The Shadows of Christmas Past

by Christine Feehan

  Losimba snarled at Harry, then shifted in a blur of gold from cat to human form. He remained seated on the flat rock perch, looking no less proud and regal as a man than as a mountain lion. Instead of snarling, he sneered.

  "There are many reasons I have no use for humans. Their lust to murder all predators, including each other, is only one of them."

  Losimba was very much a political animal, and an arch-conservative one, at that. The last thing Harry wanted, especially since it was freezing out here, was to get into philosophical discussion.

  "Yeah. Well. Whatever. What are you doing here?" Harry asked. "Other than interfering with my investigation."

  "I want results." Losimba jumped down, light and graceful, from his perch. "I want my son back."

  "And the other kids?"

  "Yes. Of course." Then he sneered, "Except for the human. Something has to be done about her."

  Harry disliked the ominous tone. "The Council asked me to find them, that's all. No violence is intended toward that girl."

  "She can be made to forget, if enough pressure is applied."

  "If the boy's mated with the human—"

  "It doesn't bear thinking about," Losimba cut him off sharply. "My breed doesn't associate with that kind." He sniffed disdainfully, "while you obviously enjoy wallowing in the human sewer. There's human stench all over you."

  Harry caught himself growling deep in his throat and longing to rip the werecougar's throat out. He didn't let himself rise any farther to the bait, though. Losimba was famously old school in his attitudes. Except that the anti-human attitudes were really only the product of the last couple of generations. What had started out as a way to avoid extinction had turned into prejudice and snobbery in many werefolk. Those were games Harry didn't play.

  "Why aren't you searching for the children?" Losimba demanded. "What progress have you made?"

  Harry understood a parent's worry, but he didn't like Losimba's arrogance. He also didn't like the feet that the other were was here. When he took on a case, the area of the hunt became his territory. There wasn't room in his territory for another alpha, never mind the other shapeshifter's breed.

  "Did the Council send you to oversee my methods? Or are you trying to screw this up on your own?"

  "Why aren't you doing anything?" Losimba demanded. "You've had weeks—"

  "And in those weeks, I've tracked the kids down to this area." He pointed back toward the buildings far away on the hilltop. "To that place. All I can do now is watch and wait. If this was a human missing person case, I could use these more." He tapped his nose, then touched an ear. "Our kind are harder to track than humans."

  "We're better than humans."

  "Our senses are slightly different, and some humans come close to us in their physical and psychic abilities. And this isn't the time or place to discuss breed differences. I don't know about you, but my balls are freezing off."

  "You damn lobos are sentimental fools. You'll let the humans domesticate you and drag the rest of us down with you."

  Once again, Harry fought off the urge to mix it up with this guy. He reminded himself that Losimba was worried about his kid. People under that kind of stress often lashed out because it was the only way to deal with their frustration. Or, Losimba was just a jerk.

  "Stay out of my way," he told the werecougar. "Even better, go home."

  "I want action! I want news."

  "I've told you all I know, and all I'm doing. This kind of hunt takes patience."

  Losimba suddenly looked sad, and tired. "I promised his mother I'd have him home by Christmas."

  Harry didn't bring up the fact that Christmas was a human holiday, even though the celebration was one of the things that united werefolk with their shape-challenged cousins. Harry wondered what kind of miracle it would take to get that peace on earth, goodwill toward others thing going between the different sides of the evolutionary divide.

  He was tempted him to ask Losimba if he'd welcome a human daughter-in-law into his home for Christmas dinner. But the answer might be a not-too-flippant as Christmas dinner; and then Harry really would go after the werecougar, tooth and claw.

  "Go home," he said to Losimba. "Don't interfere. I will get those kids home."

  Still tense, Losimba glared at Harry for a while out of tawny eyes. Then he shifted from man to cat with such graceful fluidity that even Harry had to admire his shifting abilities. All admiration was off, however, when Losimba then snarled at him once more and stalked proudly away.

