Fated in Stone, page 4
Swallowing hard at the sight of the bullet hole, the bubbling blood. The smell of slightly burnt skin. She ignored the gorge rising in her throat and tore at the shirt more until she had it freed from one of his arms and pulled around enough, she could use it to put pressure on the wound. There was less blood oozing out now. Maybe it wasn’t as bad as she’d feared?
She didn’t think she was that lucky.
“You took a bullet meant for me,” she whispered, keeping her voice barely audible. “Stupid.” She wasn’t sure he’d even hear her. His eyes were closed, his breathing sharp and ragged. When she pressed the remains of his t-shirt against the hole in his chest, he winced visibly, but didn’t open his eyes. Sweat coated his skin, turning his pale complexion ashy. He almost looked gray.
So much had happened, in such a short period of time, she realized she hadn’t even taken in what the man looked like. She knew who he was, though, without having seen him earlier. Knew this was the man who’d kept her from screaming and drawing the attention of a monster. Knew he’d just saved her life by taking a bullet meant for her.
Knew he wasn’t going to last long like this, and she had no way to get him to help quickly.
Her car was more than a mile away. Over uneven ground through the woods. The nearest emergency service, hospital, or doctor, was thirty miles away. And while a backwoods clinic might be used to bullet wounds from hunting accidents, she wasn’t sure they were set up to operate on a chest wound like this.
Panic and fear clouded her thinking. Shit, Elle. Think. Think. She had to get him out of here. He’d saved her life. She had to get him to help. How? How?
As she pressed the bunched material of his t-shirt against his wound, she swore she felt something move under her hand. Not his breathing, which was shallow and raspy. Not just the lift of his chest. Something seemed to press against her hand from under his skin.
She was afraid to lift the t-shirt and take pressure off the wound, but the sensation of something moving under his skin was so startling, so disturbing, she lifted the shirt. Saw something distort his skin, moving beneath it.
What the hell?
And then she heard footsteps. Close by. Too close.
She snatched the gun from the waistband of his pants, which she’d only barely noticed as she’d torn his shirt, and spun around to face the threat, stepping just far enough out of the nook formed by the crates that she could keep the man covered and protected.
Gun held at the ready, she used the edge of a crate to give her some protection and watched the section of the maze where she’d heard the footsteps.
“Drop the gun,” a deep voice said.
Not one she’d heard before. The man who’d shot her savior hadn’t been a guard she’d seen before either. How many were in here that she didn’t know about?
She didn’t bother responding to the stupid order. Just took a moment to ensure the safety was off. Knew from the weight the gun was loaded. Memories flooded back, but she pressed them down. No time for that now.
“I said, drop the gun. Or I will shoot you.”
She still didn’t comment. But really? Like he wasn’t going to shoot her no matter what?
From behind her, she heard the man’s breath wheezing, that scary rattle that made her own heart stop. She couldn’t risk looking back at him and taking her attention off the area where the gunman was, but panic sent another flush of adrenaline through her and her pulse pounded so hard in her ears she could barely hear around it.
Some movement behind her. She wanted to tell him not to move. To stay still.
“Come out and drop the gun,” the guard shouted this time.
“No,” she said simply.
“We don’t want to kill you.”
A snort escaped before she could stop it. Did anyone ever believe that sort of thing when people said it in these circumstances? Did the guard honestly believe what he was saying? She doubted that last very much.
The sounds behind her settled. Too much. She wasn’t hearing anything now. She wasn’t even sure she could hear the man breathing.
Fuck. Tears sprang into her eyes. She wasn’t sure why or where they’d come from. She hadn’t cried in years. She’d been a little worried she’d cried herself out and didn’t have any left. But there they were. For a stranger who may well be dying behind her. Tears gathering in her eyes, threatening her vision.
She blinked hard, forcing the dampness away so she could see clearly.
The guard poked his head around a crate.
She very carefully and precisely pulled the trigger on the gun. Little kickback sent the bullet into the crate beside his head. She’d been aiming a little lower. She adjusted her aim for the next shot, hitting the crate two inches below the last shot, exactly where she wanted the bullet to go. Both shots splintered open large holes in the wooden box.
The man cursed and ducked back behind cover.
The lack of noise from behind her had her chest and throat tight. She blinked hard again when more tears sprang into her eyes. He was a stranger. She didn’t even know his name. She didn’t know why he was here. But having him die practically in her arms…
She waited for the guard carefully hiding behind the crates to say something else. She didn’t have to wait long.
“You have no idea what you’re involved in,” he said. “What you’re messing with. It’s nothing you’ve ever dealt with before.”
“The monster you mean,” she finally responded. “The grinluk.”
A pause. Then, “You know what it’s called.”
Not a question precisely. A sort of half question, half surprised realization. What did it mean to him that she would know a monster’s…name? Species? What did she even call it? Didn’t matter, she supposed. The guard reacted to her knowledge of the name. And that was interesting.
She didn’t have a chance to respond to his not-question, though.
