Between a Bear and a Hard Place(76)

Fury looked up in response to another howl, this one followed by a clanging sound that carried down the metal walls. “I think he was sending us to our clan mates. I think he also knew where he was going to find out his answers, but from the way he’s screaming up there, I don’t think he was exactly aware he’d find Eckert. Or maybe he did, it’s hard to tell with him.”

“Yeah,” Claire nodded. “But I don’t think he’s disappointed about it.”

“Come on,” Fury said, grabbing Claire’s hand. “Let’s go. Don’t make me throw you over this river.”





-23-


“Let’s get the hell out of here!”


-Claire


When they rounded the final slight turn in the catwalk and got a real good whiff of the river running underneath them, Claire just couldn’t help herself. She leaned over the railing and tried to take a look. It was too far down to see very clearly, but there was a slight glimmer of pink, like a hellish dose of Pepto-Bismol underneath their feet.

“This sure isn’t A River Runs Through It,” she hissed. “God almighty what is this stuff?”

“He said not to ask,” Fury cocked a smile. “And I think the river is running through it.”

She laughed and was momentarily taken by the sweetness of his face, the beauty of her mate’s mismatched eyes and the way her heart sang when he looked back. The look in his eyes said he couldn’t stand to be so near her and not touch her, feel her, take a fistful of her hair and smell it, and pull it, and...

Calm down there, Hoss, she told herself. River of slime first, massive rescue second, and then we can all curl up in a big furry pile and get to getting’.

That phrase – get to getting’ – reminded her of some of the only good times at home with her dad, before he and her mom went sour and things just turned into a big mess. Claire looked back at Fury, who was tensing, obviously ready for a leap across a big disgusting river, and lay one of her hands on his bare shoulder. “Can I ask you something?”

“I have no idea what this shit is, but I think I could take a few guesses.”

She smiled again, despite the musky, coppery, piquant, cloying sweetness of the slime below. “Not about that. I’m pretty happy not knowing when it comes to that stuff. I mean about us.”

“Oh,” he said, looking a bit like he was wondering if this was really the best time to have a heart-to-heart. “Yeah, sure. Although, should we maybe get this over with first? Those things are after us. Eighty-Three said they’d be coming, and I can hear the boots.”

“Are we... a family?” she asked, staring earnestly into his eyes. “You, me, Stone – are we the real thing?”

All of a sudden, the bear’s eyes narrowed. “I lived my whole life in this place. Thirty some-odd years of life, lived underground with nothing but artificial sun to warm me and lab synthesized food to eat. That water we fell in? The stuff with so little flavor that it was creepy? That’s all we drank.”

Claire swallowed hard. She could hear the soldiers coming closer. It wouldn’t be long before they were overwhelmed, and against an entire legion of those things, not even the four alphas would have much of a chance – much less one of them and a girl who had just figured out she had some bear in her a few weeks ago... and still didn’t know how, or why.

Undaunted, Fury continued. “We were tied up, beaten, injected with God-knows-what. And all for what? To test and make sure that whatever they were doing to our clan mates was safe to use on people. We didn’t shift, we couldn’t. They gave us some kind of drug that kept us in bear form. We had collars on, these shocking things that detected the nerve twinges of a shift and shocked us so hard that we fell unconscious.”

“Wait,” Claire said. “Did I see you up on my floor? Chasing mice around a lab?”

Fury cocked an eyebrow. “I don’t think so...”

“How the hell did you get the collars off? A shifter-controlling shock collar sounds like something that’d be pretty locked down.”

Those thick eyebrows knitted together. “You know,” he said, obviously thinking back. “I’m not... I don’t remember. All that comes to mind is seeing you in the doorway when you came in, and then I felt the burning in my chest. I thought for a second it was heartburn.”

He grinned in a safe, warm way that put a flutter in Claire’s stomach.

“Anyway, that’s all I remember. Waking up, seeing you, and being free. I remember shifting, and ripping into Eckert, but nothing else. So...”

Another howl from above shocked both of them back into action. “Do you think he had something to do with it?” Fury tilted his head upward toward where Eighty-Three was screeching like a banshee.