“Imp-Shade,” Stagger said, bringing the struggling Ethan up near his face. “Now I have you again.”
“Don’t hurt him!” I shouted.
The Eld King glanced at me. “She was stronger than Muriel Greaves for sure. The Grim Halberdier nearly failed. But it was all worth it. I will consume the souls of Grunwald. You will revive the Halberdier. You will knit my three components together. Restore Stagger, Anvilback, and Drag-Belly to the form of the Destroyer. And we will leave this world together.”
“You’re not taking him anywhere!” I tried to bend a knee, pull a foot off the ground by sheer force of will. “I won’t let you!”
A roar from just behind me assaulted my ears. Momma Kodi blew past me, brushing so close that if my feet hadn’t been pinned in place, I’d have jumped out of her way. Enraged into ignoring the wounds that had debilitated her before, the bear charged across the pavement and threw herself at Stagger.
The elk tried to meet her charge, but she had built up too much momentum. She knocked him backward and brought a foreleg back to strike him in the face with her claws.
Over Ethan’s protests, the black smoke leapt to protect its master, pinning Kodi’s arm back. She shrieked and tried to pull free by brute force, just like me. And, just like me, she had no hope of overpowering the Leviathan.
Stagger got to his feet and gored Kodi’s exposed underbelly with his antlers. As she screamed and folded over, the Leviathan washed over her body and forced her to the ground next to her husband. Just then, I felt the hand of mine at my shoulder.
“He’s won,” Garrett hissed in my ear. “Kodi and Firehide have lost. All we can do is run. We’ve got to get the boy somehow and get everyone out of here.”
“There’s no escape,” I answered, indicating my feet. “It’s everywhere. The black fog has encircled the town. We’re all trapped.”
Ethan’s cry got my attention. Still being held off the ground, he reached for Kodi and Firehide. The whimpering animals struggled feebly as the darkness pressed them down, covering their entire bodies, rolling over them like tar until they were out of sight.
“No, no, no,” Ethan wailed. “Come back!”
“That’s one set of parental figures gone,” Stagger sang. “After I kill the other pair, there will be nothing left anchoring you to this world.”
“No!” Ethan screamed as Stagger turned toward me and Garrett. The elk lowered his head. With my feet held down by the Leviathan, there was no way I could escape. From Garrett’s panicked yank on my shoulder, I could tell he was similarly trapped. He tried to pull away, get in front of me, anything. I closed my eyes and tried not to imagine the feeling of the curved spike that was about to punch through my chest.
Chapter 37
“What is this insanity?” the whistling voice demanded.
Thinking that Stagger should have killed us by now, I forced myself to open one eye, then another. His antlers were no longer aimed at me. He wasn’t even looking at me.
Between him and me stood four women. My mother and Maggie. Sammie and Rachael.
“You want my daughter?” my mother shrieked. “You’ll have to get through me, beast!”
“Just try it,” Rachael bellowed. “We’re not afraid of you. I’ll snap those things off your head and jam them up your ass.”
Ethan’s hands were pressed to his face, his eyes peeking between his tear-soaked fingers. Beside Stagger, the larger of the two mounds of dark shadow began to flex and writhe. Kodi was fighting again, trying to get free. I looked from the bear, to Ethan, to the women standing up to Stagger. I thought back to the clearing, when Kodi had appeared to attack the Axe-Man. And I understood what I had missed before.
“Unbelievable,” the Eld King snorted. “You’d stand between me and the one who brought the Mother Bear. A foolish place to be.”
I smiled. “No, you’re wrong. So was Cotton. Even the boy and I misunderstood. See, it might have been me whose actions summoned the bear to begin with, but that’s only because I was the first to go into the forest. I just happened to be the one the boy met, just like Muriel. But Mother Bear isn’t just one of us.”
The unmistakable but muffled roar sounded from beneath the suffocating blanket of shadow. Ethan’s head snapped in that direction.
“Remember the clearing?” I said. “Kodi didn’t show up just because I was there. It wasn’t me who brought the bear that time. It was Rachael, putting herself in front of the axe to save her daughter. Whenever the boy saw one of us protect a child, the bear has grown stronger.”
With a guttural sound like I’d never heard before, Kodi tore free of her umbral restraint and stood at her full height. Stagger screamed and spun to meet her. He reared up to match her just as she reached him.
The two titans grappled in the street. Kodi drove forward with her claws and snapped with her teeth, trying to keep her age-old enemy from bringing his lethal antlers into play.
“The fear and hysteria the Axe-Man brought to Grunwald was enough to keep Kodi at bay in 1915,” I shouted, “when madness kept people wrapped up in themselves instead of protecting their children. But we’ve grown stronger since then. We came together and defeated him, just like we’ll defeat you.”
More lights all around the town came on as Stagger amassed the Leviathan’s body to use against Kodi. Now I could see my father, holding up Gordon, who limped on a twisted ankle. Freed from the trapping darkness, people were coming out of their homes.
