by Amy Star
Then came a faint sound of grunting and groaning from across the gym, which made Sherry and Norris look back to where Norris’s sons were standing—and Jaxon, his head tossing and nodding, was fitfully stirring awake.
“He’s coming ‘round, Dad,” called Clyde, obviously.
“I see that,” said Norris. “Saves us the trouble of waking him ourselves.” And he stepped back and away from Sherry, rejoining his boys.
It took Jaxon a groggy effort to lift his head, but in a moment, he found himself focusing his eyes hazily forward—and then to one side, where they settled on the face of the big man stepping beside him and leaning down to fix him with a contemptuous look. Norris patted Jaxon on the cheek, spurring him back to full alertness. “There now, lad. Wake up now. We’ve been having ourselves a nice little chat with your fiancée, we have.”
Jaxon sputtered out, “Wh…wh… What the fuck? What’s…?” He tried to move, and his arms strained uselessly against the ropes binding them. Confused, frightened, he jerked his head from side to side, up and down, taking in the faces of the big man and his two sons. He strained again at his bonds, to no avail. He lurched in the chair, trying to free himself, but it was no good. Fully regaining his voice, he shouted, “What the hell are you doing? What the hell is this?”
From across the gym, a voice called to him and made his heart catch fire with terror. “Jaxon! Jaxon!”
The lantern light in the gym was just bright enough for Jaxon to make out the source of that anguished call, though he knew that voice full well. Looking to the bleachers, he saw her there and could tell that she was tied in place just as he was. “Sherry!” he cried. Then, teeth clenching, he glared up at Norris. “What the fuck, man? What the hell do you think you’re doing? What the hell are you doing here?”
“There’s a fine question to ask,” Norris replied, taunting. “We were just telling your beautiful young lady over here all about the last relationship in your life. We thought she had the right to know, being she’s set to marry you and all—though I expect she’s going to have to call off the ceremony now.”
“You can’t be serious!” Jaxon snarled.
“I am as serious,” Norris rumbled back at him, “as what happened to my sister.”
Continuing his struggles against the ropes, Jaxon demanded, “No! No! You know that was an accident! You know I didn’t mean for any of that to happen! We were in love; you know that! I kept telling you I never meant to hurt Fiona…”
Like a cruel strike of lightning, the back of Norris’s hand slammed hard against the side of Jaxon’s face, wrenching his head to one side. The big man all but spat at him, “Shut up! You never speak my daughter’s name! You’ve no bloody right to speak my daughter’s name after what you did!”
Blood trickling from one side of his mouth, Jaxon defiantly looked up again at his captor. “We loved each other. What I did—what we did—was because we were in love. You know that, Norris. I loved her.”
Norris started to pace as if he were a caged animal and Jaxon were standing free, looking in at him. “You loved Fiona,” he repeated, mockingly. “You loved Fiona. You loved her so much, you slept with her without protection and got her in trouble, that’s how much you loved her. You loved her…”
“We’ve been through all that,” Jaxon protested, “again and again. You know I tried to talk to her. And it wasn’t just me. Anna and the rest of your family tried to convince her. Everybody was afraid of what would happen. We tried to convince her…”
But Norris cut him off. “I know what you wanted to convince her to do, and I know how you got the rest of the family to go along with you on it!” He pointed across the gym at Sherry. “Does your little human fiancée know? Did you tell her?” Anger seething in him, he took a few steps away until he was standing halfway between Jaxon and Sherry. He called up to Sherry, “Did he tell you what he wanted to talk my sister into doing? First, he got her pregnant, then he tried to talk her into not having it!”
Sherry sat helplessly in the bleachers and listened to everything that was said. Every word was a twist of a hot knife inside her.
“It was the right thing to do!” Jaxon protested. “Everybody knew she shouldn’t try to go through with it! We knew how dangerous it was; it was too much of a risk. We all tried to tell her, tried to convince her! But she wouldn’t listen; she couldn’t accept…”
“Of course she couldn’t accept it!” Norris bellowed. “You were asking her to do something she couldn’t bring herself to do, no matter if it was a risk! And she should never have been in that place! She should never have had to face that! And she wouldn’t have, if it hadn’t been for you!” He pointed with a furiously shaking hand up at Sherry. “What about her, eh? What about your little human? Do you carry her off to bed without protection like you did my sister? Do you treat her like you did Fiona? At least if you get Sherry here pregnant, it won’t be like it was with Fiona. An Ursan and a human won’t make a thing like that, will it? Will it?” He snapped his attention back to Sherry. “How about it, Sherry? Do you know what can happen when two different breeds of shifters, like an Ursan and a dragon, make a baby? Do you know what that can turn out to be?”
Sherry, terrified and nauseous, turned her eyes away from Norris’s cruel and furious stare.
Norris wheeled back at Jaxon. “Oh, she knows, doesn’t she? She grew up around shifters even if she isn’t one herself; she’s heard all about it, I’ll bet. I’ll bet she even knows the word: Chimera. The word for a misbegotten monster, a twisted lump of a living thing with genes that can’t work in the same body and a body that can’t live. Something that can even kill its mother before it has a chance to be born.” He glowered back up at Sherry. “You know all about it, don’t you?”
