Ember

by Ophelia Sexton

  Margaret was worried I'd go hungry my first day, he had thought, and felt something warm spark to life in his chest. I can't let this woman slip through my fingers. She's a treasure.

  "It's not about paying rent," Mark blustered. "I just don't want to see her hurt. She's already lost so much."

  Okay, now Daniel was torn between admiration that Margaret's family really cared about her, and annoyance that Mark was sticking his nose where it didn't belong. Daniel had never had anyone who looked out for him like that, except maybe Pete.

  As gently as he could, Daniel said, "And I don't want to hurt her, Mark. The details of our relationship are none of your business, but I want you and everyone else to know that I'm not playing games with your aunt's feelings. I care about her, and I want her to be happy."

  "But you—" Mark began, clearly unwilling to let this go.

  At that moment, the loud alert sound of the First Responder app blared from both of their phones.

  "A little girl is missing," Mark said, as Daniel was still trying to extricate his phone from the pocket of his chef's whites. "Last seen in her yard, just off Bearpaw Springs Road. That's just down the road from here. You game?"

  His tone held a note of challenge. Daniel had registered as a volunteer firefighter just before starting his job here, and he had signed up for the first of the required training courses, but he was not yet qualified to help on most of the calls that came in. This was one of the few exceptions.

  Great. My first call, and it's with the guy who hates my guts.

  "Of course," said Daniel. "Give me a minute and I'll inform my kitchen crew I need to leave early."

  * * *

  "She was supposed to be playing in the yard," Kelsey Adams said. Her eyes were red and puffy, and her eyeliner had smeared in wide dark streaks down her pale cheeks. "I didn't realize she was gone until dinner was ready."

  "It's not your fault. Little kids love to explore," Mark told her, and his sympathetic expression was 180 degrees from the scowling belligerence that Daniel had previously seen on the bear shifter's face. "I have two of my own, and there was a time when my wife and I had a hard time keeping track of them. She refers to it as their 'I do it!' phase."

  Kelsey shook her head. "I should have known that something was wrong, but I was just happy that Amber wasn't underfoot while I was trying to fry some pork chops!" She took a deep, shuddering breath, obviously trying to keep further tears at bay. "I've been looking for her, calling her name. And it's getting so cold outside—she only had a sweatshirt on!"

  Then she stopped and peered at Daniel. "Do I know you?"

  Amber. Daniel suddenly recognized Kelsey as the same woman who was being bullied by her boyfriend on the day of his interview at the Bearpaw Springs Resort. He was pretty sure she wouldn't want to be reminded of the unpleasant incident.

  "I'm not sure," he said, diplomatically. "I work in the area. Maybe you've seen me around."

  She nodded.

  Kelsey's home was one of a group of modest 1940's cottages that stood on either side of the road that led from the highway to the resort and the main entrance to the national park. Most of the people living in the cottages either worked at the resort or were National Park Service employees. Daniel spotted an olive-green parka emblazoned with an NPS logo, and guessed that Kelsey worked at the park, though she probably wasn't a ranger.

  According to Linda, the emergency dispatcher, at least a dozen Ordinary community volunteers were on their way to help search for the missing child. Mark and Daniel were the only shifters on-site so far, and it would probably take the police at least an hour to arrive, with no guarantee that it wouldn't be one of the Ordinary officers working for the Lemhi County Sheriff's Department.

  Concerned, Daniel looked at Mark. The late September nighttime temperatures had dipped below freezing last night, and probably would again tonight. Even now, the air already had an icy bite to it. This was no weather for a very young child to be wandering around in without a coat, and that was without taking into account the danger that mountain lions and even bobcats posed.

  "We'll find her," Daniel said, confidently. "I'm an experienced hunter and tracker, and my buddy here is, too." Actually, he had no idea what Mark's human abilities were, but he knew he could count on the other man's enhanced shifter senses.

  Mark nodded in agreement. "We need to get our flashlights from our vehicles, and then we'll start looking for Amber right away."

  "I'm coming with you," Kelsey said, and Daniel's heart sank. He had a plan, but it wouldn't work if Kelsey insisted on tagging along.

  Mark shook his head. "I need you to stay here until the other volunteers arrive. Here's what I want you to tell them..."

  Daniel listened with grudging respect as Mark issued a set of crisp instructions delegating the establishment of a search grid to the next volunteer to arrive. Kelsey wrote everything down on a notepad, stopping every few moments to wipe her eyes or blow her nose.

  "Thank you," she told them.

  "One last thing," Daniel told her. "Do you have a favorite doll or toy we could take with us to give her when we find her?"

  Kelsey nodded, and picked up a big molded plastic dinosaur. "She loves Rexie."

  "We'll bring her back to you," Daniel promised, gingerly accepting the dinosaur from her, trying to keep his scent on the item at a minimum.

  Then he followed Mark out to the gravel driveway, where Mark's pickup and Daniel's Jeep were parked.

  "All right," Daniel said in a low voice. "What we do about our clothes and radios once we shift?"

