"Me, I keep important stuff from you all the time." I grinned at him. "But I know you're a better person than I am. Still, I think that my frailty means you don't owe me an apology for doing something I would do, so we're even as far as keeping information from me is concerned."
Now it was he who narrowed his eyes at me.
"Right," I said as if he'd spoken. It was chilly in bare skin with the sun down, so I stretched out against him and let him keep me warm. "I know what I said before I took off--but I was provoked. No apologies from me or from you--but I'll take the rabbit on account. However, if you try that patronizing sh-stuff on me again, not even a fat juicy rabbit is going to stop the fight we'll have."
Since it was unfair for me to keep being the only one who could talk, I shifted back into the coyote. And since I have a policy of accepting gifts graciously, I ate his rabbit. Besides, fighting always made me hungry, and there was no chocolate handy.
He thought it was funny that I ate the second rabbit without accepting his apology--so we were okay again. I expected that we'd have a lot more fights, and mostly I looked forward to them. Life with Adam wasn't going to be boring, either.
WE WERE HEADED BACK TO THE CAMPSITE WHEN WE found the boat. On the way out, I hadn't run right along the river. Instead, I'd followed one of the ridges that lined the gorge, avoiding the few houses and vineyards scattered here and there, and Adam had followed my trail. On the way back, though, we ran along the edge of the river. The moon was new, just a sliver in the sky, and the stars reflected in the black water.
The highway on the Oregon side was always busy, and this night was no exception. Our side, the Washington side, was a lot quieter: the river was wide, the noise of the cars a distant symphony accompanying the sounds of the night. One of those sounds was made by a boat bobbing against the shore. I paused because this wasn't a place I'd have expected to find a boat. As soon as my attention was drawn to it, I could smell blood and terror-- the aftermaths of battle. A glance at Adam told me he'd noticed it, too. The fur along his spine was raised though he was silent.
The boat was tucked under the edge of three or four trees and accompanying brush that grew along the bank. From what I could see, and I wiggled a lot closer than Adam could, it was one of the small fishing boats, a bass boat, the kind that maybe two or three people could use to fish in. Small enough to row though there was a small outboard motor on the back of this one. I couldn't see into the boat because of the underbrush, but I could smell a man's fear and hear him talking.
"Don't let it find me. Don't let it find me." Over and over again, very softly, barely even a whisper. I hadn't been able to pick up his exact words until I was within a stone's throw of the boat, and I have very good hearing. The boat hitting the rocks with the gentle rise and fall of the river's waves was louder than his voice.
I backed out of the brush and met Adam's eyes. Naked was going to be hard to explain, and I knew all about what those bushes were going to do with my skin. But Adam took too long to change, would be equally naked--and if whatever this man was afraid of came back, Adam the werewolf was our best defense.
Maybe other people wouldn't have automatically assumed that whatever this man was afraid of would need a werewolf to fight it. There were no werewolves around here, vampires tended to be more of an urban monster, and the fae reservation was an hour the other side of the Tri-Cities--two hundred miles or more away from us. But the sheer magnitude of the terror he still felt made me think I wasn't being paranoid.
I shifted to human. "Hey," I called. "You in the boat. Are you okay?"
The man's voice didn't alter. He hadn't registered my words at all.
"I think I'll have better luck reaching him from the river side," I told Adam. "That boat's still floating. If he's as badly hurt as all the blood I'm smelling makes me think he is, it'll be easier if we're not trying to drag him through the underbrush anyway."
The nearest bit of clear riverbank was about thirty feet downstream. The sun long gone, the water was icy. I stumbled on a big rock on the river bottom and made a splash when I fell. I made some noise, too--frigid water on nice warm skin when I'm not expecting it tends to make me squeak. The man in the boat screamed--from the hoarseness of his voice, it wasn't the first time he'd screamed tonight. "It's all right," I said, regaining my feet. "You're safe."
He quit screaming, but I don't think it was because he'd understood me. Sometimes fear is too big for that--so much of your being is focused on survival that anything else falls to the side. I've been there a couple of times.
The rocks under my feet were sharp, but once I was waist-deep, my weight didn't press me down on them quite so hard. If I'd been headed downstream instead of upstream, I could have swum instead. Adam paced back and forth unhappily on the river's edge.
The trees hung over the river, and the shore curved back under them. Finding a path through the debris that had collected in the small backwater along with the boat forced me to wade in through a bunch of underwater plants I didn't see until I was in the middle of them.
My eyesight is pretty darn good at night, but the river was an impenetrable black veil, and anything below the surface was hidden. I hated not seeing. Who really knew what was in the Columbia?
Something brushed against my leg with a little more force than the rest of the weeds, and I let out an involuntary yip. Adam, invisible on the other side of the tree, whined.