The Shadows Of Christmas Past Part 27

"You hungry?" Harry asked, as they shared the shower. He was washing her hair and taking great pleasure in the fact that Marj was practically purring.

"Hmmm?" She sighed in utter contentment. Her back was pressed against his chest, and he felt the sigh all the way down his body. Just that small movement was enough to arouse him again.

"Hungry?" he asked over the rush of warm water. "For supper?" Not to make love again; not just yet.

He had to keep his head. The night was young, and he still had work to do.

"I'm starving," Marj said, slowly coming up out of the fog of sensual pleasure. She sighed, with resignation this time. "And the animals need taking care of."

"You need to hire some help."

"Don't think I haven't tried."

They maneuvered around so that she could duck under the showerhead and rinse the cinnamon-scented shampoo out of her hair. Cinnamon was perfect for her, Harry thought, with her dark auburn hair.

They climbed out of the shower, and within a few minutes they were dressed. He helped her with ch.o.r.es, and when they went back to the house, he rummaged in the pantry and the refrigerator and made a cheese omelet while Marj sat on the floor, playing with puppies and kittens. Taffy and Noel demanded her attention as well, and Harry took great pleasure in the amount of affection Marjorie Piper had to give.

The more he knew about her, the more time he spent with her, the more he wanted to know, and the more he wanted to be with her. Which was terrifying.

He had to find those kids soon and make his escape, or this was only going to get worse. He was werewolf, she was human. It hardly ever worked out. There were physical risks to consider, cultural problems. Family pressure alone kept most matings between were and mortals from really having a chance.

One of the reasons the adolescent group was missing was that a werecougar boy had hooked up with a human girl. Of course his parents, and his entire clan, were utterly opposed to the relationship. Harry's job was to bring the boy home.

He's just a kid, Harry thought.He'll get over her .

Just as Harry would get over Marj. They had something special, something he feared he'd miss terribly.

But he'd get over it.

Marj looked up, sniffed. "Is the omelet burning?"

Harry quickly turned his attention back to the stove. A few minutes later the meal was on plates, and she'd put the tired puppies and kittens back in their crates.

"Hope I find them homes by Christmas," she said as she took her plate from Harry.

"Speaking of Christmas..." he said, and led the way back to the living room.

The candles and fire had burned down a bit, but the place still had a nice holiday glow to it. She gave the tree an almost tolerant glance. She did smile, at last, at the array of candles, and turned that smile on him.

His head was reeling from it as they sat down next to each other on the couch. This position left them vulnerable to two tall dogs, but they fought off Taffy's and Noel's begging, and laughed together while racing to finish eating before the dogs wore them down.

"Do they get to lick the plates?" Harry asked when they were finished.

"No."

"They should, because it's almost Christmas."

"Don't spoil my dogs," she admonished. She got up, and he followed her back to the kitchen. "You cooked; I'll clean. Want to dry the dishes?"

This domesticity was far too much fun. "I'd love to, but I have to go wolf hunting now." Harry took his leather jacket off the coat rack by the kitchen door and shrugged into it. "I think it's best if I conduct this search mostly at night. Not only will the animal be more active at night, but the less the locals see someone skulking around the area, the less suspicious they'll be."

She accepted his explanation and offered him a kiss before he left. He enjoyed the kiss so much that he almost confessed that hewas her wolf, so that he could keep on kissing her and wouldn't have to leave.

In the end, it was Marj who nudged him toward the door. "Good hunting," she told him.

The words caught at his heart She didn't know it, but she'd just said the same words a werewolf's mate did when sending him out into the night.

He had to swallow hard around the tightening of his throat before he could say, "Thanks," and walk out the door.

I know that b.u.t.t.

The thought came to Marj as she was reaching toward a cabinet to put away a plate. The memory was vivid, and overwhelming. The dish crashed to the floor out of her numbed hand. Taffy yelped, and jumped away.

Marj was so stunned that she had to hold on to the edge of the counter with both hands to keep from sinking to her knees as the memory washed up out of her subconscious. She'd only encountered the naked man a couple of days ago, yet all thought of him had been pushed out of her mind.

It felt like it had been deliberately nudged away, overlaid, covered. Her awareness of the process was almost tactile. As if someone as psychic as she was had used his mental ability to rearrange her thinking.

Or at least to try. She knew how strange this seemed, but she didn't doubt the truth of it.

Hehad done it.

"Iknow that b.u.t.t."

She closed her eyes, and the memory of watching him move around her bedroom in all his glorious nudity was superimposed over the image of the naked man lying inside the wolf's cage.

They were one and the same.

