by Grace, A. E.
She turned her gaze upward, looking for the narrow view of the sky between two buildings to be momentarily broken by gigantic, monstrous shadows. Running across the empty street, she followed dull thudding noises, hoping that she was going in the right direction.
She saw a bear jump from one building to another in the distance, and she changed directions, and sprinted after it, wishing she wasn’t just wearing flats. Her shoes slapped against the ground as she chased after the two shapeshifters. It was only a guess but she was fairly certain she knew where they were headed. Liam was leading the wolf to the lake. There would be nobody there. She hoped.
Panting, the humidity clinging close, she willed herself to keep going. She cut through a narrow backstreet that she knew would exit her right at the road opposite the lake. She beat them there, and a look over her shoulder told her that they weren’t far behind her.
She leaped over a small chain fence, a little impressed with herself, before bounding down the bank of a lake, coming to a stop by a tree, gasping for air. She hid behind it, waiting for any sign of the two beasts. She didn’t have to wait long. She saw the two huge and dark figures run across the road, briefly visible in the cones of yellow light spewed down by the nearest lamppost. Liam was in what she could only describe as a full bound, and the wolf was sprinting low to the ground behind him.
“Liam!” Terry cried. The wolf was gaining, and it jumped onto his back. The bear roared in what Terry knew was pain as the wolf’s claws found flesh beneath the fur. The air rumbled with the sound of the bear’s cry, but still Liam kept going, with the wolf on his back.
“Bring him to me!” Terry shouted, and she looked around, frantic, desperate. She picked up a dry branch that had died and broken off the tree beside her. It would have to do. She held it up, ready to swing it, and she shouted to Liam again. “Bring him to me!”
The bear turned and started running toward her. She could see the wolf had clamped down on the back of his neck with its jaws, and she knew that she had only one shot at this to get him off. Liam was approaching her fast, and she pulled the branch back, and as they passed she swung.
The impact rumbled in her joints, shook her shoulders, and launched her backward onto the ground. The dry branch cracked and shattered across the hunter’s wolfen face, and the creature fell off the back of Liam, yelping as it rubbed at its eyes with its paws. With dust from the dead tree branch in the wolf’s eyes, Terry turned, clambered to her feet, and raced up the bank of the lake.
Hearing a low growl, she looked behind her, and saw that the wolf was in pursuit. She felt a thump of fear in her chest, and all the sounds of the night drained away. She could only hear the gravelly growling as it closed in on her.
“Liam!” she screamed. She couldn’t run anymore, completely out of breath, and she rounded a tree, moving left and then right, always keeping the trunk in between her and the wolf. “Liam!”
A great bellow erupted in the darkness, and it shook the very air. She looked to her left, saw the hulking figure of a bear charge out of the shadows. With her back to the trunk, she looked around the other side, heard a yelp so high pitched it made her hairs stand on end, and saw Liam had bitten into the side of the wolf, and was dragging the beast across the ground toward the lake.
Liam let go of the wolf, and Terry could see the dark blood spurting from the wolf’s wound. Missing from the wolf’s side was a huge chunk of flesh. The wolf was whining, legs pawing pathetically at the ground.
“Liam, are you okay?” Terry called out, leaning against the tree trunk. She watched as he shifted back into the shape of a man, stark naked, his hard body glistening with sweat.
“Stay there.” She swallowed and nodded, even though he wasn’t looking at her.
*
Liam glared down at Marcus. The giant wolf whimpered as blood shot out of a severed artery, hitting bushes meters away. He’d bitten down hard, had felt his teeth grate against the wolf’s rib cage. He got to his knees, panting, sucking in air from the exertion, and wiped the blood from around his mouth with the back of his arm.
“I told you I’d break you,” he shouted, angry still. The fight had dredged up old memories, and he was struggling to control the rage he felt for his hunter.
“Liam!” He snapped up and looked at Terry, still behind the tree.
“Stay there!” he ordered.
“Don’t hurt him anymore.”
