I’d seen Bethany change that morning, but the details were lost under a veil of shock. This time I was prepared. I was ready to soak up each and every minute detail. Or so I thought. From one second to the next, Donnie went from naked, towel-wearing human male to scruffy tan, black, and gray coyote. I didn’t see any limbs change shape or fur sprouting.
“Huh.”
“You were expecting fireworks or something?”
“No. Yes. Maybe?” I couldn’t help but pout. I’d gained nothing from my desire to watch Donnie shift. Except the brief glimpse of naked man. And, while appealing in its own way, it did nothing for me.
After a shake that resembled nothing so much as a wet dog drying off, the coyote—Donnie, I reminded myself—started quartering my house. Within seconds the fur at the ruff of his neck expanded and thickened down his spine. His ears flattened and a low growl rumbled in his chest.
I took an instinctive step away from the displeased coyote and closer to Ford. “That doesn’t sound good.” I kept my voice low. I so didn’t want to have to deal with an irate coyote in my living room.
“No, no, it doesn’t.” Ford stepped between me and Donnie until all I saw was the black T-shirt stretching across Ford’s wide back.
The growls coming from Donnie changed pitch at times, and he occasionally yipped. It actually sounded like he was trying to talk, but since I didn’t speak coyote, I had no way of knowing what he was trying to communicate. Apparently Ford couldn’t translate either. “Damn it, Donnie, change back and tell us what you’ve found.”
Donnie yipped. I supposed it was agreement.
I peeked around Ford so I could watch the transformation. Maybe I’d pick up something when the change happened in reverse.
Sadly, the change back to human occurred at the same instantaneous speed as the change from human to coyote. One second a shaggy coyote sat at Ford’s feet; the next a very nude Donnie stood there.
Ford reached to the side and grabbed the discarded towel and shoved it at his friend. “Cover up, damn it. No one needs to see your junk.”
Unlike the last time Ford had made a similar comment, Donnie didn’t make a quip. Instead, his lips were pursed tight and his movements were jerky as he wrapped the nubby cloth around his waist.
“So?” Ford demanded.
Donnie’s eyes were troubled when he looked up from securing the towel. “I scented cold snake on autumn leaves.”
“You recognize it.” Ford made it a statement, not a question.
Donnie answered the nonquestion anyway. “Yeah. The last time I smelled anything like it, an assassin chick shot my boyfriend.”
Chapter Eight
“ASSASSIN?”
Great. Just what this situation needed. Assassins.
Ford cursed and stormed across the living room, nearly tripping over a pile of discarded textbooks. He spun, facing Donnie. “You’re sure? It’s her?”
Donnie shook his head. “Not her. Just… close.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
Thunder rumbled in the distance. “Chillax, dude.” Donnie’s eyes darted to me, then around the room before settling back on Ford. “It means that whoever was here shared a sort of base scent. Like family or roommates.”
Ford growled. I’d had no idea he could make such a sound. It was sexy as hell. If I hadn’t already deducted that he was a bird shifter of some kind, I’d seriously be considering grizzly bear as his other form.
Hazel eyes met dark brown and held some kind of silent communication as I watched. Which reminded me that I’d sat passive in this scene a little too long. “Um, guys? Can one of you explain what’s going on? Why did an assassin shoot your boyfriend, and what does that have to do with me? I mean, I’ve had people irked at me before, but I don’t think anyone has resorted to assassination attempts.”
“Are you, or have you ever been, involved with international weapons trafficking?” Donnie asked the question like it was perfectly logical and ordinary.
“Damn it, Donnie, he’s an ornithology professor, not some kind criminal kingpin.”
I choked, staring at Donnie. “Have you seen me?” I gestured to my gangly and regrettably skinny frame, slightly rumpled button-down shirt, and khaki pants. “Do I look like an international weapons trafficker?” The occasional run-in with drug cartel minions was miles away from involvement with international weapons traffickers.
Donnie ignored me and kept his focus on Ford. “William’s a professor too. That didn’t stop him from being involved with weapons traffickers.”
