Flight: The Roc Warriors (Immortal Elements Book 1) Read online

  I reached into the Ziploc of jerky and tore off a chunk, getting bits stuck between my teeth. One of the plethora of reasons I tried to keep a mostly vegetarian diet. Spinach in your teeth wasn’t nearly as irritating as beef. But up on the mountain, keeping up my protein intake was important. And jerky was simply the easiest way to get my protein. As I’d payed attention since leaving the cabin—a basic hiking safety precaution—and didn’t notice any droppings, I felt safe enough to lie down and rest at least for a while. There was really no way to light a fire. The sleeping bag, a subzero, held enough concentrated insulation to keep me warm.

  Unzipping the bag and slipping off my boots, I slid inside and shimmied down until my feet touched the bottom, zipped it back up the side, and lay down fully. The sleeping bag’s hood kept my head supported.

  Nature sounded all around me. The wind, insects and the distant chitter of tiny tree birds made for a peaceful, beautiful evening. So beautiful, and with the day’s hiking wearing me out, it took no time to lull me under.

  Warm, comfortable, and oddly enough, dreaming of my eagle, I woke suddenly. Started awake by a vicious growl. A growl.

  My eyes attempted to focus in the dark, but it was too dark. I unzipped and reached for my flashlight, flicking it on.

  Wolves.

  An unusually high number, probably ten wolves stood in a reversed V, the leader to the front. They fanned out, all hunched low, looking ready to strike. Each one gave off an individual growl, scary yet beautiful and distinct.

  They growled not like wild animals who’d sniffed out food, but… but like they hated me.

  Did wolves hate? Could they?

  And more important, why me?

  I scrambled backward on my hands in a crabwalk—in the dark. Meaning, I scrambled until my hand slipped on some rocks, over the edge of the cap, and stopped abruptly. Stuck between the gaping mouth of a once-dormant, now-steaming volcano and death by canine.

  Baring teeth.

  Claws clicked against the ground as they moved as one unit toward me.

  This was not how I’d ever imagined dying. Not that I spent much time picturing my demise, but if I had, being ripped to pieces by angry wolves would not have been top of that list.

  The leader lunged. I threw my hands out, protecting my head and neck, and screamed bloody murder, apropos for the situation, for I was about to be bloodied and murdered.

  Out of nowhere, birds screeched overhead and a flame came charging from around the bend of the mouth of the volcano. Not just a flame, clearly a man held the torch made from a stick, but it was the flame that I noticed first. His feral, guttural warrior’s cry broke through the silence of the night.

  He charged the wolves, no fear. They shifted to lunge at him. But the flying brown army swooped in, aiding the man. Using the heavy head of my flashlight, and along with the fire in his hand, we swung savagely at the snapping beasts. His copper skin shining brightly in the orange light. Copper skin on a distinctly naked man.

  Between the birds and the man, and even me to an extent, the wolves didn’t stand a chance. But it was still all too much for me. I caught a heavy, sharp claw to the side of my head and blacked out.

  Chapter Two:

  Shadow

  I woke back in the hunting cabin to the man stoking a fire in the old stone fireplace. Still naked. His copper skin gleamed beneath the light of the flickering flames.

  His thick hair flowed like a wild, brown mane down his back reminiscent of some indigenous, past century men I’d seen in photographs while researching the area. As I took in his appearance, the one thing that I should have been concerned about, the fact that he didn’t wear a stitch of clothing, strangely didn’t bother me at all. I mean, who walked around in the woods naked besides naturalists? And didn’t they live in communities? Why didn’t it bother me more?

  He stood and turned to me and I understood in a glance why it didn’t bother me. In fact, I sucked in a loud, sharp breath, because hands down, it was the only way to get any air in my lungs. Quite simply, he took my breath away.

  Beautiful, soulful amber eyes, somehow familiar amber eyes, gazed at me. “Are you well?” he asked, sounding nothing like I expected. Though he spoke English, he had an accent. Not Native American. Something different, foreign. Exotic.

  Perfect in tone and pitch. It was as if the universe picked up on every nuance of what I would find attractive in a man’s voice and gave them to this man. Come on, all he said was, “Are you well?”

