The Shadows of Night (12 page)

“But why—“She tried to sit up and bit her lip against the resultant stab of pain.
 
“Why would anyone want to do that?
 
Why create artificial fangs?
 
That is why we have taken on forms with fangs and claws and antlers, in order to defend ourselves.”

“According to myth, the Ancestors were trapped in a single form.
 
Human form.
 
Since they were defenseless, perhaps they needed to create their own fangs.”
 

“But that is merely legend.”
 
With a grunt, she managed to heft herself to a sitting position.
 
“You are suggesting the Fang Kindred have invented such a thing?
 
No one knows if such a weapon ever existed.
 
And if it had, why
would
the Fang need it, any more than we do?
 
They already have fangs.
 
And they cannot carry such a thing in their animal form, so to use it they would need to remain in human form.
 
That is the sheerest folly.”

“Perhaps not,” Hart said, studying her wound with eyes that appeared almost impassive.
 
Then he looked up, and she caught the spark of anger deep in his gaze.
 
“It appears that this could be a very effective way of killing one’s enemy.”

“For cowards, perhaps.”
 
She swallowed against the pain.
 
“Your people have a great deal of impressive magic.
 
Do you possess such a device?”

“No.
 
Even if we knew how to make such a thing, its creation would be against the deepest-held beliefs of our society.”
 
She could hear the self-loathing in his voice, the bitter sorrow that he had violated those beliefs in his youth.
 
“We do not kill, Katara.
 
We fight only to defend ourselves, and only to wound, never to kill.”

They did not kill, but they could be killed.
 
She suddenly recalled the second
whoosh
she’d heard, and looked him over.
 
She saw no evidence of an injury, but fear squeezed her heart in her chest anyway.
 
“Did they bite you?”

“No.”
 
Hart shook his head.
 
“Not yet, at any rate.
 
But if they have a fang that strikes from a distance, we need to get away from here, Katara.
 
We do not wish them to strike us again.
 
Next time their aim might be
more true
.
 
Can you walk?”

She rose to her hands and knees, swaying a little,
then
shifted back to her feline form.
 
The pain was somehow less intense in her animal form.
 
She’d always been able to endure more as a leopard.
 
 
She started at a trot through the woods, favoring her right foreleg a bit.
 
Hart shifted and settled into a steady gait beside her.
 

They trotted for half an hour, but her movements became more and more uneven, and her pace slower.
 
Her animal stubbornness kept her going, even as she felt her body growing steadily weaker, saw the world growing darker, felt blood oozing from her shoulder in a sluggish stream.
 
But even feline tenacity could not keep her on her feet forever.
 
At last she stumbled,
then
sank down to the ground, senseless.

*****

Hart cursed lividly beneath his breath as he carried Katara into the safe house.
 
They’d gotten within a quarter mile of the building when she collapsed, and he’d managed to bring her the rest of the way in his human form.
 
Her body was wracked with chills, and he wished desperately for Otwa.
 
But he would have to make do on his own.
 
He couldn’t let Katara die.

He placed her carefully onto the bed, noticing as he did so that the fang seemed to have cut more deeply into her muscles than any natural wolf bite could have.
 
The wound appeared very deep.
 
Fortunately the fang appeared to have missed striking anything vital.
 
But the wound was bleeding, and probably already infected, judging from the heat of her skin.

He hunted through the few cabinets for first aid equipment, and finally found the small handheld regenerator he sought.
 
It wouldn’t heal her as well as the regen field in his keep, but it would stop the bleeding and help the muscles and sinew begin knitting together again.
 
He held the device over her wound, and gradually the bleeding stopped, and the hole grew smaller.

Only then did he breathe freely again.
 
For the first time, he let himself think of what could have happened to her.
 
The fang could have drilled cleanly through her heart, killing her instantly, beyond the help of any medical technology the Antler possessed.
 
It could have gone through her eye and buried itself in her brain.
 
She could have been dead in his arms.
 
The image of her sprawled dead in the wheat made his heart squeeze painfully.

For that matter, he thought, his brother could have been killed, too, although he suspected the fang would have to be very well aimed to fell a full-grown stag.
 
It was curious that with this fang at their disposal, the Pack had opted to attack Prong in the more traditional fashion.
 
It was almost as if he hadn’t been enough of a target.
 
As if they’d wanted to lure a more prominent member of the Antler Kindred to their territory.

And that, he realized, was very probably their motive.
 
They’d wanted to show him what they could do, impress upon him the new danger they represented.

It had worked.
 
He was impressed.
 
And not in a good way.

Despite his Kindred’s superiority in other technological areas, they were now at a very real disadvantage.
 
The Claw, who had retained none of the Ancestors’ technology,
were
in an even worse position.
 
It did not take a great deal of imagination to envision a full Pack of twenty or thirty wolves in human form, all armed with numerous fangs that could strike from a distance.
 
They could destroy a large number of Antler and Claw Kindred in a few heartbeats, before the other Kindred could ever get close enough to defend themselves.
 

