Chapter 23 - Hit The Trail

Flint zipped up his suitcase and looked around his basement room at Resperanza for anything he’d missed. After Goldie’s scare yesterday he had no intention of spending another night away from her. He’d slept in his clothes last night at the duplex and was just here to get a few days’ worth packed before he headed back. The daisy pin on his dresser caught Flint’s eye and he considered packing it up with his clothes, taking it with him. Nah. He’d be back.

He carried the suitcase into the hallway and almost ran into Jameson making his way out to the garage. The Keeper zeroed in on Flint, glancing at the suitcase. “What’s up? Where you going?”

Flint knew he had to tell, but he wasn’t sure he wanted Jameson to know how serious things had gotten between him and Goldie. He didn't want his friend assuming Flint's plans had changed when even he wasn't sure just how. “Back to the duplex for a while. The switch’s roommate has a stalker giving them some trouble and I told her I’d handle it.”

Jameson looked sharply at Flint. “Dario just got a call from Goldie.” Flint’s muscles tensed. What the fuck? Only reason Flint knew of for Goldie to be calling the cops was the one he’d promised to protect her from. He started towards the garage, ready to plow through whatever roadblocks stood between them. Jameson’s voice brought him up short. “But not about that.”

Flint stopped to listen, but his eyes were unfocused, his mind on how quickly he could get to Goldie once Jameson was done talking. Then he realized… Jameson wasn’t talking. Flint marshalled his wandering thoughts and met his old friend’s eyes.

J was waiting with a hard but patient expression, the same one he’d used when Flint was an angry teenager, prone to aggression when he dwelled too long on what he’d lost in the past, not to mention the things he’d secretly committed to giving up in the future. He hadn’t been fourteen when Jameson introduced him to sparring and other healthy avenues for getting his anger out, hoping to delay the day when Flint left them all to exact his revenge.

The light glinted off the salt-and-pepper scruff on Jameson’s jaw. “‘The switch’, huh? Subtle.”

Flint’s glare turned to an embarrassed grimace. “Come on, J. What’s the word from Dario?”

Jameson went serious. “Goldie called to make a report on our missing waitress, Brittany Whitacre. Seems Brittany’s little brother is one of the kids Goldie sees for speech therapy. During their session today the kid disclosed that his sister and her boyfriend fought about going to Cove Springs on their little getaway. And given where the boyfriend’s body washed up, I think it’s a good idea to go out there and have a look.”

A heavy weight settled on Flint’s chest. Cove Springs? What the actual fuck? Another fucking wrinkle.

Jameson continued. “We know vampires are involved. Cora’s out bouldering with Lynessa and Shiloh, I can’t even reach her. I’m on my way to the duplex to ask Goldie to come with me.”

A low growl started in Flint’s chest. Wasn’t nobody taking Goldie where there might be vampires without him. Jameson shot Flint a glance that was at once warning and soothing. “Chances are nothing will happen, but if that fucker has a bloodblade and I have to protect Brittany…”

Flint’s head bobbed in a nod as Jameson trailed off. It was a fucked-up twist when the best protection shifters had against bloodblades were the women they were supposed to be protecting, but what could they do? This was reality. But still. “I’m coming with you. I’ll get Goldie and meet you at the turn-out by the old stream bed. We’ll walk in together.”

* * *

Flint jogged to the Rover and pushed the speed limit all the way to the duplex. When he knocked on Goldie’s door and she opened it with that sweet grin on her lips, Flint couldn’t resist giving them a soft kiss. Her soft smile when he pulled back made it hard to resist going further. Get it together, horny bear. “Thanks to your tip, Jameson and I are about to head to Cove Springs to look for Brittany. Wanna come?”

He’d expected her to take some convincing, but to Flint’s surprise Goldie’s grin became a subdued smile and her scent flashed along with her shamrock aura. “Yes, actually, very much so.” She took a few minutes to change into jeans, a t-shirt, and the same frayed canvas sneakers she’d worn on the river tour, then met Flint on the porch.

In the car, he reached across Goldie’s legs to open the glove box and pull out a steel survival knife he kept there, still in its sheath. He watched Goldie carefully as he handed it to her. “Here. Just in case something comes up, you should be armed.”

