by Lynn Red
“Listen,” he said, raising his hands defensively. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. I might look lazy and carefree, but I take my job seriously. If I’d seen any of that stuff come across my desk, I would have paid attention to it. Especially if it had the requisite number of signatures. There’s got to be some kind of misunderstanding.”
He seemed genuinely confused, but the woman was just getting more and more ramped up the longer she ranted. “Conspiracy!” she shouted. “There’s a conspiracy to ruin the forest! I bet the alpha is in bed with an oil company, or some kind of industrial farm! Conspiracy!”
She was so mad that little collections of spittle gathered in the corners of her mouth. “You won’t win this time, Erik Danniken! The forest, nature, it isn’t going to allow this to continue! Mark my words. Every day that goes by without a solution is another day this town is closer to dying! Mark my words, Danniken! You won’t be so smug when—”
“You said that twice,” Erik cut in. “Mark my words, you said that twice. And anyway, I don’t know what your deal is, if you’re drunk or mad about getting outbid on a painting, but you need to take a few deep breaths and do a warrior pose or two.”
She lunged, like she was going to take his eyes out if she got anywhere near him, but just as his eyes went yellow, a pair of extremely large hands caught her from behind.
“Problem?” It was Rex Lee, mate to the artist of the hour. Behind him stood Atlas, and three or four other confused, but slightly irritated Jamesburg citizens.
“No problem at all,” Celia said, shooting Rex a nasty look, and then sneering at Erik. “No problem at all. I was just giving Mr. Danniken the courtesy of warning him that something was about to happen to his city, that’s all.”
Erik quirked an eyebrow, but said nothing further.
As abruptly as the bizarre rant started, the tiny woman with the square teeth yanked her arm away from Rex, and stormed out into the night, disappearing into the woods around the museum.
“That was... special.” Erik turned to Izzy, a hand casually resting on her shoulder.
Izzy nodded. “But you know what?” she asked. “All that flashing your eyes did, and how you kept clenching your jaw? I think maybe... well, maybe those yoga pants were a good idea after all.”
The room had emptied out again and the two of them stood alone in the lecture hall. She let her hand fall down to the front of Erik’s stretchy pants and for once, it was Izzy doing the flagrant teasing.
“Do you think we could find a broom closet somewhere?” she asked, stroking him and loving the way his heat burned her palm. “Or... no, that’s too crazy.”
“What is?” Erik asked. He was already tugging at his tank top. “Nothing’s too crazy. You want me to throw you across that table right there?” he pointed his head toward a fold-out card table that had about sixty unused punch cups perched precariously on top. “And don’t say anything you don’t mean because you know that I am awful at reading between the lines.”
Izzy blushed deeply, giggling and thinking that maybe this was the time just to go totally crazy. “This isn’t gonna take long,” she whispered into his ear before she kissed Erik’s neck. “It’s pretty dark outside, huh? Think anyone would notice the alpha going missing for five or ten minutes?”
Erik pushed the fallen brown curls out of Izzy’s face and stared at her for a second. “Will they notice I’m gone? Yeah, maybe. Will they care? Who knows. Do I give a shit?”
“Not for a second,” she finished, grinning in a way that gave his heart a little hit of arrhythmia.
He grabbed her hand, and kissed her so hard, so suddenly, that her head was forced backward. When he finally stopped, Izzy studied his face, breathless for a moment.
“Jamesburg,” Erik said with one of his easy smiles. “Gotta love it.”
-2-
“You’ll pay for this.”
-Orion Samuelsson, One Bad Bear
“What’re you readin’ for?” Mitch Samuelsson slapped the book that Orion was poring over out of his hand, knocking the heavy volume to the ground with a thick thump. “The hell does a bear like you need with a book, anyway?”
Orion narrowed his pale brown eyes. Cocky to the point of comedy, pointlessly smug and so obnoxious about women that Orion wanted to deck him every time they went to a bar, Mitch was the self-proclaimed leader of the Dirty Devils. The Devils were an outlaw motorcycle club that spent at least as much time selling themselves out to various criminals, drug dealers, and politicians as protection as they did on anything to do with motorcycles.
