by Star, Amy
She had to drive a lot slower than she wanted to, but always kept the police cruiser in view, several hundred meters ahead. It wasn’t until they were nearly on the edge of town again that she sped up. The road became curvier, and if she wasn’t careful, she knew she’d lose him altogether—too fast, and she’d give herself away immediately. Her jaw clenched as she tried to time her approach. As she came around another bend in the road, hedged by the river, her stomach sunk. There was a long straightaway and no sign of the cruiser. Absently she slammed the brakes and skidded to the shoulder of the road. Impossible.
There was no way he could have just disappeared, and even if he’d sped up she would have seen him. Swearing, she pulled a U-turn, feeling the rubber peel off her tires, and headed back the way she came. Sure enough, right at the curve, almost hidden by the blind corner, was a small driveway that led back into the woods. The car growled impatiently as she maneuvered it down the dusty road, feeling it threaten to slide against the ditch as the tires tried to grip at the loose gravel.
“Where did you go?” she whispered out loud, and adjusted her glasses again. There was a faint stirring of pale dust ahead, no doubt coughed into the air by the cruiser. She slowed down again, nearly idling as the road moved through a small gap in the trees and opened up into another small valley.
Sure enough, several hundred meters down the road she saw an ambulance and a row of flashing lights, blue and red. Too many cops for a simple disturbance—maybe Samson’s intel had been correct about a murder after all. And if the sergeant had indicated anything, there was likely a suspicious nature to it. Temporarily diverted from the reason she had originally come to Beaver Creek, Lily quickly fumbled in the glove compartment as she maintained a consistent speed. A small baseball cap tumbled on the floor and she fit it quickly over her head, lowering the brim as she passed by the row of cruisers. A few officers looked up with bored expressions as she moved past.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw that they were loading a stretcher into the ambulance, covered with a blue sheet. Blood had darkened the sheet in several areas and she felt sick and thrilled at the same time. Murder, she thought, and looked in her rear view. Still no evidence she’d been found out. She sighed and kept driving until the road branched off to the left against a grove and turned the engine off.
“Okay,” she murmured, grabbing her backpack. It was risky, but maybe she could gather more evidence on foot. If the cops found her—especially the portly sergeant—she’d have a hard time coming up with an excuse, but the risks far outweighed the cost. “Walking right into a crime scene,” she shook her head and stepped out, “maybe they’ll believe me if I tell them I was just out on a hike.”
It was unlikely. Normally, she would have just stopped and, regardless of consequences, tried to wean information from the cops, but a direct approach like that was more likely to get her even further away from the meat of the story.
Leaving the car by the side of the road, she bee-lined up the side of the hill and into the shade of the trees. The cops and ambulance had been positioned near a tall line of red cedar, and she tried to guesstimate her bearings as she entered the woods. The deep smell of chlorophyll and humus reached her like a dark green hand, clapping down on her senses, and she took in a deep breath.
She was, innately, the antithesis of what she’d pretended to be in front of the cop—a country girl. However, she found herself easily navigating the uneven terrain of fallen logs and slippery undergrowth, and her breath caught in her throat in a sort of ecstatic rhythm as she found herself half-jogging. What she was looking for, she didn’t know. Some clue, something overlooked by the forensics team. It didn’t dawn on her until she’d made it down a gulley that the sergeant had remarked on the death being attributed to a bear.
The thought froze her in place and her eyes grew wide. What the hell am I doing? she thought, realizing how stupid it was to blindly dive into the woods. Especially with the possibility of a killer bear being on the loose. It was the notion that the death—the body she had glimpsed under the paramedic’s blue sheet—had been suspicious that had prompted her to take the investigation into her own hands.
Lily swore and leaned over, her hands on her thighs, panting.
I’m frazzled, she realized. Not thinking clearly. Too many things were going on, and she was having a hard time organizing them coherently. Pregnancy, Blake, a mysterious death, bears. Christ, what a mess. She readjusted the straps on her backpack and considered heading back the way she’d come. It wasn’t worth it to risk being caught out here unawares. Reluctantly, she turned and backtracked the way she’d come.
She didn’t’ notice a pair of yellow eyes watching her from the thicket until it was too late.
*
It hadn’t taken Blake long to locate another member of the Ursas who was lingering at Jack’s. It took him a minute to remember the woman’s name, her short Mohawk puffed out in an imitation of Mr. T circa 1984 and her brows almost simian the way they covered her eyes with a permanent sort of darkened scowl. One of the newer novitiates, but she had gumption, and was strong enough to win an arm wrestle even among the men. Sarah.
She’d been almost surprised to see him, as if she’d thought he was already dead and he’d somehow resurrected himself back to the living. Her blue eyes resisted looking at him until he inquired about Ogre, and then her eyes went dim.
“He’s dead, I just heard… Connor and the others spread the word, I guess you were probably the last to hear,” she said. “There’s a lot of talk, Blake. They said they found him out near the pastures, north of town. Don’t know what he was doing there.”
“That’s an unusual place for any of us to be,” he mused.
