by Zoë Archer
He nodded guardedly, unsure where she was headed. “When I was allowed to see her, my mother told me stories she had heard from her grandmother. The people who ran the school didn’t like her filling my head with ‘heathen’ tales. After a while, she wasn’t permitted to visit anymore. But I remembered what she said. A legendary race of changers lived in the sacred mountains.”
Astrid shouldered past the pain she felt for him to be separated from his family at so young an age. All that mattered at this moment was now.
“The race of changers are called Earth Spirits,” she said. “I have heard the legends, too. But I learned long ago that there is much more truth to legends than society would have us believe. Often, the truth surpasses the legend.”
He stalked toward her. She had no desire to be chased like a rabbit around her cabin, so she held her ground as he loomed over her. “Tell me what the hell you’re suggesting,” he demanded.
She looked up at him, careful to keep her own gaze steady and serious. “I’m suggesting nothing. I am telling you.”
“Telling me what?”
She stared at him for a moment, understanding full well the implications of what she was about to say. Not only would his life change completely, but hers would as well. Damn.
“You are an Earth Spirit.”
Chapter 3
Transformation
Laugher. Anger. Astonishment. Astrid expected any one of these reactions from Nathan Lesperance after revealing to him that he was not a mere man, as he had long believed, but a shape-changing Earth Spirit.
Instead, he stalked around her cabin, throwing open her cupboard, hauling up the ticking-covered mattress so that the bedding tumbled everywhere, shoving books out of her bookcase.
“What the hell are you doing?” she demanded.
“Looking for whiskey,” he growled over his shoulder. “Either you’re drunk, or I need to be.” He threw more books onto the floor, heedless.
Astrid stomped over to him, determined to keep him from wrecking her once-orderly home. She grabbed his arm. “Stop it.”
He whirled to face her, and only a few inches separated them. “Thank you,” he said, low and fierce. “I didn’t say that before. Thank you for finding me out in the wilderness and bringing me here to your cabin. I probably would’ve died if you hadn’t taken me in. I know you don’t want me here. So, don’t think I’m not grateful, because I am. But like hell will I be lied to or mocked. You think I’m a stupid Indian—the way they all do.”
“That’s not what I think,” she shot back. “I’m not lying. I’m not making fun of you.”
He glanced down to where she still held his arm, his eyes narrowing at the sight. His arm was tight and hewn with muscle. Warmth flooded her, and she pulled her hand back.
“Explain yourself,” he rumbled, “before I smash this cabin into matchsticks.”
She cast a quick look around, as if actually assessing whether he could reduce her sturdy cabin to kindling. At the moment, he was so ferocious, she almost believed it was possible.
“When I found you,” she said, “you were covered in cuts. Not little scratches, but actual wounds that might need stitches. And now look”—she gestured to his chest, forcing herself to consider the sleek contours of his skin—“they are practically vanished. Healed within hours.”
“Always been a fast healer.”
“No one mends that quickly. Not without some assistance.”
He shook his head. “So my wounds are almost gone. That’s not enough to convince me I’m some kind of man-beast.”
“I did not say you were a man-beast. A man who can change into an animal. That is different.”
His bark of laughter held no humor. “Stupid of me not to see the difference.”
Astrid held up her hands. “I know this is difficult to comprehend—”
“Difficult?” His mouth twisted. “Try ridiculous.”
“But it is true,” she persisted, clenching her teeth. “Edwin, the trapper who was outside, said a wolf attacked a group of Englishmen. The wolf bit someone and clawed them. You had blood in the corners of your mouth and under your fingernails. Blood that wasn’t yours.”
This made him pause, but for a bare moment. “Still a damned far leap to make. Maybe an animal attacked me when I was wandering around.”
Astrid wanted to pummel him. She had not spoken this much at one time in years, and the effort cost her patience. “Somewhere, buried in your stubborn head is the memory of your abduction and escape. In that memory is the truth.”
He swung away from her, gripping the blanket to his waist. “The laughable truth that I—me, a man—can shift forms into a wolf—an animal.”
