She was watching for the lane and looking back at the SUV still on her tail, wondering why it hadn’t struck her again. She looked up at the road ahead. A wolf was standing in the middle of it.
She could only see its dark outline and at first, she thought it was Marshall. She was safe. She started to apply the brakes, not caring now how close the SUV might be when the wolf looked up and into her headlights. It had strange yellow eyes.
“No!” she screamed and her foot slid from the brake and back to the gas.
The wolf’s look of shock and surprise as it tried to leap out of the way gave her a moment’s satisfaction, even more so when she felt the thud of her bumper clipping its side. Her satisfaction was short lived however, when she realized the momentum of her action had taken her past the entrance to Marshall’s.
She was crying openly now, calling, “Marshall! Marshall!” over and over in her mind. The sight of the SUV receding in her mirror brought her no comfort. She’d been fooled once before.
The Home Place called to her. The shotgun was there and Maggie had left her a box of shells. She had only minutes. She knew they would find her.
Elizabeth pressed the pedal to the floor.
Chapter 24
She blew the horn again, but here in the forest the little toot-toot would be swallowed by the trees. Still, she blew it again and screamed as the speeding truck hit a hump in the road and went airborne. She was sure something had broken when she bottomed out upon landing, but the truck kept moving.
She thought she saw the flicker of lights behind her and she spun into her drive, too fast for the narrow opening. The truck fishtailed again, swerved into the ditch at the side and miraculously bounced out again as she desperately gripped the wheel. She turned her lights off and aimed for the light on the porch. This was a race she couldn’t afford to lose. She slammed on her brakes and skidded to a stop inches from the back steps.
Elizabeth scrambled up the steps on hands and feet. The keys in her hand dug painfully into her palm. It seemed to take forever to get her key in the lock. She kept looking over her shoulder, listening for the roar of the SUV’s engine.
Once inside, she threw the bolt, turned the porch light off and ran to the mantle where the shotgun lay. She loaded it and stuffed her pockets with the extra shells. She checked the front door to insure it was barred and then dragged one of the high backed chairs to the kitchen to block the locked door. It wouldn’t stop anyone from entering, but it would be a hindrance. She propped a pan on the edge of the seat. If the chair was moved, she’d hear the pan fall.
She ran back to the living room, shoved the remaining wing chair into the corner and stood behind it, the shotgun propped on the back ready to fire at whoever entered the room from any direction.
Her heart was pounding, her breath coming in frightened gasps. Her whole body was shaking and the shotgun rattled in her hands.
“Oh, Marshall, please,” she begged in her mind. She wasn’t built for this. She wasn’t raised for this. She was raised for tennis on Saturday afternoons, fine restaurants and benefit dances at the club. The sales women at Neiman Marcus knew her name, for heaven’s sake. Or at least they knew her mother’s. Before coming here, the most aggressive confrontation she’d ever seen was two middle aged matrons calling each other names as they played tug-of-war with the last available copy of the new Janet Evanovich number.
“Marshall! Do you hear me?” she silently screamed, “I’m not ready to kill someone! It’s not in me.”
But it was and she hated the thought of it. Maggie was right. When someone threatens to kill you or maim you or… or use you to hurt others… She would fight back. It might not be enough, but she would fight back. Maggie was right about that, too. She wouldn’t run. She only had to wait it out until daylight.
She risked a look at her watch. What felt like hours was only minutes. Thirty to be exact. She couldn’t maintain this kind of tension throughout the night. The adrenalin would eventually diminish and she would collapse from nervous exhaustion.
Someone was on the back porch. Crash! Crash! Crash! They were hurling themselves at the locked door. How long could the weak locks withstand the assault? She readied the shotgun at her shoulder and glanced at the front windows.
“Li-i-zz-ie.”
She heard his voice clearly in her mind. “Marshall? Marshall! Oh, Dear God, make it be real,” she prayed, too afraid it was a figment of her imagination, a psychological need to know she wasn’t alone.
She heard the pan hit the kitchen floor. Had they been successful in their assault or had the vibration simply shaken the pan until it fell.
