by Selena Kitt
Her father used to say, “Some days you get the bear—some days the bear gets you.”
This was going to be one of those days, for real. One way or the other.
Ivy instinctively reached for her rifle and realized she didn’t have it. It was back in the bunker, where Caleb had told her to leave it. Of course. Also her luck. Because if she’d had her rifle, she wouldn’t have hesitated to shoot this animal—it would be on her in another loping step, maybe two, and she could see the fierce rage in its definitely-not-the-color-blue eyes. This wasn’t her father’s bear—her bear. This was an animal bent on death. And she was his target.
Her next instinct was to run. She screamed, once, then again, hoping Caleb—who had his .45—heard her in time. That was her only hope.
“Bear!”
Nothing like stating the obvious.
Ivy dropped down to the ground, curling around herself, making her body as small as she possibly could, protecting her face and underbelly, like any scared prey. And she quivered with fear. Her panic was real, rising, choking her airway. She heard a shot ring out, but she didn’t look up. She could only think, Caleb, please, Caleb, I love you, I never told you, but I love you, I love you, Caleb, I lo—
She felt it go by, four-hundred pounds of muscle and fur thundering past, and for a moment she couldn’t move. Somewhere behind her, she heard a scream—it was a man, certainly, but the scream was almost as high-pitched as a woman’s. Not Caleb, thank God.
“Get off me! Get off m—”
Ivy knew she had to act fast. Her head popped up and she saw Caleb standing at the edge of the clearing. She heard him call out a name, although at first that didn’t make any sense at all.
“Jonah!”
Then she remembered the scream—the man’s scream. Ivy saw the bear mauling a man not five feet behind her, using his giant claws to slash and tear. Whoever the man was, he wouldn’t survive that kind of attention. If his throat wasn’t already torn out—the bear’s muzzle was full of blood—he would be disemboweled. And there were no doctors or hospitals anywhere that could put humpty back together again anymore.
Jonah. That’s the name she’d heard Caleb call, and she put it together instantly.
The man was Jonah. Caleb’s brother was being mauled by a bear!
“Ivy!” Caleb yelled. “Run! Hide!”
Of course. Run. That’s what she should do.
Ivy ran.
“Jonah!” Caleb yelled again.
She saw it happen out of the corner of her eye, but she told herself it was her imagination. She was seeing things. Because people didn’t turn into bears. I mean, outside of fairy tales and legends. That was just ridiculous. That was—
Caleb.
Ivy had reached the other side of the clearing, ducking behind a thick maple tree, spying on two of the biggest bears she’d ever seen, up on their hind legs, facing each other with ferocious roars that shook her to her bones. She felt a scream rising in her throat and bit it back. The man—Jonah?—was lifeless behind them, most certainly dead.
The two bears squared off, circling each other. The biggest bear—the one who hadn’t attacked the man—ducked when the other bear took a swipe at his head with one sharp-clawed paw. The biggest bear turned his giant head toward her—she was ten feet away, maybe fifteen, but she could see his eyes when he looked her way.
His eyes.
They were blue. The brightest, bluest eyes she’d ever seen, bear or otherwise.
Caleb.
It couldn’t be. It was impossible.
My boyfriend turned into a bear.
The bears were tussling now, rolling around together, roaring and clawing and biting, and Ivy tried to make sense of what she’d seen happen. One moment Caleb had been there, screaming at her. Run! Hide! Then—then the biggest bear in history had been charging through the clearing, his eyes blue fire, a roar coming from his throat that thundered through the forest.
Had she really seen it happen? A flash of bronze skin, thick muscle slowly morphing into the bulk of fur before her eyes, Caleb’s sharp jaw and thick beard changing, with the shake of his head, into a muzzle and snout, until all that she recognized was that ice-blue stare.
It did happen. You saw it.
Caleb had turned from giant, intimidating man to giant, intimidating bear right before her eyes. She could deny it all she wanted, but the two fighting bears—one of them with impossibly blue eyes—were proof enough. If Caleb wasn’t one of those bears, then where was he? He’d been running toward her through the clearing, calling to her—people just didn’t vanish into thin air. And there was only one lifeless human body out there—and it wasn’t Caleb’s.
Jonah.
That’s the name Caleb had yelled. His poor, poor brother…
Run. Hide.
That’s the other thing Caleb had said—and that’s what she did.
Ivy ran.
She didn’t have a destination in mind—she just knew she had to run, hide. Caleb would find her, when the time came. She knew he would. He’d known something was wrong at the house that first night—before she noticed the light on. Before she’d found Nikon’s blood all over the kitchen floor. He’d been telling her for a week that there were still men at her house, that it wasn’t safe. He’d known.
Because he’s a freaking bear!
Not just a bear. The bear. The bear in her father’s photograph.
The bear who had chased her the day she was picking strawberries.
