Saving Autumn

by Marissa Farrar

  “Not yet, I’m not.”

  He frowned at her words. Had Tala figured out that he’d been talking about Autumn? She only needed to ask her father who this person was in order to get the truth, though she probably wouldn’t even think of asking Lakota Wolfcollar. After all, what reason would she have for suspecting the old man knew anything?

  His wolf called to him again, trying to get his attention. His stomach tightened. Something wasn’t right.

  At the back of the building, a door burst open. The empty space filled with the shapes of people. Behind them swept in a flurry of rain and wind. Instantly, Chogan knew they weren’t shifters. The second thing he realized was that of the four people who had just entered, two held guns, the other two had knives, and they all had their faces covered with the type of black stocking getup he would have expected in a robbery.

  The crack of a gunshot exploded in the building, the white flash of light blinding him momentarily.

  “Get down!” Chogan yelled.

  The group before him scattered, some fleeing to the corners of the building, others instinctively throwing themselves flat on the ground. Chogan lunged down behind the platform of pallets he’d been using as a stage and focused in on his wolf. Come to me.

  While he knew it was dangerous to leave himself exposed while he shifted, being unarmed against people who clearly wanted to cause them harm might prove to be just as deadly. His wolf had already been on high alert and was always keen to shift. While sometimes Chogan found himself battling with his wolf for rights to his own body, him wanting to stay human while his wolf wanted to constantly shift, right at this moment he was grateful for his spirit guide’s urgency.

  The force of his wolf hit him, knocking him backward. Pain speared through his body and the cracking of his bones breaking echoed in his head. His muscles and tendons tore and reformed, creating newly-shaped limbs. On the other side of the crates, he was distantly aware of screams and the pop, pop, popping of more gunfire.

  His face wrenched out of shape, his jaw lengthening, his mouth filling with teeth. Every part of his skin burned as fur sprouted where it hadn’t been before. At the base of his spine, his skin tore as the appendage of his tail pushed its way through and unfurled. The jeans, t-shirt, and leather jacket he’d been wearing fell from his body in tatters.

  He didn’t allow himself any time to settle into the shift, to allow the residing pain to vanish. Instead, he crouched and sprang forward, leaping over the crates.

  Tala. Where was his cousin? Fully human, she had no protection other than him.

  Quickly scanning the interior of the industrial building, he saw he wasn’t the only one to shift. A leopard rose to her feet and shook herself off. The vast form of Enyeto rose from the back of the building, his huge bear’s body dwarfing the space.

  His heart clenched as he saw Joey Miles lying on the concrete floor, a pool of dark, sticky blood spreading out from beneath him. The young man’s hand was clutched to his chest, his eyelids flickering open and closed. Already, Chogan could smell the life seeping from him.

  Filled with anguish and fury, he lifted his head and howled.

  The twisted form of the Goth girl, Leah, was to the right of him, mid-shift. Her arms were already part wing, her face curved into the brittle form of a beak. But she was still minutes from completing her shift, her connection with her guide clearly not as strong as his own or Enyeto’s, leaving her vulnerable. A spirit shifter’s strengths were dependent on how early in life their spirit guide bound to them. Those who joined early in life, like Chogan’s had, meant they could shift at will and could do so quickly. Those who connected with their spirit guides later in life found they shifted only when their spirit decided to do so, or sometimes were unable to shift at all.

  Their attackers had been momentarily distracted by the metamorphosis of the shifters around them, but they soon refocused. Chogan didn’t think for a minute that these people had been expecting anything less. They’d known what they’d been getting themselves into when they’d come in here. He thought of the callout on the internet to rid the world of “freaks and monstrosities.” That was exactly what these people were trying to achieve.

  In wolf form, with his sense of smell greatly heightened, Chogan could tell the masked people were all men.

