I took out the top one marked with my name and plopped it on the table. The next one made my fingers hesitate, infected them with a small tremble.
Phaedra and Jack.
I placed it more gingerly atop the one with my name.
Little Phaedra.
By "little," Holly had meant my mother from the time she was born until she became a married woman at the age of twenty five -- which was three years before she died in the car wreck that also claimed my father and almost claimed me.
Fuck. I wasn't ready for this. I needed to pack everything into bigger boxes and put it into climate controlled storage for a few months. When the semester was over and enough grief had drained away, then I could sort through what pictures I wanted to keep and which ones I would donate to the county museum after digitizing them. Until then, I didn't need to dredge up any more memories than necessary.
Hearing the crunch of tires on the drive, I stepped to the front door. I looked out the narrow window that ran the length of the door, my hand absently reaching for the rifle that should have been there but wasn't.
Clover's Jeep -- another thing I wasn't ready for.
Clover, not the Jeep.
Sighing, I pulled the door open and waited just inside the threshold until she stepped onto the porch. Seeing she had a bag full of groceries in each arm, I took one from her and stood to the side while she entered the cabin and went into the kitchen.
"You didn't need to do this," I said, shutting the front door.
"You mean you picked up food for yourself?" she asked with what I recognized as a false brightness from all our years together.
"No," I confessed.
Her next question had a tart smack to it I wasn't sure I deserved. "Suddenly learned to cook from scratch?"
"No." Irritation seeped into my response. Gran didn't go to town but more than once a month. She'd get all the feed she needed for the animals and a few basic staples for the kitchen. Everything else she grew, milked or butchered on her own. She didn't even have a microwave.
"Oh, I know," Clover said with a saccharine sweetness as she took the second bag from me and started putting away the contents. "You've decided to be sensible and stay with me."
"No," I mumbled.
Her eyes rolled up in her head and one impatient foot stomped against the cabin's wood flooring. "Is that the only word you know, Paisley Williams?'
I huffed a small laugh because there was only one answer I could give her. "No."
"Damn it!" She threw a bag of muffins at my head. "You're as insufferable as Braeden sometimes."
I wanted to toss another "no" out, both because I was nowhere close to as insufferable as her big brother and because I had a good chain going, but I wisely kept my mouth shut.
"I'll make us some tea." Reaching into the cupboard, she found a bottle of my grandmother's homemade plum brandy. She laughed, turned to me and raised one mahogany-colored brow tweezed to a fine arch. "With a shot or two of this."
Me drunk around the best friend who had been slipping through my fingers like quicksilver the last three months was a terrible idea.
I moved to the front door and shrugged into my Michigan State jacket. "I don't have time. The stalls haven't been cleaned in at least a week. I don't want everything smelling like goat shit when the buyer comes."
"Braeden can get one of--"
"No," I snapped. I was beyond sick and tired of Braeden handing off chores he used to volunteer for to virtual strangers, most of them males who avoided me like I was a plague victim covered in boils and pus whenever they encountered me in town.
Turning to Clover, I caught her staring at the floor, her usually proud shoulders sagging and her fingers dancing lightly at her sides.
"I spent all day in a car yesterday," I said, not quite willing to say I was sorry but skirting the edges of an apology nonetheless. "And I'm not ready to sit in here with all the memories this place has. I need to do this."
"Not alone," she warned, her green gaze lifting with the threat of tears if I tried to turn her away.
I sighed. My best friend was the town cannonball. Anything she aimed herself at got knocked over eventually. Only Braeden, whom she practically worshipped, could rein her in.
"You'll have to use my gloves," I lied, hoping the idea of my working barehanded might dissuade her from joining me.
"I brought my own pair," she chirped and jingled her keys at me. "Just gotta pull them out of the glove box."
Suppressing a groan, I led the way out of the cabin and worked on dragging one of the barn doors across the half frozen ground, the half dozen goats inside beginning to yell for attention.