What happened next…
It took her a couple of moments to process afterward because several things happened at the exact same time.
She heard something behind her, a movement, a scrape, something that sparked hope in her. He wasn’t dead! She needed to help him.
The monster itself slithered out from behind one of the crates, not fifty yards away, its tentacles flicking the air as it rose high up over her head, the eyes on its tentacles all pointing toward her.
The guard with the gun started to step out from behind the crates.
She raised her gun to shoot the monster, knowing the guard would shoot her at the same time, but panic had her aiming for the biggest threat.
And then something hit her in the back.
But not hard. Not enough to knock her down. Just enough to shover her forward a step.
And then…
Then she watched a…a shadow? A spirit maybe? Something insubstantial, ephemeral, move out from her chest. A wolf. Leaping from her chest.
Which was strange enough she stopped breathing. But even stranger…the wolf became solid as it leapt forward.
As it emerged from her chest, it turned into an actual, solid wolf.
The whole thing happened so fast, it took a long moment to register that the wolf had leapt through her. Not past her. Not over her. Not around her.
Through her.
A spirt wolf. That became a corporeal wolf.
A real, honest to god, wolf.
A wolf. That leapt. Through. Her.
CHAPTER FIVE
The animal landed a few yards in front of Elle, between her and the monster. It growled at the monster.
But that was the only sound. Or movement.
Both humans and monster froze, held perfectly still. Not even the shadows cast from the stacks of crates surrounding them seemed to move. As if the appearance of the wolf had pressed a pause button on reality.
The monster stared at the animal, its black eyes narrowed. The guard stared at her, his mouth open. She stared at the wolf, her heartbeat hammering.
What the hell had just happened?
“How?” the monster hissed, its voice the first thing to break the silence.
Wincing at the sound of that horrible, nightmare voice, Elle looked up at the grinluk, back at the wolf, then back up at the monster.
“How can your wolf leave you and you are still there?” it said.
“Just a knack?” she said and asked. She had no idea what the grinluk was talking about. Where the wolf had come from. How it had leapt through her. Any of it. She was just as confused as the monster.
But what was worse was that it seemed to know at least some of what was happening. She couldn’t begin to guess what was going on.
“Impossible!” the monster snarled. “No one in the Families can release their animal this way. You cannot be separated.”
Families? “If you say so,” she murmured. She glanced down at the wolf again.
The wolf snarled at the monster.
Elle raised her gun and fired at the monster just as the wolf lunged toward it. The bullet hit the monster in the face. It screamed and red blood sprayed from the wound. The wolf grabbed a tentacle with its mouth.
The human guard fired at the wolf. Elle fired at him, purposely hitting him in the shoulder. He cursed and dove back behind the crates.
The monster waved its tentacles hard, sending the wolf crashing into a stack of crates. The crates shifted and started to fall…
Elle looked up in time to see them falling toward her.
The next instant a solid body hit her mid-stomach and she and the solid thing went flying backward.
She hit the ground hard enough to loosen her grip on the gun, though she didn’t release it, but it did fire, the noise of the shot lost in the cacophony of crashing wooden boxes a few feet away.
She looked up to see the wolf sprawled on her chest.
And she froze. A wolf was on her chest. Looking down at her. Its eyes were dark and luminous in the dim interior, under the shadows of more crates. It whined softly and nosed her shoulder, gently. For all the world like it was asking if she was okay.
The wolf had knocked her away from the falling crates.
After leaping through her.
A few moments passed with her just staring up at the wolf in wonder. Not sure what to make of all this. A little afraid her mind had decided to step out for some fresh air and left her living in a dream.
How was any of this real? A monster with eyes on its tentacles. Guards with guns and a sword. A kidnapped geneticist in the middle of a house turned lab and storage facility in the Michigan woods. A wolf that could leap through solid objects and rescued women in danger.
Random enough to be a dream. Even the location could be part of a dream as it spoke to her past, reminded her vaguely of her childhood. Of other monsters. Seemed like creating a tentacled real monster would fit in exactly to that kind of a nightmare.
But the wolf. And the man. Where would she have come up with those images?
The man!
She started to sit up, only to realize the wolf’s weight kept her pinned to the wooden floor. It was heavy! Were wolves heavy? She had no idea. She’d never had one sitting on her chest before.
Not attacking her. Just laying on her as it gently nudged her shoulder and whined quietly.
That was strange. But since it wasn’t attacking her and had actively saved her from the collapsing crates, she had to assume it wasn’t out to kill her, so she said, “I need to get up. They’ll be here soon. And there’s a man back there. I have to check on him.”
The wolf eased slowly off her, like he understood exactly what she’d just said, but he didn’t look away from her.
She climbed to her feet, biting back a curse as her right elbow and wrist twinged with a short sharp pain. She stayed behind more crates as she took a quick assessment. She’d have some bruising, but nothing felt broken. She moved the gun she still held to her left hand, tested her right by flexing her fingers. Her wrist wasn’t happy with her, but she didn’t feel any weakness or numbness in her hand so she’d count that as good. She could fire the gun with her left hand—her father had ensured she could—but her aim wasn’t as good left-handed.
