The pistol started to swing down. Lynda watched Greg's face grow even paler as the muzzle lowered. She could almost hear the sound of the gang leader's finger tightening on the trigger. Suddenly, the pistol stopped.
Glancing at the window, Greg's face cleared. He turned and stared straight into the gang leader's eyes. “All right.”
“No!” Lynda cried, but Greg didn't seem to hear her.
He turned the gun around, until he held it by the barrel.
The shotgun's muzzle dipped. “Toss it in the corner,” the gang leader said.
Greg nodded and hurled the pistol at the gang leader's head.
The gang leader ducked, the gun bounced off the wall, and Greg threw himself at the curtains. The chair tipped sideways, but he managed to hang on to the fabric. For a second, the sturdy cotton weave supported his weight. Then the rod snapped, and the drapes collapsed over him. The moon's bleached light spread like spilled milk across the curtains and into the room.
“Dumb ass!” The other man stood and moved from behind the table to where Greg lay struggling beneath the cloth. “We checked everything before we made our move. Ain't no one can see into that window from the street, and the neighbor's curtains been shut since sunset.”
With a single vicious thrust, the gang leader slammed the gun's butt into Greg's head, and Greg stopped moving.
Lynda felt the blow like a kick in the stomach. “Greg!”
Ignoring her, the gang leader kicked the curtain aside and examined Greg's motionless form.
He lay on his side. The cord securing him to the chair coiled around his bound feet. Moonlight glistened off the rope and off Greg's frightening pallor. The developing bruise on his temple was the only spot of color on his face. From where she sat, Lynda couldn't tell if he was breathing.
The gang leader turned to Lynda, and his smile froze her soul. “Don't worry, sweet stuff. Your boyfriend ain't dead, just sleeping. He'll wake up soon enough.” He chuck-led. “Don't worry, and do what I say. I won't kill you.” Lynda blanched at the emphasis on the word “kill.”
Scooting her chair away from him as fast as she could, she screamed. She put all her theatrical training behind it and projected the piercing cry as far as she could. Her shriek split the nocturnal silence and ricocheted off the plaster walls.
The gang leader waited until Lynda's chair hit the wall, then sauntered after her. She watched the murderous light rekindle in his eyes. When he reached her, he lifted the shotgun and swung the truncated barrel across her face. The pain shocked Lynda into silence. “None of that,” he said. “You got nothing to scream about. Yet.”
He caressed her bleeding cheek with the gun's barrel. Following the line of blood dripping down her throat, he slipped the cold metal under the strap on her left shoulder. With a savage tug, he snapped it.
The strap fell, drawing the fabric after it. Watching the dress glide off her breast, Lynda longed for the bra she'd decided not to wear.
The gang leader tucked the shotgun under his arm. “Very nice,” he murmured, cupping her breast in his good hand.
“Please,” Lynda gasped, pulling as far away from him as the cord allowed.
His hand slid under the black silk to her other breast and squeezed hard enough to make Lynda cry out. He laughed. “Can't get away, sweet stuff. You mine, now.”
“No!” The word shattered the air.
Lynda looked from the gang leader to where Greg lay. He was awake and leaning over, tearing at the rope around his feet. She saw his shoes fly off while he struggled to free them. Then he sat up and smiled. It was terrifying. The gentle warmth she associated with his smile had fled, re-placed by a joyful savagery. He opened his mouth, and a roar filled the room, starting low and building in volume until the floor shook.
The gang leader froze, his hand still over Lynda's breast. “What the—”
Forgetting the gang leader, his threats, and his hand, Lynda watched Greg's face change. His glasses fell from his elongating face, fangs erupted from his gaping jaw. Brown bristles shadowed his whole body and grew into thick, shaggy fur. His hands thickened and long claws sprouted from his fingertips. With one slash, he severed the rope binding his feet.
Lynda heard someone laughing hysterically and realized it was her. With his clothes ripping and falling from him, Greg looked just like the Incredible Hulk on the old TV show. Only he wasn't a big green man; he was a big brown bear.
The bear shook the last rags of clothing from its fur and lunged at the gang leader. Shaking off his paralysis, the man raised the shotgun. The instant before the bear reached him, the dining room reverberated with the gun's blast. Knocking the gang leader to the floor, the bear clamped its jaws around the man's throat.
“Oh my God! Oh my God! Oh my God!” Lynda screamed. Blood spurted from between the bear's teeth.
