by Calinda B
Chapter Two
Chia drove her black Jeep Commander 4-wheel drive SUV up the narrow road to her log cabin home at such a furious clip, her ghosts clung to the back bumper rather than be in the car with her. “It’s a good place for you,” she yelled out the window. “You should try it more often!”
Knowing better, but not caring, she slammed on the brakes and felt a surge of satisfaction at losing control of the truck as it skidded along the icy driveway. She cranked the steering wheel at the last minute, causing the SUV to lurch and spin before coming to a stop inches shy of her barn, millimeters from colliding with her snowplow. Her ghosts scattered throughout the yard, flung like rolls of toilet paper. She leaped out of the truck and said, “And you thought yourselves safe. Ha!”
They pried themselves from tree trunks, pulled free from snowbanks. Bunching together, they regrouped and swirled around her head in a lazy circle, like buzzards.
The sun had barely started its morning hellos. It winked on the distant glacier oozing through the split between the mountains. The glacier appeared like a static flow, pouring on the frozen lake at the base of the ice field.
Chia already had a massive headache. Fawn had given her the skinny on the discontent of a few town fringe dwellers who wanted her gone. They were an angry hive of denizens who liked nobody, her even less, and made trouble wherever they went. She called them the Cretin Clan, but not to their faces.
The ringleader, Dick Nighthawk, had always had it in for her. Now, having organized his stupid crew of assholes at the request of Red Mountainbear, and recruiting a few more, he intended on ridding the town of Charming of their manager—namely her.
He thought he and Red would then be in charge of the town. According to Fawn, he probably didn’t know Red all that well—if he did, he’d know Red was merely using him to gain access to town politics and get his way. Red Mountainbear, a man with opinions to spare, never shared responsibilities.
She pushed open her massive timber front door to her rustic home and yelped. Hanging from the ceiling, naked, wrapped like a butterfly cocoon in clear packing tape and his toes stuck in the shafts of her winter boots, hung Dillon, her last night’s playmate.
“My boots!” Chia exclaimed. “Where did you find them?”
Her TV blared. She raced over and switched it off, after seeing her face next to a photo of Red Mountainbear with the headline, Trouble in Charming - Has the Charm Worn Off? “Disgusting,” she muttered. “No, Lemming News, no charm has been lost.” She turned her attention to Dillon.
A strip of duct tape had been plastered to his mouth, catching a few locks of his ebony hair in the process. His lean arms, also wound together with duct tape at the wrists, stretched to breaking, hooked over her forged iron chandelier.
Her surprised silver-gray eyes met his angry brown ones. “What the hell happened?”
He mumbled through the duct tape, kicking his bound legs, causing her boots to fly free.
“Okay, okay, you can’t tell me through a taped mouth.” She eyed the room for a way to get him down. At five foot, weighing a mere ninety-nine pounds, she wouldn’t be much help to her six foot something cocoon of a lover. She strode toward a side table, catching sight of a note taped to the bottom of one of her boots. “What’s this?” She crouched to retrieve it, peeling it away from the sole.
Someone locked my coffin…again. Who could it be? I’m in the hall closet, pissed. You’re going to pay. Oh – you know how you couldn’t find your dumb boots? They were in the closet where they’re supposed to be. Yours, Demonio Julius Alexander.
“Always a kidder, my roommate.” She laughed nervously. Not having any idea she’d be called out of the house to look for Hung Durand, she’d meant to play a prank on the vampire, her newish roommate, known around town as D’Raynged.
He was supposed to slink in the house at the very last minute, as usual, bloated with blood and gorged on sex, find his basement coffin locked, and promise her a favor for unlocking it before sunlight blasted through the egress windows, hit his skin and sizzled him.
Yeah, it was extortion, but what the heck? He yipped and snipped at her messes and chaos in the house, and it was her house. He deserved to be toyed with. Now she’d managed to piss him off and she’d be the one owing favors. Lots of them from the sound of it.
Dillon’s angry swings of protest, causing the chandelier to creak and squeak, caught her attention.
