SwitchBack: A Paranormal Werewolf Romance (Knightsbridge Canyon Series Book 1) (17 page)

What I thought she could accomplish, I had no idea.

“You’ll find out soon enough.” Jeanetta smirked and turned toward me, taking a burgundy colored velvet bag from her belt and raising it up to the ceiling while she began to chant. The cloth in her hands was threaded with amber strands that caught the light and seemed to spangle symbols across the cavern walls.

Sean proceeded to pull dark cloth over the bamboo and the little light we had dimmed as he affixed blankets to the semicircular poles. Jeanetta approached with a wooden mixing bowl and pulled a hunting knife off her leg harness. “It’s probably obvious that this is going to hurt,” she said with glee, grinning triumphantly as she sliced a gash in my jeans and thigh, and then held the bowl beneath it.

I clenched my teeth, hissing against the pain as I tried to jerk away, but we were too securely held, not like in the movies where the villain always leaves the bonds too loose, or easy to reach and untie.

Amber wasn’t so stoic. “You bitch!” she screamed when Jeanetta cut her.

“Language, Amber.” I laughed sardonically.

“Bite me, Ashlee,” she snarled. “You got us into this.”

“Funny you should say that,” I replied, but Jeanetta cut us off.

“Girls,” Jeanetta chided us as she took her knife and sliced a few hairs from both our heads and added them to the bowl. She then went to the cage and had Sean pull Spanky out.

Shit.

“Keep her talking Ashlee,” Amber muttered and I could feel her manipulating her wrists to try to get her hands free. Good luck with that. I had already tried, and I was stronger and more limber than my sister.

“Hold him still,” Jeanetta ordered as Sean lifted the squirming dog. Spanky hated being held by anyone but our family.

“What are you doing?” I demanded as she raised her knife. “I thought you were an animal rights activist? Or was that all bullshit, like the rest of your life?”

Hey, it was all I could think of at the time.

“Oh, don’t worry. I like dogs more than I like people.” Then she turned to back to Sean, who was frowning at her. “Present company excluded, of course.”

Spanky froze in Sean’s grip. He seemed to know when danger was coming and he bared his teeth.

“Don’t even think about it.” She narrowed her eyes at him as Sean held Spanky’s mouth shut while he snarled.

“If you hurt my dog…” Amber began, but then I smelled an acrid smell of hair burning, and heard a yelp of surprise and a curse as Spanky went flying out of Sean’s arms to hit the ground running. I could hear his barking fading in the distance and I thanked the Lord that at least one of our pack had made it out unscathed.

On the other hand, you would think that he’d show a bit more loyalty.

“I didn’t know you were such a witch, Jeanetta,” Amber snarled. “A bitch, well,
that
I knew. But blood magic? Are you sure you know what you’re doing?”

Interesting. What did Amber know about magic beyond reruns of Charmed and Once Upon a Time? I started to get the feeling she’d been holding out on me again.

“You don’t think I came into this unprepared, do you?” Jeanetta mocked.

I looked at her blankly, and sensed Amber doing the same, if perhaps with slightly more comprehension.

“See, I know what you are,” Jeanetta continued.

“Oh really.” I matched her haughty tone. “And what do you think that is?” I coughed.

“
Yee Naaldlooshii
…” The words came out of her in a hiss, and a malevolent gleam sparked from her eyes. A shiver ran through me. Jeanetta poured more noxious herbs over the fire. “
Ánt’įįhnii!”
Her voice got louder and I could I feel an ache behind my jaw. “
Adagąsh!”
Her voice took on the cadence of a song as she screamed the last words. “
Azhįtee! Nee Yaaldlooshii!”

“Ashlee!” Amber’s voice rose into a different register and I could feel my own anxiety begin to rise with hers as I felt the pads of my fingers tear and claws burst out from my  knuckles, straining the tension of the rope that bound us. Blood ran down my wrists and the smell made me woozy.

Holy Shit! I thought. She was doing it. Jeanetta Macdonald was making me shift.

Yee Naaldlooshii. Skinwalker.
She’d called me a skinwalker. I’d run into the Navajo legend when I first started researching werewolf mythology back in high school. But I wasn’t a skinwalker – I was something else, product of a different magic.

