Spirits Shared (17 page)

Clay felt his heart then, pounding and
racing. His lungs seized at the possibility he was in a coma as a
result of the car going off the road, and the last day had been an
intense erotic fantasy because his brain couldn't cope with
reality.

Stay with me
!
Jessica's in
trouble.
The claws tightened on his back.
This is real,
Clay. Accept it. Follow the bond to Jessica.

Clay thought of Jessica and her terror
punched into him.

He'd deal with this weirdness later—or
not.

Jess was more important and she was fighting
for her life. He knew where she was—not a location he could
pinpoint on a map or a place he could envision—but a destination he
could get to all the same.

Her spirit was linked to his and Tekoa's by
long, honey-gold strands that made him think of the two cups Tekoa
had taken from the fireplace mantel.

He asked,
Do you know what's happening to
her?

No.

No?

The talons in his back loosened and then
disengaged.
Focus
.

A downward sweep of wings as powerful as the
ones he now seemed to posses and Tekoa pulled away, leaving the
clouds swirling angrily and thunder in his wake.

* * * * *

Jessica landed on her knees. The gun
fired.

Missed
! her mind shouted in victory
an instant before she became aware of the searing heat where the
bullet had grazed her back. She scrambled into the woods, not
caring whether she used her hands or her knees or her feet to get
something between her and the gun.

A bullet ricocheted off a tree. A second one
followed. Did that mean he had six left? Seven? A dozen?

He got out of the truck and screamed
profanities. She darted forward, dodging the trees, her breath loud
and fast.

A sane person would have let her go. But he
was incensed, trapped—a man with a great capacity for violence and
nothing to lose. He crashed after her, venting his rage with
promises about what he'd do to her once he caught her.

She ran and slid and fought to keep from
being a target. The clouds gathered and roiled above her as if they
were reacting to the life and death struggle taking place beneath
them.

The wind picked up. It whipped through the
thinning trees, driving her forward and sideways.

Jessica stumbled. Her hands hit the ground
but she kept going, fighting against slick leaves, barely looking
up until suddenly confronted with open space. Panic filled her at
the sight of the fallow field with its rutted grooves. She'd never
make it across before he got close enough to shoot.

He was behind her, closing in. There was no
backtracking, no going forward. She ran along the edge of the field
and tried to put as much distance as she could between them without
having to dodge the trees. She prayed that she was heading in the
direction of the paved road and that she'd be able to duck back
into the woods before he emerged.

Lightning flashed, closer now. The air
charged with power.

Her lungs burned. Pain stabbed through her
side.

She risked a glance over her shoulder. Her
foot hit a soft muddy spot and she pitched forward.

Even before she scrambled to her feet she
knew she was in trouble. Her right ankle gave. She stood again,
endured excruciating pain for several steps before going to her
knees to crawl into the woods.

There was a shout of triumph. A bullet
struck a tree in front of her. "Stop right there, bitch, on your
hands and knees where you belong." She stopped though every
instinct demanded she stagger to her feet and run.

She braced herself, expecting a bullet to
strike her. Nausea pumped into her throat with each heartbeat. Sex
was the only weapon she had left to fight with. She couldn't outrun
him, not now, not when she could barely stand.

If he thought he'd won…

If she could only endure…

There'd be an opportunity when he…when he
was weakened, unfocused…

Maybe she could get the gun…

She didn't let herself think about what
would happen when he got to her, how badly he'd hurt her before
getting down to the business of raping her. She didn't let herself
think about anything except the importance of surviving. Whatever
happened she'd rather be alive than dead.

And if she didn't make it…

* * * * *

Chapter
9

Clay and Tekoa had each other. She flashed
back to those moments in the diner.

She'd wondered if she could accept that
she'd never be enough for Clay, the same way she'd accepted that
because she wasn't beautiful enough, talented enough, outgoing
enough to win the beauty pageants that meant everything to her
mother, that her mother had replaced her with Ashley, the same way
she'd accepted that loving her wasn't enough to keep her father
around, or keep her an important part of his life after he'd
married Marie with her three sons.