“Hold on, hold on.” She pushed and tugged the heavy, solid wood side table until his toes touched. Then, realizing no way in hell could she reach his wrists, she pushed over a sturdy wooden dining chair. She hefted it, nearly losing her balance.
Dillon made some smothered pissed off noise.
“Chill out, I’m trying.” She positioned it next to him, climbed on and realized she forgot to get scissors or a knife. “Oops! One more second, Dillon.”
He mumbled something unintelligible, but she thought it sounded angry.
She climbed from the chair, slid from the table, and rushed to the cozy little kitchen, complete with a huge six burner range and industrial dishwasher—her grandma used to feed the loggers. She rummaged around in her junk drawer for a box cutter. “Ah ha!” she said, wielding the cutter, and headed back to the front room. “Now, don’t move. We both don’t want me to slip and slice the veins in your wrist.”
His eyebrows launched skyward.
“I know, right? Bad for both of us. Hold still.” She stretched tall, and carefully, slowly, slid the sharp edge through the sticky gray and white tape.
His arms flew free and, as his legs were still bound, he fell from the table onto the timber floor, landing with a thud and an inarticulate curse. He wrenched the tape free from his mouth, causing an angry red stripe to form on his cheeks. “What the hell kind of roommate do you have here, Chia? I awoke, heard someone banging around the front room, so I got up, got your rifle, and pointed it at him.”
Chia cringed, thinking a bullet would have only made him more pissed.
“I thought he was an intruder,” Dillon said, ripping the packing tape from his legs with rage-filled movements. His dark hair clung to the tape, leaving smooth red striped skin behind in a kind of candy-striped effect. “Only he said he lived here and wondered where you’d gone off to. Said he couldn’t find the key to his room and you probably had it. I told him to calm down, you probably had town business to attend to. The guy went ballistic. Fucking hell! As quick as lighting, he had me trussed up, hanging here like a slab of meat in a meat locker.”
“Yeah, he gets a bit anxious when he can’t get into his, uh, his room.” She didn’t dare tell him his room happened to be a coffin. And no way would she mention his status as a vamp. Part of her efficacy as the town manager came from making sure the humans didn’t learn of their supernatural neighbors.
Sure, long-timers knew or suspected they lived next to supernatural beings. But newcomers, like Dillon—up here to get in on the herring run in March, once he was done with the late winter Pacific Cod plunder—were kept in the dark as long as possible. It simply wasn’t discussed.
The supes didn’t care, they did what they were told—as long as they were left alone to party and play, or engage in territorial disputes and general mayhem, they were cool about anything she said. Chia had to spin stories like you wouldn’t believe to make such things sound normal. Sometimes she felt like nothing more than a zookeeper.
“Anxious? Anxious? This is anxious.” He climbed off the floor and scurried around the room like he was nervous or fretful. “Your roommate came fucking unglued.” He leaped from sofa to recliner, waving his arms like a mad chimpanzee.
Why do you think they call him D’Raynged? she thought, chewing her lower lip.
He stalked into her bedroom and marched out, clothes in hand. “This has been fun, but…”
“Where you going?” she asked, worried. A new playmate, he’d done her right in the pleasure department last night. She didn’t want to part on bad terms.
<
br /> “Anywhere but here. You’re in a mess of trouble from the sound of the news. I want no part of it.”
“What did you see?”
“Only bullshit about you losing a grip on reality, and Red Mountainbear feeling the need to step in and give the land back to the people it belonged to.”
“Losing a grip on reality? Me? Oh, dear. He wants to take it away from the…” She started to say shifters but caught herself. Dillon didn’t need any more alarming news.
He stormed toward the door, realized he wore no clothes and tape still clung to parts of his body.
“Can I help?” Chia asked, inching toward him
“No!” he shouted. He ripped the tape from his genitals and chest, cursing and shouting. When finished, he crumpled the tape into a wad and pitched it across the room. He yanked on his trousers and strode from the house, bare-chested and bare-footed.
Chia quickly snagged his sturdy boots off the floor, holding them in the air from the front landing. “What about your boots?”