Liam looked down at the wolf, and shook his head. The snarling and high-pitched protests of the broken beast were difficult to listen to. He got to his knees, pushed one against Marcus’ neck, immobilizing the wolf’s head, and he spread the fur around the chunk of flesh that was missing. A hole the size of a tennis ball, it was filled with blood, exposed yellow tendons, and white threads that he knew were nerves. Marcus would be in considerable pain.
“I told you I’d fucking break you,” Liam hissed. “This is going to hurt.” He reached into the wound, explored with his fingers, and the wolf howled in pain. He pressed his knee harder against wolf’s neck, turning its outcries to strangled gasps.
“Where are you,” Liam whispered to himself. He didn’t know where it would be, but he knew he’d know it when he found it. “Ah,” he breathed. He’d found the artery, large, rubbery, and slippery. He pinched it shut, stemming the flow of blood, and yanked it, pulling it out from under the blood pooling in the gaping wound.
“I could kill you now,” he growled, and he put his hand around the wolf’s neck and squeezed. “I told you not to do this, Marcus.”
The wolf snarled at him, tried to snap at him, and Liam let go of the artery and hit the wolf hard in the snout. He hit it again and again. The wolf yelped and whinnied.
“Liam, no!” Terry screamed. He could hear her running toward him, but he didn’t stop hitting the wolf until he had broken one of its teeth off. The skin on his knuckles was shredded. Replacing his knee on the wolf’s neck, he picked up the dagger-like enamel, an inch long, and he focused his attention back on the wound.
“I told you to stay there,” he said. He was angry that Terry hadn’t listened. “So get back there.”
“I’m not going to let you torture him,” Terry yelled. “Look what you did to his face.” She was standing on the other side of him, trying to look into his eyes.
“Go back,” Liam said, looking into the wound. The artery had receded again into the flesh, and so he had to dig his fingers inside and find it. He took his knee a little off Marcus’ neck, and the wolf’s howl of agony echoed in the night.
“Stop moving, Marcus.” He found the artery, pinched it shut again, stretched it out, and folded the end over, like an envelope flap. He pushed the tooth through the fold, piercing, with some difficulty, the rubbery artery walls, and stopping most of the blood flow. “I don’t know which one this is,” he said. “Marcus, I don’t know which artery this is!” He was looking at the wolf, trying to place where the artery would be if he shifted back into a man. But he couldn’t. “You’re going to need a doctor.”
The wolf responded only with a growl, and this time snapped backward, going for Terry’s feet. “I told you get back!” Liam bellowed at Terry. He saw her jolt. “Get back!” She nodded, and ran back to the tree she had been hiding behind.
“Do that again and I’ll kill you, Marcus.” Liam dug is knee in harder. “Leon is on the Indonesian border. He moves along it. He’ll still be there. Go find him. Talk to him. Stop doing what you’re doing. We’re one of the few left. We’re the last, Marcus. Talk to him. He’ll take care of you. But first, get your wound looked at, or I guarantee you that you’ll bleed to death.”
But Marcus only snarled, blood and saliva dripping from his snout and nostrils. Liam stepped back and the wolf got to its feet, its legs trembling. The wound was still leaking blood at an alarming rate, and Liam knew that Marcus wouldn’t be able to fight for much longer. He also knew that Marcus wasn’t giving up.
“Don’t fight me anymore, Marcus,” Liam warned. “You’re
not going to beat me.” Liam squatted, changing into his bear form, and as he did so, as his skin stretched, he felt knifing pain on the back of his neck. So Marcus had wounded him, too. The adrenaline must have been numbing him.
Liam stared at the wolf. It was pacing left and right, limping on its left side where he had bit him. The wolf looked between Liam and Terry. Liam roared, but it was too late. The wolf set off at a sprint, aimed after Terry, savagery in its snarls.
*
Terry couldn’t remember a time when she had ever been as scared as she was at the moment the wolf went for her. It was odd, watching the huge and ferocious beast turn to her, in its eyes the look of someone who had killed before, something that had taken lives. She stopped hearing anything. She felt like she was in a movie, and everything was slowing down. She felt like eyes were trained on her, and she didn’t know what to do.
