Bearly Hanging On (Alpha Werebear Shifter Paranormal Romance) (The Jamesburg Shifters Book 6) (3 page)

It was almost a rhetorical question.

He shook his head.

Almost
rhetorical.

Her position on the Jamesburg city council was kind of nebulous. She did a little bit of everything. If Izzy was swamped on the budget, she'd help out there. If Duggan was behind on signing permits because he spent way too long caring about each one, she stepped in. When Erik needed help doing things that were maybe, slightly, possibly a little to the left of the legal line?

She twisted her foot again. "Really?"

"I cain't see," the panther croaked. "It's dark an' anyway, I'm so drunk there'd be four of ya if'n I could."

She took a deep breath through her nose and rolled her eyes as she exhaled. Fall was getting long in the tooth. That bear had been right. Winter
was
going to arrive sooner than normal this year.

And then she was in a whole other kind of trouble. Again.

Those gruff words, that hard voice, and those eyes that sparkled every time he lifted his eyes in her direction. Jamie clenched her eyes shut and shook her head slightly. "Right," she said, to focus her attention. "So what's going to happen right now is that I'm going to take my foot off your idiot neck, I'm gonna make sure that guy is okay, and then I'm calling a friend of mine to take you home."

"He ain't a cop, is he? I got a whole pack of cubs, ma'am," the drunk panther said, just like she figured. It was almost like this wasn't her first rodeo. "If'n I cain't work, they'll—"

She cut him off with another loud, heavy sigh. "You're not going to jail, you're just stupid, not dangerous. I wouldn't waste the hyenas' time." Her voice was cold, quiet. The whispering calm is how she masked her own fear, and she had plenty of it to hide.

He started blubbering a thanks, but Jamie stepped off his neck and checked on the pecker. "You all right?" she asked, crouching down. She pushed the tendrils of black that framed her face back behind her ears, revealing high, sharp cheekbones, and a pair of eyes that glinted, reflecting the moonlight in a haunting, almost chilling way.

The grounded yokel was bleeding, and had his eyes closed, but his pulse was regular and his breathing seemed normal. She gave him a sharp slap on the side of the face.

"Buh, what were 'dat for?" he slopped out, drooling slightly and frowning. He tried to rub his face, but missed and started stroking Jamie's leg, instead. She sighed and put his fingers on his swollen cheek.

"I was waking you up. You and your friend need to kiss and make up before I send you home. Got it? What are your names, anyway?"

"Angus," slurred the one on the ground. "I'm Angus Flaggart and he's Donald Erma—”

"You Goddam' idiot!" Donald snapped. "Don't tell her yer name, she's gonna call the cops, she's—"

In one smooth motion, Jamie flicked her head backward, right into the bridge of Donald's nose, laying him flat on his back. "Is your friend always this obnoxious?" she asked the confused, inebriated, drooling mess of a panther on the ground.

He nodded. "Ain't my friend, he's just a crazy asshole what happens to be my girlfriend's brother."

"I can't deal with this right now," Jamie said as her stomach grumbled angrily. "Hillbilly family drama is way too complicated. Hell, it's hard to figure out which family is really family and which one isn't."

Even the panther had to chuckle at that one. "That's fair enough, I suppose."

Jamie kinda liked him. He was lovable, in a helpless puppy way, and even stinking drunk he was a little witty. That was pretty much her requirement for a man, a mate, whatever. She helped him to his feet. He followed as she took a few steps away and dialed Ash.

When she turned back to him, the one who had been punched was staring at the one Jamie knocked out. "He looks worse than me," Angus said.

"Messing with me is a bad idea, especially when I'm hungry."

The excited anxiety of conflict was starting to pass. Jamie never let herself get loud or shout or show much emotion at all, but every time she got into one of these little situations, adrenaline surged through her body. It had since she was a little girl, since the first time someone back at home called her 'halfsie' and she had to ask her dad what that meant.

Half bat and half human. Only able to shift into an animal form when times were right. In her case, it was during new moons. She was rare and special and absolutely hated that she was rare and special.

She blinked her eyes, coming back to the present, and realized that Angus was tugging on her arm like a lost six year old who had just found a security guard at the mall. She crinkled her forehead, a gesture the drunk panther read correctly.

