Keeping The Faith (John Fisher Chronicles Book 2)

by William Lehman

  "Sure boss, but why do you need me in particular?"

  "Because I think it's a Were-thing, and I would rather it be investigated by you and Pete than by someone with an issue with the Furry."

  "OK, if it's like that."

  "Yeah, John, it's like that."

  After that we didn't talk much, we were too busy ducking traffic, and dropping sail. The summer sailors were done for the year, but the professional mariners, the merchants, the fishermen, the private and public ferries, work all year long, and the Puget Sound is one of the busiest ports in the world. The tide was turning and the fishing fleet was going out for the start of some season or other. I don't know which one; ask the Fish and Wildlife boys. Soon enough we had gotten into port and Mary held her on station with the motor while I ran the folks back to shore. Getting everyone back in The Kidd safely was much easier than I had feared; Lars' friends were all capable folks no matter their age.

  When I got back to the Tanngnost and took the helm, Mary gave me a long hug. She didn't say anything, she didn't need to. Then we headed back out to sea and hoisted sail. Next stop: Coon Island.

  The run up to Coon Island in The Wasps archipelago was all done by visual navigation. Oh sure, the Tanngnost had all the latest electronic navigation devices, but I wanted to do this the old-fashioned way. Call it a tribute. We made it to the approaches to Coon Island in about three hours run, I was tired but exhilarated. The onboard charts, both electronic and paper backup had the pier marked. Lars had been a careful navigator, and knew that some time someone else might have to put her into the pier due to some emergency or other. Mary jumped across with the bow line as we ghosted in, engine in neutral. She made the bow fast and then took the stern line toss and we were moored. We passed across a couple spring lines and started putting the cabin to rights.

  We would sleep aboard tonight and go exploring in the morning. As we put her to bed, Mary called out "John, what's this?"

  I went over to look at what she was pointing at, and found a permanent mooring sticker for the Friday Harbor Yacht Club. "Well, Mary it seems we're now proud members of a Yacht Club. This allows us to moor at Friday Harbor in Slip 50 and at the visitors moorage for any Yacht Club in the world that has reciprocity. Which is damn near anyone on the west coast."

  "Oh."

  After that we went to sleep. I would love to hint that we did more than sleep, but I was too damn tired, my head hit the pillow and I was gone.

  I woke up in the morning to the sound of water running and the feel of a vessel softly rocking. I was out of the rack and headed for the sound of water coming in, surely flooding. I got to the galley in time to see Mary finishing filling the coffee pot. She looked at me and giggled "Do you usually want coffee so bad you show up with your Johnson swinging in the breeze?"

  I looked down, and realized I hadn't bothered to put any clothes on. "Nuts Mary, I had a flashback. I heard water gushing, I'm on a boat, my body screamed 'FLOODING.'"

  She blushed, and said "Oh, shit, I never thought..."

  "Sokay...folks don't think about such things usually."

  She looked apologetic and asked "You want breakfast?"

  Being a Were means always being able to eat. Changing, or anything else involving the preternatural uses energy...often lots of energy. It has to come from somewhere. There are Mages that use energy from other people or things; often I get to arrest such people. You can tap off electrical power if you know how...I don't; or in some cases you can use the divine, or their opposite number. Sometimes I can get energy from Tyr. Most of the time it comes from me.

  After a large breakfast, we went out on deck and got our first look at the island. I could see most of it, there was a tree-lined ridge that blocked my view of the eastern tip of the island, but according to the chart, I wasn't missing more than a few acres. To the northwest, across a narrow passage lay McConnell Island. Both were heavily wooded, but I noted that the trees on Coon seemed from here to be Oaks. Oak doesn't grow here much...no doubt part of Uncle Lars' work. The house was dead ahead. It looked like a small cabin, two or three rooms, nestled up against the hillside; but as I had learned from the school of hard knocks, looks can be deceiving.

  We walked up the pier to the cabin and I got the smell I had come to associate with Lars' particular magic. Oh yes, in case I didn't mention it, I can sense magic. It shows up as a smell, and each mage has their own version. Lars' smelled like smoke and amber. I also felt a faint resistance, like I was walking against a headwind. Then it stopped. Lars must have put a warding spell on the place, but if he did, it must have recognized me somehow because it went away.

