Chapter 31

Chapter 31

Lucas

I stared at the gear Asher had given us with incomprehension, the two sides of me at war. Human me was really good at black ops. I slunk around video game maps, sniping my enemies, my kill ratio legendary amongst the guys I played with, but this wasn't a game.

"You strip down and put them on," Kyle told me, halfway through the process right now.

"I know that," I snapped.

"You don't have to." I hated the measured look Asher gave me. Nothing, I mean nothing fazed him, and why would it? He'd killed a man before he was even in his teens, was a hero in the bear community, whereas all I did was sit in front of my computer and pretend to be one. "You don't have to do this, Luc."

"You think you're the only one that cares about Imogen's safety?"

I was squaring up to my sleuth mate, like he was the one that pissed on her stuff, not fucking Phil. My heart had fallen through the floor when I saw the damage. I had a stash of comics I'd kept for ages, now preserved perfectly, and I know how I'd felt if someone damaged them so wantonly. The search for replacements was all that I could hold onto to keep my bear under control, even though I knew.

There was a reason why e-comics never worked for me. That digital paper didn't hold traces of me, flipping electronic pages didn't evoke the feeling of the paper stock's texture, I couldn't hear the sound of it moving. The emotions I felt the first time I read about larger-than-life men that dared to go out and do good in the world soaked into the paper along with ink. I wasn't sure what Imogen felt when she read her books, but she lost it–those memories, those feelings–the moment that fuck trashed each one.

And if Asher was going to make Phil pay for that, he'd do so with me by his side.

I said as much and Asher nodded, the three of us pulling on the dark-blue track pants and long-sleeve t-shirts, balaclavas shoved into our pockets as we strode out of the building. Towards one of the black SUVs we rarely used, the facade slightly worn, nondescript, every bit of chrome remade in matte black. It was made to be unobtrusive and get us to where we needed to go, so we all climbed in, ready to go.

"What's the plan?" I felt like a kid watching his parents talk from the backseat. Kyle turned to Asher but he didn't get a reply until Asher was out of the car park and driving down the road.

"Go to Phil's place."

"You have his address?"

Asher shot me a steady look in the rear vision mirror, making clear how stupid that question was.

"If we're lucky, he's gone back home. If we're not, we look for clues, take fur and see what trail the bears can uncover."

I sat back against the seat, trying to ignore the rapid thud of my heart. I didn't go on missions for a reason, but this one? I couldn't stay away, not when I saw Imogen's pain, her anguish so clear inside my head.

This was where Mary lived?

I stared at the dingy street, then the run down house. She was always so meticulous, asking for an iron on the first morning she spent with us to ensure hers and the kids' clothes were all perfectly pressed before she was introduced to everyone else. The garden full of weeds, the rusty fence, just didn't seem to mesh with what I knew of the woman.

"Lights are off." Asher pulled out his pistol, checking that it was loaded before jumping out of the car. We were parked a house down to try to deflect attention away from us, but waving a weapon around wouldn't achieve that. Before I could say anything, he had it tucked into the back of his pants. "We'll go around the side, see if we can get in through the back door."

"Quietly." Kyle added that for my benefit, something that had my eyes rolling.

"I know."

"Stealth in a video game is different from real life."

"I know that too."

He nodded slowly.

"OK, show me what you've got."

We walked down the cracked footpath, but the noise from the street made clear that we didn't need to be that careful. Hooting cries, a scream, then a ragged cheer competed with the sounds the wind made rustling leaves in the trees as we reached the front gate. Asher tested it, freezing when the hinges screeched and jumping over the fence instead. We followed suit behind him, the sound of our feet hitting the ground swallowed by the long grass. I heard a low hiss from somewhere, making clear we had serpentine company, but one look from me had the python shrinking back, looking for far smaller prey.

