Briar on Bruins' Peak (Bruins' Peak Bears Book 7)

by Erin D. Andrews

  “The worst part,” Black Feather continued as he held me closer, “was that not long after we’d left, another murder, almost identical to the first, happened just a short distance from the original. Even though it proved my father’s innocence, he was still too scared to go home.”

  I shook my head. “It was a human. I’m positive.”

  He yawned. “Me too. But there’s no proof. And the murder was done in such a way so that a shifter would get blamed. So, what can we do?”

  I had no answer, so I fell silent. In a few minutes, Black Feather was asleep, but I had that girl’s bloody body burned into my mind. Even though I hadn’t been there, I felt as if I had witnessed each step of her demise.

  In my imagination, I saw a lonely, quiet man who observed a sweet, laughing girl as she played with her friends and ran in the grass. Then, he tried to befriend her, but her instincts told her this was not someone she could trust. She ran away. He became angry and began to plot and scheme. He decided if he couldn’t have her in his life, she couldn’t have a life of her own.

  Maybe he did do something to her, something awful, and became frightened she would tell someone. I could see him using a special tool or weapon he had made himself, something in the shape of a claw to tear her flesh open and leave her to die on the grass. Poor angel. She never stood a chance. The violence of humans is simply too deep and too inescapable.

  I slept long after Black Feather had nodded off and woke before the sun had finished setting. I walked out to the edge of our little stone house and watched it go down, and saying a prayer for that little girl. I prayed for her soul and for peace of mind for her family. Just because I was angry, it didn’t mean I had to wish anyone any violence.

  After all, I’m no human.

  Chapter Seven

  The Journey Back

  Time went on the way it does in a desert: slowly, and yet in a blink. Soon, weeks had passed, and Black Feather’s clothing had worn down to shreds of their former selves. I no longer bothered with anything more than my shorts. We were only out at night, anyhow; I didn’t have to worry about protecting my skin or being seen. No one had ever found us and, as far as I could tell, no one was looking for us.

  Black Feather developed as a hunter, and soon he began to impress me with his tool-making. He made some of the tough grasses by the waterhole into a kind of whip that flung small rocks out like deadly bullets, making our hunts faster and saving us a lot of energy. He also found some clay and fashioned a kind of bowl that he then fired on a high flame one day while I slept. I expected his usual pride to greet me when I woke up, but he must have been paying attention when I informed him that he was not in charge. Instead of a smug grin, I was greeted by a quiet, deep red bowl in the evening. I was so thrilled that I brought him the first round of water. It was the first time I had ever given a gift to someone.

  One day, Black Feather turned to me and asked, “What exactly are we preparing for? What’s the point of all this training?”

  “I think you know.”

  He flung a rock at a mouse but missed by just a centimeter. The little thing scampered off as fast as it could, and he turned back to me. “I’m a little frightened to say it out loud.”

  “You’ve survived living in the desert with me,” I assured him. “You should not fear anything.” I looked up to consult the Children. They looked happy that night, as if they were excited and waiting to see what we would do next. I smiled at them and then looked down to see Black Feather smiling at me.

  “We’re taking down the president, aren’t we?”

  I nodded. “His time is over. The two of us are going to worm our way into that castle of a mountain and tear him apart. He won’t know what hit him.”

  “How are you going to do that? There’s no way you’ll be able to get in by water again.”

  “I don’t need to,” I assured him. “I have your experience, and we have contacts with people on the inside. Besides,” I moved forward and touched his shoulder, “have you forgotten that you can fly?”

  That morning, we sang to the rising sun with a strength we’d never sung with before. As the words floated into the sky, we made eye contact and found ourselves overcome with lust.

