Highland Shapeshifter

by Clover Autrey

She leaned in close to his neck, speaking around a mouthful of crust. “Maybe after I’ve killed a few monsters of my own.”

  “She’s way out of your league, you know that right?” Lenore shoved the last bite of her own pizza in her mouth and asked around it. “Where’s the stuff?”

  “I have no league.” He tossed her the keys, never taking his eyes from Bekah who hadn’t budged in a sort of he or she-who-moves-first-loses stare-down. “Stuff’s in the car.”

  Lenore went out to her Prius, ready to get out of the damp clothes. Pulling the duffel bags from her trunk, she turned and ran straight into Col’s chest. Geez. She hadn’t heard him at all.

  He took the bags from her. Always the gentleman. “Your friend, he’s…”

  “Full of himself? Annoying? Yeah.”

  Col smiled and crazy things started fluttering around in her stomach. “A little…” His face reddened and he shrugged conspicuously. “But loyal.”

  She smiled back. “Yeah, he is.” In some ways. But in other ways, not so much. Gabe was Gabe, as long as there were no expectations of anything lasting, he was great.

  Lenore tilted her head curiously, realizing the past hurt over Gabe was no longer there, completely absent. Staring into sharp green eyes she saw a different lasting, a connection so right and ripe with promise, anything she’d hoped to have with Gabe or anyone else was a pale flicker buried beneath gauze.

  Col was her lasting. She knew that with a fervency that threatened to sweep her feet out from under her. She wanted that with him.

  And she was about to lose it all when he leapt into his brother’s time rift.

  The cold hard slap of reality crashed into her, making her head buzz beneath a droning pulsing vibration. She pressed the flat of her hand to his chest, felt firm muscle beneath smooth skin. None of this should be happening. She shouldn’t have to give him up, not when she’d just found him. Less than two days. She’d known him less than two days, and yet she knew as firmly as she knew anything that she would never be the same because of him.

  And the way he was going back in time now, he wouldn’t just disappear from this time line. She would remember all of this. Remember him. It already hurt like hell.

  Is this how Charity felt about Toren, a man she’d known barely moments? Yet her sister had risked everything to jump back in time to save him.

  “What is it?” Col leaned in so very very close.

  She stared and stared, memorizing every line and angle of his face, the intense green of his eyes.

  His lips twitched. The vein in his jugular jumped, the duffel bags thumped to the ground, and suddenly his hands were in her hair and his mouth moving over hers.