  One of their attackers swung his gun on the girl, and Chogan centered his body and leapt. The shot went off, exploding around him as he collided with the man, slamming him to the ground. Without thinking, he lowered his jaws and closed them around his throat. The man squealed as the wolf cut off his airway, the blood of his pulse pumping hot and fast beneath Chogan’s tongue, though he only pierced the skin a little. Suffocating him was enough.

  Beside him, the girl finished her shift and rose into the air, huge pale wings flapping. The wide, circular yellow eyes surveyed the scene with keen intelligence, deciding how to make her move before she did. The other knife-wielding attacker was making a dash for the doorway, and she let out a screech and dove down, talons outstretched to grab him. He swiped at the giant snowy owl with his knife, drawing blood on her scaly leg. She managed to wound him, claws ripping through the back of his t-shirt, before he wriggled loose and fled out of the door he’d entered by.

  The leopard sprang at the other person brandishing a knife. A snarl pealed from the big cat’s curled lip, and she knocked the knife-wielder to the ground. They tussled, the man wiggling beneath the beast, trying to keep his throat away from the leopard’s jaws while flailing wild jabs with the knife. The leopard’s teeth locked into the guy’s shoulder, but the weapon found purchase, plunging in just beneath the big cat’s left front leg. She let go and yowled.

  Enyeto rose on his hind legs, huge claws tipping his dinner-plate sized paws. He came swinging at the other man holding the gun, perhaps the one who’d fired before, though Chogan couldn’t be sure. The man got off another shot, hand trembling, but the bullet went wide. The bear knocked the weapon from the man’s hand with ease and batted him to the ground. The man flipped himself on his stomach and began to commando crawl away, trying in vain to get to safety, but Enyeto crashed down to all fours, crushing the man beneath his front paws as he did so.

  The man beneath Chogan was dead. He felt no sorrow or remorse at the man’s passing or that he’d been responsible. If they’d been left in peace, this would never have happened. He’d had it coming.

  Chogan caught sight of Tala hiding behind a stack of boxes at the back of the building. She peeped out at him, her normally dark skin paled, and he curled his lip and snarled at her in warning to stay where she was. She was about to dart back when a tiger landed in front of her and began to prowl back and forth, guarding her. Chogan cast his gaze around the room to see who was missing. It was Rhys, the tattooed guy with the bald head.

  The leopard-shifter was in trouble. Blood gushed from the wound, and though she managed to get her jaws around her assailant’s leg as he tried to pull himself away, he sat up and went in for another strike. Chogan centered the energy in his coiled muscles and sprang at the guy. He must have caught sight of the wolf coming, for he swung his arm in an arc as it landed right beside him. Pain bloomed through Chogan’s shoulder, blood spilling down his russet fur. Fury swelled and burst.

  With a growl, he darted forward, his teeth closing around the wrist holding the knife. Bones crunched beneath his powerful jaws, and the man let out a scream, the weapon dropping from his suddenly useless fingers and clattering to the floor. He placed one large paw onto the center of the man’s chest, pinning him to the ground, and then switched his hold from the man’s wrist to his throat. With his shoulder still burning, there was no room left for niceties. He sank his teeth into the man’s throat and tore, a great gush of blood spurting upward like a fountain. The man gurgled and choked, and finally fell silent, his head tilted to one side, eyes blank and staring into nothingness.

  An atmosphere of shocked disbelief fell over the inhabitants of the disused industrial building. Those s
hifters whose connection hadn’t been strong enough to allow them to shift at will began to emerge from behind the boxes and crates where they’d been hidden.

  The leopard shifted back to human form, revealing herself to be Mishca, the tall woman in her forties, with the ebony skin. She lay curled on her side, her hand clutched to the wound at the top of her ribs, blood spilling between her fingers. A moan of pain escaped her lips.

  Chogan prowled across the floor, torn between wanting to help and wanting to make sure they were in no more immediate danger. For all he knew, there could be a whole gang of people waiting outside for them to shift back to human form. In this state, with him and his wolf guide as one, inhabiting the same body, he had no way of getting a view on the surrounding area.

