Page 90 of Winter’s Teeth

Fox sat Everly gingerly down beside me. “You can’t keep going on that leg.”

“I’m fine,” I said with a trembling hitch in my voice. “I have to be. You have to carry Everly and—”

“Shut up and get on.”

Before I could argue, Fox’s form rippled, shifting beside me into a massive creature.

A bear.

The bear who saved me, time and time again. The bear who couldn’t keep going at this rate, but who was alive for now.

He laid down, closing the distance I had to climb to get on, and making it easier for me to tug my sister up with me. Her limp figure didn’t fight it, sagging forward on Fox’s neck as I held her waist from behind to keep her upright.

Though she was conscious, she didn’t seem like herself. I couldn’t imagine what she’d gone through since her botched wedding, and I didn’t want to.

The gun radiated residual heat in my pocket, reminding me that I had bullets to spare.

Arthur Winter was next on my list.

Fox plodded along, taking tentative steps at first, then picked up speed once he knew that Everly and I were secure. Well, as secure as we could be on the back of my maybe-boyfriend currently in the form of an unnaturally large black bear.

“I’ve got you,” I whispered in Everly’s ear, keeping her close against my chest. “You’re with me now.”

Her lack of a response worried me slightly. Granted, she’d been in captivity for so long, and I didn’t know what she had seen or knew about the Winters. Her head swayed, bobbing in what I thought was a nod. Or just the effect of Fox’s lumbering steps.

I looked over to the side, checking to make sure my leg and foot were still attached or hadn’t swollen so much that they burst through the seams of my pants yet. They were hard to make out in the dark though, and all I sensed was the pulsing throb of painful heat with every bump and jostle.

Beneath my foot, the ground grew distant, and I thought it was a trick of my tired eyes, but then my thighs stretched a little wider.

“Did you just...grow?” I asked aloud.

Everly mumbled, “Huh?”

At least Everly seemed cognizant, but I wasn’t talking to her. “No. Not you. Fox. Fox, did you just grow bigger?”

The bear grunted. Not a no, but not a yes either.

Most notably, his back and shoulders broadened out, making a wider base to hold me and Everly. More balanced. More comfortable.

His footsteps thudded a little louder on the frozen ground, claws lengthening and beginning to scrape on the ice and rocks. By the time we reached the cliffside, he was big enough that my head brushed against pine branches a good fifteen feet in the air.

He got a foothold on a ledge, and as we tipped forward, I locked my legs around his back and held onto Everly for dear life. “I hope you know what you’re—doing!” The final word was a scared shout, for we flew down the steep cliff faster than the ski ride down the right-of-way. Everly began to slip from my grasp, and as I lurched to drag her back against me, I found that I was also sliding off too fast to be saved.

After a few bumps, gasps, and a quick tumble into the snow and ferns, I rolled up onto my stomach. Everly lay beside me, sitting up with wide, blinking eyes.

The huge figure of a bear melted into the shadows. After mere moments, Fox’s figure rose up in the mist. “You two okay? Sorry, I thought I could get us down safely in that form.”

I patted myself down, feeling that all my limbs were still intact. Everly nodded with a vacant look in her eye. “We’re good,” I called back.

A chirp sounded in the ferns, making me jump, but it was only the radio that I’d dropped on the way down. Digging into the detritus, I felt around on my hands and knees while the voice of one of my friends weakly sounded. “Hang on, Ben,” I mumbled. “Hang on, hang on, hang— Gotcha!”

I plucked the radio out of the snow, holding it above my head triumphantly.

“Who is that?” Everly asked, soft as a whispering wind.

“Who? On the radio? Oh, that’s Ben.” I pressed the button, saying into the mouthpiece, “Sorry, didn’t catch that, Ben. We were falling down a cliff, but we’re all okay. Got Everly.”

His voice crackled on the other side ten seconds later, “Thank God...”