by Rhys Ford
He got a laugh out of that. A short one, but it still left a slight smile on Gibson’s face. One that disappeared when Ruth joined them outside, the once-white smock she donned to protect her clothes now crimson with Ellis’s blood.
“He’s going to be fine. It took a little bit to get the bullet out because he was healing too fast over it, but well, Martha’s stubborn—a hell of a lot more stubborn than some thirty-five-year-old puppy whose snotty nose she used to wipe—so your brother’s going to be okay,” she said, reaching for him, then stopped when the waning sunlight hit the blood crusted on her fingers. Ruth tucked them into her pockets, balling them into fists firm enough for her knuckles to dimple the smock’s fabric. “Martha wanted to move him upstairs into the loft, but I told her he’d probably be more comfortable downstairs in front of the fire. We’ve got him on the couch so he’s close to the bathroom and the kitchen. Martha is just finishing up now, but you’re going to have to stay with him, watch him for a while.”
“I can do that,” Gibson agreed, then pressed his lips into a thin, harsh line. “You two should probably take Zach down with you. I don’t know what Pat is going to do. If he’s going to do anything. We left him back there by the rocks. I’m not sure I trust myself to go back and look for him. I might beat him to death even if Ellis is out of the woods. He shouldn’t be wearing a badge, much less carrying a gun.”
“What do you think he is going to do?” Zach asked. “What can he do? Gibson, remember what you told me that night? How no one would probably believe me? If you’d asked me a couple weeks ago if I believed in the supernatural, I would’ve said that you were crazy, but now here I am with you, and somewhere out there Sheriff Brown is having to deal with a hell of a lot more truths than I had to.”
There hadn’t been time after they’d bundled Ellis up to give much thought to the broken man they’d left behind. If Zach had to come to grips with the reality of humans being able to change into wolves, he couldn’t begin to imagine the trauma of learning that blood ran through his veins nearly as soon as he learned of the shifters’ existence.
“His father was torn apart.” Ruth tilted her face up, a few errant snowflakes striking her cheeks. The air was growing colder, and off in the distance, dark clouds were beginning to roll over the mountain’s crest. “He’s going to have questions. Probably ones that you won’t be able to answer, but once he’s ready to ask them, he’s going to come to you first. This would’ve been a hell of a lot easier if his father had been honest with him from the beginning. What could happen in the future when he has a kid and—”
“Are you asking me to turn the other cheek in this?” Gibson hissed between clenched teeth. His nostrils flared, and a ring of gold began to bleed around the edges of his irises. “He just tried to kill Ellis. And if Zach hadn’t stepped in, he probably would’ve tried to kill me. Who’s to say, even if he saw Ellis change and the two of us were there, that he wouldn’t finish the job? I’m not taking that kind of animal into my protection, into my circle. That’s asking too much.”
“All I’m asking you to do is to keep an open mind,” the old woman murmured, turning slightly when Martha called out to her from inside the cabin. “You grew up with Pat, played with him when you were a child. Yes, his mother kept you apart after his father died, feeding him those lies that he gorged on all his life, but now he knows the truth, and that’s a hard thing to learn about who you are, about who your father was.
“The Kellers might not have been the ones to savage Sheriff Brown that night, but something—perhaps someone like you—did. Pat is still going to want justice for his father just like you wanted for your brother. You need to keep that in mind.” She took her hands out of her pockets, then rubbed at them until they pinked back up. “Now, I’m going to see what Martha wants, and maybe if the snow isn’t too thick, we’ll trudge up to the rock stand and make sure Pat’s not still up there.”
“If he is there, call us,” Zach said, ignoring the irritated snort Gibson made next to him. “You might need help with him, and I can do that at least. But in the meantime, I’m not going anywhere, Gibson. Not now. Probably not ever. I promised you that back there. I meant it. Every word. So we should probably see what Martha needs us to do so she and Ruth can get back home.”
