by Faith Hunter
Money talks. Dave and Mike met eyes and nodded. “Yeah, we can do that.” Mike stuck out his hand and I took it for a firm shake. Shouting for the river guides he managed at the competing rafting business, Mike branched off toward the Bean Trees Café, demanding maps, GPS coordinates, beer, and PowerPoint displays, leaving Dave, Molly, and me sitting in the shade. I looked over at Emmett, who was waving in another deputy driving a marked car. This place was going to be a circus again tonight.
Dave turned his intense blue eyes to me and focused on my scars, the visible ones on my throat, and the ones on my left arm that hadn’t yet disappeared. Mine were vamp-fang and werewolf-bite scars. “How dangerous are they?” he asked.
“The grindy? Not much, unless you’re a were who hurt a human; then you get to die, as soon as he can catch you. The wolves?” I lifted my arm to display the scarring around my elbow. “You ever think about taking on a full-grown mountain lion? Bare-handed?” When he shook his head, an almost-grin on his lips, I said, “Well, two wolves will take on a big-cat. And sometimes win.” Beast growled low in my mind, not disagreeing. “They have claws hard enough to rip skin and jaws that can crush a human skull or take out a human throat with one swipe. Werewolves are worse.”
He pointed to my throat. “Is that where you got those scars?”
“No. Vamps did that.”
His eyes widened and a small smile played on his lips. “And you still work for them?”
Molly snorted. “She never was too bright.”
I shrugged. What could I say? It was true. I followed Mol to her newish van, and leaned in the open window. “Thanks for coming,” I said. “I wasn’t sure if we’d need your healing talents.”
“I’m always happy to help,” she said, arranging her belongings in the passenger seat. “It was interesting. I like watching you work when you’re not staking vamps and trying to save people from them.” Together, we had gone up against vamps before, and not everyone made it back alive, but I’d saved her children, Angie Baby and Little Evan, and her sister and baby the year before that, before I left the mountains for New Orleans. I gave her a wry half smile.
Molly patted my arms on the window. “I need to get home. Big Evan wasn’t happy about me getting involved with this.”
“Yeah. I know. I really appreciate it. Breakfast at the café soon?”
“Almost every morning. I’m always there after I drop Angie off to school. Which still feels strange. She’s growing up so fast.” She shook her head at the passage of time. “My sisters know you’re back in town and ask after you every morning. They want to see you.” I didn’t make friends easily and knowing that Molly’s family had all but adopted me after I helped to save the pregnant Carmen from a young rogue-vamp made me feel all sappy inside. Her eyes twinkled at me. “You could bring a boyfriend.”
“I already said, I don’t have a boyfriend.”
“Hmmm. There’s Rick LaFleur. He stands around with his tongue hanging out whenever you’re around.” I sighed and Molly shook her head, vexed, starting the van. “Take care, Big-Cat.”
She was pulling away before I realized that she hadn’t asked me to the house for dinner. No invitations to visit with her there had been forthcoming at all, and I didn’t think it was because of my schedule. It was because her husband no longer trusted me to keep Molly safe. And he had good reason.
CHAPTER THREE
You Fight Dirty
I straddled the long seat, turned the key starting Fang, and waved to Molly taking off in her minivan. I eased the bike along the road in the opposite direction and stopped in the middle of the bridge where the wolves attacked Itty Bitty. The water was up, several feet higher than last night, the power company having opened the dam to make power and provide water for the businesses that depend on the releases. Evidence not collected overnight, or missed before the water release, had been washed away. A commercial raft rounded the bend in the river, the occupants wet and laughing. Kayakers played in eddies and small currents. Remembering Itty Bitty and her beau, I found my phone and texted Bruiser and Leo a request for someone to get up here pronto and heal the injured, before the were-taint turned them furry. That would go a long way to making the locals more vamp-friendly. Satisfied I had done all I could for the injured, I gunned the bike.
On the far side of the river, I followed my nose, tasting grindy on the breeze. The scent seemed to be part of the air currents falling from Stirling Mountain. No big surprise there, yet my heart started to pound. The grindy-scent worried me. Gunning the bike, I passed in front of the RV camp and up the mountain along back roads. Not long after, I headed sharply uphill, crossing the state line back into North Carolina.
