by Jade Alters
It’s not easy controlling your instincts when you’re a bear. I learned that in my first month of Coast Guard training. When I hit that icy water, my first instinct was to shapeshift. I don’t know how many times McCarthy cut me short. “Lee, all your survivors just swam away from you as fast as they could and two died of a heart attack.” He made up his own simulations for the bobbing dummies.
That’s how Roy made ensign before I did. It didn’t bother me, because I reminded the captain of Darkhorse when he was younger. Yeah, I said it. Darkhorse and Josh have been good buddies since they were cubs, still shuffling around in caves. They worked the same fishing boats together in their teens, signed up for Coast Guard training at the same time. Darkhorse earned his bars more slowly than Josh for the same reason Roy advanced over me.
None of us were really that ambitious to make rank, but we’re bears. We liked having a pecking order and challenging it. We liked lording it over each other but it was all for show. Secretly, we loved each other as much as an older brother loves his siblings.
I was hurting that night. We all were. Despite our bravado in front of the crew, our feelings were so scraped and raw, we were all struggling hard to keep from shifting. I was really going to miss McCarthy. He was an excellent man. I had pushed aside the image of his death when I saw the little girl, all trussed up like a pig for the barbecue. Her image, I have never been able to filter out.
There was the bitter question Natalia had asked once during our lovemaking. “How is it animals can be so human, and humans can be such animals?”
Darkhorse took her hand and answered her. “That’s why there are shapeshifters. We are here for the balance.”
The captain had the largest room. He also had the largest bed. All of us had specially-constructed beds with an extra half-inch of reinforced steel for unconscious sleep-shifts, but his was large enough to fit all five of us comfortably and to withstand the strain if one or two of us accidentally popped out our bear skins. It was reassuring and soothing.
Sweet, funny Natalia. She tucked each one of us in, kissing us lightly on the forehead. I closed my eyes and felt her hover over me. I hadn’t let myself think about McCarthy until today, when I saw his beloved cutter. I had shoved him back as far as he would go, thinking only about women, beer, and prey. The boat made his death real. He never would have abandoned the Christina. He would never have left her anchored helplessly on a lonely, uncharted beach. His spirit had returned to haunt the Christina, crying to take her home. It felt like two red-hot coins were sizzling behind my eyelids.
Natalia smoothed back my hair with cucumber-cool fingertips, dissolving the burning spikes of anguish. We would avenge McCarthy. We would avenge Natalia. We would avenge them all. Josh had promised.
Her breasts brushed up again my bare skin. They were covered with a thin garment that rustled silkily over her swollen nipples. I remained still, letting myself fall under her spell. She was doing something to me, to us. She was lulling us. She was putting all our bear quarrels to sleep. I breathed her in—wildflowers in the spring, the bright scent of spruce needles, liquid sunlight. I breathed her out and I felt my clan breathing with me. We rode on her sweet, bright, liquid touch.
Her smooth, cool garments slid across me, the curves under the soft folds caressing my skin. The same soothing touch she had used to calm me, she used on Josh, kissing his knotted brow until it smoothed, and softening the lines around his mouth with her fingertips. The silky fabric rustled again. I laid quietly, feeling her movement, feeling her circle around to include us all, the animal part that wished to roar in anger and despair subsiding.
When she returned to me, I was half-asleep, feeling like I had just received a Swedish massage. This time, when she kissed me, her hand moved down to my crotch and curved underneath my balls. I moaned with bliss. Teasingly, it moved upward until it circled the shaft. I held my breath as she stroked it, her hand moving languidly up and down, finding every pleasure point. My Johnson stood at full attention. I was pulsing hot and ready to burst. Straddling my hips, she guided my cock inside her. I didn’t have to do a thing. I couldn’t do a thing. I was completely at the mercy of that honey sweet triangle grinding and pressing against my own short hairs, her breasts brushing against my chest as she hovered over me. Up and down she glided until, with a final heave, I felt the last bit of tension and agony explode, leaving nothing but a moment of ecstatic pleasure.