"You want both of these open?" she asked, pulling on her gloves and kicking the Jeep's door shut.
"Yeah, need to back the truck in and unload some straw bales," I mumbled, resisting the urge to relax while she was around. It would be too easy to forget the gap that had opened up between us these last few months. Forgetting would lead to a lot more pain when reality came back and bitch slapped me with a reminder.
With gran dead, there was nothing left for me in Night Falls.
"Okay." She sounded deflated. A quick glance at her as she started tugging on the other barn door's handle was enough to confirm the impression.
"I know Holly's passing hits deep," she started, pausing in her fight to wrestle the door open. "She was the last blood relative you have. But that doesn't mean--"
A sharp crack punctured the air.
I spun around, my gaze scanning the surrounding field and tree lines. The property might look like nothing, but the house and barn were right in the middle of a hundred acres that had been in my family for generations. No one had permission to hunt the land without coming up to the cabin first.
So no one should be firing anywhere near the house or barn.
"Could you tell where that came from?" I asked, my attention riveted on the tree line.
Clover didn't answer.
It took a second for that to sink in.
The only sounds were the kicks and bleating of the goats spooked by the rifle shot. Clover hadn't so much as cursed since the shot was fired.
My head snapped left to where she had been pulling on the door.
Her body rested in a crumpled heap.
Before I could scream at seeing the puddle of blood forming on the ground, another shot rang out. A plank of the barn wood by my head splintered.
I dropped to the ground in a roll and kept rolling until I reached Clover's unconscious body.
I didn't have time to assess her condition before a third shot ricocheted off the metal handle on the door. I shoved my arms underneath hers and dragged her toward the barn's interior, running and stumbling backwards until we were out of view and I collapsed.
What the hell was going on? Why would someone shoot at either of us?
A soft moan stopped the questions running through my head. I had to focus. The front left panel of Clover's jacket was soaked through with blood. The back of her jacket was clean, no exit hole. She needed help -- fast and far more than I could give her -- or she would die.
I pulled my gloves and scarf off, shoved the gloves inside the jacket over the spot where blood oozed in a fat stream, then tied the scarf around her shoulder to put pressure on the wound.
"Clo, you gotta wake up," I urged.
Worry that the shooter had left the tree line and was moving in on us forced my voice into a whisper.
"I need you to wake up and put pressure on this."
I gave her face a light patting, but got no response. Easing her onto the ground, I rifled through her pockets for her cellphone knowing mine was on the charger in the kitchen.
"Gran's got a kit," I said, talking to myself because she was too far gone to hear. "It's got a clotting agent in it...I think."
I dashed across the aisle between the stalls, a bullet hitting the dirt two feet from me. I threw myself into a stall already occupied by a frightened nanny goat who kicked at me
as she screamed. Climbing over the half walls that formed the stalls, I tripped on more goats and fumbled with Clover's phone as I tried to call up Braeden's number in her contacts.
911 was out of the question. Night Falls was a good hour away from any emergency services, even a veterinarian. And if the cops or an ambulance team knew there was a shooter, they'd insist on making sure the threat was neutralized before they'd attend to Clover.
But Braeden would know what to do, whom to call.
No motorcycle club like the Woodsmen operated without having someone who could stop the bleeding from a bullet wound and sew it up -- especially after all the rumors I had heard from gran about shootings up on the mountain where Taron Murphy lived.
Diving into the stall with all the work supplies, I yanked open cabinet drawers as I mashed my thumb against the call icon for Braeden's number.
"Yes!" I shouted as I saw the first aid kit. I tucked it in my jacket then spun a quick circle hoping that gran had absently left the missing rifle in her work stall.
Seeing nothing, I held the phone to my ear with one hand as I climbed the ladder up to the loft. I skittered across, dodging missing boards as I made my way back to the section of the barn where I had left Clover.
"I don't want to hear it, baby girl."
