Bear My Heart: A Small Town Paranormal Romance (5 page)

Dot tried to make eye contact
with Casey but the woman was sobbing and whimpering as she twisted
feebly in her husband's grip.

Dot's arms were aching.
Timmy was small and skinny for his age but he wasn't a toddler. He
was six years old, and he weighed quite a bit. Dot staggered but she
didn't let him go.

She couldn't leave them.
Casey and Timmy were as good as dead once Jim got them back in the
house. Casey's lip was split and her face was beginning to swell.

Dot glanced down at Timmy and
saw the throbbing red mark on his cheek. The little boy's eyes were
shining with unshed tears.

“Can you run, Timmy?”
Dot whispered into his ear.

The boy nodded once.

“I'm going to get your
mom. When I put you down, you run to my house and stay there, okay?”
she whispered urgently.

Timmy nodded again, but this
time he turned to give his mother a pleading look.

Dot tightened her arms around
Timmy and walked slowly towards Jim and Casey. Jim narrowed his
eyes in suspicion.

“I'm leaving now. I'm
just going to put the boy down on the front step. Casey, your son is
fine,” Dot said, meeting the woman's red, teary eyes. “You
have a wonderful little boy, a great life ahead of you.”

Don't let this brute ruin
it
.

Dot put her mouth against the
boy's ear and whispered fiercely, “Run! Now!”

CHAPTER
THIRTEEN

Dot lowered Timmy to the
ground and the boy shot from her arms like an arrow. He looked back
once, then turned and ran straight to her house.

“What…? You!”
Jim roared.

Dot swung her fist with all
her might and socked Jim squarely in the jaw. She aimed for his nose
next but he caught her fist in his meaty hand.

“Run!” Dot
screamed to Casey. “Go to your son!”

Casey staggered away, crying
hysterically. She tried to pull her husband away as Jim twisted
Dot's arm savagely but he kicked her in the stomach and sent her
sprawling to the ground.

“Please, Jim, don't...”
she begged, crawling towards them.

“Bitch!” Jim
screamed at Dot. “I'll break your fucking arm! You think
you're so smart? I'll break you, you stupid bitch! I'll kill you!”

Dot cried out as Jim wrenched
her arm violently back, dislocating it. She screamed and almost
blacked out as her bone popped painfully out of her shoulder.

Jim wrapped his big, brutal
hands around her throat and slammed her against the wall.

“You want to feel my
hands on you, bitch?” he spat in her face. “I'll rape
you, then I'll kill you!”

Dot's vision was beginning to
blur. The pain in her shoulder was excruciating. She couldn't see
clearly and she couldn't breathe.

Desperately, Dot jerked her
knee up but she couldn't hit the bastard where it mattered.

She heard a scream. And a
roar.

She wasn't sure if she heard
them in her head.

The fingers around her neck
loosened and all of a sudden, Jim's contorted, monstrous face was no
longer in front of her.

Dot slid down the wall and
blinked repeatedly. A demented laugh gurgled out of her.

There was a bear, a huge,
ferocious grizzly bear in front of the house.

A bear! Imagine that.

Jim was scrabbling away from
the bear, screaming and throwing rocks at the snarling animal.

The bear charged and pinned
Jim to the ground. Its sharp, curved claws glinted as it slashed
down.

Dazed with pain, Dot slumped
against the wall and watched the unfolding scene numbly. The bear
clawed at Jim's face and arms, but incredibly, it left only
superficial wounds on Jim's neck and torso. The bear's blows were
powerful but calculated and precise.

It wasn't aiming to kill, Dot
realized.

The bear slashed at Jim's
hands as Jim tried to cover his face. As Jim rolled away, the
enraged bear bit down on the man's leg.

Jim howled and screamed in
agony and horror. “Help! Stop! Get away from me! Stop!”

Dot's fuzzy, scrambled mind
couldn't help wondering how many times Casey had cried out for help
in the past and begged him to stop.

“But you didn't stop,
did you,” Dot muttered as the scene wavered before her. She
blinked quickly and her vision cleared just enough for her to see the
bear stomp on Jim's hands, breaking all the bones.

Jim screamed in anguish and
curled into a ball on the ground. He couldn't even shield himself
from the bear's blows. The bear could kill him right now, but it
didn't. Instead, it sliced its razor-sharp claws across Jim's hands,
severing veins and nerves.

Dot doubted that the man
would ever regain the use of his hands again. They were far too
damaged.

He would never lay his hands
on Casey and Timmy again, she thought with grim satisfaction.

The bear backed away from the
screaming mess on the ground and looked up at Dot.

Dot had never seen a bear
with such brilliant, blue eyes before.

Shouts and running footsteps
could be heard. People were coming.

“You,” Dot
whispered. “It's you.”

The voices were getting
louder. Lights appeared in windows and people rushed down the street
towards the house.

The bear held her gaze for a
few agonizing heartbeats.

Then it turned and loped
away, disappearing swiftly and silently into the shadows between the
trees.

CHAPTER
FOURTEEN

Faces swam in and out of
Dot's focus and she was aware of people talking to her. But she
couldn't really hear what they were saying. The pain radiated from
her shoulder and down her spine, making it impossible for her to get
up.

A man who introduced himself
as Dr. Sloan was kneeling in front of her, speaking rapidly. She
couldn't make out if he was talking to her or to the people crowding
behind her.

The pain was blunting all her
senses. She stared down in fascination and horror at her limp,
floppy arm. It didn't really look or feel like her arm. She
couldn't move it and it hurt so much until it didn't hurt any more.
Her arm was numb whereas the rest of her body hurt like hell.

Through a gap in the crowd,
Dot saw blankets being wrapped protectively around Casey and Timmy.
The Sheriff's Department of Bear Cove consisted of just two good men,
and Dot managed a smile when she realized that the whole department
had turned up to arrest Jim.

