The Shadows of Night

Kindred, Book One

by
Ellen Fisher

©
copyright
2006, Ellen Fisher
Cover design by TERyvisions, www.teryvisions.com, © copyright 2012

All rights reserved.
 
This is a work of fiction
.
Names, character, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

The woman sprawled before Hart, her thighs parted, her lovely body stretched out in an inviting position that permitted him to see every last inch of her.
 
She was easily the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen.

It was really quite unfortunate that she was dead.

Although, he thought grimly, staring at the naked body on the carpet of autumn leaves, perhaps it wasn’t such a misfortune after all.
 
Beautiful or not, her kind were better off dead.
 
They were so much safer that way.

Even so, as he gazed down on her body he couldn’t help but feel a twinge of sorrow.
 
She had been a lovely woman, by the standards of any Kindred. Her ebony hair, sprinkled with gold strands, spread around her like a fan, and her tawny skin stretched over taut muscles and smooth feminine curves.
 
But her flesh was badly marred by bite marks and lacerations, and the topaz leaves beneath her were stained rusty red by her blood.

The smell of the blood matting the leaves rose from the damp earth.
 
In his animal form, he could easily scent the sharp, coppery tang of blood, as well as the rank odor of her attackers, and it made him dance nervously.
 
But despite his deep-rooted anxiety, he couldn’t totally tamp down his masculine appreciation of her loveliness.

Which was absurd.
 
She wasn’t a member of his Kindred.
 
She was merely a barbarian, not worth a moment of his thought.
 
The fact that she’d been brutally attacked sometime during the night and left here to bleed out her life on the leaves should mean nothing to him.

And besides, she was dead.
 
At least, she had certainly appeared to be.

He
shied
back, startled, as she twitched and moaned slightly.
 
Lowering his head to observe her more closely, he saw that her breathing was shallow, but she wasn’t dead after all.
 
Not quite, anyway.
 

But if he left her here, she would surely be dead before long.

He shifted his hooves in the rustling dry leaves, irresolute.
 
She was the enemy of his people, a barbarian, scarcely worthy of his notice.
 
He should leave her to the vultures.
 

And yet, with her naked body stretched out against the leaves, her golden-brown skin spattered with drying blood, she looked as fragile and helpless as any member of his Kindred.
 
She didn’t look like an enemy, but like a badly injured and very vulnerable woman.

He couldn’t leave her alone in the forest to die.
 
If he abandoned her, then he would be the barbarian here.
 

Mind made up, he shifted to his human form.
 
It wasn’t the best way to embark upon a long walk through the wild forest, since it left him stark naked and utterly unarmed, but he couldn’t lift her in his other form.
 
He bent down and picked her up, hoping he wasn’t worsening her extensive injuries as he did so, and slung her across his shoulders, as gently as possible.
 
She groaned but didn’t awaken.

He set out for home.

*****

Katara floated back to consciousness slowly, aware of the agonizing thud of a headache throbbing deep in her skull.
 
She kept her eyes screwed shut against the pain, trying to regroup her scattered thoughts into a clear memory of what had happened.
 

The last she remembered, she’d been hunting alone in the forest.
 
She vaguely recalled hearing a sound.
 
A low, ominous growling that had seemed to come from every direction at once.

She’d been attacked by the Fang Kindred.
 

She was lucky to be alive, then, despite the vicious pain in her head, and the scattered sharp pains elsewhere.
 
An ambush by a pack wasn’t something that she’d expect to survive.

She drew in a breath, expecting to smell the rich, dark scent of the forest, the soothing odor of leaves and fresh air.
 
Instead she smelled a foreign scent—a sharp, artificial odor she’d never smelled before, which made her nose wrinkle and her lips curl in distaste.
 
She’d been taken from the forest.
 
By the Fang Kindred?

No.
 
Beneath the overpowering scent, there was another smell.
 
Not rank enough for the shaggy coats of the Fang Kindred, but a more subtle odor.
 

Antler Kindred.

Startled, she opened her eyes to find herself in a large room.
 
The walls were a burnished metal, lit by an overhead light that glowed brightly, without the flicker of flame, and the room was filled with strange instruments.
 
 
The chamber was a sharp contrast to the rough bark walls, earthen floor, and thatched roof of her family’s longhouse, which was lit only by candles.

According to the mythology she had learned as a child, humans had once been a single race, unable to shift, trapped forever in their human forms.
 
But humans had left their doomed planet and traveled through the stars.
 
They had come to this planet, which had no fauna of its own, aboard great arks that held the people, plants, and animals of their world.
 
