by Holley Trent
Tamara sat up and threw her covers off, gasping.
He dropped the remote and took a step toward her.
“No! Get back. It’s you. You’re even worse now.”
“I…I don’t understand. I feel better. You shouldn’t be affected by me.”
Why did he affect her in such a way? No woman had ever reacted that way in his presence, but he’d never been around the Shrews before, either. Maybe that was the difference.
He put his hands up and backed away, slowly so as not to molest her further. “Sorry. I was just turning the television off.”
She closed her eyes and blew a breath through her open mouth. “Why is it so cold in here?” she whispered.
Cold? Something had to be wrong with her. He edged to the bed, slowly, trying to draw his energy as close to himself as he could. He imagined he was wrapping it around herself like a cape, and that must have worked because she didn’t shout when he approached the head of the bed.
She was still wearing that jean jacket he’d bitten a hole through, and now pulled the blankets up to her chin.
He pressed a hand against her forehead and drew it back. She was clammy. Weren’t people who were sick supposed to burn hot while claiming to be cold?
“Tam, are you coming down with something?”
“No, we…don’t get…sick.”
Her teeth clicked like castanets, and he could barely make out the words.
It couldn’t have been his bite that did it, could it? While it was probably a lot easier to make a Bear than a Catamount, as those beasts needed to be double infected to get the condition, even if he had turned her, she wouldn’t be exhibiting signs of it just yet. She wouldn’t start to feel the effects until closer to the next full moon. Besides, if she were turning Bear, she’d be burning up.
She behaved more like she had hypothermia than any other illness he knew of.
“Do you want me to call someone, call a doctor?” He eased onto the bed and took her cold hands into his. He rubbed them and blew hot breath onto them.
She shook her head. “No. D-don’t call Doc.”
Her lips were blue. Her goddamned lips were blue, and she dared shake her head?
“Y-you call Doc, and y-you’ll ne-never get Gene.”
There had to be another way. She needed medical help. His plan could wait.
“You’re freezing,” he said. He crawled onto the bed beside her and pulled her into his arms.
Any other time, she would have punched his nose or pushed him away, but she was limp. Shaking.
He pulled the covers up over them both, although he was burning up from his workout and dressed in long pants.
He’d lend her his warmth for as long as she needed it if it’d make a difference. He had plenty to spare, and somehow this had to be his fault.
Her breathing pattern steadied, evened out so her inhales were deeper, and exhales longer.
“There you go.” Instinctively, he rubbed his cheek over her satiny hair and chafed her back with his palms. “I think you’re warming up already.”
He tuned into the chattering of her teeth, and listened until the clacking slowed, and then stopped.
“This feels like when I was sixteen and had strep,” she said in a tired voice.
“When’s the last time you were sick?”
“Years ago, during the SHREW study. While it was going on, I was sick all of the time because of the bombardment to my immune system. Things were touch and go a few times, and I didn’t know why. Swine flu. Pneumonia. Meningitis. Anything awful I could pick up, I did.”
“That’s terrible.”
“Oh, I got off light compared to what the other Shrews went through. I was the last one left, so they were able to do some corrective things for me they couldn’t do with the earlier study victims.”
He opened his mouth to ask more, to prod for details, but it seemed insensitive. All he knew about the Shrews’ ordeal from second-hand information was that they were recruited into a drug research study almost three years ago. They were told the drug was supposed to minimize the mental response to stress, but really, it was a behavior modifier. The drug was under-tested, and had some side effects the company hadn’t anticipated.
Dana Slade’s private investigation company was called Shrew & Company because it was her way of thumbing her nose at that corporation. The drug trial their “loved ones” had referred them to was really a last-ditch effort to make them sweeter.
Bryan could understand the temptation. Really he could, but what he didn’t understand was why any man would want to stay with a woman he thought he needed to control.