  We went back to our cave and made love desperately, biting and tasting one another as if we would never see one another again. We both knew that after that day, everything would change. Everything would be a challenge. We didn’t know if our connection would be strong enough as it was, so we deepened it by wrapping ourselves up into a single, four-armed, four-legged beast with two heads in hopes that a combination of us would be strong enough to fight back any opposing force. We slept tangled up together and only separated after the sun set again. We left our cave quietly and a bit sadly, shifting as soon as we could no longer see it. I ran across the hot sand with my fossa heart pounding like mad, while my red kite flew above me, flapping his wings like an guardian angel.

  The compound appeared on the horizon after we had run and flown for most of the night. I saw the fence before I saw anything else, and it shocked me with its height and its imposing structure. I could sense the electricity buzzing through it long before I got close to it. My instincts told me to stay back, and I listened. Rather than attempt to look for an opening, I prowled the boundary between open desert and the tall, electric wires, while Black Feather flew overhead, searching for any kind of entrance.

  As I prowled, I smelled something in the ground. The scent of a young, female wolf rose up to my nostrils, and I pushed my big, soft nose into the sand. My friend, Tina, had just been there, and her footsteps led to the inside of the fence, not out. I followed her scent, and it grew stronger toward a corner of the fence. I could tell by the smell of her that she had crossed the line, but I couldn’t see where. Everything looked intact and dangerously charged. I moved back to assess the situation a bit further, but saw nothing more.

  “Hey,” I whispered. The sound came out in my deep, gravelly, fossa voice. “Black Feather! Come down here.” I waited, while he circled and then slowly flapped his big, majestic wings to lower down to the ground.

  “What is it?” For whatever reason, Black Feather’s voice didn’t change when he was in bird form. It always made me a little jealous.

  “It’s Tina. She’s passed by here recently, but I can’t find how she got in. Everything is locked and electrified. Do you see something I don’t?”

  He swiveled his head all around, inspecting the fence post and the ground by it. Nothing looked disturbed or broken. How could a wolf have passed by? He flew up and over to the other side, and something caught his attention.

  “Hey, I found something.” He hopped back, wings spread out and curled in just a bit. He picked up a shiny object with his claw and brought it back over and landed in a big dust cloud. “What do you think?”

  I sniffed it and smelled Tina, but much stronger this time. “Yes, she’s used it. Okay, so…” I looked at the fence more closely. “This piece must fit into something or turn something off. Maybe it disconnects something.” The piece was a long rod of metal with a triangular tip. It looked as if it could be used to get under an edge or maybe take out a screw. But how had she used it without getting shocked?

  “We need Tina.”

  “Black Feather, you cannot fly in there! Someone could turn you in.”

  We looked at the fence again, the tool, and then each other. He sighed. “I’ll have to risk it. I’ll stay as high up as I can until I get to her house. Then I’ll get out fast. What do you think?”

  “I think you are being very foolish. But,” I closed my eyes and resigned myself, “you are also right. We need her. I think she may have a second piece to this thing. If we just touch the fence with metal, we’ll be fried like a mouse.”

  “Okay.” He walked over to the side to give himself a bit of space from the fence. He nodded to me, then spread his wings and took to the sky. I looked around for some kind of cover, but the whole place was
lit up like crazy with security lights. I picked up the metal piece with my mouth and carried it back the way I’d come away from the glare. Once I had procured a bit of darkness, I laid down to wait.

  The wait seemed endless. In all that expanse of land and artificial light, there was no sign of any animal, shifter, or human. It was so quiet that the lack of sound made me shiver. Where were they? I tried telling myself an old story to keep myself occupied, but I couldn’t focus. I remembered it was a story about two bad husbands who were transformed into dogs, and their names had been Bow and Wow, which is why dogs say “Bow Wow!” The story did nothing to console me, seeing as it was a story about how life as an animal could not be anything but horrible. Why did humans spread such lies?

  Just as I gave up on the self-storytelling, I heard something. A footstep and a clink. Then a quick zip, like a tight line being released. I leapt to my feet and got into attack mode. Two voices floated across the dark, and when I heard them, I relaxed. It was Tina and Black Feather, both fully human and both smiling.