  Mark shot him an incredulous look. "Shift? With a bunch of Ordinaries about to arrive and start searching? What if someone sees us?"

  "Are you telling me that you can't avoid a bunch of guys with flashlights tromping around in the woods?" Daniel shot back. "Besides, what if they do see you? Bears are native to this area."

  "Yeah? And what about you, Mr. Sabertooth?" Mark asked sarcastically as he opened his truck's driver side door.

  Daniel grinned at him. "I'm pretty sure that if anyone actually sees me, they'll convince themselves that their eyes were playing tricks on them and what they really saw was a mountain lion. Look, you know as well as I do that we need to find that little girl as soon as possible, and we can smell and hear things in our other shapes that our human shapes can't. I just don't want to scare her once we find her, and that includes being naked."

  Mark frowned. "I don't know..." He sighed, and said reluctantly, "But you're right. Time is of the essence. We need to find that little girl before she freezes to death."

  "Good," Daniel said, glad that Mark wasn't going to be stupidly stubborn about this. He added, "I believe that we have our special abilities for a reason, now let's use them to do the right thing."

  "I can't argue with that," Mark admitted. "Okay, so, what I've done in the past when I've had to shift is to put my clothes and my radio in a backpack, and then take the pack with me in bear shape. It's gonna look really strange if anyone sees us, though."

  "Then we'll just have to make sure no one's going to see us," Daniel said confidently.

  He unzipped his leather jacket, folded it, and put it in the backpack he kept in his Jeep. He'd taken off his chef's coat and the bandanna before he'd left the resort, so that left him wearing only a short-sleeved t-shirt and his checked chef's pants. The wind was freezing, and he didn't look forward to having to strip down the rest of the way.

  "What are you doing?" demanded Mark, who had hauled a backpack of his own out of the pickup and was busily stuffing a handful of chocolate bars and a silver thermal blanket into its depths. "Don't tell me that you're planning to shift here?"

  "Got no choice, if I'm going to finish shifting before the rest of the volunteers show up," Daniel said. "Here, catch. It's got Amber's scent." He tossed Mark the toy dinosaur.

  Mark caught it, raised it to his nose, and inhaled deeply before turning his attention back to filling the backpack with a first aid kid and his ra
dio as Daniel finished undressing in the deep pool of shadow behind his Jeep, out of sight of the cottage windows and street.

  Holy shit, it's cold! He hated to think of little Amber lost in the woods that came right up to the edge of the neighborhood and continued on for hundreds of square miles to the north and west. Shivering, he filled his own pack with his clothes and his radio, and began the painful process of shifting.

  Daniel was aware of Mark's impatience even through the dull roar of agony that accompanied his shift.

  When he was finally done, and fighting the post-shift dizziness and shakes, Mark stripped and quickly shifted into his bear shape, become a huge, hulking shape in the night. Not for the first time, Daniel envied how easy and fast the shift was for newer lineages like grizzlies and cougars.

  They wormed their way into the backpacks—a task that proved easier for a bear than a big cat—then the two of them set off in a wide arc around the house, casting about for any trace of Amber's scent.

  Chapter Thirty – Respect

  Success came quickly.

  In a matter of minutes, Mark's super-keen bear nose, many times more sensitive than a dog's, found Amber's trail leaving the cottage yard. Daniel and Mark set off down the street in search of her, careful to stick to the shadows. Luckily, this neighborhood didn't have streetlights or sidewalks, just a grassy verge that held scents better than concrete did.

  They followed the girl's scent until it mingled with a man's. Both scents disappeared a few feet further on, leaving only the smell of poultry manure, diesel exhaust, and tire rubber.

  Uh-oh. Not good, thought Daniel, as he and Mark both cast methodically around the area, trying to pick up the trail. Nothing.

  Daniel and Mark stopped and looked at each other. They couldn't talk when they were both shifted, but they didn't need to. Daniel knew that they had both reached the same conclusion.

  Amber wasn't lost. She'd been taken.

  And it was up to them to find the little girl as quickly as possible.

  As one, they turned and began following the trail of poultry manure and diesel fumes down a street that led away from the highway. The road quickly turned from asphalt to gravel as it entered the woods and began to climb into the hills.

  A hundred yards down the road, when they had passed the last house, Mark raised his head and began to run, a lumbering, deceptively fast gallop. Daniel stretched out into a smooth lope and easily kept pace with the big bear. No need to try to follow the scent now, as long as the road didn't fork further up. With the trees and bushes growing thickly on either side of the road, they would be able to tell if the diesel-powered vehicle they were tracking had left the road at any point.

  It was a moonless night, but the sky over was filled with thousands of stars, and sabertooth eyes were exquisitely adapted to hunting in the dark. Daniel wasn't sure how well Mark could see, but the huge grizzly never broke stride.

  A mile passed, then two, as the rutted gray gravel road spun out ahead of them. The gentle curves turned into sharp, switchback turns as they climbed the side of a steep hill. All around them, a deep stillness lay over the autumn night, broken only by the rhythmic crunching of gravel under large paws and the occasional hoot of an owl.