None of us really slept. The closeness of each other was better than the closeness of our dreams. Natalia was the kind of babe that brave men longed for on cold, Arctic nights, but she was also a reminder that she, too, could have become a disappearance and a murder. This reminder made us hold her the way she was meant to be held, like a precious jewel.
At the crack of dawn, we heard the engines turning. Even though this was the day we had all waited for, there was something sad about it. I was almost reluctant to see it begin. Once we busted Denisovich, we could all go back to our normal jobs. Natalia would be patrolling the highways of the South/Central coast. We would be patrolling the oceans. There would probably be so much distance between us most of the time, she would forget us. Women married to coast guard men had the same kind of lives as women married to fishermen. Sometimes, they waited for months at a time for their men to come home. Sometimes, the sea claimed their men, and they didn’t come home at all. Natalia was a desirable woman. She would want more than we could offer her.
The cook had fixed a whopping breakfast, complete with fat sausages and piles of scrambled eggs. We should have been wolfing it down with gusto, yet nobody had much appetite. I don’t think we ate more than a half-pound of sausage each and a dozen eggs. Natalia pecked at her food like a bird. “You’re quiet,” I said, sitting next to her.
She shrugged and stirred sugar into her coffee. “Everybody’s quiet. It’s a big, quiet conspiracy.”
“The others are quiet, busy. You’re quiet, brooding.”
She cradled her cheek in one palm while she sipped the coffee. “I received an e-mail from the state troopers. They’ve begun an undercover investigation into the motorcycle clubs. They thanked me for my service.”
“That’s good, isn’t it?”
“As of today, I’m on unauthorized leave. I was supposed to remain in Ketchikan and take a plane back to Valdez.”
“Why didn’t you say something while we were there? We could have left you at the hospital or given you a ride to a hotel.”
“I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to leave any of you.” She looked out at the dull, slowly awakening day. “And I want to see this fight to the finish, even if it means losing my job.”
“If the Canadians find us, they might impound our vessel.”
A roguish smile snaked across her face. “That might be the cherry on top. State trooper dismissed for illegally crossing into Canada in a Coast Guard vessel whose team records from birth to present date are full of redacted files. I checked, if you want to know. The ship has a nice computer. I’m officially a mystery woman. I could even become a vigilante.”
She said it dryly enough to sound half-serious. I filled my mouth with toast to stifle my growl. “You couldn’t. There wouldn’t be enough criminals left over for us.”
She chased a piece of egg across her plate, then popped it in her mouth, sighing. “If I had brought my gun… if I always kept my gun on me.” A tear trickled down her face. “I wish I was a shape-shifting bear. That would have put them in their place.”
“Hey, now.” I dabbed at her tears with a paper napkin. Usually, I could get people to lighten up by saying a lot of dumb shit, which came naturally to me anyway, but it clearly wasn’t going to work this time. I fumbled around for something to say. “My mom can’t shapeshift, but she’s still the most kick-ass woman in the village. She rescued two small children from a flood when she was sixteen. The village was so thankful, they gave her a snow machine.”
She appeared thankful for the diversion. “How did she meet your dad?”
“That’s where it gets interesting.” I got up and walked her to the window. The open sea stretched out on one side, a tangle of water and land on the other. We clung to the canopied coastline. It would take at least six hours to close in on the yacht. There wasn’t much to do except pass the time getting to know each other, keeping our eyes peeled for snipers. Those bastards were clever. I wouldn’t put it past them to send someone out to swing around and keep an eye on things.
I listened to the low mutter of the engines. “Since my mother had a snow machine, she went out with the others who searched for missing people. It happens a lot in remote areas. Kids stray on their way home from school. Somebody runs out of gas on the trail, leaving them stranded. Fishing and hunting accidents. Sudden storms. Anyone with a snow machine joins the search. Usually, they find their missing people and bring them home, although sometimes it’s too late.”