I seriously felt like I was missing out on huge chunks of history here. “Your professor boyfriend is a weapons trafficker? And should you be telling me this?” That didn’t seem like the kind of information an international criminal would want let out somehow.
Rolling his eyes with the dramatic flair of a teenage thespian, Donnie whooshed out a sigh. “Of course not. He was just undercover as one.”
And again, clear as mud. I had about a million other questions, but I wasn’t sure if any of them were useful at this juncture.
Ford pinched the bridge of his nose, a gesture I’d have expected to see on Tierney, not someone as young as Ford. “I don’t think this has anything to do with weapons.”
“I’m relieved to hear it.” I looked around my trashed home. “Any ideas about what it does have to do with? Because I’ll be honest, I have no fricking clue. All these anomalies are starting to freak me out. There are just too many of them, and none of them make any sense at all.”
Ford strode toward me and, when he was close enough, grabbed my hands. “Hey, relax. We’ll figure it out.”
It wasn’t until the warmth of his palm met mine that I realized my hands were trembling. In fact, my whole body was jittery, like I’d downed a dozen shots of espresso with a Mountain Dew chaser. Even as I thought about it, my knees shook and I had to hold on to Ford to keep from sliding to the floor.
Ford guided me to the secondhand love seat that sat under the picture window facing my sliver of lawn. He sat and drew me down next to him. The cushions had been restuffed at some point, but the springs had lost most of their bounce, so our combined weight pulled us to the center, leaving me plastered hip-to-hip and shoulder-to-shoulder with Ford. Since Ford didn’t move away, I decided to enjoy the moment while it lasted. There was something immensely comforting in the feel of the larger body next to me. I felt… protected. Like nothing could get to me as long as Ford stayed between me and whatever theoretical threat might exist.
“Go check out Simon’s car. Horace towed it to his shop. Take a sniff and see if you catch the same scent.”
Donnie cocked his hip, which loosened the fold of the towel. His attempt at attitude lost some of its effectiveness when he had to scramble to keep the cloth covering his business. “Bossy much?”
“Did I, or did I not, get hog-tied by your boyfriend when you were off ‘rescuing’ your nephew?”
It was impossible to miss the implied air quotes on the word rescuing. Which made a dozen more questions bloom in my head. I had a feeling there was an epic tale involving Donnie and his boyfriend. But, like so many of my questions today, they’d have to wait.
Donnie huffed. “Okay, okay. But, dude, Horace has dogs. Big ones.”
“You’re a coyote. You can deal with Horace’s dogs.”
“Says you. Those assholes—” His words cut off at a glare from Ford. “Fine.” He rolled his eyes again and dropped the towel. “If I’m going to keep shifting back and forth like this, I’m going to need food. Order a pizza or something.” Then, without another word, he shifted. He trotted to the door and turned his head from Ford to the knob a few times before I realized the problem.
In four-footed form, he wouldn’t be able to open the door. I jumped up and opened it wide enough for Donnie to poke his head out and sniff a bit. Apparently deciding the coast was clear, he gave a little yip and darted off into the night.
When I turned around, Ford had moved to
the center of the room and was sorting through the pile of stuff in the middle of my rug. He’d started a pile for books that were at least mostly undamaged, a pile for more seriously damaged books, and a pile for lost causes. I cringed. The lost causes stack was higher than the mostly undamaged. I squatted next to him and flipped through some disassembled pages. The paper was thick and that buttery color somewhere between cream and yellow that indicated age. The header on the page told me the book wasn’t particularly valuable or useful. I’d found it at some library’s annual purge sale. There were some references to the mythical thunderbird that I’d thought at the time were worth the five bucks the book cost me. In the end the thunderbird story wasn’t much different than any of the scores of Native American lore I’d memorized since I was a kid. There were a couple of passages that skewed downright crazy.