Even if the Antler and Claw managed to put aside their differences and fight together, even if the Antler could bring
themselves
to kill their attackers, it would all be for naught.
 
Their natural defenses were nothing against a fang that could kill from a distance.

They were all as does, utterly without antlers, without any means of defending themselves in the face of this threat.

At last the regenerator in his hand stopped whirring.
 
He felt Katara’s forehead, finding that the device had destroyed the infection at the same time it healed her wound.
 
She felt cool to the touch now, and her respiration was even and normal.
 
He dropped onto a chair and watched her.
 
A few moments later, she opened her eyes.

“Where are we?”

Her voice was low and hoarse, still rough with grogginess, and his body stirred in an instinctive response to the husky tones of her voice.
 
He tamped down the reaction, reminding himself that she had just been badly wounded.
 
There was nothing sexual about this situation.

“I brought you back to the safe house,” he said.

She blinked sleepily.
 
“But the wound…”

He held up the regenerator.
 
“I healed you.”

She sighed, and her eyes drifted shut.
 
He knew that she needed to sleep in order to recover fully.
 
But she seemed to be clinging to consciousness.
 
Her voice was a bare whisper.
 
“We have a problem.”

“Yes,” he agreed.
 
“A big problem.”

“We must warn… our Kindred.”

“Yes, we must.
 
When you have recovered, we will do so.
 
We must convince our people to join forces against the Fang Kindred.
 
Only by working together do we have any chance of countering this threat.”

“My people… will not work with yours.
 
They would rather die.”

He blew out a breath.
 
“My people will feel much the same.
 
But somehow we must convince them to work together.
 
If we do not succeed, death is indeed what we all face.”

Hart had never dreamed of walking voluntarily into a Pride’s territory.
 
The Kindred all respected the boundaries of each other’s territory and stayed on their own lands, or in the neutral border lands.
 
It was the only thing that had prevented bloodshed for all these years.
 

And yet, with Katara at his side, he found himself walking toward a crudely constructed longhouse.
 
The afternoon sunlight dappled the grass of the clearing with golden light, and the scent of cooking meat rose from the chimney along with a plume of
woodsmoke
, all but nauseating him.
 
It was a grim reminder of how different these people were
from his own
.
 
The Antler Kindred would never consider eating meat, let alone burning it to a crisp first.
 
It was an entirely repulsive thought, and it turned his stomach.

He had originally planned to return to his own people first, but Katara had pointed out that Claw territory was much closer.
 
While he understood the logic of her argument, Hart couldn’t feel comfortable walking into the heart of Claw territory.
 

At least he wasn’t approaching in human form.
 
Katara had suggested he assume his stag form, both for self-defense in case the Claw became hostile, and because her people respected the wild.
 
Even if they saw him as dinner on four hooves, they at least would respect the fact that he traveled in animal form.

Despite his wide, branching antlers, he felt naked, particularly when he saw several feline shapes slink out from the longhouse, their eyes narrowed, their bodies close to the ground in an unmistakably hostile posture.
 
Unlike his people, the Claw took on many different feline forms, varied in size and species, although each person only assumed one form.
 
He saw a tawny lioness, much larger than Katara, a black panther even smaller and sleeker than she was, and an enormous orange and black striped tiger. Behind them slunk a puma, a black-maned lion, and a thick-coated snow leopard.

If they chose to attack as a Pride, he knew he didn’t stand a chance against them, even with Katara by his side.

And even though he and Katara had shared an unbelievable night of lovemaking, even though he’d cared for her like one of his own Kindred both times she’d been injured, he had no real proof that she was truly on his side.
 
It was not impossible she’d brought him here to trap him, or even to kill him.
 
What her motive for such a betrayal might be, he couldn’t imagine.
 
But then, he’d never truly understood the feline mind.
 
Predators didn’t think the way his people did, and he couldn’t guess what she might do.

The lioness stalked forward, her long tail twitching, her lips curling back from her teeth.
 
Hart debated lowering his antlers in a threatening gesture, but before he could do so, Katara leapt in front of him, her ears flattened back, crouching in a defensive posture that said quite plainly,
He is here under my protection
.

The lioness raised her head and studied Hart with her amber eyes.
 
Her tawny hide rippled, her body changed shape, and she shifted into a woman.
 
She was older, with gray streaks in her brown-and-gold hair and lines etched deeply around her eyes and mouth.
 
Her bare belly showed the stretch marks of childbirth, and her breasts hung low from feeding children, yet she was still an attractive woman.
 
There was something about the breadth of her jaw and the narrow blade of her nose that made Hart
think
of Katara.

“Explain yourself, daughter,” the woman snapped.

Katara shifted.
 
Standing just behind her, Hart observed the interesting sight of her tail shrinking and disappearing, and her sleek flanks shifting into round, shapely human buttocks.
 
He tried not to let the sight distract him overmuch.
 
In Claw territory, and facing half a dozen savage cats, the last thing he needed was to allow
himself
to be distracted by a woman’s curvaceous rump, no matter how lovely it was.