Fiends and Familiars

by Dunbar, Debra

  We all headed out, making a quick stop at the Starbucks drive-through to get a chai latte for me, a pumpkin scone for Drake, and some vegan bagels for the squirrels. The leaves were just starting to change at the higher elevations and I rolled down the window as we headed past the wards to breathe in the smell of fresh-cut hay, of late berries ripening in the sun, of pine needles carpeting the forests.

  Home. Days like this I ached to be back in Accident with my family just down the street. Everything was familiar there. Everyone knew my name.

  “I need to just give it time,” I said to Drake. “I’ll build memories in my new home and neighborhood, and before long it will feel just as comfortable as Accident.” Of course, the people down my street might not be thrilled that their new neighbor had squirrels and a vulture living in her house, and a dog-thing eating scraps in her front yard every evening. I’d have to organize a big Halloween party or something and have Glenda cater it. After that, no one would care if I had elephants living in my yard or not. Glenda’s food had a way of making everyone happy. Combine that with free beer and all sorts of witchy decorations, and hopefully I’d be accepted into the neighborhood.

  The vulture clacked his beak.

  “You’re right. Babylon has been living outside the wards since she got out of college and she’s happy. She made friends and has local hangouts where people know her. Plus it’s nice not having to commute two hours each day.”

  Drake hissed and I laughed.

  “Yes, I’m looking forward to that fall party. Should I make pumpkin bars with cream cheese frosting to take?” Glenda was the chef of the family, but I could manage a simple dessert. Besides, it would probably be rude to show up to a party uninvited and empty handed.

  The vulture eyed me with a nod of his head. If he’d had eyebrows, he would have been wiggling them.

  I sighed. “I’d like to meet someone, but right now my priority is making friends and settling into my new home. If the right guy comes along, then awesome. If not, then that’s okay.”

  Heck, at least I had my dream-demon. And if he stopped coming around, there was that vibrator I’d stashed in the back of the drawer in my bedside table.

  The squirrels chattered from the backseat and I listened in, amused at their ideas of what an ideal mate for me would be. Seems he should have a very full, bushy tail, a thick gray coat, and be especially skilled at gathering nuts and berries, and evading dogs.

  Especially hounds, Rhoid added. They’re very good at tracking you down. If one of them catches your scent, you’d be lucky to get away.

  There was an awed silence from the back seat, then Oak asked if Rhoid had ever had a hound after him.

  Many times. One almost caught me, but I managed to hide before he caught my scent.

  You should mate with the nice-house lady, Maple told the bigger squirrel. You have a nice tail and coat, and you are clearly good at evading dogs.

  Rhoid looked up and caught my gaze in the rear-view mirror. Squirrels don’t mate with humans.

  There was something odd in the squeaky words, almost as if Rhoid was wishing for a moment he were human. His emotions and thoughts washed over me and without thinking I deciphered snippets of them. Regret. It had been a long time since he’d felt arms around him. Something about paying a price and choices. I glanced in the mirror again and felt sorry for the little guy. Gray squirrels weren’t monogamous by any stretch of the imagination, so if Rhoid was longing for a past relationship, it might have been the one he had with his mother and siblings in the nest. Or perhaps he just wanted to get laid. I’m not sure why he would find that hard to do. The others seemed to regard him as a squirrel worthy of admiration, so I’m sure a female squirrel would as well. Yes, their mating opportunities were limited to a few hours twice a year when a female would come into season, but it wasn’t as if this area was a squirrel free zone. Rhoid should have been able to get it on with half a dozen females each year, no problem.

  Maybe he was picky. Or, like me, maybe he had been too busy with work and moving to a new home to take the time to go bust a nut.

  I turned my attention back to the road as the squirrels continued to offer up suggestions as to my perfect mate. By the time I’d arrived at Savior Mountain, they were in the process of setting me up with some chipmunks they knew.

