The Mountain's Shadow

by Cecilia Dominic

  The hopelessness of the situation struck me. “You’ve got me there. I don’t know how to get a contaminated vaccine or a sample of the viral vector.”

  “Still, I’ll call in the morning.”

  “Just stay hidden until then. If you need to go upstairs for anything, try not to turn on any lights.”

  “I’ll also try not to kill myself stumbling around in the dark.”

  “Good call. And stay away from any explosive devices too.”

  “That’s not funny, Joanna.”

  “None of this is.”

  “And where are you going?”

  “I have to speak with a mother and a lawyer.”

  He looked up from the notes in his hands. “You’re going to sue Robert?”

  “Nope. I’m going to find out why Peter Bowman’s son was kidnapped.”

  Iain elected to catch a few hours’ sleep, his jet lag and the adventures of the past two nights having caught up with him. I put him in one of the guest rooms down the hall at the Manor, changed into clean clothes in my room, and ignored the siren song of my own bed.

  I stood outside the apartment complex where Honey Jorgens lived. It seemed like I had questioned her a lifetime ago. The light in her apartment living room shone red through the curtains, and I thought I could see someone moving around.

  I took a step forward to go up the stairs and knock on her door, but a large gray wolf bounded in front of me, its lips curled in a snarl.

  “Easy there,” I said. “Matthew, isn’t it?”

  The wolf sat back on its haunches and studied me.

  I’m not as young as the others, so changing is tough, it said, and I recognized the voice as the wolf who had complained that they needed to figure out how real wolves hunted.

  “It’s okay, I can hear you just fine.”

  You have the talent. Your grandfather did, too.

  I didn’t have time to talk about my family abilities. “Why won’t you let me pass?”

  Because she’s been through enough. The shame of knowing that you figured her out may kill her.

  “She knows her son is still alive because you told her. And you called Lonna up here because you knew what was going on, but you couldn’t report anything without outing yourself as a CLS sufferer. You wanted her to do the dirty work for you.”

  I wanted her to find out with human methods. No one would believe me. I got close to the lab once, and they did this to me.

  “So H.J. is Honey Jorgens? She got the records for my grandfather from the pediatrician’s office, and that’s why her son was taken and why her mother was killed.”

  How did you figure it out? There are many people here with those initials.

  It had struck me as strange the first time I’d been here that in a poor community, Honey wasn’t working—not even to take care of other people’s small children. It didn’t click until later that she’d lost her job and was probably having difficulty finding another one, especially if she was under suspicion by a powerful entity. Louise had wanted to talk to me about something, likely the tough time her daughter was having or to encourage me to become involved in the search for the missing kids in my grandfather’s place, and so had headed up to the Manor before work to talk to me in private. I bet she was being followed, and when They figured out where she was going, They ensured she would never reach the Manor alive. And then after she had, They took every bit of evidence she’d been there.

  “I’m good at figuring stuff out.”

  The wolf gazed at me with suspicious eyes.

  “Fine, I’ll leave her alone. You’ve pretty much confirmed what I suspected anyway. Are you here on your own or did They send you?”

  A little of both. Don’t worry, I won’t tell Them you were here. If you leave now. The intent behind the snarl was unmistakable.

  I glanced up at Honey’s window one more time. Someone had to have tipped Them off that Louise and I had talked about meeting, and I knew just who that Someone was. Rather than try to fight my way through Matthew or risk him blackmailing me to keep knowledge of my snooping away from the sheriff, I decided to cut my losses and go visit a lawyer.

  Dawn just tinged the sky as I walked up the circular Bowman driveway. I was afraid I’d have to rouse the household, but I saw a light shining from a bay window on the side of the house. A quick inspection showed me a library and a disheveled, unshaven, bleary-eyed Peter Bowman sitting at a desk in the middle of it. A green-shaded desk lamp cast unflattering shadows over his face as he struggled to keep his eyes open to pore over the documents in front of him.

