by Lisa M Airey
“You seem a little off-the-mark lately.”
“I’m fine.”
“You know, when I first got married, I followed my new wife around the house like a lost puppy. If she got up and left the living room to go into the kitchen, I traipsed after her. If she left the kitchen to go to the laundry room, I would hover in the doorway. She finally told me that I had to give her some private space. But, there for a while, I drove her nuts.”
Julie shook her head in sympathy and took a sip of coffee.
“Just so that you know,” whispered Cole. “This is what we call ‘trading confidences.’” He paused. “It’s your turn now.”
Julie smiled despite herself and took another sip of coffee. When she set her mug down though, her face was somber. “Petey gave me a parking ticket on Saturday,” said Julie, her voice suddenly tight with emotion. “The citation read ‘parked too far from the curb‘.”
Cole took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “How far were you from the curb?” he asked quietly.
“Six inches.”
“Have you spoken to Dan?”
“I’ve called and left messages. He doesn’t return them. I’ve stopped by the station. He won’t see me.”
“How about Elliott?”
“I’ve spoken to him. Tried to explain things. He’s okay with me. Just sad. I think his friendship with Dan makes it difficult for him to do more than that. I’ve heard through the grapevine that the Copper Pigs are auditioning for a new lead singer.” Her voice cracked. Then, she couldn’t stop the tears. “I feel like I’ve lost half my heart.”
Cole set his cup down and moved around the conference table to give her a fierce hug.
“They are shutting me out. It’s like I’ve died. I’m dead to them.”
“Don’t say that, Julie,” Cole whispered fiercely.
“But it’s true. They hate me now.”
“Oh, Julie,” he whispered. “They are not that small.”
“Then why am I such an outcast?”
“This will all work itself out. You’ll see,” he said. “My wife used to say that men are like bears. When they are wounded, they hide in their caves. She told me that no woman should ever follow a man into his cave, that the best course of action is to wait until they re-emerge. And when they re-emerge, they are usually in much better spirits. You just can’t force-feed the healing process.”
Julie shook her head. “Bears? I’m still wrestling with tigers!”
“You keep your eye on that tiger, Julie. He thinks you walk on water. The bears will come around.”
“It just hurts so much.”
“I had thought better of them.” He paused and chucked her under the chin with his knuckles. “Half the animals I know behave better than their human counterparts.”
Julie nodded in agreement.
“When I was a very young man – and this goes back a ways – I was out camping with my friends.” The timbre of his voice locked her eyes to his, and his eyes were full of pain. He leaned heavily against the conference table. “We were doing crazy stuff, rock climbing without any safety equipment, jumping off cliffs into the river without knowing what lay beneath the water. There could have been rocks, trees stumps. Very typical teenage boy stupidity emboldened by bravado and peer pressure.”
Cole looked at her and she could see in his mind’s eye that he was back there reliving every moment.
“On a dare, I took an aluminum cook pot and a wooden spoon and walked up to a cave in the cliffs and banged on it loudly, shouting ‘Anybody home?’” Cole swallowed. “There was.” His eyes tightened. “A mountain lion had me on the ground before I had finished speaking. I was spun around and knocked down so forcefully, I broke the tibia in my left leg. My back was mauled. And my friends ran. And the mountain lion chased after them. I didn’t find out until almost a week later that neither of them ever made it out of the forest alive.” He swallowed the lump in his throat. “I guess I was the lucky one.”
Julie respected the silence that fell between them. “How did you get help?” she whispered.
“Help found me,” he said, his voice stretched tight with the force of his emotion. “It came in the form of the biggest wolf I’d ever seen. It approached me cautiously, willing me to trust it. I was frozen with fear and unable to move. I really thought that it would tear me apart. I was covered in blood.”
Cole shook his head. “It sat beside me and pivoted its head between the cave and the mountain slope. I couldn’t hear a thing. But the wolf was listening to my two best friends dying under the claws of a very angry she-lion. You see, she had little ones in the cave.”
