by Devin Hanson
Beard drove us in his Maserati. I have to say, there’s something to be said for driving a really nice car. It had about a billion horsepower and made my scooter’s fastest acceleration feel like a grandma pushing a walker down the sidewalk.
I swear I wasn’t jealous.
The leather seats were heated and I luxuriated in the sheer opulence as Beard weaved through traffic at a comfortable fifty miles an hour over the speed limit. It wasn’t until we pulled off the freeway and started going through surface streets that I started paying attention to where we were.
Surface streets turned into a winding mountain highway, and Beard started really putting the Maserati through its paces. I hung onto the grab handle and tried to keep my stomach from climbing up my throat. We weren’t quite drifting around corners, but Beard had zero qualms about swerving onto the wrong side of the road to pass traffic. Through it all, he maintained an absent-minded focus on his driving, and even had the spare bandwidth to strike up a conversation.
“Have you ever been up in the Angeles Forest?”
Beard might be comfortable, but complex sentences were beyond me at the moment. “No.”
He clicked his tongue. “You should spend more time experiencing nature. Where we’re heading, you have to understand how the animal mind works. These are predators. The moment you show weakness, uncertainty, worry, or any of the softer emotions, you become prey.”
“I grew up in the foster care system,” I gritted out. “I think I’ll be fine.”
Beard chuckled. “That’s the spirit.”
We swerved around a minivan and the Maserati’s engine gave a guttural roar as Beard floored the accelerator. I watched the speedometer climb up past one-fifty and I forced myself to relax my death-grip on the grab handle. At these speeds, if Beard ran into oncoming traffic, the handle wouldn’t save me.
“What are we going to see?”
“They’re the only ones I know who can find something in this city that is trying to hide.”
“Magic?”
Beard sniffed disdainfully. “Not as such. You’ll see.”
As we climbed in elevation, the pine trees grew taller and snow started showing in the shadows and sheltered crannies. Traffic dropped to nothing, and Beard slowed down and started paying attention to the mile markers. The snow was a solid blanket on the ground when Beard finally pulled into a turnout and killed the engine.
“We’re here.”
I turned in my seat, peering into the forest. There seemed to be a foot trail on one side of the turnout, but it looked like it hadn’t been used since the last snowfall.
“People live up here?” I asked. “What do they eat? Pine nuts?”
“They hunt,” Beard said shortly. He opened his door and got out of the car.
The wave of cold air that rushed into the car made me shiver and I zipped up my riding jacket. It wasn’t a suitable replacement for a snow jacket, but it cut the wind at least. I followed Beard’s example and tucked my hands into my jacket pockets.
“Okay. So, now what?”
Beard tilted his head toward the trail marker. “We go for a hike.”
Ten minutes later, I started wondering if this was an elaborate ruse by Beard to get me somewhere remote. Maybe he was looking for a good spot to murder me or something. Any other man and I wouldn’t have given it a second thought, but Beard might be one of the very few people I knew who had a real chance at taking me out.
I didn’t give the thought much credit. If Beard wanted me dead, all he had to do was sit back and watch the ghoul eventually track me down and catch me by surprise. But I was cold, my nose was threatening to start running in the frigid air, and my boots kept slipping in the snow. I was almost miserable enough to welcome an attempt to kill me.
“That’s far enough,” a gruff male voice called.
I startled and almost fell on my ass. Beard caught my arm before I went down and turned to look uphill. I followed his gaze and saw a man dressed in leather clothing standing in the shade of a pine tree. He looked like a classic cinema Indian, dark, braided hair, buckskin clothing decorated with beads. He had a compound bow cradled in his arms with a wicked-looking broadhead arrow nocked.
As an afterthought, I remembered Beard’s warning about showing weakness, and I caught myself before I shifted to stand behind Beard. Instead, I made myself square my shoulders and looked him in the eye. The man wasn’t particularly intimidating, but he had a feral look about his golden eyes that made me wonder what kind of meat he hunted, exactly.
“I’m looking for Adan Morrel,” Beard called.
