Arabella laughed. “Yes, dearie, it’s me.” She did a quick pirouette on her hind legs, dancing backwards when Laine instinctively reached out to stroke her tawny hide. “Mustn’t touch. Dangerous.”
Arabella wasn’t anything like the fat, shaggy pony she’d been in sunlight or the artificial light of the stable. The weirdest thing about it was witnessing a pony talk. Her soft, flexible lips barely moved, yet Laine could understand her clearly. Having suffered through low-budget horror films starring werewolves and other talking animals, Laine might have expected to find it ridiculous.
It wasn’t. It was marvelous.
She realized her mouth was hanging open. She closed it and decided to keep it that way, and merely observe an actual cabyll ushtey who wasn’t trying to scare her shitless.
Arabella gleamed under the moonlight as if she were fashioned of shot silk. Her small body was a golden russet, her mane and tail white as snow. So different from Jaird’s wicked black bulk, she was ethereal, delicate. Laine feasted her eyes on Arabella’s horse persona as she had been terrified to do with Jaird.
Besides being absolutely lovely, she looked . . . odd. Elongated somehow, her muscles and bones joined in ways Laine couldn’t define. Her eyes were human-blue, direct and full of intelligence. When she laughed, as she did at Laine’s gawking, her open mouth revealed teeth smaller than a true horse’s.
Except for the canines.
Arabella’s canine teeth were long and sharp as a wolf’s.
A vegetarian diet sustains us . . . so Jaird Fallon had pompously declared. They might not need it, but maybe it was flesh they craved. Or perhaps it was a lie. Her desire to stroke the pony’s silken hide waned. She could picture Arabella whipping her head around to bite her hand off.
Arabella laughed and tossed her head. “Don’t worry, love. I won’t hurt you.”
No, Arabella wouldn’t. But Jaird Fallon could have ripped her to pieces in the forest.
She jumped as two humans appeared out of the gloom, but it was only Carlotta and Tommy Cardew, strolling arm-in-arm down the slope.
Of course—they were cabyll too. She realized that she’d seen them before as horses, in the paddock, calmly chewing hay and flicking away flies with their tails.
Laine wrapped her arms around her shoulders and held herself tight, feeling her rational mind recede into one small, primitive fear: she was surrounded by impossible creatures who could kill her in an instant, no matter how friendly they might appear. Even Arren.
But Carlotta and Tommy showed no signs of changing. She began to breathe again.
Carlotta said, “I trust you two have used your time wisely?”
Arren said, “I’ve told her . . . about myself, if that’s what you mean—”
Innis, who had been watching all this, broke in. He curled his lip. “He won’t like this at all. You all know that, don’t you?” He looked around at them, scorn on his face. Of course, realized Laine, he was Jaird.
“Another stallion in his territory. What do you suppose he’ll do?” Innis walked up and poked Arren in the chest. “Eh?” Arren growled but did not retaliate. Innis turned to Lottie and Tommy. “Do you old dears think you can change anything?”
Arabella’s ears went back, and she bared her teeth. “Watch your manners, boy.”
Innis chuckled deep in his throat. “Or what? I’ll do as I please.”
Laine cried, “Innis, shut up.” Innis ignored her. What was wrong with him? Arren’s hand on hers gripped harder in warning. He was trying to stay between her and Innis.
Arren watched Innis, who was circling restlessly and eyeing his sister.
Arren grabbed her around the shoulders and thrust her behind him. “Laine—don’t go near Innis, no matter what happens. Do you understand? He’s going to—”
“What?” Laine looked past Arren at Innis. “What’s happening?” Then her mouth snapped shut and she stood perfectly still.
Her brother had started to change. His feet were swirled in mist, which rose quickly to shroud his legs. She saw him bend and strip out of his clothes, saw him stand naked for a moment in the pale light. Then, with a lunge as if he were pouncing on something, he dropped to all fours and rolled, his compact form supple and quick on the thick grass. Laine saw the taller stems and weeds sway back and bend for him, the moonlight striping his skin with black and gold. Then it was skin no more: it was smooth velvety hide reflecting a dull gold sheen, with chocolate shadows where his rearranged muscles flexed.
His wavy blond hair grew and coiled down his neck. From his back, where a human’s vestigial tailbone would be, sprang a tail whose individual hairs had lives of their own. Each golden thread ended in a trail of mist that joined the river’s tendrils and flew around him as he rolled again and leapt to all four feet.
