The Vulpirans' Honor: The Soul-Linked Saga (38 page)

“All right,” he said.  “We have a long way to go, and we have to get there before
dawn or we risk being seen by one of the dragons.  I know you aren’t real strong right
now, so I’ll go as slow as I can.  If you can’t keep up, let me know and we’ll rest,
but remember, safety lies in moving as quickly as we can.”

“You don’t sound like the Darck I used to know,” one of the men said.

“I’m not,” Darck replied shortly.  “Follow me, and try to be quiet.  No talking unless
you have to, and then only in a whisper.”

Darck hefted the pack onto his back as he watched his father and Grogan walk away,
knowing this would be the last time he ever saw his father.  When the two older men
were out of sight, he turned his back on the encampment and the remainder of the Brethren. 
Then he headed down the rocky slope, the six males behind him making far more noise
than he liked.  He remembered his embarrassment that first time Thelba had taken him
to the village, when he made more noise than a herd of thundering elephants.  He could
treat his brothers with no less kindness and understanding than she had treated him.

Day Twenty

“Honey, you got a minute?” Doc asked, sticking his head in the door to her office. 

“Of course, Doc,” Honey replied, closing the file she’d been reading.  “What’s up?”

“I’ve got a patient, she’s the human wife of a Bearen male-set,” Doc said, closing
the door behind him.  “They’ve been trying for years to have children, now she’s twelve
weeks in, but I’m afraid I found a problem.”

“What’s that?” Honey asked, knowing by Doc’s manner that it was something serious.

Doc walked around her desk and she slid the keyboard to her vid-terminal over to him. 
He tapped a few keys and Lexa Bearen-Ti’s latest scans appeared on the vid screen. 
Honey saw the problem right away.  She hadn’t had a chance to learn everything about
the Jasani as yet, but she had a good understanding of the difficulties faced by Jasani
male-sets with human wives who wanted to have children.  Frankly, she was amazed they
had as many children as they did.

“This is not good,” she said.  “It’s the primary fetus, isn’t it?”

“Yes, it is,” Doc replied.  “Not that it matters which one it is.  If one is lost,
they’ll all be lost.”

“Well, don’t give up hope just yet,” Honey said as she expanded the view so she could
see more detail of the heart on the first of the three fetuses. 

“I know you said you’ve done something like this before,” Doc said as he watched her
lean toward the screen as she studied the image intently.  “I’m almost afraid to ask
if you can fix this, though.”

“Then I won’t make you,” Honey said, leaning back and standing up.  “I might be able
to do this, Doc.  I can’t promise, but I have done it before.  Let’s go.”

“Wait,” Doc said.  “You sure you’re strong enough for this?  Should I call Jareth
in?”

“I didn’t have a healer when I did it before,” Honey said.  “It wasn’t the same defect,
but similar.  And it was a single fetus, not triplets.  Whether those factors will
matter or not, I don’t know.”

“All right, let’s go,” Doc said.  He opened the door and led the way out into the
main exam room where a young looking woman with short, silky blonde hair and large,
scared brown eyes sat on the edge of a bed with her Rami gathered around her.  Honey
knew that the woman was not an Arima, but that didn’t mean that the Bearens she was
married to loved her any less.  From their body language and the expressions on their
faces, they loved her a great deal.

Doc introduced them, then started to explain Honey’s talent, but one of the men, Cordan
Bearen-Ti, held up one hand.  “We have heard of Dr. Honey’s talent, Doc,” he said. 
“Our cousin, Jackson, has told us of her.” He turned his cool blue eyes on Honey. 
“If there is anything you can do to save our sons, Dr. Honey, we will be most grateful. 
If not, we will understand.  Some things cannot be changed.”

“I’ll do what I can,” Honey said, stepping closer to Lexa.  She smiled at the woman,
trying to ease her fear.  “Please lie down, Lexa.  Relax as much as you can, okay?”

“Do you really think there’s a chance you can fix this?” Lexa asked.  “Please, don’t
get my hopes up if you can’t.”