“Are you? He is not looking for you.”
“That’s true. Can you let him know that I would like a word with him?”
The man stared down at us impassively. “No. You are not welcome here.”
“Look,” Beard said firmly, “this is important.” He took half a step up the hill and the man’s bow came up lightning fast, the arrow pulled to full draw and centered on Beard’s face.
“I said, you are not welcome. Adan has no business with halfbloods.”
I raised my eyebrows. “You know who we are?”
“I don’t need to. I can smell you from here.”
“At least give us your name,” Beard said, making calming gestures with his hands. “We’re not here to fight.”
“Maybe I want to fight,” the man growled, but he eased some of the pressure on the bowstring. “I am Rogan. The one behind you is called Ores.”
A twig snapped behind me and I spun. Ores was a mountain of a man, almost the size of a marid, and prolifically hairy. His big brown eyes stared at me from behind a beard that seemed to merge with the chest hair sprouting from his bulging pectorals. He wasn’t wearing a shirt, just a baggy pair of buckskin leggings. He had the gut of a strongman, heavy slabs of muscle evident despite a layer of fat. It was a little unnerving that someone so large could have crept up so close behind me.
“If we want to fight,” Ores informed us in a gravelly voice, “we will fight.”
I swallowed, and Ores’ eyes locked onto me. There was something hungry in his gaze, and though there was a thread of lust coming from him, he seemed more eager for violence than sex. With him, I suspected sex and violence were two sides of the same coin. I took half a step away from him.
Too late, I remembered Beard’s warning about appearing to be prey. Ores’ lips peeled back, revealing huge jaws full of large teeth. And very prominent canines.
“You are afraid,” Ores growled.
“Fear means you have something to hide,” Rogan snarled. The bow came back up at full draw. “You have one chance. Leave now, or only the ravens will know where your corpses lie.”
“Ah, shit,” Beard sighed.
Ores reached down to his legs, grasped a handful of buckskin from each pantleg, and ripped them upward. The buckskin parted with a series of little pops and I saw metal snaps along the outside of each leg. I also got a glimpse of Ores’ huge, tumescent dick before he dropped to all fours. A rippling change was going through him, and he seemed to grow larger about the shoulders, his arms thickening, his legs shortening.
Before I had the chance to call out a warning, Ores had fully shifted into a grizzly bear and was bounding toward me, throwing clods of snow in his wake.
All my recent training and hours spent drilling on the mat were useless against an eight-hundred-pound bear. A year ago, I would have screamed and turned tail to run. Ores would have chased me down in seconds and taken me to the ground. Once pinned, I would have had as much chance as a newborn baby against the weight and power of the bear.
Two months ago, I would have tried to fight, pitting my strength directly against the bear’s. I would have been overwhelmed eventually. My strength might match the bear’s for a short while, but I would run out of energy while Ores had no such limitations.
But it was not a year ago, so I didn’t panic. It also wasn’t two months ago, so I kept my head. I watched Ores bounding toward me, then
timed my diving roll to the side when all his weight was on his front legs and he couldn’t turn. I came to my feet with snow sticking to my clothes, and Ores went by, his yellowing fangs snapping the air a foot from my face. His breath was hot and humid and smelled of berries.
I needed a weapon. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Beard had dodged Rogan’s arrow, and was facing off against a snarling mountain lion. Beard had produced a wickedly curved knife from somewhere, and the mountain lion already had a slice across the nose dripping brilliant red blood into the snow.
A knife would be better than nothing, but against a bear it was ludicrously inadequate. I need a spear, or maybe a cannon. There was a sapling a few steps from me, the trunk five inches across at the base. Weather or some other mishap had shorn the crown off the sapling ten feet up, leaving a ragged, splintery mess.
Ores was snarling as he scrabbled after traction. The snow and frozen ground made it so the bear-hinn slipped and slid. It didn’t buy me much time, but I thanked my lucky stars it wasn’t summer. If it was, this fight would already be over, and I would be bear food.
