Page 15 of Handcuffed to the Bear (Shifter Agents #1)

CHAPTER 15

As soon as Casey vanished into the woods, Jack kicked himself for letting her go.

She was a civilian, for God’s sake. She didn’t know what she was getting herself into. She had courage and heart, but what she didn’t have was training and experience. She could easily get lost on the hillside, stumble into the lions, lose her head and?—

No , he told himself. No . She was right; they were no longer handcuffed together, but they were still teammates. Involuntary ones, but teammates all the same. And he had no more right to coddle her than any agent or soldier he’d worked with.

Besides, with Casey gone, he could take a couple of minutes to muster his strength before shifting.

The downside of fast shifter healing was that the energy had to come from somewhere. An injured shifter needed rest and sleep and food—and lots of it. He’d had very little of any of the three.

He was struggling to hold it together for Casey’s sake. If she knew how much it was taking out of him just to move right now ... hell. He hoped he didn’t have to fight, but had a bad feeling he wasn’t going to get a choice about that.

He couldn’t wait any longer, not if Casey ran into danger up ahead. He pushed himself into his change, letting the human fade back and the bear come forward. It didn’t work at first. He had to push as hard as he ever had, until his head swam and his stomach lurched, and he almost fell over. Black spots bloomed in front of his eyes.

But he was on four legs now, instead of hands and knees.

Jack panted heavily, his shaggy head hanging. He wasn’t sure if he could do that again. He might pass out the next time he tried.

So make it count, genius.

He started lumbering forward, following Casey’s trail.

The wet foliage held scent well. He was most of the way down the mountain when a lion’s roar echoed from the hillside, taken up by other lions’ throats until the forest rang with it.

Those sons of bitches must have found Casey. There was no other explanation.

Jack leaped forward, dredging up reserves of strength he hadn’t known he still possessed. Not many things could stand in the way of a determined bear. He plowed through the brush like it wasn’t even there.

He came to a halt at the edge of a clearing. Damned nearsightedness—he couldn’t see more than blurs, but his nose told him he was alone and there was a vehicle of some sort parked in the clearing.

Casey had mentioned a helicopter.

There was no time for finesse. He lumbered to it, tore open the hatch to the helicopter’s engine, and with a few swipes of his powerful paws, made sure none of the Fallons would be using it to hunt them from the air anytime soon.

Then he took off again, running. Casey’s scent carried him to a much larger opening in the trees, where he paused again.

He was at the edge of some kind of field. People were talking distantly. He couldn’t make out the words, but there were at least two or three of them. Lynx smell—Casey was with them. And lion. There was a whole lot of lion.

It was going to be difficult to approach without being seen. Afternoon had drawn down to early evening, but there was still a lot of light, and enormous grizzly bears were hard to hide.

He used his nose again. A bear’s sense of smell was keener than almost any other animal’s, sharper even than a dog’s. He smelled the old-wood scent of commercial lumber, the tang of metal, gasoline’s sharpness, the lightly sweetish smell of woodsmoke. Diesel exhaust. Propane.

Gun oil. His ears lowered. They had at least one gun, probably a rifle.

Casey’s smell altered. She’d shifted to human. He could smell blood, but he didn’t think it was hers.

So, Jack, what do you have to work with? He knew there were buildings and vehicles, but he couldn’t think of a way to use that to his advantage. The ocean’s smell was very strong, and Casey had said there was a boat. He’d have to get past them somehow, though, to get to it.

He’d taken out the possibility of stealing the helicopter, but he didn’t think he could fake his way through flying one. A small plane, maybe. They were pretty simple. Helicopters ... no. All he’d do was crash and add their bones to the island’s charnel tally.

Speaking of helicopters, though ... His small ears pricked. Was that just the thumping of the generator up ahead, or a more distant engine noise?

Maybe help was on its way, after all.

Or maybe it was a commercial flight somewhere along the coast.

Come on, Avery. I’m counting on you.

But, if the cavalry was coming, it wasn’t here yet. They still had to find a way to hang on a little longer.

And Casey was literally in the lion’s den. He had to get her out.

The sharp report of a gunshot froze his heart in midbeat. Echoes rolled back and forth from the mountainside to the sea. Dying. Dying. Gone.

Casey!

* * *

Casey had never had a gun pointed at her before. She hadn’t realized how utterly chilling it would be when the black, round mouth of the barrel rose to aim at her face, especially with Mara’s ice-cold eyes behind it.

She shifted almost without meaning to, and was suddenly naked and human, straddling the peak of the roof with her knees. “Wait,” she said, raising her hands. “Please. Let’s talk.”

“Reconsidering, are you?” Roger asked. His oily grin slid back into view. “Too bad. The offer’s run out.”

They really were playing with her. Lions were just big cats, after all, and cats had a habit of toying with their dinner.

“Just say the word, brother,” Mara said, the rifle steady in her hands. “It’ll be my pleasure to shoot the little bitch.”