  Savior was just as beautiful as Heartbreak Mountain, but Clinton’s pack’s new territory had been untended and abandoned to the wildlife for decades. When I was young, I remembered my grandmother saying that a group of elves had once made this mountain their home. Fae were an odd group. Some eagerly participated in the life and community of Accident, while others preferred a more isolated existence. These elves had evidently been the latter. By the time I’d come along, only a handful remained living here, and soon they too left.

  No one was required to give notice to leave the town—or to move in for that matter. All supernaturals were welcome as long as they followed some basic rules and respected the other beings that made this place their home. This was meant to be a sanctuary—and for some, that sanctuary was only needed on a temporary basis. Grandmother had told us the elves had gone back to their fae home, and although that was absolutely fine, I’d always been sad about it. Why had they left? Didn’t they feel welcome here? Didn’t they know that life in Accident was better than life anywhere else?

  Maybe they’d just gotten tired of a two-hour-per-day commute, and needed to move closer to where they worked.

  I put the truck in four-wheel drive, then slowly made my way up the road to where Clinton was building his compound. Although several vehicles had been up here before, it was still rough going. There were brambles and bushes that reached out to scratch along the side of my truck. Saplings had sprouted mid-road, and although the bigger ones had been hacked down, smaller ones were still there to bend as I drove over them. I carefully edged around washed out sections and boulders only to come to a stop in front of a giant downed tree.

  “Guess we’ll have to go on foot,” I told the others. I was assuming the tree had recently fallen, otherwise one of Clinton’s pack would have moved it. Although it was a bit large for one werewolf to manage on his own. Perhaps someone had noticed it and gone back for help?

  Either way, I had clients to see this afternoon and didn’t have time to wait around for werewolves to come back and move a tree. Getting out of my truck, I grabbed one of the cages in the back, slung my bag over my shoulder, and eyed the thick oak trunk that lay across the road.

  The squirrels and Drake had no problem getting over to the other side, but the tree was thick enough that trying to climb up and over it wouldn’t be an easy task. I walked around to the right, but the tree had fallen into a mess of brambles that looked a whole lot less fun than crawling over a thick trunk.

  Walking around to the left, I saw the massive, dirt-encrusted root ball from where the tree had come up from the ground. Thankfully that area was relatively clear, and I made my way past some sticker bushes and vines to round the fallen tree.

  I didn’t have the same affinity toward trees as I did animals, but I’d spent enough time in the woods growing up that I wondered why this tree had toppled. Had some infection taken out the root system? A blight of some sort? It was a shame that a tree would grow so huge and strong only to be taken down by mold or fungus.

  On the other side I saw that a huge crack split the tree nearly straight up the middle. Inside, the core was black and rotted, a sickening sweet smell oozing out from the center. I put my arm over my nose and mouth, but before I could turn away I saw something glinting along the edge of the split.

  Moving closer, I knelt down and picked it up, holding my breath to keep from gagging at the smell.

  It was a bone. Probably the remnant of some animal’s dinner that they’d been keeping in this split in the tree, although what carnivore would find the smell pleasant enough to store their food there was beyond me.

  I shoved the bone in my pocket and hurried back down the road t
oward Clinton’s compound. It would be interesting to identify what sort of animal had met their end here and give the bone a proper burial. Later.

  Once I was done evicting some hornets and a badger, later.

  It was only a mile hike into the rudimentary compound, but it took longer than usual due to the incline and my lack of physical fitness. Heck, I’d only moved away a month ago and I was already huffing and puffing going up a mountain road? I needed less time in front of the television with popcorn and more time jogging or lifting at the gym. Just when I was wishing I’d waited for some werewolves to come along and move that fallen tree, I saw the compound.

  It wasn’t all that pretty, but in the spring the wildflowers and grasses would grow over the areas where the trees had been cleared and the well and septic put in, and it would look like a beautiful meadow dotted with frame homes. Right now it was a rocky, muddy mess with torn-up trees off to the side where the backhoe had pushed them. The houses were pristine pine lumber and plywood sheets, the roofing trusses covered with bright blue tarps. I assumed in addition to running pipes and wires, the werewolves would be getting the roof and shingles on, then the doors and windows. As Cassie had said, winter was fast approaching, and Clinton and his pack really needed to be off Heartbreak Mountain before the first frost, and before Dallas lost his patience.

