Highland Shapeshifter (5 page)

“Mmmmmph.” The shifter’s hand flopped from his stomach to the mattress. Long lashes fluttered and his features screwed up with pain.

Instantly alert, Lenore scooted closer, resting her palm over his heart, waiting for his muscles to seize and spasm again, though she wasn’t sure how much good she could do for him. Her healing strength was all but depleted.

His head rolled against her other palm and he cried out, “Edeen, nay,” along with a string of other nearly incoherent phrases.

“Is that Scottish?” Gabe appeared in the doorframe, a steaming mug in one hand, a cola can in the other.

“Shhh, shh, all’s well,” she cooed to the shifter, pushing sweat-dampened hair from his face, then to Gabe, “He has a deep brogue. Like my grandmother’s.”

Gabe set the tea and cola on an overturned crate he used for a nightstand. “Real deep.”

She scrunched her nose. “His words are slurring with Gaelic and some other language I’m unfamiliar with.” As healers, her grandmother insisted both she and Charity learn the basics of several old languages for the simple spells and incantations sometimes required to enhance a difficult healing. Some of the languages weren’t meant for mortal ears, like the speech pattern he kept slipping into—
language of the Fae
, her grandmother’s voice whispered.

Brows furrowed, Lenore tried to make out his distressed muffled words until her sister’s name spilled out on a gasp and all other thoughts were pushed away.

Charity.

Lenore met Gabe’s puzzled gaze across the man’s thrashing body.

What in the world was going on?

Chapter Four

Near dawn, the shifter finally quieted. His heartbeat maintained a steady rhythm that Lenore assumed was normal. Most importantly, he slept peacefully, without twitches or delirium. She was pretty sure the tanglewort had cleared his system.

She was beat. Sometime after things had gotten quiet, she’d used Gabe’s shower, borrowed one of his shirts and gotten an hour’s worth of sleep.

She woke beside the shifter and immediately checked his vitals. He looked much better, though exhausted. The pale cast to his skin had lessened significantly, giving way to a healthy tan. The guy must spend a lot of time outdoors. He had scruffy stubble, could definitely use a fresh shave and Lenore wondered when his last one was. If she knew Starch, he would’ve had that taken care of while he was out to
pretty
him up some. Pretty him up even for her, knowing his youthfulness and beaten state would get to her. Calculating ogre. He’d probably be great at staging furniture showrooms if human and drug trafficking didn’t work out for him.

The shifter most likely wouldn’t awaken for hours yet, which gave her enough time to settle with Starch and get back here and find out what he had to do with her sister.

Ah, man, Charity. Big Sis should be up by now. It was her day to open the shop.

Scrambling off the bed, she grabbed her jeans draped over a half-open drawer and dug in the pocket for her phone.

She punched in the number and waited.

Gabe stumbled in, shirtless and droopy-eyed. His mouth cracked wide in a yawn.

Charity wasn’t picking up. Geez, come on. She hung up and hit the button to their herbal shop.

“Problem?” Gabe plopped his butt on the end of the bed, making the shifter’s foot bounce.

Lenore punched the phone off. “Charity’s not answering.” She stepped into her jeans. Gabe’s sleepy gaze followed their movement up her hips.

She rolled her eyes. “Can you watch him until I get back?”

“Shapeshifter.” Gabe’s eyes danced. “Hell, yes, I can watch him. Think he’ll wake any time soon?”

Lenore hesitated, suddenly uncomfortable leaving the guy. Not that she didn’t trust Gabe. She did. The most he’d do is pester the shifter. But leaving the guy when he was vulnerable and there were ogres and yuppies gunning for him…

The ogres she could take deal with. If she got a move on. He was safe here. No one knew where he was. And once she paid Starch off, that would be one less party after the guy. Hopefully the yuppies had gotten bored and sought their entertainment elsewhere. Her gut twisted, imagining what type of entertainment the wealthy young trio had wanted with a drugged-to-the-gills shapeshifter. None of the thoughts were good. That was messed up.

She leaned over the bed to check the guy’s pulse and breathing again. “He’ll probably sleep a few more hours. I’ll be back before then. Don’t wake him.”

Gabe grinned. “Now why would I do that?”

“I mean it. He could be dangerous. I don’t want you hurt.”

Gabe’s grin widened. His palm splayed over his smooth chest. “You still care. So there’s hope for us.”

Lenore laughed. “You’re such a jerk. Yes, I care. No, we will never get back together. Ever. You’re a good guy, Gabe, but you’re also a royal pain. I need to borrow your car.” And keep hers safely hidden in his garage.

“Keys are in the bowl.” He leaned forward, snagging her by the hem of his T-shirt she wore. “Looks good on you.”

Rejected and not breaking stride. The guy was incorrigible. He must have an extra flirting chromosome. He simply didn’t register the word “no”. It was like talking to a wall. A wall with the elevated hormones of a teenager.
 

“Thanks.” Satisfied with the shifter’s pulse, she absently ran a hand along his jaw. Her heart took a little tumble as he rolled his face unconsciously into her touch.

“Huh.” Gabe snorted.

