The Long-Eared Easter Enigma

by Kian Rhodes

  “That reminds me,” I said, crossing to poke through his stack. “A sports car went off the highway just before Ridge Road last night.”

  Ralph winced. “You saw it?”

  I nodded. “Pulled the driver free, too. No serious injuries. He spent the night at the cabin and I just dropped him at the urgent care center for treatment of a hurt wrist.”

  “Good,” Ralph sighed. “What kind of fool was dumb enough to take a sports car out in that weather?”

  I shrugged. “Just a kid from down the other side of the mountain. Probably not used to these driving conditions.” Ralph nodded, but kept pecking at the keyboard, so I kept talking. “It's totaled, so no sense in rushing it, but we’ll need to get it winched out of the gully at some point.”

  “I’ll add it to the list,” Louise called from her desk and Ralph grunted his thanks.

  “You don’t need anything from me?” I pressed, impressed with the lack of drama the storm was causing.

  “Can’t think of anything,” Ralph assured me. “Other than the accidents, there was a BOLO for a stolen rental car.” He shrugged. “That’s about all, though.”

  Perfect. That freed me up to reclaim my Omega and take him home.

  “You know where to find me,” I joked, pouring some coffee into a disposable cup and heading back to the door. “Stay warm.”

  Ralph waved a hand, but Louise responded with a chipper, “You, too!” as the door slammed shut behind me.

  By the time I got back to the urgent care center, Antoine was nearly done and everyone seemed unusually chipper. Based on the confused look on Antoine’s face when he met me out at the truck after going back for his jacket, I was pretty sure I didn't imagine it.

  “Everything okay?” I asked when he’d settled into the passenger seat and snapped his seat belt in place.

  “Um, I think so,” he said hesitantly. “They seemed to get a little excitable about, well, us.”

  Then the weirdness I’d noticed all made sense and I laughed. “Did they?”

  Antoine nodded.

  “Remember when I told you that I didn’t date much?”

  Another nod.

  “I might have understated it,” I admitted, winking at him. “I don’t think anyone in town has ever known me to date.”

  Antoine’s eyes widened and his jaw dropped. “You were a virgin?”

  Unfortunately, I had just taken a drink from my coffee. I spat it all over the inside of the windshield and dropped the cup holding the rest into my lap, hissing in pain when the scalding hot liquid soaked through my jeans.

  “No!” I managed to get out between choking on my drink and the laughter at his assumption. I pulled off onto the shoulder of the road and reached under the seat for a rag to clean the windshield. When I was done, I saw that Antoine had one hand clasped over his mouth and looked absolutely horrified.

  “I’m so sorry,” he sputtered, his cheeks so red I could almost feel the heat radiating off them. “I mean, I should have known…you’re too good…I mean..”

  “It’s okay, baby,” I assured him, breaking into his apologies. “I’m not offended.” I looked ruefully at the empty cup in my lap. “Kind of sorry I wasted my coffee, though.” I leaned over to kiss his cheek. “I just meant that I don’t believe in dating the people I might have to respond to calls for, so I only date outside my county.” I winked at him. “Luckily, you meet that requirement.”

  “You’re not mad at me?” Antoine asked hesitantly, biting down on his lip.

  “Of course not.” I kissed him again and pulled back onto the road. “I do have a couple of errands to run this afternoon, though. So why don’t we go home and have some lunch?” It wasn’t until after he’d smiled and agreed that I realized that I’d not only referred to my cabin as our home, but that Antoine hadn’t even seemed to notice.

  The ease with which I was starting to incorporate him into my life was ridiculous considering we’d only really known each other less than twenty-four hours.

  After a lunch of bean chili and grilled cheese sandwiches, I sat down to pull my boots back on. When Antoine slid one foot into his, his lips twisted into a comical scowl.

  “Something wrong?”

  He shook his head. “No. I just wasn’t expecting the insides to still be wet, that’s all.”