“Li-i-zz-ie… Leave.”
She eyed the front door. She’d have to leave the shelter of her corner and turn her back to the room to lift the bar. She heard a splintering sound from the kitchen. The door had been breached.
“Run!” The word was loud and clear in her mind.
She pushed the chair away and ran for the door. A shadow moved in the kitchen doorway and she brought the shotgun up and fired. The boom echoed in the room. Her ears rang. She pumped the gun, loading another round into the chamber and reached for the bar.
Glass shattered in the bedroom as something came through the picture window. She heard a howl of pain. Wolves!
She struggled with the bar, balancing the shotgun in her arms and looking behind her for the next attack. She dropped it to the floor, turned and fired blindly at the bedroom door when it opened a crack.
And then she was running, running out across the yard and toward the path that would lead her to Marshall. The gun was heavy in her hand and awkward to carry, but she wouldn’t let it go. From the corner of her eye, she saw a wolf approaching from the side of the house. It was limping badly, but still moving fast. She turned back to look at the house. Two wolves were charging through the door.
“Marshall!” this time she screamed it aloud.
A dark shape flew past her and she screamed again, thinking it was the fourth of the thug wolvers she’d seen in the restaurant. The wolf leapt high into the air as the two wolves from the house leapt to meet it. The third wolf changed its course and joined the fray.
“Marshall, Oh Marshall.”
Elizabeth raised the gun to her shoulder and scanned the area for the fourth wolf. They might have left him back with the car, but she couldn’t be sure. From her pocket she removed four shells and quickly reloaded. She only needed three. She would not be caught with an empty chamber again.
Her eyes were drawn to the fight, a swirling mass of snarls and fur. She kept the gun at the ready, but there was no way she could fire. One wolf was thrown to the side, but he moved too fast. He was on his feet and back into the battle, a dark shape with a slash of bared white fangs at its muzzle. It was too dark to see which wolf was Marshall and which the enemy.
She heard something behind her and turned, finger squeezing the trigger. A sharp, but friendly double woof made her hesitate and her hesitation saved Henry’s life. He only paused long enough to give her a nod before he went on the attack.
She heard a scream and one wolf went down. Another was thrown to the ground and two wolves pounced at once. Marshall! He rolled, kicked with his hind feet and threw one attacker off. The other lunged at his side.
Elizabeth started to run toward the beast, ready to bring the gun to its side and fire point blank. A shadow lunged from out of the darkness to her right. She turned and fired without thinking. The recoil threw her back and she staggered to regain her balance only to fall under the weight of the leaping wolf.
She screamed and kicked at the belly of the wolf as its jaws snapped shut inches from her face. She could feel its blood soaking through her clothes. Even as it died, it made a last lunge for her throat. She threw up her arm to protect herself and the jaws clamped on the barrel of the shot gun. She never knew how she kept it in her hand.
With lightning speed, Marshall was there, jaws closed around the throat of the wolf as she raised the hand with
the gun. His lunge to save her sacrificed his own safety and left him open to a vicious attack to his underside. With a screaming howl of fury, he turned on his attacker and they rolled to the side, Marshall’s enemy now pinned on its back.
Elizabeth struggled from beneath the dying wolf and kicked at its jaws to release the gun. By the time she’d extricated herself, the fight was almost finished.
Marshall staggered back from the last enemy wolf, his muzzle bloodied. He surveyed the carnage around him and raised his head to the sky. A long, mournful howl issued forth. It was so anguished and filled with fury. Elizabeth felt the hair on the back of her own neck rise. She had never heard anything like this before.
Marshall’s forelegs gave way and he fell, blood gushing from wounds on his side and flank. Elizabeth ran to him and attempted to cradle him in her arms. He shook her off and struggled to his feet. Golden glow surrounded him in a blinding flash of light and he became man.
His wounds were no less hideous.
Behind him, along the edge of the trees, she saw the darker outline of another wolf. Its green eyes glowed in the darkness, watching.
