Driving Force (31 page)

“Challenges are considered internal conflicts. Other species don’t interfere. Ian and the other cats of this county are actually breaking the rules by involving themselves in a pride matter. But we will overlook that because of the discrepancy in numbers.”

“Big of you,” Sierra said bitterly. “They’re only outnumbered four to one.”

“Oh, it’s not that bad.” He shrugged. “Kurt called in a few favors and other prides have sent along their surplus progeny to help out. The odds are a little better now.”

Sierra closed her eyes in relief. Maybe they had a chance! Especially now that Iseya and her empowering spell had been taken out of the equation. Arrhan’s troops wouldn’t have the physical advantage Arrhan had wanted and would have to fight the Lowe pride and its allies on an equal basis.

She looked down at the clearing where the battle was raging. The clearing and the woods around it lay in a shallow bowl that seethed with embattled forms. All around the rim of that bowl, shapes moved. To her left, huge, shaggy, black and brown and white bears were rearing up on their hind legs to watch. To her right, wolves were lined up, their eyes like green flames, their jaws open and drooling, whining a little with excitement as they looked on. There was even the mad cackle of hyena laughter in the distance, coming from the other side of the valley.

“My God!” she breathed. “How many other species are here? Why have you all come?”

“For the show, what else?” mocked the wolf leader. “Really can’t pass up this kind of entertainment.”

“Shut up, Reece,” rumbled Thorvald, rolling his eyes in resigned exasperation. “Ian called us in, Miss Wallace. A valid challenge may not be our business. But we will not countenance invaders from the old country threatening the prides of our world. This Arrhan might succeed in taking the Lowe pride and its friends. He will not take more. He and his people will be bottled up in this valley. Any who attempt to cross our lines will be summarily killed.”

They were the
cordon sanitaire
and Arrhan a disease that would not be allowed to spread. The bowl had become a trap. The valley in which Arrhan had chosen to conceal his band was not a refuge, but a prison. Sierra caught her breath as she realized the further implications. If Iseya recovered enough to open a Gate to somewhere else in this world, that location too would be immediately surrounded by this world’s Shifters. Wherever he went, Arrhan would find himself contained and his threat negated.

“Ian arranged this?”

“He is farsighted and his arguments were cogent. This is our world,” said Thorvald in a flat, hard voice. “These intruders cannot be permitted to encroach upon it. We will give them only two choices. To return to their own world or be confined together in less than an acre of land. No Shifter likes being caged. We have a horror of it. I believe that they will choose to go.”

Reece was grinning with malicious satisfaction. “Gonna enjoy seeing this Arrhan’s face when he finds that out.”

But in the meantime Ian and the Lowe pride were fighting and dying.

“Why wait?” Sierra cried and some of the wolves staring down with burning, eager eyes at the struggle going on below whined in agreement. They didn’t like being left out of the fight. “There’s enough of you to wipe them out right now! Why can’t you help the Lowes?”

“Kurt Lowe accepted a valid challenge,” rumbled Thorvald.

“Because of me!”

“For whatever reason. Besides, how can we tell lion from lion?”

He had a point. There was no way to tell this world’s prides from Arrhan’s people when they were in their cat shapes.

“The studs!” she exclaimed. “Arrhan’s lions all have gold studs in their ears!”

She saw Reece glance sharply sideways at her. A little ripple swept through the wolves and then continued outward through the Shifters rimming the valley, the information being passed along blindingly fast.

But Thorvald shook his head. “They have broken no laws.”

“Their being here breaks laws,” murmured Reece and Thorvald gave him an irritated look.

“You know that isn’t so, Reece. You’re just trying to find an excuse to get involved. You wolves always want to be at the center of any conflict.”

“And unless you go berserk,” snapped Reece, “you bears always want to sit on your fat asses and do nothing!”

“While you debate, the Lowe pride is dying!” cried Sierra.

A crackle of rifle fire resounded in the valley.

Sierra whirled. “Oh God!”

“They just broke the laws,” laughed Reece. “Anyone wants to join the fight, I won’t call him back!”

