by J. S. Brent
I felt like an idiot mouthing my fond memories of my grandfather, even if he had been a father to me. Men are expected to be tough and unsentimental, like a slab of jerky, and it must have been disorienting for Olivia to see me going from stoic and prickly to thoughtful and loving in the space of a single day. But with an uncommon appreciation for the multifaceted nature of individuals, she laid a reassuring hand on my arm. For a woman who occasionally seemed to be holding a perpetual grudge against the world, she too could be awfully softhearted.
“You’ll find him,” she said. “I’ll help you.”
“Thanks, but there’s really not much you can do,” I told her, and not just because I was reluctant to take on a partner. “The trail ends on Oak Island, the site of his last letter. I’ve interviewed all the storeowners, shopkeepers and inn managers in town, and the last time anyone matching Granddad’s description was even seen on the island was over a month ago. He was here. I know it. I don’t think he left, not when he was so close. Either he’s still seeking the treasure, or…”
I paused, suddenly distracted by the rattle of cups and plates at a neighboring table. After a month alone in the wilderness, a nice dinner with a beautiful and charming companion was more than I felt I deserved. Liv sat there quietly, softly stroking her hair behind her ears, lost in thought.
“Ready for dessert?” Kim addressed herself to Liv, glancing at me narrowly from the corners of her eyes.
“I’ll have the mango cobbler with ice cream and chocolate morsels,” said Liv, handing in her menu.
“I’ll have the roasted mango and lemon bears,” I said. They both looked at me. “Did I say ‘bears’? I meant bars.”
“Oh, and I’ll have a glass of ginger ale with a twist of lemon in it,” said Liv.
Kim took my menu without once looking at me and picked up our plates and dishes. While Liv was in the restroom I sat there wondering how she would react when she found out about my true identity. I had kept it carefully hidden when discussing my family history and grandfather’s whereabouts, but if we were going to be searching for him together—and if there was any hope that our friendship might become something more than that, which I flattered myself there was—then eventually she would learn the truth about me. It was probably better that I broke the news myself, lest she think I was keeping secrets from her.
And how she reacted after that was up to her. I’d had girlfriends in school who had not taken it well when they learned that I was a shifter. The memory of one in particular, who had stormed out in a rage and never returned my calls, particularly rankled. Sometimes prejudice was too entrenched. But I had never forgotten something Granddad said to me when I was a boy: “There are going to be people in this world who can’t accept you for who you are, and those people aren’t worth your time. You know who you are, and that’s all that matters.”
By the time Olivia returned to the table, our desserts had arrived. “Could I keep this and take a closer look at it?” she said, holding up the stone. “Just for tonight.”
“Promise not to steal it.”
She glared at me. “I’m kidding,” I said. And I was, mostly.
Standing up, I threw a wad of cash onto the table. Nickels and quarters rolled across the table with a satisfying plinking sound and came to rest around the vase in the center of the table. “That should cover dinner. Find me tomorrow in the small cave just north of where you were digging this morning.” When I left the tavern, she was still peering hard at the amulet.
Chapter 5—Olivia
The next morning I awoke after only a couple hours’ sleep. I brushed my teeth, combed my hair, threw on a stained t-shirt and was on my way out the door when someone placed herself in front of me, blocking my exit.
It was Kim, her hair tied up in a loose bun, newly minted morning sunlight streaming in behind her and turning her into a glowering silhouette.
“We need to talk,” she said in an ominous voice.
Kim was a great friend, but she was also a notorious meddler in other people’s affairs. At least once a week she would take me aside for a serious chat. I had come to dread them the way you dread going to the dentist or filing your taxes.
“Do we have to do it right here, in front of all these people?” I asked, motioning to the dining hall which I realized only too late was completely empty.
“Listen,” she said, waving a batter-caked spatula with one hand. “I realize it’s none of my business, but I couldn’t help noticing what’s going on between you and that man.”
I blushed to the roots of my dark hair. “Going on between us? Kim, we just had dinner. It was one night. There is absolutely nothing going on between us.”
“Liv, don’t insult my intelligence. I’m smart enough to know when a man is flirting, and that man is smitten with you. His eyes never left you. He laughed at everything you said, you had him hanging on your every word. You may not realize it yet, and he may not realize it, but you’re falling for each other. You’re working together, you’ve been looking for ways to get out of work so you can see him, you’re infatuated.”
“And what if that’s true?” I asked, feeling red in the face. “I’m not saying you’re right, but if that happened, how is that a bad thing?”
“He doesn’t deserve you, Liv.”
I smiled. “I think I’m the ultimate judge of that. Not you.”
Kim’s voice rose; even if no one could hear her down here, she was likely attracting the attention of upstairs guests. “I know you can’t see it, God knows I’ve been there too, but the man is a hobo. He lives in the jungle.”
