River Marked mt-6

by Patricia Briggs

  “Good thing for Benny,” said Jim. “We’ve been by here twice. It would have been morning before we could have seen that boat under the trees. And morning would have been too late for him.”

  Fred (I could tell because he wore a red flannel shirt, and Hank wore a gray one) left Benny to his brother and came over.

  Evidently he’d been listening because he said, “I called 911, Jim, and they had already gotten a call from her husband. There is an ambulance on its way. I told the operator that we could get Benny up to the road. It’ll be a rough trip. The road’s only a half mile or so as the crow flies, but this is horrible country for a fast trek in the dark. But they’d have to make the trip twice that we need to make once.”

  “What about taking him on the boat?” asked Calvin.

  Fred shook his head. “We might get him to the hospital faster that way—but the ambulance will have medical personnel on board. He’ll get faster medical care, and time matters. If he stays in shock, we could lose him—but when he warms up, that foot is going to bleed like a fountain.”

  “Whatever you and Hank think best,” said Jim, which seemed to make the decision for everyone.

  5

  THE ONLY BRUSH OR TREES IN THIS PART OF THE gorge that weren’t cultivated—very little of the ground on either side of the river was cultivated—were right on the river. For the most part our footing was cheatgrass-covered basalt, not horrible hiking if I’d had shoes.

  It would have been better if I could have shifted into coyote, but I didn’t know these men—and I don’t make it a habit of telling everyone what I am. Too many bad things happened to people who admitted too openly what they were without a powerful group behind them—and sometimes even with a powerful group behind them. I’d survived a long time by keeping my head down and blending in; I wasn’t going to change that just to make my bare feet feel better.

  The Owens brothers and Calvin took turns carrying Benny. Jim led the way and carried a couple of flares to flag down the ambulance with. We all, except for whoever was carrying Benny, carried flashlights, which did a fair bit to destroy my night vision. I brought up the rear—though they had all suggested I stay down by the river.

  I could have done that, but what if they ran into Adam? Under normal circumstances, they’d be perfectly safe. But Adam had had to make two fast changes tonight and experienced a number of stressors. He’d been forced to leave me naked and vulnerable. Benny had been so afraid—in addition to all the blood and pain.

  Adam was not human and hadn’t been for a long time. His control was very good—but this was not a good night for him to be meeting up with strangers carrying a bleeding, hurt man.

  So I insisted on going with them.

  We might have been a half mile from the road, but that half mile was all up the side of a very steep hill that was broken up with basalt cliffs that ranged from two feet to twenty or thirty feet high. The first kind we scrambled over; the second we worked our way around.

  We’d made it about halfway by my hazy reckoning when Adam caught up to us. He was human and clothed, but his eyes were yellow bright from the adrenaline and the pain of his rushed changes.

  He handed me a backpack, and said, “Clothes, shoes, and first aid.” His voice was a low, growling sound, and his hand shook.

  “Thank you,” I said. “I’m safe with them.” I found that I believed that now, and it was a relief. “Can you get Benny up to the road to wait for the ambulance?” It would be dangerous, all that blood. But the men were tiring, and tired people make missteps.

  Adam didn’t look directly at any of the strangers—so they wouldn’t have the opportunity to meet his eyes. That was good and bad. It told me he was still in control—but he didn’t trust himself to stay that way.

  He took Benny off Hank’s back without a word, cradling the wounded man like a baby—which kept Benny’s foot up higher though it was a much more difficult way to carry an unconscious person than the fireman’s carry the Owens brothers had been using.

  Hank didn’t fight Adam—just held very still, as though he sensed how much danger he was in. Adam lifted his head once, then took a quick look at all the men before sprinting off for the road at a dead run.

  “Who the hell was that?” asked Calvin.

  He had to have had a fair idea of who it was—after all, Adam had brought clothes for me. What he meant, I thought, was how did Adam run up the side of the canyon carrying Benny at a speed that would have done credit to an Olympic sprinter. “That was my husband,” I said nonchalantly to the adrenaline-filled air as I opened the backpack and pulled out my jeans. “He’s a werewolf—and Hank was smart enough not to make an issue of handing Benny off to him.”

