In front of her, she heard Dylan make a growling sound and rush forward. For a moment, she was afraid that he might shift in front of her eyes but somehow he kept his rage in place. Instinctively, she squeezed his hand tighter so that he couldn’t take off without her but gasped as she was pulled along, and felt a muscle in her shoulder twinge.
“Wait, Dylan… something’s wrong!” she shouted at him.
The looming firs around steeped everything in darkness, like a wooden cathedral rising above them. Dylan didn’t hear her, or else he was too lost in his own bear to comprehend her warning. His hand slipped free of hers and she saw the back of his raincoat plummet down the trail toward the other shape, who had slipped onto his face in the mud up ahead. Only one of them, something red flickered in her consciousness, a red flag.
“Dylan, wait, why is he running aw—“
Something heavy collapsed on her and she felt a wave of nausea, even though she could still feel her feet moving under her. In front of her, through a blurry mixture of pain, cold water draped over her eyes she could see Dylan turn with fear in his eyes. She had the mind to splay her hands in front of her as she collapsed through the air. An eternity of time seemed to pass as she waited for the ground to buck up and meet her but nothing came, only a heavy dull pressure on her head, which was exacerbated by the rain.
It was a trap, was the last thing that went through her head, followed by the drum of rain that snaked its way into her bones, chilling her like a wraith.
“Hey, wake up,” she heard. “Sarah! Sarah… goddamit, please wake up…”
Her eyes took another long time to adjust to the dim light. It wasn’t night any longer but it was still hours from being morning. The sun was still a rumor, something neither of them could believe in just yet. She rolled her head on her neck, and it felt like it was barely pinned there. She let out a groan.
“What happened? My head…”
“I was foolish,” she heard Dylan’s voice growl behind her. “I didn’t even see or smell the other one. They must have been waiting for us… the first one was only trying to lure us into a position so the other could…” Dylan’s voice tapered off. She had never heard him so angry before, he could barely cough out the syllables his jaw was so tight with rage.
She looked down and realized they were both tied to a tree, a straight cedar that spired into the dark sky. The ropes wrapped across her chest, under her breasts and over her waist. There was another rope tying her ankles and she felt the sharp ragged edge of it cutting into her circulation. There was still rain, but it was more like after-rain, droplets collecting on the boughs and leaves above and plummeting onto the canopy. The forest was filled with the chorus.
As she tried to turn her neck, something sharp jabbed at her Adam’s apple and she let out a little gasp of pain. Something was attached to her neck, and her eyes had a hard time focusing on it. It looked like a collar, except it was made of tightly corded bows tied together with some sort of high tensile fishing line. But facing inward, there were several sharp stakes, each of them whittled down to fine points like fangs, and all of them arching perilously toward the vulnerable areas of her neck.
So that’s why Dylan hadn’t changed into a bear. It would be a simple matter to break these cords, but with the improvised collar… she winced, imagining the spikes driving into the thick neck of her other form. But that wasn’t so terrifying as the next thought that came to her – someone knows who we are, otherwise how would they have thought to construct these infernal collars?
“Dylan,” she said, “where are they?”
“Can’t… can’t tell,” he said, and she tried to turn her neck to glimpse at him, even though one of the spikes pushed against her jugular. He was tied to the same tree, and had a similar collar on, and the dressing on his bullet wound had come off, revealing the ugly pink puckered stitch job she had done on his brow. “You… you’ve got a sharper nose…”
She inhaled deeply but all she could detect