“I already said I don’t have a boyfriend.”
“Hmmm. There’s Rick LaFleur. He stands around with his tongue hanging out whenever you’re around.” I sighed, and Molly shook her head, vexed, starting the van. “Take care, Big-Cat.”
She was pulling away before I realized that she hadn’t asked me to the house for dinner. No invitations to visit with her there had been forthcoming at all, and I didn’t think it was because of my schedule. It was because her husband no longer trusted me to keep Molly safe. And he had good reason.
Chapter Three
You Fight Dirty
I straddled the long seat, turned the key starting Fang, and waved to Molly taking off in her minivan. I eased the bike along the road in the opposite direction and stopped in the middle of the bridge where the wolves had attacked Itty Bitty. The water was up, several feet higher than last night, the power company having opened the dam to make power and provide water for the businesses that depend on the releases. Evidence not collected overnight, or missed before the water release, had been washed away. A commercial raft rounded the bend in the river, the occupants wet and laughing. Kayakers played in eddies and small currents. Remembering Itty Bitty and her beau, I found my phone and texted Bruiser and Leo a request for someone to get up here pronto and heal the injured, before the were-taint turned them furry. That would go a long way to making the locals more vamp-friendly. Satisfied I had done all I could for the injured, I gunned the bike.
On the far side of the river, I followed my nose, tasting grindy on the breeze. The scent seemed to be part of the air currents falling from Mount Sterling. No big surprise there, yet my heart started to pound. The grindy-scent worried me. Gunning the bike, I passed in front of the RV camp and up the mountain along back roads. Not long after, I headed sharply uphill, crossing the state line back into North Carolina.
The peak of Mount Sterling is nearly six thousand feet high with a metal fire tower on top, but I wasn’t planning on hiking all the way up. I would be stopping at the national park to check out a theory and talk to a guy I had been avoiding—pretty boy Rick LaFleur, the boyfriend-who-wasn’t, whom Molly had mentioned. This little side trip was why I had taken the bike instead of asking one of the twins to fly me in Grégoire’s helicopter. Well, that and the fact that Beast had flatly refused to fly in the metal contraption.
The climbing ride to the park was beautiful. Big Creek—its massive boulders scored by grindy markings and rank with grindy scent—on one side of the road was dried to a trickle this time of year unless a heavy rain hit. Then the hair-head, adrenaline-junkie kayakers would be all over the place, taking the steep, highly dangerous creeking-run through its rocks, trees, and boulders. All around me on the climb were farmhouses on small farms, fallow land, horses, cattle, and harvested fields, some with big round hay bales on the peripheries. Wildflowers were everywhere. If I had been riding a quieter machine, I might have seen deer, turkey, even bear this time of year. But it wasn’t likely, not riding Fang. Harleys weren’t built for stealth.
I made the park entrance, taking the narrow gravel road that had been cut from the side of the mountain. It was steep on both sides, one side straight uphill, the other down, sharply, to the boulders of Big Creek. I passed through the horse area with its special camping sites and hitching posts, the distinct scent of horse and manure heavy on the cooling air.
The day-camp parking was full of cars, but I maneuvered on through, undergrowth and trees dense on both sides, to the campground. I left Fang in the bathhouse parking area. The air was twenty degrees cooler here, fresh and damp and rich with scent. I closed my eyes and breathed deeply. The weak bouquet of wild orchids that bloomed in August was faint on the breeze. Stronger were the odors of flowering bee balm, mountain mint, milkweed, and crushed jewelweed, the [ewe time of y musky scent of rich soil and the smell of verdant green ferns and moss. Pungent and gamey were raccoon, squirrel, opossum, dozens of bird varieties, and the horses. Faintly, from far off, came deer and bear scents. Overriding it all was the stench of man—the showers, the park toilets, the tang of beer, food, charcoal, and seared meat from last night. It wasn’t the smells of The People, the Cherokee of my distant memory, but it was reminiscent.