Sheriff Bob and Deputy Kane
were pushing their way through the crowd to reach Jim, who was being
held down by five pajama-clad men.

“Casey, Timmy...”
Dot managed to croak.

“They're fine. Dr.
Rita and her sisters are taking care of them,” someone said.

Dot nodded and closed her
eyes. Faces were spinning around her and she felt like she might
throw up. She didn't want to be here, with so many people crowding
round her, talking to her and touching her. She didn't want to be
seen or noticed. This was...not good.

“Not good. We'll have
to rush her to the hospital. Will someone...” Dr. Sloan's
eyes widened and he stood up quickly when he saw a little old lady
wearing a dozen curlers in her silver hair bearing down on him. “Oh,
Nanny Riddle! I...”

“I'll take care of
her,” Nanny Riddle said, pushing past Dr. Sloan. She bent down
and laid a winkled but strong hand on Dot's shoulder. “I'm
Yelena Riddle, but everyone calls me Nanny. Don't worry, I know what
I'm doing. I'm a wise woman. Every town needs one, you know.”
Nanny Riddle leaned in closer and whispered, “I'm also
not
a witch.”

Dot's eyes widened in alarm
as Nanny Riddle tugged at her arm. She let out a cry of shock as
Nanny rotated her arm and pushed it firmly back into the socket.
There was a soft click and Dot gasped.

The pain was gone.

Nanny Riddle laid her hand on
Dot's shoulder and muttered softly under her breath. The words made
no sense to Dot but she felt her body relax immediately. Her mind
and vision cleared as she took a couple of deep, long breaths.

“I can feel my arm
again,” Dot said, wriggling her fingers in amazement.
“And...it feels great. Thank you! Thank you, Nanny.”

Nanny smiled, flashing a gold
tooth. “I didn't use magic to heal you,” Nanny answered
the question at the tip of Dot's tongue. “I just did what
ought to be done. Like what you did tonight. You heal yourself when
you heal others. And you healed Casey and Timmy tonight.”

Dot looked at Casey, who was
pointing at Jim as she talked to the Sheriff.

“Casey never talked
before. Her stories were always the same. She fell down the stairs
or walked into a door. Miraculously, she stopped falling down stairs
and walking into doors after Jim was put away. But now that he's
back...” Nanny's mouth tightened into a grim line.

“Will she tell the
Sheriff the truth now?” Dot asked.

Nanny nodded. “She has
to. You got hurt because of her.”

“There was a bear...”

“A bear, eh?”
Nanny said, cocking her head. “There are wolves too in these
parts.”

Nanny looked up at the night
sky, squinting at the stars. A star directly overhead glowed
brighter, illuminating the clouds around it for an instant before
vanishing completely.

Nanny nodded to herself,
looking satisfied. “Yes, yes. The bear saved Timmy,”
Nanny mumbled to no one in particular.

Nanny turned and looked
straight at Dot. “He would have killed him one day,” the
old woman said solemnly.

Dot didn't reply. She knew
who Nanny was talking about.

He
was Timmy.

The boy would one day kill
his father to protect his mother.

It would have happened as
Nanny said and no one, absolutely no one would have been able to say
that they hadn't foreseen such an eventuality.

The bear had saved young
Timmy from his father and from himself.

CHAPTER
F
IF
TEEN

Troy walked into the
library with his two exuberant nephews and saw Megan at the counter.

“Mom! Mom!” The
twins waved and raced to their mother.

“Shhh! Keep it down.
This is the library, not the playground,” Megan said, giving
them a quick hug. She straightened up and turned to Troy. “I
thought you guys were going to Papa Bear's.”

“Been there. Done
breakfast,” Troy reported. Megan had to work on Saturday
mornings, so he would pick the boys up in the morning and babysit
them for a few hours. Troy usually played basketball or some outdoor
sport with his nephews so the little rascals could use up all their
boundless energy.

“Hmm.” Megan
arched a brow at him.

“They've filled their
tummies. So now they should feed their brain,” Troy explained.

“They just borrowed a
ton of books from the library yesterday,” Megan deadpanned.

“There's no such thing
as too many books, right?” Troy countered.

Megan's smile widened to a
grin. She wasn't fooled. She knew the real reason he was here.

“Go on,” she
said, tilting her head towards the back of the library. “She's
been there all morning.”

Troy glanced after the twins
who were scampering off to the children's section.

“Don't worry. They
know the library inside out,” Megan said and nudged him.
“Invite her to dinner tomorrow night.”

Troy frowned. “I'm not
sure...”

“Just ask. She might
say yes.” Megan flapped her hands in a shooing motion.

Troy strode to the back of
the library and saw Dot hunched over her laptop at the corner, typing
furiously with one hand. Her left arm was in a sling.

He hadn't had the chance to
speak to her since the incident at Casey's house two nights ago.
Nanny Riddle had bustled Dot over to Dr. Sloan's clinic so that no
one would think that she had used magic to heal Dot. Nanny reasoned
that if Dr. Sloan put Dot's arm in a sling, then it was Dr. Sloan who
had healed Dot's arm using “modern medicine”.

The Sheriff had turned Jim
over to the city police. On the day that he was released from jail,
Jim had been involved in a violent carjacking and robbery. Jim had
robbed a man and drove the stolen car to the edge of Bear Cove. The
car was found abandoned in a ditch.

No one saw Jim enter the
house, and no one heard the terrified pleas and whimpers coming from
the house. Troy's heart and fists clenched at the thought of what
might have happened if he hadn't been there that night.

Jim might have killed them
all.

Troy walked up to the corner
table and pulled out a chair. Dot looked up with a deep frown.