Shifter Planet

by D. B. Reynolds

  There was no answer, and no Desmond either. He frowned and felt his earlier unease coalesce into a stark warning in his head. He was out here in the middle of nowhere with two shifters he didn’t trust, at least one of whom actively wanted him dead. And no one even knew he was here. Des had made the arrangements for the hover, and Rhodry had no friends in the city, so there’d been nobody to tell where he was going, just as there’d be no one to miss him if he didn’t return. Fuck.

  He headed for the back of the hover at a run, stripping away his gear on the way. Bow, quiver, and knife went into the back of the craft. If his cousin and Daly had shifted, his only chance was to face them in cat form. It would be two against one, but he wasn’t the best hunter on the planet for nothing. He had no doubts about who was the strongest animal among them.

  He was down to shirt and pants, and toeing off his boots when a soft growl spun him around. The two treacherous shifters crouched low in the nearby branches, teeth bared, eyes regarding him with hungry malice. He didn’t wait, he reached for his animal and… Pain.

  Every inch of his body screamed in agony as his cat fought to claw its way out, as muscles and bones, tendons and nerves strained to accommodate a shift that should have been as natural as breathing. He staggered backward, stumbling along the side of the hover, putting its bulk between him and his enemies. He was fighting to remain conscious, to figure out what was going on. Why couldn’t he shift? He could feel the animal crouching beneath his skin, eager to come out and play, to prove who the true alpha here was. Something was stopping him, he couldn’t… The trail bar. The gods-be-damned trail bar had been poisoned!

  Desmond and Daly launched themselves from the trees, Daly’s claws scraping along the thin metal of the hover as he scrambled over the top. Rhodry spun to meet the attack, a roar of outrage pouring from his too-human throat as razor-sharp claws dug into his chest. Des came in from below, powerful jaws closing around Rhodry’s hip, fangs sinking deep into his belly.

  Rhodry fought. He was a big man, strong and smart, with an insider’s knowledge of his enemy. He was also completely unarmed against a well-planned attack, with not even a belt knife to defend himself. His beast was screaming for release, draining his strength even as it strove to protect him.

  They rode him to the ground, raking bloody rows in his chest and arms, his legs, as he punched and kicked, refusing to go down easily. At some point at least one of them shifted back to human, and he felt something hard and heavy come down on his head. His vision started to gray out as he caught the bright slash of a blade at his groin. He rolled enough to deflect its course, but not its lethal edge.

  Blood ran warm over his skin, soaking into the dirt beneath him, and he wanted to believe some of it was his enemy’s. He thought of his home in the mountains, of his mother and sisters. He thought of Amanda, who would die out on that glacier without knowing he cared. And as the darkness took him, he thought of his Devlin cousins who were closer than brothers, and he smiled, knowing his death would not go unavenged.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Leaves scurried ahead of Amanda, blown on a cold wind with ice in its teeth. She hunched her shoulders against gusts that seemed to attack from all sides, chivying around her like small tornadoes, kicking up leaves and dirt and rocks.

  Her guess about the weather had been spot on. This was her third day on the trail, and clouds heavy with moisture were racing across the sky, the trees groaning beneath the looming storm’s advance. She’d changed her heading this morning, abandoning misdirection in favor of outrunning the weather. She was making a straight southerly run for the Green and already she could see, and hear, the difference. The trees were definitely more plentiful, their voices growing louder with every step she took, and full of warning. She didn’t need the trees to tell her a storm was coming, though, just as she didn’t need them to tell her what it would mean. Once the snow started falling, her visible world would shrink to a few precarious feet. She could easily find herself completely turned around and heading back toward the glacier with no warning until her feet felt the unforgiving ice beneath her boots once again.

  Unfortunately, that wasn’t the worst Harp had to offer her. She sighed, pausing long enough to twist the cap off her canteen and take a small sip, hearing the growing voice of the trees all around her. There was something muttering and uneasy in their song, something clearly audible despite their distance from the Green. It had started right after midday as a mild uneasiness, a feeling of being watched. In the last hour, that feeling of watchfulness had reached a point where she was spending as much time looking over her shoulder as ahead. Except that this wasn’t the straightforward danger of a creature stalking her through the trees. It wasn’t even fear so much as it was…betrayal.