As thugs, the Devils were unmatched. How could you possibly get more dangerous than a gang of biker bears with nothing to lose and nowhere to turn? Blood in, blood out, and more often than not, blood was all the Devils thought about.
And Orion hated it.
With a snap, he grabbed hold of Mitch’s studded leather jacket with the torn off sleeves – he hated torn off sleeves, especially when they ruined a perfectly good piece of leather – and just glared.
“What’re you gonna do, college boy? You gonna try to fight me? Try it, ass stick. Me and the rest of the Devils will stomp your grungy ass into the dirt. I wanted to for as long as I can remember. I own you, boy. You don’t got a choice in the world. You either do what I tell you to do, or I’ll mount your damn paws on a spike.”
He hated Mitch, hated the Devils, torn up sleeves, and Lynyrd Skynyrd, but what he really, really hated? Mitch calling him college boy.
Orion’s slow breathing became an unconscious growl. He tightened his fists so that Mitch’s jacket squeaked as it rubbed together. Then, he took a deep breath and exhaled slowly as he released his grip.
“That’s right, college boy,” Mitch said. “Yeah, that’s about what I expected. Now clean up my boots. All six pairs. And make sure they’re shiny enough that I can see panties under a skirt in ‘em. If I run into somebody wearing a skirt, I mean.”
Mitch shuffled a handful of stuttering, scuffling steps before he turned back around. “I got a job for you later, college boy.”
Rage seethed through Orion’s veins, making his face go hot and then cold. He clenched his fist in time with the pounding of his heart in his ears. “What job?” he growled.
“Just some shit-heel traitor we found, needs takin’ care of.”
“You sure he actually did what you’re saying he did? Remember last time you tried to get me to do your dirty work and it turned out you were just trying to get me to kill the guy who stole one of your old ladies?” A grim smile spread across Orion’s tattooed face. “You remember that, don’t you, Mitch?”
The way the bigger bear said ‘Mitch’ dripped with contempt. A spider web of scars, from one of Mitch’s rages, covered one of Orion’s cheeks.
“Keep mouthing and I’ll cut off an ear.”
Orion answered with a grin. “You could try,” he said. “You’d need a half dozen Devils to hold me down, but you could try.”
Mitch turned his head to the side and spat onto the ground. “You ain’t worth it, college boy. You ain’t worth shit.”
Every muscle in Orion’s body was tense and hard. His tendons taut and ready to explode the second he decided. One split second would be all he needed. But he just couldn’t do it. Exhaling, Orion let his shoulders slacken. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, all right. I’ll keep that in mind.”
Mitch finally turned his back to Orion and shuffled away, slightly dragging the one of his feet that didn’t work quite right. It’d been that way for as long as Orion remembered, and his memory went back a long way.
The other thing he remembered? The way Mitch spent most of his life telling him how useless he was, how he wasn’t worth shit, as he put it so often. It used to get to him, when Mitch said things like that, but lately? Orion had started to see things a little clearer as he rounded the curve that went past age thirty and realized he wasn’t the worthless one.
The Devils, they were the worthless ones. The only family he’d ever
had, and they were ruthless, relentless and completely worthless.
But the most worthless of them all? His dad. The dad who never did much more than slap him, beat him, and sleep around on his mom. The dad that gave him the scar on his face and tried to make him kill.
Oh yeah, and his dad?
Mitch.
*
With boots grudgingly cleaned and his two textbooks packed and hidden, Orion stepped out of the stiff, canvas tent and into the makeshift camp that the Devils set up about sixty miles out from Jamesburg. It was a wild place with no real rules, no real law.
There couldn’t be one, not really.
Jamesburg’s hyena police couldn’t patrol all the woods, and even though they’d been looking for the Devils – and for Mitch – for the better part of twenty years, they never really caught up with the gang. It would be like Elliot Ness trying to find alcohol in a city that was nothing but an endless string of speakeasies.