“I think an ambulance is already there—coroner and stuff, and the place has been wasped with cops, I don’t like it. I’m just minding my own business, Connor gave us all orders. I’m supposed to blow smoke up their asses if they come in here asking questions.”
“He’s certainly prepared,” Blake said, trying to keep the tension out of his voice.
Sarah reached for the glass of beer in her hand—he could tell even from here that it was lukewarm, and the carbonation had long ago disappeared. She’d probably been sitting here with it for an hour at least. She looked spooked. “You should be careful,” she said suddenly.
“Careful of what?” he’d demanded.
Maybe it was because she was new to the gang—Blake recalled that, in form, she was a smaller brown bear, a southern breed—and had only fallen in with them in the last year, but she lowered her eyes, as if afraid to cross some invisible line. “They’re saying that Ogre was killed by one of us,” she said. “No names are being dropped officially. That’s why the cops came, I guess. But it doesn’t look good—what with you attacking him before at the wake. I don’t think anyone forgot that.”
“Did someone say that?”
She shook her head, then nodded slowly. “No, not in so many words—just whispers. All rumors and stuff, shit like that, nothing concrete. You probably got nothing to worry about. I just… I thought you should know. Folks are talking.”
“I didn’t have anything to do with Ogre’s death,” Blake assured her, and saw a visible sign of relief flood her face—if she’d suspected him, it was only a casual fear that she had merely been waiting for him to dispel. Another one of my side, I pray, he thought.
“I know, I didn’t really believe it,” she said, “but the others, I don’t know.”
“Perfect,” he said, “some coincidence.”
“Coincidence?”
Blake shut his mouth and frowned. “Nothing,” he murmured, remembering the mission he had just given Gavin back in the gravel pit—with any luck the kid was already hunting down clues. And hopefully keeping his head low. “Listen, Sarah, stay here. I don’t know what’s going on, but I think something bigger is going on. Someone’s trying to tear us apart from the center out—and I’m not going to let that happen.”
“I don’t get it, Blake,” she admitted, and he held up his hand.
“Just do me a favor, yeah? Anyone asks about me, ‘specially Connor, you ain’t seen me.”
From Jack’s, he’d sped north, and nearly lost his balance when two cruisers had come around the corner, their sirens blaring. For half a second he thought he’d been made, before realizing that he wasn’t actually guilty of anything. My conscience sure tells me otherwise, he thought, watching with some relief in his mirror as the cops sped past on their way to Beaver Creek.
No one had actually pointed a finger at him, but he knew it was only a matter of time—his scuffle with Ogre was the perfect pretense for motive. For Ogre to wind up mauled two weeks later, it was inconceivable as an accident. Someone’s trying to pin me down, he realized, and the thought shook him to the core. It wasn’t just the idea that he was contending with an enemy, mostly likely within their own ranks, but the fact that someone—another shifter—would go so far as to murder one of their own.
He pulled off on a small back road that led toward the pastures—the ambulance had already arrived, according to Sarah. But there was a possibility that whoever had offed Ogre might still be around. It was a long shot. Hell, it was a dangerous shot; if someone was trying to use him as a scapegoat, him showing up at the murder scene could be conceived as a sign of guilt. Have to risk it he thought, cranking on the engine hard until he smelled it burning.
It didn’t take him long to come into the small open valley. He could make out the barest flicker of movement down the road and quickly turned right down the road to avoid running past them. So that’s where Ogre had bit it. He felt a sense of misery. Ogre may have been a brute, and could get out of control sometimes, but he hadn’t deserved to die. And whoever—whatever—had killed him would have had to have been formidable.
There was a small turnaround that had once been a landing for an old logging operation and he parked his Harley next to it and stood at the tree line. With his eyes closed he took in a deep breath and tried to calm his mind. His leather jacket fell off his shoulders and he winced at the cool forest air as it bathed against his bare flesh. His muscles flexed, causing the ancient Nordic tattoos to ripple almost as if they were truly alive, animated by the human who wore them as a symbol of his pride and his heritage. The blue and black ink writhed as he crouched low, pulling his pants off and setting them beside the jacket.
He tried to weigh the risks. Yes, if any of the cops or the Ursas found him wandering around near the scene of Ogre’s death, that would be hard to justify. On the other hand, if he was in bear form it would be even more suspicious if he was caught—even though he knew that as far as stealth was concerned, it was his best option. His sense of smell and hearing as a bear was far superior to his own human senses.
With his eyes still closed, he took in a deep breath through his nostrils, allowing his bear senses to come alive again. The time he spent as a human was as much a hibernation for his inner-shifter self as the winter was a hibernation for his wild cousins. To wake from it was both disorienting and refreshing.
In his mind’s eye, he tried to focus on the single burning flame that always smoldered there. It was a constant reminder of who he truly was: a beast. He opened himself to it, giving into a primal urge that spread through his body, overwhelming him, and he fell to his knees and planted both hands deep into the gravel of the landing. The change was gradual and excruciating, as always.
Bones came apart and reknitted under his flesh with horrible popping sounds. A dense mat of black hair suddenly sprouted from his back and his arms, down his legs, even the top of his head, almost like a time-lapse of insistent undergrowth reaching for the sunlight. His face began to cave into itself, the structure reshaping in a terrible alteration as his jaw slid back and a heavy muzzle took its place. Teeth grew like daggers from his mouth, and he let out a snarl.