“Exactly,” she said.
“Not ‘exactly,’” he fired back. “You may consider me some ignorant heathen savage—”
“I never said that!”
“But the stories my mother told me are just that, stories. I knew it as a child and I know it now. This is a world of steam engines and gunpowder. Magic isn’t real.”
“Trust me,” Astrid said darkly, “it is.” And she had the loss to prove it.
He glowered at her. “Trust. You’re asking me to trust you. Based on what?”
She should have expected resistance from him. After all, a person wasn’t told he was a supernatural being every day. Even so, his stubbornness was a stone wall she battered herself against. How unlike gentle, soft-spoken Michael this man was. But then, she realized belatedly, Lesperance was much like her. She always demanded proof, would never give her trust readily, even before her husband’s death. Michael had been the one to believe, to befriend everyone, while she guarded herself and him like a tigress. Lesperance had the same wariness.
“You said it yourself,” she countered. “I could have left you to die, but I did not. Even if your wounds did heal quickly, you were in the wilderness alone and dazed.” And naked, she silently added.
“If I could turn into a wolf,” he said as though humoring a fanciful child, “I think I’d know. I’ve never done it before.”
“Things change,” she said, grim. “People change.”
“But not into animals,” he countered. “Just find me some damned clothes and I’ll get the hell out of here. I don’t care how beautiful you are, I’m not going to listen to you—” He stopped, tensing, then inhaled deeply.
Her heart, already racing, began to knock forcefully in the cage of her chest. “What is it?”
His eyes met hers, ebony to steel. “Trouble.”
“Can you hear something?”
“I smell it.” He drew in another breath through his nose. “The men who captured me. It’s their scent.” A moment’s rare bewilderment crossed his face. “I don’t know how I know, I just do.”
Astrid did not doubt him. She took a spyglass from her pack, still resting on the floor, and darted to the window. As Lesperance watched in puzzlement, she drew back the curtain, then pulled herself through the window.
“There’s a new invention called a door,” he said drily as she stood on the windowsill.
She ignored him, instead climbing up onto the roof. The pitch of the roof was not very steep, so she easily held her footing. Her hands, however, shook slightly as she trained her spyglass on the lone pass leading into the meadow. She would not be visible to whoever tried to breach the lea, and had a good enough vantage to see whoever dared disturb her isolation.
What she saw caused her heart to seize. Curses or swears refused to come to her lips. Instead, a cold sense of inevitability threaded through her. She could not see the faces of the men riding in the pass, but she was able to count their number, and knew them at once from their posture. A sense of entitlement radiated from them like noxious vapor. The world belonged to them, and whatever was not already in their possession soon would be.
She knew these men, knew them almost as well as she once knew herself. They were a blight upon the earth, an engine of destruction and enslavement that she had once foolis
hly thought she could stop. Until the day when Michael was taken from her. Then she no longer believed whatever she or any of her friends did made any difference. Their enemy was and would always be stronger, more ruthless. She had tried to leave them, and her friends, her work, behind. Yet even here, in this wild place, the enemy had found her and even now was less than a half an hour from her home.
The Heirs of Albion.
Balanced on the roof, balanced on the cusp of her own conscience. What to do? A few, far too few, options. She could get her rifle, wait for the Heirs to come within range, and then pick off as many of them as possible. But there were too many. At best, she could hit two or three before their own shooters took her down. No, she refused to throw her life away for a petty victory.
It isn’t me they want. The Heirs wanted Lesperance. He was their objective, not her. Years she had spent nursing her seclusion, far from everything and everyone who meant anything to her. The deprivations she had suffered just to carve out a corner of the world where she could be alone. Do nothing, let the Heirs take him. Reclaim your peace.
Impossible. She cursed at her integrity. No matter how much she wished, her honor rejected the idea of allowing the Heirs to capture Lesperance. Even if he possessed the ability to shift into wolf form, he could never face the Heirs by himself. They were far too powerful, too brutal. And his survival in the wilderness, alone, was next to impossible. He didn’t know the terrain. Without a guide, without protection, he would be vulnerable to the wild and, most of all, to the Heirs. She had to get him to safety.