Braeden's weary, indulgent tone, made me trip as he answered the call. I growled at my stupidity and picked myself up. He thought I was Clover. And it sure as fuck didn't matter how sexy he sounded. His sister, my best friend, was going to bleed to death if I didn't get help.
"It's Paisley," I yelled and dropped to the first floor, one stall away from Clover. I landed badly, my ankle screaming in protest.
"You have to get to my place now! Clo's been shot, she's hurt really bad--"
A piercing scream sheared its way up my throat and past my lips as I lunged over the final wall separating me from my best friend.
Laying among Clover's abandoned clothing was a full grown wolf with red and black mottled fur.
Another mindless scream ripped from me, Braeden's stern voice barely registering in my ear as he ordered me to calm down while yelling for others to grab their guns and mount their motorcycles.
"I need you to tell me right now what is going on," he snapped in my ear.
I scrambled backward over the wall, gaze wildly casting about for Clover. Why were her bloody clothes on the floor? Where was she?
"Damn it, Paisley, what do you see?" Braeden shouted, his motorcycle firing up.
"A wolf," I answered, voice numb with confusion.
The only light in the barn was from the one open door and what filtered through the cracks between the boards. I squinted at the beast. Fresh blood glistened on the wolf's front left shank.
"It's bleeding..."
Another wave of hysteria washed over me. "Why is the wolf bleeding? Oh God, where is Clover?"
"Shut up, Paisley," Braeden ordered. "Stop talking and listen to me. Do not hurt the wolf, do you understand?"
I stumbled into the aisle, lost in a haze of adrenaline fueled by terror. Clover had to be in the barn, somewhere. She had probably regained consciousness and crawled away from the wolf.
But how had she removed her clothes? Why wasn't there a blood trail?
"Where is Clover?" I asked, dirt exploding an inch from my shuffling feet as the rifleman took another shot.
"Don't hurt the wolf, damn it!" Bike already rolling, Braeden shouted at me over the wind and the sound of the motor rumbling between his legs. "Tell me you understand that, Paisley."
"Y-y-yes."
"I'll be right there," he promised. "The wolf won't attack you. You need to do what first aid you can. Please, baby girl, do what you can to save the wolf."
"Okay," I mumbled, my body still rooted in the center of the aisle as the gunman squeezed off one last shot.
********************
Braeden
I pulled up to Holly Ulster's barn and cut the engine on my bike at the same time Rooster and his brother Clark did the same. Just below the terrified screaming of goats and a hard blowing wind, I heard a woman's soft sobbing.
Paisley -- I knew all of her sounds as well as I knew Clover's. Laughter, crying, even her damn hiccups.
"Clo?" I shouted, jumping off the bike and tossing my helmet to the ground.
"Are you forgetting about the shooter?" Rooster hissed as I raced into the dark barn.
I didn't care about my safety -- or only cared about it to the extent that Clover would need me to heal her.
"Braeden?" Soft confusion laced Paisley's voice.
I looked to my left, finding her in the first stall. Her face was pressed against the neck of a wolf -- my little wolf, all grown now but still mine to protect.
Dropping to my knees, I roughly pushed Paisley's hands out of the way, my mind barely registering her blood shot eyes, tear swollen face or the thick smear of blood that covered the left side of her face.
"Why did you tell me to look after the wolf?"
She sounded like cotton gauze floating in a breeze and I didn't know if it was her voice that was distant or my hearing as I gathered Clover into my arms.
"Why didn't you want me to look for Clo?" she asked, tone shifting from dazed to angry.
I didn't have time for her questions or the hysteria that might erupt when I answered.
Paisley hit a feeble fist against my shoulder. "I said your sister was shot and is missing you stupid bastard!"
When I continued to ignore her and placed a hand over my sister's wound, Paisley swatted ineffectually at Clover's snout.
"Restrain her," I snarled at Rooster.
Paisley was in shock, didn't understand what she had just done because we had been hiding the biggest secret imaginable from her for a decade. But if she had hit my dying sister again, I might have broken her arm.
