by Zoe Chant
Neal woke, and was appropriately pleased by her building efforts. He walked her through setting out the wood for the fire, and pouring the condom partly full of water.
“You’re essentially making a lens with it,” he explained.
Mary made a tiny nest of the seaweed tinder, and squeezed the pocket of water in the condom until she got two tiny points of light that she could focus together.
“Hold it just a few inches away,” Neal advised. “Have you ever burnt ants with a magnifying glass?”
“No,” Mary said with disgust. “I have definitely never done that.”
Neal chuckled and then coughed, swearing under his breath. Mary resisted the urge to drop her make-shift firestarter and go comfort him.
When his coughing subsided, there was still nothing happening. “How long does this take?”
“It could take a while,” Neal said hoarsely. “A long while, I’m afraid. It’s a game of patience now, and the sun is past its strongest point.”
Mary settled into a more comfortable position. “Alrighty then.”
There was a moment of silence, and Mary listened to the pound of the ocean on the shore and the noise of the waterfall and concentrated on holding her points of light still on the seaweed.
“Tell me about one of your missions,” she finally suggested, not wanting to watch Neal lapse back into sleep. “How about that last one you were on?”
For a moment, she thought he was going to refuse, but then he started speaking, slowly and carefully. “The short version of the story is that we were stopping a drug lord in South America.”
“That sounds exciting.”
“The longer version, which I will spare you, involves an AWOL Marine, Lewis, who had set himself up as a local kingpin, and a school being used as a switchhouse, and a mysterious billionaire funder.”
“That version sounds even more exciting!”
Even with his breath shallow and his words unnaturally slow, Neal had a wonderful storytelling voice.
“Lewis knew we were coming, somehow, and he knew that some of us were shifters. He used children as hostages, and made us surrender ourselves before we could call in for support.”
Mary whistled. “That doesn’t sound good.”
“It wasn’t. Major Washburn – Judy – was fitted with some new tech that we didn’t want them getting their hands on, so we staged her suicide.”
Mary gasped.
“It was a ruse, don’t worry. Ended up luring in one of the mercenaries and blowing up half the compound. We focused on getting the kids out, and were able to call for backup once we were on high ground.”
“Did you get Lewis? Did everyone get away?”
“I don’t know,” Neal admitted with frustration in his hoarse voice. “I was darted in the neck during our escape. Lewis is the type to throw every man, or child, he has at his own escape, so it wouldn’t surprise me if he was still on the loose.”
Mary had no answer for that, guessing that he felt guilty for not being able to protect his teammates. She lapsed into silence, staring at the point of light focused on the seaweed.
It was several moments before she realized that it was starting to squirm, and she squealed so loudly that Neal startled.
“It’s smoking! It’s smoking! What do I do?”
It was everything she could manage not to drop the condom in her excitement.
“You’ll want to blow on it, very gently, to encourage a flame, and immediately feed it the smallest kindling,” Neal explained.
Mary leaned over awkwardly, holding the condom water balloon in one hand and tiny tinder in the other, giving it a cautious puff of air. Her heart fell as the smoke danced and seemed to disappear, then gave a whoop of triumph when the tiniest flicker of flame appeared.
It vanished almost immediately back into smoke, but a second, more careful puff of air brought it back, and Mary fed it tiny dry twigs with trembling hands.
“It worked!” she crowed. In no time, she had a small, happily crackling fire, and Mary felt like she had just conquered a country or taken down her own drug lord.
Chapter Twenty
Watching Mary’s little triumphs were the best thing that Neal had ever witnessed. He’d been in survival situations more dire than this, but it meant a hundred times more to her to do something basic like make a fire than it ever had to him. Each task was a tangible victory, and Neal loved watching her face scrunch in concentration and light up in triumph.
Once she’d gotten the fire going, she put an empty mint tin and her sunglasses case to work as vessels for boiling water, using a sock for a potholder. They boiled quickly, and she set them aside to cool before putting them into the plastic bottle. She hummed as she worked, clearly proud of her accomplishments, and delighted with every little success she managed.
If she couldn’t quite mask her concern for him, Neal couldn’t blame her. His chest felt like it was wrapped in steel bands that were being tightened by the minute. Every breath was painful and difficult. He knew that if he hadn’t been a shifter, he would already have been dead, and the possibility still existed that he wouldn’t weather an injury of this gravity. He wasn’t even sure if shifting would help him now, and he continued to refuse to think of it as an option.
“I thought we could split one of the granola bars tonight and save the other for tomorrow morning,” Mary offered, bringing the foil-wrapped treat to Neal with her hard-won half-bottle of boiled water.
Neal wondered how much of his dizziness was hunger. He certainly didn’t feel like he had much of an appetite, but it had been a long time since their picnic lunch. He drank the still-warm water gratefully, and held out a hand for the offered food. Mary broke it in halves and gave him the larger chunk.
Neal didn’t have the energy to argue with her or try to insist she take the larger portion, and he suspected she’d completely refuse it anyway. He chewed the sugary bar obediently.