Half the wolf pack immediately split away from the line and swept down into the valley.

Chapter Twelve

Busy tearing through the opposition in search of Arrhan, Ian heard the sound of gunfire. Arrhan was using the weapons he had stolen from Fort Collins. Ian snarled in fury and ripped out the throat of the lion in front of him, rolled away from another attacker springing at him, then grinned when a cougar female and a lioness both leaped at that lion and took him down. Blood sprayed on grass that was already reddened and trampled and littered with the bodies of the dead and the dying of both sides.

Even with their numbers swelled by the young men and women sent by allied prides, Kurt’s troops were still far fewer than Arrhan’s outcasts. But their wrath put them on par with their opponents. Cougar, cheetah, lion…all had lost
family
in Arrhan’s attacks. They were rabid in their desire for revenge. Cheetahs who would normally run from a lion when alone banded together now and launched themselves on lions with snarling, spitting savagery. Lionesses were vicious fighters and the Lowe females had deaths to avenge. None of the Wade County Shifters cared what damage they took—each of them only wanted to kill. They attacked like berserkers, their rage infecting even the borrowed troops from the other prides.

Shocked and bewildered, Arrhan’s thugs fell back before them.

He didn’t know whether Arrhan had actually ordered his people to use the forbidden rifles or whether a few panicked individuals had just snatched at them and started firing on their own, appalled by the ferocity they faced. Whichever it was, it galvanized rather than dismayed the Wade County Shifters. They snarled with furious contempt and instead of retreating flung themselves forward with even more determination.

Body wounds only slowed Shifters down. They didn’t kill them. Bullets needed to be precisely placed through head or heart to kill a Shifter. But precision had to be learned. Some newbie grabbing a rifle and spraying lead didn’t guarantee a kill and all of Arrhan’s people were novices when it came to “distance weapons”. The guns gave them no advantage.

A sound he had been aware of only on the edge of his consciousness suddenly resolved itself into the intertwined howl of a wolf pack. A spine-chilling, rising and falling paean that drew nearer and nearer. If his leopard shape had allowed it, Ian would have laughed in triumph. The guns hadn’t helped Arrhan, but just by having been used, they had helped Kurt. The wolves had abandoned their neutrality.

The clearing was abruptly full of flashing brown and gray forms. They fell upon Arrhan’s lions, not singly but in packs, one-on-one fair play indignantly discarded. On the other side of the clearing, a maniacal cackle of laughter sounded. Ian saw four hyenas seize a lion by his legs and tear him bloodily into quarters.

Ian gutted an enemy with a thrust of his powerful hind legs, severed another’s windpipe with a slash of his fangs, then broke free and struggled through the chaos, looking for Arrhan.

An orange-and-black tiger shape raged past, as covered in blood and gore as he was. Nick was searching too, but Ian wanted to be the one to find Arrhan. Unlike Nick, he had a score to settle. Arrhan had dared to harm Sierra.

* * * * *

“I’ve got to know what’s happening!” Sierra cried.

“They’re still fighting,” rumbled Thorvald. “You can see that.”

“No shit, Yogi Bear!”

She ran forward a few steps but still couldn’t make out features or markings. There was no way to tell which of the struggling forms below was Ian.

“Stop!” called Thorvald, grabbing at her.

“Oh, let her go,” said Reece. “Females can fight just as well as males. Why hold her back?”

“Humans have nothing to fight with!”

A gangly adolescent wolf ran up and deposited the rifle he was carrying in his mouth at Sierra’s feet. Her eyes widened and she looked around to see Reece laughing at her. He must have ordered it retrieved for her. She wasn’t sure whether it was a gift or a challenge, but either way she wasn’t going to pass it up. She snatched up the rifle and ran down the slope.

“No!” shouted Thorvald. “We promised Ian we would keep her safe!”

“She’ll be safe,” retorted Reece and raced past Sierra in his shaggy brown wolf form.