Here, humans had discovered, the planet’s magic allowed them to shift into the form of whatever Earth animals they wished.
 
Over the centuries, three distinct Kindred groups had developed.

She had always heard that the Antler Kindred had retained the greatest amount of technology from those long-ago humans, but she had never had an opportunity to see it firsthand.
 
Despite herself, she was impressed by her surroundings.
 
She was aware that the Antler Kindred thought of her kind as barbaric, and for the first time she understood why they held that belief.
 
This room, polished and clean and strangely artificial, was like nothing she had ever seen before.
 
It made her feel oddly inferior.

She reminded herself fiercely that she was not inferior to these people.
 
Just the opposite, in fact.
 
The Antler Kindred were weak, spineless creatures, cowardly and frail, and everyone knew it.

A small gray-haired woman stood nearby, studying one of the instruments, which beeped quietly but steadily.
 
The woman’s dark gaze happened to fall on Katara, and her eyes went wide.

“You’re… awake,” she said in a timid voice.

Despite the fact that Katara was in her human form, and although she was badly injured and in no condition to hurt anyone, the woman was clearly afraid of her.
 
It was typical of the Antler Kindred to react with fear, Katara thought with scorn.
  
They feared everything, after all.
 
It was in their blood.
 
The faintest crack of a stick in the forest, the slightest stirring of the leaves in the wind, sent them leaping away, hearts pounding, in terror for their lives.
 

“Why have you brought me here?”
 
She meant it to be a harsh demand, intended to infuse her tone with all the contempt she felt for the woman and her people, but her voice emerged from her mouth as little more than a whisper.

Despite that, the woman backed away, clearly frightened, her hands fluttering near her throat.
 
Her rotund body was clad in finely woven cloth garments, totally dissimilar to the skins Katara’s people wore, when they chose to wear clothing at all.

“I did not bring you here,” she quavered.
 
The tone of her voice said the obvious:
I wouldn’t have dreamed of bringing you here.
 
“’Twas the eldest son of the monarch.
 
Lord Hart.”

The woman’s obvious terror brought out the beast in Katara.
 
Her instincts urged her to leap to her feet, shift to her animal form, and intimidate the older woman into freeing her, but she found herself unable to move for some reason.
 
It felt almost as if she were chained, but when she looked down at herself, she could see absolutely nothing confining her body except a pale green sheet, which was surely too lightweight to hold her down.
 
Perhaps she was too badly injured to move.
 
She willed her voice to grow stronger.
 
“Your lord brought this disgrace down on me?”

“Disgrace?”
 
The woman looked distressed in the face of Katara’s anger.
 
Her mouth actually trembled.
 
“I know not what you mean, Claw.
 
He saved you from certain death.
 
Had you remained in the forest much longer, you must surely have died.”

“He violated the code of my people,” Katara said sharply.
 
“If we are injured, we must heal without intervention.”

“But you would not have healed.
 
You would have died.”

“At least I would have died with honor!”

“What does honor matter to a corpse?”

At the new voice, deep and resonant, Katara looked toward the door. She discovered she was able to turn her head, although the rest of her body was still unable to move.
 
Standing near the door was an exceptionally handsome man.
 
His face looked as if it had been carved out of oak, sculpted with high cheekbones, a wide jaw, and a narrow, straight nose.
 
His jawline was smooth, since Antler men, like all Kindred, did not grow facial hair in human form.
 
His eyes were a rich, dark brown, and long, tawny hair fell loose around his face, falling past his broad shoulders.
 
He wore a plain white tunic and breeches, and knee-high tan boots.
 

Engrossed as she was in his rather remarkable features, she noticed the small coronet of interwoven golden antlers on his head last.

This, then, was Lord Hart.

She narrowed her eyes and spoke harshly.
 
“I have you to thank for my dishonor, I presume.”

“I’m delighted you’re so appreciative,” he responded with a wry glint in his eyes.

“Why should I be appreciative?
 
You should have left me to die.”

“There are many in this keep that agree with you.”
 
He walked toward her, each measured stride a display of masculine grace and untamed dignity.
 
His dark eyes met hers, compelling and irresistible, holding her gaze so that she was unable to look away.
 
“Fortunately for you, I found you, rather than my father or younger brother.
 
Either of them would have left you to bleed out your life in the forest.”

She managed to look away from the dark depths of his eyes, reminding herself that regardless of his physical beauty, he was less than a man.
 
The vivid sexual imagery that filled her head at the sight of him was wrong, perhaps even perverse.
 
He was not the sort of creature a member of the Claw Kindred could consider
wedding,
or even taking to bed for sport.
 
The very thought was revolting.