“You bastard!” she screamed as she raised the gun and fired. She was too far away. That didn’t stop her. She marched steadily toward the wolf and pumped the gun as she moved. She fired again and again.
The wolf didn’t move until the third shot was fired. Then it leapt and twisted in the air and disappeared into the trees. Elizabeth wasn’t sure if she had hit it or it was merely maneuvering into a better position to attack.
“You won’t win!” she screamed at the trees. “We won’t let you. If you come back, you’ll die. Do you hear me? You’ll die! I’ll kill you myself.”
She was crying and she was angry. She wiped away the tears on her sleeve. In the truck she’d been panicked and afraid. Now it was anger that boiled to the surface and her tears were those of frustration because she had no outlet for her rage.
How dare this monster try to take what little these people had. This terror, this carnage, for a piece of land?
And how dare he force her to expose the animal within herself. It was something that should have lain dormant and unrecognized until the day she died.
She quickly reloaded and returned to Marshall. She moved in slow circles, scanning the trees for signs of the lone wolf. Pack Law be damned. She wasn’t part of the pack and if the damned thing attacked, she’d shoot it just as she had the other.
Marshall was kneeling over Henry, now in man form, and if Marshall looked bad, Henry was worse. She gasped at the blood gushing from the gaping wound in his neck. The Alpha held out his badly shaking hand over the wound and the golden glow emanating from it illuminated both the wound and Marshall’s strained face.
“Marshall,” she whispered in awe and fear.
The golden glow also illuminated his own wounds. He was naked and the blood flowed freely down his side. The areas around his ribs and lower abdomen were already beginning to discolor. Henry wasn’t the only one in danger of bleeding to death.
Before her eyes, Henry’s wound began to heal from the inside out. In minutes, it became a gash, wide and ugly, but not deadly. Marshall closed his fist and the light disappeared.
“It’s done,” he said quietly. His head nodded once and he collapsed to the ground.
“Marshall? Marshall!”
Elizabeth ran to him. He wasn’t breathing. She felt for a pulse and sobbed with relief at the steady beat beneath her fingers. Marshall gasped once and followed with a series of shallow ragged breaths. Next to them, Henry groaned. She switched her attentions to him.
“Henry. Henry.” She tapped his cheek. His eyes fluttered open and slowly closed again. “Henry. You have to wake up. Marshall needs you. I need you.” Henry slowly opened his eyes.
She helped him sit and held him upright while he wavered. He wiped his hand down his face and waved her off.
“What?” he asked weakly.
She took it to mean what did she want from him. She handed him the shotgun. “If they come back, you shoot. Do you hear me? Shoot them. I’ll be right back. Promise me, Henry. You’ll watch over him until I get back.”
Henry nodded and hefted the gun. “Shells?”
“It’s loaded and ready.”
She laid a few more next to him and ran for the house. She gathered towels from the bathroom and shook the shards of glass from the bedspread, rolled them into a ball in her arms and headed for the kitchen. It, too, was a shambles and it took her a minute to find her keys. She climbed over the chair and sprinted to the truck, sure that someone would leap for her the moment she left the steps.
The truck started with the first turn of the key and she drove it cautiously around the cabin and through the muddy yard to Marshall and Henry. She parked with the bed as close to them as she could. The tailgate had taken most of the damage from the SUV. It was a crumpled hunk of metal. Elizabeth had to climb into the bed and kick it with both feet before it would open and when it did, it flopped downward from its hinges.
This worked to their advantage as it formed a kind of ramp to haul Marshall’s body up into the bed. She’d wrapped him as well as she could, using towels to compress his wounds.
Once opened, the tailgate refused to close. She handed the shotgun to Henry who sat with his back to the cab, cushioning Marshall’s head in his lap.
“Anything comes from the side, you shoot it, Henry. And hang on to him. Anything steps out in the road, I’m running it over. Bang on the window when I’m near the turn off.”
She didn’t drive anywhere near as fast as she’d driven before, but she wasted no time. They reached Marshall’s, she called Harmony and within minutes help and everyone else arrived.