Other wolves fell in beside her as she ran. She was at the center of a protective V, with Reece at point and wolves on either side, gamboling as they ran, their tongues lolling out of open, laughing jaws.

They sped toward the clearing, but before they reached it Reece suddenly spun and stood, blocking her way. She tried to cut around him and he stepped in front of her again, growling, then lifted his head to look up at the tall oak beside her.

Finally understanding, she slung the rifle over her shoulder and began to climb. The tree would give her the view and the sight line she needed to fire accurately, and the wolves weaving around its foot would keep anyone from coming after her. She got herself braced in the crotch of a thick branch twenty feet up and checked her line of fire.

The whole clearing lay exposed in front of her, a butcher’s shambles of blood and bodies. Cats, wolves and, surprisingly, even hyenas rolled and fought across it in a dizzying kaleidoscope of intertwined forms locked in savage battle. She aimed at two combatants, then jerked the rifle muzzle away because they were both moving too fast for her to be sure of her target. She didn’t want to hit one of her allies and she didn’t dare waste even one bullet since she had no extra ammo.

A lion crouching to spring at two young wolves became momentarily stationary. He had a gold stud in his ear. Sierra got him in her sights and fired. He fell, his body thudding limply onto the bloody grass. Sierra bared her teeth in a grim smile and searched for another similar target. No compunctions—not a single one. Arrhan’s Shifters were the enemy. The Wade County Shifters and their allies were her friends. She could be ruthless in defense of her own.

She hadn’t found Ian yet. She shot another lion, then searched desperately through the rifle scope for the sight of a spotted leopard body. At last, close to the center of the clearing, she caught the flash of gold-and-black fur.

* * * * *

There! The larger-than-normal lion with the black mane was Arrhan. Ian recognized his cat shape from when they had fought before. With a snarl of triumph, Ian leaped forward.

Arrhan was standing beside Iseya, roaring and raking at her limp body with his claws. He wanted her conscious and able to cast spells again, to give him back the advantage he had lost. But the anesthetic Doc had given Sierra had been made specifically to subdue large animals. It was powerful. Iseya was out cold and with any luck would remain so for a long time.

Guards surrounded Arrhan, both in lion and human shapes, a shield wall to protect him. The ones in human form had rifles and were firing them. Shifters jerked as bullets struck them, but they still came on. A lucky shot got one of the Lowes right through the head. He fell limply to the ground in front of Ian, impeding his progress. Ian cut to one side, then was blocked by a guard. He snarled in frustration. He didn’t want to exhaust himself fighting his way through unimportant defenders to reach Arrhan, but he would have to.

A tiger on his right was struggling with two lions, roaring deafeningly. On his left, Kurt’s white-streaked mane became visible as the pride-lord flung himself at the shield wall, Gregor and Abel on either side of him. Somehow that circle of protection had to be broken. Ian crouched to hurl himself at the defenders.

A bullet hole bloomed between the eyes of the lion in front of him and it crashed to the ground, opening a gap in the circle. Ian didn’t waste the opportunity by pausing to wonder how that had happened. He made one great leap forward and flung himself on Arrhan.

Arrhan turned on him, roaring. But Ian was in the zone, his vision narrowed to one focal point, the berserk rage that had been building in him finally breaking free. He didn’t even feel the savage gashes Arrhan raked him with. Nothing was going to keep him from wiping Arrhan off the face of the planet.

They rolled across the grass, slashing and tearing viciously at each other with claws and fangs. Ian was vaguely aware of Arrhan’s guards trying to come to their leader’s assistance but being prevented by lions, wolves and one lone tiger. He paid them no attention. His focus was on getting around Arrhan’s clear advantage of size and weight.

At half the strength and mass, a leopard would normally be no match for a lion and Arrhan was larger than most. He was contemptuously certain of winning. More than that, he clearly intended to disembowel the leopard who had dared to challenge him so that Ian would die in the most painful way possible.