Bryce had blabbed to Goldie and Darby yesterday about finding Brittany’s boyfriend’s body at the BBOC, and of course they had both been horrified. But it wasn’t until later, when Flint had told Goldie in private that the kid had been killed by a vampire wielding a bloodblade, that she’d grasped the full gravity of the situation and the dangers they faced. She held the knife gingerly in her hands for a moment, staring silently down at it as they started on their way. Then she took a breath and strapped the weapon to her belt as Flint drove them deep into the forest.

When Flint pulled up to the turnout which was the furthest they could go with 4-wheel drive, and parked behind Jameson’s truck, spotting him fifty yards down the path and toting a first aid pack, Flint’s guts rolled. Cove Springs was not safe.

Flint and Goldie ran to catch up and the three of them set off at a steady pace through steep terrain, staying on the well-cleared path for almost an hour before Jameson broke off and started pushing through the underbrush to a hidden path.

Flint brought up the rear, perfectly happy to pass the time watching Goldie’s short but shapely legs at work. Once she tripped and he caught her before she hit the ground, her scent turning aroused and rich as she thanked him. After, he gave thanks he hadn’t bounced off another bubble. That magic didn’t play. It had bounced him away, same as it had that dark wolf. Shouldn’t shifters be immune to a switch’s magic?

“Hey J,” he called. “You see many red wolves in the forest?”

“Not usually. They mostly live out at the coast.”

“Yeah, but you ever seen one attack a...” He looked at Goldie. “A human?”

“Nah, they wouldn’t do that.”

Goldie looked at Flint. Flint looked at Goldie. He hadn’t thought so either, had never heard of a lone red wolf - small wolves who roamed wild in only one place on earth, North Carolina - doing what that one had done the day before.

Another hour passed before they began to hear water rush at some unknown point in the distance, seeming to come from everywhere, as the noise bounced off the thick canopy of trees above them. Flint kept his eyes and ears and nose and senses open, Goldie’s safety his only objective. Jameson could take care of himself.

Goldie sounded nervous when she spoke, but not as much as he would have thought. “Everyone keeps saying this place is dangerous. How dangerous?”

Jameson spoke over his shoulder as they kept moving ,single-file on the trail, thorns grabbing at their pants and shoes. “There’s a whole story about this place. Want to hear it?”

Goldie did.

“I’ve always known it as Cove Springs, but I found out from Carick it used to be called Coven Springs.”

Flint faltered. Oooh, he hadn’t known that, and what would Goldie think of it? She seemed remarkably open to him and anything related to The Cause today.

She didn’t say a word, so Jameson went on. Flint couldn’t see her face.

“Switches have lived in Nantahala for centuries, right alongside the indigenous peoples, though Carick says some switches wandered like gypsies, too. But as Nantahala got more crowded, more humans around, they had to cover up their magic. They dropped the ‘n’ from the name and that was that, especially after the Reckoning and there was nobody around to complain.”

“The legend the Cherokee told about the Spring, I always heard it called ‘How Catfish Lost His Scales’. They say that catfish used to be like other fish, silver scales, swimming free, reflecting the rays of the sun that penetrated the top of the water. Then one autumn, as Mother and Father Catfish were swimming upriver on their way home for the winter, five sisters offered the spring as a resting place. Mother and Father Catfish happily agreed and swam into the spring, where they found more insects and snails than they could ever eat. The sisters invited Mother and Father Catfish to stay through the winter, to eat their fill, and again they agreed.”

Flint had heard this story before, from both Jameson and Hernando. Jameson was older than Hernando by more than seventy years, though he looked much younger, but in story-telling the two men were equally rich. During his childhood, he and Bryce had heard many legends about the Great Hunters, the legendary ancestors of every shifter fated to The Cause.

Flint kept one eye on the trail and one on Goldie’s footing as the way got thicker and the going got tougher. Jameson wasn’t even breathing hard.

“When winter was over and the water began to warm, Mother and Father Catfish set out for their spawning grounds, but it turned out the five sisters were witches who had cast a spell so the fish couldn’t leave. They were trapped, forced to lay their eggs at the Springs. When the babies hatched, the sisters ate them up to the very last one. Mother Catfish couldn’t stand the pain of watching her babies be killed, so she found a shallow pool and lay there until the water dried up and she died.”

