Feral Magic (8 page)

Her hands settled on his waistband, and she pulled.  A snap sounded and his leather trousers loosened.

Dak groaned.

His fly had buttons.  She took them one at a time, teasing him, feeling the length and thickness and strength of him.  Finally she slid the pants down his legs, gave in to her weak knees and sank herself.

He plucked her up and tossed her on the bed that rolled wildly under her.  Before it settled, he was on top of her, pushing her deep into the bed.

Plunging into her deep.  The pleasure ripped a scream from her throat.

He held still, stared at her, and she blinked to focus on his wide eyes, the flush along his cheeks.  "Bran-dy."

She made an affirmative sound in her throat.

He closed his eyes, and shuddered.  "Beauty.  Power.  Like moon, so good.  Best.  Want long, but cannot."

He filled her, delighting all the nerves of her inner muscles.

His broken words arrowed to all the soft points in her heart.  So short a time to open her affections to a man!

Slowly he moved, and the bed moved with them, increasing the momentum.  She grabbed him around his slick shoulders, dug in her fingernails and held on through the wild ride to the edge of the cliff of ecstasy.

And jumped off into pure bliss with him, screaming all the way.

A few minutes later he rolled until she was on top, limp against his body, her head against his collarbone.  His heart pounded, and her own pulse buzzed in her ears.  Slowly her mind came back online.  Fabulous sex.

Once in a lifetime experience.

She squashed the seedlings of emotional attachment to the man, choked back tears over his leaving.

*~*~*

Dak lay awake, guilt roiling through his mind, his heart.  He'd deliberately broken his resolve not to touch the woman.  To have her for a night, then leave, smirched his honor.  Though they had only spoken of engaging in sex, he was man enough to know when a woman looked at him with tenderness – more of the heart – in her eyes.

And he knew himself well enough to understand that he'd bonded with her slightly, too.  She had been the one constant, the helper, in this strange situation.

No, he had not acted honorably and to his own personal code, having only a night of sex with a woman with no klatch to protect her.  But he hadn't, quite, been able to resist her.

He stroked her, the curve from upper back, over her butt.  He wanted to sex with her now, a half-hour from now...spend the whole night moving with her, in her.

That would only spin the connection between them more strongly, mixing their bodily fluids and their heart essences.  Not right and not honorable.

So he rolled as gently as he could, causing small ripples in this bed, until he stood.  He inhaled the scent of
them
, held the arousing fragrance in his lungs, then let his breath out, and drew on the moon's power – that power almost as addicting as the woman.

He'd told her truly: she was the best lover he'd had for a long while, with the scent of her, the matching of their sexes, their loving, their orgasms.

Do not think of that.

He could not stay here, now, or he would stop thinking and only mate.  Hissing his breath out, he went to the washroom and scrubbed their scents away.  Then he padded down to the main room, picked up Favel, cradled him, inhaled his nephew's odor to remind himself of the gravity of his mission.

The flickering light of the red jewel – the portal sensor – caught his eye.  Not close, but within reach of the human vehicles, and not in the direction it had indicated earlier.

Perhaps even within reach of panther strides.  Dak was being given another chance to save his nephew and his klatch.  He wanted to check the distance, get an idea of the location.

And to run free and wild in this weird land...away from the city.  The direction was west this time, toward the mountains.  Interesting.  Tempting.

He put the baby next to Brandy, settled them both.  At the door he stopped, hand on knob, and studied at the woman and the child.  His heart squeezed hard as he acknowledged the small bond with the woman, as well as the huge one with the baby.   Hesitating, he decided not to close the door.  Brandy was accustomed to sleeping with it open – for her cats – and Favel always had a touch of claustrophobia.  Dak touched his nephew's mind with a parental command to
stay upstairs
, took the two strides to the hallway and leapt over the baby gate barring the steps and lit on the landing.

Outside he added even more spell wards to protect them, slipped the dimensional gate finder in his personal aura space and changed – to track and find the portal.