  To answer his question, no. I didn’t think I was well because what I wanted to do right then was get naked along with him and find out how adventurous he could be. Never, not ever, had I slept with a man on the first day I met him. Not to mention I’d been slapped upside the head by a wolf last night. Maybe that accounted for my strange behavior. Instead of telling him all that, I answered how I thought I should answer. “Oh, um… yeah. I’m fine,” I said. “Thanks to you.”

  He smiled, and wow, it had to be the most brilliant smile I’d ever seen.

  “Your phone has been ringing off the hook,” he said. I looked over to the beat-up coffee table where it rested. “Some woman named Harpy keeps trying to reach you.”

  “Oh man.” I burst out laughing, unable to control it if I tried. “Some woman named Harpy.” He looked at me curiously but that was the contact name I’d used for my boss. For this to be said straight-faced to me by a naked man who’d rescued me from wolves on top of a mountain? The situation was so far from funny, yet, there it was.

  I laughed hard enough for tears to form in my eyes. He continued to look at me as if I’d lost my mind. And maybe I had.

  I laughed until he moved a step closer and a pain shot up my side. “Why are you naked?” I asked abruptly. Seriously. Well, as seriously as one could only just coming out of a laughing fit.

  “I was not prepared to… to have to rescue you. Clothing should arrive shortly.”

  Should arrive shortly? From where? Knowing he was about to dress should’ve been a comfort to me. Still, as I gave him a slow perusal, I found the opposite to be true. That head swipe obviously did more damage than I knew because this… this wasn’t me. The words I spoke weren’t me. “Don’t get dressed on my account,” I said. Was I flirting? With a naked stranger? Yes. Yes, I was and more importantly, I didn’t feel a lick of embarrassment about it.

  “It’s necessary.” He told me, either not picking up on the flirtation or purposely avoiding it.

  His rejection hurt, too. Was it really rejection, though? My heart took it as rejection. I think I needed to see a doctor—no, a neurologist. Could that wolf’s claw have caused this much head trauma?

  If I didn’t think about it, then it wasn’t happening, right? I was going to go with that. Onto the next subject.

  “Is my equipment okay?” I shoved up from the sofa sleeper where he’d lain me on the cushions since he’d not pulled the sleeper out.

  “It is still hooked up at the mouth of the volcano.”

  It is? Very formal, too formal. This was the second time. Didn’t he believe in contractions? I was about to ask him about it when we heard the sound of something hitting the front door outside. He moved from my bedside, or couch side, to be more accurate, and walked to open it—the door. A pack similar to my backpack rested on the ground as if someone had dropped it there. He opened that, too.

  The beautiful, copper-skinned man pulled a pair of jeans out, then proceeded to step into and pull those faded denim wonders up over his powerful thighs, making sure to tuck in his manhood fashioned by the gods inside before he buttoned and zipped.

  Threadbare at the crotch and torn at the knee, I never wanted to be a piece of clothing more in my life. Jealous that the jeans got to touch him and I didn’t.

  “My name is Shadow,” he said. “Of the Roc.”

  “Shadow?” I asked, as that was more than a curious name. Shadow Roc sounded like a place to go camping rather than the name of a person.

  “Yes.” He stood in
front of the fireplace and spread his arms out wide. An arm span to match his height, which had to be 6’5 to 6’6, casting an extensive shadow across the floor. “When I was born my mother knew from the size of me then that I would cast vast shadows.”

  “Amazing,” I uttered out loud, though I’d meant to keep the comment to myself.

  He smiled at me again. “This is where you introduce yourself.”

  “Right, yeah,” I started. “Sorry. I’m Meena. Um… Anthony.” I held my hand out for him to shake. It seemed a bit silly and formal, considering I’d already seen him naked, though manners and rules of society won out.

  He took my hand and held it but didn’t shake it, looking deeply into my eyes. “Meena,” he repeated, getting a feel for my name or putting it to memory.

  I loved how his lips formed my name. I loved how it rolled off his tongue.

