“You’re coming with me, whether you want to or not. We’ve played this game before. You can’t win.”
A crack like thunder filled the air, and Bridget careened off to the side, spiraling down towards the ground. Her grip loosened and Darien flapped himself free just before they crashed into the top of the tree line. The branches buffeted his body as he fell to the ground, but he fared better than Bridget who dropped like a boulder crashing through the thick boughs.
She hit the ground with a solid impact that left her eyes glazed. A hole in her wing poured forth a significant amount of blood, matting her feathers and making them dark. Darien shifted back into a human, taking a few steps so that he was standing over Bridget. As her eyes regained focus, she shifted back to her normal human form as well, her short red hair strewn wild underneath her against the ground. The bullet wound was in her hand, still flowing.
For a moment, Darien hesitated, not sure what to say or do. How many times did he need to chase her away before she’d listen to reason? She rolled over, grabbing his ankle and slamming her side against his shins, shoving him backwards so he crashed on the ground. She continued her momentum, rolling on top of him and wrapping her good hand around his throat. He reached up and tried to pull her hand free, but she batted his arm away. Her face was twisted into a permanent scowl as she squeezed her hand tighter.
He continued to try and pull her off, but she had leverage and was stronger than she looked. He twisted his hips, trying to unseat her, but she drove a knee into the spot where the leg joined with the hip, pinning him back down to the earth. As he flailed, Darien connected with her free arm. He slid his hand down it until he reached her palm, slick with blood. He shoved his finger into the center of her hand, squeezing as hard as he could.
With a shriek, Bridget jumped off of him and backpedaled away, jerking her injured hand free. Darien sat up, rubbing his throat and coughing as he tried to gulp in air. When he looked up, Bridget was gone, and a cobra slithered towards him. He jumped back as it sprang forward, trying to sink dripping fangs into his arm. He shifted into a mongoose, dodging to the side as Bridget launched a second attack.
The two predators circled each other, Bridget swaying back and forth as she tried to gauge his reactions. Darien hopped from one side to the other, making sure never to be in the air too long, lest he make an easy target. He let his instincts take over. The cobra was too fast to allow for any conscious thought. She attacked, and he sprang to the side, twisting around her to try and bite her neck, but she coiled out of the way in time. Again they circled.
“Stop this! You know we can’t keep shifting like this.”
“I just need one more than you.”
Bridget lunged forward again, and Darien dodged, backing up as he did since he didn’t have a good angle to attack from. He meant what he said. The strain of the shifting was a force he could already feel pressing down on his will and letting the animal take over more and more of his reactions. If it went on too long, soon all that would be left would be an animal. Either that, or his exhaustion would claim him in the middle of shifting and he might get trapped as some weird hybrid. He had never seen it, but there were records of it happening.
What he needed was a way to end the fight and soon. At the least, he was bound to collapse from exhaustion at the rate they were going. He couldn’t remember the last time he tried this many shifts in short succession. Even though he wasn’t sweating, Darien brought his front paw up and wiped his brow. The headache was mounting.
After another lunge, Bridget left herself exposed, her reactions not quick enough to pull back before Darien could take advantage of the opening. He scurried around her head, reaching for her vulnerable neck. Just as he was about to close his teeth down on it, a mouthful of coarse fur sent him flying back as she became a tiger. He tumbled a couple of times, trying to get his bearings as he heard her inhuman growl. There were no words, just the sound of a hunter in search of prey.
As she pounced on him, Darien crouched down and forced himself to shift into a buck. He dropped his head, letting Bridget impale herself on his antlers. Her weight drove him to his elbows and her claws swiped at the side of his neck, but the attack was weak and accompanied with a painful and almost pitiful yowl. Darien ducked his head and pulled back, separating the two of them as she lay on her side.
For several panting breaths, the two Sheynan looked at each other, both too exhausted to move. Bridget lay on her side, struggling for breath as she continued to bleed into the dirt. Darien collapsed on his stomach, his eyes closing as he focused on breathing, unable to think about much else. His mind swam but he managed to reel it in and regained as much of his composure as he could. He took a few more breaths to be sure, and then willed himself to shift one last time. He needed to be in his human form. It was too risky to stay as an animal.
The final shift almost drove him to the point of unconsciousness and he collapsed on the ground, not even having the strength to hold himself up. His vision swam. He shut his eyes, letting the darkness close over them for a moment. It was so tempting to give into the sweet slumber and rest, but he couldn’t. Not with Bridget right there. He didn’t know how long it would take her to recover. This wasn’t over yet.
At first, Darien held his breath, trying to listen for any sounds of movement. Opening his eyes seemed like too gargantuan an effort. He heard the rasps of Bridget attempting to breathe, the air sounding wet over an almost perpetual growl. The air was filled with the metallic scent of blood combined with the dark earth odor of the dirt it mixed with. But she sounded as exhausted as he, if not more.