The bear with the blue eyes.
There’d always been something strangely familiar about those eyes. Now she knew why. It had been Caleb all along. Her mind didn’t want to accept it—and in part, she thought she was running as far and as fast as she could from the possibility. The impossible possibility.
She didn’t know when her ankle began to hurt—she really only noticed it peripherally. Her lungs hurt—she had a stitch in her side and her throat was on fire trying to breathe. And still, she ran. There was a sensible part of her mind—probably her father’s voice buried somewhere in her subconscious—that told her she should stop. She should stop and wait for Caleb to find her.
The woods in Michigan’s upper peninsula were still some of the densest and wildest in the country. A person could get lost and wander for miles, never finding a road or a house or any sign of civilization. She was all turned around now, and when she stopped, leaning against a spindly, young oak to catch her breath, she didn’t see anything she recognized anymore.
Not one damned thing.
She was deep into the woods, that much was for sure. She thought she knew which way to the shoreline of Lake Superior. But she could have been wrong. She didn’t have a compass, or a GPS. In fact, she didn’t have anything at all, except the clothes on her back. Not even her rifle. That was back at the bunker, wasn’t it?
Which was padlocked against intruders.
And Caleb had the damned keys.
Ivy tried to be quiet and listen. She couldn’t hear anything much except birds and the harsh sound of her own breath, still way too fast, matching the galloping of her heart.
And what would she do, if Caleb-the-bear came crashing through the underbrush?
Her mind wanted to snap in two at the thought. Part of her couldn’t reconcile what she’d seen, with the other part of her that seemed to accept it as simple fact, as if that part of her had known all along.
Ivy took deep, long breaths, limping on her ankle now as she started out again, walking this time. She thought the bunker might be this way—she could wait there for Caleb to come back.
If he comes back.
That thought filled her with dread. What if he wasn’t the victor in the bear-battle that she’d fled from? But no—that was impossible. He was far bigger than the other bear had been, and he was—well, he was Caleb.
Her memory of their afternoon together made her feel even warmer than the sun reaching her through the canopy of trees. In her wildest dreams, she never could have im
agined someone like Caleb would want someone like her. Even in the time before—well, she’d learned her lesson with Vaughn.
It was better safe than sorry. Her father had taught her that, and it applied in relationships quite well, it seemed. She’d always erred on the side of caution when it came to, well, most everything. Now, apparently, the universe thought it was the perfect time to introduce a man into her life. Okay, great, so she got to find love after the end of the world. That was her luck, too—there’d be no wedding to plan, no guests to invite. No father to walk her down the aisle.
On the other hand, if there was a perfect time to fall in love with a bear, she supposed the apocalypse was it. Because while she’d never known her mother—who had died in a car accident, her father had told her, when Ivy was just a baby—she couldn’t imagine coming home and saying, “Mom, Dad… I’m in love. With a man. Who can turn into a bear when he wants to. But I’m sure he won’t do it in the house…”
Had she really seen it? Had it really happened?
The further she got from the strawberry field—her bucket once again overturned, all those ripe, plucked berries spilled onto the forest floor—the more she doubted her own memory, her own eyes. What if—what if that bear, the big one with the blue eyes—what if he’d hurt Caleb? Maybe Caleb had confronted the bear somewhere back behind the tree line where they’d made love… and maybe he had lost?
Was Caleb alone, hurt? Had she left him back there to die?
No. You saw him change, Ivy. You saw it. You can pretend it didn’t happen all you want—just like you can pretend that Nikon is just fine, running free somewhere in the forest—but you know the truth. You know.
She did know. That was the most frightening part of the whole thing.
Her mind had balked at the sight of Caleb, that beautiful, amazing specimen of a man, shifting form. But there was something deeper in her that had not only seen and accepted it, but had responded to it on an almost visceral level. She had felt almost more connected to him in that moment than she had before. Which sounded crazy, even in her own head! What was wrong with her?
But if she was going to be honest with herself—and who else could she be honest with? It was the end of the goddamned world, and she might be the only woman left living in it!—the moment Caleb had called out to her and come running, his shoulders broadening, growing thick with fur, she had felt something familiar about it. She didn’t know how, or why, but she got a sense or feeling of deja-vu. Which was ridiculous, because the only time she’d seen a man turn into a bear, it was in the Wizard of Oz. Or wait, was that a lion?
Lions and tigers… and bears. Oh my.
Ivy glanced behind her, but there was no one there.
The forest was as quiet as it got, just the birds and the wind and the rustling of leaves. And the distant sound of thunder.
She stopped to lean her back against a tree—trying not to think about the last time her back had been against a tree that afternoon—just to rest her ankle. It was starting to throb a little. Not too bad, but it might be swelling slightly. She’d have to put some ice on it again when she got home.
Home.
