Page 7 of Handcuffed to the Bear (Shifter Agents #1)

CHAPTER 7

Casey shifted instinctively as they went down into the creek, and suddenly Jack had a snarling, spitting lynx handcuffed to him as well as a lion on top of him. He started to shift himself as he hit the water, adrenaline and battle instinct combining to submerge his rational mind, but the searing pain in his wrist cleared the red haze from his brain and he threw all his willpower into fighting it back down.

The lion was a big male, heavily maned and solidly muscled. Jack tried to struggle out from under both of them. Thank God the creek wasn’t more than a foot or two deep, but drowning was still a danger with several hundred pounds of apex predator on top of him. Casey had her teeth latched onto the lion’s shoulder, and they thrashed around in a snarling whirl of fur. Jack was whipped around with them, like being caught in the middle of a dogfight—in which he was handcuffed to one of the dogs.

He’d managed to keep hold of his makeshift spear, but he didn’t have the leverage to use it properly. All he could do was wield it like a club to fend off the lion. Fortunately, most of the lion’s attention was on Casey, which gave Jack the opportunity to score a solid hit in the skull. The lion staggered back, dazed, and Casey lost her grip. Both cats’ coats, the lion’s tawny one and Casey’s brindled fur, were dark with water and splattered with blood. Jack swung the length of wood and cracked it across the lion’s face, making it fall back another few steps.

“Casey!” he yelled. “Shift back!” Her weight on the cuffs was holding him down on all fours. He couldn’t stand up while she was in her four-legged shape.

Casey shifted. Now he was on his hands and knees in the churning water with a naked, wild-eyed woman. The lion was still recovering, down on its haunches in the water, shaking its head to clear the daze.

“Now we run?” Casey gasped.

“Now we run!”

They ran, splashing through the water, sending up huge waves and cascades of spray. Behind them, the lion roared. The sound was terrifying up close, sending a primal surge of fear racing down Jack’s spine from the most primitive part of his hindbrain, the part that still thought it was a tiny rodent-shaped creature hiding from a world filled with predators.

Damn, he wished he could shift! His bear form would have outweighed the lion, and he had it outmatched in the claw department too. He probably couldn’t have handled the whole pride by himself, but he could have taken out this advance scout and improved their odds.

Instead, all he could do was run, hand in hand with Casey. There was no time to stop and find out if she was all right. For that matter, a searing pain across his ribs let him know that he wasn’t okay himself. But it wasn’t slowing him down, and that was all that mattered now.

They pounded through the water. Gravity helped; the creek was still flowing downhill, and they leaped and scrambled over boulders. No time to worry about rocks bruising and cutting up their bare feet. They couldn’t hope to outrun the lion, but they could put some distance between themselves and him, to hopefully ... well ... Jack didn’t know, but maybe he could come up with something if he could get a chance.

The sound of rushing water got suddenly louder, enough to be heard over the tremendous splashing they were making, and they stumbled into the confluence between their creek and another one. Coming down from the hills, the two creeks met in a V shape. Jack looked ahead and his heart sank. The beavers who had made his spear had been even busier here.

He and Casey were at the upper end of a series of beaver lakes, stair-stepping down the valley like terraces on an ancient field. Most of it was lost to the blue and green blur of distance, but he could tell at a glance that they couldn’t keep running through that. The water got too deep, and the bottom of the lakes would be nothing but mud.

The crack of a beaver tail echoed through the valley as one alarmed beaver, finally noticing the danger, alerting its buddies. Jack turned his head and caught a blurry glimpse of the most terrifying sight he’d ever seen—an enraged lion bounding down the creek after them. It was covering fifteen or twenty feet at a bound, throwing up a huge cloud of spray every time it landed.

“Jack!” Casey gasped.

“I know!”

He left the water and scrambled up the hillside, herding Casey in front of him as well as the handcuffs allowed him to do. The beavers had nearly deforested this patch of hillside. Aside from a few bigger trees, nothing remained but knee-high, pointy stumps, sticking up through the brush like a forest of sharpened pencil ends. Jack used them for support as he and Casey climbed, propelling himself from one to another.

“Jack,” Casey panted. “I—I can’t—I’m sorry?—”

“It’s okay.” He was impressed she’d been able to run as long as she had.

Casey doubled over, supporting herself on a stump while gasping for breath, and Jack interposed his body between her and the oncoming lion. The field of stumps had actually slowed it down somewhat; it couldn’t run through them as easily as the smaller humans could.

But the lion could shift, too. Jack squinted down the hill, cursing his myopia for the umpteenth time, as the big tawny blur collapsed into a smaller, vertical pinkish blur. From here Jack couldn’t make out anything except enough of a general impression of size and shape to know that it was a large blond-haired guy. Which could have been Roger or either of his brothers.

“You know you’re just delaying the inevitable, right?” the man shouted up the hill.

“Where are the rest of your pride?” Jack demanded.

“What, like I’m not more than enough to handle you two?” The man laughed. “They’re all spread out, canvassing the island, but I’m the one who used my brains to figure out which way you were gonna go. Not bad for the youngest pride sibling, huh?”

Well, at least now he knew who he was dealing with. Derek Fallon was the youngest of Roger’s brothers and sisters. Which meant Roger and Rory were the brothers still unaccounted for, as well as Roger’s sisters Mara and Debi.

“Derek, you need to know I’m a federal agent,” Jack called down the hill. “You’re in a lot of trouble, I’m not gonna deny it, but you don’t have to go down with your brothers. I can help you cut you a deal?—”

“Oh, we know who you are,” Derek called back. He was still coming, not in any particular hurry, strolling up the hill and picking his way through the stumps at his leisure while catching his breath. Jack couldn’t help thinking of a cat playing with a mouse. “And we know what you turn into. How do you like our little handcuff trick? How tough is the big, bad bear when he can’t shift and he’s handcuffed to a useless little prey animal like that one?”