  Right. The silly suede ankle boots he’d had on when he wrecked the car had definitely been intended as a fashion statement and not cold weather protection. “Why don’t you hang here while I go out?” I suggested. “You’ll be warm and it’ll give your boots a chance to dry.” I nodded to the table in the corner of the room. “If you move the books out of the way, there’s even a television back there.”

  “Really?” Antoine brightened. “You don’t mind?”

  “Of course not.” I laced up my second boot. “Wrap up in a blanket, watch some tv, get some rest.” I stood up to slip my coat on. “Oh, and don’t fix anything for dinner.” I waggled a playful finger at him. “We’re going to town for pizza.”

  “We are?”

  “We are,” I confirmed, pulling him in for a quick hug. I seriously couldn’t seem to not be touching him. It was starting to be concerning. “Saturday night is veggie extravaganza night at Pizza Barn. It’s really good.”

  “Okay,” Antoine agreed, tightening his arms around my waist as if he, too, was having trouble not touching. “No cooking.”

  “Good boy,” I said softly, dropping one last kiss on his head. “I won’t be gone long.”

  Chapter

  Eleven

  Antoine

  For the first hour or so after Keeson left, I did almost exactly as he’d suggested. I wrapped up in a blanket and settled on the overstuffed sofa except, instead of watching television, I had a dogeared copy of Black Beauty propped up on my knees. A favorite from my childhood, I hadn’t read it in years. So, when I saw it lying on the top of Keeson’s book stack, I’d promptly jumped in.

  I was reminiscing about Beauty arriving at Birtwick Hall when a screeching groan caught my attention. I paused in my reading and listened, but it faded away. I was about to return to my book when it came again, louder.

  From my spot on the couch, I could see out the front window. The storm had slowed to only the occasional sparkling flake and the whipping wind also seemed to have run its course. Slipping a piece of stray paper from the coffee table into the book to mark my page, I unwrapped from the blanket and walked to the back door, staring out the slightly fogged window at the blanket of pristine snow.

  In the corner of the clearing that seemed to make up the backyard was a small building. It was cute, almost fairy tale cottage like, with white clapboard siding and bright yellow trim, and, oddly, there was smoke rising from the chimney.

  Wouldn’t Keeson have told me if he had such a close neighbor?

  I was still staring out the fogged glass when another of the ear-splitting screeching noises tore through the air, this time followed by a shout.

  Someone was in trouble.

  And it sure sounded like it was coming from the tiny building.

  Without stopping to consider the consequences, I dashed out the door and down the steps from the wooden deck, hissing when my feet made contact with the icy snow. It stung my skin, but without knowing how serious the trouble in the cottage was, I didn’t dare run back to get my boots.

  I skidded to a stop at the open door and stared inside in shock. The floor was littered with what looked like broken eggs. In the center of the room, pinned to the concrete floor by a what looked like a huge metal cauldron, was a rabbit.

  Except, that description doesn’t really do the situation justice.

  It wasn’t just any rabbit.

  It was a huge freaking rabbit.

  A huge freaking humanoid rabbit dressed in a brown suit, red bow tie and gold-rimmed glasses. And he was swearing like a sailor on shore leave who’d arrived at the bar after last call.

  “Um, do y
ou need help?” I asked hesitantly. I mean, he looked like a rabbit that needed help, but, seriously, what the hell?

  The rabbit glared at me. “What does it look like to you, genius?” He craned his neck, trying to look past me. “Where the mother fuck is Sonny?”

  I took a couple of cautious steps inside. “He, ah, had to run some errands,” I said. “What happened?” When the rabbit snorted and rolled its eyes, I winced. “Sorry, I mean, how can I get this off you?”

  “A scrawny thing like you?” he scoffed, staring pointedly at my cast. “I doubt you can.”

  That kind of chapped my hide and I crossed my arms over my chest and glared. “Well, fine, then. I’ll go back to the warm cabin and read my book and when Keeson gets back, I’ll try to remember to tell him you need someone strong to rescue you.”

  The rabbit started a bit and dropped his head. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be a dick.” He raised one paw and pointed to the wall. “You see that red button?”

  It was huge, at least six inches across and looked like something out of a cartoon. “I do.”