I jumped for the sapling and threw my weight against it. The wood was still hard beneath my fingers. Whatever had broken off the crown, it had happened recently enough that rot hadn’t set in. The trunk barely bent under my weight. That was good: the sapling was strong enough that it might make an effective weapon against the bear. That was bad: I wasn’t going to be getting the sapling out of the ground in a hurry.
The scrabbling ended and Ores let loose a bellowing roar as he dug his claws into the frozen ground and surged toward me once more. I was out of options. I didn’t think dodging him would work a second time. As a last resort, I put the sapling between myself and the oncoming bear and got ready to throw myself out of Ores’ path.
The bear smashed into the sapling and the frozen wood shattered under the impact. I leapt to the side and felt a flash of hot pain down one leg as Ores’ claws ripped through my jeans and into the flesh of my calf. I yelled, still too surprised to really feel the agony, and yanked my leg away from the bear’s claws. I half-fell, half-jumped in the direction of the sapling and got a hand on the splintered crown.
With a shout, I swung the tree around as hard as I could and clubbed Ores across the side of his head. His snarl scaled up into a yip and he flinched away. That was all the opening I was going to get. The damage in my calf made my leg weak and uncertain, but it held long enough for me to set myself and really put my back into the next swing.
The sapling cracked down on his head and snapped in half. Ores let out a deep grunt and turned away. To run, to regroup, to protect his head from the dizzying blows I was hammering down on him, I didn’t know. All I knew is I saw his big, hairy bear nuts dangling behind a still raging hard-on, and I kicked like I was trying to drive home a field goal.
Ores collapsed, all the brute strength puddling from his limbs. His howl of pain modulated upward into human sobbing as he shifted back. I checked my leg, afraid of what I was going to see, and breathed a sigh of relief when I found undamaged skin beneath the slick coating of blood.
I hefted the half of the tree trunk still intact and kicked Ores over onto his back. He groaned and covered his groin with his hands. His cheek was split and blood matted the hair on his head. I planted a boot against his chest and raised the spikey, shattered end of the trunk up high.
“Call your friend off,” I growled at him, “or I’ll drive this through your skull.”
“Rogan,” Ores coughed. “Let it be! Rogan! Fucking—she’ll kill me!”
The mountain lion spat at Beard before backing away and turning toward us. For a moment, I was worried Rogan would jump at me and try to take me down.
I met the big cat’s eyes and hefted the trunk a little higher. “Try me,” I snarled at him.
The fight left Rogan and he shifted back into human form with a little whine. His face was slashed, and blood ran down his ribs where Beard had scored a second hit. Wordlessly, he gathered his buckskin pants and slipped back into them.
“You win, lady,” Ores rumbled. “Let me up.”
“Move your hands,” I growled.
Ores complied hesitantly, clearly afraid that I was going to do more damage. His blood was down, and his dick with it. Satisfied that he was thinking with the right head again, I threw the trunk aside and took my foot off his chest.
“Get your pants on,” I told him.
There was no lust coming from Ores as he limped over to gather up his pants. He redid enough of the snaps to keep the garment fastened about his waist before making his way up the slope toward Rogan. He still limped, and walked with a wide-legged gait. He wasn’t wearing shoes, but maybe he didn’t need to. Or maybe he forgot them because of the pain he was in. I couldn’t remember if he had been wearing shoes before he had attacked me.
“What do you want?” Rogan asked, once he was dressed again.
“Like I said.” Beard put his knife away in a sheath at the small of his back. “All we want is to talk with Morrel.”
Rogan nodded. He touched the slash on his face and I noticed his finger nails were long and came to points. “All right. He is not far.”
Beard gestured. “After you.”
It was a little rocky getting started. Both Rogan and Ores kept looking over their shoulders at us and stumbling in the snow. After a few minutes, they came to the conclusion that if we wanted them dead, they would be, and they got on with the business of hiking.
We didn’t have too far to go. Before I had a chance to get out of breath, we dropped down into a sheltered valley. I smelled wood smoke on the wind and the trail we were following started showing signs of being traveled on.