“I can’t promise,” Honey said.  “But I think there’s a chance, yes.”

Lexa nodded and laid down on the bed.  Cordan Bearen-Ti walked around to stand near
the head of the bed, one hand stroking Lexa’s hair, the other two men standing on
the opposite side.  Honey grabbed a chair and brought it beside the bed and sat down
before reaching out to place both hands lightly on Lexa’s abdomen.  She closed her
eyes and focused.

***

Summer watched as Maxim, Loni, and Ran shifted into their alter-forms, the beauty
of their huge katrencas taking her breath away, as always.  Ten feet tall at the shoulder,
and twenty feet long, not counting their long tufted tails.  They all had thick, golden
fur and large golden eyes, the same color as their hair and eyes when in their human
forms.  The only difference between them was the color of the thick tufts on the ends
of their tails.  Like the tail-locks they had in their human forms, Maxim’s was black,
Loni’s dark red, and Ran’s white.  Aside from the short horns just above their ears,
they reminded Summer of Earth panthers.

Summer smiled at the image of herself on Loni’s right foreleg.  She stood in an offensive
stance, skirt whirling about her legs, long black hair flying as she swung the katana. 
He had sworn, on the day of their linking, that he would display his
lau-lotu
forever, never allowing it to fade.  Everyone had been surprised to see that, when
he was in his alter-form, the
lau-lotu
displayed her as a woman rather than her katrenca.

Once she’d drunk her fill of the sight of them, she focused for a moment, then felt
the strange growing sensation that always accompanied her shift.  Unlike her Rami,
Summer’s katrenca was black, like her hair, with chocolate eyes.  Though there were
other Katres with dark hair, they all had golden eyes, which made her chocolate eyes
unique.  She’d been a little disappointed to learn that female katrencas had neither
a tail tuft, nor horns.  On the other hand, her katrenca was smaller, lighter and,
while it wasn’t faster than the males, it was definitely able to leap higher and climb
faster.  A trait she used to her advantage whenever possible. 

“You are so beautiful,”
Maxim said.

Summer purred, a deep, yet somehow feminine rumble.  She stretched, loving the feel
of her katrenca’s long, sleek muscles.  Then, without warning, she burst into motion,
leaping past Maxim to the center of the enclosed garden surrounding the house.  Her
paws barely touching the ground, she leapt again, this time clearing the garden wall. 
Then she was in the jungle, racing through the heavy blue-green foliage, the faint
sound of her men’s paws against the damp ground as they chased her the only warning
she had of their position.  She veered slightly toward a gigantic, ancient tree that
rose above the canopy.  She sprung upward to the lowest of its branches, nearly a
hundred feet from the jungle floor.  Without a pause she leapt again, higher still,
and yet again until she broke through the lush ceiling. 

“Take care,
kilenka,” Maxim warned softly.

Summer looked up, sending her senses out as she leapt to the next tree, and the next. 
“It’s clear up here,”
she said.

“Please, come back down,”
Loni asked, his tone, as always, cool and calm.  But she sensed the worry and responded
to it.

“All right,”
she said, as she leapt to the next tree, then dipped down below the canopy once more. 
She jumped down several branches, settling on one heavy branch covered with bright
blue moss.  She stretched out, rested her chin on her paws and sighed happily. 

“Where are you guys?”
she asked.

“Still trying to catch up,”
Ran said
.  “Did we fail to mention that katrencas aren’t supposed to fly?”

“Yes, you did forget to tell me that,”
Summer said, laughing softly in her mind. 
“Unfortunately, it’s too late to tell me now that I’ve learned how to do it.”

“Did we also forget to tell you that you’re stubborn?”
Maxim asked.  A brief moment passed with no response before the sound of a sharp
explosion reached their ears.  All three of them went from a casual lope to full out
running in the space of a heartbeat.  Before long the scent of burnt wood reached
them, though there was no smoke.

