The Beast of Bodmin Moor Page 3

  Even if he didn’t inadvertently snap someone’s spine or maim them with too-sharp teeth…there was another problem. A snag Jake had never anticipated. The jackal didn’t seem interested in a simple ‘shag’. He wanted…more. Jake wasn’t entirely sure what that ‘more’ was…but very much feared that Jack was convinced he’d found it.

  “Get a grip,” Jake snarled aloud, hoping that at least one of them listened. With a heartfelt groan, he scraped his forehead off the ground, and sank back onto folded knees. So now what? He sure as hell couldn’t go home, so he’d better scrounge up something to wear and wait for Him to regain consciousness. A thought that sent a shiver of delight and dread thrilling through his veins.

  Jake rolled his eyes in resigned bemusement; it was all so sodding ridiculous. A tractor could trample him and scarce leave a scratch—he could throw one without breaking a sweat—but Jake was helpless in the face of Him. After gulping down a last lungful of clean air, he clambered to his feet and headed back inside. Jake stood, watching Him for a moment, listening to the steady, sure, pulse of His blood.

  Now he just needed something to cover himself up with. He’d look like Charlie bloody Chaplin if he borrowed some clothes, not that it mattered. He was hardly about open his eyes and wonder why some bloke in God awful get-up was sitting on his sofa, was he?

  That said, chances were He might just wonder why there was a (badly dressed) bloke he’d never clapped eyes on in his life, squatting in his van and watching him sleep. Like a pervert.

  A quick scout about unearthed a bathrobe buried amidst an array of trinkets and treasures. It would do, although quite how Jake intended to explain the fact he’d donned it? Fucknows. If he was female, a drunken one-night stand would seem feasible. But why the hell might you wake to find a strange fella crashed in your campervan, wearing your robe?

  Christ, he could do with a bloody drink. Or twelve. Being engulfed in soft swathes of heady scent sure wasn’t helping matters. So, Jake sat, and watched Him sleep. He barely registered the passing hours; oddly at peace and…content for the first time in longer than he cared to remember.

  His ‘patient’ slept fairly peacefully, muttering a few random words here and there, mostly about…a foxy friend? Shit. Had He fallen for her, this friend? What difference would it make? He wouldn’t wake and promptly fall for the perv squatting on his sofa while decked out in his dressing gown, would he?

  Dawn broke while Jake was drinking a third cup of tea. The world simply brightened; shades of grey bleeding into colour, as if its dial was being turned up. It wasn’t long before the volume ratcheted to full blast, when the gulls chipped in with their contribution to the festivities. Fabulous. It was akin to a ref’s whistle being abruptly blasted down his earhole.

  Jake was ravenous. He’d not been hunting last night and now his guts were grumbling about the distinct lack of a breakfast rump steak heading their way. Naked, starving and squatting. It wasn’t the best start he’d ever had to a day…although it was far from the worst.

  Mostly, Jake just felt impatient; like a kid on Christmas morning waiting for his dad to wake up so he could open his presents. Perhaps he should rustle around a little? Or cough…clear his throat? Or…open the window and hope that squawking seagull was, as Jake suspected, enough to wake the dead. Let alone the decidedly not dead, thank God. Or Anubis, for having the grace to take a night off.

  5. Phin

  Phin hurt.

  It was a sharp, stabbing sort of pain. But it was dull too, as if it came from very far away, which didn’t seem possible when the pain was in his head. That had been firmly fixed atop his shoulders last time he looked, but stranger things had happened. Colours had forever done bleeding into touch, tastes, sounds, smells. Ants did scurrying under his skin. Pictures writhed on the pages of books as words wriggled in wormy parades. Hallucinations, Mr Neil called those. His long-suffering therapist preferred to do focusing on the sensory stuff: Synaesthesia. Hypersensitivity. He came armed with lots of cognitive fix-its for Phin to do forgetting.