The male lion with the wasp-swollen face backed up her statement with a low, rumbling growl.

“Not up there,” Roger said. “Don’t be absurd. It’ll be too much work to get her body down and wash the blood off everything, and you might hole the roof if you aren’t careful.”

Mara gestured with the rifle. “You heard him. Climb down.”

“So you can shoot me? Are you high ?” Casey demanded.

The report of the rifle shocked her. It was deafeningly loud. Her whole body went frozen and still, and for a long terrible instant she thought she’d been hit and just didn’t know it yet. She fully expected to look down at her chest and see a red flower blooming there, right before the blood stopped flowing to her brain and darkness closed in.

Instead, her skin was smooth and unmarked. The rifle had swung up, just a little to the left, and Mara had shot over her shoulder.

“While I take my brother’s point about damaging the roof,” Mara said tightly, racking out the spent bullet casing and then aiming once again between Casey’s eyes, “I am entirely willing to take on the burden of removing your body and cleaning up after it. In fact, I would consider it a worthwhile compensation for the pleasure of shooting you, if you don’t come down right now.”

Casey sucked in a breath. It felt like the first time she’d inhaled in years. “Yes,” she said. “Yes, don’t shoot. I’m coming down now.”

She considered sliding off the roof on the opposite side and sprinting to the next cabin—but, no, the other Fallon brother was still down there in lion form. In fact, he was looking up at her now, fangs bared and his one unswollen eye fixed on her in bitter enmity. Her chances were probably better with Mara and the gun.

She’d just rested her bare toes on the top of the woodshed roof when Roger’s eyes went suddenly wide. “Mara, shoot him, now!” he snapped, the last word emerging garbled as he shifted in mid-sentence.

“Him?” Mara repeated, startled, and then swung around to find an enraged grizzly bear charging her.

He was on her before she had time to fire. She pulled the trigger anyway, the bullet burying itself uselessly in dirt, and then went down under Jack’s bulk, shifting as she fell.

Roaring, Roger lunged to his sister’s aid. Mara was in deep trouble this time. Jack had her by the throat, shaking her great tawny body like a chew toy.

Casey had problems of her own. Rather than being distracted by the bear and lion fight, Rory went after her instead. He reared up on his back legs and planted his huge front paws on the woodshed roof. Casey gasped and scrambled back up, inches ahead of snapping lion teeth.

Rory shifted to a naked man with his arms stretched to grip the edge of the roof. In human form, he looked even worse, his face hideously distorted with its swelling.

“Nice look on you,” Casey couldn’t help saying, as she clung to the roof peak.

“I’m going to tear you apart,” Rory snarled. His arm muscles bunched, and he pulled himself up to the woodshed roof.

Shit . Her sanctuary had become a trap. She shifted and instinctively extended her claws for traction. Her lynx form had a decent chance of being able to take on a weaponless, naked human, even a large man.

Apparently having the same thought, Rory shifted. The woodshed roof tilted under the weight of a full-grown male lion, but he scrambled onto the cabin roof anyway, heading straight for Casey.

She didn’t have a choice. She half-leaped, half-fell, twisting in midair to land on her feet in the mud beside the cabin, where she narrowly avoided being crushed by Mara and Jack’s thrashing bodies.

Rory snarled in fury and leaped after her—or tried to; his much greater weight hampered him, paws skidding on the cabin’s metal roof. Rather than leaping off, he ended up rolling over the edge and gracelessly belly-flopping on the ground with a tremendous thud.

Mara tore away from Jack and staggered backward, not fighting anymore, just trying to escape. She was covered in blood and gasping. Her neck and shoulder looked like hamburger.

Roger piled into Jack without giving him time to recover. Now it was Jack’s turn to flee. He only went a few steps, though, and gave a tremendous blow of his paw to the propane tank behind the cabin. Casey had an instant to wonder What the hell? before Jack’s huge bear claws ripped out the hose and regulator at the top of the tank, knocking it completely off its stand. There was a loud hissing of escaping propane, and suddenly the Fallons had another problem just as pressing as an angry grizzly bear in their midst.

Jack didn’t pause; as the tank toppled behind him, he kept running, dashing between two of the cabins and out into the yard between the cabins and the hill leading down to the dock and the boat. Here he slowed, looking back at Casey.

Casey didn’t wait around to find out if propane in real life was as explosive as it was in the movies. She ran for the dock and the boat.

* * *

Jack’s initial surge of adrenaline and fury had carried him through the early stages of the fight, but he was flagging fast. At least Casey was a quick study, and unhurt as far as he could tell. She shot past him, then slowed to let him catch up.

Jack wanted to tell her not to. At least one of them needed to get to the boat. He skidded to a stop at the top of the hill and turned around, head down, prepared to run interference and give her a chance to get away.

It turned out Roger was the only lion currently in pursuit. Rory had stopped and shifted to shut off the propane, while Mara was effectively out of the fight at this point. Roger, realizing that his odds alone were not the best, slowed and then stopped, just out of reach.