  “It’s my beautiful fossa!” I ran to her without hesitation, knocking her to the ground so that I could nuzzle her with my big, furry head. “Hey! Careful. What do you think of our new fence?”

  “What did you do,” I purred to her, folding my paws on her sternum and resting my head on them.

  She put on an innocent face and put a palm to her cheek as if she were truly clueless. “Nothing. It was broken, so I fixed it.” She kept her eyes big and innocent until I busted out with a big laugh.

  “Tina, you are the best.” I gave her a big lick. “Is it safe?”

  “Safe?” She gave me a little push off of her so she could sit up. “It’s never been safer!”

  A few moments later, we were strolling into the compound in our human forms. I was completely naked; the last of my worn clothing had finally given up and fallen to the ground. Black feather just had on his shorts but looked great. His hair was messy and soft from the desert winds, and he was in the best shape I’d ever seen. Tina walked next to me and gave me all the updates.

  “See, once we all got collared, Bachmann just got cocky. He ordered the fence to be electrified, which it was, but of course the humans asked us to do all the wiring. Well, none of them had seen me before, and the word about the last, um, outburst was that the offender was in jail. Thank you, Black Feather.”

  He gave a little bow.

  “Anyway,” she continued, “I volunteered for wiring duty, and no one gave me a second look. I figured out a way to bypass the circuit and just make the wires buzz as if they were dangerous. So, we have this great fence that keeps the humans out, has signs showing that it’s locked and loaded, and no one knows that it actually doesn’t do anything. All you have to do is go to the door where I picked you two up and undo a couple of zip lines. We attached little metal bits at the end so we can just put them right back once we’re inside. That’s the piece you found.”

  “Law enforcers never come by?” Black Feather looked around in a bit of surprise at how great everything looked. There were more plants, a few new food stalls, and it sounded like a party was happening close by.

  “Why should they? We’re all collared, remember?” I checked Tina’s neck – nothing. A couple of big cat shifters passed by and nodded at us without any obvious fear or concern, and I saw that their necks were naked as well.

  “So, you are all not wearing your collars. How strange.” I cocked an eyebrow at my friend. “I wonder if someone found a way to neutralize them.”

  “I wouldn’t know anything about it,” she responded. At that moment, we walked past a big, shiny metal sculpture made out of round, flat pieces. The collars. They’d been transformed into a strange, abstract sculpture that stopped me mid-stride.

  It was my father. Only he could have welded such a beautiful piece. I stepped forward to touch it, but Tina stopped me. “We’ve got it all configured so that on screen, they appear to be moving around. We don’t touch it; it might mess up a connection or a signal.”

  “Was it…?” I couldn’t finish the question. I was lost in the whorls of the sculpture. Tina smiled and nodded.

  “This was all your dad’s doing. He was a truly great man.”

  “Was?”

  Tina’s face fell. “Oh, Larissa. No one told you?”

  “Told me what?”

  She took my hand and held it to her chest as she looked at me with sad eyes. “Your father, he…he passed away. He came down with an infection, and it was just too much for him.” She looked up at me and swallowed hard. “I’m so sorry.”

  All the blood drained away from my head. How long had I been wandering the wilderness? How many months had I been tangled up with Black Feather like a lovesick idiot? I honestly had no idea. All I knew was that I had missed the death of my father and left my mother alone. I might as well have killed him myself and her as well; that was how much damage I had done.

  “Sweetheart, are you all right?” Tina’s voice reached me, but it sounded as if it were coming from far away. “Do you need anything?”

  I felt as if I were back in the jail in the mountain. Tina’s voice seemed to echo off the insides of my skull. “Thing...thing...thing…” The ground beneath my feet rushed up to meet me, my body shifted, and something fundamental changed inside of me. I hit the ground with a hard thump, and everything went black.

  Behind my eyelids, I went into the sky above the desert. There, I walked among the stars. I almost tripped on the arrow that had pointed me to water but I caught myself, then picked it up and carried it with me on my way. I could see the Children not far off, and I wanted to visit them.