She was down from the roof, inside her cabin, within seconds. She did not spare a glance toward Lesperance. “We have to leave immediately,” she said. She dashed around the single room, throwing gear together for a longer trek into the wild. Her mind and body switched far too easily into a mode of being once thought forgotten. Everything became clear and precise. Uncertainty led to hesitation, which led to death. So, no uncertainty.
A revolver’s hammer clicked behind her. She spun around.
Edwin stood near the open door, his gun pointed at her. To one side lay Lesperance, dazed, struggling to sit up amid the splintered remains of the chair. Astrid immediately deduced what had happened. The trapper was a big man, incredibly strong. It was a wonder Lesperance wasn’t completely unconscious.
“What are you doing?” Astrid asked, even though she knew perfectly well what Edwin was doing.
To his credit, the trapper looked contrite, though he didn’t lower his weapon. “I’m sorry, Astrid. They offered me too much money to say no.”
She didn’t have to ask who “they” were. The Heirs. Her mind raced. It wasn’t the first time she’d been on the dangerous end of a gun, especially that of one of the Heirs’ hired mercenaries. Her own revolver was still in her gun belt on the table, her rifle by the door. She could go for the knife in her boot.
Astrid was still calculating odds when a gray, snarling blur leapt onto Edwin. She barely saw the movement. One moment, the trapper had his gun aimed at her, and in the next, he rolled on the floor, screaming, as an animal attacked.
Not any animal. A wolf. Huge, much bigger than any wolf she had seen in these parts. And merciless as it tore into Edwin.
Astrid ducked as the trapper’s revolver fired, the shot going wild and slamming into the wall. When she looked up, it was all she could do not to turn away in horror. The wolf had Edwin by the throat. The trapper gave another scream, then the sound collapsed into a wet gurgle. Blood splashed across the wooden floor and stained the wolf’s maw, crimson on the silver fur. Edwin’s limbs twitched, and he went still.
Wolf and woman stared at each other.
The wolf snarled from his crouched position over the trapper’s body as Astrid took a careful step forward. Dear God, it was enormous. At least thirty inches at the shoulder. Silver and black fur bristled with aggression. A mouth full of white, tearing teeth. Eyes of glinting topaz.
It was those eyes into which she stared, searching for the man within. “I am your friend,” she said slowly, hands upraised. “I am no threat to you.”
The wolf relaxed slightly from its crouch, its snarl easing. It tilted its head a fraction, as if considering her.
“Please,” Astrid whispered, drawing nearer even as her mouth dried and her hands grew slick. What if he was too far gone to recognize her? She would die beside traitorous Edwin Mayne, her blood mingling with the trapper’s, as the Heirs neared. “You and I are in danger. We must leave at once. I am your friend,” she repeated, holding out one trembling hand. The wolf leaned closer, cautiously sniffing her palm.
She expected, at any moment, to have her hand torn from her body. Instead, the air shimmered. A vapor gathered around the wolf, silvery light gleaming through the mists, like clouds covering the moon. The vapor swirled, then dissolved, revealing Nathan Lesperance on hands and knees where the wolf had been. Blood smeared his mouth. He glanced down at the trapper’s corpse, then lurched upright and back until he connected with the wall.
Lesperance stared at her, utterly, profoundly shocked by what had just happened. He brought shaking fingertips to his mouth and started when they came away wet and red. He did not seem to care that he was completely nude. What was modesty compared to the incredible, awful truth?
Before he could speak, Astrid crossed the cabin to him. She stepped over the splayed, still form of Edwin, unconcerned that she tracked his blood over her formerly clean floor. From her back pocket, she produced a kerchief. Lesperance reared back when she reached for him, knocking his head into the wall behind him.
“Easy,” she murmured, bringing the square of fabric up to his mouth.
“Don’t want to hurt you,” he said hoarsely.
