So Much To Bear: Shifting Devotions (Werebear Erotic Romance) (4 page)

He had traveled a block when he heard shouting behind him. “You! The guy with the blue shirt! Stop right there!” Damon began to walk faster, hoping it was just one of the restaurant staff, or that someone was trying to get the attention of someone else—anyone else but him. He turned a corner, his heart beating faster. “This is a direct order! Stop right there, sir—we don’t want to chase you.” The shout was closer—it was impossible not to know that they were talking to him. Damon glanced over his shoulder and saw that two men in police uniforms were walking briskly behind him, their gazes on him. He began to move faster, trying to dodge around the flow of pedestrians moving up and down the sidewalk.

If he had been in the forest, he could have lost the two officers quickly; Damon remembered that they’d been in the diner with him, eating a late lunch at the counter. He started to run, cursing mentally as he wove around slow-moving tourists browsing the restaurants and shops that lined the streets. “On your knees, hands on your head! Don’t make us chase you, man!” Damon’s heart was pounding and he let out a low growl, a mixture of fear and anger clouding his mind. He hadn’t intended not to pay—he had simply forgotten his wallet. But he knew enough about the police to know that they would never believe it. He darted across the street on the pedestrian walkway, not even looking to see if there was a walk signal or not. Damon lurched to the side as a car nearly hit him, his heart pounding faster and faster as he struggled to find the space to run. If he could just get to a stretch of relatively untenanted sidewalk, he could put enough distance between himself and the officers that they would never be able to catch up.

Before he could, however, Damon heard a sizzling crackle, and then he felt a sharp pain in his side. The next instant he was collapsing to the floor, convulsing all over, unable to coordinate his muscles, as searing pain jolted through his entire nervous system. “Police! You are under arrest. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law.” The electric impulses dancing up and down along every nerve in his body stopped—but Damon was still unable to get up, unable to even struggle as he felt the cold, unyielding clasp of handcuffs closing on his wrists, his arms pulled behind him. He thought futilely that if he hadn’t been tased, if he could have just changed into his other form, he would have been able to avoid the situation entirely. But then, he thought, as they pulled him unsteadily to his feet, he would have had the much bigger problem of everyone around him knowing that he was a shape-shifter—or suddenly seeing  a bear in the middle of the city. Groaning, he thought that at least being arrested was somewhat better than being shot.
 

***

Jennifer hurried through the hallway to the hotel room, knowing that Damon would probably be bored. Her class had run over, which made it impossible to get on the earlier bus that would connect with the route that stopped reasonably close to the hotel. She was hungry, too; she hadn’t had the chance to grab something from the dining hall on campus before she ran for the bus, and had been forced to grab something quick and not very filling for lunch. She hoped that Damon might be hungry too—they could go out and get dinner and they could come back and spend some time together while she prepared for the next day’s classes. She had grown accustomed to regular sex; she was more than happy to continue indulging that, especially when Damon was her partner for it.

She inserted the key card into the door and fumbled with it briefly, muttering to herself as it failed to light up green. She tried again, taking a deep breath to still her trembling, impatient hands. The light on the electronic lock flashed green three times and she took the card out, turning the door knob. “Damon! I hope you haven’t been too bored,” she called out, as she pushed the door to. She paused as she realized that the room was utterly silent; no TV on, and no response from Damon. Jennifer stepped into the room and looked around. Immediately her gaze lit on the bed. It was perfectly made, with hospital corners. The floor showed marks from a vacuum, and as she went through the room to the bathroom, she could readily see signs of cleaning there too. So the cleaning lady had been through, obviously, but where was Damon?

Jennifer had told him to just tell the housekeeping person to come back later—but she could see how someone might be insistent, and Damon, who had probably been bored, would find it all too easy to decide to cede the room to the employee and wander around. Jennifer looked around; the desk was perfectly straightened, but there was no sign of a note. Walking around the room, Jennifer couldn’t see any signs at all of any kind of note from Damon—which seemed strange. She found his wallet, none of the money she’d given him missing from it, his ID in place but not his bus pass. Where could he have gone? She sank down onto the bed. If he’d had his bus pass, he’d have been able to go anywhere in the city. He could be lost—taking one bus after another trying to get back to their stop on the routes. Jennifer chewed her bottom lip meditatively, trying not to worry too much. Damon was an adult. He had lived in the woods his entire life. He had managed to survive among wolves and bears—and if someone tried to mug him, he could easily take care of himself.

