Dark Ascension: A Generation V Novel (14 page)

“He was when my cousins and I used to make him.”

*   *   *

My introduction to the
metsän kunigas
had begun under extremely poor circumstances, when Suze and I got called in to investigate the murder of the then-
karhu
, Matias. Today’s ceremony was to formalize the passing of the title to his nephew, Gil. Gil hadn’t been a popular choice in my family—he was a hot-blooded guy, intensely devoted to his family and the well-being of the bears in the territory, and wasn’t afraid to be critical of what he saw as flaws in the way that the Scotts controlled and ruled the
metsän kunigas
. But his older sister, Dahlia, who’d been my brother’s pick to inherit, had supported her brother over herself.

When they greeted me at the door, I was struck once again by what a contrast the siblings presented. Dahlia was all poised, smooth control, her bobbed hair sleek and carefully presented, and her expressions so tightly tamped down that Vegas card champions would’ve envied her poker face. Gil, however, was an inch shorter than his sister and built like a wrestler, all boxy muscle, with a face that showed every emotion that went through his head. When Gil was pissed at you, you knew it—usually because he was bellowing at you. And when he liked you, there was no guessing at it.

Since Suze and I had helped him save the lives of both his sister and his husband, in addition to supporting his bid for the title of
karhu
, we were apparently in his good books right now. And I learned that when he greeted me with a hug that strained the integrity of my rib cage and lifted me several inches off the ground. Since I hadn’t realized before this that we were on hugging terms (and the term “bear hug” had never been more appropriate), it was somewhat of a surprise. I was feeling distinctly rumpled when I was finally released from his embrace.

“I feel incredibly welcomed,” I said honestly. The wide smile across Gil’s face was infectious, and I couldn’t help returning it. Beside him, Dahlia settled for a more sedate handshake.

“Don’t even think about it, teddy bear,” Suze warned Gil as he turned to her.

“You don’t have to worry, Suzume,” Gil replied, leaning in to give her a quick kiss on the cheek. “I don’t like you as much as Fortitude.”

“For which you have my eternal gratitude.”

I shook my head and greeted Gil’s husband, Kevin. The Kivela siblings had inherited their Mexican father’s coloration, and it was kind of funny how the blond, pale Kevin matched their mother’s Finnish looks so closely and in fact blended right into the majority of the group. There were two groups of werebears in my mother’s territory, the Providence group and another in northern Maine. Both traced their roots back to an original community of Finnish bears who had petitioned my mother for entry over a century ago.

Among the group of conservatively dressed people standing around the open area of the Elks Lodge interior, a blend of the werebears and several human spouses, which I found impossible to differentiate just from a glance, were two bear cubs, incongruously rolling around with each other in the pursuit of a bright green rubber ball. All the people standing around them, nursing cups of coffee and the occasional portion of bagel, simply ignored the spectacle of the two cubs, stepping aside when the two and their ball barreled past them, and at most giving them slightly amused glances.

“Anni and Linnea,” Gil supplied, following my glance. “My nieces.”

“I’d never seen them in their other forms before,” I said politely, hoping that the bears used similar terminology to the foxes.

“It’s not usual,” Dahlia said quickly, surprising me in her emphasis. After all, whenever I’d seen the younger kitsune, Yuzumi’s three-year-old triplets, they spent more time in fur than skin. I’d spent more than my fair share of time trying to discourage Riko from gnawing her sharp white canines into my shoes.

Gil must’ve seen something in my face, because he explained, “To become a bear is a gift that comes with our blood, but it is a learned skill. The part of the ceremony that is private is conducted as bears. As members of the bloodline of the ruling house, Anni and Linnea needed to be there, but changing is more difficult for them, and it will be a few more hours before they can return to their natural forms.”

“They look like they’re having a fantastic time,” I said, while beside me Suze gave a small, smug sniff. It never took much to reassert a kitsune’s belief in her inherent superiority to other species, and apparently this more than qualified.