Cole cleared his throat, choking on the memory then nodded to himself. “They were my friends, you know.”
Julie sat quietly. Not interrupting.
“I watched the wolf change. I watched him change into human form. He knew that the she-lion would come back for her young and that I could not move fast enough to escape her. So, he revealed himself to me to save my life. And he was someone I knew. Not a friend. Just an acquaintance. He picked me up and carted me to safety. It took three days hiking and he carried me the whole way.”
“At night,” said Cole, “he shifted into wolf form to keep me warm. I guess he knew that I wouldn’t snuggle up to a naked man,” he chuckled. “During the day, we talked. I was in a tremendous amount of pain, but he filled the day with stories.” Cole looked at her. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to compare stories someday.”
Julie nodded silently.
He met her eyes. “Gray saved you on that mountain in the snowstorm, didn’t he?”
“Yes,” said Julie, her voice cotton-dry, “He smelled me on the wind.”
Cole nodded.
“They are so lonely, you know.”
“I know.” She paused. “Gray gives so much. But he also takes all that I have.”
Cole looked up at her in question.
“I’m already pregnant.”
Gray showed up at the veterinary office with an edgy nervousness to his normally calm persona. She narrowed her eyes. She didn’t have the energy for more movement than that. What she really wanted to do was go home and have a nice nap and a long cry or a nice cry and a long nap. She couldn’t decide which.
“What’s up?” she asked, suspiciously. “And what did you bring us for lunch? We’re hungry.” Julie had commandeered the ‘royal we’ since Gray had commandeered her body.
He laid out two Styrofoam take-away cartons and pushed one in her direction. The heady aroma of grilled meat filled the air.
“Beef brisket,” said Gray. “Beef for boys.”
“It might be a girl.”
“Not if it eats enough beef.”
She gave him a look. “Are there French fries?”
“I gave you a double order, extra crispy.”
“Then by your rationale, I’ll have twin boys who will be speaking French at birth.”
“I have absolutely no problem with that.” Gray cleared his throat. “I just found out that I have to go away for a youth counselor workshop next week. I was wondering if you would come with me.”
“They didn’t give you much notice,” she said, chomping on a fry.
“I’m substituting for a colleague who broke a leg while cleaning his gutters.”
“Huh?”
“He fell off a roof.”
“How long is the conference?”
“A workweek plus travel days.”
“Ah,” said Julie. “On my end, Gray, I do believe that I’ve used up all my new employee goodwill with baseball, hospital visits and the Making Relatives ceremony. I can’t go. I’ve already missed so much time.”
“But I would like for you to go. It’s New York City. You can’t do that town without a girl. I have a girl now. It’s very nice to say that.”
“Big-time rain check. I can’t. I have a job.”
He closed his eyes and nodded. It looked as if the effort cost him the world. “You will just be so terri
bly lonely without me.”
She smiled at his reverse argument. “Yes, I will,” she acknowledged with a smile. “But I owe Cole. I seriously owe this man. I have missed so much time this year.”
“I understand.”
She reached across the table and took his hand. He squeezed back.
“I’ve always wanted to go to New York,” she said. “Can you bring me back that Big Apple?”
“Sure.”
“From all that I’ve read, you’ll need to candy-coat it.”
“I’ll do my best.”
Julie worked through her week with focus and intent. She helped Gray pack. She drove him to the airport. She spent her lunch hours reading about motherhood. And each evening, in Gray’s absence, she drove to the building site after work to check on the progress of their home.
It was starting to look like a house now. The foundation and basement had gone in over the summer months. The subfloor was down. This week, while Gray was in New York, the workmen were framing out the rooms.
At night, when she called with the latest update, she could hear his frustration across the wire. When she tried to ease his homesickness, he just groused at her. And that was out of character for him. Her eyes had slid to the window. Waxing moon. And Gray was all alone in a big, BIG city.
