Call of the Wild (9 page)

“Wow, I’m a shifter with an extremely fast metabolism and even I couldn’t eat all that,” said Marsha, when she saw the pile of food on his plate.

She was having a steak with cheesy fries and steamed broccoli. From what she could see, he had a steak, three pieces of fried chicken, along with French fries and potato salad. No green stuff on his plate at all.

“I don’t get food this good very often so I tend to dig in when I can. I have a pretty fast metabolism, too,” Aaron answered.

Marsha gave his frame the once over. His body seemed to be all muscle. Not too bulked up. He could probably buy shirts and jackets off the rack—just lots of lean, hard muscle.
Thump, thump, thump.

Squeezing her thighs together, she tried to concentrate on something else, anything else so her arousal wouldn’t spike. She didn’t need everyone in the room giving her the eye. Having Laura and Alexander—or as Laura called him Sasha—constantly hot for each other, did help hide her own situation. Newly mated, go figure.

She just needed to remember that even though Aaron was less of a jerk today than he was yesterday, he still wasn’t going to want to mate with a shifter. That would be taking things too far.

Marsha didn’t give a thought to her abundant curves. The looks he gave her said it all; he wasn’t turned off. She needed to make sure he was flirting because of interest, and not just because she had been giving him a hard time. Challenge flirting or interested flirting, time would tell.

After all the food was eaten and each of them had taken a break to stretch their legs, they all got back to work. No one wanted to stop at midday, which had been the original idea. Because Aaron’s strategy and ideas were so good, they didn’t need the extra thinking time. Instead, they wanted to use every available minute to refine. Then they could begin training the various teams.

“Well, we have a very workable plan,” said Alexander, at the end of a long day. “You’ll all have tonight to be with your families. Beginning tomorrow, all operational personnel will need to stay here in the Compound. Laura and Marsha will break you into our five main offensive groups. You can expect a text sometime tonight. I want to thank you all for participating today. As you know, this is just the first of many such meetings. As more of Laura’s intelligence is analyzed, there will be a need for others. This mission will be a wake-up call to both The Society and the Shayatin. It’s possible there will be an escalation of hostilities. We need to prepare for a backlash.”

“Do you feel we should step up the removal of our children to safety?” asked a voice from the end of the table. Aaron thought his name was Joseph.

“I don’t think we should vary from our current plan. If we’re seen to be making too many moves, our enemies will be alerted. They may change their timetable or attack in a different location altogether. We’ll coordinate an evacuation of children nationally, the same day we implement our counter-offensive in Marlinton,” Alexander proclaimed.

“I’m just glad it is summer, and they’re all out of school,” said another person.

The meeting broke up, and the room emptied quickly. As well appointed and comfortable as the room was, it had now been nearly ten hours. Sitting in chairs that long took a toll. Aaron stood and stretched out his back.

“I could use a run and then a steam. How about you?” he asked Marsha. She had finished her mini conference with Laura about the teams and was gathering her things.

“Yeah, I could use a run. I do my running shifted, though, so you’re on your own. Later!” she called out over her shoulder as she sailed out of the room.

Yeah, he was probably her mate. Still, he was human, so she decided to go after him the human way. He was going to have to chase her. Oh, wait, that was the shifter way. He was going to have to woo her. She wasn’t falling into bed with him right away either, no matter how much her body craved his touch.
Thump, thump, thump! Damn it!

She hurried down the hall to be out of sight when he came through the door. Yeah, she was ditching the hot guy. It was her first step in her master plan to catch him. Laura or someone else in the room must have waylaid him, because she made it to the stairwell before the door could open behind her.

Marsha dumped her notebook on her desk and then took off all of her clothes, dumping them in the laundry hamper. Opening the door to her closet, she pulled out a robe and put it on as she stepped into some generic flip-flops.

The Barbegazi family had dug a tunnel almost all the way through the mountain. They were mostly hibernating now, since they preferred cold, snowy weather. She reached the central hub and went into the shift chamber. After hanging up her robe and kicking off her flip-flops with all of the others, she called her shift. Within moments, a golden mountain lion stood where the curvy woman had been. It took her another twenty minutes to get through the long tunnel to the entrance they affectionately called the back door. The entrance was in the back of a natural cave, and was hidden from view. Still, they kept sentries on duty as all entrances needed to be guarded.

Of course, there were also fiber-optic cables strung up throughout the facility. The Barbegazi were able to embed it within the rock using their magic. She defied anyone to find lenses the size of a pin-head when looking at the cave wall. If there was also sound monitoring, she didn’t know. It wasn’t her area of responsibility. The place was huge, and she was still learning her way around.

She trotted past the sentry, giving him a nod of her head. The sentry was another cat—good. If any humans saw her exiting the cave, they would assume it was the same animal. Humans were smart enough to stay away from wild animals…generally. It wasn’t as if they could take a good look under their tails. Of course, there were always those tag and release scientists. Shifters stayed clear, the ragging you got when you came home with a big yellow tag in your ear and a radio collar was awful.

She made a chuffing sound, her cougar version of a chuckle, and picked up her speed once she left the cave. She wanted a long run; she dodged through the trees and headed over to the next mountain. A meadow was there she liked where deer often came down to graze. She could run as much as she wanted, and maybe get a snack at the same time.

She didn’t really catch too many deer; cougars generally sat in trees and attacked from above. She just liked chasing things. She could always go to the cafeteria for dinner.

She ran for about an hour, slowing now and then when she felt like it. She had no particular direction in mind. She needed to think, and running was her favorite method. When she was human, her body was too short and too round to run far. In this form, she felt she could run forever.

