Bearly Christmas

by Becca Fanning

  “And those are?” she asked coyly.

  “Well,” Jesse said pulling her towards him.

  Just then Ander came storming into the kitchen.

  “Jamie!” he yelled.

  Jesse and Jamie jumped apart like two teens caught making out under the bleachers.

  Recovering slightly Jamie turned to her father. “Dad?” she asked.

  He was angry, his face flushed, his nostrils flaring. “What is the meaning of this?”

  He shoved a sheaf of paper in front of her face.

  Jamie took it looking blank. She had no idea what he was handing her. She looked down at the paper in her hands. It was the accounts.

  “Dad?” she said. “These are the accounts aren’t they?”

  “How could you do this?”

  “Do what?”

  “I knew you blamed me for what happened…but sabotage?”

  Jamie felt her knees go weak. She stumbled to the table and sat down. “What are you talking about?”

  “It’s just too much!” her father roared. “Joe, please. You deal with her. I’m not sure I can control myself. My own flesh and blood!” he stormed out of the room revealing a small man, grey haired and bespectacled who stood clutching a brief case to his chest.

  “Hello, Jamie,” he said sitting opposite her.

  Jamie stared at him. “Joe,” she said tears building in the back of her throat. “What is going on?”

  Jesse was next to her taking her hand. “You want me to stay?”

  She shook her head. “The cattle need to be fed,” she said, “take my dad’s truck, it’s all loaded.”

  She gave Jesse the keys. He looked at her, his concern etched on his face. She tried to smile but couldn’t.

  “I’ll be back as soon as I can,” he promised and left.

  “Right,” Jamie said taking a deep breath and letting it out. Her hands were shaking. “Now tell me what’s going on here.”

  Joe was a very conscientious man. He laid out the facts in front of Jamie in a methodical manner. He walked her through each transaction, through everything step by step. He showed her where the figures almost added up, but didn’t. It was amazing. Jamie could see that. Someone, had gone to great pains to make mistakes, deliberate mistakes, adding things up incorrectly. They had placed orders for all sorts of supplies, adding in things here and there that then never got delivered. Jamie knew she’d been working hard lately, but she would never have gotten things this wrong. Could it all be just some misunderstanding? But as Joe kept on and on, showing her were things were disappearing and coming up short, where a dollar here and a dollar there were missing, Jamie couldn’t think it was a mistake. There were misfiled items, things in the wrong column and Joe had followed the track all the way. As it dawned on Jamie she went cold.

  “I didn’t do this,” she said, hardly able to say the words. “You can’t be serious?”

  Her father had joined them halfway through Joe’s explanation and he sat silent and sullen across from her.

  “Dad I would never steal from you! You raised me better than that!” Jamie said hotly. “You have to believe me. I love you and the farm. I want to see it back like it was, when mom and Andrew were alive, and things were great. Dad please you have to believe me. There is no way I could do anything like this.”

  “All the evidence points to you, dear,” Joe said sadly. “Deposits made to online accounts opened in your name.”

  Jamie sat sadly, feeling the tears run down her cheeks.

  “Just be honest,” her father said. “I can handle the theft, but the lying? That I won’t tolerate.”

  “I am being honest!” Jamie said suddenly angry. “I have always been honest with you, dad!”

  She stood up. “We’re done here!”

  The boom shook the windows.

  Jamie was shocked. They all looked from one to the other, none knowing what to say or where the deafening sound had come from.

  Oliver came running into the room. “Uncle Ander!” He stopped short when he saw Jamie, his mouth open. He stammered looking like a fish on land gasping for breath.

  “What is it Oliver?” Ander asked on his feet too.

  “I think, umm…” he trailed off.

  “Oh no!” Jamie said and ran for the back door, throwing it open. She ran out into the rain. It couldn’t be. Not again, not someone she cared about.

  The rain was pouring down and Jamie ran around the side of the house. She pelted up the rise towards the field where the cattle were standing in the downpour. She ran and ran, the mud sticking to her boots. She slipped and slid along, drenched and dirty, but she had to get to him. She had to make sure that Jesse was okay. She got up to the field but she couldn’t see him. Her father’s truck wasn’t there. She checked the feed trough. It was full, the cattle happily munching.

  She looked around.

  Another boom, this time closer and she ran in that direction. This path took her downhill. She slid through the mud on her way down a steep embankment, and she saw the taillights of the truck gleaming red in the rain. The truck had overturned and somehow it was on fire.

