by Faith Hunter
Emmett snorted, not impressed with vamp healers. He muttered under his breath something insulting about suckheads, weres, and witches in his county. I glanced at Molly, an earth witch, who ignored him, so I ignored the comment too, thinking instead about the logistics of getting a Mercy Blade here to heal the injured couple. I didn’t know if there was a Mercy Blade in North Carolina or Tennessee, but I’d find one somewhere. I turned my attention to other logistics.
“How far”—I paused, uncertain, trying to recall the distance from a long-ago vacation—“is it from here to the Mississippi River?” The last time I saw a grindylow was on a bayou that emptied into the Mississippi, west of New
Orleans. And New Orleans was the birthplace of everything that had happened to me for the last six months, most of it bad. I wanted to know how the green-skinned, semiaquatic grindy got from there to here. Sure as heck not on a Harley.
“It’s four hundred miles from Knoxville to Memphis,” Dave said, his voice raspy and soft, in contrast to Mike’s booming volume. Memphis was a Mississippi port city, and the most direct route overland to the river, but the water-loving grindy hadn’t taken an overland route.
I indicated a group of playboat kayakers coasting in after a run on the Upper Pigeon. The small, human-teenager-sized grindy would likely need as much water as a playboat. “Is it possible to paddle from the Mississippi to here, if you only count water big enough to handle something that size, and you prefer cold water, rocks, and privacy?” I looked around at the numbers of boaters. “Usually.”
The guides both looked northwest, downstream. Dave squinted, shading his blue eyes with a hand, and said, “If you can jump dams and paddle a lot of miles of waterway, all upstream,” he paused to draw in air, and my eyes slid to the scars on his throat. They looked like the result of a down and dirty tracheotomy, though I’d never asked how he came by them. “Then yes. The Pigeon goes west to Knoxville, eventually joins into the French Broad and heads south into northern Alabama. It empties into the Tennessee River, which empties into the Miss.”
Mike added, “I know people who’ve paddled the distance downstream, but it’s a hell of a long paddle even moving with the current. I don’t know anyone who’s paddled it upstream.”
I didn’t know what the grindy’s speed was, or if it could handle long distances, or upstream currents. Which might mean that the grindy had hitched a ride on boats, making it a once-mythical supernat who was comfy with modern transportation. I smiled sourly. I didn’t know much about grindys, and had been hoping to keep it that way. But the grindy wasn’t my problem. The wolves were.
I looked up and out, seeing the gorge where the rafting businesses were nestled in the little town of Hartford, Tennessee. Just in visual distance, there were thousands of square acres where wolves could run and hunt and never be seen by a human. If I was wolf-hunting in Beast form, it would take a long time to cover this much territory. Wolves liked to run long distances. Beast wasn’t fond of it, wasn’t built for it, and even with humans in danger, she would fight me every step of the way. Beast is not dog, she murmured into my mind, sounding sleepy. Do not hunt nose to ground. I scowled and walked from the water, its tinkling quickly muted by the sound of nearby Interstate 40, back toward Fang.
The wind changed and I caught a scent of wolf away from the water. On the far side of the road, something gleamed in the bright sun. Silver-tipped wood. It was mine. I sometimes lost stakes in the heat of battle, easy for an enemy to take. I bent and picked up the sterling-silver-tipped ash-wood stake.
Deep inside, my Beast hissed with displeasure and showed killing teeth. The wolves had left me a personal message and challenge. I looked around. No one except Molly had seen me pick up the stake. She watched with a quizzical expression as I sniffed along its length, smelling wolf, sweat, and motor oil, something spicy like Mexican food, and cheap liquor. No help here. No scent-clue jumping out and saying, “The wolves stayed there, in that hotel, in that town, last night.” Giving her a small shrug, I tucked the stake into a belt loop.
Boots crunching on gravel, I walked back to the parking lot of Rapid Expeditions, the mom-and-pop rafting and kayak business owned by Dave Crawford. Molly and I sat on the old church bench in front of the shop and accepted Cokes from Dave, pulled from an icy cooler. Molly sipped delicately, tucking a strand of bright red hair behind an ear. She’d always been a lady, contrasting to my motorcycle mama image. I popped the top and drank deeply before rolling the can over my forehead for the chill. It was hot for September. Global climate change and all that.
