Chapter 22
LUKE
For a brief, searing moment, Luke thought Inga had been shot, and red-hot fury roared through him, blacking out his vision for an instant.
Then, through clearing eyes, he saw the bright orange dart protruding from her shoulder. Inga was still moving weakly, her legs scissoring in the air as she lay on her side before her paws dropped to the deck.
She shifted with a suddenness that startled him, and now there was a naked woman lying there, curled up and small. Luke fell to his knees beside her, wrenched the dart out of her shoulder and threw it over the side. He took off his borrowed rain slicker and laid it across her.
He put up no resistance when soldiers surrounded them.
They were, one by one, hauled up to be hurled unceremoniously onto the deck of the Global Blue.
Inga came up second, carried up one of the lines flung over a soldier’s shoulder.
Luke caught her when she was dropped to the deck.
Carefully he wrapped the slicker more tightly about her, concealing her supple curves from the onlookers.
He ran a hand gently across her face, smoothing back the water-darkened blonde hair.
The two of them were at the center of a tight ring of guns. Abruptly, some of the soldiers fell back to make room for Brockton to stride through.
“Well, if it isn’t our long-lost stray,” he said, staring down at Luke. Even soaked in the rain, arms crossed and short hair slicked down, he radiated command. “At least one of them. Where’s the other one, if he’s even still alive?”
“I don’t know who you’re talking about,” Luke said. So someone else had managed to get away, too. He hoped that other escapee had fled across the ocean and was living their best life somewhere far away from these people.
Brockton snorted and looked down at Inga. Although there was nothing lecherous in his gaze—it was more coldly assessing—Luke was glad he had covered her. Brockton’s cool calculation was more disturbing than a leer would have been; at least that would have had some human feeling behind it.
“So she’s a polar bear,” he said thoughtfully. “A natural shifter, I assume.”
“Stay away from her,” Luke snarled.
“How very chivalrous. As if you have any say in it.” He gestured to one of his men. “We need to stop them from shifting.”
Heavy iron handcuffs were brought, looking like something from an old chain gang movie. Luke recoiled. Brockton calmly drew a handgun and pointed it at Inga’s head. “I don’t suppose I have to tell you to cooperate, do I?”
Luke wished he had more control over his bear. Even if he did, he doubted he could do anything with Inga’s life at stake. The ghost bear seemed to have no useful ability to interact with solid objects, and in the time it would take him to shift, they could kill her.
If they were separated, he would have more opportunity.
“Find somewhere empty to lock them up,” Brockton ordered. “Chain the girl, too.”
Both of them were shackled hand and foot. Luke could only move by shuffling, and once again, someone else had to carry Inga.
As they were taken down a different set of stairs, he wondered what would happen if he did try to shift like this. Would the larger bones of his bear’s ankles break the cuffs? More likely, he thought, it would shatter every bone in his wrist.
They were kept together and locked in a closet-sized room, empty but for a few buckets and mops. A small porthole high on the wall gave them a limited amount of light, though it was streaked heavily with rain.
With nothing else to focus on, Luke was uncomfortably aware of the rolling of the deck as the storm worsened.
To avoid thinking about that too much, he scooted over to where Inga lay, still wrapped in his slicker, and worked his knee under her head, so that she was resting in his lap again.
He leaned back against the wall and sighed deeply.
Wonderful. For all their efforts, they were now captured by the very people he had been trying to get away from, who apparently had an entire ship of research scientists hostage as well.
He tried desperately to find that ursine presence inside him, the part of him that had risen up so fiercely when Inga was attacked and reacted so territorially to Mace.
But it remained elusive. He couldn’t seem to contact it consciously.
Whatever that mysterious ability was that had allowed him to manifest outside himself as some kind of ghost bear was equally impossible to grasp.
He had all the power he could have wanted to escape—and no ability to use it.
Luke cursed quietly under his breath.
He felt the vibration of the ship’s engines. They were moving. Would Brockton try to take them out to sea, or find somewhere to hole up and wait out the storm? Surely he planned to shelter along the coast, perhaps even in Westerly Cove itself.