  Harry studied how Losimba managed to fade his scent to barely a trace as the other were disappeared from sight. Any information he could get would help in his hunt for the kids. The blocking was of a psychic nature, sending out a mental camouflage signal aimed specifically at the thought processes of other shapeshifters. It was a variation on how shapeshifters mentally influenced humans not to notice anything out of the ordinary they witnessed.

  "He's good," Harry acknowledged. "But his son's better."

  Then he changed back into a huge black wolf and went for a run, reveling in the power, the speed, the sharp senses of his animal form. Most importantly, he took huge pleasure in being warm.

  But after a while, a new sensation caught hold of him and made him turn his steps toward the hilltop. Something called him back toward Marj. After only a few hours away, he was already lonely for her. Instinct told him he was going home—and that bone-deep belief scared the conscious part of him to death.

  He found the boulder on the edge of the drive with no problem. He also had no problem detecting Taffy's scent, or Marj's. She and the dog had been here while he was gone. He supposed that she'd taken the dog for a walk, maybe hoping to spot the wolf, or him in human shape. Maybe Taffy had gotten a whiff of the clothing left by the boulder and come over to investigate. It was probably all perfectly innocent… and it filled Harry with dread. His misgivings grew worse when he couldn't find his stashed clothing anywhere near the boulder.

  The instinctive part of his mind told him to Run! Now! Any little breach of normal safety precautions triggered a fight-or-flight response in his kind. But the logical part, which should have been agreeing with the instinctive part, was telling him he needed to talk to Marj. That he needed to explain to her. That he just needed Marj.

  Okay, he needed her. But he wasn't going to show up at her door either as a wolf, or naked as a jaybird. He had left two other sets of clothing, identical to the ones he'd lost, secreted around her property in case of any emergency. The first thing he was going to do was head to the barn, to don the clothes he'd left under a stack of feed bags.

  He crossed the yard silently, clinging to shadows. The area was full of the crisscrossing scents of animals and of Marjorie, of himself, and other people from many different days and times. He could detect no immediate danger.

  He was at the barn door and getting ready to change to human so he could open it, when he realized it was a trap. He felt Marj's anger and whirled around. Following the direction of her emotions, he spotted her sitting on top of the cab of her pickup truck. With a tranquilizer rifle aimed at him.

  She fired even as he sprang toward her, then fired again.

  Two spots of pain blossomed along Harry's side. He went down hard on the cold ground. As the world went dark, his last thoughts were, Oh no, not again!

  chapter 10

  « ^ »

  "Tranquilizer darts."

  "Yep," Marj answered.

  "That's the second time this week, dammit."

  Marj watched warily as Harry sat up from where he'd been lying on the concrete barn floor, wrapped the red blanket around his chest, and glared at her. She was sitting on top of an old trunk, her legs tucked beneath her and an old quilt covering her lap. All the overhead lights were blazing, and the wide doors were closed and locked. It was just the two of them, as she'd left Taffy and Noel locked in the house. There was no way she was risking her dogs' safety around a wolf.

  She also noticed that he gau
ged the distance between them and looked at the rifle she cradled on her lap. Harrison Blethyin was not a happy camper.

  "How's your head?" she asked.

  "Pounding. Brutally, viciously pounding."

  "I can do something about that."

  "You've already done quite enough."

  She guessed she had, but she'd dragged the wolf in out of the cold and kept him warm with a blanket while he slept off the drugs and turned slowly back to the shape of a man. And she hadn't used as strong a tranquilizer as the men who'd shot him. She had questions about those men, and Harry's involvement with them. But there was another matter to deal with first.

  "You're a werewolf," she said.

  At first his expression was a mixture of wariness and anger, but gradually he began to look a little bit annoyed. Maybe it was just the headache. Eventually, he said, "Don't get all hysterical about it, or anything."