  Whether or not Phin’s head was still in situ was far less significant than the fact that: last time he’d opened his eyes, there had been a wolf peering down at him. Well, sort of—it looked a smidge foxy for a wolf—but Phin had felt a bit too fuzzy to be sure. Its ears had seemed a size too big to belong to a wolf…and it’s own head, which had been where it should be. This being more than Phin could claim with certainty, he wasn’t in any position to quibble about earflap excesses. He couldn’t help but do hoping they felt silky soft to touch, though. Strokable.

  Impressive pinnae aside, his foxy friend had the most beautiful eyes Phin had ever seen. It was p’raps possible that he’d done hallucinating this part, because they were blue. Very, very, blue. Canis did not often sport such a hue, except for huskies, and yet, it’s gaze had blazed azure, so…perhaps a husky had got frisky with a fox?

  Contemplating the mating habits of canine critters was perhaps tad random—particularly if his head had gone missing—in which case Phin should do concentrating on that. This was another of Mr. Neil’s favourite words. He was also fond of focus, extreme, excessive, hypersensitivity, hyperactive, hyper-however-Phin-felt. Mr. Neil was most hyperkeen on wafting his favourite prefix about. With a flagrancy that was more than a mite ironic. Phin had not pointed this out. That would have been rude.

  Rude (adj.): telling the truth.

  Hyper (prep. and adv.) a prefix appearing in loanwords from Greek, meaning ‘over’; usually implying excess or exaggeration.

  Charming.

  ‘Excess’? As if Phin was baggage. In this (suit)case, it assuredly meant Too Much. That pretty much summed up what the pokers and prodders had concluded about all Phin’s doings. He didn’t care what they decided as long as they let him do them. In a comfy way.

  Back to Phin’s foxy friend; even in that brief moment of eye contact he’d felt certain they were not those of a foe. Those brilliant blues had been warm with…concern. A claim that might rubber stamp Phin’s residency in very select accommodations—complete with a fancy buckled coat—if he was daft enough to utter it aloud. Phin was aware that the label they’d slapped on his forehead tended to deem him mind blind: incapable of reading facial expressions or observing social cues. While that often held true, Professor Simon Baron Cohen (cousin of Borat and top-notch research Prof in the field) believed that the extreme opposite occurred in some cases: Hypersensitivity so acute it was akin to a sixth one.

  Phin absorbed undertones louder than the tune itself; saw white spaces rather than words. It was tricky to do focusing on things people said when he heard their feelings at a much higher volume. Oops, the concentrating thing had gone to pot again. He hadn’t even got around to prising his eyelids apart yet. It did seem a smidge possible that his head would hurt a helluva lot more when he did, and the rest of Phin was quite uncomfy enough thank you, kindly. Inflicting further suffering on himself, when his body bits were suggesting he’d done kipping on the ‘sofa’—again—didn’t sound very fun. Why hadn’t he done clambering into his cosy bed nook? If he turned over in his sleep on this skinny bench seat, Phin sure woken up in a bit of a hurry.

  It was no good, he would have to crank his lids open sometime soon, he was gasping for a cuppa. Ping. OUCH. Phin slammed them shut again.

  “Oooh, m’head…” he groaned.

  “Are you okay?”

  Huh? That was a bit spooky. Phin attempted to blink away the bleary before turning his head towards the velvety voice that just did enquiring about his health.

  “Oh. Hello,” Phin parped, several octaves higher than usual.

  There was a man—wearing Phin’s bathrobe—sitting on the sofa-seat set at right angles to his own. Quite why he had borrowed Phin’s robe, he knew not. Nor, come to think of it, who the bejeezus he was.

  It was an odd time to pop by for a visit though, particularly without texting first. That said, Phin had never clapped eyes on the fella in his life, which did suggest he didn’
t know the phone number. That seemed forgivable enough, but the robe thing was a tad rich. Help yourself, why don’t you? Oh, you already have.

  “Hi, are you alright?”

  Well, Phin had felt better. Particularly in the head department, which was definitely attached to his neck. It hurt lots too much to be absent. Other than that, it wasn’t every day Phin woke to find the most beautiful man he’d ever seen sitting on his sofa-seat. Even if he was a robe snaffler.

