Wolf (10 page)

Since catching something required him to be as still as he possibly could, he focused on the occasional scents that drifted to him, trying to identify them. He was vaguely amazed when he discovered he could, that he could actually separate the scents around him and tag each to a specific animal. His hackles flared when he caught the faint scent of a cat, but he didn’t think much of it—at first—dismissing it when he realized it was an ‘older’ scent. A panther had passed this way and moved on. He wasn’t interested in killing it. He was hoping for a wild boar, maybe a deer, so he dismissed the faint scents of smaller animals.

Abruptly, it connected in his mind that the scent of the cat was faint because it had passed him—heading toward the camp. He leapt to his feet before that realization had fully formed in his mind and began racing back toward where he’d sent Sylvie to get water, hoping against hope that she’d done what he’d told her and hadn’t lingered. He couldn’t catch her scent, though—she was downwind of him—and that worried him.

* * * *

The stream, Sylvie discovered, was smaller than the one they’d camped near the night before. It was also faster moving, which might have accounted for the fact that it looked clearer. When she’d filled the pot, she headed back to the camp with it, but the water beckoned. It had looked far more inviting that the previous stream and she was just as hot and sticky as she had been the night before. It unnerved her a little to think about going down to bathe by herself, but there was no getting around the fact that it would be a lot more comfortable for her in one way if she could go alone. It was dusk, but there was still plenty of light to see if she didn’t linger too long.

Leaving the pot with Beau, she turned and headed back. “Give me a minute to get this situated and I’ll come watch you,
chère
.”

Sylvie snorted, throwing him a smiling glance over her shoulder. “I don’t want to be watched! That’s why I’m going now—before the others get back.”

Beau frowned but finally relaxed. “I doan like it. You watch yourself. If you see anything, you call me, an’ you haul that purty ass of yours back dis way. Got that?”

Sylvie waved him off. “I’ll hurry.”

She didn’t particularly want to but the reminder of the ever present threat of the local wildlife was enough to quell the urge to take a leisurely bath. As soon as she’d reached the water’s edge again, she peered up and down the stream as far as she could see, looking for any sign of animals. Aside from the birds—and the horrible insect life—

she didn’t see anything and her shoulders slumped with relief. Undoubtedly, she’d made enough noise to scatter anything that had been close by.

The water was clear enough to see the shallow bottom and as soon as she’d made certain there wasn’t anything scary already swimming in it, she quickly shucked her clothes and waded in. It was actually deeper than she’d expected—a trick of the eyes due to the clarity of the water, but not deep enough to worry her. The rush of the water made it cooler than she’d expected, too.

Sighing blissfully, she sank into the water, sucking in a sharp breath at the difference in temperature between it and her overheated skin. She didn’t wait to adjust.

She began splashing and scrubbing as soon as she’d sat down. The water and her own
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splashing pretty well deafened her to most of the noises of the jungle, but a particularly sharp crack of a branch brought her head around automatically with a jerk. She scanned the undergrowth where she’d heard the noise emanate from. She didn’t see anything.

She was about to dismiss it with one last search for any sign of a threat when she saw something that looked out of place.

She stared at it, hard, trying to decide what it was.

Then it blinked—slowly.

Sylvie’s heart leapt into her throat and tried to choke her. For several moments, it was as if her entire body had frozen in suspended animation. Her mind was wild with thoughts, however, tabulating at such a frantic speed that she couldn’t even grasp anything but half-formed thoughts.

Scream for Beau? What was it? Run? Had it seen her? Which way to camp?

Would it leave if she stayed perfectly still? Attack? Throw something at it?

It moved. When it did, Sylvie instantly identified what it was and sheer terror made her far colder than the water. She surged to her feet instinctively, unable to command her body in any way.
Scream! Run!

Her body refused to do either. Instead, the moment it popped into her mind to scream two realizations hit her at once—Beau wasn’t close enough to help her and, if she screamed, she could alert the men they thought were tracking them. A scream could carry for miles in the jungle.

