Shifted (4 page)

“I can’t believe I’m touching a mountain lion,” she breathed, and something surged in Charlie that was purely animal. 

He turned his back to her and rolled to his feet. She lifted her hands, backing off from him. 

He should let her. But he wanted more of her touch, more of those hands on him. He heard her inhale sharply when he pushed his big face into her hand. 

Taking his encouragement, she rubbed his ears and neck. Charlie’s eyes drifted closed in satisfaction.
No wonder house cats love this
, he thought. Every stroke sent his brain reeling back while the animal part of him roared forward. His whole world narrowed down to those strong, soft hands and the waves of bliss cascading down his body. 

He opened his eyes, and the expression on her face thrilled him. There was no pity on her face, nothing that reminded him that he was a ruined man, crippled and useless. 

“This is incredible,” she said. 

He felt incredible hearing her say it. 

The smell of her—roses, wild and sweet—overwhelmed his senses. “What are you?” she asked, awe clear in her voice. “Did the fog make you too?” 

She was on her knees, and he was sitting in front of her on his haunches. Their faces were on a level, and he couldn’t stop staring at her mouth. If he were a man, this would be the moment when he’d kiss her. 

For a reckless moment, he considered transforming so he could do just that. 

Rattled, he shifted away from her. He couldn’t think straight when she was touching him. Had he really spent all these months carefully transforming in private, hiding his secret from everyone in his life, just so he could transform in front of a pretty girl? 

He turned to stalk away, and his long tail smacked against her side. Curiously, she wrapped one hand around his tail, testing its weight and thickness as it slid across her palm. 

It was too much, too sensitive, and he turned on her with an irritated growl. 

“Sorry,” she said, dropping her hand immediately. “I know better than to touch a cat’s tail. I was curious, and … wait, don’t go away!” 

She scrambled up to follow him. “Please. I promise I won’t touch you again, if that’s what you want. Can I just—”

Whatever she was going to say was lost in a huge cacophony of sound. 

Instinctively, Charlie leapt onto Briar, knocking her to the ground and protecting her with his body. The noise was everywhere, thunderous and violent. He knew Briar was screaming because her mouth was open, but he couldn’t hear it. 

All around them, the clearing was calm. Whatever was happening, it wasn’t happening here. Looking around, Charlie noticed a plume of dust rising in the distance, toward the pass out of town. He jumped off of Briar’s prone body and ran toward the sound. 

As a man, it would have taken him ten minutes to run the distance. Before the accident, of course—he would never run anywhere as a man ever again. But as a cat, it took him a third of the time, going overland through thick brush. 

As he got closer, he could smell the change in the air. There was dirt, and dust, and cold stone, but something else as well—something tinny and chemical, like a hint of gunpowder on the air. 

He knew this terrain, had been exploring this area since he was a boy, and he knew that something was fundamentally wrong. It was as if the air was still vibrating with the crash of noise. He bounded over a rise that should have overlooked the road out of town and found … nothing. 

The ground that should have met his feet had disappeared. Charlie twisted in air as the world rushed by, trying to find purchase on something, anything. 

 His flailing paws caught a ridge of raw rock. He couldn’t stop his movement, his claws scraping against rock without traction, and he had no idea how far he would fall. 

Suddenly, his body slammed into an overhang, barely big enough to hold him, but he clung to it desperately. His heart was slamming against his ribs, and his paws were scraped and tender, but other than that he seemed unharmed. 

What had happened? Half of the mountain was gone.

Cautiously, Charlie turned so he could see behind him. The road into town had been carved a hundred years ago by wagons and horses, and it wound along a ridge in the mountain that was relatively flat but bordered by a precipitous drop on one side and a steep slope on the other. When the road was paved, back when Charlie was just a baby, the WPA had carefully excavated a larger area to allow for two way traffic and added a guard rail along the west side. The Breakneck River roared by a hundred feet below, and there should have been a steep mountain face rising to the east. 

But now, the mountain had collapsed into the road below. 