  I rapped on the window with my fingernail, and he sat up and looked wildly around. I tapped again, and he came over and scowled into the darkness. A third time brought his face to eye level with me. I had to stand on tiptoe and balance myself with a hand on the wall as his holly bush got fresh with my backside.

  “Who’s out there?” he snarled.

  I resisted the urge to intone, “The grim reaper.” Just the thought was almost enough to put me into a fit of giggles. Thank goodness for that holly bush. It’s hard to be funny when your rear end is getting pricked.

  “It’s me, Doctor Joanie Fisher. I know where your son is.”

  He scowled but pointed toward the rear of the house. “Back door’s that way. I’ll let you in.”

  I found the back door just as the light came on, and he let me in through the mudroom. A small pair of galoshes and a little red wagon reminded me the house had been missing its youngest inhabitant for a couple of days. He looked at them and ran his hand through his hair in a gesture reminiscent of Leo.

  “You said you had news of my son?” He kept his voice lowered, so I only nodded. “Come with me, and quietly. Marguerite has finally fallen asleep, and I can’t take any more of her shrieking and crying.”

  “She’s taking it hard, is she?”

  “She blames me.” He pinched the bridge of his nose, and I noticed his red-rimmed eyes. “Not that it matters who’s to blame. I could blame her for wanting this big house in the nice, new neighborhood.”

  He led me into the library and shut the door. I made a quick inventory of the shelves and saw several legal books, leather-bound and thick, but also other things I hadn’t expected such as a Physicians’ Desk Reference and other medical manuals. I also spotted piles of familiar journals.

  “Who do you work for?” I asked. “I thought it was the town’s developer.”

  “I do. But that’s not my main job.” He gestured for me to sit in one of the overstuffed leather armchairs and picked up a square glass half-filled with amber liquid from the desk. It sloshed as he flopped in the chair across from me, and I wrinkled my nose at the burnt tire smell. Scotch.

  “I’d offer you some,” he sneered, “but you don’t look old enough to drink.”

  “There’s no reason to be rude. I’m here with news, remember?”

  “What? You’re going to tell me that Lance is being held in a cave in the middle of the woods by the river? And that you can help me to free him if I only do one thing for you?” He waved his hand in dismissal. “Been there, had that conversation.”

  “With whom?”

  He snorted, and something came out of his nose and hung on the edge of his right nostril. “Wouldn’t you like to know? But they’re looking for you.”

  “Who is?”

  “See? Now you’re trying to trick me. Maybe you’re one of those wood spirits who’s only taken on the form of the sylph-like Doctor Fisher, PH fucking D who’s so smart and independent she can’t even let her best friend help her out.”

  “They have Lonna, too.” My voice was barely above a whisper.

  “What?” His hand trembled as he set the glass on a side table with a checkerboard surface.

  “They have Lonna. They got her yesterday just after she’d transformed back.”

  “So it worked.”

  “What worked?”

  “The spell. And a little something in her drink. And a little nibble fro
m someone with an attenuated version of CLS.”

  “You have it too?” I flopped back in my chair.

  “A partial expression. At least that’s how I explain the fact I can’t get enough of what my wife won’t give me.”

  I remembered Lonna mentioning something about his dissatisfaction with his marriage. It sounded like bullshit to me, but then again, I wanted answers. I could sort out the truth later.

  He took another drink of his Scotch. “They wanted me to try a spell, she presented herself. End of story.”

  “No, it’s not the end of the story.” Spells from various texts sprang to mind. Some required more than just words. That was what I had forgotten, the third way to create a lycanthrope—a curse. “What did you do to her?”

  “Mind you, I wouldn’t have done it if I’d actually thought it would work. I don’t believe in hocus-pocus stuff. But when we had lunch and we ordered drinks, I said the words under my breath.”

  “There’s no way a spell could have caused my friend to become a werewolf. There had to be something else. Did you inject her with something?”