  But before they did that, I needed to relocate the hornets who were making roofing work a nightmare for the werewolves. And a badger—although why the werewolves couldn’t deal with one little badger, I didn’t know. I closed my eyes and extended my awareness. My four squirrels were arguing with another two about trespassing and territory rights. Drake was staring at a werewolf’s discarded lunch remains, wondering why humans felt the need to cook their meat. Three does were grazing nearby, very aware of my presence. Birds. Insects.

  Hornets. I opened my eyes and walked over to one of the far houses that had been built under a huge sycamore tree at the end of the clearing. There, up on a high limb, was one of the biggest hornet’s nests I’d ever seen.

  There was no way I’d be able to reach that nest with my collapsible pole, even if I climbed up on the roof trusses of the house. I wasn’t even sure I’d be able to carry that nest somewhere else, it was so huge. I could ask the hornets to leave.

  I could do more than ask them, but I refused to do that. It wasn’t right to take an animal’s will. No, I’d ask. I’d reason. And hopefully we could come to an understanding because if the werewolves continued to get stung, then their next step would be to break out the poison.

  And none of us wanted that. Well, the hornets and I didn’t want that. I’m pretty sure no one beyond me cared about hornets. I called up to them, but none responded, so I looked around until I found a good-sized ladder, propped it against the house, and climbed as high as I dared.

  “Hello! Hornets?”

  A few emerged from the nest, buzzing around the opening. I tried to explain the situation to them, but they were more concerned about dwindling food supplies and the threat of predation by birds. After some back and forth, I managed to convince them that the werewolves working on this house were not a threat, and promised that the workers would not come within six feet of their nest.

  I made my way carefully down the ladder, nearly jumping out of my skin when a pair of hands grabbed my waist and eased me down.

  “Shit, Clinton! You nearly scared me half to death!” I scolded the werewolf alpha. As big and brawny as they were, werewolves were pretty darned light on their feet. I hadn’t even heard him approach.

  “Sorry.” The werewolf grinned sheepishly. “Saw your truck by the downed tree and came to see if you needed a hand.”

  “I just finished dealing with your hornet problem.” I gestured toward the nest. “Tell everyone to stay at least six feet from the nest and they’ll leave you alone. Unless you start swatting at them, that is.”

  Clinton scowled. “Can’t you smoke them to sleep and move the nest? I don’t trust those things one bit. Yesterday I got stung, and I gotta say it was the most painful experience of my life. I’ve been stabbed, shot, hit over the head with a fire hydrant, and nothing hurt like that damned hornet sting.”

  I grimaced, thankful that I’d never experienced a hornet sting. “They can’t vacate this late in the year, and that nest is too big and too high for me to move it. They’re really not aggressive. It’s only when they’re protecting their nest or they’re threatened that they attack. Otherwise they’re very peaceful creatures.”

  “Peaceful my ass.” The werewolf glared up at the nest. “Darla and Billy are supposed to live here along with their three pups, Billy’s two brothers and Darla’s mother. None of them wants to get stung taking out the trash or sittin’ on their porch. I’m thinking we should just spray them.”

  I did not want him thinking that was a solution. “You’re gonna spray that poison and have it dripping down on the ground where three pups are going to be playing?”

  Clinton wrinkled his brow in worry, looking at the area under the nest. “Okay, but nobody wants to be living under a hornet’s nest. Nobody.”

  I sighed and motioned for him to lean down closer to me. “Look,” I whispered. “Don’t let them know, but come November, they’ll all be dead except for the queen. She’ll hibernate elsewhere, and won’t use the old nest next year. Once winter sets in, we can take the nest down. I’ll find the queen and I’ll move her to the other side of the mountain while she’s hibernating. When she wakes come spring, she’ll start a new nest somewhere far away from your settlement.”