It had some pretty great illustrations, though. I traced the edge of an ink drawing that represented the thunderbird of myth and legend. It didn’t look anything like the drawing my great-great-grandfather had made, but I kind of liked it. In fact, a few years ago I’d considered getting a tattoo based on this picture. In the end, my fear of needles kept my skin ink-free. There was also a vague hesitancy to avoid looking like I was trying to appropriate a Native American symbol or culture. Mostly, though, it was the needles.
One of the pages in my hands was the table of contents. It listed several Thunderbird-related myths from different Native American tribes of the US and Canada. It also reminded me of a question I’d been wanting to ask Ford. I ran my finger down the chapters, pausing at the Arapaho entry. “Which tribe do you belong to?”
Ford froze.
I hadn’t expected quite that reaction to my question. It can’t have been the first time he’d been asked. “I don’t mean to pry. That is, if it’s not something you talk about….” I let my words trail off. Was my asking some kind of faux pas?
His shoulders relaxed some, but it looked like it took concentrated effort. Finally he said, “It’s fine.”
I didn’t believe him, but I didn’t press.
“I’m mostly Sioux.”
“Mostly Sioux?”
“There was some…” He paused as though thinking for the right word. “…intermingling of tribal history in my family’s past. But, yeah, mostly Sioux.”
“Did you grow up around here? It’s mostly Crow in this area, right?” Coming from Illinois, I was more familiar with the various Algonquian tribes common to the Midwest, but I was pretty sure this part of Wyoming was mostly home to the Crow Nation.
“My family moved around a lot.”
A little weirded out by the strange vibe Ford was putting off, I flipped through the pages in my hand. My breath caught. An image, this one a depiction of the mythical Lakota unhcegila, a serpent-like creature purportedly responsible for unexplained deaths and disappearances, drew me. The rounded, sideways S shape on the page brought to mind something else—the bottom curve of a snake’s tail tattooed on a gunman’s wrist.
“What is it?” Jumping at the change in my focus, Ford leaned over my shoulder to look at the thick paper. He stiffened.
“You recognize it?” I asked, tracing that low curve, following the line of belly scales up to the flared head of the snakelike creature. I paused at the horny protrusions.
“A horned serpent.” His voice echoed with darkness and shadows. The fine hairs at the back of my neck stood to attention at the tone. It was full of anger, fear, regret, and overlaying it all, menace.
“I think—” I stopped to clear my throat before starting again. “I think… the guy—the one who took my journal—he had a tattoo like this.” I couldn’t stop my finger from tracing the sinuous lines of the serpent from horned head to rattled tail.
“You’re sure?”
“Yeah.” We were whispering now. Something about the atmosphere or the topic seemed to call for it. There was no one around who could overhear us, and we weren’t saying anything particularly secretive, but I doubt I’d have been able to speak louder to save my life.
Ford’s finger ghosted over the page, not tracing the image but skimming the text. “I think it’s safe to say this is related to your damned thunderbird research.”
I leaned away from him. “How could you possibly know that?”
He tapped the bottom paragraph on the page. I peered at the text. It was a part of one of hundreds of legends discussing the enmity between the horned serpent and the thunderbird in Native American mythology. Different tribes had different stories, and this one wasn’t particularly unique among them. The horned serpents—unhcegila—were killing and eating anyone or anything that got in their way. They were finally defeated by the Thunderbird, a mythical being capable of controlling weather, life, and death, who destroyed them all except for a handful of snakes and lizards.
I was a smart man, really I was, but I had trouble wrapping my head around this. “You think, what, guys with military equipment are out to avenge the horned serpents by confiscating my journal?”
“No,” Ford said, sitting back on his heels. “I think there is a cult who worships the horned serpent, whose purpose is to destroy thunderbirds once and for all.”
“Are you speculating or do you know of such a cult?” None of my research into thunderbirds, even the research among the more supernatural sites, mentioned a horned-serpent-worshipping cult.
He didn’t say anything. Instead he watched me steadily.
All righty, then. “Setting aside a crazy snake cult, which, I mean, is pretty hard to fathom, what does that have to do with me?”
Eyes intent, Ford met my gaze. “Think about it, Simon. If you wanted to find a thunderbird, where would you go?”
