by Lauren Esker
The confession fell into a dead silence.
"And I'm not here for you, I'm not concerned with you, I'm not with a branch of the government that has anything to do with you." Noah was babbling now, but he could hardly stop. However, no one had shot him yet, which was a good sign that they might continue to listen. "If you look in my jacket pocket, you'll find a badge from the agency I work for. That's all. No weapons." He hoped they hadn't searched his car and found the gun. It was starting to look like he'd seriously underestimated the levels of paranoia around here.
Liam scowled at Peri. "What do you have to say for yourself now? Are you a fed too? Did you know he was?"
Lie, Noah begged her silently. Tell them you didn't know, tell them it's as much a shock to you as it is to them—
"I did know," she said, and Noah almost groaned aloud. "I did know, but I swear to you, he's telling the truth. I'm a witness in a federal case. That's why people are after me. Noah has been protecting me. That's the only reason he's here, I promise."
"So what agency are you?" Eddie demanded. "FBI? Marshals?"
"Check my badge," Noah said.
Eddie nodded to Liam, who shook the jacket as if he didn't want to touch it; the badge fell onto the floor. Liam dropped the jacket and leaned down to pick up the badge. "Special Crimes Bureau, Department of Homeland Security," he read. "What's that?"
"It means we investigate weird stuff. Crimes no one else will look into."
"Like X-Files stuff?" Liam breathed, fascination dawning on his face.
"Yes," Noah said. "Exactly like that."
"There is no fucking X-Files agency," Eddie growled. "That's a TV show."
"You're right about that, but there is a government agency that deals with unusual cases, and I work for it." He could see by the way they were both looking at him, suspicion tinged with interest, that he might, just maybe, have cast a bait they would take. "The things you believe in here? A lot of them are real. Not all of it, but a lot of it. The public might not believe in it, but we do."
"Like what kinds of things?" Liam asked. "Aliens? Chemtrails?"
"I don't know about aliens, but I've worked on cases involving werewolves and Bigfoot and ghosts." The latter two of which had been largely debunked by the SCB's efforts, but the werewolves were real—at least, the kind of werewolves who had mortgages and shopped at Target.
"That badge could be fake," Eddie said. "I never heard of this Special Crimes Bureau."
"Think about it. We don't go around advertising that we exist."
"So if you investigate weird crimes," Eddie said, "and you're protecting her, what weird crime was she involved in? Is it a who that's attacking us, or a what?"
Noah was annoyed with himself: he'd underestimated Eddie. Liam didn't seem to be the sharpest knife in the drawer, but Eddie was quick.
"They're just people, as far as we know. If it's the guys that were after Peri in Seattle, I'll recognize them if I see them." Noah touched his face. "One of them has a scar here."
Peri edged toward Noah until she bumped into him. He took her hand. Her fingers were ice cold, but her voice stayed steady. "So what's their plan, anyway? The fire's gotta be a distraction, right?"
"Right." Noah gestured to the window. "Can I look out?"
Eddie shook his head. "You just stay right there."
Noah subsided in frustration. "Look, if they're here for me and Peri—"
"Then you two should have a guard." Eddie nodded to Liam. "That's us."
"Guarding us from them, or everyone on the farm from us?" Peri wanted to know.
"Both."
The baby's wails in the bedroom had long since subsided, but now they started up again with a banshee scream that made Peri jump.
"Can't the kid come in here?" Noah asked. "She's what, six? It's not fair to leave her taking care of a baby all alone."
"Having guns pointed at her is better?" Peri muttered.
He was thinking, rather, that having the child in the room as a deterrent would make the guns less likely to be pointed at them at all. Eddie and Liam weren't cops or soldiers or even criminals, and they both looked increasingly uncertain; Liam's rifle was now pointed at the floor. They were ordinary civilians, perhaps a little more trigger-happy than most, but still unused to taking hostages or keeping someone from escaping. The mood in the room seemed to be shifting from hostility to grudging truce.
Eddie grunted. "Liam, go get Eve and Wendy."
Liam nodded, leaned his gun against a chair, and went carefully around Noah and Peri, giving them a wide berth. The baby's screams cut out again, as abruptly as a switch flipping off. An unpleasant feeling started crawling in Noah's stomach.
