by Debra Dunbar
“Look at this, Brina.”
I stood and went to him, careful not to pull at the healing claw wounds along my waist. When I knelt down I saw a spot on the grizzly’s chest, a hairless patch with blackened crusty flesh and a raw wound. I was surprised Karl had found it among all the slashes and bites the rogue had suffered in their battle, but there it was—a gunshot wound. And not a new one either.
“He’s got two more—another one in his chest and one in his shoulder from where the hiker shot him,” I commented. “But this one looks to be a few days old and it didn’t heal right.”
Karl examined the other two wounds, digging in the rogue’s flesh to pull the bullets out and place them in my hand. They looked like normal .357 bullets to me. Then one of Karl’s nails elongated, sharpening into a short claw and he dug out the other, older bullet. As soon as he sliced the skin over the wound, a foul odor hit my nose.
Hot melted plastic and rotten bananas.
I held my breath, gagging and waited while Karl tore through putrid flesh to pull a smashed chunk of metal from the shifter. It was slimy, coated with a gray sticky rot. And the sight of it sent a wave of nausea through me.
I didn’t want to touch it, but we needed to take it back with us, to compare it to the bullets that had been taken from Leon and Brent from the attack up in Kenai, to have someone who knew their way around a microscope test the coating on them.
We were naked. My bag was probably a half-mile away where Karl had, no doubt, dropped it when he’d shifted. Gritting my teeth, I held out my hand and took the other bullet, keeping it separated from the other two.
“That wound should have healed within a few hours, even with the bullet still lodged in his chest.” I stood, looking around the clearing and finding the two casings from the bullets the hiker had fired. Scooping them up, I kept them in the normal-bullet hand.
Karl nodded. “Looks about right timing-wise, if you discount the shifter healing. Maybe he was trying to warn them out of his territory, and the scientists got scared and shot him. Grizzlies are aggressive, more than most bear shifters. If they shot him, he might have attacked.”
“And if they shot him with some tainted bullets…” Brent said he’d had the urge to run, to get away when he’d been hit with one, but maybe bear shifters reacted differently than wolves. Maybe they got even more aggressive when the magic hit their blood.
Clearly there was something peculiar about this bullet for there to be an infected wound over twenty-four hours later, and the blackened flesh reminded me of what Brent had said about the smell of rot and necrotic tissue that came from the hunters’ bullets up in Kenai.
The whole thing made me sick. We’d had to kill a shifter who had possibly been a victim himself. And if there were hunters in south coastal Alaska in addition to in Kenai, where else could they be? Was anywhere safe for us?
We’d need to figure out exactly what had happened between this shifter and those five humans studying fungus. And for that we’d need to talk to human law enforcement.
“Let’s go find our clothes, get dressed and head back to the Jeep. We need to go back to Ketchikan and talk to the police. Then I need to get this bullet somewhere to be analyzed.”
Karl sighed, wiping his hands on the rogue’s fur as he stood. “Ain’t our problem anymore, Brina. We caught the rogue and killed him. The job is done.”
“No, the job isn’t done. There’s a group of hunters up north with tainted bullets who are killing shifters, and now I’ve got reason to suspect some of those tainted bullets can turn shifters into rogues.”
“No law against selling bullets,” Karl commented.
“There’s a law against shooting people, and in Alaska shifters count as people,” I argued.
“I doubt this rogue was human when he was shot. Maybe he was a grumpy bear who thought he’d frighten off some humans he considered trespassers and got more than he bargained for.”
I couldn’t believe I was hearing this. “Whose side are you on?”
“Mine. Don’t mess with humans. Don’t mess with other shifters. Mind your own business and keep to yourself and no one will bother you.”
We were standing here, naked, arguing. I was injured, holding a bullet that made my skin crawl, and Karl wanted me to mind my own business? This was my business.
“The hunters up in Kenai shot two werewolves while the shifters were in human form. Based on that, I believe they also shot the grizzly shifter they killed when he was in human form. That’s against the law. And it’s murder.”