I pulled Clover tight against me, repeating the promises I'd made the entire ride from Rooster and Clark's home. Never again would I tell my little sister that she talked too much. I wouldn't call her a busybody, either. I'd let her have the shower first every damn morning for the rest of what I prayed would be a very long life.
Just please, please let her live.
Over and over I repeated those promises as I let every ounce of my alpha healing energy pour into her. I rocked, I whispered, I kissed the fur matted with her blood, its coppery essence seeping past my lips to sour my tongue.
"Fuck it's cold." Clover's weak whisper ripped a harsh laugh from my chest. "Shit, am I naked?"
Freeing another laugh, I barked an order for Clark to find something to cover her with, the bloodied clothes useless in keeping her warm.
"There's a stall back right of the barn," Rooster said, his arms still around Paisley.
Paisley...
I had momentarily forgotten about her.
"Smells like goat," Clover complained as Clark returned with a handful of blankets.
"What is it," Clark started, turning his back while I drew the blankets up around my baby sister, "about women that lets them be dying one second and complaining the next?"
"What makes you think we need separate seconds, jerk wad?"
Clover grinned up at me then her smile collapsed and she jerked her head around.
"Paisley? Where is she? Is she..."
Seeing her best friend confined in the rough circle of Rooster's arms, she reached a hand toward her.
Paisley stared at the offering then looked at me.
No doubt about it, the girl was in shock.
"You shifted, Clo," I said, explaining why her best friend was looking at her extended hand like it was dripping acid -- or dipped in goat shit. "What do you remember?"
She answered with a weak shake of her head.
I nodded at Clark and Rooster to help Clo while I turned my attention to Paisley. She shrank from me, her gaze jumping from me, to the two brothers then to Clo before repeating the circuit. I grabbed her shoulders and gave her a light shake.
"What ha
ppened to the shooters? How many were there?"
She stared at my face, dumb and mute, her skin pale as the snow that still clung to the cabin's roof. I didn't know which was worse, her current silence or the fresh bout of hysteria I expected once it finally sank in that she had witnessed Clover shift from her wolf to human form.
At the sound of approaching motorcycles, I tapped Rooster's arm.
"Tell them to keep their heads down, but I need them to fan out and find where the shots were coming from."
He nodded, his body practically dancing with the need to join the hunt.
"We don't know how many there were, tell them that. Then check the cabin, I need to know it's safe before I take Clo inside."
Gaining my feet, I extended a hand down to Paisley. I needed to get her inside before her shock wore off and she turned unmanageable.
"Can you stand?"
Staring at my hand, she tucked hers inside her bloodstained jacket.
Fine! I spun and knelt in front of Clover, gently scooping her up then standing as Rooster jogged back into the barn.
"House is clear!"
I jerked my head at Paisley. "Bring her."
I expected shrieks to erupt but Paisley apparently hadn't made the connection from Clover to me to the Woodsmen and the secret the pack had been hiding for almost a century from every human in Night Falls.
"Not there," Paisley rasped from the living room as I started to place Clover in the middle of Holly's bed. I growled, ready to ignore her, but Clover tugged at the collar of my jacket.
"She's right...this is where they found the body."
My stomach did a superstitious back flip and I reversed directions, carrying Clover into Paisley's bedroom.
"She's bleeding," Clover said as I peeled the goat blankets away from her shoulder and called for Rooster to bring me some water and look for rubbing alcohol.
"That's your blood, baby girl. Paisley's fine."
"You sure?"
I wasn't. Not one hundred percent, at least. Clearly, Paisley was in shock, but I'd seen her with her face pressed against Clover's neck when I entered the barn.
My grip went slack as I swabbed at Clover's shoulder. The blood had been on the opposite cheek.
Comes Now the Wicked Woodsman (A Night Falls Alpha Wolf BBW Shapeshifter Romance) Page 2
