Read Kate Daniels 04.5 - Magic Dreams for Free Online Page B

for a medicine man,” I said. “The dealers at the Underground call themselves that, but they aren’t medicine men. They’re animal-parts dealers. Do you remember that big shapeshifter case in Asheville three years ago?”
    Jim frowned. “Vaguely. I was in Florida, dealing with Kaja’s loup pack. I remember there was a fifteen-year-old kid, Jarod, I think. He was a black bear. He said he was walking in the woods, encountered a group of hunters, waved to indicate that he was a shapeshifter, and when he turned away, the hunters shot him in the back and he had to defend himself. By the time the game wardens showed up, Jarod had the shooter pinned and everyone else had cleared out. The medic pulled sixteen bullets out of the kid. The hunter claimed he was attacked without provocation. They had a hard time proving Jarod’s story because his wounds had closed, so there was no way to determine how he’d been shot. The prosecution argued that Jarod was so huge in his beast form that if he was walking away from a hunter, no sane man would have shot him, so the hunters must’ve fired in self-defense. Curran sent the entire legal division down there.”
    Clearly, Jim wasn’t sure what the word
vaguely
meant.
    “My uncle Aditya testified in that trial,” I told him. “He is a federal park ranger for the Smoky Mountains National Park. The hunter’s name was Williams. Chad Williams, MD. Uncle Aditya testified that Williams has been detained several times on suspicion of poaching with intent to sell animal parts. He had friends in the right places and he was let go every time.”
    “Stupid people believe that bear cures everything,” Mother put in. “Diabetes, stomach pain, weak heart, limp penis …”
    “A black bear gallbladder goes for about forty-five thousand dollars on the black market,” I said.
    Jim repeated, “Forty-five grand?”
    I nodded. “When your family is sick or your equipment stops working, people get desperate. Especially ignorant white people—they think mystical ‘Oriental’ medicine will cure all their ills.”
    I refilled our cups. “A black bear’s gallbladder is expensive. A bear shapeshifter’s gallbladder is worth even more. Williams shot Jarod on purpose. He wanted his organs. They found silver bullets hidden in his campsite.”
    “Poachers think that if the bear dies in pain, his gallbladder will get bigger.” My mother grimaced.
    Jim’s eyes sparked with green. “They shot the boy with regular bullets to torture him before they killed him.”
    “Yes. Once all this stuff came out on the stand, everybody got involved.” I waved my arms. “The marshals, the FBI, the GBI. Williams even got in trouble with the post office because the idiot used the mail to ship some animal parts down to Atlanta. He went down in flames.”
    “And our family got blacklisted with the poachers forever and ever and ever,” my mother said. “That’s why Dali can’t go into the Underground. A black bear is a valuable animal, but you know what’s better?”
    My mother got up, went to the cabinet, and pulled a folded paper out. Oh no. Not again.
    “A tiger!” My mother slapped the paper in front of Jim. On it a stylized tiger curved his back in a garishly bright watercolor. Arrows pointed to different parts of the tiger’s body, each marked with a label: brain to cure laziness and acne, blood to cure weak constitution and gain power, teeth for breathing problems and venereal diseases, whiskers to help with the toothache …
    Jim stared at it. His eyes went completely green, glowing with barely restrained violence.
    “They will kill her,” he growled.
    “If she’s lucky, they will kill her.” Mother crossed her arms.
    Jim looked at her.
    “White tiger, powerful magic. She heals very fast. They’ll put her in a cage and harvest her parts over and over. She’ll be their organ factory. We’ve heard of such things happening. She can’t go.”
    Jim’s face was terrible. When Curran was angry,