The Lion’s Cross Species Baby

Chapter 7

Annie clutched Cooper’s arm, shielding her nudity from the natives as best as she could. She watched warily as the group of mostly men moved a little closer. The women who were with them wore only brown loin cloths, like the men, their bre*sts bare and sagging. All of them wore some kind of red face paint, and all of them had similar hair, short, shaggy, and dark. Several of them held spears or other types of weapons; the one who seemed to be the leader carried a machete.

Annie had done her research about the types of people who lived in the jungle; most of them were harmless as long as you stayed out of their villages or within a certain distance. But this group seemed barbaric and fully prepared to kill them should the need arise. When she’d told people she planned to travel and stay in the jungles of Brazil so she could complete her thesis, so many had spoken of cannibalistic tribes. Nothing she’d found gave any indication of truth in their statements. However, looking around at the dozens of natives surrounding them, armed and glaring as if she and Cooper had trespassed on sacred land, those words haunted her.

“What do we do?” Annie asked, a tremor in her voice she couldn’t control.

“I know the language of this group. Somewhat,” Cooper said.

“Somewhat? What if you say the wrong thing because you don’t know the difference?” Annie asked.

“Just stay behind me.”

Cooper raised his voice and spoke words that sounded like garbled Spanish to her. The natives had quieted and were listening to him, which surprised her. They waited patiently for him to finish his sentences. The machete wielding leader replied to him, and Annie thought his voice sounded calm, almost friendly, so her shoulders relaxed a little. But under her hands, she felt Cooper stiffen and heard him suck in a breath. She opened her mouth to question him, but he spoke again before she could. After several more exchanges of words, Cooper turned to face her and spoke quietly to her.

“They don’t speak English, so we can speak freely.” Cooper was speaking to her, but he was looking past her and appeared to be counting how many were on the beach behind them. Annie glanced back as well, frowning.

“So what’s going on? He doesn’t sound mad or anything,” Annie commented quietly.

“His tone is deceptive. He wants us to return to their village with them,” Cooper told her, his eyes still focused behind her, calculating.

“Is that not a good idea?” Annie asked, confused.

“People who go to villages in this jungle don’t always return from those villages,” Cooper informed her. His count finished, he looked into her eyes. “We’re probably going to have to shift in order to get out of this.”

Annie’s thoughts immediately went to her baby, but the doctor had assured her she could still shift for another week or so just yesterday. She nodded at Cooper. “All right.”

“If I give you the signal, shift and fly up into the trees.”
“Where will you go?” Annie asked, her frown indicating her worry.

He smiled reassuringly at her. “Don’t worry, babe. When I shift, they’ll be so surprised I’ll be able to zip past them before they realize it. Most of these natives have never seen a shifter. They don’t get out of the jungle. You just make sure you fly high enough so they can’t hit you with anything, but low enough that you can see me and fly in the right direction.”

“What about the jeep?”

Cooper shook his head, smiling at her. “What a thing to think of.” He ran a hand over her face, and she returned his smile with one of her own. “You ready?”

“What’s the signal?”

“I’ll yell shift.”

“Pretty simple.”

Cooper winked at her and returned his attention to the leader of the natives. He spoke more forcefully, obviously refusing to return to the village. Several of the men in the group began hollering, and one of the women stepped forward. She looked different than the others. She carried no weapon; she held what looked like a scepter made of a thigh bone from some large creature. Her hair hung to the middle of her back rather than in the short, choppy cuts of her peers, and her clothes covered her bre*sts and were ornamented with bones of all sizes. Annie wondered briefly if they were animal or human; her research would be doubled when she got home.

The woman lifted a hand, and the jungle filled with silence. She spoke softly to Cooper in what Annie thought was a reassuring tone. As she spoke, trying to capture the attention of her captives, Annie glanced behind them. The natives on the beach had entered the water and were moving closer to the rock outcropping, closing off their escape should they try to run in that direction.

She returned her attention to the natives in front of them. They too had begun inching closer. Her grip on Cooper’s arm tightened.

He felt it and murmured, “This is their medicine woman. She claims she only wants a clipping of our hair and a few drops of blood, then we’ll be released.”

“A few drops of our blood? For what?”

“Doesn’t matter. They aren’t getting it,” Cooper told her.

The woman had watched closely while Cooper and Annie spoke but didn’t interrupt. The vague feeling that the woman understood at least a portion of their conversation sank into Annie’s mind, and she wondered if the woman knew their plan to shift should things get any hairier. When Cooper’s eyes met the woman’s again, she raised her eyebrows in question but didn’t speak to him.

Cooper tried to reason with the woman once more, hoping she would allow them to go free. The man Annie had assumed was the leader because of his choice of weapon had deferred to this woman when she’d stepped up. The choice to let them go or try to capture them was hers. Annie looked behind them; the natives were closer. The woman’s decision had been made before she began speaking to Cooper; she planned to take them to her village for whatever nefarious purpose she had in mind.