  Adam’s status was not a secret, though there were still a lot of werewolves who hid what they were. Adam was almost a celebrity in the Tri-Cities, though we were hoping the fascination with him would die down. It did no harm for Calvin and the others to know what he was—and maybe it would give them a little caution when we caught up to him.

  Putting on my jeans was slow work because I was still a little damp, but the warmth felt wonderful. He’d packed a sweatshirt that smelled like Adam, came down to my knees, and was warmer than anything I’d brought. I dusted off my sore and bleeding feet and stuffed them into a pair of socks, then into my tennis shoes. Heaven.

  I looked up to see all four men watching me.

  “Don’t meet his eyes if you can help it—he’s had a rough day,” I told them. Then, with the blanket in one hand, I took off after Adam, leaving the others to follow however they would. They’d been swift and sure in the face of their friend’s trouble. They’d recover from the werewolf pretty fast.

  Adam was waiting for us at the highway’s shoulder when I found him. He’d set the injured man down a few yards away, where there was a big rock he’d used to keep Benny’s leg elevated.

  “Hey.” I spread the blanket over Benny and tucked it in around him. “How are you doing, Adam?”

  “Not good,” he admitted without looking at me. “I need someone to kill.” I think he was trying to be funny, but it came out seriously.

  I could hear the others approaching. My feet were battered, shoes or no shoes, and my calf ached where the water plant had been pulled off so abruptly. I hadn’t made the best time up to the highway and, without Benny slowing them down, evidently they had been able to speed up a lot. I stood up and walked to Adam.

  “No one here needs killing,” I told him with quiet urgency. “These men were out looking for Benny here. They are the good guys, so you can’t kill them.”

  Adam still wasn’t meeting my eyes, but he laughed, and it sounded genuinely amused. “Shouldn’t.”

  “Shouldn’t what?”

  “Shouldn’t kill them, Mercy. Not can’t.”

  I put my forehead against his shoulder. “It’s the same thing for you,” I told him confidently.

  He took a deep breath and turned around to meet the four men who were approaching us a little warily—because they weren’t stupid.

  “Hello,” he said, his voice still growly and about a half octave lower than usual. “I’m Adam Hauptman. Alpha of the Columbia Basin Pack.”

  “Jim Alvin,” said Jim, stepping forward. I’d told them not to meet his eyes, but he did better than that. Maybe it was luck, maybe he knew something of werewolves or just wild animals, but he turned one shoulder forward and tipped his head sideways and down submissively even as he reached out a hand. “Of the Yakama Nation. Thank you for the help. Benny’s a good man.” I noticed that Adam didn’t get the elaboration of tribal bloodlines that I had.

  “Do you know what happened to him?” asked Adam, after giving Jim’s hand a brief shake. His eyes were wolf-bright, ominous yellow in the illumination of their flashlights.

  “No idea at all,” Jim said.

  Fred Owens stepped up. His head was lowered, too, but he was looking up into Adam’s face.

  “I’ve seen all kinds of kills. A bear might bite
off half a man’s foot the way Benny’s was. A bear or some other big carnivore.”

  It was a challenge, of a sort, and I held my breath.

  The tension dropped from Adam’s shoulders, and he suddenly grinned. “You think I bit off his foot? Hell, Marine, I just got married. I have more important things to do.”

  “Barracuda,” said Hank into the sudden silence. “It looks like a barracuda ... or maybe a tiger shark. They have these odd teeth that they saw back and forth.”

  “The Columbia,” said Jim slowly, “is freshwater.”

  “Tiger sharks have been found up fresh waterways,” Hank persisted.

  “Not up past dams,” said Fred. “How did you know I was a marine?”

  Adam’s eyes were now honey brown, not quite his usual bitter chocolate, but safer than before. “Easier than spotting a cop,” said Adam. “Might as well have it tattooed across your forehead.” He paused for effect, then said, “It helps that you’re still wearing your dog tags.”

  “You’re not a marine.”

