Page 10 of Handcuffed to the Bear (Shifter Agents #1)

CHAPTER 10

Jack scanned the treeless ridge around them, squinting to try to sharpen the blurred shapes of distant rocks. No cover—but the lions wouldn’t have that either.

Think, Ross. They’ll be coming up the mountain straight after you. They’ll be angry and moving fast. They can tell from the blood smell that you’re hurt. How do you use that to your advantage?

There wasn’t a whole lot to work with. He wasn’t going to be able to duplicate the trap he’d sprung on Derek. That had been a desperation move, taking advantage of the conditions of the moment.

Now he just needed to figure out another.

“Caves or cabin?” Casey asked. Her face was white, her voice taut, but she showed no sign of panicking.

“Which one’s closer?”

“Caves, I think,” she said, looking up the slope.

But it was uphill, therefore slower going. And, though the caves might offer better shelter, the cabin was more likely to have something they might be able to improvise into a weapon.

“Cabin,” he decided.

Casey looked at him expectantly. Waiting for him to take up the lead, he realized after a moment. Jack gave her a gentle push.

“You’re the one who can see it. You’ll need to get us there.”

They scrambled downhill, at a diagonal slant across the hillside. All the little creeks that made big valleys farther down the slopes had their headwaters here, which mean constantly climbing in and out of shallow ravines, with tiny trickling streams at the bottom. In a heavy rain, Jack thought, those would turn into raging torrents. Something else to watch out for.

They entered the trees again. It was mostly pines and spruce on these high slopes, their branches tossing in the wind. Casey kept stopping to look downhill, checking their progress. “I can’t see it anymore,” she said.

“Try to find a landmark. A ridge or a gully or something near where you saw it, something you can still see and take your bearings from. See anything like that?”

She hesitated, then nodded.

“Good. Go.”

* * *

The first fat drops of rain struck them as they stumbled out of the sparse woods into the overgrown backyard of the old cabin.

It was hard to say what it had been built for. Jack guessed it was probably a hunter’s warm-up cabin, or maybe somebody’s half-assed attempt at homesteading, before the land had been bought by the Fallons.

The roof was a sheet of corrugated metal, overgrown with moss and half fallen in. A tin stovepipe stuck up from the intact section of roof, with an incongruous tree growing out of it. The log walls still looked pretty solid, though one of them had slumped, bending in the middle as if it was slowly melting. No glass remained in the windows, just the wooden slats that had once held it in place.

“Careful,” Jack said as they padded toward the cabin, wading through chest-high Queen Anne’s lace and other meadow weeds. “Could be nails or glass underfoot. How are you on your tetanus shots?”

“This is a fine time to ask me that. Have you seen the state of my feet lately?”

“I’d rather not see your foot with a nail through it, is the main point.”

And then his foot plunged through something rotten and yielding. There was a sudden shocking sense of space underneath him. Jack yelled and threw his weight the other way, falling against Casey. She grabbed him and they both staggered backward until Jack caught his balance. Then they stared at the gaping dark hole where his foot had gone through. The ragged edges of old boards were visible under the moss.

“What the hell is that?” Casey wanted to know, her voice shaking.

“Old cellar, I think.” Now that he was looking at it, he could see how the weeds dipped slightly in the area he’d stepped onto. “Maybe the top of an old well or septic tank.”

He knelt down, bringing Casey along with him, and fingered the splintered edges of the old boards where they’d broken beneath his foot. Knocking a clod of dirt off the edge, he tilted his head and listened to it thunk wetly against the unseen bottom of the hole.

“Are you okay?” Casey asked.

“Basically.” The sudden movement had dislodged what was left of the moss dressing on his arm, but shifter healing had already closed the edges of the injury well enough to keep it from bleeding. He felt totally wiped out, exhausted and aching with hunger.

But he’d dealt with this before, in other places, other parts of the world. He knew his limits better than most people did, knew how far he could push himself before it was too much. And he wasn’t there yet. But there would come a time when he couldn’t demand more of his body because it simply had no more to give.

Avery, dammit, you always said I didn’t know how to rely on other people. Well, partner, I’m counting on you to save my ass this time, because I don’t think I can get either of us off this island without you.

“Jack?” Casey asked softly, with a nervous glance at the dark forest around them. It was raining harder now.

