Phantom Warriors: Riot (2 page)

“How’s Harold Twofeathers doing today?” she
asked.

The nurse recognized her and gave her a wan
smile. “He’s hanging in there, but there’s been no
improvement.”

No improvement was better than him getting
worse. Right? The lie slipped easily into Nina’s mind because she
wanted so desperately to believe it. “Thanks for taking such good
care of him.”

Compassionate eyes met hers. “He’s a
wonderful man.”

“Yes, he is,” she said. Nina reached her
grandfather’s room and paused long enough to paste a smile on her
face. The act was as much for her benefit as it was for his. It
helped ease the dull pain of impending loss. She’d been dealing
with the grief for over six months.

Nina knew when she walked in the room that
she’d find him propped up in bed, his once strong muscles wasting
away. It was like an invisible monster took chunks out of him while
she was at work. She couldn’t stand to see him like this and would
change places with him in a heartbeat if she could. Not that he’d
let her. Her grandfather, Harold Twofeathers, was a proud man, who
believed in the old ways. Life circled and that was how it should
be.

“Stop hovering outside my door like the
coyote, Little Deer,” his warm voice called out, even though there
was no way he could’ve known she was there. The cancer might be
eating his body, but it hadn’t touched his mind or his Shamanic
abilities.

Nina stepped forward, forcing her legs to
move her into the room. “
Shi-yo
, Grandpa. You’re looking
better today,” she said.

“Hello.” His warm chocolate-colored eyes
sparkled as he patted the lumpy chair beside his bed. “Did you know
that your nose twitches when you lie?”

Her hand rose to her face to cover her nose.
“Does not.”

He laughed. “Come here, Little Deer. My eyes
are not what they used to be.”

Warmth spread through her at the continued
use of the endearment. “Your eyes might not be, but your hearing is
just fine.” Nina grinned at him and did as he asked.

The second she sat, his large hand reached
out to cover hers. His copper skin stretched like crinkled paper
over his boney knuckles. Life may have beaten the padding out of
them, but you wouldn’t know it from his warm gentle touch. Nina
carefully squeezed his hand, then didn’t let go. Maybe if she just
held onto him, death would be unable to take him away. It was a
child’s hope. She knew that, but in her heart she couldn’t stop
praying that somehow a miracle would occur and her grandfather
would recover. She needed him.

His soft brown eyes crinkled at the corners.
“Don’t be sad, Little Deer. There’s no need to fear the Great
Spirit. I have spoken with him many times. He waits on
Kuwah’
hi
for me to join him.”

“Well, he can wait on the Sacred Mountain a
little longer. You’re not going anywhere.” Nina sniffled and
quickly wiped all hint of wetness away.

He patted her hand. “Not yet. I must remain
until you’re settled.”

Nina rolled her eyes. “Then you’re going to
be here for a while.”

Harold chuckled. “So what have you been doing
today?”

Nina sighed. “Stocking up on bandages and
antibiotics. The bear hunts are about to begin.”

He looked at her, his warm expression quickly
turned serious. “Stay out of the woods. I don’t want the Sheriff to
arrest you again.”

“You know I can’t do that. Too many animals
need me.” He’d never told her to stay out of the woods in the past.
Oh, he’d warned her not to get near the crazy white hunters because
they might mistake her for an animal, but he’d never told her to
stay out of the Smoky Mountains and the surrounding areas. It was
tantamount to saying ‘stop breathing’. “I’ll be fine, Grandpa. You
know I’m always careful.”

“It’s not you that I’m worried about,” he
said. “The spirits have been whispering to me. They tell me that
powerful magic is coming.”

“You know magic isn’t real, Grandpa.” Perhaps
the cancer had spread to his brain after all. Her heart dropped as
she battled the pain to keep it from showing on her face.

“Oh, it’s real.” He touched her heart. “You
just need to open your eyes to see it.”

Nina knew she could keep her eyes open
forever and the most that she could hope to see was a rerun of
Harry Potter.

“The ancestors are singing The Bear Song. I
hear it most everyday,” he said. “I think this time it’s going to
draw the Great Bear out of hiding.”

