by Cathy Clamp
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Table of Contents
About the Author
Copyright Page
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CHAPTER 1
Step. Jump. Pull. Toss. Every shovelful exposed unburnable dirt, and added to the hope of stopping the fire before it could reach town. The smoke blown in on the wind stung Anica’s lungs, made her eyes water nearly uncontrollably. She could feel, could smell, the panic of the people around her rising as the heat increased. Every person’s distinct and individual scent of sweat and fear erupted from their layers of protective clothing in bursts of sharp unpleasantness. Along with charred bark and grass, the odors painted themselves on her skin; she desperately wanted to find a stream and scrub away the stench. But there was no water here, just fire.
So she concentrated on the clean smell of the dirt that rose from the ground as she dug, breathing in the sweet, thick scent of life under the roots, letting her sensitive nose find some relief. The crackling of bark was audible now in the distance, making her work harder. Her heart was pounding and so was her head; her muscles ached. This would be easier in bear form. She was a strong digger. But not everyone shoveling beside her was a shape-shifter. Some were professional firefighters … human residents from neighboring towns. Nobody could know that her kind lived among them.
A tap on her shoulder made her turn. Peering through the smoke, she made out the shape of a man, definitely human, wearing a gold insignia on his helmet. He touched her shovel and yelled over the noise of the helicopters passing by.
“Petrovic! Take a break! I’ll take over!” He handed her a plastic bottle of water and waved her toward a truck that was pulling up along the makeshift road that wasn’t much more than beaten tracks through the tall grass. Anica stepped aside, yielding her place in the fire line. Looking back, she saw a wide path of bare dirt behind her. It made her feel proud.
When she reached the truck, Rachel Washington reached down to help her into the cargo area. Soot was smeared in patches on the woman’s warm brown skin, and her eyes were red from the same smoke that marred her natural sugary scent, like a frozen treat made of cherries that made Anica’s raw throat wish for ice. Ash rained down on them, sticky and gray. She sat down on the truck bed next to her new friend. “Wow! You rocked that fire line!” Rachel’s voice cracked.
Confused, Anica frowned and shook her head. “No. No rocks. I moved rocks so no one is hurt walking.”
Rachel smiled and shook her head. “‘Rocked’ means you did a good job.”
“Oh! Yes, thank you.” English was such a difficult language. So many words had more than one meaning. “Did you also rock your dirt?”
Another smile. “Yeah, I did.” The other woman’s smile faded as more sirens filled the air. “I don’t know if it’s going to do any good, though. The fire just crossed Highway 21. If we have to evacuate, we’ll have to go east, or north into Canada.”
Anica shook her head and stared out at the smoky landscape as the truck jounced through the forest. Ash, dirt, and pine needles rained onto her borrowed jeans, and she carefully brushed off the debris before it could stain the fabric. When she and her family had come to Luna Lake for a mediation between her family’s bear sloth and the neighboring one, she’d brought only a few clothes, and most of them suited for the negotiating table, not physical labor. Her family had intended to stay for only a few days. During those few days, her life had changed, possibly forever.
With the help of people she’d met in Luna Lake, she’d been able to root out slave camps back in Serbia and free many children taken captive by the evil snakes. But some of the bad men had not been found, and Anica knew they would be looking for those who had ruined their plan. For her. Serbia could not be her home, not now. Fortunately, her father had been asked by the Sazi council to become the new Alpha of the town and Anica would stay with him, at least temporarily.
As for her mother … she had stayed behind to care for the new bear shifter cubs they’d rescued from the snakes.
Stayed behind. It was what Papa had told her and her brother, but Anica knew it was a lie. Mama had betrayed the family, and Papa had cast her out. But Anica knew everything that had happened was actually her fault. She had been weak. After she had been kidnapped and turned, she had turned the rest of her until-then entirely human family.
Her other brother, Samit, had gone insane and tried to kill her. Poor Samit was dead now.… Her cousin, Larissa, another betrayal, another attempt at murder. Luna Lake and the people here had saved her. This place was all the Petrovics had now—Anica, Papa, and Bojan.
Anica opened her water bottle. Her throat was so sore from smoke that the water actually burned going down. She grimaced, then took another drink. The pain eased a little. By the time she’d finished the bottle, she could almost swallow normally. They picked up Dalvin, Rachel’s fiancé, a few moments later, at the next fire line.
The truck turned slowly onto an even bumpier back road, passing other groups of diggers, working side by side with the trained firefighters, before swerving to the side of the road and skidding to a stop. A shower of soot blanketed them. Anica tried to dust it off, but it smeared into the fabric. A line of green and brown camo-patterned trucks sped by. To Anica, the uniformed men inside looked like soldiers. “The army comes?”
“National Guard,” Rachel replied, speaking close to her ear. “They’re civilians who volunteer for military duty. The governor must have called them in, which isn’t good. The fire must be getting worse. But they’ll have better equipment, and more of it.” Rachel touched her hand. “Don’t worry about the jeans. They’re yours. Consider them a gift. But I’m afraid they’re going to get dirtier before this is over. Maybe with the Guard here, it’ll be over quicker.”
