Chapter Fourteen: Derek

 

 

Ghost's first shot blew a hole in the door, inches from Derek's shoulder. The polar-bear shifter was leaning down through the trap door, awkwardly trying to shoot through the opening.

Ghost fired again, missing in the other direction this time because of the difficult angle, and Derek snapped off a couple of quick shots at him. Ghost jerked back with a hoarse yelp. Derek couldn't tell if he'd hit him or not.

He needed to keep Ghost's attention on him, not on whatever was happening in the yard, where he could only hope Luisa had managed to make it to the shelter of the trees.

Aiming in the general direction of where he thought Ghost was, he fired a couple of shots into the ceiling. The bullets weren't high-powered enough to penetrate the thick wooden ceiling all the way through to Ghost, but there was another startled yelp from above.

"Come down here and fight like a bear, asshole!"

"I prefer having the high ground," Ghost's taunting voice came down through the trap door. "Seem to recall that worked out pretty well for me before."

They'd fought on a mountainside. Derek remembered Ghost leaping onto him from a boulder, huge claws scoring his side, leaving trails of fiery pain ...

"Fine, you can stay up there 'til the cops get here. You know they're on their way, right?"

"I'll just pick them off as they arrive."

"You're trapped, man. If you turn yourself in, all you have to deal with is a rap sheet for assault and attempted murder. Kill a cop, and you're never seeing the light of day."

"Trapped, am I?" Ghost fired through the trap door, again and again, until the rifle clicked empty. There was the sudden click and clatter of reloading.

Derek shifted to his grizzly immediately, dropping his gun, and swatted the ladder to the loft with one tremendous paw, knocking it down. Now Ghost really was trapped.

Derek's bear snarled inside him. It didn't want Ghost to surrender. It wanted a rematch for their fight. Growling, Derek reared on his back legs and clawed at the edge of the framed-in cupola entrance. As he thrust his head and shoulders through the opening, he glimpsed Ghost (still human-shaped) aiming the rifle at his face, and dropped quickly to all fours. The rifle boomed, ripping a hole in the bedroom floor, next to Derek's paw.

They were really wrecking Keegan's cabin. Derek himself had gouged huge slashes in the wood around the opening to the cupola.

But he could no longer hear the distant rumble of the Mustang's engine, which meant Luisa and Gaby had made their getaway. It was just him and Ghost now.

He heard scuffling noises from above. There was a pause and a sudden crash, followed by more scuffling which gave way to an ominous silence.

What the hell was that bastard up to now?

The cupola was completely silent. Derek gripped his gun in his teeth and reared up on his back legs.

The cupola was silent because it was empty. Ghost had smashed out one of the windows; the afternoon breeze washed over Derek's bear nose, bringing him Ghost's scent very strongly.

Bastard's on the roof!

But he couldn't get more than his bear's head through the opening. He couldn't see much, other than a floor's-eye view of the cupola.

Derek hooked a giant paw over each side of the opening, and shifted. Now he was dangling from his hands. He pulled himself up and quickly crouched, looking around.

He couldn't see Ghost on the roof either. What the hell? He'd gone over the side?

A soft noise from below—the bedroom door swinging a little wider—sent him on high alert. He crouched, gun in hand, and leaned cautiously down to peer through the opening in the floor, expecting to see Ghost in the bedroom.

Instead he saw Gaby looking in through the bedroom door, gripping a poker.

What in the hell was she doing here? He'd thought she, Sandy, and Luisa would be long gone by now.

The movement up at ceiling height caught her attention. She looked up, wide-eyed. Derek lowered the gun and waved her back, mouthing "Out! Go!"

Ghost was still around here somewhere. Derek could not let him get his hands on Gaby.

Looking worried but not panicked, Gaby backed out of the bedroom and disappeared from Derek's field of view.

Where in the hell was Ghost? He wasn't on the roof; he wasn't in the cupola. There just weren't many places to go—

Except one.

Derek looked up at the underside of the cupola's low roof.

The temptation was very strong to just leave him up there. But Ghost on the roof, with a sniper rifle, could shoot anyone who tried to cross the yard. Derek and Gaby would be trapped in the house. Ghost could kill Keegan and anyone else who tried to come help them.

Derek pointed the Glock at the underside of the cupola's roof and fired twice in different spots. He wasn't sure if the ammo was a high enough caliber to penetrate the roof, but it ought to get the attention of anyone up top.

He heard sudden scuffling on the roof. Yep. Asshole was above him.

Fury seized him.

Derek shifted, dropping the gun. As a bear, he nearly filled the cupola. He reared up, throwing his powerful shoulders against the underside of the roof. The whole house shook.

The cupola's roof wasn't meant to withstand heavy loads. A bear, even a large bear, couldn't possibly take the roof off a house, not with a normal roof's support structure of trusses and beams. But the cupola roof was simple frame construction. Everything began to splinter, coming apart. The roof started lifting up at the edge.

There was a thump and Ghost, in his blond-haired human shape, appeared suddenly in Derek's field of view. He'd jumped off the cupola roof and was now crouching on the sloping roof of the cabin, one hand flung out to stop himself from sliding as he balanced the rifle across his knees to point at Derek.

Derek roared and threw himself at the cupola's windows. Frames splintered and glass shattered and half a ton of furious grizzly bear came crashing through the side of the destroyed cupola on top of Ghost.

Ghost managed to get off one wild shot. Derek felt the bullet blaze a trail of pain across his shoulder. Then he landed on top of Ghost, just as Ghost started shifting too, ripping out of his clothes.

The rifle, dropped from hands becoming paws, clattered down the roof and vanished over the edge.

Neither of them cared. By now Ghost's shift was complete, his small furry ears plastered to his skull and lips curling back from his teeth as he snarled.

Derek roared. Finally, he and his bear were in perfect agreement.

You wanted a rematch, asshole? Here you go!

He buried his teeth in Ghost's fur. Ghost tore him with huge, clawed paws. They whirled around each other on the roof, snapping and snarling, locked together in a dance of fanged death. Shingles went flying, ripped out by their claws.

Both of them were too caught up in the fight to even remember where they were until, tearing at each other with teeth and claws, they rolled off the edge of the roof.