  We walked up to the door, which was unlocked. Hel, truth to be told, there wasn't a lock on the damn thing. We stopped just inside the door and looked around. The place looked like it was furnished entirely from a Cabela's catalog. Behind me I heard Mary mutter the refrain from a song in a Disney movie "I use antlers in all of my decorating..." This was the sort of place you would find if you went to general casting and asked for a "cabin, woods, one each." The central lighting was a real, no-shit, antler chandelier for gods sake. The kitchen, to the right rear, was sort of an afterthought, a real "one butt kitchen"; so called, because only one butt will fit in it at a time. In front of us was a great-room, with a breakfast nook thing to the right, a living room in front, and the doors to what looked like two bedrooms and a bathroom between them to the left.

  Behind me Mary looked around and said "Oh no. This has got to go!"

  We spent about ten minutes looking around. There were keys on hooks beside the front door that I would eventually have to figure out the use for, but something kept nagging at the back of my mind. For one thing, I kept getting that whiff of magic, but there was something else. Then it hit me. There wasn't much in the way of clothes, or books, or any of the other things that said "someone has lived here for a while". About that time Mary asked "John, why does this wall glow?"

  "Say-what?"

  "The back wall here in this sorry excuse for a kitchen. It's glowing."

  As I walked over to where I could see the kitchen's back wall, I mentioned "Mary, have you noticed that this place doesn't seem very lived in?"

  By the time I could see the back wall, Mary had answered "Yeah, if Lars lived here for more than a couple days at a time, I would be very surprised."

  Well, when I could see the wall in question, it wasn't glowing, at least not to me. This means it had a spell on it of some sort. Mary "sees" magic, like I smell it. After I pointed out that I couldn't see a glow, she started to try to figure out what sort of spell was on it. Basically it turned out to be an aversion spell. Sort of a magical "don't look at me". A little fiddling with the light switches showed why. After switching them in a set sequence: top on then off twice, bottom off then on twice, top off, the whole wall slid in by six inches, and then slid to the right into a pocket in the wall around it. I had known that the back of the cabin butted up to the hillside, but I hadn't explored the ramifications...until now.

  When we stepped down through the short passage, we almost seemed to have stepped into another world. On the other end of the passage was a kitchen. It bore as much resemblance to the kitchen we had just left as the space shuttle does to the Wright Flyer. (You know, it's funny. They almost didn't build the Wright Flyer. "Why would anyone need non-magical powered flight?" they asked. No one saw how big that would get.)

  Anyway, about this kitchen. The place was a symphony of stainless steel, enamel, and copper. It looked like it had been transported out of a five-star restaurant. The kitchen was almost as big as the whole cabin on the other side of the passage. I turned to Mary and said "I think we found where Lars actually lived." She looked over at me with one of those looks that said 'DUH', shook her head, and muttered something under her breath. We spent the rest of the day exploring the place, which had three floors.

  Upstairs were bedrooms with real windows that must have been fairly well hidden on the outside, as I hadn't noticed anyt
hing on the way in. The central floor was the kitchen, a large dining room that looked like it converted to a small ballroom or a conference center, a library/den/setting room, and a small theater. Downstairs was an arms sallet and a small gym/sauna. The sallet was set up for hand to hand, edged weapons, and small arms. We also found an arms locker, and an electronics room that would have looked right at home in a James Bond movie, with Q explaining the gadgets. I was overwhelmed.

  In the end, since it was going to take days if not weeks to go through the house and find all the secrets and goodies, and Work wanted me back in the saddle ASAP, I sweet-talked Mary into coming back and poking around while I took care of whatever had the lieutenant's panties in a wad. We would go over to Orcas Island and leave The Kidd at the moorage reserved for the Tanngnost, then sail back to Marysville to get our cars, and for me to report over to the office. Mary would drive over on the ferry, park her car at the Yacht Club, and drive over to Coon Island in The Kidd. I could come over with Tanngnost on weekends or when I got the time. All of this took slightly more organization than the Normandy invasion, but we made it work. By Sunday evening we were back in Marysville at my place.