Sherry said nothing. She only kept her eyes averted from Norris, hiding from his hateful look and hiding her tears from him.
The big Englishman called up to Sherry, “My sister’s lucky in just one way. She’s lucky that what Jaxon here gave her didn’t actually kill her. She’s lucky she only gave birth to the thing prematurely, and it died, leaving her still alive but torn up inside. But you know how she wasn’t lucky? Her mind didn’t survive like her body did. Her mind as good as folded up and died. Right now, Fiona is sitting right where I left her, in a hospital, where she can’t talk or move, and her eyes are open, but she sees and hears nothing. And she’ll likely be that way for life—or what’ll pass for her life from now on.”
Still refusing to look at him, Sherry heaved her shoulders, fighting back hard, heavy sobs of despair. No, Jaxon never told her any of that, and she understood why. She could not find it in herself to hold it against him that he did not—could not—tell her that.
With a menacing stride, Norris stalked back over to Jaxon. Cocking his head in Sherry’s direction, he said, “And you want to marry this girl. At least this time you picked a human, someone you can’t do the way you did my sister. That was the one smart thing you did. But you know something, mate? Sherry here doesn’t deserve you. She doesn’t deserve to be married to someone who’d be so careless with the gentlest, kindest, sweetest girl who ever lived; someone who’d take a girl like my sister to bed without even bothering to use bloody protection and do what you did to Fiona.”
Pained at the bottom of his heart but still defiant, Jaxon said, “I loved Fiona.”
Again came the brutal slap of the back of Norris’s hand across Jaxon’s face. Jaxon’s head whipped hard to one side with the impact of the blow. His cheek turned purple, and more blood trickled from his mouth.
Norris bellowed, “I said don’t say my sister’s name, you worthless little pisser! NEVER speak my sister’s name!”
Jaxon turned his bruised face back to meet Norris’s furious eyes. “So, does the rest of your family know you’re here? What about Anna and the rest of them? Do they know you’ve brought Clyde and Ross all the way here to get revenge on me for something I never meant to happen? Something we all tried to talk Fi…tried to
talk her out of? If she’d listened, if she’d stopped it before it went too far…”
“She couldn’t do it,” Norris glowered. “She couldn’t bring herself to do it. Fiona couldn’t stand the idea of doing that. Don’t you think I tried to reach her, the same as everyone else? Don’t you think I tried to talk to her?” A different tone came into his voice, a cracked and breaking tone, the sound of a man on the edge of grief too great to endure. The sound of a man who screamed and ranted and raged for want of dissolving into a river of bitter tears. “She wouldn’t hear of it. She was the gentlest thing in the world, and she wouldn’t hear of a thing like that, no matter what it might do to her.” His voice ragged with feelings that clawed and scraped at each other, he snarled at Jaxon, “You gave her no bloody choice.”
Everything was silent again. Norris returned for a moment to pacing. “And now,” he said, in a lowered but no less enraged tone, “you’re getting married.” He pointed to the bleachers. “To her. You’re marrying this girl, and you’re going to take her to bed as her husband, and you’re going to… And you get a life with her, and she gets a life with you. And maybe the two of you will make a little Ursan cub together. And what does Fiona get?” He spun on his heel and repeated the question as if plunging it into Jaxon like a knife. “What does my little sister get? Just to sit up in bed in hospital, not even knowing where she is. I ask you, is that right?” He addressed his two sons: “Is any of that right?”
Clyde and Ross simply shook their heads.
“None of that is right,” said Norris. “Not one bloody bit. And your innocent little human girl—she knew you’re a werebear, all right, but she had no idea what kind of creature it really was that was taking her to bed and asking for her hand. I don’t know anything about Sherry, except one thing. I know she deserves better than you. She must deserve better than you.”
Jaxon resigned himself to knowing that no appeal to reason or compassion was about to reach Norris. The big dragon man was too far gone, too lost in his rage and his guilt, to be talked off the dark path he had set himself—and onto which he had now taken Jaxon and Sherry. Only one thing was left now; only one last plea for him to make.
“Look,” said Jaxon, both pained and numb from being struck twice across the face with the furious strength of the Englishman. “I know you hate me for what I did. I know you can’t forgive me, and the only thing you think will put this right is taking some kind of revenge on me. I accept that. All I ask is…leave Sherry out of it. Don’t make her a part of this. You’re right; she deserves better. She’s beautiful, and she’s good and kind, and she doesn’t deserve to be dragged into this. Please, do whatever you want to do with me—and let her go. That’s all I’m asking. Just let Sherry go.”
From the bleachers came a shout of unspeakable pain and fear: “Jaxon, NO!”
Jaxon called up to her, “Sherry, you shouldn’t be in this. You didn’t have any part of this then, and you shouldn’t be in it now. I want them to let you go.” Back to Norris, he begged again, “Please…please let Sherry go.”
