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  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental.

  Samhain Publishing, Ltd.

  577 Mulberry Street, Suite 1520

  Macon GA 31201

  Puma

  Copyright © 2008 by Jorrie Spencer

  ISBN: 978-1-60504-221-3

  Edited by Sasha Knight

  Cover by Scott Carpenter

  All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  First Samhain Publishing, Ltd. electronic publication: October 2008

  www.samhainpublishing.com

  Puma

  Jorrie Spencer

  Dedication

  For my mother.

  Prologue

  The male had made a home in this canyon, where his tawny fur blended with the sand, where the night could freeze you and the day bring your blood to a boil.

  Werecougars, at least the few Callie knew of, usually chose to live farther north, but perhaps this one had been born here. After all, his animal counterpart, the cougar or puma, used to range throughout North America.

  Callie placed one large paw after the other, intent on this trail, on her path forward, studiously ignoring the fact that she was being stalked by the one she sought. Exactly as they’d planned. She’d even screamed earlier to attract his attention. No male would ignore a female screaming.

  If he was at all clever, he would stop and ask himself how she had arrived here so suddenly, alone. (For she was not alone.) But they weren’t clever, these feral males. And while she sometimes felt a pang for their stupidity, it was generally overridden by the vicious and brutal way they slaughtered their prey. This one had killed six humans, including a five-year-old boy, and that she couldn’t forgive.

  He was close now, approaching from the right, and her heart rate sped up. Perhaps he wouldn’t even be curious, perhaps he would simply attack. She almost hoped he would. Put an end to this job she had taken up four years ago and regretted every day since, and yet could not bring herself to leave.

  She slowed down, willing him to pounce. She wouldn’t mind a good fight, wouldn’t mind going out in a blaze of glory. That was only her puma self speaking, but at the moment she didn’t care.

  Instead of an ambush though, the feral waited for her. Just before she could round the corner that would take them into the clear, he stepped in front of her and hissed, a question in the sound. She froze at the sight of him, her heart rising to her throat, for he was smaller than she was, which meant he was young, too young.

  She didn’t kill children, even murderous ones. She’d told Trey that when he’d hired her on.

  Maybe this one is salvageable. Despite how this job had eroded all hope of saving one of her own kind, that thought took hold, and she could not turn away from it.

  It wasn’t her call to make. At this point, she had a protocol to follow, orders to carry out. She was the hired help.

  But to find such a young male was a new development. To date, the killers had all been older, adult. Callie refused to treat this puma like the others. Trey would just have to deal with her executive decision to change the plans.

  The male’s tail wasn’t even twitching, and he chirped, trying to speak to her. At least he was aware enough to realize she, like him, was a shapeshifter. A couple of the males, too far gone in their cougar heads, hadn’t seemed to notice anything but that she was potential prey.

  If she wanted to protect this one, she’d have to back up, lead him away from where they could pick him off with a long-range rifle. It wasn’t quite the risk to her that it might have been, given his relatively small size. In a fight, she could hold her own, whereas a full-grown male would have been significantly larger and stronger than her.

  She chirped back at him, but he didn’t know what to make of the noise. This was frustrating. Werecougars had a repertoire of sounds, which also belonged to their animal kin, but given how badly most were socialized, they had difficulty knowing what the other meant. Right now, communication was extremely limited.

  Callie stepped backwards, unwilling to take her eyes off him, but trying to lead him away from danger. The FBI had its pick of fantastic sharpshooters and cougars were relatively big targets.

  She whistled at him to follow and he did. Careful, curious.

  Trey was going to kill her—figuratively. She could just imagine him pitching a fit right now, in his silent, stoic way. Because she had most definitely veered off plan.

  She heard the high-pitched whine and leapt, knocking the male to the ground before the bullet hit sand just beyond them. He snarled, swiping at her with his large paw, aggressive now that she’d initiated physical contact. So she rolled away, then ran, hoping he would give chase without catching her. The path she raced along narrowed and zigzagged into the low, parched bush. Anything to keep them both out of the sharpshooter’s sight.

  Her running would likely force his predator instincts to kick in so she slowed, though she was taking a chance, making herself vulnerable. The feral hit with his shoulder, knocking her sideways off her feet. Shit. His paw slashed down her belly and she expected to be gutted by the action, but unfathomably, he’d retracted his claws. While the swipe would be bruising, her skin remained intact.

  So he wasn’t in it for the kill. Something within her eased as she rolled to her feet. She had always wanted to make contact with another werecougar, hadn’t recognized how desperate she was to connect until she turned towards him.

  Such a foolish move. She realized just how badly she had judged the male as teeth sank into her open throat.

  The pain turned her world red, then black.

  ***

  She woke human, lying on her back, her eyelids heavy, her thoughts slow. Though she had the wherewithal to think I’m alive and be surprised by it.