  Well, at least he didn't try to deny it. What did he expect from her? Did he think the appropriate response would be to scream, to panic? To call the tabloids?

  "I could exchange the darts for silver bullets, if it would make you feel more threatened," she suggested. "Besides, I had hysterics when I first figured it out. Should I have videotaped it for you?"

  "You sound bitter," he said, as though it concerned him. "I don't know what you have to be bitter about."

  "You lied to me."

  He rubbed his jaw, dark with stubble at the moment. He slowly got to his feet, still wrapped in the blanket. He kept his gaze on the rifle, and moved slowly toward a shelf stacked with twenty-pound bags of animal feed. "I'm going to get dressed now."

  "Your stuff's not there."

  He dropped the blanket as he turned around, looking annoyed.

  She just looked. She already knew he was gorgeous. After all, she'd seen him naked in a cage, and in her bedroom. She'd watched the slow, graceful transformation from wolf to human form while he was unconscious. Perhaps that should have disturbed her—but it had been beautiful; like a kind of art. And here he was naked again, and looking at her with angry sparks in his blue eyes. Sparks went through her, as well—she couldn't help it when she was around him. She wasn't going to try to deny how much physical attraction she felt for this—man? For the man-shaped part of him?

  "You found my clothes in here, too? How?"

  His angry question refocused her attention. "Taffy found the clothes out by the drive. Then I showed them to Bailey. He's a beagle/bloodhound mix. Once I told him what to look for, he had a ball."

  "Once you told him?"

  She found it odd that he sounded suspicious and skeptical. Then, again, why did she assume he knew everything about her? It seemed like she'd known him forever, but that wasn't true at all. And most of what she did know was false.

  "Are you going to let me stand here and freeze to death, woman?"

  "Are you going to turn into a wolf and attack me?"

  "Of course not!"

  His indignation slapped against her psychic senses, and she believed that he believed what he said. Which would have to do. His folded clothes were lying next to her on the trunk. She nipped back the quilt and tossed shirt, pants, socks, and shoes to him.

  She continued to watch him closely while he dressed, and when he pushed aside some of the bags and perched on the storage shelf.

  "Now what?" he asked.

  "Now you tell me what's really going on."

  He stared at her, his expression blank. But she could feel his thoughts teasing and tickling around hers, trying to get into her head and change what she believed and remembered. She didn't like his reasons, but she welcomed the connection. She'd never shared this kind of communication with a human before. Heck, if there wasn't a wolf part of him, maybe she wouldn't be able to doit.

  Stop that! she finally told him, and conjured up a mental image of her smacking the big, black wolf on the nose.

  Harry blinked. Then he threw back his head and laughed. "You're not afraid of me, are you? Not one little bit. I'm a werewolf, you know," he added seriously.

  "And I'm Dr. Doolittle," she answered.

  She's not scared, Harry realized. And she's not freaked. She was, in fact, incredibly accepting of the fact that he was a very different type of being than she was. It didn't bother her that he could turn into a dangerous animal. She accepted him for who he was, and knowing that she did filled his heart, and his head, with—her.

  He could also tell that her knowledge and acceptance of his otherness did not stop her from being really pissed off at him.

  "You want explanations," he said.

  She settled the rifle back across her lap. "How can you tell?"

  As he was faster and stronger than a human, he could take the weapon away from her at any time. But he wasn't going to strip away a prop that made her feel safe. He didn't blame her for not trusting him just yet.

  Harry rubbed a sore spot over his ribs. "I really hate getting shot."

  "At least I only use tranquilizers. My neighbors wouldn't be so humane."

  "You were worried that a rancher would take a shot at me?"

  "Of course. That's why I hired you to find—you," she finished with an annoyed grimace. "I suppose you found that really funny?"

  He shook his head. "No. I found it sweet. And useful," he admitted. "I have been using you, but for the very best of reasons. I really am a missing persons—"

  "Werewolf."

