Silver Mine (20 page)

He’d had cuts and bruises before—all shifters had, especially an outcast like himself. Shifter metabolism didn’t mean instantaneous healing, but more rapid than the average human. Complications like his were extremely rare. The kind of pain he was experiencing was unique, something similar to the descriptions of blood poisoning he’d heard. Strings of heat and the occasional sharp dagger-like blows he felt made him more concerned now than he’d initially been when Shelley expressed confusion over his injury.

So he marched them across the deserted territory with brief stops for lunch, snacks and a dinner that left a lot to be desired.

One more hour and he’d give in. Maybe two. If they hadn’t found the miner by then, they’d break for the night before swinging around to the second camp in the morning.

“Chase? I need to stop,” Shelley called.

He stepped to the side of the trail, eyeing the terrain. It wasn’t the best place she could have selected. “Now?”

“Unless you want me to pee my pants.”

She was getting blunter, which was a good thing, he supposed. “Now is fine.”

She dropped her backpack before giving him a dirty look and heading off the trail toward the bush.

“What’s that for?” he shouted after her.

“Damn boys and their bladders. You think we can all drink two liters of fluid and keep it in.”

He turned his back as she found a bush to squat behind. He had been forcing the liquids on her as they hiked to make sure she didn’t get dehydrated. “You forgot to mention the bit about how unfair it is that we can pee standing up.”

“Bastard,” she muttered.

Chase grinned, enjoying how much he’d been smiling since he met Shelley. “Don’t wipe with poison ivy.”

“I’m going to—”

Her mocking response was lost under the snarl of an animal. Chase twirled and raced toward her, vibrating with adrenaline.

Mere seconds had passed, yet she was already on her back with a full-grown puma on top of her. Chase fought the spontaneous urge to shift that rolled over him. He screamed, the cougar shriek escaping from his human vocal cords nearly as terrifying as the real thing.

Shelley called out as well, her insistent
no, no, no
echoing off the nearby tree line. Chase’s heartbeat pounded in his ears, dimming the volume of her cries as he focused on the big cat.

He shifted one hand to cougar, claws at the ready, and swiped it over the beast’s shoulder in a wound eerily reminiscent of his own injury. The cat lifted its head and snarled, but otherwise didn’t budge from where it loomed over Shelley. Muscles flexed as it lifted a paw, head twisting back toward his prey. There was that sense of
other
about the creature—and recognition and horror slammed simultaneously into Chase.

It was a shifter attacking Shelley.

A second later the animal roared, this time in pain, not fury. Its body jerked once, then again, blood spurting out to coat the ground, Shelley, Chase’s shoes.

He snatched at the animal’s shaking body, the knowledge it was a man inside this beast forced down as his concern for Shelley washed away all hesitation. He made ready to reach around and slit the cat’s throat with his claws. Only the creature wasn’t mauling her anymore, it was quivering slightly as it lay draped like a thick skin rug.

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. Chase, oh my God, help me.”

Shelley’s shouts were the only thing that kept him in human form. He grabbed the heavy beast and dragged it aside, ignoring the horrible agony that ripped through his shoulder as he manhandled two hundred pounds of puma to the ground.

Her face was streaked with tears, and there was blood everywhere. It only took a glance to double-check that the puma was dead. The animal’s limbs still twitched, but it was the long open wound across its neck and a very familiar knife handle protruding from its chest that caught Chase’s eye.

He dropped to his knees and gathered Shelley close, looking for claw wounds, for bite marks.

“Chase, I killed him. I didn’t mean to, but he just—”

“Did he bite you? Cut you? Tell me.”

She lifted her arm in the air and held it out for inspection. There were a couple slashes in her skin, deep enough she’d need stitches. “Shit.”

“Grab hold of your arm and squeeze. We need to get you bandaged before you bleed into trouble.”

“I killed him. Killed a shifter.” Her voice trembled.

Chase carried her back to the trail. She dropped her head on his shoulder and all the fight went out of her, and he was damn sure she’d fainted. Only when he lowered her to the ground, she dragged herself upright and leaned against the pack.

Tears marked their tracks on her face through the dirt and dust. He wiped one cheek tenderly. “You killed him because you had to.”

Shelley hesitated. “I didn’t want to. Oh God, what have I done?”

Chase cupped her chin in his hand and locked their gazes together. “He attacked. You responded. Nothing more—there was no ill intent on your part.”

“I could have—”

“Could have what?” Chase refused to let her start second-guessing. “He attacked you, Shell. It wasn’t a conversation where you could consider your responses. Instinct kicked in and you defended yourself, and that’s what you’re supposed to do. Accept it.”

She nodded slowly, her fingers clenched tight around her arm. He stroked her cheek, willing her to accept the truth. The back of his neck tingled as he attempted to stay alert to the dangers around them even as he gave her the attention she needed.

She breathed around the pain. She was afraid, but she wasn’t going to pass out.

And when she spoke, he couldn’t have been any prouder—the strong, capable woman he’d come to know shining through as he expected. “Get my red medical kit out of the backpack. And…I need you to get my knife.”

He nodded and rose to his feet, all senses on high.

He’d recognized the puma. The shifter was a sometimes partner with the man who’d initially clawed him. Chase grabbed the medical supplies for Shelley then made his way to the body to recover her knife.

Chase stared down at the body, another jolt of admiration hitting alongside sorrow at the shifter’s death. She’d done exactly what she said she could. The slice to the throat should have been enough to warn off an opponent—it wasn’t that cut that killed the man. It was the perfectly executed thrust that had stopped the puma’s heart cold.

Chase needed two hands to pull her blade free.

