by Rhys Ford
“And what do you think they’re doing out here?” His mind scrambled to follow the sheriff’s reasoning, but Zach couldn’t see where he was going with his arguments. “Can’t be much of a grow operation, and counterfeiting is out. Do you have any idea how hard it is to get the right kind of paper and ink? They’re on generator half the time—”
He could’ve sworn he heard Gibson laugh, a wolfish, sardonic rasp amid the low growls he and his brother were exchanging.
“God, you are as stupid as you look,” Brown said, leveling his weapon back toward the wolves. “Meth, you idiot. Or does your new boyfriend, Gibson, fuck you so hard you can’t see what’s right in front of you?”
While now was not the time for Zach to point out how inappropriate it was for the sheriff to comment on his sex life or lack thereof with Gibson Keller, Zach’s anger was beginning to get the best of him. The brothers were jostling against the stand of boulders, agitating Brown further. If they weren’t careful, the sheriff would decide to shoot both of them, and it would be Zach’s word against his that Gibson and Ellis hadn’t attacked him.
He didn’t know what would happen if one of the brothers were injured or—worse—killed. They couldn’t risk reverting back to their human form, a very real possibility Zach wouldn’t be able to explain away to a man already touched by madness.
“Drugs? Really?” Anything he knew about making drugs or the drug trade pretty much came from what he learned in books, television shows, or movies, and since that was also his source for werewolves, he was not going to take anything he scraped into his brain about meth as gospel. “The family has owned this land for years, and from what I got from Martha and Ruth, they’ve never caused any trouble.”
“That was then, this is now,” Brown shot back. “The latest batch of Keller boys were nothing but problems. My father used to have to come up here all the time because of one thing or another. And he’d come home tight-lipped and tense, muttering about the family and their mountain. Something attacked him that night, something big and vicious. Just like the dogs the Kellers run. So yeah, you can try to cover up whatever happened that day, maybe because Gibson has something on you or you think you’re going to get some from him if you keep your mouth shut and do what he tells you, but there are other people in this town that I’m not willing to risk with these dogs just because you’re looking for a piece of ass.”
“My being gay or looking for a piece of ass doesn’t give you the right to trespass on Keller land, and since you had to pass through mine to get up here, I have a vested interest in what you’re doing here. One question, did you come up here with a warrant?” Zach made sure the shotgun was pointed toward the ground, not wanting to agitate Pat any further, but it didn’t seem like the sheriff was willing to listen to reason. “Or did you think you could shoot one of them and no one would know it was you? Because that’s what it looks like to me, a vigilante cop without anything, any evidence of wrongdoing to back him up.”
“I don’t need a warrant to investigate a dangerous animal.” He gestured with his gun, the muzzle sweeping over both wolves. Gibson mantled, arching his body and bristling his fur. The sounds coming from Gibson’s throat rivaled the thunder Zach’d heard rolling over the lake in the middle of the night. Ellis keened, his ears flattening against his broad head when Brown raised his weapon. “No jury in the world would convict me. Not when they see the size of these things. Not when I pull up photos of what was left of my father. Not a damn jury would think I wasn’t in the right.”
Zach wasn’t sure what set off the chaos. It was like a butterfly effect, with a single flap of a pair of pretty wings triggering a tsunami of violence. He heard the blast of a gun going off, and then the sting of gunpowder, its sulfurous, foul bloom, slapped at his nose and eyes. There was a scream and Zach couldn’t tell where it was coming from until he realized his throat was turning raw and the sound coming up from his chest was one of anguish and fear.
There was blood, blood everywhere, and Zach was caught watching a tragedy suspended in drops of time. He dropped the shotgun, throwing it aside, and flung himself in front of the wolves. He needed to stop what was happening, somehow pull back whatever had happened and started the sea of red pouring over the rocky soil.
“Get out of there!” the sheriff shouted, bringing his weapon back up. “I’ll shoot you too if I have to.”
“Oh God, Ellis!” Zach struggled to find the wound on the wolf’s body, but there was too much blood, and his fur was sticky with decayed leaves and dirt. “Please, don’t die. Please don’t die on us.”