He needed to see her. It was a slow effort, like waking up from a nap that was far too short when your entire body simply wanted to collapse back into the mattress and ignore the world for just a little bit longer. All he saw at first were vague blobs of color. There was a lot of brown, some orange and white, and a fair amount of dark red. The colors sharpened, and Darien began to be able to distinguish the outline of Bridget as she lay there, still in her tiger form. Her eyes were partially closed, but pointed in his direction. As he shifted his weight to push himself up off the ground, they widened and the pupils dilated, focusing on his movement.
He tried to talk, but his voice caught and he had to cough to clear it. The second time, he was able to whisper.
“I’ve done the research. Yes, there might be a cure for one of us with the rituals you’ve been so obsessed with. But one of us would have to die in the process. Did you miss that part, or did you just assume it would be me and I wouldn’t notice?”
The glare in her eyes gave him all the response he needed. She was aware of the cost and was more than willing to lead him down a hopeful path to salvation that would have been all a sham. He closed his eyes and forced himself to suppress the flare of rage. It shouldn’t be that surprising she’d be willing to sacrifice him for her own good. Wouldn’t most people when it came down to it?
“There might be another way. There’s a government agency that’s done a lot of research into shifters. They know what Sheynan are. They might know something. If you went to them, I’m sure they’d take you in.”
Bridget closed her eyes and chuckled a few times before letting out a thick heavy sigh that almost sounded like a purr. When she opened them again, he had no doubts about the malice he saw there.
“Work for the chess masters? Never again. They know nothing and tried to use me to make more. You’d be kinder killing me now.”
“They don’t seem as bad as the Shadows, or even the Arm.”
“You’re stupid.” She spat after saying those words, spraying red on the ground in front of her. She struggled to get to her feet, making Darien tense and get ready to run, but she collapsed before lifting her weight off the ground. “They are the Shadows and the Arm.”
“What do you mean?”
“How do you think they both happened to find you at the cabin, at the same time?”
Darien shifted his gaze away as he thou
ght about her implications. He and Susan were hunted pretty aggressively by some shifters shortly after the agents showed up. He assumed they were all Shadows, but Omba warned him that some militant members of the Arm were looking for him as well. If it was both organizations, that was a little too coincidental.
A sharp snarl snapped Darien’s attention back just as Bridget landed on him with her full bulk. She drove him to the ground, pinning him underneath her. He barely had the strength to keep her from crushing him, let alone manage to get away. Her front claws raked at him multiple times with energy he didn’t realize she had. As her head turned towards him, he saw no intelligence in her stare, simply wild animal lust. Her eyes had shifted from her regular grey color to the light yellow of a tiger. Even when shifting, their eyes were never supposed to change color.
“Bridget! Stop! Susan! Help!”
He screamed out into the woods but got no response. Her snarls had no words in them anymore and were not intelligible. Darien could feel his strength waning as she threatened to crush him with her mass alone, to say nothing for her fangs. Desperate, Darien reached up and put his forearm under her jaw, trying to keep her up and away from his body while ignoring her claws shredding his clothes and scoring gashes in his skin underneath. Reaching down, his fingers flailed at his pocket as he tried to grab his pocket knife. Feeling the metal under the tip of his fingers, he slid it free.
Pressing his thumb against the latch, the spring-assisted blade snapped free and locked into place. Darien turned his head and reached up with his arm, slamming the blade in the tiger’s neck all the way up to his fist. He felt the hot blood gush all over his body, but the tiger continued to move. Darien stabbed again, and then a third time, driving the weapon in as far as he could with each thrust. Even after the tiger went limp and collapsed on him, he continued to stab, fear controlling his body long past any conscious thought.
As he lay there, struggling to breathe, he heard someone crashing through the woods as they came in his direction. He heard Susan’s voice calling out his name. Over it all, he heard the sirens for the military base.
Chapter 19
Getting back to the truck was a blur. Darien was vaguely aware of Susan pulling him out from underneath Bridget’s corpse and half-dragging him back to the road. Even once they were on it, he moved like a zombie, the mental and physical exhaustion having taken their toll. The only thing that kept him moving at all was the incessant alarm coming from Fort Lewis that let him know they would soon be found if they didn’t get into the vehicle.
Blood drenched as he was, Darien just couldn’t summon the energy to care. He crawled into the truck’s cabin, making it look like a major accident scene within seconds. Speaking of accidents, he looked over at Susan as she crawled into the driver’s side. Her forehead was bruised and she had a few cuts on her face, but otherwise looked okay. Seeing her like that gave him a jolt of energy and he reached out to put his hand on her leg. Strength for that action was all he could muster. She reached down and squeezed his hand once before reaching back to the gear shift.
She put the truck in reverse, and Darien was pleasantly surprised to see that it still ran. The front end was crumpled, but the engine appeared to have no trouble working. For a few minutes they bounced down the dirt road until reaching a paved service road. Susan turned onto it, heading in the direction of the city.
As they drove, Darien slipped in and out of consciousness, with only brief flashes coming back to him of their journey. He remembered them turning onto the highway and Susan reassuring him that they just needed to get some distance between themselves and the base. After a few more miles, she pulled over on the side of the road and she reached over, pulling off his soaked clothes and throwing them in the back seat. The sensation of his shirt being peeled off woke him up.
“I’ll be fine. We need to get somewhere safe.”
