by Red, Lynn
"It sounds silly when you put it that way, but... No, no, it doesn't matter. None of this is any of your business, Danniken," Branson said. "Your job is to help us find this dangerous criminal, not to try to make me feel stupid."
"You do a pretty good job of that on your own," Erik fired back. That time, at least one of the suits broke character and might have sorta-kinda-almost chuckled until boss man shot him a nasty glare.
Outside the room, something was shuffling around in the corridor. Or, rather, it sounded like more than one something. Jamie turned to look back, curious as to who among Jamesburg's population would bother coming here this early. Sure, it was a quarter past nine, but in Jamesburg terms, the day didn't really get going until about noon. A second later, she heard a groan and then a shuffle.
This is gonna be good.
"Er...ik!" came a booming voice from right outside the door. "Are... in there?"
Atlas's bass carried through the heavy oaken doors. Immediately, everyone who knew him, started laughing, almost uncontrollably. Erik furrowed his brow and looked back toward the door. "Er, not now, Atlas!" he yelled back. "Sorry," he turned to Branson. "It's just my... uh, just my brother. He's a little soft-headed, but sweet as can be."
"E...rik! Need you... something?"
"Is he asking if I need something," Erik turned to the Jamesburg side of the table. "Or telling me that he needs something from me?" Everyone shrugged, almost in unison, except for Duggan, who had somehow begun to snore again.
"I dunno," Jamie said, "but he's not very patient. And he isn't very shy or modest either." She wondered if any of them had seen his traffic directing uniform. From the confusion on their faces, she thought probably not. "Oh boy," she said under her breath. "Oh... boy."
The doorknob turned, and before Erik could yell that he'd be there in a second, it swung open, and in walked Atlas, in all his slightly-green, stitched-up glory. And just as expected, he was decked out in his workday best - the purple sash, the big plastic sheriff's badge, and his giant, swinging dork.
Which was still covered in glitter.
Jamie had never in her life seen an entire room full of men get so wide eyed at the same time.
"Yes, uh, like I said," Erik was laughing nervously as he quickly crossed the room. "I'm sorry, my brother isn't exactly—"
"Bro...ther?" Atlas laughed so hard that his belly began to shake, and his glitter stick helicoptered slightly. "You not... brother! Funny Erik," the giant patted the town alpha on top of the head. "No, I need..." he paused for a very long time. If not familiar with Atlas, you'd think he'd just fallen into a standing stupor, but when he was trying to remember a word, he just stared blankly ahead, often drooling.
"Oh! Stop sign!" he announced, triumphantly. "Lost... one?"
Erik squeezed the bridge of his nose. "Okay. Yep, okay, I can get you a stop sign."
Smiling, the giant skipped away, a tendril of drool following behind him.
"Welcome to Jamesburg," he said as he turned back to the crowd. "But then again, if you know as much as you're supposed to, none of this is a surprise, is it?"
Branson's eyes were still wide as beach balls. "Werewolves, bears, witches, magicians, I've encountered every last one of them," he said. "But... that?"
"That," Erik said, "is a he. And is a good friend of mine. And if you're going to find your magic bear man, you better get to work."
"Yeah," Branson said, his voice hollow and slightly amazed. "Yeah, I guess I should. All right boys, let’s... shit, let’s go, I guess."
As soon as the room was emptied of suits, Erik turned back to his council with a smile. "That's how you handle government agents," he said. "You blow their fuckin' minds. But now we got work to do. Jamie, you need to find your boyfriend before they do, and the rest of you need to start chopping wood."
Jamie and Izzy exchanged a glance and then both looked at Erik, confused. "I made a promise," he said. "I told him I'd take care of all those old people, and if nothing else, I'm not a liar. Quit staring at me and get busy!"
As they were filing out, almost as confused as Branson had been, Izzy turned to Jamie and grabbed her sleeve. "It's been a long time since I thought this, but holy hell that was hot."
Jamie snickered slightly. "You know, I always make fun of Erik for having the approximate level of subtlety as a locomotive, but that?"
"Hell," Izzy said. "For Erik, what just happened was almost as subtle as a ballet."