  He shook his head. “I’m not that kinky, Doctor.”

  “Okay, that was a mental picture I didn’t need. But you did bite her?”

  He only shrugged, but a satisfied look came across his face.

  “Okay, ew again. Did you tell your bosses or whoever that you had succeeded with your spell?”

  “Of course not. I didn’t know I had succeeded.”

  “But they do now. And they have your son. What if they try to do it to him? You know he’s got the genetic predisposition: your brother and cousin are both werewolves. And there are your, ah, proclivities.”

  “I’ve been trying not to think about that. You must be some sort of spirit-wench to keep bringing that up. My poor little boy.”

  “I’m just trying to find my friend and my butler. And the rest of the children that have been taken.”

  He looked at the desk, and before he could stop me, I jumped up and ran over to see what he’d been looking at. It was a topographical map of Crystal Pines and the surrounding areas, but it didn’t include the canyon Simon had told us about. The bottom of the map told me more than I ever needed to know about how Peter Bowman could be connected to all of it. When he grabbed my left wrist and jerked me away, tears stung my eyes, but I knew what I had clearly seen. In the bottom right corner of the map was a symbol—a howling wolf. In the bottom left corner, another one, a stylized H with a snake winding around the middle bar. Cabal Research and Hippocrates Pharmaceuticals, a match made in hell, a hell they’d created right here in the middle of the Ozark Mountains.

  Peter twisted my arm behind my back, and I struggled against the pain that made dots swim in front of my eyes and threatened to overwhelm me into blackness. “Where is it?” he growled, his Scotch breath burning my ear. “Where is the cave? I stole these from the Town Hall today so I could find it, but there’s nothing on there.”

  “Where’s the lab, you mean? That’s what it is, a research lab, and the genetically pure kids here are the rats. Except your son.” His grip relaxed a little. “Why did they steal your son, Peter? What do they need to blackmail you for? You work for them.”

  He let me go, and I stumbled forward and hit my hip on the edge of the desk as I tried not to catch myself with my hurt arm, which throbbed again.

  “They didn’t feel like I was pushing hard enough for the Town Hall to be destroyed.” He ran his hand through his hair again, and it fell in greasy strands around his face. “The plan was to mess up the demolition date so that it would be imploded before all the records were removed. They didn’t want anyone to be able to trace their motives for setting up here and make the genetic connection that you did. That’s why they fired you, you know. You were getting too close to the truth.” He reached in a drawer and pulled out a gun. “I suppose I should kill you now. You know too much.”

  I held up my hands and backed away. “I know where your son is, Peter. And I’m the only one who’s going to be able to take you to him before they do something awful to him. Have you seen what happens to kids with CLS? They do all sorts of crazy things like climb out windows and run away in the middle of the night. He may do that one day, and then you’ll never hear the end of it from Marguerite. The worst part is that you won’t know until then what they may or may not have done to him.”

  “Ah, so now I’m caught between two shrews, not just one. And once I find my son, what then? Will you have my sorry ass hauled off to jail?”

  My mind worked quickly. The strands of the spider’s web had been there the whole time. Sometimes it’s hardest to see what’s right in front of you, especially when you find out the man you loved betrayed you. Now that I’d made the connection between Cabal, Hippocrates, and the lab in the woods I didn’t really need Peter Bowman except for one thing.

  “I’ll make a deal with you.”

  He chuckled and waved me to a chair with his gun. I sat down and crossed my legs, trying really hard not to look as nervous as I felt.

  “I don’t really think you’re in a position to be making deals, Doctor Fisher.”

  “Oh, but I think I am.” I drew on the insouciance that had gotten the sheriff to buy breakfast for me, the anger that caused me to confront Leo, the frustration that made me tell Iain off, and the pain that Robert’s revelations had left me with. I leaned forward. “I’ll take you to the cave in the woods. I’ll even help you rescue your son. But you have to promise to testify against Hippocrates and Cabal.”

