by KT Strange
Before I can swing my leg over the wheel, the front door to the guys’ cabin is opening, and Kyron saunters out in a pair of low-slung flannel pants. He’s shirtless, squinting, and yawning.
“Hey,” he says, waving me over. I’ve got about twenty pounds of groceries in my bike, and have no interest in stopping. Losing momentum might mean toppling over: both me, and the bike.
“Morning,” I say as he glances upward. The trees crowd out the sky here, but you can still catch snippets of it, silver and blue swirling high above us.
“You got something in there?” He asks, looking like he’s inhaling the scent emanating from my bags. “Smells tasty.”
“Get your own,” I say, but he gives me a pitiful look, sucking in his stomach.
“Look at me, wasting away, right in front of you. C’mon. C’mon and feed a guy. You can’t be that heartless, can you?”
“You have more muscle on your body than my entire weight,” I retort and he puts in a manly effort to suck his stomach even more, his cheeks bulging out like a puffer-fish. I roll my eyes and start pushing my bike toward my cabin. Kyron tags along beside me, arms stretching up to the sky as he yawns.
“Okay, so, french toast? I bet you got a dozen of those good eggs in there.” He leans over, trying to get a good look into the top of one of my panniers.
“You guys pay me, not the other way around,” I point out, resting my bike up against the side of my little house. Kyron crosses his arms over his chest and I raise an eyebrow. “Why don’t you guys like to wear shirts?”
He coughs, and then laughs, sounding sheepish.
“They’re inconvenient,” he says, moving to help me unload the baskets, grabbing my groceries for me.
“Thanks, but how’s it inconvenient to wear clothes? You’re always in the woods, don’t the branches scratch you up?” We step inside, the cool air of the interior smelling like dust and old wood. It’s a comforting scent.
“Y’know, you keep asking questions like that, and I’ll show you what happens to little girls that get too nosey,” he replies, and even though there’s humor in his voice, a small chill zings down my spine.
“I’d feel threatened, but I’m not a little girl,” I say flatly, and Kyron’s expression shifts from amusing too thoughtful. He gives me a slight up and down, and I can tell he’s adjusting how he thinks about me.
“How old are you anyway?” He asks.
“Old enough to know that’s rude of you to ask,” I say, reaching out to take my groceries. “Thanks for the help.”
“Yeah, lemme offer you one more bit of help,” he says, “stay away from O’Hara.” For a moment I don’t know what he’s talking about, and then it clicks.
“You mean Kat?”
His eyes darken and he looks away, like he’s watching over his shoulder.
“Yeah. She offer you the cream tea?” He asks and then grins. “It’s shit, don’t believe her when she says she’s a good cook.” He reaches over and punches me in the shoulder, in a move that should be awkward but he somehow makes it look cool.
“Uh, thanks,” I say, turning to walk toward my little kitchenette. Silence hangs in the air, like wet, drippy laundry. Setting the bags down, I don’t even bother turning. “You can go now.”
It’s a dismissal, and he knows it, but he hovers in the doorway, half in and half out, like he can’t quite bring himself to step inside, like he needs to be invited. I think of the old vampire lore and smile to myself as I start to unpack my bag of food. It’s been a long day and I’m hungry. What I got would be quite a feast, and I hope I can toast the bread over my little stove-top.
“Seriously, what’s the deal,” I say as I turn back to look at him. His hands are shoved in his pockets, the light from beyond the door outlining him in a thick silver line. I can’t quite see his expression in the darkness of the cabin.
“I meant what I said about O’Hara. There’s some people that’re bad news in town, and she rolls with some of those kinds.”
“Yeah, well, last I heard this place,” I gesture around me, “was the one that’s had a girl go missing, so, I think I’m already risking my life as it is. I haven’t disappeared yet, so I’m probably fine.” I raise an eyebrow at him. His expression doesn’t even shift. He doesn’t even flinch. I don’t know why I’m expecting him to. Maybe because I think, deep down, that he might be somehow connected with Lacey’s disappearance. I decide to lay it on thick.
