by Lauren Esker
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.
Chapter Sixteen
The ocean glittered beneath the speeding Sikorsky Jayhawk, a former Coast Guard hand-me-down that was currently the biggest and longest-range helicopter at the SCB's limited disposal for search and rescue. Eva Kemp had claimed the shotgun seat, next to the pilot. Avery was behind her. He craned out the window, peering down, though there was nothing to see but the ocean. Occasionally he caught intermittent glimpses of the land to their right, hidden behind the storm's dark curtains.
They were lucky, though: by the time they got this far up the coast, most of the storm had blown inland. They flew in and out of patches of dense clouds and pounding rain. When they weren't under the storm, the western sky was stained with a gorgeous salmon-colored sunset. Avery barely glanced at it.
Eva keyed her mic. "How close is the island?"
"We'll be on top of it in just a minute, beautiful."
Eva made an irritated noise and checked her gun, again.
Avery wasn't sure whether they'd lucked out or not by getting "Wild Bill" Majewski as their pilot. Bill was a wiry, tough-as-nails little guy, a jackrabbit shifter and former Army pilot, who had a reputation for being willing to fly in even the worst weather. He wasn't afraid of anything. There were times, especially in law enforcement, when this was exactly what you wanted in a pilot.
As Bill suddenly and without warning banked the helicopter sharply left, tilting it steeply to the side, Avery gripped his seat and reflected that, at most other times, it would be nice to have a pilot with a sense of self-preservation. He glanced at Mila, the elk shifter from Eva's team who was seated beside him, and shared a brief look o
f commiseration with her.
They were now flying alongside a jewel-green island rising out of the ruffled sea. The gently curving chain of low mountains was easily recognizable from the map Mila had spread out on her knees, but it was much more striking in reality. The forest spread like ruffled green skirts around the mountains' gray, rocky peaks.
In the seat behind Mila, her teammate Dev Tripathi had a small pair of binoculars clamped to his eyes, examining the scenery below them as Bill skimmed over it. Eva had a pair, too. Avery hadn't thought to bring anything of the sort.
His hand, resting on his bad knee, clenched into a fist.
Mila punched Avery lightly in the shoulder. When he looked over at her, the platinum-blond Ukrainian gave him a quick thumbs-up.
We'll get him back, the gesture seemed to say.
Most of the shifters Avery worked with at the SCB—aside from Eva and her pod—weren't pack animals in the same way he was. But there was a pack feeling among them, nonetheless. Jack was one of theirs. They were going to find him, and if he was hurt (or, God forbid, worse) they were going to make the people who'd hurt him pay for it.
***
The boat bobbed on the waves, rolling unsteadily in its unpowered state. This, plus Derek's weakened condition, threw off his first lunge. He fell against the side of the cabin, rolling the boat even more wildly.
Casey was unable to do anything except clutch her leg, the pain washing out everything except how much it hurt. She thought vaguely that she ought to shift, but couldn't summon the mental stillness to do it. She had no idea how Jack had been managing.
Practice, probably.
Jack was a ravaged, muddy mess, no more steady on his feet than Derek. He’d cut up his mouth snapping through the mooring rope, and blood dripped off his chin. He hadn't shifted yet. Casey wasn't sure why; then the awful thought occurred to her that he might not be able to. Or maybe there wasn't room. Derek, in his shifted form, nearly filled the cabin.
Dodging the reeling lion, Jack made a lunge for the boat's small galley. Everything in the cabin was securely fastened down or put away, so there were no loose pots or knives to grab. Casey could see Jack realizing this and changing direction. He pulled the sheet off the bed just as Derek got his legs under him, and threw it over the lion's head.
There was a thump from the deck, and the boat rocked. Oh God, now what?
Casey wobbled to her feet, standing up to see out the window. She caught a glimpse of a dripping, tawny tail. Roger was on the boat. An instant later his huge claws screeched across the door, and it bowed inward beneath his weight.
"Casey!" Jack gasped. He was wrestling to keep Derek's head and forelegs wrapped in the sheet, while Derek struggled and lashed out blindly with his huge paws. "Get away from the window!"
Casey ducked only seconds before there was a loud spang! from somewhere on the hull of the boat, followed by the rifle's report.
One thing she had managed to see, in her brief and dazed glimpse of the shore, was that the boat had drifted quite a way from the dock. The tide was going out, carrying the boat with it. They were almost to the mouth of the cove.
Which, on the one hand, was carrying them steadily farther from Rory, Mara, and the rifle. And that was good.
Unfortunately they had two very angry lions on the boat with them.
Not so good.
Roger roared and threw his whole weight against the door. Made of the same fiberglass as the hull, it didn't stand a chance; it folded inward, spilling Roger's forequarters into the already crowded cabin.
His face was a bloody mask. Casey was pretty sure she'd either got the hook-pole thingie in his eye, or opened a deep gash right above it. Either way, he was down to one good eye, and water mixed with blood kept flowing into it from the clawing she'd given him earlier.
Still, he oriented on the two of them with laser-beam accuracy.
Casey, unable to walk, tried to drag herself away. Roger was too big to easily fit through the door in lion form, so he shifted and threw himself after her. She'd been expecting him to go for Jack, as the more dangerous opponent, and was caught unprepared when Roger's cold, wet hands closed on her arm.
"Jack!" she screamed.