She remembered thinking that Harry was too big to have been trapped in the cage, before she stopped thinking about the naked man at all. Had Harry put the thought about his size into her head as a diversion?

She settled cross-legged on the tiled floor, amid the debris of the broken plate, and rubbed suddenly aching temples. With her eyes closed, she once again called up the memory of how Taffy had rescued her from her two attackers.

Once again, the image of Taffy superimposed itself over the sight of the wolf's glowing blue eyes, the softness of its fur brushing her face, its solid weight bearing her down.

The image of the loyal Labrador retriever made perfect sense. But she knew in her gut, and in her extra senses, that that wasn't what had happened.

As Taffy came up and sat down next to her, Marj reached over and put her arm around his neck. She felt his concern, and the constant love for her that was so much a part of him. Becoming aware of his emotions made her realize that Taffy might have his own memories of what happened that night.

What good was having the ability to talk to animals, if she didn't call upon it when needed? She didn't normally try to pick up more than an animal's current emotional state. Actually, she didn't generally try, it just happened. But she could pick up images and memories if she concentrated hard enough and the incident was sufficiently traumatic to stick in the animal's mind. She could only hope that the attack registered deeply in Taffy's mind.

And when she was finished with her him, she had an entire kennelful of witnesses that she could interrogate.

Harry was aware of the cougar's scent on far western side of the ranch even before he made the shift to wolf form.

He took deep breaths of the cool, dry night air as he took off his clothes, folded them, and tucked them between a bush and the base of the large boulder at the entrance of Marj's long drive.

The cougar prowling out in the darkness was no ordinary one, either: there was another shapeshifter in the vicinity. Harry hoped it was one of the missing kids, but somehow he doubted it. Because he thought that the reason he was having so much trouble tracking down his quarry was due to the camouflage talent of the were-cougar youth.

Harry stretched his hands over his head and arched his back before dropping down onto hands and knees. He ignored the sharpness of the winter wind on his bare skin and let the change come slowly, let it be a sensual pleasure rather than a rush of necessity. Making love with Marj had put him in the mood for all the sensual pleasure he could get.

The distant scent became even more obvious when Harry was in wolf form, and easily recognizable.

Harry was annoyed at the delay in his search, but he couldn't put off tracking the other were, since it was his client, Mr. Losimba.

He was glad that the trail led quite a distance across the rocky valley, away from the buildings on Marj's hilltop. The last thing he wanted was the Losimba kid's family marking up the territory Harry was using as bait.

When he found Losimba, the werecougar was perched regally on top of a rock outcrop, his gold fur frosted by moonlight. Harry came to a halt and took a moment to appreciate the pose.

Then he switched from wolf to human form. All were-folk were telepathic, but it was easier to communicate mind to mind with humans than across forms. Wolf to wolf, or any other canine type, was natural for him, but canine to feline was just-wrong.

Harry ignored the sudden blast of cold, along with a natural distaste for cats, and said, "You're lovely.

But if a rancher gets a look at you up there, you're going to get shot."

The Losimbas were as urban as most shapeshifters these days. Normally, when werefolk went out into the wild to take on their animal forms, they did so on large tracts of wilderness property owned and guarded by the Council of Clans. If you wanted to run free, you paid an annual fee for the privilege.

Losimba snarled at Harry, then shifted in a blur of gold from cat to human form. He remained seated on the flat rock perch, looking no less proud and regal as a man than as a mountain lion. Instead of snarling, he sneered.

"There are many reasons I have no use for humans. Their l.u.s.t to murder all predators, including each other, is only one of them."

Losimba was very much a political animal, and an arch-conservative one, at that. The last thing Harry wanted, especially since it was freezing out here, was to get into philosophical discussion.

"Yeah. Well. Whatever. What are you doing here?" Harry asked. "Other than interfering with my investigation."

"I want results." Losimba jumped down, light and graceful, from his perch. "I want my son back."

"And the other kids?"

"Yes. Of course." Then he sneered, "Except for the human. Something has to be done about her."

Harry disliked the ominous tone. "The Council asked me to find them, that's all. No violence is intended toward that girl."

"She can be made to forget, if enough pressure is applied."

"If the boy's mated with the human-"

"It doesn't bear thinking about," Losimba cut him off sharply. "My breed doesn't a.s.sociate with that kind." He sniffed disdainfully, "while you obviously enjoy wallowing in the human sewer. There's human stench all over you."

Harry caught himself growling deep in his throat and longing to rip the werecougar's throat out. He didn't let himself rise any farther to the bait, though. Losimba was famously old school in his att.i.tudes. Except that the anti-human att.i.tudes were really only the product of the last couple of generations. What had started out as a way to avoid extinction had turned into prejudice and sn.o.bbery in many werefolk. Those were games Harry didn't play.