The ground was cold on his knees, the snow seeping into his jeans, and Ellis was still—too damned still—under Zach’s hands. He didn’t know what to do. Common sense told him to press against the wound, but that wouldn’t buy Ellis much time. The wolf’s breathing was shallow, the struggle to draw in air clearly visible in the uneven rise and fall of Ellis’s rib cage. His eyes were closed, but his muscles twitched, rippling under his pelt. Then Zach’s probing found the gunshot wound.
The bullet had dug a deep furrow through the black fur on Ellis’s broad chest and into the meat of his shoulder. Shuddering, the wolf gasped and whined through Zach’s ministrations, clenching his muzzle tight when Zach pressed against the gushing wound. All Zach could hear was the buzz of the sheriff’s crazed shouting, then the horrifying sounds of bones shifting.
Loud creaks seemed to be coming from all around him, beneath his fingers and somewhere near the rock face. A part of his mind tried to make sense of the cacophony, the reverberation of splitting bone and tearing ligaments, but his fleeting thoughts scattered as he focused on Ellis. It wasn’t until he heard the sheriff’s inarticulate cries that he realized Gibson was shifting a few feet away, his amber eyes filled with rage and revenge.
THE TWO years he’d spent trying to coax his brother out of the wolf had felt like a life sentence he could never finish serving. Gibson’d locked himself away behind bars he’d forged himself, sworn to protect Ellis from any and all harm until his brother could reemerge, could heal from the nightmares he carried inside his mind. To lose Ellis because an ignorant man carried a grudge against the phantasm would’ve been laughable if his brother’s blood wasn’t staining the ground and Zach’s hands.
“What the hell were you thinking?” Brown shouted at Zach, his lips peeled back from his teeth, practically a mockery of a wolf’s snarl. “I need to finish the job. Or do you want to just let it bleed out and die in agony? Because I’m good with that too.”
His change hit him hard, his anger driving the wolf out of his blood and off of his skin. Gibson’s shoulders began to ache before he was even aware of the shift’s initial tingle. Then the snap of his spine stiffening was all the warning he needed to brace for the pain.
The human in his mind broke through with a harder hit. To go wolf was easy, a shift to an animal that humans had—on some level—within them, but the evolution from a primal creature to a thinking one was nearly catastrophic in its agony. He understood Ellis’s preference to live within his own fur. It was simpler, a life driven by instinct. There was only hunger and fatigue with flashes of anger fueled by territory and simple wants. There wasn’t much to do but live in the now of each minute. Life happened around the wolf, and time flowed in different ribbons around the form, the dread of the next second lost under whatever whim struck the creature they became.
His mind remembered what it was to be human when he cloaked himself in fur and fang, but his instincts, his urges, were always pure wolf. At least until a very mortal rage struck him.
Much like the bullet that punctured Ellis’s chest.
He rode the shift, drawing strength from every aching bone in his body and the ripping sensation of his pelt falling from his skin. The stretch and tug of his muscles, more intense and nerve-racking than he ever remembered, began to shape his body back to the one he was born with. His paws lengthened, thinning out, and the pads absorbed back into palms, the sensitivity of his
fingers returning with a lightning-strike awareness as they formed. Caught in the moment between wolf and human, Gibson could feel and see everything with such clarity it was nearly overwhelming, too much stimulus for his divided brain to take.
But in all of that, he had a single focus: to protect his brother from slaughter and defend Zach from a madman.
Gibson stood.
Being human was first nature for him. He’d always placed the wolf second, never depending upon the creature lying in wait in his bloodline for anything other than an escape from the world when it got too busy, too tight. He’d forced the change, knowing that if he didn’t, his teeth would feel the softness of the sheriff’s skin beneath them and his throat would be filled with the man’s blood.
Brown trembled before him, his nerveless fingers dropping the gun to the forest floor, and he staggered back when Gibson turned to face him. His fleshy face went pale, nearly as ashen as the bleached sky covering the mountains, and his legs buckled, unable to hold him up as he attempted to flee.