The peak of Stirling Mountain is nearly six thousand feet high with a metal fire tower on top, but I wasn’t planning on hiking all the way up. I would be stopping at the national park to check out a theory and talk to a guy I had been avoiding—pretty boy Rick LaFleur, the boyfriend-who-wasn’t, that Molly had mentioned. This little side trip was why I had taken the bike instead of asking one of the twins to fly me in Grégoire’s helicopter. Well, that and the fact that Beast had flatly refused to fly in the metal contraption.
The climbing ride to the park was beautiful; Big Creek—its massive boulders scored by grindy markings and rank with grindy scent—on one side of the road was dried to a trickle this time of year unless a heavy rain hit. Then the hair-head, adrenaline-junkie kayakers would be all over the place, taking the steep, highly dangerous creeking-run through its rocks, trees, and boulders. All around me on the climb were farmhouses on small farms, fallow land, horses, cattle, and harvested fields, some with big round hay bales on the peripheries. Wildflowers were everywhere. If I had been riding a quieter machine, I might have seen deer, turkey, even bear this time of year. But it wasn’t likely, not riding Fang. Harleys weren’t built for stealth.
I made the park entrance, taking the narrow gravel road that had been cut from the side of the mountain. It was steep on both sides, one side straight uphill, the other down, sharply, to the boulders of Big Creek. I passed through the horse area with its special camping sites and hitching posts, the distinct scent of horse and manure heavy on the cooling air.
The day-camp parking was full of cars, but I maneuvered on through, undergrowth and trees dense on both sides, to the campground. I left Fang in the bathhouse parking area. The air was twenty degrees cooler here, fresh and damp and rich with scent. I closed my eyes and breathed deeply. The weak bouquet of wild orchids that bloomed in August was faint on the breeze. Stronger were the odors of flowering bee balm, mountain mint, milkweed, and crushed jewelweed, the musky scent of rich soil and the smell of verdant green ferns and moss. Pungent and gamey were raccoon, squirrel, opossum, with dozens of bird varieties, and the horses. Faintly, from far off, came deer and bear scent. Overriding it all was the stench of man—the showers, park toilets, the tang of beer, food, charcoal, and seared meat from last night. It wasn’t the smells of The People, the Cherokee of my distant memory, but it was reminiscent.
And over it all rode three of the scents I’d come looking for. One was the grindy, letting me know my theory had been right. Crap. Why’d I have to be right this time? The other scents didn’t belong in these hills, not ever. They had the under-tang of foreign lands, of jungle, rushing violent rivers, and darkest, most remote Africa. Big-cat smell, feral, fierce, ferocious. Alien.
I opened my eyes and tracked that scent across the parking area and higher up the mountain. Moss-covered trees rose above me. Moss-covered ground muffled my boot steps. I hadn’t been here recently, but I knew where I was going. The scents told me.
Despite the slight chill, I slipped out of my leather jacket and hung it by one finger over my shoulder, following the stink of big-cat. I wasn’t armed, not during the day in a national park, no matter that I was licensed to carry concealed. Sometimes it wasn’t smart to taunt law enforcement officials, especially when a mauling had taken place last night.
&nbs
p; I followed the scent up a trail, cool and dark beneath the shade of trees, through the acreage set aside for rough, dry camping. Tents dotted the greenery like upside-down flowers in rainbow colors. I took the path higher still, my breath coming harder as the grade increased, to a tent far back from the others. It was close to a runnel of water that emptied into Big Creek, and the tent had been in place for several weeks, grass beginning to grow up at the tent sides. The smell of grindy was strong here. So was the smell of black were-leopard. Kemnebi.
Kem-cat’s wife was dead at the claws of her pet grindylow because she fell in love with Rick LaFleur and tried to turn him into a black were-leopard, like her. Spreading were-taint broke were-law, and killing Safia had fulfilled the grindy’s primary function—protecting humans. Kem was taking it out on Safia’s lover boy. My boyfriend. Ex. Whatever. Rick’s scent still carried some of the wolf-taint too. He’d suffered—been tortured by werewolves—because I hadn’t figured out he was in trouble. I didn’t know if I loved him, but I knew that I owed him.
“Hello the tent,” I said softly.
“I heard when you bring that machine into the park,” a cultured, accented voice said.