“Yeah.” He took a handful of loose grass and covered the hole he’d made. The first scattered pieces of a plan were jostling around in his mind, starting to come together into a useful shape.

Together the two of them circled the cabin, feeling their way carefully and staying alert for hidden traps. Down the hill to their left, water rushed in a brush-choked gully—no point in digging a well with all these mountain streams to choose from. Rain pattered lightly all around them, and thunder cracked loudly, not far off.

In the front yard of the cabin, an old oil drum was rusting away in a tangle of nettles. The cabin door hung open on rusty hinges.

Jack put Casey behind him and peeked inside to make sure they weren’t setting themselves up for an ambush. “Safe,” he told her, and they scuttled under the intact section of the roof just as the sky opened up and dumped a waterfall of rain on top of them.

The only intact piece of furniture that remained in the old cabin was a small, rusty potbelly stove, with moss growing on top of it and leaves poking out the half-open ash grate. Other than that, it was empty except for drifted leaves and an old table made out of two planks, with one end slotted into the cabin wall and the other fallen through the slats of a broken crate. The collapsed roof slanted down to the middle of the dirt floor, forming a makeshift lean-to with long grass and weeds growing around it. It was leaking in a dozen places, water dribbling through rust holes and around the edges to form slowly deepening puddles around their feet. But the walls stood intact all around them, providing a sense of security that Jack reminded himself was an illusion.

He tried to close the door, but years of coastal rains had frozen the hinges three-quarters of the way open. Frustrated, he applied a thrust of bearish strength. The hinges cracked and the top one came off in a shower of rust, leaving the door tilted drunkenly against its frame.

Good going, Agent Ross.

“Jack,” Casey murmured. She pointed up. He looked. In the dimness it was hard to see what she was pointing at, but the humming gave it away. There was another yellowjacket nest up there.

“It’s okay,” he said, because Casey had gone tense next to him. “Just try not to bother them, and they won’t bother us.” I hope.

“Fellow refugees from the rain,” she said, casting nervous glances up at the nest as they began to search the cabin for anything useful. “Are there such a thing as insect shifters, do you know?”

“There are a handful. I know a lot more bird and reptile shifters, though. I don’t know why. Maybe they just stay under the radar better than the rest of us.”

Rain thundered on the old metal roof, dripping down around them. Casey was beginning to shiver and Jack felt needles of ice crawling down his spine, up his legs. His arm ached horribly. Hypothermia was going to be more of a problem than the lions soon. He knew various ways to make a fire without matches, but few that were likely to be effective in a torrential downpour.

Lightning flashed overhead with an almost simultaneous boom and crack of thunder. Casey jumped, dropping a handful of leaves she’d been sifting through for tools or other items.

“There’s just nothing here,” she groaned, scooping up another handful and throwing it at the wall. The rain caught the fluttering leaves and pounded them into the muddy ground.

“Yeah, looks like the place has been picked over pretty good. I doubt we’re the first ... people to find it.”

The first victims, he’d almost said, biting it off and switching in mid-sentence as he remembered that the last victim had been her best friend.

They did find a few things: a rusty can (Jack set it on the windowsill to catch rainwater), a broken glass jar, a rotted burlap sack. Jack shook this out to get rid of potential mouse nests or insects, and then draped it over Casey’s shoulders. She gave him a look.

“If it bothers you from a feminist perspective, we can share,” Jack pointed out. “No sense both of us falling over from cold, though.”

“We’re handcuffed together. If one of us goes down, the other?—”

Jack’s cuffed hand shot out, dragging hers along, and clapped over her mouth.

He wasn’t sure what had tipped him off that they weren’t alone. There was no way to hear anything over the sound of the rain. It was a sense beyond the usual five, an atavistic predator’s instinct.

Jack took his hand off Casey’s mouth and touched his finger to her lips. Then he leaned slowly out from under the dubious shelter of the collapsed roof to glance first through the doorway, and then out the window into the backyard.

Lightning flashed just as he did so, lighting up the dripping woods. For an instant, every blade of grass and water-bowed wildflower behind the cabin had its own sharp shadow. And it turned the lion at the edge of the woods to a great statue cast in molten silver.