Tamara was a huge pain in the ass, but to some man, she’d be worth the work. Obviously not the coward who’d referred her. Karma had special gifts for people like him.
“You’re growling,” Tamara said.
Bryan cleared his throat. “Was I?” He let his hand resume its circuit up and down her spine. “You’re probably mistaken, and it was my stomach.”
“I know the difference between a growl and a gurgle.”
There it went again. His bear acting on its own accord. What did the furry beast want that Bryan wasn’t letting him have, besides a romp in the woods?
This woman? This damned, frustrating woman?
Couldn’t be.
“You’re growling again.”
Fuck you, bear.
“Hunger, Tamara. I just ran for an hour and a half. I’m going to order some food once I’m sure your body temperature is coming back up.”
“Okay,” she whispered, conceding a bit too willingly.
If it were possible, her body melted into his a bit more, as if his heat were making her pliant.
He caught himself wrapping an arm around her waist to steal that tiny sliver of space that was left between them.
He told himself it was all about the warmth, but his bear said, “Whatever you need to tell yourself, fool.”
___
Joseph Ursu gave his wife a frantic shake, repeating for the third time, “Katrina. Katrina! Get up. We have to go.”
“Go where?”
“To the States.”
“God, for what?” She rolled over, putting her back to him and pulling the bedclothes up to her shoulders. “More rogue Coyote problems? You’re retired. You don’t take those calls anymore.”
“This is not about work. This is about Tamara.”
“Tamara? What about her?”
Katrina was unmoved, and actually yawned and patted her mouth. After all, Tamara could take care of herself. She was bullet resistant, and thank God.
“She’s working with a Bear, Katrina. Capital-B Bear.”
Katrina rolled onto her back and forced her eyes open. “What?”
“One-on-one with a Bear. She called me earlier. She’s working on a case and asked me about their quirks.”
“That shouldn’t bother her. Made-Bears shouldn’t come on her radar one way or the other.” Although her voice was sure, steady, Katrina’s eyes had gone a bit wide.
“Not made. A born-Bear. This close to the full moon’s end, and she knew something was off, just like she used to with us.”
Now Katrina sat up and pushed the covers down to her knees, already slinging her long legs over the side of the bed. “It’s going to be like it was with my mother all over again,” she said from inside their cavernous walk-in closet.
Sighing, Joseph pushed to standing and shuffled toward the dresser. He’d waited hours, hoping the feeling in his gut was just usual fatherly nerves—his overprotectiveness for a child who should have been strong, who should have been a Bear, but instead lacked the genetic trigger. In a family with four Bears, she was the mundane. The Marilyn of The Munsters. While she had the genetic propensity to be a Bear, like Katrina’s mother, Tamara just wasn’t.
As far as Joseph had known, there were very few born-Bears in the part of the country Tamara lived in. He’d done the research, and happily signed the mortgage check each month for Tamar
a’s little condo, thinking she’d never cross paths with a born-Bear, especially not so close to a full moon. They tended to keep to the woods then.
What must she be feeling right now? Would she nearly slip away like Katrina’s mother had? Her mother’s body hadn’t known what to do with the signals from her brain—the ones telling her to take her mate. All those hormones swirled and poisoned her, finally laying her flat out until some foolish sucker came along willing to stir her. It was like Sleeping Beauty, except instead of a prince waking her with true love’s kiss, some lonely Were-bear with nothing to lose snuck into her hospital room and gave her shoulder a nip and a lick.
She’d woken and slapped the shit out of him the moment she found her bearings.
They were married fifty-five years.
Joseph threaded his legs into his slacks and watched his wife toss clothes into her open suitcase. He knew she was panicked because she wasn’t even bothering to fold. Katrina was unerringly meticulous about her appearance until her mama bear trigger got pulled. Then, she couldn’t get to her grown kids fast enough.
“Maybe she’ll be okay,” Katrina said. “Maybe her mutations will keep her from slipping under.”
“If you really thought that, you wouldn’t be packing.”