Goldie gasped. “How awful!”

“Yep. Father Catfish was so overcome with grief that he began to shake. He shook so hard all his scales fell off and floated to the top of the spring. That day when the witches came they found Mother Catfish’s body, and all of Father Catfish’s scales, and they thought both had died. They lifted the spell that had held Mother and Father Catfish prisoner, and made plans to capture more catfish and eat their babies, too.”

Jameson’s voice turned dark. “But Father Catfish heard their plans and didn’t leave, even though he was finally free to do so. Instead he decided to exact his revenge on the witches. He sank himself deep down to the bottom of the springs, where no light could reach, and waited. When the witches returned the next day and walked into the spring to reset their magic, he counted on his naked skin to keep him from reflecting the sun as he used to, and he gobbled them up, except for one. A lone sister escaped his jaws, but he scared her so badly she ran away and never came back.

“Ever since then it’s been said that Father Catfish still lurks in the bottom of the spring, waiting for the fifth witch, and that anyone who swims there or even wades in too far risks being pulled under and never heard from again. Over the years there have been a handful of unexplained disappearances that centered around the Springs. Now it’s like a haunted house, teenagers will go there to spend the night and prove you don’t die, but the thing is it’s so treacherous getting out here, you just might.”

Cove Springs was a pool off to one side of the Nantahala River, a few miles upriver from the BBOC. Just a slow seep that picked up after rainstorms, like the one they'd had on Monday that had washed that guy’s body downstream. Flint had been to the Springs dozens of times over the years starting, as Jameson said, when he was a cocky teenager bound to prove it was possible. Nothing strange had ever happened to him or his buddies, but Flint had felt… different there. Like he needed to watch his back and be open to magic at the same time.

Goldie gave him a fascinated look, no longer nervous. Which made no sense, but Flint was going with it. Jameson needed to keep talking.

“What about the Warrior Woman?” Flint said.

Jameson didn’t say anything. Maybe walked faster. Acted like he didn’t hear. Goldie turned questioning eyes to Flint's. Ah, right, Jameson was touchy about the Warrior Woman, since she’d first appeared around the time of the Reckoning, when Jameson had lost his own family to vampires. It was like asking Flint about bloodblades. He knuckled the tight scar at his neck.

He spoke softly to Goldie. “Remember I told you about the Reckoning? When the vampires turned the tide of the war and…”

He trailed off. He’d always thought the vampires had won, even though they’d also taken a huge blow in numbers, had to, because they’d been hard to spot until recently. But they didn’t win. The war was not even close to being over. And there were switches again...

Goldie turned to look at him again, urging him with her eyes to continue. He did. “Ever since then, there’s been rumors, legends, and sightings of a fierce, otherworldly woman haunting Cove Springs. She’s only shown up to shifters, so this legend is more covert than the ones you’ll hear in town, like the White Wolf of the Forest.” He looked up, but Jameson didn’t slow or act like he heard.

Flint warmed to his story. “She haunts Cove Springs, it’s said, looking for something or someone. Dressed like a Cherokee in a deerskin skirt and top, with a body they say, ‘curves like the Nantahala River itself’. She winds acorns and rocks and vines in her wild, black hair, and has a whole string of knives, spearheads, and sharp sticks hanging from her waist.”

Goldie looked at him over her shoulder again, eyes shining, like she loved the imagery. “Fancy.”

“Shifters who see her usually remember when they wake up somewhere crazy, doing something they don’t understand. One guy, a wolf, woke up miles away in the Murphy Marble Belt up in the hills, digging up graphite. Another one, a bear, went home and burnt up half his winter firewood down to charcoal while his wife yelled and tried to stop him, but when he woke up he claimed he didn’t remember a thing from the second he saw the Warrior Woman. Most shifters stay away just because they don’t want to get caught having to explain themselves, but there are others who says she’s not even real.”

A brand new voice, young, sounding almost bored despite its shaking, broke in. “She is real. She saved my life. And by the way, what took you so long?”