by Martha Woods
“Maybe I am, but I don’t have any complaints about that.” He could feel himself getting closer, it was only a matter of time before he toppled over. The least that he could do was make sure that she fell right alongside him. Wrapping his arms around her waist and turning them again, he rested her legs on his shoulders and thrust downwards, pressing her into the bed with how deep he went, her eyes rolling into the back of her head as another lightning bolt shot right through her. Once, twice, he could hear every meeting of their bodies echoing off the wooden walls, mingling with the crackling of the fire and the howling of the wind outside, driving them closer and closer to the edge until his vision was dancing with spots and he could feel that familiar tingle spreading through him, before he thrust one last time and lost himself completely in her.
Holly’s mouth was agape at the feeling of him rushing into her, hand squeezing on the back of his neck so tightly that her nails broke the skin, every nerve ending in her body lighting up with the force of a million volts as her legs wrapped around him and her vision blacked out for a moment. When she came to again he was collapsed against her, breathing just as hard as she was and still holding one shaking arm up to brace himself, before that too thumped gently into the bed.
“Y-You doing ok?” She asked, still shivering as he shifted just enough for her to feel it again, “That was… sure something.”
“Dry months,” He mumbled, half into the bed and half into her hair, “Next time’ll be better, promise.”
“Wow,” She said to herself, resisting the urge to pump her fist in victory even if it would have been out of sight. The night had already been ridiculous enough, she didn’t need to be adding to that on top of everything else. “Sooooo… what now?”
“Now?” He asked, propping his head up and looking at her, blinking his eyes slowly, “I guess now I worry about what I’m actually going to do now, I hadn’t really thought about it before.”
“Well… if you need any help, and I don’t know how much help I’d be able to give, but you can always come to me. The bar is always open to you, if you just want to drink or if… something a little more dire is around. We’re not exactly strangers to having to defend our bar from anyone who has a problem you know.”
“Ha, yeah I bet you’re not. I don’t want to involve anyone else in this mess, it’s my own mess after all, but if I have to… I’m not going to forget about that, if I need your help I’ll absolutely ask for it.”
“Good,” She said, patting his cheek and rubbing her thumb lightly along his stubble, smiling gently before she flopped back into the mattress, “Now I don’t know about you, but I think that I’m just about wiped out, aren’t you?”
He laughed, staring down at her for a moment before he shrugged and lay right down next to her as well, pulling her close and letting his eyes fall shut as he finally gave himself up to sleep. There was definitely strife in his future, a fight just waiting around the corner for him to let his guard down and ambush him, but he had a feeling that he’d been given a small grace period by Paul. Like a death row inmate being given his last meal, he supposed that he was being given a last chance for happiness before they came and tore him away from it all.
But Shane wasn’t going to let this meal be his last, he would fight for every scrap, every crumb that he could get, and sooner or later he was going to come out on the other side, prepared to make them pay for daring to think that they could rip all of this away from him as though it was nothing.
And it was with thoughts of a plan forming and Holly’s warmth at his side that he finally fell into darkness, curled up and feeling safer than he had in years.
Chapter 7
The forest whistled with a cold wind, ice forming on the surface of whatever it touched, frost caught in the now visible whiskers of Shane’s beard, eyes as blue as a frozen tundra staring out into the white nothingness looking for any sense of movement that seemed to be foreign to the forest. It may have been a few years since he’d left his forest behind him, but some senses for things you never could leave behind, and a feeling for what did and did not belong in the trees was something that had stayed imbedded in his core.
“Where are you…” He growled to himself, boots cracking the ice beneath him as he moved forward and marched towards the trees, fists clenched and his muscles tensed. Burnie hadn’t been thrilled that he’d needed to call in sick to work again, but he was at least understanding enough to not question the reasons why. Shane supposed that he was lucky to get a boss that was at least that caring, he’d had occasions where he’d worked even harder and been fired for much less, a situation that had resulted in a trashed office and a hasty escape from town, with the laughter of his colleagues trailing behind him as they saw the state he’d left their managers in. Here his problems weren’t his boss, but most of his colleagues it turned out. A refreshing chance if he was being honest.
But without the pressure to turn up to work and pretend that everything was normal, Shane could focus completely on preparing for what was coming, bear and wolf alike coming to collect on a bounty that he hadn’t done anything to justify, hunger in their minds and anger in their claws. Speaking was clearly not an option, that had been made clear when Paul had left his cabin, so all he had left was his fists and his feet to negotiate with. He didn’t want to kill any of them if at all possible, not even the wolves, his time in the war had left a mark that he hadn’t been able to leave behind no matter how hard he tried, it wouldn’t do to add to that guilt any more than he already had.
So what he would do is break bone and cut skin, send them running back certain that they would be killed otherwise, and if that didn’t work… then he would be forced to go further, but hopefully their desire to live would override their desire to kill, otherwise it was going to be a bad time for just about all of them. Only one thing was certain, one way or another Shane was going to be walking out of this town a free man, however many bodies were left behind was purely up to them.