  He was sun and heather and laughter. Savage ancient strength and yielding gentleness, the crashing of ocean waves and man oh man, she must be crazy because she swore she heard the skirl of bagpipes in the distance.

  ~~~

  Gabe lifted a brow when they came back into the room. Ruffling her hair in front of her face, Lenore started going through the duffel bags Col placed on the bed.

  Gabe had brought all the knives from his butchers block as well as a few others she hadn’t known he had. And a 9mm.

  She picked up the heavy gun gingerly, giving Gabe a wicked grin. “Holding out on me?”

  “Sugar, I’m an open book. You just never asked.” He turned his predatory gaze on Bekah. “You can ask too.” He spread his arms out as far as his crutches allowed. “At the same time.”

  Both Col and Luke gave him bland stares.

  Bekah picked up some jeans and a sweater, probably cast-offs from Gabe’s girlfriend-of-the-moment. “Some secrets take a deft hand to uncover.” The bathroom door closed behind her.

  Gabe blew out a low whistle. “I have deft hands.” He smiled and turned. With Bekah out of sight, Gabe zeroed in on Col, scanning the damp blanket riding low on his hips. Gabe’s lips stretched over white teeth meant to dazzle. “Barring the homeless stench of the fabric, that’s a good look for you.”

  Col’s brows shot up, disappearing beneath long overlong bangs. As comprehension settled in his features, horrified, he shifted back a step even though there was the queen-sized bed already between them.

  “Gabe, stow it.” Lenore handed Col a pair of Gabe’s old jeans and black T-shirt.

  Gabe sat down on the edge of the bed, lifting his casted leg up onto the mattress. “Dutifully stowed.” He set the crutches against the side of the bed. “So, who’s going to tell me what I missed?” His gaze wandered back to Col as he tugged the denim on.

  Whoa. Lenore couldn’t blame him for that as the denim rode up tight buttocks to slim waist.

  Bekah came out of the bathroom in black jeans and a form-fitting beige top, and started finding all sorts of interesting places to hide several blades on her person. “If you’re done staring at his ass, let’s get this traveling circus on the road.”

  Col spun abruptly, noting that Gabe was, indeed, unabashedly staring at his posterior. Eyes huge, Col spun back around and hurriedly finished dressing. “Are we absolutely sure Gabe is not a supernatural being, like a Roane?”

  “A Scottish merman?” Gabe frowned. “I don’t see how…oh, they’re highly amorous. Well, if the tail fits…” Gabe merely shrugged, but didn’t look away. “They’re not real too, are they?”

  Col full-out smiled, deliberately not answering.

  Smothering a grin, Lenore shoved the gun in the back of her damp pants. She wasn’t about to give that up and took her own change of clothes into the bathroom.

  When she came out, Bekah and Gabe, of all people, were applying a mixture of moistened cinnamon to the gedisite collar around Col’s throat as he sat patiently on the bed.

  “Is it working?” Lenore leaned over Gabe where he sat beside Col with his leg stretched out on the mattress now.

  “Seems to be,” Gabe answered. “So he’ll be able to shift once this is off?”

  Col looked at Bekah, interested in that answer as well.

  “Shouldn’t be a problem.”

  Col blew out a breath in relief while Gabe’s eyes glinted with excitement. Kid in a candy store. Luke stood sentinel by the window, watching. Apparently he’d assigned himself guard duty.

  Col’s face tightened in a wince, whether from the burn of the gedisite or the cinnamon, she didn’t ask. Could be both. “Can I help?”

  “Maybe some cloth to put on his skin beneath the band.”

  Lenore grabbed some washcloths from the bathroom and came back to the bed. She crawled behind Col and worked the cloths up between the collar where it immediately turned a greenish brown, soaking up the residue of cinnamon and the dissolving gedisite. She felt the heat coming off him. The muscles of his back were coiled. His lips pressed thin. His hand came up and found hers, guiding her where to place the cloth.

  It was working. The metal was dissolving as Gabe and Bekah rubbed the cinnamon paste against it. The harder they rubbed, the quicker it dissolved and the more rigid Col became.

  “Almost got it,” Gabe exclaimed. They had a good portion of it dissolved. Unfortunately it wasn’t a large enough section or malleable enough to pull open.

  “Get another section in the back open like that and it will come away in two pieces.” Bekah handed Lenore the paper coffee cup she’d mixed the cinnamon and water in.

  She went to it at his nape, rubbing the cinnamon across the offending metal with urgency. She wanted this off him now.

  “Easy. It’s done.” Gabe held her hand back. “See.”

  Carefully, Bekah pulled the two brittle halves apart, freeing Col. The skin beneath puckered in angry red welts, but Col’s relieved smile was brilliant.

  “Care to test it?” Gabe prodded.

  “No,” Lenore and Bekah both scolded him.

  “Yes.” Col leapt off the bed, instantly burning in a myriad of shimmering lights that flickered around him, and then became him, or rather the light became the shape of a man, fluttering firefly lights that shrank and shrank unt