Jack bluff-charged and Roger danced lightly out of claw range. Aside from having been clawed across the face, by Casey from the look of it, he was the least injured of them all. And he seemed to realize that all he had to do was stay out of Jack’s way and let Jack’s energy seep out of him along with the blood he was losing.

Then, looking past him, Jack realized why Rory hadn’t followed. Roger was only a distraction. Meanwhile, his brother had picked up Mara’s rifle, and was even now fitting it to his shoulder.

Fuck! Jack spun and almost collided with Casey. He snapped his teeth at her, having no other way to get his urgency across since he couldn’t talk in this form. Casey, startled, leaped backward on light paws, then whirled and ran for the boat, with Jack a step behind her.

The rifle boomed. The bullet splintered the clear surface of a puddle a few feet in front of Casey. She faltered, startled, then flattened out into a graceful, floating run.

She didn’t slow down when she hit the dock. Instead, she executed a long, graceful leap to the deck of the boat. She skidded across it, digging in her claws to stop herself, and turned cheetah-style by kicking off the cabin, facing back the way she’d come.

Jack wasn’t going to be able to do that. Actually, in his present condition, he wasn’t sure if he could jump at all. And the boat was tied up; it needed to be cast off. He slid to a stop beside the heavy rope looped around a post at the edge of the dock.

The scrabble of paws on the dock and Casey’s snarl alerted Jack right before Roger’s paw took his head off—or tried to. Jack managed to duck partway, and the lion clouted him across the top of the head. Jack’s ears rang.

“Hey, asshole!” someone yelled.

Casey had shifted back to human form. She was standing balanced on the deck with her feet spread apart, wielding a gaff hook—a pole with a hook on the end, used for hooking fish into the boat. As Roger looked up, Casey rammed it at him, hook end forward. She got him in the face.

Jack couldn’t tell whether the hook had actually gone into his eye, but Roger shrieked and lurched backward. His back legs went off the dock and he fell into the water.

Casey gasped and staggered. There was a noise like a slap, and an instant later, the crack of the rifle.

She’d been presenting a perfect target, standing there.

Casey fell to the deck. Jack snapped his jaws on the heavy rope and gave it a tremendous sideways wrench with his powerful neck muscles. The rope cut deep into the sides of his mouth, but this was the least of his worries at the moment. It broke in a spray of bloody spittle and Jack gathered himself in a leap he hadn’t realized he was capable of.

The rifle cracked again. Jack hit the deck, splayed out in a tangle of limbs. Riding on a wave of adrenaline, he still didn’t know if he’d been hit, but if so, it didn’t stop him from clawing his way to Casey.

She was down but conscious, clutching her left leg below the knee with bloody hands. Rory had probably been aiming for her chest, but failed to compensate for the slope and the bullet’s parabolic trajectory. A wave of heat and cold went through Jack. For an instant he was back in the desert, kneeling with Avery in his lap and blood all over both of them, soaking into the wet red sand.

“Jack,” Casey gasped. “It hurts.”

Another rifle shot splintered the deck next to Jack’s knee. The boat was bobbing sideways, drifting freely on the low waves in the sheltered cove, but Rory was going to get a lucky shot sooner or later. They had to get out of sight.

He couldn’t help Casey in this form. Jack shifted. Dizziness washed over him and he almost blacked out.

“Jack!”

Casey saying his name got him up and moving. He hauled her to the cabin, half-dragging and half-carrying her, and pushed her ahead of him into the dim interior. He stumbled through behind her and closed the door.

They weren’t entirely safe—bullets could still punch through the bulkheads—but if they stayed away from windows, Rory wouldn’t be able to see them. Now, he needed get the engine started?—

“ You ,” said a hoarse, rough, horribly familiar voice.

Jack looked up in shock.

The interior of the boat’s cabin resembled the inside of an RV. It had the same cramped quality and space-efficient furnishings. There was a console up a set of shallow steps for driving the boat, a small table with padded chairs, and pull-out beds recessed into the sides of the narrow space.

Someone was sitting up on one of them. Someone covered with bandages. Someone who was looking at Jack and Casey with a level of hatred that, if looks could kill, would have melted them on the spot.

Shit.

He hadn’t realized Derek had survived the fall onto the beaver-cut trees. Damned shifter healing.

“You,” Derek said again, and pushed himself off the bed. Immediately he swayed and fell sideways. He shifted in mid-fall, from a bandaged man to a lion with scraps of bandages peeling off him.

As a lion, the awful extent of his injuries was even more obvious. Wet-looking, new pink skin glistened in hairless swaths along his neck, shoulders, and flanks. He’d broken some of them open when he moved, and fresh blood trickled into his fur.

Somehow Jack didn’t think an apology was going to cut it.

He was also pretty sure that, in his weakened state, shifting back to the bear would kill him.