Except in Jamesburg, Elliot Ness was a hyena, Al Capone was a bear with a patchy gray beard and eye tattoos that marked him as a member of the Samuelsson clan. And the endless string of speakeasies was a vast expanse of forest. And it is damn hard to find bears in a forest if they don’t want to be found.
“Come over here, college boy,” Mitch said, chiding his cub. “Here.”
He plopped a lead pipe into Orion’s hand. The metal was heavy and satisfying to hold, the rough, cold surface scraping against the calluses on his palm. The feel of lead against his hand was familiar. So many times he’d held one of these, so much guilt he held onto now for the things he’d done. This time though? There weren’t going to be any regrets.
“Kill this fucker,” Mitch said plainly. “He tried to rat us out.”
Orion turned his huge head to the left and there, through the wildly overgrown trees, was a small clearing. In that clearing, a man knelt in front of a stump, with his arms chained around it like he was hugging a toilet after a night that went on way too long.
Squeezing his fist around the rod, Orion briefly though about letting his hand lash out. He could almost feel the crunch of lead on bone, and in his imagination, saw Mitch falling backwards, scrabbling against the ground in pain.
But as big and powerful and overwhelming as Orion’s strength was, he was only one bear against a small army. That probably wouldn’t turn out too well, at least not without a little help. He stared at the bound bear for a long second, sizing him up. He wasn’t big, but the scars crisscrossing his lean arms meant he’d probably seen his fair share of fighting.
“You just want me to kill him?” Orion growled. “Just like that? Where’s the fun? Where’s the sport?”
Mitch yawned, openly showing his contempt for his cub. “I figure he needed to be tied down for you to be able to do him in. I mean, if he tries to fight you’ll just end up hurt again, and I ain’t takin’ care of you for another month.”
The last time Orion was hurt, he was run over by a couple of Devils while his father was trying to prove some point about being the clan alpha that didn’t make a whole lot of sense. But, then again, “sense” and “Mitch Samuelsson” were two concepts that never did overlap much.
“Let him up,” Orion said as he began to close the short distance between where he stood and where the man knelt. “I’ll kill him, but not if he’s defenseless.”
Mitch let out a short, grunted laugh. He whistled to two of his enforcers. “Let Ricky up! I guess we gotta watch the two of ‘em dance and kiss a little before we can get back on the road.”
One of the two men lifted his hand up to shield his eyes from the sun and squinted in Orion’s direction. “You jes’ say to let ‘im up? After I spent all that time figuring out how to tie him in the first place?”
“You do it without complainin’ or I’ll let him have you next, Elwood,” Mitch sneered. “And hurry, we gotta get going before too long. One of our labs blew up last night. Jamesburg’s finest’ll be looking our way before long.”
With sagging shoulders, Elwood grumbled something and crouched down to unlatch the chains. His knees popped when he stood, and the prisoner looked up at him, obviously confused.
“Up, Ricky!” Elwood shouted. “Boss wants you on your feet.”
Orion paused and grabbed his father’s shoulder. “Give him a weapon. I don’t care what, just something.”
“Aw, Jesus, can’t we just get this over with?”
“Sure, if you want to go do it yourself. If you’re gonna use me as a murderer you can at least give me the courtesy of a challenge.”
With a clear look of irritation on his face, Mitch motioned for Elwood to again do what Orion was requesting. The only thing around was the length of chain that previously bound this Ricky guy to the stump.
“What am I supposed to do with this?” Ricky said as he took the chain and looked down at it, confused. “Fight someone?”
Elwood tilted his head toward Orion, who was already starting to feel the surge of blood rush through him. At the same time he loved the warmth coursing through his veins that made all his skin prickle and made his hair stand on end, made it grow thicker and harder and longer, and sometimes if the stars aligned just right, his eyes went from pale brown to flaming gold and...
“Fight him?” Ricky’s voice jumped about four octaves. “No! No way, just... just do whatever you’re gonna do, don’t make me try to fight him.”
Mitch looked over at Orion and shrugged. “Your choice, college boy,” he said. “Just deal with him. I don’t want to look at that traitor without a hole in his head.”