What could make a baby start and stop crying like that?
Did the bedroom have a door to the outside or an opening window?
Noah lurched to his feet. Eddie's hand jerked on the shotgun. Noah knew he might be about to get himself shot, but his adrenaline was spiking for a completely different reason, because he was pretty sure they were about to have a much worse problem. "Liam, get away from the—"
Liam made a choking sound and staggered back from the door. In that first instant, Noah thought Liam was reacting to something he'd seen on the other side of the door. Then he saw the knife protruding from the young man's throat, its handle quivering with the beat of his pulse, blood soaking the front of his T-shirt in a rapidly expanding flood.
"Down!" Noah snapped at Peri, dragging her to the floor behind the couch.
As Liam fell, Eddie started to swing the shotgun toward the bedroom door, and two quick shots snapped out from an unseen, small-caliber weapon. Eddie went down, the gun falling from his nerveless fingers. If Peri and Noah hadn't hit the floor, the bullets would have gone through Peri's spine.
Around the couch's skirt, across a stretch of not-recently-vacuumed carpet, Noah glimpsed a sliver of the open doorway to the bedroom. His fingers were spread out on Peri's back; he could feel the quick flutter of her breathing, the rapid beat of her heart.
Did he kill the kids? Does he have hostages in there? Is it he or they? How many hostiles are we up against?
There were two possible exits, neither more than ten feet away: the door to the front yard and the open doorway into the kitchen, with its exit beside the woodpile. Getting up to run would be suicide, but they could crawl, using the furniture and general clutter for cover.
But that would mean abandoning a little girl and a baby to the Valeria.
"Peri," he whispered, "I'm going to distract them." Best to assume there were more than one person in the bedroom, in the absence of other information. "As soon as I move, go for the door, whichever door you can get to."
"I'm not leaving—"
He shook her shoulder. "Teamwork, remember? When you're out, find the first person you see and tell them what's happening. Once you have armed help, see if you can circle around and get the kids out of the bedroom. There must be an exit to the outside if the hostiles got in that way."
Feet whispered on carpet. Noah's teeth clenched. Both Liam and Eddie's discarded weapons were in sight, the rifle leaning on the chair, the shotgun on the floor. But neither was reachable without exposing himself. He eased away from Peri, unfastened his jeans and slid them over his hips. He could shift with his clothes on, but it tended to be faster and easier without.
"Ready?" he whispered. He risked a quick glance past the end of the couch, caught a glimpse of mud-splattered hiking boots. One person, so far. At any moment, Hostile #1 would be close enough to see over the back of the couch.
"No," Peri whispered back, but he felt her body tense, her hips rise as she pulled the knee of her good leg under herself.
"Now," Noah murmured, and he launched himself to his feet, shifting as he went.
He took in the scene in a glance as he sprang over the back of the couch, gripping it with hands becoming paws, his T-shirt ripping away from his chest and shoulders. Their attacker was Scar Face, with a rifle slung over his should
er and a semiautomatic pistol in his hand. The Valeria tingle of similar-but-wrong shifter recognition flickered through Noah's brain, just he took in the rest of the scene and tried to check himself in midair.
Scar Face was holding Wendy in the crook of his left arm with his hand over her mouth. The muzzle of the gun was not pointed at Noah; instead it was pressed to the baby's soft forehead.
It was very obvious that Scar Face had not expected a half ton of tiger hurtling at him. He stumbled backward, while Noah twisted in midair with feline agility and barely managed to stop himself from slamming into Scar Face and knocking him down as he'd originally planned. Even feline reflexes could only just do it, and he crashed to the floor at Scar Face's feet. He managed to twist at the last minute and get his paws under him rather than sprawling helplessly on his back.
"Stop right there," Scar Face said.
He was speaking over Noah's head, and Noah risked a glance over his shoulder to see that Peri hadn't gone for the door; she'd gone for the shotgun instead. She was frozen in the act of reaching for it. Slowly she straightened.
"Stop or the baby gets it?" Peri's voice shook, but with fury as much as fear. "Really? Do you kick puppies too?"
