Man's Best Friend

by C. B. Lewis

  Man’s Best Friend

  By C.B. Lewis

  Sam Eastman lives a lonely existence in the mountains of Colorado, working as a ranger and taking care of holiday cabins during the winter. He gets a new dog from the animal shelter and is shocked to find out he has accidentally adopted a shape-shifter.

  Philip, a young Englishman, was on holiday and got a bit carried away on a night out. Sam agrees to help him get back to his friends, but a landslide cuts them off, stranding them in Sam’s cabin together. They end up getting closer than either of them expected.

  When they go their separate ways, Sam gives Philip his number to stay in touch, but Philip loses it. He’ll have to resort to desperate measure to find Sam again.

  THERE WAS a naked guy with a leather collar in the trunk of Sam’s SUV.

  It wasn’t like that hadn’t happened before, but this time, it was a surprise.

  Two hours earlier, Sam had picked up a spaniel from the animal welfare center. His old dog, Starbuck, had passed in the spring, and it was getting to the time of year when company up in the mountains was a good thing. Colorado was beautiful whatever the season, but there were less tourists up in the cabins in the winter, except the people who were crazy enough to do the ice hikes.

  When you open the trunk of your car to let out your new dog, you sure as hell don’t expect to find a sleeping guy curled up on the blankets and no sign of your dog anywhere.

  Just to be sure he wasn’t going nuts, he shut the door, closed his eyes, and counted to ten.

  He opened the trunk again.

  Nope.

  Still a naked guy with a collar on.

  He blew out a breath that misted the snow-crisp air. How exactly did you wake up some stranger who happened to be naked in your car and ask him where the hell your dog had gone in the two-hour drive back from town?

  The cold wind did the job for him.

  The guy grumbled, tugging at the blankets he was lying on, then opened bleary blue eyes. Sam saw the split second when the man went from half-asleep to suddenly and very wide awake. He was sat bolt upright, hands spread over his lap, a look of panic on his face. He was younger than Sam, in his midtwenties at the most.

  “Um.”

  Sam braced one arm against the door. “Good start. Now, who the hell are you, and where the hell is my dog?”

  The man smiled nervously, showing white teeth in a very pale face. His curly black hair was sticking in all directions. “It’s… um… a bit of a long story.” His accent sounded weird. English, if Sam had it right.

  Sam raised his eyebrows. “I have all night and unless you want to catch hypothermia, I’d suggest you get to talking.” The man tried to look furtively past him. Sam stepped aside, letting his unexpected guest see the road curving back down the mountain. The sun was fading, and the shadows were stretching long across the ground. “Go ahead. You can try running, but we’re almost an hour from the next building by car and it’s pretty cold out there.”

  The man’s face fell. “Well, shit.” He reached down, pulling up one of the blankets to preserve his modesty, or maybe just to keep warm. It was getting colder by the second. “I don’t suppose I could infringe on your hospitality?”

  “Explanation first.”

  The man winced. “I really ought not to do this,” he said, then shuddered and right in front of Sam’s eyes, turned into Sam’s goddamned dog.

  Sam recoiled in shock. “Jesus Christ! What the hell?”

  Canine limbs lengthened and the black-and-white fur looked like it was pulling back into pale skin. The dog—man—thing was shuddering. Long floppy ears vanished as a curly mop of hair reappeared and the whole face looked like it was shrinking.

  It only took a couple of seconds and the man was grinning nervously at him again. “Surprise?”

  “The hell was that?” Sam demanded again, trying to keep his voice from squeaking. It never sounded good coming from a guy as big as he was.

  “Shape-shifting?” The man pulled the blanket around him like a cape.

  “Bullshit! That’s impossible!”

  “I just did it in front of you, so unless you’re going quite mad, believe me, it’s possible.” He was shivering now, teeth clattering together. “Look, I know. Big surprise and all that, but I’d rather not freeze my bollocks off….” He looked imploringly up at Sam. “I’ll be out of your hair as soon as I can be, I promise.”