Stagger enveloped Kodi in a cloak of shadow and pushed her away. “No!” he shrieked. “It is not me that will fall, She-Bear. No more stalling, no more taunting.”
With that, an arm of darkness wrapped around me and Garrett and lifted us both up. We were carried near Ethan. My arms were crushed to my sides by the horrible power. My husband howled in pain at the compression on his damaged arm. I felt a sickening torsion as my shoulders were forced one way, my hips the other. Stagger was wringing us to death.
“Stop that! Let them go!” my mother called. But she was held in place like Kodi and everyone else. Stagger’s burning eyes were on me.
Garrett’s hand closed around mine. “Don’t be afraid, babe,” he said through the agonized clench of his jaw. “I love you.”
“I love you too,” I said. “And I’m not afraid. Ethan will save us.”
I turned my head to see Ethan’s hands drop away from his face in shock. Garrett looked back. Our faces were an inch apart. I could see the dawning understanding in his eyes.
“You’re right,” Garrett said. “Our boy will get us out of this.”
“What are you talking about?” Stagger’s skeletal face betrayed no emotion, but his tone was clearly shaken.
“Yes…” Ethan muttered. “What are you talking about?”
Garrett smiled. “You tell him, babe.”
“I just said it,” I said to Ethan. “Every motherly act that brought the bear… you saw it. Or at least knew about it. You watched me in the woods. You ran to us last night in the storm. You saw Rachael run for Laylah. And…”
I jerked my head toward Garrett. “The first night, Kodi’s call for help failed. But the second night, once the boy had learned to trust my husband, Firehide came.” I turned my head to glare at Stagger. “A little while ago, I said to Kodi, ‘I’m you.’ But I had it backwards. I’m not her. She is me. She’s Muriel. She’s Rachael. She’s everyone that touched Ethan’s heart in the way that he was looking for.”
“That doesn’t make any sense!” Ethan shouted.
“Yes it does!” I replied. “You told me that Kodi and Firehide are both just extensions of the shadow. Don’t you understand why that is? There was only ever one King of the Forest. And that’s you.”
Stagger advanced, increasing the pressure until I felt a sickening pull in my spine. “Hold your blaspheming tongue. I am the rightful King. The boy shows the appropriate fear of my power.”
“No, you’re an invader. And you still don’t understand how any of this works. Or you d
o, but you’re reaching because you know the truth will destroy you. Ethan isn’t afraid of you because you control the Leviathan. You control the Leviathan because Ethan is afraid of you.”
The boy gaped at me. Just then, the dark coil gave a wrenching twist. I cried out. I wasn’t going to be able to take another one of those.
“It’s you, Ethan!” Garrett called. “You have a choice! It’s your power, do you understand? Not his… yours.”
“Just trust me, baby!” I shouted. “Just try!”
Stagger let out a piercing cry and swung his head at us. But he missed. The shadow released us and we dropped straight to the ground just as his antlers cut through the space in the air where we had been hanging. I wasted no time in grabbing Garrett. The two of us dragged each other away from the Eld King.
Ethan stood in the middle of the street, shoulders thrown back, chest sticking out, arms over his head as the shadow abandoned Stagger and gathered around him instead.
“Listen to me now,” Ethan hissed to the gathering darkness. “We’re the same. Me, the shadow, the bear, and the wolf. We’re the Leviathan. I’m the strongest, not Stagger.”
“Child…” Stagger rounded on the boy, scraping at the ground with his hooves. “I don’t know what’s come over you, but I’ll cure you of this delusion of grandeur. How do you think I won control of the shadow to begin with?”
“For one thing, I didn’t know better,” Ethan said. “And besides, you won’t be around to try again.”
Stagger bellowed and charged at Ethan. The boy pointed, and the shadow washed forward and took shape.
Kodi and Firehide rose again, but this time as creatures of pure darkness. They looked like obsidian figures, but they reflected no light from their bodies. Stagger intensified his charge, snorting and lowering his head to barrel through them and strike Ethan down.
Firehide leapt first, catching Stagger by the head and pitching him forward. The wolf’s enraged snarls mixed with the deer’s echoing whistle as they grappled. Stagger lifted his head, bringing the wolf with it, and smashed both into the ground. Firehide’s feet found purchase on the rough asphalt and he pulled to one side.
Momma Kodi threw a massive, body-weight blow into the exposed side of Stagger’s neck. The vertebrae fractured, the elk shrieking in pain as his forelegs collapsed under him. Firehide’s jaws took a solid hold on the deer’s head and slammed it to the ground. Kodi reared up for another blow, crashing into Stagger’s ribcage and twisting the rest of his body down to the sidewalk. Husband and wife pulled in opposite directions, stretching and yanking the withered body of the Eld King. When they collapsed away from one another, each of them had a piece of Stagger in their grip.