He whirled, stomped toward her, snatched the boots, and whirled away, yelling over his shoulder, “I’ll call you…maybe. Probably not.”
As he sped away in his Chevy Tahoe, Chia sighed. Her head dropped to stare at her grandma’s worn welcome mat, bearing the words Loggers Welcome. “He was fun. I guess this is one of the job hazards of being manager of a strange little town and having an unpredictable roommate.”
She wandered in the house, casting a wary eye at the assorted remnants from last night—beer bottles, a joint—both courtesy of Dillon, tequila—her drink of choice, her socks and bra, his underwear. She started to pick up the beer bottles, then thought better of it. “Later,” she said, and sauntered down the hall. She banged her clenched fist on the hall door. “I could open this thing and fry your ass,” she yelled.
“You’d burn in hell for murder,” came his muffled response.
“You’re already dead, jackass.” She placed her back against the door and slid to her rump, landing on the red, gray and black wool runner her grandma left with the house when she bequeathed it to her. Everything, from the sturdy sofa, its fabric covered with bold, chunky red, black and aqua designs from the Tlingit tribe, to the massive timber bed, had been her grandparents. She’d replaced the mattress, of course, but couldn’t bear to part with anything else. She’d loved her grandparents.
“You’re not crying are you?”
“No, I’m not crying. Merely angry. And disappointed.”
“Puh-lease, child. There are plenty of fish.”
“He was fun.”
“There are plenty of fun fish. Trust me.”
“Not in this town. Only a seasonal now and then.” She picked at a drop of dried blood, no doubt from the fangs of her roomie.
“Feeling sorry for yourself?”
“Maybe. I have a problem—a huge problem, from the sound of it.”
“Can it wait? I’m exhausted. I had quite the night with a delightful little vamp named Sultana. Lives a village away. I plan on spending some serious time getting to know her.” His low chuckle seeped from the closet.
“Spare me the deets, D. Yeah, it can wait. Dark will be here soon enough.” Sunrise still came late these days and darkness resumed early, even though spring was around the corner. Vamps loved Alaska for its abundant winter nightlife. Many migrated south for the summer, since the daylight consumed most of the twenty-four hour cycle the farther north you went.
“Care to tell me the topic? I can ruminate on it.”
“My job. Red Mountainbear wants it.”
“Isn’t he the one always on the news? What’s that network? Lemming News?”
“That’s the one. He’s broadcasting stuff that was news to me until I saw it. It’s like watching a version of my life I didn’t agree to and don’t even know about. Talk about a spin.”
“You’re good at your job. The townsfolk won’t have it.”
“They might. He’s going to try to prove my incompetence and my supposed loss of grip on reality.”
“By doing what?”
“By doing what I should be doing. That’s the reason I had to leave suddenly. I forgot I’d locked your coffin.”
“What’s the reason? You haven’t told me anything.”
She blushed, feeling sheepish. “It’s…it’s Hung Durand.”
“Not the bounty hunter you talk about like a chattering magpie. Tell me it isn’t so.” Several loud thumps whacked the door behind her, as if D’Raynged were banging his head against the door in frustration. “I could make short work of him, you know. One bite, and…”
“And you know you can’t. It’s in the town constitution. He’s as much a protected species as you are. Only a qualified town leader, of which I am one of two, can kill a bounty hunter, and only with extremely good cause.”
“I won’t tell if you won’t.”
She smiled. “Nice try but….you know I can’t allow that.”
“I know. You don’t like to break the rules. I however, adhere to no such rules as your little town holds dear.”
“No, D’Raynged. The answer is no.” She thought she heard a sigh.
“So what do you need from me?”
“A plan. I can’t let him elude me this time. And I can’t let Red kill him and parade his head around town on a platter.”
“Yum, sounds delicious.”