The ceremony started soon after that, with everyone pitching in to set up an array of folding chairs. I quickly realized why this assignment had been characterized by my family as a punishment for my choice in supporting Gil as
karhu
—and it hadn’t been because of the early start time. The ceremony was a long series of blessings being read, then protracted periods of solemn reflection by all participants. Worse yet, the blessings were all in Finnish—which, unfortunately, none of the current crop of
metsän kunigas
actually spoke. Apparently the last person who had a working grasp of the language had been one elderly bear in his nineties who had recently passed away. Much of the ceremony was actually achieved thanks to the forethought of Gil and Dahlia’s grandfather, who had, at some point in the nineteen sixties, committed the ceremony text to a series of slide projections with accompanying audiotape. While I gave him points for the preservation of historical tradition, I also could’ve lived without three hours of staticky droning in a completely incomprehensible language, punctuated with barked orders of “Advance slide!” The slides themselves were simply the text of what he was reading, which was useful only in the sense that I could visually identify that I had no idea where each word began or ended.

As the visiting dignitary, I was seated in the front, beside the Kivela family, so there was no escape. Suzume was no help at all, since after the initial ten minutes she excused herself to take a bathroom break. She never returned from that break, which might have concerned me, except Anni and Linnea were suddenly joined in their ball-chasing fun by a black fox.

When the final tape of the recording was finally at its end, everyone roused themselves from their glazed-eyed stupor long enough to make polite golf claps. While I was shaking hands with Ilona and several of the other older bears, Suzume appeared at my side, again neatly put together in her navy wool dress and smiling politely, giving no indication at all that we’d all seen her pass the time during the ceremony by, at one point, stealing the ball from the little girls, jumping to the top of the stack of still-folded metal chairs, and taunting them into climbing for it, with entirely predictable results.

Gil made his way over to us. “I’m actually thinking that one of my first proposals will be to translate the ceremony into English.”

“That is so Vatican Two of you, Gil,” Suze said.

“Well, it’s either that or have the film converted to DVD, and I’m not sure that that’s something I can do in good conscience. After all, someday Anni or Linnea will become
karhu
. Having to sit through Grandpa’s presentation is not exactly the legacy I’d like to pass forward.”

“You’re a good uncle.” I hoped that my level of fervency wasn’t rude, but just the thought of anyone having to sit through that again was horrifying.

With perfect timing, lunch was announced. It was a huge potluck affair, and I was able to fill my plastic plate multiple times and I still hadn’t even managed to taste half of the dishes. The bears were apparently very serious about food. As I swallowed my third smoked salmon hors d’oeuvre, I noted to Suze that, as terrible as the ceremony had been, the food was almost good enough to make up for it.

She gave me a sly smile. “I see that you enjoy eating like a bear, then.” I frowned, then looked back at the tables of food and realized what she was referring to—every dish contained either fish or berries. I shushed her as she snickered.

Toward the end of the afternoon I was sitting off to the side of the group, making conversation with Kevin about his Web design business while Suze applied herself to working the room, probably collecting scraps of noteworthy information to bring back to her grandmother, the White Fox. Gil made his way over to me, accepting congratulations from a few other bears with polite nods, but homing in on me with all the subtlety of Bullet Bill in
Super Mario Brothers
.

“Let me guess,” I said when Gil parked himself in the chair next to me. “You’d like to have a chat about some territory issues.”

“I promise to at least keep it a friendly chat,” he said, with a little “what can you do?” shrug. Kevin gave a smothered laugh and headed back to the crowd. Suzume caught my eye from where she was chatting with a few other women in their early thirties, and lifted an inquiring eyebrow, clearly wanting to know whether I wanted her to come over. I gave a quick shake of my head, and she returned to her conversation.

“So this conversation is going to be fox free,” Gil noted. “I’m flattered.”

“Gil, you really should ask your sister for some pointers on diplomacy. And I’m not even someone who usually wants all the fluffy language and talking around a subject.”

“That’s why Dahlia runs the business and I just go out to check out claims,” Gil said. “We each have our strengths. And you know that I’ll never stop being grateful that you and Suzume helped me save Kevin and my sister, but I think that maybe it’s time for a little more plain dealing between the
metsän kunigas
and the Scotts.” He held up a hand when I initially began to respond, saying, “I’m not pushing today, Fort, I’m really not.”

