Chapter Nine
A Narrow Escape
Bryon’s first reaction was to back away from the door, his gaze flicking from Harold and the other townspeople to the rest of his surroundings.
If he moved quickly enough, maybe he could make it out the back door or through one of the windows.
But something told him the entire house must be surrounded by now.
As far as he could tell, there wasn’t much of a chance of escape for him.
Harold meant business tonight.
“End of the road, Bryon,” Harold said. The man’s lip curled. “If that’s even your real name. At this point, who even knows what’s real and what’s a lie?”
Bryon glanced at the baseball bat in his hands, then back at the man.
Harold’s gaze was murderous. There was no mistaking his intent tonight.
Bryon’s insides clenched. He’d hoped it would be at least a little longer before the town turned against him.
His world was coming apart at the seams, and there didn’t seem to be anything he could do but watch.
He swallowed. “Harold, you’ve known me for several years. You and I have been friends for the longest. How could you turn on me so suddenly?”
“Friends.” Harold snorted. The man stepped into the house, wielding the bat menacingly, and Bryon braced himself for a sudden attack. “If you ever truly were my friend, you wouldn’t have kept such a secret from me for so long. And you’d have spared me the indignity of even knowing you.”
He might as well have swung the bat. His words hit Bryon like heavy blows, each one heavier than the last.
“I never wanted you to find out,” Bryon admitted. “I did it to protect you from—”
“From a monster like you?” Harold spat.
Bryon’s jaw clenched. “From yourself. Look at what seeing me shift has done to you. You’ve gone mad, claiming I’m some sort of monster. There’s so much you don’t understand, Harold. That’s why I never told you what I was.”
“What’s there to understand? It’s like I said the other day: You’re an abomination, Bryon. You should not exist.”
“Yet here I am.” Bryon could feel his unease slowly giving way to anger. His fingers trembled at his sides. If he shifted, he could take down at least three of these humans before any of them managed to land a blow on him.
No, he chided himself. These people already thought he was a monster. Hurting any of them would only make matters worse for him. Besides, they didn’t know better. If anything, he should be focused on making an escape.
Harold drew even closer. “I can’t believe you thought you could make a run for it. You thought you’d skip town and find some new place to live, eh? You shouldn’t be allowed to live among people. You shouldn’t be allowed to live at all.”
His lower lip trembled, and for the first time, Bryon saw the pain in the man’s eyes.
His heart nearly stopped beating for a second.
It wasn’t just his world that was falling apart.
Harold’s was, too. The man was still struggling to process what he’d seen the other night, not to mention he was undoubtedly questioning his own judgment in light of their friendship. Harold was far from stable.
“Harold...” Bryon breathed a sigh. “I’m sorry. For everything.”
His best friend—former best friend—gave a laugh that was almost inhuman.
“Sorry? What, so we should all just turn around and walk home, forget that there’s a monster in our midst?
We’re here to rid this town of you. And if there are any others like you...
well, they’ve got something similar coming. ”
“You’re not thinking straight.”
“Maybe I wasn’t thinking straight when I agreed to befriend you,” Harold said, “but I sure as hell am now.”
He swung his bat so suddenly, Bryon almost didn’t see it coming. The bat moved through the air in a wide arc and would have shattered his cheekbone if he hadn’t lunged backward.
“Harold!” Bryon stared, wide-eyed, at the man. “What are you—?”
Before he could complete his question, Harold struck again. This time, Bryon ducked low, the bat swinging above his head. Before Harold could strike a third time, he kicked the man’s feet out from under him, knocking him to the floor.
There was a cry from outside, and a few men rushed into the house, weapons at the ready. Bryon recognized them immediately. These were men he’d seen on an almost daily basis for the past eight years, men he’d shared beers and conversation with at bars and parties. And they were here to kill him.
His crime? Not being human.
The first man rushed at him with a yell, but Bryon simply stepped aside, sticking out his foot. The man tripped and hit the floor next to Harold, clutching his nose. Bryon turned to face the other men, just in time for a shape to fill his vision. Pain exploded in his face, and he went down, hard.
“You’re not getting out of here alive, Sanders,” said a deep voice. “Me and the rest of the boys here, we’re going to make sure of that.”