Dave lounged in the middle of the church bench, propping one bare foot on the old wood. He was lithe as a snake, solid muscle, and bare-chested in the heat, water-wicking pants hanging from hips to knees, exposing more surgical scars. His dog, Josie, leaped up and curled beside him, her eyes on me and her ears back. The mutt was gentle and sweet, but she didn’t like the way I smelled and wanted to make sure I knew it.
Mike pulled hard on his Coke, standing in the sun with one fist on a hip, looking around as if expecting the wolves to reappear any moment. “You want to see the other sites?” he asked, gesturing to the river behind the shop. “I can take you down anything that’ll take a two-man raft or ducky. If you paddle, Dave can get you into any tight areas in a hard boat.” He pronounced it as if it were one word, hardboat.
I wasn’t familiar with the lingo, but hard boats sounded like kayaks. And no way was I strapping myself into a kayak and bouncing down a mountain creek. Beast hacked softly, stressing her opposition to the activity. And then I actually heard the question. “Other sites?”
“Places where that thing made the three scratches.”
I stopped, the Coke can still on my head, and let a smile form. If a grindylow was marking territory, then it was likely leaving scratches where it smelled weres, tracking them to take them down. Justice among weres was quick and final. The grindy could do my work for me. I lowered the can and drank, finishing it off. “To start, can you put out the word to the locals,” I said. “I need a map of all the places where people have seen the grindy’s scratch marks. Kayakers, rafters, hikers, park rangers, anybody who’s seen anything. If we can get a decent count and locations, we can determine the perimeters of the grindy’s territory, and maybe pinpoint the center of it. I can start my search for the werewolves there. I can pay you for your time.”
Money talks. Dave and Mike met eyes and nodded. “Yeah, we can do that.” Mike stuck out his hand and I took it for a firm shake. Shouting for the river guides he managed at the competing rafting business, Mike branched off toward the Bean Trees Café, demanding maps, GPS coordinates, beer, and PowerPoint displays, leaving Dave, Molly, and me sitting in the shade. I looked over at Emmett, who was waving in another deputy driving a marked car. This place was going to be a circus again tonight.
Dave turned his intense blue eyes to me and focused on my scars, the visible ones on my throat, and the ones on my left arm that hadn’t yet disappeared. Mine were vamp-fang and werewolf-bite scars. “How dangerous are they?” he asked.
“The grindy? Not much, unless you’re a were who hurt a human; then you get to die, as soon as he can catch you. The wolves?” I lifted my arm to display the scarring around my elbow. “You ever think about taking on a full-grown mountain lion? Bare-handed?” When he shook his head, an almost-grin on his lips, I said, “Well, two wolves will take on a big-cat. And sometimes win.” Beast growled low in my mind, not disagreeing. “They have claws hard enough to rip skin and jaws that can crush a human skull or take out a human throat with one swipe. Werewolves are worse.”
He pointed to my throat. “Is that where you got those scars?”
“No. Vamps did that.”
His eyes widened and a small smile played on his lips. “And you still work for them?”
Molly snorted. “She never was too bright.”
I shrugged. What could I say? It was true. I followed Mol to her newish van, and leaned in the open window. “Thanks for c
oming,” I said. “I wasn’t sure if we’d need your healing talents.”
“I’m always happy to help,” she said, arranging her belongings in the passenger seat. “It was interesting. I like watching you work when you’re not staking vamps and trying to save people from them.” Together, we had gone up against vamps before, and not everyone made it back alive, but I’d saved her children, Angie Baby and Little Evan, and her sister and baby the year before that, before I left the mountains for New Orleans. I gave her a wry half smile.
Molly patted my arms on the window. “I need to get home. Big Evan wasn’t happy about me getting involved with this.”
“Yeah. I know. I really appreciate it. Breakfast at the café soon?”
“Almost every morning. I’m always there after I drop Angie off to school. Which still feels strange. She’s growing up so fast.” She shook her head at the passage of time. “My sisters know you’re back in town and ask after you every morning. They want to see you.” I didn’t make friends easily and knowing that Molly’s family had all but adopted me after I helped to save the pregnant Carmen from a young rogue-vamp made me feel all sappy inside. Her eyes twinkled at me. “You could bring a boyfriend.”
“I already said, I don’t have a boyfriend.”
