Saving Autumn (6 page)

Dressed, Chogan headed out into the city. He remembered seeing a pancake place near the lake, and figured he could use a stack of pancakes accompanied by a vat of coffee. He felt like it had been a very long time since he’d last eaten, and shifting always drained him of energy, leaving him ravenous.

As he walked, he passed a newsstand and something caught his attention. He grabbed a newspaper and stared at the headline—‘Are There Werewolves in Our Midst?’

His mouth had fallen into a gape, and he forced himself to shut it. Werewolves? Seriously? Did people think they shifted when the moon was full and went around ravaging virgins? Chogan frowned. Or had he muddled up that myth with vampires?

It suddenly hit him just how little people understood about what they were. People thought them monsters when they were spiritual creatures. What on earth had made him think people would automatically understand? He realized his first television appearance may not be his last. He needed to take command, and a way of doing so would be by harnessing the media.

The number of nutcases around made his job more difficult. He’d need someone who would take him seriously. His thoughts went to the redheaded reporter he’d met outside of the government building, the one who’d first captured his shift on camera. She was the person he’d need to go to in order to put his point across to the public. 

If he wasn’t careful, this litany of hatred would spread from Chicago to other cities as well. He needed to put a stop to it or this whole thing would spiral out of his control.

Chapter Six

THE PHONE CALL from Mia and Peter had taken them by surprise.

Autumn had only caught half of the information, something about them being at Toby’s house and Toby having found out something they needed to know. Blake had been the one to speak to Peter, but after Autumn’s initial thrill at her friend spending time with Peter
Haverly, she found the excitement quickly solidified in her stomach and turned to dread. Peter said he couldn’t discuss things on the phone.

They’d left right away and were now heading across the city.

The city’s traffic drew to a standstill, a row of cars lined up ahead. They joined the back of the queue and waited, but the traffic didn’t budge. Blake sighed in frustration, his fingers tapping the wheel of the car he’d rented a couple of days earlier in order to help him cover a bigger distance in his search for his cousin. Autumn glanced at his profile, but he stared straight ahead, his lips pressed tight together.

People began to get out of their vehicles, standing beside their open car doors to try to get a better view.

“What’s going on?” asked Autumn, straining her neck to try to see farther ahead. “Do you think there’s been an accident of some kind?”

Blake frowned. “I’m not sure. Let me check.”

She’d expected him to join the others by getting out of the car, but instead, his features smoothed over, his eyes no longer seeming to see his direct surroundings, his full bottom lip falling slack.

He’s making contact with his wolf guide,
she realized.
Sending the animal to relate back what lay ahead.
She stared at him, trying to imagine what was going on in his head. How amazing to be able to see the world through another set of eyes. Would she ever get used to the things he was able to do?

He came back around, his eyes refocusing. The hard expression had returned to his face.

“We need to get out of here.” He twisted around, slung his arm over the back of her seat, and shifted the car into reverse. But as he began to back up, another vehicle pulled in behind them, blocking them in. “Shit.”

“What is it? What’s wrong?”

“Trouble is heading our way.”

Baffled, she asked, “What do you mean? Has there been an accident?”

His nostrils flared. “Not yet, there hasn’t.”

Through the open driver’s window, Autumn became aware of voices, muffled shouting that rose in a crescent, becoming clearer. A chanting. She sat up straighter in her seat and the cause of the noise came into view. A crowd of people walked down
the middle of the road, blocking the traffic. They held placards on sticks, thrusting them into the air as they shouted.

Autumn frowned. A protest of some kind. She’d not heard of anything going on in the city today. The crowd was still too far away for her to read the placards.

She glanced at Blake’s face. His jaw was locked tight, his normally generous mouth thinned. A line of worry had appeared between his brows.
Why is a simple protest bothering him so much?
It didn’t look as if things were going to get violent.

But then the people got close enough for her to be able to read what had been written on the signs.

Shifters are Freaks!

Kill the Mutants!

Humanity is Sacred!

Men, not Monsters!

“Oh, my, God,” she breathed, and instinctively reached across to twine her fingers with Blake’s, giving his hand a squeeze of reassurance that was as much for herself as him.

