The Shadows of Christmas Past

then Harry really would go after the werecougar, tooth and claw.
    "Go home," he said to Losimba. "Don't interfere. I will get those kids home."
    Still tense, Losimba glared at Harry for a while out of tawny eyes. Then he shifted from man to cat with such graceful fluidity that even Harry had to admire his shifting abilities. All admiration was off, however, when Losimba then snarled at him once more and stalked proudly away.
    Harry studied how Losimba managed to fade his scent to barely a trace as the other were disappeared from sight. Any information he could get would help in his hunt for the kids. The blocking was of a psychic nature, sending out a mental camouflage signal aimed specifically at the thought processes of other shapeshifters. It was a variation on how shapeshifters mentally influenced humans not to notice anything out of the ordinary they witnessed.
    "He's good," Harry acknowledged. "But his son's better."
    Then he changed back into a huge black wolf and went for a run, reveling in the power, the speed, the sharp senses of his animal form. Most importantly, he took huge pleasure in being warm.
    But after a while, a new sensation caught hold of him and made him turn his steps toward the hilltop. Something called him back toward Marj. After only a few hours away, he was already lonely for her. Instinct told him he was going home—and that bone-deep belief scared the conscious part of him to death.
    He found the boulder on the edge of the drive with no problem. He also had no problem detecting Taffy's scent, or Marj's. She and the dog had been here while he was gone. He supposed that she'd taken the dog for a walk, maybe hoping to spot the wolf, or him in human shape. Maybe Taffy had gotten a whiff of the clothing left by the boulder and come over to investigate. It was probably all perfectly innocent… and it filled Harry with dread. His misgivings grew worse when he couldn't find his stashed clothing anywhere near the boulder.
    The instinctive part of his mind told him to Run! Now ! Any little breach of normal safety precautions triggered a fight-or-flight response in his kind. But the logical part, which should have been agreeing with the instinctive part, was telling him he needed to talk to Marj. That he needed to explain to her. That he just needed Marj.
    Okay, he needed her. But he wasn't going to show up at her door either as a wolf, or naked as a jaybird. He had left two other sets of clothing, identical to the ones he'd lost, secreted around her property in case of any emergency. The first thing he was going to do was head to the barn, to don the clothes he'd left under a stack of feed bags.
    He crossed the yard silently, clinging to shadows. The area was full of the crisscrossing scents of animals and of Marjorie, of himself, and other people from many different days and times. He could detect no immediate danger.
    He was at the barn door and getting ready to change to human so he could open it, when he realized it was a trap. He felt Marj's anger and whirled around. Following the direction of her emotions, he spotted her sitting on top of the cab of her pickup truck. With a tranquilizer rifle aimed at him.
    She fired even as he sprang toward her, then fired again.
    Two spots of pain blossomed along Harry's side. He went down hard on the cold ground. As the world went dark, his last thoughts were, Oh no, not again !

chapter 10
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    "Tranquilizer darts."
    "Yep," Marj answered.
    "That's the second time this week, dammit."
    Marj watched warily as Harry sat up from where he'd been lying on the concrete barn floor, wrapped the red blanket around his chest, and glared at her. She was sitting on top of an old trunk, her legs tucked beneath her and an old quilt covering her lap. All the overhead lights were blazing, and the wide doors were closed and locked. It was just the two of them, as she'd left Taffy and Noel locked in the house. There was no way she was risking her dogs' safety around a wolf.
    She also noticed that he gauged the distance between them and looked at the rifle she cradled on her lap. Harrison Blethyin was not a happy camper.
    "How's your head?" she asked.
    "Pounding. Brutally, viciously pounding."
    "I can do something about that."
    "You've already done quite enough."
    She guessed she had, but she'd dragged the wolf in out of the cold and kept him warm with a blanket while he slept off the drugs and turned slowly back to the shape of a man. And she hadn't used as