Black Bear Fall: A BWWM Paranormal Romance (Black Bear Saga Book 2) (14 page)

“
I
never thought
I’d see you again,” Anne said as she sat up and winced in pain. The room had two simple beds with straw filled mattresses, a sink and toilet in the corner and a single flickering bulb lighting the room.

“I didn’t think I was going to get out of that room alive,” Grace said as she slowly got up from the floor, each movement exploding bombs of pain in her joints. Seeing Anne sitting on the corner of her bed looking haggard and in pain hurt Graces heart. She sat down on the bed beside her and the two women held each other in silence for a few minutes.

“Did you see anything when they lead you here,” Grace said after awhile.

“Nothing but a whole bunch of locked doors. There is not a lot sound coming from the rest of the place. We must be out in the country somewhere, well away from civilisation,” Anne said.

“Have you picked up any more scents that might help us?” Grace asked.

“No. I have picked up the smell of the mongrels that captured us. The scent is fading fast. Apart from that I have nothing that can help us,” Grace said and looked at the raw skin on Graces wrists. “Are they very painful?” She asked.

“Yes they feel like they are on fire,” Grace said looking down at the damage.

“I’m going to do something that you might find a but gross but will help you. Do you trust me?” Anne asked.

“I trust you,” Grace said looking her friend in the eyes.

Anne lifted Graces arm up to her mouth and looked at the wounds. She stuck out her tongue and then gently licked the damaged area in a large sweeping motion. She lifted Graces other arm to her mouth and did the same.

Grace looked at the wet glistening patches on her wrists and smiled. “Oh wow. I can feel a tingle and the pain is fading away. The burning is gone and it’s down to a dull throb. What did you do?” she asked.

“I healed you. Shifter saliva has a weak healing property and some pain killing traits. It works wonders on small injuries, burn, scratches stuff like that. Your wrists should be healed by the morning,” Anne said giving her a weak smile.

“What about you? Can you heal your injuries?” Grace asked.

Anne shook her head and said, “Not with this device embedded in my flesh. I’m too weak to heal such massive damage. I think the doctor injected me with something to keep me in a weakened state. I can feel something like lightening dancing behind my eyeballs. It keeps erupting every couple of seconds, unexpected jolts of pain. It’s stopping me from focusing and healing myself.” Anne winced again and gripped the side of the bed her knuckles white with the strain.

“Can you transform into a bear and break us out of here?” Grace asked knowing the answer even before it was uttered.

Anne slumped back against the wall and shook her head. “I couldn’t risk the transformation in my current state. I might not have enough energy to fully turn. I’m sorry Grace I can’t risk it.”

Grace crossed the room and lay down on her bed. The mattress was thin and stalks of hay stuck out through the surface. No matter what way she tossed and turned Grace could not get comfortable. “I’m afraid Anne, I don't think I can go through with another dose of the bile. I already feel like I’m going crazy. I’m seeing flashes of an alleyway. Smelling stale tobacco that overpowers me and makes me sick to my stomach. I keep feeling like I’m being followed by someone. I can feel them behind me like they are leering at me and when I turn around no one is there,” Grace said rubbing her eyes, “I nearly collapsed walking down the corridor. I can’t get an image of a gold tooth out of my mind. Its spinning around and around every time I close my eyes. I can’t do it again Anne, we need to get out of here somehow.”

Anne sat up on the bed and looked over at Grace, her mouth was hanging open in shock as she looked at her. “What is about the gold tooth you remember? Try to remember more of what you saw when under the effects of the bile.”

“Please Anne don’t make me relive it again. I feel cold chills running down my spine every time I think of the alleyway. I feel an all consuming fear, something that blocks out all other thought at the moment you know you have meet you end. I can’t do it,” Grace said.

“Grace this is important,” Anne said in a firm voice. “I’m here with you now, nothing can hurt you from the visions. Try to remember more.”