The bear released its grip, and turned to Lynda. Its blue eyes held her gaze a moment, then clouded. The bear collapsed, pinning the gang leader beneath him. Neither man nor bear moved.
For the first time, Lynda noticed the blood matting the bear's shoulder. “Oh my God, Greg, you've been shot!” Helpless, and horrified, all Lynda could think of was Greg lying beneath that fur, bleeding to death. Unable to watch, she tore her gaze away and rocked her chair back and forth, trying to loosen the rope holding her.
“Help!” she cried until her throat was raw, “Help!”
No one answered.
After she wore her voice to shreds, Lynda forced her-self to look at the bear. Blood from its shoulder mixed with the flow from the man's throat, covering the floor. “Greg,” she pleaded. “Get up. Please. Move. Do something.”
Nothing happened.
“Please don't die,” she whispered. “Please, God, don't let him die.”
PAIN CHARGED after him like a locomotive in a railway tunnel. A single, blood red beacon swept the path, back and forth and back again, and every pass seared him.
He ran as he'd never run before, all four feet flying, thirty, forty, fifty miles an hour and more. Still, the tormenting engine drew nearer.
Far ahead, a light appeared. It grew as he approached. Clean and cool, the radiance beckoned. He sprang toward the light and landed in a forest.
Ancient trees surrounded him. Beeches and oaks, red-woods and pines, trees both familiar and exotic touched branches high above his head. A full moon glowed through the lattice work. He could see by its light that some of the trees wore autumn finery, while some were thickly green, and still others flaunted the fragile leaves of spring. The air smelled of forest mulch, hazelnuts, and honey. He turned, but the tunnel had disappeared along with his pursuer.
A gentle voice brushed his ears. “Nothing can hurt you here.”
A woman stepped from between two trees. Silver hair billowed around a pale, lined face, yet her stride bespoke a young girl's energy. The set of her eyes looked familiar, and he wondered where he'd seen her.
She smiled and threw her arms around him. “Welcome home, dear heart.”
“Do I know you?” His voice rang through the wood, startling him. He'd never been able to speak from a bear's throat before.
“No, but I know you. You were just a baby when I came here. I held you in my arms in the hospital and sang you the old lullabies. I am Oma, your great-grandmother.”
“But how—”
“Never mind how. The dance is about to begin. Pick your tree and join us.”
He became aware of rustling in the forest. Animals slipped among the trees, all kinds of beasts, from elk to wolves to chipmunks. An overpowering desire to follow swept through him, and he realized what he needed to do. Rake his claws along any of the trunks, and he could join them.
A redwood towered above the lesser trees in front of him. He could almost feel the shaggy bark between his claws and smell the freshly cut wood. He went to the tree and rose to his full height. Stretching up against the trunk, he prepared to score its length when a voice stopped him.
“Please don't die,” it whispered. “Please, God, don't let him die.”
He forgot the tree and dropped to his feet. “Lynda?”
“She calls from another world, one you have left be-hind,” the woman said quietly. “After you mark your tree, the memories will fade. You will remember your life and love, but as a dream, pleasant to remember, easy to forget.”
“But I don't want to forget Lynda. I want to be with her.”
The woman waved her arm, and the tunnel reappeared, filled with scarlet fluorescence. “You may return, but the way is difficult.” She ran her hands over his rough fur. “Please, dear heart, forget that life and remain here. That way lies pain and suffering. I have waited so long for company, please stay and dance the dance with me.”
His eyes shifted from her face to the scarlet maelstrom and back again. “No,” he said, his voice quaking. “I have to go.”
She sighed. “Very well. Enter the tunnel and follow it to the other side. It will not be easy. If the task proves too great, return. The dance will always be here.”
He reached up and planted an ursine kiss on her cheek. “Thank you, Oma. I'll remember you.”
“In your dreams, perhaps.” She lay her cheek against his fur, then straightened. “Go. I cannot hold the opening much longer.”
Taking a final breath of moon-kissed air, he leapt into the tunnel.
LYNDA OPENED her eyes and groaned. Her head had gained a million pounds overnight, and her neck screamed when she tried to turn it.
She hurt. Her neck, her shoulders, her back between her pinched shoulder blades, her wrists and ankles where the cord bit into her skin, her cut cheek, all of her hurt. Except her hands, they'd been numb for hours. Even moaning hurt, Lynda discovered when she rolled her ponderous head from side to side, trying to ease the knots in her shoulders.