Sometimes it felt like abusers announced to the world what they were. The state of the house, the way the gutters sagged and the whole yard was a ferocious obstacle course, filled with rusting junk, it felt like its decay was an externalisation of the rot in his soul. Scott had grown up in this, at risk of getting tetanus the moment he went outside. Charlie, the toddler, would've had to be watched every second and no doubt Mary was the one to do it. By creating a rat's nest of rot, it both kept her down and kept her too busy to walk free of it.

"Fucking hell…" Kyle hissed as we picked our way through the mess, finally arriving in the backyard.

It was worse here. Car bodies fought with weeds for space, yet neatly pegged up on the clothesline were a line of kids' clothes. Mary would've put them out the morning when Phil turned on her, then Scott. I wanted to collect the clothes up in my arms, neatly fold each one, and bring them back to her, but instead we sidled up to the backdoor. Asher produced a long knife, the moonlight shining on the blade and the side of his face as he slid it in between the door and its rotting frame, wiggling a little before popping it open.

The smell was what hit me when we got inside. Sour sweat, mould, dust, it was the stench of despair. That would've been what Mary felt every time she walked around the house, each attempt to tidy or clean feeling more and more hopeless. That was enough for me. I wanted to rip Phil's head right off his fucking shoulders, but that wouldn't be happening here. The place was empty, I could feel that in my bones, but we checked the rooms anyway.

"Not here," Asher said grimly. "I'm calling in the foxes."

"We're gonna owe them our first born at this rate," Kyle said, but Asher just stared through his lame joke.

"There won't be any children to barter," I replied, "not if Imogen isn't safe. It's like by taking Mary away, he needed to find another victim."

"Makes sense." Kyle's face fell. "We've seen it often enough. The woman doesn't matter, and they usually find someone else to take their shit out on if we get their wife or girlfriend free. They need someone to beat down, take out all their petty frustrations on."

"Someone to hold down so they don't have to face that fact they are small, pathetic little boys," Asher snapped, right before he grabbed his phone out.

"You call the foxes." I drifted forward, spying a laptop buried amongst all the shit piled up on the dining room table. "I'll take a look at his computer."

I wish I hadn't.

This was the part of the job I fucking hated, using the skills I'd picked up in some less-than-savoury places on the internet. As a kid, the idea of white-hat hackers entranced me, their actions that of real-life superheroes, using technology to bring down fuckers who deserved it.

But just like all things in real life, the reality was far more grim.

Sometimes I'd been asked to do this, getting remote access to an abuser's computer to find evidence that could be reported anonymously to the police, but I'd had to delegate that to contractors fairly early on. The kind of shit I found… It stayed in my mind, burned there as I struggled to accept what was there on the screen. My hands flexed as I opened the laptop, seeing at least it still had a charged battery. My gloved fingers would leave no trace as I ran through the usual passwords that way too many people used.

His name, her name, the kids names, it was none of them, but password? Yep, he'd really used that. The computer was old and sluggish to boot up, but then I saw it.

Fuck…

I prayed then, really prayed, to the bear gods or the human ones, that the boys never caught sight of this shit. Porn clips littered the desktop, and even by the thumbnails, I knew I wouldn't like what was in each one.

"What's…?" Kyle's voice trailed away as the first one started. No preliminaries, the crying, tear-streaked face of the woman in the video appeared straight away, her pleas for help cut up seconds later. "What. The. Fuck."

His brows drew down, his face turning to thunder, but it was my turn to educate him.

"This is what most of them watch. Violent porn performed by consenting actors is the best option." I held his gaze, watching the pupils blow wide. "Non-consenting isn't even the worst."

"Rape porn…?"

Something seemed to die inside him as he realised that was a thing. The product of a healthy, happy bear shifter family, his parents had so much love they'd adopted Asher when he was brought back to the community. It made sense to me that he didn't know, but I…

I'd romanticised the actions of lone wolves and vigilantes, imagining myself striding with the same kind of cool Batman did the shitty streets of Gotham, but the comic book writers pulled their punches. What lived out there in the shadows was beyond something the artists could draw. Far darker, far more horrific, and worst of all, far more common than the Machiavellian plots of the Penguin or the Joker. There was a whole industry full of people putting out this shit for people to wank to. I jerked my keys out of my pocket, inserting a flash drive I kept attached to it, and then downloaded a copy of the prick's entire hard drive onto it.

