The Shadows of Night (8 page)

“I am sorry about your brother.
 
Will he survive?”

“Otwa believes so.
 
I certainly hope so.
 
I do not know what I would do without him.
 
He is frequently annoying, but he is my brother.”

“It is strange that both of us should be attacked by Fangs and survive.
 
That is very unusual.”

“Yes, it is.
 
Few have lived to tell of a Fang attack.
 
But my brother was able to make it back to the keep on his own.
 
You would likely have died had I not found you.”

“I am not certain of that.
 
My people are strong, and I have survived severe injuries before.
 
But I cannot understand why they didn’t tear my throat out, or your brother’s.
 
It is their usual way.”

“I wonder if perhaps the Fang Kindred are trying to send us a message.”

“You mean that they are threatening both our peoples?”

“It seems a likely theory.
 
They could have killed both of you, but they chose not to.
 
I believe they had a purpose in leaving you alive, and that it was intended as a warning.”

Katara considered that.
 
“My people cannot stand against the Fang,” she said.
 
“We are too solitary in our habits, and our Prides too scattered.
 
If they really intend to declare war, my people will be destroyed.”

Hart frowned.
 
“My people are in danger as well.
 
The Fang are more numerous than we are, and brutal fighters.
 
If they attack in force, they may be able to take our keeps and our villages.”

“I cannot believe your people are in any real danger, with your magic walls and your technology.
 
Surely you can easily stand against the Fang.”

Hart shrugged a big shoulder, and his gaze dropped.
 
“We are not accustomed to fighting, and we do not ever kill.
 
It is not our way.
 
I do not know that we could stand against an attack.”
 

“My people will not shun a fight, but we tend to fight alone,” Katara said.
 
“There is little interaction among the various Prides.
 
All the more reason I need to return home.
 
I must warn my people of this possibility, so that they may join together if necessary.”

“Do you really believe your people will listen?”

Katara hesitated, thinking of her fierce, stubborn mother.
 
Even in her human form she rarely took the counsel of others.
 
In her lioness form she was even less likely to listen to a young female.
 
The other Pride Leaders were similar—haughty, arrogant, and unlikely to pay heed to warnings uttered by a young, litterless woman they still thought of as a cub.

“I doubt it.
 
But I must try.”

“I have a better idea,” Hart said.
 
“We need more information.
 
I suggest we work together to spy on the Fang.
 
Then we can go back to our respective peoples with facts, rather than speculation.”

Katara lifted an eyebrow.
 
“What thinks your monarch of this idea?”

“He knows nothing of it.
 
I doubt he would approve.
 
The notion of working with a Claw, for any reason, would appall him.”

“Is this why you followed me?
 
To convince me to work with you?”

Hart shrugged.
 
“I am not a hunter, nor are any of my people.
 
The Claw
are
much more capable of subtlety than we are.”

“You claim you are no hunter.
 
Yet you tracked me more readily than a Fang pack could have.”

“I used this.”
 
He held up the metal object.
 
“There is a tracking device in your collar.
 
It enabled me to follow you easily enough.”

She wasn’t sure what a tracking device was, but guessed it was another piece of the magic the Antler wielded.
 
But the mention of the collar reminded her of something else.

“Your idea is interesting.
 
But I dare not approach Pack territory.
 
I have no hope of defending myself against the Fang in this form.”

“I realize that.
 
I will remove your collar if you give me your word not to attack me.”

The desire to be free to change, whenever the mood took her, struck her again with an almost physical force.
 
She had never before realized how important shifting was to her, how much she valued the ability to shift to her animal form whenever she wished.
 
She would promise almost anything to be free of the cursed collar.

At any rate, what he was asking for was very little.
 
Only the veriest fool would attack Hart in his animal form.
 
It would take a full Pride working together to pull him down.
 
By herself, she doubted she could injure him even if she took him by surprise, leaping on him from above, and she would likely be skewered in the attempt.
 
And he could shift so quickly that it would be nearly impossible to successfully attack him in his human form.

“I promise,” she said.

“Very well.”
 
Hart took the small piece of machinery he held in his hand and waved it toward the collar.
 
She heard an audible click, and the golden collar dropped from her neck and fell to the ground.
 

She was free.

*****

Hart saw Katara’s skin begin to ripple, and he hastily shifted himself.
 
It wasn’t that he didn’t trust her to keep her word.
 
Not exactly.
 
But it had been several days since she’d had meat, and he didn’t want her to be tempted.

The outline of her body blurred.
 
A second later, her torn clothing fell to the ground, and she stood in front of him on four paws.
 
He looked down at her, surprised by how small she was.
 
He’d always thought of the Claw as gigantic, huge, muscular creatures armed with enormous teeth, but she was dwarfed by his animal form.
 

Unlike his people, all of whom assumed a similar deer form, the Claw Kindred assumed the forms of various feline species.
 
Her form was a leopard, one of the smallest of the great cats.
 
Despite the obvious strength of the muscles rolling smoothly beneath her hide, she was nowhere near as large as a tiger or lion.
 
