Chapter Nineteen – Carter

 

I woke with a start, my hand going for the nightstand where I kept my pistol as I sat up and looked around the cabin. “The hell?” I quickly realized I wasn’t actually in my cabin back in the mountains of Missouri. Nor was I in the hotel room from the night before.

Where was I? This place didn’t seem familiar at all. The smell was all wrong, all coppery and metallic, and there were curtains and frilly soft things over everything.

Well, not entirely unfamiliar. I could smell her beneath it all. Lucy. Raspberry and vanilla, stronger than ever.

“Carter?” asked Lucy in a groggy voice from beside me. “You awake?”

I glanced down to my left, at her fully-clothed form curled up next to me on top of the flowers and roses printed on the bedspread. Startled, I went to get out of bed.

“Shit,” I breathed as I pulled the covers back, felt the cool bedroom air on my naked privates, “where’re my clothes?” I flipped the bedspread back over my lap. I glanced back at her over my shoulder. “Did we? We didn’t, right?”

“Did we what?” she asked, laughing a little as she stayed lying there on her side of the bed.

“You know.”

“Not that, no. You tore them off last night,” she said, the bed shifting under her weight as she sat up, “when you transformed. Remember?”

The previous night’s events started to come back to me in a rush. The two rat shifters in the hotel room, the plummet from the third story onto some innocent bystander’s car. And, yeah, me losing my clothes in the fight. I leaned forward, planted the heels of my hands in both eyes, and rubbed them furiously.

One of their names, too: Zoey. Wasn’t that what the guy had called the woman I shot?

“You do remember, right?” she asked, getting up off the bed and coming around, her hair tousled beautifully from her night’s sleep. She was gorgeous even when she’d just woken up. Gorgeous to me, at least.

I sighed and nodded, looked up at her. “Yeah, I remember. Did they get away? Were you hurt?”

Lips pressed tightly together, she shook her head. “I’m fine. I don’t know about either of them, though. The cops haven’t tried to contact me about a murder, or anything, so I’m assuming they didn’t find a body.”

“These people are professionals. If someone got dropped, they’d have taken them with them. They need to fly under the radar.”

“But you’re feeling okay?”

I looked up at her, eyebrow raised. “Yeah, I’m fine. Why wouldn’t I be?”

“Well, you did fall out of a building last night and crush a car.”

“Oh. Right. No, I’m fine. Just a little stiff, that’s all.”

Sleepily, she rubbed an eye as she nodded. “Had me worried for a little bit. You want coffee or something?”

“Yeah. Coffee would be good.”

She turned and went to leave, presumably to head into the kitchen.

“Hey Lucy?”

She stopped, turning back to me. “Yeah?”

“Did you bring my bag with you by any chance?”

“On the floor next to the closet.”

“Thanks.”

She left me alone in the bedroom, gently closing the door behind her. I glanced over at the alarm clock, checked the time. Just before eight in the morning. Okay. We’d lost some time to sleep. Not a lot, but some. Luckily, they were hurting just as badly as I was, if not worse, which meant they’d probably have been down for the night, same as me.

I rose from the warm bed, feeling a chill go through me as the air hit my nude body, goosebumps traveling down my arms and my nipples hardening. Sure, I’d gotten used to cold mornings from living in my shack up in the mountains, but I normally wore long johns to bed. I padded over to my duffel bag, scooped it up from the floor, and dropped it on the bed where Lucy had been sleeping just minutes before.

I unzipped it and began to go through everything, mildly self-conscious about the fact that I was standing in Lucy’s bedroom, as naked as the day I was born. Pushing aside my personal feelings about my situation, or my state of undress, I began to mentally catalog everything in my bag.

All my gear? Check. She’d even remembered to grab my gun from the nightstand. Good.

Clothes, though? Only my dirty jeans from the night before. Thankfully, I’d had the foresight to pack those away, since they had my ID in them.

“Son of a bitch,” I whispered as, in an exercise in futility, I dug around for my extra pants and shirts. I must have taken them all out back at the hotel when I’d first gone to shower. And, like Lucy had said, the fresh pair I’d been wearing had been shredded when I’d shifted into my bear form. “Fuck.”