He cleaned the knife, watching the bushes, staying vigilant for any further disturbances. By the time he returned to Shelley’s side, she’d wiggled out of her shirt and wiped most of the blood from her torso. She’d single-handedly gotten out a needle and thread, and was preparing to stitch herself together.

He laid a hand on her shoulder and kissed her temple. “Let me do that. Did you take a painkiller?”

She nodded. “Numbed the area I need to stitch.”

He grabbed the water bottle lying at her side and picked up the remains of her bloody shirt. The one she’d obviously been using to clean herself up.

Shelley protested as he dabbed the cloth over her skin. “You have to stand look-out in case there are any more mad men out there. Last thing we need is to be caught with our pants down.”

There was so much wisdom in her words, and so much anguish in his heart for putting her into this situation in the first place. That she was joking about it didn’t reduce his guilt.

“I can watch
and
help.”

It took time. Him pulling off her bloody pants, washing her clean and helping her dress. All the while she clutched her arm, the cloth he’d torn from his shirt staunching the wound.

The instant she was clothed, she dropped to the ground and applied the needle to her arm. Chase had done a lot of bleeding in his life, but never sewed himself up. Offering to help didn’t seem the right thing to do—not with her clearly in control. He pressed her cleaned and closed knife against her thigh. She glanced from her bloody task to grimace then nod.

Chase stood and eyed their surroundings, wondering where Mark was. If ever they needed their backup, it was now. “Do you have something to take for when the freezing wears off?”

“Once I’m done. I need a clear head to make sure I’m doing this right.”

The thought anyone had considered this woman worthy of being tormented made his blood boil. “I’m going to shift. Check out—”

“No.”

Her shouted denial of his plan stopped him in the middle of removing his shirt. “No?”

She shook her head. “Don’t change. I need you…” Shelley swallowed hard and continued stitching, her voice amazingly level. Controlled, as if she’d reached deep inside and flipped a switch. “I need you human. I need to be able to talk to you, and I need you to not go anywhere. If that’s crazy and selfish, then so be it. Please?”

Crazy, maybe. Selfish? He’d never call it that. “I’ll wait until Mark arrives. Let me know when you need help.”

In the end, she let him complete the final stitches once she discovered she couldn’t cut the thread left-handed. Instead, she kept lookout as he wiped her clean and applied a bandage. Followed her directions and found the bottle of painkillers so she could swallow a couple pills.

He arranged their packs as if he were circling the wagons. Made sure she had her knife. Then he pulled her into his lap and held her as they waited for Mark to find them.

Part Three

This is the Law of the Yukon,

that only the Strong shall thrive;

That surely the Weak shall perish,

and only the Fit survive.

Dissolute, damned and despairful,

crippled and palsied and slain,

This is the Will of the Yukon,—

Lo, how she makes it plain!

“The Law of the Yukon”—Robert Service

Chapter Sixteen

The puma was dead.

Not the one she’d personally sent to his grave, but the one they were looking for.

It had taken at least thirty minutes before Mark found them, his pulled-back lips revealing razor-sharp teeth as he prowled the perimeter before returning to their side.

The wild-looking creature gently bumped her arm, offering comfort. Her world whirled as someone who she barely knew, who was on the
more likely to rip off a hand than shake it
list, gave her tender attention.

Misfits and outcasts they might be, but damn the men of the Keno bush had soul. She wasn’t going to forget that.

And she was going to do whatever she could to help their leader.

Mark led them unerringly past the still body of the shifter she’d killed, guiding them into a clearing not far away. A small rustic lean-to, barely standing, teetered where the sunshine met the shadows. Rachel’s cabin had been a luxury resort compared to this.

The broken door half-hanging off its hinges was the first indicator something was dreadfully wrong. The second was the smell, which shifter senses brought to a high-pitch gag-level before they stepped within throwing distance of the hovel.

The third and most obvious proof was the naked body sprawled just inside the doorframe.

Chase touched the body with a toe, ready to roll the corpse over when she stopped him.

“No. Don’t. Not without gloves.”

Chase gave her a look she recognized too well.

“Look, Mr. Indestructible, humour me.”

He shrugged. “Not as if I can catch anything from him I ain’t already got.”

A shiver shook her from head to toe. She barely contained it, forcing herself to pull on a mask and protective gloves. After being stomped on by a crazed puma, she had reached the breaking point. “Great, so why don’t you just give him a cuddle, and when we bury him you can crawl into the pit at his side.” She snapped out a spare set of gloves, ignoring Chase’s expression as she waved them in his face.

If he wanted to be nonchalant about what they’d found, fine. She wouldn’t be a wimp and fall apart. She was more than ready to poke back.

Chase followed her directions. He pulled on the gloves, grabbed the man’s arm and carefully tugged.

Rigour mortis had set in, and the entire body rotated as if the shifter had turned to stone. An eerie and horrible statue designed by Picasso on one of his less lucid days.

It wasn’t the body of man they gazed down on. It wasn’t a puma. The shifter had died in the middle of a change, arms and legs not quite human, not quite animal. Shelley took a deep breath through her mouth, swallowing hard to stop the bile from rising.

She’d seen death before. She could cut and slice and stitch and repair the bodies of both forms. But this was worse than trying to stitch together flesh that had been torn apart in a fight.

It just wasn’t right, in all the ways that a person could possibly be wrong.

She took a peek at the man’s face, needing clues to his death. If he’d been in pain, if it had come upon him unaware.

His face was worse than the rest of him, that mixture of man and beast creating something out of a horror novel, and she totally understood how the stories of terrifying werewolves and Sasquatch could have developed. If anyone from vet school had seen something like this on an autopsy slab, they would have been convinced that the world of the gothic nightmare existed.