Bear This Heat (A BBW Shifter Romance) (Last of the Shapeshifters)

by Grace, A. E.

  Bear This Heat

  Last of the Shapeshifters

  By

  A.E. Grace

  * * *

  Last of the Shapeshifters

  Hunted for centuries to near extinction, only a few shapeshifters remain alive, seeking truth and love. These are their stories.

  A Change To Bear

  Bear This Heat

  Each Last of the Shapeshifters book is standalone, though they share an over-arching mythology. You can enjoy them in any order!

  * * *

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  Table of Contents:

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Epilogue

  Afterword

  About the Author

  License

  A muffled and distant vibrating, quiet yet distinct, was enough to rouse newly and meritoriously promoted Detective Inspector Sasha Monroe from her shallow sleep. She groaned without worry that someone else might hear, without any concern that she might wake somebody.

  “Damn,” she whispered. The inside of her throat was as dry as a sun-baked leaf. She sat up, felt the thump in her head, saw the blur and fuzz hang in the air all around her. The fog cleared, but left in its place a dry-eyed sting to match her parched gullet. It was punishment for a celebration that lasted too long and too late. She pushed her face into her hands, and groaned with irritation. Her temper would be on a short leash today.

  The vibrating did not stop, and she looked toward her purse. Who was calling her this bloody early? And, come to think of it, what time was it, exactly? The blinking red digital clock on her bedside table read fourteen minutes past four, an hour and sixteen minutes earlier than her alarm.

  “Alright, alight,” she mumbled, standing up, and fighting off a wave of momentary dizziness. She smacked her lips, felt the grate in her throat. The glass next to her alarm clock stood empty, and so she grumbled silently to her desk at the foot of her bed, and pulled from her purse her trembling mobile phone. It took her a few seconds of squinting to make out just who the hell it was that was calling her.

  It was her boss, Superintendent O’Neill. Shit.

  Sasha cleared her throat, winced at the rasp she felt, and then answered. “Morning, Superintendent.”

  “Detective Monroe,” the sleepy voice said at the other end. He was wheezing a little, and that meant he was excited about something. Excited was bad.

  “Yes, sir.” She ran her hand to the bun she had used to keep her hair, and was thankful that she had even bothered the night before.

  “I didn’t wake you, did I?”

  She rolled her eyes. “Of course not, sir.”

  “Bad news, I’m afraid.”

  Sasha felt her stomach knot. “Oh?”

  “Charlie Kinnear is dead.”

  It took her a moment to remember the old, fragile man who lived on Lester, which was in the same grid she walked her first beat on. “Dead?”

  “That’s right. And there’s more. It’s looking like it wasn’t of natural causes.”

  Sasha couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “He was murdered?”

  “Nobody’s saying that. At least, not yet. The call came in just a few minutes ago. Some new kid working the phones at the station called me personally. Can you believe that idiot?”

  “No, sir,” Sasha said, her voice fading. Charlie Kinnear was dead? Who would want to kill him? The man was, as far as she knew, as benign and harmless as they came, not to mention pretty much the most ancient thing she had ever laid eyes on.

  Sasha decided to try again. “So it’s possible that he was murdered?”

  “From the details that kid told me,” the superintendent said, before pausing. “That’s looking like a possible theory.”

  She could tell by his reticence to use the m-word, or ‘homicide’, that he was hoping, rather uselessly, for the best. Another murder would add more waves to a political ocean that was already surging. He’d have the state governor asking questions while simultaneously breathing down his neck.

  Sasha sighed while cleaning out sleep’s residue from the corners of her eyes. “That’s terrible, boss. He seemed to me to be a sweet old guy. At least from the few times I met him.”

  “You ever walk Lester?”

  “Yes, sir, when I was fresh out of the academy. I was on foot early mornings, patrol car by noon.”

  “Ah. Yes, Charlie Kinnear was gentle. Anyway, Monroe, I’m calling to let you know that the case is yours.”

  Sasha was wondering what the purpose of the personal call to her was. Now she knew. She blanched, recovered herself, and then spoke into her phone with as even a voice as possible. “Sir, it’s not even my first day.”

  The superintendent’s voice hardened. “I’m sorry?”

  “I mean, wouldn’t one of the more experienced detectives be better if this is a homicide, sir? I’ve not even been a detective for a single minute yet.”

  “Nobody said anything about homicide, and unless you know for sure, I wouldn’t start bandying that word about just yet, Monroe.”

  “But you said it wasn’t natural, sir.” She cradled her forehead with a cupped hand. The mere vibrations from her speaking were making her headache worse. She’d need something stronger than Panadol.

  “Yes. But I never said homicide. Get down to his house. A couple of uniforms have taped it off, and they’re waiting for a D.I.”

  “Sir, with all due respect, this isn’t my watch. I wouldn’t want to step on the toes of any of the other det-”

  “Detective Monroe.” The superintendent sounded like he was struggling to control his breathing. “I have just given you a case. In other words, an order. You have a job to do, and I don’t care if it is not your watch. You’ll do as you’re told, understand?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Now get down to Charlie Kinnear’s house and work the fucking scene.”