  "Which gives me the perfect skills for the job. But it's my being a werewolf you want to know about first. I can feel your curiosity. You want explanations, assurances, background—all that stuff that's supposed to be secret. Stuff that has to be secret," he added. "We only have two choices in dealing with humans that learn it."

  He waited for her to ask what those two choices were.

  "Tell me about werewolves," was all she said.

  She was not paying attention to consequences. Harry didn't understand that, because Marj struck him as the sensible sort. He supposed that learning that the myths and legends of the supernatural world were real could shake even sensible people into reckless behavior.

  She knew he was a real shapeshifter, and had proved that he couldn't make her forget. That left him with those two choices—and he already knew that he wasn't going to kill her.

  He sighed. "Okay. You know all the ancient tribal stories about shamans taking on animal forms?" She nodded. "Well, a long, long time ago those shapeshifting abilities were a well-known and accepted part of the world. I'm talking prehistoric times. We evolved as humans, among humans. We were people with psychic gifts that could also be manifested with the physical ability to take on the form of certain totem animals—wolves, bears, foxes, tigers—just about any mammalian predators. The ability to turn into wolves has always been the most prevalent. But as humans stopped living in small tribes of hunter-gatherers and settled into farming communities, they didn't have any need for predators in their midst anymore. The were-folk were driven out. We ended up banding together into our own tribes and mating only with our own kinds. So, what was originally a rare mutation for a specific psychic gift turned into dominant traits in our offspring."

  "So, you have to be born a werewolf? What about the legends of people being becoming werewolves by being bitten by one?"

  Harry shrugged with discomfort. "Yeah, well, unfortunately that can happen. None of our scientists have been able to figure that out yet. But we've only really had the ability to study the infectious properties of—"

  "Werewolves have scientists?" she interrupted.

  This was not the time to explain to her that most of the real research into the scientific aspects of supernatural phenomena was being carried out by vampires. Information about his own kind would do for the time being.

  "There are werefolk involved in the research. We go to college," he added. "We're not animals, you know."

  Marj laughed. "Don't get your tail in a twist. Go on."

  He laughed, too, delighted to hear such a common werew
olf joke from this human woman. Of course, it was probably a common sort of joke for a vet who ran an animal shelter, too. Either way, it reinforced the connection between them.

  "I wonder," he said, "if you would let me make love to you right now, knowing what I am."

  That wasn't what he'd meant to say, but suddenly it was very important for him to know. He was almost scared to look at her, afraid of seeing disgust openly on her face. Or, even worse, her trying to hide it.

  But she looked at him steadily, thoughtfully. Her emotions rippled around her. He picked up brief, overlaying shades of surprise, curiosity, anger, impatience, and lust. Harry especially liked that deep, rich ribbon of lust that wound through everything else Marj was feeling.

  "So, you still like me," he said. "I can feel it, even if you won't answer my question."

  "Because it's not a relevant question for the moment. It's a matter of trust," she said. "Liking has nothing to do with whether or not I should trust you."

  "I'm very trustworthy."

  "You didn't tell me you were a werewolf." She made a face at her own words. "Okay, if I were a werewolf, I wouldn't spread the news around, either. The world isn't safe for the radically different. I'm not forthcoming about my own—peculiarities."

  "There is nothing at all peculiar about you, lovely Marjorie."

  She waved off his flattery. "Tell me more about werewolves—or should I say werefolk?"

  "Werefolk. We are separate breeds, but we all answer to rules set up by an elected group Council. The Council is very conservative. For the last fifty or sixty years they've made it the priority for all memory and belief in werefolk to be wiped out of human consciousness. It'll be safer for us if people don't believe we exist."

  "People don't believe werewolves exist."

  "See, it's working."

  She didn't even crack a smile. "It would be dangerous for your kind if you were discovered. Everybody knows the legends, and the horror movies and books about how people get bitten and turn into bloodthirsty monsters during the full moon. That sort of bad publicity could get real werefolk killed."