The Baby Shift- Arkansas Read online

  “You still there?” Kean asked.

  “Yes.”

  “You need to lay low for a while. Garett is one of our most trusted captains. I’m gonna need time to convince Carl you didn’t do this. The problem is, they have already sent out the Lone Wolf of Tennessee to get you, dead or alive.”

  “Are you kidding me? No one can hide from the Lone Wolf.”

  "I know. It's only a matter of time before he finds you, which is why I have to get in touch with Antonio Fabrizzi. He's supposed to be dead, but a few of us know he's still alive. His wife used to be an FBI agent. Maybe she could get some of her former colleagues to help keep you two safe."

  Wesley frowned. “Since when did we trust the FBI?”

  “Since you managed to get yourself under the crosshairs of both the Boon and the resistance,” Kean replied dryly.

  “Good point,” Wesley said. “Tell me where to go.”

  “Are you sure they will meet us here?” Kate asked. She was still at the wheel, driving the vehicle into the central region of Castle Rock. They had only just crossed the border of Middleshire into its neighboring city. Wesley was unfamiliar with the navigation, but luckily, Kate wasn’t.

  “Kean said they would be here. I just have to trust that they would,” Wesley said.

  “Isn’t he a member of this... resistance? The people who are after you?” she asked.

  “When I was little, the other shifters used to beat and make fun of me because I could not shift. Kean took me in when I was hungry and bleeding on the streets. Anything that I am now is because of him. I trust him with my life.”

  “I know, but...”

  “If he says they will be there, then they’ll be there,” he snapped.

  “Oh... okay. If you say so, we have to stop and ask somebody for directions, though. I’ve never been to that part of Castle Rock.”

  "Okay," Wesley said. He watched her stop the car and speak to a stranger. Luckily, the young boy they asked knew the place in question and described it to her in detail. She said goodbye to the stranger with a wide smile on her face, and for an instant, something explicable happened in Wesley. He felt his heart somersault at the sight. He had to force his gaze away from her before she had a chance to notice.

  When they were on their way once again, she glanced at him. “I heard you say something about a lonely wolf? You seemed terrified.”

  "The Lone Wolf," he corrected. "His real name is Angel Edwards, but we call him that because he's one of the few werewolves who operated without a pack. He believes in what the resistance is doing and has become one of our best trackers."

  “And he’s coming for us?”

  “Yes. With orders to bring me in dead or alive.”

  “Oh.”

  He glanced at her. “You still don’t believe any of the things I’ve told you, do you?”

  “No. I don’t.”

  Wesley shook his head. "I can't believe after all you've seen and ..."

  “We’re there.”

  “What?”

  "We're there. That's the small bungalow by the river with two oak trees in front that your friend talked about. I don't see anyone waiting, however."

  Wesley flinched, though he hoped she didn’t notice. “They probably haven’t arrived yet. Let’s go in and wait for them.”

  She looked unconvinced but stopped the car nonetheless and stepped out of it. The building was a large bungalow by the side of a quiet pathway. There was shrubbery growing all around it, an indication that it hadn't been used for a while. Behind the compound was a river expanding into a forest on the horizon.

  “Who owns this place?” She asked as they stepped onto the porch.

  “I have absolutely no idea.”

  “Do we wait here for them to arrive, or do we try the lock?”

  "Let's try," he said and placed his hand on the doorknob. The second his fingers touched the metal, the door suddenly swung inward, causing him to stagger forward and into the house. He heard Kate grasp but could not turn to see what had happened to her because there was the barrel of a gun in front of his head.

  A man in a brown leather jacket had a gun aimed at him. Another had one aimed at Kate and was beckoning her to come in and close the door behind her, which she did.

  Once the door had been closed, the men lowered their weapons, much to Wesley’s relief. “Welcome, Mr. Radcliffe. You are here early. Barely gave us enough time to prepare. You can call me Agent Dan,” the man in front of Wesley said, flashing a badge. He had grey hair and looked no younger than sixty.

