Trouble Bruin

Badlands: Trouble Bruin

Copyright 2016 by Rebekah Blue

This book is intended for readers 18 and older only, due to adult content. It is a work of fiction. All characters and locations in this book are products of the imagination of the author. No shifters were harmed during the creation of this book.

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Charlie watched the Badlands whirling slowly beneath her wings as she circled, looking for the perfect place to set down her Cessna. The ground below was rugged and rocky, almost barren. The shadow of her plane swept over the rocks like an inky paper cutout. The wild-growing Starweed was getting harder to find, and this would be her last trip. Most of the other pilots had been laid off and their teams assigned to other duties. It was only because of her experience as a botanist that she was being kept on. She was like a two-for-one deal.

She wouldn’t be sorry to be back in the cool, clinical environment of Dynamic Earth’s high-tech laboratories. Much as she loved to get her hands dirty, digging her fingers into the moist earth and getting soil under her fingernails, the Badlands in high summer didn’t suit her. Her fair skin burned too easily, her hair frizzed, and orangey freckles popped up on her face and arms, making her look like a plump, sweaty join-the-dots puzzle.

Not to mention that the heat scrambled her brains. Last time she was out here, soon after she’d landed, she’d been scanning the surrounding area through her binoculars, trying to pinpoint the surviving thicket of Starweed she’d spotted from the air. Following the line of a shallow stream in the hopes of seeing signs of thirsty, questing roots, instead she’d seen…a vision, shimmering through a heat haze.

Drops of water beaded the muscles of his chest, and his biceps swelled as he bent to scoop water from the streamlet to splash it over his face. A droplet of moisture drizzled down over the smooth, taut planes of his stomach to dampen the waistband of his low-slung khaki pants...
She felt an answering trickle of moisture in her panties at the memory.

“Get a grip,” she muttered. Gorgeous men didn’t just pop up in the middle of nowhere to put on a show for sexually frustrated botanists. Getting hot and bothered remembering a heatstroke-induced flight of fancy? Was her dating life that much of a disaster?

“Pretty much,” she told herself gloomily. Working at Dynamic Earth wasn’t exactly doing wonders for her love life. Her hot dating prospects consisted of burly, unsmiling security guys, who had everything locked down so tight they probably counted the spoons in the cafeteria, or her fellow scientists, who for the most part weren’t interested in anything they couldn’t replicate in a petri dish. Plus not only was the facility miles from any other signs of civilization, the non-disclosure agreements were ferocious.

That probably explained why she’d spent the last few weeks day-dreaming about the hot, wet and sadly non-existent Adonis. Not that alpha studs like that went for chubby, sunburned nerds, imaginary or not.

She’d just settled on a relatively flat, smooth area where she could land without too much jolting and teeth-rattling when there was a wrenching shriek and clatter, and the airplane lurched to the left.

Her heart kicked into high gear and alarm slammed up her spine.

A thick plume of grayish smoke unfurled and trailed behind the Cessna as the left-hand engine choked and died.

“Holy fuck.” That was Charlie’s version of a brief prayer to St. Jude, the patron saint of lost causes, as the plane lurched and she fought to get it under control. She could land on one engine – probably – but it wasn’t going to be pretty.

The Cessna pitched and yawed as she wrestled with the controls, descending faster than she would have liked. She knew she was a good pilot, but she was fighting physics, and physics fought dirty. It wasn’t going to be a crash, exactly, but she was definitely going down hard.

Hauling back on the controls with all her strength and with a sick, terrified sensation in the pit of her stomach as the plane hurtled gracelessly over the ground, she had no time to brace herself.

There was a terrible cacophony of buckling steel and tearing metal. She thought the whole cockpit flipped and rolled, but it all happened so fast it was impossible to tell. Pain shot through her temple and her vision flashed white as her skull slammed against something hard.

Then there was nothing but a ringing darkness and the tick-tick-tick of cooling metal.

* * * * *

She tried to open her eyes, but her eyelids felt swollen and stuck together, and she was terribly, painfully thirsty. Her heartbeat was sketchy and fretful.

