Luke (Bear Shifter) (New World Shifters) (13 page)

“Let's go,” Luke said. “Your friend’s not going to stop gouging those words into trees until she dies completely. Whoever you knew before isn’t in there anymore. Let’s back to the truck and do what we’re supposed to do.”

“But it’s a trap,” I said, not that I was going to let that stop me. God knew that I'd move heaven and earth for my boy, and Bruno sending this poor, broken woman to deliver his message wasn't going to change that. Not for an instant.

“Yes. It’s a trap. And we’ll walk straight into the teeth of it,” Luke told me, grabbing my hand and practically dragging me back to the stones so that we could cross the river once again. “I don't give a damn if that trap closes on us. We’ll make it wish it hadn't. We’re getting your boy back, Zoe. Mark my words.”

I raced after him, stepping where he stepped, surprising myself at how I’d quickly adapted to life in the outdoors. The adrenaline coursing through my blood made me not even feel the wind and the cold, and I almost beat Luke back to the truck.

“You drive,” I said. Presumably he'd taken the road back to town a time or two, and I never had. Speed was of the essence. My little man, my precious son was in the hands of a vicious Werewolf, and I didn't for a moment think that man would hesitate to hurt him if it meant a means to the end he sought.

Luke started the truck and off we went. I was helpless, and I found myself making fists of my hands and pounding them against my thighs, testing the door handle to see how quickly I could open it when I needed to, pulling off the seatbelt because all of a sudden it felt incredibly restrictive. I was trapped. We both were. None of the love or joy I had felt in Luke’s arms meant
anything
, not if I'd bought and paid for it with Jake’s blood.

How could you have been so selfish?
I screamed at myself. I had come to Alaska to make money and to escape my past, and here the only thing that mattered to me was being used against me. I'd taken my eyes off the prize for a moment, been foolish enough to think that love could truly conquer all, and it was going to mean that Jake had to pay the price.

“Hurry,” I urged, even though I knew for a fact that Luke was driving as fast as he could. “Get there!”

“I'm trying to, “he said, and I could hear how calm he was attempting to be on my behalf. I wasn't falling for it. I knew him too well. There was a storm raging inside of him, one that matched my own. None of this was fair, and none of this was right. The only reason Bruno wanted us to come back was to end our lives, and if we didn't I was sure that he would murder my boy.

I’d do anything to stop him, and without even looking at the steely resolve on Luke's face I knew that he felt the same. My heart sank and the love I felt for the man driving beside me swelled. We would not be making it out of this alive.

That was okay. Once more, I told myself that I would gratefully lay down my life for Jake's. Luke would too, I could see that in his eyes.

But would it be enough?

Luke was blasting through snowdrifts and screeching along icy roads, steering the vehicle at a breakneck speed that I never could've imagined, let alone maintained. His reflexes were way better than mine, and he knew the road back as well. I was glad to have him, even though it was more than likely that I wouldn't have him for very long.

“I'm sorry”, I said under my breath. Even though the words were well below the roar of the engine, Luke reached over and laid his hand on my thigh.

“I know,” he told me, “but there’s no reason to be. None of this is your fault.”

“I should've protected him better.”

“He wasn't even in the state! You did your best, and raking yourself over the coals is only going to make you weaker. We need to be strong right now. I need you to be strong for me.”

“I never should've let last night happen,” I said, feeling my throat start to close as I almost tripped on a sob. “This is what happens when I let myself be happy. I'm paying for it now.
Jake
is paying for it now. I let myself love, but there's always a cost to that. I don't deserve the joy you gave me, and now the world is taking a piece of me back as payment.”

“It's not like that,” Luke said, the hand that remained on the wheel skillfully guiding us down the road. “Bruno is a bad guy, like capital ‘B’ bad. It wasn't your fault that you took the job he was offering, and once you were here it wouldn't have been easy to get away. People don't really leave this place on their own, haven't you noticed? Old Man Cole and Carla, they’ve been here for years. The ones who do leave, no one actually sees them go. They either end up like Everly, a corpse under a pile of leaves in the wilderness, or like Bridget, wandering mindless until they succumb to the cold.”

