They took the airboat out that evening, when they still had enough light to navigate toward the star on their maps.

The group was both jittery and exceedingly nervous. The men had wanted the women to stay at home, but that argument hadn’t lasted long at all.

“That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard,” Thea had said. “You’re all gonna head out there to fight Arturo, he’s gonna immediately realize that we’re separated and then he’s gonna come back here to suck our souls out of our ears or whatever he does.”

“She’s right,” Martine had agreed. “Well, not about the ear sucking thing. But the fact that separating would be very dangerous. We need to stay together.”

So they’d all crammed onto the airboat while Jean Luc navigated them through the twisted, green gloom of the Everglades. It was the bluest twilight that Celia had ever seen. Something about the caved hallways made by the Cypress trees seemed to capture the otherworldly glow of the dying sun.

Shadows slid snakelike over the floor of the boat, over their faces. Bats swooped in great, tangled clouds and every so often, they’d see something large and dark slip into the water at that impending roar of the airboat.

Finally, after half an hour, Jean Luc, squinting at the map and at his GPS, idled the boat, flipping it off and landing an anchor into the swamp water.

Night sounds of swamp animals plinked and chirped in the immediate, heavy silence left behind.

Celia couldn’t help but pull closer to Jean Luc. She hadn’t known what to expect exactly, having never been out in the Everglades before. But she hadn’t expected it to be quite this spooky. She hadn’t expected so many tiny islands, so much algae. She hadn’t expected everything to shiver with life.

“This is the scariest place I’ve ever been in my life,” Celia whispered to Jean Luc who merely smiled and hooked a heavy arm around her.

He pressed his lips at her temple, feeling the thin layer of damp sweat. “I won’t let anything get you.”

“I won’t let anything get you, either.” Her eyes scanned the deepening dark all around them, so she didn’t catch the surprise in his eyes. She was being serious. She honestly meant that.

He tightened his arm around her chest in three rhythmic pulses. One, two, three. It was him silently telling her he loved her. She just kept scanning the dark.

They all knew the plan. They’d talked about it ad nauseum over the last few days. They were silent in their wait for Arturo.

It wasn’t until the moon peeked its face above the Cypress trees that the men started quietly shucking off their clothes.

Jean Luc and Jack both kissed their women before they slipped, naked, into the black swamp water. Tre merely ducked his head at Caroline and Martine. Although once his feet were over the edge of the boat, Caroline couldn’t seem to resist lunging forward and pressing a kiss to the side of his head. He grinned, not turning around, and followed his brothers down.

Celia shivered, couldn’t stop it, as she imagined what it would feel like to be naked in that dark water. To know, without a doubt, that snakes and alligators and God only knew what else could be reaching for them. But they didn’t protest.

They stayed quiet in the water.

The women stayed quiet on the boat. Martine’s knives glinted in the moonlight. They waited and waited.

“Celia,” a man’s voice, clear as a bell, said over her shoulder. She thought for one wild second that it was her father speaking, and then maybe one of her brothers. But no. Of course it was Jean Luc who was speaking to her. Only Jean Luc spoke with that kind of reverence in his tone, that soothing note that made her want to curl up in him like he was a fleece blanket on a cold night.

She turned. And there he was. Her love. He was standing in a copse of trees on a small island that she hadn’t noticed from before. Naked, swamp water dripping off him in rivulets.

“Celia,” he repeated.

She nodded at him and watched in sleepy fascination as he lifted one hand to her.

“Come here, love.” He pulled his hand toward his chest and Celia felt herself tugged toward him, like he had her heart on a string. Well, she thought to herself, he basically did. He had her all wrapped up like a birthday gift. She would give herself to him over and over again. That’s just what love made you do.

The water, she found, wasn’t cold like she’d expected. It had a strange warmth, a mossy scent. It touched her everywhere when she slipped into it, let it close over her head.

She came up on the shore of the tiny island. She expected sand, but it was a knotted, holey system of roots under her fingers that she gripped onto as she pulled herself out of the water.

She heard something like shouts behind her, but she was too busy reaching toward Jean Luc, toward her love, who was reaching back to her where he stood back, amongst the trees.

“Come here, love,” he said again. This time, when he spoke, the image of him before her became grainy for a second, tugging to the side like a projection gone wrong. Underneath the image of his face, another image came through. A different face. Handsome. Darker. Cruel.

She pulled back for a second, but then, he was Jean Luc again and her heart once again swelled with love.

He held out that familiar hand and she held out hers, stepping toward him.

Then a noise nearly split the earth in two. It was an animal’s roar, so deep and so incensed that she knew, inherently, it had come from the gut of whatever beast had made it. It was the most horrifying sound she’d ever heard and Celia found herself clasping her hands over her ears and screaming along with it.

The sound came again and this time it was accompanied by a tremble of the island under her feet. She curled down onto her side and streams of water nearly drowned her as a humongous, dripping animal came to stand over her. She looked up at the grizzly bear standing over top of her and realized then that it was Jean Luc. There was no other being on earth that would stand over her like that, protect her with every cell in his body.