Something about the exchange wasn’t hitting Orion right. Not at all. “You’re lying,” he said through gritted teeth. “He didn’t do anything. You’re just testing my loyalty again. That’s it, isn’t it?”
“Does it matter?” Mitch shrugged. “You’ll do it or I’ll kill you, same as always.”
“Have them kill me, you mean,” the muscled-up bear growled, stomping toward the man who would be his victim.
As he crossed the distance, Ricky started first shaking, and then trembling. Seconds later, the much smaller bear’s hands started to vibrate with fear, his lip trembling. “Just do it quick,” he said. “I never did anything wrong! I never sold anyone out!”
“Shut up,” Orion roared, putting on a show. “Shut up and fight me!”
Orion looked to the side, obviously trying to indicate something to the man he faced down. As they circled, Mitch strode up beside them, apparently waiting to watch the spectacle. “Hurry up, college boy,” he said. “We ain’t got much time.”
Orion roared and lunged, easily catching the smaller man by the collar of his torn shirt. He clutched Ricky’s head in a rough headlock, dropping his pipe to the ground.
Blood pounded in Orion’s temples.
Times like this, even when they were set-ups, even when he wasn’t actually going to fight? They made him feel alive. As much as he hated it, there was a reason he was the Devils’ chief enforcer, no matter how much berating Mitch did.
“I’m not going to kill you,” Orion said as quietly as he could.
Ricky grunted in pain as Orion squeezed. “You’re... My neck!”
“I’m gonna let you go, you’re going to whip that chain around and hit the fat one who let you up. Then I’m going to clock the other one...” he groaned, straining to keep the terrified, wriggling Ricky under control. “Anyway, we’re going to get away. You’re going to live. I don’t need any more guilt weighing on me.”
The little guy elbowed Orion in the side, which hurt a little bit, but nowhere near enough to break the hold, or even get him to move very much. “Good,” Orion said. “Make it look more realistic.”
Next, he slammed a knee into Orion’s gut. That one? That knocked some wind out.
“Not that much trying,” Orion said with a bitter laugh. “Are you ready for this?”
“No,” Ricky said. “I’d rather... Ugh! Just kill me!”
“We don’t always get what we want,”
Orion said with a grin. “I’m gonna count to three, then do exactly what I said. Spin right, and whip that chain as hard as you can. Get it?”
Ricky gritted his teeth like he was about to get a dislocated shoulder popped back into place. “Don’t have... any choice,” he hissed
The entire world condensed to one instant, one moment in a vast ocean of time. For years, Orion had been planning to do something exactly like this, but he never thought it would happen. Today was a good day for taking risks, he decided. He didn’t know why, not really. Maybe it was the way Mitch talked to him, maybe it was the almost comical level of rage he felt. Maybe it was being forced to hurt someone who didn’t deserve it.
“One,” Orion whispered. “Be ready. They won’t put up much of a fight if we get the drop on them, but then we have to run.”
Ricky nodded. Sweat beaded on his upper lip. He pulled both his lips into his mouth in a nervous gesture and chewed on the bottom one.
“Two,” Orion said. He shot a glance in Mitch’s direction. His gray, patchy beard blew gently in the wind, and he turned, impatiently, away from the fight.
Nothing is ever going to feel this good again as long as I live, he thought grimly. I’m not much for settling down with a mate and a clutch of cubs, no matter how much I try to pretend I am. But at least I’ll be free while I’m still alive.
Just the fleeting thought of a mate and cubs made Orion pause. But then, it didn’t matter what he wanted. Not really. This was the life that fortune had picked for him. A life in the gang, or a life running away from the gang – there was no place for a nice woman, a pair of cubs. He’d never drag anyone else into his own, private hell.
“Three?” Ricky asked.
“Huh?” Orion said, blinking.
“You stopped at two. So, three. Time to go?”
“Oh.” Orion blinked hard, one last time, clearing his thoughts. “Three.”
With a wild roar, Orion dropped to a knee, grabbed the pipe off the ground and lunged at his father. Ricky did exactly what Orion told him to do: he spun as hard as he could, whipping his chain through the air.