“Can Werewolves do that?” I asked. “Can you make people into…” I didn't know what to call it. Bridget hadn't really been a zombie, but what other word was there? She was like a ghost, except she was obviously flesh and blood. But she still had the same strange mannerisms I imagined an apparition would have, locked in repetitive motions that meant nothing, robbed as they were of meaning.

Luke shook his head. I don't think so. “At least, if they can, I've never seen them do it. Bears sure can’t.”

“Then what was she? What did that to her?”

“I don't know,” Luke said slowly, clearly deep in thought as he tried to work out this puzzle even as he raced down the road back to town. “But if I were a betting man, I'd say that the person that killed Everly is the same one who did that to Bridget. There's something going on that we can’t see. Someone's getting in their heads. You said Everly’s bullet hole was perfectly placed, but his face looked like he was fighting it. Maybe he really did shoot himself, but against his will…”

“What, like mind control?” I asked.

“Something like that. “Luke pointed up ahead, and I realized just how close to town we were. We are about to enter Main Street, which meant that we were possibly thirty seconds or so away from Bruno's. “You ready for this?”

“I am.” I didn't ask what the plan was because I wasn't so gullible as to think that there
was
a plan. What could we do? I could take the gun from the glove compartment, and the knife too, but I doubted that I could kill Bruno before he hurt Jake. Besides, there was no doubt that he'd search us for weapons.

“No,” Luke told me, following my gaze, “we have to go in there with just our wits, empty-handed. If we show up looking like we’re ready to gun someone down, I don't think it will end well for your son.”

I nodded. “Is he going to be okay?”

I knew Luke wouldn’t lie to me, so when he glanced over at me and gave me a tight, almost grim smile, I felt the edges of my heart crumble away. Luke was the youngest. He was the magic one. How many times these last few days had he told me that? He knew about these things, and he didn't really think we had a chance.

He parked the truck in front of Bruno's, and before I could get out Luke grabbed my arm gently. “I don't know how this will go,” he admitted, “but I promise you that I'll do my best to make sure you and your son walk out that door. You both deserve to be free.”

“We all do,” I told him. “You're not a coward Luke. You make your father proud every day, I have no doubt of that.”

He squeezed my bicep, and I put my hand on his and gave him a reassuring squeeze back. And then we opened the doors, got out of the truck, and went inside Bruno's, just as we'd been told to do.

The first thing I saw when I walked into the bar was Bruno. He was sitting in his usual spot, at one of the two tables the Wolf pack always occupied. He was staring at me, that fixed glare that was meant to drive me into the wall with hate.

In between his eyes was the perfectly round circle of an exactly placed bullet wound.

“Shit,” Luke said from beside me, and I was surprised by the way he said it. There was no triumph in his voice, no victory at all. Here was the man that caused his family so much grief, the one that had threatened to do the same to mine. He was dead. It was over, finished at last, so why was he so upset?

“Come on over,” Carla said from her place behind the bar, and I hadn't even realized that she was there until she spoke.

I looked up at her, and my heart rose to my throat. There was Jake perched on a stool beside her, happily sipping from a juice box as Carla stroked his hair.

“He's a gorgeous boy,” Carla told me, doting on him. “Why didn't you tell me that he was so adorable? I always asked for pictures, but you never showed them. Now I know why. He’s too good for you, dear.”

“What is he doing here?” I asked, wary. None of this made sense. I couldn't imagine that Bruno would've done that to himself, and it matched too closely to what had been done to Everly for there not to be a singular person behind the two actions.

“I brought him here,” she told me. “Well, that's not exactly true. I had Bridget get him on your behalf. It took her a while. After all, there are a lot of rivers between here and the place you stashed him. She had to work her way around them. Slow going, but she made it after a week or so.”

“Rivers?”

“They can’t cross moving water,” Luke said with a growl beside me. “Neither can Carla, at a guess. It’s one of the few things that slow her kind down.”

I didn’t know what to do with that information, so I ignored it. “Jake, honey, are you okay?” I asked, desperate to hear his voice. “Did they hurt you?”

Jake didn't answer, and I took an involuntary step forward to go to him.

Luke grabbed my arm, and there was none of the gentleness there'd been before. He practically hauled me back, almost lifting my feet off the floor with his strength. “Guard yourself,” he said, his voice low. “There's a reason I chose to den on the other side of that river. This one is not what she seems to be.”