“Since she just kicked your ass a minute ago, I think I got the lucky end of this deal,” Jack said. Beside him, Casey raised her head wearily.

A growl rumbled out of Derek’s chest. “Luck is exactly what that was, and nothing else.”

“Didn’t expect the prey to bite back, huh? What does it mean for your place in the pride when they all find out a guy who can’t shift and a little cat shifter took you down?”

This time Derek’s growl had the vibrato that meant he was on the cusp of a transformation.

“Jack?” Casey whispered. “What are you doing?”

“Shhh. Trust me. And be ready to move when I do.” Raising his voice, Jack called, “Derek, I’m going to warn you one last time. I will use deadly force to defend myself and the civilian with me. Surrender yourself now, and I’ll offer you whatever help I can after you’re arrested. If you don’t, I will defend myself by whatever means are necessary.”

Derek laughed, a deep rumble. There was only about ten or twelve yards separating them now, and at this distance Jack caught the golden flash from Derek’s eyes. He was still man-shaped, but not for long. “You really think I have anything to fear from you ? You think you can arrest me ?” His voice deepened and distorted until the words were almost incomprehensible. “I’m going to really enjoy tearing you apart.”

Jack spread his legs apart and bent his knees, balancing his weight. Casey glanced at him and then copied his stance, though it was clear she had no idea what he was doing, or why.

Derek shifted as he sprang. One minute there was a man standing down the hillside from them; the next instant, a huge lion was bounding over the stumps toward them.

“Jack!” Casey screamed.

“Throw!” he snapped back at her, and then the lion was on them.

This was a terrible plan, and they’d get only one chance at it. On their desperate scramble up the hill, the sharp, upthrust ends of the stumps had reminded him of something, but he hadn’t figure it out until he looked behind him, down the hill. That was the point when he’d noticed the resemblance to the sharpened stakes at the bottom of a pit trap, like people used to hunt tigers with, a long time ago.

He didn’t have a pit, but the beavers had kindly supplied him with a whole hillside covered with stakes. Because the trees had been growing uphill, leaning slightly into the slope, all of the “stakes” were pointing up and angled inward, at a perfect slant for impaling someone falling downhill.

Unfortunately the only bait he had was himself. And Casey.

When five hundred pounds of enraged lion plowed into them, Jack caught him under the jaw and flipped him over backward. He could never have simply thrown him, not in human form, but it was a pretty basic self-defense move, using the opponent’s own momentum and lack of balance against him.

Whether or not she realized what he was doing or why, Casey moved with him, raising her arms as he raised his. Derek’s claws scored Jack’s arm in a blaze of scalding agony, but it was a wild flail and not a calculated hit.

Derek tumbled over backward and rolled down the hill.

Under normal circumstances he’d simply have been knocked off balance, gotten up, and come after them again. But he fell straight onto the upright, gnawed-off tree stumps, rebounded and rolled and hit again farther down the hill. Derek screamed, a terrible sound halfway between lion and human. Thrashing around in pain only made his situation worse.

“Go, go!” Jack gasped, giving Casey a push. At his last glimpse, Derek was still rolling downhill, still screaming, a tumbling patchwork of golden fur and red gore.

“That was awful,” Casey choked as they plunged into the trees.

“He was trying to kill us,” Jack panted. His left arm was a sleeve of pain from shoulder to wrist. He didn’t dare look and see how bad it was. Not until they were farther away.

“It was still awful.”

He didn’t dare answer her; it would have come from the darkest part of him, and there would have been nothing to say after that. Behind them, Derek’s screaming cut off. Jack wasn’t sure if that meant Derek had died, passed out, or simply managed to get out of the field of stakes.

“Ow, ow!” Casey gasped. “I have to stop—I stepped on something?—”

“Can’t stop. Keep going.”

“My feet?—”

“I know. Stop in a minute.”

They finally stumbled to a halt in a small clearing. Casey leaned on Jack, gasping for breath. He didn’t want to admit how much of his own ability to stay upright was due, in turn, to leaning on her.

The forest was very quiet. Their crashing through the brush had disturbed the local wildlife, and the only sound for a moment or two was their own harsh breathing and the wind in the trees. Then, slowly, the twittering of the birds began to come back.

Casey’s panting settled to the point she could lean over and check her feet. “Oh man,” she moaned, coughing. Her legs were badly scratched, and a raw gash ran from mid-shin all the way down her foot. “It felt like something ripped right through me.”

“Could be devilsclub or some other kind of thorn bush. We gotta find a way to protect our feet.”

Casey looked up and her eyes widened. “Jack, you’re bleeding!”

“I know. You too.”

“No, you’re—you’re really bleeding.”

Blood pattered softly into the leaf mold around their feet. It was dripping off the dangling fingers of his left hand. “Shit,” Jack said. “Yeah. Yeah, I guess I am.” And he sat down suddenly.

Pulled off her feet by the cuffs, Casey sat down hard beside him with a startled, “Ow!”

“Sorry,” Jack said automatically. The forest, blurrier than usual, rocked gently around him. His fast shifter healing should be kicking in, stopping the bloodflow. Anytime now.

“No, no, you should—lie down, I think. Yes. Lie down.”

“Can’t. Lions?—”

“Can’t stop, lions will eat us, I know , but Jack, you look really pale.” Casey was pale too, her eyes wide and stark. “If you pass out, I can’t possibly drag you, so just lie down before you faint, okay?”

With that, she gave him a firm push in the chest. He lay flat, and watched the trees and the sky go around hazily above him, somewhere down a long dark tunnel.

“I tried to give him a way out,” he said. Somehow it seemed important.

“I know,” Casey said, and Jack closed his eyes.