  “It lowers that chain,” he gestured up to a beam on the ceiling. “If you can lower that, you might be able to hook it to the handle of the pot and raise it off my legs.” He gave my cast another blatantly skeptical look. “Maybe.”

  I started to argue that I was stronger than I looked, but I just shook my head and walked across the room, griping silently about the scattered eggshells making the freezing cold concrete even more uncomfortable to walk on.

  When I pushed the cartoon button, another screeching, groaning noise came. Then, the massive black chain that the rabbit had pointed at began to creep down toward the floor. It stopped just shy of the side of the huge cauldron, the bottom of the hook scraping the cast iron as it swayed gently back and forth, not quite reaching the handle.

  The rabbit gave an ineffective shove at the metal and moaned when all the pot did was shift, pinching this legs under it. “Useless unless we can hook the handle with it,” he groused sourly.

  “I see that,” I huffed back, staring at the challenge before me. There had to be a way. I turned away from the rabbit and the pot, for the first time inspecting the room I stood in. There were shelves lined with baskets of every design, stacks of cases marked with the logos of popular Easter candies, and shelves lined with toys, stuffed bunnies, and ducks in fancy bonnets. Along one wall, an enormous glass case seemed to house thousands of carefully decorated eggs – much like the ones scattered across the floor.

  It looked like everything Easter had been crammed into the tiny shack.

  And there was a talking rabbit on the floor.

  Was it possible..? I shook my head. Of course it wasn’t. The rabbit was obviously a shifter and, based on the room around me, a delusional one.

  “Any time you’re done gawking,” the rabbit snapped.

  I spun around to reply, but my eye fell on a length of rubber hanging from a hook on the wall. I grabbed it and walked over to the upended cauldron. “I have an idea.”

  The rabbit raised a brow and twitched its nose but didn’t respond.

  “I can use this to lengthen the reach of the hook,” I explained. “When the pot lifts off your legs, you can roll out from under it.”

  The rabbit shook his head. “I’m not sure, boy. There’s a good chance my legs are broken, you know. And that inner tube isn’t going to be able to hold the weight up for long. Not long enough for you to run over and pull me out, anyway.” He sighed. “When it crashes back down, it will probably kill me.”

  I studied the distance from the wall button to the cauldron. “I can do it.” The rabbit started to argue, but I glared him into silence. “Look, I’m telling you, I can do it. But whatever you see, don’t freak out, okay?”

  That got me a laugh. “That’s rich coming from a guy who is talking to a rabbit,” he snickered, making me smile.

  “Yeah, well. Just remember, I’m here to help, okay?” The rabbit nodded and I thought of something else. “And if you start to freak out, remember I’m a vegetarian, okay?”

  “Um, okay,” the rabbit was staring at me. “Veggie. Got it.”

  “Good.” I looped the inner tube rubber in a slip knot through the handle of the kettle and then wound it around the hook a number of times. “Here goes nothing.”

  I crossed back to the button and began to take off my clothes. Both of the rabbit’s brows were arched, but I just ignored him. Naked, I hesitated slightly, unsure if the cast would interfere with my shift, but it wasn’t like I could really afford to worry about it.

  When my body arched and began to stretch into the four-legged creature that lurked inside me, I heard the rabbit gasp and, oddly, pray out loud. Ignoring him, I took a minute to evaluate my plan and then I sprang at the button, depressing it with my shoulder as I fell back to the concrete, grunting in pain as my bad leg impacted the ground.

  As soon as my paws were under me, I leaped across the floor, ignoring the white-hot pain searing through my leg as I ran. I reached the trapped rabbit just as the rubber reached its limit and lifted the cauldron a few inches off the injured creature. Sinking my teeth into his shoulder, I scrambled backward, dragging him out of the way just as the rubber snapped and the huge pot crashed back to the floor.

  Dropping the rabbit, I fell to the floor beside him, panting.

  “Are you okay, puppy?” I heard him say softly.

