by Sonja Bair
Drew shifted closer to the car door.
Alrik sighed. “This is how false stereotypes of supernaturals get started.”
“Nah,” I said. “Drew’s smart. He knows we are only kidding. Once this is over, the only thing David will have to do is mortally wound him so he’ll turn into a werewolf.”
“Drew, do not listen to her.” Alrik nearly barked out.
Drew shook his head slowly, then relaxed back into his seat. “I married Freya’s sister. I should know how this family’s twisted brains work.”
***
When we arrived at the site again, David looked around, taking in the myriad of hiding spaces and the rugged terrain. “I’ll give it my best shot, but the aftershocks may have covered up the trail. Also, rock isn’t the best surface for holding a scent.”
Without a warning, David pulled his t-shirt over his head. I couldn’t help but stare. Yup, he was in shape, too. I hadn’t had this many handsome men strip in front of me since, well, never. David caught me staring, smiled broadly, and reached for his pants. I averted my eyes but could feel my cheeks turn pink, red, and then flame-colored. Alrik had caught the interaction and made an angry sound deep in his throat. Within a few seconds, the sounds from David changed from clothes hitting the ground to hard nails on rocks.
I had never seen a werewolf in the flesh. His fur was soft and looked thick enough to bury your hands into until they disappeared. His ears were a dark black that slightly lightened toward his face. The black continued down his back and legs. His chest had a slight patch of white, which almost seemed to glow when compared to the black of the rest of his body.
David shook himself like a dog getting out of the water, sniffed the piece of Jia’s clothing we had brought, and then immediately put his nose to the ground. He sniffed around for about a minute before he found a trail. He followed the trail for about fifty feet, but then halted by a large spread of loose rubble. He gave us a look which communicated that the rocks had messed up the trail. He sniffed around the rocks and eventually found the trail again. It seemed erratic to me, like Jia didn’t know where she was going. The trail crossed back over the gravel wash. David stopped again and started to sniff around in circles and follow what seemed to be random paths. There was a rockslide down the wash that hadn’t been there when Alrik and I had first arrived, hours ago. Eventually, I sat down and waited for David find a direction. After about ten minutes, he padded back over to his pile of clothes and started to change back to human. I blushed bright red again and looked away, but not before I saw a really nice-looking human derrière. Alrik glared at me.
As soon as David was clothed, he rejoined us. “I lost the scent. The aftershocks really messed this place up. But we can smell energy as well as physical scents, and I am picking up a pretty big energy trail. The trail leads back to the mine site. I’m guessing there was a huge energy outpour by the mine.”
“I bet you’re right,” I said. “I’m sure Jia and Qiang were exchanging lots of energy during the collapse. But how will that help us find Jia now?”
“Werewolves can use energy to track each other and communicate in wolf form. The energy felt different than pack energy, but I may be able to access it and get a sense of what was going on in the last few moments. Maybe that will help us understand what was going on with Jia that caused her to run off.”
“Let’s give it a try.” Alrik spoke so quickly, he almost interrupted David. I could tell that he didn’t like someone else leading the investigation.
Unfortunately, David had to be close to the accident site to access the energy better. I tried not to look at the wall of rocks at the entrance, but I couldn’t help but notice some protruding bones and flesh. The flies had already found Qiang. I looked away and took a couple of deep breaths to prevent getting sick.
“Remember, this isn’t werewolf energy. I don’t know how this will work.” David closed his eyes and seemed to retreat to an inner space.
Oddly, the air started to sparkle. I looked at Alrik; he seemed puzzled, too. The sparkles grew thicker until the air was impenetrable. And then it abruptly cleared.
***
It is my eighth birthday. It’s a scary but good day. I am the center of attention. Even my little brother isn’t as important as I am today.
We had to travel for two days to get here, but now it is the time. My stomach is turning flip flops. My mother and I arrived at the central plaza this morning at dawn. My father and brother are waiting outside the square. The other girls celebrating their eighth birthday are here too, and we giggle when we see each other. Our mothers cuff us, but not hard, so maybe they understand our excitement.
We are waiting for the arrival of the priests and the other boys born this day eight years ago. Us girls are gathered on the north side of the plaza. The priests enter and slowly bless us with chants and drops of special water. The priests don’t seem as excited as us, but I guess they do this every day and a match almost never happens, so it must not be as exciting to them.
The boys and their fathers walk in to the south side of the plaza. My eyes drop to the floor. It isn’t fun anymore, just scary. The priests bless the boys, too, and then move to the middle of the plaza. Another chant starts which seems to last forever. Finally, the sacred scrolls brought by each of the boys are tossed into the fire. Four, five, six texts are burned within an ordinary orange flame. The seventh text flashes a bright red. A match, a pair! Somewhere in the crowd, there is a Yin and Yang. I look at the other girls, but there is no red glow to match the fire. But my mother gasps and all the other girls are looking at me.
Oh. Oh no. I am Yin. Somewhere in the crowd of boys is my Yang.
***
The temple plaza was suddenly gone and replaced by craggy hills. It was so disorienting that I lost my balance, tripped on my feet, and fell, not so gracefully, on my rear. Alrik and David looked a little off-kilter too. Drew looked confused. “Did I miss something?”