In fact, she looked almost dainty, and strangely… beautiful.

Programmed by instinct as he was to dislike the Claw, he’d never before thought of one as beautiful.
 
But he was surprised to realize that Katara was as lovely in her animal form as she was as a human.
 
Her fur, more golden than his, glistened in the moonlight, and the black spots would help her blend into the shadows of night that mottled the forest.
 
Despite her total physical transformation, her eyes looked much the same as they did in her human form, large and green-gold.

She turned from him and began to glide noiselessly through the forest, and he followed, mesmerized by the sheer lithe
grace of her motion, the play of powerful muscles beneath her sleek hide
.
 
He was surprised to realize he’d never admired a woman in her animal form
so
greatly as he admired Katara in her leopard form.

No doe among his own people had ever attracted him as strongly as this feline did.

He trotted through the woods behind her, his hoofs almost as quiet on the carpet of leaves as her padded feet were.
 
She seemed to know where she was going.
 
At least he hoped she wasn’t leading him to Claw territory so her Pride could pull him down and break their fast with him.
 
He shoved the thought away
impatiently,
aware that he was going to have to trust her if they were to work together.
 

They jogged through the darkness for hours, their path lit only by moonbeams and the glimmer of the stars through the canopy of trees.
 
Hart began to recognize his surroundings, though he had not come this way often.
 
They were still in neutral territory, but perilously close to both Claw and Fang lands.
 
His people rarely ventured this far from their own territory.

The greater moon rose, then began to fall again.
 
As the moons set and the faint light of dawn approached, Katara leapt lightly into a tree and looked down at him.

He understood the wordless message.
 
She was going to hunt.

Revolted, he trotted on without her, pausing every so often to nibble at leaves.
 
He supposed she really needed meat, especially in her cat form, but he didn’t want to be an accessory to the killing of animals.
 
The thought disgusted him, reminding him that although she looked as human as his own people did, she was very different.
 
His people never killed, for any reason.
 

He browsed as the light grew stronger, and eventually she appeared, licking her lips, a satisfied expression in her eyes.

He looked at her for a moment,
then
decided he might as well discover if he could trust her now as later.
 
Besides, since she’d just eaten, this was probably the safest time to test her.
 
He shifted to his human form.

“We need to find a safe place to rest,” he said.

Green-gold eyes regarded him thoughtfully.
 
Then she shifted, and the same eyes gazed back at him from a human face.

“I can climb into a tree.
 
That is safest for me.
 
But your people don’t climb trees.”

“No, we don’t.
 
But I believe there is a safe house nearby.”

She blinked.
 
“A safe house?”

“A building we use to sleep in when we discover we’ve ranged too far afield.
 
The safe

houses
were built by the Ancestors centuries ago, and we still use them for protection when we find ourselves in the neutral territory at nighttime.
 
It’s not always feasible to return to Antler lands before the sun sets.”

Her upper lip curled with scorn.
 
“So you wander in the woods, playing at being wild, but you daren’t sleep there?
 
How very far from the forest your people have grown.”

Anger bubbled up within him, along with the memory of being surrounded by snarling Claw.
 
He’d roamed the forest since he made his first shift to animal form at age five, and only been attacked once, but the memory of that day was more than enough to make him cautious.
 
“We don’t enjoy being eaten.”

“We take our chances,” she replied.
 
“We
live
.
 
That is what taking an animal’s form
is all
about.
 
Otherwise you might as well remain in your human form all your days.”

He snorted.
 
“Perhaps you like to risk your life, but I don’t.
 
This close to Pack land, I prefer the safe house.”

She looked disgusted, almost contemptuous, but she shrugged.
 
“Very well.
 
Lead on.”

He had rarely come this far into the forest, but his memory was excellent, and he found the safe house in moments.
 
It was disguised so that it appeared almost a thicket in the woods, yet once they were inside a light flashed on automatically, and stout silvery stone walls stood between them and predators.

Katara looked around with disdain.
 
“This is the residence of cowards.”

Annoyance made his skin ripple involuntarily.
 
With an effort, he managed to stop himself from shifting again.
 
“What you see as cowardice,” he said, barely keeping his voice even, “my people see as prudence.”

“Prudence is but another word for cowardice.
 
My people would rip me to pieces if they knew I had slept in a place such as this.
 
They would say it proved I had lost my claws.
 
And they would be right.”

Hart grinned coldly, refusing to let her contempt irritate him into shifting.
 
He didn’t want her to know that her opinion meant anything to him.
 
“I have no claws to lose.”

“That,” she responded with ice in her voice, “is more than obvious.”

Hart felt his skin ripple again.
 
He turned away from her, looking at the small room.
 
It was but sparsely furnished, with two small chairs and a table in the middle of the room, and a lone narrow cot against the wall.
 
An odd litter of sticks, rocks, and rope cluttered the floor, but it was the cot that drew his attention.
 
The idea of sleeping in a small chamber with the Claw caused lust and fear to struggle deep within him like two stags battling for supremacy.