Chapter 25
Doc Palmer came from the bedroom shaking his head. “I stitched up what’s on the surface, but it’s what’s inside that’s going to kill him.”
He was a small man with an old fashioned pencil mustache. He wore a grey sweat suit that was fashionable in the 1980s.
“Can’t you take care of him Doc?” Henry was sitting on the floor of the hallway, propped up against the wall with his legs splayed out in front of him. His face was pale and there were dark circles under his eyes. Marshall had saved him, but his blood loss was still acute. He refused to go to bed until Marshall’s condition was known.
“I’m a vet, not a surgeon, son. He’s busted up inside.”
“Then we need to get him to a hospital.” Elizabeth didn’t understand why they were all standing around looking miserable when they should be doing something.
“We can’t,” Maggie answered. Her face was hard and unyielding. “Our insides are different from your’n. So’s our blood. We go to a hospital and they’ll find us out. Rabbit Creek’s never had to worry much about it. We’ve always had a healer.”
“Then find a healer!” Elizabeth shouted. They couldn’t just stand around and let him die.
“Marshall is our healer. I don’t know of another one in a hundred miles. It’s a rare gift that runs in families. Goodman’s have always had the touch.”
Elizabeth turned to Doc Palmer. “Can you help him enough to wake him up she asked desperately. “Then he can heal himself.”
“Physician heal thyself does not apply in this instance,” he said sadly. “It’s the flaw, a fatal one in this case. A healer has no magic for himself. I’m sorry.”
“How long,” she asked miserably.
“He’s a strong man. It could be days or… it could be hours.”
Elizabeth looked from face to face, seeing only stony acceptance of Marshall’s fate. She hated them all. She hated this place that had given her everything she’d dreamed of and turned it into a nightmare. She stood up straight and turned her back on them. She could hear their murmuring as she marched down the stairs. There was a larger crowd gathered in the living room and their hostile stares were nothing more than she deserved. Marshall’s injuries were her fault. She turned away and fled through the front d
oor.
Once outside, she had nowhere to go. She couldn’t go back inside and watch them all wait for him to die. She couldn’t go to the Home Place. It was a shambles of broken windows and doors.
The darkened barn stood off to the side. It was a place to hide in her grief and misery. She opened the door and reached for the light. The horses stirred in their stalls.
These were his babies, his Percherons from a centuries old line of warhorses. Marshall’s line was centuries old, too. She wondered if that was part of his affinity for these gentle giants. He’d promised to introduce her to them. She’d have to add it to her list of Things I’ll Never Do With Marshall. It would fall somewhere after: Make love again, Have children and Grow old together.
She walked to the nearest stall and looked up and up into big, brown eyes. “Yep, you’re the same size you were the last time,” she laughed through her tears. “I thought my mind might have exaggerated your size what with the wolves and the fire and all. But my estimate was pretty accurate. Marshall says you’re strong and powerful. Max says you’re gentle as lambs.” Elizabeth raised her hand and met the descending nose halfway. She scratched the silken coat. “I think you’re like Marshall, a combination of all three. Beautiful like him, too, though he probably wouldn’t appreciate being compared to a horse.”
“This is somehow my fault, you know. None of this ever happened before I came.” She sniffed in self-pity. “I’ll go down in history as the girl who destroyed Mayberry.” Maybe Charles was right and it wasn’t Mayberry, but it was damn close.
“Rabbit Creek ain’t never been Mayberry,” Maggie said from the door, “But this mountain is as close to heaven as you’re going to get this side of the real thing.”
“Until I came.”
The older woman snorted. “Think a lot of yourself, do ya?”
“I brought those men here,” Elizabeth said miserably. “I had to go play the lady with some mean bastard in a restaurant.” She’d already told them about meeting Charles in the restaurant, about Creepy Eyes and his thugs. She didn’t tell them anything about the feelings Creepy Eyes evoked in her or about Charles. She was ashamed enough without the whole world knowing about it. “It was his men who followed me and his men who k-killed…”
The Alpha's Mate Page 18
