Desert Wolf

by Linda Thomas-Sundstrom

  Paxton didn’t want a replay of her meeting with the thing she’d thought was a bear. Grant had told her the creature that had jumped on her car might be a werewolf. She didn’t believe that was possible, but damn it, was everyone in this part of Arizona insane?

  “Go to hell, Grant,” she shouted.

  As those words echoed in the truck’s cab, the sensitive skin on the back of her neck chilled as though someone had dropped an ice cube down the back of her shirt. Red flags of warning began to wave, telling her…

  Oh, God…

  She wasn’t alone.

  *

  Grant’s chest had tightened as he had lunged for the moving truck, aware that the special speed he possessed wouldn’t get him to Paxton in time to stop her from whatever she had in mind by taking the vehicle. Surprise had made him hesitate a beat too long.

  Paxton was long gone.

  Ben, on his cell phone, barked a quick heads-up to the pack members in town. Shirleen raised an eyebrow when Grant whirled to face her—she was waiting for instructions on how to handle the situation.

  “Headstrong,” Grant muttered, taking off at a brisk jog toward Desperado.

  Too damn headstrong for her own good, he silently added.

  “At least she won’t get far,” Shirleen called after him.

  As for the not-getting-far business, Grant wasn’t so sure about that, given the possibility of Paxton’s memories of the area and how many details a six-year-old kid’s brain would retain.

  He didn’t remember much about his own life prior to his first shape-shift. When a body temporarily closed down for a complete system rewiring, more than just a few nerve cells were fried.

  Room had to be carved out for a long list of new senses and abilities that included a wolf’s enhanced sight and the power to smell things no other species could. His body had been loaded with new muscle for both protection and the kind of speed he could have used now to chase down stubborn she-wolves who hadn’t yet experienced their own physical awakening.

  Turning on the heat, Grant raced on, his legs churning on the dirt road. He had to pay attention to his surroundings and was glad moonlight exposed what lay in the shadows on both sides of the road to town. Desperado was only a mile ahead of him. He heard Shirleen, always light on her feet, running behind him, and he swore out loud, fearing that his pack might be in trouble because of the attention needed to handle Paxton’s breach.

  “Paxton. Stop. Wait for me. Keep out of the dark spaces. I don’t understand your need to run.”

  He sent that silent message on a closed channel reserved for personal things in order to keep other Weres out of his thoughts. Chances were good that she wouldn’t hear him, because Paxton retained most of her humanness at the moment, and old human habits were often hard to break.

  He glanced up at the moon, well aware that last thought wouldn’t be true for much longer. To most of the Earth’s population, the moon overhead already appeared to be full. Werewolves knew better. However, now, tonight, the big silver disc tugged on his will to remain in human form. Emotion was ruffling his skin, bringing chills.

  In a fully morphed state, he could have reached Desperado faster, arriving seconds after Paxton did in spite of the truck’s massive engine. But he didn’t want to scare Paxton. In any case, the rutted road they hadn’t bothered to repair would help to delay her departure.

  “Don’t hold back on my account,” Shirleen sent to him, reading parts of the thoughts he hadn’t purposefully hidden. “All right. Done deal,” Grant said aloud, changing his mind about shifting in order to catch Paxton sooner, knowing he’d have to shift back when he did.

  Claws popped at his invitation. Layers of muscle began to seize, shimmy and quake. His arms burned beneath the layer of chills. So did his legs. Facial bones began to rearrange. A dusting of fine brown fur sprang from chest pores, and the hair on his head lengthened to brush his neck with what should have been half a year’s worth of growth.

  With a larger lung capacity, breathing was easier and required less effort. Embracing his true nature brought him an exquisite sense of freedom. He didn’t have to ditch the open shirt or his jeans and boots, being in full control of how far he could take this shift.

  Running was easier now. Sprinting through the landscape was like experiencing a suspension in time and space. In Were form, he always had the feeling of being pasted onto the world rather than being part of it. Always, when wolfed up, he imagined he could hear, far off in a distant time, his four-legged ancestors howling.

  This was what being a werewolf meant, and nothing in polite human society could have covered it.

  Without the ability to speak, Grant sent his thoughts winging through the night. “Paxton. Wait. There are so many things I need to tell you.”

  Another shape-shifting perk, aided by his connection to Paxton, was Grant’s ability to tap into her emotions. He knew her heart was racing and that she felt lost. Hell, she was lost. Paxton had been stranded for far too long in a form that didn’t truly explain her. She’d been lost to part of her family and to her heritage, ignorant of what lay ahead for her in less than twenty-four hours, now that she had come home.

  “Stop,” Grant sent to her again as the town came into view. “Wait. I’m coming to get you. I can’t protect you if you don’t listen.”

  Shifting to his human form again would be necessary before he reached her. She couldn’t see him like this. Not yet, before she believed the things he had told her.

  Near the first building on Main Street, he found nine Weres waiting for him. One of them shook his head and pointed north. Grant growled his acceptance of the news that his truck had already passed through town.

  Worry set in as his pack gathered around him. All of these Weres were tense. Sharing his emotions made them more anxious.

