Luke (Bear Shifter) (New World Shifters) (7 page)

Luke

I didn't feel the cold, but I could sure as hell feel the pain. The frigid air around me stunk of my own blood and every movement screamed at me in a dozen shouting voices of agony. I looked up, but the blackness that surrounded me was so deep that I couldn't tell what was cluttered sky and what was frozen wall.

The crevasse had successfully swallowed me, and I didn't know when I'd see the light of day again. I wasn’t sure how long it would be before the sun came back up, but when it did I didn’t think I’d like what it showed me. I'd tried to escape as a Bear, but even the massive claws and brute strength that form gave me were no match for gravity.

As a man, I had a better chance of climbing out of here. There were handholds in the cracks and niches of the ice, if only I could see them. If I waited until morning to use the light, there was always the danger that I’d be too weak from blood loss to escape. Even if I made it up, the only thing that would be waiting for me up there was…

I tried not to think of that. The pack had left three of their own to guard the top, and the instant I peeked my head over the rim they’d bash it in or shoot me full of holes. They were Shifters too, which meant I was sure that whatever weapon they’d use against me would be silver and therefore possibly fatal.

They knew the score and they knew the rules, and these guys played for keeps.

I sighed, resigned to my fate. At least Zoe had gotten the way. If luck and fate were on her side, then Bruno wouldn't be able to recognize that it had been her that had discovered Everly’s body. I'd used as much of my magic as I could to cover her tracks and her scent, and that sort of thing had worked in the past to cover my own.

Not for the first time, I wished that Zoe and I could be together. It wasn’t going to happen, though.  I knew for a fact that I wasn't destined be with her since she wasn’t a descendant of Virginia Dare.

Right there, in the moment she’d been born without that bloodline, the fate of our relationship had been sealed.

Maybe it was for the best. I wasn’t sure if I was ready for the feelings she inspired in me, and I was afraid that they’d pull me away from my true purpose of revenge.

Besides, I’d failed my father and my brother once, and now it seemed I’d be failing them again. The whole reason I was this far North was to track down the Wolf pack that had destroyed my Den. I'd gotten some of them, picking them off over the last few weeks, but it seemed that my plan was at an end. They'd gotten the best of me, and all because my instinct to protect the woman I was trying hard not to love had got the better of me.

It was fitting. My whole family had always seen me as young and foolish, and even though I'd never seen my age as a disability or handicap, maybe they were right. What they had called naïveté I had simply considered a willingness to see the best in people, but my life had changed so suddenly when my Father died that I could no longer bring myself to do that anymore.

My father had done his best to encourage me, but even he had said that there was one rule that could not change. Mates need to be destined.

If I wasn't destined to be with her, then all I could hope for was that I hadn't messed her life up too badly in the brief time I’d gotten to share it.

I listened to the night above me. I could hear the three Wolves stalking around the edge of the crevasse. They were anxious, eager to get to me. I'd already tried to play into their desperation and trick them into moving closer to the slippery slope of the top, but they were too smart for that. They were cunning enough to simply wait for me to try and climb up so that they could murder me or just watch in shifts as I wasted away and died, trapped in the ice below.

If only Father could see me now. The young one, the magic one, the one who was supposed to protect his brothers from the things they couldn’t see… Stuck at the bottom of a pit he'd thrown himself down on purpose, like an idiot.

I wasn't yet beyond hope. Not quite. Just the same though, I couldn't decide
what
to hope for. I had enough magic left in me to take those three if we were on even ground, but that wasn't going to happen anytime soon. There wasn't much room at the bottom of the cave down here, and I already could tell by feel that it didn't extend into other parts of the glacier.

I was trapped, and I knew the only way that I was getting out of here was if I grinned at fate and accepted the end that awaited me at the top.

That was when I heard her voice. It was high and clear in the frozen air, and even from this depth it had a bright, almost silvery crystalline tone to it. When she spoke it was music, and my heart swelled despite my depression.

“Hey,” Zoe called out, “can you guys help me? I am kind of lost.”

Zoe

I'd known that I wouldn't be able to sneak up on the Wolves, so calling out seemed the best course of action. That way I could make it look like I wasn't trying to pull the wool over their eyes. Which I was, of course. I just didn't want them to know that…

“Bruno sent me out here with some rope,” I told them, doing my best to sell the story. “He said, and I quote, ‘there's no point in those assholes freezing to death. Bring them some rope so the damn Bear can haul himself up and then have them bring him back to me.’”

The three men looked at me. One of them, short and stocky with spiky blond hair, shook his head. “Why does Bruno want him out of there?”

I gave him a withering look that I hoped told him that he hadn't thought through the situation with enough fervor. “Because the Bear knows things. What’s the point in letting that knowledge go to waste? If we get him out of the bottom of that hole we can find out what's in his head. Sound good?”

“He never told us about you,” the blonde guy said, taking another suspicious step forward.

“I was supposed to be a double agent. No point in that now, I suppose. The Bear’s caught…”

I could tell by his body language how wary he was, and when he angled his head and sniffed the air my heart skipped a beat. I think he picked up on that too, as he cocked his head a little more in my direction. “What's with the silver?”

“Silver?” I hadn't thought of that. Was I wearing any? I truly doubt edit, unless some of the cheap ass costume jewelry around my wrist or neck accidentally contained some. Everything decent that I owned had already gone to the pawnshop months ago.

He glanced down, and that was when I remembered the gun hastily tucked into my waistband. “Oh,” I said, hoping against hope that I guessed right. “You mean the bullets? How else are we supposed to shoot him if he tried to run?”