“Because you won’t give him a room!”
“Because he’s a tramp! We’re not talking about a man with a job here, a professional. This is—Liv, this is not a serious person you’re dealing with here. He’s a man-child, a pathetic loser stuck in permanent adolescence. Just because he has the money to travel halfway across the world in search of King Solomon’s gold doesn’t mean he has the financial stability or maturity to take care of you over the long haul.”
“Do you really want to go there, Kim?” I asked, practically spitting with anger. “Last time I checked, you weren’t my mother.”
“No, but I care about you, and I know a bad man when I see one. He’s not good for you. He’s dangerous, probably more dangerous than either one of us realizes. I guarantee you he’s bedded many women. Some women like that kind of man, but I expected better of you. I just don’t want to see you throwing your life and your career away over a romantic summer fling with someone who is not even worth your time.”
“Your concerns have been noted,” I said in an icy voice.
“Like I said, it’s none of my business,” said Kim. “But I hope you’ll at least listen and keep your head. Love can be awfully deceptive. It can blind us. And we don’t realize our mistake until it’s too late.”
“Good day, Kim,” I said. With a low bow she graciously stepped out of the way and I proceeded outside, shielding my face from the intense sunlight.
I marched to the pier, fury in every step. I hated being lectured by another adult about my life choices, but what made it worse was a quiet fear that perhaps she was right after all. I had only known this man for a couple of days, and men who slept in caves weren’t known for being decent people. But there had been a tenderness in his eye last night when he spoke of his grandfather, and surely anyone who could love their own family that deeply could be trusted.
I scoffed at the notion that we were falling for each other, but I had never been in a relationship before, had been too busy building my career, and so it was hard for me to read the signs of interest in a man’s eyes. Kim had more experience in this area, and I was inclined to trust her judgment over mine. But if she was right about that, then maybe she was right that he couldn’t be trusted. A man with a job would almost certainly be preferable to one who lived in a cave. If I couldn’t see that, then maybe I really was blinded by love, or lust.
I paused. Ahead of me
the trail split into four paths. I couldn’t remember which of them was the correct one.
For a moment I stood there debating the risks of just striking out on a path and letting the road take me. After all, this was supposed to be a day of exploration, and perhaps Henry wouldn’t be upset if I was late because I had been scoping out the island. But then I pictured myself later in the day, stumbling through the woods without food or water. With a sigh I sat down on a large rock near the very center of the intersection and hoped that Henry would realize I was lost, and would come looking for me.
“Things would be so much easier if he had a phone,” I said to a blue jay that was hopping along on the ground beside me. Kim was right: my parents would have been horrified if I had known I had put my job on the line to hook up with a homeless man who lived in a cave.
The blue jay was twittering pointedly, and it took me a few minutes to realize that it was actually trying to communicate with me. “What is it you want?” I asked, in the tone of voice we reserve for animals and babies. “Do you want food?”
The bird shook itself vigorously.
“Do you have a message from someone?” Negative again. “Do you know where I’m headed?” This time the bird bounced up and done, more merrily than before. “Could you take me there?” And the bird was off, up in the air, skimming over the tops of trees, soaring through the air like a cloud.
I was lucky I had the bird to guide me, as I might not have been able to find the cave even in daylight, even knowing the right path. The opening in the rock was so small that I might have missed it had the bird not flown directly above it and then vanished, as though sensing that its task was complete.
Henry was standing in the door of the cave, partially concealed by a boulder. It was impossible to tell from this distance whether or not his lower half was as naked as his upper limbs and torso. He was brushing his teeth using a toothbrush and mirror he had presumably stolen from a hotel bathroom. The mirror was propped up on a ledge that jutted naturally out of the cave rock.
I paused and watched him performing his morning routine, sighing at the torments fate and circumstance were inflicting upon me. Why had they conspired to make this vagabond so handsome, so peerless and without fault? Every movement of his body was a sly taunt from the gods who had made any thought of relationship impossible. I felt like a child whose parents had shown him the most beautiful toy in a shop window, only to tell him he could never have it.
Henry himself seemed to be in on the joke. For a split-second he turned his head, and I felt sure he must have seen me. But he kept brushing his teeth, quietly flexing his arms as he did so. How long was he going to do this? I had heard stories of people who had destroyed their enamel from brushing too hard and too long. Yet the repetition of movement carried its own thrill; he seemed transported out of his human self and into some lower register of being, more beast than man. For a moment I forgot my despair and stood looking on in a lucid dream of perfect happiness.
