Taming the Beast

Part I

The Half-Bear’s Honey

Jacqueline Sweet

Chapter 1

“Please, someone help me!” Rose Weston shouted into the forest, but there was no one around. She was well and truly screwed this time.

She’d driven off the road. The rain was hard and unrelenting and the old dirt roads had gone to mud. So here she was, somewhere in the wild forest west of Poppy Valley and east of the coast. Miles from anywhere. Huge trees loomed up out of the fog, leaning over the narrow road as if they were impatient to reclaim it for their own. When she’d skid, she had managed to avoid hitting one of the massive trees head-on, but the brambles that grew dense at their base had ripped up both tires on the passenger side of her car.

She had one spare tire and knew how to change it. But who carried two spares? Nobody. She was screwed.

Rose tried her phone, but she had no service at all.

The moon hung full and bright above her, shining between the clouds, painting the muddy road in silver and throwing deep shadows in the forest. Rain hammered her car roof like fists banging on a door.

“I drove off the road,” she said out loud, as if the wilderness was listening. Her voice sounded small and thin, all sound devoured by the clatter outside. “That was not very smart, was it Rose?”

Her face felt hot and sticky and her nerves burned with the post-adrenaline rush of the crash. She touched her forehead and it was wet and sore. Rose closed her eyes and wiped her fingers on her jeans. There’d be blood on them, and she had always been terrible with blood. Just thinking about it made her dizzy and seeing it—seeing her own actual blood?—she would faint dead. It’s why, despite her parents’ pleas, she dropped out of medical school and instead took the remarkably bloodless path of becoming a librarian.

There was very little blood-induced fainting in library school. Her parents—a surgeon and a health policy specialist—had been profoundly disappointed. “You’ll get used to it,” they said. “You just need more exposure to blood,” they said.

“Hell no,” Rose replied.

It was a cold night in Northern California. The wind pushed the rain almost horizontal, making Rose’s umbrella all but useless. As soon as she exited the car, a clammy dampness sank into Rose’s bones. She found the first aid kit in her trunk and blotted her forehead with sterile gauze. She had to do it with her eyes closed and the skin throbbed with even the lightest touch. Eventually she decided to wrap the gauze around her head mummy-style, and to pull a knit cap on over it to keep it all in place. All while hugging her umbrella to her chest.

On an ordinary night, she could have huddled in her car and wrapped herself in a blanket and waited out the storm before looking for help. But it wasn’t an ordinary night. Rose was being pursued and waiting in the car was not an option.

“Now where am I?” she asked, as if the trees would pull out a map and tell her.

She’d been driving on the backroads, the narrow roads that no one but the hermits and the loggers used. She hoped that he wouldn’t find her this way. Ronald Parker had friends everywhere—no, not friends—goons. Lackeys. Associates. He was the mayor’s son and every door opened to his toothy smile. How long did she have before one of his cronies traced her cell signal? Or pulled up traffic cameras? When they failed to find any sign of her on the highways, would they come this way? She chose the west roads precisely because she’d never been down them before. No one from Poppy Valley ever drove west. West meant Bearfield, and everyone in Poppy Valley knew that Bearfield was where the monsters lived.

She’d skirted south around the town of Bearfield, avoiding the tourist roads that plunged into its heart. But the roads she’d chose were narrow and steep and winding. They maneuvered through valleys and around mountains in one monotonous swerve. And Rose had never been good at night driving. Even with her high-beams on, it was hard to see. Her mother had suggested once that it was night blindness, and that Rose shouldn’t be behind a wheel at all after dark.

She was probably right.

Rose stuffed her pockets with anything useful from her car’s trunk: a road flare, a protein bar, a travel-sized pack of tissues, and an old flashlight no larger than a tube of lipstick. She also took the tire iron and tucked it into her belt. She had no idea what she could use it against, but it seemed comforting nonetheless to have something weapon-ish, in case she stumbled on a bear or a mountain lion or one of those narco-traffickers that everyone swore had secret grow operations deep in the forests.

Sure, she’d probably get one good swing in before the bear or lion or drug-runners got her. It wouldn’t be much, but at least it’d be something.

Which was basically the story of her life.

>

“I can see it now,” Rose said to the trees. “On my tombstone it’ll say it wasn’t much, but it was something. Or maybe She went down swinging. I could live with that. Or die with that, I guess.”

No, if she died out here, they’d never find the body. She’d be one of those women who just went missing one day and everyone would wonder if she’d ran off to something better or if she’d fallen prey to one of the hidden darknesses of the world.

Rose looked down the road but couldn’t see any sign of anything. She was mid-way up one of the gentle mountains with walls of trees and brambles to either side and a road that was entirely ankle-deep mud. After five years of drought, the rain in California was making itself known and the earth was not prepared. If she walked east, back towards civilization and Poppy Valley and Ronald Parker, she’d find people within fifteen miles and maybe Ronald would let her live if she handed over what he wanted. Maybe.

If she walked west, it was into the unknown. It could be thirty miles until she saw another soul. She could hit the ocean and the coastal roads and still be hours from people. Could she survive walking all night in the freezing rain? Well, she had a protein bar and a road flare. She could do anything.

Maybe it wasn’t the smartest decision, but the unknown was still better than seeing Ronald Carter’s beady eyes again.

Rose tightened her jacket around her and huddled under her umbrella. With one hand she gripped the tiny flashlight and trudged off down the muddy road west. She kept to the edge of the road, not because she was afraid of passing traffic—because there wasn’t any—but because the roots of the trees provided a firm footing, even if they almost seemed to grab at her feet. She had to be careful. Walking in the mud would suck her shoes right off and chill her to the bone, but walking on the twisty uneven roots could lead to a broken ankle. There was no good path.

The rain pounded harder as she made her way, winding along the mountain roads, desperate for some light in the darkness. Before each new curve opened before her, she closed her eyes a moment and hoped for a luxurious vacation home full of tourists swigging white wine and watching the hungry storm from the safety of a roofed jacuzzi.

Poppy Valley was full of little tourist rentals and every single one seemed to come with a white wine fridge and a roofed jacuzzi. It was probably a town law. Probably Ronald Carter had written it himself, alongside the law that said every city employee was a plaything for him to abuse.

But the land she was in now, somewhere south of Bearfield and north of the Russian River basin hadn’t been colonized by tourists yet. It was undeveloped and unclaimed and virginal.

The moon was swallowed up by the storm and the low rumble of thunder made Rose’s belly clench.

“This would be a very stupid way to die,” she said. But the trees didn’t say anything back.

She’d been walking for hours, with the rain soaking into her pants and socks and shoes, when she came upon a path leading away from the road, deeper into the forest. She almost tripped when she saw it. There was a mailbox on a post. It was rusted and crumpled in on itself. But it was a sign that a home was near. Shelter was near. The path was a driveway, dipping down the mountain rather steeply and vanishing into the space between trees.

Rose had a choice—she could stay on the road and see what else lay ahead and maybe run across a park ranger or an emergency phone if she was lucky. Or she could walk down the abandoned driveway and find whatever shelter she could until the storm stopped. It would give Ronald a chance to catch up with her, but if she kept trudging along in the wet darkness she’d catch her death of a cold. It wasn’t much of a choice at all.