Debris spread across the entire road. A chunk of the asphalt had been gouged out by a falling rock. It looked like a giant had ripped away a fistful of earth. A section of the guardrail was sheared off, the twisted metal hanging off the side of the mountain. The road itself was completely blocked with enormous boulders that had to be taller than a man, and piled high with smaller rocks and shifted dirt. 

Charlie was horrified. A rockslide like this was a disaster for Independence Falls. The town was as self-sufficient as possible, but they could only survive for so long if they were cut off from the rest of civilization. 

The isolated valley that held Independence Falls was surrounded on all sides by forbidding peaks. It was possible for a man on a horse to find an overland route to one of the neighboring towns, but it would take days. What were they going to do for food? Supplies? In the winter, they might be cut off from civilization for weeks at a time by a heavy snowstorm, but the road was going to take longer than a few weeks to repair. The river rushing by below him was no help; the rapids known as Miner’s Revenge were too dangerous for any boat to traverse. Without the thin strip of asphalt that clung to the side of the mountain, they were truly isolated from the world.

 Charlie wanted to get a better view of the damage. The ledge where he’d landed was barely big enough for all four of his paws, and after a rockslide like this the earth had to be unstable. There was a large piece of broken rock about twenty feet away that jutted out from the side of the ruined hill. It was too far to jump, but he might be able to make it if he moved fast. 

He picked his path and crouched low, flicking his tail for better balance. He hit the ground running, trying not to let his weight stay too long in any one spot. Still, a hailstorm of pebbles fell behind him. His back paws were finding less and less purchase, and to his horror the ground in front of him started to shift as well. It wanted to carry him down the side of the mountain, and Charlie had a vision of losing his footing, tumbling down the mountain, crushing his bones against the hard rocks below. If he survived it, he would be crippled as a cat just as he was as a man. 

That thought was so enraging that he pushed himself harder, faster, until at last the rock ledge was beneath him. He was going so fast that his paws skidded, and he almost tumbled off the far side in his haste. 

Panting, he tested the rock under his weight. It seemed stable enough, but he was certain now that he couldn’t linger here. Still, he could see more of the rockslide now. 

A whole swathe of road, probably fifty feet in length, was completely blocked. It seemed impossible—how could the entire mountain collapse? He looked up at the high ridge above him. He couldn’t be certain, but it seemed like the rockslide was oddly regular. He supposed that if there were a fault in the rock, it might have opened up somehow, but it seemed unlikely that it would incise such a neat chunk out of the mountain. 

He was distracted by a glint of light off metal. He hadn’t noticed the car before because of the angle, but he could see it now—an old black sedan, headed away from Independence Falls, with its front end crushed by a fallen rock. 

Although the rock was holding under his feet, Charlie felt as if he were falling all over again. A sickening vertigo took over his vision, and for a moment he was back in time, back in the twisted metal that stank of motor oil and blood, listening to Angela scream. 

Darkness swam in his mind, and it was only the peril of his situation that snapped him back to the moment at hand. He was too far away to see if there was anyone in the car, but if there was, they would need help. 

There was nothing he could do while he was a mountain lion, and even if he transformed, he didn’t have any medical supplies or any knowledge beyond basic first aid. Besides, he wasn’t even sure he could make it down the mountain to where the car sat without triggering another rockslide. 

It felt wrong to turn away from the car when he didn’t know what was inside, but he knew that the best thing he could do now was run back to his car, transform, then drive into Independence Falls to get Dr. Porter and the police. 

He was closer to the top of the rise then he would have imagined. He could see shredded sod and thin fibrous roots above him. Torn between caution and haste, he scrambled back up the hill as quickly as possible. 

There could be people in that car. They could be dying even now.

Twilight was spreading fast as the sun sank behind the mountains. He was almost back to the clearing when he heard Briar. She was crashing through the underbrush with the subtlety of a freight train. She must have tried to follow him, but gotten turned around in the trees. 