A diffused sun brightened up the top of her head, where soft curls of hair were making an escape from her barrette. She looked like one of those sea maidens hanging off the bow of a ship. A grown-up Goldilocks. I touched her hair. “This time, they were searching for a hunter. He was twelve hours late coming home, and the wife was getting worried. My mom found him. His leg had been badly mauled by a bear and he was speaking gibberish. They got him back to the village and fixed him up. But they were puzzled. Why didn’t the bear kill the hunter?”
“Your dad was the bear?”
“Yes. He was from another village, but he knew things about the bastard. The hunter had married his cousin. He knew the hunter beat his wife and abused his daughter. My dad met him in the woods to confront him about it, to warn him. They got in an argument and the hunter swung around his rifle. Dad said he didn’t even think; he just shifted. The hunter was completely petrified. His hair turned white. Dad mauled him but spared his life.”
“How did your dad hook up with your mom?”
I laughed. Her eyes were no longer deep and sorrowful. They glittered brightly with interest for my story. “My dad never strayed far from the hunter. He didn’t want him to die, just to be nice to his family. When he saw my mom lug that worthless piece of shit up on the snow machine, he decided, right then, that was the girl he wanted to marry. He introduced himself to the village, which had terrible effects on the hunter. Every time he saw my dad walking through the streets, he would start jabbering. After a while, the hunter got the nickname Monster Man because he was the man who saw monsters.”
I stroked back her hair, loving the way the strands curled around my fingers. “We are a funny people, Natalia. We jeer at people like the hunter who lose their wits over a shapeshifter; but we all know the truth. The elders know. The shaman always sees right away. When we hold the long dances in the dark night, the shapeshifters always appear. We can’t help ourselves. The shadows betray our spirits. My mother knew what he was soon after they started dating, and eventually she learned the whole truth about the hunter, piece by piece. She says it made her love him more.”
She rested her cheek against the window, her face so soft and tender, I wanted to kiss her raspberry lips. “What do your parents do now?”
“Mom gives first aid courses. Dad is an electrical technician. Hates the job. He says every time he gets jolted, he changes into a bear. But you can’t get him to do anything else.”
“My dad’s a state trooper,” she volunteered. “My mom’s a regular housewife. They didn’t really like me following in dad’s footsteps, but these are modern times. A lot of young people are marrying outside the Russian communities. We’re creating new businesses. The Russia we’ve been clinging to for three hundred years isn’t the same motherland. This is our motherland now.”
The raspberry lips turned upward as she looked into my eyes. “They understand. I don’t want to go back. I want my own life.”
“You can have your own life,” I promised her. “I have land in Galina. I could quit the Coast Guard and join forestry. We could open a mom-and-pop store. You can be whoever you want to be. I’ll be there. I’ll support you.”
Her luscious lips wrapped around mine, giving me a taste of her sweet saliva. It was like nectar. She broke away just as my mouth began opening hers. “You can’t do that, Lee. Your team needs you.”
“They need Roy. Roy can swim among the ice floes in sub-zero weather. I’m a land animal.”
“You love your job.”
There was no arguing with that. I liked challenging jobs, jobs that pitted me face to face with Mother Nature’s wrath, and the Coast Guard was the most challenging of all. There was more to it, though. I liked search and rescue; I loved being the first line of defense. It was times like these when I was reminded our skills went beyond our ability to fight all obstacles. They were the stealthy hand that cut the fuse on the dynamite. Everything we did from this moment on could prevent or provoke an international incident.
If Natalia understood she was sitting on a disaster waiting to occur, she didn’t show it. As the ship sailed deeper into Canadian waters, the crew tensed and readied their weapons. Captain Josh took over the helm.
Josh knew his ship the way a man knows his woman. He was the best navigator in the Arctic and understood the island archipelago like no other. He guided the boat through thin, narrow channels, scarcely causing a ripple on the nearby shores. The engines purred, soft and low, as we slipped along a seascape dotted with secret passages.