That’s home.
Blinking in shock, Ivy straightened, shading her eyes and squinting through the cover of trees. She saw a flash of a metal roof, red painted wood sides underneath. She couldn’t quite believe it, like a thirsty man crawling across a desert seeing the mirage of water in the distance, but her eyes weren’t good at deceiving her.
Just as she had to acknowledge that she’d seen Caleb change into a bear, she knew that was her father’s barn in the distance. Which mean the house—home—wasn’t far away.
Ivy, no. It’s too dangerous.
That was Caleb’s voice in her head.
She wanted to heed it, to listen to him. That part of her that had grown to rely on him, to trust him, knew he was right. He’d been trying to protect her—the same thing he’d done when he changed into a bear to keep her safe from danger in the forest.
But… what if they were gone now?
There was no harm in looking, was there? She could be nearly silent in the woods, if she wanted to be. Her father had taught her how to hunt, how to walk quietly and carry a big rifle. Okay, so she didn’t have a rifle now, which made what she was contemplating even more dangerous—but her curiosity was slowly getting the better of her.
She crept closer to the image in the distance, the sun glinting off the barn’s metal roof. The sound of the rain on that roof in the summer was amazing. She smiled, fantasizing about spreading a blanket up in the hayloft and bedding down there with Caleb during a rain storm. How awesome would that be? She could almost hear Blitzen chewing her cud, the barn cats running after scurrying mice, the rain making it feel like they were lying inside a kettle drum…
Ivy was so lost in her fantasy, she’d reached the edge of the woods before she even realized it. And there it was—home. She saw the back door thrown wide open and frowned. That would let flies in the house. Indignant, she took a step forward, and her gaze fell onto the garden. Her heart lurched in her chest, seeing her trampled cucumbers, squashed tomatoes, and the squash—they were beyond squashed.
The fish barrels her father had carefully cultivated with worm castings—one was full of rainbow trout, the other with perch—were open and upended. All the fish were gone. The barn she’d seen in the distance stood open, just like the house. That was the place where they kept the cow, and sometimes the chickens and rabbits in the winter. Ivy glanced around the yard, listening. She didn’t hear anything, so she ventured forward.
Maybe the animals were still…
Ivy covered her mouth with both hands to keep in her scream.
Inside the barn was as red as the outside. There was blood everywhere. The cement floor looked like it had been painted with it. And it wasn’t just blood—it was gore. She didn’t know what, exactly, she was looking at splattered on the walls, even on the beams of the high ceiling, but she was sure it had been viscera meant to stay inside something that had once been alive.
“They’re monsters,” she whispered, feeling her bladder contract with fear, and she almost peed herself at the thought of being confronted by the men—the monsters—that had done this.
Run, Ivy! Hide!
She turned and ran blindly toward the woods.
She knew the way back to the bunker.
She would wait there for Caleb.
He would come—maybe he was there already, waiting for her—and they would—
“Where do you think you’re going?”
The rifle that shot out from behind a tree clotheslined her and she flipped over it like a gymnast. Unfortunately, she wasn’t one, and she landed flat on her back, her head gashed from the edge of a sharp log, her side screaming in pain—something was jabbing her in it—and the wind completely knocked from her lungs.
“Wondered where you were hiding.” The man who looked down at her was oddly familiar.
She almost placed him in her memory before his combat boot came down and she forgot everything again.
Chapter 12—Caleb
“Where are you going?” Jonah grabbed his brother’s arm, stopping Caleb, but just barely.
Caleb tried to shake him loose, but Jonah added another hand to his arm, putting all his weight behind it, then pinning his bigger, older brother to a tree. In bear form, Caleb outweighed him by two-hundred pounds, but in human form, he didn’t have quite the same advantage.
“I have to find her.” Caleb’s eyes scanned the clearing. He could smell her scent, but it was faint, fading. He would be able to track her, though—of that he was sure. As long as it didn’t… “It’s going to rain! I can smell it. Come on, we have to go.”
“Caleb, wait!” Jonah got in front of him again, a forearm over Caleb’s collarbone. He could have broken his arm, but this was Jonah, not an enemy or foe. “I’ve been tracking Vaughn. He’s holed up at a farmhouse through those woods—about a mile from here—and he’s
got at least a dozen men with him. We won’t live through it.”
“I know!” Caleb snapped. “And neither will she, if I don’t catch up to her!”
“That’s one of his men.” Jonah nodded at the lifeless body at the edge of the clearing.
It was the man that had been holding a knife, sneaking up on Ivy from behind, the one she never would have seen and likely would have been on her before Caleb had a chance to get there, if Jonah hadn’t charged into the clearing. Caleb had gotten one shot off—he’d hit the man in the side, but it wouldn’t have been enough to take him down—before Jonah attacked, protecting Ivy from the interloper.