Bear Meets Girl

CHAPTER TWENTY

“He’s doing it wrong,” Van Holtz noted.

The entire table looked over at the polar bear working the in-tent barbeque.

“He’s going to make everything dry.”

Novikov sighed. “Guess you’re going over there to show him how it’s done.”

Crush, still feeling where Chazz had slammed his head into a tree, quietly stated, “I wouldn’t.”

Now they were all looking at him. Crush still couldn’t believe these guys had backed him up in his fight against Chazz and Gray. And, man, had those idiots been jealous because he’d had the goddamn Carnivores on his side. It had been great !

“You know him?” MacRyrie asked about the polar working the barbeque.

“He was DEA before he retired. Now he lives in Staten Island and is a butcher. His name is Billows, but they call him Wishbone.”

“Why?”

“The story I heard from other shifters in NYPD is that there was a case involving some crack house in Staten Island. There was a little firefight and one of the guys made a run for it. Wishbone caught him and during the struggle, the guy stabbed Wishbone in the leg, which just pissed him off because he has a real short temper. So they say he had the guy by his legs, told his partner to ‘make a wish.’ Then he ...”

Unable to find the right words, Crush illustrated by yanking his hands apart and all the men exclaimed simultaneously, “Ohhhh!”

“Anyway,” Crush went on, “I’ve been to his butcher shop a few times since he caters to polars and, I think, lions, and he’s still known in his neighborhood for being kind of short on temper. So if I were you ... I’d let him make his dry meat.”

They all silently agreed to let the butcher keep making his dry meat while they went back to their conversation.

Eventually, they went to get something to eat. Crush gawked at the array of things to choose from, smiling up at Wishbone when the former cop turned around.

“Crushek.”

“Hey, Wish. How’s it all going? How are the kids?”

“Pretty good. And you. Heard you moved to the Brooklyn House.”

“I did.”

The polar glanced around, stepped closer. “Watch your back, Crushek.”

“From other cops?”

“No.”

Crush’s eyes crossed. “Right.”

“Bears who work for her”—and he knew who Wishbone meant when he said “her”—“going around asking questions about you.”

“Anything specific?”

“Just digging. Probably trying to discredit you. Don’t know how far she’ll go, though. I don’t know what you did to piss her off, but ...” He picked up a tray of whale fat slabs. “Just be careful, man.”

“Thanks, Wish.”

Suddenly not hungry, Crush stood there staring at the table. When the answers to his problems didn’t miraculously appear amid the deer steak and zebra burgers, Crush started to walk away.

“Have you tried the bison dogs?” Van Holtz asked. How long he’d been standing there, Crush didn’t know.

“I haven’t.”

“They’re good. Different. Add a little Dijon mustard and relish.”

Deciding to follow the wolf’s suggestion, Crush filled up his plate and found an empty table. He dropped into a seat and Van Holtz sat down next to him. In silence, they ate until the table began to fill up with Cella’s aunts. They mostly ignored the two males, eating their own food, and talking shit about some of the other party attendees.

When Crush was nearly done, Cella’s Aunt Karen leaned over and asked Kathleen, “No one thinks it’s strange that them two are friends?”

The entire table looked over at Cella and Dee-Ann Smith, both of them laughing.

“It is surprising,” Kathleen admitted. “Considering the past.”

Crush wiped his mouth with a napkin. “You mean when Cella was in the Marines?”

Kathleen and her sisters laughed. “God, no. I’m talking long before that. When we hexed them.”

Crush looked at Van Holtz. They both frowned at each other before Crush asked, “You hexed the Smiths?”

“Not me personally. Our ancestors. But the Smiths deserved it. They were eating us.”

The bison was sticking in his throat, but Crush was a cop. There were just some things he simply couldn’t walk away from.

“Wolves were eating tigers?”

“They weren’t wolves then. They were cannibals.”

Van Holtz leaned around Crush to see Kathleen. “Excuse me?”

“You didn’t know that? You’re living with one of them.”

“She’s not a cannibal.”

“And I don’t raise horses. But my ancestors used to.”

