Among Weres who were prey animals, mixing with herds containing pure animals was like donning camouflage. But among predators, a willingness to pack and mate with beasts was the mark of a feral or rogue.
He’d expected to find a heavy concentration of them here. Like other supernaturals, ferals and rogues were drawn to human settlements and cities, because despite the risk, prey was plentiful.
They were close to what the humans called the Barrens. It was a blackened, burned-out place where the dregs of human society took refuge, the insane and hunted, those so reviled they didn’t dare live in the red zone as the healer he sought did.
Distaste shuddered through Aryck, that she’d make her home among outcast prostitutes. It didn’t surprise him the ancestors knew of the healer’s existence. It was in their power to restore those they’d judged unfavorably, though it happened so rarely he’d never seen evidence of it.
Aryck spared a glance at Melina as the scent of hyena grew heavier. He hated the necessity of it, but knew it would be safer to have the jaguar’s strength.
“We change before going any farther,” he said, stopping and immediately removing his pants and supple moccasins, ensuring the pouch containing payment for the healer, gold coins unearthed in ruins on Jaguar lands, was well secured.
For once Melina stripped and stood naked without the conscious offering of her body. Like Aryck, she quickly rolled her footwear into her clothing, then knotted it to make a loose fabric collar that could be worn while in jaguar form.
Aryck shifted first, the collar of clothing already around his neck. Melina did the same.
Low to the ground the scent was even more intense. It carried not only traces of hyena but wolf and coyote, feral dogs as well as deer and rabbit.
This deep in the forest there was no trace of humans, but that wasn’t surprising. Even with their guns they would be nothing but prey here.
Aryck moved on, with Melina traveling farther from his side than before. He was anxious to get to the red zone and find the healer. Willing or not, she would accompany him back to the Jaguar’s summer campsite.
The trees thinned as they neared the Barrens. Rubble and debris turned the path they were on into a winding trail full of blind spots.
Aryck slowed, sensing danger an instant before three spotted hyenas scrambled over hills of vine-covered ruin while two others blocked the path in either direction, creating a vicious cage. Their excited whooping added to the adrenaline spiking through his blood and he lunged, using his weight to his advantage to knock a small male to the ground as it leapt from the piled rubble.
There was no time for finesse. Aryck buried his canines into the animal’s throat, clamped, and ripped, severing the jugular.
Searing agony whipped through his side and flank as his skin was pierced by two attackers. Behind him Melina screamed in fury and pain.
He turned, raking his claws over the animal trying to eviscerate him, blinding it in one eye. It retreated, giving Aryck a chance to spin around and savage the animal whose bite had torn through muscle to crush leg bone.
Fury, pain, the will to survive burned away any vestige of thought. He attacked with teeth and claws, not content just to drive his attacker away.
Aryck killed his opponent, then focused on those circling Melina. She was bleeding from a tear in her side but had held them off.
He launched himself, nearly blacking out as he used his hind leg, but somehow managing to land on his target and bite, severing the spine so the animal went down underneath him.
Melina pounced on a large female. Aryck felt the rip of muscle and tendon, the crack of bone in his other back leg as the beast he’d blinded in one eye overcame its injuries, forgetting them in the frenzy of fighting, and with the whooping calls announcing the rapid approach of another pack. He turned, driving the hyena off him as Melina killed her attacker.
Strength bled out of Aryck with the loss of blood and the severity of his injuries. He knew he was a dead man, the ancestors’ prophecy coming to pass, though not in the way he’d envisioned it.
His legs were both broken, too badly damaged to hold his weight. He was injured beyond what could be healed by shifting form, even if he had the strength to manage it.
The whooping calls were closer now, moments away given the speed of hunting hyenas. He would die where he lay, fighting until they ripped out his internal organs.
Aryck growled at Melina, using a sound that meant retreat, climb, hide. She showed her teeth and growled in response but was already scanning, looking for a route, a tree, the instinct for self-preservation greater than any other and beginning to override all else.
She’d taken only a few steps before the first of the new pack appeared, coming from the direction of the forest instead of the Barrens. A feral led it, the scent different from the pure hyenas in the first attack. It was followed by a second feral and then a third, their rolling gait and obvious intelligence enough to send terror out in front of them.
Aryck pulled himself into a crouch, half expecting the hyena he’d injured to attack from behind. Instead he heard it yelling, the roaring scream of an animal trying to escape.
An instant later he saw the reason for it. A male Lion charged past him, closely paced by a Tiger. In front of Aryck the lead feral dropped as a bullet smashed into its skull.
Before the first two of its companions could escape, the big cats were on them, taking them down like prey.
The remaining pack members fled, laughing, filling the forest with the high-pitched sounds of their intense fear.
Melina wheeled and snarled, prepared to launch herself at a new threat. Aryck turned his head just as a man holding a gun said, “I don’t want to shoot you but I will if you attack.”
The voice and face were vaguely familiar but Aryck couldn’t concentrate. With the hyenas gone and the need to fight no longer present, adrenaline flowed out of him, leaving him hollowed out, nauseous until pain descended and shock started to settle in.
He fought against blacking out and was only vaguely aware of Melina giving up the jaguar’s shape for a human one, of the Lion and Tiger padding over, sitting, their heads cocked as they listened while she and the man talked.
Aryck struggled to full consciousness with the mention of the healer Rebekka. Despite the futility of it, he tried to change shape, failed even as the conversation ended and the man moved to his side and crouched next to him.
Were, Aryck had time to think. Lion. And then darkness descended in a wave of agony as he was lifted off the ground.
IT was backbreaking work, bending over each plant, not just to harvest but to check for disease and insects. Rebekka ached from it.
A few plants in front of her a girl pulled a bug from a leaf and tossed it a short distance away. A bold mockingbird snatched the bug up before it could crawl away.
The mockingbird wasn’t the only bird brought to the garden by the prospect of an easy meal. Robins dotted the aisles, waiting for a chance to dart in and snag an earthworm as children harvested small potatoes for the evening meal.
Finches and sparrows of various types were equally plentiful, varying from shades of brown to gold. A lone male cardinal sat on a low tree branch, while higher up, two scrub jays began squawking and quarreling, the sound of it making the cardinal fly away.
Rebekka stood to stretch the muscles of her back and take a moment to look over at where the younger children played on blankets or took naps, watched over by older girls and women on break. She’d taken her turn underneath the trees and out of the sun several times since coming to the garden with her mother to work.