by T. S. Joyce
The ground was rough and hard to navigate, even for someone skilled at walking these trails. The potholes and hidden dips created the perpetual danger of a twisted ankle that kept my eyes on the road, but my other senses in the woods. A broken ankle meant no hunting. There would be no bandages and painkillers and time on the couch for me. A broken ankle meant a likely and painful death by starvation.
A sound caught and held my attention. I froze, one leg locked into place and one bent and resting on the toe.
There it was again. The softest of sighs, the barest of whispers. A noise as quiet as a breath. It was the death chant of something that had already accepted its impending doom.
I changed direction. Footstep after quiet footstep steered me toward the noise. I wouldn’t have cared if I wasn’t so hungry and that sound didn’t present the possibility of an easy meal. It’s not like I had the ammunition to waste to put the poor creature out of its misery, anyhow.
Or perhaps it was curiosity, pity, or something more that led me closer to the noise.
The leather strap of my weapon zinged against my shoulder as I pulled it off. The click of the safety sounded loud in the quiet of the woods. All had gone still and the hairs began to prickle and raise on my neck.
I bit my bottom lip. A wise woman would just leave. Instinct was a powerful deterrent, and mine was screaming for me to get out of here. My deep hunger, however, failed to get the message and pressed me closer still.
A break in the foliage of my woods revealed something so unexpected and surprising, I stopped and stared at the crumpled thing, dumbfounded. Lifting the rifle, I trained the scope on it out of a sense of self-preservation, though it was likely already dead. I sidestepped, taking a wide and cautious loop around it for a better look.
It was a man. His young face was made to look older by the grit and blood that painted it. As soon as I saw the blond, shoulder-length hair caressing the side of his face, I recognized him.
“Shit,” I muttered as I glared at Caleb McCreedy. Gold stubble graced his jaw, and the sunlight reflected off the sharp angles of his face. He was the most alluring man I’d ever seen, but all the looks in the world didn’t mean a thing if his heart was black. His hand rested on his chest, like he’d been trying to keep pressure on a wound there when he’d been conscious. Two of his fingers flicked in the barest gesture, like he was hailing someone in his dreams.
He wasn’t dead then. Not yet.
I lifted the rifle to see how it felt to train it on someone so cruel. His face was slack in my scope, his fingers still. Perhaps I’d imagined the life I’d seen there.
A bigger movement near a towering oak tree startled me, and as dread slammed into me at the danger I’d really stumbled across, I lifted the gun and pulled the trigger.
The sound was deafening.
Chapter Three
Mira
If I wasn’t fairly certain that bear wasn’t my neighbor, Eli Emmerson, I would’ve been happy to eat that giant grizzly. Bear probably tasted like raccoon, greasy and full of sinew, but about now, I’d try anything. I wasn’t a people-eater, though, and even if old Eli looked like a feral grizzly laying in the dirt over there, he’d definitely been human once.
I waited, but the body didn’t change back to its human form. Maybe when bear men died, they just stayed like that, all furry and powerful looking. The human Eli had been a sickly old man, frail and not long for the grave, but besides his ribs protruding, his bear form looked healthy.
I debated telling the game warden I’d shot the bear, but they weren’t native to Texas, and there would be way more questions about why he was on my land than I was prepared to answer. I’d definitely have to leave out the part about him being a bear shifter bent on murdering Bryson’s favorite golden boy. Uncle Brady had crowed shifter stories to the game warden before and been rewarded with a twenty-four hour stint in the drunk tank at the police station.
I cast Caleb an angry glare for trespassing and causing me this trouble. Had the idiot even realized he was being hunted?
I walked cautiously over to the giant grizzly with my rifle trained. It wasn’t a high caliber. I had been squirrel hunting after all, but my shot had been true, and I had aimed to kill, not to maim. That had been Mr. Eli’s mistake. He played with his food. I did not. I poked the glazed eye with the tip of my rifle to assure myself he was really dead. It didn’t flinch.