  “Hi. Not the warmest of welcomes, but I guess this beats being left out in the open,” Wesley said. “By the way, what do you mean by prepare?”

  “We are sending a medical specialist in. For the woman.”

  Kate drew closer. “Why? I’m not sick. I feel great.”

  Dan glanced at each of them. “We need to confirm your friend’s story. That is, to see if the baby she’s carrying is truly what you say he or she is.”

  “She—the baby is a she,” Kate said.

  Wesley wasn’t sure he could trust these men with Kate, but at that moment, he wasn’t in the best position to argue with their methods. Their house, their rules. For now.

  Dan said, “let me show you to your room.” They followed him through a corridor to one of the few rooms in the building. “As you can see, space is limited, and we would protect you better if we have you two in the same place as often as possible.”

  Wesley looked at the small bed with uncertainty. “Are you sure we would fit...”

  Kate glared at him. “I’m pregnant, not fat.”

  “Dan,” a voice at the door said, interrupting him before he could reply.

  All three of them turned around to see a man at the door. “The doctor is here,” he announced. A second later, a lady in her late twenties walked into the room, holding a large bag.

  She shook Dan's hands and then turned to Kate. "I'm Doctor Lance; I'll be running your tests."

  “Hello, Doctor,” Kate said, taking fearful glances at Wesley.

  Dr. Lance said to her, “Now if you wouldn’t mind lying flat on the bed while I run a scan on your baby’s anatomy.”

  As Kate approached the bed, the doctor turned to Dan and Wesley. “Can we have the room, please?”

  "Oh, sorry," Dan said. He tapped Wesley gently on the shoulder. "Don't worry, kiddo. She's in safe hands. You both are."

  And together they walked out of the room, closing the door behind them.

  “That’s impossible!” Wesley yelled. “There has to be a mistake somewhere.”

  “Mr. Radcliffe, I am very certain of the results of my test. The child Miss Henderson is carrying is definitely not a shifter, much less an elite. I can assure you the baby is a regular human.”

  “It can’t be,” Wesley said. His mind struggled to deal with this piece of confusing information. Could the doctor be lying to him?

  Dan said. “Thank you, Dr. Lance.”

  She nodded. “I have to leave now. She fell asleep midway through the process, and I decided not to disturb her. She needs to rest, seeing that she’s been through a lot in the past ten hours. I will take my leave now.” With that, she walked away from them, leaving Wesley and Dan standing alone in the corridor.

  “What do you have to say about this, boy?” Dan asked.

  “Our intel was solid. We were certain we had the right mother,” Wesley replied.

  "Well, intel can be wrong. And yours may have just led you to kill three innocent men. I'm doing this as a favor for a trusted friend, and I know you mean well, so I wouldn't have you arrested for murder. Not until we get to the bottom of this."

  “Those men were Boon agents. I’m sure of it,” Wesley said.

  “We’ll run them through our program and see for sure. For now, go get some rest. Tomorrow, we take the woman back to her life. She has no part in this war.”

  “Oh, really?” Wesley asked. He silently decided he understood what was going on
. They wanted him to believe Kate wasn’t carrying an elite shifter, just so they could have her to themselves.

  “Yes,” Dan said.

  “Okay,” Wesley said. “See you tomorrow.” Then he opened the door and walked into the bedroom.

  Chapter 3

  Kate stiffened. Before then, he had been sleeping peacefully beside her all night, even though she had been awake through most of it. But now it seemed like his sleep was deeply troubled. Wesley was tossing and turning on the bed, which they shared for the night.

  “Wesley. Wesley, you have to wake up,” she whispered. Despite her apprehension, she was not ready to alarm the FBI agents walking around and inside the building, keeping watch over them.

  Wesley continued to mumble nonsensical words as he thrashed about in his sleep. He seemed completely oblivious of her anxiety, lost in a nightmare so terrifying she could not bring herself to imagine it.