  “She just blew through,” one of them said.

  “Where are you, Paxton?” Grant silently called before growling again. Her fear had spiked suddenly in a reboot of what had happened earlier that night—her brush with an animal she had assumed was a bear.

  He had to find her. Tonight was off the charts in terms of oddness, and Grant had a terrible feeling that Paxton really might be the focus of this latest series of close calls and mishaps.

  He wasn’t sure why he thought so, though the sour taste in his mouth meant trouble awaited him around the next corner. There was a new pressure in the atmosphere and a needling sensation on the back of his neck. His discomfort sang to him, urging him to find Paxton, pressing home the point that she might be in peril.

  “I’m coming,” he repeated for the tenth time, heading in the direction she had taken.

  Chapter 18

  Paxton stood beside the truck, gauging the viability of finding an exit from Desperado’s vast acreage in the dark after so many years. She had grown rigid, sure she was being watched. Nerves were prickling.

  Her body quakes had returned in full force. She called out, “I know you’re there, so you might as well show yourself,” hoping in this instance she might be wrong about having unwelcome company.

  “Actually, I insist,” she added, whirling around every time there was a noise in the brush.

  No one met her challenge. No intruder appeared in the truck’s headlight beams. Yet she sensed a presence. Inching sideways, toward the truck’s open door, Paxton tried to calm herself down. But when a different kind of awareness came that was more like a feeling than a series of spoken words, she imagined a voice say, “I’m coming.” And “Hold on.”

  The sensation the tone gave her was one of familiarity, leading her to believe it was Grant’s voice.

  With her back pressed to the truck’s warm metal, Paxton glared at the nearly invisible landscape, searching for this other presence.

  “You’re scaring me.” She spoke, not to the distant idea of a familiar voice, but to the closer presence she sensed hovering in the dark. “What do you want? Are you one of Grant’s friends? Can you help me move this tree off the
road?”

  She suppressed a gasp when she heard the snap of a twig, followed by the shuffling sounds of someone or something moving just beyond her field of vision.

  “Show yourself,” she insisted, not liking the way her voice wavered.

  The next sound that reached her was one an animal might make—deep, guttural and very much like a growl. Rather than adding to her discomfort, the thought of this visitor being nothing more than an animal came as a relief. Wolf, then, she thought. Real wolf, since Grant had nixed the idea of a bear. And yet that growl resonated in the night, too loud and too deep to have come from a wolf.

  Turning swiftly, Paxton climbed back into the truck. More chills came. More icy waves. Her head felt light. Movement out of the corner of her eye made her swivel, wishing she had taken the time to close all the windows. With shaky hands, she felt along the inner surface of the door beside her, looking for a button that would seal her inside.

  When the screech of something scraping against metal came, her fear escalated to nearly overwhelming proportions, freezing her on the seat with one hand on the steering wheel. Pulse exploding, she watched the dark blur of a moving body pass by the open window too swiftly to match it to an image.

  Scared out of her mind, and unable to deal with the latest state of fright, Paxton screamed.

  *

  Grant heard Paxton. She was in danger, scared.

  Doubling his effort to reach her, he flung silent curses that did nothing to alleviate his own budding fear over what might be happening to her.

  He felt responsible.

  If he hadn’t picked her up at the airport like an inquisitive ass, and had let her find her own lodging and make her own way, maybe these feelings of extreme connection to Paxton Hall could have been avoided and she would be safe. Certainly, she’d be nowhere near Desperado right now. He had brought her here, where a trespassing son of a bitch, whatever this rogue bastard turned out to be, could get a peek at her.

  Imagining Paxton was the key to solving the latest version of this mystery was probably absurd, and yet he couldn’t shake the idea. That beast had shown itself to Paxton and hadn’t harmed her. Something had been at the motel where she had checked in, and Grant had a bad feeling about that, too.

  “How could you know about the motel?” he asked across silent Were connections. “You spoke to me once, so why be silent now?”

  He didn’t actually expect a response and wasn’t surprised when none came. And he was an idiot for trying to reason with an unknown entity responsible for doing plenty of damage in the area. But, really, all he and his pack needed was one pertinent clue as to this sucker’s location.

  There was light ahead that had to be from the truck’s headlights. Changing from his werewolf shape to a more user-friendly appearance, Grant raced on through the slap and sting of yet another downshift in too short a time.

  His face reverted to its human semblance with a swift recall of power. The sting he felt was due to his fur being sucked back inside his skin. His shirt flapped in the wind created by his sprint. Claws were the last detail to go. His human shape would be best for Paxton, and worse, in theory, for facing whatever had frightened her.

  He saw the truck. Found Paxton inside. His relief over finding her unharmed was monstrous. She didn’t turn her head when he came up alongside. Nor did she acknowledge him at all. Paxton was ashen-faced, stiff and staring into the distance with glazed eyes.

  When he spoke to her, all remnants of his wolf had gone. This was the voice Paxton would know. This was the guy, at least on the surface, she had made love to.

  “You could have been hurt,” he said softly, yanking the door open, waiting until she looked at him.

  She spoke in a voice weakened by what had made her heart thunder. “No bear. Not even close.”

