Page 32 of Bear With Me
My mind races, but every scenario I envision ends with someone I love dying, and I can’t bear to lose anyone else. And what a hell of a time to realize that I’ve fallen for him. For this beast I get to call my own. If we make it through this, I vow that I’ll make sure he knows it every day for the rest of our lives.
By the time he reaches me, he looks more bear than human. I manage to throw my hands around his throat. His claws come around my back. “Please, we have to go, Dec. Let’s go now. It’s not safe here.”
“Didn’t I tell you to stay in the shed? What the fuck are you doing out here?”
“Like I was going to let you go in here alone. We’re in this together, remember?” I kiss the fur covering his jaw, cupping it in my hands to feel what he’s thinking. I see my face in his mind and hear his responding growl. There’s no way he’s going to let this go. Hopelessness unfurls, a putrid reminder of our gruesome fate if we take one misstep. “Please,” I beg, “please let’s just go before something else bad happens.”
Sam joins us. “C’mon man. We can talk about it back at your place.”
A sound above me catches my attention. Like the sound of a thousand people all whispering at once. My heart thuds dully in my chest and my hands grow clammy. I look up and come face to face with the thing that had once been a man named Red.
I scream again, the sound echoing through the space. This time when I stumble backward, Sam is there to catch me.
Red is no longer the big-boned red-headed man who I met at Declan’s shop. His meaty arms and tree-trunk thighs have melted, shifted, into needle thin limbs wrapped in gray, pockmarked skin. What had once been a large barrel chest is now sunken in and mottled with dark blue bruises. The clothes he was wearing are long gone. The red hair which inspired his nickname is gray, blood-matted and falling off in clumps.
He hangs upside down from one of the tree limbs, his blood-red mouth nearly even with my head. Congealed matter drips from the corner of his mouth and his lips are split wide—nearly ear to ear and house a mouth of razor sharp teeth.
Sam pulls me backwards as the Red-thingreleases its hold and walks down the tree horizontal to the ground as if it can defy gravity. It stands face to face with me and I search blindly for something to protect ourselves with and come up empty-handed.
Declan growls and I watch as he shifts completely into his bear form; the one that he was so worried would hurt me. If we weren’t in such a dire situation I would have admired how beautiful he is. As it is, I barely have time to give his new form a once-over before he’s charging at the wraith-like figure of Red.
“Any ideas?” Sam asks, his fingers nearly bruising with their hold on my arms.
I pull out the lighter and accelerant. “When I lit this back in the hole, he seemed afraid of it. What about we pin him in somewhere. Maybe light fires around them so that he can’t run away or get loose.”
“The fucker can practically fly, Sully, I’m not sure how much a coupla small fires are going to do.”
I shake the bottle of accelerant. “Fine, then I’m going to douse him with this and then light him up.” I grab a stick and tear off a piece of my shirt. I wrap it around the end and wet it with a couple drops of the accelerant. “Take this and start making fires around them to fence them in. I’ll do the same on this side. I don’t want this son-of-a-bitch getting away.”
Sam drags the torch around in a circle. I start to go in the opposite direction. Hopefully, Red will stay busy with Declan long enough that he doesn’t notice what we’re up to.
Declan’s bear form stalks the thin white figure over the grass. His powerful jaws snap and growl as Red leads him on a winding pattern, taunting him like he taunted me the night of the tornado. That must be part of the thrill for him now; frightening his victims before he goes in the kill. Tenderizing his prey.
I race around the circle until I meet Sam on the other side. Declan lunges at Red, his teeth reaching for his outstretched arm. Red manages to evade, almost like he’s not even trying. My heart sinks when I realize that this is all just a game to him.
My fear that this is going to end badly causes me to take a few steps backward, then I take a running leap and jump over the fence of flames and to the other side.
“Hey, asshole!” I shout, catching the attention of both bear and monster.
Declan objects with a growl and the monster turns to Declan and his lips spread wide in a mocking smile. But that’s his fatal error. The one second of distraction allows Declan to leap for his throat, ripping it out with one powerful bite. The moment Red takes his attention off of Declan, I start to run toward them, legs pumping as fast as I can make them go.
Red falls to the ground, black blood spitting out of the fatal wound in his neck, his fingers clutching at the wound to stave the flow. Without giving myself a moment to think about my actions, I drench what’s left of his body with the accelerant and flick the lighter to life. Red lifts one bony arm toward me before I drop the lighter on his emaciated body. It sparks to life like tinder, black smoke curling for the sky, but never quite dissipating. It gathers above his body like a thick cloud, then it drifts towards the ground, before disappearing into the soil.
epilogue
DECLAN
ONE YEAR LATER
Ilock up the shop, smiling as I hear Sully’s cheerful voice a few feet down the road at the office to the Chronicle. She’s wearing one of those cute little summer dresses that I like so much. Which is a shame because it’s probably going to get dirty. And she’ll probably get pissed and go off on me. The beast inside me growls and I flex, trying to tamp down my own excitement. The both of us would do well to learn a little restraint. But damn if it doesn’t make me hard when she gets all pissed off.
After I pocket my keys, I head down the street toward her. She looks up, catching my eye and smiles. She makes her excuses with her coworkers and lifts up to her toes to press a kiss against my lips.
“I thought you were tired of working for the Chronicle,” I say, as I lead her back toward the shop.
“You know, I think I judged it unfairly in the beginning. I kind of like having my fingers in everything in this town. I like knowing everything before everyone else.”
“Oh you do, do you?”