“I understand,” he spat at me. His eyes were filled with hate.
“Get out of here, right now,” I growled at him.
I rolled off of him, and he ran off to his SUV without bothering to pick up his rifle. I hoped his friends had driven off without him, and he had to walk to the highway.
Luka ran over to me as soon as I rolled off of Jason. I could see the storm brewing in her eyes. There was a dangerous mixture of emotions swirling in there, including fear and anger.
The fear was a good sign. It meant that she still loved me, which I was sure that she would. The anger was because I hid my secret from her. This definitely was not the way that I had planned on her finding out. I was planning on telling her tonight—just not like this.
Luka knelt down beside me, looking aghast at all the blood. It was everywhere. The situation was pretty bad, but it wasn’t as bad as it looked. Part of the blood belonged to Jason, from his face wound, and it was mixing with mine on the ground and on my body.
“I love you, and I’m so angry with you that I could literally spit fire. However, I will kick your butt later. Let’s get you inside.”
She put my arm around her shoulder and stood, slowly helping me to my feet. I knew the blood loss was pretty significant because I felt painfully light-headed. I found it difficult to walk. She half dragged me, half walked me into the cabin, which couldn’t have been easy because I outweighed her by about a hundred pounds.
We made it to the bedroom. She sat me in the chair in the corner and went to get several old blankets and a sheet to put on top of them so that I wouldn’t bleed into the mattress.
Then, she helped me over to the bed and laid me down.
Running for some hot rags, she quickly cleaned the area around the gunshot wounds. They were still bleeding pretty heavily, especially my side. She packed both areas with gauze and then towels over them, taping them tightly.
“I need to get a doctor. Do you have a veterinarian I can call?”
That she called the doctor a veterinarian showed she was angry, but she still had a sense of humor about her, too. I truly was not looking forward to being healed. She was going to tear me to pieces in her own way.
I tried to speak, but the words kept sticking in my throat. I had a hard time staying awake. The world was spinning, and I closed my eyes to try to make it stop.
She shook me. “No, you don’t. You stay awake. And you had better not die on me. You will not take the easy way out. Now, tell me. How do I get a hold of your doctor?”
With a jumble of halting words, I told Luka the doctor’s name. I gave Luka her phone number but said that if the doctor was in her bear form, she wouldn’t be able to answer a call.
Luka’s response was, “There are more of you?”
I tried to smile, but I couldn’t quite get my mouth to cooperate. Again, I slurred and stumbled through several words, giving Luka directions to the cave where she could find the doctor. I also managed to tell her that I loved her.
A few seconds later, I heard Luka leaving a message on the doctor’s phone. She must have been in bear form.
Luka came back and kissed me. “I’ll be back as quickly as I possibly can. I love you, too.”
Her hurried footsteps rushed out the door. I prayed that she would come back in time. I wanted a full lifetime to share with Luka. A full lifetime to love her. The last thing I remembered before the world went completely dark was the door shutting as my wife literally ran for help.
11
Luka
Jumbled thoughts filled my mind as I ducked under hanging limbs and jumped over fallen branches on the forest floor. I barely felt the scratches on my face and arms from brambles and other thorny plants that grabbed at me.
As I ran, the past hour flew through my mind like bright flashes in a kaleidoscope. I remembered how things had unfolded and how I had to find out the secret that Gage had been keeping from me. As I tore through the forest, I thought about the bear.
While most people would have been terrified at the sudden appearance of a grizzly bear, I felt relieved. My gut told me that the bear was not dangerous to me. I had known as soon as I saw it that the bear was there to protect me. The cognitive side of my brain told me that was not smart, but the spiritual side of my mind banished those thoughts.
In reality, the bear wasn’t even dangerous to Jason’s friends. He didn’t try to hurt either of them. He simply scared them. I had to admit I laughed to see the two big men that Jason had brought for backup running down the road with their tail tucked between their legs.
I knew that Jason was going to try to shoot the bear. Without even thinking, I jumped off the porch to try to stop him. I didn’t even try to reason why I would be trying to protect the bear from a human. I had almost reached Jason when he pulled the trigger and hit the bear. I had stood frozen in place. I wasn’t sure I could have moved if I had wanted to.
The bear roared and leaped. The leap was more like what I would imagine a mountain lion to be capable of, but somehow this bear managed it.
I screamed as Jason pulled the trigger again. My stomach clenched into a thousand knots. I was doing my best not to hyperventilate.