"Truly," Jamie said with another snorted laugh. "As delicate as a daisy fallen upon a fresh drift of snow, our Erik."
Both girls cracked up - the first time Izzy had in about two and a half months, which was incredible, even though she was slightly afraid she was going to pee a little.
"What?" Erik snapped, turning to his two favorite women. "What's so funny?"
"Oh, it was nothing." Izzy's voice was still slightly raspy from how hard she'd been laughing. "Just that we expected you to rip his head off instead of actually, you know, tricking him. That was a sight I never thought I'd behold, dear love."
"Yeah, well," he shot off one of his smug grins, which went super well with the yoga pants. "I'm full of surprises, what can I say? But Jamie - you got some way of finding him, right? Whatever that weird vampire echolocation trick is? That's a real thing, right?"
Pursing her lips, Jamie started shaking her head. "Twenty years around a guy and... Sure, Erik. I'm not going to try and debate the finer points of vampirism, or of being a bat, with you, but I'll do my best to find him. But, what's the rush? I mean, you got rid of Branson, didn't you?"
It was Erik's turn to laugh. "I've seen television, Jamie. Those types? They never take defeat easy. You find Ryan, we'll do the next best thing to getting a budget and giving these people a bunch of money. We'll chop wood and act like we care."
She knew from the way he spoke that Erik didn't mean to sound quite as obnoxiously callused as he did, but she had to jab him anyway. "Act like we care? Isn't that a little too cool for school even for an alpha werewolf?"
"Er," Erik started. "I didn't mean that, I meant, that we were going to do actions, you know, that showed we cared. Not that I don't care, but I'm trying to act like it." He was getting flustered, which was always a lot of fun. "Ugh, what I mean is, we're going to let our actions show how much we care. And—"
Jamie started snorting again, Izzy was next. With her long, delicate fingers, Jamie smoothed Erik's lapel and patted his chest. "You're a good egg, Erik Danniken," she said. "No matter how hard you try to act like you're not. All right, I'll find my bear. Oh," she grabbed him as he started to turn. "What about West and Elena? They've got tons of produce. I’m sure they’ve got a bunch of milk, eggs, whatever else could be useful, too."
"Good thought," Izzy said, "I'll drop Erik off to chop wood or rub old people’s feet, and I'll go talk to them. Also, Erik?” she turned to her mate. “Go wait for me in the minivan. I've got about fifteen seconds of girl talk."
With a heavy sigh, Erik turned to the door and started for his newly acquired Honda Odyssey. "He acts like he hates it," Izzy said as she watched him leave. "But the other day I caught him adjusting the baby seat. Son of a bitch even had a level out there because he said he didn't trust the bubble in 'some plastic shit from who-knows-where.'"
"He's gonna make a great dad, you know," Jamie said, smiling. "I can't wait to see what it'll look like when he starts coaching little league or something, and takes to those shorts. You know, the red ones with the snap-up waist band?"
"Oh God, coach shorts. Yeah, and he'll wear a whistle everywhere."
Izzy and Jamie each threw an arm around the others shoulder and leaned in until their foreheads touched. "Thanks," Jamie said softly.
"For what?"
"For being the best friend a freak show like me has ever had? Isn't that enough? I'm closer to you three years on than I've ever been to anyone."
Izzy laughed. "We're all freak shows, Jamie," she said. "And anyway, yours looks damn good on you.
Mine? Mine's all inside and bubbly and boiling, like one of Jenga's potions. Anyway, if Erik's a good egg, that bear of yours is free-range, cage-free organic. Don't let a guy like that get away. I say this as a warning from someone who received a limerick that involved the words "porking your mate" and "buy a pig" in it as some kind of strange attempt at romance. Did you have anything to do with that?"
Jamie smiled, warmly, and felt a little trickle of red tickle her cheek. "Oh my God, he did not," she said.
Izzy lifted one eyebrow and nodded. "He's Erik," Izzy said. "I took it as an earnest attempt."
"I... can't believe he actually did that. But no, no, I won't let him get away. Or at least I'm going to try," she said. "Although I'm not exactly sure what Erik was talking about with the echolocation thing. Does he think if I drink some blood outta somebody that I can magically track them or something?"
