by Jasmine Walt
Oh, Lord, that’s what he meant. She wrenched her gaze away.
“Know anyone who might be available?”
She almost offered herself in willing sacrifice…you know, take one for the team…but her head shook back and forth in reluctant negation, as if without her consent. “Think how it would look. I…I can’t.”
“Damn, Chia. I know you want to. You want it as much as I do.” Hung made an angry sneer. “You and your goddamned rules. Suit yourself. Anyway, my hit should be here any day. Might be here already, but I don’t think so.”
“Anyone I know?”
“Doubt it. Some bitch vamp named Sultana. Tracking a vamp isn’t easy. Don’t need any more complications. Got my silver at the ready. I’ve got to bring her head back as proof.”
Where did I hear that name? Her eyes flicked to the rearview, past Hung, to the parking lot. Two of the administrative assistants strode in her direction, laughing and talking. “Uh, oh, we’re about to get company.”
Hung looked to see what she referred to, and without another word, he shifted into a fly.
“How can you do that? A dumbass fly?” she spluttered.
One of the assistants, a gal named Debbie whose brain cells had all lodged in her boobs, strode up to the truck. She tapped on the tinted window with a long painted fingernail, indicating Chia roll it down.
Chia groaned inwardly. She’d bet money this stupid girl let Cecil have his way with her, whenever, wherever. She shook her head, shouting, “Too cold.” She didn’t want Hung to escape.
“What?” the ditzy blond assistant yelled. She reached for the door handle.
“Wait!” Chia yelled. She didn’t want anyone to see her roped like a calf in her own vehicle. With great difficulty, she wriggled her arms and maneuvered one of her fingers to the window controls. She stabbed it until the window parted a crack. The fly crawled up the window and flew free.
Chia groaned, inwardly.
“Hi. Just want to let you know I ordered those supplies you asked for. You know, paper, pens and ink for the printer.”
“And you had to tell me this right now, why, exactly?” Chia wanted to fire the woman on the spot. “Or, why ever? It’s your job to do as I say.”
“You’re here. I’m here. Seemed as good a time as any,” the blonde said, shrugging. “Anyway. Now you know. Later.” She turned and sashayed away, with a small wave of her red nail painted fingers.
“Dag nab it!” Chia said, frustrated. She loved the phrase. It usually made her happy when she said it. It had been her grandpa’s favorite. “Fuckity, fuck, fuck, fuck,” she added. “Stupid ass Debbie and her stupid ass blond ideas.” Then, like an arrow shot through her cranium, Hung’s last statement registered in her mind, waving like a blood soaked flag.
Vamp named Sultana? Wasn’t that the name D’Raynged mentioned about his last conquest? Something about how he wanted to get to know her better and play with her for a while? One thing she knew with certainty: no one, not a bounty hunter, not a shifter, not another vamp, and definitely not a mortal—no one got between a vampire and his latest lust project. She groaned, struggling against the restraints Hung had bound her with. “Could this day get any worse?” Catching movement out of the corner of her eye, she turned her head to see Cecil striding purposefully toward the passenger side door.
As if they had an arranged date, the passenger door opened, startling her. Cecil folded his tall body into the seat. “Turn the truck on. Let’s go.”
“Why should I? Where are we going?”
“There’s something I need to show you. Right fucking now.”
“Right,” she said to herself. “I guess it can get worse.” She glanced at the rope around her waist. “Uh, can you untie me first?”
5
“So, do you ever do Debbie?” Chia sped toward Haunted Bear glacier, the place Cecil said to head toward. Her ghosts circled high in the sky, like soaring eagles. She wished they’d stay up there.
“Do what to Debbie?” Cecil asked, clearly confused.
“You know, fit the bits together?” Chia asked, blushing, sorry she’d broached the subject.
They zipped last the cemetery with its plain headstones and decomposing wood crosses, marking the so-called “first families” of Charming, those who staked their claim in the mid-1700s. The town founder, Octavius Charming, a nefarious gay gold miner, had his headstone here. In the summer, the Hail, Charming Festival was held on this very ground to celebrate.
