“What the hell did I get myself into?” she asked her empty cabin. Squeezing the pistol in her hand, the mixture of hard rubber and cold metal was reassuring. The heft of the weapon gave her a sense of peace that was fleeting, but at least present for a moment. “I thought this was just supposed to be a year in the woods watching bears.”
The last word lingered on the tip of Jill’s tongue. She touched the spot on her chest that burned every time she thought of Rogue, said his name, or looked at him. She didn’t know what was going on, or if the stuff he’d said was a big load of shit, but at the moment? It sure didn’t seem like it was.
In the distance, the lupine howls were broken by what sounded like a struggle. Jill clenched her pistol tighter, but the only thing she thought of was how badly she wished for Rogue to be back, and in one piece.
Whatever hit her door banished that thought.
Something, she didn’t know what, and didn’t particularly want to think about it very much, banged against the door to her cabin. It held, but for how long she had no idea. There was a deadbolt, but after all, it was only a wooden door standing between her and whatever horror was trying to get at her.
She swallowed the taste of bile as it crept up her throat with a second, then a third, impact. Whatever was out there wanted her fiercely, but not in the way she wanted Rogue.
For a second, she wondered why it wanted her. Wondered why all of this was happening. She was just Jill, just a dorky scientist who was too tall for most guys and not coordinated enough to play basketball very well.
Thunk!
And why wasn’t that thing trying to come through the window?
She shook her head, focusing. Questions didn’t matter right then, neither did doubts or anything else. Survival was all that mattered. Another slam sounded, the door began to creak. There wasn’t much time left, Jill knew.
If it breaks the door, I’m gonna be real screwed. Not much way to get new hinges out here.
She stood, approaching the door slowly, measuring her steps. She forced herself to breathe slowly, in and out, consciously keeping her heart from racing. Sweat beaded on Jill’s temples, ran down the sides of her face where her lover’s fingertips had been only minutes before.
She swallowed her terror, and reached for the doorknob. Squeezing her eyes shut for a moment, she focused her attention to a laser pinpoint.
With her hand on the door’s handle, she waited, listening for the next crunch. From here, she could hear the claws outside, scraping against the ground, like a dog digging after a half-buried bone.
“Come on you son of a bitch,” she whispered. “One more time, just come at the door one more time.”
She gripped the pistol, squeezed the handle with her thumb on the deadbolt’s latch. “Come on...”
The paws scrabbled, the beast charged. A split second later, another thunk! met her ears. In one smooth motion, Jill flipped open the lock, swung open the door and grabbed the gun with both hands. Her eyes narrowed, she pointed the revolver straight at the middle of the gray, fur-covered half-monster, half-man.
He lunged, diving straight at her.
She squeezed the trigger.
The entire thing took barely more time than a breath, but for Jill, it extended into eternity, like being pulled through the middle of a black hole and stretched out into space.
Every single action of the gun’s firing filled her mind. The click of the hammer, the sound of metal on metal, the blast of the exploding bullet, even the sound of the hunk of silver erupting from the barrel, all sounded plain as day.
The only thing she blocked out was the noise the creature made when the bullet hit him square in the chest.
Right before her eyes, the wolf stood on its back legs. They started flexing and twisting, as the monster lurched back and forth. Backing away, Jill couldn’t tear her eyes away. The wolf made a screeching sound, then a gurgling one, and when he finally fell to the ground in a heap, half his body was vaguely human.
Trembling, she sat on the floor, scooting backward until she felt her bed against her back. Not for a second did she take the shaking gun barrel off the dead wolf – at least, not until the body began dissolving.
A sizzling sound – and the smell of burning hair and cooking meat – hit her, and moments later, where once there was a huge, dead werewolf was only a pile of fur and bones. Her bullet was lodged into the back of the ribcage that lay on the rough wood floor.
“Jill!” she heard. The voice was hollow and sounded distant, though the man speaking it was right in the doorway. She looked up at him, unable for a moment to recognize the face.