  Clinton jerked upright, his eyes wide. “They’re all gonna—”

  I reached up to slap a hand over his mouth. “Don’t say it. They don’t need to know that. It’s just that there’s no food come winter, and…you know. So just tell Darla and the others that if they’re polite and respectful for a few months, then everything will work out. Both your pack and the hornets will be happy.”

  “’Cept for the dead ones,” Clinton muttered under his breath.

  I glared at him. “But you agree? I made a deal that you wouldn’t bother them and they wouldn’t bother you.”

  He huffed out a breath. “Fine. As the alpha of my pack, I will honor the terms of your agreement with the hornets. Now, how about the badger?”

  “That’s next on my list.” I moved the ladder to the ground. “So where is this badger? I can’t sense him anywhere near here.”

  Clinton shot me a narrowed side-eye look. “You can sense animals? I thought you could just talk to them.”

  The werewolves had always been a little afraid of me and my abilities. Correction, a lot afraid. Ever since I was a kid they’d been worried I could do some sort of mind control magic and that my abilities towards animals would also extend to them in their wolf form—and possibly extend to them in their non-wolf form. I’d never tried my magic on the shifters in Accident. It had always seemed rude and intrusive to even attempt it. So I honestly didn’t know if I could influence them or not.

  “I can sense animals, but only within thirty or forty feet of me. It’s not always accurate either. If they’re sleeping or hibernating, or underwater then I can’t sense them. I need their mental activity to know they’re nearby, so that means it doesn’t work on all animals, and I only pick up a presence about seventy percent of the time.” It was still better than accidentally walking into an occupied bear den, or unknowingly stepping on a ground nest of yellow jackets.

  “The badger’s got a den over this way.” Clinton turned and I followed him across the muddy compound.

  Of course, as a nocturnal animal, I wasn’t likely to be sensing any badgers in the area. They were pretty reclusive, and weren’t common to this area of the country at all, so I was actually doubting that the werewolves had a badger problem at all. It probably was a skunk. Or a mink.

  Imagine my surprise when Clinton pointed out a burrow that did, in fact, hold a sleeping badger. He wasn’t deep in the sett, and I could see his wedge-shaped
body and a paw with some impressively long claws only about a foot inside the tunnel.

  “So what exactly is your problem with this guy?” They were omnivorous, eating worms, grubs, insects and small mammals, along with fruit and roots. None of that would make them competitors for prey in the eyes of the werewolves. They were fierce when cornered, but tended to avoid contact and kept to themselves.

  “He sprayed some musky shit on Bruce the other night. His wife made him take three baths in tomato juice and sleep outside on the porch.” Clinton laughed. “Sleeping on the porch didn’t bother Bruce nearly as much as taking three baths. That guy thinks once a week is too much. Three in one night? Thought he was going to die over there from all he was complaining.”

  I stood up. “And what exactly did Bruce do to get sprayed?”

  Clinton shrugged. “Heck if I know. Look, I get that you’re on the side of these animals, Adrienne, but this is gonna be our new home. I need my pack to feel comfortable here, or they’ll start thinking things might be better with Dallas. That means the hornets and the badger got to go. Now, I respect you witches and all you’ve done for me and my kind here in Accident. That’s why I came to Cassie and didn’t take these things into my own hands. But I can’t have hornets stinging folk. And I can’t have badgers spraying Bruce.”

  I understood, but I wanted to hear this badger’s side of the story. And I wasn’t inclined to go kicking him out of his home just because he sprayed some werewolf. This was Accident, and here we all tried to get along. I know I was the only one who included animals in that mandate, but it was important to me that I didn’t evict a creature when there was another solution at hand.

  Which was odd given that outside the wards, in the world of humans, evicting animals was exactly what I did. Still, I never displaced bats or rodents when they had young in a nest, and I always made sure to provide an alternate home for them. I’d put bat boxes, bird houses, and squirrel boxes all over the place. I’d relocated insect nests and made sure animals I moved had plenty of food to get them started in their new location. I just wanted everyone to get along. I wanted a win-win situation.