The Bare Truth

Chapter 15

The next day Molly and Sierra popped their first cork at 10:00 am, ordered a pizza, and set to work cleaning the apartment. Sierra found a pair of work gloves and started picking the larger chunks of glass out of the carpet while Molly scrubbed the red paint out of the places it had splattered. They put on some music and tried to focus on the task at hand instead of dwelling on the night before.

There was a knock on the door shortly after they got started. Sierra answered it with her gun behind her back.

At the door was a pale young man with sandy blonde hair and a muscular frame. He held out his hand awkwardly. Sierra did not take it.

"Hi," he said. "I thought I should introduce myself. I'm the, uh, security guard Joe hired. My name's Zeke."

Sierra regarded him for a moment.

"Well, why don't you help us then Zeke? No sense in standing around. Could you carry that couch down to the dumpster?"

"Sure," he said, eager to please.

Then he hesitated.

"I mean...uh...maybe I could find someone to help me carry it."

"I'm pretty sure you could lift it by yourself," Sierra countered.

"Yeah, but..." he dropped his voice to an undertone, "I'd look pretty obvious carrying it by myself, right?"

A few minutes later Zeke had enlisted the help of a neighbor, and Sierra uncorked the second bottle of wine.

The man she was falling for had unceremoniously dumped her less then a week after their first date, and now there was a teenage bear shifter in her apartment. It was just going to be that kind of a day.

Molly refused to throw out the paintings. She gathered up every scrap, laid them lovingly in a storage bin, then spent the next hour crying.

By the fourth bottle Sierra had called in sick to work and Molly had moved on to sketching cartoons of Eric dying in increasingly violent and creative ways. A lot of red colored pencil went into those drawings.

Zeke was eventually relieved by Damon around the sixth bottle or so. Damon was an older shifter who hardly spoke to them and would not help move furniture, not even when offered cold pizza.

By the time Damon was replaced by Steve they had hauled out all the broken furniture and appliances. They were left with their kitchen table, two out of four chairs, and one bed.

The two of them passed out on the living room floor where the couch used to be, empty wine bottles at their feet. Steve covered them with a blanket before assuming his post by the door.

Sierra woke up stiff and hung over. A look out the peephole confirmed that Zeke was back again.

Molly, annoyingly more capable of bouncing back from a bender than Sierra ever had been, busied herself with the acquisition of breakfast. She had a meeting with her publicist to discuss the lost paintings. Sierra supposed she ought to go to work today too.

It just all felt so mundane. Toasting a bagel. Going to work. In the last week she had witnessed amazing and terrifying things and let herself fall in love with a man whose very physiology defied reason. Now it was just business as usual.

Sierra waved goodbye to Molly. Ate her bagel. Took a shower. Put on a suit and high heels.

She stared at her reflection in the mirror. Could she do this? Could she just go back to the way things were?

Sierra kicked off her heels and walked to the front door. She swung the door inward, almost sending Zeke, who had been leaning on the other side, tumbling to the ground. Startled, he smiled at her sheepishly.

"Good morning ma'am," he said.

"Come in, Zeke," she instructed him.

Sierra sat down at the kitchen table and poured them each a cup of coffee. Zeke sat down and dutifully accepted the mug.

"I need you to tell me what's happening."

Zeke shook his head empathetically.

"I can't. We're not supposed to talk to you. Just keep the place on lock down."

"You're going to tell me what's going on," Sierra insisted. "You will tell me, or I will call Joe and tell him I caught you sleeping on the job."

Zeke gaped at her.

"But I wasn't...you can't do that!"

"Try me," Sierra said dryly.

Zeke swore.

"Okay...but you didn't hear it from me."

"A good journalist never reveals her sources," Sierra assured him.

"Okay," Zeke said, reassured. "So there's like this faction thing happening."

"Factions?"

"Yeah. Joe got back to Sleuth and was all ready to fry Eric on a spit. But Eric was already there. And some of the other guys, well...they think you're dangerous and you have to be turned or you won't keep the town a secret. And Eric's got all these guys with him. He wants to make a bid for Alpha, but he doesn't really have enough support yet. Still, he's got all these guys on his side, so Joe couldn't really charge past them all to rip his head off."

"So what's Joe doing now?"

"He's doing the politician thing. Trying to convince everyone you're not a threat and keep supporting him for Alpha."

"And how's that going?"

"Not good," Zeke said darkly. "More and more of us are going over to Eric's side every day. People are scared."

"What happens if Eric becomes Alpha?" Sierra asked.

"He can order the pack to turn you. But they'll have to get through me first."

"You're not going to side with Eric?" she asked.

Zeke shook his head.

"No ma'am. I've seen what he did to this apartment and your friend's face. We don't hurt humans. That's like a dude beating a woman or a grown up beating up a kid. You don't hurt people who can't fight back. It's not cool."

Zeke sipped his coffee.

"Eric is not a cool dude."