Chapter 23 #2
“Long story,” Inga said, grasping the older woman’s hand in both of hers.
Dr. Moberly had been a researcher on the ship during its previous trips in waters near Westerly Cove.
“But it’s good to see you safe.” She glanced at the others.
The one tying up the soldier was a marine biologist she vaguely recognized from last year’s research trip, an outdoorsy man in his thirties.
The others were all women, two of them very young, probably students.
“Is this all of you? Is anyone else on board other than Brockton and his men?”
“No, it’s just us,” Moberly said. “We had a skeleton staff because we were just starting the research season. They told the ship’s crew they were fired and replaced them with their own people, but took us with them.”
Inga felt that this was a stroke of luck. It meant there was no one else to rescue. They just needed to get these people out of here.
“Did that guy walk through the door?” one of the girls said.
“And where’d that dog come from?” said the other.
Inga didn’t bother answering, partly because she had no idea how to answer, and Luke seemed to feel likewise. “Is everyone well enough to travel?” he asked. “Anyone hurt?” He addressed the question primarily to Moberly, who was clearly senior.
“One of those assholes, pardon my French, broke Meredith’s wrist,” Moberly said. One of the girls had her arm clamped to her chest. “But we’re all right other than that. Can you get us off this ship?”
“We’re going to try,” Luke said. “Alternatively, if you want to lock yourself in somewhere and wait while we go for help, we can do that. But there’s no telling what these people are going to do when we leave.”
“We’re coming with you,” said the male biologist. There was a small chorus of agreement.
“Thought you’d feel that way.” Luke grinned. One of the girls was petting Rogue. “The dog’s name is Rogue. He’s on our side.”
“Well, of course he is,” the girl said. “All dogs are good at heart.”
“Maybe not every single dog, but this one certainly is.” Luke took the gun back from Inga.
“Say, I hate to ask this,” Inga said. “But is there anyone here who has feet about my size? I just need socks or something. My feet are freezing.”
The grateful hostages were all willing to give up footwear, and Inga ended up wearing Moberly’s shoes, which were just snug enough to fit comfortably without socks. She felt ridiculous in a raincoat and someone else’s shoes and nothing else, but the relief was immediate.
“Okay,” Luke said, gesturing the researchers together.
“I’ll go in front, Inga behind, and the rest of you in the middle.
We’re going to head straight for the deck and try to steal one of their boats.
They can’t fly the helicopter in this weather, so all we really have to worry about are the guys with guns. Does anyone know how many there are?”
“Not very many, I don’t think,” Moberly said. “I couldn’t give you an exact head count, but I don’t get the impression that it’s a big operation. Who are they, anyway? Hijackers? What do they want?”
“The police will have to get it out of them,” Luke said, with a swift glance at Inga. “Come on, let’s go, quickly.”
As they began to file out, with Luke leading the way, Moberly asked Inga, “What did happen to your clothes, dear? Please tell me they didn’t try to—”
“Oh, no,” Inga said quickly. “Nothing like that. Just a, uh, wardrobe malfunction. I had to swim.”
“In these waters, at this time of year? You must be freezing!”
“I’ll just say that I hope I don’t have to do it again.” Inga urged Moberly ahead of her. “Let’s get out of here.”
“What’s the quickest way to the escape boats?” Luke called down the line of people.
Moberly moved to the front to direct him.
“We’re going to need a distraction,” Inga called up to him. “Even if there aren’t very many of them and we’ve already taken out some, it’s not like they’ll just stand around while we all troop over to a lifeboat.”
The by-now-familiar zipping sound came from behind her, and she turned to see that Rogue was gone.
“Uh, never mind. I think we’ve got our distraction.”
They emerged on a rain-lashed deck. The fog and rain made it difficult to see, but Inga had lived her entire life in Westerly Cove and knew it all like the back of her hand.
The ship had, indeed, moved into the mouth of the harbor to wait out the storm.
Being a deepwater ship, it probably couldn’t go any further.
The shallow cove accommodated fishing boats easily, but it wasn’t set up to handle anything bigger.
“This is better than I hoped,” Inga said to Luke as they grouped together again. “Any boat will be able to get us to shore from here, since it doesn’t have to handle the open—”
“You!”