“Her poster’s up in the window at the Black Moon,” I say, and there it is. A tick in his cheek, like he’s biting the inside of it ever so slightly. I’ve got him, hooks under the skin, and I’m ready to reel him in. “Seems like she’s missed.”
“Lacey’s a good girl,” he replies, and even if it’s easy, there’s a hitch in his breath.
Lacey is a good girl.
He says it like she’s still around, breathing and walking and seeing and talking. That means he thinks she’s alive, not dead.
“Do you know where she is?” I ask, because I want to chase the thread in front of me, the trail of breadcrumbs too succulent and delicious to miss up. My Auntie C always said a good mystery was like catnip to me.
Kyron’s expression folds into a frown, and he turns around, striding away.
“We’re making beans and hotdogs tonight,” he says, calling over his shoulder, “you’re not invited.”
I walk fast to the doorway, abandoning my groceries.
“Kyron, seriously-”
He flips me a bird over his shoulder and I know better than to chase him.
If he’s had anything to do with her going missing, then I shouldn’t be baiting the lion in his den. It’s a dangerous, stupid mistake that’s going to get me hurt.
The walls on the cabin feel like they’re closing in on me at the same time as being paper thin. Am I sharing space with three murderers?
Lacey’s a good girl.
No. He thinks she’s alive. Maybe he knows she’s alive. Maybe he knows where she is but he’s… protecting her? I’d have to find out more about Lacey in general. Who her friends were. Who she hung out with. If she was born in Fallen Mountain, and if she’d lived her whole life here.
The burning questions are humming under my skin, and I want to get back on my bike and head right back into town.
Kat O’Hara seems nice enough, and she said she’d make me cream tea. Kyron’s just being an asshole about her, like he seems to be a dick about everything and everyone. Besides, if she really does hang around with the bad types in town, she might know more about Lacey’s comings and goings.
It’s worth it, to find out, to just ask the question, anyway.
A thudding noise behind me makes me turn and I sigh. Two of the apples I’d bought have rolled out of the bag, hitting the ground. They’ll bruise if I don’t eat them up.
I’ve got to put away my groceries, but after… after I can do some sleuthing of my own. That officer hadn’t really spent all that long asking questions, and he seemed more into poking at the guys than finding out what happened to Lacey.
Was anyone looking for her?
I glance out at the window, the dappling of sunlight coming down through the trees. If it was me, I’d want someone to be looking for me, hunting down every shadow until I was found.
Did Lacey even have family in Fallen Mountain to push the search for her?
Sadness creeps up the back of my throat, tingling and burning. I need to find out. For my curiosity’s sake. And… to help her, if I can.
I’m just cutting into the fresh loaf of bread to make a sandwich when my knife pauses and my heart nearly stops.
Stay away from O’Hara.
Kyron hadn’t been with Beau and Grady, hauling lumber into the back of their truck. Icy chills descend around my shoulders.
How the hell had he known I’d been talking to Kat?
8
Grady
“The girl is a menace,” Kyron says, throwing himself down on one of the long couches in the back
den, glaring at me like it’s all my fault.
He’s looking at me like he wants me to say something.
I’m sorry I ever picked her up at the end of the road. I’m sorry I saw a woman being harassed by a jackass, and didn’t want to drive by like I didn’t care. Both statements that aren’t true. I’m not sorry at all. And Kyron can suck my dick if he thinks I am going to feel bad or apologize.
“What, she wasn’t terrified by your grr-grr-I-am-a-scary-beast routine?” I ask, popping a can of beer and slouching down in my recliner, sighing as my bones rearranged themselves. I’ve been on my feet all day. First, getting lumber for a new construction project here at the cabin, and then Beau and I did a perimeter run of our property, shifting into wolf form and running to the far reaches. We didn’t say it to each other, but we were looking for any sign of Lacey. Nothing. Not a hair out of place, or a scent.
“That’s not,” Kyron pauses, looking frustrated, “I was not doing that. I wasn’t trying to scare her” He crosses his arms over his chest, looking like a sulking five year old. “The point is, she needs to be careful who she asks pointed questions of. You know something in town is rotten, and it’s infecting everything.”
