She had no choice.
Bay sat down on the couch and patted the seat beside him. Manda limped tentatively across the room and sat on the soft cushions, but as far away from Bay as she could. He knew she’d tried to make it look as if she merely wanted to be comfortable, but her barriers had fallen when Bay shifted and she’d broadcasted her thoughts like an open book.
He still terrified her, but for different reasons. He wondered what had happened to make her so afraid of men. Whatever, it went beyond the mere fact of her appearance or the fact he was a stranger. He tried probing her mind, but her chin snapped up and she glared at him, obviously aware he intruded.
Bay took a deep breath and wondered where to begin. It hadn’t been all that long ago that Jacob Trent had done to Bay exactly what he’d just done to this young woman. Shifted from man to wolf, and in the process, turned Baylor’s world upside down.
Then, just as quickly, Jake had righted it. Answered the questions that had plagued Baylor all his life. Questions that couldn’t possibly be as confusing as the ones this young woman confronted. He couldn’t imagine going through life looking the way she did. Well, he had to start somewhere. “Will you tell me your name?”
She looked oddly vulnerable and at the same time, almost pleased with his question. “I thought you knew. My name is Manda. I figured that was how you found me.”
Bay shook his head. “No, Manda. The folks here are working damned hard to protect you. Even Harry, the guy who brought your groceries, only agreed to tell me where you lived when I convinced him I could help you. He wasn’t real happy about it, but I think he finally believed me.”
“Did you do that for him? Change into a wolf?”
Bay shook his head. “No. That’s a secret we’re not allowed to share.”
“You shared it with me.”
He laughed, reached out and ruffled her tangled hair and realized he’d frightened her with the friendly gesture. Immediately he withdrew his hand. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you.”
“It’s just…I’m not used to people not being afraid of me. Or disgusted. I’m not used to other people, period.” She looked down at her paws crossed in her lap, then raised her head again. “I haven’t always been like this. I was cursed when I was twelve years old. Up until then, I was just a normal girl.”
“Why do you think you were cursed?”
“I sinned.” She looked away. “My father caught me…” She sighed, then looked directly at Bay and the words spilled out. “He caught me touching myself. He said it was an abomination. A sin against God. If I didn’t pray for forgiveness and promise never to do it again, God would curse me. I didn’t ask for forgiveness because it felt too good and I knew I’d do it again, so I lied to my father. That night the rebels came into the village. They killed Mother and Father. It was all my fault, for lying, and I was cursed. I became this creature.”
“How long ago was this? How long have you been…” He couldn’t call it a curse, though to Manda it must be worse than death.
“Like this? It happened almost twenty-five years ago. I’m almost thirty-six years old and I’ve looked this way my entire adult life. I’ve been studied, poked, experimented on, and raped, all in the name of science. You try telling me it’s not a curse. If not, then what? Tell me, Mr. Quinn. You seem to have all the answers.”
He wanted to smile at her anger. She still had spirit. No matter what had happened, that hadn’t been broken. “Actually,” he said, leaning back against the padded arm of the sofa so he could see her better, “I probably have as many questions as you. What scientists? What happened?”
She clenched her hands and glared at him. “No more. You said you have answers. Damn it, tell me what happened. I have to know. Why? What made me this way? If not God’s curse, then what?”
He liked her already. “Genetics. Your breeding. I believe you, just like me, are Chanku. An ancient race of shapeshifters that first appeared on the steppes of the Himalayas, probably not that far from the village where your parents were missionaries. We don’t know if the first ones evolved naturally or might even have been left here by some alien race millennia ago. What we do know, however, is that the species loses the ability to shift from human to wolf and back again without certain nutrients found in that one isolated area of the world. I can only imagine you ate some of the local vegetation that allowed your Chanku genes to awaken. We can’t shift until reaching puberty. You were twelve years old. About the time when a lot of girls begin puberty, right? What happened the night your parents died?”
Manda stared at him a moment, amber eyes wide, yet Bay knew she tried to process what he’d just told her while she focused on her memories. Somehow she would have to reconcile an entirely different history for herself, but now she relived her own reality. Horrible memories of blood and death and abject fear. He felt them, saw as she remembered, experienced her agony through the thoughts spilling out of her now unblocked mind. Bay felt her horror of the men on horseback and on foot slipping into the small, walled village late at night, moving from hut to hut, burning and murdering.
He saw her father standing at their doorway, his Bible held high as he defied the raiders. Saw the blood spatter from the back of his head when a bullet entered between his eyes and split his skull. Her mother was next, though her death wasn’t nearly as clean as her husband’s. She, like the other women, was raped by many before one of them finally killed her.
Manda saw and heard it all, hidden in a secret closet designed for just such an attack, watching through the woven, wicker door. When the battle ended, when soldiers came in the morning to find what was left of the village, they’d found her by the sound of her whimpering. One of the men opened the door and he’d screamed. Screamed and run from her in fear.
There’d been a young congressman on a fact-finding mission. He’d obviously been repulsed by her appearance, but when he heard her speak English, he’d been kind to her. He’d managed to smuggle her out of the country and back to the United States, where he’d kept her over the years. Moved from lab to lab around the country, she’d spent the last two dozen years being studied as a freak of nature.
She’d called him Papa B, but he’d been dead now for what seemed like forever and the visual Bay got of the man was fuzzy and indistinct. Manda opened her mouth to speak. Bay moved closer to her and touched his finger to the side of her muzzle. “I’ve been in your thoughts. I don’t want to make you talk about what happened. It was truly awful, but what I saw in your memories explains a lot.”
She blinked, almost as if she were coming out of a trance. “How do you know what I remembered?”
“I am Chanku. So are you. We share our thoughts with one another. It’s a form of telepathy we call mindtalking. It’s even easier with a mate, but just getting to know each other will make it easier for us. Living there in Tibet, you probably ate enough of the local foods to enable a small gland in your brain to begin to develop. Probably not fully, which would account for your partial shift. The trauma of the attack and your parents’ deaths would have forced the shift on you. You’re not a freak, Manda. Not at all. You are Chanku. A shapeshifter. Part of an ancient species that exists secretly among humans, but they have the most amazing abilities. I can help you find your true self, but you’ll have to trust me. Can you do that, Manda? Can you trust someone you’ve barely begun to know?”
She reached up and touched his cheek with her paw. Bay felt the sharp nails against his face, the rough pads at the end of each finger, and looked into eyes the image of his own. “The two men who’ve cared for me since Papa B died didn’t come back from their last mission. They’ve been gone more than two weeks now.