Chapter Fourteen
"This is bad, Falon. This is real bad," Dunn says as he steers the Hummer through the Refuge back towards my house.
"This is good. Now they know we're not afraid of them," River says from the front seat. He squirms around, finally settling on a position that looks very uncomfortable.
Dunn had insisted River take shotgun and Hicks sit in the back with me.
"No one asked you, yeah?" Dunn snaps. "We've stirred the shit pot and I'm telling you, someone's about to throw the whole thing at a fan."
Finn hadn't said a word to me after the kids came out. He spoke around me, through me, over me, but never to me.
Worry and doubt and anger and a million other emotions are whirling around inside me. I can't stay still in the backseat. Maybe I've just made everything worse for everyone. And why? I could've just lied. Could've told Judge exactly what he wanted to hear. It all would've been a lie anyways.
I feel like I'm going to explode.
"Stop the car," I say to Dunn.
"What?" Dunn slows but doesn't stop. "Why?"
"Stop. The. Car," I repeat.
River turns to look at me, eyebrows arched in confusion.
Dunn doesn't stop, but I open the door and hop out anyways.
"Damn it, you, wait a flipping minute, yeah?" Dunn says, finally stopping.
I slam the door closed and River jumps out as well, saying "I'll bring her back, go on to the house."
Like hell he will. I'll be back when I'm damn well and ready to. I take off into the woods, not knowing exactly where I'm going, just that I need the comfort from the souls of the forest to clear my head. What if I've doomed us all? Maybe Judge will come back and bring more of the Order with him. Maybe we actually need the Order's help to fight off the freaking Transmutes.
A sprawling oak lies ahead of me and I don't slow down as I charge towards it, and take a running leap up into its branches. River is probably right behind me, but I don't really want to talk to him either. Everything's so black and white for him. Vampires are bad. Humans are bad. Soul Binders are the only good. There's a pretty big grey area for me as far as that's all concerned.
I climb up the oak as high as I can, the thinner branches splintering a bit under my weight. Almost through to the top of the canopy, I can see past the leaves to the blue sky above. My body itches to fly. To jump up and fly as far away as I can. Maybe removing myself from Finn's life would make things better for them.
"I know it's tempting. But flying off to a distant land won't make anything better," River says from below me.
"What about jumping out of a car, running away, and climbing up into a tree doesn't say 'I want to be alone' to you?" I snap.
"You've been alone long enough," he says, unflinching at my anger, climbing onto a branch just next to me.
I sigh. "That's the thing, I haven't been alone." I can't look at him as I say this and focus on entangling my fingers with the tendrils of the oak's soul instead. I feel like I'm betraying him. "I know to you it seems like I'm surrounded by the enemy, but these people, these vampires, they're my family. And I think I've just made things a lot more dangerous for them."
"It's not your fault," he says, looking up into the sky the same way I had just a minute ago. "You said exactly what you needed to."
"It was what I wanted to say, but maybe not what I needed to."
River cocks his head at me, eyebrows furrowed together. He looks like he's ready to argue with me, ready to start a rant again, but he sighs instead.
"You need to let off some steam," he says, moving closer to me.
"What?" I squeak, leaning back a bit.
"Some steam. You've got all this tension built up inside of you. And that's not healthy for you or Wolf. You've got to release some of it." He moves even closer.
"H-how do I do that?" I ask, and find myself leaning back in a bit, heart beating through my chest. Wolf is skeptical, trying to keep me calm.
He takes my hand and that damn grin stretches across his face. "A sparring match. Like we planned on."
He starts to pull me down the tree. I can't tell if I'm terrified, disappointed, or excited. Maybe a mix of all three.
"Like, a fight? With you?"
"Nothing serious, just a bit more training. What's the strongest form you have?" he asks, jumping down the branches with the ease a monkey would.
It feels so natural to be in the woods with him. Where both of us belong.
"Um, well, I guess my grizzly." I regret it the moment the words leave my mouth, because now he'll expect me to use it. And the grizzly never feels quite right after... what happened.