The problem, we both know, is that despite so many women going missing, nobody seems to be concerned about it. Not that much, anyway. It’s odd for a small town where everybody knows everybody that after almost ten women have vanished without a trace that nobody is kicking up a fuss. Sure the sheriff’s office is sending out Officer Bradshaw to spit at rocks and annoy us, but other than a few signs in the windows about one or two of the women… it has all been insidious, deadly silence.
Whenever it gets brought up, at least in my presence, people just shrug.
Folks leave town all the time. Go to make their fortunes in Twocities.
That is always the answer here. Twocities is like a a flytrap, glowing neon in the distance, drawing the younger set in, never to release them.
The front door kicks in with a bang and we both sit up. Before he even entered the back room, his eyes stormy and furious, we knew it is Beau. His scent precedes him, sweaty and pissed.
“What?” Kyron asks, immediately on the alert. He might act like a lazy asshole half the time, but he always knows when he needs to be serious and focused.
Beau throws something, a scrap of fabric, across the room, with a snarl.
I reach for it first, eyes widening. I recognize that print, cream flowers blushing over white jersey cotton. It had belonged to Lacey. My heart drops.
“So you went snooping through her room?” Kyron asks. Beau curls his lip at the other man, baring his teeth.
“That,” he says, “was in the woods, out by the lake. Over ground we covered a week ago!” He looks furious, although it isn’t with us. Beau hates uncertainty. Finding something where we’ve already looked is uncertainty.
Lacey going missing, women going missing at all, is a lot of uncertainty that he can’t get along with.
“So she was there after we’d been through,” I say, running my fingers over the fabric. It is rich with her scent. She’d worn it, sweated in it.
Maybe…
My thoughts yanked sideways.
Died in it.
I swallow and bury my face in the fabric, trying to catch any lingering residue of death. It has a sickly-sweet smell, the pall of the afterlife, but this shirt just smelled like sweat and a hint of fear.
Whoever had scared Lacey is going to die, and with my teeth in the back of their neck while I shake them until their spine snaps.
Kyron is on his feet when I look up.
“Let’s go hunting,” he says, an angry, twisted grin on his face.
“We’re not going to find her,” I say, but I am following them out of the den and toward the front door before I can stop myself. We have to look, and the lake is our starting point. None of the other women have left behind a single clue for us to follow. Weird how this bit of fabric I hold clenched in my hand wasn’t giving me any additional hope, but I still feel the urge to look for her, and find her. She is pack, in a way, and we always look out for members of the pack.
I strip off my shirt before I get to the door, kicking down my jeans. The boxers will just fall off of me as I shift, and it is dark enough out that nobody will notice them in a puddle on the forest floor until I come back to get them.
Beau and Kyron are doing the same, and as Beau reaches the front door, opening it, we all stop dead in our tracks.
Cordelia stands there, a plate of muffins in her hands, her eyes wide.
“Um,” she says, staring at us, her hand still raised as if to knock.
“Hey,” Kyron replies smoothly. “We’re going to go swimming, you wanna come?” Quick on his feet, and making us look a little less like we are about to engage in an orgy. Cordelia’s eyes widen even more, so much so that I am worried they’d pop right out of her face.
“Now?” She asks, which made complete sense given that it’s late at night. Kyron smirks, his gaze swooping down her body and he wraps a hand on his upper arm, flexing his muscles just so to make them pop and stand out.
“Cold water builds character,” he says. I feel the irritation rolling off of Beau over this delay. He wants to get going, and now.
“Don’t you guys need, like, swimsuits. Towels? A flashlight?” She asks, her voice spiraling higher and higher.
Kyron gives Beau a shove, and laughs. Lighten up, was the unspoken message from wolf to wolf. Beau takes a deep breath and settles his shoulders.
My brain is honestly not thinking, because those muffins smell really good and almost like they have fresh blueberries in them, and also, where did she get them? I don’t remember seeing blueberries on any of the bushes in the woods, it is too late for them, and the grocery store tends to only carry what was in season.
