by Lynn Red
Her complaining at herself quickly devolved into just regular old sobbing. After a few seconds, the sobbing gave way to shaking and then to the worse-than-crying silence that came when Jill’s throat was too raw to keep making noise, and her eyes were too puffy to make any more tears.
And then, the mark on her chest tingled again, almost like it was taunting her. She reached up and touched it, immediately reminded that everything was real. The pistol on her bed with the flattened bullet next to it on the nightstand did the same thing. Jill reached over and grabbed the crackled silver disc, turning it over in her fingers as the cold bit deep.
She watched the sun glint off the cracks, and turned her other hand over, watching the circle of shadow dance over her knuckles. For a moment, that entertained her, but then, the circle vanished and the entire room darkened.
“Storm?” she asked the empty room, turning around and poking two fingers through the blinds, peeking outside. Thick, heavy, carpet-like black clouds hung in the small space of sky visible from Jill’s cabin. As the rain started to fall, it felt to her like her tears were being externalized, like her sadness, her helpless feelings, taken outside and given to the weather instead of being buried in her heart.
Anything was better than the doubt being inside.
Thunder boomed, and a flash of lightning briefly lit the entire world.
On the table, her as-yet-unused shortwave radio fuzzed to life. It sounded like someone turning the dial, scanning through FM channels. Static interspersed with short bursts of sound issued from the single round speaker.
Another peal of thunder rattled the windows of the cabin. Another round of static, and then scanning noises came from the radio, but as she sat there listening to the slightly relaxing white noise, Jill heard something that sounded like voices. One voice at first, but then joined by a second. She thought maybe she was picking up a signal from the Forest Service, but the next words she heard chilled her bones.
“Gen... Draven,” a voice said. It was broken up by crackles in the airwaves, but the message was clear enough. “Draven ... you copy?”
“Draven here, ... copy,” came the response. “Orders? Any...change with ... orders?”
“Neg... to proceed as ordered. Give us ... we will collect. Repeat ... interact with bears.”
The last bit came through flawlessly. It was the older, more grizzled sounding voice. “Understood. Draven out.”
Suddenly, the peals of thunder and blasts of lightning felt more like they were punctuating panic than that they were an interesting diversion.
When the radio came in loud and clear for a second transmission, lightning always strikes twice occurred to Jill, and she laughed softly despite everything else. She took a deep breath, held it for a moment. With a long, heavy, weary sigh, she exhaled just as a voice called her.
“Home base calling Jill Appleton,” the voice said. It sounded familiar, but with the lack of clarity a radio broadcast gives, it was hard to tell.
“Fred?” she asked. “Is that you?”
“Calling Jill Apple—oh, Jill? I think you’re supposed to use words like ‘copy’ and ‘affirmative’ when you talk on these things.”
She giggled. Fred Stanton never was very good with communications technology. Molecular biology and virology? Yeah, he was the best in the world. But give the guy a cell phone and he froze up like a six-year-old caught with his pants down, about to pee into a jack-o-lantern on the neighbor’s porch.
“Sure, yes, I copy, Dr. Stanton. Loud and clear, I read you.”
“Huh?” He sounded genuinely surprised. “Jill?”
“Yeah, Fred,” she said, laughing. “I can hear you. Give me something nice to hear – after this morning, I could use it.”
“Oh,” he grumbled. “Things not going well? You’re not sick are you? Or hurt?”
“No, nothing like that. Just...”
I’m in love with two hunted bears. Oh also, I’m just getting over three werewolf attacks and killing two of them. While we’re at it, I’m pretty sure I’m the magically fated mate to those bears I mentioned earlier, and the bigger one was talking about getting me pregnant.
That’s what she wanted to say, anyway. God almighty it’d feel good to get that off my chest.
“Just frustrated with trying to find the bears,” is what she heard herself saying, and then she sighed again for lack of anything better to do.