Kneeling down, I looked with pity at the deceased horse Caleb had apparently ridden onto my land. It had been a beautiful creature. Probably worth ten times the two I had in the rickety old barn out back.
Why the hell was Mr. Eli on my land hunting? He’d made a pact with my uncle long ago he’d stay in his own territory, the other side of the fence that separated our properties. I shook my head and frowned. His boys had been killed by poachers a few years back, and he hadn’t been the same after that. I’d hardly seen him since he told Uncle Brady what had happened to his family.
Maybe, he finally just lost it.
A soft groan escaped Caleb’s parted lips, and I twisted to look back at him. At least the puddle of blood beneath him was probably keeping him cool. See? There was always a bright side to everything.
I squatted down beside him, the tendons of my ankles stretching. I canted my head to the side to get a better look at the wounds around his neck and chest.
“You got yourself messed up bad, didn’t you?” I looked back in the direction of the house. It was a long walk from here on an empty stomach, much less dragging a body that weighed twice mine.
I could leave him here.
This wasn’t my concern. Caleb was trespassing, anyway. I had rights to shoot him, and I hadn’t even done that. I’d gone one step farther and shot his murderer. Avenged his death. I was basically a saint.
I growled in frustration. That wasn’t me. No matter what the man had done, I was already moving to try and save him. It wouldn’t work, but I had to live with myself. I didn’t need another ghost haunting my nightmares. My dance card was full.
I tore Caleb’s shirt to admire the damage. It was easy to do because it was already in tatters. Still, I had always wondered what it felt like to rip through fabric so easily. One time when I was younger, I had tried to rip my own shirt open like the hulk. My arms were much too weak, and all I did was growl a lot and stretch the neck so much that my foster parents at the time had grounded me for two weeks. Hulk fans, they were not.
“All right,” I said aloud, trying to calm my nerves at touching another human. I couldn’t remember the last time my fingers had brushed another’s skin. It had been years, at least.
The shirt Caleb wore was useless. Less than useless. It was in shreds and matted with blood in various stages of drying. It was stiff and dirty and smelled of death. When some poor creature lost too much, there was a subtle variation in the smell—an almost unnoticeable shift. That difference in smell meant there was no taking back what had been done, no healing, no more walking this world.
It was close with Caleb.
I tossed the rags to the side and kicked dirt over the top of them. I wasn’t going to help the other predators in the area smell the ready-made meal any easier. Right now, Caleb was easy pickings for the hogs that ran rampant here.
I pulled my thin shirt over my head. Self-consciousness didn’t cross my mind as I didn’t see the man regaining consciousness anytime soon, if ever again. I tried for the second time in my life to hulk rip a shirt with the exact same result—stretched fabric and annoyance.
“Bite the stitches,” said a gruff voice as soft as a whisper.
One impossibly blue slit of color looked back at me, appearing even brighter with all of the red surrounding it. Caleb closed his eye and sighed as he slipped into unconsciousness again. I arched my eyebrows at my exposed breasts. For the first time in my life, a boy had seen me basically naked, and the moment had passed so quickly I hadn’t even been able to fully appreciate it. Huh. I puffed air out of my mouth. Such a moment should have bee
n huge. At least that’s what the books I had read hinted at.
I did as Caleb suggested and got the rip started. With my shirt shredded into exactly two un-strip like pieces, I tied one around a deep gash and puncture wounds at his neck and the other at three deep claw marks across the inside of one of his elbows. They looked the worst. I worked like I was in a trance. I had seen too much blood to be affected by it now. Before I’d come to live with Uncle Brady, my life had been bathed in it.
Caleb should’ve been dead already. I didn’t want to be a pessimist, but this man had lost too much blood to survive. I narrowed my eyes at the still lump of Mr. Eli’s body. That rangy old shifter had either ruined Caleb’s life or killed him.
The rifle clunked into the inside of Caleb’s arm as I set it down. Bolting down the dusty path, I ran like hell for the horses. He could shoot himself or shoot the pigs that would come for him soon. Either way, the choice was his.