Instinct told her to run, but she knew the wolf would catch her. She looked up the tree, but she knew she could not climb it. She thought about trying to fight, but that would be a futile effort, and would only end with her death, which was where all the options present to her converged.
And though Terry did not consider herself a coward, though she often made the tough decisions, and had been told many times that she was a brave person, she felt no courage now. The icy fingers of fear were wrapped around her heart, and she couldn’t breathe, she couldn’t move, she couldn’t make a decision. She was frozen, rooted to the ground like the tree beside her. It was all over. The only hope she had was Liam.
Behind the wolf, charging up the bank, the large body of a bear closed in on her. She looked from the bear to the wolf, then to the tree beside her. The wolf would probably jump, and thought, and so she bent her knees, lowered her center of gravity. The paralysis had ended, and she knew she wasn’t about to go down without a fight.
Claws raking the leafy ground, the wolf’s run had a hitch on the side that it was injured, and Terry, her mind racing even though it felt like time had slowed down, decided that was where she was going to go. The wolf, meters away, lowered its body to jump, and Terry dodged sideways to the right. The wolf, half-way into its leap, tried to correct left, but couldn’t. It yelped in pain as it tried to turn, and Terry felt the damp soil of the bank on her face, and she knew she had dodged the wolf.
She scrambled backwards, getting to her feet. The wolf was facing her again, saliva dripping from its mouth, tongue hanging out, swollen and red. It was panting, exhausted, and her eyes went to the wound.
Liam roared, and the wolf’s head snapped to its left, and Terry’s to her right. A dull thud preceded a dry crack, and the wolf slammed into the tree trunk. Liam had head-butted it. Immediately the wolf began to shift back into a man. Its body receded, its hair was sucked inward, and a torso revealed itself, muscular, chunky, and pale-skinned.
Liam shifted quickly, took three strides toward her, closing the distance fast, and wrapped her up in his arms, one hand on the side of her head, and he held her tightly.
“I’m sorry,” he said into her ear.
“Are you okay?” she asked, her voice trembling. She pushed her head off his sweat-slicked chest, looked up at him, and saw a stream of blood trickling over his shoulders. “Oh, Liam,” she said, and she touched his face and turned his head. The wound on the back of his neck was leaking crimson, and she could see the jutting white of a vertebrae. “Oh, Liam, it’s not good.”
“I’m fine. I heal fast.” He let her go, turning toward the pillar-shaped hunter with thighs as thick as the tree trunks around them. “Marcus,” he breathed, shaking his head. The hunter was no longer a wolf, and he was unconscious. Terry studied his face, saw rough and blunt features that lacked nuance. He could be anybody, be from anywhere. Liam squatted down and turned Marcus’ body, examining the wound.
“Why did he change?” Terry asked. She looked around, wondering if anybody had seen them, but saw no signs of people. A light rumble drew her attention upward, and she saw a grey milkshake sky, clouds overlapping each other.
“He was knocked out.”
“So it was automatic?”
“The shift is like flexing a muscle,” Liam explained, without finishing the thought for Terry. But she got it. When knocked out, all muscles relaxed. He stood up, his hands dark with blood. “We need to get him to a hospital.”
“What?” Terry looked at him, and then down at the body of the hunter. “He just tried to kill me.” Her feelings had changed from just moments ago. She felt intense anger, and almost humiliation. She hadn’t known what to do. She had been afraid. She never wanted to feel that way again.
“He’s going to die. I have to do it.”
“Why?”
“Why?” Liam asked, whirling on her. “He’s like me. I already told you, there aren’t many of us left.”
“So? He just tried to kill you, and me! He killed your wife, for fuck’s sake!” Terry screamed it, hurled it at him, spat it at him. She wanted to slap him, push him. She wanted to hit him. She wanted to cry.
Liam came to her, held her again. She pushed against him, hit him on his chest, but he wouldn’t let her go.
“I can’t let a man die, and you can’t, either.”
“Fine, you go to the hospital,” Terry said. “I’ll go back to the room.”
“No.” Liam shook his head. “No, I’m not leaving you.”
“Then what?”