  She shook her head and kept walking.

  By nightfall, the pall of dread hanging over Amanda had become a physical thing. Snow was falling in earnest, having settled in along with the darkness. Her tiny penlight was useless against the thick shadows, but she was too tense to remain still, too certain that something awful was about to happen.

  The wind died all at once, leaving her in stunned silence. Clouds that had been racing across the sky with the storm abruptly hit an invisible wall and stalled out, piling one on top of the other. Something barely seen drifted past the corner of her vision and she twisted quickly, her eyes straining in the darkness. She pushed back the hood of her cloak to see and hear better, and caught the sound of a low, rumbling growl. Holding perfectly still, she listened. The snow muffled the sound, flattening it, taking away any resonance or distance. She closed her eyes, narrowing sensory input, focusing only on hearing. A second growl joined the first, followed by a distinctive high-pitched whine, and she shivered in sudden knowledge. Those were hycats—shaggy coated, hunchbacked predators who were fully capable of bringing down their own meat, and just as happy to scavenge someone else’s. By the sound of it, they’d found something.

  It wasn’t her they were after. Whatever it was couldn’t be too far, though, if she could hear their growls so clearly. By the sounds the animals were making, their prey was something big and not quite dead. Something so dangerous that even with their prey injured and near death, the hycats were afraid enough to hold off their attack.

  There were only a few creatures on Harp capable of frightening the vicious hycat packs that much. She stood up and pushed her cloak all the way back, swinging her short bow off her shoulder and nocking an arrow, holding it ready in both hands as she started forward.

  Hycats feared ice bears—huge, hairy beasts with thick, impenetrable coats of fur and skin and eight-inch claws. Hycats feared Harp eagles—black-feathered bodies that dove sleekly through the trees like spears, gliding between the trunks to snag prey from the ground before powering upward with a single snap of their broad wings.

  But more than anything, hycats feared shifters.

  She glided cautiously forward, her feet finding their own way through the trees, as if some instinctive sense had finally kicked in. The thick snow now became an advantage, concealing her in its all-consuming folds of white, muffling every soft footstep. The air was still and silent, no breeze to carry her scent, only the imperceptible fall of snow on the ground.

  The animal noise grew louder as she approached, until she could no longer hear her own movements, quiet as they were. From the sounds, there were more than two of the big cats up ahead, a hunting party who’d scented a potential meal for the family group, and were willing to wait out its eventual death rather than leave the meat for some other scavenger to feast upon.

  She had a feeling they weren’t going to be happy when she took their dinner away. Or maybe you’re wrong, Amanda. Maybe they’ve just found a big old bear who had a heart attack on the trail.

  Yeah, right.

  She slowed her steps, close enough now to hear the animals moving restlessly, carving circles around their prey, long tails swishing the snow behind them in agitation. A shrieking yip and a flurry
of angry snarls split the darkness as two of the big cats tussled, eager for the meat, blood scenting the air so strongly that she could smell it even with her dull human nose.

  Something groaned, little more than a murmur of sound. Maybe it was her weak-hearted bear after all. And then the creature gave a gasp of pain, and her heart jolted.

  She raced ahead, following the noise of the pack, heedless of the treacherous ground underfoot. The trees ended abruptly in a small clearing and she skidded to a halt, barely stopping herself from barreling into the open. A quick look around told her there were at least three of the animals in the clearing, maybe a fourth. Their dark pelts stood out like smudges against the white snow, their gleaming yellow eyes giving away their positions. A pair of those eyes swiveled to glare at her, tightening into narrow slits as the hycat opened its mouth to snarl a warning.