“That was quite a bit different than using werewolf energy. Did you guys get the scene as well?” David asked.
Alrik and I nodded. Drew looked petulant, like a child left out of a secret. David continued, “It must be that the energy brings back other events of similar emotional level. I think there is enough energy trail left that I can get another scene. Let me try.”
David retreated again to that inner space. I tried to steady myself and allow the sparkles to do their job. This time, after the air cleared, we were inside a different temple.
***
I have only seen her once, back when I was eight. I don’t remember much about her. She seemed like any other girl and I definitely didn’t feel like I was supposed to be her forever partner. But my father seemed pleased with the honor that it brought the family, and I didn’t have a choice. So I spent the last four years in training. I trained in the Yang abilities, but also in the Yin abilities, since one does not exist without the other. I also had lots of instruction on leadership and ancient wisdom. They expected Jia and me to lead the tribe one day.
I wait in my traditional robes. They are scratchy, uncomfortable, and hot. The hat is a little too big and keeps slipping over my ear. The back door opens and I hear shuffling. She must be here, but I am not allowed to look at her. Something in me calms down. All of the sudden, I feel more in control and relaxed. Is this the balance that the teachers have talked about? Maybe this wouldn’t be so bad.
I still look forward, but when the priest asks me to lift my hand, I am not so scared. This is the pairing ceremony. We are now trusted to be in each other’s presence and not misuse our combined power, either on purpose or not. Our training will continue together now until our marriage ceremony. The cloth placed over our two arms is half black, half white. The black goes over my white robes and the white half goes over her black robes. One side cannot exist without the other.
***
We came back to the present. It was disconcerting to be flung from one reality to another. All three of us are breathing h
ard, like we had been running a race.
“Not helping, David,” Alrik said in a growl. “I really don’t want to see inside pre-pubescent kids’ heads. What are you going to bring up next, the wedding night?”
David replied with a half-snort, “I’m not choosing the scenes here. The energy does what it wants. And besides, I don’t think there is enough of an energy trail for another time.”
“I have no idea what you guys were doing or what you are talking about, but it’s getting dark,” Drew interjected. “Why don’t we continue the brainstorming at my house? If Jia doesn’t want to be found, we have little chance of finding her.”
“Let’s leave a note and a two-way radio, just in case she comes out of hiding.” I didn’t like the thought of leaving an emotionally devastated, perhaps injured woman by herself.
“Good thought. I have a blanket, some granola bars, and water in my truck. It’ll get cold out here tonight.” Drew has always been well-prepared and a steady thinker. In that way, he was a good match for my more artistically minded sister.
We piled the supplies in the middle of the wash and I wrote a note begging Jia to call us. David eventually had to drag me toward the truck. It felt so wrong leaving, especially when we had, if only for a moment, shared part of Jia’s history.
By the time we got to the ranch house, Elin was back from the hospital. Miguel had a slight concussion and Elin had dropped him off at his house with the doctor’s instructions for his wife. I called my parents, put them on speakerphone, and updated them and Elin at the same time. My mother reported that the tribe in China was trying to get a plane ticket as soon as possible but didn’t have a lot of advice for the search for Jia. According to the tribe, most partners died together, sharing even in causes of death.
While the rest of the group was discussing the situation, I started to make a list of questions which needed answers.
1. Is Jia hiding or hurt or trapped?
2. If Jia is hiding, why?
3. If Qiang took all the strength, how could she have moved?
4. Why did she hit Drew?
5. Qiang saved both Jia and Miguel. What kind of emotional energy did that take? And what did that leave Jia with?
Number Five was the most concerning to me. I realized I was chewing my cuticles again and jerked my hand out of my mouth. I couldn’t keep my worries to myself anymore and interrupted the discussion about whether to contact the police.
“According to the story Elin got from Miguel, Jia was already out of the mine and Qiang could have saved himself and let the roof fall on Miguel, but he waited until Miguel was clear. So Qiang saved Miguel’s life at the expense of his own.” I looked at Elin for confirmation, and she nodded in agreement.
“So let’s say since Jia was active in giving her strength to Qiang, then was she active in giving her sense of virtue to Qiang as well? And then Qiang died, leaving Jia weak. Does that mean it left her without her virtue as well? What if Jia’s sense of self-sacrifice and nobility and all those fabulous qualities died with Qiang? It, unfortunately, would explain why she clobbered Drew.”
There was silence around the table. By the look on the others’ faces, I was the only one to have pondered that thought.
“Greater love has no one than this: that to lay down one's life for one's friends.” All heads swiveled to David. He shrugged. “I have been known to read a book or two, including the Bible.”
Alrik verbalized the conclusion we were all coming to. “Yes, but Qiang and Jia saved Miguel, who wasn’t even their friend. That, I would say, is an even greater love.” Alrik tilted his chair back onto two legs. Elin shot him a nasty look. She had made this dining room set from the reclaimed wood of an old barn on the property. The chair promptly thumped down onto all four legs.
“So that would leave us with an even greater evil?” I asked.
