he? I can’t even smell him anymore.*
*And I bet you couldn’t smell him clearly before he appeared, either,* Fleance replied grimly. *Just because you can’t see or sense a hellhound, doesn’t mean we’re not there.”
*What? How?*
*Magic.* His jaw set in a grim line as he finished bandaging her side and moved onto her leg. He hesitated slightly, inspecting the bite marks more carefully than he had the scratches. *Hellhounds can pass completely unseen to all senses. He could be here and we wouldn’t know it, unless we were part of his pack.*
*My sheep couldn’t sense him, even when I could. When he was… making me afraid.*
Fleance frowned. *I haven’t heard of that happening before.*
“Oh, good.” Sheena’s cheeks heated up. *Just my sheep being its usual unobservant self, then. Forget I said anything.*
So, hellhounds could turn invisible to all the senses—unless you were a part of their pack. That sounded a lot like her flock sense. Except sheep didn’t go invisible.
She concentrated. *I can’t feel that… that fake fear anymore. And the only shifter I can sense here is you.*
Fleance looked relieved, and his eyes flickered with possessive fire. *Good. Let’s get to the nearest city, uh…*
*Rotorua?*
*Right. Find a hotel to hole up in, make sure you’re safe, and then I’ll… deal with Parker.*
She didn’t ask what he meant by ‘deal with’. Fleance dabbed stinging antiseptic on the scratch on her leg, and carefully wrapped a bandage over it.
*That’s that,* he murmured. *I think… I think you’ll be all right.*
*Like I said, I’ve had worse,* Sheena began, and pinched her lips together before she could say anything else that might reinforce the impression that she couldn’t leave the house without breaking herself in some way.
Arson. Hellhounds. Invisibility powers. Forget traveling the world; this was more adventure than she’d thought possible, here on her own doorstep. What did those old Tourism NZ ads say? Don’t leave home until you’ve seen the country? And here she was.
The ad hadn’t said anything about getting savaged by a magical shifter before you leave the country, but Sheena’s sheep had always had trouble following instructions.
She swung her legs into the footwell as Fleance tidied away the first-aid kit and got in the driver’s side. The scratch across her ribs was fine, but her leg ached like a bastard.
The pain was more frustrating than anything else. Another reminder that she was physically more pathetic than literally everyone else she knew. She’d injured herself before. She’d been bitten before, and a bite from a fellow sheep shifter had a lot of crunch damage. The monstrous hellhound had barely sliced into her leg at all. And here she was, wincing over a nibble that didn’t even need stitches.
It’s not even as bad as when I tried to run through that barbed-wire fence, she said to her sheep. Remember?
There was no reply. Sheena held her breath.
All her life, even before she first shifted into her sheep form, her sheep had been there. Tucked away in the very heart of her being. Frolicking or dicking around, usually. Now, it was…
Stop hiding! she said suddenly. I know you’re still there, so come out and talk to me!
She dove deeper into her own heart, hunting for the cotton-wool fluff of her sheep. It had to be there somewhere. It had to be. It couldn’t—
She saw a flicker of something just out of each and squeezed her eyes tightly shut, concentrating fiercely on it.
A flicker of black-and-white woolliness.
There you are, she thought, relieved. What are you doing?
Her sheep twitched its ears at her, but she got the feeling it hadn’t actually listened to her. It was as intently focused on her injury as she was.
It probably hurts so much because I’m embarrassed about it, Sheena thought, to herself since her sheep was off in its own world. I thought I could help, but instead I just got in the way.
Shh, her sheep muttered. I’m concentrating.
You’re concentrating? On what?
Shh!
Jeez Louise, all right…
Sheena blinked and focused on the outside world again. Not on her leg. She’d whinged about that enough, even if all the whinging had been inside her own head.
Fleance turned on the engine and glanced her way. “Are you all right?”
His voice brushed against her like heat from a home fire. Sheena blinked.
“Oh, fine. Box of birds.”
“A box of…” Fleance’s face creased with confusion.
“I mean I’m… fine. No worries.” Americans understood ‘no worries’, didn’t they?
She shivered as Fleance put the car in reverse and bumped along the uneven farm road. This Parker character had