When playtime was over, she jumped up into a tree and stretched out on a limb. Shutting her eyes, she thought about her mate. Well, her potential mate. Until they sealed the bond with the aid of a priestess of the lady, they weren’t mated. She needed to decide how she wanted their courtship to proceed. She’d already made the decision to let him chase her. Now she needed to decide how long she was going to hold out on sex.

He wouldn’t be the only one suffering. She really wanted to get in his pants. Marsha couldn’t wait to see if his package lived up to her expectations, and if his ass looked as good naked as it did in jeans. She needed to take into account her own lust when she considered how long she should hold out on sex…two days, three days? Crap, she was going to drive herself crazy.

About an hour before full dark, she headed back. The sun would set before she got to the cave entrance, but that was okay; in this form, she had excellent night vision. She hadn’t gone far when she emerged from some trees onto a path and was confronted by two men…with rifles…pointed at her.

She leapt to the left as the first one fired, then the other man also fired a half second later. She ran about a hundred feet before her movements became sluggish and the burning in her side overrode her burst of adrenaline. Needing to hide, she jumped up into the nearest tree. She almost didn’t make it, her right leg weaker than normal.

Using her strong front claws and her left hind leg, she pulled herself up the rest of the way, dragging the right leg behind her. Once she was settled on a branch about twelve feet above the ground, she took a moment to assess her injuries. She was feeling groggy and was worried about blood loss. She twisted her neck and could see where a bullet had hit. The wound was bleeding sluggishly and from the feel, the bullet was still inside her hip. The grogginess was being caused by the dart.

It was caught in her fur. She could tell it hadn’t impacted strongly enough to deliver its full payload. Either that or whatever drug was inside had been intended for a different animal.

She was about to see if she could pull the dart from her haunch with her mouth, when she heard the two hunters approaching. She froze, turning her ears to listen.

“Do you think we got one of them shifters, Earl?” asked a voice, coming from down the hill a ways.

“It better be a shifter, you idiot. Why did you shoot real bullets, Brad? I got it with the dart. All we’d have to do is track it down and take a blood sample. Now what if you shot a real cougar? It’s an endangered species, dummy. We’re here to find out if the locals are shifters, because this is the area the head guy went to. If we found another large community of shifters, this can be our next targeted area. But we don’t want to alert them, but if you shot a real cougar, we’ll have to track it and kill it and then hide the body,” said Earl.

“Sorry, Earl, I was just so surprised when it jumped onto the path,” Brad said contritely.

The Society respected animals, so long as they stayed animals and didn’t try to be humans. Their mission was to cleanse the earth of what they felt were abominations to God’s plan.

There was no more dangerous zealot than a religious zealot
, Marsha thought from her perch.

The two men were just coming into view. They were tracking her blood trail. She would have to get ready; they would find where the trail stopped soon enough. Luckily, the heavy foliage of the trees hid her from view. Of course, that meant she couldn’t see them very well either, so planning her attack was difficult. She had to get both of them, and needed to look like a true animal attack.

It seemed like an eternity but was, in fact, only moments later, when the two men came into view below her. She sprang before they could notice the blood trail had stopped and looked up. It was none too soon, as one of them turned his head up just before she hit him. Cougars generally took the throat of their prey to suffocate them. She was also pissed! As she latched onto his neck, she used her strong left hind leg to eviscerate him.

It only took seconds to crush his throat, and she was able to jump to the second man.

Brad couldn’t believe it when the big cat jumped down from the tree and hit him. He froze for a moment, and then realized if he didn’t do something, he was going to be next. He scrambled for his rifle, swinging it up just as the cougar leapt toward him. He fired a shot, only he would never know if it hit. He was dead before his body hit the ground.

Marsha checked to make sure both of the men were dead before she paid any attention to her own injuries. She was still a half hour from the caverns, but the shots would be investigated. When she tried to take a step, she discovered her left front foreleg was now out of commission. She screamed her frustration as she stumbled to the ground.

A cougar’s roar did sound like a woman’s scream, only a lot louder. She hoped anyone coming to investigate would hear it and hurry their asses up. She wanted an aspirin—or twenty. Better yet, a morphine drip sounded really good about now. She knew the scene would be investigated and photographs would be taken. She couldn’t shift and put a naked human footprint on the ground. With two bullets in her, she couldn’t shift anyway; they would have to be removed first. Luckily, the dart had fallen out when she jumped from the tree. She heard a distant wolf howl and screamed again in response.

Help was on the way.

Marsha woke up as she was being carried through the woods on a stretcher. She kept her eyes closed and took stock. She rested on her right side. She was bandaged and they must have given her something for the pain, because her hip only ached with each step instead of shooting agonizing pain through her body.

Opening her eyes, she let out a chuffing sound of inquiry. Surprised, the stretcher bobbled, then righted again.

“We’re almost at the back door, Marsha. We’ve got medical on standby to remove the bullets. We didn’t want to knock you out because it would delay your shift. You only need to hold on for a little longer,” the one at end of the stretcher said.

Closing her eyes, she let herself drift along. The next time she opened her eyes because she heard yelling. Well, that and because someone was digging the bullet out of her shoulder, and it hurt like a bitch.

“I want to see her right now! Either you move out of my way or I’ll move you,” said a voice she recognized as Aaron Donahue.

“You’d better let him in,” said the doctor. “I’ve got my hands full here. I don’t need another patient.”

Aaron rushed into the room where Marsha was being operated on. She let out a grunt just before there was a clink when the bullet dropped into a waiting pan.

“Good, that’s one. You can help me turn her over to get to the second one,” said the doctor, giving Aaron a look.