"I was just wonderin' if'n I was goin' to jail. Just askin' because—"

A smile crossed Jamie's lips. "You have a pack of kids and no one to care for them and you just want to get back to work tomorrow, right? I've heard it a million times."

Angus's mouth fell open, but he didn't say anything. Jamie shook her head. "You're not, but he is. I tried to warn him, but you know what they say about drunk panthers."

"Yeah," Angus nodded his head slowly. Jamie backed away. She needed wing-span room, and didn't want this joker grabbing her.

She spread them, feeling the tendons stretch, relishing the pops of the knuckles in her finger-like wing bones. A slightly chilly breeze swept across the parking lot, kicking up some dust and filling her wings. They prickled with the wind, and all at once, she felt alive.

"Wait!" Angus called. "I don't!"

Jamie swept her wings, lifting herself slightly off the ground, before she realized he'd said something. "What?" she called back, having completely forgotten she'd said anything. Flying was like this for her. It gave her a rush, a sense of complete freedom, like the chains of who she was, where she had come from snapped off all at once.

"I don't know what they say about drunk panthers!"

"Oh," she laughed. "Neither do I, I just said that to sound clever. Give your buddy a kick in the ribs for me."

She spiraled up, up, away from the ground, directly toward the enveloping sky, the beautiful blackness that was her shroud. She loved her friends, she loved Jamesburg, and even the dumber residents, like the two she'd just dealt with.

But
nothing
felt like flying. Up she went, higher and higher, until The Tavern was just a couple of sparkling lights, and Angus and Donald were distant memories. She hung in the air, sweeping her massive wings back and forth slowly, humming the tune to a Winger song she'd heard earlier on the radio.

Erik said that flying for her was like moving meditation. She thought that was stupid, because meditating was like meditating for her. Flying was transcendent, indescribable and perfect.

In the far distance, probably ten miles to the north, a small night-flying Cessna was heading her way. With a languid fluidity, she dipped down and turned a few somersaults, before floating downward on an updraft, fingers intertwined behind her head like she was floating in a hot tub.

And then, her stomach reminded her that it was time to feed.

For all her grace, beauty, and elegant intensity, feeding was anything but. Bloody, messy, and brutal - but completely necessary - there was a laundry list of reasons she saved her nightly date with her pal West's cattle for after dark.

She fluttered along, skimming over the Greater James River, and turned an airborne pirouette around the chimney of Milt's hamburger grill. It was still belching out greasy, wonderful smoke that carried the scent of meat in various stages of cooking. She'd never eaten there, but the smell was just about as intoxicating as a scent could get.

Before long, Jamie spread her wings, braced herself for impact, and trotted along the pasture, until she slowed to a stop.

She'd worked this deal out with West and his mate, Elena St. Claire. West was an ex-cop who moonlighted as a private eye for Elena's agency when he wasn't tending his cattle or raising prize-winning tomatoes and carrots. And, he also happened to have a hopeless addiction to bacon and beef jerky, despite his normally strict vegetarian diet. He’d tried the vegetarian stuff, but it just didn’t scratch that itch. So, Jamie gave him jerky, and West let her, well, suck the blood out of his cows.

"Oh, you again?" Jamie said, patting a fat heifer on the shoulder. The cow reacted with a gentle moo and a nuzzle of her nose against Jamie's arm. "You like this, don't you?"

She slid her hand along the animal's wiry fur, patting a cloud of dust off her dinner. "I really should give you a name for as much time as we spend together. The cowprodded her again as Jamie scratched one of her black spots with an outstretched fingernail. If cows could purr, this one was mewling like the most obnoxiously needy housecat in the entire world. It brought a smile to Jamie's lips.

Her fangs extended, and when she opened her mouth, the cold air tickled the inside of her mouth. "Where do you want it this time, uh, Gertrude?"

The name fit for some reason. Gertrude turned her huge, brown eyes toward Jamie, and Jamesburg's only bat girl thought for just a second that the cow actually shrugged. Then, she thought she was probably going insane.

As her teeth, coated in antiseptic, anesthetic saliva sank into Gertrude's neck, the cow's mewling turned into something approaching a carnal moan.

It was really hard not to laugh, but hungrily sucking the blood out of a groaning cow, and trying to drink as much of it as possible without wasting any made it a little easier. But, when Gertrude rolled her eyes back in her head and arched her back?