  Then Daniel's keen ears caught a faint sound. He froze, straining his senses. Mark lumbered a few paces ahead before he realized that Daniel had come to a dead stop. He halted, and Daniel saw his silhouetted muzzle against the starlight as the big bear swung his massive head from side to side.

  Then Daniel heard it again...the faint but unmistakable sound of a crying human child, coming from somewhere up ahead.

  Amber!

  He launched himself forward, passing Mark. The two of them raced up the hillside in the direction of the sound, and it became steadily louder.

  Near the top of the hill, they caught the scent of diesel exhaust, the ammonia reek of a chicken coop, and saw a wide wire gate barring a driveway leading from the road. The gate had been locked with a thick length of chain, now severed. There was a prominent FOR SALE sign wired to the main bar of the gate. A high chain-link fence topped with barbed wire stretched away on either side.

  Daniel spotted a huge tow-truck parked in the driveway on the other side of the closed gate, in front of a large, two-story house, and knew that they'd come to the right place even before he heard the crying child inside the house.

  He crouched, gathered his muscles, and leaped, sailing over the fence with plenty of room to spare. He landed with a nearly inaudible thump on the expanse of frost-killed weeds, and looked back over his shoulder to see whether Mark planned to climb the gate.

  The huge grizzly let out a huffing breath, rose on his haunches, and hooked a single claw from his massive paw under the gate's latch. Then he pulled the gate open and sauntered through.

  The house lights were on downstairs, illuminating the overgrown yard with long glowing golden pools. Daniel paused just outside one of rectangles of light, trying to peer inside the house and assess the situation.

  Somewhere inside the house, the little girl was sobbing, "I want Mommy! I want to go home!"

  "For the last time, kid, shut the fuck up!" shouted a voice that Daniel recognized as Kelsey's ex-boyfriend Jeff. "Or I'll really give you something to cry about!"

  "But why? Why can't I go home?" Amber sniffled.

  "Because your Mommy broke up with me. No one fucking breaks up with me!" snarled Jeff. "And now I'm going to make her very sorry."

  Mark came up next to Daniel, his movements eerily silent for such a huge, heavy creature. He looked expectantly at Daniel.

  Okay, I've got lead on this one.

  Daniel lifted his paw, pointed at Mark, then pointed at the front door. He mimed a swipe and the bear nodded then tilted its head interrogatively at Daniel.

  Daniel swung his paw in a wide arc, then crouched and made exaggerated stalking motions in the direction of the back of the house. You charge in through the front, I'll sneak in through the back.

  Mark nodded again, and Daniel hoped his plan had been understood.

  He padded around to the back of the house, and silently climbed the rotting wooden stairs that led up to a wide deck overlooking the hillside. As he'd guessed, there was a big sliding-glass door at the back of the kitchen, leading out to the deck.

  Staying low in a stalking crouch, Daniel made his way over to the slider. He reached up with his paw and tested the door. It moved an inch. Unlocked. Good.

  He'd been prepared to simply crash through the big window, but this way was easier...and sneakier.

  The door squealed as Daniel pushed it further open. He froze, wondering if Jeff had heard the noise over the sound of Amber's wails, and recoiled from the stench that rolled out though the open slider like a tsunami of foulness.

  The inside of the house looked as if squatters had taken up residence there. Everything was grimy and stained—the old linoleum, the paneled walls, the once-white kitchen cabinets. There were dirty dishes piled in the sink, and the counters were piled with all kinds of trash— cereal boxes, plastic bottles, empty cans. Daniel shuddered at the thought that Jeff was might actually be living in the middle of all that filth and junk.

  Then he heard a loud roar from the front of the house, following by the crash of splintering wood.

  That's my cue.

  Daniel tore open the slider and leaped through. He bounded for the front of the house, knocking over piles of rubbish as he went.

  "What the fuck?" screamed Jeff.

  An instant later, Daniel saw Jeff from the back. He was dressed in a baseball cap and a dirty flannel shirt over equally dirty jeans. The remains of the front door lay on the tiled floor, and Jeff was cursing frantically as he recoiled from the giant snarling bear trying to squeeze itself through the front doorway.

  My, what big teeth you have, thought Daniel, eyeing Mark's impressive mouthful of gleaming white fangs. But mine are bigger.

  Amber's wails abruptly stopped. Her mouth open and her eyes
wide, the little girl stood among piles of old clothing and trash littering the living room, staring at Mark's bear in fascination as it struggled to enter. Its shoulders were just too wide to fit comfortably through the narrow entrance.

  Daniel saw Jeff reach for a shotgun leaning against the wall nearest to him.

  Bear shifters were tough...but even they might not survive being shot in the head.

  Daniel's muscles bunched, and he launched himself at Jeff's back. His paws landed squarely against Jeff's shoulders, sending the flannel-clad man crashing face-first onto the stained carpet.

  Kill him, urged his cat. He doesn't deserve to live.