  In spite of myself, I was amused at being mistaken for a dog. I pushed myself into a sitting position and eased my hold on the wolf, allowing for a gentler transition back to human form. Once I was there, I stretched my bad arm.

  Yep, even in the cast I could tell I’d rebroken it.

  “I’ll be fine,” I assured the rabbit, standing up to get my clothes. “How about your legs?”

  “Broken,” he said bluntly. “But I guess that’s better than being dead, anyway.”

  I nodded. He did have a point there. Redressed, I studied him for a minute. “We need to get you to a doctor.”

  The rabbit laughed. “You’re funny.” When I didn’t respond, he cocked his head. “You’re serious?”

  I nodded.

  “Of course you are,” the rabbit sighed. “Well, I’m pretty sure that the only way that will happen is after Sonny returns.”

  Well, he had me there.

  Keeson had already told me that there was too much snow for the ambulances to get around on the unplowed roads. “I can at least get you to the house,” I assured him.

  “How?”

  I pointed to a long toboggan hanging on the far wall and the rabbit laughed. “You’re a resourceful little doggie, I’ll give you that!”

  It took some time and more than a little elbow grease, but I eventually had the rabbit lying on the living room floor, his legs temporarily splinted. Thank the Gods for that long ago scout training.

  I had just covered the rabbit with a blanket from the couch when Keeson’s voice called out from the porch.

  “Antoine, I’m home!”

  Chapter

  Twelve

  Keeson

  “Hey, I stopped by the wreck and collected some of your stuff..” I trailed off when I got to the living room doorway and saw a very familiar creature lying on my living room floor with my grandmother’s afghan covering him from the chest down. “Well, this is new.”

  Antoine was perched on the edge of the couch, his face was white and pinched, and he was holding his injured arm to his chest. The cast didn’t look right.

  Oh, hell.

  “Pete? What the hell are you doing?” I glanced at Antoine. “Baby? Your arm is worse?”

  The two of them exchanged a look, but neither spoke.

  “Is someone going to answer me?”

  “The cauldron tipped over and pinned me,” Pete said quietly. “Your pup here rescued me, but he reinjured his arm in the process.”

  Pup? Before I could ask for clarification, Antoine
interjected, “The rabbit, ah, Pete, I guess,” he mumbled, “is more important. His legs are broken. They could be crushed.”

  Well, fuck.

  “Okay,” I said, mostly to myself. “Let’s see what’s going on here.” I pulled the blanket off of Pete and had to bite back a laugh when I realized that Antoine had found my stash of SAM splints and braced his legs, but hadn’t thought to take off Pete’s trousers first. “Let me see your arm, Antoine.”

  He held it out and I could see the swelling already starting to put pressure against the edge of the plaster. “I need to cut that off, ASAP. Wait here.” I ran to the garage, returning with the small handheld circular saw that I’d bought years before on a whim. As I sliced through the double layer of plaster, I warned my Omega not to move. When the cast finally dropped to the floor, Antoine sighed in relief.

  “Thank you, Alpha.”

  The fake gagging noise from the floor reminded me that I had a second patient.

  “Shut up, asshole.”

  Pete blew me a kiss and flipped me the bird simultaneously. He was down, but he wasn’t out.

  Working as quickly and gently as possible, I unwrapped the splints from the rabbit’s legs. “I’ve got to cut your pants off.”

  “Fine,” Pete huffed. He was trying to play it cool, but the pain was evident in his big brown eyes.

  I pulled out my knife and began to slice through the coarse fabric. When I finished, I looked over and saw that Antoine had moved to the floor and was holding Pete’s paw in his good hand.

  All in all, he was taking the giant talking rabbit thing pretty well.

  With the thick fur covering Pete’s legs, I couldn’t really look for bruising and such, but the swelling made it clear that they were injured. Broken, I was guessing, but I didn’t think they were actually crushed and I said as much.

  “You’re sure?” Antoine asked hesitantly. “I mean, that’s a really big pot.”

  “Heavy, too,” Pete confirmed, wincing as I felt along his leg. “But Sonny knows that. He’s had to lift it off me before.”