  He laughed, and it wasn’t pleasant. “How about this? You take me to my son, and I’ll think about whether to keep you alive or not after I find him.”

  I opened my mouth to protest, but then shut it. Robert was still out there. So were Leo, Ron, Lonna and Gabriel. I may not be able to count on them to defend me, but it was a chance I had to take.

  As if reading my thoughts, Peter smiled. “And if you think one of those mutt-men may come to your rescue, don’t worry.” He held out his hand and showed me what he held in his palm—silver bullets.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Our shoes made tracks in the dew on the grass, which was frosted by the gray early morning sunlight. The air smelled sharp, the chill settling into my skin. A mist rose from the ground and wreathed the trees in otherworldly fog, their branches held high in warning or fear at the creatures who roamed among their roots under the moon.

  I paused. The light hadn’t made it into the woods yet, and shadows still twisted and undulated in the fog. I reminded myself the most lethal shadow walked behind me, his footprints in mine, his hand on the gun he held in the pocket of his navy jacket.

  I found one of the deer paths my grandfather and I had explored when I was a child. When I stepped on the crunching rocks, the image of the trail came to my mind, and I walked forward with confidence. The path toward the river was gentler from this side of the mountain. The ground leveled off, although it still sloped toward the riverbank. I could hear the water, its soothing gurgle audible but faintly muted in the morning mist. The vapor hung heavily here, and I had to tread slowly so as not to lose the path or my footing, for as we got closer to the river, the rocky path turned to dirt, then to slippery mud.

  “How much farther?” Peter hissed, his voice coming through the fog from somewhere behind me.

  “Not too long,” I told him and wondered if I could make a run for it at this point.

  “Don’t even think of trying to run,” he whispered after me. “I can still see you.”

  Damn. I grabbed a tree trunk to keep from sliding the last few feet to the riverbank and thought I heard a twig snap nearby, but I couldn’t be sure. I moved away from the tree, and Peter came after me. He seemed to not be in danger of losing his footing, although his hiking boots were caked with mud.

  “What now?”

  I held my hand up, listening, but the noise of the rushing water filled my ears. “Follow me.”

  We headed upstream, and I
saw our footprints from the night before, mine and Iain’s, then Simon’s. Surely whoever was in the cave must have seen them, for there were more prints beside them, adult-sized boots and small paw prints. My heart skipped a beat, then rage welled up. They were using the children to hunt us! And I thought it had just been Robert. I worried for Iain’s safety, but there was nothing to be done for it now. He’d just have to take care of himself. As for Leo, I hoped he’d gotten the boy—and himself—somewhere secure.

  We came to the fork in the river.

  “All you have to do is follow that branch to the canyon,” I said.

  “All we have to do,” he corrected me. “And how do we get across?”

  “Carefully.” The footprints on the bank led us to a crossing point, a series of stones in the water. We stepped from rock to rock. I planted my feet and tried not to look at the water rushing between the current stone and my next target. That’s how it went: plant, shift, stretch, plant again. I thought about making a run for it when I got to the bank on the other side, but a look back told me Peter still had control of his weapon in spite of his slippery passage. I didn’t want him to shoot me or warn anyone who might be near of our presence.

  I stopped and listened again but didn’t hear anything aside from the water and the usual early morning noises of the forest. We followed the footsteps away from the main river and down the smaller stream. The mist hung here too, but not nearly as heavily. I stopped a few times, sure I’d heard the snap of a twig or the slow breathing of something watching us from the forest, but every time I stopped, so did the sound.

  A rustling in the branches startled me, and I halted. Peter stumbled into me, and for a moment I felt the hard rim of the weapon in his pocket through the material of his jacket.

  “Stop doing that,” he hissed in my ear.

  “We’re being watched.”

  He drew his weapon and leveled it at me. With his thumb, he clicked the safety catch off. “Keep going.”