Chapter 10
Vatten
Canton Valley Farm
The skies turned grey as we drove back to the farm. Jacand rode in the little backseat. Eran was tense. The muscle in his jaw twitched as he drove. I almost offered to drive but figured the steering wheel would give him something to do with his hands.
The baby fine hair on the back of my neck stood up as lightning cut through the sky.
I almost said that this was why we couldn’t toss out his kitten brother in the rain but stopped myself.
I wanted to be alone with Eran as badly as he wanted to be alone with me.
We were new to each other this lifetime around and the true-mate response magic pulled hard behind my navel.
Only, I still couldn’t kick his little brother out and I did need to see Gooseberry.
“Bro, this storm,” Jacand said, looking out the window.
“I know,” Eran said, his voice calmer than his annoyed scent. “We’re closer to the farm than any place else.”
“I know,” Jacand said.
“We’re probably fine,” Eran said to me. “Probably. Nothing’s came in over the phone. They’re rare here.”
“What’s that?” I asked, thinking maybe they were talking about a tornado.
“We don’t even think the word while it’s storming,” Eran said.
Thunder cracked the sky wide open above us and Jacand nearly climbed on the ceiling of the truck.
“Jacand, shift,” Eran said as if he was casting a spell on his brother.
A second later, a bear colored, fluffy kitten sat in the backseat. In human years, Jacand was a teenager, but in cat form that equated to looking like a yearling kitten. Eran patted his shoulder and Jacand leapt onto it. My mate grabbed his brother and stuffed him down his shirt.
“If we get an alarm on the phone we go to the closest hatch to the parking spaces,” Eran said. “That’s about thirty feet to the southwest.”
The sky cracked open again and I fought off the urge to hide under the seat.
A strange static danced on the air. Not quite weather or magic.
Eran’s phone erupted with a terrible shrill cry as if it too feared the storm.
Then Jacand’s phone echoed it in the backseat.
My mate glanced at my seatbelt, put one hand over his brother, holding him against his stomach, and laid on the pedal.
I watched the sky for the big swirling finger of wind to descend but nothing came even as the grey clouds turned green as if all the ruckus left them nauseous.
Eran whacked the door unlock button as soon as the farm came into sight.
He stomped the breaks before we reached the place we parked earlier.
I didn’t ask questions. We had plenty of extreme weather back home but a blizzard and a sky funnel that sucked on everything had little in common.
We met at the front of the truck and left it there on the side of the road as he pulled me with one hand through the brush and bramble.
“Hurry up!” someone shouted and I looked up to see the bear shifter from before – Eran’s sire – half standing out of the ground.
Only then did it click that the sudden change of plans probably came from them over the family or group link and I hadn’t heard because I wasn’t on them yet.
I wouldn’t be until Eran and I exchanged the claiming bites.
“Tell those kids to hurry up, Kenny!” someone shouted from deep underground.
Eran pushed me in front of him and his sire opened their arms. I was about to tell them that this was no time for a hug when they picked me up and started down the stairs like I was nothing more than a paperweight.
Sure, I lived with bears, but sheesh. I had feet.
Eran followed down behind me, closed the trapdoor, and secured the latch.
The underground passageway was brightly lit. I squinted at one of the shining lights on the wall wondering if it was magic or electricity that was still sometimes used in DIY projects. Eran took my hand while Kenny led the way. Inside my mate’s shirt, Jacand shook.
From somewhere in the belly of the underground realm a puppy whimpered and barked as if the world itself stood against him and he had not a single friend left to stand by his side. Being separated from his mum and litter probably felt that way.
“That would be Gooseberry,” Kenny said, rubbing their ears.
“Poor baby,” I said.
“Poor us,” Eran said. “Our ears are going to bleed before this is over.”
If I knew the underground path, I would’ve run ahead to comfort him. Only, even the best nose could get lost in winding tunnels. I wasn’t a ratter after all. After a few minutes of walking, we reached the group. Evie waved, bouncing a baby on her knee.
Gooseberry sat in the middle of twin little girls and a little boy a bit younger, howling at the roof.
His nose twitched when he scented me. He leapt over the heads of the girls and crashed into the back of a man’s leg who stood nearby.
The man swore, “damn dog!’ but Gooseberry didn’t stop until he was at my feet.
He looked up at me expectantly and I scooped him up.
“That’s our dog!” one of the little girls stood up and thumped her foot like a rabbit ready to fight.
“That’s the dog trainer, baby,” a nearby man said, tapping her foot so that she stopped thumping.
