Bear Vet by Zoe Chant
Chapter Six
“Dad just doesn’t get it,”Raelynn told Bruiser.
He snuffled at her, licked her throat, then flopped his head back down on her chest and began to snore. She lay back with a sigh, staring at the horse posters on her walls. None of them even came close to the fierce beauty of the hellcolt.
Her hellcolt.
She could remember when she’d first looked into his eyes, as vividly as if it had happened seconds ago. One moment she’d thought he was only a stray horse, if an especially beautiful one. The next moment, they were communicating the way people could with animals they especially loved and were especially attuned to, not in words but in feeling. In knowing.
Tame me, and I’m yours, the young hellhorse had said wordlessly.
And Raelynn had replied, I will.
It had been the most wonderful moment of her entire life.
One second later, it had turned into a complete disaster. Dad had come charging up yelling, the hellcolt had burst into flames and fled, Dad yelled at her to stay away from her horse, she’d refused, and Dad had yelled more. Rinse, repeat.
“It’s like everything else in my life,” she told Bruiser. “It seems great at first—it is great—but it’s got this one thing wrong with it that ruins it all.”
Bruiser gave a loud snore, but she went on talking. It seemed completely in tune with the rest of her life that she had no one to confide in but a dog who wasn’t even awake.
“I have this glamorous mom who travels the world and does video calls with me from Morocco and sends me presents from Venice and never talks down to me. Great, right? But she’s not really a mom mom. She’s more like a really cool aunt.”
Bruiser snorted in his sleep. She decided to take that as agreement.
“Now Dad, he’s a real dad. He tells dad jokes and he always has time for me and he cooks food I like and he never tries to make me be someone I’m not and he never makes me feel bad about… stuff I can’t do. But then I find the ONE thing I want more than ANYTHING, and it’s the ONE thing he goes nuts about!”
Her voice rose until Bruiser woke with a start. She petted his ears till he settled back down. “Oh, and let’s talk about that thing I can’t do. It’s kind of the opposite of your thing. You were supposed to be this big, bad, brutal fighter dog, but you’ve got those short little legs, and you’re a big old sweetheart.” She tickled his stomach, making him scratch the air with his short little legs.
“Now me, I was supposed to be a bear shifter like Dad. And I am a bear shifter. But not like Dad is. He turns into a bear, and he’s… Dad as a bear. Oh sure, maybe he wants to laze around and eat honey more than when he’s a man, but doesn’t do anything the man doesn’t want him to do. When I turn into a bear, if I want to swat down a bee hive for the honey, or knock down the neighbors’ apple tree, or rip off our own car door to get to the granola bar I left on the seat when I was a girl five minutes ago… I do. I can’t help myself.”
Bruiser gave a loud snort.
“Oh, I know it sounds funny,” Raelynn told him. “But it really isn’t. That’s something you’re supposed to grow out of by the time you’re five or six. If you still have no control over your animal by the time you’re ten, that’s bad. Traditional shifters, like Dad’s bio-family, would say it’s shameful. Nicer shifters are almost worse, because they understand how awful it would be to never be able to shift without someone babysitting you, because you might destroy something or hurt someone, and they feel so sorry for you and they try really hard to teach you and then they feel guilty when it makes no difference and then they get awkward around you, and then when you pick up and move to a new town where maybe you might get a fresh start, your Dad decides that since his new co-worker vets are shifters too, he should tell them all about you without asking you first because he thinks maybe they can help, but guess what? THEY CAN’T!”
Bruiser barked. She stroked his ears, assuring him, “It’s okay. Dad promised he’d never tell anyone about me again unless I said it was okay. And Bryan and Angel never got awkward about it, so it ended up all right. I mean, it was horrible and embarrassing, but basically all right. Except for me being thirteen now, and I’m as shameful and out of control as ever.”
Bruiser lifted his head, his yellowy-brown eyes gazing at her soulfully as if he sympathized. She kissed his nose. “You understand. You darling. So don’t get your feelings hurt when I say that I love you a lot, but you’re Dad’s dog. You’re not my dog. And Felix and Oscar are the family cats. They’re not my cats.”
What she didn’t say aloud, on the off-chance that Bruiser really did understand, was that he had been supposed to be her dog. But he loved Dad best. If Dad had been home, Bruiser would have been with him, not her.
Tactfully leaving that part unspoken, she went on, “Anyone would think I was the luckiest girl in the world, living in a town with a portal that magical animals come through, the daughter of a vet who takes care of them so I get to meet them all. I’m actually the luckiest and the unluckiest girl in the world. I get to meet the animals, but then they go back through the portal. Every now and then, one of them bonds with a human and stays… but up to now, none of them have ever bonded with me. AND THEN!”
Bruiser cocked his head and growled. She must have yelled loud enough to hurt his ears. Raelynn lowered her voice. “Sorry, sorry. And then, one finally did, and guess what? Dad’s dead-set on sending him back through the portal anyway! I finally found an animal that loves ME, and powerful forces are trying to separate us forever!”
Bruiser jumped off the bed. His little legs churned beneath him as he went straight for the locked bedroom door, growling ferociously.
Raelynn sat up, alarmed. Bruiser never acted like this unless something was actually going on. Maybe there was a bear… not a shifter bear, an actual bear. Grabbing her cell phone, she opened the door and followed him as he trotted down the corridor and into the living room, growling all the way. Raelynn peeked out the window.
The hellhorse was in her backyard.
“You came for me,” she breathed.
His elegant head turned toward her, and his ears twitched forward. Bruiser growled again, and the hellcolt gave a warning stamp of a hoof.
“Stop it, both of you,” said Raelynn. “Bruiser, hush. He’s a friend.”