Jamie gave the term "spit-take" a whole new meaning.

––––––––

T
he sticky, sweet smell of Douglas fir sap was so thick on Ryan's skin that even after scrubbing himself pink in a scalding hot tub, he still felt like the inside of a syrup bottle. A real one, not the kind in the shape of a woman with giant hips that you squeezed to get the weird, high fructose pancake topping product out the top of her bonnet-covered head.

The sap dueled with the heavy, violently relaxing scent of the lavender and patchouli bubble bath into which Ryan had sunk almost an hour before. He slid down under the water and then came up, shaking his head, flinging water all over the bathroom that was tiled almost exactly like a YMCA built in 1972, and grabbed the almost-empty bottle off the floor.

Squeezing the final contents into his tub, he stuck his foot out of the water, and turned the knob with his hairy-knuckled toes. As another pillow of bubbles rose around him, the big bear heaved a sigh of relief, and smiled, drawing a lung full of tantalizing fragrance.

He curled his toes, and then flexed them outward, mirroring the gesture with his hands. A shrug of his massive shoulders followed, and seconds later, he slid back down under the water, enveloped in his bath.

"Oh my God," came a voice from the hallway. It was an old, crotchety, rickety voice with a whole lot of years behind it, and a whole lot of stories to go along with those years. "He's back in that damn tub again. What is this, the eighth time today? Moo-maw, get in here, come look at this idjit in the tub."

"Leave the boy be, Franklin," Ryan's Aunt Maude crowed. He'd never figured out why his uncle called her Moo-maw, but then again, he had no idea why she called him Franklin, since his name was actually Boston.

Yep. Boston the bear.

Every day - every single one of them - Ryan was glad he'd been born to the normal side of the Drake clan. Then again, he was also glad he'd been able to convince his ancient uncle and his almost-as-ancient aunt to move in with him when their house in the Jamesburg hills burned about six years ago. A whole community had grown up around him, or them, mostly made up of his aunt and uncle's friends.

The midnight frost on the window he'd installed so he could look outside while he was in the tub reminded him that there wasn't a whole lot of time left. With a grunt, and a glorious popping of knees, he pushed himself to his feet. The cast iron tub he'd had to work very hard to get into place after the delivery drivers refused to take the thousand pound, sixty-seven inch monstrosity any further than the curb right outside the truck, creaked just a little as he stepped out.

He took one last, deep breath, held in the scent of lavender, patchouli and whatever that strange not-quite-chamomile smell was that all bubble baths seem to have.

It might be midnight, but if the old codgers that he'd somehow surrounded himself with were going to make it through the winter without losing a few toes, or going hungry, there was work that needed doing - and not the regular chopping wood sort of work.

He opened the window, letting the frigid mountain air brace his skin. His naked flesh tingled and prickled to life all over. And then he closed his eyes, wishing there was something else he could do besides what had to be done.

Who was she? And why did she keep looking at me like that?

Only a couple of days had passed since his grand entry to the Jamesburg Courthouse, followed by the vague threat he made against the town alpha, although was it really a threat? All he'd done was tell him about the problem. "And then I growled at him to fix it, I guess."

He shook his head and laughed softly at himself. But that woman. Who was she?
I've never seen anyone like that in my entire life. I can't think about this right now. Not until...

"I hate this show!" his aunt shouted, as the theme music for Sanford and Son started blaring through the speakers on the enormous television that Ryan bought, and then basically never used again after his aunt and uncle had moved in.

"Yeah, well, I spent all day yesterday watching those damn Sandra Bullock cute movies," his uncle groaned. Ryan imagined him dramatically raising one of his arms in the air, and then resting it on top of his head like he was so exhausted he couldn't hold it aloft. Cute movies, by which he meant romantic comedies, were Uncle Boston's kryptonite.

After a moment of silence, the television started to blare the Dragnet theme, followed by Jack Webb's gravelly monologue. "This is the city. Los Angeles, California." Ryan recited the opening along with Detective Friday. He'd memorized most of those wonderful moral lectures that Friday gave to the criminals, too. A lot can be absorbed through the walls of a house, especially when one's uncle is mostly deaf, and one's aunt doesn't want to listen to him complain about not hearing the television.