Her grandfather had always loved The Bear
Song. In his youth, he’d gladly joined in to sing along. Talk of it
usually made her happy, but now it just frightened her.

As a veterinarian, Nina could logically
understand the ritual of performing the song, but she hated its end
result. Every bear season brought an increase of dogs and horses
being shot, along with too many bears for her peace of mind. She
was always inundated with injured animals this time of year—most of
which she couldn’t save.

Hunting wasn’t allowed in the Smoky Mountain
National Park and was highly regulated on the Qualla Boundary, but
that didn’t stop a few hunters from wandering into places they
shouldn’t be. Bear Season also brought out the poachers. Not
satisfied with killing just one bear, they had to trap and kill as
many as possible. Of course, it was illegal, but that didn’t stop
them. The mountains and the woods were vast. Hunters could easily
evade law enforcement.

“You are frowning again, Little Deer.” Harold
Twofeathers smiled. “Let me tell you a story.”

Nina had heard the story about the Great Bear
hunted by the four brothers. They’d chased the monstrous creature
into the sky where they remained to this day. But she listened to
her grandfather as if it were for the first time. Some of the
Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, or
Tsalagi
as they called
themselves, believed that bears were violent, and that there were
monsters the size of woolly mammoths that resembled bears, roaming
the woods. These creatures regularly attacked people and could only
be slain by heroes.

Others, like her grandfather, believed that
bears possessed strong medicine magic, which aided in healing. Nina
didn’t believe either story, but she implicitly trusted her
grandfather and his power. She just couldn’t, in good conscious,
stay out of the woods.

He finished his story and looked at her. “Do
you understand now?”

Nina’s brow furrowed. She’d listened to the
story, but she wasn’t sure what lesson she was supposed to take
away from it, other than don’t chase bears. “Um…”

Harold shook his head. “You must remember the
stories. They will help you through life.”

She squeezed his hand. “I know, Grandpa. I
will remember, and just to be safe, I promise not to chase any
bears.”

“Not
any
bears.” Harold shook his
head. “The lesson I was trying to impart was that if you chase the
Great Bear, he will take you with him into the sky.” His pained
gaze met hers. “There’s no coming back from the sky, Little Deer.
Once the Great Bear lures you there, you are his for eternity. The
four brothers found that out the hard way.”

A shiver tracked down Nina’s spine. The
chances of her running into any bear, much less the Great Bear
while she was out sabotaging bear traps, were slim to none. “I’ll
remember, Grandpa.” Nina glanced at her watch. “I have to get back
to work now. Do you need anything?”

He smiled. “Only your visits, Little
Deer.”

“I’ll come by again after I get off work.”
She slowly rose from the chair.

His hand snaked out with surprising speed and
grasped her wrist. “Remember what I said. The Great Bear has
powerful magic. He can mesmerize you and convince you that he’s not
dangerous, but in the end, he is still a bear.”

This whole conversation was making Nina
uncomfortable. She knew going into the woods and messing up traps
was dangerous. The Sheriff had only let her go after her
grandfather promised him that she’d pay for all the damages. And
she had, but not until after Bear Season ended. This year would be
no different, except she had no intention of getting caught.
“You’ve always told me that bears aren’t naturally violent,” she
said. “If I leave them alone, that they’ll leave me alone.”

“This is true.” His gaze sharpened. “But the
magic that I see coming is no ordinary magic. And since bears hold
the most magic, it has to be the Great Bear that the ancestors are
warning me about. The Great Bear is like nothing you’ve ever seen
before.”

Nina didn’t believe it, but she nodded all
the same. “If he’s as big as you say that he is, then it sounds
like the hunters are the ones that should be worried.”

“This magic is not coming for the hunters,
Little Deer,” Harold said. “It’s coming for
you.
”

She chuckled and kissed his forehead. “The
magic is going to have a hard time finding me, unless it comes to
the office and knocks on the door.” Nina glanced at her watch
again. “I really have to go. I have a Rottweiler coming in at 1:00.
I’ll see you later, okay?”