Somewhere off in the distance, far enough to be invisible to the eye but not hidden from his ears, a stick was trampled underfoot before all sound ceased, whoever had been clumsy enough to trample on something so loud clearly recognizing that it was an error. That ruled out an animal, any normal deer would have just kept walking without a care for what noise they had created, if they were able to recognize the danger they’d been put in then clearly they were here for an actual reason.
“Got you,” He said to himself, slinking low to the ground and crawling forward, rolling in the snow to cover himself further and make his heat level fall even further, covering himself with a layer of snow would hopefully kill any scent that he could be giving off too. He knew what the bears were capable of already, but the wolves could be some truly fearsome trackers, he’d seen them track down a rabbit from five miles away from a single drop of blood, no small feat when the forest was filled with countless other creatures all in various states of distress at all times of the day. But as he crept closer he could feel that whoever it was was getting closer to him, but their body language wasn’t changing from the cautious approach to readying for battle, an indication that his camouflage was at least working somewhat well.
Pausing by the base of a tree and covering himself even further with snow, he lay in wait as their footsteps got to within a mile, barely audible to anyone else who could have been listening but as loud as drumbeats in his ears, walking closer to his position as they approached his home. They weren’t stupid enough to think that he wouldn’t be waiting for them, not since they were well aware that Paul had requested a moment to speak with him alone, but they were at least hoping that he would decide to come peacefully. They’d heard the stories, if they hadn’t fought against him directly in the war anyway, they knew fully what he was capable of and the states that he’d left his enemies in before. Many of them had friends, family members who had come up against either him or someone in his unit, some of those hunting him today had even served on the same side as him,
and they were perhaps the most scared of all of them.
While the wolves knew the fear of hunting a former enemy, the bears had to deal with the knowledge that came from tracking down a former comrade, and with that came the knowledge of the many things that he was capable of that their enemies had never even seen before. The bears hadn’t vocalized their concerns just yet, but there was a reason that they were sweeping their eyes up at the trees just as much as they were sweeping the ground, they knew more than anyone that an attack could come out of seemingly nowhere.
“Leo, make sure that you watch your sides,” Jules said, sniffing his nose and nodding his head at the bear at his side, “He could be anywhere.”
Leo shuddered, the cold getting underneath his coat and sinking into his skin, like a thousand tiny ice needles all pricking directly into his muscles. “You don’t have to tell me, why don’t you tell them?” Nodding his head at the two wolves trailing behind them, he flashed a thumbs up as they fanned out and searched around the nearby trees. They hadn’t spoken much, a joined purpose in hunting wasn’t enough to make someone get over a few decades of hatred overnight, but they had a feeling that they were slowly starting to warm up to each other.
“Hey Jules,” Leo said, looking back, “How long do you… Jules?”
Jules had been walking at his side not five seconds ago, yet when he looked to where his friend should have been standing he was seeing nothing except blank space. His footsteps were still visible in the snow, but they cut off so suddenly that it was as though he’d been blinked completely out of existence in an instant. Spinning around, Leo raised his voice to alert the two wolves in their own sectors that Shane was nearby, but when he searched for them he could see not a single sign of them either. Just the same footprints in the snow, walking steadily before they turned to nothingness.
Leo stumbled back, fists unclenching and fingers stretching out in a showing of begging for mercy before he’d even seen the target of his fear, before he felt his back thump against something manlike and sturdy, a lump forming in his throat that he soon realized may as well have been his heart. “Please… don’t kill me.”
“That’s up to you,” Shane said, resting his hand on Leo’s shoulder and squeezing down with just enough force to make sure that he knew how easily he could tear him apart, so easily that it may as well have not mattered at all. “Your friends aren’t dead, but they easily could be, you need to know that. All of you need to know that.”
“What did you do to them?”
“If you do exactly what I say, you’ll see them for yourself soon enough.” Scraping the nail of his thumb along Leo’s neck, Shane continued, “I know that you’re not a kill squad, you’re just the scouts coming to find out where I am, maybe take a few halfhearted swings at me, soften me up for the actual kill team that’s coming in the next few days. Am I right about that?”
Leo nodded his head, breath coming in shuddery breaths by now. “Y-yeah, that’s right. Just scouts, not fighters, we’re not here to kill.”
“Then you go back to your kill team and tell them that the fact that you’re scouts is the only reason that I didn’t kill you.” Shane’s voice had dropped to something deep and raspy, almost demonic as it echoed in Leo’s very soul. “Tell them that if they come here looking to shed blood then the only thing they will get is blood, and I have so much more to give than they do. I don’t want to kill any of you, I want both of your groups to go back where you came from and leave me to my life, whatever happened at the forest is none of my business, nor do I really care about what came to be of my former home, but if you come into my new home here and dare to think that you can do whatever you want then you are in for a very rude awakening.”
Leo nodded, shutting hit eyes tightly as he felt Shane circling around in front of him, standing tall and looking down at him with interest. “Why are your eyes closed? Look at me.”