  Her throat, he’d ripped it open. She moved to lift her hand and couldn’t. Realized she was trapped, bound to a bed, and adrenaline surged through her, shocking her full awake. Opening her eyes, she gulped air—

  “Easy.” A hand came down on the arm she’d tried to move. “Just till you’re conscious.”

  She blinked. Trey, her boss, was there, stroking her arm—he never stroked her arm—and speaking in soothing tones. How odd.

  “You’re not captive here. We had to restrain you so you could heal, that’s all.”

  So her injuries warranted immobilization, and Trey’s reassurance. That had never happened before.

  “I’ve been waiting till you woke up and now I’m going to release your arms and legs, okay?”

  “O—kay.” Her voice felt rusty, but usable, despite the tenderness in her throat. She watched while he undid the plastic cuffs.

  “Better?” he asked.

  “Who are you and what have you done with my boss, Trey Walters?”

  His mouth kicked up a little, his excuse for a smile. “He’ll be back soon enough and then…there’ll be hell to pay.” These last words said with some steel behind them. However, his manner returned to that of the gentle imposter. “You need to feel better than this first.” It was strange, his behavior. His normally cold eyes were actually warm. Kind of. For Trey Walters, stone-cold werewolf.

  She’d always wanted to impress him and apparently getting herself almost killed had made some kind of impression, if not quite the one she’d been aiming
for. She’d wanted to accomplish something, not get her throat ripped open.

  Lifting her arms from her sides, she touched the IV taped to the back of her hand, tracing the plastic and needle with a finger.

  “Listen. Leave that IV in.”

  “I don’t need it.” She was a puma. She healed herself. Medicine was for humans. But her protest wasn’t as energetic as she would have liked. Weariness dragged at her in a way that was new and foreign to her.

  “I happen to know you’re a shifter, Callie. However, you basically died. We’re going to play it safe.” That steel returned. “Or I’ll restrain you again.”

  “You’re bluffing.” This she mumbled as her eyelids drifted downwards. Was she on drugs? She struggled to speak, to ask him, hating the idea of drugs.

  His palm came back to rest on her arm, a gesture to reassure her. It worked. A sign of just how badly off she was, she supposed.

  “Sleep. You’ll feel better next time you wake.” He kept talking, but she was floating away now and couldn’t make sense of the words.

  The next time she woke, Trey was no longer there, only a normal. Familiar, as he was part of the team. Callie didn’t trust him, didn’t trust any nonshifters, even if this guy was innocuous enough.

  She fed and drank and healed, and slept some more. It became her routine, a very basic existence and yet enough for the time being.

  A week later the exhaustion was fading and her natural restlessness reasserted itself. She roamed the room, ready to move out, to move on—when Trey returned. The real Trey, this time. He gave her a once-over, and there was nothing sexual in it, never had been. She wished that absence didn’t cause her a pang of regret.

  “You’re looking much better,” he observed.

  “Yes.” The scars on her throat were vivid, but they no longer hurt. Unlike those of most of her past injuries, the scars wouldn’t completely disappear. The feral had done too much damage and shifting couldn’t erase them.

  “Sit down, Callie.”

  She sighed, but complied. He liked to loom over people as he reamed them out.

  He turned, and the intensity, the cold blaze of his blue eyes, took her aback, though she should have been familiar with his anger by now. “What the fuck did you think you were doing?”

  “Debriefing,” she drawled. “Is that what this is?”

  He fisted a hand. “I could have sworn you didn’t have a death wish, or I would never have sent you out there.”

  “You need me.”

  “Not like that I don’t.”

  She opened her mouth to argue, then closed it again.

  Briefly he shut his eyes. “I thought you were honest. I thought I could read you better than that.”

  “I am honest,” she protested, piqued that the one person in the world she trusted thought otherwise. “I don’t have a death wish.” At his raised eyebrows, she pulled in a fortifying breath and tried to explain. “It’s only…” They didn’t talk like this, she and Trey, so finding the words was difficult. “When I meet a werecougar, that moment before leading them to their death, I always wish, just a little, that it was the last time. I don’t actually want to be dead. I just don’t want—” She broke off as she realized she’d been going to say, I just don’t want to kill any more of my kind.

  Was that true? Did she want to stop working for Trey?

  Trey was the only person she had. And these cougars she lured in, they were death machines. They needed to be killed. For a shifter, killing was kinder than imprisonment. She knew all that, and yet had to revisit the rationale behind her job over and over again.

  Trey’s icy eyes bored into hers. “If it makes you feel any better, you’re fired. You won’t be bringing in another cougar. You’ve proved you can’t.”

  The job was over. Stunned relief hit her, an almost physical force that winded her, and she leaned forward, taking in the news. But there was also loss. Trey had given her a home, a purpose, even a love, one-sided as it had been. Yet it wasn’t in her to argue to stay. Her pride and his aloofness made it impossible. Instead she admitted, “I always thought we’d track down a puma who didn’t need to be destroyed, who could be saved.”

  He shifted his head and shoulder, not quite a shrug. “That was my hope too.”