Lenore snapped her hand away and Gabe laughed. “I saw that.”

“What? Get real. I don’t even know him.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I don’t.”

He stood and drew her up by the shoulders, looking as serious as she’d ever seen him. “For once, sweetheart, just go with what you’re feeling without analyzing it.” He kissed her forehead. “You might have the best time of your life.”

“There’s more to living than always looking for a good time,” she murmured.

“Life’s in the journey,” he countered.

“That’s all blissful and good until someone gets hurt.”

He stared at her for a long moment. “For what it’s worth, Nory. I never went out of my way to hurt you.”

“No. But you still did.”

Chapter Five

Lenore slid into the white corvette, hoping the yuppies hadn’t been able to follow or track her. That was assuming Starch hadn’t given them her identity, which, with how angry he’d been at the Barbie doll crew shooting up his place, she doubted it. She supposed if the ogre betrayed her, it wouldn’t have been hard to locate her by the GPS on her phone. No one had come for them so far, so the novelty for the yuppies had probably worn off for them and they’d called it a night.

Except the uneasiness pinching her lips tight wouldn’t let it go at that.

Regardless, all she had to do was get Starch his money and get back to the shifter and find out what his interest in Charity was about. Then he could be on his way.

Funny, she didn’t consider that he meant her sister any harm—not after glimpsing the core of his essence.

Heat flushed through her at the memory of her magic entwined with his. Gah,
magic entwined
…crimony.

She nearly missed a turn and jerked the wheel hard to make it. Gabe’s work-out bag slid off the passenger seat to the footwell with a plunk.

She had to get it together and stop mooning over how wonderful being inside the shifter’s essence felt. Grabbing her phone, she quickly called Starch. She got a busy signal from him too. Was no one going to answer this morning?

She shoved the cell back into her jeans and then pulled the car into her space at the apartment complex.

She’d barely gotten inside, taken her emergency stash from the inside of the toilet paper spinner on the wall and jammed that in her pocket with the rest of the cash, when her doorbell buzzed. She nearly jolted out of her skin.

The ringer buzzed again, followed by frantic knocking.

“Lenore, are you in there?” Charity called. “Answer your door!”

The knob rattled as her sister undoubtedly got fed up waiting and had pulled her spare key out.

Lenore yanked the door open, and Charity spilled inside, her fingers on the key still in the doorknob.

Relief flooded Lenore’s vocal chords. “I called you. Several times. Why didn’t you pick up?”

“You won’t believe what happened.” Charity raced down the hall, a disheveled whirlwind of dark hair. “This guy just—“ She spun back to face her and threw out her hands. “—just appeared in my kitchen, completely naked, was just all of a sudden there.”

“What?” Lenore’s heart dropped. Had the yuppies found Charity instead of her? Why would they get naked? “Someone broke in? Are you okay?”

“No. Yes, yes, I’m okay. No, he didn’t break in. I’m telling you he just materialized in my apartment. Before my eyes. Out of thin air.” Charity’s shoulders went up and down in her frantic excitement.

The walls seemed to tilt sideways as Lenore tried to make sense of what she was hearing. “What?”
 
Because really,
what?

Charity’s laugh held a touch of hysteria. She grabbed Lenore’s arms to pull her into the library-slash-dining nook. “A sorcerer, Lenore. From the past. One strong enough to open a time rift and seek out a healer.”

Lenore sank down into a chair at the little table, processing as Charity chattered about witches and dungeons, broken bones and her healing abilities enhanced times thousands. Old magic from centuries past. Pure unadulterated magic of light. A wounded Highland sorcerer who traveled through time for a respite from the tortures he was even now enduring—well, in his time—at a witch’s hand. A witch he could not escape without placing his siblings and clan and the magic they guarded at a higher risk.

And she had a name.

Toren Limont.

Lenore flinched in her seat. She knew that name. Had heard of the last High Sorcerer.
 
But it couldn’t be possible.

She spun out of the chair to quickly search the bookshelves. Where was it? Where was it? Her flea-market shelves were crammed with old texts, even scrolls, anything she could get her hands on. The art of healing fascinated her.

“I can’t believe it. One of the fabled sorcerers of Limont came to you. In the flesh.”

Her body hummed with the possibility of this being true. Ah, there. She tugged the large tome from among others on the second highest shelf.

“In nothing but his flesh.” Charity grabbed the other side of the old book and together they brought it to the table.

“You sure it’s in here?”

“Oh yeah, I remember reading about it when I first convinced mom to let me look at the book.” It was impossible. The name had to be a coincidence. No way had the High Sorcerer of Limont time-traveled into Charity’s apartment. Things like that didn’t happen anymore. Not on days when she had a mysterious man of her own to figure out. One looking for Charity.

“You were ten.”

Huh? Oh. Lenore shrugged a shoulder. “It was a romantic story, an entire clan, every individual gifted with some form of magic as long as they remained the protectors of man… And then all of them vanished. Poof.” It was an incredible story, like a fairy tale. “The village must have fallen to ruin because no one knows where it once was.”

She took her gloves from the little carved box on the table. The pages were too old to let the oils in her fingers damage them.