Mikko Lawrence

Mikko went into the kitchen to get a compress and ibuprofen while Annie went with Bell to get him clothes.  He was blood-soaked, and Annie was making him take a shower.

Bell was an absolutely enormous wolf.  Mikko didn’t think he had ever seen one that big.  He was a mass of chestnut fur, his shoulders so broad that he barely had room to walk through the hallway and up the stairs.  He had to weigh at least four hundred pounds, and his head was almost at Mikko’s chest.

Mikko had seen Bell in his wolf form before Samhain.  He and Mickey had saved Mikko and Sloane from an attack by this bear-monster-thing.  But Mikko had been so exhausted from the torture and the fear that he hadn’t really noticed how big Bell was.

He heard the stairs creaking and looked up to see a confused Frankie.  “Who’s in the bathroom?” he asked.  His hair was free from its usual bandana, a wild frizz of curls around his head.

“Bell.”  Mikko shut the door to the freezer and moved to the living room.  He flopped onto the couch, laying back on the arm, putting the compress to his ribs.  The cold was dull, the compress soft and insulating.  It would seep into his skin slowly.

“Is everything okay?” Frankie asked.

Mikko stared at him in disbelief.

His confusion turned to a scowl.  “What?”

“Did you not just hear everything outside?” he asked.  Genie, of course, he could understand sleeping through that.  But Frankie?

Frankie looked out towards the front window and back at Mikko.  “Outside?”  He moved to the window that faced out to the front yard, pulling aside the light blue curtain the covered it.  His head moved as he scanned the yard.  “Is that . . . blood?”

“Aisha and four halfshifters just tried to beat the shit out of me and Annie outside.  The only reason we’re okay is because Bell came.”

Frankie’s head whipped around.  “What?”

“Yeah.  Aisha had a real bug up her ass about us being friends with Sloane.”

“It’s cuz the shifters around here look up to Aisha,” Annie said as she entered the room.  She sat down at the other end of the couch, lifting up Mikko’s legs and laying them across her lap.  He winced as the movement jostled his ribs.  Annie sent him an apologetic look.

“What do you mean?” Mikko asked.

“She acting like that because the shifters around here look up to her cuz she’s such a huge shifter.  Her lion form is the biggest fucking thing I ever seen in my life.  So, she be going around with this strong-bitch personality.  And the shifters don’t like that I’m staying friends with Sloane.  So, they probably asked her what she finna do about it and so she did this.”  Annie gestured vaguely to the front yard. 

The stairs creaked and Genie walked into the living room, rubbing her eyes.  “What’s going on?  Who’s in the bathroom?”

“Bell,” Frankie signed back.  He gave her the quick rundown of what had just happened.

“What?”  It was a one-handed sign, but she signed it so forcefully, it shuddered through her shoulder.

“No idea,” Mikko shrugged.

The phone rang.  Frankie disappeared into the kitchen.  “Hey, Mira.”  He came back into the living room.  “Uh . . . well I guess Mikko and Annie just got attacked outside by Aisha and her crew.”

Mikko heard Mira’s shriek in response, Frankie almost dropping the phone.  He frantically handed it to Mikko. 

“—are you fucking kidding me?  What the fuck—”

“Mira,” Mikko interrupted.

“What happened?”

He explained to her the general outline, ending with how Bell was currently upstairs taking a shower.

“Bell?”  Her tone was a combination of quiet wonder and confusion.  “What sort of luck . . .”

“I don’t know,” he shook his head. 

“Jesus Christ.  Well, look—I called because I talked to Hazel.  She said you should have someone coming by later this afternoon to beef up the wards around the house.  They’re going to add wards to the windows, too.  That should have been done the first time, but I guess things slip through the cracks sometimes.”

“Is it going to be a vampire?” he asked.  He hadn’t been here the first time the wards got installed.  But, if it was a vampire, they were going to have problems.  The neighborhood was already out for their blood.

“Vampires don’t make good mages,” he heard Annie say quietly.  At the same time, Mira said, “No, no.  A mage.”

“Good,” he said.  “Alright, that’ll work.”

“Thanks.  When Lina’s home, can you have her call me?  I miss her voice.”

Mikko smiled gently.  “Yeah, of course.”

“Thanks.  Love you all.”

