They hit the highway in record time, and all hell followed after.
Chapter 7
The swarm of the Cuckoo’s children weren’t quite as fast as a Jeep traveling downhill on a highway, but they weren’t much slower. Mina’s heart was racing. She was safe. Well, safe-ish. Matt was there, which was amazing. He’d found her right in the nick of time. But he was shot and without his bear he’d be no use if they hit traffic and the swarm of bird-things overtook them.
“Joannie, dear, it’s so good to see you,” Mina yelled over her shoulder.
“Any complications?” Joannie asked. “Nausea? Fatigue?” She spoke at a normal level but her words had no trouble finding Mina’s ear.
“There have been some complications, yes. That Vera woman knocked me unconscious at least twice. I don’t suppose that’s good for the baby. Does magic sleeping dust cross the blood brain barrier? And the Cuckoo massaged my belly quite hard. It still feels sore, actually.”
“Do you know that thing, Joannie?” Matt asked. In the rearview mirror, Mina could see his shirt soaked with blood and her heart leapt with concern. He was patched up now—Joannie was a miracle worker—but until he got his bear back he’d be a mess.
“I’ve never seen it before,” she said. “But every witch knows of it. It’s a baby thief, a sick and twisted monster that thinks it’s placing babies with more deserving families. But it just so happens that those families that are more worthy are the ones who summoned the creature and paid its fee.”
The sky darkened as storm clouds rolled in unnaturally fast. A stroke of lightning smashed into the road before them, and the peal of thunder hit Mina like a fist, driving all the air from her lungs.
In the backseat, Joannie yelled, “The old Greeks used to believe that the Cuckoo was Zeus, king of their gods and wielder of lightning.”
“That’s crazy!” Allison interjected. “There’s no such thing as Greek gods!”
Mina reached out and placed a hand on Allison’s shoulder, trying to will a calmness into her sister-in-law. “Just focus on driving. Watch the road. Find your chill.” A curious sensation moved through Mina—it was like her unborn cub turned and spoke to a kindred spirit within Allison. Mina gasped. “Allie, are you pregnant?”
Allison smiled grimly. “It seemed like an awkward time to tell you.”
Mina’s cub laughed with delight inside her. Waves of joy and warmth radiated through her and out into the world. Her daughter was talking in some sort of magical way to Allison’s unborn cub. They were becoming friends. It was unreal.
Everyone in the Jeep was smiling and sighing like they’d just found a long-lost friend. Allison closed her eyes and her foot slid off the accelerator.
“No no no,” Mina said. “Keep driving! Don’t let the baby bliss distract you from the squawkers behind us.”
“What is that feeling?” Matt asked.
“It’s your daughter asking to be born,” Joannie grunted. “We need to get to a clean, safe place. Soon.”
Mina leaned over to Allison and whispered to her, “It’s a boy. You’re having a boy.”
Tears sprang to Allison’s eyes so fast they almost squirted out. “Did he tell you his name?”
“No one names themselves, girl,” Joannie said. “Of all the damn fool ideas.”
A pressure built inside Mina, like cramps but more primal, like the earth itself was squeezing her. She shut her eyes and focused on breathing through the discomfort.
“Does anyone else feel that?” Matt asked, clutching his belly and doubling over. “What the hell is the Cuckoo doing to us?”
“It’s not the Cuckoo doing it,” Joannie said. “It’s your wife.”
“Why?” Matt asked in a hiss.
“She’s in labor, obviously.”
It was a contraction. The first of many. They were only an hour out from Bearfield though, and Mina knew from the approximately eight thousand birthing books that she’d read that first labors took a long time. No one had their first baby in an hour, right? But the books said nothing about magical shifter pregnancies. They didn’t talk about Cuckoo baby-thieves or contractions that everyone around you could feel.
Eight minutes later the next contraction rose up from within her and the windshield cracked. Tires blew out on a Honda Fit driving next to them. Matt leaned over and bit the headrest. Allison breathed through it and mostly kept in their lane. But for Mina it felt like she was turning inside out.