Karl’s eyes gleamed gold, that darkness pushing to the forefront. “Then track them and kill them. No need to involve human police. No need to investigate anything. Just drop your nose to the ground, find the human responsible, and make him disappear.”
This Karl terrified me.
“That scent has long gone cold.”
His lip curled into a snarl. “Then wait. He’ll kill again, and you’ll have him.”
Oh, no big deal. We’ll just sit around and wait while the hunters kill someone else, or cause more shifters to go rogue. It was obvious I wasn’t going to change Karl’s mind on this. He was a lone bear, an isolationist, where I was a pack animal with a sense of societal responsibility. Yet another glaringly obvious example of how we were miles apart.
“Okay. It’s not your problem, then. I still need to let the police know that the rogue who killed five human scientists has been neutralized, so he and the others in Ketchikan can sleep at night.”
I wasn’t going to bury my head in the sand on this one. I’d find out where this bullet came from. Then we’d work with the police as we’d always done to handle the situation.
The gold dimmed in Karl’s eyes and once more they were clear hazel. “We’re going straight into Ketchikan? You’re gonna make me walk around the town and talk to humans, aren’t you?”
Oh the horror. Although I doubt he’d be much help in dealing with the police, plus there was the fact that he didn’t have a shirt with him. “No. I’ll drop you at your cabin and you can go back to chopping wood if you want. I’ll go to talk to the humans.”
He sniffed and stared into the forest, back along the path. “You’ll come back?”
“Come back after I meet with the police? Or some other time? I’ll see you at the barbeque, right?”
“After you’re done with the humans in Ketchikan. I want you to spend the night at my cabin. I want your scent there.”
If I spent the night at his cabin, my scent would be everywhere because we’d probably screw like rabbits all night long, in every square inch of the place. The guy scared me. His “not my problem” attitude pissed me off. But I wanted him so bad I could barely stand it. Besides, it would save the pack the price of a hotel room in Ketchikan. “Yes, I’ll come spend the night, but I might need to leave early. I’ll have to meet Dustin at the dock whenever he can bring in the plane for me.”
He nodded and started off down the path while I fell in beside him. “You’re just going to talk to the police and drop that bullet off somewhere, right? I’m not going home to chop wood while you’re going after killers with bullets that kill shifters and make them crazy. I need you to be safe. I don’t want you sticking your nose in something that gets you shot and killed.”
I rolled my eyes and picked his pants up off a sticker bush, tossing them to him. “I’m just talking to the police, but I won’t promise you anything else. I’m a wolf. I stick my nose in stuff. It’s what I do.”
He caught the jeans with one hand. “Then you need to let me know. This isn’t my problem, but if you’ve got your nose in it, then it turns into my problem.”
“So you’ll come riding to the rescue like a knight on a white horse?” Yet another difference between us. I was a dominant wolf—strong, capable, a leader. While I appreciated back-up, I didn’t need a rescuer.
He grunted. “I hate horses. And I’ll always fight by your side, wolf.”
Maybe I’d misunderstood him and that
’s what he’d meant all along. Not a rescuer, but an extra sword in battle. That I could accept. “You’re handy to have around in a fight, Karl,” I told him, because he was, and along with my pack, I’d appreciate a grizzly shifter with a giant prehistoric cave bear form to walk by my side.
“You’re not so bad in a fight yourself, Brina.”
The trek back to where Karl had dropped the duffle bag took a whole lot longer than our mad dash in, and gave me time to think. Twenty seconds it had taken me to reach the rogue and the hiker, and I doubt Karl would have traveled much faster. I’d been fighting the bear for all of five or ten seconds before my back-up had appeared. That meant it had taken him a maximum of fifteen seconds to change form, quite possibly less. That was unheard of in any shifter accept for Nephilim.
And that bear…that monstrous, extinct bear form of his.
“What are you, Karl?” I asked, breaking the silence as we walked. “Nephilim? Are you a Nephilim?”