So she was probably in shock, but she couldn’t remember why. Nothing hurt…and that probably wasn’t a good sign at all, because something really bad had happened to her.

She opened her eyes and looked at the ceiling – which was the control panel of her little twin-engine light aircraft. Then the world spun queasily on its axis and she realized she wasn’t lying on the ground, but strapped into her pilot’s seat and facing forward. She gagged as her inner ear and her muddled perceptions had a brief but spirited argument about which way was up.

“Try not to puke,” said a voice.

She turned her head slowly to see a skinny teenage girl leaning over her. She considered. “Why?” she asked.

The girl wrinkled her nose. “It seems like you’re having a pretty bad day. I don’t see how puking will make it any better,” she said.

She had a point.

The girl’s hair hadn’t been combed, and was probably a dark, mousey blonde under all the grime. Her face was pale, pointed and, if not pretty, then at least sharply intelligent. She unscrewed the lid of a bottle of water she’d pulled from her tatty backpack, and handed it to Charlie.

Charlie took it with shaking fingers, and slopped a fair amount of it down the front of her T-shirt before she managed to take a mouthful. It was lukewarm, but delicious, and she resisted the urge to gulp it all down and make herself throw up. The girl was right – nobody’s day was improved by being covered in sick.

“What’s your name?” she managed.

“Titch,” the girl replied. “What’s yours?”

“I’m Charlie. Listen, Titch, it isn’t safe for you to be out here. There are some very dangerous people in the Badlands, and if they find me…” Her head swam again, and she realized she wouldn’t remain conscious for very much longer. “If they find out what I’m doing out here, they’ll probably kill me. You need to…get away…”

Titch gave an inelegant snort, which Charlie vaguely interpreted as meaning “fat chance”. But as she drifted away again, she saw Titch wriggling out through a gap that had been torn in the airplane’s fuselage as if it were a sardine can.

Chapter Two

Art’s radio crackled on his hip. He ignored it. He knew the folks back in Darwin would want a progress report. Someone had been raiding the food warehouses around the outskirts of the town, and Art was hot on their furry tail and the bounty that came with it. Darwin was one of several towns in the Badlands – the area set aside in the 1940s for shifters who didn’t want to live under the constant watchful eye of Big Brother, otherwise known as the Council for Shifter Affairs. But it suited Art better to be out here by himself, just him and his ghosts and whatever bad guy he was chasing.

Today, though, something else had caught his interest.

The twin-engine light aircraft had come down fast – too fast. Its uncontrolled descent had filled the sky with noise, which had ended in a plume of dust and smoke, the low scream of tortured metal and then a horrible silence.

There had been a lot of small aircraft over the Badlands of late, and they were seriously bad news. There were plenty of rumors going around, but not much in the way of facts. What they did know was that the planes were from a company called Dynamic Earth. What was that? Green energy? Someone interested in reopening the old mines, or starting up new fossil digs? Whoever they were, they were shipping packages of some kind out of the Badlands.

That wasn’t the bad news, though – they were also highly secretive, and they were willing to kill to keep the locals away from their operation. Only a few days before, a couple of Art’s buddies – guys who made their living out here in the wild, like he did – had been shot by Dynamic Earth people when they’d got too close. One of the guys, nineteen years old, had tried to carry his dead friend back to Darwin, even though he’d had a silver bullet inside him. He hadn’t made it.

This could be Art’s chance to find out what Dynamic Earth were up to – and how to stop them.

He picked his way gingerly over the rocks, rounding an angular outcropping that shielded the crash site from his view.

The aircraft looked surprisingly intact. One wing was buckled and there was a long, ugly tear along the side panel, but it wasn’t on fire and it was more or less in one piece. He approached cautiously. Art was very, very tough, even for a bear shifter, but he’d still rather not be blown up if he could avoid it, and he didn’t know how likely the thing was to explode. He sniffed the air. He didn’t know what aviation fuel smelled like, but he couldn’t scent anything chemical, which probably meant the fuel tanks were intact. That had to be a good sign.

