Chapter 40: Isabelle

Isabelle had insisted Tara get some sleep now that it was light out. She was less twitchy about being alone with Damon when she could see every move he made. He had fallen asleep at some point himself, and from the kitchen, Isabelle listened to his slow, even breathing. It was funny how soothing it was to her despite its source. The simple sound of someone in a deep dream state always made her think of being at peace. Peace wasn’t attainable for her at the moment but at least Damon, and hopefully Tara, could find it.

During the night watch, she had been able to go to the bathroom since Tara could stay with Damon until she was back but now Isabelle was too paranoid to leave him alone for very long. With the reverberation of his snores reaching her, Isabelle hopped up onto the kitchen counter, hung part of her ass over the lip of the sink, and peed into it. She prayed that Tara didn’t wake up or Cormac and Joey didn’t come stumbling in, talking about how it was all just a misunderstanding and they took care of it. Though, she would take utter embarrassment over the possibility of being murdered by wolves in the desert. Pretty much anything trumped that.

Once she relieved herself, Isabelle hopped down off the counter, buttoned up her pants, and turned to wash her hands. She daydreamed a bit as the warm water rushed down her palms and finger; she thought about Cormac the night before. How he came at her as an animal then step by step became a human. She had watched his muscles move from man to wolf then back again and yet, she struggled to believe it. Her eyes and her mind were both completely unsure of what to make of it. Collectively, they came up with nothing.

When she turned the faucet off, she was greeted by an abrupt silence. Damon’s breathing had faded; there was no steady rise and fall drifting from the living room. She slowly faced the couch but before she could, she felt the blow of something hard against the back of her head.

“Stay down, bitch,” came a shaking voice through her gray toned consciousness. “Don’t scream for the old lady or I’ll kill her. Ya get me?”

Isabelle assumed she nodded because Damon muttered, “good.” Her head felt like there was too much pressure inside her skull, a tire inflated beyond its capacity. Vision foggy at best, the coppery taste of blood in her mouth. It took her a moment to figure out she had bitten her tongue when she was hit. A rivulet of crimson careened down her chin.

Damon yanked Isabelle’s arms behind her and bound them with the same rope that had been used on him. “We’ve got an appointment to get to,” he told her as he wound the binding around her wrists then pulled her to her feet. “We gotta go meet your boss.”

Isabelle tripped over herself as Damon yanked her towards the front door. She looked down the hallway just as he forced her over the threshold and into the unblinking dawn sun. From where she was, she could have sworn she saw a wolf by the entrance to Tara’s room, hunched and wound up, its eyes like crosshairs on a rifle.

As Damon muscled Isabelle out to the car, she felt how weak his pull was and how his hands shook too much. The thought of taking him in a fight crossed her mind but she decided against it. Her best bet, the route she considered to be more in her wheelhouse, was to reason with him; get him to see that he was being used. Not just him but his whole pack.

“I know you think Wes has some type of loyalty towards you because you guys are both shifters,” she said as Damon threw his truck into reverse and peeled out of the driveway. “The truth is he’s a piece of shit. He’ll sell you out the first chance he gets.”

“If I were you, I’d run my mouth a little less.”

“There’s all that shifter law and history so you think that you and he have some connection but only cares about himself. The rest of you are just things he’s using to get what he wants.”

Damon snorted, looked at her sideways derisively. “You still think you’ve got the whole story, huh?” He floored it, speeding the truck towards the hidden tunnel that led to the cave. “You really think we told ya the truth?”

A speeding truck was coming in the opposite direction, a truck Isabelle thought she recognized. When it got closer, she was sure it was Cormac’s. When she squinted at the driver behind the wheel, she saw Joey, terrified and moving because he didn’t know what else to do. Their eyes met briefly before the trucks passed each other, and the one carrying Isabelle approached the opening of the tunnel.

The tunnel devoured them. Isabelle remembered the first day she was there, and how her heart had nearly stopped when Cormac drove right under the rock and plowed on a slope towards the sunlight. It seemed so long ago. Years and lifetimes had passed since then.

“What’s the truth then?” Isabelle asked, her nails making ridges in the vinyl of the bench seat. Damon was driving through the tunnel much faster than Cormac had, and he was obviously less experienced in driving and in life. “Christ, Damon! If you want to kill me, that’s one thing but keep driving like this and you’ll take yourself out too.”

Damon turned the wheel hard to one side. They exploded into the open air and skidded to a stop on the plateau. Through the window, Isabelle didn’t want to believe what she saw. Cormac’s face sought hers from his precarious position. His expression was stone but only because it had to be. The gun pointed at him, the imprint of his knees in the dust. Isabelle closed her eyes for a split second, hoping to gather her thoughts, and the sight of it all was still there on the inside of her lids.

Her focus and concern had been so drawn to Cormac that she didn’t even notice that Wes was the one holding the gun to her mate’s head. Damon had come around to her side of the truck to make a big show out of wrenching her out but when Isabelle saw what Wes was doing, she threw open the door with so much force it smacked into Damon and knocked him on his ass.

“What in the hell do you think you’re doing,” Isabelle growled as she sprinted across the dusty flattop towards her boss.

Cormac held his arm out. “Isabelle! Cool it!”

Before she could get much closer, a wolf crossed into the path and stood there, a curve in its spine and intention in its eyes. Isabelle skidded to a halt, sickened at the side of Wes’s self assured smile.

“You didn’t really think I’d give you this important part of a story, did you?” Wes laughed. He let the gun hang at his side. Everyone knew that wasn’t what was keeping Cormac in place anyway. It was the army of shifters stalking around them that he didn’t dare take on. “A story that would tear apart how we as humans see and understand the world, and you thought I’d waste it on an office cooee with a bad attitude.”