In moments, it was over. A full grown grizzly stood on all four legs and huffed, swinging the slow lope of his head back and forth as Blake readjusted to his bear shape. For a moment, there was only bear. The human part of his mind had been buried under the impatience of his animal self, and was only now slowly swimming back to the surface of consciousness. Blake scratched at the dirt and looked back at his bike, remembering who he was.
Yes. The death of Ogre.
He turned back to the woods and ploughed into the forest. Even without knowing the direction in which he had come on the bike, his nose was able to pick up the telltale signs of blood. It was as if the forest was drenched in it, and he could sense the other animals, the wild ones, cowering in their dens. They could sense the death as well, and had all retreated. It made the gullies of interspersed creeks and long aisles of dark bowed conifers seem somehow emptier, dejected. Iy was as if everything was balanced on a moment, waiting for the final shoe to drop, anticipating something evil or foreboding. Blake tried not to let it get to him as he headed due west, following the acrid iron tang of blood. It became stronger the closer he got, and he instinctively slowed down.
Through a break in the trees, there was a glimmer of red and blue again, the distant sound of human voices. The ambulance Sarah had mentioned, no doubt; a man in a dark coat, presumably the coroner, was bent over a shape on the ground, but Blake couldn’t get a good look. The scent of bile and ichor told him all he needed to know. Ogre hadn’t just been killed. He’d been torn apart. Normal wild bears didn’t come out this far, as a rule, which meant the only other possibility was, indeed, a shifter. The reality of the fact hit him like a bullet between the eyes and he growled low in his throat and took several steps back, testing the air.
It was hard to make out exactly what was going on, but it looked like they were taking pictures and a crew of paramedics nearby had a gurney. Rest in peace, brother, Blake thought, offering a sort of primitive and atavistic prayer for his fallen comrade. Through the haze of blinking lights and the heavy stench of blood, it was difficult to discern anything else, but he took a step back into the woods and raised his nose anyway. Ogre, in his human form, was a potent scent, almost as overpowering as the reek of his own innards—but as Blake sat back on his haunches and let the subtle nuances of the forest alight against his keen nose, he began to pick up other traces.
There was squirrel, the tang of elk, a few deer—where they mule or white-tail?—and the remnant pungency of other humans, but that scent was old. But there, almost at the periphery of his awareness was something else, distinct, like a brass note clanging out of the distance, and his black beady eyes flashed open. Shifter. Unmistakable, though it was far too light a smell for him to be able to pinpoint as belonging to a specific member of the gang—or any other gang, for that member.
Moving further back into the wood, Blake stepped lighter, trying not to alarm anyone else to his presence. There was a thick patch of heavy turret ferns against the hillside and he made his way slowly toward it. Even despite his girth and great weight, he was able to be surreptitious—for anyone not looking directly at him, he seemed to balance his movements against the natural rustling of the trees and bushes.
There, his human mind echoed.
The scent was stronger here, and he saw the scuff of upturned earth. Someone, something, moving fast across the forest floor, but they’d been clumsy in their retreat. Dipping his low snout to the ground he followed the evidence of a path until at last it wound back across the flat expanse and dipped down into a gulley. As Blake peered between two dead logs, he almost gave away his position with a startled huff.
There in the bottom of a creek was another bear. No, not a bear, he realized. His grace was bulky, limited by too much time in human form, and he hadn’t found his feet as a true bear yet. It was undeniably a shifter, though Blake couldn’t make out any distinguishing marks. Something told him, though, that it was a member of the Ursas. He cursed himself for not having spent more time trying to learn the names and faces of all the new novitiates. For the past year, he had been taking his position as Beta seriousl
y alongside Damian.
Who are you? he growled, and ducked low. The other shifter was a black bear with a pale muzzle and impossibly dark hair that covered him head to paw. It was so dark that when he entered or passed through the shadow cast by the canopy of trees above, Blake almost lost sight of him again. The shifter was very clearly trying to keep a low profile, and was only now taking notice of the obvious trail he had left behind. Blake followed at a distance as the shifter circled, using the creek to cover his tracks and his scent. It wasn’t until they both came back to the flat field that led to Ogre’s murder scene that Blake felt something like dread prick at his senses.
The shifter was several hundred feet ahead and oblivious, but was taking up a position in the cover of foliage where he could watch the police cruisers from a distance. The ambulance had packed up the body and was pulling away, but there was still a contingent of officers huddled at the side of the road. Seemingly satisfied, the shifter sat up again and started back the way he’d come—Blake held his breath until his brother had passed by before following him again. Part of him wanted to confront the shifter here and now. He was just a small black bear; if it came to a fight, Blake would have the upper hand, at least. But he had to wait until they were further away so as not to draw unwanted attention.
Biding his time, he stalked the shifter again for another hundred meters. His paws carefully chose soft places on the earthen floor, avoiding nests of branches that might give away his position. Blake was so concerned with switching his attention between stepping lightly and between tracking that he almost blundered into the other shifter and froze.