“Ed.” He knew the owner of the voice to be the bartender. Sure enough, when he opened his eyes, a squat man with bushy eyebrows stood over him, fists clenched. “Ed, you don’t have—”
“Harold told us everything, you know.” The bartender had a look of disgust on his face. Next to him, Harold and the other man Bryon had tripped were picking themselves up off the floor, the latter nursing a broken nose. “What he saw. Whatever you are, Sanders, it ain’t human.”
Bryon pulled himself to his feet. His face still throbbing with pain, he faced the men before him. More of them had come into the house, all bearing expressions of anger or revulsion as they regarded him. His pulse raced. There were definitely too many of them to defend himself from at once.
Was this the end of the line for him? His gaze drifted to Harold, and his heart thudded almost painfully in his chest. Killed by his best friend. The irony of that almost brought a smile to his lips.
Almost.
“I never meant you any harm, Harold,” he said. “I never meant any of you harm. I’ve been nothing but a friend to you all.”
A dangerous smirk tugged at the man’s lips. “Unfortunately, that makes only one of us. We mean you plenty of harm.”
He stepped closer, raising his baseball bat again.
And Bryon swung into action.
He moved seconds before he even realized he was moving, kicking Harold in the chest. The man staggered backward, knocking into several other men and nearly toppling them like bowling pins. There was a collective cry as Ed and a few others lunged forward.
Bryon was quicker to react this time. He spun, dodging their attacks, and began to shift, fur brown spreading across his skin, teeth and claws extending.
Within seconds, his inner wolf had clawed its way out, leaving his clothes shredded on the floor.
He rose on all fours, his body coursing with energy, his senses heightened.
He could smell the fear in the men standing before him.
He snarled, glowering at them, and took a step forward.
“Jesus Christ!” one of them yelled, stumbling back and almost landing on his rump. “What in the—”
“Get back!” another man cried. “What the hell just happened!”
“I told you!” Harold pointed, his eyes comically wide with triumph. “I told you he was a monster! Get him!”
Nothing happened. Harold looked around at the other men. They all stared from him to Bryon, none of them looking too eager to attack.
Bryon saw his chance then. While the men stood staring in shock and trepidation, he turned and bounded from the living room, tearing out of the house into the night.
He stuck to the shadows as he powered down the street, avoiding the glare of streetlamps and vehicle headlights.
Even after he rounded the corner, he could hear Harold’s scream of rage.
He continued running. He needed to get as far away from this town as he possibly could.
His life depended on it.
***
“Wow,” Miranda said, once Bryon was done talking. “I mean... wow.”
“Keep moving,” was all the response she got.
She hadn’t even realized she’d stopped moving again. More than once, as Bryon narrated his past ordeal, she’d paused in her tracks as he spoke, struggling to make sense of his experience. It had to be fiction. Except... Bryon didn’t seem like the type of guy who made up stories.
“Miranda.” His voice broke through her thoughts once again.
She blinked at him, realizing she still hadn’t moved from the spot. With a quick nod of her head, she continued, walking behind Bryon as he hobbled along the narrow path. She stared at his broad back, the details of his story still fresh in her mind.
“I...” She searched for the right words. “I just can’t believe all that happened to you. Not that I think you’re lying to me, but... man. This is a lot to take in.”
It was also a lot for one person to experience.
Getting outed, having an entire town turn on him...
Miranda wouldn’t wish that on her worst enemy.
Earlier, when Bryon mentioned having less patience and trust for humans, she’d figured something bad had happened to him.
She just hadn’t realized it was at this magnitude.
“Take your time,” Bryon replied without looking over his shoulder. He reached up to brush aside a tree branch.
“What happened to you was terrible. I honestly can’t imagine what it must have been like, having your best friend turn on you in the blink of an eye and even try to kill you.”
She saw his shoulders tremble a little, and it dawned on her that he was chuckling. When he responded, however, there was no humor in his tone.
“No, you definitely can’t, Miranda,” he said. “It’s not really an experience humans can relate to. Especially since you kind are usually the ones harming supernaturals and animals.”
His words hit her like a low blow to the gut, but Miranda decided it would be unwise to respond to them.