“No,” Leo said, “I… I can’t…”
“Why’s that?”
“Because… I’m afraid of what I might see.” Leo bowed his head, feeling as though the eyes of Satan himself were burning a hole through his skin. “I heard… I heard the stories.”
“Whatever the stories were, I’m certain that they were true. But I can tell you that I’m not a demon, I’m just a man waiting to be able to live the life that he wants in peace, do you understand?” Placing his finger underneath Leo’s chin, he tilted his head up to look at him, eyes still clamped tightly shut. “Look at me Leo, and then you’ll be free to go.”
Slowly, hesitantly, Leo opened his eyes and looked up, expecting to see a monster standing in front of him and instead seeing… just a man. A tired man, with lines of stress at his eyes and the beginnings of what was clearly going to be some unkempt facial hair, certainly not the near demonic figure that had snatched his three companions up without so much as a word of surprise. Appearances truly were deceiving.
“Jesus, look at you,” Shane said, shaking his head as he stared into Leo’s eyes, seeing his reflection in a set of wide, youthful eyes, “You’re just a kid. How old are you?”
“...Nineteen.”
Shane narrowed his eyes, before he clicked his tongue and said, “No, you’re not.”
Leo was silent for a moment, before he replied under his breath, barely more than a breath of a whisper, “Sixteen…”
Shane stepped away, turning his back on Leo and showing that he wasn’t even considered to be a hint of a threat, knowing for a certainty that he wasn’t going to dare to make any moves that could put him in danger. Leo was young, inexperienced, but that did not make him stupid by any means, if anything, knowing not to fight and just take the opportunity that was being given to him, that made him possibly the smartest person in his clan at that moment.
“Your friends are back there,” Shane said, pointing over his shoulder in the direction that Leo and his group had come from in the first place, “They might have some broken bones, they’ll probably have to stay off their legs for a few days, but they’re alive. You take them, you go back to the rest of your people, and you tell them that if they want to have that be the extent of how violent this thing gets, to just turn around, leave me and my family alone, and leave us to our lives, do you understand?”
Leo nodded, not giving an audible reply but Shane knew enough to know that was answer enough. With a flick of his head he dismissed Leo, watching him scamper off into the forest like he’d been set on fire, marching right into the group of his friends where they’d been dropped off, lifting them up onto his shoulders or dragging them behind him as he made his way out of the forest. Shane sighed, sitting down and resting his back against the tree, looking up and seeing the sun starting to filter through the leaves a little darker than before. It had been one hell of a few days, and he was not looking forward to any additional excitement, but in his heart he knew that it was coming.
He’d lived his entire life with the clan, being taught by their failure of a father to always get into the fight, to never back down even if it meant that you’d lose. It was a lesson that he’d definitely internalized, it was foolish to think that everyone else hadn’t also done the same, especially after the absolutely disastrous war that they’d fought for most of their adult lives. Every day that they fought was one that they’d been expecting not to survive, yet they’d gone ahead and done it anyway, walking headfirst into death and destruction and being surprised every time they managed to make it through to the other side. It was something that had affected him deeply, affected all of them deeply, and now that he was on the other side of the sword… he had some very serious thinking to do in regards to how far he was willing to take this. Because if it came to blows, and it absolutely would, how much was he really prepared to fight back? He may have thought big of himself, known that he had a reputation for doing some truly awful things in the name of victory, but that had been years ago by now. The man that he was back then was not the man that he was now, and it was naive to think that he would be c
apable of the same acts as he was when he was a younger man.
Killing a wolf was one thing, he’d done it many times before in many different ways, but the thought of doing it now filled him with a potent sense of dread rather than the old thrill that he’d felt back in his ‘Glory Days’. And if that was how he felt about going into battle against a former enemy, how could he expect to fight against his former comrades? Men and women that he’d charged in right next to through everything, who had seen the same things that he’d seen and bled alongside him with glee, forming a bond that nothing could shatter. At least, they’d thought nothing could shatter it, until he’d left. How was he supposed to square those feelings away to be able to do what he needed to do, to fight the way that he needed to fight in order to live to see another day?
These were questions that he was far from able to answer properly, and he was no stranger to finding difficult answers to impossible questions. All he could do was sit there and stare up at the trees, and hope that somewhere, somehow, an answer would come to him.
It was after another hour of waiting for something to appear out of the ether that he stood up and walked silently back to his cabin, knowing when something wasn’t going to appear without some effort. And while he thought, he figured that he might as well go and get a drink.
He’d considered driving to the bar, but he couldn’t honestly be bothered trying to work the car around these slippery backroads and putting the effort into not killing every single person that he passed on the road. These roads were dangerous enough at this time of year with the frost, what they did not need was him adding to that danger by being totally distracted.
So instead of driving he’d marched his way down the hill and through the trees, ears open the entire time for any sign that anyone could be following him and finding none. They’d taken his warning seriously, at least for the day, and that was something that sat very well with him for the time being.