“Be patient,” she whispered to her baby. “Be patient. There’s no rush. We just need to get to our home. We have a birthing pool. I know, right? If you’d told me two years ago that I’d give birth in a tub of water in my own home I’d have called you crazy and pre-ordered an epidural. But it seems normal now. Is this what California does to people? Or is it just Bearfield? How much have I changed already? Who will I be tomorrow when I wake up with you in my arms?”
“You’ll be her mother,” Matt said, his strong hands reaching up between the seats to hold hers. “You’ll be amazing. She’ll love you until the stars grow cold.”
“But what if I’m not good enough? Not strong enough? We haven’t talked this through. I need more time. We should have had weeks more to plan.”
“It’ll be okay,” Matt said. “Women have been giving birth for a million years. It’s the most natural thing in the world.” He squeezed her hand and she wished she could climb into the back seat and be held by him, feel his strong arms around her again.
Another contraction pulled at her foundations. The road in front of them ripped open, revealing a two-foot-wide maw, but Allison steered around it expertly. The car’s antenna bent itself over double, twisting into a knot. The steel frame beneath Mina’s feet shrieked as it tried to resist being warped into a pretzel.
“Four minutes apart,” Joannie said. “This cub is in a hurry.”
Mina looked back to see Matt as white as a sheet. Blood soaked his bandages. Had the contraction ripped the stitches? But Joannie calmly watched the hills pass by and chewed her gum.
“Joannie, why aren’t you affected? Is this some witch magic?” Mina asked.
“Is it that stuff you’re chewing?” Allison asked. “Is there a magic herb that protects you?”
Joannie blew a bubble in her chewing gum and popped it. “Menopause,” was her explanation.
Somehow Michael snored through the entire affair, oblivious to everything.
The contractions seemed to egg the Cuckoo’s children on. Every spasm filled them with a squawking fury. And behind the cloud of malformed birds was Peter’s ambulance. He was driving it while the Cuckoo clung to the roof. He looked like an old man again, all pink and white like a shaved pig. But his hair stood up from his head in a crest like a cuckoo’s and he sang a song of hunger.
The ambulance’s lights and siren were blasting. It was gaining on their Jeep.
Another contraction grabbed at Mina’s guts.
“Three minutes apart now,” Joannie said. “I wish I could check your dilation.”
The windshield cracked again. Spiderweb fractures spread across the entire surface.
Mina gripped the dashboard and her fingers ripped right through it. The plastic and metal weres like taffy in her grip.
“Sorry!” she said to Allison. But her sister-in-law didn’t hear her. She was pure focus, her eyes locked on the road ahead.
They took the highway exit at high speed, sliding across the shoulder and banging off the guardrail just as another contraction squeezed at Mina’s bones. The road behind them shattered, concrete turning to gravel and dust. The guardrail liquefied and dripped to the ground. Through the cloud of dust the Cuckoo’s children came, with the ambulance hurtling after. It slid on the broken pavement, slowed, but did not stop.
“What are we going to do when we get home with all these things behind us?” Matt asked. “We sort of haven’t covered that part of the plan yet.”
Joannie snorted. “You call this a plan?”
“It’s plan-i
sh?” Matt retorted. “Is this what contractions always feel like? It’s like someone is pulling my testicles out my mouth.”
On the curving roads between the highway and the border of Bearfield, neither vehicle could go at highway speeds without risking a plunge over the shoulder into a valley. Bearfield was a mountain town and that meant slow roads, tourist traffic, and vertiginous drops to the canyon below. Two years ago Mina had almost flipped her car off the mountain on these very same roads—it was how she met Matt and his warm, welcoming family. It was how she’d found the home she never knew she’d been missing. There would be a savage irony to her story ending the same way.
Allison slowed down to ten over the recommended speed limit. She chewed her lips as she took every turn too fast.
“We need to speed up,” Matt muttered.
“The Cuckoo can’t drive any faster than us,” Mina said.
“But his little flying monkeys can.”