Realizing she’d seen it, the panther surged from the brush in a rush. Uttering a panicked whimper in spite of her fear of giving up their position, Sylvie whirled to flee.

The moment she did, she saw one of the ‘monsters’ from the beach charging straight toward her.

Not just one of them, Mac. “Mac!” she screamed in a quavering voice, flying toward him and flinging herself at him. He caught her, hesitated as if trying to make up his mind whether to drop her and brace himself for the panther that was directly behind her or turn and run. Instead, he tightened his grip on her and issued a bellowed challenge.

The panther skidded to a halt. Flattening its ears back, it screaming its own challenge.

Even as Sylvie whipped her head around in horror to look, Hawk, Beau, and Cavanaugh—all now transformed into the frightening, hairy beasts she’d seen before just as Mac was—leapt from the jungle.

Mac, by far the closest to the cat, peeled her loose and tossed her in the air. She sucked in a startled breath, losing it with a grunt when she landed in Hawk’s outstretched arms.

He set her on her feet almost in a single move and charged toward the fray and Sylvie saw even as she wilted to the ground that the cat had attacked Mac the minute he’d tossed her to Hawk—she thought. Maybe it had launched itself at him even before that. Both of them were bloodied from slicing at each other with razor sharp claws.

Hawk reached Mac and the cat before the others. It whirled and swatted at him with its paw, tearing four gashes across his chest. Sylvie clapped a hand over her mouth to keep from screaming. Beau, the next closest, caught the cat around the neck and pulled it backwards. She saw every considerable muscle in his chest and arms straining to hold the panther, which was as big as he was standing on its hind legs. The cat
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managed to twist its head around far enough to sink its teeth into his shoulder. He uttered a roar of pain as it bit down on him, losing his grip. The moment it turned on him, however, Mac and Hawk moved in. Mac clubbed it hard enough with his fist on the side of its head that he knocked it lose. It took a chunk of flesh with it, and Sylvie felt her stomach lurch. Cavanaugh caught the cat by the tail as it whirled and launched an attack at Hawk.

Tethered by its tail, the cat whirled to attack Cavanaugh instead. He jerked on its tail, jerking its hind legs out from under it. It curled up, swiping at him with its huge fore claws. Roaring, Cavanaugh jerked the panther clear of the ground and slung it away.

The cat hit a tree on the other side of the stream, let out a scream of rage and pain, and then vanished into the underbrush. The four men/beasts stared after it, obviously struggling with the urge to chase it down and finish the fight. For a moment, as she stared at them in horror, she thought they would. Instead, after several moments passed, the tension seemed to ease from them. Still heaving for breath after the battle, all four of them turned to look for her, zeroing in on her where she was huddled in the brush.

They stared so long, Sylvie began to fear they’d turn on her. They seemed to shake the urge off, however, and, as she stared at them, slowly changed. The claws disappeared, became hands. The beast-like faces became the faces of the men she’d come to know and the fur that had covered them all over disappeared.

Mac’s eyes were still wild and glazed with the heat of battle as he strode purposefully toward her, however. Fear flickered through her, but it was surpassed by the heat that surged up in her as he grasped her and lifted her straight up as if she weighed nothing, clamping his mouth over hers in a kiss that was almost savage. An involuntary sound of fear and pain escaped her at the sheer force of his lust, but there was no denying the effect it had on her. Desire rushed through her like a lava flow. She coiled her arms and legs around him.

Someone slammed a fist into his back, jolting both of them. When Mac tore his mouth from hers and whipped a furious look around, Sylvie opened her eyes and discovered the other men now surrounded them. It was hard to say which of them had punched him to bring him to his senses, though.

“Put her down, Mac!” Hawk growled.

“You doan need to be grabbin’ her—not right now,” Beau said pointedly.

“Shit! You didn’t even see if she’s hurt!” Cavanaugh said tightly.

Some of the tension eased from him to Sylvie’s relief.

Dropping to his knees, Mac set her away from him and looked her over carefully.

She was bloody all over and for a moment that scared the shit out of him. He discovered when he’d rubbed his hands over her, though, that it was his blood.

Or the panther’s.