  *****

  Which brings me back to sitting in Lieutenant Murphy's office, listening to her talk about the events over in the north edge of the Olympic National Park, and what she wanted me to do about it.

  Chapter Four

  Lieutenant Murphy looked up from her desk and said "Sorry John, but Officer Sims won't be able to join you over on the peninsula for a week or two. He's going to be in physical rehab for a bit."

  Pete Sims is my old Swim Buddy from the Teams. He retired from the Navy and SEAL team twelve shortly after I did, and joined the Federal Park Police. I pulled a few strings to get him assigned out here and we've been a team for about fifteen years between the Teams and here. "Well, I'll miss him. I'll stop by before I go over there. I think I can handle at least the investigation solo, boss." I replied.

  "Normally I'd say no, but we're short-handed even without you and Pete gone right now."

  After that we spent awhile talking about support on that side, and how I was going to get my patrol vehicle over there, and so on. See, I figured to take the Tanngnost over and live on her, instead of being put up in a hotel somewhere or trying to do a three hour commute each way. After a little bit of reasoning and pointing out that my living on the boat would be saving the department some of the cost of temporarily assigning me over there, Murphy folded. All of the logistics got worked out, and the orders for me to work on detached duty operating out of the Olympic Park District Ranger station got cut. Then it was just a matter of getting all the data to date on the case, and arranging to have someone pick up the Durango from the marina after I took off.

  After that, I drove down to Harborview hospital to see Pete. He was doing as well as could be expected. He was going to have to go through some physical therapy; he had a broken pelvis from the fight we had with that Aztec bitch and her Civatateo thugs. After visiting with him for a bit, I went home and shut the house down for long-term absence. I didn't want to pay for keeping the hot tub and such running for, gods only knows how long, while I was gone, and I had to go through the fridge and such. By sixteen hundred hours, I was finally ready to go.

  The drive down to the marina and the sail across to John Wayne Marina was uneventful; Lars had rigged the Tanngnost for single-handed sailing. I got in about Twenty-one hundred and put her to bed for the night. Docking single-handed was a bit of a bitch, but some fellow yachtsman took pity on me and handled lines. In the morning someone would bring my rig over and I could get to work.

  The next morning I woke up early, and went for a run before breakfast. This got me some shocked glances from the local yachtsmen, but hey, I needed to get back in trim after more than two weeks being practically an invalid. After the run and some calisthenics, I made breakfast, got my uniform and gear on, then saw the guy from the moorage and showed him my club membership so he wouldn't bug me about paying fees. I don't know what it would cost to moor the beast, but I'm sure it would be more than I wanted to pay. By then it was about nine and my rig was pulling into the parking lot, followed by another rig to take the first driver home. This, invited some more glances from the locals. The Boating Community (capitalized for a reason) breaks down into two major groups: the Very Rich/Nouveau Riche, and the folks that have dropped out or want to drop out of the rat race (AKA boat bums). I didn't fit either one of these definitions, and with the increases in Big Brotherism in the last ten years or so, I think both of those groups are a little less trusting of anyone who might belong to "the man". Well I'm not exactly part of "the man", I don't care if you smoke a joint, just don't operate a motor vehicle on it, same as booze, and DON'T grow it in my jurisdiction. Meth, that I take a real damn dim view on (like anyone else with a brain), but what you want to say about the President, or the NSA, or...Hel, I have probably said worse, and meant it more. Oh well, the locals will get over it, or not.

  So, soon enough I was headed out to the District ranger station, at Port Angeles. The weather around here was beautiful, they're in the rain shadow of the Olympics, and get less than six inches of rain a year. There's so much water coming off the mountains, though, that everything is green, especially in winter. Now if I had to go to Forks, it would be different. That's the only temperate rainforest in North America, and they get all the rain that should hit the rest of the peninsula. I went elk hunting there once, and I have never been so wet in my entire life. I hope I don't have to go to Forks.