He suddenly remembered that Briar’s Aunt Patrice was a nurse in Dr. Porter’s office. If he could get her to go wake her aunt, and he went to the doctor’s house, they could get most of the medical personnel in Independence Falls in one swoop. Changing direction, he cut through the woods toward her. 

When he emerged from the trees, her relief was palpable. “There you are,” she said. “I tried to come after you, but I couldn’t figure out where to go. What happened to you?” 

She stooped to brush dirt off of him. “You’re filthy! What was that sound? Can you lead me there?”

He hesitated for a moment. He had no choice. There was no time to waste, and his secret wasn’t worth a human life. 

Concentrating, he began his transformation. Briar was still talking, and her voice grew ever more pitched as he went on, but he couldn’t follow the words. He was too focused on forcing his body to reform to hear her. 

His bones and muscles crushed into their normal shape, including the ruined portion of his left leg. He had been standing, which was a mistake, and he staggered forward without the support of his cane. Before he could fall, Briar caught him in her arms. 

“Charlie!” she gasped. “Charlie, you’re … you ….”

“There was a rockslide,” he rasped. His voice always took a while to regulate after the transformation. He swallowed hard, then continued. “On the road out of town.”

She was still gaping at him. “But you were … how did you …?”

He straightened, putting most of his weight on his right leg so he could look down at her. “Briar, listen to me. There was a rockslide. The whole road is destroyed. We need to get back to town. We need to tell people what happened. Go get your aunt, tell her to bring any medical supplies she has.” 

She was staring at his chest, and he suddenly remembered that he was naked. 

A flush of embarrassment rushed over him. He was suddenly aware of how close they were. She still smelled sweet, but her hair was tangled and her neat blouse and floaty skirt were torn. There was a smear of dirt on her lovely cheek. 

That was his fault. He had knocked her to the ground, played with her on the ground like an animal. He’d let her touch him all over. The memory rushed back, except for in his imagination she was stroking and rubbing his human form. The idea had him growing hot and hard in an instant.

Even in the dying light, Briar must have seen something because her eyes went wide. She glanced up at him, and the interest he saw there sent a thrill down his spine. Her lips were parted, and he wondered if she would taste as sweet as she smelled. As if in a trance, he shifted her closer. 

The change in weight sent a bolt of pain shooting through his leg. Reality came rushing back. Someone could be dying while he thought about kissing Briar. He pushed her away, taking two stumbling steps before he could grab hold of a tree branch. “Quit staring at me.”

“Well, you’re naked,” she said softly. 

Her husky voice did nothing to quell his arousal. “We don’t have time for this,” he said, as much to himself as to her. “Someone might be hurt.”

“Are you okay? I mean, your leg looks terribly painful.”

She was still staring at him, and he realized that she hadn’t been admiring his body. She’d been cataloging his scars. A bitter fury rose up in him. Of course. As a mountain lion, he was fascinating and powerful. As a man, he was nothing but a cripple.

It was illogical, irrational, but he couldn’t stop himself from venting his rage. “I don’t need your sympathy. I need you to listen to me. Jesus Christ, I knew you were stupid, but this is ridiculous.” 

She flinched in shock. Her wide, staring eyes shot up to his, and the hurt there had regret fluttering through him. 

Dammit. This is why he was better off in the woods by himself. He had never learned how to be honest without being rude. 

In defense, he growled at her. “Look, just get your aunt, okay? Can you handle that?”

It was probably cowardly, but he started transforming before she could answer. Slipping into the form of a cat had never felt better.

CHAPTER FIVE

Briar

“I can’t believe you missed it,” Norine said for the third time. After Briar had driven frantically down the mountain and back into town, she had discovered Aunt Patrice already loading medical supplies into her trunk. It seemed Gail Goodman had interrupted the town meeting with news of the rockslide. Dr. Porter was already on his way to help Gail’s injured husband. Aunt Patrice had bustled Briar and Norine in her car to follow. 

“Mrs. Goodman was positively covered in blood,” Norine said, her voice caught between sympathetic and excited. “Do you think Bill Goodman is dead?”