"Step away from the weapon. Right now." As he spoke, Scar Face took a few long steps away from Noah, getting out of reach of Noah's claws. Noah flattened his ears and cautiously eased his weight after his enemy, but he was brought up short when Scar Face ground the muzzle of the .38 into Wendy's forehead hard enough to make her let out a choked wail behind his hand.
Noah didn't dare take his eyes off Scar Face, but he heard the shuffle of Peri changing position, and knew she'd obeyed.
"Change back," Scar Face ordered.
He had to be alone, Noah thought. If he had a partner, they'd already be dead.
And as soon as he was able to take the gun away from the baby's head without being instantly attacked, he'd kill them. Noah was sure of it.
So he waited, twitching his tail.
"Actually, he doesn't have to," Peri spoke up. "This is a, whaddya call it, a Mexican standoff, right? You can't kill Wendy—" Her voice cracked slightly, then steadied. "—because as soon as you aren't holding her anymore, Noah will kill you. And you know it. The only thing keeping you alive right now is Wendy."
Scar Face smiled grimly. "You have a point, but there's something you're not taking into account. I don't have to kill her to make you do what I say." He shifted his grip on Wendy, resting his elbow against the wall and taking his hand away from her mouth. She gave a little hiccuping whimper.
Supporting her in the crook of his arm, Scar Face wrapped his big hand around the baby's pudgy forearm.
"What are you doing?" Peri asked in horror, taking a step forward.
Noah was pretty sure he knew exactly what Scar Face was doing—the miserable son of a bitch. He was going to break her arm. But it also gave Noah an opening, because the muzzle of the gun was no longer pointing directly at Wendy's head. And he realized Peri was getting as close as she could. She recognized the opportunity too.
Noah lashed his tail and sprang.
He glimpsed Peri lunging in from the side. Her reflexes weren't as fast as a shifter's, but when Noah slammed into Scar Face, she had positioned herself to catch Wendy as the baby dropped with a wail.
The pistol went off, a quick staccato burst of shots, as Noah and Scar Face crashed into the wall and from there to the floor. Noah had no idea if he'd been hit; his body pulsed with fury and adrenaline. He wanted to rip Scar Face's throat out with his teeth. In all his life he'd never felt bloodlust like this, his human emotions and feline instincts united in hatred of this man and his wanton torture of an innocent child.
With Scar Face flattened under him, Noah panted through the rage, getting himself under control again. Not yet. Not yet. They had to find out if Scar Face was here alone. Were more Valeria on the way? The only person who knew the answers to those questions was the man struggling beneath him.
For the moment, Scar Face was going nowhere. The guy was big and strong, but hand-to-hand combat between a tiger and a human was simply no contest, especially when the tiger had a human grasp on fighting strategy. Noah used his paws and the weight of his upper body to flatten his assailant's arms to the floor. Scar Face tried to kick him, but it didn't matter what he did with his legs. With close to a half ton of tiger lying his chest, there was no way he could get up or get his hands on the gun that had fallen just beyond his outstretched fingertips.
Noah looked around for Peri. She'd landed awkwardly on the floor with her good leg bent under her, the other one stretched out, and Wendy in her lap. The frightened baby was screaming at the top of her lungs, while Peri helplessly tried to soothe her.
And where was Eve? Noah growled in his prisoner's face. If you've hurt her ...
Scar Face thrashed under him, and suddenly Noah was on top of a rapidly rising, massive heap of shaggy fur.
He was so shocked that Scar Face's first heave threw him off. Noah recovered with cat-quick reflexes and crouched as he found himself confronting the biggest bear he'd ever seen.
At the SCB he worked with a bear shifter, Jack Ross, whose grizzly form was bigger than most non-shifter bears, but this bear was beyond the realm of the possible and straight into supernatural. He filled the room. Even on all fours, he had to hunch his huge shoulders to avoid bashing his head on the ceiling. He couldn't have weighed less than a ton, and probably more.
Even more curious were the dark raccoon-like marking around his eyes, creased by his facial scars. With the masklike marking, the enormous size, and the high, domed forehead, very unlike Jack's flatter head in grizzly form, this was a bear like none Noah had ever seen. He hadn't even known there were bears like this.