As soon as Matt said it, the first of the Cuckoo’s children landed on the back of the Jeep. It was a foul thing. The bird looked like a greasy woodpecker, with a mohawk of hair instead of feathers. It scrabbled on top of Michael’s sleeping body. “Give us the baby,” it said in a gentle child’s voice.
“Get stuffed, bird,” Mina said. Then threw her shoe at it, missing the bird but clocking Michael squarely in the nose.
The big bear shifter woke up and stretched. “Man, that was a seriously weird dream.” He patted the floor next to himself as if feeling for Allison in bed, but instead his hand took hold of a Cuckoo child. He squeezed ir in his hand and brought it close to his bleary eyes. He blinked several times, frowning at the bird. Then the cuckoo bird—this one had human eyes in a cuckoo body—wailed loudly like a crying baby. And Michael screamed back in surprise, right into its face.
He sat up and looked around.
“Good afternoon!” Mina yelled. “It’s hard to explain but those birds want to steal your niece.”
“Well, eff that,” Michael said. Then he turned and winked at Matt and Mina. “I’m practicing watching my language. There’s going to be little babies running about, y’know?”
The birds kept coming, landing all over the Jeep. Matt swatted them away with his good hand. Joannie swung her midwifing bag like a wrecking ball. Mina slapped them away and immediately felt guilty about it, after the bird babies started crying like upset toddlers.
“It’s not fair!” one of them whined.
“I have an owwwie!”
“You’re mean!”
At first it seemed like they just wanted to unnerve the passengers, saying odd things like “Our daddy is coming for you!” and “He promised us a new sister!” all said in innocent sing-song voices, but then they swarmed Allison, trying to flap in front of her face or grab her hair, anything to distract her from the very tense driving.
When the cuckoo children landed on the windshield, Mina took special joy in reaching over to flip on the windshield wipers, sending them hurtling off with cries of “No fair!” and “You’re a meanie!” She did everything she could to keep them off of Allison without actually smacking Allison in the face or being even more distracting than the bird-things.
There were no other cars on the road at all, which was unusual for that time of year. In the spring, tourists flocked to Bearfield to see the gardens in bloom, to sample fresh produce at the farmer’s market, to fish and to hike the verdant paths. The road should have been bumper to bumper, but it wasn’t. Mina couldn’t understand what was happening until she saw a police car ahead of them. Sheriff Pete, Bearfield’s only official law enforcement, had his cruiser parked just off the side of the road on a scenic turnout. He was leaning on his police car and shouting into his police radio. Mina’s heightened senses picked up police chatter and cursing and demands from Pete to keep the road closed at either end. He must have timed it perfectly to let her through on the highway exit.
As they raced past him, Mina saw Pete struggling to lift some sort of heavy equipment that looked not unlike a bazooka up to his shoulder. “What the hell is that?” she said.
“Language!” yelled Michael.
“It’s one of those things that shoots out tire spikes,” Matt said. “Pete got it from a state police sale last year and he’s been dying for a chance to use it.”
“Does he know how to use it?” Mina asked.
Pete fired in the space between their Jeep and the Cuckoo’s stolen ambulance, but the old cop had the device pointed the wrong way and the spiked roadblock fired behind him, punching out the passenger window of his car, sailing through the interior and out the driver’s side, flying far and wide down to the canopy of trees below.
“Guess not.”
The bird-things swarmed again, forming into a dark mass like a fist in the sky and launching themselves at the Jeep.
“Michael,” Matt said in a matter of fact voice.
“I got this,” the big man said. He turned and leapt out of the back of the Jeep, shifting into a giant honey-gold bear in midair, tackling the swarm of cuckoo children. He lashed out with paws and jaws, slapping and snapping at the creatures. He didn’t kill any of them though. They were monstrous little beasts, but they were still just kids.
“Will he be okay?” Mina watched as the swarm of bird-things changed course and pelted Michael with their mottled bodies.
Allison laughed. “The only danger is him sneaking off for a nap before the birdies get bored attacking him.”
The Cuckoo’s ambulance swerved around Michael, narrowly missing him, and barreled on towards their Jeep. None of the bird-things were chasing them now. Mina almost felt relieved, until she heard the Cuckoo singing again.
