Chapter 10 Inga
INGA
Luke had definitely grown up without other shifters around, Inga mused while she blew on her beef and mac.
(Somehow it was less good than she remembered.
Also, she had forgotten to account for utensils.
There was one plastic fork that had somehow fallen down to the bottom of the cooler. They took turns using it.)
But yeah, Luke seemed to be in the dark about things she had thought were shifter common knowledge. Looking back on it, she was pretty sure he’d had no idea what she meant when she talked about mates. Who didn’t know about that?
The food went down fast, though, and the company was good.
She’d always found that food tasted better outside.
Inga crumpled and burned their trash when they were done.
Luke went down to dip a panful of sea water to pour on the fire and extinguish it.
She was pleased to see that he knew good camping etiquette.
“You want to shift and run for a while?” she asked as she kicked sand and rocks over the remains of the fire, scattering it with her boot.
If she hadn’t looked up at the right moment, she would have missed Luke’s expression. It was completely out of proportion to the question she’d asked: a quick flash of fear, covered swiftly with a slightly forced smile.
“You mean—as a bear?”
“Yeah, it’s pretty rare to have a chance to do it without other people around. We could adapt our packs to carry on a bear’s back and walk back to the cabin that way, or just shift for a little while and take a refreshing dip in the ocean.”
Luke was already shaking his head. “No, thanks, you go ahead. It’s not really my thing.”
“Shifting isn’t really your thing?” She had never heard anyone describe it like that. Most shifters couldn’t wait to change into their animal and stretch out their legs, wings, or flippers.
“I just don’t really like being a bear all that much.” He was looking away from her now. “I spent way too much time as a bear recently, and I’d rather have hands. I don’t really care if I ever turn back into a bear, to be honest.”
Inga stared at him. “But it’s not healthy not to shift. Don’t you feel your animal in you, wanting to come out?”
“I don’t want to talk about this,” Luke snapped. He stepped away from her and began gathering items with short, harsh motions.
Inga took the pan down to get another scoop of sea water for fire-extinguishing purposes, not that they really needed it, but to get herself together. She hadn’t expected to be this affected by Luke’s anger, but it was the desolation on his face that struck deep into her heart.
Is there someone who can help with this?
she wondered. Was it possible for a person to have a falling out with their shift animal?
Maybe he needed some sort of counseling.
She had never heard of anything similar.
People could sometimes turn out to have a previously unknown shift form—her sister-in-law, Lucy, was like that—but all the shifters she knew loved being shifters, loved shifting, and thought of their animal as a beloved part of themselves.
Just the idea of being cut off from her bear was horrifying to her, and after mere seconds of entertaining the thought, she found herself reaching inward to hold her bear and apologize to it.
A shifter’s inner animal had no real physical form, but she seemed to feel rough fur anyway, her cheek pressed against it, with warm breath ruffling her incorporeal hair as her bear nuzzled her back.
Then she opened her eyes to find that there was, in fact, fur pressed against her leg, and warm breath on her hand. The dog had followed her down the rocks to the water’s edge.
“Hi, Rogue.” She sat down and put an arm around the dog, who allowed it for a moment before pulling away. Like many big dogs of her acquaintance, Rogue didn’t seem to like being clung to.
But the dog’s warm support helped relax her.
She climbed back up the steep trail across the rocks—Rogue lingered behind, investigating smells along the path—and poured a completely unnecessary pan of water on the nearly extinguished fire.
Luke had just finished putting together a small pack for himself, using the coat for carrying some of the gear with its bottom tied together into a makeshift sack.
“Sorry,” he said. “I was out of line.”
“No, I was. Your relationship with your shifter side is between you and your animal. It’s not any of my business.”
Even as she said it, the words sounded wrong to her. It did feel like her business, in some odd way.
Luke gave her a lopsided grin that shivered through her, connecting with some deep part of her; it was as if her shifter animal trembled with it for an instant.
“No worries. Let’s just call it—”
A deep bark echoed up from the rocks below them. A moment later, Rogue came running up the path, voicing more of his deep-chested, alarming barks.
“Whoa! What’s wrong, fella?” Luke dropped to one knee and beckoned the dog. “Settle down. What’d you see?”
