I looked at Kem and back to the cave. The vamp-killers felt good in my palms as I stepped up and around the small pool toward the cave entrance. The jumbled bones were covered in flies. Maggots—not my favorite bug—crawled everywhere, big, small, totally gross. A buzzard spread its wings and flapped, irritation in every feather. I’d interrupted their feast. Rick at my shoulder, I stood at the entrance to the cave, letting my eyes adjust, drawing on Beast’s speed, vision, and hearing. Adrenaline flushed through me. Something brushed my thigh. I daggered downward. Jerked to a stop. The tip of the blade was buried in the shoulder hair of Kem-cat, just touching the skin over his scapula. He looked up at me and growled softly in warning. I showed him my teeth. My look promised challenge. Later. He looked into the dark before us. Together, we stepped inside the cave.
It was an underground microcosm of the cleft in the mountain, almost mimicking the shape of the pool. Twenty feet deep and ten wide at the entrance, it narrowed to a point overhead and at the far end, a slash into the heart of the world. Stone slabs composed its walls. The roof was fifteen feet high at the entrance, lower at the far end. The floor was dirt, covered with fresh fir branches. More fir branches lined a small shelf at the back, about three feet off the floor. And on it was the grindy, curled tightly in a protective ball. When I’d seen him last he had been wearing baggy human-style clothes. Now he was naked. Around him were green balls of fur, shocking bright, almost neon. One moved. And mewled. “Holy crap,” I whispered.
Rick said, “He had babies.” He was a she.
The grindy woke, moving from balled up asleep into fighting mad and protective-mother-predator in half a heartbeat. Standing over her litter, she showed us long killing teeth, her arms out, claws spread, legs wide, her head forward, like any predator in danger. Multiple teats like a nursing dog’s hung on her belly, and when she shrieked, it was a high-pitched squeal, her eyes wild, not recognizing us at all.
Kem turned with a liquid grace and leaped from the cave. I backed away, not taking my eyes from the grindy, Rick’s shoulder touching mine. He was holding a nine mil, safety off, ready for firing. I felt better just seeing the gun. I had seen what the grindy’s claws could do to a boulder, and my flesh wasn’t nearly that tough. I also wasn’t immortal. If I lost my head I was done for. If I received a mortal blow, and didn’t have time to shift before blood loss took me, I’d be dead. My father had died that way, too fast for a shift to save him.
In the daylight I blinked at the sight of Kemnebi, on a log, still staring at the cave. He looked at us and patted the log twice with his left front paw before whirling, front feet leading his body, taking off up the hillside. “And that means, what?” I asked Rick, still processing the sight of the grindylow with babies. Babies with neon green fur. Angie had seen this. How weird was that?
“He’s hunting. We get to wait.”
“How about we do that upwind of the bone pile.” We trudged uphill, pulling our way with trees and roots when needed, until we found a stone outcropping overlooking the grindy’s lair, but upwind. We sat, our feet swinging over a seventy-foot drop. Rick opened his backpack, revealing apples, raisins, and nuts. I opened mine, showing packages of jerky made from three types of meats and six Snickers bars. “So how long do we wait?” I asked, taking off my shoes so my feet could dry.
A cat-scream and a roar sounded, echoing through the folded earth of the mountain. I jerked my gaze up, following the sound. The roar rang out again, followed by the challenge of a big-cat. Snarling. It was a fight. “I’m thinking Kem is trying to kill a bear. So not long,” Rick said, his tone wry. He took my feet in his hands and began to rub, his eyes watching out over the mountain below us. The sloppy sentimental thing called my heart did a little somersault.
Want to kill a bear, Beast thought at me, flooding my system with longing and my mouth with the remembered taste of hot blood and fat. Long time since I hunted black bear.
“Not today,” I said aloud. And shook my head when Rick looked at me curiously. I bit down on a strip of turkey jerky and chewed while Beast prowled the back of my mind, pouting. And Rick rubbed my cold feet. This was turning out to be the weirdest job I’d had in a long time. Moments later I was asleep.
Rick said, “He’s back. Wake up, sleepyhead.”
I sat up and yawned, spotting the dark shadow that was Kem, far below us on the opposing face of the mountain. He was moving erratically, jerking and sliding, backside first, dragging a black bear down the mountain. It looked like two hundred pounds, maybe two fifty. Beast couldn’t have dragged the bear. She hissed in displeasure, but it was true. Beast could drag a hundred fifty pounds, but not much more. Leopards have excellent musculature in head, jaw, neck, and shoulders, and superior climbing ability. They can even climb down a tree headfirst. The leopard could probably drag the bear up a tree, which is where leopards keep their dinners, safe from other predators or scavengers. Kem dragged the carcass inside the mouth of the cave. I looked at Rick. “I thought Kem was ticked off with the grindy for killing Safia.”