Nephilim were the only ones among us that could assume more than two forms—human and one animal. But Karl didn’t feel like a Nephilim, he felt like a grizzly shifter. Most of the time. Sometimes he felt…like I was looking into a fiery abyss.
“I’m not a Nephilim, I’m a grizzly,” he countered. But even I could feel the edge of a lie in that.
“Karl, you changed form in seconds, and you weren’t a grizzly back there, you were a giant bear-thing from the paleontology books and archeological digs.”
“My mother was a grizzly,” he insisted.
“And your dad?” I prompted. “A time-traveling extinct cave bear thing? What?”
Even if one parent was a Nephilim, the offspring still only had the two forms. What the heck was he?
“I’m not talking about my dad. Or my mom.” There was this closed expression on his face. He was shutting down, but I wasn’t about to let this one go.
“What other form can you assume, Karl? Hawk? Cougar? Saber-toothed tiger?”
“Bears. Any kinds of bears and that’s it.”
I got the feeling there was more. I got the feeling that the more was something really horrific. I remembered the glowing eyes, the glee with which he’d toyed with the rogue, like a sadistic monster playing with his prey. I remembered the twisted grin on his face as the other shifter had bitten down on his shoulder.
He’d told me once he liked it when I bit him. I’d thought it was just rough sex, but now… There was a dark power to Karl that drew me in, made me feel off-kilter, vulnerable. I’d likened it to a mountain, to an amoral force of nature, but I’d now seen something else in him. Under that mountain was a volcano, ready to break through the earth’s crust at any moment and destroy everything in its path. And unlike the impersonal destruction of nature, I got the impression that Karl would enjoy every minute of it, that he’d have those glowing eyes and disturbing grin as the world burned around him.
“You’re afraid of me, Brina?” His voice held disappointment and sorrow. “Strong dominant wolf like you is afraid of me?”
Of course I was afraid. A grizzly shifter would have made me feel wary, well aware that if I needed to defend myself I’d need to be alert, smart, use every bit of cunning and strategy to get out alive, but Karl with those glowing eyes and sadistic grin had made me scared—fear like I’d never felt before.
“Dominant doesn’t mean you’re not afraid,” I told him, trying to deflect his statement into a different sort of conversation. “Dominant means you fight even when you’re afraid, that you exhibit the type of leadership and skill that makes other wolves instinctively follow your lead. Over time their instinct is reinforced with your good decisions and your history of putting the good of the pack above your own welfare. That’s dominance, not being foolishly aggressive or grinding every one of your packmates beneath your heel.”
It was my philosophy. It was Brent’s philosophy. It was the philosophy of the majority of wolf Alphas in our world.
“But you’re afraid. Of me.” The gold flecks sparked like beacons of light, and again I saw something dark and dangerous behind his eyes. “Why?”
Because he was supposed to be a grizzly shifter, but he’d just turned into some kind of prehistoric monster. Because he wouldn’t give me a straight answer about his heritage. Because the power in him seemed off-leash and ready to kill with reckless, gleeful abandon.
“I’m less afraid of you like this than a giant cave bear,” I told him, trying to avoid hurting his feelings. It didn’t work.
“You’ll fuck me like I’m the very air you need to survive, but you’re afraid of me.”
I caught my breath at the rawness in his words. If I was honest with myself, part of his appeal was that fear he inspired, that wild feeling of danger, that he could just as easily kill me as bring me pleasure. Sex with everyone else was enjoyable, fun. Sex with Karl was like mating with nature itself—full of beauty and brutality, life and death all rolled into one seductive, dangerous package.
“Dominance is fighting when you’re afraid, taking the risk even though you’re afraid,” I told him, implying that it was also loving when you were afraid. I wasn’t anywhere near ready to say the “L” word with him, but love didn’t come without taking a chance, and in spite of our mountain of differences, in spite of my very real fear, I wanted to take that chance and see what a future for us might hold.
He stared at me, his scrutiny feeling like it tore through to my very soul. “I need you to trust me, Brina. Afraid or not. Sex or not. I need you to trust me.”