The flash of light died on a thunderclap. Jack blinked against the afterimages. The lion was still there, standing belly-deep in meadow grass and flowers under the dull gray light of a rainy afternoon.

No , he thought. Not lion. Lioness. There was no mane. This was one of the Fallon sisters.

Just as he realized it, she shifted. The lioness’s human form was a tall, statuesque naked woman, her limbs lean and muscular. Her long blonde hair was dark with water, plastered to her neck.

“I know you’re in there,” she called, pitching her voice to be audible above the rain. “I can smell you, little prey. And hear you.”

Casey looked up at Jack, her eyes huge.

No sense in trying to hide their presence. Jack forced the cold-numbed fingers of his injured arm to work, grasping one of the timbers on the underside of the collapsed roof. His shoulder muscles bunched as he gave it a tremendous yank. Pain flared up his arm, but the rusty nails pulled out, leaving him holding a club about four feet long with nails sticking out crookedly all down its length.

He stared at it, then ran his thumb over the tip of one of the bent, rusty nails.

“I thought so,” the lioness called. “Come on out, little prey animals. Or will you cower in your burrow like the mice you are?”

But she stayed where she was, not approaching the cabin. She’s seen what we did to Derek, Jack thought. She knows we’re dangerous.

“That’s Mara,” Casey murmured. Jack glanced down at her. “She’s the oldest of the siblings except for Roger. Their other sister, Debi, is probably back in Seattle. She’s not really an outdoorsy person. She keeps the books.”

“Hi there, Mara,” Jack called. “Did you have a nice chat with your brother? I’ll be sure and send him a get-well card—if he’s still alive, that is.”

The humanform lioness bristled, growing a bit larger in the shoulders, but not quite shifting. Not yet. “Derek was always a fool.” Her eyes flashed gold in the dull gray afternoon, gleaming through the rain. “But he’s pride. And no one messes with our pride.”

“I’m going to tell you what I told Derek,” Jack shouted. “We didn’t start this fight. You did. But now that you’ve brought us here, we’re fighting to win, and we’re not planning to leave here in a body bag. You can end it at any time by just letting us go.”

“Oh, you won’t be leaving here at all,” Mara called back. “Your gnawed bones will lie forgotten in the soil.”

“Mara, I’m a federal agent. The only thing that’s going to happen if I disappear here is that the whole coast will be combed with a 24/7 manhunt. My bones won’t be forgotten, they’ll be used as evidence to bring your whole family down. Is that what you want?”

“Then we’ll just have to make sure there’s nothing left of you to find.” But she still hadn’t moved from where she stood, rising out of the wet grass like a mermaid breaching the water.

Stalling , Jack thought. She’s stalling ‘til the others pick up the trail. They’d be easy prey for two or three of the lions at once. If he couldn’t get Mara to back down, he had to push her into making a move.

“Like I told Derek, I’m willing to make deals. If any one of you is willing to flip on the others, we’ll let you plea out.”

“Okay,” Mara said. She smiled. “I’ll deal. Come over here and let’s talk about it.”

“Jack, don’t,” Casey whispered.

“I know.” To Mara, he called, “If you’re serious, I’m going to need you to secure yourself somehow. I can’t trust you otherwise.”

“Hmmm.” She made an elaborate show of patting down her naked body. “Awww, I think you have the only pair of handcuffs on this island. Want to come here and give them to me?”

“She’s playing with us,” Casey whispered. “Cats like to do that. Believe me, I should know.”

Jack nodded, and called, “Mara, do you know what I used to do before I was a fed?”

“No idea,” Mara called. “Should I care?”

“I was a mercenary. Now, I like to think I’m not a bad guy. I’ve got my own sense of honor. But as far as I’m concerned, I just gave you a fair chance. You’ve rejected it. At this point, I figure all bets are off.”

Mara laughed. “Oh wow, I’m so scared! What have you got in there, a submachinegun?”

“I know you’re scared. If you weren’t, you wouldn’t be all the way over there.” Jack stood up so she could see him through the window. “You’ve already cleaned everything useful out of this cabin, haven’t you? And you know I can’t shift, because you guys made sure of that too. And yet, you’re huddling as far away from me as you can get.”

“I am not huddling ,” Mara snapped, throwing her shoulders back.

“Yeah? Well, you sure aren’t trying very hard. Want me to make it easy for you by coming out there?”