“Do you think they’ve noticed we’re gone yet? They’ll probably start looking for us first thing in the morning, don’t you think?” Mary suggested, sitting beside him carefully.
The sun was just beginning to go down, casting long shadows along the beach towards them.
“Yes,” Neal said soothingly. “At dawn, no doubt.”
He didn’t consider the worrisome idea that Travis had taken the boat to the mainland for an overnight, and that Scarlet probably thought they were on it and not due back until tomorrow afternoon. Only Tex knew that he’d changed his plans to take a hike instead. When would Tex notice that they were missing? It was hard to think past the pounding pain in his head, and the vertigo that was swamping him.
“It’ll be dark soon,” Mary said, and Neal could hear the quail in her voice before she steeled it to add, “I want to take another look at your leg, while there’s still enough light.”
Neal let her unwrap it and peel off the shirt.
“I think it looks better,” she said uncertainly, poking gently. “A little, anyway.” Blood still oozed along it, but it was sluggish compared to the original flow, and the shirt wasn’t completely soaked. It didn’t look infected, at least. “Let’s put the clean socks on for bandages now, and I’ll wash this blouse out so we can use it tomorrow if we need it.”
She stood, brushing sand off of her legs briskly. She put on her pants and bra, now that they were dry; the sun was losing its strength as it plunged for the horizon, and she put most of the remaining wood onto the fire. “I’ll get another load of wood and water, too.”
“Mary,” Neal said, as she started to stride away. “I’m proud of you.”
She was back at his side in a flash. “Don’t talk like that,” she said fiercely.
Neal was trying to fight back one of the wracking coughs that his battered lungs were insisting they needed. “Like what?”
“Like you don’t expect to be here when I get back.” There were tears in her blue eyes, gathered but unfallen. “I’m not blind. I know you’re more hurt than you
’ll admit. I know I can’t help you, and you won’t help yourself, but damn it! Neal, you’d better hold on until someone else can get here and help you, because I’m not willing to lose you.”
Neal felt like the band on his chest tightened three notches, and he envied Mary her easy sobs. “I’ll fight to the last,” he promised. “I’m too tough to die here.”
“I’ll hold you to that,” she said fiercely, clinging to one hand and bending over him. “I didn’t chase you across half the resort just to let you get away this easily.”
Neal wheezed a laugh for her. “I’ve never been so happy to be caught.”
Mary sniffed and drew in a deep breath before standing. “It’s almost dark. I have to get wood while I can.” Neal wasn’t sure if the tremor in her voice was fear or some other emotion, but he marveled at the way she squared her shoulders and marched off into the growing gloom.
Chapter Twenty-One
The cheerful afternoon sun was gone, and the final direct rays had vanished by the time Mary made it to the stream. She refilled her water bottles and tucked them to the bottom of her voluminous bag. The stream was less friendly in the dark—no longer a Christmas trimming, but a stream of blood, reflecting the final light of the sunset. She rolled up her pants to wade across it cautiously.
The last light was gone by the time she made it across, and it took her eyes several moments to adjust. Every shadow seemed full of chirping insects and singing frogs, and every bush rustled with some sort of creature in it. Continuing to walk forward was one of the hardest things she had ever done. Behind her was Neal and the safe, cheerful glow of her fire, but before her was darkness and mystery and danger.
There was a bright moon overhead, so she wasn’t walking entirely in blackness, but the shadows were thick. Mary wanted to walk further away from the treeline than she had in the daylight, and was alarmed to discover that the tide had come in: the beach was a much thinner sliver than it had been earlier, and the terrifying ocean was threatening to encroach on the places she wanted to walk.
A tiny crab skittered across her path, making Mary startle and bite back a shriek. The last thing she needed was to make Neal try to come after her.
The thought steadied her.
Neal needed her.
She had to be brave for Neal.
She marched forward again, and faced down the menacing driftwood piles with a determined scowl. “I don’t like you, and you don’t like me,” she told them fiercely. “But I need wood, and I teach middle school, so nothing you can do can scare me off.”
As declarations of bravery went, it lacked panache, but the ridiculousness of it buoyed her spirits and Mary was able to plunge her arms into the unknown depths and find more wood that was dry to the touch. The sun had even dried some of the driftwood she had rejected earlier.
She couldn’t see each piece well enough to identify bugs, so she could only brush at each one and try not to image that each little tickle was something with too many legs and antenna.
She filled her bag to bursting and piled more into her arms before turning back towards their piece of the beach—and stopped in alarm.
The tide had come in even further as she worked, and where there had once been a clear path back to their fire, there was now ocean, lapping right up to the trees in places.
She could try to scramble back into dense jungle foliage, or she could wade through dark water—dark ocean water. Dark ocean water that was probably teeming with biting, stinging things.
Mary took a tighter grip on her armload of wood. Trying to climb through the jungle— which was undoubtedly full of scorpions and snakes—would be nearly impossible with her load of firewood.
She stopped to roll her pants up further, up above her knees, and as she was patting them smooth, recognized that she was just trying to delay the inevitable.
“I teach middle school,” she reminded herself.