Indeed, the rolling movement of the ship seemed to be settling down a little, which was a relief; they must have moved somewhere more sheltered. Even Brockton wasn’t crazy enough to risk the full fury of the elements.
Luke struggled once again to reach for that elusive part of him that was his bear. Once again, nothing happened. But it occurred to him that he wasn’t the only one who seemed to have strange abilities as a result of his involuntary stay on Black Rock Island.
“Rogue!” he called softly. It seemed ridiculous to try to summon the dog, who must be back at the lighthouse with Bernie.
And yet, he was well aware that Rogue had not leaped from the top of the headland to the bottom.
“Rogue! Here, boy! We could really use a dog right about now.” He wet his lips and whistled.
Nothing happened.
Luke heaved a sigh and gave a little laugh at himself. Well, it had been a long shot anyway. It wasn’t like he could expect to call a dog and have it appear out of nowhere in a locked—
There was a sudden sound, that cloth-ripping sound he’d heard earlier. And Rogue bounced out of the shadows and flung himself on Luke, licking his face.
“Whoa! Down, boy!” Luke tried to keep his voice quiet, ducking the dog’s effusive greetings. The last thing he wanted was a guard poking his head in. “Hey, there. Good dog. Good boy.”
Rogue sniffed at Inga and licked her face, then looked at Luke and whined.
“Yeah, it’s good to have you here, but I’m not sure how you can help.
” Now that he’d actually achieved the impossible and gotten the dog here, against all odds, Luke wondered what Rogue could actually do.
Could Rogue get the keys somehow? Luke unfortunately couldn’t think how, even if the dog understood the instructions to warp out of their cell and go find the keys.
It would involve Rogue having to pick out the specific person who had the keys to the handcuffs as well as the locked door, who might easily be different people.
And then Rogue would need to do what—pick the guy’s pocket?
And find the right key, and carry it in his mouth?
Luke’s elation lapsed into dark thoughts again.
Inga gave a sudden gasp and a flinch. Rogue immediately started licking her face.
“Ugh! What’s happening? Oh, my head.” Inga squeezed her eyes shut, tried to move her shackled arms, and settled for turning her face against Luke’s abdomen. He tried not to enjoy it too much, given the circumstances. Slightly muffled, she said, “Is the floor moving, or is it just my head?”
“We’re on the ship.”
“Oh,” Inga mumbled. There was a silence. Then she said in a small voice, “I can’t move my hands.”
“They’re handcuffed. It’s not you.”
“Oh.” She let out a sigh. Rogue stuck his nose in her ear. “Ack!” She jerked her head up so quickly she nearly banged it on the underside of the dog’s muzzle. “What’s that?” Looking around, she frowned. “Rogue is with us?”
“Yeah, he, uh, I called him and he came.”
“Came from where?”
“Yeah, that’s a good question, isn’t it? We’re locked in,” Luke said in answer to her next unspoken question. “And we’re shackled to stop us from shifting.”
“Great.” Inga squirmed a bit. “Am I wearing your coat?”
“You’re wrapped in it. Sorry, it was all I had.”
“Wonderful.” She lay back in his lap and stared at the ceiling. “We’re prisoners and I’m naked. So how exactly did Rogue get here?”
“Like I said, I called him and he came. I know it’s weird. But you and I both know he didn’t jump to the dock back at the lighthouse.”
“I know,” Inga sighed. “He can do something like teleporting, can’t he?”
Rogue plunked himself down and perked up his ears as if he knew he was being talked about.
“Yeah,” Luke said. “I guess. But it doesn’t seem like he’s able to take people with him, so it’s not very useful under the circumstances.
” He hesitated for a long moment, because what he was about to say was going to sound insane.
Was it really weirder than a teleporting dog, though?
“Uh, and I seem to be able to turn into a ghost bear sometimes.”
Inga raised her head from his lap and pushed herself up on an elbow, contorted at an awkward angle on the bare metal floor beneath her. “You what now?”