Not good. Not good at all.
35
It was her turn to lock up. Rose and Cole had left at five. Julie had fed the boarders and tended to the sick and healing as part of her departure routine. Just as she’d grabbed her purse and keys, she heard footfall in the kennel.
It was just like Cole to return for supplies if he got roped in for a house call as a personal favor. And as usual, he was the only one to ever enter from the back.
But she thought he had mentioned something about a card game tonight. She crossed the reception area and pushed open the swing door that led back to the kennel.
“Cole?” she said quietly and stepped into the room.
Her air supply was truncated immediately. In a panic, she flailed against her assailant. He slammed her into the wall, head-on. She pushed backwards trying to reach for the fire alarm, but her eyesight clouded red from a busted eyebrow and she missed the handle. Her attacker wrenched her wrist and flung it through the glass wall of the medicine cabinet, slicing it open. He had rotated her and she used that momentum to continue the turn. She tried to kick him, almost catching him flush in the groin. Almost. He slammed her into the opposing wall, driving two exposed coat hook nails deep into the flesh of her shoulders.
When she screamed, he slapped her hard, splitting her lip against her teeth. The blow stunned her. He choked her next cry by pressing his forearm against her throat, pinning her to the wall.
The room was sprayed with blood. Her blood. Her entire body was screaming even if she could give it voice.
“Do as I say,” said a hard voice in her ear. He eased the stranglehold he had upon her and pulled back.
“Lync?” The word sounded foreign to her. She rasped it out as if she’d been in a waterless desert for days on end.
“Do as I say.”
He put a zip-tie on her wrists, then half-dragged, half-carried her to his car. Both her body and mind were sluggish and unresponsive. He had, in effect, beaten the fight out of her.
They drove through town and up into the hills to Gray’s home site, as the bright, yellow light of an Indian summer faded into the soft golden light of early evening. And they were both a long time silent, Julie assessing the physical wounds to her person, Lync focusing on an exit strategy. His driving slowed, so did her breathing.
She was bleeding all over his seat and car carpet, but she took tremendous satisfaction in that. They’d catch him for sure.
“You are such a fighter, Julie,” said Lync. “Gray must find that so exciting.” His voice was whiskey soft.
“I’ve never fought Gray.”
“Never?” He snorted.
“Not once.”
“That’s not normal.”
“That is very normal. That’s the way it’s supposed to be,” said Julie.
“Not for us.”
“You’re wrong, Lync. It can be that way for you, too. Gray courted me. When we made love the first time, it was because I wanted to.”
“You wanted him?”
“I did.”
“The shoe will be on the other foot tonight,” he said tightly.
“Ah. So it’s your force of will. Did you force the others too?”
“Yes.”
“Why did you kill them? You were bonded to them afterwards. They belonged to you, right?”
“I don’t want anyone to have that kind of power over me,” he snarled.
“Power over you?” Julie was dumbfounded.
“You can’t imagine the pull, the desire, the ache. I don’t want that hanging over my head every day of my life.”
Julie was speechless.
“Killing simplifies things,” said Lync. “It does. It really does.”
“Do you intend to kill me too?”
“Naturally.”
“Why?” she asked. “I am bonded to Gray.”
“You pull me more strongly than any woman I’ve ever met. You drive me crazy, Julie.” He paused and pivoted his head in her direction. “I wasn’t after Susan that day on the mountain. I was after you.”
“And the other woman?”
“Another convenient distraction,” he said grimly. “I was waiting for you.”
“Did you kill the AAA driver?”
“I did.” Lync chuckled darkly. “I was at the rest stop when he was given orders to go pick up your vehicle. I didn’t get you then. Got you now.”
Dan was right. He’d been right all along.
“I’m pregnant.”
“Changes nothing.”
“That’s a double murder.”