Carla smiled at Jake, leaning over the bar to give him a little kiss on the forehead before angling her eyes at Luke. “Yes, you living on the other side of that water was particularly clever. Tell me though, did it help you? All it did was make me send my Werewolves after you instead of having to fetch you myself. Bridget couldn't cross it, of course, but I see her little message got through to you anyway.”

“Carla's a Vampire,” Luke said. “I didn't think her kind would want anything to do with the New World, but here she is.”

I didn't know what that meant. I knew that Vampires were a thing, but just like Werewolves and Bear Shifters they existed only in movies and books for me until Luke had proven they were real. I didn't know what powers they had or how to stop them, but judging by the way Luke's body language was, stiff and ready for a fight, I could see that they were dangerous.

“Yes, yes”, Carla said, waving Luke's way words away as if they were smoke blown into her face. “Big deal. Don't pretend you worked it out, since I practically just told you the truth.”

“What did you do to Bruno and Everly,” I asked, trying to drag this out until Luke could work out a way to get the upper hand.

Carla shrugged. “I didn't
do
anything to them. Well, nothing other than look into their eyes and ask them to take out their guns and shoot themselves in the head. But it was their own choice. None of my doing, not really…”

I swallowed hard, trying to work out if Jake was similarly hypnotized by Carla. Neither Bruno nor Everly had wanted to do what they'd done. I knew Bruno well enough to know he would never have ended it like that, and I had physically seen the look on Everly’s face with my own two eyes. Maybe they'd pulled the trigger, but both of them would’ve been fighting it as hard as they could.

Not that it had done them any good. They were both dead, and here was Carla standing smugly behind the bar, treating my son as if he were her own.

“Get away from him,” I said, when she reached for Jake again.

“No,” Carla told me. “I don't think so. You don't deserve him. You gave up that right when you left him behind. This poor boy needs a mother, and I think it should be me. Don't worry though, I promise you he'll understand. It's easy to make people understand when I tell them, in my special voice. Everly understood what he needed to do, in the end. So did Bruno.”

“If they were working for you,” Luke demanded, “why kill them? What was there to gain?”

Carla shrugged. “Nothing at all. I was done with them. And Bruno, big and powerful as you may think he was, had failed me. He was supposed to bring Zoe back, but the two of you fought him off. This transition should've been easier. Not that it will be difficult now. Once I’m through with you, I'll be through with this town. Jake and I will go somewhere else, hopefully South. The cold is bitter and sometimes unbearable up here. We’ll be done with this place, and all that will remain is a town without its protectors, however dubious they once were.”

“I'm not going to let you take that boy,” Luke said. “He’s more my son than yours. I claim him.” I felt the power behind his words and realized that he’d just used some sort of spell, something that would bind Jake to himself. Whatever it was, I felt my love for Luke grow even more.

Carla looked at him as if he were dirt, though. “Your magic isn’t going to stop me, either. You Shifters are all the same. There's a thing in you, an animal that fills your mind constantly. It pushes you. It pulls you. It splits your will between what the beast wants and what the human needs. You're already divided, and it makes stepping into your mind and convincing you of what is right so very, very easy.”

“Not this time,” he growled.

“Oh yes,” Carla told him, at last stepping out from behind the bar and coming towards us. “This time, and the last time, and the time before that. And the next time, once I'm done with you two. Do you honestly think the Vampires have lasted as long as we have by being wrong about these things?”

I realized with a start that there was a gun in Bruno's dead hand, and Carla was near enough now to pluck it from the tightened grip of the corpse and hand it to Luke. “Here,” she said, as if she were handing a tool to a man that had requested it. “Get rid of her, and then remove yourself from my world as well. The two of you are tiresome, and this little boy and I have places to go and things to do.”

I don't know if it surprised me when Luke took the gun, but my breath left me and I couldn't feel my hands when he calmly and casually turned to me and pointed it at the center of my forehead, right between the eyes.

“I'm so sorry”, he managed to say, but even those words were strangled. It was an old-fashioned revolver, a lot like the big gun that Old Man Cole had given me. Luke cocked the hammer back now, and the sound reverberated around the bar as if it were the last tick of a clock that would never be wound again. “Forgive me, Zoe.”