He felt vaguely ill at the expression on her face when she looked down and saw the blood and then looked at him. “You’re alright,” he said gruffly, trying to sooth her.

She swallowed convulsively and shuddered.

Releasing her abruptly, he surged to his feet, plowed through the men behind him and waded into the stream. After studying her uncomfortably for a long moment, the others followed him.

It took Sylvie a few minutes to regain any kind of control of her emotions. Her heart was still hammering frantically in her chest, both with residual fear and the desire
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Mac had ignited. It would no doubt have taken her a lot longer to recover if the horrible visions tumbling through her mind hadn’t finally fastened on the fact that the blood was theirs. She surged to her feet then. Her legs were still so wobbly with fright that it took an effort to make it down to the stream. Remembering the horrible bite Beau had gotten, she waded toward him first, checking his shoulder with trembling hands. It was still bleeding fairly freely but, to her relief, it didn’t look as bad as she’d feared.

Glancing around for her clothes, she spied her shirt and hurried toward it to grab it and press it over his wound. “Hold it there!” she said shakily.

Ignoring the dumbfounded look on his face, she rushed away as soon as he’d put his hand on it and checked the others, starting with Mac when she remembered he’d taken the full brunt of the initial attack. Satisfied when she discovered the tears in his flesh weren't nearly as bad as she expected, she rushed from him to Hawk. She couldn’t remember that the panther had actually managed to claw Cavanaugh, but she checked him as soon as she was sure Hawk’s scratches weren’t life threatening.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Mac finally demanded.

Sylvie turned and gaped at him, stunned that he acted as if she’d lost her mind when they were the ones who’d been mauled by the panther. “You’re hurt,” she managed after a moment. “You all got clawed.”

The four men exchanged uncomfortable glances. “It’s nothing that won’t heal,”

Mac muttered finally.

Sylvie stared at him a moment and burst into tears, sobs she couldn’t seem to control.

Hawk, Beau, Cavanaugh, and Mac stared at her with a mixture of surprise and dismay.

Hawk cleared his throat. “This is your department,” he muttered, giving Mac a significant look and wading decisively from the water.

Mac glared after them with equal parts disgust and uneasiness as Beau and Cavanaugh retreated with him, leaving him in sole possession of the squalling woman.

“Shit!” he snarled.

She jerked all over, but she seemed to think it was his job to sooth her, too. She launched herself at his chest, weeping all over him. Uttering a long suffering huff of breath, he gathered her up and moved to the bank, dropping down on it with her on his lap since he was fairly sure this was going to take a while. He couldn’t think of a damned thing to say. He was pretty sure anything like ‘Baby you look like hell when you cry’, wouldn’t be appreciated or have the desired effect, but she seemed satisfied just to be held, so he did his best to ignore the fact that every heaving sob was sheer torture. He tried not to think about the fact that she’d rubbed those soft, beautiful breasts of hers all over his chest—too many times to count now—and he hadn’t once touched them.

He was relieved when she finally cried herself out. Maybe she’d just needed to, he thought? She’d had a really rough couple of days and she’d been a real trooper about it. She’d surprised him, actually. She was a lot tougher than she looked—not hard when she looked like a hot house flower that was liable to wilt in a strong wind—but still she had grit. He had to admire that about her. He couldn’t imagine any other female of his acquaintance managing nearly as well as she had—especially without whining and complaining until they drove him up the wall.

The amazing thing, he realized after a moment, was that she’d rushed directly
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toward him when he’d charged at her in full beast form instead of screaming and running the other way. The
men
that had been guarding them, and torturing them, had turned white and went weak in the knees when he’d shifted.

He rubbed her back when she settled to sniffing. “Better?”

She heaved a shaky breath and he thought for one horrible moment that she was going to start wailing again. She merely nodded, however. “I was so scared one of you were going to get killed,” she said finally.

He patted her back a little awkwardly. “Not much danger of that, actually,” he said drily. “It’s one of the perks of being a monster, I guess.”

She swallowed a little convulsively. “You aren’t a monster!” she said almost angrily.

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