  He glanced over at the young man who had been shot. His face had grown slack, his eyes open but unblinking. His body stank of death. Chogan let out a growl, rumbling like thunder deep in his chest. The man, not much more than a boy, was dead because of him. If he’d not called this meeting, the other shifter would have been tucked up in bed or perhaps out at a late-night bar trying to pick up women. He hadn’t deserved this.

  None of them had.

  At least they were far enough away from the main part of the city and any residential areas that he could be fairly confident no one would have heard the gunshots and called the cops. The last thing he needed right now was to explain this to the police. It also didn’t look like they were going to be attacked again anytime soon.

  Chogan concentrated and pushed the spirit of his wolf guide from his body. Instantly, his body began shifting back to human, the agony that always accompanied the change ripping through every inch of muscle, bone, and skin. He internalized the pain, not giving voice to it as many shifters did, instead clenching his morphing teeth as best he could.

  With the shift back to human form complete, he rose from the ground, naked, his long black hair swinging down his back. Around him, people cried quietly, a couple over Joey’s body, others just holding each other in stunned silence. Chogan glanced over at Enyeto, who had also shifted back. Enyeto locked eyes with him and gave him a slow nod. Take control, that nod said. Use what has been done to us.

  Still naked, and feeling no shame, Chogan jumped back on top of the overturned pallets he’d been using as a stage. One by one, his people lifted their tear-streaked faces and looked to him for guidance.

  “This is what we’re dealing with!” Chogan snarled. “Innocent shifters being attacked and slaughtered. Did we provoke those men? No, we simply had the guts to gather as a group to discuss our future. Are we going to let them get away with this?”

  Numerous voices rose together from the crowd. “Hell, no!”

  How had the men known about the meeting? Someone here must have leaked the place and time of the gathering, despite having been sworn to silence. He hoped to God the leak hadn’t been done on purpose. Chogan scanned the shocked and hurt faces, praying he didn’t have a traitor in his midst.

  Surely, no one here would have done this to one of their own?

  Chapter Three

  AUTUMN WOKE TO early morning light drifting through the drapes. Beside her, the expanse of Blake’s smooth brown back met her sleepy gaze and she reached out to run her palm over his heated skin. White, round circles—scars from the bullets that had passed right through his body—were the only blemishes, other than his tattoos. Autumn had a feeling the scars would vanish soon as well. As she’d learned, he healed quickly.

  He moved in his sleep, and she smiled and snuggled closer, pressing her face against the plane of his back, inhaling the sleeping scent of him.

  Other than the times they’d been called in separately to answer questions about what had happened at the government building, they’d not left each other’s side. Their story was that they’d been working at the building, only to accidentally discover the captives in the cells beneath ground. Frightened, they’d run, but then had come back to help. They denied all knowledge of the animals in the building, saying that they found the rumor of their presence as confusing as everyone else.

  They’d gone back to Autumn’s apartment and stayed there. Autumn had wanted to be able to keep an eye on Mia, realizing her friend had been through a trauma, but in the end, Mia had made her excuses and gone to stay with her parents for a few days, allowing Autumn and Blake time alone.

  The footage of Chogan shifting and calling for all shifters to rise and unite had been played multiple times on television, and the last time Autumn had checked, had several million hits on YouTube. There was much speculation about whether or not the footage had been doctored, but the large number of eyewitnesses was calling that theory into dispute. Others tried to claim the sightings to be a form of mass hysteria, but again, with the combination of what had happened in the building, people were struggling to find a rational explanation. Of course, Autumn knew there was no rational explanation. What they’d seen had been real.

  As for Chogan, he’d vanished right after his debut television appearance, and despite Blake searching the city, they’d not seen or heard from him since.

  The government had been left with a veritable nightmare to clean up. The boy, Toby, had made nationwide news. The kidnapping of a child was apparently even worse than the holding of the two adults. But the government department had managed to blame everything on Maxim Dumas, claiming the General had been suffering from a mental illness causing delusions and had believed both Toby and the two adults, Michael and Kasa, to be part of a terrorist ring and had taken them captive for questioning. Dumas’s cause of death had been declared suicide, the fall from the window being no one’s fault other than his own.