  There was something…timeless about him. Primal; all tumbling locks, heavy-lidded eyes and pouty lips. Despite being a compact sort of chap, rather than a hulking behemoth, he was more than a mite Momoan. A look enhanced by hair that tumbled in a hundred hues of honey-to-toffee. He was sporting what appeared to be a permanent sort of stubble, rather than a beard, but aside from that, he might have stepped straight from an ocean the exact shade of those eyes.

  It was a good job Phin’s mum wasn’t here. She would be nailing planks across the door after dispatching him without so much as a by-your-leave, or a Latin quotation.

  “My head hurts, which is a bit not fair when I’ve forgotten the squiffy part. I might be fibbing though, cos I can’t recall crashing here, either. Um, I don’t mean to be rude—though I often am—but why are you wearing my robe?”

  The hot as hell squatter on his sofa looked a bit bewildered by Phin’s question. Not half as befuddled as Phin felt though; it was his robe that had been filched, after all.

  “Your robe?” He glanced down, as if surprised to find himself informed thus.

  Perhaps he was a nutter. Phin did tend to attract them. Not in a sexy way, sadly. In an: ‘Oh hello, I intend to chat away to you until the end of time about my collection of vintage tax discs from 1921-2014’ sort of fashion.

  Heaven knows why. They didn’t usually ‘borrow’ his robe without asking, though.

  “I mean, you’re welcome to lend it, although no one ever has before. That’s why I was surprised…have you popped ’round to borrow anything else? Sugar? Tea-bags?”

  “Sugar?”

  He really is a wee-bit w-e-i-r-d. “Sweet stuff you sprinkle in your tea?”

  “I am familiar with sugar,” he grinned. “Four spoons please.”

  It was the sort of grin his mum had warned his sisters about. She hadn’t thought to mention this to Phin, but then…she hadn’t seen the scrapbook of blue-eyed-boys stashed under his bed.

  “You’re staying for a cuppa? I wish you’d told me you were coming—not because that would have been po-lite—but I would have bought you some Hobnobs. You’ll have to suffer malted milks, I’m afraid. Unless I’ve scoffed those too…Four?!”

  Phin had to be hallucinating this, had to be. Even then, he’d really excessed himself this time. Conjuring up a sexy sweet-toothed scoundrel with sticky fingers was a smidge extravagant. Phin had better not tell Mr. Neil about this episode, or they might start fiddling with his meds. Again. Oops, that had been a…misfortunate mishap. Phin hadn’t meant to get quite so…upset. The zoo had been quite nice about it. Eventually. He should p’raps not ’fess up about the foxy-wolf he met on the moors, either.

  Phin was clearly on a roll. That never went well. Perhaps he’d dreamed last night’s foxy friend with some spook-sleep sixth-sense? It had happened just before this new (and very) foxy friend parked his bum on Phin’s sofa-seat.

  “Tea?”

  “Pardon?” Phin blinked, several times. Dang, he’d zoned out. Again.

  It was with a devilish grin that Foxy raked a hand through his tousled hair, scraping back its trailing tendrils. Blimey…Phin did shutting his mouth sharpish, perchance he was gaping. A tad. His distracting tumble of waves had cascaded over one eye, concealing half his face. It’s features alone forced Phin to concede that hallucinating was a very lot likely. His bone-structure did suggesting that Phin had woken up in Asgard, or Atlantis.

  His gaze was a blue so true, it shimmered like sunlit Caribbean seas. Phin tended to dread visitors, especially ones who turned up unannounced and robbed you blind. But then, he’d never been offered one that resembled an aquatic god, or Robin Hood. Or certain lazuli-eyed vampires. It wasn’t Phin’s fault that his visitors turned up clutching folders with squinty foreheads, was it?

  Foxy appeared to have been dipped in liquid gold. Or coaxed from sleep by the caress of sun rays every morn. If only Phin was the one person in the world who was allowed to wake and scatter that skin with kisses.