"That's perfect. I've got a great rival for a grizzly." He folds his arms over his chest, pleased with the match up.
I'm a bit worried, but he's not going to beat me this time. I'm sick of him being better at everything. It's about damn time I give him a run for his money.
"Okay, no claws or jaws. I don't heal, so you'd literally rip me to shreds," he chuckles, but I feel a bit of grief behind his words. "Besides, this is about strength first, the claws and teeth will come later." He starts to stretch then raises an eyebrow at me, "And don't be too mad when I wipe the floor with you."
"Ass." A smile tugs at my lips as join in stretching.
"Okay, on three," he says. "One... Two..."
"Three!" I yell, running at him, shifting into the grizzly mid-stride.
He laughs and shifts as well, into a massive polar bear, only slightly bigger than my grizzly.
We meet nose to nose and lightly jaw each other. I know River wants me to make the first move, because he knows exactly what that will be. I need to stop being so predictable; I have to start using my head to supplement my instincts.
River roars and rises up on his hind legs, ready to push me down from above, but I lunge for his midsection, my lower body easily pushing him off his feet to the ground, pinning him beneath me.
Wolf is so into the fight, so eager to dominate, that I almost lock my jaws around River's throat, but pull back at the last minute. She has so much more influence when I'm in this form.
River rolls over and tosses side to side, shaking me off his back. I stand up, towering over him, and he stands as well. Our enormous paws push against each other and it becomes a bit of a sumo match, each of us trying to use our strength to push the other over.
We're pretty evenly matched. Both of us are already getting tired, using every ounce of our strength to try for a take down.
When my energy is just about gone, Wolf is there. I snap at River. He snatches his head back at the last moment and my jaws bite shut with a loud crack.
Stop it! We're not trying to kill each other, this is just training!
Wolf growls. River pushes hard on my shoulders and I'm forced to take a step back to keep my balance.
What's your problem? Stop it—
I'm not fast enough to stop her. She takes control and lunges at River, biting down hard on his shoulder. River grunts and pushes at us. My shock and horror is so enveloping that Wolf lets go, snapping back to her senses, and I stumble backwards, shifting out of the shape.
The moment I have the ability to speak back, I'm apologizing. "River, holy shit, I'm so sorry! I couldn't stop her, I'm so sorry!"
He shifts back as well and his shoulder is oozing with blood.
"It's okay, I'm alright," he says, putting a hand over the wound. "Polars have thick skin, I'm alright."
Wolf is mortified. I bury my face in my hands and tuck my head between my knees. It's humiliating to lose control in front of him. He would never lose control.
River plops down on the ground across from me. "Hey, hey. I'm okay, see?"
I peek up at him and see the bleeding has already stopped.
"What happened?" he asks.
I sigh. "I don't know. Neither of us are in sync when I use the grizzly. I'm stronger in that form because Wolf seems to have equal control, but she's just not in sync with me. I'm so sorry."
"What happened?" he asks again.
"What? I just told you, we—"
"Not with Wolf. With the grizzly. What happened? Something must've if it throws you and Wolf off like that."
"It's not something I like to talk about."
"And that's why it's giving you so much trouble. Tell me how you got a grizzly form all the way down here."
His eyes hold my gaze with such a force that I feel like I have no choice but to tell him. Wolf tries to direct me away from the memory, but I've already grabbed hold.
I take a deep breath. "I'd gone into town to get a new hammock net after I'd accidentally shifted into Wolf in my sleep. There was a big cage hitched to an old pickup truck in the parking lot of the motel. He was in there. No more than three weeks out of the wild." Even now the state of him brings tears to my eyes. "He was foaming at the mouth, it was at least 99 degrees out, and was biting at the bars of the cage, throwing his weight up against them. The cage was disgusting. Full of shit, dried urine, uneaten freezer meat. Stupid humans crowded around his cage taking pictures, while some fat man in overalls tried to get them to fork over five bucks for each photo they snapped." I gag as the smell of the fat man comes back to me. "Somehow he smelled worse than the cage."