  “Yeah. It means ‘blue stones.’ My eyes.”

  “Your eyes.” He repeated that too, still holding my hand, I might add.

  The way his eyes held me captive, I could do nothing aside from lick my lips and swallow hard the lump of lust he was responsible for forming in my throat.

  Shadow.

  “Are you hungry?” he asked. “I cannot cook much, but I can cook.”

  I nodded. Even as my stomach grumbled from the mere mention of food, all I could muster in response was a nod. My mouth went dry. My heartbeat raced. I felt like a big bucket of sweat all because he spoke to me. Looked into my eyes. Said my name and continued to hold my hand.

  Don’t get me started on his hand. In mine, it felt familiar in a way that I couldn’t understand. That logic told me I shouldn’t feel. We’d only just met yet my soul told me we’d known each other forever.

  Immediately when he dropped it, the cold seeped not just over the skin there, but throughout my whole body. I shivered as if I’d never be warm again.

  He didn’t shiver, at least not that I saw. Clearly not as moved by the experience as me, he walked gracefully over to the kitchen, opened the refrigerator and pulled out the processed cheese slices I’d brought up with me as part of my provisions, then moved to the cupboards. From there, he pulled out white bread—the kind that could outlast a nuclear winter—and a can.

  Then I watched him prepare grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup.

  It was cute. Quaint.

  To see such a large-framed man fumble around the kitchen until he produced dainty sandwiches and one of the more delicate soups in the myriad of canned soups instead of say, the canned stew I had in there, could almost be described as comical if it weren’t so sexy. And they tasted wonderful. Wonderful. There was just something about another person cooking for you because they wanted to.

  Nobody had prepared me dinner without me having to pay them for doing so in too long a time. We stayed silent throughout the duration of the meal. Thoughts, well more like questions, sifted through my mind. Ones I wanted to ask him. Ones I wasn’t sure if I should ask him. Did he feel even a smidgen of the strange emotions concerning me that I felt around him?

  At the end of the meal, while I was clearing our plates and mugs, he broke the silence to ask me the most bizarre, most nonsensical question he could have thought of.

  “Do you believe in magic?” he asked.

  Magic? “I saw a wonderful illusionist in Las Vegas once. He made a school bus disappear.”

  “That is false magic. I mean real magic.”

  My heart deflated. He was so pretty, too bad he had to open his mouth. The man running around naked in the woods made sense now. He was obviously as crazy as a loon.

  I set the dishes in the sink and turned to him. “I’m a scientist. Magic is…” I trailed off, leaning my hands against the sink behind me, and bit my lip, trying to figure out a way to explain that didn’t hurt his feelings. “Magic was ‘created’”—I used air quotes— “to explain what we had no explanation for at the time. But as we figured out what was real, the underlying science, we learned that magic never really existed.”

  My answer seemed to upset him, as he curtly dipped his chin and walked back over to the fireplace to stoke the fire.

  It wasn’t like I meant to upset him. But a man his age, whatever age that happened to be—maybe thirties—a man that age should understand magic simply didn’t exist.

  Period.

  I started to walk over to him because it hurt me to hurt him. Physically hurt, in my chest. Next to my heart. Over my heart. The pain was almost excruciating.

  Just heartburn, I told myself. Even though I knew it was more than that. What it was, however, I couldn’t say.

  Unable to help myself, I reached out to touch his shoulder stopping short when these loud, evil caws pierced the stillness of the cabin.

  Caws.

  I pivoted on the ball of my foot, sprinting to the door to throw it open.

  Although they didn’t approach the cabin, hundreds of those ginormous turkey buzzards lined the grounds—on the dirt, perched on boulders, and on the tree branches. All with black beady, hungry eyes, staring directly at me.

  And like the wolves on the volcano’s cap, they were hungry not for food, but for blood.

  My blood.

  Their aggression towards me was tangible. If looks could kill, I’d already be dead. Those birds hated me. Who knew birds could hate? Well, they sure did. Me.

  His heat found my back before his body brushed up against me, his hand to my shoulder in a sign of solidarity. The cawing started up again when they saw him. This time it sounded like a challenge. For Shadow.