Roger dragged her out the door. His bloody face was so twisted with fury that it hardly looked human. When he opened his mouth, his teeth were sharp predator's teeth, and claws pressed into her skin; in his fury, he was losing control of his shifting.
"You little bitch," he snarled, slurring through his fangs. "I'm going to enjoy killing you."
"Jack!" she screamed again, right before Roger slammed her head against the deck. Sparks danced in front of her eyes. Roger mashed her down against the deck. She tried to rake the handcuffs across his bare skin, but he pinned her arm. She couldn't shift, couldn't struggle; she couldn't even breathe.
Out of the corner of her eye, through dimming vision, she glimpsed movement. Then it changed, humping up as Jack plunged out of the cabin door and burst into his bear form. The bear hit Roger going full tilt, frothing in fury. The two of them slid off the edge of the deck and into the water, Roger shifting as they went.
Casey lay on the deck, shaking. She managed to roll over, but that was as far as she could get. She lay on her back, staring up at the evening sky. She was so cold. Her leg, mercifully, seemed to have gone numb.
Got to get up. Got to help Jack ...
Derek lurched into view, pushing his way painfully through the door onto the deck. He was still wobbly, but moving with purpose. His jaws parted, fangs bared.
Got to get up ...
She reached out blindly, hoping to find the hook on a pole, or something, anything to defend herself. Her fingers did nothing but swipe across the damp deck.
She was so cold. So tired ...
A growl bubbled up in Derek's throat. He seemed almost to smile.
Then the growl merged into the sound of an engine. Dazed, her consciousness beginning to fade, Casey thought, Jack got the boat going.
No. Jack was in the water.
Then who—
The helicopter seemed to come out of nowhere. It wasn't there, and then it was, looming huge in her vision, skimming low across the headland and then banking steeply in a big circle.
It braked somehow in midair, tilting up at the nose, and then leveled out to hover about fifteen feet above the boat. They were pinned in the brilliant glare of a searchlight.
Casey stared upward. So did Derek.
A door opened in the side of the helicopter, and a blond woman with an assault rifle leaned out. "Federal agents!" she screamed. "Freeze where you are!"
Derek stared at her, then turned his baleful gaze to Casey. Hate warred with self-preservation, and he took a step forward.
Something darted past the woman with the gun and flung itself out of the helicopter. All Casey caught was a black flash. It hit the boat's wet deck, stumbling and nearly sliding over the edge before catching itself.
Casey pushed herself up shakily on her hands, and discovered that a medium-sized black wolf had interposed itself between her and the lion. The lion was five times its size, but the wolf's hackles bristled, its head low. Just try to go through me, asshole, its body language seemed to say.
Avery! Casey thought.
A dark bundle thumped to the deck a few feet from Avery. The wolf scuttled sideways to it, limping heavily but never taking its eyes off the lion. It put a paw on the bundle. Then, with a liquid flicker, Avery shifted and the wolf was replaced with a dark-haired, light-skinned young man crouching in front of the lion, his hand resting on top of what, Casey now saw, was someone's jacket. Avery pulled a gun out of it—the gun and its holster had been bundled in the jacket—and aimed it at the lion's face.
"You're under arrest," he said. "Shift and get down on your face."
The lion's lips curled back from its fangs.
"Do it now!" Avery yelled. "Think you can take me out? Did you miss the woman up there with the rifle pointed at you? If you take one
more step, make one more threatening move, she's going to shoot you. Now shift."
Derek seemed to think about it; then he blurred to his human form. Sullenly, he lay down on the deck.
Avery retrieved a pair of handcuffs from the jacket. Seeming unconcerned about his nudity, he cuffed Derek—taking an interested look at the lion shifter's injuries while he did so—and then picked up the jacket and limped to Casey, unsteady on the slippery deck.
Her eyes were drawn to his legs. Jack had told her how badly he'd been hurt, but she was still unprepared for the extent of the scarring, or the way his right leg twisted under him, the foot toeing slightly in.
"Avery," she managed through chattering teeth as he awkwardly crouched beside her.
"You know me." He wrapped the jacket around her shoulders. It was wonderfully warm. "Then you've met Jack, right? Agent Ross. Where is he?"
"He ..." she gasped. "He went off the edge."
Avery tilted his head back. "Jack's in the water!" he shouted up to the helicopter. "Where's Eva?"
A naked woman, presumably Eva, dived out of the open door of the helicopter. She deftly missed the boat and sliced gracefully into the water.
Another shifter? Casey thought. But, of course, they were all shifters. What a strange and wonderful thought.
"Are you hurt?" Avery asked, patting her down. "Is any of this blood yours?"
She tried to force her scattered mind back on task. "Leg. Shot."
"Jeez," Avery muttered. He clasped a hand over the bloody mess of her lower leg. She cried out.
"Sorry. We'll get you up to the helicopter, okay? There's people with paramedic training. They'll take care of you."
There was something else. Something important. To do with Jack. "R-Roger Fallon is in the water too," she stammered, her lips clumsy with cold.
"Don't worry," Avery said. He put his free arm around her, supporting her. "Eva will take care of him. Now, we're going to lower a sort of chair to lift you into the helicopter, all right?"
"Th-there are more of them. With guns. On shore." But there had been no more shots since the helicopter showed up. It seemed Rory and Mara had decided to make a break for it.