  Adam shook his head. “Army ranger. I never could swim—and since I became a werewolf, I’m all but useless in the water.”

  “Could his foot have gotten caught by one of those old jaw traps?” asked Calvin, speaking up for the first time. “It looked sort of like that to me.”

  “I haven’t seen one of those things being used since I was a kid,” Jim said. “And it was illegal then. But he’s right. It could do that sort of damage.”

  “A bear trap wouldn’t catch two people,” Hank said. Adam might have won over Fred with his military fellowship, but the other Owens brother was still suspicious. “Where is Faith?”

  “He was afraid of something.” I frowned at the unconscious man. “Really afraid. But it wasn’t Adam.”

  Fred nodded abruptly at his brother. “No ranger would be dumb enough to leave a witness alive.”

  Apparently, he felt that left Adam in the clear.

  Hank looked less certain and rubbed a hand along his ribs as if they hurt. Maybe he had strained something carrying Benny up the hill, or maybe it was a reflex thing.

  About that time, the ambulance, followed by a sheriff’s car, pulled up. With practiced speed, the EMT people slipped Benny onto a gurney, and the ambulance roared off to the nearest hospital. The officer took down names and statements. He seemed to know the other men, and, from their body language, they all got along pretty well. When Fred told him Adam was a werewolf, the officer tensed up and ran his flashlight over us.

  His gaze brushed by me, then stopped. “You’re bleeding,” he told me. He aimed his flashlight at my leg—and damned if he wasn’t right.

  I pulled up my pant leg. It had been so cold, and my feet had taken such a battering, I hadn’t really been paying attention. It hurt, but I hadn’t connected that to actual damage. And there was quite a lot, really. Something had ripped the skin off my calf and taken some meat with it. It looked like a really nasty rope burn.

  “I got caught up in some weeds wading out to Benny’s boat,” I said. “Benny hit the motor while I was holding on to the boat and pulled me loose.”

  “That doesn’t look like something a weed would do,” Fred told me, shining his flashlight on it. “Some of those underwater plants can be sharp and slice you up some, but that looks more like you pulled free of a hemp rope.”

  “All sorts of garbage in that river,” said the deputy. “Lucky you didn’t get caught up in deeper water. Ambulance is in use, but I could run you to the hospital.”

  “No,” I said. “It’s nasty, but I’m up-to-date on my shots. Mostly it just needs cleaning and bandaging, and we have the stuff to do that.”

  Adam had knelt to get a good look. I heard him take a deep breath, then move closer. After a minute, he shook his head and stood up. “Thought I smelled something odd, but there’s no telling what a rope might gather sitting in the river.”

  The deputy swallowed, having been reminded what Adam was. “You four can take your boat back? Okay. Leave Benny’s boat there, and we’ll get people to check it out and see what that tells us. Mostly we’ll just have to wait until Benny can tell us what happened to Faith and his foot. At this point, I expect it’s some sort of accident.”

  “I saw a man attacked by a barracuda once,” said Adam. He looked at Hank. “I agree it looked a lot like your Benny’s foot.” He glanced at Calvin. “Not a metal trap. Those old jaw traps are built to dig in and hold the animal, not go all the way through the bone. A bear trap might crush a foot off, and there was some crushing on Benny’s foot—but mostly it was sliced. Something with sharp teeth went after him.”

  “No barracuda in the Columbia,” said Fred. But he didn’t sound like he was arguing. “No sharks, either, for that matter. It looks to me like something a piece of farm machinery might do. But I’ve never run into a baler or harvester in the river.”

  My leg, once I’d noticed it, began to itch. It looked as though it ought to hurt more than it did, but right now, it itched. Maybe I’d gotten into some nettles or something while I was running around bare-legged.

  Adam glanced at me. “I need to get Mercy to camp.”

  The deputy said, “You guys go get your boat and go home. Mr. Hauptman, I can take you and your wife back to your camp so you can take care of her.”

  He was scared of Adam. When we got in the car, the scent of his fear filled the air. I don’t think a human would have noticed, though, and a little bit of fear wouldn’t set Adam off.

