Blood lure

Ripples of gold unsettled the shadow, catching the imperfect light of the flash. Out of the woods padded the great grizzly, beside him the crying boy with the smile of a saint. On the bear's other side walked Rory, the same Rory whose screams had indicated he was snack food.

The spi

"Don't shoot him," the boy said, as if A

"How do you do?" A

Recovering from the bear theatrics-given that Rory's skin was still whole and he was in it, that's what the roaring must have been-McCaskil crawled toward the enclosing ring of darkness. The bear's enormous head swung toward him and an echo of the bone-melting roar rumbled in his chest.

"Keep that goddamn bear off me," McCaskil cried, his voice ragged from yelling.

"Balthazar doesn't like him," Geoffrey said. "When we were little he used to tease us something awful."

We. The boy and the great bear had grown up together. Staggered by the unreality of the scene, A

Enough of her training survived this onslaught of otherworldliness that she continued to watch McCaskil with one eye and half of a reeling brain. He feared Balthazar more than he feared her or the Weatherby.

"You can't let that bear come after me," he said. "That's illegal."

A

Her head hurt, her knee was killing her, she was very tired. Overriding these fleeting discomforts was a bear of legend not ten feet from her. More than anything, she wanted to touch him, play with him, listen to the stories he might tell. It crossed her mind to let McCaskil go. His nerves shot, his rifle taken, he was of little threat to a party of five souls, particularly when one of them weighed over a thousand pounds and came from the factory equipped with an astonishing arsenal of edged weapons.

Ruick would pick McCaskil up in the frontcountry or the Montana state police would nail him eventually. Maniac turned craven, the man actually looked rather pathetic oozing toward the woods and temporary freedom. Being captured by a crippled-up lady ranger would only add to his humiliation.

That thought brought with it the tug of petty revenge that pulled A

"You can't shoot a man if he runs. Not unless he's a threat to life. I read that," McCaskil said, but he made no move to test the theory.

"You qualify," A

Rory found the wire cutters and freed Joan. Joan held the flashlight and A

The sense of unreality was such A

Checking McCaskil's bonds, A

When their makeshift camp had been made as safe as plastic ties could make it, Joan righted McCaskil's stove and boiled water for hot drinks. A

Given the homely activity of serving tea and cocoa, normalcy might have been expected to return but for the fact that a huge bear sat among them, his dark eyes following their puny movements, his pale golden belly round and Buddha-like under paws the size of serving platters.

We'll talk," A

"Your name is not Mickleson-Nicholson, but Geoffrey Micou, isn't that right?" she asked.

The boy sat with his arms around his knees looking weary and relieved and terribly sad. He wasn't as old as Rory, maybe fifteen. The silky brown hair was greasy, flattened against his skull by a ball cap that Balthazar had gotten hold of and was in the process of dismembering with delicate nips of his inch-long canines.

"I'm Geoffrey Micou. I just-just made up that other name."

"Carl G. Micou was your dad?" A

"We found your truck and trailer-your dad's truck-" A

"Oh." Geoffrey sounded disappointed, magic losing its charm once the trick is explained. "That was what we used to move Balthazar. Dad had it made over."

"I know," A

"He fucking stole him." McCaskil dripped his acid into the circle. "That bear's mine."

Joan turned to him. In lieu of her traditional campfire candle, they had put McCaskil's flashlight butt-down in their midst, needing the security of watching their prisoner and, for A

"Don't talk," she said. "We don't want to talk to you. We don't care what you think or feel." Her voice was so devoid of humanity A

McCaskil subsided.

"I did steal him," Geoffrey said with a fond look at his monolithic companion. "Nobody should own a bear like Balthazar. He's not just a thing."

"You're my map boy, aren't you?" Joan asked.

Geoffrey blinked a few times, long dark lashes settling like feathers below wide-set hazel eyes. Then the sense of what she was asking came to him. "Yes, ma'am. I thought if I knew where the food was, I could take Balthazar there and teach him to eat it."

"Reintroduce him to the wild," A

"You don't let anybody shoot them in the park," Geoffrey said simply.

"Ah." The logic was indisputable. One does not take a friend to live where murderers are waiting to take his life.

"Why didn't you ask for help?" Years of motherhood and carrying pain for children ached in Joan's voice.