“Love you.  Bye.”

He hung up.  “Mira sends her love,” he said to no one in particular.

“Mira needs to send me a new ear drum,” Frankie muttered. 

“Poor baby,” Genie said.  The sign and expression she used were both condescending, and Frankie gave her the finger.

The stairs creaked again, and then Bell walked into the room.  He was fully clothed, hair wet from washing the blood out.  It stuck out from his head at odd angles at the top.

“Why are you here?” Annie asked him.  She signed as she spoke.

Bell didn’t respond with his voice.  He responded in sign language, his movements fluid and easy to understand.  The signing of someone who wasn’t quite fluent but could have complex conversations.  Had Sloane taught him that?

“Sloane came to Port Orchard.  It didn’t go well.  She won’t answer our calls.  I was hoping maybe she was here.”

Frankie looked out the front window again.  “How did you get here?” he asked.  He didn’t speak, only signed.

“Ran,” he shrugged.

“Why not just . . . call?” Annie asked.

“Don’t have the number here anymore.”

“Also, she doesn’t live here anymore,” Mikko added, exchanging confused glances with Annie.  “Why not check with Karhi?”

“—went to St. Paul.  He got there before I got here.  Neither Karhi or Sloane is around.”

The first word that he signed wasn’t a sign.  It was a movement on his cheeks, right next to his lips, with an M handshape.

Mikko mimicked the sign.  “What’s that?”

“Sorry.”  He fingerspelled, “M-I-C-K-E-Y.  That’s his sign name.”

“Mickey has a sign name?” Mikko asked.  He knew that Genie had never given him one.  And Sloane had never mentioned, before she fell off the planet, that they had had any deaf friends in Port Orchard.

“Yeah.  One of my pack members is deaf,” he shrugged.  “Gave it to him for his dimples—”

“One of your what?” Annie interrupted in disbelief, sitting up and leaning forward.  Mikko bit back the pain it sent thrumming through him.  “Did you just say pack?”

Bell’s brow furrowed.  “Yes?  So?”

Annie was getting ahead of herself, and Mikko nudged her with his foot.  She looked up and he signed, “Hold up.”  He looked at Bell.  “Sloane’s not here.  What happened between you?”

He averted his eyes, shrugging.  “She just didn’t respond well to our explanations.”

Mikko raised an eyebrow at him, but Annie was the one to reply.  “Explanations?  Or excuses?”

Bell sneered at her.  “What the fuck do you know?”

Before Mikko could track what was happening, Annie had slipped out from under his legs and stood in front of Bell.  They were the same height, gazes matching each other.  Annie bared her teeth at Bell.  “Don’t you dare fucking transform in here,” she snarled.

Mikko glanced at Bell’s hands—usually the telltale indicators with shifters—and confirmed that his nails were looking just a bit darker and a bit sharper.  He couldn’t sense when someone was transforming, but shifters usually could.  Annie was no exception.

“You come in our house, demanding answers from us about Sloane, and then you threaten us?”  There was murder in her eyes.  She gestured to where Genie and Frankie stood by the windows facing the front yard.  “There are kids here.  Humans.  What the fuck is wrong with you?”

Bell blinked and his hands went back to normal.  He took a small step back from Annie.  “Threaten?  I’m not threatening you.”  The anger hadn’t disappeared from his features, but surprise was warring with it for dominance on his face.

Annie looked down at his hands.  Seeing they were back to normal, she said, “You’re angry and you started to transform in my house.  Your fucking mentor should have taught you that in shifter culture, that is a threat.”

The anger disappeared completely.  “Shifter culture?” he asked, brow furrowing in confusion.  “What are you talking about?”

“Are you kidding me?” Annie asked.  She looked back at Mikko who shrugged.

Mikko himself didn’t know a lot about shifter culture.  He didn’t spend a lot of time around Annie’s frie—former friends.  Annie didn’t really talk about it all that much since she didn’t really have any shifter family.  Daoine didn’t count since anthroshifters weren’t really included in shifter culture.  Plus, their transformations weren’t dangerous the way that transforming into an animal could be.

Despite that, he did know enough to know that a shifter transforming inside of another shifter’s house was considered a threat.  It didn’t matter if they were best friends or had known each other since they were children.  There was almost never a reason to transform in someone else’s house.