But a leopard didn’t go berserk in the same way lions or tigers did. Rage didn’t stop them from thinking. Ian didn’t go for the throat as expected. The thick ruff of mane an adult lion had there was a natural defense against fangs and claws. Ian struck at belly and sides instead, ripping at Arrhan, wearing him down, angling all the while for a vulnerable point that would give him the advantage.

All Arrhan’s attempts to simply roll over his opponent and crush him failed. His vicious slashes were blocked or ignored and he was taking massive damage instead. His amazed gaze met Ian’s and widened as he saw what Kurt had seen—the deadly eyes with their pinpoint pupils fixed on him, cold, pitiless and implacable. As Kurt had, Arrhan flinched.

That second’s hesitation gave Ian his chance. A snaking sideways strike and his teeth closed on one of Arrhan’s forelegs. He bit down with all the force of his bone-crushing jaws.

Arrhan shrieked as bones splintered. With one leg out of commission, they were on equal terms, Arrhan’s size no longer giving him the advantage. Ian caught the shock in his eyes. For the first time in his life, Arrhan was made incredulously aware of his own mortality.

He shoved Ian away with all his strength. Flung violently backward, Ian hit the ground hard, rolled, then rebounded to his feet. Then he saw to his astonishment that Arrhan had turned human.

If that was a bid for mercy, Ian would show him none. He leaped forward just as Arrhan snatched something from the grass. A rifle muzzle struck the center of his chest. Arrhan pulled the trigger and kept on pulling it.

It was too late. The impact of the bullets thudding into Ian should have knocked him back. But the momentum of his leap was powerful enough to carry him forward. His jaws closed on Arrhan’s human throat and his fangs ripped it out.

Arrhan fell, spasming as he died. Ian collapsed on top of him, riddled with bullets.

* * * * *

“No!” gasped Sierra.

A roar of triumph from the allies and a wail of despair from the intruders told of Arrhan’s defeat. But Sierra wasn’t listening to that. She was scrambling down the tree as fast as she could, almost falling as she went.

“Come,” said Reece, his face grim, then turned back into wolf and ran in front of her, shouldering Shifters out of the way.

She could hear Kurt shouting, “Yield or die! Signify that you yield by shifting to human. Any outlanders who do not will be killed out of hand!”

But what was going on among the Shifters no longer meant anything to her. Only Ian mattered.

She skidded to her knees beside him and pulled him off Arrhan and onto her lap. His body rolled over with a limp slackness that terrified her and the massive leopard head fell heavily onto her breast. He was covered with blood and gore, slashed all over, and there was a line of bullet holes running from his chest down his belly.

“Ian! Oh God, Ian, don’t die!”

A ripple went through him and he shifted slowly to human. But the shift was sluggish, far slower than it had ever been before.

“Ian!” she shrieked.

His eyes opened. But they didn’t see her. They were glazed and blind as they stared up at the sky. Then his eyelids fell closed again and his body went utterly limp in her arms.

“Ian, come back!”

“Oh, get a grip,” said Reece irritably behind her. “There’s no need for hysterics. He’s still alive.”

“He’s not breathing!”

“He is. I can hear it, even if it doesn’t show.” He went down on one knee beside her and laid a hand with surprising delicacy on Ian’s chest, carefully avoiding the bullet wounds. “And his heart’s still beating. Really slow and ragged, though. As if it’s been grazed by a bullet.”

“Oh God!”

“Look on the bright side. He’s still with us.”

She looked up at him desperately. “He’ll live?”

“Can’t promise you that. Might, might not.”

“For Chrissakes, Reece!” Nick exclaimed, flinging himself down beside them. “Clobber her with it, why don’t you?”

“What? I shouldn’t tell her he might be dying? She can see that.”

Nick glared at him. But for Sierra, Reece’s stating the truth was somehow more comforting than facile lies would have been.

“The healing fever!” she cried. “Won’t that mend things?”

“If he’s lucky.” Reece shrugged.

“But he’s not shifting! I thought shifting was part of the fever, that you had to shift to heal!”

“Foreign matter in the body impedes the shift. Those bullets have to come out before the healing can really get started.”

And they were miles from anywhere!