“Did you even think that maybe I don’t want you here?” Gibson’s face was closed off, but anger simmered in his eyes. “You don’t have a say in this, in what happens. It probably would be better if you climbed in the car with them and went back down—”
Zach took a deep breath and resisted the urge to cross his arms over his chest before facing Gibson. For all of his talk about the duality of their nature, it was pretty obvious the wolf ran hot in Gibson’s blood, especially when he or anyone he loved was threatened. There were a few times when Zach could clearly see a divergence in how his life was going to turn out unfolding in front of him. This was one of those times, one of those moments.
If he walked away, if he climbed into Martha’s rattletrap of a vehicle, then he would essentially be walking out of Gibson’s life. Zach was not only unwilling to do that, he couldn’t. But if he was going to have a fight with the only man who’d ever made him feel the heartbeat in his own chest, savoring the life he’d been gifted, it was going to have to be now and over probably the most important person in Gibson’s life. He was going to have to fight to stay by Ellis’s side, and at the same time demand respect, even when he disagreed with something Gibson felt deeply about.
“I’m going to pretend—no, I’m not to play at this—you are going to need help, and whether you want to admit it or not, you’re going to need me. I know you’re angry. Hell, that dead sparrow we passed on the trail down knows you’re angry.” Zach stepped forward, taking away a little bit of the space between them but keeping his arms loose at his sides, watching Gibson’s reaction. “You’re doing what Ellis does when he feels cornered. Lashing out at me because you’re pissed off and I’m here.
“Let’s get one thing straight. I’m not somebody you can shove into a box because you’re done playing with me. That’s not how this works. That’s not how we’re going to work. And what the we part ends up being, I don’t know, but I’m not going to let you shake me off because I don’t fall into line behind you. That’s also not how this works.” He hooked his thumbs into his jeans pockets just to give himself something to do, to steady his stance. Gibson’s expression went from thunderous to thoughtful, and Zach continued, “I’m going to go inside and see what Martha needs us to do to keep Ellis comfortable. If you want to join me, that’ll be nice. If you want to take your pissiness and use it to chop wood, that would be fine too. So long as whenever you come through that door you leave that shit behind you. I’m not holding it against you, but I’m also not going to swallow it. I care too much about him—and you—to walk away.”
Zach got as far as the cabin door before Gibson finally spoke up. There was a rumble of a clearing throat, and then a whispered baritone chased after him, Zach’s name spoken as sweet and smooth as honeyed whiskey.
“I’m sorry. And you’re right… about everything.” Gibson reached out and laid his hand between Zach’s shoulder blades. “Give me a few minutes and I’ll be inside. I think the woodpile needs some work.”
“WHEN WE were growing up, I was Ellis’s shadow. Everything he did, I wanted to do. If he went out for the baseball team, I wanted to join as well, even if I wasn’t old enough to compete in the same league. He hated it, but I was his baby brother, and even if he didn’t want me tagging along, he never made me feel small.” Gibson cradled his mug, the sharp acrid steam from his black tea wafting over his face. He could smell the sugar in the brew and watched the froth across the surface of his tea turn as he moved his hands. “He was always the strong one, even if he was a bit of an asshole—okay, a hell of an asshole—he was my hero, the guy I wanted to be when I grew up. And seeing him like this, finding him like this, made me realize he needed me to be strong too.”
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nbsp; They’d been watching Ellis sleep for nearly three hours. The night and the storm struck a dance across the mountain nearly as soon as the women said their final goodbye. Nearly half an hour later, Ruth called with the news that Pat Brown walked into the sheriffs’ substation, put his badge on the intake counter, then walked away. He’d last been seen throwing some things into his truck, then heading down the highway, ignoring every call made to his phone.
Zach was of the opinion that Brown needed space to come to grips with his life and his bloodline. Gibson was more concerned about the man coming back to finish what he’d started, but something inside of him—something visceral and human—whispered the same words Zach threw in his face before they came inside.