“Am I supposed to care about that at this point? They’ll catch me sooner or later, but at least I’ll die content.” He smiled at her wickedly.
Julie looked at her right wrist. It was badly cut. She lifted it up and extracted a sliver of bloody glass with her teeth and spat it onto the carpet of Lync’s SUV. A fresh rivulet of crimson coursed down her hand and between her fingers as she did so. But that wasn’t the only serious injury. She could feel the blood trickling down her back, running down her spine. She smelled the sickly, iron-sweet nature of herself as it coursed out of her. And she worried.
“I carry a lycanthrope. I carry one of you, one that I welcome and accept with all of my being.” She paused. “Lync… love, sex… doesn’t have to be confrontational. It doesn’t have to be life or death.”
“It is for me.”
“But, it doesn’t have to be.”
He struck out and slapped her. “Don’t play shrink. I don’t want or need a lecture.”
Julie wiped the blood from her lips silently.
He watched her, and an odd silence fell between them. “You are not new to violence are you?”
“Violence is an old poison,” she said, “I’m immune.”
He grunted, impressed. “I didn’t think Gray had it in him.”
“He doesn’t. My stepfather beat me.” She paused. “Gray is the most patient and tender soul I’ve ever met.”
“Gray is a killer.”
“He damn near killed you, that’s for sure.” The fact that she wished that Gray had succeeded went unsaid, but not unheard.
Lync snorted. “I’ll get him next time. Third time lucky.”
Julie stiffened. “Third time?”
“First go round, I grabbed my hunting rifle and gave him a chest wound.”
“You shot Gray? On purpose?”
“I was aiming for the heart and missed. Deflated a lung. He was back on his feet in two days. He’s a healthy mother—”
Julie lifted her hands as if to stop his words.
“Fucker. So, yeah,” Lync continued, “I heard gut wounds were the most painful. And I wanted to see him suffer. Ne
xt time, second time, I caught him flush. He was tracking a lost toddler in the woods. Had found him too. I get points for that, don’t you think? I waited until the kid was saved.”
Julie turned her head and stared out the window trying to compose herself as Lync pulled up to the construction site. Her unfinished house was backlit by a golden sun. She could smell the pungent tang of raw lumber as it wafted through the air vents.
How on the earth was she going to escape? She had to escape. She had to get away.
Lync got out of the car, shutting the door and walked around to her side. In a flash, she hit the lock button. The click was loud and ominous midst the quiet of the countryside and she watched Lync’s face darken with rage. Her stomach tightened into a hard little knot. He held the keys and he fumbled with them, scrabbling at the door in an effort to reach her. Even when his key slid home the door wouldn’t open. She held the lock button down. She felt the first flicker of hope wash over her.
How long could she hold out?
He stared at her through the glass, unfocused in his fury, then a slow smile spread over his face. He jiggled his keys at her, then popped the trunk with his toggle. The hatch door released with a sickening whoosh of air.
Wait. Wait. Wait, she told herself. Wait until he is in the car before making a run for it. She could individually open one door lock alone, without unlocking all doors. That would gain her a few seconds. She slid into the driver’s seat. It was closest to the house.
But, she needed a weapon. Her eyes searched the construction site as she felt the car sag under Lync’s weight as he entered the vehicle. Silently, she manually opened her door lock on the driver’s door and placed her hand on the handle. She watched Lync advance through the hatchback area, then, as he straddled the back seat, she bolted.
She was surprised that she made it into the house, surprised she didn’t hear the heavy footfall of pursuit. Then, with dawning awareness, she understood his game. He was going to hunt her.
The realization forced more tears from her eyes. She was on the first floor of their home. Their wonderful home. It smelled of pine and sawdust. She wiped her cheeks. She found a piece of re-bar and breathed a sigh of relief as her hand gripped the knobby steel rod. It wasn’t much, but it was something. Her arms shook and her grip was bloody, but she squeezed that metal for all it was worth.