My father spoke up via the speaker phone. “It comes down to the fact that we don’t know. All we know is that there is a possibly injured woman out there in an area she doesn’t know. We need all the resources, natural and supernatural, we can scrape together to help find her.”
“And we need to do something about Qiang, too.” I added. “He deserves a better resting place than where he is right now.” I couldn’t get the image of the bloody rock pile out of my head. “Qiang was a hero, and we aren’t giving him his proper respect.”
Drew stood up abruptly. “It’s my family’s ranch; I’ll call the police and give them the details.”
We all listened in silence to the one-sided conversation with the authorities. Several buildings in San Luis Obispo County had collapsed under the additional pressure of the aftershocks and almost a dozen people were missing. Since Qiang was clearly dead, the police didn’t seem too concerned about racing out to help unearth him. Jia’s disappearance caused a few more questions.
“No, she made it completely out of the mine shaft.” Drew paced the floor with quick, staccato steps. “No, I don’t know why she hit me.” There was silence for a few moments.
“We’ve spent the last few hours searching for her, but there’s no sign. Plus we used a highly trained dog to scent out the trail, but he couldn’t pick up anything after the aftershocks.” Drew mouthed an apology to David. David shrugged a shoulder. Alrik snickered.
Drew continued. “We left blankets and supplies for her, along with a two-way.”
There was another long pause in Drew’s side of the conversation. After a seemingly interminable amount of time, the phone call wrapped up with Drew’s promise to follow up with any updates and the name of a police officer who would be our liaison.
“They were very professional but admitted that they wouldn’t be using any resources to pursue Jia’s case right now. They are overwhelmed as it was, and from their point of view, since Jia was an adult and had taken off by her own choice, they can’t spare anyone to find her. They will send a recovery team out here tomorrow to retrieve Qiang’s body.”
The kettle of boiling water on the stove started to shriek, causing all of us to jump and then chuckle at ourselves. The interruption of getting tea and the low concern of the police seemed to lighten the mood a little. Maybe we had overblown the situation. Maybe Jia was in mourning somewhere, only to appear tomorrow, heartbroken but alive and well.
Chapter 8
Elin’s favorite green tea was steeping in the pot and I was getting the mugs down from their cupboard when David cleared his throat.
“There may be one other problem, although it will be mine alone to deal with.” His blank face was back, which could only mean trouble. “Honestly, I didn’t expect to be able to access the energy trail today. Reading energy is a talent of a collective pack of werewolves. I had assumed that all ties to my pack had been severed but, in fact, they were still in place.”
“Does this mean that you can come back to the pack? Do they still want you?” Somehow, the thought, even though it would be good news to David, caused my stomach to constrict some.
“No, probably the opposite. They probably thought that I was dead. I got some backflow when using the energy, and there was an overriding sense of shock from the Alphas. And not a welcome back type of shock. I have thought about it, and I believe that there must have been some intrigue on the part of lower-ranked pack members to get me out alive.”
“Okay. So what now?” Elin had poured herself a mug of tea and was gently blowing the steam away. She seemed strangely unruffled; probably growing up in the house of an ambassador to the strange had inured her to the oddities of life with supernaturals.
“I assume they still want me dead. A high-ranking wolf who challenged them once will be considered a threat that must be taken care of. They will track me down and try to kill me.” The emotionless cadence of his voice was painful to listen to.
“And you brought this danger to us.” Alrik’s tone was icy.
“I honestly didn’t think that I was still connected to the pack,” David said. “I would have never intentionally bro
ught the pack to San Luis. Nevertheless, I will remove myself from the town and face them by myself.”
“What? No. Absolutely not. Those beasts need to be taken down. They were terrorizing your pack, not just you. Bring them on; I’ll help you rout them out of the pack,” I blurted out.
“Thank you, Freya, but no. You have enough problems without me adding to them.”
“I might not be a werewolf,” declared Drew, “or a supernatural of any sort, but I believe in justice and goodness. And I’m feeling helpless right now with the Jia situation. What can I do to help you?”
Before David could reject Drew’s offer, Elin put her mug down and added her vehement support.
David sat back in his seat, looked around the room, and gave a half a laugh. “Does this whole family work on the steamroller model?”
Alrik, however, wasn’t buying in to the plan and turned to Elin, Drew, and me. “You guys are sheep before the wolf, trusting every word he says. I would want to know more before I throw my lot in with anyone, let alone with a lone werewolf. ” Honestly, it was a fairer and more clear-headed response than I expected to get from Alrik. The animosity between Alrik and David was too great for me to have expected anything but vitriol from him.
“That’s fair, Alrik, and I am not asking anyone to help me. This is my battle; I don’t want any more innocents hurt by this pack,” David said.
“That’s the problem, David,” I interrupted. “It sounds like innocents are being hurt already. The naturals and the lower-ranking wolves are being abused by these Alphas.”
“So says David. Freya, Elin, and Drew, stay out of this for now. Let me ask around and do some investigating before you all rush off with swords drawn,” Alrik said.
“Elin, do you have a spare sword I can borrow? Mine is still packed away from the move.”