Bearing It All (Alpha Werebear Shifter Paranormal Romance) (12 page)

She bent over and pulled her boots on. It was a little cold out, and with the shorts she was wearing, it was pretty much imperative that her boots were warm and high. The shorts certainly didn’t help anything.

“You don’t have to treat me like an idiot all the time, Leota,” Jasmine said. “I’m a pretty successful pre-veterinary student at the biggest school for a thousand miles. I don’t know why you care so much about what shoes I wear. I never comment on yours.”

Leota pulled her lips back in a silent snarl. She took a big whiff of her concoction, and jabbed at a frog eye that had floated to the surface, sending it back into the thick, bubbling liquid. In two more days, maybe three depending on the humidity, the test run of her potion would be finished.

She’d be able to see if all that money she gave that wretched little crocodile was worth the effort. More than the money, she’d find out if going to
see
him was worth the effort.

“Leota?” Jasmine said again. “Why do you always do that? Criticize me and then ignore me? What’s that supposed to do? Just give me a complex?”

“Hmm,” Leota exhaled, examining the recipe.
An amount of innocent, virginal life-essence commensurate with the lasciviousness which needs curing; two frog eyes per essence; a pinch of cardamom; two sprigs of turnip greens; a dash of oregano; a heavy pinch of cinnamon to flavor and perfume the broth to make it easier to trick a person into imbibing.
“What was that? Did you say something?”

Jas let out an exasperated sight. “Always with the damn potions! Why can’t you pay any attention to anything else? I wish dad were still alive. I almost kinda-sorta liked you when there was a buffer between me and your crazy-town stuff.”

“Very good,” Leota said, obviously not paying a lick of attention. Her test dose was very small – she’d not even killed the girl she drained so little essence. But, if she gave it to Jas and then the girl began wearing more reasonable clothes, Leota would take that as a sign that there was hope after all. “That’s fine, dear. Leave those horrid boots.”

“You’re so... just...” Jasmine was getting frustrated. She balled up her fists and stuck them into her hips. When she did, the part of her shorts pockets that extended past where she’d cut off the legs flapped a little. “UGH! You’re impossible! You know what? Fuck this! I have class. Enjoy your soup or whatever you’re making. I’ll be home at eight. Or maybe not. I don’t know.”

“Hmm, yes,” Leota said, trailing off and taking another whiff. “Very good.”

The door slammed behind her, and she didn’t react at all. The only thing that could bother her now was that vile crocodile not delivering the girls he’d promised. Well, that or the tincture failing to do as Jenga, the witchdoctor who lived down the way, had promised her.

This purity potion, meant to return her step-daughter to what Leota considered, proper, was by no stretch of the imagination the witch’s first foray into the darker parts of magic. But, she’d never done anything quite like this.

Inter-state kidnapping? Draining the life force from eight people? She knew the danger, but she thought there was simply no way she’d fail. After all, she’d spent her life doing the things all self-respecting, cranky, reclusive witches did – luring children into her house and almost getting them in her oven was just the beginning of her rap sheet.

She stirred the pot a little faster, inhaling the acrid scent.

Then again, like she’d told that foul little stooge, she’d do whatever it took.

Whatever
it took.

Outside her house, Leota heard a jingling sound, then her step-daughter started the car and drove off. A moment later, another jingling sound – this one accompanied by shuffling feet and a rattling cough – approached the door.

The rickety knock irritated her, but there was nothing to do for now with the potion, so Leota gave it one final stir and turned to glance out the door. Her shoulders slumped. Why did he have to come by so often? And why did he have to bring that awful zombie?

Jenga knocked again, so eagerly that Leota’s door shook. At least he didn’t have Atlas knocking for him still – the last time that happened he had to stay around for three or four hours repairing the damage.

“Leota!” he called excitedly. Ever since he had his jail sentence reduced to a tremendous amount of community service hours, he’d re-opened his “medical” practice, and it seemed like every time he got some time away from picking up trash at the school playground, he figured out some reason to visit. “Leota! Are you in there?”

He stuck his face right up to the window, pressing his bone-speared nose to the glass. His beard – or rather, all of the stuff tied in it – clanged loudly against the doorframe. “Leota!”

“I’m coming, Jenga,” she replied. “Please, could you
calm down
? Some of us spend our hours in decent pursuits instead of simply vegetating in front of that television of yours.”