Fred hummed audibly. He did that when he was worried, or upset about something. “Yeah,” he began. “That’s what I was supposed to contact you about.”
“Don’t tell me,” Jill said. “It’s only been a couple of weeks!”
“Two and a half, to be fair.”
“Okay, that’s a twenty-fifth of the time I was allotted. What the hell’s going on?”
Fred made that same, worried noise, again. “I know it’s ridiculous, and so do you. But, GlasCorp—”
“Fucking GlasCorp!” Jill cut in. “First they steal my thing in Yosemite, now they’re out here on a bear hunt. What the hell am I supposed to do?”
“First be quiet – don’t start in on the airwaves. God knows who’s listening. Now, hold on, did you just say ‘bear hunt’? What are you talking about? They’re hunting? Are you sure?”
She couldn’t tell him everything. Fred might be her close friend, her confidant and her mentor, but at some point you have to draw a line. This line, she decided, was going to be starkly between ‘shape shifting mates’ and everything else. Jill took a deep breath. “Okay, you’re going to think I’m crazy, but...”
For the next several minutes, she explained everything she’d overheard. She went on and on about the weirdness with the helicopters and the mysterious Draven, and all of that. Knowing full-well anyone could be listening to her, just like she listened to Draven, she avoided specifics, talking skillfully around the point enough to get it across, but only just.
She went right up to the line where she was going to start talking about the shape shifters, but pulled back at the last second, not wanting her boss to dismiss everything she just said by thinking she was a lunatic.
She was breathless by the time she finished, and for several moments, Fred was silent. “You still there?” she finally asked.
“Oh, uh, yeah. Sorry, I’m just trying to process all of that. And you’re sure they’re hunting?”
“I heard them on the radio,” Jill said. “About five minutes before you called. The thunder and lightning... I guess the storm screwed with their signal and I picked up pieces of it. And I definitely remember whoever it was calling this guy, Dra—” she caught herself. “Calling this guy a general. I don’t know if that’s just some sort of nickname or if he’s an actual army general or what.”
“I’d personally rather not even think about that,” he said. “I mean, I know better than to doubt what you heard, but at some point I have to start questioning what I can take on, you know?”
One man can’t fight against an army, the words Rogue said, rattled through Jill’s mind. Yeah, an army or an entire global, multinational corporate syndicate. “Yeah,” she said. “I know it sounds crazy.”
“I’ll see what I can find,” Fred said. “But it sounds less nuts than you’re probably thinking. I’m not one of those ‘it all adds up!’ sort of people, but, yeah, it—”
“Don’t say it,” Jill cut in, smiling. “As soon as this weather breaks, I’m going to go back out to keep hunting for my bears. You’re gonna poke around in the politics and see what you can see. Won’t be much different than any other time, right?”
Fred scoffed a laugh. “Right, keep your head down, you hear me?”
“Will do, boss. Will do.”
The radio squelched again, and then fuzzed back to white static. As it did, Jill slumped back into her chair, briefly considered jotting some notes, and then pushed the paper away too.
“Rain’s just water,” she said, standing up and finishing the shoe tying she began when this all started. “I’ll get wet
, I’ll complain about it, I’ll get soggy socks, and then I’ll get over it. But if that shit about them hunting my bears is true, I’m not,” Jill caught herself, clamping her mouth shut and clenching her teeth at the same time.
“I guess I’m gonna be a damn mama bear is what I’m going to be. No one hurts my mates,” she said through gritted teeth. “Not some scumbag mercenaries or a greasy pharmaceutical company.”
She picked her .357 up off the bed, slowly rotated the cylinder and checked to make sure she had six loaded – and impeccably cleaned – chambers. Then, for lack of a better place to put it, she stuck the gun in her holster, which she tucked into her shorts. She made sure the safety was engaged, since she decided she’d prefer to stick with the standard butt configuration instead of adding a second hole.