Someone yelled out from the street, “You’re protesting against a fairy story.” A ripple of laughter chased the comment, but another yell followed. “Bullshit! They’re real. I saw them for myself.”

Autumn’s eyes sought out the new shouter. She thought she recognized the young man as having been from the crowd that had gathered outside of the government building when she’d raced out with Blake on the stretcher and into the back of the ambulance.

Suddenly, people began to cry out in alarm, backing away and pushing past each other. Autumn turned her head to try to spot the cause.

A huge lioness came at a sprint from around the corner, muscles rippling beneath amber fur. Her upper lip curled in a snarl to reveal long, white canines. Bystanders screamed and turned, shoving to get away, while others stood staring at the spectacle before them. She lifted her massive paws, standing on two legs briefly to swipe at one of the signs that read ‘Death to Mutants’. She tore the wood from the man’s grip and slammed it to the ground. Lowering her face, she ripped the sign to pieces with her lethally sharp teeth, as though it were made from no more than tissue paper. The wind caught the pieces and blew them down the street like confetti.

One of the protesters, a man, flipped his placard over and lifted the wooden stick above his head. He brought it down brutally across the animal’s back. The lioness buckled in the middle at the impact, but quickly recovered and sprang back around, snarling.

People began to look up at the sky and Autumn did the same, peering up through the windshield.

A bird, a giant white snowy owl, blocked out the sky. The bird let out a screech and dived for the man with the stick, its sharp talons outstretched. It hit the man with a flurry of beating wings, screeches filling the air.

Chaos erupted all around them. People jumped back in their cars and tried to reverse in the gridlocked traffic. The squeal of metal on metal joined the animals’ cries as people behind the wheels tried to get away, crumpling fenders as they did so. Those on the street either stood and gaped, or turned and ran, pushing and shoving those around them. A couple of young guys pushed a middle-aged woman. She fell to the ground, her arms covering her head as people ran like a herd around her, taking no notice if they stomped on her back, head, and neck.

Blake opened the car door. Autumn grabbed his hand again and tried to yank him back. “What are you doing?”

“I can’t let this continue.”

“What are you going to do by yourself? Don’t get involved, Blake!”

He shook his head. “I’m already involved.”

Her heart lurched. She didn’t want to see him get hurt again. “You’re recovering from three gunshot wounds. Another injury could put you back in the hospital, and then what good would you be?”

He turned on her, his dark eyes fierce, his upper lip curled in a snarl. He shook her off. “These are my people. You don’t get to tell me what to do.”

She sat back in her seat as if he had slapped her. There was aggression in his face, a hardness she’d not seen in him before.

“Move over to the driver’s side, and as soon as the traffic moves, get out of here. Go to my apartment and I’ll meet you there as soon as I can.” With that, he slammed the door shut.

She watched with her heart pounding as he stood in the busy street and began to remove his clothes. People who had been watching the fight, or were also caught in the traffic, cast confused glances at the big man who appeared to be stripping in public. The confusion turned to fear as Blake lowered his massive, naked shoulders, swirled in tribal tattoos, and his skin began to ripple.

Oh, Blake. I hope you know what you’re doing …

He was giving up his anonymity. People would have no doubt when it came to knowing exactly what he was.

Before them, the crowd of protestors had begun to overpower the lioness, lifting their make-shift weapons to beat down upon the shifter. Autumn caught sight of the occasional paw swipe upward, the flash of white teeth as she tried to lash out at the people. From above, the owl continued its attack, lifting one of the smaller protestors—a skinny male in his early twenties—by the arm and managing to hoist him into the air a couple of yards before dropping him back down again. The man hit one of his comrades and they both collapsed to the ground.

Tearing her eyes away from the horrific scene, she focused her attention to Blake. Silver and black fur had begun to spring from his chestnut skin, the shape of his shoulders changed, his neck elongated. Ears unfolded from the top of his head, his human hair vanishing in a pelt of fur. His face was no longer recognizable as a man’s, his jaw lengthened into a muzzle. The hard bottom she’d been digging her nails into only hours earlier had completely vanished, replaced by the hind legs and long tail of a wolf.

His change was complete.