“That won’t be necessary.” Mara’s shoulders hunched and she rippled into her lioness form, as easily as breathing.

Raising her head, she gave a tremendous, coughing roar. It was echoed, an instant later, from farther down in the valley.

“Jack!” Casey whispered. She was pressed to the wall of the cabin, out of Mara’s sight. “She’s calling the others! All this time, she’s been stalling.”

“I know,” Jack murmured back. “I’ve been stalling, too.”

And he raised his hands a little to show Casey what he’d been doing. While he was talking to Mara, he’d been working the lock of the cuffs with one of the nails from the roof. Wiggling the bent tip of the nail around in the keyhole, he finally found the right angle.

The cuff gave a tiny click and sprang open.

Casey gasped.

Jack smiled at her, then called through the window, “Some big brave lioness you are! You need the whole pride to deal with two helpless little humanform shifters? When they get here, they’re going to find you cowering, just waiting for backup to arrive.”

Mara snarled, and her self-control broke. Her muscles bunched, and she sprang forward, covering the distance to the cabin in a series of great, leaping bounds. Two leaps. Three?—

Her whole weight came down on the rotten cellar roof. It disintegrated under her.

Jack jumped as hard as he could, caught his toes on the edge of the window, and pulled himself to the top of the wall. After all this time of being locked to Casey, unable to move at his own speed, the ability to use his body to its limits felt like breathtaking freedom. The ache of his arm, the cold, his own exhaustion faded away. He had never felt so alive or so present in his own skin.

As he sprang from the top of the wall, he shifted. It was a man who leaped off the wall, but a grizzly bear who landed, crashing heavily into the wet snarl of weeds behind the cabin.

Mara was thrashing around in the wreckage of the cellar roof. It wasn’t that deep, but her legs were tangled up in broken boards and clinging brambles, and from the way she was struggling, there must be nothing but mud underneath. Jack lumbered forward and was on her just as she got her forelegs on solid ground.

He chomped down, aiming at her head, but she recoiled in horror and he missed, sinking his teeth into her shoulder instead. Jack’s rational human mind might technically have veto power, but as soon as he’d shifted, his bear instincts had come erupting to the forefront of his brain—and his inner bear was pissed .

The noise Mara made was probably the closest thing to a scream that a leonine throat could produce. She’d expected two fragile humans, hurt and scared and severely hampered by the cuffs holding them together. Instead, she found herself fighting an enraged grizzly bear.

Jack’s teeth ripped out of her shoulder as she managed to tear away from him. Rearing back, he swatted her across the side of the head with one enormous paw.

But now Mara was starting to rally. Normal lions weren’t quite as big as bears, but Mara was not an average-sized lion, and she, like Jack, had a human brain driving her enormous predator’s body. She turned the disadvantage of her lower position into an advantage, ducking under his swinging paws and then coming up from below. Her teeth sought a grip on his throat, failing to sink in only because of his bear form’s heavy fur; she got a mouthful of fur and loose skin instead. Her front claws tore at his chest and belly.

With Mara ripping and clawing at his underside, Jack bit at her back. His jaws would have been capable of crushing her spinal cord, but she was moving too much. All he could do was slash her golden fur, leaving bloody stripes.

Mara finally managed to get out of the hole. They both staggered backward and glared at each other through the pouring rain. Mara was coughing and spitting; blood mixed with rainwater dripped off her fur. Jack felt the sting of new cuts from Mara’s clawing. His mouth tasted like blood, which made the human part of him uneasy even as his bear side relished it.

The fight had seemed to take forever, but Jack realized it had only been a few seconds when Casey appeared around the corner of the cabin, loping along in lynx form. The silver chain of the handcuffs flashed at her ankle, where the cuff was still attached.

Mara’s ears flattened as she reoriented on the smaller and therefore more tempting target. She crouched and launched herself like a hunting housecat.

Jack roared. He slammed into Mara before she could reach Casey, knocking her down. Rather than falling, she latched onto him, furious. Her claws sank into his sides, and she raked at his belly with her powerful back legs. Jack snapped at the back of her neck and finally managed to sink in his fangs.

They rolled in the mud, tearing at each other. Jack glimpsed Casey trying to dart in and bite Mara to help him. No , he wanted to tell her, stay back! She was only going to get herself hurt.