The ambulance roared up behind them and bashed their bumper, causing them to fishtail and swerve on the narrow road. Joannie’s bag flew out of her hands, nearly getting tossed out of the car, but Matt caught it with his injured hand at the last second, wincing and cursing but never letting go. The bag felt important to Mina, like it was the key to having a healthy birth.
The contractions were coming faster now, but they were directed internally, no longer shattering the world around her. Instead they began to pull Mina’s attention inwards, into the depths of her own body. The world seemed unimportant now. Whatever was happening, her mate and her friend and her midwife could deal with it. Her breath came in steady swoops and a song filled the air. It was a joyous song, full of bright clear notes and hope. She looked around to see where it was coming from and realized it was coming from her.
She was singing. It was an old song her mom used to sing in church, but the words were gone. It was just joy and happiness, the song of becoming.
The Cuckoo rammed them again, but she didn’t care. Her daughter was coming, being sung into the world.
Ahead of them, the road curved. A sign said, “Now Entering Bearfield, A Pleasant Place To Live. Pop. 4,710. Elevation. 3413,” and just beyond the sign, standing in the middle of the road, was Matt’s other brother, the Alpha of Bearfield, Marcus.
And while Matt was a very large man, standing around six foot six with broad shoulders and muscles for miles, Marcus made him look small. The Alpha was wearing jeans and work boots and a flannel shirt. His face was twisted up with anger. It was the scariest thing Mina had ever seen, and she’d once looked into the mouth of a great white shark.
They drove past Marcus but he didn’t spare them even a look. He was focused on the ambulance. Mina fought to keep her eyes open as another contraction tugged her deeper into herself. She turned in her seat, as did Matt and Joannie, to watch Marcus.
As the Cuckoo’s ambulance crossed the border of Bearfield, Marcus stepped into the path of the speeding vehicle. A ghostly blue bear the size of a house appeared around him and the Alpha caught the ambulance in his arms, halting its momentum completely. He placed one foot behind himself and slid barely an inch. The vehicle crumpled and broke, collapsing in on itself like it’d smashed into an immovable object, which it had. Peter Parstip’s airba
g went off, saving him from meeting the road at fifty miles an hour, but the Cuckoo was not so lucky. The baby-snatching monster hit the pavement hard and rolled end over end, squawking and cursing in some foul old tongue leaving a trail of greasy feathers behind him.
Later, when comparing notes, Matt and Mina both swore that the ghostly blue bear took the Cuckoo in her mouth, swallowing it down before fading away to fog, but Joannie said they had baby brain and could not be trusted. No one had even seen the great bear spirit who protected Bearfield and her people before, so it must have been a dream.
The danger was over, but the need was not.
“The baby is coming,” Mina said as she focused on her breathing exercises.
“Get us home,” Matt said to Allison. “Please.” But home was a twenty-minute drive through downtown, through tourists, and down a winding dirt road.
Joannie sniffed, “There’s no time for that. We need someplace closer.”
“The bakery,” Mina said with a smile. “Get us to my bakery.”
Saturday gasped with surprise when Matt and Allison carried Mina in, with Joannie following, burning sage and muttering protective incantations. Matt lifted Mina up in his strong arms, whispering “I love you” to her over and over as tears rolled down his handsome face. His wounds were healed now. The bear had gone back to him when Mina wasn’t paying attention, as they crossed the Bearfield border. It was rumbling encouragements to the little cub inside her.
Allison shoved all of the baked goods off a long wide table and Joannie flipped a clean linen blanket onto the surface in a practiced motion.
And then Mina was on the table, lost in her inner world.
“Push now,” Joannie said. “It’s time, my girl. You’ve done great. Just a bit more.”
Mina pushed and all the flowers in Bearfield bloomed.
She pushed and four songwriters sat down and wrote the best songs of their careers.
She pushed and all the bottles of champagne in The Lodge popped their corks, spraying fizzing wine everywhere.
The Bearfield Baby Heist Page 6