They continued walking in near silence, her gaze still mostly trained on Bryon.
Her mind worked rapidly, trying to come up with the right words to say to him. But what exactly could she tell him?
She couldn’t seem to shake the feeling that, as terrible as his story was, it had been watered down for her convenience.
This man was dealing with a lot more than he’d let on so far.
No doubt, he’d experienced other terrible things simply because he was a supernatural.
How many others out there like him were suffering the same, or worse?
And all because of humans.
Miranda bit her lip. She wasn’t much different, was she? If she was being honest with herself, she’d wondered a little whether to tell people about the creature she’d seen in the woods. But wasn’t that what Bryon’s old friend Harold had done?
Ahead of her, Bryon stumbled a little, and she heard a grunt of pain. Her chest tightened with concern. He’d injured himself trying to save a random animal in the woods. He didn’t deserve to have almost lost his life because of who he was, because he’d been seen.
And she’d had the effrontery to think her life was hard. Miranda almost scoffed at herself. Her problems with Jerry were nothing compared to what she’d just heard. At least she still had the option of reporting her ex-boyfriend to the authorities.
They seemed to have walked for several long minutes by the time she spoke up again.
“Have you heard from Harold since it happened?” The words tumbled out of her mouth faster than she could clamp a hand over it.
Bryon still didn’t turn around, but she saw his shoulders stiffen as he walked. “No, of course not. If I had, I’d probably be dead by now. Or worse.”
Miranda didn’t want to think about what fate might be worse for him than dying at the hands of a crowd of terrified, enraged humans. Another question bubbled up in her mind. “Do you think about him?”
He gave no response, and she didn’t bother asking again. Instead, she doubled her pace to match his, sidling up to him and touching his arm. Bryon stiffened for a moment but soon relaxed. She curled her fingers over his bicep, feeling a slight pulse against her fingertips.
“I’m really sorry for all that happened to you,” she told him. “It’s... it’s horrible, and you didn’t deserve to experience it. Not one bit.”
He slowed in his tracks, turning his brown-eyed gaze toward her, and she felt her heart skip a few beats. “I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t surprised to hear that from a human.”
It wasn’t too difficult to figure out why. Miranda gave a half shrug. “Well, I’m not exactly like other humans.”
The second the words were out of her mouth, she realized just how silly they sounded. The look Bryon shot her didn’t help matters.
“I doubt that,” Bryon said with a raised eyebrow. “I remember the fear in your eyes when you saw me shift.”
Touché.
Hard to argue against that point. She stopped walking, forcing him to do the same, and faced him. “I guess you’re right about that. But I’d like to be better. Better than Harold and the others. You can trust me.”
That eyebrow rose a little higher. His eyes glinted softly with something she couldn’t quite put her finger on. “Can I?”
Miranda swallowed. “Yes, you can.” She gripped him a little tighter, stepping closer to him. “I promise I’ll keep your secret. Cross my heart and all that.”
Bryon stared at her for a long moment. Then the corners of his mouth twitched slightly.
“Thank you,” he said. “That’s a relief.”
“You’ve saved my life so far,” she replied. “At least, somewhat. I’d probably be dead without you. It’s the least I could do.”
His brown gaze seemed to intensify. “Is that the only reason you’re willing to keep my secret?”
It was suddenly becoming harder to breathe. Miranda swallowed, glancing momentarily between his eyes and lips.
“Well,” she managed, sucking in as deep a breath as she could, “I can think of one or two other reasons.”
His eyes twinkled at her words, and this time, he smiled a little wider. Miranda’s heart gave a rapid flutter. Would he kiss her like he had earlier today? She sure hoped he would. Her insides tingled with anticipation. Was it just her, or was Bryon’s face drawing closer to hers by the second?
Before his lips could brush hers, he suddenly pulled back, and Miranda’s initial disappointment immediately dissipated at the sight of his expression. His eyes were wide, his eyebrows so high up on his face she could barely make them out.
“What’s going on?” she wanted to know.
Then it hit her. Somewhere in the distance, a soft cry could be heard. She and Bryon stared at each other, understanding dawning on Miranda.
“It’s the foal,” she gasped. “We’re close!”