I snorted. “If I knew that, I’d have found one years ago.”
“Exactly. You and your family are probably the world’s foremost experts on all things thunderbird. If someone wanted to find one, they’d start with you.”
I shook my head. “But I don’t believe in Thunderbird.”
Dark brows arched over gorgeous, nearly black eyes.
“I don’t. Not the Thunderbird, with a capital T. Not the mythological godlike Thunderbird. I’m looking for a large, rare species of raptor.”
“And if you were a cult of mythological-creature-worshipping dumbasses, would you make that distinction?”
“Not being a mythological-creature-worshipping cultish dumbass, I don’t know.” But I had to agree he maybe had a point. I stared at the image for a few seconds longer before flinging the handful of loose pages to the floor. Not even my thunderbird-obsessed, bigfoot-chasing great-grandfather would put any credence in horned serpent cults. Or, well, he might have believed in them, but tying them in to the situation I found myself in wouldn’t even have crossed his mind.
I flopped backward, landing on my butt on the boring beige carpet of my living room. Suddenly exhausted, I scrubbed my hands over my face. I peeked through my fingers. “This is too much, you know? I mean, I’ve had weird shit happen around me before. I’ve had people question and wonder and doubt me. I’ve been in the wrong place at the wrong time. But this… I don’t know how to cope with this kind of crap. Guns, slashed tires, vandalism, assassins, snake cults. All in less than twenty-four hours. That’s a lot. I’m a geeky bird-watcher, for crying out loud. Sure, I’ve been a bit obsessed with thunderbirds, but that’s research.”
I sucked in a breath, the white splotches filling my vision reminding me to breathe. Like the night before at Buddy’s, my head grew tingly and my body started to shake. Damn it. I didn’t have time for another panic attack. Intellectually I understood my physical reaction was a result of my sympathetic nervous system hijacking my body, but emotionally… well, emotionally I just knew I was afraid and possibly in danger, and my body couldn’t figure out if flight or fight was going to be the best option.
I closed my eyes to try to regain some bit of control over myself. I tried counting to ten. First in English, then in Spanish. I’d made it to six in Swahili
when thick bands wrapped round my torso, trapping my arms. For a second I thought I imagined it, like it was an extension of the panic attack, but then I realized the bands were warm and muscular. I felt a solid, heated presence at my back and knew Ford was somehow keeping my scattered emotional and visceral pieces where they belonged.
I leaned into him and could breathe, comforted by his murmurs.
A few seconds later, I registered the words that made up his murmurs. “I’ve got you. You’re safe. Just breathe.”
A funny thing. Until he wrapped me in his safety and security, I hadn’t realized how unsafe I’d been feeling. I’d come up against men who could arguably be called bad guys, been involved in situations most would deem dangerous. I’d gotten through them with the same determination and the fearless façade that had gotten me through college as a preteen. I’d faked confidence and competence so long and so well that I hadn’t realized it was a façade. And now, with Ford’s arms wrapped around me, I could actually be vulnerable. I could let down my guard because I knew Ford would shield me from any danger.
And, holy shit, not only was that sentiment inadvisable, it would probably freak Ford the fuck out. It wasn’t his job to be the buffer between me and the ugliness of the world. He sure as shit wouldn’t want me assigning the task to him. And I couldn’t rely on him for it. It wouldn’t be fair to him or me.
I tried to pull away from him, to gain some much-needed distance. His arms stayed firm around me.
Since I couldn’t get free, I angled my head back so I could see him better. “You can let me—” My words cut off. Blame it on the proximity, my newfound vulnerability, or the thunder-and-lightning scent of him. A shadow—the slightest smudge of darkness at the point where the mandible of his jaw angled upward—drew my fascinated gaze and trapped it. I wanted to touch that shadow, to trace the line of bone with my finger, with my tongue. Just below it, Ford’s pulse beat visibly, and I wanted to follow the trail of his carotid, to nibble my way down until I hit his collarbone, and keep going.
Chasing Thunderbird Page 9