He glowed hot and golden under the moon. His human eyes blazed topaz-bronze, and he laughed as he pranced up to Arren and Laine.
Laine tried to shove Arren aside. “Innis! This is incredible . . . I can’t believe it.” She wanted so badly to touch him, just to make sure the miracle was true . . . but she’d been warned. She clasped her hands behind her back just in case.
Arabella was keeping a watchful eye on Innis, backing and wheeling to follow his movements. Innis reared and danced around the pasture, his hooves kicking up an astringent tang of grass and clover and mint. He circled closer, so beautiful, and Laine backed away.
Innis’s sharp front hooves flashed out, striking directly for Arren’s head. Arren ducked reflexively, and Innis took the advantage. He wheeled like lightning, his withers so close Laine had to flail for balance. Her hand grazed his hide and started to burn, to stick as if her flesh had been welded to his hide. She couldn’t get it free. “Innis, stop it! Let me go!”
Innis crowed with glee and whirled around, tearing her from Arren’s grip. She screamed and tried to pull her hand free, but he twisted his neck around and caught her at the waist with his head. With one violent shove he’d pushed her up onto his back, where she found herself with arms and legs involuntarily wrapped tight around his taut, muscular body.
Arren managed to get a hand around her foot, but the golden cabyll’s powerful haunches bunched and released in a bound like a rocket taking off. If she hadn’t been glued to him she would have been thrown. They landed at least twenty feet away. “Let her go!” Arren bellowed, running after them. “Damn you to hell! Let her go!”
Laine struggled in vain. “I can’t get off! I’m stuck!” Her hands melded into his neck. It was like getting your tongue stuck on a frozen lamppost in winter. She felt the pounding of his blood in her palms as he reared, forelegs scissoring like deadly blades.
Arren dodged the flashing hooves, cursing vainly.
In one more leap Innis reached the river’s edge. Laine almost tore her skin off trying to get free, but knew it wouldn’t work. Oh, Jesus, this is it. Mom’s going to kill me.
Then: Don’t be stupid. You’ll die before she gets the chance.
With a spray of diamond droplets, they were in the water.
Arren felt his last grip on Laine ripped from his grasp, and it was like losing his arm.
Innis was doing his father’s bidding. The air reeked with it. Forcing the boy to capture his own sister was a power play intended to bind father and son even more tightly.
Innis swam to the deepest water with Laine struggling and cursing on his back. Arren crouched at its verge helplessly. The damned river was playing its part in Laine’s abduction. It had to be three times its normal width and depth.
Why in God’s name had he never learned to change? His resistance was the worst mistake he could have made. If he managed to somehow do it now, he would be the most useless cabyll of all.
He felt a painful nip on his shoulder. Arabella. She’d bitten him, just hard enough to jolt his brain into gear. “Go,” she screamed.
He could choose fear, or he could choose Laine. He ripped off his shoes and jacket and plunged into the river. To hell with what might happen.
The water licked like cold fire, making him sick and dizzy and horny all at once. He’d known this would happen, but he hadn’t realized how strong it would be. The urge to battle for the female, kill the one who had stolen her—no! Don’t think like a cabyll.
He put his head down and swam.
Innis, his legs churning the water, had rolled to one side, submerging Laine. Arren could hear her gasping and choking. He stroked harder. I’m still human.
Still human for now. Laine too. But for how long?
If he touched Innis, it was possible that he would be trapped too. He just didn’t know. And Innis wouldn’t change him, he’d kill him with one snap of his teeth.
The water was making him crazy, lighting up the inside of his skull and scrambling his brain. Too much thinking.
He dove under Innis’s body, below his thrashing hooves that churned skeins of bubbles past his head. He could see Laine. She was holding her breath and trying to free her hands. Innis hadn’t bitten her yet. And he wouldn’t let her drown, not when he almost had her.
Arren swam for the bottom and grabbed a rock, the biggest he could lift, and pushed off upward with both feet. He felt the rock connect with the stallion’s muzzle, but the water slowed the contact. Innis seemed unaffected.
Arren gasped to the surface, flipped and tried again. Innis turned like lightning and tried to bite him, but Arren dodged and swung his rock. He heard the crack as it connected with Innis’s head, but a horse’s head is thick, even a cabyll horse, and it did nothing. Laine got her head above water and screamed like a banshee, sounding furious rather than frightened. The hot tang of her sex boiled in the water.
He almost dropped the rock.
One reason he never wanted to shift. It turned off your brain.