Tell that to the native peoples, Chia always thought when one person or another spoke of their first-family heritage. She didn’t want to get into arguments, though. People around here were proud of their history. Who was she to make waves? And hell—even she carried pride at her family’s origins here in Charming. Her mom and dad were the first ones to leave and never look back, a fact that bothered her to this day. How could anyone leave Charming?
“We already discussed the so-called bits. Mine’s way more than a mouthful.” Cecil grimaced at her. “You’ve got the wrong impression of me. God said ‘super-size this one’ and his angel said, ‘yes, sir!’”
“Oh, puh-lease,” Chia said, rolling her eyes. Apparently, he regarded his man-parts seriously. She glanced at the snow covered tundra, longing for the breakup when snowmelts would yield lots of mud, flowers, and lushness out here. In the late spring, it would be a teeming meadow. Now, it stayed shielded in white, like a well-kept secret.
“I’m just sayin’,” Cecil said, a solemn look on his face.
“Answer the question. Have you or haven’t you bedded Debbie?” She lifted her hand to wave at Graham, a local dog musher, last year’s winner of the Iditarod. I wonder if he has a girlfriend.
Graham, out feeding his dogs, seemed to squint and his face brightening, waved back.
“Who’s Debbie?”
“Big busty blond who works for me? Kinda dumb?”
Cecil frowned. “It rings a bell. Maybe. I don’t ask their names. Why, want to ask her how I am in bed? I can tell you straight up, I leave the ladies’ satisfied.”
“Okay, okay, too much info again.”
“You asked. For someone who doesn’t sound interested, you sure sound interested.” He shrugged and looked out the window, peering intently at their surroundings. “Let me know. I’ll always fit you in.” He turned toward her, his eyes suspicious. “There isn’t some sort of law against doing Debbie is there?”
Chia blushed, waving a hand at him. “No, there’s no law. Laws in this town are only meant to keep people safe.”
“There seems to be a lot of them. I don’t know how you remember them. My way is simple. I live by the canine code. Stay friendly, stay aware, keep to your territory, do what you like and stay out of the garbage.”
Chia spluttered out a laugh.
“You can get sick,” Cecil said, looking at her earnestly.
They zipped past the turnoff to her land, the property her grandfather and his father had homesteaded. The same land her parents left behind, taking her with them to live in the big city of New York. She’d made such a fuss, they finally shipped her back to live with her grandparents. She’d hated big city life in the lower forty-eight.
Cecil opened the glove box and rooted around.
“Can I help you?” Chia said frostily. She tugged at his hand. “Stay away from my gun.”
“Can’t stand guns, don’t worry. Looking for a map.”
“No need. I know this area well.”
“Humor me.” He retrieved an ancient looking paper map, and peered at it, hunching forward in his seat. “Here! Right here, turn left,” he said, bouncing in the seat.
Chia swerved and fishtailed into the barely there snowy dirt road, almost repeating the same out of control maneuver she did in her driveway this morning. Which was a long, long time ago, she grumped. Will this day ever end?
“Good driving, Ms. Manager. Now head toward the base of the glacier.”
“Roger, copy that,” she said, her stomach gro
wling with hunger. “Except the road is snowed in up ahead. Let’s take our chances on the Two Mile Lake. Think it’s still solid?”
Cecil looked thoughtful. “Probably still good. Usually is this time of year. Just take it nice and easy.”
Chia eased the Jeep onto the frozen lake.
Cecil studied the map, as if it held some clue.
“You know you didn’t need a map to get out here. The glacier borders my property. I can see it from my living room window with the binoculars. I know this land.”
“That’s not why we brought the map. We brought it to emphasize a point.”
“What point is that?”
“You’ll see,” he said again.
Her stomach pitched another fit. “I don’t suppose you have anything to eat, do you?”
“Nah. Had a fine omelet after you left the café this morning. Followed by a romp in the hay with--”
“Never mind, Cecil, zip it.” She jacked the steering wheel to avoid a herd of musk oxen, in no hurry to get out of her way. “How far?” she asked.