Grace closed her eyes and immediately it felt like the bed was moving under her as the room spun and tilted at sickening angles. A gold tooth spun in the blackness, glinting and shining as if under a spotlight. The darkness faded away and the tooth was sitting on the pale white palm of a young girl of maybe sixteen. Grace felt like she was floating above the alleyway as it tilted from side to side making it hard to concentrate on what was below her. A pile of blood and guts sat steaming at the far end and close to that was the body of a man ripped to shreds. The girl was looking at the tooth in her hand, rolling it back and forth with her index finger and letting the sun glint off it. The girl was smiling. Graces stomach lurched as the stench of tobacco filled her nostrils and the scene bent and warped and flipped as she rocketed down the alley to another man lying on the ground dead and eviscerated.

Grace’s eyes snapped open and she leaned over the edge of her bed feeling close to getting sick again. She groaned loudly as pain flared out from her joints and along her spine. She lay back on the bed feeling exhausted and drained. “I could see more this time,” she said through ragged breaths, “it was mostly in sequence, didn’t jump around like before. Everything was still moving like I was standing on the deck of a boat making it hard for me to concentrate on what was happening below me.” She stopped and breathed heavily trying to get her rapidly increasing breath under control.

“Take your time,” Anne said in a soothing voice, “bile can have a disorientating effect. Most of the things I have heard about what it can do sound like old stories told to entertain shifters as we huddled together in a cave.

Grace wiped her face and it felt like it was covered in a cold slick of grease, her whole body trembled from a chill running through it. “I feel like I have the flu,” Grace said, “my whole body is trembling. Parts of the vision are starting to come back to me. I saw a gold tooth. A man with a gold tooth. Everything became jumbled and then the man was gone but the tooth was still there flying through the sky, twirling and glinting from the sun.”

Anne stiffened and her eyes widened as she looked over at Grace.

“I could see a young woman. Maybe twenty years old. She was throwing the tooth up into the air and catching it. She was smiling I think,” Grace said letting out a moan and clutching her sides.

“It can’t be. It’s not possible,” Anne said coming over to Grace. She knelt beside her bed and took her warm hand in hers. Tears where streaming from her eyes as she looked at Grace. She leaned in and kissed her hand. “The stories are true Grace, you are the one to finally bring peace to all the clans. I can’t believe it,” Anne said repeating it over and over again.

When the searing pain pulsing through her body diminished Grace sat up on the bed and looked at Anne kneeling before her. “What’s going on. What do the old stories tell you? Please Anne you are freaking me out a little, get up off the floor, sit here beside me,” Grace said patting the bed. Am I going insane Grace thought to herself, the constant pain, the chills and now Anne breaking down in front of me, what is happening.

Anne squeezed Graces hand and then wiped the tears from her face. “The visions you are seeing. Those are of me, the young woman is me. That was me in the fifties.”

“What, that’s not possible,” Grace said not understanding what Anne was trying to say.

“The bile allowed you to see into my past. We have legends that some chosen few were able to ingest the liquid and then they could relive parts of someones life. Other stories tell of a select few that can take the bile and then see all the way back to the beginning of shifter kind. You saw a vision of me when I lived in New York,” Anne said.

“It felt like more than a vision. It was as if I was actually there reliving the whole thing,” Grace said.

Anne looked at Grace, her eyes downcast and said, “Are you going to judge me for what I did to those men?”

“I’m in no place to judge anyone. I still can’t piece together everything that happened in the alleyway. It’s like I’m flipping through a book and all I see are a handful of pages. Even the pages are out of sequence, so I can’t really tell what is going on. What I can remember is those two men wanted to hurt you real bad. Why do you think Tulimak wants me? What is his plan?” Grace said.

“I don’t know. The man is dangerous, we need to get back to Twin Rock and warn the elders. They know more about bile then I do. You can’t let Tulimak know that you saw anything from the past. There are events in both clans history that need to stay lost in time. If he starts digging around in our shared history, I don’t know what the outcome could be. He is up to something, our clan has had very little dealing with the white bear clan over the last eighty years. We have had somewhat of an uneasy peace between our two groups. The end of your World War 2 was also the start of a peaceful time between our clans. Things happened between us during that period that I think almost destroyed both sides. I’ve only ever heard whispers and rumours about how close we came to total destruction. You’ve met the elders, they are not the most forthright bunch and they strongly believe in the keeping of certain secrets in order to maintain a future for our clan,” Anne said.