  “You’ve had much better luck with werewolves, eh?”

  “Callie. These guys were probably on their own from the time they were toddlers. Werecougars, even more than werewolves, need to be raised by people, need to be socialized.”

  “Yeah.” They’d already been through the differences between the pack dynamics of wolves and the solitary nature of cougars. The latter was fine in the real animal, but fucked up a shifter. She hated that conversation, even if Trey only spoke the truth.

  “So, you thought this cougar could be saved?” he asked, gaze intent.

  “He was young, Trey.”

  “Not young enough.”

  “You killed him, then.” She’d known, but nevertheless Trey’s nod hurt.

  “I’d still like an explanation for what went wrong. Why you led him away, why you let him attack you.”

  So she spoke of the feral male’s small size and young age and the way he’d chirped at her. To her embarrassment, her voice caught.

  Looking unimpressed, Trey rolled right over that observation, that oh-so-brief connection that had meant so much to her. “You didn’t have to let him rip your throat open because he chirped.”

  “Oh, that.”

  “Yeah that.”

  “I didn’t think he would hurt me.”

  “He’d killed six people, including a small child, and he’d knocked you over. Yet you didn’t think he would hurt you.” Trey looked haunted now. Another first. She hadn’t realized he felt so responsible for her well-being.

  “He retracted his claws,” she explained, though it sounded kind of stupid now.

  Trey didn’t speak, he waited for more. If he were in his wolf form, he’d look on full alert, ears forward, body tensed and ready for action.

  “He swiped a paw down my belly.”

  “God, he could have eviscerated you too.” He raked a hand through his too-short hair. “You wouldn’t have recovered from both.”

  She nodded, inordinately warmed that he cared. Until now, until her almost-death, she hadn’t known that she’d meant something to Trey. At least she could carry that knowledge with her after he kicked her off the base. That she was out of his life was obvious or he wouldn’t be revealing this much emotion.

  “He didn’t gut me,” she said, returning to that point. “His claws were retracted. So I thought he was playing. Until he tore my throat.”

  Trey actually winced.

  “How did he die?” she asked.

  “You mean, how did I save your life? I was wolf. When you didn’t bring him into the clear as planned, I came after you. I attacked him. His throat, like yours, ripped open, but…” He threw up his hands. “You know these ferals. They’re ignorant. He didn’t know enough to shift immediately.”

  “Or didn’t want to,” she muttered.

  “Possible,” Trey allowed.

  “He was too young. I wanted to help him.”

  “Unfortunately, he was already beyond helping.”

  Maybe, but Trey didn’t really know. They would never know. She didn’t want to argue that point.

  “When do I leave?” Whether he liked it or not, Trey had been her family these past four years. She would miss him. Her leave-taking would be painful.

  He seemed rather taken aback by the abrupt question and his answer came out a bit gruff. “You have time to heal. There’s no rush.”

  She fiddled with the hem of her shirt, the idea of being turned loose sinking in. “Maybe I’ll go feral.”

  “Don’t joke.”

  “Not a joke.” She fixed her gaze on the blank wall in front of her. If he’d stayed her boss, she wouldn’t have said it. However, her time here was over. “I don’t know what to do with myself.”

&n
bsp; “Visit family.”

  At the suggestion, she almost snarled. She could feel her lip lift in a sneer. “You know I have next to none.”

  He shook his head, disagreeing with her. “Remember where I found you? Taking care of your foster sister, Ruth? You worry about her. You occasionally visit her. Go see how she’s doing.”

  Chapter One

  The smells were familiar—pine, cut grass and the heat of the earth rising. In this season, summer, she’d have to resort to shadows and night to accomplish anything. Like feeding. A necessity before the shift.

  Her human self could not fend for itself. Puma’s lip curled. She didn’t entirely approve of her vulnerability in that bare, hairless skin. Yet she could not stay puma. After a time, the human pressed too hard upon her and she became lonely, starved of companionship.

  The human, Callie, might call this home, but Puma was not yet ready to name it such. Twice before she’d been forced to flee from here, when cougar sightings had begun to alarm the residents. It would happen again and that thought was accompanied by a certain rather unfeline weariness.

  Nevertheless, she had traveled far to reach what was undeniably familiar and comforting in its odd human way. In the safety of her cat body, she intended to inspect everything, to ensure, as much as was possible, a safe transition. She would also check on the sister for whom, even as Puma, she felt affection. Callie had half-raised the girl, given the neglect of her elderly foster mother.

  Puma flicked her tail, feeling the long grass behind her bend with the motion, and approached the edge of the subdivision. Crouching, she surveyed the humans. Mostly children out and about, with bikes and scooters. One boy kicked a ball and chased after it, over and over again.

  Her body tensed, her muscles bunched, though not with prey instinct, as the town had feared in the past and would fear again. She might have a cougar’s form, and she might have a cougar’s senses and some of its needs. But she wasn’t a true feral and she was fond of human children, would have liked to care for one again, as she had for Ruth.