“I’ll carry him. We’ll go to the road, see if we can flag down somebody, and get them to call an ambulance.”
“Nobody is going to stop,” Terry said.
“Yes they will.” Liam went to the body and hoisted it easily onto his shoulder. “Come on, Marcus,” he whispered.
“Why would anybody stop for two naked men covered in blood?” Terry shouted. She began to walk away, her hands shaking.
“Terry!”
She turned. “What?”
“Wait. You’re right.” He put the body of the hunter back down, propped him up against a tree. “We’ll go back to the guest house, and get the receptionist to call the ambulance.”
“No,” Terry said, waving her hand at him and looking away. “Just take him. I know you need to.”
“No,” he said, and he approached her, but was interrupted.
“Liam,” Marcus groaned.
Terry stepped back, her eyes on the hunter. His brow was knitted, his face bunched up in pain, and he had both hands over the wound on his side.
“You asked for this,” Liam said, not leaving Terry’s side.
“I know.” He was having trouble speaking without groaning in pain. “Why did you tell me to see Leon?”
“I met him when he was in Borneo. He is calm. You could use some of that.”
“He’s my father, Liam.”
Silence was wedged in between them. “What?” Liam asked.
“He’s my father.”
Again Liam said nothing, and Terry looked between them. “Why don’t you go see him, then?” she asked, and the hunter looked at her, and tried to laugh, but wheezed, and spat blood from his mouth instead.
“Because I hate him.”
“Why?”
“Because he made me like this.”
Liam stepped forward. “What? Made you like what?”
“Like you.”
“Impossible,” he said. “We’re born this way.”
“Not me.”
“You just found out late.”
“No,” Marcus said, and he shook his head. “No, I’m telling you the truth. He found a way.”
“How?”
“I don’t know.”
“He says he’s forgotten how to change.”
“He didn’t forget,” Marcus whispered. “He lost it when he turned me.”
“You weren’t turned,” Liam said, his voice a hard edge. “We’re born like this.”
“You don’t understand,” Marcus said. “Everyone is born like this. Some of you just figured it out on your own. My father made me find it in m
yself. I never wanted to be like this!” He spat out the last word in disgust, and looked down at his body.
“I don’t believe you.”
“Believe what you want, Liam, but I am telling you the truth. And you,” he said, looking at Terry. “You asked me why. It’s simple. I hate him. I hate you that you’re with him. I hate my father. I hate our kind.”
Liam stepped in front of Terry. “That’s it?”
“That’s it,” Marcus said, laughing. “That was it when I killed your wife.”
Terry saw Liam’s body harden, and she held his arm. “Don’t listen to him,” she said. “Just forget it.”
“Were going.” Liam turned. “We’ll send an ambulance.” The hunter didn’t respond.
Terry, falling into step behind Liam, looked at the wound on the back of his neck. The wolf had bitten into him badly. “You’re going to need a doctor as well,” she told him.
“Yeah,” Liam agreed. He stopped and turned, held out his hand. Terry took it, and the two walked in silence back to the guest house. Nobody else was on the streets – it was late. Nobody would have seen the sculpted man, six feet and three inches tall, walking barefoot and completely naked, with a fully clothed woman beside him. And for that, Terry was glad.
“You have to see a doctor today, Liam.” Terry was cleaning the wound on the back of her neck, but it was clear that it was more than she could, or should handle. “You don’t want to risk infection.”
“Fine,” Liam said. “We’ll do that first thing.”
It was already starting to get bright, but Terry did not feel the weight of sleepiness. Everything had that happened had her nerves in a frenzy, and she knew that even if she tried, she couldn’t possibly go to sleep.
On the television, the morning news was showing footage of a great hulking man being carried by four paramedics on a stretcher, and being placed into the back of a small ambulance. He was unconscious, body limp, and bleeding profusely through a wound in his side.
“What do you think they’re saying?” Terry asked, referring to the news reporter who was speaking rapidly in Vietnamese. A square box with a blurred out human head appeared in the corner, and a bright red question mark faded into the center of it. “It’s obvious they have no idea who he is.”