I didn’t blame her for leaving them behind, either. How could I? I’d just exited the room in the most direct fashion possible, and left her alone with a bleeding-to-death hitwoman.

The clothes, though? The clothes didn’t matter. I could get clothes anywhere. She’d remembered the important things.

I reached into my duffel, dug around in one of the side pockets I’d sewn in, and found my spare burner phone. One of many I owned in various bug out bags and hidden caches, my burner was a cheap flip phone, the type you could buy at any crappy gas station or cheap bodega anywhere in this great country. The minutes were just tied to the phone itself, with no other financial or personal information. Great for drug dealers, government spooks, Special Forces, and shifters hunting down the paranormal.

I pulled it out and sat down on the edge of the bed, hit the power button, and ran a hand back through my tousled hair as it chimed its low-quality ringtone at me. I needed to talk to Kris, needed to let her know what had happened the night before, and that I might or might not need a lawyer. My gun hadn’t been used at the hotel, but cops in small towns could be tough to handle.

When it finished doing its thing, I typed in Kris’s cell phone number from memory and pressed the phone to my ear.

“Cole here,” she barked, an edge to her voice. In the background, I could hear noises of a busy coffee shop. “Talk to me, Carter. What’s wrong?”

“How’d you know it was me? And who’s to say anything’s wrong?”

“Well, it was either you or the county morgue. Tabitha forwarded an interesting article from the Shamrock Times about what seemed to be a pair of circus performers who snuck a full-sized bear into a Super 8 hotel room.”

I cleared my throat, wiped a hand down my face. “Look, I can explain—”

“Said bear,” Kris continued, a little bit of levity creeping into her voice, “got rowdy, according to hotel guests staying in the rooms next door, and attacked one of the circus performers, was shot, and proceeded to leap out the window onto a Suburban parked beneath the window.”

“It’s not as bad—”

“But wait, Carter, there’s fucking more! The bear crawled from the wreckage of the earlier mentioned SUV and slunk off into the woods, limping and leaving a trail of blood behind it. Shamrock PD has made no official statement on the matter.”

“Look, Kris, shit got out of hand. I know, okay?”

“Got out of hand?” she hissed. “That’s what we’re calling you being spotted by witnesses in your bear form? While skydiving from windows into parking lots? If Col. Harrington were here, he’d be yanking you out of that goddamn town so fast, you’d have windburn on your fur. And you fucking know it! Now what fucking happened out there?”

“The mischief of rats came at me again last night,” I said. “Forced themselves inside the room, this time posing as cops. Got a good look at the two from the car. At least, I hope it was them in the car. If there’s more than just them, I’m up shit creek.”

“Without a fucking paddle.” She paused, slurped some coffee. “Well, I dug up some more info on your pal Winters, and what he might be doing stateside.”

“Ain’t my pal,” I said. “You’re the one who’s had drinks with him before.”

“Whatever, Carter,” she replied as the tenor of the background noise changed entirely, switching from the murmur of a coffee shop to that of a busy city street. I imagined she was downtown in St. Louis, just down the street from the office building where we operated Full Moon Security. “You wanna hear this, or not?”

“Shoot.”

“Winters bounced around for a little while, like I said, working security. Ended up in Macao. You familiar?”

“Yeah. Portuguese sister city to Hong Kong. Never been.”

“You should go sometime before it gets handed entirely back to the Chinese. Just don’t do what Winters did and get in debt to a Chinese river dragon over gambling debts.”

I whistled low. “River dragon?”

“Yeah,” she said. “Apparently, he or she let the credit ride, and Winters couldn’t pay up at the end of the night. And one thing my father made sure I knew before he passed was to never take a loan from a river dragon.”

“So, what’s he doing here, then? Working for a demon to try and get paid? Or working for someone who can pay him enough, and summon demons to possess people?”

“Either-or, maybe? Not sure. Next time you run into him, why don’t you ask?”