“If they try? They’ll have to get through me first. Six feet of Jill that doesn’t seem all that big when you put her next to seven and a half feet of bear. But I’m still not gonna go down without a fight.”
As she pushed open the door and stepped out into the rain that had slowed to something slightly more aggressive than a sprinkle, she grinned at herself, perfectly aware of how ridiculous her little speech of affirmation was.
But, what surprised her most? For once, she didn’t care about how awkward she sounded, or about her gangly frame.
Jill knew that she was needed. She wasn’t going to fail, wasn’t going to lose her bears no matter what it took.
The first step she took off the cabin porch and into the leaves felt like she’d just climbed a mountain. The second like she stepped over a hill. By the time the fourth step squished into the leaf mat, she was at peace, and full of purpose.
The mark on her chest, tingling like it did more and more these days, was her purpose.
Rogue and King? They were her fate.
-12-
“That... doesn’t seem right.”
-Jill
Worry was starting to sink in, the heavy kind that made Jill’s shoulders sag when she stopped long enough to think about Rogue and King and where they might have gone, where they might be.
Jill was up with the sun, getting ready for a day in the field actually doing what she was supposed to be doing all along. The two days since Stanton’s haunting radio call were spent ranging in ever wider circles from her base camp. All she had to show for it were a bunch of chigger bites, a couple of cuts, and burrs in her socks. No signs of life – especially not the kind she needed to find – had appeared. Not even a shred of bear fur, or a prey carcass had crossed her path.
This morning was cooler than the past few. A slight breeze blew through the dense green, drawing a chill up the back of Jill’s neck. It was a chill just like the first time she heard the wolves howl, a chill just like the first time she felt Rogue’s tongue, just like the first time she felt King’s forceful kiss.
“Not today,” she said, shaking her head and laughing at herself. “Nope, not gonna do it. Not gonna sit here and pine over my bears. If they’re not gonna come for me, I’m going to them.”
Lacing her boots, and then tying off her bandana, Jill checked all her supplies one last time before she started the trek. Today she’d decided to head east to a stream she knew was in the area, and then follow the water as far as she could. She’d even packed a small tent, and some overnight supplies, should it take longer than she thought, or if she ended up finding anything that warranted extra attention.
Overhead, a chopper zipped across the sky. Shielding her eyes, Jill looked up, trying to make out where it was from. It was flying low, but the bottom looked almost black against the morning sky. Choppers weren’t a surprise out here, since the various logging companies and other researchers – assuming there were any, which she doubted – needed supplies, and the only way to get to the thicker parts of the woods was air.
This one though, was strange.
It was flying low, but that wasn’t it. Really what caught Jill’s attention was that the side door was open, and someone was standing there, looking out. She crouched down and fished around in her bag for binoculars.
“Weird,” she said under her breath. Sun glinted off of binoculars that the man held. He was scanning the horizon, and even though she was close enough to make out a stark, black leather jacket, and hard lines of a jaw, he seemed not to notice her at all. The man had gray hair that was almost white and his cheeks were thin, but not gaunt. His clothing was completely unmarked, just like the helicopter.
Briefly she considered calling out to whoever this was, but something stopped her. Instead, she pulled back, into the shadow of an overhanging branch. Something didn’t sit right about this. Something wasn’t normal about this chopper and this man.
Once, then again, the big vehicle swung in slow circles around the area, the man never taking his eyes off the horizon. At points, it was so close to the ground that Jill probably could’ve dinged it with a rock, but not once did the guy ever look down. She wondered if maybe he knew she was there, and was simply uninterested.
The thought gave her another chill. This one more like the one she felt when she smelled that wolf’s breath, when she felt it’s eyes on her.
And then, the man retreated inside, pulled the door shut, and the helicopter hovered briefly before turning to depart. Jill searched for any sign of the vehicle’s origin, but there were no markings of any kind anywhere on the thing. She shook her head, confused and slightly irritated at the distraction.
