The bare ground beneath the windows was littered with junk, but nothing as helpful as a periscope or even a mirror presented itself. There was, however, broken glass and rusty nails to cut Cormac’s bare feet.
He risked a quick look into the first window, but a shade had been drawn, showing him only a blank white. A window shade would mask what was inside, but if Cormac stood up outside it, his silhouette might show. A shooter needed only the silhouette.
He went at a crouch to the next window and darted another look inside. A shade had been drawn down on this window as well, but one inch above the sill had been left exposed. Through that gap, Cormac saw a dim bedroom with junk strewn across the floor and piled on the bed.
The room was empty of people, though. No Shane, no bounty hunter.
Cormac checked the windows for wiring that would mean an alarm system. Nothing. The windows were newer than the cabin itself, panels of thick glass that slid sideways to open, screened to keep out bugs.
Cormac carefully removed the screen from the bedroom window. The window itself was sturdy, double-paned, and though there wasn’t a lock or alarm system, the window was definitely latched.
Old windows in decent condition were much easier to pry open than new windows engineered to withstand fire, high winds, and burglars. On the other hand, windows could be taken apart from their frames if a person knew how, and Cormac knew how. The one job the humans had let him have in Wisconsin had been construction. He hadn’t been allowed to use the big boys’ tools, but he’d been very good at carpentry and component installation.
Cormac fished around the litter on the ground for nails that weren’t too far gone, and pushed these around the frame as shims. He’d need to find something flat and sturdy to use as a crowbar. He had a tire iron back at the truck but running there and returning unseen was too much of a gamble.
He also had to work as quietly as possible so no one would hear the snick, snick of him trying to remove the window. He would have to—
Boom!
The window shoved itself outward under his hands. Cormac dropped the nails and covered his face as fire lit up the room inside. Fire engulfed the front windows of the house as well, and a line of flame zipped down from the porch and headed for the propane tank, used for the cabin’s winter heat.
Cormac was shifting to bear even as he ran for the propane tank and its safety valve, his half-shifted claw-hand slamming off the propane just before the fire reached it.
He lunged away from the tank and back to the house, which was burning merrily. Another explosion rocked it deep inside, the roof now in flames.
Coming across the clearing were Nell and Brody, both in bear form, both running all out.
Nell would try to burst in there to save her cub. She’d get herself burned all to hell, and maybe shot by the hunter, if he was still alive.
Before Nell and Brody made it halfway across the clearing, Cormac turned and dove through the broken front windows and into the fiery room.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Cormac couldn’t see anything. Fire raged, and smoke choked the room. Cormac’s full grizzly body had shoved the broken window out of the frame, and glass cut through his fur, but he barely felt it.
His claws snagged on a rug on the floor. Shifting to the beast between human and bear, Cormac seized the rug and flung it across the sill, creating a temporary break in the flames.
Something moved in the shadows of a corner. Cormac ran that way, blinded by smoke. He found chains, too strong to break, a limp body on a chair, the hot liquid of blood.
Cormac stayed his bear-beast, a creature nearly eight feet tall, head bumping what remained of the low ceiling’s beams. He grabbed the body, chair and all, and half carried, half dragged it to the window and the rug across it.
He heaved the chair and Shane outside. The chair landed on its back on the porch, breaking the porch’s boards. Shane lay unconscious, covered with blood.
One of the grizzlies running toward the house shifted to become Brody. He seized his brother and pulled him off the porch and away from the house.
The second grizzly came barreling into the cabin after Cormac.
“Nell!” Cormac tried to yell, but there was too much smoke for a breath.
The hunter was in a corner in the living room, his rifle in his hands. As Nell charged him, her Collar arced electricity around her neck, trying to slow her down. The hunter’s rifle came up, the barrel pointing at the center of Nell’s chest.
Cormac bellowed. He became grizzly all the way as he leapt at Nell, shoving her hard aside. The gun went off, the bullet catching Cormac full in the belly.
As pain erupted in his stomach, Cormac heard Nell roar. She reared on her hind legs, mouth open to flash her insanely huge teeth, an enraged grizzly ready to kill.
When she came down a second later, her great paws broke the rifle into three pieces. Then Nell went for the hunter, her Collar sparking like crazy.
She would have savaged him, killed him, and ripped apart his body, if a tranq dart hadn’t thwacked into her side.
Nell screamed a horrible snarling scream. She came down, missing the hunter, her form swallowed by flame and smoke.
Cormac leapt after her, feeling like his insides were falling out. He found Nell’s slow-moving body in the smoke as she tried to heave herself to her feet.
The tall form of the Fae called Reid stood just outside the front window, a tranq rifle in his hands. Diego and Xavier flanked Reid, and behind them were Graham and Jace.
Reid handed Diego the tranq rifle, swung in through the window, and moved to the human hunter. Reid grasped the hunter by the shoulders, and then he and the human . . . disappeared.
Cormac’s bear blinked, then coughed, pain buckling his legs.
“Out!” Diego shouted. “Before it comes down on you.” Cormac tried to climb to his feet, slipping again to the floor. Xavier whipped inside, wrapped wiry arms around Cormac’s backside, and hauled him up.
“Move your ass,” Xavier shouted. “Before I move it for you.”
Graham and Jace went for Nell. Nell swatted at Graham, but Cormac growled at her.
Nell wouldn’t go with Graham. She staggered to Cormac, her muzzle dripping blood, her eyes as red as the flames around them. Cormac put his shoulder to hers, leaning on her strength.
Together, supporting each other, encouraged by Jace and the cursing Graham, Cormac and Nell pushed through the rug-draped broken window, half tearing out the wall with them, and staggered out into the cold, fresh breeze of the mountain morning.
Brody made sure everyone had shifted back to human before the fire trucks arrived. The cabin was beyond saving, but the danger that the fire could spread to the forest beyond had multiple fire trucks there within minutes.
Diego and Xavier stayed in the clearing to talk to the firemen. Brody and Graham had gotten the rest of them all into the pickups a little way up the road, out of sight of the fire.
Graham did some quick first aid on Cormac’s gunshot wound, saying it had been a clean shot, and Cormac should be all right if he didn’t move around too much. It hurt like hell, but Cormac knew it could have been worse.
Nell was fine except for coughing up smoke, but Shane was more of a worry. He was still out, lying flat in the bed of Cormac’s pickup. Graham had picked the padlock on Shane’s chains and was now performing his quick patch-up on the bear, but Shane didn’t wake.
Reid had the human hunter locked in a pair of handcuffs and now stood over him, training a pistol on him. Dimly Cormac reflected that pistols and handcuffs were made of steel, and Reid, a Fae, shouldn’t be able to touch either of them. Iron made Fae sick, could kill them even. Reid showed no sign of weakness, however, as he continued to point the semiautomatic at Joe Doyle.