  Shifting onto his side a smidge, Phin tried to adjust himself without being unseemly. Much to his relief, he was still wearing jeans, or his flimsy blanket would have been draped obscenely over an erection that had bid adieu to morning glory a wee while back. Hell-bent on an utter excess of glory halleloo.

  6. Jake

  He woke two hours later. His breathing altered first, becoming less rhythmic, regular, as he stirred to consciousness. His pulse rate picked up a little when feathery lashes flickered, parted, fell. Huge eyes had no sooner flared wide than slammed shut again, alongside a groan.

  “Oh, m’head…”

  Jake didn’t think it through before enquiring how He felt. This being the most important thing in the world, and they needed to know. When Jake’s presence registered, He blinked, as bewildered as a new-born fawn. It might be best to fling himself off a cliff, Jake decided. Before he did something diabolical, rather than afterwards. It would save time.

  “Oh. Hello.” The soft musicality of His voice was somehow more surprising than His first words. Oh. Hello. For all the world as if Jake was a regular visitor who’d popped in for coffee on the off chance.

  Who the hell are you? What are you doing in my van? Why the fuck were you watching me sleep like a pervy stalker…?

  None of which seemed cause for concern, compared to the unfairness of waking with a banging headache and no memory of earning it. All of which might well be a ‘fib’. Apparently. One that didn’t appear to include erasing naked men, methods of conveyance, or things that went bump in the night. Foreheads in particular. All of this was related with an air of bemused acceptance as…adorable as his wide-eyed wonderment.

  Jake would be best advised to avoid being lulled into a false sense of security by charms way too beguiling to withstand without a wink of sleep. A state that left him utterly unarmed for following corker, added as an afterthought, as if it was not a steel jaw trap tossed in Jake’s path.

  “Um, I don’t mean to be rude—though I often am—but why are you wearing my robe?”

  All of the aforementioned queries must be more significant than your stalker’s apparel while squatting in your van, watching you sleep? Surely? Jake glanced down at it, trying to rustle up something, anything to explain this most pressing of matters. A reason that didn’t include:

  You slipped on some rubble and smacked your head on a rock after being distracted by my whimper. Rather than let you bleed to death, I licked the wound—to clean it, clearly—not because I’m a vile dog who gets off on lapping at the heads of unconscious innocents on the moors. After that, it was the least I could do to carry you home and stay to ensure that you didn’t slip into a coma…or say, turn into a mangy mutt. Your robe? Well…I had to carry you here, um, sort of naked, which seemed one rude awakening too many. In addition to finding a stranger in your van, watching you sleep in a deeply suspect manner. While wearing your bathrobe.

  Jake was still trying to come up with a feasible alternative while chime bar tones compared the virtues of Hobnobs and malted milk biscuits. He didn’t like to ask if there was any raw steak instead. Or bacon.

  Or sausage.

  You are not having sausages. They give you the trots.

  Spoilsport. It’s not as if you’re required to poop scoop, is it?

  Be-have. Or we’re going home.

  Says you and whose army?

  Jack! F’fucksakes, shut up.

  Shutting. I still fancy a sausage, though.

  Jake slammed his lids shut, as if they would act as a partition between him
self and certain backseat drivers. He was too distracted to prepare for impact upon reopening them. Blue locked with brown. The world tilted on its axis.

  Planets didn’t collide, there were no sudden snowstorms in the Sahara or monsoons in Moscow. A teacup probably didn’t even fall off a table. No jackal exploded from Jake’s body and pertinent parts refrained from exploding all over the borrowed bathrobe. Nothing untoward happened whatsoever…but Jake knew that nothing would ever be the same again.

  Somewhere inside, the jackal whined pitifully. Want. Jake could practically feel his claws scrabbling at his guts like a frantic dog scratching at the door. They were all doomed. Nothing good could come of this…surely? At that precise moment in time, Jake was more likely to audition for Britain’s Got Talent than convince himself—or Jack—that he could flee from this. Even on two legs, let alone four.