I followed the dulcet tones to the back of the tent where a woven, dark green hammock hung between two trees, a long, lean man lazing in it. One leg was draped over the side, bare foot and calf dangling. A matching arm, equally naked, held a bottle of beer. The body between the two was hidden by hammock, and hammock and beer were banned in the park, hence the positioning of them behind the tent. I grinned, skipping the niceties. “You are dressed, aren’t you?”
He toasted me with the beer and wiggled his toes at me in a drunken wave, which didn’t answer my question. The dark skin of both limbs was smooth and unscarred, the flesh of a shape-changer, forever untouched by damage, remade with every shift. Given a few more hundred shifts, my own skin would be as perfect again, assuming I stayed out of mortal danger. For reasons I didn’t know, scars from a lethal wound were hard to heal. “Jane Yellowrock, Rogue Hunter,” he said. “My alpha.” I had made Kem my beta, forced him to bring Rick here, and care for him until he shifted into his big-cat. Kem wanted me to understand that he didn’t have to like it. “My alpha, who smells of catamount and Eurasian owl and dog.”
The last was a slur and I let a hint of my grin out. “Kemnebi, of the Party of African Weres, my beta, who smells of black leopard and sweat and very strongly of beer.”
He lifted his hand, the bottle disappearing behind the hammock edge. I heard a slurping sound and the bottle reappeared, now half empty. “Good beer. Samuel Adams makes the most acceptable beer I have yet discovered in America. I have been tasting all of them. Extensively.” He sipped again. “There are more in the cooler.”
“No thanks, I’m driving.” I dropped my jacket, plopped into a folding sling chair, which was far less comfortable than it looked, and lifted the cooler lid anyway. “I’ll take one of these, though.” I opened another Coke and sipped, wondering how much beer it took to keep a shape-shifter drunk. Our metabolisms are fast, and it had to be a lot of beer. With a toe, I lifted the lid of a large, blue recycle pail. It was three-quarters full of broken beer bottles. Yeah. A lot of beer. After a companionable moment of silence I said, “How long ago did the grindy get here?”
“Safia’s pet arrive two week ago.” The words held no inflection, but were carefully, drunkenly enunciated. Interesting.
“It was a long swim, I take it.”
The hammock moved with what may have been a shrug, noncommittal. “He was most unhappy with me at first. But he forgave me.” There was a heavy dose of bitter irony in the words. I wasn’t real sure about the symbiotic relationship between the two races, but it would seem difficult to maintain, when one was always in danger from the other. I didn’t know what to say to that, but Kem was drunkenly loquacious and carried on the conversation without my contribution. “They are like pets until we err. Affectionate . . .” The words trailed off, then picked back up again. “He killed my mate. And then he came beneath my hand for caress. He . . . licked my hand.” He spaced the last words widely, and they were full of venom. “I forced him to leave, yet I still smell him on the wind. He watches.”
I wanted to say I was sorry, but that might have been offensive as well as disingenuous. I had a similar relationship with the vamps. I killed them when they got out of line, much like the grindy did the weres. Of course I didn’t lick Leo’s hand afterward. The thought’s accompanying mental picture made me grin, which I hid behind the Coke as I drank. My sense of humor was gonna get me killed one day. “How is he?” I asked from behind the can, changing the subject.
Kem raised his head at that one, his black eyes wide, showing above the hammock edge, trying to focus in my direction. His face was darker in the shadows beneath the trees, but his eyes were vibrant. “He is alive. He is unchanged. He is frightened about the full moon, which comes again soon. He is lonely. As lonely as I am.”
The he is lonely was directed at me for not coming to visit. Asheville is only sixty miles from Hartford. A nice ride. One I hadn’t made, even though I’d brought Kem and Rick here in the first place. I’d hoped the black were-leopard could ease Rick through his first shift, teach him something about being a were-cat. The International Association of Weres had agreed, and insisted Kem help the newbie. For a lot of really good reasons, Kem had been less than enthusiastic. “Still no shift?”
“He will not try again until the full moon. His pain is too great.”
That got me. I’d seen Rick try to shift on his first full moon. It had been agonizing. Like watching a man try to turn himself inside out. “So where is he?”
“He likes to fish.”