“I can turn into a ghost bear. Like a hologram or something. I know it sounds crazy. But I was on this ship earlier, and also in the boat. They could see me, but they couldn’t touch me. I understand if you don’t believe me.”
“No,” Inga said slowly. “I do believe you. I think I saw you do it a while back. I just didn’t know what I was looking at.”
“You did?” Luke tried to remember if he had ever felt his consciousness split in that peculiar way before. “When?”
“At the cabin, the first night.” She frowned up at him. “Can you do it now?”
“No,” he said, frustrated all over again.
“It doesn’t seem to be under my conscious control, as far as I can tell.
” If it was the first night at the cabin, no wonder he might not have noticed.
Everything was disjointed then, his awareness of things all over the place from dehydration and exhaustion.
“What made it happen before?”
“I wish I knew! I have no idea at the cabin; maybe it was my bear wanting to come out after being shifted into that form for so long. And today, I guess I just felt like I needed to, because we were in danger and the bear distracted them back on the ship. But we’re in danger now, and it’s not happening. ”
“Hmm.” Inga sat up all the way, the coat slipping from her shoulder and exposing far too much of her freckled chest for Luke’s concentration. “Maybe if you focus on how much danger we’re in, it’ll bring it out?”
“I don’t think it works that way,” Luke protested, but he closed his eyes and thought about men with guns. Shaking his head in frustration, he opened his eyes again. “No, if that was going to work, it would have happened when we were captured.”
“Hmm.” Inga frowned and looked thoughtful. “Maybe it’s the opposite of that, then. Something meditative. Perhaps you have to get in touch with your inner bear.”
“I’m not sure that I want to.”
She looked at him curiously with wide-open eyes, faintly lambent in the rain-washed light of the porthole.
“Maybe that really is the problem. I’m trying to think how most people get their first shift, but for most of us, it’s very natural.
For some people, it comes out in danger.
I think that’s what happened with my sister-in-law, Lucy.
” She hesitated. “But honestly, Luke, the thing about most shifters is that our animal is part of us. It doesn’t feel strange or unfamiliar. It’s us.”
“I don’t want it to be!” Luke protested. His voice cracked.
Very near them in the small room, there was a sudden ripping sound, and Rogue was gone. Inga whipped her head around. “Where do you think he went?”
“Probably somewhere that’s not going to help us very much. He’s a Newfoundland dog; they don’t have the temperament to bite people. And he doesn’t have hands to get the keys.”
“Right,” Inga muttered. She blinked rapidly, getting her mind back on track. “Okay, Luke, so let’s assume that maybe the trouble you have getting in touch with your bear is because you don’t think of it as part of you.”
“It’s not,” Luke said.
“It is,” Inga insisted. “That’s how we are.”
“I’m not -- I’m sorry -- but I’m not like you, Inga.”
In a voice that was so gentle it seemed to reach into some long-untouched part of him, Inga said softly, “You are now.” She was quiet for a moment, as her words settled in Luke’s heart with the gentleness of snowflakes.
Then she went on, “And your animal is part of you too, and it always was. Our shift animals are not intruders. They’re us.
And your bear is also you. It always has been.
Whether it’s brave and protective, or fearful and defensive, that’s you, Luke.
It’s always been in there, it just didn’t know how to come out before, and you didn’t know how to talk to it. ”
Luke could tell that some part of him was protesting her characterization of him.
It sounded like a split personality. But—wasn’t she right, though?
The bear really didn’t feel like something completely separate from him.
Brave and protective .... wasn’t that what he had always aspired to, the desire that had brought him into the military in the first place?
He closed his eyes. And this time, rather than reaching for something alien inside himself, he tried to listen to the parts of himself that had always been there.
His trust, his fear, his doubt, his needs.
He had been trying to commune with an alien intruder.
But it wasn’t alien. Inga was right; it was him.
And he needed it now as he had never needed it before.
Not to attack or scare anyone, but simply to be—part of him, giving him the tools to get out of here.
If it was him, couldn’t he just ... move his hand, like this, and let the ghost bear part of him come to the surface, setting him free.
He felt the handcuffs slip gently away from his wrists.