  Adam had a lot of experience dealing with scared people. By the time we reached the campground, the deputy was deep in a discussion about what the impact of a second campground in the Maryhill area would be.

  “What we really need here is a good restaurant or two.” The deputy’s voice carried his conviction. “The museum has a nice deli, and there are a couple of places in Biggs, but they are always overflowing with highway traffic. You have to drive all the way to Goldendale, The Dalles, or Hood River for really good food. Those are too hard to find for the tourist business pulled in by the museum or Stonehenge. I figure we lose a lot of business because we don’t have enough places to eat.”

  He pulled up to the gates and let us out. “I’d appreciate it if you folks stayed around here for a few days in case we need to ask you anything else.”

  “We were planning to,” said Adam. “But if you need us, you have my cell.”

  He drove off, and I told Adam, “You’d better not let Bran see how diplomatic and reassuring you can be when you want. He’ll make you go around the country and make speeches about how werewolves are gentle and not scary at all, too.”

  Adam smiled and picked me up. “Shh,” he said.

  I didn’t argue. The itching hadn’t gone away, but the pain had increased just on the short ride to the camp. Besides, carrying me wasn’t much of an effort for a werewolf.

  “Hey,” I said. “You’ve been playing the hero pack mule all day. First Robert, then Benny, and now me.”

  He set me down in front of the trailer and opened the door for me. When I sat down on the leather sofa, he turned on the interior lights and rolled my pant leg up to my knee. In the bright light of the trailer, it looked a lot worse than it had. Yellow stuff and blood crusted the cut, which was about an inch wide and deeper than I’d thought. The first hint of bruising was beginning to show up above and below the cut, and the edges had puffed up.

  Adam put his nose down to my leg and sniffed again. He took a fluffy towel out of a cupboard and put that over his leg. Then he propped my calf on his thigh and poured liquid fire over the cut. I know some people claim that hydrogen peroxide doesn’t hurt. Goody for them. I hate the stuff.

  I jumped when the hydrogen peroxide hit and shrank down into the couch as it continued to bubble ferociously. Adam used the damp towel to clean my leg, then he sniffed again.

  “That was no rope,” he growled. “There was something caustic or poisonous on whatever grabbed you—I can smell it.”

  “Is th
at why it itches?” I asked.

  “Probably.” He handed me a couple of pills from a bottle in the kit.

  “What is this?”

  “Antihistamine,” he said. “In case the swelling is an allergic reaction.”

  “If I take these, I’ll be asleep in three minutes.” I took them anyway. The need to dig my fingers into that cut and scratch was almost unbearable as soon as the burn of the hydrogen peroxide had worn off.

  “We need to call Uncle Mike,” I said in a small voice. I didn’t want to start an argument again.

  He must have heard it in my voice because he patted my knee. “I’ll call as soon as I’m through here, but I doubt that Uncle Mike sent us here for this.”

  “Just to be clear,” I said. “I didn’t misunderstand you, right? You and the Owenses are thinking that there is some kind of fish that ate Benny’s foot.”

  “Too soon to make assumptions,” said Adam. “Maybe they stopped onshore for lunch and met a bear.”

  “Are there even bear around here?”

  “Probably not here,” Adam acknowledged. “But up where we were hiking there are. No telling how far Benny got his boat from the initial attack.”

  “So what was it that grabbed my leg?” I asked.

  “That is something that Uncle Mike might know,” Adam said. “How much of those otters did you see?”

  I blinked, my brain already starting to haze from the antihistamine. Otters.

  I sat up a little straighter. “Those weren’t river otters.” Their heads were a little differently shaped. I hadn’t paid much attention to that at the time.

  Adam nodded. “I saw one when I got back to the boat. What do you bet that they’re a European species? Werewolves aren’t the only shapeshifters in Europe.”

  “I’ve heard of selkies and kelpies,” I said. “But not shapeshifting otters.”

  “Nor have I,” said Adam, frowning at my calf. “But selkies interacted with people a lot. Kelpies are rarer, I’m told, but terrifying. You can see why there would be stories about them. Otters just aren’t scary.”