  “Jesse!” she yelled, running and sliding down the muddy track towards the stricken vehicle. He couldn’t be dead, oh please not dead! She reached the truck and peered inside. He was still belted into the driver’s seat. She didn’t know what to do. The whole under carriage of the truck was a flame.

  Jamie, on her hands and knees, crawled into the cabin of the truck through the broken passenger side window. She grabbed the seatbelt mechanism and pushed the button. She pushed it again, but the belt was jammed, pulled tight around Jesse. It was stuck. She began to cry in frustration, trying to free him.

  “Here take this.”

  Jamie turned and saw her father there in the mud on his hands and knees with her. He was holding out his pocket knife. She took it and began to cut the strap. The truck gave a shudder.

  “Hurry girl!” her father said, fear in his eyes.

  Jamie’s fingers were numb and wet, the knife kept slipping, but she kept on.

  “It’s going to blow!” her father cried and with one heave, pulled her out by her legs.

  “No! Dad! He’ll die!” she screamed but her father dragged her out and away from the truck. Then he went around to the driver’s side and reached in to the cabin. He pulled and the truck exploded.

  Jamie woke up with rain on her face. Where was she? Why was she outside? There was a ringing in her ears that was really starting to annoy her. Swaying she sat up blinking. Something was on fire she could smell the smoke. It was close. She stared at a bright light until some neurons, not currently misfiring, managed to produce some coherent thought.

  That was when she started to scream. Her father was in there. The man she had loved her whole life, and he was helping the man she had just fallen in love with. How could the universe be so cruel as to put them both in danger at the same time? How could this be happening?

  She crawled and slid and slipped around the burning vehicle tears and rain stinging her eyes.

  Jamie couldn’t even get close. The fire was burning to brightly.

  “Daddy!” she screamed.

  “Jamie!”

  The voice was her father’s and she turned to see him sitting in the mud a little way off. He was cradling something.

  “I’m so sorry,” he said as she crawled towards him. “I’m so sorry.”

  She looked from her father’s mud covered face to the thing he was holding. It was Jesse. He was covered in blood, cuts and bruises, and one side of his face was burnt.

  “I don’t think he’s breathing,” her father said sadly.

  Jamie took Jesse from her father and cried. She held him while her father wrapped his arms around her.

  After a while sirens filled the air and soon other people arrived. A fire truck and an ambulance showed up too, called by little Joe the accountant who looked sad in his rain drenched suit.

  A paramedic spoke to her but Jamie didn’
t hear him.

  “Ma’am I have to check him,” he said indicating Jesse.

  Her father drew her back as the paramedic knelt down. He checked for a pulse and suddenly began to work with determination. He called his colleague over and together they put an IV into Jesse’s arm, and a tube down his throat. Then they loaded him onto a gurney.

  “But he’s dead!” Jamie wailed.

  The paramedic shook his head, “No ma’am, he’s very much alive, but needs to go to hospital immediately.”

  “Go with him,” her father said. “Go, I’m fine.”

  Jamie climbed into the back of the ambulance where a paramedic took one look at her and began to check her.

  By the time they reached the hospital Jamie was calmer. Jesse was breathing on his own and the paramedic was marveling at his healing powers. Suddenly Jamie panicked. What if they found out that Jesse was a were-bear? What would happen then?

  “It’s okay,” the other paramedic said quietly, turning golden eyes on her. Jamie relaxed. “I know what to do with him.”

  Once Jesse was peacefully asleep in a private room in the hospital, Jamie called her dad to fetch her.

  “Will he be okay?” he asked as she slid into the passenger seat of her own Ford, which her father had clearly borrowed.

  “He’ll make a full recovery,” Jamie said. She was so tired but there was something she had to tell him. “Listen dad, you have to believe me, I didn’t do those things to the accounts. I wouldn’t know how. That’s complicated stuff and I’m not smart or devious enough. You have to believe me.”

  Her father held her hand for a moment but didn’t say anything.

  It was a quiet ride home and Jaime dozed part of the way, too tired to stay awake. When they got home Oliver was sitting at the kitchen table, eating a sandwich and someone was sitting across from him. He glanced up when Jamie and her father entered the room. Suddenly he looked nervous. His eyes darted from them to the girl sitting opposite him. She had a blue hoodie on and her dark hair spilled out from under it.

  “You!” Jamie said bearing down on the girl all tiredness forgotten. “I know you. I’ve seen you hanging around.”

