Highland Shifter (MacCoinnich Time Travels #4)(24)
Author: Catherine Bybee

He shook thoughts of Grainna aside. She was dead. No need to think of her now.

Then again, she was the reason he’d landed in the sixteenth century and why his mother had married Finlay. Simon would give her credit if the thought didn’t leave him physically ill.

“My God, you’re serious.” Helen had stopped walking and so had he.

“Aye.”

“So, what’s your special gift?”

Simon opened his mouth, but before he could utter a word, a woman’s scream pierced the air with a shrill that caused every nerve in Simon’s body to stand on alert.

He pivoted, and saw a woman leaning over the railing of a gorilla exhibit a few yards away. “My baby!” she cried.

Simon didn’t pause, he ran toward the woman who was attempting to hoist herself over a rail. When he reached her side, he noticed a toddler, a child no more than three, sitting in a bush, deep inside a ditch of the exhibit.

Pushing the mother aside, Simon leapt over the rail and jumped twenty feet to the ground. The sounds of the crowd gathering hardly registered as his mind opened to the animals around him.

A male, the alpha, bounded forward to see who the intruders were. A female, less dominant, but even more intrigued, darted down the ditch and came within feet of the crying child.

The female heard the cry and tilted her head. A rush of instinct filled Simon’s body. He couldn’t tell if it was his or the gorillas, but he knew it as the same.

Help.

The gorilla moved closer to the child and the noise around Simon wailed. He thought he heard his name, but he didn’t respond.

Help the baby.

The thought filtered in his head like a mantra.

Above him, the 400-pound male watched and stood tall, making sure Simon saw him and knew he was the master of this space. Simon kept his head low and moved closer to the crying child.

“Mommy!” he cried. The child’s arms reached above his head, big tears ran down his plump cheeks.

“It’s okay, lad. You’re okay.”

“Mommy.”

The female gorilla scrambled toward the child.

Simon moved forward slowly.

“Help him,” he heard above his head.

The female eyed Simon as he inched closer and barked a warning.

The child hiccupped and started to calm. Simon was the same distance to the child as the gorilla. The chocolate eyes of the animal caught his and held. The gorilla’s weathered hand reached toward the child and stroked his cheek.

The mother of the child screamed.

With as much power as Simon had, he asked the female not to move.

The gorilla shifted her eyes above her, then back to Simon. Then moved her arm to her side and sat.

Once realizing he had control, Simon scooped the struggling child in his arms and held tight.

In the back of his mind, Simon felt the massive male move forward. Curiosity about what was taking place swam over him.

“Alex!”

Simon backed away from the female and stood. The steep barrier that kept the gorillas in their pen would make it difficult for Simon to escape.

The sound of a smashing door made him jump. The gorillas shifted their gaze to a far wall. The thought of food and routine filled Simon’s mind.

Go, he suggested to the animals. Within seconds, the gorillas lumbered toward their keepers, awaiting their unexpected meal.

Keeping the toddler pinned to his side, Simon climbed up into the gorilla encampment.

While the apes were distracted, Simon moved along the outer fence to a door. A pair of zookeepers waved him forward and ushered him into safety.

The toddler clung to him, but his cries had muffled to whimpers.

When the mother burst around the corner, Simon handed the child over.

“Alex. Oh, my baby.”

“You have a brave young lad,” Simon told the mother. “You didn’t even shy away when the gorilla tried to help, did you?” he asked the child.

“Thank you.” The mother fell on Simon and hugged him. “Thank you.”

“Best keep a watchful eye on this one.” Simon warned her.

The mother smoothed a hand over her child’s face and sat down to assess her son’s body.

Simon felt a hand on his arm and he turned to find Helen’s deep, penetrating gaze. “Let me guess.”

He narrowed his eyes.

“You have a thing for animals?”

* * * *

Helen was still shaking when they left the zoo an hour later. The gorilla encounter had lasted only a handful of minutes, but the time stretched out in slow motion. The young mother’s scream played repeatedly inside Helen’s head, followed closely by the image of Simon leaping over the railing to the child below. When the charging gazillion-pound ape skidded to a stop next to the child, Helen nearly lost her lunch.

Who the hell willingly jumps into a wild animal’s cage? Okay, so what if the ape hadn’t charged him, still, who in their right mind stands up to an ape?

When chaos erupted around her, it was obvious the people who’d been there thought the same way.

Simon approached the child and the ape with calculated ease. He’d kept complete eye contact with the gorilla while gathering the child in his arms. Beside Helen, the child’s mother alternately would cry out one moment and bite her tongue the next to keep from screaming.

And all the while, Simon didn’t react to anything going on above him. A small miracle, since a fair amount of dopey-eyed females batted their eyelashes at him when he returned the child to his mother and walked away. People took pictures. Video cameras angled in his direction. His stunt in the gorilla cage would be viral by dinner.

Helen’s hands shook when she placed her key in the ignition and started the car.

“Are you well, lass?” Simon asked.

She killed the engine and twisted in her seat toward him. “No. No, I’m not. It’s been a crazy-ass couple of days and that stunt topped off my wack-o-meter.”

“Wack-o-meter?”

“Yeah, and stop smirking like you don’t understand what I’m getting at. What the hell was that, Simon? Something tells me that if any other person had dropped into that pen, those apes would have had them for lunch.”

“The female only wanted to help the child. The male wanted to protect the female. They aren’t all that different from our own species.”

Helen tossed a hand up in the air. “And how the hell do you know that?” Her voice rose, her blood pressure with it.

“Animals are my gift.”

“Yeah, I gathered that, Einstein. But how? What did you do, talk to them or something?”