Chapter One
Randy
A racket on the roof sent me flying up the stairs. Growing up in the country, I’d had acres of open land to run around on, a big kitchen garden where my parents raised most of their vegetables, chickens for eggs and meat, fruit trees… They hadn’t been into large livestock, but they had traded their eggs and goat’s milk and cheese for beef and pork… I hadn’t appreciated the independence of their life until I moved to the city to follow my own dreams.
No, I didn’t want to be a farmer, per se, but the produce and other foodstuffs available in the central marketplace of New Corbine was not remotely of the quality back home. Through trial and error, I’d found solutions to some issues; after all, Haven, my hometown, was not exactly across the country. My parents’ pride, their goat cheese, was in such high demand, the cafe could not keep it in stock. One of my married sisters had recently started a small herd of her own and would soon double his supply. The same farmers who traded with my folks for grass-fed beef and Berkshire free-range pork were delighted to sell me meat and had, in fact, agreed to raise larger numbers specifically for the cafe. Between Haven and the city lay a number of sources of organic, high-quality produce.
Chicken and duck were next. I had a line on someone for that, too, as well as eggs—my dads weren’t full-time farmers and couldn’t provide the hundreds of dozens we needed every week. But shoving the roof door open drew attention to the chaos ensuing in our most critical area of self-supply.
Nobody on the street below could have a clue about the paradise covering the roof of this ten-story apartment building. When we’d moved in, it had been a flat, asphalt-shingled hell, blazing heat in the summertime and piled with snow in winter.
Not now.
After three years of effort, along with a few friends and two of my brothers, we had created a bee heaven of blooming flowers, fragrant herbs, a small clover lawn in the center...and rows of hives which, at the moment, were the location of the riot that brought me up here.
A youngish, skinny bear shifter in ragged clothes stood holding a frame in one hand, waving the other at the thousands of bees swarming around him in angry attack. Already, his face was marked with at least a half-dozen stings, his arms even worse.
“Drop it!” I shouted, grabbing for the smoker and hood. Usually, we didn’t need to wear protection in this bucolic paradise, but a stranger wasn’t stealing the bees’ honey. “What the hell is wrong with you? How did you get in here?” I lit the smoker and headed for the hives, pissed beyond belief at the effect this could have on production. “I have half a mind to toss you off the edge, but then I’d have to clean up the mess!” Waving the device toward the bees, I reached in and grabbed the thief’s forearm and dragged him away.
“I-I...”
The idiot still held the frame, so the bees were following. I set the smoker on a low wall and slapped the frame out of his hand, cursing the loss of product and the inevitable loss of bees. As I opened the door and shoved the guy in, the man’s knees buckled, and he started to fall.
“Shit!”
“I got him.” Barry, my brother and cafe manager, leapt the last few steps and caught the swollen burglar before he could break his neck. It might or might not have been a good thing. He turned and carried him down to the top-floor unit where he laid him on the sofa. I followed. “How the hell did he get in here, anyway?” he asked, staring down at the injured man. Or kid. He looked so young, maybe twenty? Twenty-two?
“How the hell should I know?” I bit out, tossing the hood on the floor and stomping over to stand beside my brother. “I suspect someone forgot to close the street door again, but we’ll have to find out.”
“Do we need to call the doctor?” Barry studied him. “He’s breathing okay.”
“Yeah. If he shifts he’s probably fine.” Poking the moaning shifter’s shoulder, I barked, “Can you shift?”
“I don’t know,” he groaned, peering through swollen eyelids. “It hurts.”
“Of course it hurts! But if you shift, it will stop.”
Barry bent closer. “You allergic to bees?”
“I don’t know.”
Barry cursed and headed for the phone. “I’d better try to get someone here. Who is that doctor you said was willing to do house calls for honey?”
Barter was alive and well, even in the city. Honey like ours was hard to come by, and while we used almost all of it for family and friends and the cafe, we kept a little aside for just such situations.
“His number is on my desk, but I don’t know if you’ll catch him on a Sunday afternoon. Doctors have a life.” The kid was looking worse. “Give it a try and, if we can’t get him we’ll have to haul our burglar off to the hospital.”
“Gotcha.” Barry grabbed his phone and headed into the home office.
“No…” The honey-thief tried to stand and sank back to the couch. “Just give me a minute. I’ll leave.”
“You can’t stand up.” I shoved his feet over and sat on the edge of the cushions. “Much less shift or open your eyes. You’d just fall down the steps, break your neck, and we’d have to bury you in the rosemary beds.”
“Please, please don’t call the doctor.” Tears dribbled from under the swollen lids, tracking down the kid’s face. “I-I don’t have insurance.”
Now that rang false. “You heard me say our doc works for honey. We’ll pay him. And if we can’t get him, we’ll pay for your hospital bill.”
“I can’t ask that of you.” His breathing was starting to sound a little rough. Damn. “Barry, is the doctor coming?”
“Hang on, his service is patching me through. I think he’s golfing or something.”
“Okay, but tell him to hurry. I think we have a problem.” I returned his attention to the kid on the couch. “What’s the real reason you don’t want the doctor? You weren’t worried about stealing our honey, but you’re concerned for your credit rating if you don’t pay a doctor bill?”
A long silence ensued, and I was afraid he’d passed out, but, finally, he sighed. A smooth exhale, so maybe he wasn’t going into shock. “They’ll find me.”
“Who? Your parents?” He was probably a runaway which would explain the ragged clothes and how skinny he was. Bears, even teen bears, rarely had thin frames. “Were your parents abusive? Should we call the cops?”
He shuddered. “No. Some of them are in on it. And it’s not my parents. They’re dead. The red dragons killed them when they tried to stop them from taking me a few years ago.” A sob shook him up more. “Just let me go, and I’ll be fine.”
“Little bear, you’re anything but fine. How old are you, and how did you know about the honey? It’s not something we tell a lot of people about, mostly because we don’t want it stolen. Do you have any idea how valuable that honey is?”
He swallowed hard. God. Hopefully his throat wasn’t swelling.
“Barry! The doctor?”
He came back into the room, shaking his head. “That doctor couldn’t make it. He was on the sixteenth hole with a big bet on the outcome.”
“He’s also had the last of our honey, so I hope it was worth it.” Standing, I looked down at the bundle of misery on the sofa. “Sorry, kid. We’ll have to take you to the hospital. You’re a mess.”
“No, wait,” Barry said. “The service gave me another number before she patched me through. I guess the other guy isn’t too reliable and she was trying to help.”
“And?” Why didn’t he just spit it out?
“And another doctor is on the way. I don’t know if he works for honey, but he was willing to come, and I figured we’d work the details out later.”
“How long?” Even if he was breathing well, I didn’t want the kid to wait any longer than necessary.
“Ten minutes. He doesn’t live far away.” Barry came to stand next to me. “What’s your name, kid?”
Why hadn’t I asked him that? Sometimes, it was good to have a brother.