But questions continued to swirl in her mind. He knew she was going to be back at the hotel—and she was actually late; he should have been expecting her almost two hours earlier. If Damon didn’t expect to be around when she would be getting back, he would have left a note—she was almost positive of it. The possibilities stacked up in her head and Jennifer turned on the TV for the sake of some kind of noise in the room. She could try to find him—but the city was large enough that they could be looking for each other for hours, days, and never actually run into each other. She could leave a note behind asking him to stay put if he got back before she did… but then, she didn’t know why he was away. He could have run afoul of a gang for whatever reason, he could be endlessly lost on the buses, he could have just lost track of time—though without his wallet, Jennifer couldn’t think of many things he could actually be doing in the city of his own will.

Jennifer felt helpless. She couldn’t reasonably look for Damon, and she had no idea where he was or what he was doing. All she could do was wait for him to show up and hope that she wasn’t waiting in vain.

Chapter Four

Damon closed his eyes and covered his face with his hands, resting his elbows on his knees. He’d had no ID on him when the police had brought him to the jail—they had taken down his name and other information with a wary look and fingerprinted him before leading him back to the cells. Damon knew about the existence of jails—had heard stories about the prison industrial complex when he’d still had a functioning radio, and had absorbed the news on TV since he’d taken up with Jennifer. He felt humiliated. He had tried to explain the situation to the police, once he’d regained the ability to talk, but they hadn’t wanted to hear anything about it at all. “You’ll probably be released in a day or two, unless the District Attorney really wants to make a point,” the booking officer had said. “But we’ve got a backlog of charges to put through the system, so you might as well settle in.”

Damon resisted the urge to break out of the handcuffs. Even in his human form, he was much stronger than the average person; it wouldn’t be that difficult. But it would be conspicuous. If there was one aspect of their life together that Jennifer did not have to remind him of, it was the fact that he couldn’t be visible. He had to blend in to normal human society if he were to have any hope at all of assimilating. In the forest, where there were few witnesses, Damon could transform without too much danger—though the result of attacking Liam in that form had stuck with him. If he was obviously stronger than a normal person would be, Damon would have to deal with the visibility that came from that.

“Hey, man. That’s some nice ink you’ve got there.” Damon opened his eyes. The cell he had been put in held another four men; one of them, sitting across the small floor from him, gave him a nod when he looked up.

“Thanks,” Damon said, thinking to himself bleakly that the last time someone had complimented his tattoos, he had ended up in jail. It wasn’t the waitress’ fault, he told himself firmly. He had broken the law; whether he had intended to or not, he had technically committed theft. The most humiliating aspect of the situation was the fact that one absentminded moment had resulted in him bringing shame to his family.
“We are bears—we are noble. We do not kill for anything other than survival, and we do not steal.”
He hadn’t tried to steal, but he was guilty of it nonetheless.

“Tribal, right? Not one of those fake-tribe bands.” Damon shrugged. The man across the cell held his gaze for a long moment. “Yeah, it’s real,” the man said, smiling slightly. He was big—an inch or so taller than Damon and almost undoubtedly heavier, though he was not as clearly built. Someone without a practiced eye would have assumed the man was fat, out of shape—but Damon, who had instinct honed from years of living among animals, knew that the truth was more complex. The man across from him was probably in excellent shape, body fat notwithstanding.

“It’s just a tattoo,” Damon said, shrugging again. Without his clan around him, that was, ultimately, all it was. It no longer meant that he was part of a group, that he belonged to an extended family of shifters.

“Nah, man. Not just a tattoo. Just like you’re not just a regular guy.” The man grinned and stood; walking the few paces across the cell and sat down on the bunk next to him. “What did they book you for?” Damon pressed his lips together. He was humiliated by the paltry nature of his crime, by the fact that he had committed—although involuntarily—such a shameful crime as theft.

“I forgot my wallet, tried to ditch a restaurant tab.” The man next to him chuckled and Damon felt his shame increase.

“Happens to the best of us. So they came after you and probably tased you instead of asking what the situation was, right?” Damon nodded, smiling wryly. “You got no business being here—I got no business being here for my so-called crime.”

“What did you do?” The man shrugged.

“Roughed someone up who owed me money on something, that’s all.” He leaned in and looked around, making sure that none of the jail’s guards were close by. “Listen, kid. Bunch of us are going to bust out.”

“Bust out?” Damon kept his voice pitched low, looking around instinctively to see if the other men in the cell had heard them. “How can you do that?” The man next to him shrugged.