I shook like the last leaf on a tree in autumn. The one that was afraid to fall for fear of the unknown. Even when all of his friends had fallen, trembling uncertainty consumed such a leaf before it preformed its final floating dance to meet the fate of the others on the forest floor. It needn’t worry, but how could it know it would be reborn the next spring?
I shook for other reasons. Caleb had scared me off buying groceries, and I hadn’t built the nerve to go back yet. It had been a week with nothing in the pantry, and a damning fear of facing Mr. Bernard and the audience at Jake’s Quickstop again.
The leaf and I were the same—fearful creatures.
By the time my horse, Bobby, was saddled, I was close to passing out. “Stay awake, stay awake, stay awake,” I chanted to the hoof beats of my running stead. Stead was perhaps the wrong word when applied to my twenty-two year old gray gelding that had gone long in the tooth. The uneven terrain kept us at a slower pace than my beating heart preferred, a fact for which Bobby was probably grateful. When I found Caleb again, he was clutching onto the rifle with a shaking hand. It was the only part of him that had moved, and my heart lurched into my throat. I had known that kind of fear before, and I wouldn’t have wished it on anyone. Not even Caleb McCreedy.
The saddle creaked as I slid off Bobby. I pulled on his reins, but he balked at the smell of dead predator and blood. The gap between the horse and Caleb’s withering body widened. No good.
I tied Bobby off at the nearest tree and ran for the bear. I yanked and pulled on its tail until the body gave a little, then used the momentum to drag him as best as my weakened body could manage. I made it about ten yards before my shaking legs refused another inch. I kicked leaves over the animal to help mask the smell, but it wouldn’t do much. I tried Bobby again. He made it close enough to Caleb, but he sure as hell wasn’t gracious about it.
“Caleb,” I wheezed, finding it increasingly difficult to catch my breath. “Caleb,” I tried again as I shook his shoulder gently.
He groaned.
I looked up to the sky. “A little help?” I asked to no answer. It was probable that I’d placed one too many flaming bags of dog turds on God’s doorstep to earn any assistance.
“Just you and me,” I said to Caleb whose eyes rolled back and forth under his closed eyelids.
Hands under his arms and pull.
Rest.
Pull.
Rest.
Pull.
Bobby backed up.
I cursed.
Dragged Bobby closer.
“Caleb!” Teeth gritted against the effort of propping him up.
Caleb yelled in pain.
“Help me get you up, and you can pass out on me again,” I implored.
Caleb’s knees bent and his muscles moved and twitched just enough to get him standing and leaning against Bobby.
Bobby shied.
I cursed again.
Caleb grunted in pain and effort as he hoisted himself upward.
He passed out lopsided.
I pushed him onto a sidestepping Bobby.
I clambered on, clenched the saddle horn, and swallowed a sob at how pitiful my body felt.
Squeezing Caleb in place with my knees, I held on tight. “Bobby, home.”
I kept staring at the blood stain on Bobby’s neck. It was such a stark contrast to his light gray coat. In any other situation, the colors together would have struck me as beautiful. Not today, though. I would never forget this ride for the rest of my life.
When we finally made it back to the house, we slid off the saddle together like we had no bones at all. I lay curled in the dirt beside Caleb’s still body. I wretched over and over until my stomach was empty, but my stubborn body tried one more time to the same result. My hands shook so badly, I had trouble using them. Cold sweat dotted my forehead, and the edges of my vision blurred. Maybe Caleb McCreedy and I would die here together in the dirt in front of this old haunted house. The thought of it made the corners of my lips turn up in a pained smile.
He was no Romeo, and I couldn’t be further from Juliet if I tried.
I crawled up the stairs and stood unsteadily to let myself in the house. For the hundredth time, I searched the pantry in the kitchen for something to eat. Anything that would keep me up and useful to Caleb. It was empty, as it had been for days. I didn’t even try to check the old fridge. The generator had gone out three months after Uncle Brady died, and I hadn’t been able to figure out a way to fix it. I suspected the smell of that fridge alone could kill me. The door stayed firmly shut.
