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Chapter Seventeen
Acrowd of people had begun to gather outside near the newspaper stand, but it wasn’t because they were trying to get today’s newspaper, as it had been distributed hours ago. People were amassing because of one particular article in it, and the town was buzzing with gossip.
“If miners and resort workers weren’t up in the mountains to begin with, they never would have got attacked by wild animals,” shouted a young man who stood there, shoving slips of neon-colored paper into the hands of every passerby. “Those two men left the bar last night ready to fight, and they must have gone up there to duke it out. But hey, how do we even know if animals killed both of them? Maybe one killed the other, and it was the blood that drew them in.”
“If anybody killed someone, it had to be the miner,” snorted Hector, one of the workers from our resort, in a somewhat feral tone. “Ilya was just a gardener who was out trying to have a good time. He would never kill anyone.”
The lone miner in the crowd was a man Espie had never seen before, and he bristled at what he’d been hearing. “You can cast the blame all you want, but Lewis was a good man, and he didn’t deserve what he got.”
“And Ilya was a bad man?” Hector spat angrily. “That’s about enough, you miner trash!”
The two men lunged at each other, punching, screaming, and generally trying to beat the living shit out of one another while women, children, and other shocked residents looked on. After exchanging a quick look with Maria, Espie did what her big brother would have done in a situation like this – she rushed in to diffuse things before someone got seriously hurt. Maria followed, though only after a moment of hesitation.
“Hector, stop this,” Espie snapped, before she barreled into him and pushed him away from his opponent. Maria tugged the miner back, arms around his waist as he continued to swing. Taking a cue from the ladies, a few of the men in the audience finally stepped up and positioned themselves between the fighters.
“Everybody just calm down,” Espie insisted. “Take a deep breath. Now tell me, Hector, what happened to Ilya?”
“Dead,” Hector told her, his voice wavering. “Cops say it was animals, but I know the truth. He was killed by some fucking miner!”
“We don’t know that,” the Vesper guy interjected. “It might have just been the animals, like the paper said. The safest thing would be to make all the people come down off the mountain, I think –”
“Too many people live up there, you idiot!” the miner exclaimed.
The police arrived in four squad cars, and the officers piled out of them and spread out as one of them, a bear shifter by the name of Clive Henley, pulled out a bullhorn. “Now, just what the hell is going on here, people?”
“From where I’m standing, it looks like one of Vesper’s goons is trying to stir up trouble,” one of the men told him. “He’s trying to get these good folks to believe that the deaths up on the mountain were murders instead of just animal attacks.”
“That true, son?” Clive asked the guy, and he glared back at him.
“Look, man, I’m just callin’ it like I see it,” he scoffed. “It’s a free country, ain’t it? I’ve got a right to say whatever I want.”
“Just like I got a duty to run you in for causing a riot,” Clive pointed out. “Look, people, the investigation is ongoing, but it’s very clear from the evidence we got so far. Some sort of a wild animal or animals attacked those boys. Now sure, maybe they were up there throwing a few punches, but neither of them was trying to kill anybody. You got to get that notion right out of your heads. And if there’s a wild animal up in them trails, you’d best be thinking about that. Don’t go up on the trails alone. And if you do, bring along some kind of weapon to protect yourself. And furthermore, if you don’t have any particular business up there, you should stay in town and leave it well enough alone. The last thing we need is to clean up more dead bodies before the beast is found.”
Maria pulled Espie aside. “Come on, you know we can’t get involved here. Your brother would have a fit just knowing we were anywhere near this much trouble. Two people were found dead this morning.” She handed over her phone, where a news article appeared on the screen, paired with a picture of her family’s resort. “Ilya, from your resort, and one of the miners are the victims. I guess people aren’t taking it too well.”
“No kidding,” Espie scoffed, scanning the article almost too fast to absorb any of the information. Apparently the two men had been found at the base of her clan’s mountain, horribly brutalized. The initial report stated that it was believed that animals had fatally wounded them both.
“This isn’t going to look good for the resort,” Espie grumbled. “People aren’t going to want to vacation near a bunch of killer animals. I hope they quickly find the thing that did this.”
“I know, right?”
The two young women froze as a powerfully magic noise suddenly surrounded them. Ursalina was calling the clan, but not to the mountain. There was no way anybody was going to climb up there while some kind of vicious animal was running about.
Clive obviously had heard the call as well. He signaled Espie over to him. “Espie, you know I can’t leave until we’ve gotten this crowd under control. You’ll tell your brother for me, won’t you?”
“Yeah, sure,” she agreed. “I’ll let him know.”
While Espie was hesitant to leave the crowd while the bickering and shouting was still getting worse as yet another group of aggressive morons had shown up, she had to go and help Miguel with whatever he needed, too. She knew he would be looking to her for support.
“Come on,” she muttered to Maria. “Let’s go figure out what the hell is going on here.”