Brockton appeared from the other side of the lashed-down and rain-wet helicopter. He was soaked and there was dog hair on his fatigues.
“Can you get the lifeboat launched?” Luke asked Moberly, slinging the gun off his shoulder.
The older woman nodded, tapped the male biologist on the arm, and the two of them ran to start working on it.
“I’ll hold them off. Inga—” he began.
“I’m not letting you go down in some kind of last stand.” Inga moved to stand beside him. Brockton had at least a half-dozen men with him; their odds weren’t good. “What if I shift?”
“You’re not bulletproof as a bear. One well aimed shot from one of those guns and it’s over.”
“We’re about to launch!” Moberly shouted. “Get in!”
Luke shook his head. “Go! I’ll follow—”
“We’ll follow!” Inga interrupted.
“We’ll take one of the other boats!” Luke called. “They don’t want you, they want us. You’ll be safer without us. Go!”
He didn’t turn to see if they followed his instructions. Inga stayed with him as they ran along the railing.
There was a great splash as the lifeboat hit the water.
“What are you going to do?” Inga asked.
“Jump, I guess. You’ll be fine if you shift, right?”
“Yes, but you can’t shift!”
“I guess I’m gonna have to figure it out.” A bullet chipped paint off the bulkhead just in front of them. “Go!”
It had been a long time since Inga and her brothers used to dare each other to jump off high rocks into the sea, but she still had the knack.
Hearing the crack of more guns, she flung herself over the edge, hoping Luke was right behind her.
She struck the icy water, went under, and came up as a bear, struggling to rid herself of the raincoat. So much for Dr. Moberly’s shoes.
Luke splashed into the water next to her—as a human. Inga bear-paddled next to him. He wasn’t wearing a life vest, and if he didn’t shift, the cold water would drag him down before he made it to shore. She wondered if she could tow him through the water somehow.
But then, just as she was getting desperate, he shifted. The bear flowed out of him, as if he had been doing it all his life.
Together they struck out for land. The soldiers on the ship had ceased trying to shoot at them, but looking back, Inga saw that they were launching the powerboat. The lifeboat was some distance away.
There was no chance that two swimming bears could beat a speedboat. Rather than striking out for the town itself, which they couldn’t possibly reach without getting overtaken, Inga turned to swim at an angle for the rugged rocks sheltering the bay.
She heard the boat gaining on them as she struggled out of the water, with Luke in her wake. Inga shifted so she could use her human fingers and toes to cling to the rocks. There was nothing like a beach here. She was abruptly very conscious of icy rain hitting her like needles.
“They’re launching the helicopter,” Luke gasped, pulling himself out behind her, human-shaped. Icy water streamed off his naked body, and he was shivering.
“What?” Inga looked around. She hadn’t even noticed the additional sound of the helicopter’s rotors, but there it went, lifting off the deck into the storm. “Can it fly in this weather?”
“I didn’t think so, at least not safely, but it looks like they don’t care. I bet Brockton is on it.”
Inga had thought the speedboat was chasing them, but it turned out that it was going for the lifeboat instead.
Inga swiped rainwater out of her eyes and pressed herself against the rocks.
The waves were beating at them both, threatening to tear them off their precarious perch and wash them out to sea again.
“Looks like they’re chasing them straight into town,” Luke said grimly, climbing up beside her. Through the rain and the sea spray, it was hard to tell exactly what was happening, but it looked like the lifeboat was almost to the docks. “Does Westerly Cove have any kind of police force?”
“Not at all. If we need something like that, we have to call the Mounties. But we almost never do.”
“Yeah, because the town’s protected.” It came out too tired to be sarcastic.
Inga looked up, and Luke did too, as the helicopter beat its way through the storm toward them. She felt Luke’s shoulder press against hers, and his hand brushed her hip. Inga reached down and took it. She found herself wondering where Rogue was and if they would ever see him again.
They were probably about to be shot. She wondered if diving into the water would save them. Maybe if they went down as deep as they could ... Polar bears were great divers, and she vaguely remembered from some movie she’d watched a long time ago that bullets rapidly lost their velocity in water.
But they would have to come up for air eventually. They might be able to escape a boat that way, if they were very lucky. But not a helicopter, which could canvass the surface of the water until it found them.
