22 - Past - Beastie Boy Gets Mean

Jaggar took the curve at the speed of sound and Harlan held his breath until they cleared it. “You want to ease up a bit, Beast?”

Jaggar shot him a look at the nickname.

Harlan laughed. “Come on, no one calls you that?”

Jaggar sneered but didn’t snarl. “Of course not.”

Harlan made a face and looked the other way. Trying not to smile. Jaggar was a good kid. Touchy but he had his reasons. They’d had an interesting couple of days, Jaggar being assigned to help him orient to the department while a replacement was found for Sergeant Wheeling, who had gone out on maternity leave. Harlan liked Jaggar. Jaggar wanted to like him back, he really did, and they both knew the two of them could be great friends, but for some reason, the kid kept going sandpaper on him.

Harlan hadn’t done much yet. Certainly no demon ass-whipping. He’d only gotten his uniform and weapon, qualified with his weapon, driven around the area a few times, studied the protocols, sniffed around Eventine Risson’s story a bit, just a couple questions here and there, and been issued a vehicle. He still didn’t know what his job would consist of each day, and was disappointed in the lack of demon blood-letting so far. In fact, the KSRT didn’t seem to do much at all besides bitch and bullshit until the shit hit the fan. The group needed a leader, one who wasn’t knee deep in baby poop at the moment or worrying over a comatose boy’s mental health.

Oh, and he hadn’t seen Evie since she’d confessed she recognized him as her mate, he’d practically called her an immature baby in response, and she’d dismissed him and disappeared.

He’d resolved to stay away from her, steer clear from her, knowing it was cruel if she really did recognize him as her mate, but it hadn’t mattered anyway. She’d disappeared. Which had given him a little breathing room. Made him wonder if perhaps her mark had come in, and it had not been his after all.

Harlan stared out the window, at the forest whipping past, trying to think of something else besides Evie. It was all oaks and sycamores and elms blurring by, mostly blues and greens, but the first fire colors of fall were starting to show here and there. He dug around in his mind for an olive branch to extend to Jaggar. Wait. That was a human expression that made no sense to wolven. He was going to quit using it. What would the beast want? Not an olive branch. Something meaty. A meat popsicle. No that was stupid, there were no meat popsicles. Oh no? What about a drumstick, a big old fat turkey drumstick could be a meat popsicle if you stuck it in the freezer. Ha, not so stupid after all. Or maybe twice as stupid, he didn’t know. Luckily, no one would ever hear it, because he had an excellent filter. 93% of his thoughts never made it out his mouth.

Harlan grinned, extending a meaty mental drumstick to the Beastie Boy. They could be working together for years, once Jaggar entered the KSRT. Who knew how important they would be to each other in the future, how bonds built now could affect what happened later.

“Ok, Jaggar, I won’t call you Beast, either. Sorry! Anything else you’re pissed at me about?”

Jaggar had an answer all ready for him. “I told you she was off limits,” he snarled.

Harlan snorted softly, lowering his voice. “You told me?” Meat popsicle snatched back. Bite off a big imaginary hunk in front of him, swallow without chewing, and throw the rest in the dirt. We doing this? Cuz we can do this.

Jaggar’s hands tightened on the wheel. “Yeah. Me and her, we got a thing.”

Harlan grappled for control of himself, even though he knew it wasn’t true. Thought it wasn’t true. “Really?”

“No, not really, you fucking dickhead, but we could, if you and your stupid abs would go back to Harlan, Harlan. You’re too fucking old for her, anyway.”

Harlan kept himself well-reined in. No sane wolf wanted to fuck with the Beast that had never been allowed to shift, because the Citlali were petrified of what it might do. Harlan might have been accused of being a crazy wolf a time or two, but he’d never been called a stupid wolf. He liked his guts in his gut and he was gonna keep them there.

He looked away and nodded his head. “Hardcore, kid.”