“Do you know anything about this Tulimak? Is he their leader,” Grace said.

“I know very little about the other side. I think he is the son of their leader. We need to get back to the elders, they hold all the answers,” Anne said.

“How do you propose we do that?” Grace said.

Anne winced and looked down at the bandaged wound in her side and the catheter taped to her bandages for bile removal. “I can’t transform with this thing in me. If I rip it out, then maybe I can change and give us a fighting chance of getting out.”

“What about the guards? If they shift do you think you have the strength to take them on?” Grace asked. She could feel a sickening feeling in her stomach at the thought of Anne ripping the surgical tubes out of her own broken flesh.

“They are humans. I can only smell two other shifters in close proximity. Tulimak and that slicked back blonde sadist. I think this compound is run by humans under Tulimak's control. If I can over power the guards we might have a chance to make it to the nearby forest,” Anne said as she ran her fingers gently over her bandaged abdomen.

“When do we try it?” Grace asked.

“You can’t take another dose of the bile, so we have to try it before they come and get you. If I rip out the tubing now, I might be healed enough by the morning to attempt a transformation. We have to do this now,” Anne said looking down at her bandaged side. Blood had started to blossom in widening circles on two spots of the snow white bandage.

Grace looked at Anne, her face was set in a hard look of grim determination that Grace wished she shared. “I don’t know if this is the right thing to do. What if you bleed out during the night. Cant we try to over power the guards ourselves,” she said looking around desperately in the room for something, anything that could be used as a weapon.

Anne looked at Grace with a drawn and serious face and said, “Look at yourself Grace, you are weakened from the bile. I’m doing no better with this damn tap stuck into my guts. Do you really think we would have a chance over powering either of those guards. They looked to me like solid walls of muscle. The only chance we have is if I transform.” Anne put her hand on Graces chin and said ,”Look at me. We have to get out of here. They will experiment on you until you can take it no more. You are important to our clan, it is up to me to get you home anyway I can,” Anne said softening her voice as she saw Graces eyes begin to glisten with tears.

“I’m scared Anne. I’m out of my depth here. My mind is filled with everything from the vision, the fear, the horror and the feeling of power I felt ripping those men apart. The prophecy and everything that goes with it, that I am somehow important to the clan. It’s all getting a bit overwhelming. I don't think I can step up and be the kind of person the clan wants me to be. I can’t do it Anne,” Grace said wiping away the tears from her cheeks.

“You are going to be tested and hurt by what is to come. We are entering a very dark time for our clan and all shifter kind. This is only the start of it Grace. When I look at you I don't see a rightened woman, I see someone who has reserves of strength that she doesn’t even know she contains. You are a strong person and I am going to be strong for both of us. Let’s get this thing over with so that we can both rest,” Anne said wiping a tear from Graces sodden cheek.

Anne rolled up her her t-shirt and with a sharp intake of breath Grace helped her pull it off over her head. Her body was wrapped in a layer of tight bandages and a tube with a catheter was pinned under her arm. Grace unhooked the clasps holding the bandage in place and began to unwrap it. Once the bandage was removed she unclipped the catheter from the bandage and Anne held the end of it. A tube ran from it into a long slit in her side that had been sealed shut with metal staples.The area along the two inch cut was puffy and swollen and blood oozed out from between the staples and from where the tube disappeared into her body. Annes hands were shaking as she held the catheter and she winced in pain from the movement. Grace ripped off a section of bandage and wrapped it around Annes waist and then hooked the tube and catheter onto it to hold it steady. Beads of cold sweat ran down Annes face and her skin had turned a pale ashen colour.

Grace bent in close to the wound and looked at the area where the tube disappeared into Annes flesh. She could taste a bright metallic tang like she was sucking on a penny and the flavour was coating the inside of her mouth. You have to be strong Grace told herself as she examined the wound.

“How do you think it’s held in place?” Grace said.