by Amy Star
“What about Dylan? He doesn’t know about them… where is he?”
The patron caught the knife-edge in her voice and his eyes widened too and something like Shit passed barely as a whisper through his lips as he stood up again. “We’d better find him… I don’t think we’re in any real danger, but…”
“I’ll check the west side of the island,” Sarah finished his sentence for him, heading for the door, “you check the east.” With that, she was out the door again and didn’t turn back to see if Chris was following her.
Her legs felt weak, still achy like jelly from the hard sprint back from the beach, but she tried to focus on her breathing as she followed some of the side paths that veered toward the tributaries and little streams that circulated over the island like a fresh-water web. Dylan always seemed to enjoy those areas best, places where he could stand in the middle of the creek and snap at the salmon, which were just tapering off in their spawning season.
She could already smell the decay of dead and dying fish long before she reached the flowing creek. There was a convent of eagles on one rocky shore, all gorging themselves on dead salmon, which was red in their beaks. They gave her an inquisitive look and then hurriedly returned their attention to their scavenged kill. She looked up and down the creek but couldn’t see any sign of him. She decided to head upstream. In all likelihood, if there was good salmon hunting, it would be higher up, which is where Dylan would most likely be.
Her feet skidded over the slippery stones until she reached the small pool. There were dorsal fins of tired salmon, trying to keep themselves afloat but no sign of Dylan. She let out a breath of relief. Maybe she’d missed him. Maybe, she thought, he’d already returned to the cabin and I missed him, and here I am panting hoarsely at a pond full of dead fish worrying for nothing.
The thought was amusing and she shook her head, feeling foolish, but still relieved, and gripped her hips with both hands as she started back the way she came.
Then it came. A shot, like the trunk of an old growth fir splitting in a wind storm; something full of energy and rage, sharp as a thunderclap. It echoed, entering her body and working its way down to her toes, and she realized she’d stopped breathing. Another shot, this time she could tell the direction it was coming from, and took off running again. She couldn’t even think, her body reacted on its own and she had the distinct impression of watching it move without being able to consciously interact with it.
The only thing that ran through her head was No. It was cloudy, yes, but there was no lightning. She hadn’t imagined the gunshots; they were real and close. Her feet slipped again and up ahead she heard a scream and a series of growls. The screams were screams of pain, agony ripping itself from the throat of someone and she tried not to picture Dylan or Chris’ face.
The noise was coming from down near the western beach, closest to the cabin, and her foot snagged a root, causing her to slam against a tree trunk. It ripped the air out of her, and she felt her side burning, but continued on. The screams were louder as she saw the glint of blue between the trees and leapt down through the underbrush towards the shore, whether into the cross-hairs of a poacher’s rifle she knew not. Only that she had to reach Dylan.
The shoreline was chaos. The white outboard motor was facing out to the ocean. All four men were either in, or attempting to get in, and she saw the screams were coming from the youngest of them. Two older men were hauling him into the ribbed cask of the boat, one of them raising a rifle one-handed and aiming onto the beach. The youngest looked white, with blood-loss or fear or both, Sarah couldn’t say. Something dark trailed behind the men in the water like ink, and she realized with a sickening lurch that it was blood.
He was wounded and holding his ribs. The camo vest was torn, shredded, and she couldn’t tell what was flesh and what was material. Geezus, what happened, she thought, breaking free of some brush and jumping down onto the hard stones. She followed the line of sight of the poacher’s rifle back toward the beach and saw a grizzly snarling at the men. He was enormous, a tawny golden brown, and his teeth were white and sharp. It wasn’t Dylan – Dylan was black, black as night. It could only be…
“Chris!” she shouted aloud, without realizing her voice had acted of its own accord.
The grizzly turned at the outburst, his black eyes locked on her like pulsing stones, and his muzzle raised in a half-snarl. When he saw whom it was, his muzzle softened, and Sarah could see something red seeping from his shoulder. More blood, she realized.