Blake twisted his neck toward her to regard her with his deep, amber eyes. Her breath caught. There was warning in those beautiful eyes, something she instinctively read as ‘stay where you are.’ But there was also danger, and the aggression she’d recognized in his human eyes.

Would this fight—and she didn’t mean the one happening in front of them now, but the conflict Chogan had created between humans and shifters—change him? He’d spent most of his adult life in a military situation, and now that Dumas was dead, Blake found himself without a job. His role in life had been taken from him. Plus, back at the government building, he’d been forced to keep his true identity a secret and allowed Dumas to harm other shifters. Perhaps now he’d finally decided he’d had enough. If he had to choose between humans and shifters, he’d choose the shifters every time.

The question was, where did that leave her?

BLAKE SHOOK HIS fur and bounded toward the action. Though the lioness was big, in wolf form, he dwarfed her. Several of the protestors saw him coming, their eyes widening in horror before they turned and ran. Those caught up in the bloodlust were too intent on hurting the female lion, and it wasn’t until he was upon them that they even noticed his presence. The iron tang of blood filled his nostrils, the scent of the human’s violence like a bitter flood down the back of his throat. In the distance, his sharp ears picked up the wail of sirens heading toward them. He was surprised the cops had taken this long to get here.

His teeth closed around the arm of the man who had initiated the violence, snapping him around so the man spun away and fell to the ground. Though he wanted to, Blake refused to kill any of these people. All he wanted was to get the lioness shifter away from danger. Using his brute strength, he pushed the other men and women away, snarling at them, snapping, causing more noise and threats than anything else.

Pain crashed through his hind quarters as someone brought the flat side of their placard down upon his lower back. He spun around snarling, and brought his paw down on the protestors sign, pinning it to the ground. The man holding the other end tried to tug it away, once, twice, his eyes wide and locked with Blake’s. Blake lifted his upper lip, revealing his huge canines. The man dropped the end of the post and took a couple of staggered steps backward, turned and ran.

The approaching sirens grew louder. The protesters dispersed, leaving the lioness bloodied on the road. She lifted her head and mewled in pain. Anger burst through him. What had she done to deserve this?

Unable to get the police cars through the gridlocked traffic, they’d had to pull up at the end of the street. He heard the combination of heavily booted feet smacking against the sidewalk, together with shouts to “Get back.”

He had to get the shifter out of there.

The owl took off into the air—an easy escape. People shaded their eyes to watch the bird go. Blake locked his jaws around the back of the lion’s neck, catching the scruff in his teeth and, hoping he wasn’t hurting her any more than he had to, dragged her away from the main street.

The crowds had fled at the sight of the huge wolf dragging the injured lion. No one made any attempt to follow them as he dragged the big cat into an alley and deposited her behind the side of some large dumpsters, big enough to hide most of their bodies from the view of anyone who might have passed by on the main street.

Her body shuddered, the fur rippling in a wave, dissolving into the skin as it did so.

She might know something about Chogan.
He wanted to question her, if she was in any state to answer his questions, but he couldn’t do so in wolf form.

Following the woman’s lead, Blake concentrated and willed the wolf’s spirit from his body. He felt the disconnection like a change in pressure, lightening somehow. His consciousness split in two as once again he was aware of both his own senses and those of his spirit guide. Agonizing pain ripped through his body and he struggled to hold in the yell of anguish threatening to burst from his lungs, not wanting to attract any attention to their hiding place. His body changed shape, his hind legs becoming human once more so he was crouched on the ground. His muzzle shrank and flattened, his teeth rounding. Front paws elongated to fingers, thick fur vanished to reveal skin.

Blake rose to standing.

The woman beside him had also shifted back, and now crouched on the ground, her arms wrapped around her body to hide her nakedness. She was in her mid-thirties, with honey-colored curls and green eyes. But though she was both pretty and naked, that wasn’t what caught his attention. Her creamy skin was mottled in bruises, already turning a rainbow shade of blues, greens, and purples. The worst were on her lower back and spreading around to her hips. The sight made him wince. At least, being a shifter, she would heal in less than a day, though she was going to find it difficult to lie down comfortably anytime soon.