“I... shot it,” she said. “It was beating on the door and I shot—”
“You did what you had to do.” Rogue crossed the room and wrapped an arm around her trembling shoulders. The fur on his massive forearm receded as Jill buried her face in his chest.
He kissed her fiercely, running his thumbs down either side of her face to wipe away the tears. “You’re fearless,” Rogue said, in a voice that was barely above a whisper, as soon as Jill stopped shaking quite so much.
She let out a hollow laugh. “I don’t know where you get fearless from me shaking like a terrified squirrel,” she said. “I’ve never actually shot anything before, I—”
“You ended a frenzy,” Rogue cut in. “You stopped the wolves from getting whipped up into a blood-fed rage. My brother, King, we were in the woods, watching them and waiting. We can take five or ten of the wolves each, but an entire pack? Not a chance.”
“So I saved...?”
He nodded, slowly and solemnly. “The two of us, our cubs, perhaps. It’s hard to tell what lupines are going to do when they get worked up like that.”
Jill shook her head. “I thought they were,” she swallowed. “Full moons, or something? I don’t know. I don’t know about any of this.”
A surge of fear, then anger at herself for being afraid, and then at Rogue for not being a normal bear, ripped through Jill. She pushed away from him, though he held her at arms’ length. “You’re not supposed to exist!” she said. “None of you are! None of this is! You’re supposed to be a bunch of bears that wander around the woods, eat berries, and I’m supposed to watch you and—”
Her mark burning stopped Jill’s tirade short.
“We do do those things,” Rogue said in his quietly powerful way. He regarded her cautiously, like he was trying to figure out the best way to say something that was rolling around in his mind. For a long moment though, the two of them just watched one another.
Jill chewed her lip, like she always did when she couldn’t think of anything else to do with herself.
“Have you never wondered about the mark on your chest?” he finally asked. “The one I know you feel burning? We both have them too. You’ve never—”
He said we, she thought. We.
“You said she—” Another voice, very similar to Rogue’s, but slightly deeper and calmer, broke the silence.
“Who is—” Jill turned to the left, toward the door, as someone she knew, but couldn’t place, stepped through. He too was nearly naked. Huge, muscled thighs flexed every time he moved. Jill felt her mouth fall open, but couldn’t do anything aside from stare.
She shook her head. She knew this man, just like she’d known Rogue.
“You’re...”
Running his hand over his wavy, black hair, King stared back. “King,” he said simply. “My brother told me he’d found you. I don’t understand how this is possible, though.”
Jill scoffed. “You don’t? The giant, magically transforming bear-man doesn’t understand how I am possible? Did I just step into la-la land?”
“No,” King said. “I don’t know where that is, but it isn’t here.”
He and Rogue exchanged a glance. “I don’t know either,” Rogue said. “Is that like Virginia?”
A smile crept across Jill’s taut lips. That was the first time she realized she’d pulled them into a line. Just that instant of levity relaxed her enough to let emotions other than fear and anger come through. “It’s just an expression,” she said.
She laughed for a moment, then she smiled again, and then before she knew it, a tear was rolling down her cheek followed by another and another.
“This is real, isn’t it? I’m not going to wake up from this like it’s one of my dreams?”
Rogue stroked her cheek. His hands were quickly joined by one of King’s, pressed flat on Jill’s back. The heat from his palm burned through her shirt, warming her skin. “But she’s a human,” he said. “This can’t be right. Can it?”
The shorter, more muscled Rogue, turned his face to the other bear, then back to Jill. “Don’t you feel it?” he asked the other man. “When you look at her, don’t you feel your mark burning? When I kiss her, when I taste her lips,” he paused to do just that. She felt him warm her to the core, and then when he pulled back, immediately chased him for another.
“When I taste her, when I smell her, I can’t explain my emotions,” he said. “All I know is that I haven’t felt this since they were taken.”
Rogue’s voice had a strange down-turn when he spoke. King cocked an eyebrow, and Jill noticed that even with his skepticism, he hadn’t taken his hand away. “I,” he began, then trailed off.