The country road stretched on between farm after farm. They crested a gentle hill, slid down the other side, and up another, before Jaggar started to thaw. He spoke, and Harlan could feel the monumental effort it took. “Look, I know she’s not my mate. I know she thinks she’s yours, so that means you’re hers, and you’re just too fucking stupid to see it. She’s smart enough for both of you, so she’ll figure out how to get your dumb ass to notice it eventually, but until then, excuse me if I don’t throw you a fucking party. Evie’s my friend, and now she’s gonna be your mate, and-” He stopped talking abruptly.

Harlan knew what the rest of that sentence was. And I won’t see her anymore. Shit, kid, sorry. But he wasn’t gonna promise it wouldn’t happen. Sometimes, that’s how it was. And fuck if it didn’t warm him from the inside out to think Jaggar might be right. Maybe he was too stupid to see that Evie was his mate. Maybe he should go with it. See what happened.

He cleared his throat. No idea what he was going to say, but something would come out. Hopefully it wasn’t too stupid. “Look, I know you’ve known her for a long time.”

Jaggar interrupted him. “Yeah, since I was five, and she was FIVE.”

They crested another hill. Jaggar interrupted him, jerking his chin ahead of them. Harlan looked. The green plains and fields were flat, some harvested already, some still waving with crop. Jaggar had taught him every crop on their 2 hour drive from Chicago to Serenity. The empty or newly-planted fields had held spring oats or winter wheat, or maybe hay, while corn dominated what was left. Illinoisans (the S is silent he reminded himself. Illinoiiiiyans is how they said it) liked their crops. Back in Kentucky they’d been more into forests and streams and fucking off than this endless farming.

One house appeared at the bottom of the next gentle hill, the only house in sight, and Harlan was seized by the knowledge that they were headed there. That was Burton Risson’s house, and Eventine Risson’s house. That massive, three story farmhouse with the sparkling white paint job and the carved front door grand enough to be a focal point for the house, even from this far away. The land the house sat on took up acres and acres, as far as Harlan could see, a few hobby crop plots here and there, plus one big, strange hole in the front yard of Burton’s house, but mostly, it was corn in every direction.

They pulled in without another word, Jaggar parking the truck next to a well pump in the yard and jumping out. Harlan followed. Jaggar approached a back door into the house, not that carved monstrosity that Harlan had seen from the road. This was a normal door.

Inside. Mud room, cool and clean and dark. Then farther inside. Through a doorway. Another doorway. Eventine’s scent barely lingered here, like she took great pains not to touch anything as she entered. Harlan wasn’t sure if she was there or not, but he guessed not. Burton Risson’s alpha wolf scent filled the room and overpowered everything. Into a kitchen. The place was cool. Lots of hardwood, wide hallways, built-in shelves, lighting and high windows. It didn’t look like a farmhouse from the inside.

There, on the table. Something that did scent like Eventine. Jaggar had disappeared into another room. Harlan wondered briefly where Eventine’s room was, then went to the table and picked up the small notebook that scented like forbidden fire. He opened it, turning to a page at random. It was filled with notations that looked rather like math, but in two different sets of handwriting.

Nxe4

D3

Harlan puzzled over the notations, scenting deeply, two secrets playing through his head.

A hand reached into his awareness and plucked the notebook out of his hand. Jaggar.

Jaggar shoved the notebook into his pocket. “That’s mine.”

Harlan didn’t want to rise to the bait. Did anyway. “Then why’s it in Eventine’s house, scenting like she just had her hands all over it?”

Fuck. Too late, Harlan remembered he was a 23 year old male, and Jaggar was a 16 year old beast who was probably smarter than Harlan would ever be.

Jaggar sneered, then pulled the notebook out of his bag and pressed it to his nose. They were equally tall, both just over six foot, but Harlan had sixty or seventy pounds more muscle packed onto his frame than Jaggar did. But then Jaggar had the Beast and didn’t need shit else to scare bigger wolves than Harlan. Jaggar sniffed gently then grinned, showing his teeth. “It does scent like Evie, doesn’t it? That must be because it’s actually our notebook. See, me and Evie, we share this.” Jaggar held it up in front of Harlan’s face, fanning the air with it so Harlan would get another scent of Evie.