I didn’t know what I had expected. Going by Ores’ appearance, I thought maybe he lived in a lean-to. Instead I started seeing log cabins with children being hustled indoors by women. This wasn’t a backwoods outlaw camp, this was a community.
At one point, a hefty woman burst from a cabin not far from the trail and started rushing toward us. She had wildly bushy hair and an impressive unibrow. Ores shook his head firmly at her and she stopped in her tracks, staring after Beard and myself, her eyes wide with fear.
Shit. Now I felt like an asshole. Ores might have the rough-and-ready violence of a psychopath, but he was a husband. Maybe he even had kids. Suddenly his aggressive attitude toward newcomers started to make more sense. There was more he was protecting here than just the privacy of Adan Morrel. This was his home, probably the only home he had found that could accept him for what he was.
I looked at Ores’ hairy back as he tromped through the snow ahead of us, feeling a strange kinship with him. What I wouldn’t give to have people around me that accepted who and what I was without fear or expectation.
It also made me wonder at Beard’s dismissive attitude toward these hinn. He hadn’t been willing to call them people. Was he so much of a racist that he would dismiss out of hand anyone not human like he was? It made me dislike him even more, and I started feeling a growing anger that I had somehow been tainted by my association with Beard. These were people I could understand and respect. But because Beard had been the one to introduce me, any opinion they formed of me would be influenced by Beard.
Rogan led us past a communal kitchen where a central fireplace held a deer slowly turning on a spit, dripping juice into the crackling coals. Rough round rolls of bread cooled on a rack. Aproned women watched us go by, exuding hostility.
Our destination became evident: a round lodge with a streamer of smoke rising from a central chimney. Rogan and Ores led us inside and stood aside, heads bowed. The furniture, decorations and other people in the room paled to insignificance. The lodge was dominated by a man, his face lit in profile by the fire. He had dark hair shot through with grey, a neatly trimmed beard, broad shoulders, and wide, intelligent eyes.
He flicked his eyes toward us, acknowledging our presence and dismissing us as a threat at the same time. There was enough command
in that brief glance to root us to the ground. I could no more have moved than flown back to Los Angeles by flapping my arms.
This had to be Adan Morrel. I found it impossible to tear my eyes from him, and was only peripherally aware that he was deep in conversation with another man. After a minute, Morrel nodded and pressed his hand to his companion’s shoulder before turning to face us.
Morrel’s eyes were brilliant, liquid gold, shining in the firelight. He crossed the room and stood in front of us, his arms folded, a frown creasing his face. He wore a flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled up, jeans worn at the knees, and no shoes.
“Your names, halfbloods,” he said.
“I am Beard,” Beard answered, “and this is—”
“Can she not speak for herself?” The question was directed at me, but it shut Beard down immediately.
I swallowed. “Alexandra Ascher. And yes, I speak for myself.”
Morrel nodded. “I have heard your name, Ms. Ascher.”
“Really?” It came out as a squeak, and I hated myself a little for the rush of gratitude.
“You have helped friends of mine.” As he spoke, I could see the long canines, larger than in any djinn I had met. He looked at Beard. “You I have not heard of. And Beard is not your name. What do you want? Why have you invaded our lives?”
“I’ll take this one,” I said.
Morrel shifted his eyes to my face. “I did not ask you, Alexandra Ascher. Are you the alpha of your pack?”
“Beard is not my alpha,” I said firmly. If there was any doubt left in my mind that Morrel was a wolf hinn, it was gone now. “Los Angeles is my city. There’s nobody else left to protect it but me.”
The wolf eyes held mine and I felt a thrill go through me. “Very well. Speak then, Ascher.”
“A ghoul hunts in the city.” I cut right to the chase and laid it out for him. I didn’t feel the need to embellish or give unnecessary detail. Those golden eyes held a lifetime of experience that I couldn’t even guess at. If any mortal knew how to kill a ghoul, I would wager on Morrel. “The missing bodies have to be found, or the allies I have been able to gather will fall apart. There will be nothing left but me standing against whatever evil strikes at the city next.”