“You won’t.” She carefully wiped the blood from his lips until it was completely gone. The kerchief was ruined, though, and she tossed it to the ground.
“I’ve never…” He swallowed hard, then shut his eyes when he tasted blood. But he was strong, because he opened his eyes a second later. “I’ve never killed anyone before.”
Astrid turned away. “It doesn’t get easier.”
Considering that Astrid Bramfield had just watched him change into a wolf and rip a man’s throat out, she was damned calm. Nathan, buried in layers of shock, watched her bustle around the cabin with a levelheaded precision that would have shamed the most seasoned soldier.
“Help me strip the body,” she said, tugging on the dead trapper’s buckskin coat.
Nathan normally bridled at being told what to do, but in this instance, he couldn’t bring himself to be angry. At least someone was thinking clearly. He moved to follow her command, helping her to pull off the trapper’s coat, deerskin leggings, wool shirt, and boots. Blood stained the coat and shirt, blood that was still wet because Nathan had taken his teeth to the man’s throat and torn at the flesh until the man died. Holy hell.
“Lesperance.” Astrid Bramfield’s voice cut into the downward spiral of his thoughts. “Don’t travel that road. Put the clothes on.”
Numb, Nathan did so. The garments were ill-fitting, cut for a heavier, taller man, and they still held the warmth of the trapper’s body. Soon, the body would be cold.
As he dressed, he kept his eyes trained on Astrid Bramfield, knowing instinctually that if anything could keep him from losing his mind entirely, it would be her. He felt her strength, her presence. Normally, he relied on his own. But he’d lost his mooring and found steadiness in her. It shouldn’t be a surprise. He knew the moment he met her yesterday that this was a woman of uncommon will, a will that matched his own.
She pulled on her heavy coat and her broad-brimmed hat, then culled items from the cabin, things needed for a journey. She knelt in front of a box at the foot of the bed. From this, she loaded a cartridge belt with rifle shells. Women who lived in the wilderness had to be familiar with using firearms, but this woman possessed a long familiarity with weapons. That much was evident in her economic, efficient movements.
Nathan, tugging on the trapper’s oversized boots, saw her hesitate over an item in the box. Eventually, she seemed to make a decision, and put what looked like a field compass into her coat pocket. Odd that she’d hesitate over something so ordinary. She took a few more small objects from their hidden places around the cabin, also stuffing them into her pockets. She wavered over the pile of books—books he’d thrown to the ground when refusing to believe her claim that he was a shape changer—then decided against them.
“I made a mess of your place,” he muttered.
She dismissed this brusquely. “Doesn’t matter. I’m not coming back here.”
The implications hit him. Her cabin had been her refuge, though from what, he still didn’t know. And now she had to abandon it. Because of him.
“No time for apologies,” she said, seeing he was about to offer exactly that. “We must leave now.”
Easier for him to find shelter in movement and action than dwell upon what he had just done, what he had now become. She headed for the door, a revolver in her belt, rifle slung across her back, and he followed, but not before taking the trapper’s fallen revolver and tucking it into his belt. She gave an approving nod. He found a gleam of satisfaction in getting her approval.
Once outside, sensations battered him. The sound of the wind in the pines. Trails of scent telling thousands of stories. He tasted the deepening afternoon. Everything had become too sharp, too present. Somehow, he must find a way to navigate this new world, or else risk being drowned by his senses.
She watched him struggle, her own expression remote. This was a battle for her, he realized, as much as it was for him.
It shook him that he could read her so intimately, and that she, too, could see into him. No one, especially no woman, had ever done the same. He’d never let them and never wanted anyone prowling around the inside of his mind. But he and Astrid Bramfield shared a connection. Whether either of them wanted to.
“Take Edwin’s horse,” she directed. “And we’ll keep the mule, too.” She didn’t look behind her to see if he did as she bid him. Instead, she trotted toward the corral and readied her own horse. The trapper’s animals seemed indifferent to their change of owner. He smelled the horse’s and mule’s momentary confusion and then acceptance.