“Stop it. If I lose this job, you lose your place of residence. I can’t afford to live here by myself. I’ll have to sell.” Her grandparents had mortgaged and re-mortgaged this property during their lifetime, leaving her with a ton of debt. Several seconds of silence fell around her. She let her head fall back, glancing at the ghosts, still circling overhead. Maybe I should quit my job. Work at the crab factory. Assume defeat rather than give it away. Then, maybe I’d have time to deal with the ghosts of my emotions.
“Tell me you’re not thinking of quitting again.”
“Only if you tell me you’re not reading my mind again.” She sat up and let out a breath. “So. Will you help me come up with a plan before you head off for the evening?”
“Yes, child, I’ll be at your service. But you still owe me.”
“I’m sure I do. What are your terms this time?”
“I haven’t fleshed them out yet.”
“Fleshed? Ew.”
“Stop it, it’s merely a term. Let me get some rest and I’ll get back to you.”
“Fine,” she huffed, getting to her feet.
“Fine,” he said amicably from his dark closet.
“Thank you,” she called, as she headed toward the kitchen. “And now I have just enough time to clean up this mess and get back to town for work.” She glanced around at the disarray, reliving last night. They’d had sex everywhere, on nearly every surface. Living room lamps were knocked over, spices spread on the kitchen floor, kitchen towels strewn everywhere… D’Raynged would hate to see this mess. Feeling deliciously passive aggressive—not that it would help matters—she shoved her feet into her boots, grabbed her coat and strode out the front door.
Chapter Three
“Hurry,” Socyone Williams, Chia’s trusted advisor called to her as soon as Chia pulled into the parking lot of the downtown administrative offices, a wood and brick death trap. A tall, slender woman, with golden eyes, golden-brown hair sticking out in tufted dreadlock clumps all over her head, golden everything, Socyone shifted into a giraffe when the mood struck. It seldom struck since there were no savannahs here and giraffes didn’t do well in the snow. It came in handy, though, when something needed to be reached way up high. Chia had clung perilously to Socyone’s long neck to rescue a few cats from trees when the fire department had been out on a job.
Chia hopped from the truck. Decrepit building is still standing, Chia thought darkly, glancing at the two hundred year old structure. Every day she came here, she wondered if it would be her last, fleeing from the flaming building or ducking as the bricks tumbled down. She glanced at the whitecaps d
otting the Bering Sea in her line of sight, as if making an escape plan.
“Let me grab my stuff. What’s the hurry? Where’s the fire?” Chia reached across the front seat of her truck, grabbed her pink fake-furry purse, and hustled toward the circa 1700s building. Her jaw length hair blew in her face, as gusts of frigid wind picked up, heading straight from the coastline. Her ghosts clung to her shoulders, ethereal hands and fingers digging into her. She experienced their ghostly touch as bristling buzzing. She shook her shoulders, trying to dislodge them.
“Are you okay?” her assistant asked.
“I’m fine.” Stupid ghosts.
“The fire is going to be your ass if you don’t get it in here. An emergency meeting has been declared.”
“I’m the only one who gets to declare emergency meetings,” Chia spluttered.
“Not today. Not since Hung Durand rolled into town.”
“What, so he called it?” she scoffed.
“Hardly,” Socyone said, holding the door open to her boss. “It was our regional leader, Joseph Ashoroc, summoned by none other than Red Mountainbear.”
“Holy crap, this day has gone from worse to horrible, and it’s not yet lunchtime. Didn’t I recently return from a blissful vacation in Tahiti?”
“A couple weeks ago, yeah,” her assistant said, literally breathing down Chia’s neck as they raced to the conference room.
“After today, I can barely remember what I did there or who I went with, if I went with anyone at all.” She burst through the double doors to the conference room. The same room served as the local theater for plays and music events, thanks to the large stage at the front.
The space hummed with a mixture of common townsfolk, local leaders, Joseph, and several elders and their kin from neighboring territories. People shouted, yelled, and pushed against one another to be heard. Statements like “it’s her and her goddamned preference for their kind,” and “she’s given them better rights than the lot of us,” could be overheard, giving her pause.
I thought I was a local favorite. I thought they loved me.
Another protest rang out. “Damn shifters brought this on. She should know this.”