  Grant searched the dark, more concerned for Paxton than anything else. He sensed no one. Nothing jumped out at them. Paxton appeared to be alone. The only obvious details out of place were the tree blocking the road and the new two-foot-long scratch running the length of the truck’s left rear panel.

  Had Paxton gotten too close to the brush in her rush to beat him to an exit out of town? Grant didn’t think that would explain this kind of damage. The scratch was deep and looked to have been created by a very sharp object.

  In even more of a hurry now, Grant climbed into the truck, gently shoving Paxton aside. Throwing the truck into reverse, he drove backward, his eyes on the road through the rear window. The last spot wide enough to turn the truck around was some way back, and he was determined to reach that spot as soon as possible.

  His next uttered curse, whispered vehemently through clenched teeth, drew Paxton’s glassy gaze.

  “What was it?” he asked her. “What did you see?”

  The tires kicked up dirt and other desert debris, but Grant knew where he was headed. He was familiar with every inch of land surrounding Desperado, as well as most of the territory in and around the distant city. Weres often roamed far and wide, driven by the wildness inside them, before returning to their homes. Sort of like you, Paxton, moving to the other side of the country before returning to the land of your ancestors.

  “Okay. No bear,” he said aloud. “So, what did you see?”

  In a slightly stronger voice, Paxton said, “I’m not sure.”

  She was telling the truth, which in this case might not have been such an odd response, since no one around here seemed to know exactly what they were chasing. Even the word Lycan covered a lot of ground.

  “Describe what you saw,” he said.

  “It was the same damn thing.”

  He nodded. “The thing that jumped on the other car?”

  “Yes.” Paxton’s eyes were huge, her pupils partially dilated. He saw no evidence on her face of her earlier stubborn streak.

  “And?” Grant prompted.

  “And, as crazy as it sounds, I think it might have been expecting me. I think whoever is out there put that tree in my path to keep me from leaving.”

  Grant slowed the truck mid-turn and faced Paxton, anxious about her reply. “What was it?” he repeated.

  “I swear I don’t know. I didn’t see it. Not clearly.”

  “But you did see something?”

  She nodded. “Something.”

  Her pallor told him Paxton had reached the end of her ability to describe what she’d witnessed and that it would be useless to keep pressing her. However, she wasn’t quite finished, and the next words she spoke pierced Grant’s soul.

  “It wasn’t human,” she whispered breathlessly. “And if this is your trespasser, we’re screwed.”

  Chapter 19

  Paxton expected the man sitting beside her to blanch at what she had just said. At the very least, he should have questioned her judgment and current mental state. Grant Wade did neither of those things, which led her to assume he was one step ahead of her.

  “You believe me.” She watched Grant for any hint of a reaction.

  He nodded.

  “Damn it, Grant. Has the world come unglued, or are there things I’m obviously missing? When did the word inhuman become shock-resistant?”

  His sideways glance, there and gone, might have been an example of avoidance. He had the truck turned around and was heading back toward Desperado.

  “Maybe I should be the one asking the toughest questions,” she suggested. “Like what the hell is going on around here?”

  After a deep breath, she continued the interrogation.

  “Why do I imagine I can hear you speaking to me at times, when you’re not close to me? Am I nuts, or is there a reason I think this?”

  He seemed to be concentrating on the road, and that wasn’t going to do it for her.

  “You could do me the honor of an honest reply, since it appears I’m not going anywhere, anytime soon, and that rescuing me is your current MO.”

  He threw her another sideways glance that showed no expression of anger or gave her a clue about what he was
thinking. He gave no indication of believing he might be dealing with a madwoman. And that, Paxton decided, spoke volumes about his belief systems.

  When he spoke, it was in a low tone reserved for passing along a secret he wanted no one else to hear, even though no one else was present. “We believe this trespasser is unique.”

  “That’s putting things mildly,” she snapped, bristling with a desperate need to understand the things presently eluding her. Fear tickled her nerve endings. Her stomach again turned over.

  “So how about telling me what else you know, Grant?”

  “I’m not sure you’re ready to hear what I have to say,” he returned. “Especially since you didn’t believe the last few things I’ve mentioned.”

  “Try me.”

  “At the moment, I’m acting as your guardian and attempting to keep you safe.”

  “I didn’t ask for you to watch over me, only that you deal with my father’s goddamn will.”

  “You’re absolutely right, Paxton. And you’re safe now, so you can calm down. I’m not going anywhere and I will answer your questions one at a time.”

  Paxton sat back. Telling her to calm down after everything that had happened so far in Arizona was like telling a child not to cry when it fell down. Nevertheless, she managed to steady her voice, and gathered her thoughts together in spite of how fast her pulse was racing.

  “What do you mean by unique?” she asked, attacking that comment first. “You said you think the thing out there is unique, and also that it’s a werewolf. If you’re a werewolf and your pals are werewolves, what would make that thing out there different?”

  Desperado’s lights were twinkling. They would reach the center of town in minutes, and then what? With other people around, Grant might postpone the explanations she was waiting for.

  “I was born here,” she added tonelessly and out of context, her voice exhibiting the weariness she felt.