Bearly Hanging On (The Jamesburg Shifters #6)(10)
There were footsteps coming.
Ryan rolled over, looked down at his bare chest and then at the rest of himself, completely naked, and wondered for a second if he'd been taken to some crazy experimentation facility like Stu from The Stand. He loved that book, but somehow, warm beds with carefully tucked sheets and beautifully maintained hardwood - pine, he assessed – floors, did not go along with industrial prison complex motifs.
Naked as the day he was born, and head still throbbing enough to make him a little sick, Ryan rolled to his knees and quickly surveyed the room. The footsteps had halted some way away, and a conversation he couldn't quite make out occurred between two people, one with a very deep voice and one slightly higher-pitched, but still a bit gruff. The higher pitched one definitely sounded tighter, more strained, more irritated.
Ryan crouched back with his legs taut and ready to pounce. He considered shifting, but then, that might be exactly what whoever was holding him wanted, so possibly not the best idea to walk right into a trap.
A quick glance around the room revealed absolutely nothing out of the ordinary. On one wall was an MC Escher print, the one with the hands drawing each other in a circle. Below was that a series of photographs of people who looked happy.
Happy enough to have come with the frames, Ryan thought, allowing his most paranoid thoughts to dominate his mind. He narrowed his eyes to peer through the dimness of what he assessed was around seven at night, judging by the light coming through the mini-blinds. Unless this was all a set up and it's like Vegas, where they have the fake sky and all that in the hotels.
He shook his head, figuring that might be going a step too far down crazy lane. Above the twin bed he'd occupied, which he was slightly surprised he even fit in at all, was a built-in mantle with a collection of boxed Star Wars toys, all impeccably dusted.
Lifting both of his eyebrows and furrowing them together until they looked like one big, brown caterpillar, he tried to guess at what such a thing meant.
It means a dork, he thought. Not even the best trap-house set ups would ever have Star Wars toys. He stood up, and crept silently across the room, plucking one of them off the shelf. It was a series two Han Solo, complete in box. "Even has the blaster pistol and the mistake lightsaber," he said with a tone of slight reverence. "This must be worth a—"
"It's worth about the price of a used Toyota," said a small, but shapely woman who walked into the room so quietly he didn't even notice the door opening.
Ryan spun on his heel, bracing himself against the prickly-textured wall, but made sure not to drop the figurine. Bending the packages really hurts the value, after all. "Who are you and where am I?" he spat out in one breath. "And why do you have bacon and hamburgers and pancakes on that plate?" That one took two words, but it was still hurried and carried slightly more panic than Ryan meant to convey. He snaked out a hand, snatched a sheet and covered himself.
The woman sighed. She was wearing soft-looking, brown pajamas that had a bunch of different kinds of coffee printed on them - mocha, latte, espresso - next to various styles of mugs. "I'm Elena St. Claire," she said flatly. "And my husband, my mate, whatever, is a giant idiot who cares too much for people who are trying to steal his cows and end up getting bitten by vampires."
Involuntarily, Ryan put his hand back to his neck. "That woman is... Did you just say vampire?"
"Jamie? Yeah. Well, I mean, she's a halfsie."
Ryan quirked his eyebrows again.
"Don't do that," Elena said. "Makes you look like you've got a unibrow. Sit down, and try not to break the bed. Oh, and give that here." She gestured toward the Han Solo figure, which she fetched and replaced on the mantle. A set of heavier footsteps approached, but Ryan was so wild-eyed with confusion by that point, that he didn't even bother to try and hide again.
Oh, and also there was bacon on that plate. Bacon is like bear kryptonite, except instead of killing them, they just really like it. Especially when it's in maple syrup, which this was.
"What's a halfsie?" Ryan asked, still confused.
"A really nasty thing to call someone," a huge man, who Ryan recognized as Thomas Westing, said as he strolled through the door. Elena rolled her eyes.
"Jamie's my friend, it isn't like I'm being mean about it," she said.
"True, but she is sensitive about it. Anyway, she's a really rare sort of shifter," the big guy said. "She's both human and animal at the same time, and during certain times - for her it's during a new moon, I think - she can turn into a bat. Also, she's a vampire, but that's neither here nor there."
Ryan's eyes resumed being wild after he got over the confusion. He was staring at the plate when Elena set it on a tray that she'd placed on the tiny bed at some point. Ryan's stomach growled, and he reached out and grabbed three or four pieces - he wasn't really sure - and munched while still holding up his sheet.
"He tries to steal your cows, and you let him sleep in the guest room and make me feed him," Elena said. "If I didn't love the fact that your heart was this big, I'd shoot you."
West let out a grunted laugh. "Jamie wanted me to keep an eye on him. Said he might react strangely to the bite. Of course, she also thought you were going to wake up two days ago."
"Three... days?" Ryan - who was smaller than West across the chest, but had thicker legs - grabbed a hamburger and looked at it suspiciously.