  Sam ran a hand over his face. It wasn’t like he really had any choice in the matter. It was too dark to head back down toward civilization, and it was too cold to tell the guy he could sleep in the car. Best he could do was give him the couch and pray to God that he wasn’t having a mental breakdown or inviting a serial killer into his home.

  “Okay,” he agreed. “Stay there.”

  He went back around to the side of the car and fetched his hiking boots that were stowed behind the passenger seat. He returned and handed them to his unexpected guest, who pulled them on gratefully. They were far too big for him, but it was enough for them to cross the gravel to get to the house.

  It wasn’t until he was unlocking the door that Sam realized something.

  “You could have turned into a dog to get over here, couldn’t you?”

  The man nodded. “Didn’t want to alarm you again.” As soon as the door was opened, he dashed into the warmth of the house, Sam’s boots thumping on the wooden floor.

  Sam shut the door behind them and flicked the light on. “You got a name? I’m Sam.”

  The man nodded again, curls flying. “Philip.” He looked around. “You want shoes on or off?”

  “Those shoes?” Sam grimaced. He hadn’t had the chance to clean them yet. “Leave them by the door.” He took his time removing his coat and hat, hanging them up, then motioned for Philip to follow him into the house.

  It wasn’t a huge place, but he didn’t need much. To the right of the hall, there was the bedroom. To the left, storage closets and the bathroom. He led Philip straight ahead into the other half of the house.

  It was a cross between a den and a kitchen with a cooking area on one side and sofa and bookshelves on the other. A fireplace was set in the wall facing the door, and on either side of it, there were glass-paneled doors that opened out onto the balcony.

  “I’ll grab you some clothes,” he said, gesturing over to the couch. “Wait in here. I’ll be back in a second.”

  The moment he was in his own room and could close the door, he leaned against it, wondering what the hell he was even thinking. Yeah, he’d taken in random strangers who got lost in the forest before, but how many of them had turned out to be the shape-shifted version of his new pet?

  It was crazy!

  Shape-shifting wasn’t—couldn’t possibly be—real.

  But the guy had turned into a dog and back right in front of him, and Sam knew for a fact that he was sane, sober, and hadn’t been near weed or anything like it since he was fifteen. If he wasn’t drunk or high or having a breakdown, then it had to be real.

  Unless he was having a breakdown.

  But then why would his dog turn into a naked English guy?

  He pressed his fingertips to his eyelids with a groan.

  Get a dog, he thought wryly. It’ll be easy.

  First things first, he had a naked guest to take care of. He could play host. That was easy enough. He went through his closet, but from what he’d seen of the guy—pretty much everything—he was almost a foot shorter and at least a hundred pounds lighter.

  He pulled out one of his smaller sweaters, then headed across the hall to the storage closets. Sometimes guests at the cabins left stuff behind, and if they didn’t reply to his e-mails about it or told him to keep it, it ended up stashed in one of the boxes in his closet. He managed
to find a pair of women’s pants that looked about the right size, and a couple of T-shirts. There were even some threadbare socks.

  “Best I can do,” he said as he walked back into the den.

  Philip was huddled on the couch, wrapped in the blankets from the car, and he reached out gratefully. “It’s more than I could have hoped for.” He shed one of the blankets, and Sam quickly turned away, heading over to the kitchen. It had been a long drive, and not everyone had spent it napping.

  “You hungry?”

  “Oh God, yes.” Fabric was rustling, and the couch springs creaked. “Four days of dog food was more than enough.”

  Sam stared blankly into the refrigerator. “Dog food?” It took him a second to remember where he had picked up his new guest. He turned, looking over. “You were really in the welfare center? I mean, the dog? You?”

  Philip was pulling on the socks. “What did they tell you about me—him?”

  Sam braced a hand against the side of the counter. “Found abandoned by the side of the road,” he said, recalling the girl’s spiel. “High blood-alcohol level. They figured someone thought it was funny to get a dog wasted, then abandoned him when he collapsed.”