il he was gone. Denim pants dropped to the floor.

  He chose a panther this time, shiny and powerful with bunching muscles beneath slick black fur. It was like witnessing something so sacred there weren’t words for it.

  “Wow, he’s beautiful,” Gabe whispered, his face radiating quiet awe.

  He was right.

  Excruciatingly unequivocally right. Col was beautiful.

  The panther glided around the bed to Lenore, pushing his head into her palm.

  She’d never been so close to a lethal predator, with claws and teeth that could tear through her throat in an instant, but this was Col.

  She trusted him. She knew him, knew his soul. His essence. His eyes were the same—intensely green within the midnight fur and so filled with humor and kindness, she swallowed against the emotions consuming her and smoothed her hand over his head. Soft. He was soft and so silky. A purr rumbled deep in his throat and she laughed.

  “As entertaining as this is,” Luke said from the window. “We going to do this or what?”

  The panther growled, but went once more into a shift, disappearing in a blaze of pulsing light and vibrating energy and reappeared in all his naked glory.

  “Still…beautiful,” Gabe uttered.

  Lenore wanted to fault him for that, she really did, but you can’t fight city hall and all that.

  Once again, Col pulled on his jeans and T-shirt with a rapt audience taking in every nuance of muscle playing across skin. The redness circling his throat was evident. She wondered why she thought it might not be, why going through a transformation of pure energy might heal every wound.

  Lenore grabbed up a second clip for the gun and shoved it in her pocket while Col went through the assortment of blades, planting several upon himself.

  It was almost hilarious when they piled into her little Prius. Two women and two large men, all armed to the teeth, blades galore and a futuristic ray gun and heavy duty 9mm between them.

  Gabe whined about being left behind, but as he was the walking wounded and in no way would be able to stretch his casted leg in the overcrowded car, it was just too damn bad. See, still swearing easily. She’d have to start a swearing jar when this was over, maybe use all the coins to go on a long vacation.

  Not to mention, Lenore wasn’t prepared to drag Gabe into this more than he already was.

  “Well, kiddies,” Bekah said from the back. “Let’s go bag us a Sift.”

  Chapter Twenty

  Turned out getting troglodyte DNA was not that difficult. They found several of the uglies still trolling around Charity’s apartment complex.

  Bekah did the honors, snuck up between one rooting behind the large dumpsters and slit its throat to get its attention before slamming a second blade up the flaring nostril. Gross, but effective. Guess the easiest way to put down the almost un-put-down-able monsters was to get up close and personal with the slimy gray brains. And Future Girl was scary precise with a blade. Lenore grimaced at the milky gray ooze that passed for Morlock blood as Bekah and Luke drained it into the Squid. The rubbery gelatin soaked it up like a sponge, going from translucent yellow to mottled grayish brown crap. They were supposed to eat that?

  All that pizza was about to come back up.

  And the smell…

  Garlic and curry overcooked in a stew of rotting cabbage would be more pleasant. Don’t ask how she knew that. Herbal experiment gone awry. What? She read it in a book.

  “Go on.” Bekah handed her a broken off piece of the soggy Squid. She didn’t want to touch it, let alone eat it. She’d rather face a dozen decomposing zombies. Okay, maybe an exaggeration, but eating crap was not her thing.

  She took it between two fingers. It felt as bad as it looked, slime with cartilage.

  Escargot, right? It was a delicacy.

  Forcing the door, they piled into Charity’s empty living room.

  “What now?” she asked.

  “Click your heels together, Dorothy, and think of home,” Luke groused.

  Smirking, Bekah eyed her piece of Squid with a jaundiced eye. Guess it was even worse after already having sampled it once. That so did not help. “I have the day and minute stamped in my brain. You simply focus on your sister. And brother.” She glanced up at Col. “Hang onto me and enjoy the ride. Hands inside the vehicle at all times. Ready?” She lifted the brown crap to her lips. A drop of brown crud dribbled onto her lip and Lenore was ready to puke just seeing that.

  “This doesn’t bother you?” Lenore asked.

  Bekah’s lips thinned. “They ate Matthew. And many others I care about. This doesn’t bother me.” Placing the brown sludge between her teeth, Bekah smiled.

  “Down the hatch.” Plugging her nose, Lenore squeezed the Squid past her protesting lips and her gag reflex immediately kicked in, revolting against the taste. It was like the Sifts, nightmares and death, killing for pleasure, thick snot sliding down her throat. Squinting one eye, she forced it down, nauseated at the texture.

  Holy geez, she needed a gallon of water to wash this down.