She gathered up all of her wood again, and settled her bag firmly across her body.
Then she stepped into the lapping water and waded across to the other side of the crescent.
Walking in the ocean was not like wading in a stream. The stream knew where it wanted to go and went merrily there. But the ocean was a different matter altogether.
The ocean caressed her. It tickled at her, and swirled around her ankles, and tried to take the sand away from the bottoms of her toes. It surged up almost to her knees and tried to pull her out with it in a salty partners dance. It subsided and relented and teased her, making her shiver as it played against her bare skin. Mary closed her eyes, willing herself just to keep going—and then she was walking out of it close to Neal’s driftwood chair, and she could see the glow of her fire on the undersides of the trees again. Licking her lips, Mary wondered now why she had been so frightened. The ocean against her legs hadn’t harmed her. In fact, it had felt… almost nice.
She actually stopped, and turned around, dipping her toes into the lacy foam right at the edge. It was partly greeting and partly in thanks. She knew she would never have to fear the ocean again.
Chapter Twenty-Two
True to his promise, Neal was still conscious when Mary returned with her heaped armload of driftwood, but it was more of a fight than he liked to admit.
She dropped her burden beside the fire, shimmying out from her laden bag strap in a manner that would have boiled Neal’s blood if he were in better shape. She was lit by the cheerfully crackling fire in warm hues that accentuated every gorgeous curve, and there was moonlight giving her a cool halo from behind. Clad only in torn pants and a bra, she was all womanly perfection in shape and grace. Even half-dead, he wanted her to the very core of his being.
“How are you feeling?” she asked, kneeling beside him.
“I’ve been better,” Neal said truthfully. “But I’m not worse.”
If he kept his breaths painfully shallow, he could keep the chest-buckle feeling from reaching excruciating levels, and the worst of the coughs seem to have passed. Maybe he was just getting used to fighting them back.
Mary felt his forehead and Neal willed himself to think cooling thoughts. He could feel her frown through the darkness.
“Neal,” she started.
“I’m not shifting,” he growled at her. At this point, he wasn’t even sure if he could; it had been so long since he’d had a hint of his inner wolf that he wasn’t sure any of it was left. Could a shifter lose his animal self?
“I won’t ask,” Mary said. “But …”
Neal gave a growl, sure that the ‘but’ would involve shifting.
“Remember your promise,” Mary said simply. “Just keep fighting. I love you, and I don’t want to lose you.”
Neal lost a precious breath at her words and had to cough again. Mary held his shoulders while he struggled back to his precarious balance of shallow breathing, dizzy to the bottom of his soul.
She loved him.
Neal knew he ought to say it back, that he ought to confess that the tangled up mess of his heart was all hers, whether she understood everything that entailed or not, but he couldn’t.
She was everything to him already, but when he thought about telling her that, it felt like he was ensnaring her, trapping her in the miserable downward spiral of his life. He couldn’t tell her. He could barely admit it to himself.
He closed his eyes when Mary went to put more wood on the fire, missing her presence beside him as soon as she was gone.
Nothing used to scare him. He took the most dangerous jobs without quailing, faced the most terrible enemies. Now here he was, facing mortality with the woman he was afraid to love, and he was more terrified of admitting to himself that he cared about her than he was of the cold reality of his death drawing near.
He felt Mary return, warm against his side. She shivered and then shifted, laying her gentle deer’s head on his good thigh.
I love you, he thought he heard, like a distant echo, or a memory.
Chapter Twenty-Three
&nbs
p; Mary woke in darkness.
The moon was gone, and the sprinkle of stars in the bottomless sky did little but frost the edges of the shadows.
For a terrible moment, she thought that Neal’s stillness beneath her head was complete, and she shifted to her human form as she sat up.
He was still breathing, but if his breaths had been shallow before, they were almost nothing now. His skin felt clammy and chilled under her fingers.
“Oh, Neal,” she said, her own chest feeling tight and hopeless.
He stirred, but didn’t wake.
Mary got up and went to the fire, which had died down to glowing coals.
Tears blurred her vision, and she nearly put the embers out in her haste to feed in small pieces of driftwood. Finally, though, it was crackling again, flames licking at the rock ring, and Mary had her sobs under some semblance of control.
She knelt by Neal and drew his head gently against her, burying her hands in his ruddy hair.
“You're safe,” she murmured. “You're safe with me.”
He stirred and muttered, but didn’t wake from his restless sleep.
“Neal, listen to me. You have to shift, you have to. I can’t heal you, I don’t know how. But your wolf can, if you let him.”
He didn’t snap this time, far too deep in his fever to register her words or fight the idea— but too far, also, to understand the urgency.
Would he die this way, stubbornly resisting his animal form to the very end?
Mary’s hands clenched reflexively. She couldn’t let that happen.
Neal, she said firmly, without speaking. Neal!
There was no answer, just muffled silence behind her closed eyes.
Dammit, Neal, I love you, and I’m not going to let you go like this.
Deeper and deeper she fell into his mind, through fever-crazy dreams and prickling fears.
I won’t leave you, she told him.