“I’ll be here.” Harold laughed, then started
to cough violently as he waved her out of the room.

Nina rushed out before he could see the fresh
tears forming in her eyes. Harold Twofeathers; healer, shaman, and
all around best grandpa ever, had raised her when her mother
decided that she cared more for alcohol than she did her only
daughter. She’d died ten years ago in a drunk driving accident. The
state troopers had said that she’d driven off the side of the
mountain on her way back from Gatlinburg, Tennessee.

Her mother had never made it to Cherokee,
North Carolina. Nina hadn’t cried when she’d learned the news. It
was hard to cry over someone that you didn’t really know, but her
grandfather had wept. Her mother was his daughter. His only
daughter. That meant something to him. And now Nina finally
understood as she faced her grandfather’s impending death. If only
the stories about the Great Bear’s magical powers were true… She’d
follow it anywhere, if it meant saving the only man that she’d ever
loved.

Phantom Warrior Riot spent the night in La
Push, Washington, staying only long enough to admire the pounding
waves and the Quileute Tribe’s totems. The community was welcoming,
but too small for what he needed to accomplish. For that, he needed
a much larger population, one full of females of various shapes,
sizes, and colors. He made his way through Forks, a small town that
seemed to be obsessed with something called ‘Twilight’, before
continuing on to Olympic National Park.

Riot ran across a few black bears in the
park, but nothing near the size that he was in his Other form. The
bears had sensed danger and quickly scampered off. As a Phantom
Warrior—an alien shape-shifter species— and a member of the Claw
Clan, he was expected to find a mate. Women were few in number on
his home planet of Zaron. Without the aid of women from Earth, his
people would quickly become extinct.

Fortunately, the Phantom people had found a
solution to their problem, when a lost group of Atlanteans returned
to Zaron after having been stranded on Earth for hundreds and
hundreds of years. The news of a planet full of compatible women
had spread quickly. Soon warriors from the Tooth Clan, Wing Clan,
Claw Clan, and Blood Clan were lining up to travel to Earth.

They’d banned together with the Zaronian
Atlanteans, who also battled extinction due to intergalactic wars,
to go on expeditions in search of viable mates. Like his Phantom
brothers who’d gone before him, Riot had to do his part, which was
why he found himself strolling into a bar in downtown Seattle near
the wharf.

The moist sea air gave way to the warm press
of too many bodies within the narrow room. The crowd parted, giving
Riot plenty of space. Too much space. He smiled in the direction of
a few females, but they shied away or pretended not to notice. He
inhaled. Past the perfume, alcohol, sweat, and desperation, he
could smell the fear. His smile faded. Riot sat down at the bar and
ordered a beer. His shoulders hunched in an effort to make himself
appear smaller, less intimidating.

At over six and a half feet tall, and pushing
two hundred and eighty pounds of packed muscle, Riot wasn’t exactly
inconspicuous. He received more than a few curious glances, but
everyone, including the females he’d come here to make contact
with, kept their distance.

A few women approached the far end of the bar
to order drinks. Riot tried to talk to them, but the words came out
like he was issuing orders to new warrior recruits. He’d never been
good at chatting up females. What little experience he had, had
been utterly unpleasant. He could still hear the Phantom woman’s
cries of pain ringing in his ears from that fateful night. He’d
been so excited by the opportunity of getting to couple that his
beast had slipped its leash and nearly crushed the woman to death.
Afterwards, Riot had been too embarrassed and horrified by the
incident to ever try again.

He eyed the human women around him. They
weren’t nearly as strong as the Phantom and Atlantean women on his
planet. How would he ever be able to touch them without injuring
them? His insecurity must’ve showed because the women who’d been
standing at the bar grabbed their drinks and disappeared into the
crowd quickly, barely giving him a second glance.

Riot watched them go, a mixture of
disappointment and relief coursing through him. He took a deep
swallow of his beer and shook his head in disgust.
You can’t
find a mate by passively sitting here,
he chided. He slowly
scanned the room and vowed to try harder with the next woman. It
didn’t take long for another to approach.

“Can I buy you a drink?” he asked as she
bellied up to the bar.