now, there’s a fucking kid… I’m cleaning this up. You shut up… Kyle, take them back to the boat…”
The seriousness in the old hunter’s voice was enough to silence Sean, and even Kieran. Kyle had become his right hand, silent and grim but abiding. That’s when it had all gone to hell. Arthur had raised his rifle to finish off the job. They’d have to bury the body somewhere up the hill. Make it deep. Then never talk about it again.
The sound that came next was a growl and a movement of fur and muscle, and when he turned, another grizzly, this one as huge as the legends, was lunging over the sand, impossibly fast. Kyle and Kieran both tried to raise their guns but it was pointless. The grizzly had body-checked Kyle out of the way easily enough, then turned his attention on his son.
“No!” Arthur had said, his face a vicious compilation of hate and fear, and had raised his own gun and fired. He knew the bullet had found its quarry, but it was like shooting at a locomotive. Blood spouted from the bear’s soldier but he only growled at his attacker and swung at Kieran.
Everything went into slow motion then, and even now as he thought about it, everything was a blur. Somehow they had pulled Kieran away from the monster, and Arthur had fired again and missed. They’d made it to the outboard and then he’d seen another person – a woman. She had screamed at the bear and then both of them had disappeared back into the woods.
Impossible, he wanted to blurt. In the other room, Kieran made another groaning sound.
“I’m going back to that island,” he repeated.
Kyle gave a curt nod. “Then I’m coming with you, Art… you’re not doing this alone. Sean can take the Pygmalion back on his own. And you’re going to need another gun, I think. But just what do you plan to do? You… you saw it, too… that kid, he was a bear.”
Arthur wasn’t prepared to give his friend his theory, not just yet. Not until he could confirm it with his own eyes and preferably at the end of his own rifle. Yes, the kid had been a bear. And, he suspected, the woman who had appeared on the beach probably was too. Shifters. The legends were almost impossible to believe, but… his eyes flashed.
What could be a better test of a hunter’s skill then to bring in something so rare, so exotic that it defied the imagination? He licked his lips and gave Kyle a stern look.
“Get your goddamn gun, then,” he said. “Five minutes. Time to take this fight to them.”
CHAPTER FIVE
Chris opened his eyes slowly and tried to speak, his lips were parched and was pleading for water, but no sound came. It took a few moments for him to remember where he was. He saw the rafters of the cabin’s roof, the smell of his own sheets and an animal sort of odor that hung about him like a wraith, the whispering boughs of cedar trees through the single-paned window. The island.
He grunted and tried to readjust his posture but was rewarded with the effort by a twisting, jagged pain that speared through his shoulder and radiated into his chest. He gasped, not daring to scream aloud, but wondering what sort of fire had taken over his muscles. He looked down and saw a thin white wrap criss-crossing his shoulder blade, the center darkened to an almost rust color. I’ve been shot, he remembered and laid his head back down on the pillow.
It all seemed like a horrible chapter in some dusty paperback. The island. He’d been here six months already, acting as a patron for Dylan who was undergoing his final rite of initiation as a bear. And Sarah, how could he forget the beautiful, kind, incipient Sarah? She was to be Dylan’s bride, although he imagined she was taking the role with somewhat less motivation than most maidens. Then he remembered the poachers.
He closed his eyes against the memory of pain and fire. They’d shot Dylan and he was naked and bleeding on the sand when Chris had found him. Rage had overpowered his good sense, and he’d charged the poachers, fully shifted into the mighty brown grizzly. He’d injured – perhaps, killed? – one of them in the heat of the moment. Another of the poachers had shot him.
It was all a blur after that except that he had