  “Observant huh?” the girl said, tilting her head to one side, “You want a medal?”

  Jamie set her jaw. She turned on Oliver screaming.

  “How dare you bring her into this house!? She’s a werewolf! How dare you? After everything they’ve done to us?!”

  “Jamie, please!” her father said, but Jamie was on Oliver pelting him with her fists. He was trying to ward her off.

  “Get off me!” he yelled. Jamie looked into his scared grey eyes, the eyes begging her not to think, not to notice anything. There was after all only one other person with access to the accounts, to the supply ordering and the deliveries. There was only one person here who could be so devious and has the means to pull it off.

  All the pieces slotted into place in her mind creating one big picture. And then she turned and looked at the werewolf, those cold eyes, that jaw. She wanted to spill the beans. Jamie could just see it. She was dying to rub Jamie’s nose in what she and Oliver had done

  “We’ve been such fools, dad,” she said letting Oliver go. “Such idiots. Who has been helping out with the admin since mom died? Who has been here to receive the deliveries? It’s not me, I’ve been with you, out in the fields. But it has been someone now hasn’t it?” she looked at Oliver.

  “Did you come up with this plan by yourself or did your girlfriend here help you?”

  Oliver swallowed and stood up. “I don’t have to sit here and take this,” he said.

  “Actually you do,” Jamie said. “You tried to pin it on me, but I’ve been watching you. Was it you who tampered with my light fitting so it would fall on my bed and hurt me? And the snake in the stable? Was that you too? And Jesse in the car?”

  Oliver sighed, “You were supposed to be in the car, not him.”

  “He almost died!” Jamie roared at him.

  “Oh, stop being so melodramatic,” the werewolf said. Her voice was annoyingly nasal. “He’s a bear, he’ll be fine. Sadly it takes more than failed brakes to kill them. But like Oli said, it was supposed to be you.”

  “Why Oliver?” Jamie’s father asked sounding so sad and tired it almost broke Jamie’s heart.

  Oliver turned on him. “Because you’re a fucking bumpkin who wouldn’t know how to run a business if his life depended on it!” he said. “You’re out there, at home with the cattle and the shit. I’m in here, thinking about growth! About building a future!” His voice got low. “About building an empire. I always knew I’d change the world, but my stupid father pissed away everything on penny stocks. Now he’s nothing. You had Andrew, there was no way this would ever be mine. So I came up with a plan to get it. I had to remove some pieces but…”

  “Some pieces?” Jamie felt herself go weak and cold at the same time.

  “Don’t judge me because you’re too scared to go after what you really want in life,” he said, licking his lips.

  “My mother and brother weren’t pieces!”

  Her father was red with rage. He grabbed Oliver by the shirt and hit him again and again. Then the werewolf was on him, pulling him off Oliver and throwing him against the wall where he hit with a crunch and then lay still.

  “Daddy!” Jamie grabbed the number 14 cast iron skillet from the kitchen shelf. Twelve pounds of solid nineteenth century craftsmanship swung in a long arc. The crunching sound as it slammed into the side of the werewolf girl’s head was sickening and satisfying. She flipped backwards, and Jamie could see the hair beginning to sprout from the girl’s face as she Shifted.

  The girl brought both hands up to her face and with a quick motion pulled her jaw back into place. “You were supposed to be there with your mommy and brother. There were meant to be three. I was cheated out of your flesh. I think I’ll take it now,” the werewolf said around her lengthening canines.

  Jamie was scared, her heart beating so fast. She wanted to run but her muscles were stuck. She held the frying pan between them. The werewolf batted it out of the way. The werewolf girl leapt, a maw of savage teeth aimed at Jamie’s throat.

  Jamie closed her eyes waiting for the beast to land on her, but she heard a scream and a roar. Opening her eyes, she saw a huge black bear bolt through the back door and grab the wolf girl out of the air. The bear turned then with the wolf scratching and clawing at it, dragged it back out into the yard. There were growls and yelps and then silence.

  Jamie went to her father who was coming around.

  “What happened?” he asked sitting up.

  “I think one of Jesse’s people just saved our butts,” Jamie said.

  A moment later Tyler poked his head into the kitchen.

  “Hey,” he said. “All taken care of out here. I’ll just get rid of the trash.”

  Jamie looked up and quickly looked away. Tyler was naked. He saw the look on her face and laughed.

  “You’ll have to get used to that if you’re gonna hang around with bears,” he said. “See ya!” and Tyler was off.