“I don’t know how you managed that,” Amber whispered. She couldn’t see that the sharp things her hands touched were actually a part of me rather than rocks or knives. Who knows what she thought? But I could feel her sliding the hemp fibers across my claws causing them to part, bit by bit, as she sawed at our bonds.

“Me neither,” I said.

“Werewolves, shifters, all the same thing,” Jeanetta cackled. “I knew it all along!”

But she was wrong. The legend of the skinwalker said that a shapeshifter utilized rituals to assume the form of a beast. In doing so, she would shed her human skin to become the shape of the animal she wanted to change into. But it cost a blood sacrifice to do so. In order to return to human form, a skinwalker had to consume her own human pelt, eyeballs, scalp and all.

Besides being totally gross and nasty, I wasn’t a skinwalker. Or a Navajo.

On the other hand, there had to be some kind of overlap, because whatever she had done had affected me.

“After you killed my brother I spent years researching the legends of your kind. In my travels, I found a tribal elder who was willing to share with me the secrets of your people.”

“What, Scottish people?” What
my people
? I barely knew what I was.

“He said if I could force the shape of the wolf onto you while the moon was waning, and then burned your skin, you would be bound into your shifted form for the rest of your days.”

“You’re insane!” I laughed uproariously, which made Jeanetta furious.

“Ashlee,” my twin said, “don’t antagonize the psycho.”

“We’ll find out who’s insane now, won’t we?” Jeanetta said tightly. “Sean, cover them up and then go look for that damn dog. We need it.” As she said this I realized that I could still hear Spanky barking from outside the cave. I guess the little furball hadn’t run off after all.

Amber whimpered as the cloth concentrated the smoke around us. The heat began to become unbearable as Jeanetta chanted and threw blood and herbs into the fire, causing more choking fumes. My head began to swim and I could hear Amber retching.

“I think I’m going to be sick,” she said and then she passed out, her body going slack against me. Jeanetta’s annoying noises stopped and it sounded like she moved away, probably to prepare her next round of tortures. I could hear her chanting start up again, farther away.

“Hold on, Amb. I’ll think of something.” My claws were already out and I could feel my lupine side come out and take on that monochromatic perception where the olfactory senses filled in the visual details.

I wondered if I could continue this partial shift. I never could quite do it before and I ran the risk of hurting Amber badly if I had to go all the way, but if Jeanetta could force me into my wolf form, I couldn’t guarantee that I could control it anyway. I didn’t think I’d hurt my twin, but I hadn’t ever been forced into the change before.

I centered myself and felt the ropes dig deeper into my flesh. My vision began to blur and I got a bad taste in my mouth as my canines began to lengthen.

“Amber, forgive me for getting you into this mess,” I said softly as darkness covered us and the muffled sounds of Jeanetta’s chant faded away into the background. The sound of pine sap popping and the crackling of the coals around us seemed to get louder in my brain.

Sweat poured down my face and I could feel it drenching my sister’s back. She was unusually quiet, and I wondered if she’d passed out again. I kind of hoped she had, just in case…in case...“Amber?”

“I’m here.” She coughed. “I’ve found if you take shallow breaths it’s not that bad.”

“I have a confession to make…”

“What, that you’re a werewolf and spend your full moons running around the hills and munching on forest critters?” she said offhandedly. “Ooh, big secret.”

“You knew?” I barked. The sound of betrayal echoed around me in the muffled silence.

“Of course I knew! Why do you think I worry about you all the time? And haven’t you noticed that I always call you after a full moon to make sure you’re okay? Seriously, Ashlee, you’re not a very good liar. Remember, we have the same face and I can read you like a book. Besides: visions,
hellooo!
”

I was floored. All this time, she knew my secret and she never said a thing.

“So, when were you going to tell me that you knew?”

“It wasn’t my place.” When she said that I could hear echoes of my mom in her words.

“Do you see Mother too?” I asked, and before it was out of my mouth, I knew it was the wrong thing to say.

“What do you mean?”

Crap. I was
so
not good at this.

Finally I felt the rope fibers part and I stood. My mother’s face hovered in the darkness and I could see her putting her finger to her lips.

“Nothing. Just visions,
helooo
,” I said with as much snark as I could muster. I tore the restraints off my ankles and proceeded to set Amber free. There wasn’t much room to maneuver, but I slid to the ground and lifted the cloth tarp to look out into the cavern. I couldn’t be sure that Jeanetta didn’t have more tranquilizer darts ready and I wasn’t about to waste this opportunity.