Bell didn’t have an answer for that.  He looked frustrated and lost.  Mikko recognized the look of someone who was completely out of his depth.

“You have a pack,” Annie said.  Her tone was inscrutable, but Mikko knew from the way her eyebrows were arranged, just barely pulled together, that she was incredulous.

“Yes . . .” Bell answered warily.

“Shifters don’t have packs anymore,” she told him.  “They’re archaic and outdated.  Alphas aren’t real.  None of that shit is real.  What the hell is this guy teaching you?  Obviously, he ain’t teaching you how to actually exist with other shifters.”

Bell bristled.  “What are you talking about?  Of course they exist.  I’ve met other packs.  Mingan used to have a pack before we met him, and he started teaching us.”

The anger didn’t disappear from Annie’s face, but it did color with confusion and doubt.  “I have never heard of a shifter under the age of, like, fifty, having a pack.”

Bell shrugged uncomfortably.  The heat was still there, but his confusion was mixing with Annie’s.  “I don’t know.  We’re a pack.  We can sense each other and communicate in our wolf forms.”

Annie stared at him.  It went on long enough that the confusion turned back to anger on Bell’s face.  “What?” he demanded.

“I’m going to move on because that don’t make no sense,” she shook her head. 

Mikko finally interrupted to actually provide some useful information.  “Sloane’s not here.  She’s in Montana with Mira at the house of living vampires.”

“She what?”  Bell stared at him in disbelief.  “Why?”

“Sounds like she was on her way back from Port Orchard, and she went through the Rockies and got caught in their territory.  She’s fine.  She’s with Mira.  I guess she’s staying there for a bit with her.”

“But why?” 

Mikko rubbed his temples.  “I don’t know.  Some request from the queen.  I don’t know how long it’ll take, but it’ll probably be at least a week.  I know Mira was hoping to be home by Christmas.  I don’t know about Sloane.”

Bell’s shoulders fell and the anger that seemed to have been the only thing keeping him going fizzled out.  He looked exhausted.

Finally, he looked at Annie.  “I’m sorry.  I don’t know anything about shifter culture, but that’s not an excuse.”

“Do you understand what you did?” she asked him, eyes hard.  “That you, coming into this house, a full-fledged werewolf, threatening to transform in front of a halfshifter to show how powerful you are, is fucked up?  A giant white man coming into this house and threatening me?”

Mikko hadn’t thought Bell could deflate any more than he already had, but he was wrong.  Apologizing to Annie, there had been an air of confidence, even in his shame. 

Her question had taken all of that confidence from him.  Everything.

“I’m not racist,” he protested weakly.

“You are,” she replied.  It wasn’t angry or sad—it was just a fact she was stating.  “All white people are.  Men, especially.  And y’all are volatile.  Everyone in this room has a reason to be afraid of you.  Don’t matter that you’re Sloane’s brother.  Ain’t none of us have a reason to trust you.”

Bell didn’t have anything to say to that.  When he had come here, he had expected answers about Sloane.  Mikko suspected he had maybe even thought he’d get some sympathy.  Maybe some hand-holding.  He hadn’t been expected to get called out about racism.

He came to the wrong house.

“I appreciate that you helped us,” Annie said.  She had taken a step back from Bell, no longer rising to meet his aggression.  Her eyes were tight with fatigue. “I really do.  We couldn’t have gotten through that okay without you.  But I really think you should leave now.”

Bell looked uncertain for the first time since he had come in.  It was good—Mikko had expected him to argue, maybe even get angry again.  But he apparently had enough self-awareness to feel shame instead of anger.

Finally, Bell nodded.  “Yeah.”  He moved past Annie, eyes downcast.  Mikko twisted around to watch him go towards the door.

He glanced back as he put his hand on the door.  Annie hadn’t taken her eyes off of him.  He met them, mumbled another sorry, and left.

Mikko turned back, his ribs reminding him that his movements weren’t appreciated as he did.

Annie sat back down on the couch.  This time Mikko lifted his legs for her and then laid them on her.  His breath hitched from the pain, but he was okay.  It seemed to be lessening, the ibuprofen kicking in.

Genie stepped forward to stand closer to them.  Frankie followed her.  “You okay?” she asked Annie.