The door, emblazoned with the words “Dynamic Earth” in a slanted, flowing green script, was buckled. There was no way Art could fit through the gash in the side of the plane, in either form. No problem. He curled his fingers into the deep dent in the metal, biceps bulging, planted his feet, and tore the door away, tossing it behind him, where it tumbled across the ground and came to a stop a few feet away. He ducked down and peered into the aircraft’s cabin.

He sucked in a surprised breath.

A woman was strapped into the pilot’s seat, unconscious and with dark blood matting her hair to her temple. Her eyes were closed and she looked extraordinarily pale. Art couldn’t tell whether or not she was breathing.

He shouldn’t move her, he knew that – she could have broken bones or internal injuries. But he couldn’t just leave her in the wreckage, no matter why she was here.

Her seat belt was jammed, but he wrenched at the buckle until something gave, then carefully worked the strap over her shoulder. She was still and limp, but as he leaned over her, he thought he felt a whisper-soft breath against his skin.

He scooped her into his arms, being gentle so as not to jar her, carefully supporting her head against his shoulder. Then he carried her away from the airplane and laid her on the floor, kneeling beside her so he could assess her injuries.

Her chest rose and fell, gently, her breathing soft but steady. Apart from the clotted mess on the side of her head, he couldn’t see any blood. He carefully brushed a coppery corkscrew curl away from the side of her face, tucking it behind her ear. She had a sweet, heart-shaped face and her skin was spattered with freckles, so that it looked like she’d been dusted with cinnamon. It was probably just his imagination that she smelled spicy like cinnamon too. He wanted her to open her eyes so he could see what color they were.

He ran his hands over her arms and legs, feeling for any obvious breaks. She seemed to be in one piece. When he placed his fingers to the side of her throat, her pulse was strong and steady against his fingertips.

He lowered his face to hers to reassure himself that she was still breathing, and felt her soft breath against his lips. He had a sudden wild, inexplicable urge to press his mouth against hers.

He drew back, shaking his head to clear it. What the hell was he thinking? He’d been by himself for too long. The first woman for ages who’d stirred feelings of any kind in him, and she was working for some mysterious company of killer douchebags. So she was beautiful to look at – so was a lightning storm, and it would still kill you stone dead if you took it into your head to play kiss-chase with it.

Art stood, scooping her up, then looked down at the unconscious woman who’d literally dropped from the sky and into his arms. She was a sweet, warm weight against his chest. He turned to carry her back towards his camp, several miles away – and flinched and cursed when something fetched him a stinging blow to the side of the head.

He turned to see a skinny kid crouched at a distance, a pile of small rocks gathered at her feet. She picked up another, weighed it in her hand, then pitched it at Art. “Leave her alone, you son of a bitch,” she hollered.

He ducked to one side and another rock bounced off his shoulder. She followed it up with a steady stream of inventive cursing. Some of the words made him blink – and he was ex-military.

“Jesus, kid, settle down,” Art said. “I’m here to help.”

The girl stood up from her crouch, hands on her skinny hips. She couldn’t be more than thirteen, but the expression on her face was fierce. Art didn’t know much about human children. Was it possible for them to be rabid? “Prove it,” she challenged him.

Art glanced around helplessly, then looked back at the kid, who’d stooped to pick up another missile. “How?” he asked. He would have spread his hands wide to show how harmless he was, but dropping the unconscious woman on her butt didn’t seem like a sound tactical move right now.

The kid considered for a moment, tossing the stone into the air and catching it one-handed as she narrowed her eyes at him. “Got anything to eat?” she said eventually.

* * * * *

Back at his camp, Art instructed the girl to pull a blanket from his pack, and he lay the woman carefully down on it, then pulled out a battered tin box and sorted through it for antiseptic wipes and a bandage to treat the ugly gash on her temple.

Once she was patched up, he dug out some packs of crackers – not exactly a gourmet feast, but the girl eyed them hungrily. Her stomach growled, and she reached out, but then snatched her hand back.

“How do I know they’re not poisoned?” she demanded.