“Zach, can you call Martha? She’ll be able to help. If she can’t get up here—God, it’s going to have to be a doctor, but I can’t guarantee he won’t shift again. He’s not going to make it if we don’t get him help.” Gibson choked out the words he didn’t want to say, but the truth of his brother’s condition couldn’t be ignored. The scrabble of limbs against loose rocks jerked Gibson’s attention back to the man who’d tried to take his brother from him. It was all Gibson could do not to close his hands around Brown’s throat and strangle him until his eyes turned red and his tongue blackened to a deep purple. “Do you understand what you’ve done, Pat? Do you know who it is that you shot?
“That is my brother. That is Ellis.” He didn’t care that he was naked. He didn’t feel the cold in the air or the chill rising from the ground. None of that could match the glacial fear moving through his body, advancing with each drop of blood leaving Ellis’s lupine form. “You came up here to hunt monsters you think killed your father. Instead, you killed a man—or you tried to murder a man—who gave everything to defend his country, including his sanity. There was a reason your father left our campsite upset and angry. Because he was one of us, one of our bloodline, but changing into what you see before you never came to him. And God knows, he tried.”
“You’re wrong,” the man gasped, shaking his head. The arrogant confidence fled his expression, replace by an uncertainty Gibson couldn’t imagine feeling. “I’m not like you. I’m not like whatever hell-thing you are. And neither was my father. He was a man. A good man. We are nothing like you. My family is nothing like you.”
“Maybe not now, but maybe soon, perhaps even your children or your grandchildren will one day, after they learn how to walk, learn how to wear the wolf like we do.” Gibson strode closer, kicking the sheriff’s gun out of his reach. “I don’t know what killed your father. What I do know is that his death haunted mine. We were hundreds of miles away when it happened, and by the time my father and uncles returned, there was nothing left for them to do. What happened was tragic, but that doesn’t give you the right to take one of mine in return. Not when we are innocent of your father’s murder.”
He couldn’t bear to look at Ellis, not when he heard the echoes of his brother’s bones beginning to crack. He didn’t need to turn around to see Ellis shifting. Gibson heard the horror in Brown’s expletive-laden shock, then the unevenness of Ellis’s breathing change.
“Gibson, I need you,” Zach said above the sheriff’s panicked whimpering. “Ellis needs you. We have to get him to the hospital. It’s the only way he’s going to make it, and I can’t carry him by myself. I’m not strong enough.”
The shock of seeing Ellis human after such a long time broke apart the rage holding Gibson hostage. The ground was thick with their shed fur and the snow dappled with their footprints, both human and wolf. His brother was bigger than he remembered, sculpted hard and lean from endless days spent running and hunting on the mountain. There were scars on his skin, deeply embedded healed-over wounds from fighting a war he brought home with him. The glimpses he’d gotten of Ellis in the partial shifts in the past few months didn’t prepare him for the changes in his brother’s face. Ellis looked worn, tired, and now so close to death, nearly eager to slip into the darkness promising him relief from what hunted him.
“I’m not going to let you go, brother,” Gibson promised, crouching to lift Ellis off the ground. Zach pulled his jacket off, then tucked it around Ellis’s shivering body. Stealing a quick kiss from Zach’s cold mouth, he whispered, “I’m not going to let you go either.”
“I’ll go down ahead and get you some clothes,” Zach whispered, stealing a glance at the sprawled man on the edge of the clearing. “Don’t kill him. Even if you want to, don’t. Let’s get Ellis to safety first. Then we can deal with everything afterwards.”
“Agreed.” Stepping over the sheriff’s legs, Gibson held his brother tight to his chest, shooting Brown a look as he went by. “If you’re smart, you’ll be gone off our mountain before we’re on the road. I can’t promise that if I see you again, I won’t rip your throat out. We have never, ever been an eye for an eye, but I can tell you after what you’ve done today, I’m more than willing to change my mind.”
Seven
“HE’S GOING to be okay,” Zach said for what he felt like was the fiftieth time, but as they did the first forty-nine times, his words sat flat and wooden, stuck to the roof of his mouth and stagnant with worry. He’d worn a path into the rugs scattered over the living room floor, frozen stiff only when Ellis’s cries broke the weighted, tense silence growing with every minute. “Martha seemed like she knew what she was doing. I was kind of confused when you told me to call her on the way down.”
