She knew that the four a.m. start time had been set so that by first light they could be on their way. But not everyone was itching to get out there and last man didn’t arrive until almost four-thirty.
Asher took his name and checked him off his list. That made ten. He checked that they all had their tags on. The latecomer had to be reminded to take his out of his jacket pocket and put it around his neck.
“Okay, people, rule one is we stay within sight of one another. Ideally we should be shoulder to shoulder walking a line. But North Cascades is too blamed big.
“We’ll take a motor launch to the area we’re responsible for. These here are the maps. We’ll walk each square in a line as best we can—given that the ground ain’t flat and there’ll be brush, trees, rocks and water. Could be boggy this time of year.
“I hope you all wore boots?” He scanned for footwear. Ten pairs of laced boots. Gabriella’s looked well broken in and he saw her eyes fasten on the latecomer’s shiny new boots.
Gabriella listened with half an ear as Asher told them to be sure to use the port-a-potties as there weren’t any where they were headed. He reminded them that they should have food and water. Dry socks. Bear spray. Bells.
He suggested they might wish to have sticks to probe and reminded them that picking up dead wood was okay, but cutting live timber was a Federal offense. “And being a Ranger, I’d have to arrest you,” he said affably. But he wasn’t joking—not a bit.
Gabriella enjoyed the boat ride. The stream they were navigating in the flat-bottomed launch was high and fast flowing at this time of year. They all had big, bulky orange life vests and instructions to stay seated if they didn’t want a soaking.
The trees grew down almost to the river banks. In the half light, birds sang from the berry bushes that grew in the infrequent clearings, claiming their patches of scrub, declaring their availability for mating. Deer raised their heads from the river and bolted for the trees as they approached.
Once she thought she saw a bear, but when she looked harder it was just a bare black rock jutting high up above the river. They skirted some rapids, and took a smaller muddier stream until it met the bigger one some distance north.
The sun was coming up and tinting the pale grey sky pink when Asher Benoit eased his boat to a halt. He turned off the engines and said cheerfully. “Here we are.” As if he had arranged sunrise for them.
It was beautiful. Gabriella wished that she was just out for a walk in the forest with friends instead of looking for the grisly remains of her lover. She reminded herself of last night’s dream. Of her lover visiting her, mating with her. She had to trust her inner bear.
“We’ll arrange ourselves in a line,” Asher said. He assigned a man to the far edge. “I’m going to leave a gap in the middle of this line for me. Mostly you all should be able to see me. If you ever can’t see nobody, holler. It’s important we stay in visual contact.
“We’re looking for anything man made. Rubbish. Food wrappers. Sunglasses. I can guarantee you most of it will be trash, but if you find it holler and we’ll mark it, GPS it and collect it.
“Any questions?”
Gabby was walking with Ash’s comforting bulk to the right of her and a short but competent woman in a big sun hat to the left of her. She kept her eyes on the ground and walked forward a pace at a time, scanned right then left, then stepped forward with the group.
Asher had been right. By lunchtime they had a fine collection of discarded camper junk. A baseball cap, faded and ragged with the remains of some mouse’s nest inside it. A Twinkie wrapper as fresh as if it had dropped this morning. Any number of soda cans. Half a clasp knife. Asher took possession of that himself.
“Likely nothing,” he told Gabby quietly. “But I heard that the straps of the parachute were broken—and not by the couple who found it. Could be they were cut.” He bagged the broken handle and tucked it into his big backpack.
The afternoon proceeded in exactly the same manner. It was tedious, necessary work, but that didn’t make it easier. They found some animal bones—Asher was able to assure them they were looking at a small mammal. He thought it was a raccoon. They bagged those too and carried them out.
Gabby almost thought she had made a discovery when she found the entrance to a cave. Her halloes brought the team to look.
“Let’s check for snakes.” Ash poked his walking stick in and moved it about.
Whatever had hibernated in the little cave, it wasn’t a bear. Ash took some photos and a sample of hair which he examined in the sunlight. “Fox,” he told them, and patiently sent them out in a line again.
Gabriella kept an eye out for bear sign. She had seen nothing. She guessed Asher would be looking for bear sign too. He was a shifter and it would be automatic. But they were both disappointed in this section.
Gabriella was tired when she returned to camp. And glad she had packed her cooler with frozen food she had prepared herself. She only had to open her trunk to take out a hearty dinner. It took only a moment to get her camp stove going.
She would sleep well tonight, after the exertions of the day. She was tired from the adrenalin of hopefulness and from the constant backbreaking stooping. Anyway, Asher had told them they had the same early start tomorrow and another full day in the field. So it was bedtime as soon as she had cleaned up.
She half hoped she would have no erotic dreams. She felt too emotionally drained for the taunting pleasure of her nocturnal inamorato. Unless he wanted to tell her where to look, not tonight, lover boy.