A million possibilities went through her mind. Black ops, X-Files kind of stuff; poachers looking for game; loggers who weren’t supposed to be in the area scouting for a good clutch of trees. Any of them could be possible – hell, even the X-Files thing didn’t seem too farfetched. After all, this Jill had been in a bear sandwich a couple days before.
But the fact that anything could be possible didn’t exactly answer any questions.
Shooting one last glance upward, Jill decided to simply not decide before she knew more. What good was speculating going to do? And anyway, what was she going to do? What could Jill, one woman in the woods with a slightly wonky hip, do against any of the things she’d dreamed up? The answer that came was the one she hated the most. Nothing.
She turned east, checked her compass and stuck her binoculars back in her day pack. The crunch of leaves under her boots calmed her nerves bit by bit, step by step.
The heavy, cold steel wedged between her stomach and her jeans eased her slightly more.
And the thought that somewhere, out there, in the wild world around her, she had two protectors. Even if she hadn’t a clue how to find them, where they were, or even if they would ever find her again, they were out there.
Somehow, that brought the most peace of all.
*
Midday sun turned to early evening haze, and Jill needed rest. She needed to take a breath, get a drink, to eat something. She’d been hiking straight through all day, stopping only to wash her face in the stream, and then later to pull off her shirt, dip it in the stream, whip it around over her head to get it nice and cool, and then put it back on. That helped a little, but the brutal humidity and oppressive, stultifying heat made it hard to keep on truckin’.
But, she wouldn’t let herself stop. She’d made it to the stream – which really was much larger than she expected, more of a river than anything – only a couple of hours after leaving camp.
About three miles as she followed the riverbank, she found the first encouraging signs she’d seen yet. A clump of fur, the kind that comes off when bears scratch themselves on trees, brushed against her as she passed. The tree it was stuck on had been marked by claws or teeth, another common bear behavior.
And even better than that, she hadn’t seen hide nor tail of any wolves.
Come to think of it, I haven’t heard any howling the last couple nights.
A thrum on the horizon caught her attention. The sound throbbed in her ears before anything visible appeared, but when it did, she was at once terrified, amazed, a
nd utterly perplexed.
Covering herself partially in brush she peered up. The same helicopter from before, with the same man, standing in the same position, circled overhead. Once again, he just stared out over the horizon, never taking note of anything else.
“What the hell are you?” she asked under her breath. “Who are you?”
This time she was able to make out the pilot, who was also wearing completely unmarked, black clothing. Whoever the man in the side bay was, he had an air of dignity about him. She noticed for the first time a thin, well-trimmed mustache on his lip. She also noticed that every so often, the man pulled part of his lip between his teeth and gnawed.
Before he’d been a kind of inhuman sentinel staring out over the woods. But his having human traits was somehow a comfort, and a point of heightened anxiety. Also for the first time, Jill noticed that there was a marking on the tail of the craft, as useless at is was. A simple “2A” was stenciled onto the dark gray metal.
Her stomach roiled.
Jill had no idea why, or even what it was about this helicopter that made her so nervous. After all, it wasn’t like she’d illegally crawled under the gate at Area-51. She was on a government grant to study some bears.
That’s all. That’s all it was, all she was doing. As far as anyone else knew, none of the rest of it had ever happened. None of the rest was real.
Unless, of course, she wasn’t the only one who knew about her bears.
That thought chilled her to the bone. The chopper tilted again, cutting a deep turn. For the briefest of moments, the man in the side door with the trimmed mustache and impeccable dress, moved the binoculars from his eyes and looked directly at Jill. He squinted briefly, and then nodded before turning to the pilot, saying something that Jill couldn’t read lips well enough to make out, and then just like before, the helicopter was gone over the horizon.
*
She’d walked as long as she could. Night was coming on fast, and Jill knew better than to try and push her luck. Pitching a tent and getting a fire going was hard enough in the daylight, but at night?