Two shots fired into the air, one from an enlisted man’s upright rifle and one from across the water. I grabbed Natalia by the arms and pulled her into a crouch. “Stay low. I’m joining the captain.”
I didn’t need to join him. He was rumbling down the stairs toward me, bent at the waist, his knees jogging in front of him. He pointed to the stern. “Get the others. Let’s go. We’re shifting.”
I slapped once at their doors as I raced toward the metal ladder at the back of the boat. Josh was already halfway down and shifting by the time I reached it. I threw off my clothes and swung over the side, dropping into the water like a torpedo. Three other furry muzzles popped up around me. Another shot fired in our boat’s direction. We swam around to the side to have a look at our assailants.
There were two of them, in a streamlined skiff built for speed and very little else. It wasn’t a fisherman’s practical boat. It was vulnerable to capsizing in choppy water. Josh began swimming in their direction, and we followed. If we got there before they noticed us, we could tip them.
One of the ambushers fired another round. Afraid of attracting the Canadian guard, our ship remained silent. The assailants had started reloading when one tugged at the sleeve of the other and pointed toward us. Instead of firing at us, though, they started their engines. Even with high-powered rifles, they were reluctant to take on four massive bears, one of which was, inexplicably, a polar bear. We began paddling furiously behind them but knew we couldn’t catch them, not in a high speed chase.
A whistling noise sped past my ears toward the skiff. There was a “pop,” then the engine blew sky-high. Our two attackers rained down in a fury of flaming boards and engine parts. They lay still on the water, face down, arms stretched. I turned toward the boat, looking for whoever was responsible for the shot. Natalia stood on deck, carbine in her hands. She looked smoking hot.
Roy
I don’t pretend to know much about women. They play by their own rules and have their own goals. The one thing I do know is, they can twist you up and get you so confused, you find yourself doing things you swore you would never do. You make compromises against your better judgment. You tell them your secrets. Natalia had that effect.
We should have left her in Ketchikan, but instead, we took her with us. Though I couldn’t tell the others, I assisted her. I gave her access to the computer and showed her how to open first level files—the kind of files the police and state troopers would read, not the encrypted ones. She may have sent a few phony e-mails to her superiors stating how the team needed her on the case, but if it ever ca
me into question, I hadn’t seen a thing.
That was the effect she had on me. It was worse on Josh. He’d given her a gun! He’d let her come with us on a dangerous mission. And now… hot damn. She had fired the gun. Josh remained circling in the water a good ten minutes longer than necessary before climbing up the side into the boat. Slowly and methodically, he retrieved his clothes, inspecting each piece with his mouth downturned before putting it on. Natalia arrived on deck just as he was tucking his shirt into his pants. “You blew up a boat,” he said stiffly.
She straightened his collar and brushed at his shoulders. “True. They were getting away.”
“You blew up two people.”
If she was dismayed about her singular act of violence, she didn’t show it. “We couldn’t afford to have them informing the cruise ship. Besides, they shot Pete.”
I thought he was going to shift again, right on the spot, but he controlled himself. “What? Where?” he sputtered, his face flushing dark, then pale. “How bad?”
“He was lucky. It was a flesh wound. It bit through the flesh of his arm and embedded in the wall. It didn’t hit bone, but it tore a muscle.”
Josh began pacing, hands behind his back, muttering. “She blew up two people with a military weapon in Canadian waters. How do we explain that? Who teaches her these things?” He stopped in front of me and looked sharply into my face. I trembled with undefined guilt. “Did you teach her? Are you the reason she does what she pleases?”
“I probably am, sir,” I admitted, feeling it was better to agree than to contradict him.
He stood woefully in the middle of the floor, his hands still behind his back. “I suspected as much. You never can trust a Viking with a Russian woman. Now, how do we explain this to the authorities?”
“Let the admiral sort it out,” Natalia suggested. “You were fired upon while investigating the murder of McCarthy and his team.”
“In a high-speed chase,” I added.