“Maybe there’s an animal that alarmed him,” Inga suggested.
She took a few steps forward to look down, but she saw nothing except the water rolling against the rocks.
“A bear, maybe?” It seemed unlikely. Her shifter senses were duller in her human form, but she could usually tell if there was another bear close by.
“He’s not afraid of other animals,” Luke said. “Maybe he’s hurt.” He ran his hands down Rogue’s legs. The dog, as usual, didn’t want to be clung to, and took a few dancing steps back. Barking again, he looked up at the sky, which Inga had never seen a dog do before.
She became aware of a sound that she hadn’t noticed over the barking and the ever-present crash of the waves. It was a low rhythmic thrumming that seemed somehow familiar, but she didn’t realize what it was until Luke suddenly burst into motion.
“Get down!” he snapped. He seized hold of Inga and threw both of them into the shadow of a large pile of rocks where they had been sitting for their lunch.
“What?” Inga yelped. She found herself crushed against the rocks with Luke half on top of her. An instant later, there was a shaggy mass of black fur on top of her too as Rogue joined them, wriggling as if in an attempt to merge with their human heap and whining.
Struggling to get out from under the sudden people-and-dog pile, Inga found herself on her back, looking up at the sky. She opened her mouth to ask what the hell was going on, but suddenly her view of blue sky and puffy white clouds was briefly full of the underside of a low-flying helicopter.
It came out of apparent nowhere, skimming over the rock pile.
It must have been flying at a low altitude along the coast. The noise was very loud, which made her realize why it had seemed familiar.
As well as having seen them in movies and on TV, she’d also had a fair amount of in-person experience.
Not up close—she’d never been in one—but it was pretty common for wildlife biologists and scenery touring companies to use them.
She regularly saw them flying around the island.
Luke put a hand over the top of her head and pushed it back against the ground. Now all she could see was sky again. Anyway, the helicopter was heading off across the island, its choppy noise receding in the distance.
As they lay there, Inga was very sharply conscious, not in a bad way, of Luke’s weight on top of her. He was twisted partly around, looking after the helicopter, so she could see his profile against the sky. Having him on her like this was definitely not unpleasant.
It was the dog worming closer, so suddenly her view of sky and Luke was blocked by dog fur, and all she could smell was damp dog, that made her give both of them a hard shove.
She finally managed to crawl out from under them.
She was damp and dirty now, and it felt like one of her hips had bruised on a rock.
“What,” Inga said, “and I cannot emphasize this enough, the hell. Haven’t you ever seen a helicopter before?”
Luke sat up and pushed Rogue away. The dog went to investigate Inga as if to make sure she was all right, and when she pushed him away too, he trotted a few steps in the direction the helicopter had gone, looking after it.
“Yes, I know what a helicopter is,” he said, somewhat distractedly.
“You’re aware, then, that they generally carry tourists or marine biologists counting whales, not aliens with death rays?”
“That’s not what I—damn it, it’s coming back,” Luke snapped. “They did see us. Is there something, anything—”
Working frantically, he picked up the tattered coat that had been torn up by the griffins for a nest. It was smelly and ragged, but he put it on anyway, flipping up the hood over his head while Inga stared at him in bafflement.
Even more baffling, Rogue had vanished. Inga didn’t even see him go; she just turned around and the dog was gone, as if he’d disappeared into thin air. He must have run down to the bay.
“What is going on?” Inga demanded. With the coat on and the hood covering his head, Luke was bent over with his hands on his boot, miming tying a shoelace.
Meanwhile, the throbbing noise of the helicopter’s rotors was deafening. It wasn’t flying over the top of them this time. Instead, it appeared low over the rising land above them and then began slowly to descend to the ground, a hundred paces or so from their rock.
“I bet they have infrared,” Luke muttered.
“I should’ve known.” He kept his head down.
Stuff was flying around, whipped by the wind of the rotors: bits of flying dead grass, ashes from the fire, a half-burned granola bar wrapper.
Some of their gear was tumbling around as well.
Luke grabbed the lid of the cooler and looked up at her.
“Inga, I cannot let these people capture me.”