"He might," she said. "Or he might just have a lot of faith in you and not be able to articulate it. I gotta go. Good luck, girly."
Swallowing back the lump that had for some reason appeared in her throat, Jamie nodded. "Bear hunt," she said to herself. "Just like Teddy Roosevelt."
-16-
“All I can think right now is that I really wish I could find a cow, and get a long, long drink.”
-Jamie
The vast majority of the day passed for Jamie without any sort of event to take her attention at all. She swooped here and there, bobbing up and down, and trying to think of where she might find her erstwhile, beautiful, rugged bear. The morning chill turned shortly to midday warmth, and although she hadn't slept much, or eaten anything in the last twenty-four hours - which was normally a recipe for utter disaster in Jamie Ampton's world - she hadn't really thought much about it, in favor of letting every single thought she had be dominated by Ryan.
At least she had the views.
It never failed to amaze Jamie, the way the world looked as she swooped to and fro, lazily watching the sun begin its descent along horizon. As the day wore on, she started to worry - not about Ryan, particularly, but that she had no way at all to find him.
One thing about Erik's slightly-offensive assumption that she could magically track those with whom she'd shared an intimate vampire moment was that she was able to get a vague sense when one of them was near. Problem is that it didn't exactly work like a Lo-Jack. She had to find the person or, well, cow, and then she could feel a little tingle in her chest, a flutter in her nose when they were near.
If she had no clue at all where to hunt them down, that didn't do a whole lot of good. Anything would be good. Any kind of direction or clue. Any kind of idea, which she was totally, completely lacking.
Teddy Roosevelt never saw the world like this, Jamie thought as the cold air of looming dusk whipped across the thin membranes of her wings. If he did, there probably wouldn't be much of anything left alive. He probably could have found Bigfoot.
The night creatures began to make themselves known. Fireflies, with their flickering tail lights, which by the way, make a sound like a light switch going off and on, but only if you have ears like Jamie's. To her, the night time was a chorus of songs, overlapping and intertwining, that become a symphony of chaos with a pattern all its own.
Along the Greater James River she silently swung, her ears filled with the click-clack of crawdad claws, the flapping of jumping trout readying themselves for a journey away from the creeping cold, and more than anything, the increasingly intent song of bullfrogs from the marshy banks that edged up to the forest she'd known for most of her life.
She dipped below the tree-line, pulling back her wings and zooming through the branches. The Douglas fir needles brushing her skin reminded her of the tender caresses Ryan gave her when they stole time away. She thought about the one time they'd been able to get alone for long enough for her to touch him the same way, to act out those dreams she'd had. She wanted it again - needed it again - needed to feel his fingers, taste his lips.
Not long, we'll be together again. Keep focused, keep from thinking about all that, she told herself. Keep focused and look. He can't be too far away. Bears don't like getting too far from home, even if there is someone after him.
Problem is, finding someone without any clue where they might be is a hell of a lot harder than—
"Wait!" Jamie said, snapping to attention as a thought occurred. "They'd know where he went. Boston, Cora, Marmite, someone must know where he went. Or at least have more of a clue than I do."
She dove shortly and then opened her wings, catching a gust and shooting back up into the sky. She passed in front of the moon, staring momentarily into the shimmering, samite-like light, letting the cool night bathe her skin the way she wished for Ryan's kisses to do. She turned her head west, and squinted to find the hidden compound.
The trail of moonlight shimmering over the tops of the pines led from where she flapped, bobbing up and down in the night, all the way to where she hoped she'd find some answers. And if nothing else, I can see what Erik's done. I can't believe he's actually putting himself out like this, she thought. But damn if he doesn't always come through when it matters most.
In the distance, about thirty miles from where she was, she could pick up vague sounds through the forest cacophony, if she tilted her head and focused just right. Something was going on down there, so if nothing else, she was going to get a story.
*
"You find him?" Erik called out as Jamie patted to a stop behind him, trotting until her momentum slowed. Erik was shirtless, of course, and pounding away on the side of one of the shacks.