Looking out the window, she realized she must have passed out. Sparrows rustled and peeped under the eaves, and the light coming into the window had changed from the moon's iridescence to the gray of false dawn.
The light brightened, and soon sunrise tinted her neighbor's wall. The blush spilled through the window and over the tangle of bodies at her feet.
A noise, half groan, half growl, joined the bird song. “Greg?” Lynda rasped.
He hadn't twitched since he collapsed. Lynda would've thought him dead, except for the slow trickle of blood from his shoulder. Now, at last, he moved. His fur rippled like an irritated cat's where the sunlight touched it. He rumbled again, a painful sound. His legs jerked.
She watched him shrink. His paws contracted into hands and feet; his claws withdrew into blunt, harmless nails. His muzzle collapsed. Greg's familiar features formed beneath the thick brown fur. A final racking tremor, and the fur melted back into his skin, leaving him naked and vulnerable, sprawled across the body of the gang leader.
“Greg?” Lynda whispered. She shivered and couldn't tell if it was with cold or dread. “Greg,” she called, her voice growing stronger. He didn't respond.
Lying in a blackening pool of blood, he seemed as dead as the man under him. And his shoulder! The fur had hidden most of the damage, but now Lynda could see the extent of the injury. His right arm and shoulder were a bloody, pulpy mess. Sunlight glinted off bone white shards. “Oh, Greg,” she moaned.
A tuneless melody drifted through the window. It sounded like whistling.
Lynda looked up from Greg's still form. “Help!” The sound died in her parched throat. She heard footsteps and the front door close with a solid ka-thunk. She swallowed and tried again. “Tom? Is that you?”
This time her words carried into the entryway.
“Lynda?” Tom peered into the dining room.
Her brother's ingratiating smile and curly red hair were the most beautiful things she'd ever seen. “Thank God, you're home.”
“What's—”
His voice died and his smile froze in a grimace. He stood in the doorway, not moving, not speaking. The color drained from his face, and for a terrible moment, Lynda thought he was going to faint. “Tom!”
He lifted his stunned eyes to Lynda's injured face and his paralysis shattered. He ran to her through the gore. “God, Lynda, what happened?”
Dropping to his knees in the congealing pool, he tore at the ropes binding her. “What happened?” Tom repeated, glancing around the room while he untied her. His eyes grew three times too large. “Your face, your dress, a—a dog? All this blood.”
He took his hand from the rope long enough to point at the bodies. “Who are they? Did they—” His voice rose hysterically when he looked from her bare breast to Greg's naked body.
The tears she'd held back broke loose and ran down her face. “Tom, it was awful!”
As soon as she was free, Lynda threw her arms around her brother. He held her and crooned to her like she was a baby. For a moment, she lost herself in the comfort of his embrace. But the burning in her hands and feet soon reminded her of where she was and what had happened.
“Greg!” she gasped, letting go of Tom.
Forgetting everything she knew about First Aid, Lynda heaved Greg into her arms. An agonized sigh racked his body followed by short, panting breaths. She looked up at her brother. “He's still breathing. Call 911, quickly!”
Tom just stared.
“Tom!” Lynda yelled. “Greg's been shot! Get the phone and call!”
He jumped up and ran into the kitchen. A trail of blood-red footprints followed in his wake.
“Lynda?” Greg's voice sounded faint and strained, as if coming from a great distance. And breathy, as if he couldn't pull in enough air.
“Yes.” Joy surged through her. Surely if he could still talk, everything would be all right.
“I'm tired,” he panted. “So tired.”
Lynda brushed a stray hair off his forehead with her free hand. “Everything's going to be fine,” she murmured, as much to reassure herself as to comfort Greg. “The ambulance will be here soon.”
“No!” he gasped, opening his eyes and staring into her tear streaked face. “No hospitals. Call Dad. He'll—” Greg shuddered and his eyes rolled back into his head.
Breath catching, Lynda fumbled for his pulse. She found it, fluttering beneath her fingertips, but his skin felt cold and lifeless. She thought about shock and how quickly it could kill, about the blood Greg had lost, the injury he'd suffered. Without medical help, most people would've al-ready died. But she now knew Greg wasn't like most people. She stared at his waxen face a moment, and took a deep breath. “Tom! Bring the phone here when you're done. I've got to call his parents.”