“Hmmm. There’s Rick LaFleur. He stands around with his tongue hanging out whenever you’re around.” I sighed and Molly shook her head, vexed, starting the van. “Take care, Big-Cat.”
She was pulling away before I realized that she hadn’t asked me to the house for dinner. No invitations to visit with her there had been forthcoming at all, and I didn’t think it was because of my schedule. It was because her husband no longer trusted me to keep Molly safe. And he had good reason.
CHAPTER THREE
You Fight Dirty
I straddled the long seat, turned the key starting Fang, and waved to Molly taking off in her minivan. I eased the bike along the road in the opposite direction and stopped in the middle of the bridge where the wolves attacked Itty Bitty. The water was up, several feet higher than last night, the power company having opened the dam to make power and provide water for the businesses that depend on the releases. Evidence not collected overnight, or missed before the water release, had been washed away. A commercial raft rounded the bend in the river, the occupants wet and laughing. Kayakers played in eddies and small currents. Remembering Itty Bitty and her beau, I found my phone and texted Bruiser and Leo a request for someone to get up here pronto and heal the injured, before the were-taint turned them furry. That would go a long way to making the locals more vamp-friendly. Satisfied I had done all I could for the injured, I gunned the bike.
On the far side of the river, I followed my nose, tasting grindy on the breeze. The scent seemed to be part of the air currents falling from Stirling Mountain. No big surprise there, yet my heart started to pound. The grindy-scent worried me. Gunning the bike, I passed in front of the RV camp and up the mountain along back roads. Not long after, I headed sharply uphill, crossing the state line back into North Carolina.
The peak of Stirling Mountain is nearly six thousand feet high with a metal fire tower on top, but I wasn’t planning on hiking all the way up. I would be stopping at the national park to check out a theory and talk to a guy I had been avoiding—pretty boy Rick LaFleur, the boyfriend-who-wasn’t, that Molly had mentioned. This little side trip was why I had taken the bike instead of asking one of the twins to fly me in Grégoire’s helicopter. Well, that and the fact that Beast had flatly refused to fly in the metal contraption.
The climbing ride to the park was beautiful; Big Creek—its massive boulders scored by grindy markings and rank with grindy scent—on one side of the road was dried to a trickle this time of year unless a heavy rain hit. Then the hair-head, adrenaline-junkie kayakers would be all over the place, taking the steep, highly dangerous creeking-run through its rocks, trees, and boulders. All around me on the climb were farmhouses on small farms, fallow land, horses, cattle, and harvested fields, some with big round hay bales on the peripheries. Wildflowers were everywhere. If I had been riding a quieter machine, I might have seen deer, turkey, even bear this time of year. But it wasn’t likely, not riding Fang. Harleys weren’t built for stealth.
I made the park entrance, taking the narrow gravel road that had been cut from the side of the mountain. It was steep on both sides, one side straight uphill, the other down, sharply, to the boulders of Big Creek. I passed through the horse area with its special camping sites and hitching posts, the distinct scent of horse and manure heavy on the cooling air.
The day-camp parking was full of cars, but I maneuvered on through, undergrowth and trees dense on both sides, to the campground. I left Fang in the bathhouse parking area. The air was twenty degrees cooler here, fresh and damp and rich with scent. I closed my eyes and breathed deeply. The weak bouquet of wild orchids that bloomed in August was faint on the breeze. Stronger were the odors of flowering bee balm, mountain mint, milkweed, and crushed jewelweed, the musky scent of rich soil and the smell of verdant green ferns and moss. Pungent and gamey were raccoon, squirrel, opossum, with dozens of bird varieties, and the horses. Faintly, from far off, came deer and bear scent. Overriding it all was the stench of man—the showers, park toilets, the tang of beer, food, charcoal, and seared meat from last night. It wasn’t the smells of The People, the Cherokee of my distant memory, but it was reminiscent.
And over it all rode three of the scents I’d come looking for. One was the grindy, letting me know my theory had been right. Crap. Why’d I have to be right this time? The other scents didn’t belong in these hills, not ever. They had the under-tang of foreign lands, of jungle, rushing violent rivers, and darkest, most remote Africa. Big-cat smell, feral, fierce, ferocious. Alien.
I opened my eyes and tracked that scent across the parking area and higher up the mountain. Moss-covered trees rose above me. Moss-covered ground muffled my boot steps. I hadn’t been here recently, but I knew where I was going. The scents told me.