Foolish thoughts, foolish feelings. Her own
sense of worth and completeness couldn't depend on being the most
important person in someone else's world. It had to come from
within.

She'd wondered if she could keep risking her
heart when
The Revelation
had nearly crushed it, if she
could share herself, share Clay, and she was glad that in the end
she'd answered yes, that she'd taken a chance on love.

If she could just survive this…

A roiling, black mass of clouds headed
toward her, reminding her of the ones she'd seen after passing
between the totem poles when she was desperate to find help for
Clay. Thunder exploded, boom after boom after boom.

She rose onto her knees. The shirt and
jacket she'd undone in the car parted and even through the pounding
rain, out of the corner of her eye she saw the convict focus on her
exposed breasts.

His hand went to his fly though he didn't
unzip his pants again. A downdraft nearly forced her to the
ground.

Lightning flashed in one furious thrust
after another, charging the air with violence, blasting the ground
in front of her like an unnatural line of gun fire moving toward
the convict. Her would-be rapist tried to dodge but a bolt struck
him in the chest.

He screamed and flew backward. And the
lightning continued to strike, bolt after bolt after bolt.

She glanced upward and her imagination
conjured two Thunderbirds hovering in the sky, protective spirits
who'd come with the storm and saved her life. Her heart soared,
wanting to merge with them, almost feeling as if she could.

Tears blurred her vision. She blinked and
there were only dark, turbulent clouds, the sense of a powerful
storm overhead and the contradictory feeling that a part of it was
moving away.

She got slowly to her feet, careful not to
put weight on her right foot. She was shaking. From fear, from
relief, from the frigid rain striking her bare chest and from her
soaked clothing. With trembling fingers she buttoned the shirt and
zipped the jacket.

Her attacker was dead. He had to be
dead.

Needing the truck keys, she hobbled forward,
stifling a cry with each jarring, painful step, stopping yards away
from the dead man.

His chest was cratered, as if in fact he had
been struck by dozens of bullets. His eyes were open, staring
sightlessly into the sky as rain pounded his face.

Jessica glanced upward and found only dark,
turbulent clouds. Was it really her imagination that had conjured
the Thunderbirds? She couldn't help but think of the totem poles,
the phantom drumbeats, the lighting's unnatural, targeted
strikes.

The logical part of her argued that the
Thunderbirds had been a powerful hallucination brought on when
absolute terror gave way to overwhelming relief. But the part of
her that accepted Tekoa's ability to heal Clay through a sing, the
part of her that had
felt
the Thunderbird's presence both
when Tekoa had made love to her on the rug in front of the
fireplace and when she'd been looking at the mist-shrouded totem
poles, that part of her believed that somehow, someway, when she'd
accepted Tekoa as her lover she'd become connected to the
Thunderbird's spirit.

Warmth slid through her, reminding her of
the drink Clay had given her on Tekoa's porch when she was
shivering and cold and frightened by the future. Tears choked her,
happy grateful tears that she had a future to look forward to. The
truth about the Thunderbirds could wait, what she needed now was to
get home.

Home. She knew where that was now, with
Tekoa and Clay. And to get there, she needed to return to the
truck, but before that, she needed the keys and couldn't assume
they'd been left in the ignition.

She took a step toward the dead convict. A
sob of pain accompanied the burn in her eyes.

She could do this. She would go through his
pockets.

She wanted to go home. She wanted to take a
shower and then climb into bed with Clay and Tekoa. She wanted
their hot bodies pressed to hers. She wanted to hear them whisper
words of love and tell her everything was okay. She wanted it with
an intensity that consumed her.

She forced herself to take another step.
This time nausea swelled along with the pain. She looked around for
a stick and found one that would work as a crutch.

Thunder rumbled above her like a growled
warning. A gust of wind held her in place.