Pat Brown’s world was never going to be the same. His shadows were now going to hold monsters instead of just the darkness, and every dog he saw he would question, looking for an intelligence a normal canine would not possess. He’d built his life and convictions on a lie, a slippery ground yanked out from underneath him in a rush of truth and blood. When they’d been children, Pat’s tender heart made fishing for dinner impossible, and he’d taken home more than a few injured rabbits the Keller boys would’ve turned to stew. The irrational, enraged man who’d shot Ellis hadn’t been the child Gibson’d known, and today peeled back all of the layers of anger choking that little boy’s gentle soul. Afterward, Gibson had wondered out loud if he’d seen something in Pat Brown—a tinge of remorse in his eyes when they’d left him behind—a sliver of ingrained mercy and a need to do the right thing. That drive was probably the reason Pat wanted to wear the badge his father had, to be the man his father had been, but today he found out there was more to the man than he’d ever known.
“Was Ellis the only asshole?” Zach murmured from his spot on the couch next to him. Gibson shot him a glance, but the other man masked his smirk with a judicious sip at his cup. “I kinda got the feeling that the two of you pretty much gave everybody a run for their money.”
“Those aren’t the kind of feelings I want to give you,” he admitted. “But that’s going to have to wait. Ellis—”
“Ellis is our top priority right now. Besides, it’s been a hell of a long day, and I’m going to admit it, it’s kind of weird seeing him as a human being.” From his place on the sectional, Zach had to lean forward to get a good look at Ellis sleeping on the futon, most of his body wrapped up in a pair of soft quilts Martha pulled out of the linen closet. “I just keep worrying he’s… going to stop breathing or change back. I guess I’m still scared, and I can’t even guess how you feel about this.”
“I haven’t seen my brother—really seen his face—in nearly two years.” He chuckled, remembering the thick black bristles half covering his brother’s features. “The beard’s a surprise. I’m pretty sure he’s going to have to use a machete to get it off. He’s skinny. You might not see that, but he is. There isn’t a lot of fat on him. Being a wolf burns that off of you, and he spent most of his time ranging over the hills. Did you see how callused his hands and feet are? There’s just so much that I hadn’t taken into account, I hadn’t even realized would happen if Ellis shifted human again.”
“Has anybody else been wolf this long before?” Zach moved, and Gibson held his tea up to avoid spilling, smiling when the man tucked up against his side. “Is there anyone you can ask? Anything written down? Someone must have gone through this before.”
“Everything I know about what I am I was told,” Gibson replied, shaking his head. He put his cup down, the aftertaste of tea turning bitter on his tongue. If Pat Brown’s world had been changed by learning the truth, then Gibson’s was blown apart with the realization he knew nothing about how to help his brother. “I’m glad you’re here. Before when—”
“As far as I’m concerned, you left that outside. And from the sounds of things beyond the windows, the storm took it away.” Zach’s mug joined Gibson’s on the table. This time when he leaned back, there was no pretense about the space between them. Sliding an arm around Gibson’s waist, Zach waited until Gibson looped his over Zach’s shoulder. “Whatever you need, I’m here. I keep telling you that, and I get that you might not believe me, because why would you when your whole family abandoned you when you needed them the most? You pulled me out of the lake. I sure as hell can hold on to you now so you don’t feel like you’re drowning.
“I don’t have any answers about being human again, only the ones I learned when they were putting me back together, so maybe I can help there. Ellis is going to have to learn how to walk upright again, learn how to balance and speak.” His grin edged on the line of grimace, then turned sweet. “And he’s going to get angry. I know I sure as hell did. Because his body isn’t going to do what his mind tells it to do. It might go faster than mine did because, well, the two of you heal scarily quick, but those emotions are still going to be the same. Have you thought about what you’re going to do afterwards? After he decides he’s human enough?”
“I’m—” Gibson paused, staring down at the face of an angel he’d rescued from a frozen lake. With so much uncertainty ahead of them—ahead of him and Ellis—he didn’t have the right to ask Zach to stay by his side. Then he got a soft, gentle smile and his heart ached to catch the moon for the man he held against him. “I’m hoping that whatever I choose to do, whatever happens after that, I’ll have you to do it with me. So what do you say? Are you willing to take a chance on a lost wolf?”