She glanced over at where Jean Luc the man had been standing moments before and she saw a different man. There was a sneer on Arturo’s face, a grim brightness, as if he were looking forward to what was about to happen. Celia felt a hand at her ankle and she jolted in surprise as she looked back and saw Tre dragging her away from the scene. He dragged her into the water and swam her immediately back to the boat where Thea and Martine’s arms came around Celia’s chest and dragged her aboard. The next second, Tre had shifted back into his bear form.

“What happened?” Celia gasped, shivering against the warm air and going to her knees to look back at the island where Jean Luc and Arturo faced one another. Bear vs. Man.

“The plan got royally fucked is what happened,” Thea muttered, reaching into her bag and pulling out two Taser guns and a bottle of mace that she passed around to Celia and Caroline. Good thing they’d been practicing.

“Arturo got to you,” Martine said through clenched teeth, coming to stand. “He lured you off the boat.”

“I thought he was Jean Luc,” Celia muttered.

“I really hate that guy,” Caroline said, her eyes narrowed on Arturo.

He was saying something to Jean Luc, though none of them could hear it. Jean Luc lurched forward, charging the man. But he was no longer standing there, he was ten feet away, and then he was no longer a man. Arturo was a dark, twisting shadow, velvety black and void of all light. He twisted in on himself and grew, larger and larger. The shadow seemed to solidify and then, in a stiff, bracing wind, the shadow blew away, and there stood a bear. Larger even than Jean Luc and blacker than the night.

Jean Luc pulled back for a moment in surprise, and that was all the advantage Arturo needed.

The two bears charged one another and smashed backwards into the swamp. Their collision was louder than a car accident, a roaring crash that tore through the night.

The bears submerged and Arturo came up first, roaring and spraying water. He lashed out with one horrible set of claws and turned the black water red with Jean Luc’s blood. He came next for Tre and got another clawful. Blood sprayed through the air like a firework. Jack was next, charging with ferocity and fury.

“NO!” Thea screamed, but it was too late. Jack was clawed across his chest, torn open to the pink meat underneath.

Tre was up and onto Arturo’s back, shoving him into the water. Jean Luc was there, too. No holds barred, Jean Luc’s great bear jaw closed around Arturo’s throat. There was a wheezing sound and then a roar and Arturo’s claws found Jean Luc’s gut and Jean Luc had no choice but to release.

Celia saw, with horror and understanding, that Arturo was coming for the women. He must have been able to see that the men were too strong for him as a pack. There was no picking one of them off. But the women, all he had to do was get to them and then this would all be over. He’d win.

Half of Celia considered jumping into the water toward the monster that was Arturo, reaching out to him, making it easy. If she sacrificed herself, then her friends, and Jean Luc, would no longer be in danger.

Hell to the no.

She’d spent the last 20-something years convinced that she wasn’t worth anything, that she didn’t matter. There was no way in hell she was sacrificing herself right when she’d actually gotten a lid on all that crazy self-doubting horseshit. There was no way in hell she was going down without a fight.

Arturo was closer now, ten feet from the boat.

Celia lunged backwards, toward the motor. She did exactly what she’d just seen Jean Luc do and she started it up. It roared to start and the boat lurched. Martine, understanding what she was doing, helped to heft the anchor up out of the water, but instead of laying it on the boat floor, Martine used every ounce of her muscle to swing the anchor over her head and launch it toward Arturo.

The great, horrible bear howled and submerged under water as the teeth of the anchor lodged in his sides, at his ribs.

The airboat skittered away twenty feet, keeping at a distance.

It was just enough time for Jack, Tre, and Jean Luc to gather to one another in their bear forms, shoulder to shoulder on the banks of the island.

 

***
 

Jean Luc had never known pain like this. Not even from the car accident that had taken Hugo’s life. This was the feeling of his soul threatening to leave his body. He knew it. There was something about the swipe of Arturo’s claws that threatened more than just the body. He stood there on his back feet, chuffing, his claws wheeling out at the night air, shoulder to shoulder with his brothers.

He could feel Jack’s pain. He could feel Tre’s. He knew now that just like the first time they’d shifted voluntarily, it was up to him to bring them along. He had to ignite this. This thing they’d practiced a hundred times over the last weeks.

He forgot the pain in his gut and across his back, inflicted on him by Arturo. He blocked out the sounds and smells of the environment. There was only room inside him for a few things.  There was room for his own soul, that indescribable singularity that made him him. There was room for Jack and Tre, his new family, the extensions of himself in the form of a clan. And there was room for Celia. For the healing, growing, wildly audacious love that had grown between them.

It was that that Jean Luc concentrated on as his gaze narrowed on the thrashing beast in the water, trying desperately to dislodge the anchor in its chest. Jean Luc focused himself, rooted in all the things that made him who he was, and he reached out, not knowing what he would find.