"I don't remember walking up to the cage and pushing my hand through the bars. I was just suddenly there reaching out to him. I've never had an animal shy away from me before. But he did. He backed up into the corner of the cage and roared at me. But I didn't flinch. Then he realized what I was. I still remember every detail of him, the texture of his nose, the shape of his eyes, the way he shifted his weight to his front paws."
I get lost for a moment in the memory of him, but River clears his throat and I continue. "I got into an argument with the fat man. Everyone saw. I made a pretty big scene. That night I bought bolt cutters instead of netting and cut the locks. We hid out in the woods for two days. Wolf loved him. He was a predator on her level and she respected him for it. I thought it'd be easy, you know? That he could hide in the Refuge for the rest of his life. Enough land, enough food. But then they came. With bait and traps and guns."
"I'd shifted into his form and tried to lay a false trail, then returned as human. But on the way back I ran into the fat man and some other men with guns. He remembered me from that first day and accused me of cutting the locks. I mean, he was right, but that didn't stop me from telling him off. That was when he hit me. The grizzly came running to my defense, roaring and snarling, and they put a bullet in his head. No hesitation, no second-thoughts. A bullet in the head."
I pull away from the memory, the image of the grizzly smacking the ground, skidding across the forest floor to rest at my feet. Dead.
"Someone cutout his gallbladder to sell on the black market. Finn told the fat man to take a hike. And that was the end of it." I curl my arms around my legs and hug them tight. "But Finn didn't understand. He didn't get why I was so upset. No one did. Except T.K. and Niki's mom. She carved me a grizzly out of wood. She said to put my pain and guilt inside of it. To let go of the negative and embrace what the grizzly meant to me. But I couldn't. It was all my fault. I'm supposed to protect them. All of them. It was all my fault."
The floodgates have opened. My guilt and regret pour out as tears and Wolf is there, sharing in that moment of loss all over again. I'm sobbing, so hard that snot is dripping down my nose onto my upper lip. I'm like an open book with him. It's not fair. I know nothing about him or his past, and he knows everything about me, the ins and outs of my whole being.
River's arm is suddenly around me and for some reason I start to cry harder.
"Why. Can't. They," I choke between sobs, "Understand? We're. All..."
River runs a hand through my hair and I tilt my head into the gesture. "That we're all of this Earth. I wish I could agree with you. But humans have evolved into something different. Something obsessed with destroying itself, and taking everything else down with it."
Those aren't the words I want to hear. It feels like he's going to continue, but he sighs instead and wipes at the trail of wet down my cheek. His skin is so warm.
"It's not your fault, Falon. He spent the last moments of his life how he was meant to be." River leans in to whisper in my ear, "Free."
In less time than it takes for goosebumps to travel down my arms, River is standing and moving away from me. Just as he's put a good distance between us, I can smell Dunn, who bursts through the bushes, Hicks following close behind.
"Christ, there you are. Do you know how long we've been looking for you? Blondie tells us to flip off, like he's the damn king of the world, yeah? I don't listen to—" Dunn stops when he's sees my tear-streaked face. "Hey! Why are you crying? Are you hurt?" He rushes over and kneels next to me, taking my face in his hands, turning it this way and that. Then his head snaps towards River. "You! What did you do?"
River puts up his hands, "Relax, Big Mouth. Just unclogging a blockage."
"What does that mean?" Dunn stands and walks straight up to River, poking him in the chest. "Is that code for something? I swear to god, if you touched her I'm going to cut off your damn bal—"
"Dunn!" I yell. "It's okay. I'm okay."
Hicks helps me off the ground.
"Then why the hell are you crying?" he asks me.
"Because I've unclogged a blockage," I say, wiping my cheek on my shoulder.
I can feel the grizzly form inside of me and for the first time neither Wolf nor I shy away from it. It's strong. Stronger than it's ever been.