And he was going to win. His strength was fading, but Mara’s was fading faster, her attempts to disembowel him getting wilder and less effective. She’d picked a fight with a larger predator, and now it was coming back to bite her—literally. His jaws ground down through flesh and sinew. He didn’t want to kill her, but he had no choice. In their world of predator and prey, it was kill or be killed; there were no other options.

An earthshaking roar came from the trees, and another lion charged out to join the fray.

It had a mane; it was a male. Jack didn’t know if this was Roger or his brother Rory, but it hit him with teeth and claws fully deployed. White-hot pain tore through his side, and he had to let go of Mara and scramble away before he was ripped open.

Mara rolled to her feet, slowed down by her injuries, but refusing to stop. She lunged as the other lion came in from the side, the two of them fighting as a smooth team with the ease of practice. Jack managed to avoid Mara’s charge, but the other lion sank its teeth into his back leg.

He whipped around, roaring, and his teeth snapped on empty air as the male lion let go and danced back out of reach. Unlike Mara and Jack, he was still fresh, uninjured and at full fighting strength.

This was bad. Very bad.

Jack backed toward the cabin, head down and hackles raised, while the lions closed on him in a V formation. Mara was limping, one of her legs dragging, but Jack was limping too. He’d reopened the injuries on his front leg, and now he was bleeding from a dozen new places as well.

There was a sudden scrabble of claws from inside the cabin. Jack risked a glance over his shoulder—an awkward twist that bears weren’t really designed for—just in time to see Casey, still in lynx form, appear at the top of the wall, with her paws hooked over it like a climbing housecat.

She was holding something in her jaws, and her eyes were screwed tight shut.

Jack realized what it was just as she sprang, leaping over him and into the middle of the lions. Casey opened her mouth as soon as her paws hit the ground, letting her burden fall, and kept running. She sprinted for the trees like all the hounds of hell were after her.

The paper yellowjacket nest, trailed by a lot of angry wasps, rolled under the male lion’s belly.

There was a frozen instant as the reality of the situation sank in; then the male lion shot into the air like ... well, like someone had dropped a wasp’s nest on him. Mara fled for the shelter of the cabin, reacting on instinct rather than conscious thought, but she was too big to get through the door. Her shoulders collided with the doorframe and collapsed the wall inward—which took down what remained of the roof, and brought the rest of the wasps boiling upward in a surge of insectile fury.

Jack made a break for it.

Grizzlies weren’t graceful, but they were fast. A bear running flat out was as fast as a galloping horse, and Jack was an extremely motivated bear. He hit the edge of the woods running at top speed.

Casey was waiting for him there. As he raced past her, she fell into step with him.

He didn’t know at first where he was going; his only thought was away . After a few moments of running, as his human mind began working again, he found that they were retracing their steps back up the mountainside. Something in his grizzly instincts must have said backtrail to safety and that’s what he was doing.

Unfortunately, there was in all likelihood another lion along their backtrail, since at least one more Fallon sibling was unaccounted for.

Jack veered off and crashed through the brush, down into the nearest ravine, with Casey racing at his heels. Near the bottom, he skidded to a stop in dismay. What would have been a small, trickling stream before the rain was now a raging, muddy cataract. He might be able to navigate it, with his massive size and low, squat build, but a smaller feline like Casey would be swept away.

He didn’t want to expend the energy to shift back and explain. Instead he crouched down and hoped she’d understand.

Casey looked at him in disbelief, but then she cautiously crawled onto his wet, shaggy back, digging in her claws to stay on. When he could feel her crouched on top of him, Jack stood up carefully—there was a fast prickle of claws as she automatically dug in harder—and waded into the flood.

The water was ice cold, churning around his legs. Small rocks, dislodged by the flood, bounced off his body. Worse, he was swaying with dizziness, barely able to keep his feet in the torrent. Between the blood loss from his injuries, and his body’s own energy demands as it tried to heal itself, he was nearing collapse.

He tried fighting his way upstream, but it was too exhausting, so he only went a short way before climbing out on the other side. Casey hopped off. Jack led the way in a short slog uphill, out of the brush onto the exposed brow of the mountainside.

