Apocalypse Happens by Lori Handeland Page A

years, centuries, millennia—who knew?—he’d been unable to leave the Dinetah as a man. But since I’d torn her to shreds, the curse was broken.
    I contemplated Saywer’s fuzzy ears and bushy tail. Unless it wasn’t.
    I sighed. Sawyer obviously had no desire to return to his human form at the moment, and since making a wolf do anything, especially this wolf, was damn near impossible, I’d have to compromise.
    “If you can’t beat ’em.” I opened the trunk of the rental, then pulled a silk robe from my duffel. “Join ’em.”
    A gift from Sawyer, the robe had been fashioned in every shade of midnight—blue, purple, black with sparkles of silver—the image of a wolf flickered in the folds. Skinwalkers can shape-shift, but they need a little help. Sawyer, in human form, had tattoos everywhere. They depicted mammals and birds and insects—every single one a creature of prey. To shift, he touched a tattoo and became whatever lay beneath the stroke of his fingers. I could do the same. Touch him and become them.
    However, sometimes, like now, touching Sawyer’s tattoos wasn’t an option, so I used the robe.
    Quickly I lost my clothes. The jeweled collar around my neck had been bespelled, which allowed it to shift shape along with me. A good thing, since a vampire werewolf was something I really didn’t want to be.
    I swirled the garment around my shoulders and embraced the familiar bright flash of light that heralded the change. A blast of cold, followed by heat, then the fall from two feet to four, the shift from human to wolf. It didn’t hurt, not really, but it freaked me out every single time.
    Phoenix.
    Sawyer’s deep, melodious voice echoed in my head—the telepathy that existed between shifters in their bestial forms.
    What’s going on? I asked. The curse should be broken.
    It is.
    He circled closer, slid along my body, rubbed his face against mine, and I let him. While human, I didn’t trust him. He kept too many secrets, told too many lies. But in this form we were pack, joined in a way no one else could ever understand. Animals don’t lie. I’m not sure they’re capable of it.
    If you can leave the Dinetah as a man, then why are you furry?
    He whirled and took off across the deserted terrain. I hesitated, but only for an instant. In this form certain things called to me, and running was one of them.
    True wolves can cover 125 miles in a day and run 40 miles per hour. Shifters are much faster, and skinwalkers can move so quickly they seem to disappear in one place, then appear in another. Part of the reason we excel in this area is that we love it. Running frees us.
    I chased Sawyer until I caught him; then I jumped onto his back and we rolled onto the ground, tussling and snapping, nuzzling and nipping. But all too soon, he sidestepped and ran away again. Sawyer wasn’t much for play, unless it was sex play. The man was a sexual god.
    Maybe that was hyperbole. But not by much. He’d had centuries to hone his skills. He could seduce anyone, was comfortable doing anything. Unfortunately, sex meant nothing to Sawyer but a means to whatever end he was after at the time. That didn’t make the sex any less spectacular. But the aftermath was a bitch.
    I understood why he was the way he was. His mother had screwed him up. Didn’t they always? However, Sawyer’s mother had screwed him up by actually screwing him. The federation had helped to make Sawyer a head case to rival all head cases by using his talent as a catalyst telepath—he could free blocked supernatural abilities through sex. He’d certainly unblocked me.
    That he’d drugged me and slept with me to do so was still a matter of contention between us, but since I’d discovered the truth about his mother, I was a littleless likely to plunge a knife into his back when he wasn’t looking. I still hadn’t forgiven him, but I kind of understood why he’d thought it was okay. His boundaries were as fucked up as he was.
    We ran for miles.