And suddenly I had a glimpse of his soul, of a dark monster who would never submit, but might walk side-by-side with the right person, the right wolf. In his eyes I saw a glimpse of someone who longed for another to share his days and nights with. I could be that wolf. All I needed to do was trust.
5
Karl stuffed his jeans into my duffle bag while I dressed. And he watched me dress. I thought maybe he’d joke around or proposition me, but after our serious conversation, he’d fallen silent. Once again he was the brooding shifter of few words, naked, watching me as I struggled into a pair of jeans while favoring my still-healing wounds.
His had healed. Completely. He didn’t even have a scar. It was another thing that made me think Nephilim, even though he’d denied it.
“You’re going to hike naked?” I asked, easing into my T-shirt.
He shook his head. “I’ll hike as a bear.”
It was like he was waiting for me to say or do something. Or like he was trying to think something over and come to a decision.
“Should I wait here while you shift or will you catch up?”
He took a step back, then another. “I don’t let anyone watch me shift. No one.” He made eye contact with me, making sure I got the significance of what he was about to do, then he shifted. With Ahia, who as it turned out was a full angel and not a Nephilim, shifting was in an instant with a flash of light. With us, shifting was a painful contorting and re-forming of skin, muscle, and bone. For Karl, it was like a smooth, liquid transition. He slid into something bright and formless, like a molten metal taking shape midair, then expanded. It took seconds, and before me was a giant grizzly, his fur sparkling with gold lights before it dimmed to blond.
At least he hadn’t turned into that cave bear thing, although his grizzly form still made my flesh rise, made me want to back away very slowly. I pushed down the instinctual fear. Trust. He was one scary mo-fo, but he’d done nothing that might make me think he would harm me.
“What’s with the glitter?” I teased him. “Sparkly bear?”
He shot me an irritated glance, then shook his fur again, glancing down at his paws.
“Oh, it’s gone now, but don’t think I didn’t see it. Is that why you don’t want anyone to see you shift? Ahia would never let you live this one down. You’d wake up one morning covered in glitter glue.”
He snarled, then made a huff noise and turned to head down the trail. I grabbed the duffle, wincing as it hit my healing s
cabs, then followed him. “Lead the way, oh Sparkly Bear.”
It wasn’t long before I realized that this hike was a bad idea. I was exhausted from the fight, from shifting, from healing my wounds. I’d been tracking the rogue for most of the day, and after all that had happened including a dump of adrenaline into my system, I was done for. Still I pressed on, not wanting to admit to Karl that I needed to rest, and wanting to make enough headway on our trip back that we’d arrive to the Jeep tomorrow with plenty of time to get into Ketchikan before the police sheriff had gone home for the day.
The urgency wasn’t quite the same as it had been when we had a killer on the loose, but I still felt the need to hurry. If this was related to those hunters up north, then any delay might cost lives—shifter as well as human lives.
I stumbled, catching myself with a hand on a tree. Karl turned and I tried to brush it off as me being clumsy or lost in thought, but I could tell from the expression in his eyes that he knew. The next small clearing we came across, he began to circle, sniffing, shredding a few tree trunks, and checking the potential camp spot.
I plopped down the duffle, yanked out a light blanket, and curled up, using the bag as a pillow. The sun hadn’t even set yet and I was ready to sleep. As I closed my eyes I felt the warmth of fur next to me, the thump of something huge settling down on the ground. Then I felt Karl’s huge bear body press against my spine.
He was scary. I didn’t quite know what he was, but he was scary. And right now, I was glad to have him at my back.
6
I wasn’t sure how the heck Karl had done it, but his jeans were ripped in several important areas. Actually I was pretty sure he’d tried to shift before he managed to get all the way out of them, which again had me wondering what he was that he could change forms so quickly. Alphas could often do it in five minutes. Maybe Karl was dominant as all hell, or he had a higher than usual percentage of angel in his DNA, or both. Either way, his pant legs were separated at the side seams, the crotch had an indecent-sized hole and the zipper was hanging useless from a gaping fly.