Norris glared his hate at Jaxon again. “Let her go? You want us to let her go because, what now? Because she’s beautiful and good and kind? My sister was beautiful and good and kind. And now, we’ll never see her smile again or hear her laugh and sing again. Or hear her tell us, like she always did, how everything would work out all right in the end when it all looked bad. Fiona was all the goodness and kindness in the world. We could let Sherry go. We could cut the ropes on her and let her run out of here, and that would spare her. The thing of it is, that would also spare you. And you…you don’t deserve to be spared. What comes next, I want it to be while Sherry watches—not because of what it’ll do to her, but because of what it’ll do to you. I want you to have all the pain you can possibly have in what comes next, and that means it comes in front of her.”
Things could not possibly have looked direr. Sherry recalled the layout of the school and guessed that Jaxon was doing the same or had already done so. The gym was around the back of the building, not facing the street, and its only windows were way up towards the ceiling, across the space from the announcer’s box where members of the school newspaper and audiovisual club sat during Varsity games. It was more than likely that no one would notice the unusual lighting in the gym during the horrible thing that was surely about to happen. No one would have any idea about any of it until someone came into the gym tomorrow morning or later—too late to help, too late for anything at all.
Sherry’s struggles against the ropes holding her and her kicks on the metal surface at her feet and the one tier of seats below her actually made the aluminum bleachers rattle. “NO!” she screamed. “No! You know this is wrong! What happened to Fiona was an accident! You can’t punish Jaxon for an accident! He didn’t mean any of it! Why don’t you listen? Why don’t you stop this? Don’t hurt him! Just let him go! Let him go!”
“More concerned for him than for yourself, then?” Norris called up to Sherry. “That’s really touching, the concern the two of you show for each other. I wish I hadn’t had to bring you in on this, Sherry. But it’s part of your fiancé’s punishment. It’s not enough for him to get what he’s got coming. It’s got to be in front of you. He’s got to know you’re watching. It’ll give him back some of his own, in his last moments. As for you…we don’t mean any harm to you. We don’t want to hurt you. And we won’t. Though if you’re not quiet we may have to gag you. Please don’t make us go to that. Just…accept this is how it has to be, then.”
Kicking and screaming, Sherry hurled her terror and fury at Jaxon’s captors. “I will NOT just sit here! I will NOT just be quiet while you do this! You let us go! Damn you, you LET US GO!” She screamed herself hoarse and drenched her face with tears of impotent rage and mounting fear.
Norris sighed and shook his head. Then, he looked over at Ross. “Son, take care of that, will you?”
“Yes, Dad,” said Ross. And from his back pocket, he produced a handkerchief, and he stepped past his father and towards the bleachers.
“This won’t be like the last handkerchief we used on you,” Ross told Sherry as he came over to her. “Dad wants you awake for this.”
When Ross drew near her, Sherry wanted to scratch his face off. If only he would just step right in front of her, she would give his face and stomach some of the hard, swift kicks that she had planted on the metal seating. But Ross was too smart for that. He climbed up to the row of seats behind her, rolled up the handkerchief, stuffed it along Sherry’s mouth, and secured it behind her head, all while she tossed her head in a frantic resistance. The cloth cut her screams to a muffled din. Ross left the bleachers and left her screaming and sobbing in a muted voice.
Jaxon shot Norris a look of unbridled hatred. “You’re a fucking bastard, you know that? Bad enough you can’t forgive me for an accident, but to torture Sherry for it, who never did a damn thing to you? You’re a sadist is what you are! A mean, evil sadist, spreading the hurt around so everybody gets to hurt as bad as you! What’s it gonna do, huh? It won’t bring your sister back. It won’t make anybody hurt any less. And your sons—your own sons. You’re putting blood on their hands, making them help you. Is this really what you want for your family? You’re a sadistic son of a bitch.”
“Don’t talk to me about pain until you’ve looked at your flesh and blood and seen nothing but an empty shell looking back,” said Norris. “The law couldn’t punish you for the ‘accident’ of getting Fiona in trouble with a monster. What the law couldn’t do, I can. It’s for my family I do this. It’s justice for my blood. I only wish I’d taken care of you while you were still over there. But my family was in pieces over what you did, so I had to follow you home. We get to tear you to pieces right here on your own soil. That’s what comes now. The boys will let you lose from the ropes. Then, you’ll strip and change, and we’ll have done with this.”
“And what if I don’t go along with it?” Jaxon defied him.
“T
hen Sherry gets to watch your human self that I’m sure made her so happy in bed get shredded. Your choice, mate. Stay human or be a bear; it’s all the same to us.”
Ross had rejoined his father and brother, and the three Joneses fixed their eyes on Jaxon, awaiting his answer. Barely containing his anger, more for Sherry than for himself, Jaxon growled at them, “Cut the damn ropes. You want me as a bear, you’ve got it.”
Norris nodded at his sons. The three Englishmen took a breath in unison, and their bodies, clad only in trousers with slits in the seats, responded. Their skin turned from human flesh to reptile scales. Their hands and feet became scaly things with taloned digits. Mighty reptilian tails protruded from the backs of their trousers to the floor, and great leathery wings erupted from their backs. Their necks turned serpentine, and their heads became massive, horned lizard heads with blunt snouts. Where three Englishmen had stood, there was now a trio of powerfully built two-legged dragons, hissing their wrath at the human tied in the chair.