"The foxes will meet us in a nearby park in twenty," Asher informed us. "What did you find?"

"The usual fucking shit." I said that between gritted teeth and he knew exactly what I meant, resulting in Kyle looking at the two of us in incomprehension. He went with Asher sometimes, was good at kicking in doors, but me? I kicked open digital doors, much more quietly and with less fanfare. Kyle was Superman all the way, using all his considerable strength for good and never wavering from his moral centre, but some of us… I stared at the computer screen, seeing it, but not really able to focus. Some of us were forced to get our hands dirty to achieve our goals.

"No one's been past your girl's place since," Rye told us as Todd and Wyatt dropped down from the crumbling jungle gym they were perched on. "Your cleaning crew did good work. Barely smell the piss now."

"Cat shifters," Asher told him. "No one's more meticulous. But Phil?"

"I put word around, even took a sample from the apartment to circulate through our colony," Rye replied. "Everyone there knows if they see any evidence of this fucker anywhere, they're to report that back to me." He grinned slowly. "Even put a bounty on his head, to incentivise some of my more unruly… colony members."

"You tell me how much and I'll cover it," Asher said.

"No need. Our mate is proving to be… resistant to the idea of forming a bond. We have not always acted with honour and she knows this." Those green eyes glittered like cut glass in the moonlight. "Consider this part of our redemption arc. Perhaps if we help you find your way to your mate, the goddess will smile down on us."

"We follow the ways of the bear gods," Kyle said, "but if this will help… I'll send up a prayer for you."

"I would assume Phil's not in the city. I can reach out further to the wild clans that live in the bush, but that will take some time. Our colonies are ruled by matriarchs. I can't just approach the mother of another colony. My grandmother must make the connection."

Mama Lisica was a notorious figure in the shifter community. Neither a force for good or ill, she was fiercely protective of her colony and would stop at nothing to keep its members safe. Previously her amorality offended me, but now? I could understand the method of her madness.

"And I suspect she will be a lot less generous in her favours." Asher stared at Rye. "Tell her we'll pay it, whatever it is. There is nothing I will not give the mother of foxes to keep my mate safe."

"Be careful of that." Wyatt looked surprised that he had spoken, but he pushed himself forward anyway. "She… she will take full advantage of that offer."

"Let her." I knew the look in Asher's eyes, the one that made me think he wasn't Batman, but a superhero far more reckless, far more self-sacrificing. The Punisher, that was him–brutal, reckless, suicidal. "Let her ask for whatever she wants because I will give it to her. A monster hunts my mate, and I must bring him down before he can get within ten feet of her. Tell Mama Lisica that."

"So, what now?" Kyle asked, staring at the moon when we got back to the car.

"I don't know about you, but I need to take fur." Asher's hand formed claws against the car window, scratching the glass. "He's been pressing hard on the bond between us, and I?—"

"We'll go to the pine forest just outside of town," I replied. "Let the bears out, buy us some time because…" That's what I hated about the job. Abuse, violence, rape, they were all words I could shy away from, but videos? I couldn't erase them out of my head once I'd seen them, my guts turning. "What we have to do, it's going to push our control to its limits."

At that we all got inside the car, driving in silence to an abandoned pine plantation. It was easy to jump over the sagging wire fence, to tear our clothes off the moment we reached the trees. The bear had never shoved forward so fast, his paws landing in the pine needles, his head turning back towards the car.

No, to her.

He saw it in his mind, the long, slow amble back towards headquarters. I tried to turn him around, to make clear what a mistake that would be. Images of being tranqued, of being shot made no difference, but this did. Imogen's look of horror as a grizzly bear advanced upon her. He huffed at that and then shuffled forward, into the forest.