And also, I want to get out there and look for Lacey. Cordelia is a nice-enough if annoying distraction.
“Who needs a swimsuit? We’re all brothers,” Kyron says with a smirk, and immediately her face flushes like a peach in summer.
“Yeah, hard pass,” she replies, before shoving the plate of muffins at Beau. “But enjoy. Y’know, for your after-swim snack.” She turns and walks down the stairs, a flashlight swinging from the crook of her arm and lighting the path back to her cabin.
I let out a breath as she’s ten feet from us, then twenty.
“That was rude of you,” Kyron says to Beau, and Beau shoots him a dirty glare. “C’mon, let’s go.”
“She’ll be watching,” Beau says, voice hard as granite. “She didn’t buy your swimming line.”
“Not like either of you was in the midst of coming up with golden excuses,” Kyron says, stealing a muffin from the plate in Beau’s hands like things aren’t as serious as they are, and he doesn’t actually give a fuck about going to hunt down Lacey.
“Yes, thank you, Ky, for that overwhelming display of absolute cunning,” Beau says, putting the plate down in the kitchen and walking past us, outside.
“Where are you going?” Ky asks around a mouthful of pastry. I roll my eyes and follow Beau. The forests are dark and quiet, and he’s already at the edge of the woods. A few feet in, and even if she’s watching for us, she won’t see us shift.
Kyron is grumbling as he tags along, trailing me by a yard. I hit the brush, holding my hands up to keep it from hitting in me in the face before I inhale and shift. My bones shift. The world warps. Colors, already muted by the hour, fade into black, brown, and gray tones. It was weird the first time I shifted and lost the ability to see in a full range of color.
But like this, I can see much more, shapes in stark relief against the shadows. A mouse squeaks at me angrily as my front paws hit the ground, my claws flexing and sinking into the dirt. I lower my nose to stare at it. It’s frozen in place, she, a female. I look away as Kyron trots up next to me, shaking himself all over. He stretches into a low, long bow with a roll of his spine and huffs out a breath.
&nbs
p; Shifting always feels so good, once I’m shifted, anyway. Beau looks back at us, his dark eyes narrowed. He jerks his head. C’mon.
Got it, chief. He takes off at a run, and I follow, Kyron tagging behind me.
It’d be faster to drive down to the lake and hunt from there, but then people would know we were there.
A lot of what we know about the disappearances (almost nothing) leads us to believe that we really want nobody to know that we’re actively searching.
Lacey. Diane. Rose. Just the last three missing women. There are too many more. And maybe now, with that scrap of fabric Beau had found, we’ve got a lead. The lake might hold some more answers for us, as deep and cold as it is. If we can, we’ll walk the entire perimeter tonight. If we press it, we’ll make it around to the far side at least.
The ground sinks under my feet as I run, my muscles stretching and bunching. The air is thick with smells of all kinds, completely natural and normal. Nothing amiss. It’s reassuring. You don’t want to smell something out of place near your home territory, especially with a woman taking up residence in your guest cabin.
Ahead of me, Beau tucks his feet and jumps hard over a downed tree. Kyron and me follow suit, almost at the same time. We run, startling squirrels and rabbits as we go.
I see Kyron turn his head to watch a darting cotton-tail, and Beau growls from up ahead. Ignore it.
It’s not Kyron’s fault that he wants to chase. Some of us have created drives to run after things that are bolting in front of us. Kyron is just that kind of wolf. For me, turned, and not born, I don’t feel the pull as much.
But I do know what it’s like, and I feel bad at him. He lets out a soft, annoyed whine and follows after Beau, running fast to catch up.
For a second I wonder if Kyron will jump at him, snap his teeth at Beau’s neck, in irritation, but he falls into place just behind Beau’s shoulder, pacing along.
The run down to the lake is uneventful, no cars of course, this late most people are in their homes, not going to the lakeshore, and we stick to the brush anyway, only crossing roads when we have to.