Despite the slight chill, I slipped out of my leather jacket and hung it by one finger over my shoulder, following the stink of big-cat. I wasn’t armed, not during the day in a national park, no matter that I was licensed to carry concealed. Sometimes it wasn’t smart to taunt law enforcement officials, especially when a mauling had taken place last night.
I followed the scent up a trail, cool and dark beneath the shade of trees, through the acreage set aside for rough, dry camping. Tents dotted the greenery like upside-down flowers in rainbow colors. I took the path higher still, my breath coming harder as the grade increased, to a tent far back from the others. It was close to a runnel of water that emptied into Big Creek, and the tent had been in place for several weeks, grass beginning to grow up at the tent sides. The smell of grindy was strong here. So was the smell of black were-leopard. Kemnebi.
Kem-cat’s wife was dead at the claws of her pet grindylow because she fell in love with Rick LaFleur and tried to turn him into a black were-leopard, like her. Spreading were-taint broke were-law, and killing Safia had fulfilled the grindy’s primary function—protecting humans. Kem was taking it out on Safia’s lover boy. My boyfriend. Ex. Whatever. Rick’s scent still carried some of the wolf-taint too. He’d suffered—been tortured by werewolves—because I hadn’t figured out he was in trouble. I didn’t know if I loved him, but I knew that I owed him.
“Hello the tent,” I said softly.
“I heard when you bring that machine into the park,” a cultured, accented voice said.
I followed the dulcet tones to the back of the tent where a woven, dark green hammock hung between two trees, a long, lean man lazing in it. One leg was draped over the side, bare foot and calf dangling. A matching arm, equally naked, held a bottle of beer. The body between the two was hidden by hammock, and hammock and beer were banned in the park, hence the positioning of them behind the tent. I grinned, skipping the niceties. “You are dressed, aren’t you?”
He toasted me w
ith the beer and wiggled his toes at me in a drunken wave, which didn’t answer my question. The dark skin of both limbs was smooth and unscarred, the flesh of a shape-changer, forever untouched by damage, remade with every shift. Given a few more hundred shifts, my own skin would be as perfect again, assuming I stayed out of mortal danger. For reasons I didn’t know, scars from a lethal wound were hard to heal. “Jane Yellowrock, Rogue Hunter,” he said. “My alpha.” I had made Kem my beta, forced him to bring Rick here, and care for him until he shifted into his big-cat. Kem wanted me to understand that he didn’t have to like it. “My alpha, who smells of catamount and Eurasian owl and dog.”
The last was a slur and I let a hint of my grin out. “Kemnebi, of the Party of African Weres, my beta, who smells of black leopard and sweat and very strongly of beer.”
He lifted his hand, the bottle disappearing behind the hammock edge. I heard a slurping sound and the bottle reappeared, now half empty. “Good beer. Samuel Adams makes the most acceptable beer I have yet discovered in America. I have been tasting all of them. Extensively.” He sipped again. “There are more in the cooler.”
“No thanks, I’m driving.” I dropped my jacket, plopped into a folding sling chair, which was far less comfortable than it looked, and lifted the cooler lid anyway. “I’ll take one of these, though.” I opened another Coke and sipped, wondering how much beer it took to keep a shape-shifter drunk. Our metabolisms are fast, and it had to be a lot of beer. With a toe, I lifted the lid of a large, blue recycle pail. It was three-quarters full of broken beer bottles. Yeah. A lot of beer. After a companionable moment of silence I said, “How long ago did the grindy get here?”
“Safia’s pet arrive two week ago.” The words held no inflection, but were carefully, drunkenly enunciated. Interesting.
“It was a long swim, I take it.”
The hammock moved with what may have been a shrug, noncommittal. “He was most unhappy with me at first. But he forgave me.” There was a heavy dose of bitter irony in the words. I wasn’t real sure about the symbiotic relationship between the two races, but it would seem difficult to maintain, when one was always in danger from the other. I didn’t know what to say to that, but Kem was drunkenly loquacious and carried on the conversation without my contribution. “They are like pets until we err. Affectionate . . .” The words trailed off, then picked back up again. “He killed my mate. And then he came beneath my hand for caress. He . . . licked my hand.” He spaced the last words widely, and they were full of venom. “I forced him to leave, yet I still smell him on the wind. He watches.”