The men in the boat had started to move further out in the bay but they saw her, too. Something like panic and confusion warped their faces as they tried to grasp at the situation – a snarling grizzly and a young girl, both apparently acquainted. It was only a moment. She saw him raise his gun, leveling down the sight, for another shot.
“Run!” Sarah said, ducking toward the cover of the shoreline herself.
Chris, even in bear form, seemed to understand her urgency, if not her exact words, and galumphed on his own vector toward the safety of the tree-line. Another shout rang out, eaten up by the crash of waves, and Sarah looked over her shoulder. Stones next to Chris’ massive body sparked, shaken by some invisible force and she let out another sharp exhalation of relief.
In the darkness of the canopy, she looked back and saw the outboard heading due east, toward one of the other islands. Toward their ship, she guessed, skidding on her hands and knees toward where Chris had pierced the tree-line himself. She found him, a huge brown hill in the forest, slumped against another fallen tree, his breathing slow and ragged.
Dylan was beside him, his hand on the bear’s slope of a head, dressed in only his pants. As Sarah got closer she saw that his head was bleeding from a vicious cut that ran from the right side of his brow, above his eye. Blood was still dripping over one eyebrow, although it was dark around the wound where other blood had dried. He turned at the approach of the girl, and like Chris, his face softened like tallow as soon as he saw who it was.
“Chris…” He couldn’t speak and winced, falling backward and shooting out a hand to support himself. “Dizzy, can’t…” He shook his head, and the muscles in his forearm stood out like riven valleys. “Are they gone?”
Sarah collapsed next to Chris as well, but her eyes were on Dylan. “What… what happened??”
“Can’t remember,” Dylan said. “I was down on the shoreline, coming back to the cabin. I heard a sound, like thunder. Before I could look up to see where it had come from, there was blackness. Pain. A pressure like a hammer on me.” He reached up and touched the wound.
Sarah already had her shirt off and was ripping desperately at the thin fabric. Beads of sweat trickled down her breastbone, swerving slow arcs between her breasts, and disappearing under the fabric of her bra. She pressed a folded piece of shirt to his head and he winced again. “They shot you,” she said flatly.
Dylan was in shock but slowly he was coming around. “Yeah. Yeah, I guess. I don’t know what happened after that… I looked up and the sky was red. And there were faces… men’s faces, looking at me. I must’ve,” he dealt with a wave of nausea, and continued, “passed out. Shit. Then Chris…”
It wasn’t hard to guess what had happened. After the poachers had shot what they assumed was a bear, they’d come ashore to claim their prize but Dylan had already reverted to his naked human form. Imagine the horror and surprise of discovering that they had shot a human man. No, it was worse than that. They had shot a bear who’d had become a man.
To be shot and killed by a hunter was one thing. To have the secret emerge that there were shifters was even worse. A tapestry of worst-case scenarios ran through Sarah’s head in an instant, and she too felt nauseous. At their knees Chris let out a tired heart-breaking sigh. She looked at the wound, already black with dried blood. It had stopped bleeding, and she could find the exit wound – good, she thought. But there was no way to know how much blood he’d lost or if any major arteries or organs had been compr
omised by the bullet.
“Have to get him back,” Dylan said, struggling through the pain in his head.
“How?” she asked, her voice frantic. I’m more in shock than he is, she realized. “How?” she asked again, forcing herself to be calm.
“Stubborn bastard,” Dylan wiped at the blood covering half his face. It had spattered onto his arm and chest and he looked like he’d just come out of a warzone. “He knows that the longer he stays in bear-form, the easier it will be to heal. Doesn’t matter… how much it hurts… he’ll stay like this… stubborn bastard.”
Sarah balked. There was some truth in that. While as bears, shifters enjoyed a preternatural healing factor, several times that of a healthy human. She marveled at the presence of mind it would have taken, not just to hold shape in the wake of so much pain but to comprehend it as the best strategy for survival, even amidst the chaos. He’s not such a simple mind after all, she thought. He may have looked like a big dumb gentle giant but she suspected Chris was more astute than anyone would dare to guess.
