by Lexy Timms
The thought put a knot of fear in her belly that stayed with her all the way across continents and oceans. It followed her into her dreams when she finally slept, safely ensconced in what turned out to be a first-class pod, thirty-five-thousand feet above the rest of the world.
THE CROSS-PACIFIC FLIGHT went by without a hitch. Almost no shifting, no fighting, and actually some sleeping. Somehow Angela managed to relax and not send anyone screaming “LION!” as they raced down the aisle.
Beijing was incredibly crowded, and Angelica still wasn’t sure they’d gotten on the correct connecting flight until after they’d landed. A lot of pantomime and gestures and pointing to the ticket stub seemed to be the correct procedure. Taylor towered over the local populace, making him stick out like a sore thumb. Angelica let her dark hair hang forward, around her face, and tried desperately to blend into the woodwork. She didn’t feel safe until she was on the plane, and even then wasn’t able to shake the anxiety that crowded out her every thought.
By now, they had to have been spotted somewhere. Reported to someone. It was a paranoid, crazy thought, but the longer they were out in the open the larger the risk. Add to that the stress of worrying about changing where someone would see, and she was jumping out of her skin. Literally.
Only once on the plane had Taylor had to wake her abruptly. Traveling first class helped, she was sure. The flight attendants were used to employing discretion toward their first class passengers, and the light blanket she’d covered herself with before falling asleep had kept the fur safely out of sight, until she’d gotten herself back under control.
The flight out of Shanghai offered no such privacy. After some discussion, Angelica resolved to not sleep until they safely arrived. By the time they landed in Chengdu, she was sure it was a moot point anyway; there was no way she could relax enough to sleep regardless of whether she actually wanted to or not.
Thankfully the Chengdu and Lhasa airports were smaller, less frenetic. It was easier to find the connecting flights there, even if that was largely due to the ability to make fewer wrong choices. It was during the final approach to the airport in Kathmandu when she raised the question that had been bothering her since they’d left Minnesota.
“Taylor? What happens when we get there? I mean, from the airport, where do we go?”
Taylor shrugged without looking up from his book. “I don’t know.”
“What?”
He put his finger between the pages to mark his place and glanced over at her. “We broke off from them hundreds of years ago. No one is still alive from those days to ask. Hence, no one knows where they are.”
She looked out the window at the mountains that seemed far too close to the runway. The ground rose up to meet the plane; the city spread out around them, much larger than she’d anticipated. Kathmandu had felt like it was on the furthest edges of the world, but she could have sworn she’d just seen a sign for KFC. The whole experience was surreal. It had been two full days, 42 hours in airplanes, and she was gritty and dirty and felt like she was marinating in her own sweat. Yet the snow was heavy on the mountains, and somewhere out there was Everest, the tallest mountain in the world.
And a jungle. Two days ago she had no idea Nepal even had a jungle, where big cats roamed.
She looked back at him. “Please tell me you’re joking.”
He shook his head.
“Taylor... why... what was the point...”
“Because,” he said simply, setting the book down in his lap, “in my entire life my mother has never hit me. Ever. This was a first. I have never seen her this way. My dad? Maybe. But for her to lose her cool like that tells me that something is deeply wrong. If you only knew her...” He looked at her with sad eyes. “It felt like I didn’t know her at all.”
Angelica stared at her hands, bunched in the sweater she’d taken off when the flight had gotten warm and had somehow wound up wadded up on her lap. “Then why? Why would she hit you now?”
Taylor glanced at her. “Maybe because my mom needed to get it through my head that you’re the important one. I needed to see you through this and I wasn’t listening.”
“You were looking for support,” she said, and winced a little as the plane touched the tarmac and promptly bounced a little more roughly than necessary. “And I was too upset about my prognosis.”
“So was my mother. Not for the same reason, I think. See... we’re...we’re not doing well—as a species, I mean. There aren’t a lot of us, and though the shift gene is dominant in our children it’s less and less so every time someone marries a non-shifter. And to tell the truth, there aren’t a lot of non-shifters who would welcome sharing their lives with one. Our children...” He grinned. “...have special needs.”
“At puberty,” she reminded him with a wry shake of her head. “That has to make things easier.”
“Yes, puberty and easy are two contradicting words, aren’t they? But as children we have to be very careful because we have the advantage to ‘my dad can beat up your dad’, but we can’t say anything to outsiders. Sometimes we do anyway.”
“Yikes.”
“The thing is...” He spoke over the announcements. They were in Chinese and Nepali anyway, and without gesturing and pointing to a ticket there was no chance to understand any of it. “...those who do marry—sometimes the cat gets lonely. They have no mate...”
She IS my mate. Even before.
“I mean no mate they can run with and be a cat with. And sometimes the spouses become resentful because they don’t have the physical benefits, like instant healing and a longer life.”
“So, I represent...”
“The continuation of our species. If we can stabilize you, we can offer it to others and maybe we can get new blood into the group. Before we start to inbreed.”
It was an uncomfortable thought. Going from being an oddity to the possible salvation of a species in ten minutes would leave anyone unsettled. Angelica couldn’t wrap her mind around it. What would their children be? Lions? Tigers? Ligers? Oh, my...