“I notice that emphasis on ‘today,’” I replied. “But I have to tell you that my sister wasn’t happy when I supported you as
karhu
. None of my family was. So you need to be really careful, and really cautious. Please”—I dropped my voice almost to a mutter—“please don’t give them a reason to want you dead.”

Gil’s dark eyes were steady. “We both know that they already want me dead. Not actively, but enough that I’m certainly not going to let myself cross paths with Prudence Scott any time soon.” He shifted. “But you were on the front lines with what happened—you saw the way that Carmen planned to exploit Scott control to get what she wanted. If the bears had more self-governance—”

“Gil,”
I cautioned.

He frowned, irritated. “Fine, okay, we’ll use different words. After what happened with Carmen, I think it would be in
everyone’s
best interest if the bears had more of an ability to handle and investigate more problems internally.”

“My sister is not happy that even the kitsune have those rights right now. I’m not sure that either she, or even my brother, will be overly enthused at the bears requesting them.” I sighed and rubbed my hand hard over my head, forgetting for a second how much gel I’d applied that morning. The result was a disturbing crunchiness under my palm, and a very real feeling that I probably didn’t want to know what I looked like right now. However, my hair was very much the least of my problems at the moment. After the issue with the succubi, the last thing I wanted was to have to get into another discussion with Prudence and Chivalry—yet from the increasingly stubborn look on Gil’s face, that was exactly what I was heading toward. And even worse, I agreed with Gil. Carmen had been relying on having a vampire roll in to investigate her father’s death who had no interest in finding anything other than a quick and easy target for blame, and had come closer to getting exactly that than any of us really wanted to think about right now, given that her plan would’ve resulted in Dahlia’s death, and quite probably Gil’s as well.

“Listen,” I said, “what about this—I go to my family and suggest that a specific member of the
metsän kunigas
is assigned to be an assistant or an attaché, or whatever, whenever the Scotts are dealing with bear affairs. That person not only advises us about what’s going on inside the community, and gives us feedback about what might work or not work, but also keeps you informed about what’s going on. Now, I can’t make any promises, because I have to sell this to my family. But this way you’re not in the dark on what we’re doing, and you know that at least you guys have a voice in the room, even if right now it’s just in an advisory capacity.”

It clearly wasn’t what Gil had been hoping for, but at the same time I could see that he was weighing that against his likelihood of getting anything better, and realizing that that was pretty much nil. Which obviously didn’t make him any happier about it, but with a small grimace he nodded. “Okay, that’s okay as a first step.”

I heard his emphasis on the last two words, and couldn’t help sighing internally. Standing between my family and Gil was like being in King’s Quest VI during the crushing ceiling trap scene. Two unyielding surfaces and one squishy person in the middle.

There was a brief pause, and then the unhappiness on Gil’s face was replaced by worry. I could feel the hair stand up on the back of my neck, and I knew even before he started talking what Gil was going to ask about. “Fort, I’m sure you know that there are a lot of rumors right now. Rumors about your mother . . . and her health.”

He looked at me, and I could see, for just a second, just how terrified he was.

I paused. Maybe the smart thing was to keep quiet, to keep family business to the family, but we’d been through some stuff together. Maybe Gil would never be the kind of person who I could really feel comfortable around, or have a real friendship with, but I owed him something.

I leaned closer to Gil, and, very quietly, so quietly that even he would have to strain to hear, I whispered, “I don’t know what the rumors are, Gil, not for sure. But things are changing. I think things are going to change fast.”

Gil shuddered, just once, and his mouth pressed into a thin, pained line. He nodded quickly, then clapped me hard on the shoulder with one broad palm.

*   *   *

Back in the car, Suze immediately cranked up the heat to full, threw her heels into the backseat, and started wiggling out of her panty hose. Given that she was sitting in the passenger seat of a German compact car, that required near-contortion levels of wiggling.