“Then we wait,” she said, and Dylan nodded.
Chris merely let out another huff, as if to acknowledge them and closed his eyes against the tree trunk. Dylan grumbled and staggered off to the bushes, pulling his remaining clothes from a small hollow in a dead tree. He tossed his sweatshirt to Sarah, who gratefully covered herself, and pulled on his own T-shirt and sat down next to her. Chris’ big bear head and nostrils disturbed the dust at her thigh.
“Will he…” she couldn’t bring herself to ask.
Dylan’s arm brushed her shoulder and he held the tattered remains of her shirt to his forehead, trying to wipe away as much of the sticky red blood as possible. “He’s stronger than any of us,” Dylan said. “If anyone can survive, it’s Chris.”
“I…” she bit her lip, and her eyes began to redden.
“I know,” Dylan said, and there were no more words that either could share. Only the coolness of the canopy around them and the slow steady rhythmic breath of Chris at her feet.
She leaned her head on his shoulder and held a palm to her chest to keep the sobs from overtaking her. This can’t be happening, she repeated to herself, but there was no part of her that believed it. Dylan reached around with his free hand and gripped her shoulder, pulling him closer against her. He smelled like the forest, deep and warm and familiar, despite the rank smell of blood that was everywhere. She closed her eyes and let him hold her. This can’t be happening.
*
It was late in the night when Sarah awoke. She couldn’t remember when it was she had fallen asleep. Everything had overloaded her, and she had submitted at last to the dreamless depths of a black sleep, filled only with the occasional recognition of Dylan’s warm body against her, or the panting of Chris in bear-form. She started when she realized Chris was no longer in front of them and the world was sideways.
The muscles in her abdomen sprung her upright and she realized her head had been resting on Dylan’s lap. He was cross-legged, and his hand had been brushing her hair. Her eyes still felt red and abraded by too many tears, or by the act of withholding them.
“Where-?”
Her eyes tried to adjust to the dark and she saw his white face looking back at her.
“Back at the cabin,” he whispered. “He regained consciousness earlier, a few hours ago. I helped him back up to the cabin… the bullet when through his right shoulder, tore some muscles and ligaments, but it looks okay… he’s sleeping now… still has a sense of humor, so…”
“Why didn’t you wake me?” she said angrily.
He lowered his eyes. “You were sleeping so deeply, even after I shook you…” he explained. “I took Chris back, bandaged the wound, and hurried back here.”
She felt a little ashamed to have been so out of things that even Dylan couldn’t have woken her. And yet, he had come back and sat with her well into the night, watching over her. She could see the lines of fatigue under his eyes, despite the cheerful expression that danced back from it. He probably didn’t get any sleep, she realized, and felt bad.
“I’m… sorry,” she said.
He shook his head and stood up, stretching his knees, and offered her a hand. The wound on his head was still open and ugly, pink and glaring in the moonlight. It must hurt like a bitch, but he hasn’t complained once. There was still traces of blood caked in his hair. He hadn’t had time to wash himself properly. He’d come straight from the cabin to her.
“C’mon, let’s get back,” Dylan said.
Inside, she changed out of the sweatshirt and put on pants and another fresh tank-top and sweater, and went to check on Chris. He was snoring, as usual, and save for the crude bandage job that was wrapped over one massive tree-trunk arm and shoulder, it was as if nothing had happened at all. It still felt surreal. Her mind tried to tape down the rewind button for her as she knelt beside him.
The gunshots, she could remember. Then running. Then the hunter bleeding terribly into the water, and the poachers raising their guns. Right. They had shot Dylan. And then you changed into a bear and tried to protect him, didn’t you, she reached out and brushed Chris’ forehead. The big man made a mumbling sound and smiled, taken with whatever dream had lapsed behind his closed eyelids. She bent down and kissed his forehead.