“Some of my buddies are in different cells—they took us all in at once. You don’t have to be in on the plan, but be ready to get out when we do.” Damon considered it. He wasn’t sure what time it was, but Jennifer was probably out of class already and might even be back at the hotel. She would have no idea where he was. If he could get back to her, explain what had happened, they might be able to turn the situation back around.

“Okay. Let me know.” The man held Damon’s gaze for a long moment and then smiled, extending his hand. Damon shook it, noticing that the man’s grip was stronger than he would have thought.

***

About an hour later, one of the guards came through with their “dinner,” a plastic box full of cold sandwiches. From the cell Damon could smell the low quality meat, the plastic cheese, the stale bread. It wasn’t appetizing, but he supposed that good food was on the low end of priorities for the jail. The man who’d spoken to him earlier caught his eye as the guard made his way down the line of cells, pitching the sandwiches to each of the inmates. “Get ready,” the man said lowly. Damon nodded once, fast, taking a deep breath and preparing for the inevitable confusion.

In the cell to the right of his, one of the inmates called out “Hey jackass! Guy in here’s bleeding—aren’t you supposed to stitch him up before he dies or somethin’?” The guard told everyone to stand back from the cell door and took out his keys. The man who’d clued Damon off to the escape nodded across the walkway to someone else.

There was a confused shout, and Damon balanced on the balls of his feet, poised to run. He heard the sound of something shattering, a thud, the unmistakable crack of bones, and an agonized groan. Damon felt a short jolt of fear and guilt—if they were unsuccessful and he was involved, it would make things worse for him. There were more shouts, and then a rush of a few people past the door. After a few moments—as shouts rang out through the cell block—someone came to the door of the cell Damon and the man who had spoken to him were in, and unlocked it. Everything was a blur; inmates flowed out of cells and started down the walkway, and Damon watched as one of the guards, coming to his colleague’s assistance, was snatched up by one of the prisoners, hauled about with a kind of strength that startled him.

Some of the other prisoners fought off the remaining guards, snatching away their weapons and bringing them to heel as they made their way out of the jail. Damon followed, intrigued and only slightly disturbed by the people around him. The man who had captured the guard carried him out of the building and the prisoners who escaped all made a beeline to an enormous, unmarked van. Damon watched, hesitating for just a moment as everyone piled into the van—including the man carrying the jail guard hostage. “Come on, kid,” the man who’d clued him into the escape attempt said. “We’ll give you a ride.”

Damon climbed in. He was startled as the doors all closed to smell the scent of musk—a scent he associated with animals, much more readily than humans. He was beginning to consider the implications when the self-appointed driver peeled out of the parking lot in front of the jail and started towards the nearby freeway. “Where are we going?” Damon asked quietly of the man who had helped him to escape. The man glanced at the guard and shook his head.

They drove along the freeway—mostly obeying the speed limit—for miles, and Damon felt the suppressed tension in the quiet of the group. They didn’t want to give the guard any information that would help him to track them down later, that much was clear. Damon remembered that the man had told him that the others were friends of his—they must be a gang. Damon swallowed against the tight, dry feeling in his throat. When they came to a long, semi-empty stretch of highway with few cars passing by, the driver pulled over, not quite stopping, but keeping the van to a little over a crawl.

“Here’s your stop, officer,” the man who was holding the hostage down in the back of the van said. He opened the door and threw the guard out of the van and onto the grassy shoulder. Damon felt a lash of concern for the man—he had only been doing his job, after all; even if Damon felt personally punished for a simple lapse, he would feel horrible if the guard were seriously injured. As they pulled off of the shoulder and back onto the highway, he saw the guard starting to stagger up onto his feet and decided, hopefully, that the man couldn’t be that hurt.

The van picked up speed, the driver still maintaining a reasonable approximation to the speed limit. “No sense inviting the 5-0 to pop us again,” one of them commented. Everyone began to relax and Damon again caught the unmistakable scent of wild animal in the confined space.

“Where are you guys headed?” Damon asked. He thought—briefly—about Jennifer potentially waiting for him, not knowing where he was.

“We got a clubhouse not far from here, little past the city limits. Want you to meet the president of this chickenshit outfit,” the man who had tipped him off said. Damon considered; he was outnumbered by the people in the car—and they all seemed to be endowed with similar strength to his. Their pheromones labeled them clearly as people with a similar secret to what he was hiding—they were shifters. But just what kind, Damon didn’t know. “Caught sight of that tattoo and knew you had to be one of us,” the man said, flashing him a grin.

“I’ll come along,” Damon said, thinking to himself that if they really wanted him to meet their leader, it wasn’t as though he had much chance of squaring off against the whole group and demanding they drop him off at the hotel.

***