“I’m sorry I got you into this,” Luke said.
“I made my own choices,” Inga retorted. She squeezed his hand.
The sound of the helicopter was incredibly loud. Inga could see that the side door was open, and she glimpsed someone in that gap leaning out with a rifle.
“Inga,” Luke said in a very different tone. “What on Earth is that? One of the griffins?”
He took his hand off the rocks for a moment to point.
Inga looked up. There was something—no, several somethings swooping out of the rain and mist swirling around the helicopter. She couldn’t see them clearly through the storm. They had wings, and they were huge.
“They’re too big,” she shouted above the noise. “I don’t know what they are.”
But she did, actually. She had looked at them every day of her life. She’d just never seen them from this angle before.
Let alone moving, flying, alive.
The helicopter was under attack by gargoyles.
There were at least a half dozen of them, with more arriving by the moment, swooping out of the clouds.
Inga stared, open-mouthed. At first the pilot didn’t seem to be aware of them, but that changed in an instant when they got close enough to grab hold.
Two of them started trying to climb in through the open cargo door.
Another seized hold of the helicopter’s landing skid, dragging it down on that side.
The helicopter swayed and dipped dangerously.
Bursts of gunfire came from the open door.
Inga and Luke could only stare as the huge machine wobbled above them.
Inga was aware that they were still in danger, now from having the helicopter crash on them, but she wasn’t sure if the water would be any safer.
There was a sudden scream and someone plummeted from the open doorway. He fell like a stone and crashed into the water, and didn’t come up.
The helicopter started rising, going up, trying to escape its attackers. As it flew erratically out to sea, into the full force of the storm, the noise abated and Inga became aware of more gunfire and screaming coming from closer to the town.
“There are more of them,” Luke exclaimed.
The men in the powerboat were also under siege.
Several gargoyles had swooped down on them and were now yanking them out of the boat and flinging them into the water.
The great creatures appeared to be impervious to gunfire.
Made of rock, Inga thought; of course they were.
Was that a colorful lei around the neck of one of them?
She gave a half-hysterical laugh, and realized that she and Luke were dangerously close to hypothermia.
But she couldn’t stop watching. She turned to find out what had happened to the helicopter, just in time to see it tilt on its side and completely lose its grip on the air.
It was almost majestic as it fell with seeming slowness and hit the waves in a great explosion of spray.
It vanished beneath the water. The gargoyles continued to circle above the site of the wreck, like huge gray carrion birds.
Inga tugged on Luke’s hand to get his attention. Her hands were so numb by now that she couldn’t feel his fingers wrapped around hers.
“We need to get ashore,” she told him through chattering teeth.
Together, they slipped into the water. Inga shifted and almost gasped in relief as the freezing water became nearly warm.
Luke shifted with almost as much ease. Still, they were both cold and exhausted, and it was a slow slog of a swim until they reached a part of the bay where the beach was shallow and accessible enough that they could climb ashore.
By that time, the powerboat had disappeared as well, although Inga was too busy swimming to notice if it had fled back to the ship or simply went down with all hands under the gargoyle onslaught.
At the moment, she was too tired and cold to care.
She and Luke struggled out of the waves and collapsed on the pebble beach.
Rain continued to drive down on them, but their heavy fur protected them.
Inga rolled so she was pressed against Luke.
She knew she was going to have to shift in a moment; they didn’t want to be discovered here as bears by townspeople who didn’t know their secret.
But for the moment, she was too tired to move.
She didn’t hear the telltale ripping sound, but Rogue abruptly came splashing out of the water. He flopped down next to them, soaked and panting. Inga raised her head enough to nose at the dog, but she didn’t smell blood on him. Rogue licked her nose.
With her head up, she could hear a babble of distant voices.
She and Luke were more-or-less hidden behind some of the larger boats, but when she pushed herself up on shaky front legs, she saw that the lifeboat was pulled up to one of the docks, and there was a small crowd of people out on the dock, surrounding the rescued researchers.
She saw no sign of any gargoyles. The ones circling the helicopter wreck had disappeared at some point while she and Luke were swimming for shore.
It’s over, she thought. It’s finally over.