“Summer?”
Maxim called as he ran, but there was no response.  He pushed himself to run even
faster, trying to ignore the fear crawling through him like a living thing.   The
scent of burnt wood grew stronger, though there was no smoke, and he began to get
an idea of what had happened.  He kept his suspicions to himself though.  Getting
to Summer was all that mattered at the moment, and if Ran and Loni knew what he was
thinking, they might well go into a blood-rage.

A few moments later they scented Summer’s blood, but at the same time they all felt
her, so they were able to maintain their tempers.  She was not conscious when they
reached her a few seconds later, but she was alive.  She was also still in her katrenca
form, which was not a good sign.

“Stay in your alter-form so you can hear her if she begins to wake up,” Maxim said
to Ran just before shifting to his humanoid form and kneeling down beside Summer. 
He checked her carefully, clenching his teeth hard in an effort to maintain his calm
as he examined each of the twenty or so long, thick slivers of wood that penetrated
her body, nearly covering her left side.  While he examined a large wound on her head,
Loni studied the tree that had exploded.

It didn’t take him long to understand what had happened and he hurried back to where
Summer lay and knelt down beside Maxim.

“Laser beam,” he said shortly.  “Orbiting ship.  We would have heard a transport or
VTOL otherwise.  There’s no sign of her climbing up the tree, so she climbed down
it from the canopy, and they marked her.

Maxim nodded as he looked up at the tree that had exploded and measured Summer’s distance
from it and her position.  “She sensed it at the last moment,” he guessed.  “Just
in time to save herself.”

“How bad is the head wound?” Loni asked.

“Bad,” Maxim replied.  “From the blood I’d say the worst of it is on the other side,
but I can’t check it because her neck is broken.  The problem is that she has too
many wounds.  Her body can’t heal them because of the wood keeping them open, so her
energy is being wasted.  If we move her as she is, she’ll die, so we’re going to have
to do this one step at a time.”

“What do we start with?” Loni asked.  As always he sounded calm and in control, but
Maxim saw the near panic in his brother’s eyes.  “We won’t lose her, Loni,” he said. 
“We won’t.”

Loni nodded, just a tiny fraction of movement, but it was enough to assure Maxim that
he was in control of himself.   “We need to begin removing this wood, one piece at
a time, so her body can heal the smaller wounds first,” he said.

Loni nodded and reached for one thick sliver of wood near Summer’s hip.  He gritted
his teeth and pulled it out in one smooth motion.  It was longer than he’d feared,
and left a larger wound than he’d hoped.

They all watched as blood welled up from the wound and spilled over into Summer’s
dark, glossy fur.  A moment later the wound began to close and they let themselves
breathe.  Loni waited until it was fully healed before reaching for another sliver. 

Ran shifted back to his human form and together, one by one, they removed the raw
slivers of wood from their Arima’s flesh.  An hour later, after all of them had fed
energy into Summer’s unconscious body to help it continue healing itself, they’d removed
the last of the slivers.  Now they could only wait tensely to see if her body would
heal the head wound and then, finally, her broken neck.

The dark bruise that had begun to spread across her face as they removed the wooden
splinters faded, but the worst of the wound was on the side of her head that lay against
the ground so they couldn’t see it, and didn’t dare move her head.  All they could
do was wait, and hope.

It was long minutes before the black katrenca lying in front of them began to slowly
change into Summer’s human form.  Only then did they begin to truly relax.  Summer’s
katrenca would not have allowed the shift until her neck was healed.  If it had, the
injury would have killed her.

Summer’s eyes opened slowly, surprising them all.  “Close your eyes,
kilenka
,” Maxim said hoarsely.  “You must save your energy.”

“Warn the Dracons and the Lobos,” she whispered, barely able to form the words with
her lips.

“Warn them of what?” Maxim asked.

“Triad are targets,” Summer said, her eyes fluttering as she struggled to keep them
open.

Maxim frowned, not understanding what she was talking about, but Loni got it.  “It’s
the last line of the prophecy,” he said.  “
Shall the Three perish, so shall the people be lost, forevermore” 
Summer’s lips turned up slightly at the corner as she turned her eyes to him.  “We
got it,” Loni said.  “Now close your eyes.  We’ll handle it.”