“Why would I be carrying packs of poisoned crackers around with me?” Art asked reasonably. “Besides, I don’t think you can poison wolverines.”

The girl snatched a pack of crackers, tore it open and started stuffing the food into her mouth, her eyes never leaving Art’s face. “Whaf’s a wfolverine?” she asked, crumbs spilling from her mouth.

“It’s a kind of animal. They’re much fiercer than you’d think to look at them. Their name means ‘glutton’,” he added as she tore into another pack of crackers and started stuffing them in, cheeks bulging like a hamster’s.

She pulled a bottle of water from her tatty canvas backpack and drank thirstily, then wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. The label said “Town of Darwin. Not for unauthorized redistribution or resale.”

Huh. Looked like he’d caught the warehouse thief after all.

Apparently satisfied that he didn’t mean her any harm – or possibly that she could take him in a fair fight – she kicked off her battered sneakers and wiggled her grubby toes. She reached for another pack of crackers, which she opened more carefully. “I’m not a wolverine,” she informed him. “I’m not even a shifter. I’m just a kid.”

Art nodded. “You know I can’t leave you wandering around in the Badlands by yourself? A couple of days and you’d be toast. Where are your parents?”

She ignored the question and nibbled on the corner of a cracker. “Toast like sunburned?”

“Toast like dead. It’s suicidal to be out here without a guide.”

“Oh.” She didn’t seem too concerned. “
You’re
a shifter, right?”

“Yup. Bear shifter.” Art braced himself on his palms and stretched out his legs. “My name’s Art. What’s yours?”

She shrugged and her eyes slid to one side. “Titch,” she replied.

“Titch?” Art snagged a pack of crackers for himself. “That what your mom named you?”

She shrugged again, looking mutinous. “My mom named me Indica Indigo-Child Duckett,” she confessed.

Art winced. “Tough break,” he told her. “That why you ran away?”

“Naw.” She picked at the skin around her bitten fingernails, avoiding his gaze. “I just do my own thing, you know?”

“You been living in No Man’s Land?” She must have come from Darwin, and Art knew there were bands of shifter kids running feral in the unclaimed territory between what had been the cats’ side of town to the north and the bears’ side of town to the south. Things were different now, at least on paper, and the cats and dogs and bears were working together, but change came slowly. It was still a hard life for kids who had no pack, pride or tribe. He couldn’t imagine how tough this human child had had to be to survive.

Titch must have seen the pity in his expression. “Don’t look at me like that,” she snapped. “I can look after myself. Besides, my mom’s out in Cottonwood now with her new guy. She had a whole bunch of babies. Or, like…puppies. Her new guy’s a wolf shifter. Who needs to deal with dirty diapers
and
pooper-scoopers, am I right?”

That made sense. Cottonwood was a town maybe a hundred miles away. It was more law-abiding than Darwin, where survival of the fittest was the rule, and it was where families, the elderly and sick or vulnerable shifters tended to go – at least the ones who were running from their pasts, or were running from someone who wanted to hurt them…or were running from bad memories. Like Art was.

“So how come you aren’t there with them? Didn’t want to be domesticated, huh?” Art watched her carefully. She was a tough little thing – tougher than any thirteen-year-old girl should need to be.

She shook her head decisively, lank, grubby hair flying around her pointed little face. “I decided to run away to sea. I’m going to be a pirate.” Her forehead wrinkled in thought. “Or maybe a badass mermaid. Is there such a thing as a shark shifter?”

Art nodded seriously. “You know we’re about eight hundred miles from the ocean?”

Titch shrugged, as if to say that was the least of the problems with her plan. Which was true.

“Okay then, Titch,” he said. “Look, it’ll be dusk soon, and it gets pretty cold out here after dark. We can build a fire, hunker down for the night. In the morning, I’ll get you and this lady somewhere safe, okay?”

“Charlie,” Titch said. At Art’s questioning look, she explained, “Her name is Charlie.”

It suited her, Art thought. Sweet Charlie with the cinnamon sprinkles.

Charlie with the secrets, who was working for Dynamic Earth.