NINE
Sarah could barely register the fact that Chris was dead. She saw Dylan put the patron’s head onto the ground and felt like throwing up. A huge grin was on the giant’s face, like he’d gone out the way he’d always wanted to. She looked up at Dylan, but he wouldn’t look at her. His face was changed, a mask of anger and hate that made her feel as if she’d lost him, too.
She pulled back on the bolt of the rifle and loaded another: seven more shots. The poacher still hadn’t learned to shift his position after each shot, which meant it was easy to calculate from where the next bullet would come from. She hissed at him and he turned, his face a mess of emotions and confusion, as if he’d only just realized she was there.
“I can’t get in a good shot,” she whispered. “He’s got me pinned too well.”
“If we stay here, he’ll just pick us off,” he said, looking above the stone wall quickly and ducking down again. “What do you think? Should we run for it?”
She looked down the path. It didn’t offer much cover. If they could make it to the grove of tightly growing cedars off the bank, then maybe they’d have a chance. She winced and held the gun in front of her. “One of us might get away.”
Dylan snarled. “Both of us or none of us. I’m through losing people today,” he grated.
“Do you have a better plan?”
Without looking, Dylan reached down and touched Chris’ shoulder with his fingers. “This bastard wants a trophy and he was expecting bears. I say we give him bears”
She thought about it. It would mean abandoning the rifle, the only real form of protection they had against the poacher, if they both turned into bears. But it might just give them the speed and opportunity to outrun the poacher in his nest. They could make better distance as bears. But it was still chancy.
“I have a better idea,” she said.
***
From his perch, Arthur had a perfect 180 degree angle on both of his quarry. He hunched down, feeling the stone under his legs start to wear into the muscle, but kept his eye firmly locked on the sight. He would get one chance, one chance if he was lucky, and he refused to miss it. Through the magnification of the scope he could make out Kyle’s body. The shifters had killed him too, he suspected. There was a dark patch of blood but he couldn’t see the rest of Kyle’s body.
“C’mon, c’mon,” he muttered, his finger resting lightly on the plastic trigger.
The girl was a good enough shot. She’d managed to fire off two rounds at him, and if he hadn’t been slipping in another clip, that first one would have got him through the forehead. She knew how to shoot, which troubled him. These weren’t ordinary prey. Besides the fact they could change at will between bear and human, and he’d seen that well enough to know it wasn’t fiction any longer, at least one of them had training with a rifle.
He looked down his scope again. All he had to do was wait. If the girl was using Kyle’s rifle, there were only a couple more rounds left. Meanwhile, he had at least a hundred bullets and two extra clips. Let them get weary, and it’ll be their end, he thought.
Two minutes passed. Nothing. No movement at all. He craned his eye through the scope, trying to get a glimpse of anything that would signal their presence. He hadn’t seen them leave. To the left and right, it was open trail, he would have noticed. Were they playing coy or had they managed to sneak past him somehow? He felt worry gnaw at his stomach and started to chew on a twig. The muscles in his arm were starting to cramp.
Then, there was a flurry of movement – not from the tree trunk or the rock shield, but to the right. A brown movement. He tried to readjust and saw a bear-like form trying to lumber off. So, abandoning your sweetheart, huh, he wanted to mock. He looked down the graphite muzzle and prepared to shoot. Just then, another shot boomed to his right, and several chips of the boulder beside him sparked against his face. He flinched and turned back. A ruse!
Another shot, and he ducked, heard the ozone of a bullet swim above his head and snarled. He was leading away his aim while she took a shot. It didn’t matter, Kyle’s rifle was a bolt action, and his was a semi-automatic, which gave him at least a four or five bullet lead on her if it came to speed. He aimed down his sight again. The girl was running. A shame, but he wasn’t about to give up a good shot. Maybe he could just clip her, she was beautiful and the combination of the hunt and his mad lust for revenge had stirred other feelings in him, dark primitive feelings that bubbled in his loins.
“You’re on your own now, pretty,” he said, aiming for her ankles.
But the narrowness of his scope had suddenly been used against him. He saw a black shape move in the opposite direction, putting his aim off balance, and was forced to look over his scope with his own two eyes. He saw the black grizzly returning from the other angle, and saw the woman wrap one arm around his neck and swing her leg over his hump as if he were a horse. It was all one fluid movement, one second earlier or later, a slip of the foot, and they both would have tumbled hopelessly into the breach of trees. But somehow, she’d mounted him, coming from the opposite direction!
He swore and tried to regain his shot, but the woman fired off another shot. It went wild, no way to aim from the galumphing back of a grizzly bear but it startled him all the same. By the time he was in place, they were gone. Only the swaying of branches and leaves remained.
“Fuck!” he screamed, and punched at the stone beside him. He didn’t even feel the flesh push back over his knuckles, or the pop of bone and cartilage. Just a numb hatred, and then something wet trailing between his fingers. He sucked at the avulsion on his hand, and spit red onto the ground.
He kept the rifle raised even as he made his way down to the path, but he knew they were long gone. Kyle’s body – what was left of it – was still twitching, and Arthur kicked at his boot. Poor fool, he thought, lamenting the headless corpse. The head had landed several meters away, and was still frozen in an expression of pain and surprise, the eyes starting to go pale even as the first flies found them. Walking across the horrible image caused even the seasoned Arthur to turn away.
The smell of blood was everywhere. Soon, decay would start in, the process of nature doing its hard work to return the dead to its bosom. There was another body, big and muscular, some dumb grin plastered on his face. A layer of brown fur surrounded the pale naked man, and he took the meaning well enough and laid his boot into the side of the man. The grin remained, almost imperious, defiant. You’ve already killed me, what can you do now, poacher, it seemed to taunt.
“I can make your friends scream for their lives,” he said out loud. His voice sounded alien in the woods, something that didn’t belong, something that couldn’t belong. Part of him considered making a line for the outboard, still covered with ferns down by the beach. Make his way to the mainland, if the motor would get him that far. “No, I can’t. Not anymore. I’m in this too far… I’m in it with Kyle. For you, for Kieran… I swear to God, whatever it takes, I’ll murder these sons of bitches. I’ll avenge you. Even if it kills me.”
It felt good to say the words out loud, something about the physical sensation of the syllables leaving his throat made the vow real, attached it somehow to a sense of honor that he felt for his fallen friend and for his son. There was nothing wavering about it. It was like a hard line penciled in, irresolute, indelible. Kill or be killed.
He rummaged through Kyle’s coat, pulled out the man’s wallet, and stuffed it in his own jacket, and turned toward the path where the bear and the woman had left. It was sunny now, their trail was fresh and he had nothing more or less to live for than their deaths.