The blonde shrugged. “Since you know the score, why don’t you go talk to him. He won't come up for us.”

I tried not to frown. It wasn't like I could trick the Wolf into it. We were standing so close to the lip of the crevasse that there was no chance that the Bear stuck down there hadn't heard every word of our conversation. These guys might be smart, but they were arrogant. I was hoping to be able to use that against them.

“Sure thing,” I said cheerily, shrugging out of the bundle of rope I had looped around my arm. I took a step closer to the edge of the crevasse and tried to peer over. It was dark as sin down there. The moon lit up the snow a little bit, giving the top of the glacier that quintessential deep, soulful blue they always had.

But I couldn't see the bottom. All the way down I saw spikes and jutting columns of jagged ice, and in too many places there was frozen blood lining them.

Was this all for nothing? Had the guy already died in the fall?

“Hello?” I called down tentatively.

“Hey, “came the reply, though the echo made it sound more like
hey… hey… hey...

“I’m going to drop down the rope,” I told him, being careful to keep my tone all business. The Wolf pack might be arrogant bastards, but if I slipped up they'd know. “Climb up here and let's have a look at you. I’ve got a gun too, so don’t try anything stupid.”

With that, I uncoiled the rope and held tight to one as I dropped the other into the hole, slowly feeding more and more slack down into the crevasse. Once or twice it got hung up, but a little vigorous shaking served to both free it and keep me warm at the same time. Surprisingly, the temperature was still dropping out here and I told myself that if I made it through this I was going to go find a heater or fireplace to stand in front of and never, ever leave it.

When the rope finally hit the ground at the bottom of the hole, I looked around for something to tie the end of the rope around. It was no good. The trees had ended fifty yards back or so, and there wasn't any other anchor point that I can use. “Little help?” I asked one of the Wolves. “He's going to hold on to the other end, and we can drag him up. I'm happy to leave him down there, but Bruno will be pretty pissed off when he finds out you guys just stood there and wouldn’t lend a hand.”

I got the feeling that this group had hunted together for a long time. They answered so quickly, without any communication or hesitation going on between them. Just the same, it felt like they all knew what the answer would be.

Spiky guy broke his stance and came forward, looping the slack in the rope around his waist before beckoning the other members of the Wolf pack to join him and do the same. “Hold on tight,” I called down into the crevasse, and I was rewarded with a gentle double tug that told me that the Bear at the bottom had heard me.

The Wolf pack and I dragged him to the top, but I can't say they were gentle about it. I didn't have any way of slowing down the Bear’s wild ride. The Wolves were supplying all of the strength and the best I could do was pretend to slip and slide in the snow so that they had to slow down for my benefit.

I didn't know what I was expecting to come out of the hole. A Bear? A man?

A body?

When he finally emerged, he was human. Bruised, bloodied and battered, but still clearly alive.

“Listen, shithead” I said, stepping forward so quickly and with such aggression that I felt the other members of the Wolf pack stiffen beside me. I was hoping that I was overstepping my boundaries just enough for them to assume Bruno had given me some authority. This needed to come off as me being brash and bold, not afraid of anything, but in reality my heart was pounding and my palms were sweating and I was so scared that I didn't know what to do.

I was acting on impulse. On instinct…

“What?” asked the guy we’d dragged out of the hole. I saw the moon sparkle in his eye and hoped he could see through my game. I didn’t want him to attack me, or anything.

I got even closer, near enough to touch him, and I put my hands on his shoulders and planted my feet. “You look beat up,” I said with a sneer that I hoped he could ignore. “It would be a pity if you fell in there again, don't you think? Tell the Wolves what they need to know, or that's exactly what will happen.”

“Shit,” I heard one of the members of the Wolf pack say behind me, “this girl's got balls.”

The Bear didn’t say anything. This close to him, with my hands on his shoulders and his face only a couple of inches from mine, I felt myself starting to lose control. Everything bad fell away. The Wolves became nothing more than a nuisance, and the fact that I didn’t have Jake beside me turned into just another obstacle I could overcome.

He made everything better, and I fought the urge to step forward and kiss his gorgeous face. Instead, when I was sure that the Wolf pack couldn't
my
face, I gave him a sly little wink and glanced down, trying to be as suggestive as I could. “Do me a favor?” I asked him.

“Anything. Name it, and it’s yours.”

“Put your hand in my pants?”

A couple of the Wolves behind me laughed, but one of them didn't. It was probably the blonde one, the one that felt like the leader of the three. He knew something had gone terribly wrong all of a sudden. He'd overlooked something important, but it didn't matter. It was too late for him.

It was too late for them all.

Quick as a flash, the Shifter in front of me yanked the pistol from my waistband, pushing me gently aside in the same motion so that I wouldn't be in the line of fire. I heard three booming crashes and then I heard three bodies hit the ice.

“You know,” he said, helping me up off of the snow and handing me back the pistol, “I grew up in a Clan of Bears locked in an ancient war and that was
still
one of the gutsiest things I’ve ever seen. You’re something special, Zoe.”

I shrugged, embarrassed as I took back the gun. It was strange. That hunk of metal felt even heavier now that it had taken three lives so quickly. “Don't mention it,” I said. I knew the Wolves needed to die, but it was still hard to come to terms with the fact that those three guys had been walking around a second ago and now they never would again.

“Well, the Wolf was right. You’ve sure got balls.”

“So do you,” I told him, “here I am risking my neck for you and you
still
haven't worked out that now is a perfect time for you to at least tell me what your fucking name is.”

He looked down at me and grinned, flashing a set of perfect white teeth that shone in the moonlight. “I'm Luke,” he said. “Pleased to meet you.”