  Blue eyes peeked up at him. “Well… they’re not entirely wrong.” He started rolling up the sleeves of the sweater, which was drowning him. He looked even smaller now. “Which reminds me: Do you happen to have a telephone or an Internet connection or something? I need to let my friends know I haven’t fallen in a canyon or something while I was out on the piss.”

  “Wait, what?”

  Philip scratched his head. “Have you ever been out on the tiles with your mates and things got a little bit… crazy?”

  “I have a guy who turns into a dog on my couch,” Sam said wryly. “Define crazy.”

  “Shots, jumping off bridges, skinny-dipping, the usual.”

  “Ah.” Sam nodded. “The regular kind of drunk crazy.”

  Philip shot him a sheepish smile. “Turns out that remembering where you left your clothes is a good thing. And your friends. And your hotel.”

  Pieces started to slip into place, in a puzzle that was already looking pretty insane.

  “Let me see if I can guess the rest: You were cold and wet and drunk enough that you decided turning into a dog would keep you warmer?”

  “Well, I didn’t end up with hypothermia,” Philip said with a quick laugh, “so technically, it worked.”

  “No. You just ended up in the animal welfare shelter.” Sam shook his head. “God….” He took some vegetables and meat out of the refrigerator, then glanced over at Philip again. “Do your friends know that was a possibility? I mean, would they have gone looking for you there?”

  “Ah.” Philip was twisting his hands together. “Well, you see that’s the awkward thing. No one outside the family is meant to know. Certainly none of my friends know. And I would consider it a rather big favor if you didn’t tell anyone.”

  Sam eyed him. “You showed me. You’d known me two seconds and you showed me.”

  “In my defense, I was in your car in the middle of the mountains with no clothes, and you look like you could snap me like a toothpick.” He picked at his thumbnail. “Panic does strange things to the brain.”

  Sam had to lean against the counter. “You know how all this sounds, right? ‘The family,’ shape-shifting, all of it?”

  “Oh, believe me, I’m well aware.” Philip looked back up at him. He seemed nervous. “I would rather not have told you, but given the circumstances, what could I do? You’d put a dog in your car, and there I was in its place. You were looming, and I was hardly about to lie. Would you rather imagine you were losing your marbles?”

  Sam looked down at the vegetables on the counter, as he sorted them into piles. “I guess.” He glanced over. “Phone’s on the shelf.”

  He tried not to listen in as Philip called his friends. There was plenty to keep him busy with vegetables to peel and chop and meat to marinate. By the time Philip padded over toward the kitchen area, Sam had two of the pans on the stove and onions were sizzling.

  “Thank you,” Philip said quietly. “For this. For… not reacting badly.”

  Sam snorted, tossing some meat into the pan. “I’m still not sure I’m not going nuts, but for what it’s worth, no problem.” He shot a quick smile at the younger man. “And try not to look so scared. I’m not going to bite your head off.”

  Philip laughed only a little nervously. “You are a little imposing.”

  Sam looked down at him. “In case you wondered why I live in the backwoods, you just got your answer.” It wasn’t that he minded people staring, but some guys saw him as a challenge. Being six foot five and built like a wall had its uses, but it was always frustrating to be seen as a threat just by saying hello. He offered Philip a wooden spoon. “You’ll need to stir it so it doesn’t stick.”

  For a few minutes, the only sounds were the knife on the chopping board and the sizzle of the food cooking in the pan. Sam scraped the last of the vegetables into the other pan, then carried the knife and tray over to the sink. As he washed them, he shot a look at Philip, who was prodding the food around the pan.

  “You could take off the collar,” he said conversationally.

  Philip blinked as if he had forgotten it was there and reached up to tug at it. “Right.” He managed to get it undone and turned it over in his hand. “Sorry about that.”

  “Hm?”

  “You went for a dog. Now you don’t have one.”

  Sam dried the knife and slid it back into the block. “You’re the one who just spent four days in a cage, eating dog food. I think you got the worse end of the deal here.” He lifted plates down from the shelves above the sink. “You don’t sound local either.”