In her dream her gigantic lover turned her on her stomach and lifted up her sweatshirt to expose her back. He dripped some fragrant slippery unguent on her spine and a big palm gently rubbed it up and down her sore back.
The friction made her stretch and snuggle into her sleeping bag. The gentle caresses extended into the tired muscles of her low back. He kneaded her stiff lats in a strong and tireless rhythm. Gabriella sighed in contentment and her sleep deepened.
It seemed eons later that she felt those hands begin to pummel her glutes. She had walked miles and her butt and legs were aching from the unusual exertion. His oily caresses moved up and down the backs of her thighs and then her tight calves were kneaded until the muscles relaxed. Again she plunged into dreamless sleep.
When she woke again, her enormous lover sat astride her supine body. His hips straddled her muff and he leaned forward to kiss her plump lips. His desire was a tangible thing in the darkness of the tent, and his marauding tongue plundered the treasures of her mouth with a fierce passion.
When he moved his ravishing kisses to her swollen breasts, she tried to speak. Her mouth moved but only a despairing moan emerged. He laughed and the laughter vibrated around her peaking nipples and resonated right through her body.
Every night he had learned her secret pleasures. And each night it took less for him to bring her to crowning point, she was so attuned to his caresses. Excitement clouded her mind, she forgot her urgent need to know how to find him, and her whole being focused on the little nub he was rolling gently between his oily thumb and finger. She splintered in his arms.
With a fiery ardor he pressed his long, thick cock into her waiting, rippling passage. Before the aftershocks had passed he was pounding into her. This time his passion left her far behind. It was as though he had waited overlong and had exhausted his patience.
Gabriella lay beneath him enjoying the savagery of his thrusts. She felt nothing but a most exquisite sense of being loved by her massive lover. She reached to touch his face and fondle his beard. Her fingers caught in the tangled curls and he laughed loudly as he continued his furious gallop.
His hand pressed between their two bodies. He found her nubbin and pressed it. Together they rocketed into bliss and she felt life at her core, liquid and hot as blood.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The Black Bear woke from his slumbers with another splitting headache. He felt surlier even than usual, and the return of the trespassing a
dolescent bear was too much for his composure. After scenting his rival, he paced on his rounds with grim and indignant determination.
The horsetails at the river bank summoned him and he broke his fast before heading upslope to the waterfall. The icy deluge numbed his throbbing head and he followed the river back down to where there were fish. But the smell of the cinnamon colored bear was an offense in his nostrils and when his breakfast was complete, he continued to track the younger bear.
The interloper had obviously been lured into his domain by the enticing aroma of a female in full heat. The pair were nosing one another coyly in a high meadow formed by some long ago clear cutting and kept grassy by elk. The female was fat and fertile. She had been gorging on the young shoots of cow parsnip and skunk cabbage and the evidence of her meal lay in the crushed plants she had left in her wake.
The big male was freshly incensed by the presence of the other male. He charged into the clearing and rushed at the smaller boar. Once again the cinnamon colored bear thought flight the better part of valor. He turned tail and bolted. The sow became flirtatious. She directed moans and clicks at the big male and turned so he could admire her broad rear and muscular limbs.
The male padded up to her interestedly, hopeful that this fine, fertile sow was his missing mate. He was disappointed. This was a strange female, utterly unknown to him. He could tell she was ripe, he thought she was beautiful, but he did not want to mate with her. If the sow was disappointed at his lack of attraction, she disguised it by returning to her feast of newly emerging shoots.
* * *
The Black Bear had made his long patrol of his dominion. He felt satisfaction at having driven off the young cinnamon colored bear who seemed inclined to poach on his preserves.
The bear’s head ached. He again sought out the place where the river cascaded down a rock fall into a deep pool. The water was ice cold and when he stood directly under it, the pounding pain in his skull eased off. Time passed. He could see the whiskey jacks darting in and out of the trees provisioning their nestlings, but he couldn’t hear them over the roar of the water.
Eventually he dove down to the bottom fighting the swirling water under the waterfall. When he popped back up to the surface his powerful limbs easily carried him out of the whirlpool into the more placid stream.
There were fish here, darting in the shallower water and he helped himself. The sun shone brightly here where the river carved its way through the thick trees. The bear left the water and found a warm flat rock to lie on. He was full, he didn’t hurt, yet he felt dimly uneasy and unable to nap.
When his fur was dry he set off on his rounds again. He found an unknown female with three tiny cubs. She charged at him and he detoured around her. The little cubs were as dark as he was, but when he stood downwind and sniffed, their scent was unfamiliar. They tumbled in the weeds while their mother ate salmon berries and tried to get them interested in food she hadn’t made. The bear longed to join them, but he didn’t want the female charging at him again.
None of the females he had encountered smelled like his beautiful, ripe, fertile young mate. He had no mental image of her just a dim scent memory, but it was enough to keep him prowling through the woods hunting for her.
