Chapter 7

CHAPTER SEVEN

GARRETT

Coming up with a course of action took time, which only agitated my bear with every passing second. My mate was trapped below a collapsed building, surrounded by dangerous waters and treacherous conditions. One wrong move could result in her being crushed under more debris, drowned by rising waters, or worse. It was taking all my control to rein in my bear from simply tearing apart the building on top of her and lifting her out.

Two plans were made, just in case. The first, Rodger and I would journey to where Ethan said the escape tunnel ended. We would work our way through any blockages there and travel up the waterlogged tunnel to where Odette and Amelia were. We had a better chance of heading upstream as bears than we did as men, so we would need to shift once we were inside the tunnel and out of the eyesight of any potential witnesses.

The second plan was for Dameon and Ethan to work their way down to Odette. All they needed to do was to clear a gap—very, very carefully—that was big enough for Odette to fit through in her fox form. Foxes were sneaks by nature. They fit in practically everything. I considered this Plan B because I had every intention of reaching her before she had to try climbing her way out with a fox kit in her mouth. On her own, climbing up would be challenging but doable. With Amelia, even shifted, it made it exceedingly more dangerous—for both of them.

Before either plan could take place, we had to get the electricity turned off. The live power line was Odette’s most immediate danger. This took some time, as it involved getting to the store’s breaker box. The metal door protecting the panel stood no match against the strength of an elephant’s punch—even in human form. Dameon was able to get us inside and then we flipped the breaker.

Odette immediately reported back to me that the live wire stopped sparking.

I sighed in relief. That was one challenge down. The next was getting to her.

Ethan described where Rodger and I needed to go. The furniture shop was on the edge of town, lined up to a patch of foliage that led into dense forest. The tunnel let out about a half mile east.

Our biggest challenge was going to be finding the entrance in the floodwater. Any traces of scent left behind by the skulk leader would have been washed away. By going east, we were going deeper into water left behind by the flood.

Before leaving, Rodger and I stripped down to just our underwear. While it might look funny to a human to see two men walking through the flood water in just their underwear, it would be less suspicious than seeing two large bears walking through. There was no point in taking our backpacks or clothing with us, as there was not likely to be a safe place to leave them while we shifted.

Hopefully once in the trees, the chances of being seen by a passing human lessened enough that our lack of clothing wouldn’t matter. We would be faster without our boots and clothing.

My bear was comforted by the fact that we had a plan and were on the move.

Odette was trying to calm my bear even more by telling me facts about herself. She was around Rodger’s age at two hundred and twenty two. Like many shifters, she’d had a number of jobs over the centuries. The one I found the most interesting was she used to work as an embalmer in the nineteen-sixties. Her skulk had lived in North Carolina since before any European settlers came to their shores.

Their aging went unnoticed by the humans in their midst by rotating which generation fronted the businesses the skulk owned. Every twenty or so years, the older generation would go into the forests for several years, allowing the younger generation to become the faces the humans in town were familiar with. Then they would slowly rotate out.

It sounded complicated and, for a loner like me, completely ridiculous. I didn’t have to hide from any humans if I didn’t know any humans.

I told her about my cabin up in Maine. My sleuth owed property in the far eastern part of Maine, between Moosehorn and Cobscook Bay. We were spread out through the land and did not keep close contact with each other like her skulk did. We were around, sure, and we socialized at times, but we weren’t a community like her people were.

I tried to picture my cabin in my head, unsure if the images would carry over to her through our link. I was equally surprised and happy when they did.

Odette loved my cabin. Immediately, the images in my head changed to how she wanted to rearrange furniture, the different comforter on the bed, an additional dresser in my bedroom, the addition of a nursery…

It was so distracting for both myself and my bear that Rodger actually had to bring me back to the present to focus on our task at hand.

We were trudging through four foot waters, which was dangerous even for us. I could not afford to be distracted. Flood water could contain many unknowns. It was too murky to see where our feet were landing either. Mud tried to pull us down with each step. Rocky terrain would have been easier, but we weren’t so lucky. With nothing solid beneath our bare feet, even our balance was tested.

The escape tunnel wasn’t marked in a way that a human would notice. Since our noses were of little use to us, we had to find a massive tree with fox markings in the middle of a forest.

Since we had no way of communicating with Dameon and Ethan, we did not know if they were faring any better than us. Odette reported back that she heard noises from above, but nothing definitive. Nothing that indicated she had a clear and safe exit.

Finally, what seemed like hours later, we came upon an unusually tall tree amongst the other foliage. Foxes don’t mark trees like bears do with claw marks. Instead, we found chewed-on branches and little dents in the bark where they’d gnawed on the tree trunk.

The tunnel was supposed to come out beneath the tree roots. Which meant Rodger and I would be going under the flood water.

We’re coming, Odette…