5. Chapter 5
The Wall in the Sky
Meredith
Okay. So maybe this wasn’t like those paranormal romances.
Those bitch heroines lied. There was nothing romantic about being carried on the back of a shifted whatever-the-fuck-he-was.
It was terrifying, I realized, as the thing carrying me through a snow-blind forest at a dead sprint used to be a man - a human man - that I patched up on my own couch.
I lived every second of that terror with both of my fists locked in his fur and my face pressed low against his neck, because the wind alone felt like it could take my skin off better than any exfoliating soap or loofah I’d ever tried.
“Slow down,” I shouted. I knew my words were useless even as I said them, because nothing about the animal under me looked interested in slowing down for anything.
His stride ate up the ground in long, punishing bounds, snow flying off his hooves in sheets.
Trees blurred past close enough that a branch caught my shoulder, and left a line of fire I knew would sting as soon as the adrenaline pulsing through my veins slowed. That’s gonna leave a mark.
I’d grown up in these woods. And when I was brave enough to peek through Dash’s wild mane, I knew roughly where we were.
He’d run north of the ridge, past the old logging road, deep enough into the backcountry that if I fell off right now I’d be looking at a long, cold walk home, with no cell signal, and two brothers who were probably tearing the county apart looking for me.
Fuck. My cell phone. I left it on the kitchen counter.
A fat lot of good that was. You dumb bitch, I berated myself.
Cole’s face flashed through my mind, the fury on it right before the door slammed, and under the fury, a raw thread of fear.
I’d caught it for half a second before Dash pulled me out into the night.
I hated that Dash and I put that look on his face.
I hated it more that I didn’t have the first idea how to fix it from here, moving at what felt like forty miles an hour, on the back of something that used to grab bullets meant for a moose.
He ran, dodging trees, leaping over ravines and creeks that had long frozen over. I tried to see where he ran because I needed landmarks, but he moved too fast. Whenever he stops, I’m running the other way. He’s fucking insane.
When I could take the jostling no longer, I leaned forward.
“Dash.” I said his name low, right against the base of his ear, the way I’d seen characters in television shows talk down a spooked horse.
I had no experiences with horses, and I had even less experience talking down anything that outweighed a horse, and also occasionally had hands and a human form.
“Dash, hey. It’s me. You know me. Slow down, please.
It’s not too comfortable back here. I’m cold. ”
Something in his stride shifted a fraction, as if the sound of my voice found a crack in whatever panic drove him forward. For one second, I grasped hope that my words might penetrate his brain and my plan might work.
Then the world stopped.
Not slowed, but stopped, all at once. Dash ran, a full-body collision with something that wasn’t there.
The air turned solid, as if an airbag exploded right in my face from a car crash.
The impact threw me clean off his back into a snowbank hard enough to knock the breath out of me.
My vision flashed white with pain. “Ow. Son of a bitch.”
I lay there for a second, staring straight up at the sky.
It didn’t look like any night sky I knew.
This sky was strange and shimmered above the treeline.
Some faint ripple in the air appeared like heat coming off summer asphalt, which would have been normal, except it was December, and below freezing, and there was no heat source anywhere near me.
“Dash!” I scrambled up, ignoring the pain in my shoulder and head. Snow dripped down my collar, and every part of me screamed from the fall. I found him sprawled a few feet away, still in his animal form, massive and unmoving, one hind leg twitching in the snow.
He hit that invisible wall at a dead run, and it had put him down like he’d hit a truck.
“Dash!” I raced to his side, my legs wobbling with every step.
I dropped to my knees in the snow beside him.
My hands went to his heaving side, and I pressed gently, hoping I wouldn’t feel a broken rib, or worse, no heartbeat.
I felt a tremor run through all his muscle, and for a terrible second I thought the impact had killed him outright, until his ribs expanded under my palms in one long, ragged breath.
“Okay. Okay, you’re breathing, that’s good.
That’s something.” My voice came out shaking worse than his ragged breathing.
“What did you run into? There’s nothing there!
I need you to wake up and shift back. Please.
I’m scared. There’s nothing there.” I glanced around. “I’m serious, Dasher. There’s nothing…”
“Holy fuck!” I gasped when the light hit us. I raised my hand to my eyes, blinded by a light as bright as mid-day sun.
The glare came from three directions at once, hard white beams cutting through the trees.
My first thought, insane as it sounds, was thank goodness the police are here.
Help has arrived! Some part of my brain was still trying to force whatever this was into something that made sense, because no person changed into an animal.
I thought I had things figured out, until the shapes behind the lights resolved into something that made no sense at all.
They were small, quick figures in matching dark tactical gear.
The shadowy people moved through the snow with a coordination that read military professionals.
But their size was wrong. Everything was off about the whole situation.
“Stay back from the animal,” one of them called out, their voice pitched high.
It took me a full second to understand why the voice sounded strange, and another few heartbeats after the second call, for my brain to comprehend what my eyes saw.
The person attached to the odd voice stood maybe four feet off the ground.
“What the…” I got out, and didn’t get further, because the nearest of them raised something that looked like a dart rifle and put a shot square into Dash’s flank, before I’d even seen the rest appear.
Dash convulsed once under my hands, a full-body shudder, and went boneless in the snow.
“No… hey, you fucks, no!” I was on my feet in an instant, putting myself between Dash’s prone body and the rest of the shapes closing in through the trees.
Snow soaked through my jeans, my heart pounding so hard I could feel it in my teeth.
“Get away from him. I don’t know what the hell you people are, but you get away from him right now!
” I assumed a karate pose, thankful for the lessons my brothers insisted I took, telling me self-defence would always come in handy.
When I get Dash and me out of this fucked-up situation, remember to thank Cole for those lessons.
“Ma’am, you need to come with us.” The voice belonged to the nearest of them, and up close, in the spill of the lights, I made out a small, sharp-featured face.
He, at least I assumed it was a he, appeared unbothered by the fact that I was about two seconds from doing something violent.
What the fuck? The small person had pointed ears, I noted.
Maybe I wasn’t so far off a fictional heroine, because I decided to note details instead of panicking.
Pointed ears, and a face that looked like it belonged on a Christmas card.
No way. No fucking way.
“I’m not going anywhere with you.” My hand found a fistful of Dash’s fur or mane again, in a useless, instinctive attempt to shield a body twice my size. “Whatever you shot him with, you tell me right now what it was.”
To my surprise, small hands closed on my arms from behind.
I counted at least half a dozen, maybe more.
They gripped me with supernatural strength, and the last thing I saw before the trees, lights, and Dash’s still, breathing bulk all tipped sideways in my vision, was an angular face leaning close to mine.
If I didn’t know better, I’d say it looked apologetic in a way that did nothing to soften what came next.
“Sorry about this,” the voice said as something sharp bit into my neck. His hand moved in quick and precise motions, and the cold, bright world went soft and slow until it disappeared entirely.
The last thing I remember thinking, right before the darkness overtook me was that I really hoped this counted as a dream, because there was no way on God’s green Earth that elves with tranquilizer guns were standing over a downed reindeer shifter in the middle of the Alaskan backcountry.
And some part of me, even half-conscious, understood that whatever waited on the other side of the darkness was going to make the last few days look like nothing I’d ever experienced.