“Compared to what it’s going to be now, my attitude was fucking lovely.” Then something clicked in Isabelle’s head. Her mouth dropped slightly; she retracted it, hearing the clink of her teeth meeting. “We...as humans? But you’re not.”

“That’s an easier tale to sell,” Wes told her. He pointed the gun at her and gestured towards Cormac. “Join your lover. Get down here on your knees.”

Isabelle reluctantly obeyed. For a moment, she was just relieved to be next to Cormac. “What’s he going on about with this easier to sell shit?” she asked but before he could answer or she could even think, Wes’s free hand struck her across the face. She heard Cormac shout and get to his feet. When she righted herself, a line of wolves had come between the two of them and Wes.

“Very loyal creatures,” Wes said, flashing the gun and his smile at Isabelle. Cormac was pinned back against the opening of the cave by a huge shifter in animal form. “They know who’s side they're on.”

Isabelle touched the throbbing side of her face. “I don’t get it. If you’re a human, why are you involved with these people at all? What’s the point of all this?”

“Tell her, Cormac,” Wes ordered. “Tell her what you did.”

“He’s Maxine’s father,” Cormac explained. “He blames me for her death.” He looked into the wolf eyes of the shifter holding him in place. “He blames all of us for it just because we exist.”

From the depths of the tunnel came the gravelly roar of an engine. Cormac’s truck sped out and managed to stop just before the edge, narrowly avoiding Damon’s sloppily parked vehicle. Clint and Tara were wedged into the passenger side of the cab and Joey was behind the wheel. In the flatbed were the other ranch hands. A formidable group for sure but still less plentiful and powerful than Wes’s pack.

“This’ll make it easy,” Wes cheered as Cormac’s pack piled out of the truck and stood their ground in front of him. “Now I get rid of you all at once.”

No one was paying attention to Isabelle anymore. They were staring at each other, trying to guess who was about to do what. The side of Isabelle’s foot connected with a sizable rock. Moving as slowly as she could, Isabelle crouched down and wrapped her fingers around it, holding her arm close to her side as she came back up.

Tara sniffed the air then whipped her head towards the cave. “You...pissed in our sacred spot?” she asked, the tremor in her voice so evident it was as if she was on the edge of tears. “That is a ‘oly place. It belongs to us.”

“Old lady, please. Your whole pack is going to be dead by noon. You can relax about your god damned cave.”

The shifters were stalking again, now all changed except for Cormac’s pack. Isabelle knew they just needed a second to get into animal form. She also knew that as soon as they started to shift, Wes’s group would be at their throats. As Wes started another winding, hubristic speech, Isabelle lunged forward and slammed the rock in her hand against the back of his head.

Wes shouted as Isabelle made contact. He dropped the gun, causing it to misfire and shoot a bullet into the back of the shifter pinning Cormac against the cave. The shifter howled as he crumpled away from Cormac, his fur growing thinner and thinner until he was his writhing, wounded human form.

And then all hell broke loose.

The shifters already in wolf form charged Cormac’s pack as Isabelle clawed through the dust towards the dropped gun. Wes, hand pressed against his spurting head wound, swiped at the gun so that it was out of her reach. In mid-shift, Cormac tried to grab it but another shifter attacked him from the side, sank his teeth into his throat, and they tumbled the opposite direction.

Isabelle scrambled to her feet, pressing herself to the nearest truck to get out of the way of the wolf bodies shooting so fast past her that she swore they were flying. Wes was still bleeding and cursing her, directly in the center of the action yet somehow completely removed from it.

Tara spun towards Isabelle and pressed a cold object into her hand. “Here. Take it. Use it.” She moved away swiftly, her nose elongating and her shoulders starting to hunch forward.

In the palm of her hand was the smallest gun she had ever seen. Isabelle was shocked at the weight of it. When she looked up, no one had noticed her still. She tucked herself behind the truck and examined the gun as thoroughly as she could. Her experience with guns was limited but she knew the basics of the thing. She wasn’t sure why this one was so heavy for something so small. It was a revolver, and she checked to see how many bullets were in it. Fully loaded, ready to go. She had six shots; she knew they had to count.

Rising to her full height, Isabelle took aim over the top of the flatbed. The wolf tangling with Cormac was her first target. It was easy for her to tell them apart: in the second before she fired, Cormac made direct eye contact with her, and she knew it was him for sure.

She pulled the trigger, thrown backwards by the force of the shot.

The wolf she hit didn’t seem to be mortally wounded but he was thrown against the rocks and began convulsing violently. Everyone else froze as they watched him shudder and twitch, his body jarring back and forth between human, wolf, human, wolf. White foam pooled in his mouth, running down his long jaws in bubbled threads. Isabelle was sick to her stomach watching it but couldn’t bear to look away. She had done this; whatever this creature was going through, it was happening because of her.

When the shifter finally stopped convulsing, his body began to shrivel and curl as if the water was being leeched right out of him. A long shrill shriek escaped from him. He became smaller and smaller until the only thing left was a frail husk that looked like an unearthed relic from a prehistoric world.

Some of the shifters bolted to corners with the rest of their pack. Some of them stayed fixed and unmoving. Wes followed the trajectory of the bullet to Isabelle who came out from behind the flatbed, gun still trained on the lifeless remains.

“Silver bullets,” Isabelle said, a quiet power blooming in the depths of her voice. “After all this time with shifters, and you still don’t know a thing.”