"No," she said. "Looking still, that's why I'm here. Are you... patching a hole?"
"Nope," Erik said with a grunt of effort. "Replacing studs. This roof collapsed, and, er, well, it's a good thing we know them."
Looking past the straining alpha, Jamie caught a glimpse of Atlas and Sara holding the entire roof of the small house, high enough in the air for Erik to get the studs back in place. Ash Morgan, Rex Lee, and West, three of Jamesburg's biggest bears, were cramming support beams between the floor and the ceiling, while Lilah Lee corralled a bunch of screeching pups, kits and cubs.
"Town's all here, huh?" Jamie asked, slightly incredulous. "Holy shit, is that Leon?"
Sure enough, the town drunk-cum-salamander was hauling buckets of water up from a well and pouring them into massive barrels near each dwelling place.
"Jamie," the salamander nodded, suspiciously sober. "Evenin'."
"Er, hey Leon," she said, before turning back to Erik. "What the hell did you do? How did... you didn't threaten to cancel Christmas again, did you?"
"No," he said, as he delivered a final mallet blow that sunk a stud right into place. "Thanksgiving this time."
"Ha-ha," Jamie mocked him. "But seriously, how did you convince all these people to come out here? It's like one of those town dances we used to have before—"
"Heya, heya, heya, heya, heya," Jamie heard. The voices came in increasing pitch, and when she wheeled around, she noticed that the Duncans, Jamesburg's normally-reclusive corgi family, had even showed up. In front was the father, behind him, their mother, and then their three pups in, of course, sequential order. Each of them carried some kind of animal - chicken, lamb, one of them even had a goat.
"Simon, Sammy, Simone, Sandra and," Jamie bit her lip, trying to remember the name of the smallest of them. "Don't tell me. Shakira? No... Samson! Yes! I got you all, right?"
Simon, the father, grinned. "Nailed it! Love to chat, but gotta get these animals back to their pens."
They went on their way and as soon as the diminutive family was out of earshot, Jamie turned to Erik, excitedly saying, "The corgis are herding animals. Even you have to appreciate that."
"It is funny for short people to try and be so big, isn't it?" he said, grinning broadly and obviously having absolutely no idea that was either offensive, stupid, or both. "They're cute."
Jamie heaved a sigh. "Okay, well, anyway, I'm going to ask
around and see if anyone's heard from Ryan or knows where he might've gone. You keep, you know, rebuilding an entire community with your bare hands."
In the distance, as she stepped out the hole in the wall that Erik was surgically repairing, Jamie heard a great heaving sound, followed by creaking wood, and a huge crash. After all that, a cheer rose up. "One more down!" Professor Duggan huffled up to Jamie, red-faced and smiling. "And they even have proper permits for all this construction! Nothing could be more wonderful!"
She just shook her head and crossed the packed-dirt driveway that made a path through the compound. Jamie was daydreaming, partially about the amazing turnaround that Erik's soul had apparently taken, but also about Ryan, where he could be, how much she'd give to feel his hands against her skin, his arms around her shoulders, when a rattling voice broke her concentration.
"Simply amazing," came a weak, soft, and obviously ancient voice. It was the sort of voice that never raises, but whenever it speaks, everyone in ear shot quiets to hear. "This work. It's all so... amazing."
Turning to face a small, but sturdy-looking house, Jamie saw the old man Ryan had pointed out to her from a distance. He was holding a long-stemmed pipe with a crooked finger, and wearing a loose-fitting bathrobe which Jamie identified a few seconds later as a silk smoking jacket, along with Hugh Heffner-like pajama bottoms, and red slippers embroidered with golden anchors on the toes.
He took a draw off his pipe, and blew out three smoke rings before stretching his mouth into a thin smile. "Welcome back," he said. "Though we never met, I feel like we did."
Jamie quirked one of her eyebrows, and searched her memory for his name. She decided to buy some time. "I'm Jamie—"
"Ampton," he said in his paper-thin voice. "Oh, I know, everyone knows. Ryan, he hasn't been well for a long time. Sick, you see, his heart."
"He is?" Jamie asked, her jaw dropping. "He has heart problems? I—"