Annie shrugged, rubbing at the top of one of Mikko’s ankles.  “Purebloods always think they can’t do no wrong.”

“And white men,” Genie added.

“Seriously.”

Before they could go down that rabbit hole—because the four of them would, for several hours, at length—Mikko interrupted.  “Can someone get me the phone?”  He was the only one who was okay with talking to people on the phone.  Genie couldn’t for obvious reasons, and Frankie and Annie just flat out refused.

“Why?” Annie asked as Genie left to grab it for him.

“Call Carlos,” he said.  “Maybe he can put a stop to these shifter attacks.”

Annie nodded, frowning thoughtfully.  “Maybe.  But then we’d owe him a favor.”

Mikko shrugged.  “Carlos never asks for impossible things.”  He didn’t tell her that he .  After what Carlos told him the day before, he had a feeling Carlos would bend over backwards to help them without asking for a favor in return.

Annie was satisfied with that answer even without the added context.  “True.”

Genie entered the room and tossed him the phone.  As it left her hand, she stumbled, catching herself on the couch.

Mikko caught the phone.  “Great physiopath.  Can hit a target from a hundred feet away.  Can’t walk without tripping.”

Genie gave him the finger.  “Deaf physiopath.”

Mikko shook his head, dialing Carlos’s number.

Carlos answered on the third ring.  “Hello?”

“Hey, it’s Mikko.”

“Something wrong?”

“No.  Well, yes.  But not right at this moment.”

“¿Que pasa?”

Mikko explained what had happened to them since Carlos had last seen them.  The shifters going after Frankie the day before, and the shifters coming after Annie and Mikko that morning.

“Going after kids?” he hissed.  He let out a string of curses in Spanish, only half of which Mikko knew.  “Oh, now they’re asking for trouble.”  Mikko could hear the bear growl in his voice as he spoke. 

“Is there anything you can do to stop—”

“I can think of a few things, yeah.  No te preocupes, pibe.  Do what you’ve been doing—stay in groups and stay home until Mira gets home, but I’ll take care of it.”

“Thanks, Carlos.  We owe you one.”

Carlos paused for a moment before saying, “Yeah, no problem.  Call me if anything else comes up.”

They hung up.

Stay home.  They could do that.

“This is not staying home,” Mikko said as he got into the passenger seat, and Annie got in the driver’s seat.  “This, in fact, is the opposite of staying home.”  He was voicing what he was saying, trusting Frankie to interpret for Genie where they sat in the back seat.  Mikko wasn’t in a good place to turn around to sign.  His ribs ached if he even shifted in his seat.

“We’re going through a drive through!” Frankie protested, also voicing.  “It’s the safest way to get food!”

“The safest way to get food is by staying at home and cooking.”

“Yeah, and if we cook food at home, the sooner we gotta go grocery shopping.  And Genie’s pointing out that we have to pick up Lina anyway!”

“Why are y’all arguing still when we already in the car?” Annie cut through, pulling out of the driveway.  “It’s done.”

Mikko sneered but he settled back in his seat.  “Whatever.”

“Anyway, Lina will be happy to get McDonald’s or whatever.”

Annie was right.  They didn’t get fast food much.

“Hey, I never asked—what did Mira tell you when you was talking to her before everything with Bell went to hell?” Annie said.

“Oh fuck.”  He suddenly remembered the conversation he’d had with Mira.  This morning felt like it had happened days ago.  “Shit, there’s a mage coming to fix the wards this afternoon.”  They hadn’t been by yet, or Mikko would have remembered the conversation with Mira. 

Annie took the information in stride, turning on her blinker to go back to the house.

“I’ll stay,” Mikko said.  “Let me off here.”  He pointed to the alley that would take him back to their house.

Annie sneered at him, pulling into the alley.  “‘Don’t go out alone’,” she mimicked him.  “Then you be out here trying to walk back to the house.”

He couldn’t even argue.  If it had been anyone else, he wouldn’t have allowed the excuse that came to his lips.  It’s only a few houses down.  It didn’t matter when shifters were on your ass.  Mikko could not outrun a shifter.

She pulled up to their backyard, next to the green city trash can.  “Probably better for you to stay home anyway,” she said.  “Give your ribs a break.  I’ll get your usual from wherever we decide to go.”  She leaned over and pecked him on the lips. 