The wolf settled at her side, close to her leg but not quite touching her. The animal was huge. Larger than she’d expect of an average wolf. Or maybe he just seemed huge because of everything that had happened.
Because he had leapt through her.
How the hell had a wolf done that?
If this was a dream, she’d be able to write it all off as a strange manifestation of her mind when she woke up. But for now, she felt too sore for this to be a dream, which meant she needed to deal with the situation like it was real life.
That meant finding the wounded man. If he’d somehow managed to survive a gunshot wound to the chest only to get crushed by falling crates, she was going to scream.
There was also a monster around here still to worry about.
Except, even as she thought that, she heard some shouts from another part of the house. The front door slamming. More shouts. And then the sound of several engines firing up.
She cursed, realizing the guards were getting away—and probably had the professor with them. She hoped he was okay. Still alive. She’d have to check the house in a minute.
She eased back toward the spot where she’d tucked the injured man. No sign of the monster. No sign of the guard who’d been shooting at her, who’d shot the man.
To the wolf, she whispered, “The monster?”
It huffed and to her surprised, shook its head, like it was saying “no.”
“It’s gone?” she asked, just to see what the wolf would do.
It nodded yes.
“You understand what I’m saying?”
Another yes nod.
“That’s pretty fucking freaky, you know that, right?”
Another head nod.
“At least we’re in agreement.”
She scrambled over some broken crates, ignoring the contents that had spilled out, as she hurried to the man’s side. The place she’d left him was fortunately still mostly intact. Only one side of the nook had toppled and it had collapsed forward and out, away from him instead of on top of him. She climbed over a small pile of broken wood to get inside what was left of the three-sided nook.
Only to rear back.
This… This really did have to be a dream. There was no way this was reality. But how on earth had her mind manufactured this? Where had her imagination even gotten these images?
Where the man had been, now reclined a solid stone statue. That looked exactly like the man. Right down to a ripped shirt bunched up on his chest, and the way he was half propped against the boxes behind him. But he was solid stone. A gray-white colored, smoothly polished marble. Like a statue in a museum.
A statue that looked exactly like the man.
She blinked a few times. As she stared, she wondered if it really did look like him, or was she just imposing what she vaguely remembered of the man onto the statue. Things had been happening so fast. Her memory of what he looked like was fuzzy. Maybe this was just a coincidence. There’d been a statue in one of the crates, it had fallen here, into this position, and she was imagining that it looked like the man who’d saved her life.
Except…
The way there was a shirt bunched up and positioned over his chest seemed unrealistically coincidental.
More slamming from outside. And the screech of tires in gravel as they churned up the dirt road leading away from the house.
And then silence. A deep, deep silence.
Filled with a lot of questions.
Elle wasn’t precisely sure how much time passed as she stared down at the stone statue and contemplated the silence filling the house-turned-warehouse-and-lab with the wolf standing just beside her. She was vaguely aware of the wolf at her right hip, opposite side from the gun she still held in her uninjured hand. Smart wolf.
A faint dripping noise sank into her muddled thinking. She assumed some of the professor’s beakers had broken. Didn’t sound like a water main break. Just the drip drip drip of liquid falling off a table onto the wooden floor.
Around her, the chaos of broken boxes and strange dim lighting went mostly unnoticed. She was too focused on the statue that looked so much like the man who’d saved her life and who she thought was dying of a gunshot wound.
Thought he was dead, actually. She’d been certain he’d died while she was exchanging gunfire with the guard.
Was he dead? Was she seeing things in the strangely shadowed light? Imagining she was looking at stone, when she was actually just looking at a man with no life left in him?
She knelt beside the body, pressed her fingers gently against his shoulder. Jerked her hand away quickly. Nope. That was definitely stone.
“What the hell is going on?” she asked aloud.
The wolf beside her whined softly.
She glanced at him. He had moved up beside the statue too and stared at her across the body.
“If you’re expecting me to explain all this, you’ll be waiting a while,” she said. “I am beyond baffled.” She glanced between the statue and the wolf. “Speaking of baffling, how the hell did you leap through me? Or did I imagine that?”
Had she? Everything had happened so fast. Maybe the wolf really had leapt around her and she’d…thought she saw it jumping through her? Another trick of shadows?
But… But the monster had reacted strangely to the appearance of the wolf, hadn’t it? Saying something about how it wasn’t possible?
She couldn’t remember its exact words. Shock was already making her memory of those moments jumbled and unclear. Shock was a fucker for that, and it’s what made eye-witness stories so unreliable. She felt like her brain was doing that to her now, mixing up things that had happened too fast for her to full register, altering what had happened to fit into a neater story.
Except why would neater involve an animal that was clearly solid right now leaping through her instead of around her?
Was the wolf solid? Yes, of course he was. He had knocked her away from the falling stack. She’d felt his weight on her chest. He was definitely a solid, living thing.