A paw that looked as big as the hood of a Volkswagen swung toward him, and he sprang out of the way. Scar Face shattered a chair instead.
Peri was sitting frozen, gaping up at the enormous bear with her mouth hanging open and Wendy all but forgotten in her arms. Noah shifted to shout, "Peri, get the kids out!" Then he had to dodge another swipe of the bear's massive paw. Claws the size of butcher knives raked across the wall, peeling strips out of the drywall and scattering family photos and tchotchkes. A coat rack toppled in an avalanche of coats and hats.
In the confines of the living room, the bear didn't have room to fight properly. A smaller opponent actually had an advantage. Noah stayed human-shaped and dived for Liam's abandoned hunting rifle.
Scar Face shifted back at the same instant, apparently having similar thoughts. The strap on the rifle over his shoulder had snapped when he'd shifted; now he went for the fallen gun. Noah got his hands on the rifle a fraction of a second earlier and fired blind. The stairs were directly behind Scar Face, so he could be reasonably confident there weren't any bystanders in that direction.
The rifle's report was deafening in the enclosed space. The bullet blew a hole in the wall beside the stairs and missed Scar Face completely.
Noah jacked the shell casing frantically out of the rifle as Scar Face swung his rifle toward them. Then Scar Face staggered back at the quick pop of the pistol, now clutched in Peri's shaking hands.
She got off several shots before the gun clicked on an empty chamber. She'd done incredibly well: aiming for center mass, she'd managed to hit Scar Face at least once in the lower abdomen. Blood bloomed across his pale skin.
Noah took advantage of his enemy's moment of distraction to shift again and charged, snarling.
Scar Face's rifle boomed as Noah leaped. Pain blazed across his stomach and inner thigh. Scar Face was already shifting, dropping the rifle and hulking out as the bear again. Noah raked his claws across the bear's face and darted away, dashing for the door to the kitchen in an attempt to lure Scar Face that way. If he could just get Scar Face out of the house, away from the hostages—
"Get out!" Peri shouted. She'd dropped the semiautomatic and made a lunge for the shotgun. Somewhere the baby was still crying, bu
t Noah could no longer see her. "Get out of this house!" She swung around with the shotgun and fired in Scar Face's general direction, unloading two barrels of twelve-gauge buckshot into the enormous bear. At point-blank range, with a target the size of a bulldozer, it was impossible to miss him, but there was little visible effect except now she had his attention. The bear swung his big head toward her.
The front door slammed open. A man's voice shouted, "What the hell—"
Noah utilized the semi-privacy of the kitchen to shift back to human and yelled through the doorway, "Shoot it! For God's sake, shoot it!"
Multiple rifles boomed. Under the onslaught, the bear threw his massive body into the back window of the living room. The window shattered and the wall around it splintered. Scar Face hooked one massive paw into the exposed studs and, as Noah stared from the kitchen doorway in disbelief, ripped open a section of the wall with a tremendous bunching of his enormous shoulders. The rifles boomed again. On the second try, Scar Face managed to enlarge the hole in the wall enough to climb out and lumber off into the woods.
There was a brief silence, broken only by the baby's hoarsening wails. Smoke and dust drifted on the air.
From the doorway, someone said, "That is the biggest fuckin' bear I ever saw."
"Noah?" Peri called. She dropped the shotgun on the couch. Noah wanted to tell her to be careful with it, he wanted to ask if she was okay, but in the shuddery aftermath of adrenaline crash, he couldn't seem to find words. The whole world had a haze over it; lights were too bright, colors too vivid. He gradually became aware of a vicious burning pain all down his front, and when he touched his bare skin, his hand came away sticky with blood. For an instant he thought he might pass out.
But at the same time, a distant, rational part of his brain was thinking, What the hell kind of bear was that?
What are these Valeria, anyway?
***
Peri bent down to retrieve Wendy from where she'd left her on a cushion under a chair. Wendy seemed to have cried herself out for the moment, and she huddled into Peri's chest, sniffling. Cradling the baby, Peri called again through the pall of dust and smoke cloaking the shadowed corners of the living room. "Noah?"