As he padded through his domain, the bear found a Douglas Fir where the intruding young bear had left clumps of his pale fur. The black reared up to his full length and stretched until he could rake the tree from sixteen feet up. He gouged deep in his rage at the trespassing of the adolescent male and sap flowed down the wound he had made.
He rubbed his back and haunches hard against the rough bark and covered the younger bear’s reddish fur with clumps of his own thick, black winter pelt Over marking the interloper calmed him and he continued to explore his bailiwick.
He came across scat at the base of a small aspen. He sniffed it and recognized it as male. Big, old male. But this marking did not disturb his regal calm. He sniffed it some more. There was something here that made him restless, but not angry. Safe. It was a good feeling.
He placed his own droppings in a steaming pile adjacent to, but not on top of, the other bear’s scat. For good measure he rubbed his back against the little tree even though its smooth bark didn’t pull out his snarled winter coat. A few clumps drifted down onto the forest floor and the bear lost interest and wandered away. His head was throbbing again and he forgot about the big, old bear almost immediately.
* * *
Asher’s team had been assigned a different area this morning. He distributed the new maps to his team and made a few announcements. They were down to eight volunteers this morning. Yesterday’s latecomer was one of those missing. Clearly he had taken himself and his new boots elsewhere. Asher merely said that the absentees had had to return home.
It left them shorthanded. Asher made the difficult decision to spread the remaining volunteers further apart. This meant that the area in between each searcher would be skimped. The alternative was searching only four fifths of the entire section.
They all knew the routine now. Step. Look right. Look left. Step. Look right. Look left. Rinse and repeat.
They found some more pop cans. A mountain of plastic bags. A bus ticket. A little pile of change and a set of car keys laid neatly on a rock. That excited everyone.
Asher backed the team up and conducted a prowling search. Under leaf litter he uncovered a hearth and cooking vessel. And then the tattered remains of a tent and a sleeping bag. No bones, no corpse, nothing human at all.
The Ranger summoned his team and kept them busy taking photographs while he bagged the evidence of a bear kill. At least that was what Gabby thought it was, and Asher had at least her skill in reading tracks.
She felt nauseated at the thought of Roman killing and eating his kind. It was almost worse than him being dead. It was true there were lots of bears in Washington State, and there was little chance that this was Roman’s doing—even if he was living in bear as her instincts intimated. But this gruesome find brought home the danger of her quest and the brutal reality of a shifter gone feral.
After the excitement of finding the abandoned campsite, the rest of the day was anticlimactic. Gabby looked for bear sign and again found none.
The enormity of her task overwhelmed her with fatigue and sadness. The Cascades were home to hundreds of bears. How was she to find hers in all this vast wilderness? She had hoped that these two days in the forest would have provided her with a starting point.
She was sad and lost in thought on the journey home. The debriefing of all thirty-two groups of volunteers by an Air Force officer was a letdown. Major Chang thanked the volunteers for their hard work.
“The fact that we located nothing that we can directly link to Capt. Zhadanov, in the areas searched this weekend, does not mean your efforts were wasted. Not at all. Elimination is also important. Your work in the field means there are now three hundred additional acres we can strike off. That is invaluable information.
“We are still awaiting the complete reports from the sectors searched by the Air Guard and the Air Force. It is possible those teams have turned up something.
“The Air Force would like to thank the Washington State Forest Rangers for their assistance, and in particular the Rangers of the North Cascades National Park, and of course all the volunteers who gave up their weekend for this vital search.
“I know many of you traveled long ways to be here. The Rangers have arranged a hot supper outside the Ranger Station. Thank you again for volunteering your time.”
As she was turning to walk back to her camp, Asher laid a friendly hand on Gabby’s arm.
“Give me a moment to finish up,” he said. He shook hands with the last of the volunteers and smiled at her. “You remember Roman’s Uncle Van?”
How could she not? He was such a character.
“Sure,” she said. “I saw him in January at the vigil for Roman.”
Asher nodded sadly. “He’s here. He went out with another group, b
ut he wants to talk to you. Listen I got to clear up here some, wait for me.”
“Of course.” Gabriella was more than willing to have a talk with Roman’s Uncle Vanya.
Roman had told her that he had been born in Ukraine and had been adopted by Vanya and Klara when he was about five. Which in itself made no sense. The papers had called him Roman’s father but he wasn’t. Well maybe legally. But Roman had told her his Aunt Klara was Vanya’s daughter not his wife.
Klara had already been an old woman when Roman was born. Gabby had tried to figure out how any agency had permitted them—father and daughter—to adopt a kid from Ukraine. Roman had laughed at her confusion and told her that Vanya and Klara were related to him in some obscure way.
“They decided I should come to America,” he said. “And they made it happen. Otherwise it would have been a state orphanage for little Roman.” Then he had deflected her questioning with some salacious suggestions that had probably shortened the battery life of her cell by months.
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