Detecting and gripping onto Arturo with his mind was like trying to grip a snake around the middle. Jack and Tre’s feelings were alive and warm-blooded and pulsing. Arturo’s feelings were dead and dry, hissing and twisting against Jean Luc’s grip. He felt the stinging bite of Arturo’s mind trying to fight its way free of Jean Luc’s. He trembled and almost lost control. But then there was Jack at his side, gripping on with his mind as well, and Tre, too. The three of them held tight, side by side.

This was the plan. To grab Arturo by his mind. Surround him on three sides. Make him surrender. The great bear wrenched the anchor from his ribs and sent it flying. Driven halfway insane by the intrusion into his mind, he bounded through the deep swamp water toward the three brother bears.

“No!” Jean Luc said the word in his mind, deadly and low.

Arturo stopped, water sloshing around him. His feral eyes went wide with panicked fury. He wanted to move. They three could feel that. He wanted to get to them and destroy them. But he couldn’t move.

“Back down,” said Tre.

“Now,” said Jack.

Arturo shook with fury, but he couldn’t move another inch. He wasn’t stronger than they were. Blood leaked from his wound and he staggered sideways in the water.

“Stop,” said Jean Luc. “Stop.”

Jean Luc pushed out hard with his feelings and gripped onto Arturo’s in a furious grip. If there was such a thing as a mental chokehold, Jean Luc had him in it now. Arturo gasped and writhed, trying to maintain consciousness, but he couldn’t.

He twisted and stumbled, and the great bear fell sideways into the water. Like black soup, it covered him and started to settle. Moments later, a dark shape floated to the surface. Arturo, in his human form, unconscious.

The bears rushed forward. It was Tre who took the knocked-out Arturo to the boat. Jean Luc and Jack, whose injuries were much worse, had enough of an issue getting themselves back to the boat. The women hauled and dragged every last man into the airboat, grateful they’d had the energy to shift back into their human forms.

Celia, seeing the puddles of bloody water, the dim look in Jean Luc’s pale face, revved the boat and sped off into the night.

***

 

There would be scars, because the gift of warm, clean water couldn’t heal everything. But each injured man found himself washed by a woman that night, Arturo included. Each injured man found himself stinging with the hateful, essential hell of those wounds healing, closing over.

It was hours before they were well enough to drag themselves out of the tubs.

One by one, they assembled in the doorway of the hall bathroom. Thea stood in the circle of Jack’s arms, Celia clutched Jean Luc, Tre and Caroline stood side by side, and Martine knelt on the bloody bathroom floor next to the bathtub where Arturo lay, completely motionless.

His chest rose and fell in shallow beats. His wounds had closed. He did not wake.

 

***

 

Two days later, still, Arturo slept. The group packed their things and closed down Jean Luc’s house bit by bit.

The maps had spoken, wiped the Everglades clean and shown a new place that had caused Thea’s eyes to tear. It was Montana. It was her family’s land that was next. The demon would come for them there. And if they didn’t go, one of their lives would be forfeit.

It was Celia, though, who cried the most. She didn’t want to leave Jean Luc’s home. The place where she’d fallen in love.

“Celia,” Jean Luc said in exasperation, finally pulling her aside as she helped him close all the storm shutters, “I’m going with you. Don’t be so sad. This place doesn’t matter. Not really.”

She’d nodded and pressed her face to his chest; she’d needed to hear it. “Will we come back here?”

“I don’t know,” he said after a long while. “I feel, sort of, like this was my goodbye to this place. Like I came back here with nothing, but I’m leaving with you. In a way, it makes it feel like you were Claude and Hugo’s final gift to me. I don’t wanna mess that up.”

“You won’t mess it up,” she whispered into the cloth of his shirt.

She could hear the van doors slamming and knew that the rest of the group was very close to being ready to leave.

In an hour or so, the group would begin the drive from Florida to Montana. With an unconscious Arturo strapped in the back seat. Celia just hoped that they wouldn’t get pulled over.

Celia couldn’t even begin to contemplate the next leg of their journey. Not when her mind was still full of the swamps, of this place, of Jean Luc. She wanted to crawl up and lock her legs around his waist, but she was mindful of the injuries he’d healed from only two days ago. He wasn’t a god, she reminded herself. He was a man. Her man.

“No matter what happens…” Celia told Jean Luc.

“I know,” he said right away, a smile softening his face. He stroked a big palm over her silver hair. He wondered what color she’d dye it next. “No matter what happens, I’m your family now.”

“And I’m your family now.” She tugged at his shirt until he bent his head and kissed her.

He pulled back from the kiss and looked at her in amazement. “I just realized,” he told her, sweeping a palm over her back, “the map, the original one, it said that we’d find what we sought. I thought it was all a joke after Arturo attacked us. But maybe that part was right. Maybe I was seeking you this whole time and hadn’t even figured it out yet.”

“You big romantic,” she whispered, emotion in her voice even as her smile teased him.

He rolled his eyes at her and they both laughed as they turned back to the storm shutters and finished nailing them up. Together, side by side, they gently closed the doors on their pasts.

 

 

The End