She tried to press forward. This time the
thunder was an angry splash of sound accompanied by more forceful
winds.

Jessica glanced upward and her heart jumped
toward the sky. There was no mistaking the Thunderbird this time.
It hovered in plain sight for timeless seconds, its gaze fixed on
her in a silent command to stay put.

She sunk to her knees as the feathers of
red, yellow, blue and white became roiling black clouds like the
ones that had whipped past her when she'd desperately sought help
for Clay.

Clay fought to stay in the form that was so
surreal it might have blown his mind if Jess's well-being wasn't at
stake.

Fuck! Even in his wild teen years when he'd
blacked-out, passed-out, and done his share of puking his guts out,
he'd never come close to something like this. Then again, back in
those days his recreational drug of choice had been alcohol instead
of acid or some other stupid-ass thing.

This whole experience would have rivaled a
Sixties trip down psychedelic lane—except how could he argue with
the sight below him and the aching, wrenching pain in his
heart?

He'd died inside when he'd seen Jessica on
her knees with her shirt and jacket hanging open.

Her terror and horror had been like a kick
in the gut with a steel-toed boot.

From his trailing position, he hadn't seen
the flashes come from Tekoa's eyes, but he knew enough about Native
American myths to know that's where the lightning had come from.
Fuck! Myth? He'd have to rethink that one, or better, let Jess do
it. That kind of thing fired her creative synapses.

It was all so un-fucking-believable. The
thunder, the wind-blown clouds, the lightning.

Amusement rippled through Clay despite his
frustration at not being able to do anything other than stand guard
over Jess until help that was closer than Tekoa's cabin arrived. He
could almost hear Tekoa saying, "Now don't try this at home, you
two, especially when I'm not around to guide you."

Clouds filtered in between Clay and Jess. An
updraft pushed him higher.

Cold seeped in and it was harder to think.
At the edge of his consciousness his human form lay stretched out
on the police cruiser's backseat.

His heart dropped through the clouds, driven
from his body by the fear that this was all some elaborate fantasy
from a head wound.

Then he noticed that his human self was
dressed in the borrowed sweatpants and his Seahawks sweatshirt, not
the jeans and flannel he'd been wearing when he and Jessica left
the diner.

Grayness crowded the edge of his vision. He
felt a tug deep inside, almost like he was a fish on a line. As
soon as he thought it he remembered the golden strands he'd
followed to Jessica and guessed this pull was Tekoa about to reel
him in.

Clay fought the call. He used the sweep of
wings to clear away some of the clouds so he could see Jess.

Two men emerged from the woods near where
Jess sat. From a distance one of them could have been Tekoa though
he wasn't. The other man glanced up and the knowledge was suddenly
there, inside Clay, that both men were whatever the hell he'd
become.

The tug came again, harder, but not
insistent.

Beneath him the first man reached Jess and
crouched next to her. "I'm Ukiah."

"The artist."

Worry melted away. She'd recognized the name
from some conversation she must have had with Tekoa.

"One and the same," Ukiah said. "And this is
Tenino, our cousin."

"The deputy."

Tenino crouched at her other side. "So he's
told you about us. You hurt? I smell blood."

"A bullet grazed my back and I did something
to my ankle. I can't walk very well."

"Lean forward," Tenino said. "Let me look at
your back."

Clay tried to move closer but the flap of
his wings filled the air with the boom of thunder and sent a gust
of wind slamming into Jess and the two men.

Ukiah glanced up with a patient expression
that reminded Clay of Jess when she was dealing with preschoolers
during a story reading.

He cringed and let the air buffet him and
carry him upward.

Ukiah removed Jess's shoe and sock, then
probed her ankle. She jerked and gave a soft cry.

Tenino said, "What's the damage?"

"Pretty severe sprain. Maybe a fracture.
We'd have to carry her out of here and chances are it'd swell a lot
more by the time we met up with Tekoa and Clay. You up for a
sing?"