“Foxes?” I asked.
“No.” Sawyer tensed, muscles gliding beneath marked skin. The tattoos seemed to live, to breathe, even dance. Since they were magic tattoos, fashioned by a sorcerer wielding lightning rather than a biker guy with a needle and ink, dancing wasn’t completely out of the question.
Shadows flickered, meeting, melding, then separating into strangely hunched figures that moved with a rolling yet oddly jerky gait.
“What are they?” I whispered.
“Hyenas,” Sawyer said, even as their hair-raising laughter rose again toward the moon.
“In New Mexico,” I clarified.
Sawyer cast me a quick, unreadable glance. “They aren’t real hyenas.”
“Duh,” I muttered, my gaze returning to the steadily multiplying shades.
Sawyer and I had no weapons but ourselves. Good thing we were pretty amazing.
I reached for his biceps where the image of a black wolf howled. But Sawyer stopped me with a quick shake of his head as he circled my wrist and drew my hand much, much lower.
For an instant I resisted. This was no time to play with the snake; then Sawyer spoke. “The only animals the hyenas fear are the big cats.”
My gaze lit on his thigh, where the image of a tiger roamed. I laid my palm on Sawyer’s leg, high up where his pulse beat thick and heavy.
“I hope you’re right,” I said.
CHAPTER 10
The flash came again—bright light and icy heat, the whoosh of the breeze as I fell. I’d never changed into a tiger, wasn’t sure what to expect.
I’d discovered over time that shape-shifting—at least for skinwalkers—had nothing to do with our human shape. When I was a wolf, I was a wolf. Less than a hundred pounds despite being quite a bit over a hundred pounds as a human. As a snake, I was a regular-sized snake. As a tiger, I appeared to be one big mother—maybe three hundred pounds if the size of my paws and the drag of flesh on my bones was any indication.
A second flash drew my attention to Sawyer. Damn, he was gorgeous. Orange coat, brown stripes, sleek, muscular and even bigger than me.
The hyenas were toast.
Unfortunately, they didn’t appear to see it that way. Instead of running for their lives as a good hyena should when confronted with a tiger, they surged forward.
Sure, there were a bazillion of them. But tigers were mean if the roiling, burning fury that pulsed in my blood was any indication. Seeing the hyenas here, on my land, my place, my territory, made me want to crunch their bones like uncooked spaghetti.
The pack came at us like a wave. I went with my instincts; they were all I had. One swipe from my mammoth paw and the first hyena’s neck broke. I sank my teeth into the throat of another and twisted, then just kept smacking and tearing, snatching and yanking, mowing through the throng on the left as Sawyer did the same from the right. With any luck, we’d meet in the middle unscathed.
If I’d been nothing more than human I would have died. I had no idea what killed a hyena shifter—silver, gold, bullets, knives, strangulation with the cursed entrails of a billy goat. However, a fight to the death between shifters works nearly every time, and the telltale burst of ash from each hyena proved it was working just fine right now.
That was the good news. The bad news? There were too many of them. They were legion—again.
They tag-teamed us. I began to bleed. Would a skinwalker die if bled to death by the wounds of another shifter? I didn’t know.
What I did know was that to kill me, they had to kill not only my skinwalker nature but my dhampir and vampire natures as well. Not that it couldn’t be done. It would just take time. But from the number of hyenas tumbling over the dunes, time was on their side.
What should we do? I thought.
Sawyer replied, Keep fighting. Help will arrive.
Help? From where? What? Who? How? And most important—when?
Two hyenas engaged me from the front, and as I smacked them around, a third snagged my leg and clamped down. Hyenas have the most powerful jaws in the animal kingdom. I roared as bones snapped.
The thunder of my call made the shifter flinch, and I pulled away. But I was hurt, couldn’t move as fast, wouldn’t heal completely until I shifted back into my human form, which I couldn’t do with an army of hyenas all around.
Sawyer jabbed and parried, tossing animals willy-nilly. He was bleeding too; one particularly nasty wound flapped open on his shoulder, making him gimp as badly as I did. I began to get a little scared. We weren’t going to last forever.
Help! I thought. A plea. A prayer. Right now, not much more than a platitude.
Then a roar split the heavens. Everyone froze, glanced upward. I almost expected to see fire raining down. Perhaps a huge celestial hand sweeping from the sky and scooping Sawyer and me to safety.
Hey, I had lost a lot of blood.