She gathered her belongings and followed Taylor out of the airplane in something of a daze. The air was thin from the higher elevation, but dry. Taylor had assured her there were forests here as thick as the Amazon, only a bright, brilliant green, but all she could see was open land covered in industrial buildings and the occasional pagoda-styled apartment building—and in the distance, those amazing snow-capped mountains.
They truly were at the top of the world.
The airport felt dark and old after having been in so many airports that were much more modern. It was just as crowded. The people hurried past in a chatter of unfamiliar languages. Finding their way was something of a challenge, though thankfully there were a handful of signs in English to guide them. Even better, they had only to deal with customs, having carried their two bags with them and not having to try to figure out the baggage claim.
Outside they stood a moment and stared at the sea of white cars and vans that were taxis, disoriented by the sheer cacophony of noise that greeted them. Here the cars honked and swerved like so many prima ballerinas, each pushing the other out of the spotlight and dancing to different music.
Angelica looked around her. Near the entrance was a large Buddha, reminding her that this was another world entirely. Fascinated, she started taking in the details that she’d missed in their haste to find their way outside. The people, for example, were fascinating. For the most part, they were short and rather squat. There was a definite Mongolian influence, though there was a great deal of Chinese as well. The contrast in looking at Taylor was remarkable. She saw only his Viking heritage. He stood a good head taller than the tallest native and his build was Nordic. He stood on the sidewalk, trying to talk to a pair of men she guessed were drivers of the taxis. They smiled and bowed and offered to take them to the line of hotels that were easily visible.
One of these things is not like the other...
“So, if your people came from here,�
� she said when he joined her, shaking his head, “they weren’t native, were they?”
“Actually, they arrived here in long-ships from Scandinavia,” a large, barrel-chested man with a ready smile and a thick mane of grey both on his head and on his chin interrupted them.
Angelica started in surprise, as she hadn’t seen him come up. Taylor jumped back, wary, his hand going reflexively to the small of his back, though Angelica knew he had no weapon there.
The man clapped Taylor on the shoulder and gave a hearty laugh. “Relax, old man, they’re hardly going to take you out in the middle of a crowd.” He ushered them toward the street. “Taylor, Angelica, I’d like to welcome you. I hope you won’t be put out by my rushing you, but I do have a car waiting. If you’ll come this way, please.”
Chapter 14
“Who are you?” Angelica asked.
Taylor shook his head to warn her. You didn’t ask questions. Not yet anyway. “It’s okay.” That was all he was able to get out before they were rushed into the waiting car. Even then, no conversation ensued. Just silence.
The drive seemed to take forever. Several times Angelica opened her mouth to say something, and each time Taylor shook his head and she’d close her mouth. It took several hours to get to the compound. Rather than head toward the mountains they traveled through the heart of the city, eventually going south and then east. Initially they passed through the tourist areas. Angelica stared out the window and Taylor followed her gaze, seeing fine restaurants side by side with places that would supply you for a trek up Everest. He realized that he’d forgotten that climbing the world’s tallest mountain was a deadly game for the rich to play at, and it showed in the luxurious storefronts and hotels.
Soon enough the roads found neighborhood streets, and the houses took on a distinctly foreign look. Shrines were a constant, as were pagodas and other architecture that reminded her that this was an area rich in history. Finally, this old sector of town gave way to an industrial park. They passed warehouses and factories that belched smoke into a sky already hazy with smog that rose only so far, and was trapped in the valley by the mountains around them.
While the roads started well, by the time they left the city behind and wound down into the ever-thickening green of the jungle Taylor could see Angelica’s spine was a line of flame up her back. Their host apologized profusely for the condition of the road, but said little else other than, “The elders will answer all your questions.”
They arrived in the darkness, spent and exhausted. They were shown to a small building that looked like a mud-daubed hut on the outside, but was a nice little room with wooden planks for walls and floor of terracotta tiles on the inside. Outside, the world had taken on the darkness that comes of being surrounded by a thick and verdant jungle. Oddly enough, after so much time in the Amazon and later Africa, it was this that allowed Angelica to relax. Taylor could see it in her posture and on her face. For the past two years the jungle had been her home in one incarnation or another, and while this was a new place to her, at the same time it wasn’t.
With the cessation of the panic that had engulfed them for too many days and far more miles than they could count, Angelica saw nothing in the room besides the giant bed and collapsed across it without removing any of her clothes. She was done, plain and simple. With a relief that bordered on the orgasmic, she finally slept.
Well, that didn’t take long. Taylor stood and looked at Angelica, his face softening. It had been a hellish amount of travel in a handful of days, and she’d withstood the strain well. He studied her pale face, the way she curled around the pillows, and for a long moment wanted nothing more than to hold her in his arms and kiss away the frown that followed her even into sleep.
