Page 20 of Taming Her Bears

“I’m a state trooper,” I offered.

She gave me a sardonic look. “Where’s your badge?”

I was frantically rummaging through my brain for a good reason why I didn’t have my badge, without spilling the whole I-was-captured-while-at-a-party bag of beans, when Captain Josh and the rest of his crew clip-stepped down the hospital aisle in full dress uniform. I had never seen the captain in anything but his sloppy clothes or his bear rug, so it just didn’t occur to me how knock-down gorgeous he was when he was all cleaned up. I had to whip my tongue back to keep it from hanging outside my mouth.

His effect on the attendant was just as high voltage. She clasped her clipboard primly to her chest and pulled up her glasses, and quite spontaneously lifted a hand to loosen her hair. He stopped in front of her and gave a slight bow. “Captain Joshua Banks, Coast Guard, SRS, Special Division Ursa. The young lady was picked up on a search and rescue mission. We need access to all her medical files, and we need to question her as soon as she is able to communicate.” He showed her a document. “By order of the governor.”

Wild horses couldn’t stop her tongue from wagging now. She tucked an arm confidentially through his and explained in a deeply troubled voice, “She was raped repeatedly. We’ve picked up the DNA of three different men. This is consistent with the bruising made with fists and boots—three different sizes.”

He patted her hand to let her know how deeply he sympathized and how reluctant he was to keep this on a purely professional level. “We’ll need the DNA samples of the perpetrators. How soon can we see her?”

The gravity in her voice caused us all to draw close. “Her body will heal. She was tortured, but the injuries were not life-threatening. But mentally… she’s been severely traumatized. It may be a long time before you can make any sense out of her at all.” She gave me a penetrating look, as though to see if I would object. “That’s why we called the shaman.”

A shaman would not have been the first person I would call for a mental health issue, but the captain appeared satisfied and I’m not one to criticize people’s beliefs. How could I? I was living with four shapeshifters! In some places, I could go to the looney bin for saying that. Fortunately, not in Alaska.

The captain and the attendant were still signing forms when a small, somewhat stocky man appeared seemingly out of nowhere. He had a moon-shaped face, with an upturned mouth and giant crow’s feet that crinkled away from the corners of his eyes into laugh lines. He wore a sky-blue, elaborately embroidered shirt, a large ivory necklace, a bracelet made from small jade stones and a multi-colored, hand-woven belt to hold up his jeans. His long braid reached all the way down his back and his head was covered by a bowler hat sporting a single peacock feather.

“Flashy, isn’t it?” he asked when he saw me studying his hat. “I was looking at these feathers in the India store down on main street and I asked myself, why be a raven or an eagle if you can be a peacock?”

“Why a peacock?” I asked. Shaman were supposed to be wise, so I expected a profound answer.

“Why not a peacock? Are you against peacocks?”

“Of course not.”

“There you go,” he said, apparently completely satisfied.

His attention shifted sharply to Captain Josh, then Darkhorse, Roy, and Lee. He sniffed the air and walked around them. “Hey-ya!” he said, boxing at the air next to them. The team appeared unperturbed.

“Well, that’s over with,” he sighed, unfolding a woven ceremonial robe that had been sitting on a chair for I didn’t know how long. I hadn’t seen it appear. It was decorated in the traditional bright red and black colors of the Haida.

With the robe draped over him, he did look more like a shaman. The air became quiet, the way it does when someone lights a candle. He crossed his arms and stood in the semi-circle of the team. “Bear clan, I welcome you. Your spirits will make her stronger.”

I would never again dismiss the stories and legends of the spirits that wander through the north. That night was even stranger than the first time I saw a shapeshifter—not as frightening, but stranger. The room was lit only by the heart and breathing monitors next to the bedside, and by a single candle in the window. The shaman bent his knees in a shuffling dance, holding something. I couldn’t quite catch what it was, but it seemed to emit a vapor so light, it was like a fleeting spirit.

The dance continued, his robe creating an odd motion picture. He chanted. The shadows flickering over the walls looked like the flight of wild geese. There was a rush of air followed by a long faint howl of the wilderness. I heard music floating up over a murmuring ocean. I heard bird calls. A forest sprang up within the shadowy dance and four massive creatures stood erect, their ears rounded, their snouts tilted to sniff the air.

The chanting lowered and grew softer. Slowly, the images melted away. The shaman stood over the girl and whispered intently, then touched her head. “She will sleep well tonight,” he said, ushering us out of the room. “She will dream she is safely in the village with her family. She will dream of the things that make her happy. Tomorrow, you can ask her your important questions.”

He walked with us to the exit door and lit a cigarette. After he smoked half, he handed it to Josh. “To get rid of the bad medicine,” he explained, waving the smoke around. I wrinkled my nose as it hit my nostrils. He grunted. “You, too. When we pass around the little smoke, he can’t tell one of us from another. We’re all the same to him then.”

He watched Josh take two drags then hand the cigarette to Darkhorse. Leaning leisurely against the wall, he lit another. “You are chasing a very bad man, Captain Banks. It’s not for me to say,” he began, lowering his voice and drawing us closer. The smoke wasn’t all tobacco; it was slightly intoxicating. In the smoke-filled circle, his voice sounded like it floated from the deep hollows. “But show him no mercy. You can’t hide from me. I know what you’re doing. For all of us, show him no mercy.”

Josh

Normally, I don’t have much trouble controlling my shapeshifting, but damn, that woman gets me hot and bothered. I see her and my temperature automatically goes up sixty degrees. There are only two solutions when I’m pumping that much adrenaline: sex or shapeshifting. I prefer the sex, but there are matters of propriety, especially concerning senior officers in the Coast Guard Services and what’s acceptable to the public. What I wouldn’t give for the good old days when everyone was tribal, and shapeshifters were considered a hot date. You can’t win them all, but I would sure like to win one argument with Natalia.

She was right. She was always right. If she hadn’t come with us, we probably would have bungled it when we found the girl, especially since Lee found her first. Lee’s a good kid, but he has all the tact of a musk ox. He probably would have terrified her to death before we could get her on the boat.

I didn’t like it, though. I didn’t like her coming ashore land. If there had been one shooter and that shooter had come close to hitting her, I think I would have ripped the entire lodge to shreds getting at him and, consequently, destroying all our evidence.

We had a lot, enough to make our case for murder in any court. I don’t think Denisovich knew we were riding so closely on his tail or he would have been more careful about cleaning up. He clearly didn’t think it mattered. He thought his Valdez crew had wiped up their island headquarters. He had no way of knowing, because nobody had returned to Valdez. There had been no one to sound the alarm. And since Natalia had never showed up either, there was no reason for anyone to get suspicious. At least, not right away. And right away was all that mattered.

Only one person, besides the admiral, knew our destination, and that was the Sitka harbor master. He was trustworthy. I radioed him, confirming McCarthy’s death and the deaths of his top officers. I knew it would cause a major rumble, but it wasn’t something we could keep under our hats forever. People needed closure.

The next morning when we went to check on our victim, she was cranked halfway into a sitting position, awake and sipping water through a straw. She drew back when she saw me, so I stopped at the door, leaving it open to reassure her. Darkhorse and Roy remained standing behind me, and only Natalia and Lee went inside the room.

The girl was more receptive toward Natalia than she was toward Lee. She turned in her bed and reached for Natalia’s hands, mouthing words that would not leave her throat. Natalia knew what to do. She pulled up a chair so that she was sitting so close, her woodsy, spruce-trees-and-wildflowers scent overrode the smell of hospital antiseptics.

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