It was utterly miserable up here in the storm. Rain poured down so hard that his nearsightedness didn’t make a difference; they could only see ten or twenty feet in front of them. Lightning flashed overhead with simultaneous ear-shattering claps of thunder, a constant reminder that they were doing exactly what you weren’t supposed to do in a lightning storm: crossing open ground and presenting themselves as tempting lightning targets.

But the danger and misery of it was the point. Jack was hoping the Fallons would be willing to wait out the worst of the storm, following them once the going wasn’t quite so rough. In the meantime, they could gain a little distance.

And then what?

He wasn’t capable of forming plans that far ahead right now. Increasingly, it was all he could manage to put one paw in front of the other.

Beside him, Casey slouched along, the very picture of abject unhappiness in her bedraggled state. She kept flicking her ear and raising one forepaw to brush her face. She must have gotten stung by the wasps. He hoped it wasn’t too bad, and wished he could tell her how brave she’d been.

Right now, though, he was fairly sure if he shifted to his human shape, he wouldn’t be able to turn back into a bear. And the only thing saving them from death by hypothermia was the thick fur of their animal forms.

His vision had telescoped down to a dim view of the rocks right in front of his low-hanging snout. A silver glimmer caught his eye, and he swung his shaggy head far enough to see the empty handcuff dragging behind Casey’s left ankle, what would be her wrist in human form. At least he’d managed to get them disconnected from each other. When he collapsed—which he was starting to consider a certainty and not a distant possibility—she could go on without him.

Would have to go on without him.

And he wanted to tell her it was all right; he understood. He knew now, finally, what Avery had been trying to hammer through his head for all this time they’d known each other. Why he’d never really made it in the military, why he’d always bounced from one group of friends to another, never quite putting down roots anywhere. He’d blamed it on his shifter nature—bears were loners, bears were ramblers. But what it really came down to was that he’d never been willing to lay down his life for someone else. He’d never let himself put down those roots. Kept yanking them up before they could take.

And he wasn’t sure what had changed. Maybe it was Avery and the rest of them, and the fact that he’d stayed at the SCB longer than he’d ever stayed anywhere. Maybe it was Casey, her courage and resilience and the way he felt when he looked into her amazing gold-flecked eyes.

Maybe it was just that he’d hit a point when he had to either change or keep running forever, and he’d chosen to be something better than he’d been in the past.

Whatever it was, whatever it meant, he was okay with falling here on the mountainside as long as she got away. Avery and the rest of them would come; if he knew nothing else, he knew that for certain. And even if he couldn’t walk, he could try to slow down the Fallons enough to give Casey a head start.

In fact, why was he wasting his energy climbing, when he should wait here to stop their pursuers?

Jack sank to his knees, then let his bulk settle to the mountainside. Rain washed over him. Wind tugged at his sodden fur. He ignored all of it.

Suddenly Casey was there, pawing at his face.

Jack closed his eyes and ignored her.

But two small hands seized the fur on both sides of his muzzle and yanked on it. “Jack!” Casey’s voice said.

He opened his eyes with great effort. She was kneeling before him on the mountainside, naked and human, gripping his fur. The cuff dangled from her wrist like a bracelet.

“Jack, get up. We’re almost to a cave. You can lie down there.”

No , he wanted to say. This is my sacrifice. Let me stay here and protect you.

But she kept prodding him, even going around and pushing on his great bulk as if she could move a half ton of bear all by herself. She was shaking with cold, gooseflesh standing up on her bare limbs, but she just wouldn’t leave.

And it was for her sake that Jack made himself get up again, wobbling onto legs that would hardly hold him. She was going to stay out here on the mountainside until she died of exposure. He couldn’t let her do that.

“Just a little farther,” she said, her teeth chattering. “That’s it. You can do it.”

When the wind and rain abruptly ceased, Jack thought at first it was a trick of his mind. He stood, swaying, and registered slowly that there was rock above and in front of him. Dry rock. The rain still poured down outside, and occasionally as the wind changed a light spray of mist blew across them, but they were ... inside.

Cave , he thought. She’d found it.

He sank down to soft, dry sand, crunchy with dead leaves and dried-out moss. His head settled into the dirt.

Beside him, Casey shifted back and stretched her lynx body against him, pressing close as if to give him some of what little body heat she possessed.

Jack leaned against her, and let himself relax at last.