I couldn’t see much of anything.

“Amber, I need your eyes.”

“Sorry, I’m using them, thank you,” Amber said as she joined me on the ground. Her voice quavered a little as she stared into my face. “Your eyes are different. Wolfy.”

“Yeah, and that means I’m color-blind and can’t see worth shit in this smoky mess. So, tell me what you see. Where’s Sean? Where’s Jeanetta?”

“She’s right outside the cave entrance and, um…”

“What?” I asked.

“Well, she’s naked…”

“Glad I can’t see that.”

“Actually…”

“Focus, Amber. No time to go admiring her killer bod.”

“That's a bit too apropos. And she’s holding some kind of pelt up to the sky.”

The sound of chanting rose again and then came a
whoosh
.

I felt my whole body go rigid. “Uh oh,” I said.

“What?” Amber whispered.

“What just happened?” I ground out, my tongue getting hung up on my teeth.

“She dropped the pelt into the fire.”

I moaned and could feel my bones begin to turn and bend and crack.

“Ashlee!” Amber grabbed my face and looked into my eyes. She must not have liked what she saw there, because she scrabbled back away from me.

“What?” I coughed. My body…I hardly felt human anymore, and I probably wasn’t mostly.

“My, what incredibly big teeth you have…”

Yeah, well, humor was one of our strengths. Laughing in the face of danger. That, and, making lemonade out of lemons. Someone should tell Jeanetta to be careful what she conjured, or she might get it.

Or it might get her.

I struggled with my clothes for a moment before I got free of them. With a roar, I leaped from the folds of the sweat lodge and slammed headlong into something. Stars danced in my optic nerves as I stumbled leftward, rubbing up against a barrier I couldn’t see or smell.

Looking up, I saw Jeanetta continuing her ritual incantations, and I instinctively tried to rush her again, but I couldn’t reach her. I felt as if a wall of glass stopped me, and made my sensitive nose burn as I pushed against it.

On the ground I could see an elaborate symbol drawn, some kind of wheel-shape, like a dream-catcher or magic circle. I tried to scratch at it with my paw but nothing I did could reach it.

Turning, I growled and whined, looking around for some trick or way through. Whatever it was, it kept me out, and suddenly I was wracked with another wave of pain, a convulsion that threatened to drive away my human mind, leaving only the animal. If that happened, Jeanetta would have the perfect revenge, destroying me with no real evidence of what had been done – nothing that would convict her in a court of law, anyway.

“Ashlee!” my sister screamed from inside, and I rushed back into the cave. Amber grabbed the bamboo center-post and brought the fabric down into the coals of the fire like the collapse of a teepee. Smoke poured out of the chamber as the material caught fire, and I leaped in to tug at the ropes still ringing one hand, leading her out into the open air. She collapsed, coughing and helpless.

Another spasm went through me and I screamed, a horrible gut-wrenching sound never meant to proceed from a canine throat. Spanky charged forward out of the darkness to nuzzle me in that way that dogs have, sensing another of its kind in pain. Or maybe he just knew I was family.

Rolling over to stare into his eyes, I tried to make the little Schnauzer to understand. I nudged him with my forehead, pushing him toward Jeanetta as she danced and gestured and spoke words of power. Crawling toward the crazy witch, I tried to tell Spanky what to do.

Somehow, he got it. Maybe it was a dog thing, or maybe that “Speak With Animals” spell I always liked when we used to play D&D really worked, but he turned and began scratching at the design. Formed in the dirt by colored chalk, it only took a few strokes of Spanky’s forepaws before he made a gash in its perfection and I was able to press in close to help him. A few seconds more and we had an opening.

I leaped through, and moments later, Jeanetta lay in shock beneath my snarling muzzle.

At that moment, Will charged out of the darkness. Mom must have gotten through to him, or maybe he just decided to search Jeanetta's old stomping grounds and saw the fire. Or both.

Unfortunately he carried an axe, and he lifted it over his head in preparation for cleaving me in half.

I froze with shock, disbelieving that he would ever do such a thing to me, before realizing that all he saw was a big wolf attacking a human woman. A naked human woman. Ew.

“WILL!” Amber screamed as Spanky sank his teeth into Will’s calf.