I smiled at that one and stood. I rinsed the can and crushed it, tucking it in the sealed, bear-resistant recycle basket. “Tell him I said hi.” I turned and stopped. Dead. As still as a vamp.
“Tell him yourself,” Rick growled.
My breath caught. Kem chuckled. He’d seen Rick approach behind me, quiet as a cat. Rick was unshaven and shirtless, his jeans hanging low on his hips, chest hair sparse and straight and forming a line pointing into the top of the jeans. His black hair had grown, the ends curling at his nape and over his ears. His eyes were shadowed, black as night, steely, pinning me to the path. His torso and shoulders were a mass of scars from big-cats and werewolves, the scarring ripping through his tattoos, nearly obscuring the bobcat and the mountain lion. Except for the cats’ golden-amber eyes and the blood on their claws. There was something about that naked chest and the scars that begged to be touched. I curled my fingers under. Rick’s eyes dropped to them, then back up in a leisurely perusal that made me acutely aware of myself. My breath hitched slightly, and I tightened all over, warming from a lot more than the heat. Boyfriend? Oh my.
Rick LaFleur was a pretty-boy when wearing city clothes. Half-naked, in the wooded site, ungroomed and feral-looking, he was gorgeous. He smiled then, exposing white teeth, one bottom tooth slightly crooked, and I realized I’d said part of that aloud. Crap.
“I’ve missed you too,” he said, amused. He moved past me, and only then did I catch the smell of fresh fish. Even the breeze had been hiding the man. He carried a bait bucket, two rods, a tackle box, and a string of fish. They looked like smallmouth bass, about eleven to sixteen inches long. One still flapped. Rick stowed his gear away and carried a long curved knife and the fish to a board set up between two trees; there were traces of blood on the wood, and part of the dead-fish smell I had attributed to the grindy actually came from the fish-cleaning station.
Movements economical, almost graceful, Rick hung the fish chain from a nail and slid the hook from the gills of the top fish. It moved weakly when he sliced through below the gills and cut off its head. I wondered if Rick thought I’d run at the sight of the casual cruelty, but Beast sometimes ate her food still kicking. I figured she could outdo him in the gross-factor if I wanted. Of course, Rick didn’t know about Beast. Rick d
idn’t know a lot of things. I hadn’t found a way to tell him most of them. Others were complicated.
Okay. I was lying. I was a coward, that’s why Rick didn’t know a lot of things.
The knife moving with swift, sure strokes, he scaled the fish, the iridescent scales flying everywhere. I thought fishermen scaled fish before they beheaded them, but I wasn’t a fisherman trying to gross out an old girlfriend.
“Beer,” Kem said from behind me. Rick stopped, wiped his hands on a towel hanging in the tree, and walked to the cooler. He took out a beer, opened the top and handed it to Kem without meeting his eyes. It was the action of a submissive animal to an aggressive alpha. Beast hissed quietly inside, the hair of her pelt rising, stiff, the phantom reaction tight inside my skin.
Wordless, Rick returned to the fish. I narrowed my eyes, putting things together. I walked to the hammock, placing my feet without care, so that Kem would know I was coming, if he wasn’t too drunk to notice. I stood over the hammock, seeing his body, lithe and fit, wearing baggy shorts and a sheen of sweat. He smelled of bug spray and old beer. He was watching me with savage glee on his face. Expectant. Eager. “You want a fight, don’t you. Fine.”
Drawing on Beast-speed, faster than he could see, faster than he could react, I flipped the hammock. Rode him down to the ground. He landed on his stomach. Face in the dirt. My knee in his back, pressing him down. I grabbed his short hair and yanked back. Bowing his spine, arching his neck. Shoved the stake I had found under his chin. The hammock spun and settled. The sound of fish scales flying stopped. The beer bottle landed, spilling in a froth. Everything stopped.
“I am your alpha,” I said. “Listen. Or I’ll make you my dead beta.” Kem growled softly, but after a long moment, relaxed into submission under my hands. “Two of the werewolves I fought in New Orleans got away because they were in jail when I helped kill the rest of the pack. A big guy and a little scrawny guy. They followed me here, looking for the same thing you want. A fight. To get my attention, they attacked and tried to turn a young woman and her boyfriend last night. They left this silver-tipped stake, my silver-tipped stake, for me to find.