Suddenly there came a loud groan from the forest, like a bear growling. It was close enough that I instinctively flinched. Henry, who was stooped over rinsing out his mouth into a porcelain basin, shot straight up, every sense taut. For a split-second I caught a glimpse of his perfect pecs, on which were imprinted a design I could swear I had seen before.
“Did you hear that?” he asked me, putting on a Van Halen t-shirt. “And how long have you been standing there?”
“I just got here,” I said, which was true in geologic time. “And yes, I heard the growling. Maybe a tree fell?”
He shook his head darkly. “That was no tree. You’d better come inside, at least for a few minutes.”
Inside the cave, I returned the stone to him and told him what I had learned in my online investigations the night before.
“I knew I recognized this thing from somewhere,” I told him. “I knew it the moment I saw it, I just didn’t know where. Turns out, it was dug up near the money pit by a small team of private explorers back in the 1950s. In fact, it’s one of the few items to have been originally found there.”
“So why did it disappear for so long?”
“Well, the island has been claimed by at least six different nations in the last 60 years. It’s been fought over by corporations and billionaires. The original owners of the stone placed it in a museum, but then the museum was snatched up by the Saltcross Mining Company when they were doing their excavating, and when they left, the museum was torn down and its treasures distributed to the four winds.”
“Yikes.”
“I know. So this wasn’t the only invaluable artifact to disappear. Dozens of others went missing at around the same time. It’s rumored that there was another stone linked to this one, known as the cipher stone. Where it wound up is anybody’s guess.”
“And the reason so many people have been fighting over the island?”
“Ostensibly because of the mango crop. But conspiracy theorists and treasure-seekers suspect otherwise. If the treasure that’s rumored to lie buried here is as big as claimed, then it’s no surprise that some of the wealthiest corporations in the world would want to get their hands on it.”
“Any clue as to what it is?”
I shook my head, stepping lightly over a protruding tree branch. “A lot of theories, some more plausible than others. Old maritime legend states that King Solomon’s fabulous wealth, which he used to finance the building of the first Jewish temple in Jerusalem, was mined on an island in the Pacific. But the exact location of his mines has never been found, and at least one wealthy investor believes they lie here.”
“Where does that story rank on the spectrum of plausibility?”
“Three, at best. There’s another story about the mysterious wealth of the Knights Templar, which was one of the richest organizations in Europe in the Middle Ages. Their wealth was so great that they attracted the attention of the king of France, who in a fit of jealousy had their leader burned at the stake. The king died within a year, and legends sprang up about a terrible curse that the leader of the Knights had spoken over him in his final agonizing moments. But to this day no one knows where or how they acquired their considerable fortune.”
“Likelihood of its being here?” he asked.
“Between a one and a two. Some people have put forward an argument, which I find slightly more persuasive, that there may be pirate treasure hidden on the island, or the wealth of a Spanish galleon on its way back from the Americas that ran aground here. One blogger even argued that Shakespeare’s first folio is buried here, which (a) everyone knows where that is, and (b) what would it be doing on an island?”
I was getting carried away with enthusiasm, but Henry merely smiled. “Well,” he said, “I’d say we have as good a chance of finding the treasure as anyone.”
“Seriously?” I asked. “Are you really suggesting what I think you’re suggesting?”
“Why not? Wouldn’t you like to be enormously wealthy?”
I shook my head. “And do what, exactly? But I think I am up for an adventure.”
Chapter 6—Henry
It was my good fortune to find myself with nothing to do that afternoon except explore the island, and a beautiful woman eager to accompany me. Yet even as we were setting out, doubts began to set in.
The thing about shifters is, we have a split nature. The human part of us is rational, elevated, reasoned, seeking the good of others. The human part of me was quick to remind me that Liv was just a friend, that I was her guide across the island and that as her guide it was my obligation to protect her. She could have trusted that part of me, if she had had any inkling of the war raging inside of me.
Unfortunately for both of us, there was more to me than that. There was something in me that defied human language, that could only truly be expressed in grunts and moans, something that delighted in the shattering of bones and the grinding of flesh against rock. Something so bestial.
And that part of me didn’t necessarily will the good of
Olivia. It wanted to possess her, consume her, until we were one in blood and bone. My longings were so powerful, she would never be able to contain them. My strength was so great that the first taste of desire satisfied would destroy her. But the scent of her hair, the warmth of her body next to mine was setting me off, was turning me into that thing I could never be. It was making me relentless and omnipotent, was leading her into greater danger than she knew.
“Before we get going,” I said, as we paused beside a brook to fill up our blue plastic water bottles, “there’s something I have to talk to you about.”
Liv gave me a look of annoyance that slowly settled into resignation. “What’s up?”
I strode forward, looming over her until I seemed to fill the clearing. Her eyes grew wide. “I’m not sure going on this expedition with me is such a good idea.”