  “Yes, sir,” Sasha said, but the superintendent had already hung up. She sighed. “Shit.”

  Sitting down at her desk, she plunged her face into one of her hands, phone still pressed up against the side of her face. Her skull was pounding, and her left ear was blocked. Definitely way too much celebrating the night before. She’d have to overload on the water today, especially if she was going to be spending a considerable portion of the day outdoors and working a murder scene.

  No, she thought to herself. Not murder. At least, not yet, according to her boss.

  She couldn’t believe that Charlie Kinnear was dead, and possibly killed, no less. Who would want to hurt a harmless old man like that? The poor soul would not have even been able to put up a fight. Arthritis and what she guessed was Parkinson’s had Charlie in a pitiable state. The few times she’d seen him, he looked entirely out of control of his own motor functions. It was a rare sight that he left his house.

  And why was the boss giving her a case like this on her first day? Why not one of the other three detectives, two of whom were on night shift? Begrudgingly, she was forced to admit to herself that she knew why. Not only was it her first day as a Detective Inspector – and technically, that day hadn’t even started yet – but it was also because she was not just the highest ranking female police officer in her station house, but she was the only female police officer in her station house, ever since Margaret Bell transferred out two months ago. But even if she w
ere still around, it was still just a big old boys club, and she suspected that this was the equivalent of hazing.

  Unbelievable. No doubt the superintendent was probably also stalling on getting another woman transferred over from one of the other two stations in the desert town.

  She sighed, trying to dispel the annoyance and nerves that colored her consciousness, and began to pick out her clothing. Thoughts of what to wear on her first day were unimportant and distant at nearly half past four in the morning, so she threw on the bed a white layered pleat shirt with long sleeves, which she knew she would promptly fold up to her elbows. She then tossed straight black trousers with a comfort waist onto the bed – she wasn’t in the mood for dealing with a button that would strain against the inevitable alcohol bloat that would soon make its presence felt. It was simple and formal enough, she thought. She’d be wearing her all-black tennis shoes, too. She’d need the heel support, especially if she was going to be on her feet for most of the day.

  With the sun beginning to peek over the horizon, an orange glow struggling to penetrate her thick curtains, Sasha could hear a dog baying in the distance. It was a sign that the morning ritual was beginning for animal and human alike, and so she ran the shower while brushing her teeth, knowing that getting clean would bring some welcome relief, if temporary, from her hangover.

  The uniforms who would not be dismissed until she arrived on the scene would just have to wait.

  *

  We’ve been chatting for hours already, the shapeshifters and I. They’ve granted me an exclusive interview spanning four days, and the feeling that I’m in way over my head continually assaults me.

  […]

  “We were the last of our kind,” he says, eyes hard to read, like they are conveying meaning and emotion that I struggle to truly parse – and they know it. The words hang in the air between us. I become aware that I cannot fully absorb the implications.

  I look at the faces of the others, perhaps to elicit further explanation. But they are unwilling to add to the statement. They don’t want to expound. It is clear that, at least as a group, this topic hits home. No doubt that individually, some might be more willing to talk. But there is a pressure here, viscous, and it coats our every interaction.

  And so it falls to me to ask the obvious question. “Just how many of you were there, exactly?”

  His eyes don’t leave mine as I ask it. His gruff features hold in them a hard and disarming handsomeness, and I find myself wanting to break eye contact. There is an intensity there that borders on the uncomfortable. I feel somehow disadvantaged in his presence.

  “We didn’t know,” he says. “There was no census data, or anything like that.” A tiny joke, offered without mirth. He coughs then, and folds his shirt sleeves up on both arms. He squeezes his fists, flexes his forearms. The pause is dramatic. He knows how to put on a show. “But very few.”

  A wedge of silence once again creates distance between us. Then he veers off-course, off-question. He has a propensity to take the reins, I’ve noticed, and I let him talk.

  “It is nearly impossible to describe the feeling you have when you know that you are one of the few remaining members of your species.” A flicker of a smile punctuates the wise but grim statement. “I am glad for the Bali tiger that he could not comprehend his imminent disappearance.”

  Once again I look at the faces seated around the table. Some are looking at him, some are looking at me, but none are looking away. They all, to some extent, understand what I don’t, what I can’t. What words cannot accurately describe or quantify.

  “But you didn’t disappear,” I say. Redundant… clumsy… yes, but I hope that it will prompt further insight.

  He blinks, licks his lips. “Almost.”

  - Excerpt from Interview with a Shapeshifter by Circe Cole. Printed with expressed permission.

  *

  The great big bear padded slowly in the desert night. The empty plains of sand, broken intermittently with frail, leafless shrubbery, glowed a languid purple, red mixed with the soft blue light of the full moon overhead. With his head low, and beady black eyes facing forward, the bear’s shoulder blades jutted up alarmingly out of its back with each forward step, giving the slim yet large caniform an almost feline quality, but more in the vein of a tiger, rather than that of a tabby cat.