Bruiser subsided, but she decided not to let him out. The hellcolt was so wary, even a single bark might startle him disastrously. She stuffed her phone in her pocket, grabbed a handful of carrots from the vegetable crisper, and slipped out the back door, closing it softly behind her. Then she stood with her back to the door, holding out a carrot.
The magnificent black horse whickered at her, his nostrils flaring as he sniffed the air. She gave a sigh of happiness at the sight of him. His coat shone in the sun, midnight black with a rippling shimmer of flame…
“Black Flame,” she said, keeping her voice low. “Is that your name? What do you think?”
He walked toward her, then stopped short. She waited until he stretched out his neck farther than she’d thought it could go and nipped off a third of the carrot with a satisfying snap.
She decided to take that as a yes.
Black Flame took a delicate step forward and took the rest of the carrot from her hand. She could feel his warm breath on her hand as he did so. Normally he backed off after that, but this time he stood still, munching away as if he had all the time in the world.
Decision time, she thought.
She’d hadn’t yet touched him, and didn’t know how he’d react if she tried. If she tried too soon, she’d startle him. At best he’d run away, and at worst he’d set the backyard on fire. It might set back all the work she’d done to tame him. But if she put it off too long, she’d lose valuable time. Her only chance at getting her father to accept Black Flame was if she could prove that he was tame and safe, and she was on a deadline for that. At any moment, he could be tranquilized, captured, and pushed back through the portal, never to return.
“Black Flame,” she said. “Don’t be scared.”
Slowly, Raelynn reached out her hand, giving him plenty of time to see it coming and get out of the way. His huge dark eyes followed the movement, wariness in every line of his graceful body. But he didn’t flee. At the last moment, he bent his head, letting her stroke his quivering muzzle. His coat there was fine and soft as velvet.
He breathed out in a snort, and she jumped. But all he did was snuffle at her hand and wrist, then take an experimental chew at her sleeve.
She giggled and pulled it away. “That’s not for eating. Have more carrot.”
Black Flame was very willing to relinquish the probably nasty-tasting fabric for more carrot. This time she snapped it into pieces before feeding him, coaxing him to eat them off the palm of her hand. He lipped them up delicately, his teeth sometimes brushing against her skin, but he never bit her.
As he ate, she stroked his muzzle, then the sleek hair on his forehead, and the coarser hair of his mane. He was hot to the touch; if he’d been an ordinary horse, she’d have thought he had a fever. But Raelynn was pretty sure that was just how hellhorses were.
“If I took your temperature, I could contribute to the sum of human knowledge about hellhorses,” she told him. “Vets For All Pets has access to a secret database with information on the care and feeding of magical animals, but Dad says there’s not much on it about hellhorses, and what there is was obviously all written by someone who observed one from a distance.”
Black Flame, discovering that the carrots were all gone, stretched out his neck again. Raelynn stepped back neatly before he could taste-test her hair. “You’re a chewer, huh? Or maybe just curious. I wonder how different this world is from the one you come from.”
He whuffled at her, all warm breath and velvet muzzle and rubbery lips. Most horses smelled like hay and grass and horse sweat and leather and dust. Raelynn had always found it a pleasant scent. But Black Flame’s scent had an undertone of fire and smoke and something metallic. Iron, maybe. It was different, but she liked it. She hoped she didn’t smell gross to him.
Black Flame seemed much more relaxed now than she’d ever seen him before. She wondered if it was that he’d learned that she was safe or if he liked her backyard. It had high walls covered in ivy, so she and Dad could shift or bring home magical animals without the neighbors seeing. Maybe the enclosed space made him feel safe and protected. Horses that were jittery outside often relaxed once they were inside their stalls in the stable.
He sniffed the air again, then started walking across the yard. She followed as he made his way to the barbecue, then jumped as he swung his head and knocked off the cover.
“What—hey, don’t—”
Black Flame nosed at the grill, then seized it in his teeth and wrenched at it. The entire barbecue fell over with a crash. The grill came off and charcoal rolled everywhere.
Alarmed, Raelynn rushed forward to make sure they weren’t still hot. To her relief, they were all black and cold. A loud crunch made her turn. Black Flame delicately picked up a coal between his lips and crunched it up like a sugar cube.
“No! Drop it! You can’t eat those!”
Black Flame crunched another with every appearance of enjoyment.
Raelynn felt panicked. Was he poisoning himself? Or did all hellhorses eat charcoal? What could she do if it was poison?
She hurriedly began scooping up the coals and stuffing them down the front of her shirt for safekeeping, starting with the ones closest to Black Flame. She knew that was a dangerous thing to do, and she nearly lost a finger when they both made a grab for the same one. Black Flame gave an annoyed huff, and stepped around her to chomp on coals that had rolled farther away. Raelynn finally managed to confiscate the remaining coals, but not before he ate at least nine or ten.
Dad would know if this is all right or not, she thought. And if he doesn’t know, he could find out. He has colleagues all over the world he can call.
But how mad would he be if he found out she’d been with Black Flame again? Would he scare the hellcolt enough arriving that he’d set a fire? Did hellhorses need to eat charcoal in order to set fires? And if she warned him to come quietly, so he wouldn’t scare Black Flame, would he take the opportunity to tranquilize and capture her beloved colt?
Raelynn took out her cell phone, backing away from Black Flame’s attempts to stick his head down the front of her shirt to eat more coal.
Probably it’s okay for him to eat charcoal. He is a hellhorse. Probably it’s fine.
If she didn’t call Dad, she’d be risking Black Flame’s life. If she did, she’d risk him getting sent away from her forever.