  Philip made a face. “Let’s just say this hasn’t been my best holiday, shall we? Nick’s already put out that I missed most of his birthday.”

  Sam couldn’t help it. He started laughing. “You’re kidding, right? You came over here for a holiday and end up taken to the pound? Is that going to get a mention on TripAdvisor? ‘Two stars. Catering from a tin. No basket’?”

  Philip blushed to the tips of his ears. “Shut up,” he grumbled, but he looked like he was fighting against a smile.

  The conversation came more easily after that. Most of Philip’s wariness seemed to have been shaken off by the dumb joke, and Sam was surprised to find how much he was enjoying having someone around to chat to as they sat down to eat.

  It turned out he was right on the money at guessing Philip’s age. Philip was twenty-six, and partway through his final year of med school. That was how he’d met his American friends. One of them had invited him over for his birthday, and that was when things had gone badly for Philip.

  “So you can do the shape-shifting thing,” Sam said, jabbing a piece of tomato. “Does that mean you’re not human? Or human plus one?”

  Philip frowned at his plate. He’d wolfed down two helpings and was already working on a third. “Plus one. That’s a new way of putting it. It’d make wedding invites a lot more complicated if you were asked to take your plus one plus one.” He chewed thoughtfully. “You know, we don’t really know. It’s just… I don’t even know how to describe it. Family trait, I suppose. Passed down. Who knows? Maybe we were werewolves back in the day?” There was definitely something wolfish about his white grin as he bit a chunk of beef off his fork.

  Sam set down his fork and picked up his beer. “So how does that work? I mean, the whole ‘family’ thing? Is it just a small group or what?”

  “Again, we’re not sure,” Philip admitted. “There are a few families scattered around, but we don’t tend to cross paths much. I met another one once.” He made a face. “He was a complete tosser. Looked like an Afghan, all lean and aloof and elegant. Brains of a stunned Labrador. I swear I could have had a more stimulating conversation with a soggy piece of bread.”

  Sam snorted. “Awkward.”

  “Well, we can
’t all be good-looking and witty.” Philip sighed sadly. “The burden is a great one only few of us can bear.”

  “Your sacrifice is a noble one,” Sam said, trying his best to keep his face straight. He took another mouthful of beer, then inquired, “Does it hurt?”

  Philip shrugged, the sweater rippling around him. “You get used to it. It’s the hair that’s an absolute pain in the arse.” He raised his own beer. “You know, you’re the first person I’ve spoken to about it who isn’t either one of us or married into the madness, and I’m quite frankly astonished you haven’t run screaming for the hills.”

  Sam deliberately looked out the window at the view of the snowcapped mountains that flanked the cabin on all sides. “Argh,” he said in a monotone.

  Philip almost sprayed beer all over the table. He was still coughing and laughing as he wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. “Was that necessary?”

  Sam took a mouthful of beer. “You had your naked ass on my couch. Makes us even.”

  Philip took a more cautious drink, keeping his eyes on Sam, as if daring him to say something and make him spit up everywhere. “To be honest,” he said when he set the bottle down, “I half expected the nudity to scare you more than anything. You hear strange things about Americans and their puritanical values. Irrational nipple-phobia and all that.”

  This time, it was Sam who choked on his beer. He was laughing so hard that he couldn’t breathe, slapping a hand against the table. “Jesus… you look at me and see puritanical values?” His shoulders were shaking. “It’s pretty safe to say you’re not the first naked guy I’ve had in my trunk.”

  For a second, Philip almost seemed to stop breathing. “We’re not talking Silence of the Lambs here, are we? Because it’s a toss-up between that and rather more kinky outdoor sexcapades.”

  Sam couldn’t stop chuckling. “We’re talking hookups,” he confirmed.

  Philip looked relieved. “So,” he said, as Sam picked up his bottle and took another mouthful, “when you say ‘had in the trunk,’ you mean ‘had’?” He raised his eyebrows with a filthy grin.