Eight
“IT’S ONLY a few hundred yards, Ellis,” Zach said, hoping he sounded encouraging. They’d fallen into a routine in the past six weeks, one that included keeping Ellis company as he fought to regain control of his body. “Hopefully, Gibson’s done with that chapter of his and we can have an early dinner if the pot roast survived. Ruth insists that Crock-Pot recipe is foolproof, but I don’t think it’s been three-fool tested.”
He kept his smile to himself when his teasing drew a small chuckle from the taciturn man trudging next to him. In hindsight, Zach realized Ellis knew exactly how many more yards it was to the cabin since he’d grown up on the mountainside, but the former wolf never seemed to mind Zach’s need to fill the silence between them. Their days were nearly cookie-cutter copies of the day before. Zach would join the brothers at noon to have a quick sandwich or ramen. Then he helped Ellis with the physical therapy exercises Martha suggested while Gibson spent a few hours working on his next romance novel.
After that, he and Ellis would take to the trails, slowly at first. Then when Ellis’s strength began to return, their hikes grew steeper and longer. Returning exhausted, they would have dinner—an often daunting task, considering none of them could really cook—and after a couple of hours spent with Gibson with the occasional appearance of Ellis, Zach would go home to the inn.
It was both a satisfying and frustrating existence. The exercises were helping, and they couldn’t take Ellis to an actual physical therapist since explaining Ellis’s rapid recovery from an alleged life-altering injury was as problematic as taking him down to an emergency room with a healed-over bullet wound. It was odd seeing parts of Gibson’s features and body on another man, a similarity that grew when Ellis shaved off the beard he’d grown during his time as a wolf. Taller than Gibson, he’d been almost painfully lean and odd-looking with a musculature defined by hours of agitated roaming, but the high-protein diet Gibson insisted Ellis eat and the range of exercises they used to restore Ellis’s balance and awareness of his body returned his shape to a more human one.
Speech was a harder thing to recover. Unused vocal cords atrophied, and Ellis’s frustration at not being able to clearly communicate grew even as his body returned to normal. When he did speak, his words were halting and thick with a rusty purr. During one of their talks on the cabin’s deck before Zach left for the day, Gibson let slip he mourned the changes in his brother. The once cocky, charismatic brother who Gibson looked up to had been replaced by a shattered, silently angry, broken man.
“I just
wish he’d tell me what he is thinking or how he feels about all of this,” Gibson confessed that day. “I know that I’d wanted him to come back to being a human—come back to being my brother—but I hope this is what he wants too. I just don’t know.”
That had been nearly a week and a half ago. Ellis grew stronger but remained silent for the most part, working very small words out of his throat and using gestures rather than speaking out loud. Gibson alternated between stressing over forcing Ellis to remain human, then being grateful at his brother’s dedication to recovering his form.
The moments Zach stole with Gibson were fleeting, especially since Ellis was usually present. The older man still slept on the futon in front of the fireplace, sprawled out on mounds of pillows, eschewing blankets or any other sort of covering. He spent only about ten hours awake in the day, his changing body requiring both large amounts of food and long stretches of sleep. Still, Zach didn’t feel comfortable doing anything other than stealing a few kisses from Gibson as they watched movies or he talked about the endless frustration and joy of writing books.
His kisses were often stolen outside with Zach pressed against the railing and Gibson leaning over him. Winter had hit full force, and the snow fell thick and furious, feeding the ski slopes the area depended upon for its livelihood. He’d grown used to the chill and took an oddly silly delight in Gibson insisting Zach wear and keep one of his leather jackets to stay warm.
However, after spending an hour outside trying to keep pace with Ellis, Zach would have gladly shed the jacket in exchange for a tall glass of iced tea. He’d at some point lost feeling in his fingers despite the gloves he wore, and his feet felt numb, but his leg muscles were on fire, and his heart was never going to forgive him for the cardio workouts he was forcing his body through every day.
