Silver Basilisk (Silver Shifters 4)

Rigo followed, loving the sight of her complete absorption in the gorgeous scenery. Two, three, then five times she stopped, looked around, then muttered, “No, just a bit farther . . . There. Right over there, that has to be it.”

She stood at the lip of a cliff, and began a slow panning of the entire canyon—but halted halfway, exclaiming, “Where did the light go? It’s noon!”

She glanced up at the same moment Rigo did, to discover a weather front spreading with deceptive slowness from the south. “That i

s a weird cloud,” she said. “It looks kind of like an amoeba.”

“It’s a storm cell,” Rigo said as a gust of hot wind tore at them from below. “We’d better get back up the trail.”

“Okay,” Godiva said, balancing the cane between her knees so she could toss her phone into her purse with one hand and clap her other on her head to keep her hat from taking flight. “Wow. The sky was clear ten seconds ago.”

She bent into another gust of wind, this one tearing along the cliffs, bringing a scattering of huge drops of rain. She staggered as the wind buffeted her. The wind ripped her hat from her head and sent it spinning out over the thousand foot drop. Rigo leaped forward to try to shelter her, but the wind scoured past from yet another direction, gaining strength by the moment, as overhead the gray cloud intensified to a dark lanced with green.

Godiva bent nearly double over the cane as she stumped up the path, but again the wind did its best to swat them right off the side of the cliff. Godiva’s eyes widened as a gust threatened to take her light body away into the wind, and Rigo caught her hand.

The cane went spinning away as a stronger gust buffeted them. Both her hands clung to his. In spite of the wind and the stinging splatters of rain increasing by the second, warmth flooded through him.

“Trying to hustle here . . . but my knees aren’t getting . . . the memo,” Godiva panted.

“When we came down I noticed a crevasse. It should be up ahead about a hundred feet,” he said. “Maybe even a cave, if we’re lucky.”

“I know there’s supposed to be . . . a million caves all through these canyons,” Godiva gasped. “Weren’t there . . . entire communities . . . ages ago?”

“I think so. Ah! There it is,” he said, as lightning glared overhead.

Thunder crashed, shaking the stones around them. And hail roared down with the force of a pistol shot.

Rigo tried his best to shelter Godiva as he guided her into the crevasse he’d spotted. Icy wind shoved at them from behind, bringing a curtain of hailstones. Most of them struck his back. The crack was maybe twenty feet deep, but at least they were mostly out of the wind and weather, though not the cold.

“I’m sorry about this,” he began.

“Why?” she asked, shivering violently. “This is a hundred percent on me. In my defense I will say that I’ve gotten so used to Southern California’s weather that when someone says fifty percent chance of rain I mentally translate that to five percent. And if it comes, it’ll be five minutes’ worth.” Her teeth chattered a little as she added firmly, “I’ll tough it out. Sorry I dragged you into this.”

Lightning flared so bright it seemed to enter the cave, then another mountain-rattling clap of thunder. The noise of hail softened, but the curtain blurring the cave entrance only thickened from gray to white— a snow flurry! It wouldn’t last, of course, but it was dangerous enough, soaked as they were.

Godiva sat on the ground, her arms curled around her knees, which were pulled up to her chin like a child. Her top was plastered to her back, outlining the knobs of her spine, making her look so vulnerable it tore at his heart. He wanted to wrap himself around her, but he was as wet as she.

But that was as a human.

He looked at the components of the crevasse, letting his basilisk sense the density of the stone. Ah. There.

He glanced up. Maybe fifteen feet to the apex. It was going to be a very tight fit, but . . . he shifted, curling his long dragonish tail gently, carefully, around Godiva. Then he focused on a segment of stone, concentrated, and zapped it with a sustained glare until it glowed a deep red, emanating welcome heat.

And then settled as best he could, his basilisk utterly content to be protecting his mate.

Chapter 11

GODIVA

At first it startled her when Rigo shifted, and she watched, fascinated as his eyes lanced a glowing shaft of green light at a rock. She sneezed violently at the smell of burning stone, but when his huge body blocked that howling wind, she scooted gratefully as close to the glowing stone as she could get, her toes tucked under his armored tail.

“Thanks,” she sighed, thankful for Rigo’s smooth, scaled back blocking the wind. “Number 5,437 on the Getting Old Shit List is temperature changes. I used to be proud that I could endure any weather. Maybe it’s not age. Maybe living in Southern California has made me go soft.”

She looked to either side, where Rigo’s legs formed protective columns, and slid her hand along the smoothness of Rigo’s scales. They were steely, cool to the touch. She leaned over to study more of him, admiring a huge claw the size of a manhole cover that looked like it could shred a tank. Potentially fierce—Rigo’s basilisk looked like he could personally take on an entire tank regiment, even with close air support—but he sat so still and quiet, curved around her like her very own fortress.

She turned her head up the other way to admire more of him, her admiration turning to dismay when she saw his magnificent crested head bent at an awkward angle. “That cannot be comfortable,” she exclaimed. “Go ahead and change back. This mega-heat you made is more than warm enough. Anyway, it’s raining out there again. The temperature has to be coming up a bit.”

He blurred, and with a brief whispery sound he was human again. He dropped down next to her, one forearm propped on his bent knee, hands loose. She’d always liked his hands, the palms rough from work, but gentle even in their latent strength.