He struck again, sank, and thrashed upward for another try. So far, still human.
When Laine saw Arren treading water with a snarl on his face and a stone in his hands, she swallowed a mouthful of river. She choked and gasped as Innis’s big body rolled in the water.
A memory flashed: herself and five-year-old Innis, wearing swim trunks with racecars on them. He was dive-bombing her off the dock at the family cottage. The lake water in June had been cold, but they hadn’t cared. They were kids. She had shrieked and kicked spray in his face. She had taught him how to dive; she had wrapped him in thick towels when his lips turned blue and he still wanted to jump in just one more time.
Son of a bitch. Her brother was trying to turn her into a cabyll ushtey. If she survived, he would pay for this. If she wasn’t so damned mad, she’d be crying.
Arren took another crack at Innis, who didn’t even notice. Laine could do nothing to free herself. She was stuck. Real fright was starting to sink in. Innis would change her into a horse if she didn’t drown first. Shit.
“Stop it!” she screamed. “Let me go!” Innis turned his head on his long, sinuous neck and looked at her, his eyes crazy. She got the impression he didn’t see her at all. He was under another’s control. Did he even know it?
His mad eyes frightened her more than the constant rolling in the water, the fact that she couldn’t get off him. Water she could handle. An insane brother she couldn’t.
Arren shot to the surface next to her, with a bigger rock, a jagged, nasty-looking one.
Without sparing her a glance, he bashed the rock against Innis’s legs, his neck and head—anything he could reach. Spray frothed around them. Laine felt her mount shudder and flinch, and saw streaks of blood blur into the river.
“Arren! Look out!” Innis’s vicious white teeth snapped at Arren’s arm, but Arren flipped in the water and pushed off hard against Laine’s thigh, disappearing under the black surface. If Arren touched Innis, would he be stuck too?
Innis’s head whipped back toward her, his mouth wide open and as bright with fangs as a wolf’s. He struck for her neck. Jesus, he was really going to do it.
“No!” She dodged, barely. The moonlight seared her flesh, burning her bare wet arms like a torch. Half blinded by a spray of water, she scarcely saw Arren shoot upwards and slam the rock as hard as he could into Innis’s muzzle. Innis screamed at the pain in his sensitive nostrils. His legs lost their churning rhythm. Innis rolled awkwardly to one side, blowing spray, and Laine felt herself slip.
“Hit him again!”
Arren did, above one blazing topaz eye. “But don’t hurt him!” God help her, he was still her brother. One of Innis’s hooves caught Arren a raking blow, and Laine heard him grunt before he slid under water again.
But Innis’s hold was broken. The magic force that stuck her to his back was stuttering. With a sensation like the world’s biggest bandage being torn off, Laine felt her hands loosen and her legs slide off Innis’s slippery hide. With a splash she rolled into the current and away.
Not caring which side of the river she ended up on, she put her head down and stroked hard for land, praying that Arren was heading there too.
What if Innis had killed him? Please, God, no. At a sudden presence beside her, Laine gasped another mouthful of water in, but it was Arren swimming stroke for stroke alongside her. Battling the swift current, they angled to shore downstream. Laine’s kicking feet touched bottom, and together they floundered ashore.
Laine crawled away from the water and flopped down, panting, to examine her stinging hands for damage. Other than an itching tenderness, they were all right. She had half expected the skin to be torn off right to the bone. Arren was flat on his back beside her, gasping like a fish and scowling at the moon.
The damned, pasty-faced, smirking moon. Laine coughed up water and spat.
Innis had vanished. The river had shrunk to normal size and resumed its quiet rush to the sea. There was no sign of disturbance. Innis must have swum to the other side and run off. She hoped. Arren hadn’t inflicted enough damage to severely injure him, had he?
To hell with Innis. The bloody idiot had tried to kill her. Laine felt her throat tighten. How could he do it? How could her own brother do such a thing?
Before she knew it, she was sobbing.
And then Arren was holding her, crooning in her ear as if she was an infant. It made her sob harder. She could feel his every breath, every heartbeat.
He cradled her head in one hand. Water dripped from his hair onto her face. “It’s all right. He’s gone.” His voice was harsh with anger. She shivered. “Did he hurt you?”
She looked up at him and shook her head.
“Would you mind very much if I killed the little bugger next time I see him?”
Her sobs changed to choking laughter. “Not at all. I’ll help.” She let him wrap her in his arms as she cried.