Harlan growled. The kid pushed too fucking far, now, and if Burton Risson came around the corner, Harlan was gonna be chewed a new asshole, but all Harlan could care about was letting Jaggar know once and for all that Evie was his, Harlan’s and not—

Harlan broke off from all of those hard but hazy thoughts and walked away from Jaggar, further into the kitchen, then into a dining area, then a second dining area, then another room overflowing with records. Old LPs in worn covers.

Harlan stopped and stared, as Jaggar came up behind him, talking something about chess strategy and Evie wanting to improve her strategic thinking, so they’d been playing chess by correspondence for four years, and there was something to be said for familiarity and yeah, he and Evie they had lots of secrets, lots of history...

Harlan blocked him out. Focused on the album covers on the wall. The rows of records in shelves and the stacks of LPs on the floor everywhere. AC/DC, Highway to Hell. Supertramp, Breakfast in America, Michael Jackson, Off the Wall.

Nowl, this is getting out of hand. Is she mine or not?

Fate is quiet on the matter.

Perfect. Thanks for the help, fate. Why was Harlan thinking of Eventine as his? Did he just want it that bad, or was she really? The walls and surfaces were covered with pictures of Evie that made him… want. Pictures of her as a young girl, under five. An adorable petite, young red wolf chasing a butterfly through a field, a boy the same age sitting in the grass nearby, his eyes on the red wolf, his expression inscrutable. The red wolf was Evie. Had to be. And the boy was Jaggar, his face two-tone already.

Another picture: Evie at the station, small, petite, always, age indeterminate, maybe 6 or 7, her feet tucked into her dad’s Sam Browne belt as he gave her a piggyback ride through the station. She was pointing at a wiry wolfen, eyes fiery, mouth working, as if telling him what to do. Burton’s face and the faces of the wolven around him were delighted, smiling and laughing, as if she’d just pulled off a good one.

Harlan pulled his eyes away, to the next picture, and the next. Shit, he had to get out of here. He turned and kicked a colorful wooden fairy drop across the floor where it bounced off a stack of records in the corner. He hadn’t met the Chief yet, but he’d seen the fairy drops already, had them explained to him.

He turned around and cut Jaggar off. “Where’s Chief Risson?” The Chief hadn’t been in to the station for a few days but had said he wanted to meet Harlan, so Jaggar had brought Harlan out to his house.

Jaggar led him outside, out the back of the house, across a covered walkway to another building. Harlan saw a cat run and hide under a porch around the side of this new building that looked like a barn, a modern one with high windows and a helper’s quarters in one corner, with a separate entrance. A white and black goat with floppy ears eyed them from the grass off to their left. A small wooden sign, painstakingly painted by a young or shaky hand, proclaimed the goat to be Precious Goat, then a 2 that was crossed out, and a 3 painted over the top of it.

Jaggar took him into the barn. It was a gym, and across the large, open room was a pool, floor-to-ceiling windows letting in all the light possible. A tiny pink bikini hung on a hook on the wall. Did Evie get undressed and dressed into that bikini right there, out in the open? His dick swelled. He was a dirty fucker and he should just go throw himself off a fucking cliff, but fuck he couldn’t help but want that woman. That girl. That woman. Walking through her house was torture. Where was her dad? His boss. Hey, Gramps, oops, I mean Chief, mind if I dream about fucking your only daughter, you know, the one you brought back from the dead then adopted, the one you trained to be a leader since the day she came into your life? The one you seem to adore, idolize, and cherish. Mate? Ah, well, see, she says I’m her mate, but she’s wrong, gotta be cuz I don’t recognize her back. Yeah, she’s got a mark. It’s pale. Could be mine, totally. Fuck, what a cluster. His mom would say he was thinking with the stupidest part of him.

There he was. Burton Risson in the flesh. He stood at the firing line of the outdoor range, sighting downrange with the department issue Smith and Wesson.

Jaggar pushed him toward the range. “Go get him, tiger.”

“Where you going?”

Jaggar threw him a sly, triumphant look. “Evie’s room.”

Harlan kept himself under control, then turned away and pushed outside before he could do anything stupid.