The Shadows of Christmas Past

hand.
    Taffy yelped, and jumped away.
    Marj was so stunned that she had to hold on to the edge of the counter with both hands to keep from sinking to her knees as the memory washed up out of her subconscious. She'd only encountered the naked man a couple of days ago, yet all thought of him had been pushed out of her mind.
    It felt like it had been deliberately nudged away, overlaid, covered. Her awareness of the process was almost tactile. As if someone as psychic as she was had used his mental ability to rearrange her thinking. Or at least to try. She knew how strange this seemed, but she didn't doubt the truth of it.
    He had done it.
    "I know that butt."
    She closed her eyes, and the memory of watching him move around her bedroom in all his glorious nudity was superimposed over the image of the naked man lying inside the wolf's cage.

    They were one and the same.
    She remembered thinking that Harry was too big to have been trapped in the cage, before she stopped thinking about the naked man at all. Had Harry put the thought about his size into her head as a diversion?
    She settled cross-legged on the tiled floor, amid the debris of the broken plate, and rubbed suddenly aching temples. With her eyes closed, she once again called up the memory of how Taffy had rescued her from her two attackers.
    Once again, the image of Taffy superimposed itself over the sight of the wolf's glowing blue eyes, the softness of its fur brushing her face, its solid weight bearing her down.
    The image of the loyal Labrador retriever made perfect sense. But she knew in her gut, and in her extra senses, that that wasn't what had happened.
    As Taffy came up and sat down next to her, Marj reached over and put her arm around his neck. She felt his concern, and the constant love for her that was so much a part of him.
    Becoming aware of his emotions made her realize that Taffy might have his own memories of what happened that night.
    What good was having the ability to talk to animals, if she didn't call upon it when needed?
    She didn't normally try to pick up more than an animal's current emotional state. Actually, she didn't generally try, it just happened. But she could pick up images and memories if she concentrated hard enough and the incident was sufficiently traumatic to stick in the animal's mind. She could only hope that the attack registered deeply in Taffy's mind.
    And when she was finished with her him, she had an entire kennelful of witnesses that she could interrogate.

    Harry was aware of the cougar's scent on far western side of the ranch even before he made the shift to wolf form.
    He took deep breaths of the cool, dry night air as he took off his clothes, folded them, and tucked them between a bush and the base of the large boulder at the entrance of Marj's long drive.
    The cougar prowling out in the darkness was no ordinary one, either: there was another shapeshifter in the vicinity. Harry hoped it was one of the missing kids, but somehow he doubted it. Because he thought that the reason he was having so much trouble tracking down his quarry was due to the camouflage talent of the were-cougar youth.
    Harry stretched his hands over his head and arched his back before dropping down onto hands and knees. He ignored the sharpness of the winter wind on his bare skin and let the change come slowly, let it be a sensual pleasure rather than a rush of necessity. Making love with Marj had put him in the mood for all the sensual pleasure he could get.

    The distant scent became even more obvious when Harry was in wolf form, and easily recognizable. Harry was annoyed at the delay in his search, but he couldn't put off tracking the other were, since it was his client, Mr. Losimba.
    He was glad that the trail led quite a distance across the rocky valley, away from the buildings on Marj's hilltop. The last thing he wanted was the Losimba kid's family marking up the territory Harry was using as bait.
    When he found Losimba, the werecougar was perched regally on top of a rock outcrop, his gold fur frosted by moonlight. Harry came to a halt and took a moment to appreciate the pose.
    Then he switched from wolf to human form. All were-folk were telepathic, but it was easier to communicate mind to mind with humans than across forms. Wolf to wolf, or any other canine type, was natural for him, but canine to feline was just—wrong.
    Harry ignored the sudden blast of cold, along with a natural distaste for cats, and said,
    "You're lovely. But if a