Katrina’s shoulders fell and she shook her head. “We should have told her. All those years, sending her away on the nights we shifted, and we could have just told her what was happening. She always thought we were off having great fun with Soren and Peter, and you did nothing to dispel that notion.”
“Little white lies. They were necessary. Remember, your mother was the one who told us to wait.”
“I don’t remember that.”
“Of course you don’t. Well, here we have a twenty-four-year-old daughter who doesn’t know she’s got Bear parents and Bear brothers, and the client she’s working with right now is probably going insane around her without knowing why.”
Katrina, with one knee on her bulging suitcase, stopped zipping. “They’re dangerous to each other. At least my father knew what my mother was, even if she didn’t.”
Joseph turned his hands over and studied the indentation in his left ring finger for a moment. He’d taken his wedding band off before the shift and had forgotten to put it back on.
He’d hoped his daughter would be lucky, and that in spite of her preternatural sensitivities as a child, she’d be unaffected by those dormant genes that made her Bear, but not Bear. He’d hoped she’d just be human.
Normal.
No such luck.
CHAPTER SIX
Tamara slid a little farther down the passenger seat, and pressed her dark sunglasses up her nose. She needed to close her eyes for just a minute. She’d slept at least ten hours the night before, curled into Bryan’s spicy embrace, but somehow the sleep hadn’t been restful.
Her dreams were full of Bears and guns and knives, and when she wasn’t thinking of fighting and espionage, her dream-self wondered who took the covers away. Why was it so cold?
Bryan gave her a nudge across his pickup truck’s center console. “Tam.”
“Hmm?”
“You need a cup of coffee or something? I need you alert.”
“I’m fine,” she said, eyelids already drooping. “When he comes out, I’ll be ready.”
“You remember the plan?”
“Mm-hmm.” Something about distracting the guy? Was that it, or was that the plan they’d scrapped before setting out? Her brain was like cotton, and she could hardly keep all the details straight. She felt quite like some of her intelligence had been sloughed off onto Bryan’s dirty truck floor, and the sensation was highly unfamiliar. All the Shrews were calculating, quick thinkers, and had been even before they got so indelicately screwed.
Dana had been a Durham PD detective. Sarah had been a Marine. Astrid had been a law student, and might have been a damned tenacious judge someday if she hadn’t entered the study. Maria had been a CPS worker, and had actually been stabbed once and choked twice by the parents of some of her charges. She may have been a small woman, but she knew how to fight back, although violence was always her last resort.
“I’m going to get you that coffee,” Bryan said.
Before she could formulate the words to tell him not to bother, he slammed the door closed.
She sighed and drew her phone out of her jean jacket pocket, figuring she’d check in with the Shrews while she had a moment.
She input the appropriate string of characters into a text message and sent it to Dana’s unpublicized phone number. In just a few letters and numbers, she’d explained that she was fine, that Dana shouldn’t expect her any time soon, and that in case of emergency, she was within fifty miles of at least one Shrew.
Normally, the crew was based out of Durham, but ever since the shit with the Bears hit the fan, the little team had been spending more and more time in the mountains, playing glorified bodyguards for the other shapeshifter groups. The five women would have generally cycled in and out, but as they were somewhat short-staffed with Sarah being on light duty, Tamara was picking up the slack.
She wanted so badly to go home to her condo and have real, honest-to-God weekends again. She wanted to soak in a bathtub familiar to her, watch her own television, and sleep on her own pillows. This transience didn’t suit her at all in the people might have expected of a Shrew.
No, Tamara wanted some order in her life. That’s the way she’d been raised, with lots of routine. Even when Tată uprooted them from one country to the next, he worked magic and made the transitions seamless.
Ever since Sarah and Dana found themselves in the middle of the Were-war, Tamara’s life had been anything but organized.
Her phone vibrated in her palm, and she read the simple return code. 65. Sixty-five meant Ok.