“Guess I owe him one,” Dylan said, and she turned quickly. He was standing at the doorway, but his eyes were locked on Chris. It had been traumatic enough for her to see Chris at the edge of his own life but Dylan had grown up with Chris, had chosen him as his patron. He hides his worry better than I do, she brushed at her cheeks, smudging invisible tears.
“How do you feel?” she asked, pushing off the bed.
“Hungry, of course,” he said, but at that instant he blinked rapidly and his hand shot out, gripping the doorframe. “And… probably concussed,” he snickered.
Sarah sat him down on the chair in the living room and dressed the wound on his forehead. Another centimeter or two and the bullet wouldn’t have grazed his skull… it would have entered it, she gulped. It was still gaping, which meant she’d need to sew it. Anticipating the worse, she heard Dylan croak with little joy in his throat.
“Sewing kit. Behind the glasses, top cupboard,” he said, and opened Chris’ blue tackle-kit while she brought down an old Altoids container that had needles and thread in it. “And… bring that lighter, by the stove.”
“What are you-”
“I need you to do something because I can’t do it myself,” he said, abating the fear in his voice by focusing on the movement of his hands. Cleaning the bullet graze on his forehead had caused it to bleed again lightly, bright red like watercolors. “How’s your needlework?”
She fired up the kerosene lamps and put them around the table, trying to get as much light as possible. Meanwhile, Dylan took a pair of needle-nose pliers from Chris’ tackle-kit of fish hooks and used it to bend the sewing needle into an elongated U shape, and then slip one of the higher tensile threads through it. Next, he held the needle with the pliers and used the lighter to coat it with flame. Puffing his cheeks and blowing out through a small O in his lips he handed her the makeshift suture.
“You’ve gotta be kidding me,” she said.
“This…” he said, “this is not my kidding face.”
Sarah reluctantly took the needle and thread. “Maybe you should lie down?”
“I think… if I do that, I’m going to throw up,” he wheezed.
“I’m…” she tried to decide on the best way to get at the wound with a careful hand. Resolutely, she swung a leg over top of him and sat down on his lap, straddling him. He gave a little squeak of surprise, but she shushed him. “I’ve never done this before,” she said. “If you don’t want crooked stitches… or to lose an eye, for that matter, then… hold me still. And you hold still, too.”
It was not the most orthodox medical procedure but he reached out and his warm hands steadied on her naked thighs. She felt a shiver and swallowed arou
nd the lump in her throat. His hands felt good on her skin, like an electric current, and she almost let out a little sigh of pleasure as they squeezed her soft skin as she made the first pierce of the needle.
Dylan didn’t make so much as a sound but simply stared straight ahead at her collarbone, as if staring through her. He’s not looking at me, she thought. He’s looking past the pain. The first stitch was clumsy and difficult. It was odd to push a needle through the skin, especially live skin, and it made it all the stranger that Dylan didn’t react at all. She couldn’t tell if she was hurting him, and bit her lip.
“You’re doing great,” he whispered, when she was halfway through.
The only hint of life from him was when his grip on her thighs tightened, and she looked down and realized that over the course of stitching him, his hands had accidentally moved further up their thighs, his fingers already underneath the thin fabric of her shorts. Any closer…, she felt her heart beating faster.
But then it was over, and she had tied the last stitch. Reluctantly she stood up, and felt his hands fall away. There was still a ghost sensation of them on her thighs, and she sniffed to avoid the annoying flush that seemed to sweep her whole body.
“All good?” he asked. “How do I look?”
“Wrecked,” she said honestly.
“Good, good. I would hate to feel any worse than I look,” he joked.
She absently put the make-shift suture away and poured water in the kettle and put it on top of the stove which was already warm. Dylan went to the small washroom and she heard water from the creek splashing on his face, and then he returned with a fresh shirt on, and several steri-strip bandages over the gash.
Neither of them spoke as Dylan collapsed on one end of the couch, and Sarah took the other, and handed him a blue cup full of tea – it was infused with several dried herbs that Chris himself had picked and left out in the sun. Dylan could detect sage, ginger, yarrow… even something tart, like rosehips.