Instead, he did the only thing he could do. He slipped the shoes from her feet. He loosened her belt and opened her jeans in case she shifted, so that she might slip easily from the clothes. She murmured in her sleep but didn’t wake as he removed her shirt and bra, which only went to show just how utterly exhausted she was. Realizing that she wasn’t going to wake anytime soon, he thought about it a moment and finished the job, pulling her jeans down and draping them over green chair tucked into the corner of the room.
She stirred only a little in all of it.
Poor girl.
With a wary eye on her, lest she shift suddenly in her sleep, he stripped and settled next to her. Immediately she moved toward him, nestling into his arms so naturally that it felt as though she were designed to fit just there. He kissed her shoulder and pulled the single sheet over her and then himself. It was too hot for more than that thin material. He lay there, his arm around her, looking at her hair in the moonlight that filtered through the window screen.
Then he blinked and it was morning. He had no memory of falling asleep, of being aware of anything in the night at all.
For a moment he panicked. What if she’d changed in her sleep and he had been too tired to notice? But she was still in the same place, and even the same position, curled into a little ball next to him. He tried to move and discovered how stiff he was.
He chuckled when he discovered that it wasn’t just his muscles that were stiff.
He looked at her and sighed. She was completely wiped out by the journey, and still slept though her cheeks had gained some color and were delicately flushed now. Her lips parted as she breathed, long and slow. No, he wasn’t about to wake her just because his body was wanting attention. He tucked himself around her as best he could and draped an arm over her, letting the erection press against her, in case she should wake up enough to notice and might actually want a little of that kind of attention herself.
Taylor could be very optimistic sometimes.
But sleep eluded him as much as release. He’d been worn out enough that his body had shut down when he lay down, but now that it had its rest, though he could tell it was still not enough after so many days of adrenaline-fueled panic, the worries that plagued him kept him awake and anxious.
Angelica seemed likewise on edge. She moaned in the throes of a dream and shifted slightly against his hardness, automatically adjusting to stay in a somewhat comfortable position. It wasn’t easy. He didn’t remember taking off her underwear last night, but one of them must have; she was naked under the sheet just like he was.
His hand held her arms, but he felt a nipple touching his forearm as she breathed. Her back was a perfect line from neck to hips. The most perfect line is the line of a woman’s back, he thought, recalling an old essay he’d read in college called “The Line of Beauty”.
But as the lioness, it’s even nicer.
She turned her head and partially opened one eye to look at him. “Are you happy to see me?” she asked in a thick voice, but that smile was all lust.
He flexed a muscle and she giggled.
“Yeah. I think you are.” She turned and groaned as muscles had to suddenly break the position she’d been in for far too long. “I need to find a bathroom,” she said, rolling over to kiss him. “And I should wash up a little.”
He watched her get up and walk to the door across from the entrance they’d come through. Whatever this place was it was nicely constructed, with wooden planks that had a patina, the sort of weathering that old barns in the Midwest would get after years of exposure to the elements. The walls were planed and sanded and the slats were set close enough that they sealed the place without using any sort of filler, somewhat like the interior of a log cabin, but somewhat not. This felt older. Even European in feel.
That was all taken in a secondary view from the side of his vision. A different vision was forefront in his mind. It didn’t help his aroused state that a beautiful naked woman was striding across the room and headed to an unknown door. He watched her pad over the hardwood floors and open the door with a certain appreciation for the beautiful woman she was. He wasn’t sure who jumped more when she squealed and jumped back, slamming it shut.
Taylor was up in an instant. Angelica, though, just st
ood there and laughed, one hand on her hip, hair cascading down in a tangled curtain that she pushed out of her face with the other. “Just kidding.” She grinned mischievously and her gaze fell to his waist. “Why should you be the only one who gets a good view?” She was still laughing when the pillow hit her chest. She caught it and lobbed it back, narrowly missing his head.
“Come and check this out!” she said, as thrilled as a little girl as she threw open the door and stood back to let him see past her. The door opened to a large bathroom complete with toilet, bidet, and a large tub. The tub seemed to be a single piece of wood that was carved out and sealed. It was gorgeous, gleaming in the light from the open window.
“Just enough room for two,” she said, her eyes sparkling as she reached for him, grabbing the part of him that was currently the most predominant and giving him a tug, then got a funny look on her face. She glanced at the toilet, then at him, her face turning redder by the minute. He stifled a laughed as she let go and stepped backwards into the bathroom, holding up one finger to indicate that he needed to wait.
Only when he heard the water running in the tub did she open the door. Now it was his turn to shoo her out. “Um... between you and the running water, I’m fairly desperate...”
“Aren’t we the romantic pair?” she laughed, and stepped back into the bedroom to give him an equal moment of privacy.
The bathroom was a beautiful thing, built along the same lines as the rest of the place, but the fixtures gleamed in the early morning sunlight. It wasn’t what he’d expected by a long shot and he wondered what it said about the people who lived here, a little luxury in the middle of nowhere.
He finished and went to check the tub. The water was quite hot, hotter than he’d expected. The door opened and Angelica came in, holding a small box. “I found a little gift basket,” she said, holding up a small wooden box that held a handwritten note, reading, “For the bath.”
She opened it and took a cautious sniff and then took a deep breath. “Oh... it’s... heavenly.”
