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“Copy, fifty-four. Accident reported by the Crow’s nest. No one is on scene yet to respond. Over.” The dispatcher ended the call, leaving us with nothing to go by except it was called in by another shifter in the area.
“What do you think we’ll find?” I grabbed a clipboard from the glove compartment and slipped a report sheet in to take notes for our reports to be entered into the computer system at the end of our shift.
“Are we taking bets? I say it’s a male, late fifties, thinking he could make it home from Vider’s pub before the Mrs. was missing him.”
“I think it’s a young female just beyond the Woodland Creek sign in that damn ditch I’ve been telling the sheriff and the DOT guys to fix.”
“How specific do you want to get?”
“I dunno. Hair color? Weight?”
“Twenty bucks?” Jase looked over from driving and I hit his shoulder, annoyed.
On a sigh, I nodded at the road in front of us. “How about you pay attention to the road and you buy me dinner later?” Jase drove like a maniac, getting to the scene in record time. My anticipation likely had less to do with the moon cycles and more to do with my rush of adrenaline. Jase was a good driver despite his high strung personality and I trusted him to have my back as I had his. The rain was still hitting hard and the road flooding was making the main road in and out of town difficult. We drove a good eight minutes, coming up to the accident where we found a single car off the road, down in the damn ditch as I predicted. The Woodland Creek sign population 3,150 stood behind us, illuminated for a moment by a flash of lightning.
“Shit, no tow vehicle to get the car out.” Jase was looking out the window of the ambulance toward the ditch.
“And no sheriff here either.” I zipped up my town issued uniform jacket and reached for the door handle to get out. “I guess we’ll have to go in and see what we can do.” My skin continued to feel ultra-sensitive and it wouldn’t have been the first time Jase and I used our talents to help out a patient in our care. Just acknowledging that part of myself we typically concealed from others gave me an itchy awareness.
“You going down there?” We both peered into the darkness of the ditch.
“Yeah, let me check it out first. Do you think we can make it to the hospital?” The ominous weather seemed to decide for us.
“Let me call it in and see. The wrecker isn’t here yet to tow it out. There’s always the clinic or the university student center depending on the volume of calls.” I left Jase to sort things out from inside the ambulance and got out, carefully trudging my way into the ditch. Surprisingly, icy water lapped at my legs and sucked my boots down into muck, covering them to my knees. Luckily, I’m tall, but coming up to the car I found a good portion of it submerged.
“Crap. This isn’t good.” I made my way past debris, pulling out large branches in my way and tossing them over the car with my increased strength. I had to wedge myself between the wall of the ditch and the vehicle. My ears were tuned into the sounds around me. Whooshing water, the creaking of the car, and a low, keening moan came from inside the vehicle. “Hang on, we’re coming. Jase! Jase, get out here!” Yelling, he clamored behind me to catch up.
“Dude, what is it?”
“Female, stuck inside the vehicle. I don’t know how injured she is, but we don’t have time to wait for the fire department to get here and rip this shit box open.” I got alongside the partially open door. Water had filled it up to the window and all I could see were her shoulders, bluish skin, and tangled pale hair.
“Well, I’ll be damned. Dinner it is, Boone.” Nodding, Jase jumped down to where I was and cuffed me on the shoulder. “Let’s do this, Warren.” Both of us partially shifted into wolf form. Who needs the Jaws of Life when you’ve got increased strength and grip with razor sharp claws? I was liable to scare the crap out of the girl if she saw me like that with my back hunching slightly to accommodate for the change in my bone structure. My hair grew fuller and my face elongated into a wolf jowl and large ears. Focusing to keep my hands from fully changing into clawed paws, to keep from accidentally injuring her, I grabbed a hold of the door, my hands trying to pull it open as wide as we could to get the metal off the frame.
“More, Jase, I can’t get it loose.” Growling, the
struggle was real to get the door off the bent and rusted frame before we were joined by two other bystanders both willing to help.
“Hey, we heard the call on the scanner and came as fast as we could.” There was no vehicle in sight to have transported our helpful bystanders, their clothes soaked through, torn and muddied in places. I didn’t care at the moment as long as we could help the woman.
We both nodded at them and unsurprisingly they shifted as well, a sleek black panther and the other a large black bear. The woman inside the car slumped forward unconscious into the rising water that covered her to the hips inside the low car. “Jase, again!” A combination of frantic pushing and pulling, I tried to hold her head up gently as the water continued to rise and get caught filling the car. I was standing in water that just sucked me down further and made it harder to hold her steady. Together we were able to finally get the door off its hinges and the bear tossed it downwind of the ditch.
Jase was panting heavily like me. “She could have drowned. Pull her out carefully. I’ll get the stretcher ready. There’s no way I can get it down to you and pull it back out like this.” We were all slipping and sliding in the mud and debris from the unexpected flooding. Jase seemed less affected by the whole ordeal than I was. He quickly shifted back with ease, something I often struggled to do when I was hit hard with the adrenaline rush. “Warren. Warren.” His voice was biting and brought me back to attention. I didn’t know how many times he called my name before I heard him.
“Yeah, I know. I got it handled.” Ignoring Jase, I went back to concentrating on helping the woman out of her car as best as I could. There was no way to know how long she’d been in there, but her skin was cold and she was shivering. Reaching down, I was unable to snap the belt buckle, my own fingers not shifted, exposed and affected by the cold water.
“Here, let me do it.” This time the panther reached in over my shoulder, nudging back against the rock and dirt wall of the ditch. He used his sharp claws to slice through the belt efficiently. His bear companion roared into the storm, holding the car out of the water about six inches up and just enough for me to reach in between the high wall of the ditch and the car, taking her out safely. There didn’t seem to be much of her as I pulled her out from the car, careful to not jostle her anywhere.
I felt her stirring in my arms enough to make our companions fidget. The panther and bear, whose names I didn’t catch, eyed each other warily. “Thank you,” I told them as I adjusted her in my arms. Her head rested on my shoulder, facing away from them, arms limp at her sides.
“Anytime, Boone.” Confused, I was about to ask them how they knew my name, but our companions, obviously residents of Woodland Creek, ran off down the road, likely to help someone else. Seeing as how they claimed hearing the call on the scanner, I dismissed any further lingering questions. Most might have found it odd that a panther and bear shifter came so willingly to help a human, but I was happy to put off any differences and know when to be grateful for small mercies.
The rain continued to pour and all of us were soaked through. My hair, now grown out from shifting, was annoyingly plastered to my face and neck. Tonight had been one of those nights, and any help by anyone, shifter or otherwise, was appreciated.
A strange night indeed.
“Hand her up to me.” I had a moment of hesitation placing her in Jase’s capable arms. He’d got the stretcher out of the ambulance but couldn’t get it into the ditch and back out again. I trusted him implicitly, but I still didn’t want to give her up.
Jase saw my hesitations and raised his brows. “Now, Warren. We can’t help her out here.”