The words came out slurred and soft, and Susan ignored them. She checked over his wounds, forcing him to lean back so she could see how bad the gashes were on his chest. He didn’t have the strength to resist her. Reaching in to the back, she pulled out some gauze and wrapped it around a surgical sponge. She pressed the temporary bandage against the deep gashes in his torso and he sucked in air as fire lanced down every nerve. It was a few seconds before he could even gasp for air and pant.
“Hold this in place.”
Darien did as he was told, placing his hand against the gauze and holding it against his torso. Susan resumed driving, glancing at him out of the corner of her vision. He tried to offer her a weak smile to reassure her, but it took too much effort. Darkness crept in around his vision and he dropped in and out of consciousness until they pulled into a motel parking lot. Susan grabbed a blanket from the back seat and wrapped it around his shoulders, sheltering his battered body from the casual observer.
The step from the truck to the pavement looked like a drop off a cliff when Darien opened the door. He swung his feet out and slid off the edge of the seat, holding onto the door for balance. As soon as his feet struck the ground, his knees buckled and he almost fell on his face. Susan came around the front of the truck and helped him into the motel room, guiding him to a bed and laying out the blanket for him to rest on. As soon as he collapsed on top of it, Darien fell asleep.
When he woke up, the room was dark. Glancing over at the clock on the bedside table he saw that it was three in the morning. Susan slept on the bed next to him, her arms curled under her body and her face turned in his direction. In the dim light provided from the street lamps filtering through the curtains, he saw a pile of bandages and tissues on the small bedside table. As he slid to a sitting position, he felt tape pull at the skin on his chest. The sensation made him jerk his attention back to Susan.
In the limited light, he couldn’t see how bad her injuries were. But at the least, he knew that she had to be battered and as exhausted as he was. Yet, despite all of that, she tended his wounds while he was passed out before taking care of herself. He took a shuddering breath and reached out to lightly stroke her hair, not wanting to risk disturbing her. She needed some rest. She was always hiding her injuries and shouldering the worst of her burdens for his benefit. Without her, he would have been lost long ago. He may be the Sheynan, but not for the first time, he thought she was the real strength in their partnership.
Easing out of the bed, Darien stood up and stumbled, dropping to a knee and catching himself with his hands on the carpeted floor. His legs weren’t recovered enough for sudden movement. It had been too many shifts, and he needed to be careful. Reaching out to put his elbow on the bed, Darien stood again, this time easing his weight onto his legs rather than trying to stand up straight away. When his knees stopped shaking and he felt stable, he walked to the bathroom, shuffling his feet across the carpet in small steps. Even the short distance to the other room felt like a chore.
But it was a chore that he managed and soon he felt the cold linoleum underneath his bare feet. Darien gripped the sink for balance with one hand and reached back behind him to ease the door shut. He flicked the switch and the lights buzzed to life overhead in a flash that blinded him. He blinked several times to clear the spots from his vision.
The man staring back at him from the mirror was slashed and bruised almost to the point where he looked to be more bandage than man. Darien knew that Susan could go a bit overboard in her medical care, but this seemed excessive even for her. His entire chest was wrapped in gauze and he could feel bandages taped down underneath. Both of his arms were wrapped from his elbows to his wrist, and he had a square pad taped over his right cheek. Darien peeled that last bit back, checking to see how bad the damage was. Three slashes, not very deep but about two inches long, ran parallel down the side of his cheek just below the eye. As he looked closer, he could see there were a couple of places on his chest and his arms where he had started to bleed through the gauze and padding underneath. Maybe it wasn’t excessive on Susan’s part.
The effort of standing
was starting to take its toll. Darien used the towel rack to walk himself over to the bathtub, lowering himself so that he could sit on the edge and cradle his head in his hands while giving his legs a break. At least none of the wounds burned or hurt. He felt more stiff and exhausted than wounded. The only wounds he could feel at the moment were a couple of deep ones along his abdomen. Given the way that his skin felt puckered, he imagined that Susan had to suture those shut.
He had no idea how long he had been in that position when the door opened and Susan stepped through, rubbing her eyes with the back of her hand. She came over and put the lid to the toilet seat down, sitting on it and reaching out to slide her fingers into the palm of his hand.
“How are you feeling?”
Darien lifted his head and forced a smile onto his face. He had no delusions that she wouldn’t see how much the gesture pained him, but he was genuinely happy to be alive and safe, even if it was just for the moment. Also, seeing her reminded him how lucky he was.
“Peachy. I feel like I’m ready to take on the whole army myself. Can’t you tell?”
“Right. And just how were you going to do that?”
“I don’t know. Turn into a dinosaur or something? Or maybe Godzilla. Damn, I wish I could do that. Could you imagine how handy that would be?”
“The man can shift into any animal in the world, and all he can do is complain about the things that he can’t shift into. There is such a thing as taking your abilities for granted you know.”
She had a smile on her face, but Darien could see the concern etched around her eyes. They were wrinkled around the edges and a little wet and red, despite just being asleep. He reached up with a hand and stroked his thumb across her cheek.
The Torn Soul (The Sheynan Trilogy Book 3) Page 15