"Why aren't you searching for the children?" Losimba demanded. "What progress have you made?"

Harry understood a parent's worry, but he didn't like Losimba's arrogance. He also didn't like the feet that the other were was here. When he took on a case, the area of the hunt became his territory. There wasn't room in his territory for another alpha, never mind the other shapeshifter's breed.

"Did the Council send you to oversee my methods? Or are you trying to screw this up on your own?"

"Why aren't you doing anything?" Losimba demanded. "You've had weeks-"

"And in those weeks, I've tracked the kids down to this area." He pointed back toward the buildings far away on the hilltop. "To that place. All I can do now is watch and wait. If this was a human missing person case, I could use these more." He tapped his nose, then touched an ear. "Our kind are harder to track than humans."

"We're better than humans."

"Our senses are slightly different, and some humans come close to us in their physical and psychic abilities. And this isn't the time or place to discuss breed differences. I don't know about you, but my b.a.l.l.s are freezing off."

"You d.a.m.n lobos are sentimental fools. You'll let the humans domesticate you and drag the rest of us down with you."

Once again, Harry fought off the urge to mix it up with this guy. He reminded himself that Losimba was worried about his kid. People under that kind of stress often lashed out because it was the only way to deal with their frustration. Or, Losimba was just a jerk.

"Stay out of my way," he told the werecougar. "Even better, go home."

"I want action! I want news."

"I've told you all I know, and all I'm doing. This kind of hunt takes patience."

Losimba suddenly looked sad, and tired. "I promised his mother I'd have him home by Christmas."

Harry didn't bring up the fact that Christmas was ahuman holiday, even though the celebration was one of the things that united werefolk with their shape-challenged cousins. Harry wondered what kind of miracle it would take to get that peace on earth, goodwill toward others thing going between the different sides of the evolutionary divide.

He was tempted him to ask Losimba if he'd welcome a human daughter-in-law into his home for Christmas dinner. But the answer might be a not-too-flippantas Christmas dinner; and then Harry really would go after the werecougar, tooth and claw.

"Go home," he said to Losimba. "Don't interfere. I will get those kids home."

Still tense, Losimba glared at Harry for a while out of tawny eyes. Then he shifted from man to cat with such graceful fluidity that even Harry had to admire his shifting abilities. All admiration was off, however, when Losimba then snarled at him once more and stalked proudly away.

Harry studied how Losimba managed to fade his scent to barely a trace as the other were disappeared from sight. Any information he could get would help in his hunt for the kids. The blocking was of a psychic nature, sending out a mental camouflage signal aimed specifically at the thought processes of other shapeshifters. It was a variation on how shapeshifters mentally influenced humans not to notice anything out of the ordinary they witnessed.

"He's good," Harry acknowledged. "But his son's better."

Then he changed back into a huge black wolf and went for a run, reveling in the power, the speed, the sharp senses of his animal form. Most importantly, he took huge pleasure in being warm.

But after a while, a new sensation caught hold of him and made him turn his steps toward the hilltop.

Something called him back toward Marj. After only a few hours away, he was already lonely for her.

Instinct told him he was going home-and that bone-deep belief scared the conscious part of him to death.

He found the boulder on the edge of the drive with no problem. He also had no problem detecting Taffy's scent, or Marj's. She and the dog had been here while he was gone. He supposed that she'd taken the dog for a walk, maybe hoping to spot the wolf, or him in human shape. Maybe Taffy had gotten a whiff of the clothing left by the boulder and come over to investigate. It was probably all perfectly innocent... and it filled Harry with dread. His misgivings grew worse when he couldn't find his stashed clothing anywhere near the boulder.

The instinctive part of his mind told him toRun! Now ! Any little breach of normal safety precautions triggered a fight-or-flight response in his kind. But the logical part, which should have been agreeing with the instinctive part, was telling him he needed to talk to Marj. That he needed to explain to her. That he just needed Marj.

Okay, he needed her. But he wasn't going to show up at her door either as a wolf, or naked as a jaybird. He had left two other sets of clothing, identical to the ones he'd lost, secreted around her property in case of any emergency. The first thing he was going to do was head to the barn, to don the clothes he'd left under a stack of feed bags.

He crossed the yard silently, clinging to shadows. The area was full of the crisscrossing scents of animals and of Marjorie, of himself, and other people from many different days and times. He could detect no immediate danger.

He was at the barn door and getting ready to change to human so he could open it, when he realized it was a trap. He felt Marj's anger and whirled around. Following the direction of her emotions, he spotted her sitting on top of the cab of her pickup truck. With a tranquilizer rifle aimed at him.