  Kate placed her hands on his shoulder and shook him as rigorously as she could. That seemed to do the trick, as he suddenly stopped thrashing about and blinked a couple of times.

  “Are you okay?” she asked.

  Still blinking, he replied, “yes, sure. Just a bad dream.”

  But she noticed a tear run down the side of his cheeks, so she asked, “wanna talk about it? I haven’t been able to sleep.”

  He seemed to hesitate for a second; then he turned on his side so that they lay face to face, and he said, “I guess it wouldn’t hurt to talk about it.”

  “What were you dreaming about?”

  “A memory. The most terrible memory I have.”

  “I’m sorry. It’s okay if you don’t want to talk about it.”

  “It’s fine. You see, I grew up in the most rural part of Wisconsin with the rest of my family —pride, as we shifters call a large family of werelions. I never had trouble shifting back then. It came naturally to me. When the government started moving in on shifter settlements, a neighboring pride was displaced. My father, who was our leader, took them in on a temporary basis. When we asked them to find their own piece of land, things got ugly. They ambushed us in the middle of the night. Big blood-thirsty lions who slaughtered everyone in their path. I managed to survive because my mother hid me in a hole that I wouldn’t have fit into as a lion. I stayed there like a coward until everything ended.”

  He continued, "Since that day, I have never been able to shift. I lived with other homeless shifters and got a lot of shit from them for what they considered a handicap. Then came Kean and his wife, sharing food and clothes among us. He saw me isolated from the rest and took an interest. I don't know what he saw in me, but he took me in. Then when I was old enough, he taught me to protect myself with a gun. I'm a pure-born, which means I have heightened senses and strength even without shifting. I channel these abilities into my shooting."

  Despite her own sad predicament, Kate felt her heart burst with sympathy for this man, and the child he once was. She said, “I don’t know what a pure-born is, but I do know what happened to your family wasn’t your fault. Sometimes things just happen. Things that seem unfair. Look at me, for example. It turns out I’m not even carrying a shifter baby, yet my life has been turned upside down.”

  He stared at her. “We don’t know that for sure.”

  “I do. I feel it,” she said. “Just like despite everything I’ve seen, I feel you are a good person too.”

  Their eyes locked for what seemed like minutes but could only have been a few seconds. She felt something there and then. It was subtle at first, a tiny flicker in her stomach, but it sooner burned bright within her. Without looking away from him, she reached out a hand to touch the side of his face. He had a slight stubble which could only have been a day or two old.

  He drew closer to her until their faces were only inches apart. Kate’s eyes involuntarily closed shut, and she held her breath as his lips inched their way towards hers.

  “Oh my God! He’s going to kiss me," she thought to herself. But the kiss never came. She waited a few seconds before opening her eyes. He was no longer looking at her with those golden eyes. Instead, there was a frown on his face as he stared out the window behind him.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  “I think - no, I know I heard something,” he said.

  "Agents are walking about outside, of course, they would make sounds."

  “No, this is different. It’s almost like...”

  He never got to complete the sentence. The wall behind him suddenly blew apart and sent bricks, glass, and fire sailing into the room. Their bed was thrown off its position, causing her to fall to the floor and him to smash against the hardboard beside her. Her eyes rang from the aftermath of the explosion. She felt some level of pain in her elbow, but aside from that, nothing seemed to be wrong with her.

  “Wesley...” she turned to see him lying beside her, unmoving. There was blood dripping off a cut in the back of his head.

  “Wake up, Wesley,” she said, trying to shake him to no avail. All around her, various parts of the room had caught fire. The ceiling had caved in on the exit, and the only way out appeared to be a small opening in the wall that had crashed.

  She heard cries and screams all around. The only words she could make sense of were “take cover... rocket launcher... the woman.”