Anica nodded gratefully before her eyes returned to the line of trucks disappearing into the smoke. “Thank you.” She didn’t have a good feeling about soldiers being involved, but Rachel didn’t seem concerned, so she would wait and see. She’d learned that her friend was very suspicious of authority, much like she was herself, so she trusted the other woman’s instincts.
The truck neared the edge of a boggy area that smelled of bugs, frogs, and thick algae and made her mouth water. She liked bogs. They always had berries and roots that were succulent and sweet. She was so hungry after working hard all morning. Anica sniffed deep, trying to memorize the smell so she could come back later. In human form, her nose wasn’t as sensitive. She’d learned how to inhale and hold the air in while her mind sorted the scents. But what she smelled now wasn’t food; it was danger.
She jumped to her feet and began to slap on the roof of the moving truck, trying to make as much noise as possible. “Stop! We must stop!”
The exhausted volunteers became instantly alert. The truc
k stopped so sharply that Anica had to hold on to the grating covering the back window to keep her balance. The driver’s door opened and the head of the local owl parliament, a man named John Williams, exited and asked, “What’s going on? What’s wrong?”
Anica pointed ahead of the truck, to the treetops. She tried to think of the words, in English. It was always harder when she was stressed. “The fire, it smells different. Hotter than before. The trees burn … inside. Not bark. We must not go further.”
The others in the truck lifted their noses and inhaled. Rachel was an owl. Others were wolves, wildcats, eagles. But Anica was a bear. Her nose was better than theirs. As she watched, the smoke ahead grew darker, passing through gray to black; a roaring sound filled the air. The trees were too close to them. There was no way to turn the truck around.
“It’s crowning!” John’s eyes got wide and he jumped back behind the wheel. “Hold on, everyone! We’re backing up, and fast.”
The world turned orange. Fire raced across the tall trees overhead, which began to explode. Anica jumped out of the truck. “Come! We must get wet!”
“Anica, wait!” Rachel called. “Don’t get out of the truck. We’ll outrun it.”
“Truck is not fast enough!” she shouted back, heading for the bog. “We must get to safe wet!”
Thankfully, the man in the passenger seat of the cab, a wolf—who, she remembered, was a firefighter from Seattle—agreed with her.
“She’s right. C’mon. It’s coming too fast.”
Anica leaped into the water. It was only waist deep, so she took a deep breath, dove under, and started to dig, covering herself with thick, mossy mud. “Come! Mud will help.” If the fire lasted too long, even the mud wouldn’t be enough. It would turn scalding hot. But treetop fires often passed over and burned only a little. She’d grown up near other woods, with different trees, but fire was fire, and she’d been through this before.
A wall of red began to spin, turning into a tornado made of fire. As the others jumped into the water and dug down into the mud beside her, Anica smelled a bear. Not a natural one, a shifter like her, She also smelled blood. Both scents came from the other direction … not from the truck. The others wouldn’t be able to smell it, she knew. She had no choice.
Jumping out of the water, the mud stinging her eyes and the smoke making her cough, she raced into the woods. Bits of burning leaves and branches rained down on her, quickly extinguished by the thick layer of wet mud. It would soon dry in this heat, so she had to move quickly.
At last she saw the source of the scent—a large brown bear, who smelled of exotic spices that in another age would be reserved only for the tables of royalty. Rich and luxurious, the odors filled her nose and then her whole head, making it hard to concentrate. But she had to: he was unconscious, pinned under a massive tree, and bleeding from his side. His fur was smoldering as the tree began to burn. Coughing, her lungs stinging from the heat and smoke, she tried to shield her nose and mouth with the kerchief she’d been using earlier, while digging. But it too was coated with mud. She quickly slapped it against her leg until it was cleared enough to breathe through. It still stank, but the algae coating the cloth blocked the spicy smell of the injured bear.
The tree was too big for her to try to lift, but it was already badly damaged by fire. Working quickly, Anica dragged a large rock close to the tree and tore off one of the branches to make a pry bar. While strong, she wasn’t very heavy, and the trunk did not move. She needed more weight. There. A rock. She strained to pick up the stone that was as big as her torso, then set its weight at the high end of her lever. Instead of lifting, the tree broke in two where it was most charred, freeing the trapped man. She gingerly lifted the smaller piece of trunk and branches off him, careful not to drag it over his injuries. She winced at what she saw. One of his back legs was visibly broken. There was no way he’d be able to walk. But she was so tired and the smoke was so thick.…
I cannot leave him here to burn.
She shook his head hard, tapping on his nose, which always woke her, even from the soundest sleep. But he was limp, unresponsive. Squatting, she grabbed handfuls of the bear’s coarse brown fur and heaved his weight up until she could wrap his front legs around her shoulders. Anica leaned into the task of dragging the unconscious shifter to safety. She’d never known a shifter who could both shift off the moon and retain his form after passing out. But being an attack victim, she didn’t know many bears outside of her family and the neighboring sloth. Did that mean he was more or less powerful than her?
