At last Perron stopped and gave his body a little shake, muscles rippling beneath her. Sherrie dismounted. She patted the big animal's back, and he turned his head to look at her with eyes that glittered like reflectors. He opened his mouth and gave a hair-raising cry that brought Walker bounding over. The wolf's hackles rose, and he growled threateningly.
Grant hissed before slinking away into the woods. Sherri watched him disappear then turned to find John already changing back into human form. He lay on the ground, hands braced where his paws had been, breathing hard.
Sherrie crouched beside him to touch his heaving back. "Are you all right?" He nodded without speaking.
"I don't know why you do it when it's clearly so painful." She rubbed his smooth, solid shoulder-all skin, no fur.
He looked up at her, eyes warm and human once more. "I couldn't live without my other half. It's not a choice."
Rising, he took the backpack from her and rummaged through it for his clothes.
"So, did you like your ride?" His voice was muffled as he pulled a T-shirt over his head.
"I guess. Where'd he go, anyway?"
"Hunting for breakfast, I suppose."
Her stomach rumbled at the word. John pulled a few power bars and juice boxes from the pack and offered them to her. "Hope it's enough to fill you up. I didn't want to pack too much."
"This is fine. Thanks." She drank deeply of the tepid juice and wolfed down a bar in a few bites. John opened one of the foil-wrapped bars, but didn't take a bite. He toyed with the wrapping and stared at the ground until the silence between them grew painful.
"Sherrie, did something happen at the cabin when I was gone?"
"Something like what?" She was annoyed that a pang of guilt shot through her.
He met her gaze with his concerned brown eyes, his head slightly cocked. "You know what I mean.
With Perron."
"I don't think you have any right to ask me. It's not really your business," she replied stiffly.
"So you did." His gaze was so intense it made her stomach flip, and in that moment she saw the wolf as clearly as if he'd shifted.
"Not like you're thinking. Not physically." She sighed, seeing the hurt flicker across his face and knowing she had to tell the truth. "I was drawn to Grant in the same way I am to you. This desire is outside the realm of normal. Like your shifting. The urge to … connect with each of you seems to be beyond my control. And it seems to be changing me."
"How?"
She shook her head. "I don't know exactly, but I can feel it. My senses are more open, and my mind expanded. It's like I'm seeing things clearly for the first time."
She crumpled the power bar foil in her fist, wishing she didn't have to hurt him, willing him to understand. "I was with Grant, sexually, in my dreams or maybe on an astral plane. It was as vivid as real life."
There was no need to add she'd felt the physical results later, or that she'd felt even more empowered by that encounter than she had after having sex with John.
"Sex in your dreams," he repeated quietly, looking past her at the trees.
She got up and knelt before him, putting her hands on his. "Listen. This isn't about romance or commitment or which one of you I like better. Honestly, I don't know either of you well enough to make some kind of emotional bond so soon. This is about a crazy lust that feels like it's coming from beyond me and, strange as it sounds, I think it's part of why I'm here."
"To fuck shifters?" His tone was as bitter as coffee grounds.
"To build energy for whatever lies ahead. The joining with you and with Grant felt right, even necessary, and I refuse to be apologetic about it."
He nodded once, a single bob signaling he acknowledged but didn't like what she had to say. "Fair enough."
Her chest ached. Despite her declaration that she had no emotional investment in John, her heart seemed to have other ideas. She liked him a lot and didn't want to hurt him. She stroked her hands from his wrists up his arms to his shoulders and nudged her body between his knees. Peering into his eyes, she felt another flicker of something more than lust shimmer through her body.
His arms went around her back, drawing her closer, and his lips descended on hers, touching lightly then sealing them in a firm kiss. He stroked her hair, settling his hand at the nape of her neck to support her head. It was a comforting gesture, and Sherrie felt she could remain content in his warm embrace for a long time.
A crash in the underbrush broke them apart. They turned to face the mountain lion leaping into the clearing. He landed with a flourish of his long, thick tail and almost instantly began to shimmer and change.
