presence in their minds vanished.

  Chantal squeezed Dauro’s fingers. “Are you okay with this?”

  “No. I want you safe, but we need your talents to save Sunscar, and we can’t wait for a better path.” He stepped closer, so the only thing separating them was the flat crystal. “Are you okay with this?”

  “Yes. I wish I could send you somewhere safe, too, but I don’t know where that would be, and, as you said, we need to rescue Sunscar. Helping people is what I do.” She surprised him with a quick, hard kiss. “Find someone to tell about our plans.”

  Though she hid it well, he sensed her worry and doubt. She started to pull away.

  “Wait.” He kept his expression serious. “If anyone asks, what plan letter are we on?”

  She snorted with laughter. “Plan C, for crazy.”

  12

  Chantal warily watched the arched portal as it wove an uneven pattern around the island shrubs. On the far side, she could only see a dark hallway lit by the fading sunlight from the real world. Her head pounded with the effort to keep the portal stable, even with the help of the uncomfortably hot portal pearl tucked in her bra. Bless Rosinette’s musical magic for making its activation spell unforgettable.