It took every ounce of her strength to pull the massive bear forward; he probably weighed close to four hundred kilograms. Her leg muscles began to cramp as her lungs starved for oxygen. But there was no clean air to be had in the burning forest, so she did her best to only take small sips through the cloth.
A cracking sound above her nearly made her drop her burden. As a tree limb broke and fell, Anica took a huge breath and threw herself and the injured bear to one side. The gasp she sucked in was full of ash and soot and she began to cough uncontrollably. She dropped to her knees to find clear air near the ground, as her father had taught her when she was a child.
Smoke and ash swirled around them; her eyes were streaming with tears. Unsure of her way, she felt the world narrow as she tried to smell the bog through the fire. The bear started to rouse, instinctively digging his claws into her shoulders. She fought to keep his claws from breaking through the cloth. Yes, she would eventually heal if he mauled her, but it would take time and energy she didn’t have. “Do not fight me!” she yelled, hoping he heard her over the roar of the blaze. “I know you are burn, but I am take you to safe place!”
Now fully awake, the big bear tried to pull away. She had to dig her hands into his fur to keep him tight against her. He bawled in fear and pain but didn’t speak. That confused her. Maybe he was a three-day or a rogue who could not speak. Maybe he didn’t speak English. She tried her own language, Serbian. There were many brown bears there. “Ovde sam da pomognem.” I am here to help. Simple and, she hoped, easy to understand.
He bawled again, clearly in pain. His skin was blackened with burns and his foot pads were raw and bleeding. She kept her grip tight in his fur. Frustrated, she returned to English. She had to immerse herself in this language if she was to live here, since few people she’d met spoke more than one language.
“You must be strong. Please try to walk. I know a safe place.” He struggled for a moment, but when she refused to let him go he finally stopped trying to get away. He put a little weight on his one good foot, pain in every line of his body. He would have to stand it, like she had to. She stood. The soles of her boots were beginning to overheat—the rubber becoming tacky and sticking to the leaves. Even her hard hat was smoldering. It wouldn’t be long before her clothing caught fire.
“Anica! Where are you?!” Rachel’s voice came through the smoke to her left.
She adjusted position and called back, “Here! I have wounded bear. Help me!”
Another crashing sound from behind her made her turn. A massive pine tree, red-hot and crackling, had broken into pieces and then exploded in mid-air. Fiery logs began to rain down on them!
CHAPTER 2
The plan had backfired. Badly. Tristan could kick himself for letting it go this far. But he’d honestly planned to be found easily when the trucks came by, and he hadn’t planned for the whole forest to burn down around him. When the small, mud-covered woman appeared out of nowhere, looking for all the world like a diminutive bigfoot, and grabbed his fur, he was too much in shock to respond. He’d also inhaled far too much smoke. It felt like his lungs were buried in ash. She was right that they had to get out of the forest. If she knew a safe path, he would gladly follow. She spoke broken English and a language from somewhere in central Europe. He didn’t know all the languages there. For some reason, he trusted her, even though he didn’t want help. Well, actual help, anyway.
But she wouldn’t let
go, even though he tried to pull away. Another woman called out a name from somewhere inside the smoke and his rescuer answered. His savior’s name was Anica. She was pretty, and her scent was amazing—like nothing he’d ever encountered. He had no time to process it, though, because the sap inside the tree next to them boiled and then exploded. Massive chunks of wood began to fall, causing even more limbs to come crashing down.
Yet she didn’t abandon him. For someone so young, that was astounding. She couldn’t be much older than her teens, but she had the depth and strength of people a century older. He couldn’t decide whether that made him happy or sad. Anica used surprising strength to quickly drag him close to the base of a massive old pine twice the diameter of the others, and covered his body with hers—spreading open her heavy fire-resistant jacket to try to protect him.
He couldn’t let her take the brunt of the damage. She was a shifter, of that he was certain, but she wasn’t very powerful. He could barely feel her magic pushing against his. It was time to throw off the charade, at least for a moment. The victim needed to become the rescuer. Searing pain drove through him as he rose to three legs, lifting her right off the ground. Hell, he’d actually wounded something in his leg when he crawled under the tree. She was coughing hard now, unable to catch a full breath. And I’m not in much better shape. Wheezing heavily, and trying not to take too deep a breath, Tristan hopped on his three good legs, avoiding the bouncing pieces of burning wood, toward the people crashing through the brush who were calling her name.
Then hands, covered with slimy mud, were reaching for him. He couldn’t tell who was male or female through the thick, wet slime, but the mud was cool and wet. They half pulled him through the trees to where the ground gave way to water. When the people pulled him underwater, he was grateful. He let himself be covered with mud and dug his claws deep into the muck for more. He got a mouthful of stale water each time he came up for air, but he didn’t care. Water was his natural home, no matter how foul. The mud took some of the sting out of his burns, and even the pain in his hands and feet eased to a throb. He shifted to human, hoping the shift would help heal his burns and cuts. It was hard to tell under the mud, but maybe it worked, at least a little.