Leota forced a strained smile as she pushed open the door.

“Atlas smells... less offensive than normal,” she remarked, as the giant re-animated werebear shambled into her house. Her floorboards creaked as he did, but the creature smelled vaguely of lilac. “In general, I don’t approve of perfumes as they’re markers of decadence and a desire for lascivious attention. Outside of a bit of rosewater about the collar, of course. In the case of him, though, it’s a marked improvement.”

Atlas turned to her and smiled broadly at the compliment. “Thank... You...”

“Did you... use lilac water?” Leota asked.

Atlas smiled again. When he exhaled, the scent was unmistakable.

“Well, you know,” Jenga began, “seein’ as Erik let me off with community service as long as I kept my practice running and didn’t steal anything, I’ve been taking the new zombie cleanliness town ordinance seriously. I tried just dousin’ him with the stuff, but he drank the whole jug. I agree though, it is a lot nicer than his normal breath.”

Jenga smiled at her. Then, he picked a piece of... something from between his yellowed teeth. A moment later, he rubbed his nose, which set the bone stuck through his nose to wiggling. Leota allowed herself a moment’s indulgence to smile before regaining her composure.

“By the by,” he started in a second later, “what’s all that noise I keep hearin’ from your cellar. Sounds like banging.”

Leota shook her head dismissively. “I’ve got a problem with raccoon infestations. They seem to make their way into my—”

“Ain’t the Newsome bunch is it? They got into my back house a while ago. Creswell – that’s the dad - ate right through my television cable in my workshop. I got so mad I chased one of them off with a fetish doll and burned an effigy of another.” He laughed. “Then I got to feelin’ so guilty I let them all back in. Guess I’m goin’ soft in my, er, extreme old age.”

Leota closed her eyes tight and pushed her thumbs into her aching temples. “No, Jenga,” she said. “I don’t believe it’s the Newsome family having taken up residence in my cellar.”

She couldn’t believe that one obnoxious little teenager could make that much noise. And now that she was getting another shipment, she made a mental note to put more sound dampening fluffy stuff down there.

“What have you been doing with all those frog eyes and lichens I’ve been bringing you?” Jenga asked out of nowhere. “Some kind of evil magic?”

Leota scoffed and opened her eyes wider in an angry glare. “How
dare
you, Mr. Cranston! To come into my own home and accuse me of using evil magic. Why, I never... I’ve never heard of such rudeness, I—”

He smiled and scrunched his nose into a confused look. Then, he began to chew. “Oh, must’ve been stuck back there,” he said. “What were you saying? So it isn’t an evil potion?”

“Most certainly not!”

Jenga looked at Leota for a moment, trying to digest what had just happened. Why’d she suddenly gotten so angry? It couldn’t have been that he mentioned evil magic – after all, she was notoriously the crankiest of all the witches in the Jamesburg coven.

“Did I say somethin’ wrong?” he finally asked, deciding to take the direct route. He’d never been very good at reading minds, no matter how much of an expert he was at talking people out of their money. “You seem all bent outta shape.”

“The insinuation that I – a highly respected natural magic practitioner would,” Leota was just about to get really ramped up when she was interrupted by a very fresh smelling zombie shambling toward her momentarily forgotten cauldron.

“Jenga!” she shouted. “Retract your zombie! He’s—”

“Leota,” Jenga said, infuriatingly slow. “He’s not a zombie. Not really. Atlas is a re-animated, improved version of—”

“He is
drinking
my potion!” She was gawking. Leota
never
gawked.

“He’s... what?” Jenga turned to see what all the fuss was over.

Sure enough, Atlas had picked up the boiling cauldron, completely unaffected by how it was burning his hands.

“That’s... that’s my test batch!” Leota cried. “Atlas! No! Bad boy! No!”

“He ain’t a dog,” Jenga said. “Atlas, put that down! You don’t know where it’s been!”

The huge bear licked his lips and took a deep breath. “Mmm,” he groaned. His voice, low and rumbling, filled the entire house. “Good.”

“Atlas! Don’t drink that!” Jenga yelled, hobbling across the house and grabbing his zombie friend’s arm.

But, neither that, nor Leota’s increasingly raspy screeching, was going to keep the big bear from his prize. Slowly, he let his grin open and he lifted the cauldron.