  The bear was lean. Eating infrequently, and sleeping even less so, the wear of the search had taken its toll. But it would all be worth it, the bear knew. He lifted his head, sniffed the air, and caught the scent of an animal that did not belong in the desert, much like he didn’t. It was just the faintest hint, carried on the arm of a light breeze, fleeting, half a second there, and half a second gone. The moving air in the desert was of a deceptive quality, because whatever it touched, it leeched any moisture it could. The wind was to the hot and parched person walking the sandy wastes what the sea water was to the man stranded in a lifeboat with no land in sight.

  But, in the evenings, it was enough. The bear was certain he was on the right track. The wind, gentle, slow, filtered through his generous coat, finding its way through the weaving fur to touch his skin in brief bursts. But it did little to cool the broiling blood beneath. The bear had become accustomed to controlling his exertions, taking in deep and long shuddering breaths, salivating endlessly, and moving slow and only in the night. Being so far out of is habitat, it was the only way to contend with the blanketing desert heat, even in the evenings, for the heat escaped upward through the sand in great columns, and it warmed the underside of his body.

  And the bear needed to keep going. He had little other goal in life than to find another like himself; another animal in a place it did not belong. Perhaps even a companion. Maybe a brother, maybe a sister, or maybe, if he was lucky, a mate.

  What that other animal would end up being, friend or foe, lover or acquaintance, did not matter to the bear. He would be content with simply finding another like himself. It would calm that aching storm in his heart that told him every single day that he was alone in this world. That he was an aberration, something spit out by Mother Nature by accident, a chance pairing of the right genes with the right circumstances at the right time.

  Any sort of knowledge confirming the opposite would do wonders to quiet his surging frustration. Answering the question of whether or not he was alone would bring the bear the peace he sought. And, for now, peace was all that he sought. Love, a mate… they were just distant ideals. He knew of the possibilities, but didn’t dare to give them safe harbor in his mind. They were best cases which he cast aside; forced himself to forget. For now, at least.

  He had given up on that many years ago. He had exhausted his lust, emptied himself everywhere he could. He had lived a life of vice, brief for him, but what might be half a life time to a normal man or woman. But that lifestyle had been unrewarding, he eventually figured out. Something akin to an existential crisis had struck him in his seventieth year, and he had set out then to find the ultimate truth about himself, about what he was, and whether there was another like him anywhere in the world.

  The bear once again caught a whiff of that scent. The smell was odd, and the trail it left almost bare, like breadcrumbs the size of rice grains sprinkled on rolling sand dunes. But it was something, at least. More than that, it was all he had to go on.

  In the distance he saw illumination on the underside of a single voluminous cloud that might or might not bring welcomed rainfall to the region. On one side of the sky, the massive moon drowned out the stars, and on the other, the giant cloud shrouded them.

  But illumination on the underside of a cloud… now that was unusual in the middle of nowhere. He cleared a ridge, eyes scanning the distance, where he saw the telltale signs of human civilization. Lights on posts, conical corridors of yellow cast down onto winding slabs of dusty concrete and black, sand-swept tarmac. Circles and squares of red, flashing brighter intermittently, attached to the end of moving rectangles.

  This was the only p
lace where people lived for miles and miles. This had to be where that other like him was going. Where else would the animal he was chasing go? Perhaps he had finally found that companion. He allowed himself a brief glimmer of hope that soon he would get his answers, and silence the need to know that boiled constantly in his thoughts. Perhaps, then, the bear would start to understand his place in the world.

  A great sheet of metal erupted out of the darkness, glowing harsh white and green. Rectangular, and supported by two thin poles, the signpost was momentarily blinding in the night. A dusty rumble sounded to the bear’s side, and when he looked, his eyes flashed yellow, and his face was lit up for the tiniest fraction of a second, before the turning road took the light off him. The rumble waned, faded, and as the bear looked after the four red squares getting smaller and smaller.

  He returned his attention to the town of glowing yellow, unaware that inside the car, the driver and his passenger had exchanged two questions that went unanswered: “Did you see that?” and “What the hell was it?” The bear did not fail to notice the large sheet of metal, briefly lit up, had the words printed on its surprisingly reflective rusting surface: ‘Welcome to Salty Springs. Population: 25,000’.

  It was on the edge of the small desert town, a forced oasis in the unforgiving dry wilderness, that the bear began to grunt. He padded against the cool evening sand with his paws, hopped up onto his two hind legs, and looked out at the settlement. He sniffed the air again, felt the fleeting respite of its coolness rush into his lungs, and then the bear dropped back onto four feet, an indescribable elation filling him.

  He began to run. At first a lumbering jog, but soon he found his rhythm and accelerated into a sprint, with deceptive speed, and in the bear’s eye was a glint, a shine. The bear stopped suddenly, skidding to a halt, sending plumes of dust and sand streaking outward into the night, and began to sprint in a different direction, the volume of his hoarse inhaling matched only by the thunder of his paws against the ground. The taste of dust and sand was bitter and metallic in his mouth, but by now he was used to it.