That earned groans from Genie and Frankie behind them.  “Get a room,” Frankie muttered.

Normally, when they did something like that, Annie and Mikko would respond by making it even grosser.  But this time, with an exchange of glances, they agreed not to.  Mikko needed to wait for the mage, and they needed to pick up Lina.  Plus, he hurt.

Mikko got out of the car, using his elbow to knock the door shut.  He side stepped the trash can, reaching for the gate in the chain link fence that sectioned off the back of the yard. 

The backyard was small, just a plot of grass.  One corner had a little sandy area with some rocks and a cactus.  Before she died, Mira’s grandmother had wanted to get rid of her lawn entirely and replace it with native plants.  She hadn’t gotten far.

A wooden privacy fence blocked off both sides of the yard, short chain link fences bridging the strips between the house and the wooden fences.

He went to the back stairs and unlocked the doors, letting himself in.  He locked the door behind himself automatically.

The ache in his ribs was less than it had been.  He lifted up his shirt and examined them.

There were dark bruises across his entire left side, but there wasn’t any sort of mottling.  He didn’t know a lot about the body, but he was pretty sure that meant he was just bruised—nothing irreparably damaged or broken.  At the very least, it ached a bit to breath, but it wasn’t a sharp pain.  He didn’t think he had broken ribs.

Mikko was never able to stay home alone and not do anything.  Next to where he stood was the laundry, a washer next to a dryer with a counter over it for folding.  A basket of clean laundry sat on top of the counter.  He dumped it on the counter and went upstairs to the room he shared with Annie.

Their room was small, the floor clear of anything. A full bed sat in one corner opposite sliding doors into a small closet, and a single small dresser next to their bed.  Mikko slept on the inside of the bed.

He opened the closet to reveal a small pile of dirty clothes below their hung shirts.  He picked it up in a bundle, throwing it into the basket.  He winced as he picked up the basket again.  This wasn’t the best plan for healing ribs, but it was all he had to keep himself busy.

Downstairs, he tossed the clothes into the washer before putting the basket back on top of the counter next to the dumped laundry.  As the washer started filling, he set to the task of folding the clean laundry.  It looked like Mira and Lina’s.

Mikko enjoyed laundry.  In fact, he was the one who primarily did it in the household.  He had a special formulation of cheap detergents plus vinegar that kept soap scum off their clothes and made them smell nice.  The smell was comforting and familiar, and the water filling was soothing—a whirring and splashing sound coupled with the soft rattle of the machine against the floor and the soft scratching of metal in metal. 

Wait.

He paused in folding a shirt, perking up.  His good ear already faced the door and he tilted it to hear better.

The soft sound of metal scratching on metal was coming from the door.  He wouldn’t have even noticed it over the washer if he wasn’t standing literally a foot from the back door, folding the laundry.

He set the shirt down, turning to the door.  The scratching stopped, but he stayed where he was.

A moment passed and the scratching continued.  The thumb turn of the deadbolt twitched but didn’t open.

The door had a regular doorknob with no lock and a deadbolt above it.  They used to have multiple deadbolts on the doors, but with the installation of the new doors and wards, they had settled for just one deadbolt.  The wards would keep them safe.

A sharp report cracked through the air, and Mikko heard a man’s voice cursing behind the door.

Mikko reached above the door jamb.  He found the sharp edge that had been installed up there and he pricked his finger on it.  He smeared the blood on the door before pulling the door open.

He felt the thrum of magic that settled over the doorway, sealing anything on the outside from coming inside.

A man crouched in front of the door in the midst of wringing out his hand.  Mikko caught a glimpse of a beanie, a black mask over nose and mouth, and grease-painted green eyes.

“What . . .”

Mikko didn’t have the chance to get the question out before the man was turning tail and bolting out of the yard. 

Mikko didn’t try to chase him.  He just watched, cataloging the man.  Shorter than Mikko, the man was corded heavily with muscle, like what he would expect to see from someone who frequently carried a lot of heavy equipment.  He moved with a grace that was almost supernatural.  Maybe a shifter?

He disappeared down the alley, and Mikko shut the door.

What the fuck? There was a knock on the front door.