Bounding through the backyard and over the fence, he ran softly down the alley, the noise of the city hiding any small slap of paws on pavement, until he reached the sidewalk.  A large vehicle sped in front of him.  Muscles bunched, he leapt over it, landed in the alley across the small street.  That felt good, too. 
A screeching, smell of rubber, shouts came behind him.
  He ignored them.

He ran from the city and into foothills – farther away than they seemed.  Once away from the choking odor of vehicles and tech chemical smells that ladened the air and the mass of people smells, he enjoyed himself.  He'd miss Brandy, the beauty of Earth's moon, but not the planet itself.  Little wonder there were few shapeshifters here, they could have died out from the sheer fug of the world.

Higher and higher he rose in altitude, charging up hillsides instead of taking the slow and winding roads humans used.  The dirt and dry grass felt good under his paws.

His head whipped up as he scented cat.  Wild cat.  A few steps later he saw the prints.  Nearly as big as he.  His ears twitched in pleasure, his mouth opened in a cat-smile.  Yes.  Local, wild, big cats. 
Yes!

It gave him hope for Earth.

A warning growl.  He flicked his tail and was out of reach of the young male in a few stride lengths.  Though the cat was tough, he wasn't an intelligent pantherman.  And he didn't have magic.

Not many here did, the tech had crippled Earth so.

He let his cares fall away as he ran along the stream at the bottom of a canyon, splashing in and out as he wished to cool his paws.  Munched down a couple of fish.  Tasty.

The tingle of the dimensional portal came stronger – he was within an hour of it.  But he was tired, unaccustomed to running so far, so fast.  The moon had set and the sun would rise before he found the portal – and the gate continued to drift slowly and inexorably away.

Stopping, he yowled his distress and dug his claws into the summer dry ground.  For a long moment he lived in the now, as a panther did, feeling the opening and closing of his ribcage as he breathed, drew in all the fragrances of this place in the mountains: the stream and the life in it, the grass and other plants, the dirt.  He listened to the starsong and the fading moonsong, the static of the sun ready to paint long shadows across the planet as it turned.  He felt the grit embedded in his claws.  If he were a man, his eyes would have stung as he pivoted to return to the city.  And the man within him had to discipline the wild cat to go back.

But he knew his duty.  He ached for his nephew and the lady he'd left sleeping.

*~*~*

Brandy jerked from sleep, heart thumping hard, blinking in the bright yellow morning sunshine and trying to comprehend the noise that had awakened her.  The water bed shifted under her.

Dak was gone.  She
hated
that. 
Hated
when a man left her while she slept.

Ross hadn't awakened her that last wee-hours-of-the-morning time when he'd left for Afghanistan, and never came back.  The black past engulfed her.

A baby cried and she shook her head.  Another wail and then the frozen amber instant of the past shattered and she was back in the present.

Loud sobbing. 
Favel
.

She rolled from bed, slipping on an oversized tee and thin pajama pants.  She trotted toward the back storage room where Favel sat, tears dribbling down his face, fingers in his mouth, her two cats staring at him.  She got the idea he'd been exploring and they'd trapped him.

None of the three seemed damaged, which let her release a relieved breath.

Favel glanced up at her with big, light-brown eyes.

"Tom-Tom, Gypsy," she said sharply.  They turned, and
not
looking at her, strolled, tails up and waving – showing their sphincters to Favel? – they approached the baby gate that blocked the stairs down; jumping over it, they only went to the landing.

It is late in the morning and We NEED FOOD!
Tom-Tom snarled.

Brandy flinched.  It was a half hour later than she usually rose.

Foooooddd,
bawled Gypsy, both in her mind and an accompanying screech that hurt Brandy’s ears.

She just grunted.  Her face felt tight and itchy so she rubbed at it and found tear tracks.  Eh, that hadn't happened for a long time.

Neither had sex and her body felt achy.  If Dak was here, she'd be revved and happy; instead crankiness cloaked her.  She'd give him a piece of her mind when he got back.

She hauled the kid up and he wrapped his arms around her neck and set his head on her breasts, sobs subsiding.  Feeling for him gushed through her, almost banishing her irritation.  She
would
miss him.