He wasn’t Canton. At least I didn’t think he was. He sounded nothing like the man I spoke with on the phone.
“Tarabell! Stop thumping!” another man scolded.
“That’s Canton,” my dog chimed into my thoughts.
“He’s stealing our dog!” she protested.
“Where’s he gonna take ‘em, girlie? Up into the storm? He’d get blown away.”
“With our dog!” Tarabell said and her little brother started crying.
I walked over and sat down with the kids. I introduced myself and explained why I was there.
“And because Tarabell tried to murder him!” the girl nearly identical to Tarabell said.
“I did not!” Tarabell said and thumped again.
Canton scooped up the thumping girl and tickled the bare little foot she stomped against the ground. The girl squealed and squirmed until she was nearly upside down, laughing hysterically from the tickling.
“She did too,” the other little girl whispered to me. “She fed him poison.”
“What sort of poison?” I asked. I already knew what had gone down with the chocolate but hearing her perspective promised to be interesting and it wasn’t like we were going anywhere anytime soon. Eran sat down next to me, Jacand still in his shirt.
“Asleep,” he mouthed to me and I nodded.
“So, she fed him chocolate after Daddy said not to. He said ‘you girls listen here. This is ‘portant. You can’t feed this here dog chocolate. It’s poison to him.’.”
“I don’t talk like that, Marabell,” Canton laughed.
“He did. He said ‘this here dog’.” The little girl nodded. “And what did my murdering sister do? She fed Gooseberry chocolate and he almost exploded!”
I held the puppy up to my eye level. He wagged his tail a few times.
He certainly remembered the chocolate and that it was tasty.
He hadn’t tied it to the horrible things that happened after because much like the little girl who fed him the chocolate he hadn’t developed the thought processes necessary to connect the dots.
He barked again and I sat him down like he wanted.
He was too big to hold up that way for long.
He was nearly as big as me even if he was merely a puppy.
With a few barks and some scents he explained to me the problem with being down here.
He had to howl extra loud to keep the storm and the scary lady away.
He had to shout his warnings extra loud so that they’d know that he’d eat them if they messed with his kids and all four of the little ones were his kids.
They had a baby too. Though, Tarabell, the Giver of the Forbidden Snacks was definitely his favorite but he’d protect them all.
The storm rattled overhead and I snuggled into Eran as the puppy told me his story.
He’d been born somewhere in the wild where there weren’t people or buildings or ‘loud moving rocks you sat inside of.’ He’d been one of three but somewhere along the way got separated from his mother and littermates.
He missed them but could never find them.
When he finally picked up their trail it ended in a weird box with food inside.
If I had to guess someone had ‘rescued’ his family and tried to leave a trap for him but Gooseberry had outsmarted it, taking the food and not going inside to be captured.
So he wandered around for a few days until he found a cave.
Then a bear chased him. Then he ran smack dab into Tarabell and the wild bear hauled tail away.
I relayed the story to the children and their parents, adding my own flourishes to entertain the kids.
To my surprised, everyone was listening to me.
I blushed, realizing I was the center of attention.
Later, in a private session, I’d ask Gooseberry what his worries were but I figured his would be more or less the same as any puppy separated from their litter.
His family had been kidnapped and he had to leave before he could find them.
That was the biggest difference. Gooseberry decided to follow Tarabell out of the woods because he needed a friend and she fed him some weird meat on some white stuff that stuck to the roof of his mouth a little.
Only, Eran thought further abroad than I did and a few minutes later showed me his phone screen.
There on a rescue website was a large dog who had much the same colors as Gooseberry with a puppy on either side of her about this puppy’s size.
One was white and the other looked almost like a calico cat turned into a dog.
They had been adopted by a sheep farmer.
That solved that mystery, but it wouldn’t help Gooseberry now.
The puppy had already curled up on Tarabell’s lap and fallen asleep.
As more of the kids dozed off the adults started talking about the weather radar and how this was the longest they’d been stuck down here for a storm.
Canton and Philip did their best to reassure everyone that some storms just lasted longer but the puppy’s talk about the scary lady clung to my thoughts.
Eventually, Jacand woke up and crawled out of Eran’s shirt to the snack area.
Eran cocked his head and looked at Canton.
Both men were quiet for a long moment and then the rabbit shifter nodded.
Eran rose to his feet with all his cat-like grace and helped me up.
I opened my mouth to say that I wasn’t about to go out into the storm when Eran led me further into the Burrow.