“I’m still unclear—”

Kathleen cut Crush off. “Some time in the sixteen or seventeen hundreds, I forget which, the Malones were once again forced out of Ireland.”

“Once again?”

She fluttered her hands. “Anyway, they were traveling through England and there was this area they were warned not to go through, but they went anyway because, ya know ... tigers. Figured they could handle anything, but what they didn’t know was that the Smiths were lying in wait.”

“Lying in wait to ... eat you?”

“And rob. That’s what they did. Most of the Malones got away, but the Smiths actually caught a few.”

“And ate them?”

“Among other things. The matriarch of the Malones at the time, she got really pissed and she said if they were going to be as low as dogs, they should be dogs. Then they hexed them.”

Crush finished off his hot dog and, after chewing thoughtfully, finally said, “I’m not sure turning violent, vicious, cannibal killers into actual predators was the best idea your ancestors had.”

“In their defense, though, at the time there was a lot of wolf hunting in England, so they probably thought the Smiths would be destroyed, but who knew the inbreeding cannibals had their own witches? A spell here, a spell there, and they were able to shift back and forth just like us. From what I understand, my relatives were sorely disappointed by all this.”

“You mean because now the Smiths didn’t have to track down any weapons ... because they had become weapons?”

“Yeah,” Kathleen sighed. “They clearly hadn’t thought long term.” She patted Crush’s leg. “But we all have stories like that, right? Mr. Van Holtz here is descended from German barbarians.”

“It’s true,” Van Holtz admitted. “We’re the real reason Julius Caesar charged back across the Rhine and burned the bridge his troops had built before we could cross it.”

“What about you, dear?” Kathleen asked Crush.

“Well, my parents died when I was really young, but when I was older I managed to get a little information about my great-great-great-grandfather, who liked polar bears and used to sit around thinking about how much he’d like to be a polar bear. Then one day he woke up and he was a polar bear.” Crush thought about that a minute and added, “In retrospect, not nearly as interesting as barbarians fighting Julius Caesar.”

“No. But not a story you have to hide, either.”

“She’s got a point.” Van Holtz blew out a breath. “It’s not like I’ve heard any of the Smiths running around talking about their cannibal days.”

“Exactly.” Kathleen patted Crush’s leg again. “I’m sure your ancestor was a very nice man.”

“He was kind of a cop. You know, for his time. Well ...” Crush thought back, remembering what he’d found out. “Kind of a cop slash executioner. He had a real thing for injustice—”

“There you go!”

“—and witches. Used to burn them at the stake unless he drowned them or piled rocks on them first.”

“Oh.”

The group went silent until Crush finally stated, “Still liking the barbarians against Roman forces story better.”

“Yeah,” they all agreed.

The sun went down, the snow began to steadily fall, and nearly everybody was out on the dance floor dancing to Mungo Jerry’s “In the Summertime.” The hotties, of course, had on what some would call ski gear, but even they couldn’t stay in the hot tent. It had been a great party.

She knew that Crush was having a good time, too, dancing with her, a little blood still in his hair from his earlier seal hunt with Novikov. He didn’t even seem to mind that she could only currently look at him through one eye since the other one was swollen shut from the fistfight. Smith offered to “cut you like in the Rocky movies,” but as Cella told the She-wolf when she’d offered, she’d rather wait until the swelling went down on its own.

A slower Motown classic came on and Cella immediately went into Crush’s arms, the two grinning at each other while swaying to the music. Like most bears, the man had some nice rhythm considering his size.

“You and the girls need a lift home?” he asked.

“No. I’m going back with the girls, and some of my cousins. We’ll be making brownies at Jai’s place and talking boys all night. But thanks for the offer.”

“No problem.”

“Glad you came to the party?” she asked.

“Very.”

“You coming back next year?”

He gazed down at her. “Maybe.”

She chuckled. “Oooh, ‘maybe.’ That’s promising.”

He laughed, his arms tightening around her waist. Cella rested her head against his chest. And that’s when she knew—she was in trouble. Deep, deep trouble.