“All the way to the glacier.”
“What are you going to show me?”
“You’ll see,” he said, cryptically.
When they reached their destination, Cecil said, “Okay, here’s the spot. Park the car and let’s get out.”
Chia headed for the edge of the lake as if pulling into a parking spot, out of habit—no one would come out this way—and trekked in the direction Cecil indicated. The hard-pack, end of season snow crunched and cracked beneath their boots. “What are we looking for?”
“You’ll see,” he said again.
They rounded the bend and continued their hike. Her ghosts rocketed to the ground, not wanting to be left behind. They spun around her shoulders, while she batted at them, her hands simply moving through them, as if they were puffs of smoke. It felt like a cluster of wispy cats rubbing against her, coming at her from every direction.
“You know, very few, as in one or two people can see your ghosts, right?” Cecil said. “And when you bat at them, it makes you look crazy.”
“Thanks. If you were in my place, you’d bat, shake, and try to dislodge them, too. They feel like bursts of buzzing energy, they get in my way, they obscure my vision…total pests.”
Cecil gave her an enigmatic stare. “You might want to do whatever it is you don’t want me to know about to get rid of them. Just a thought.”
She fluttered her hand at him, dismissively. “Show me why we’re here and mind your business.”
He lifted his hand to point at something. “Here’s the first one. Under that outcropping, there.”
Chia gasped at the scene before her, not believing her eyes. One of the shifters—one of her shifters, a fond friend from town—lay dead, his bloody, torn lower limb trapped in a steel-jaw leg trap. His legs still in the visage of a wolf, half his torso naked and human, his mouth open in an endless scream, it looked like he’d died an agonizing death. “What the holy hell happened?” Chia asked, her hand flying to her mouth to trap the sob inside.
“I think you can see for yourself.” Cecil smirked.
“Yeah, but I mean why? And why didn’t he shift back and free himself?”
“You know a shifter in agony or under duress has no control. Hell, he probably started to shift back as he died in some sort of instinctual impulse to return to his form of origin.”
“How would I know that?” Chia snapped, clearly distraught. “I don’t shift.”
“It’s common knowledge, Ms. Manager.”
“Not to me it isn’t.” Chia struggled to hold back the rage and tears. “This violates city law six zero five, prohibiting the use of animal leg and body traps,” she said, sadly, softly, as if to herself. The laws she’d fought for, tooth and nail, were in place to protect the shifters and animals alike, and to keep the residents of Charming safe.
Two of her ghosts, the broken hearted spirit and the rage-filled one circled her head. The broken hearted ghost pulled on her, making her feel weighted and heavy. The rage-filled ghost buzzed like an angry hornet, pissing her off even more. She waved her hands frantically, shooing them away. “What do you mean the first one?”
“First of many, I’m afraid,” Cecil said, hands on his hips.
She dropped to her knees beside him, crushing the icy, brittle snowbank. She gently closed his wide, frozen in fear eyes. “Oh, Michael. Looks like you died a violent death.” She leaned closer to examine the trap. “This looks like one of the traps I confiscated a couple years back. Remember that? When I ordered everyone with a trap to hand them over? I locked them in my barn. What the hell?”
“Don’t know about the traps, but what I do know is Red did it. Either him or Dick. This whole passage into the glacier is Hung’s place of exit, right?”
“It’s usually the way he enters and exits, true.” Chia often fantasized of him making a beeline right for her house when he entered via the glacier gate. Skip the trails heading for town. Land on her doorstep with a naked smile, having shifted out of whatever form he arrived in. We’d share some skin, swap some spit, get busy, get it on, and then I’d kill him. “It’s the safest passage for him since no one comes out here. Superstitious humans and all. Why wouldn’t Hung have seen him? He must have been here for days.”
Cecil lifted one of his shoulders and let it fall. “Who knows? Maybe he scented it and thought it roadkill. Man on a mission wouldn’t stop for roadkill.”
