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Part I

The Half-Bear’s Honey

Jacqueline Sweet

Chapter 1

“Please, someone help me!” Rose Weston shouted into the forest, but there was no one around She ell and truly screwed this time

She’d driven off the road The rain was hard and unrelenting and the old dirt roads had gone to mud So here she was, somewhere in the wild forest west of Poppy Valley and east of the coast Miles fro over the narrow road as if they were impatient to reclaied to avoid hitting one of the rew dense at their base had ripped up both tires on the passenger side of her car

She had one spare tire and kne to change it But who carried two spares? Nobody She was screwed

Rose tried her phone, but she had no service at all

Thebetween the clouds, painting thedeep shadows in the forest Rain ha on a door

“I drove off the road,” she said out loud, as if the wilderness was listening Her voice sounded small and thin, all sound devoured by the clatter outside “That was not very smart, was it Rose?”

Her face felt hot and sticky and her nerves burned with the post-adrenaline rush of the crash She touched her forehead and it et and sore Rose closed her eyes and wiped her fingers on her jeans There’d be blood on the about ither own actual blood?—she would faint dead It’s why, despite her parents’ pleas, she dropped out of medical school and instead took the re a librarian

There was very little blood-induced fainting in library school Her parents—a surgeon and a health policy specialist—had been profoundly disappointed “You’ll get used to it,” they said “You just need more exposure to blood,” they said

“Hell no,” Rose replied

It was a cold night in Northern California The wind pushed the rain al Rose’s umbrella all but useless As soon as she exited the car, a clammy dampness sank into Rose’s bones She found the first aid kit in her trunk and blotted her forehead with sterile gauze She had to do it with her eyes closed and the skin throbbed with even the lightest touch Eventually she decided to wrap the gauze around her head mummy-style, and to pull a knit cap on over it to keep it all in place All while hugging her umbrella to her chest

On an ordinary night, she could have huddled in her car and wrapped herself in a blanket and waited out the storht Rose was being pursued and waiting in the car was not an option

“Nohere am I?” she asked, as if the trees would pull out a map and tell her

She’d been driving on the backroads, the narrow roads that no one but the herers used She hoped that he wouldn’t find her this way Ronald Parker had friends everywhere—no, not friends—goons Lackeys Associates He was the mayor’s son and every door opened to his toothy s did she have before one of his cronies traced her cell signal? Or pulled up traffic cahways, would they come this way? She chose the west roads precisely because she’d never been down them before No one from Poppy Valley ever drove west West meant Bearfield, and everyone in Poppy Valley knew that Bearfield here the monsters lived

She’d skirted south around the town of Bearfield, avoiding the tourist roads that plunged into its heart But the roads she’d chose were narrow and steep and winding They h valleys and around ood at night driving Even with her high-beaested once that it was night blindness, and that Rose shouldn’t be behind a wheel at all after dark