Sherrie froze with her arms around John's neck, watching the cougar face with its cocoa-trimmed muzzle and ears twist into human form. She didn't think she could ever grow accustomed to the bizarre sight.
When the transformation was finished, Perron stood naked before them, his tawny fur replaced by smooth skin, only his chest and stomach lightly furred with gold. Sherrie exhaled the breath she'd held. He really was an astonishingly beautiful man. In her embrace, John's body stiffened and he growled softly.
The last thing she needed was to deal with male jealousy right now. She squeezed his tense shoulders and rose to her feet.
"I scouted the area. Didn't find anything." Grant rummaged in the backpack for his jeans and pulled them on as he looked at Sherrie. "What do you think? You feel anything?"
"Me?" She was taken aback. Somehow she'd imagined one of them would have a plan once they got close to their destination.
"Yeah, you. Do you sense this guy? What's your radar telling you?" Sherrie closed her eyes and tried to calm the tumult of her thoughts. Breathing slowly, she let the buzzing energies inside her settle to a low hum and opened her mind to listen.
She felt the presence of her two companions- Earth and fire. Grounded and unpredictable-and the mountainside around her. Breeze, trees, leaves, rock, stone, animal bone. The little rhyme made her smile, but the experience was profound. She didn't simply feel air on her flesh or hear it in the trees; didn't merely feel the ground beneath her feet or smell pine trees. She experienced the woods around her as if they were a part of her very cells. As she expanded outward, she took in more and more of the world until she thought she could feel the stars whirling overhead and the sun rising inside her.
"Oh!" she gasped, eyes snapping open.
"What is it?" John was beside her, steadying her with a hand on her back.
Grant approached, still buttoning his shirt. "Got something?" Sherrie was giddy, blood rushing through her veins, mind racing as if she were on speed. "It was … wow!" She shook her head and tried a more lucid explanation. "I was outside of myself. I felt … everything, all around me."
"Great. So, look for him. Must be some kind of connection or you wouldn't be here. Reach out.
Hunt." The panther touched her arm lightly, and the moment he did, a jolt of energy shot through her. From John's hand on her back to Perron's hand on her arm, an arch of electricity crackled like lightning.
Sherrie gasped. Her gaze flew back and forth between the two men to see if they felt it too. Both pairs of eyes were as shocked as hers must be. John frowned, while a big smile curved the corners of Grant's mouth.
"What the hell?" John pulled his hand away, breaking the connection. Immediately, the electric charge fizzled and popped out like the delicate filament in an incandescent bulb breaking.
Sherrie blinked, stunned. Her body still thrummed with residual energy, and she felt she could fly to the moon and back by simply leaping off the ground like some comic book superhero: Shifter Avenger-
able to track down and destroy evil psychic monsters with her magic mojo.
Once more she closed her eyes and opened her mind. It was even easier this time to expand her consciousness and float outside herself. She searched the strands of life around her, the flora and fauna that covered the mountain, until she found a dark strand like a polluted stream in the landscape. It marked the natural fabric like a stain, and she followed the thread, searching for its source, already recognizing the evil vibration of the being she'd encountered in Liberty's mind.
As she neared her goal, she stopped. She could sense his smoggy presence, very close now, but was afraid to draw his attention to her like the eye of the evil dude in the Lord of the Rings movies. Could this being actually harm her here on this astral plane if he discovered her searching for him? It seemed his power was more of the mind than the body, and Sherrie wasn't about to get herself imprisoned in a coma like Liberty. She drew back and waited.
She focused on her quarry, felt his looming form near her-dark and dangerous, saturated with evil like pus oozing from a wound. Adrenaline rushing through her urged her to run, even though she wasn't in the physical world. This experience was vivid, like the sex with Grant had been. Her mind's eye was wide open, taking in the landscape around her. She began to get a sense of the place in the world where The Bad Man's corporeal form existed. There was a rocky outcropping, a deep ravine, a stream of water trickling over mossy stone, the mouth of a cave. If she saw the physical place, she would recognize it.