She cast her gaze at the glacier up ahead. Known as a valley glacier, it spilled between two mountains, like a waterfall of non-moving water. The dome on the right gave the glacier its name. The top of the craggy rise looked like the back of a grizzly bear, including the hump. Smaller protrusions served as ears, leading down to a slope of a bear nose. As many had died trying to cross this passage to get wherever they needed to go, the name Haunted Bear glacier had stuck for centuries. “Why are you asking about Hung?” she asked, still horrified.
“You know that woman you didn’t want to hear about? My after brunch fuck?”
“Jesus, Cecil.” Chia shook her head at him.
“You sure can be a prude sometimes, Ms. Manager. What do you call it?”
“I call it…I call it…I don’t know, I call it fun when and if you can get it, let’s move on. What about her?”
“Her uncle hunts out here. Said he came across poor Michael yesterday. Left it alone for you to see it. He found lots of other traps set out here. Suspects there’s even more. Said they’re going to catch a mess of innocent animals, shifters, and hopefully Hung Durand, which is stupid because we know most people are scared of this place. That’s why I brought the map.”
“Except for the shifters,” Chia said, sadly. “They don’t care.”
Cecil dusted the snow from a flat boulder, unrolled the map and said, “Look here. Here’s our town.” He stabbed the parchment with his grubby fingertip, indicating Charming. The population of six hundred ninety five was scribed along the map in elegant letters. “We’re bordered by a wilderness preserve to the north. The Bering Sea to the west. Tribal lands to the south, spreading out southwest along the Contrary Islands.”
“Yeah, what are you telling me that I don’t already know?”
“The only way in and out of Charming is by bush plane, boat, from the south if you’re granted passage through tribal lands, through the wilderness if you want to take your chances, or through this passage.” He pointed to the valley glacier. “There’s one narrow passageway to the east people use during the thaw but basically, we’re in our own little world out here.”
“I’m still not following.”
“Think about it, chief. Red and Dick putting traps in Hung’s only traversed path in and out means easy pickings. I know you want him dead but I also know you have a soft spot for him, too.”
Chia’s face burned with heat. “Not really. No soft spots here.”
Ignoring her, Cecil continued. “Lord only knows what Michael was doing out here
.”
Chia got to her feet, brushing the snow from her calves, and grimaced at the stiff male lying on the ground. As much as she wanted Hung’s hide, she wouldn’t wish this kind of death on anyone. “Okay. Let’s make a plan. Can you contact the wolf clan? We’ll have them conduct a burial ceremony to consecrate Michael’s life. I’ll get in touch with his family. That’s going to suck,” she murmured to herself.
“All right, I can do that. But, there’s more.” Cecil propped his hands on hips once more, surveying the scene with disgust.
“What? Spill it.”
“My fuc…the person I shared sex with this morning, said her uncle suspects traps in every known area surrounding Charming. This could cause a lot of deaths, Ms. Manager. A lot of deaths. Your reputation could take quite a few hits.”
“Come on, I’m not responsible for this.” Chia threw her hands in the air. “Why would my reputation take the hits?”
“You’re the manager. I’m just reporting back. Telling you what I heard.” He looked at her, his eyes suddenly dancing with mirth. “Fawn was right. You look like a little bitty chocolate cupcake, full of spitfire.” He began to laugh.
“Quit it.”
He laughed even harder.
“Stop it, Cecil, I’m not in the mood.”
“Itty bitty pink frosted cupcake,” he hooted.
Without warning, she barreled into him with all the force she could muster.
Cecil lost his footing and fell backward, with her on top. The air whooshed from his lungs and for a moment, he looked like a fish out of water, gasping for air. Finally, his chest expanded like a bellows and he took several restorative gulps. “Damn, girl. Where’d that come from?”
“I’m not in the mood for being today’s topic of humor,” she said. Balling her hand into a fist, she slugged his ribcage.
“Ow, stop it.” He curled his broad palm around her fist, pushing her hand away from him.
She sat, breathing hard, straddling Cecil’s hips.
He lay, breathing hard, looking at her intently.