  The head Ranger for the district met me at the front counter of the station. The gentleman's name was Randy Tigner, he was about six foot even, about fifty years old, iron gray hair, and maybe two hundred pounds. He looked sort of like Jack Palance, all rawhide and whipcord. You got the feeling they built the park around him. He grabbed my hand as it was offered, and said "Damn good of you to come out this way. We can handle the normal stuff just fine, but this is weirder than snake suspenders. Your boss says you're an expert at this sort of thing. Our next stop was going to be the FPI, and I gotta tell you, those guys give me the creeps."

  "Well, I don't know about expert, but I do have to agree with you about the fucking Papal Inquisition." I said with a grin. "I had a run-in with them awhile back. 'Fraid I stepped on their little toes a bit." In actuality I had gotten them thrown off a case, and the local regional commander wasn't likely to forgive me for it. Of course, that didn't stop them from trying to recruit me.

  The FPI, or Federal Preternatural Investigation Department as it was officially known, was the bastard stepchild of J. Edgar himself. It was a branch-off of the FBI and had jurisdiction on preternatural crime. Especially Murder by Magic, and Aggravated Rape by Magic, the two federal capital crimes for which there is no appeal. Being found guilty of either one is an immediate death sentence, and one the boys from the FPI just love to administer. Now don't get me wrong, I don't sympathize with anyone who would commit such an act. (Oh, I suppose I should remind you that non-consensual feeding by a Vampire constitutes ARM.) But the guys that form the majority of the FPI are just a little holier-than-thou for me. I can best describe them as Torquemada with a badge and a gun. About one third of them are graduates of Loyola, and another third are graduates of Oral Roberts University. About the only place you can find those two colleges on the same side of anything, but they both agree that it would be a far better place if all these evil creatures (that includes me, in their eyes) were banished to the underworld where they belong. And they really hate anyone having a badge and preternatural talents that doesn't belong to them. "Yeah, any way that we can keep them out of our woods, is OK by me."

  "Well, Head Ranger Tigner–"

  "Call me Randy; we're both on the same side here."

  "Good, it's John by the way. Anyway, I've seen the reports you sent over, but I really would like to talk to the guys that found the animals, and go look over the area."

  "You know that none of
the carcasses are there. We sent what was left to the Federal lab in Oregon, because it was such a weird situation."

  "But Randy, surely you guys have found 'Thrope kills before. The law says that 'Thrope kills in animal form are always in season, as long as they're not a protected species, and not on a game preserve or National Park. I can't believe that there have never been 'Thropes slip over the boundaries into the park, whether accidentally or on purpose."

  "Oh, sure, we find one or two a year, usually just inside the park borders. When we do, the guy or guys that did it are usually pretty 'stand up' about the whole thing. There aren't more than a hundred 'Thropes on the whole Peninsula. We know most of them, and they know us. Occasionally we get a tourist group come through, usually a small pack of wolves or a big cat from the inner city that wants an opportunity to hunt the big stuff. Short of a buffalo, or a moose, it doesn't get any bigger than a Roosevelt elk. But they always check in, they usually abide by the Fair Chase rules, and there are rarely any problems."

  "OK, so what makes this different?" I asked.

  "Well, for one thing, there were multiple species involved in each case. Always a couple wolves, but big cats, and bear, and some other tracks I can't even identify, all working together."

  "Humm, yeah, that is sort of weird." In fact, I had to admit, the only time I have ever seen multiple species of 'Thrope work together well was while I was in the Teams. I wasn't going to mention that though, if the local Rangers didn't know that I was a part-time cougar, I wasn't going to volunteer the information. Some folks get a bit weirded out by that, and I was going to have to work with these guys.

  Yeah, we've been legal since the Civil Rights movements of the sixties decided not to stop with blacks, but go on to cover the intermittently furry and the terminally anemic. But there are some folks that are still damn uncomfortable with one of us being in a position of authority. The fact that I was a member of the infamous SEAL TEAM TWELVE, just made it worse. That stupid sow of a Senator from California, with her rants about the "President's Rabid Attack Beasts", really made it hard for us. Oh, and if she wasn't bad enough, now there's this new guy from Iowa who's raising a major stink in Congress, trying to repeal the whole Equal Rights Amendment as pertains to "unnatural beings".