  Stepping deliberately from the trees’ shelter, she aimed at those eyes and let fly with her first arrow before her foot hit the ground. She was sighting on the second cat before the first arrow hit its target, then she fired and did it again, falling back and rolling away as the third cat spun toward her with a furious yowl. She rolled completely, feeling her ribs crush against thick tree roots, jumping up to swing her bow over one shoulder and draw her belt knife, positioning her back against a sturdy trunk. Two animals remained that she could see, one seemed smaller, a young female learning the ropes, maybe. If she could kill the larger animal, the smaller would probably run, too inexperienced and too terrified to face the human alone. Even now the smaller cat hung back uncertainly, shuffling from side to side, a nervous yellow gaze slashing between Amanda and the older female, probably a mother or an aunt.

  She had a choice. She could wait for the dominant animal to attack and hope the smaller one didn’t join in. Or she could go on the offensive. She thought about her long knife, the one her shifter escort had taken before leaving her on the glacier. It would have come in very handy right about now. And wishing for a better weapon wasn’t going to do her any good. She risked a glance at the body lying a few feet away, ominously still in spite of the racket being raised by the surviving cats. Wishing wasn’t going to save that man’s life either.

  She let her bow slide slowly down her left arm until she was able to grip the smooth wood, never taking her eyes from the snarling animals. Sucking a long breath into her lungs, hoping the gods favored stupid humans who wanted to become Guild, she repositioned her knife in her right hand, let her breath out slowly and with a quick, underhand movement sent it slicing through the air toward the chest of the big female.

  The cat leaped as soon as Amanda moved and her thrown blade took it in the belly rather than the chest. It was enough that the animal twisted in flight with an almost human scream of pain. Its claws missed her face by a hair’s breadth, slicing instead through her layers of clothing to dig into the flesh of her arm as the animal flew past to land awkwardly to her right. She swore, and didn’t hesitate. The cat was stunned, not out of the fight yet. Bringing up her bow, she sent an arrow into the brain of the injured female, then nocked and drew again, sweeping her sights across the clearing in search of the smaller cat. With a streak of gray underbelly, and the flash of a pale tail tip, the young hycat was gone, disappearing between the trees, lost in the thick snow as it crashed through the underbrush in its haste to escape.

  Amanda let it go, her body thrumming with the rush of adrenaline, her heart pounding as cold air rasped in and out of her lungs. When she was confident the youngster was gone, she moved purposefully through the clearing, going from body to body, ensuring the three other hycats were well and truly dead. The only thing worse than a live hycat was a live, pissed off hycat. As it was, she had three dead animals and that was going to be problem enough.

  Retrieving her knife from the dead cat, she hurried over to the downed man. Her first touch told her he was still alive. A gasp escaped her throat when she turned on her penlight and got her first good look at his battered body. He was lying on his stomach, half turned to one side, his left arm flung out as if to ward off an attack. His other arm was under his body and there was a wide, red stain on the frozen ground beneath it. He was more or less fully dressed, his clothes torn and bloodied. From the size of him, and the braid in his hair, she guessed he was a shifter, and also because no one else would be out this far from the city. It made her wonder why he was in human form, why he hadn’t shifted to defend himself. Maybe the attack had taken him by surprise. Not an easy thing to do with a shifter. Weirder and weirder.

  She ran her light over the ground and didn’t see any weapons—no bow, not even a knife. If he hadn’t brought his weapons, then he hadn’t planned on remaining two-legged for long. His clothes—soft-soled boots, pants, a pullover shirt—were nowhere near enough for the cold weather, more proof that he hadn’t intended to stay here very long. She shuddered trying to imagine something that could bring down one of the powerful shifters so quickly that he hadn’t even had time to fight.

  She did a quick scan of the surrounding trees, looking for stray hycats, then dropped to her knees next to the wounded man. His hair was long and black, most of it still bound in its braid, the rest flung loosely across his face and matted with blood. She touched his shoulder gently, not wanting to startle him. He didn’t so much as shiver beneath her hand. Barely able to see, she held her flashlight between her teeth and tugged off her gloves, running her hands quickly and gently over his back and legs, his outstretched arm. He had several deep and bloody furrows on his arm, and his left shoulder was ripped open, but those injuries weren’t enough to account for the blood she could see staining the white snow. Dread filled her at the necessity of turning him over and seeing just what had caused the frozen puddle of blood he was lying in.