Discovering the lesbian couple he employed at an inn he wasn’t qualified to run not only knew about werewolves but had also over the years provided emergency medical assistance was a bit of a surprise. After Zach finally got a signal halfway down the trail, he’d been mildly shocked but mostly relieved to discover the woman who spent most of her time repairing farm and landscape equipment so broken it would’ve been a mercy killing if they’d been taken out back behind the woodshed and buried could also perform an on-the-spot appendix removal if necessary.
The steel-haired stout woman had been there waiting for them at the Keller cabin, her face grim and deeply lined with concern. Ruth was already inside, boiling water for sharp-edged instruments they would soon use to peel apart Ellis’s flesh. There were bottles of chemicals, syringes ready to be plunged into Ellis’s cold skin, and the talkative, smiling Ruth Zach had grown fond of was replaced by a matter-of-fact, gruff authoritarian who told him to get out of her way when he stepped in to help.
He’d almost protested not taking the injured man down to the hospital, but as he stood at the cabin’s threshold, his hand on Ellis’s bared and bloodied stomach, he watched the wound on the former wolf’s chest heal over. The skin remained angry, purpling at first, and then streaks of black sprayed out from where the bullet entered him. The air felt hot around the area, noticeable even from far away. As Gibson carried his brother in, unselfconscious about his nudity and focusing only on what directions Martha gave him while she prepared herself for surgery, Ellis’s flesh began to ripple, and the skin closing over the enveloped bullet started to bubble, as if being burned from the inside out.
Martha took one look at Zach and ordered him outside. She didn’t want to hear about how cold it was or that he’d come up the mountain without anything to protect himself from the chilling wind; she just wanted him gone and out from under foot. Ten minutes after Zach found his perch against the deck railing, a stretch of wood he’d cleared of snow and pine needles, a fretting Gibson joined him, fully dressed but with most of his heart and soul left back inside the open cabin door.
“Saying it doesn’t make it true, Zach,” Gibson finally whispered, his hooded eyes dead and flat behind his long lashes. “I know you mean well, and I
appreciate it, because I don’t know—no, I do know—how insane I would be right now if I didn’t have you here. You give me something else—someone else—to focus on besides what’s going on inside.”
“Is there somebody we need to call?” He hated asking that question, but as far as he could tell, no one had reached for a phone; no one had asked him or Ruth to reach out to a family Zach knew existed—the Keller brothers’ family. “Your father—”
“Yeah, the last thing our father told me before I kicked him off of Ellis’s land was to fuck off and die.” If anything, Gibson’s face got even bleaker, and his Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed. “See, he—actually a lot of people in my family believe that Ellis should be put down just like Pat Brown wanted to.”
The shock stung, closing Zach’s throat. He choked on the back of his tongue, unable to reconcile the close-knit clan he’d built up in his mind with the stark reality of a man wishing his own son dead. Stammering, he asked, “Why? Because he didn’t want to be human for a while? What’s wrong with that? He said he had problems. Being a wolf wasn’t hurting anyone. Why would they care?”
“I don’t remember if we talked about this. Honestly, the night I found you in the lake, everything was so much a blur, then when you saw Ellis changing, it shifted—” Gibson grimaced, flashing Zach a rueful smile. “It changed how I saw you, because it—seeing him become human—peeled away all of my secrets.”
“Was that a good thing or a bad thing?” Zach studied Gibson’s body language, a coiled-tight bundle of nerves wrapped up in a man he wanted to hug, and the tightness across Gibson’s shoulders nearly made his teeth ache. “I can tell you changed my life. It kind of blew apart everything that I knew, or least everything I thought was engraved in stone. Hell, my mind is still being torn apart. I worked next to those two women in there for weeks now, and neither one of them breathed a word about being able to do field surgery or that my neighbor—my really hot neighbor—could turn into an adorable black puppy the size of a Shetland pony.”