The instant the Eld King’s body snapped, Kodi and Firehide dissipated into clouds. The skeleton fell apart and crumbled into powder, releasing another wisp of shadow which joined the rest. The dark shroud over the town lifted as all of the black fog withdrew into Ethan’s body and vanished. His eyes glazed over.
I ran to the boy and caught him just before he hit the ground. Scooping him up into my arms, I held him to me.
“Momma,” he whispered. “Momma.”
“That’s right,” I said. “I can be Momma if you want me to.”
Garrett came to my side, a protective arm around my waist. People were approaching.
“Hey, give them some space,” Sammie said. “It’s been a long night. We can ask them about all this tomorrow.”
A thin, reedy figure approached in my peripheral vision and I turned. It was Ike.
“Better yet,” he ventured. “You could write a tell-all for the Grapevine.”
I shrugged. “We’ll see.”
Everyone else respected Sammie’s request except for Branchett and Mayor Vintner. The portly man approached first, fidgeting with his sweaty hands.
“Mrs. Clegg,” he began, “during my public address today, I may have, ah, revoked your Mayor’s Medal of Honor. Just, um, disregard that. I’ll retract that statement. I hadn’t started the official removal process yet anyway.”
I waved a hand. “Doesn’t matter to me one way or another. I was never the hero here.”
“Beg to differ,” Branchett said. “Mr. and Mrs. Clegg… I hate to say this, but I’ve got to take the boy now.”
I held tighter. “Where will he go?”
“Well, there’s no record of him, so they’re going to have to create one. He may not really be a child, but I don’t think that story is going to fly with the state. Best to do things the right way. Once he’s in the system and has a social security number, I suppose he’ll go into the foster system and be up for adoption.”
I set Ethan down and knelt in front of him. “Would you want that?”
He didn’t hesitate. “More than anything.”
When I stood, I saw the worried look on my mother’s face. I waved a hand and winked. I knew the source of her concern—and this time, I shared it. I turned to my husband.
“Garrett,” I said, “we need to have a serious talk. I know you have a mission to fulfill. The thing is, that mission needs to include me in it. I can’t hold our house together by myself. Especially not one with a child in it. If you can’t handle that, this isn’t going to work.”
He didn’t falter. “I spent so long running away from the pain of what happened to us. I threw myself into that work to get away from it. But all the time, my mission was here. It took a near disaster for me to see how much I’m needed here in Grunwald.” He took a tighter hold around my waist. “I’m not going anywhere.”
He kissed me, and I tried to pretend I didn’t hear the playful cheering and whistling that followed.
Chapter 38
Seven Months Later
“Come on in, children!” Maggie’s voice called from inside the narthex of the little church. “Don’t be late, now!”
Most of the parents left their children at the gate and let them run across the yard into the church, but we elected to walk all the way to the door. I held the boy’s hand for the trip along the cobblestone path. Garrett walked tall and proud on the boy’s other side, his gait smooth on his newly fitted leg. The boy’s other hand held the plastic socket above his prosthetic hook.
We stopped at the step and let the boy walk up into the entryway by himself. He paused just inside the door.
“Pick me up at three?”
“Of course,” I said. “Have fun.”
From behind a plastic card table, Maggie beamed at her new grandson. “It’s his first day of Vacation Bible School,” she said. “How could he not have fun? And speaking of,” she added with that mischievous gleam in her eye, “someone is out enjoying the day instead of manning their post.”
I made a mock production of shock and affront. “You think I’d be sitting in a musty old library instead of seeing my boy off to his first day?”
Maggie laughed and winked at Ethan. “Go ahead and find your name tag, dear, and then go have a seat in the chapel with the other children.”
The boy’s eyes scanned the table before his face broke into a smile. He picked up a sticker, peeled off the backing, and stuck it to his shirt. He started to head into the chapel, stopped, and turned back to look at me one more time.
“I love you, Momma,” he said.
My eyes dropped to the name tag on his shirt. On the white square, printed with Maggie’s block letters in black permanent ink, were the words “Ethan Levi Clegg.”
“I love you too, baby,” I said, hoping he didn’t see the tears in my eyes.
THE END
Acknowledgments
Momma Grizzly is a tribute to mothers, just as my previous two books were thematically centered on fathers. The “mama bear” instinct as a natural phenomenon appears frequently in fiction and has always been a topic of great fascination. I hope you enjoyed my take on it.
In Sheep’s Clothing Books 1 and 2 were initially thought up in 2007. Momma Grizzly is much more recent, with the first drawings and ideas coming together i
n the last couple of years. I like to say that In Sheep’s Clothing was the story I wanted to tell in college, while Momma Grizzly is the story I want to tell now. I owe that to my wife and son, who are the heart and soul of this book.
Thank you for reading. Your support helps the Nexus Nebula Saga continue. My greatest hope is that the payoff at the end will be worth your investment.
Next up is a short story and another book that will close out the In Sheep’s Clothing arc. Then the Saga will take another completely different turn. A generational family curse and a dark origin story await.
Momma Grizzly Page 18