  She rolled him as carefully as she could, unable to stifle a groan of dismay at what she found. His chest and belly were in terrible shape, deep diagonal slashes gouged into his flesh, his clothes little more than shreds of cloth stuck in the thick, oozing wounds. The ground beneath him was nearly bare of snow, which meant the storm had hit after he’d been attacked. That might actually have saved his life, as the cold had slowed the bleeding somewhat, although she knew there were other risks that the cold brought with it. And now that she’d rolled him, several of his wounds had begun bleeding freely again. He was going to bleed to death right in front of her if she didn’t do something fast.

  She stripped off her cloak and her pack, propping the flashlight against the thick material to free her hands. “Hang on,” she said, leaning closer to brush away his long hair. “Try to—” She caught a look at his face and felt a jolt of horrified recognition. “Rhodry,” she breathed. She stared in disbelief as her heart crashed against her ribs, and then she swore softly and started working.

  There was a sizeable swelling just behind his right ear. He moaned when her fingers probed further, his eyelids rolling up briefly in a flash of gold. The swelling was trouble enough, but the injury was mottled purple and red with subdermal bleeding and there was a dried trickle of blood from the ear itself. Even more disturbing was the soft depression at the center of the swelling, a feeling somewhat like an overripe fruit. She ran through the symptoms of a skull fracture in her mind, and hoped she was wrong, because there wasn’t much she could do about it out here in the middle of nowhere.

  Packing snow around the head injury to dissuade bleeding and reduce swelling, she reached for her knife to strip away what was left of his clothing…and stopped. These were the only clothes he had and, as torn up as they were, they were better than nothing in this cold. Hopefully, he wouldn’t need them much longer, since, as soon as he regained consciousness, he’d shift. Or his body would do it for him before then. It was an autonomic response in the shifter physiology, one of the reasons they were so damn indestructible. The shift itself would repair most of the less serious wounds and begin healing the worst ones. It had something to do with the cellular reconstruction during the shifting process. And the scienc
e didn’t matter right now. The simple fact was, the sooner he shifted, the sooner he’d begin to recover. It was a little puzzling that his body hadn’t shifted on its own yet, and she hoped it didn’t have anything to do with his head injury.

  In the meantime, though, the temperature was dropping and it was snowing so hard she couldn’t have seen ten feet in daylight, much less in the cave-like blackness surrounding them. She pulled the small roll of her sleeping bag out of the backpack and spread it on the ground, rolling Rhodry first one way and then the other until the insulated bag was between him and the cold ground. Repositioning the flashlight against a piece of fallen branch, she shook out her cloak and used that to cover him. It would be harder for her to work on him, but the heavy fabric would hold in his body heat and keep him from going any further into shock. And maybe prevent the extreme cold from damaging the raw flesh of his injuries.

  Cursing the lack of a first aid kit—that had been among the supplies her escort had dumped out of her pack—she yanked off her parka, tugged her top shirt over her head and quickly put the jacket back on. She immediately felt the absence of the extra layer, and wondered how much worse it must be for Rhodry who was practically naked beneath her cloak. Using her knife, she cut her shirt into strips for bandages that were admittedly far from sterile. Fortunately, shifters didn’t generally have to worry about infection, because it was all she had. The main thing was to stop the bleeding and get the hell out of this clearing. Three fresh kills was a feast in the forests of Harp. The smell of the dead hycats would draw scavengers for miles around, and she didn’t want to get caught in the feeding frenzy.

  Working under the cloak, trying to keep him covered as much as possible, she apologized silently, and began removing his shirt, tugging his arms out of the sleeves and pushing the stretchy material up until he was wearing the whole thing around his neck like some sort of bizarre muffler.