  She bent over, holding perfectly still and trying not to hurl, hearing those around her making their own strangled grunts, holding the crap down.

  Her stomach twisted. And not in a normal going-to-regurgitate way, although there was that too. It felt like being stretched apart. From the inside.

  A hard rattling vibration shook through her bones, threatening to separate every molecule.

  “This is it,” Bekah shouted. “Hang on!”

  A roaring filled her ears, stuffed her head, like standing beneath Niagara Falls—loud, rumbling through her cells.

  Col’s wide fingers slipped between hers, guiding her hand to clasp around Bekah’s slender wrist.

  Lenore thought she was going to break apart, piece by piece. Her teeth rattled in her skull.

  Then it was gone.

  Everything abruptly stopped.

  The roaring, the sensation of pulling apart… Everything but the taste. The horrible taste in her mouth was still there.

  No, that wasn’t quite right. There was still noise. Loud. Like an avalanche exploding down a mountain. An external pulsation outside of herself.

  And wind.

  Inside Charity’s apartment. Two days in their past.

  She spun to face the roar, toward the small kitchen and her heart jolted.

  The sorcerer’s time rift was already opened and growing in size. It was huge, larger than she’d imagined a rift to be.

  Her sister was stretched out on the floor, hands clamped around the wrists of the sorcerer, his long body hidden behind the counter. His long ebony hair pulled to the side in a hurricane force twisting wind. He looked so much like Col, Lenore thought at first he’d already leapt into the fray—and the thought paralyzed her.

  Knowing he planned to do just that and believing it had already happened were two entirely different things.

  She couldn’t let him do it. There had to be another way.

  “Charity!” she called though the noise snatched her cries away.

  “No, let her go.” Bekah caught her arm.

  The wind circled harder and harder, a whipping cyclone that swept the appliances off the counters. The floor buckled beneath them, tossing them off their feet. The cabinet doors pulled from the cupboards, bending the metal hinges. Everything was being sucked up in the vacuum of the whirlwind.

  Charity and Toren lifted from the floor, caught in the whirlpool of air, clawing to hang onto each other.

  Col lunged up. Now. He was ready to go now.

  The couch lifted, flew across the apartment, landing across the arched doorway between living room and kitchen, groaning and buckling against the walls, baring her view of her sister and what was happening on the other side.

  Lenore pulled up to her feet, swaying with the movement of the bucking, breaking building. Plaster fell from the ceiling. Upstairs neighbors were going to love that.

  And puff, puff-puff-puff. Tiny explosions of dusty air clouded the roo
m, dispersing little smoke in the raging wind to reveal Sifts. Another appeared. And another. Coming through their own time portals to stop them.

  Startled, but not stupid, Lenore pulled the 9mm out and shot the closest in the stomach. The next bullet went in its head. Blue light whizzed past her, nailing another.

  Col was suddenly there, swirling behind her, one of his blades carving a vee straight down a Morlock’s head. Well, that was another way to get to the brain. Rictus gray blood sprayed the churning air like spinach spaghetti. She’d never cared for that healthy pasta anyway and wouldn’t be eating it any time soon. Or ever.

  Bekah revolved close, stabbed another in the chest, but it leapt up to the ceiling where Lenore shot at it. Missed when it dropped on Col, dragging him to the floor. Again, the beasts were concentrating their effort on him.

  Fury, fear, adrenaline, or all three, stroked through Lenore. Screaming, she kicked the Sift off Col, pressed the muzzle to its jaw and fired three rounds.

  The guns were good for a distraction, getting lucky when they could close to any cavity in the head, but between their blades, Col and Bekah were doing some serious damage.

  Blood, guts, and who knew what else splattered them. Col whipped two knives from a Sift’s underbelly. She hadn’t even seen him stab the thing—and grinned devilishly up at her.

  “How’d they know we’d be here?” She smacked another clip into the handle of her gun.

  Bekah’s face was fierce. “They ate Matthew,” she growled and ducked out of the way of slashing claws.

  Blue light pulsed into the veiny chest and Luke laughed, enjoying the fight. The Sift spasmed and fell flat. “The Sifts eat you, they know your innermost concerns.”

  And Matthew would have been worried about losing the Squids they had taken off him and Bekah. “That’s how they knew about your plan to come back to my time and help Col get back to his.”

  Luke shot several bolts into a Morlock that just didn’t want to go down. A stinging blade from Col in its ear did the trick. Lenore shot the Sift pouncing over his shoulder, sending the beast smacking into the wall. He, or the bullet coming out the other side, must have hit an electrical wire behind the sheetrock because the wall started sparking, sending eerie glows through the monster’s skin like sparklers.