I was going to pass out soon, but Caleb couldn’t just lay there in direct sunlight. With the last bit of my strength, I dragged him up the stairs and into the front room of my uncle’s house. Caleb was probably dead already. I fell hard on my backside and lay down in defeat. I’d fought it longer than I thought I would’ve been able to.
Caleb lay there, face up in my living room. I tried to see if he was breathing but my attention was pulled in all directions, and it was hard to focus. I closed my eyes and opened them slowly. They grew so heavy, I couldn’t keep them open any longer.
At least when I was unconscious, I didn’t feel the hunger.
Bright side.
Chapter Four
Caleb
Mouth parted, I cleared my throat. The rasp sounded as dry as the south side of a cactus growing in the sand. I was so thirsty, surely I’d die of it. I turned my head to the side and jerked back with pain. “Sss,” I hissed, drawing air through my teeth.
I’d known pain. I was a man, and Lord knew I’d done some dumb shit in my day that got me really hurt, but I’d never felt pain like this. I was burning.
Searing flames engulfed every surface of skin I possessed. The wooden ceiling above me offered little to focus on. The wood was an aged dark gray and unpainted. Other than the tattered white curtains that had seen better days over the front window, the house remained untouched. Unadorned. Uncared for.
A low grumbling noise sent my heart into a panic. Adrenaline laced my veins as my brain screamed that the grizzly had followed me here. It was back to finish the job.
Nothing happened.
Another grumble sounded, this one more pathetic than the last. I turned my head gingerly to the side, wincing as clotted injuries stretched and reopened. Crazy Mira lay on her side, completely unconscious. Was she dying? At some point in the throes of pain, she had lifted her knees to her chest and wrapped her thin arms around her abdomen. The position shielded most of her frame from me. I looked at her face. It was relaxed and free of fear. She was beautiful when she was asleep.
Her slightly parted lips were paler than they should’ve been, but they were full. Her dark eyebrows arched attractively, and her nose was small and feminine. Her thick, dark hair didn’t look so overwhelming when it was flipped to the side and laying harmlessly across the wooden floor beside her.
A man could tangle his fists in hair like that.
I turned back to the ceiling. Maybe I was hallucinating from shock.
The adrenaline had done somethin
g uncomfortable to me. It hurt to move, but I felt fidgety like I must. I tried to sit up but realized I needed help to get anywhere. And stitches. Lots of stitches.
“Mira,” I said.
She stirred. Her stomach growled again. She was starving, and I thought about Jake’s Quickstop for the hundredth time in a week. She probably hadn’t had groceries for a while because of me. I felt like grit.
I pulled my foot to the side and caressed her head with the tip of my boot. It was all I could do. “Mira, can you hear me?”
Her eyes fluttered behind her eyelids, and she opened them slowly. I couldn’t look away. Her eyes weren’t like everyone said.
Don’t look into Crazy Mira’s eyes. They’ll pull you down to hell.
She’ll cast her spell on you if you look into the black abyss of her eyes.
Her eyes weren’t black. They weren’t even dark. They were gray. My mind raced with the realization. Maybe I really was dreaming. Perhaps I was already dead. I squeezed my eyes shut. I couldn’t be. Heaven wouldn’t hurt this much, and I saw no hellfire.
As realization dawned on her face, her pupils began to dilate until her eyes looked black once again. A fear induced response then.
I looked back to the ceiling to give her privacy. “Mira, I think you need to eat something. Do you have anything to eat?”
She shook her head, her face scraping softly against the grain of the floorboard beneath it.
I clamped my teeth until my jawline worked. I’d never known hunger. Not like this. “Can you make it to the sink? Run the water and drink it until your stomach feels solid. It won’t help for long but it might make you feel a little better until we can figure something out.”
“Okay, I’ll try. Don’t look.”