Bryan returned as she was tucking her phone to her pocket. He handed her a very large coffee without a word, and settled low behind the driver’s seat, adjusting the backrest about thirty degrees downward.
She sipped and let her face pull into a grimace. “Did you leave any sugar for the rest of the customers?”
“I figured between the caffeine and the sugar, you’d be wired for a bit. Once we’re done with this, we’ll go get a good meal into you. Keep your blood sugar up.”
“You purporting to know what ails me?” She took another sip, and this time, she barely registered the sweetness on her tongue. That first sip had been so hot she’d probably swallowed a few taste buds along with it.
“No, but you forget I have the hearing of a true bear, even when I’m wearing this particular body. Heard you on the phone with your doc this morning.”
“Rude.”
He raised his shoulders in the tiniest shrug before lacing his fingers together behind his head. “If it were private, you would have left the room. She doesn’t know what’s wrong with you, does she?”
It was hard to be indignant, even with the slight tone of accusation in his voice. She was too tired to argue. “No, she doesn’t, but what kind of doctor would she be if she tried to make diagnoses over the phone?”
The Shrews all shared a doctor. Doc had been with them since their time in the hospital all those years ago, and followed them during their stints in rehab. While she wasn’t directly associated with the study, it would have been impossible for any doctor in the Triangle area to not have caught wind of the fall-out from it. Dozens of women changed or near dead, all with one thing in common.
She’d more or less adopted Dana and the rest, made their wellness her mission. It was hard work, but they fed her curiosity. They were sort of her guinea pigs in a way, considering her copious notes and thorough, frequent examinations, but her heart was in the right place.
She was a scientist motivated by discovery, not profit, and she really took that Do no harm credo to heart.
“Good point,” Bryan said.
Tamara flicked the lid off her coffee cup and stowed it on the dashboard. “She wanted me to drive t
o Patrick’s so she could meet me there and examine me, but it’ll have to wait.”
“Hmm. Guess that means all the Shrews know where you are and what you’re doing.”
“Sorry. Good news for you is they’re giving me some space for the moment.” She took a long sip of her coffee and stared at the back of the building they’d parked behind. Bryan had pulled his truck beside the warehouse-turned-strip club’s loading dock to keep an eye on the back door. As the day was still somewhat young, the only people in the club at the moment were brazen lunchtime regulars, a couple of B-rate exotic dancers, and the fulltime kitchen staff.
Soon, though, the rest of the house staff would start filtering into the lot, starting with the bouncers.
That’s whom Bryan was watching for. If he and Tamara were lucky, the bouncers wouldn’t pick this day to carpool, because they were only after one of them.
“How much force am I going to need to use on this guy?” she asked.
All of the Shrews carried weapons. A knife at the very least, and usually a gun. Most people, when seeing a confident woman with a weapon, backed down and she almost never had to squeeze her trigger or take a swipe with her knife.
But, Bears were unpredictable, and Bryan wanted there to be as little bloodshed as possible.
Bryan had no idea how strong she actually was. If he knew, he’d insist she use the knife instead of her fists. Her gun was back at the hotel in her bag. Breaking yet another Shrew rule by allowing her firearm out of her sight. This one rule she felt guilty about breaking, but she got a wild thrill from using her fists and feet. As a child, her brothers had always hovered over her. Defended her. Being able to fight her own battles, and even pick a few, gave her a sense of empowerment that was almost worth the ordeal she’d gone through to get it.
“Depends on how much he’s had to drink and smoke today,” Bryan said. “I picked him first because he’s most likely to run his mouth and spread news if one of the other lieutenants goes missing, and if he vanishes for a while, no one will think twice about it. He goes on benders all the time, so it’ll be a few days before people get suspicious.”
They sat in quiet for forty minutes, which was long enough for the lunch lechers to head back to work or whatever they did on weekdays that allowed for a midday excursion to a titty bar.