Brandy knew Dak would return.  No way was he leaving his nephew here.  She would
not
worry that Dak might have found Bretine and was fighting her.  Might be losing.

No.

We need food!
Tom-Tom repeated.

Fooodd!
Gypsy whined.

FOOOOODD!!  WE NEED FOOODD!
chimed in Favel.

Whose side was he on, anyway?  Had to be done.  Food for baby and cats before a shower.

Hoping that the "spell" Dak had put on the baby gate to keep Favel safe let humans as well as cats through, and still thinking darkly of the man, she wrenched it open.  Her cats zoomed downstairs.  Even before she could speak with them mentally, they'd been sensitive to her moods.

Clumping downstairs, she slid Favel into the highchair, gave him a spoon to bang like all babies.  Belatedly she took a deep sniff.  Nope, his diaper was all right.  Not sure how that happened, but she wasn't questioning luck.

Favel watched as she fed the cats, whined himself when he saw meaty food being given to them and pouted when she didn't serve him from the same can.  Still peeved, she stomped to the refrigerator for Favel’s meat-grains-and-greens, a combination she and Dak had made the day before.  She tipped the mixture into a bowl and placed it on Favel's tray.

He did love the turkey.  So had Dak, a new taste treat for them both.

Favel squealed and dropped the spoon on the floor, went at the food with both hands, digging into the soft mess and slapping some into his grinning mouth.

She should have put a bib on him.

Brandy sighed and went to get a damp washcloth.

The cats had gobbled their food and howled for her to open the back door.  They preferred that instead of going through the cat door.  They zoomed through, entering the hot morning.

Since Favel's fingernails had turned into little claws, Brandy just watched as he ate.  She let him play with his food, smear it all around his face, and eat it himself, keeping a wary eye on those claws.  Dak had better come back soon.  He
knew
she couldn't take care of Favel alone – the baby, probably; the cub, pretty much, but the black panther shapeshifter?  No.  She'd be too rough or too gentle.

She could get hurt.

And Dak could tear her apart.  She really shouldn't forget that – or that both man and child were aliens.  Favel's claws growing and retracting at will reminded her of that.

There came an awesome fart-squishy-poop sound, a terrible smell, so she called breakfast done, took Favel up to the bathroom, bathed and diapered him.  He wriggled and scowled and grumbled and it was warm enough that she didn't put any more clothes on the little guy.  She finally took him down to the living room and put him under the upside down playpen and he calmed.

Really, he was odd.  So was Dak, and alien, and she should cut him a break, she supposed.  Couldn't be easy, figuring out how to get himself and the baby back to their own dimension, coping with a strange world.

A twinge went through her that soon Favel and Dak would be gone.  They'd certainly shaken up her life, and for the good.  She was determined to do more living, more living in the moment.  Socialize more.

Date, even.

Though she hoped Ross and Dak hadn't spoiled her for other men.

But she wouldn't go with a soldier or a warrior next time.  That just meant heartache.

The doorbell rang.  Brandy squinted through the peephole at two uniformed cops.  Acid pitched in her stomach.

She glanced at the large window with the shutters closed against the sun.  Favel sat up and stared at her with curious eyes from under the playpen.  She ran to it, flipped it over and put Favel back in.  Then she took a deep breath and opened the door, uncomfortable in her pajamas, but she didn't think she could take the time to put on something less revealing.

The shorter black woman stood in front of a large white guy.  He remained a pace away – so as not to frighten Brandy?  Both had their badges pinned to their light blue short-sleeved summer shirts.

"Officers?" Brandy asked.

"We are checking out rumors of a large cat roaming the neighborhood."

Brandy frowned.  "Both of my cats are big.  One is...plump, the other is big boned but long-haired so he seems bigger than he is.  I know they don't stay in the yard, but they both have collars and tags."

"And you are?"

"Brandy Svensson," she said promptly, knowing they'd probably already checked on the owner of the house.

"We are talking about a black panther."

This was not the time to inform them there was no such thing, a leopard or a jaguar, but no panther.

"A black panther!"  Brandy made her eyes wide.  "You mean like a big wildcat from the zoo or circus or something?"