  “Come away, Meena,” he ordered, tugging at the back of my T-shirt to pull me from the doorway. When I cleared it, to the continuous caws of the buzzards, he stood there and stared them down for a few more long moments before he too backed inside and closed the door.

  “That was weird.” I informed him of something that, although obvious, still needed to be voiced. Or, at least, I needed to voice it.

  Now, I didn’t have a whole lot of experience with animals; I’d taken care of a stray cat as a kid, and I’d had run-ins with wild animals from time to time. It happened when researching volcanic activity, seeing as most volcanos didn’t exist within city limits.

  But Yukon animals were positively loopy. Maybe it was the air quality? Maybe it affected the animals’ behavior responses. I’d have to note it. More tests needed to be run. It was far past time to get back to the cap to check the readings on my monitors. This was big.

  “Stay inside unless you need to use the outhouse,” said Shadow, breaking into my thoughts. “then let me know. I’ll walk you.”

  Uh… let him know? When I had to use the outhouse? No. How embarrassing would that be? I was not telling him when I had to pee. Or worse. Of course, we all did it. But that didn’t mean I wanted him outside listening while it occurred.

  “Sure,” I replied instead, not in the mood for an argument. Where did he live, anyway? Why was he still here? “Don’t you have a home to get back to?” That didn’t sound too rude, did it?

  “Yes,” Shadow answered. Though, he made no move to leave to go back to said home. Rather, he sat on the rustic sofa, built from logs and handstitched cushions for the seat and back. Surprisingly comfortable compared to how it appeared.

  The kitchen table held my notes and test samples. They took up every bit of available space minus the small corner where Shadow and I had eaten our lunch. I looked between him and them, and sighed. “I have work to get back to.” I walked over and slid onto the seat to get down to it.

  So engrossed in my progress, I never even noticed him cook dinner until he slid a plate next to me and ordered, “Eat.”

  Chunks of meat and a kind of fry bread. Okay, so I never brought canned meat with me. And fry bread? Where did he get all these ingredients? He even gave me a carrot slaw, though he didn’t serve himself any of that.

  “Where did the food come from?” I asked.

  “I had them send it along with my clothing.” That was it, all
he offered on the subject. I waited, staring at him while he continued to shovel food in his mouth.

  “Shadow?” I asked.

  “Eat your food,” he ordered again. And I guessed that was the end of that. You could lead a man to the table but you couldn’t make him speak.

  Even after cooking, he cleaned up so I could continue my work. While his back was turned to me, up at the sink, doing the dishes, I tried to sneak off to the outhouse.

  “Woman,” he called. “Stop right there.” What? Did he have eyes on the back of his head? “I thought I told you I would be walking you out.”

  “You were busy.” That seemed like a good enough excuse.

  “Not too busy to keep you safe,” he replied. So nope, not a good enough excuse. He dried his hands off with a piece of paper towel, cupped his long fingers around my elbow and led me out to do my business.

  The short trip was just the pick-me-up I needed to allow me to return to my research while Shadow sat down on the couch and opened up a book that he also must have had the backpack gods send down along with his clothing and food.

  Finally, after my eyes dipped closed for the fifth time in a minute, I set my pen down, pushed my chair back, twisted my neck from side to side to work out the kinks there, then stood to stretch the muscles in my back out. I looked down at my phone and saw it was almost one-thirty in the morning.

  Time had certainly gotten away from me. Shadow was sleeping on the sofa. He’d used the blankets and pillows from the nest I’d made for my copper bird friend.

  He didn’t look insane while sleeping. He looked peaceful… and beautiful.

  And for some bizarre reason, I walked over to him, brushed the back of my hand over his forehead, and then bent to kiss him goodnight.

  He never even shifted.

  Quietly, I walked over to the bed in the corner of the room and crawled in, fully dressed aside from shoes, and collapsed on top of the covers.

  I couldn’t be sure how long I’d been asleep, but it was still dark outside and I had the covers not just pulled up, but tucked around my shoulders. And more than that, I swore I saw Copper, my giant eagle, in the doorway.