As the liquid went down his throat, down his chest, and down either side of his huge head, the groan that Atlas made got louder and louder. He lowered the pot, smiling still, and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, then let out a contented sigh.

Leota and Jenga both froze, just watching and waiting.

“What, uh, was that?” Jenga asked, breaking the moments-long silence. “Is he gonna turn into a newt? Or a birthday cake? I’d really like a birthday cake. But I wouldn’t trade Atlas for one. He’s too good of a friend.”

Jenga let out a long, rattling cackle. “You are too, Leota,” he said, clapping her on the back and surprising the old witch. “You’re a good friend. I’m so glad you’re right down the way from me. I don’t know what I’d do without our visits. Don’t you enjoy them too? Say,” Jenga finally took a breath as he went to Leota’s kitchen. “Want some tea? I can put on a pot.”

“STOP IT!” she shouted. “Stop! No tea, no biscuits, no nothing!”

Leota’s eyes were so wide open they looked like bloodshot plates. “He
drank
my test batch!”

“Yes,” Jenga said. “But what
was
it? Why does it matter so much?”

“You have no idea how much that cost,” she replied. “Ten thousand... no seventy, eighty... I’ve lost count. But it’s a huge number. All lost, unless—”

“Pardon,” Atlas said, surprising himself with his own strangely accented voice. “Would it be possible for me to have a bit of tea and possibly some cake? I’m famished.” He was still speaking slowly, but there was something British about his voice. Very proper, anyway.

Jenga’s mouth fell open, his beard jingling against his chest. The bone in his nose wobbled.

“Atlas? Are you okay?”

The zombie bear coughed, slowly of course, but lifted his hand, covering his mouth. “Excuse me,” he said. With every strange motion, every alien-sounding word, Atlas looked more and more confused.

Leota, on the other hand, looked happier and happier.

“Tea!” she said. “He wants tea! The zombie wants tea! He’s... oh, oh my goodness!”

Jenga shook his head. “From furious to excited. Confusin’ as all hell, the ways of womankind.” He and Atlas exchanged a perplexed glance. The big bear touched his chest tentatively.

“I’m not sure that’s so polite, Jenga,” he said. “After all, we’re guests in her house. Shouldn’t we be more considerate?”

By this point, Atlas looked absolutely terrified. His eyes were wide open, and getting bigger every time he talked or made some gesture that would have been at home at Downton Abbey, but absolutely
not
on a seven foot tall bear.

“What’s happened to him, Leota?” Jenga asked. “He looks scared as all hell, and he’s... well he obviously ain’t himself.”

Just then, the old witch appeared from the kitchen, carrying a tray full of shortbread cookies, and impossibly delicate cups of tea. There was a beautifully inlaid Bone China pot in the center of three cups.

Jenga wasn’t sure if Atlas had ever even
smelled
tea. At least, he’d never smelled tea that didn’t come from swamp fungus.

“How do you take it?” Leota asked. “Sugar? Milk?”

Atlas cleared his throat, once again covering his mouth. “I, um, well,” Leota sensed his discomfort and poured it for him.

“Try it regular, with nothing in it. That’s how I like it,” she said.

She and Jenga both watched in great anticipation as Atlas pinched the tiny cup between his thumb and forefinger, stuck out his pinky, and lifted the cup to his lips.

He took a sip, which turned into a drink which quickly turned into a gulp.

The huge, stitched up werebear smiled, and then suddenly the corners of his eyes relaxed back to their normal slackness. At first, Atlas’s mouth hung just a bit more open than it was a few seconds before. Before Jenga’s eyes, his friend was becoming himself again.

His mouth fell open. A long, lovable tendril of drool ran down his chin. Atlas let his eyes fall halfway shut, and he slouched into
very
poor posture.

Leota stared, completely beside herself.

Atlas’s smile spread from ear to ear. He was back to normal, just like that.

Leota and Jenga looked from one another to the now very-pleased werebear.

“Atlas! No!” Jenga shouted, as Atlas lifted the teacup back to his mouth, opened wide, and bit the cup off at the handle.

He chewed, smiled, and swallowed. Then, very happy with himself, Atlas patted his stomach. A moment later, he reached for another tea cup, the one Leota had filled for herself, and swallowed the whole thing at once, gulping it down like a tea-filled bonbon. Made out of Bone China.