  Blake stretched in bed, elongating his muscles, distracting her from her thoughts. She couldn’t help herself and ran her hand from the top of his ribs down to his waist and hip. Blake swiftly turned to her, flipping her onto her back so he towered above her. At five-foot-eight, Autumn had never exactly felt like a delicate flower, but being held beneath his huge form made her feel petite for once in her life. His dark eyes bored into hers, and a smile touched the corners of his mouth.

  “What do you think you’re playing at?”

  “I thought you were sleeping,” she said, returning the smile.

  “I was. Someone woke me.”

  “Is that a problem?”

  “It wouldn’t have been, but then, you, Doctor Anderson, interrupted my stretch. I hate when someone interrupts me mid-stretch.”

  He lowered his face to hers and she thought he was about to kiss her mouth. Instead, his lips skirted her jaw, hot kisses feathering their way down her throat and across her collar bone, making her squirm.

  She wanted the events of the last few days, with the exception of meeting Blake, to disappear into her distant memories and stay where memories should be—in the past.

  Blake slipped the straps of the tiny black slip she’d worn to bed from her shoulders and lowered the top, exposing her small breasts. Her nipples crinkled on exposure to the cool air of the morning, but she gasped in delight as the cold was replaced by the heat of his mouth. He enclosed one sensitive peak and laved the pebble with his tongue, before moving across her body and paying the same attention to its neighbor. She ran her hands over the moleskin soft top of his head, down the back of his strong neck, and across his shoulders. She still struggled to believe that what she felt beneath her palms didn’t always exist this way. Sometimes, his smooth skin was covered in a soft, thick fur.

  She sighed and twisted her face to the side, her eyes closed, losing herself in his attention. Blake seemed to know exactly how to make her body sing, playing her with every flick and strum of his fingers and tongue.

  A shrill buzz signaled someone at the door.

  “Oh, you have got to be kidding me,” she groaned.

  Blake lifted himself back up above her body and paused with their faces level before he lowered his forehead to hers. “Leave it.” He closed his eyes briefly. “It’s probably rep
orters.”

  She hesitated, tempted to take his suggestion, but then the buzzer sounded again, and she turned her face to the direction of the door and groaned. “I can’t. It’ll drive me crazy all day, not knowing who was at the door.”

  Autumn squirmed out from beneath him, and he lifted an arm, rolling to one side to let her go. She got to her feet and grabbed her clothes from where she’d discarded them on the easy chair. She started to pull on her jeans, but Blake put out his hand.

  “You stay here. I’ll get it.”

  He’d been fiercely protective of her since the incident. Autumn wasn’t used to having someone watch out for her. She’d been fending for herself ever since her mother had died. She wasn’t someone who hid behind others, even if this particular someone made for quite a figure to hide behind.

  She pushed his arm away and continued to get dressed. “No, you won’t. This is my apartment and I’m capable of opening my own front door.”

  Even so, he followed close behind as she left the bedroom and headed to her front door. She was about to hit the intercom to see who was waiting, but a knock came at the door. Her visitor must have been let up by someone else in the building. Blake hovered at her shoulder, his arms folded across his massive chest. Unlike her, he hadn’t bothered to put on a shirt. Not that she minded about that too much.

  Autumn approached the door and peered through the peephole. She was surprised to find Peter Haverly standing on her doorstep.

  She stepped back and swung open the door. “Hi, Mr. Haverly?”

  “It’s Peter, please.”

  “I suppose you’re looking for Blake?”

  He peered over her shoulder, an almost hopeful expression in his gray-green eyes. “Err, no, I wasn’t, at least not completely, though I guess I would have found him. I actually wanted to see how Mia was holding up.”

  “Mia? Oh, she’s gone to her parents’ house for a couple of days. I think she needed some home comforts after everything she went through.”