  The house seemed to be crumbling, with fire rapidly eating away at the walls and ceiling. “We have to get out of here. Wesley, please wake up.” He did not so much as flinch. Taking a huge breath, she rose, bent low, and grabbed his two feet. Then she began to drag him towards the opening in the destroyed wall. Her advance was slow, but she was determined not to leave him behind. She just couldn’t live with herself if she did.

  The fire was drawing closer. Tears began to fall down her cheeks as she felt the searing heat approaching. She wouldn’t even get the chance to see what her baby looked like.

  Just then, she heard a loud thud from the other side of the pile of debris and wood that was her destination, which was still meters ahead. She paused. There was another thud and yet another. Someone was trying to break into the room from the outside. It had to be the attackers.

  Kate took a glance at the gun in Wesley’s holster still attached to his waist. Before she could reach for it, the pile of rubble suddenly blew apart, and the room was immediately exposed into the open on one side. Kate looked up to see a man standing over them. He was blonde and had shoulders that were just as broad as the man who had tried to murder her the previous day. She had learned enough about shifters in the last 24 hours to know that werebears were big and muscular.

  “Stay back!” she yelled, albeit hopelessly.

  “Stay calm,” the man said. “I’m Kean Grayson. I’m a friend of Wesley.”

  Kate’s heart skipped a bit. She was not sure if she believed him or if she just wished this were true. “How do I know it’s really you.”

  He looked up. “We’ll have to figure that out later.” With that, he sprinted forward and effortlessly picked Wesley up from the floor and onto his shoulder. “Let’s get you out of here,” he said and carried him towards the opening while she followed closely.

  When they were safely away from the burning building, he lowered the unconscious man to the ground before her. Then he said, “I have to go in and see who else I can get out. I brought them into this, and I have to do this. I’ll be back.”

  Before she could reply, he ran back into the chaos and destruction. She turned to Wesley. He was still unconscious. So, she held onto his feet once more and proceeded to drag him as far away from the burning house as possible. All around the compound, she could hear gunshots, roars, and groans as the FBI agents with their guns battled animals of different kinds and sizes. She had never witnessed so much killing and gore in her life. These shapes weren't Garett and his bears; these were shifters far more ruthless and blood-thirsty.

  There was movement in the open wall once more. Kean was helping someone through the wreckage. She recognized the veteran age
nt Dan even from a distance. As soon as he was in the open air, Dan seemed to regain his ability to walk properly again. Kean let go of him as he staggered forward. Then something happened that made Kate gasp in shock. A large beam layer of concrete fell off the ceiling and landed right on top of Kean. He fell to the ground behind Dan. The latter rushed to help him.

  "There she is. Get her and kill the rest of them!" a voice yelled from afar. She turned to see a man who looked in his mid-sixties ordering a group of wolves in her direction.

  Dan yelled at her, “run! To the river. I have a boat there. I’ll help Wesley. Just go.”

  So, she ran. As fast as she could, which wasn’t much she realized, because as soon as she reached the small white boat on the river, Dan came in behind her, breathing heavily as he carried an unconscious Wesley on his shoulders.

  They climbed onto the boat, and Dan let him down beside her while he manned the controls. The wolves were almost on top of them now - just a few feet away. The boat suddenly shot forward just as they reached the edge of the shore.

  Dan drove the boat with all three of them deeper into the water, heading in the direction of the forest.

  “What about Kean?” she asked.

  Dan said, “He was unconscious. I couldn’t save them both, so I had to choose Wesley because my mission is to protect you both, and the mission always comes first.”

  Kate felt a wave of sadness. Wesley would be crushed to find out they had to abandon his mentor to save him. "What about the other agents? They could protect him," she asked with renewed hope.

  Dan hesitated for a second, then he replied, “I saw their bodies and heard their screams. They are all dead. We are the only survivors.”

  Chapter 4

  His head hurt. It was almost like a nail had been driven into the back of his skull. But when Wesley's eyes blinked open, he was glad the first thing he saw was her face, staring down at him. The fact that the expression on her face was a worried frown did little to mask how beautiful she was.