  When I approached, the stars glowed a little brighter in greeting. I reached out to touch them and was surprised at how cold their light felt to my soft, female hands.

  “Why are you so cold, my children?”

  They stayed silent, but a chill came over me. My astronomy lessons came back to me, and I realized why they felt so empty and cool. “They’ve already died,” I said out loud. “My children died years ago. These are just their ghosts.” I reached out to the heart of the nearest child and watched as my hand passed right through its core. As it passed through, the stars winked out and became black pinholes in the sky one by one. The sight of them falling into darkness made a massive, torrential scream pour out of me and fill the night sky so completely that I saw the moon start to shake.

  Then I felt myself shake. Above me was a terrified Tina with a crescent moon over her shoulder.

  “Larissa? Is it you? What’s happened?”

  “Is it me?” I sat up and realized as I moved that I felt very different. My shoulders felt much bigger, and my normally curvaceous hips were flat. I reached down to touch them, then froze as I got a look at the space between my thighs. I had shifted into my male form. My new body made me shiver a little. I didn’t want to be a boy; I was home and surrounded by friends. This was the time to be female, to be recognized.

  “It’s me. The boy me.” I stood slowly, still spinning a little. “I switch sometimes, though it’s usually against my will.”

  Just then, Black Feather ran up with a cup of water, but it slipped from his hand as soon as he saw me. “Who are you?”

  “Black Feather, it’s me. Larissa.” I looked around at the small crowd that had gathered to stand open-mouthed at the sight of my male, naked form. “Does anyone have a pair of shorts or pants? I feel very exposed.”

  A couple of people ran off to their homes and left me to wait out in the open. It would have been nice if someone had invited me to come along with them and get me indoors, but I cannot have everything I want in this life.

  I had an extended, awkward moment of people standing and looking at me, but not my body. Everyone kept gawking at my face. I scowled back at them, but it did nothing to deter their saucer eyes. Tina reached up to touch my cheek.

  “Larissa,” she whispered, “you look just like your dad.”

>   I snapped back from her hand as if she’d burned me. “No.”

  She nodded, and I realized the rest of the group was nodding with her. “Yes,” they murmured. “Yes. You do. You look like your father.”

  “It’s impossible. Whenever I turn male, I just look like a boy version of myself. I know I can’t possibly look like my dad.” A few of the errand runners returned and one had a small mirror. It was the female boar, the one whose brother was killed. She lifted it, and I saw someone in the mirror who wasn’t me. It was a man with a strong jaw and laugh just beneath the surface of his deep black skin. A man with a soft dimple in the side of his cheek. It was my father.

  “We brought you some clothes,” a young girl said, holding them out to me. I accepted and saw her gaze fall to just below my waist for a moment. She smiled and turned away, but made sure to look over her shoulder at me for a quick second. The look struck me as odd, but then I realized – she was flirting. Girls had never flirted with me before. It was thrilling.

  I dressed and then looked around for Tina. She had shrunk back into the crowd. “Can you take me to my mother?” I asked her. She nodded, and the two of us moved away from the frozen crowd. Even Black Feather hung back and watched me walk away, unsure of what to do with his now male lover.

  We walked quietly across the compound to the big, twisted structure my family and I had called home for so many years. I didn’t know what I would say to the woman who had raised me when she saw me in my new body, but I prayed something would come to me. I took deep, slow breaths and told myself not to make any presumptions. ‘Let her say what she will say. Don’t get stuck in your own mind.’ We reached the door and Tina knocked on the frame.

  “Mama’n Larissa? You home? I have someone who wants to see you.”

  There was a long silence and then a shuffle of footsteps against the dry ground. A figure came from the dark as if she had been hunched in the shadows. It was my mother, but she looked very different.

  When I had left her, she had had a grey streak in the front of her hair. Now, her entire head was covered in grey and frizzy with kinky, uneven curls that flew away from her face. I stood in the doorway to see her, but before she reached me she stopped.