“Prefer to not so much talk to the guy, as kill him, if I’m going to be honest. He’s taken two swings at me already, and he’s starting to get on my nerves.”

“Well, whatever the reason, his substantial debts are definitely the reason he’s working freelance like this again. Anything else?”

“Got a name of one of the other rats he’s working with, and a description of both. Maybe you can do something with that?”

“I’m listening.”

“Zoey. Female, early to mid-thirties. Definitely well-trained.”

“Got it.

“Smaller guy with her, seemed like a close partner. Or, I dunno, maybe more. Also professional.”

“Description?”

“Shorter than me—”

“Doesn’t exactly narrow it down, Carter. You’re a goddamn pro wrestler.”

I sighed in frustration, closed my eyes, and tried to picture the man from the night before. I went to stand, trying to remember where he’d come up to on me when we’d been in close quarters, trying to draw blood. I held my hand up about chest high, despite the fact that she couldn’t see me. “Five-eight, maybe? Receding hair line, balding spot, close-cropped hair.”

“Definitely a rat shifter?”

“Definitely. Had an up close and personal demonstration of his abilities. They get bigger than I thought.”

“All right,” she said, “I’ll see what I can do. I find out any more information, you’re the first to know.”

“Same.”

There was a knock at the door. “Carter? You talking to someone?”

“Hey, I gotta go,” I said.

“Who’s that?” Kris snapped. “Do you have a civilian with you?”

“Shit, Kris, you’re breaking up,” I said, trying to fake a crackling noise with my mouth as I went to stand. “Let me see if I can get a better connection.”

“Carter!” my boss barked just as I took the phone from my ear and went to press the end call button on the phone. “You’re not fooling me!”

“Carter?” Lucy asked again as she opened the door and poked her head inside, just as the phone beeped. “Oh my God!” she shouted as she quickly withdrew her head and slammed the door shut.

“Oh!” I yelped, dropping the phone as I went to cover myself. “Shit!”

“Sorry!” Lucy called through the bedroom door. “I thought you’d gotten dressed already!”

“No, I—”

“Wait,” she said, cutting me off, “why haven’t you gotten dressed yet?” Her voice was heavy with concern. “You’re not like, doing something in there, are you? With my stuff or something?”

“What? God, no. No! I’m just…shit! Just a second, okay?” I realized I was talking through the door at her. I took my sticky and crunchy jeans, still covered in burst soda and potato chip dust, from the bag and pulled them on. I padded over to her bedroom door and stepped outside.

She stood there in the hallway, hands on her hips, tapping her foot impatiently. “Well? What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

“I wasn’t doing anything, I swear.” I let out a long sigh. “You forgot my clothes back at the hotel, is all. I’d taken my last good set out when I went to take a shower.”

Her expression softened immediately. “Shit, I’m sorry.”

“Don’t worry about it too much. They’re probably all covered in blood anyways.”

“That’s not exactly reassuring, you know.”

I reached up, scratched the back of my head. “Don’t suppose you can run to the store for me, if I give you my measurements?”

She gave me an uncertain look. “Isn’t that going to waste some time we don’t have?” She snapped her fingers. “Oh wait, I know! My ex, Jason, left some of his clothes here when we broke up, and he’s never come by to pick them up. Think that’ll work?”

“Think they’ll fit?”

She screwed up her face as she looked my form up and down. “Well, he was about your size, maybe a little smaller. Tell you what, why don’t you go hop in the shower, and I’ll get his stuff together. Sound good? I’ll put some coffee on so it’ll be ready when you get out..”

I shrugged. “Sure, whatever works. I mean, any port in a storm, right?”

“Right. Now, go get cleaned up. Towels are in the cabinet above the toilet, and there’s body wash and everything in there. You need to get cleaned up and get all that blood off you if we’re going to go meet Kent Marten’s wife.”

Just then, my stomach grumbled, the sound seeming to expand out and fill the whole apartment to its edges. I gave Lucy a look of embarrassment as I blushed. “Healing like that takes a lot out of us shifters.”

“Don’t worry. We’ll stop and get breakfast on the way.”