THIRTEEN
Malinda, as a wolf. Part of him thought she was the most beautiful creature he’d ever seen.
The rest of him was scared to death for her.
He’d allowed the animal spirit to take him, tearing through clothes and filling out the shape of the bear as he lumbered down the stairs. He hadn’t wanted to bring the animal out. He wanted to bury the bear under his soul and leave it there forever, but right now, right here, he needed the bear to save Malinda. To save his son.
To kill Raul.
As usual, he could feel the bear trying to get more from him. It would take everything from him if he let it. The wolf would do the same to Malinda.
How could he have gotten her involved in this? He should have never invited another person into his home. Not like this. The household staff was bad enough. The dead friends and employees he had seen on his way here would always weigh down his conscience. But Malinda was different. They shared something special. He couldn’t let Raul ruin it any more than he already had.
He promised himself that he would make it up to Malinda. Somehow.
For now, he just had to save her life.
The bear inside him thundered its anger and reared him up on hind legs. That hadn’t been him. The animal had taken control of his body—their body—and made him move. He didn’t care. Let the animal spirit taken him over for the next thirty minutes, two hours, half a day. As long as it saved Malinda, just this once, he would give in to it.
Then let us save our beloved.
Garrett’s mind reeled. That had been the bear, speaking directly to him. Of course he’d heard the bear’s voice before. Every time he spoke while in animal form the bear was in his voice. This was different, though. The animal spirit had spoken right to him. That had never happened before.
What was going on here?
You have given me allowance to act, was all the bear said.
Whatever that meant.
Raul laughed at him in that instant, a harsh and cold exclamation that drew Garrett’s attention back to the fight before him.
One second too late.
Raul launched himself at Garrett, and he only saw it when the flash of gray fur and angry eyes was right in front of his face. One huge bear paw swiped in to defend himself only to become the wolf’s target. Teeth sank into the muscles near his wrist and pain lanced up his arm as blood spurted. Using the arm as a lever, Raul swung his lower body until his hind claws found purchase in Garrett’s abdomen.
Bellowing in fury, he did the only thing he could. He fell forward on top of the wolf.
The smaller animal twisted and flailed under him. Something snapped. Bone, maybe. Raul’s claws scratched and cut at him, but without much force. It hurt, but it wouldn’t kill him.
Wrapping his arms around Raul, pulling him out from underneath, Garrett threw the other Shifter with all his strength, across the room, in a trajectory that ended when the wolf’s spine slammed into a metal countertop. The impact bent the steel like so much paper.
Raul slid down to the floor, tangled, dazed, eyes open and tongue lolling out of open jaws. He was still alive.
Not for long.
With a snort, Garrett landed on all fours, and barreled at the wolf.
The force of the collision dazed him. Raul yelped and thrashed weakly, blood frothing around his mouth. His body began the transformation back to human. Garrett doubted that Raul had used his human form in years. Decades, maybe. He had given himself so completely over to the wolf that Garrett had doubted there was anything left of a human soul in him at all. Fur sank back into skin. Claws melted and reshaped into fingernails. Blood oozed from wounds revealed by shifting muscle and broken bones.
It was the animal spirit within him that had kept him alive this long, Garrett knew. It wasn’t his own mind that told him. It was the bear within him. Information, facts, arcane knowledge that Garrett had never even guessed at. All of that and more was there. It was as if the connection between him and the bear was different now. Like they were, if not friends, then at least not enemies.
We are as one now, the bear told him. See and know what a true bond of spirit can accomplish.
The strength that flooded him was incredible. This was what the bear was like, and he had felt this before, on nights when his mind left him and the animal took over completely and he woke up in the morning back here in his own house with no memory of what had happened, naked, afraid, and scared to death that the blood in his mouth belonged to some poor soul who had only been in the wrong place at the wrong time.
I have never killed a person, the bear told him now. We have hunted, you and I. We have taken small game and large prey alike, and we have feasted. But never a human. Never.
Relief flooded him in a gasp of breath. He shivered, and thanked his spirit for that.
“Garrett?”
The trembling voice was Malinda’s. She was still the wolf, still cowering over by the wall of the kitchen. He turned to her, telling her it was all right. Raul would die now, here, and everything would be all right.
Something bit him. Deeply. Sharply. He tried to turn his head but there was something there, in his neck, keeping him from bending his body the way he needed to. Something long and metal and hard and slick with his own blood.
A knife. Raul stood on shaking feet, slamming the long butcher knife into Garrett again. The bear in him screamed warnings that he could barely hear. His blood. It pooled around his feet now, matted his fur. The look in Raul’s eyes was triumphant.
The man that Raul had hidden away behind the form of a wolf was filthy. Dirty, disgusting, unclean. His hair was long and shaggy and brittle. His eyes were sunken and Garrett was hard pressed to say what color they really were. His teeth were yellow and uneven. Big purpling bruises covered his torso. Blood oozed from different cuts that Garrett had dealt him. He shook all over. Still he stood there, hands wrapped around the handle of that knife, and smiled.
“I win,” he trumpeted in a harsh, rough voice. “My revenge is complete. I will live, you bastard. I won’t let you die completely, either. Not yet. You and I will live together for years while I kill you slowly, a piece at a time. For now, I’ll start with your ears. Later, maybe your feet, if I’m up to it. Then one little piece carved off you every day and I will feast on each of them as if they were sacred offerings until there is nothing left but your heart and then I will roast it in front of you and eat it—”
A snarling ball of whitish gray fur and teeth was there now, tearing Raul away from Garrett, slashing him savagely and growling-snarling-howling intensely specific threats in a language that was part wolf and part human and all Malinda.
She had saved him, but he wasn’t sure she was in time. The cuts were too deep. He couldn’t hold on to his consciousness, to his mind…
To himself.