We were curled up. She was behind me, her arm was laying over my chest and I was pretty sure if she'd been capable of it she'd be purring. So would I if I could. As much as I really wanted to lie there all day and ignore the world we had things to do. "How long has it been since you oiled and cleaned those guns?" Hunter pillow talk, so romantic.

"I've been bad about it," She confessed, "Been about a year and a half."

I was kind of curious why she hadn't told me about her stash, "Why didn't you tell me you had them?"

She moved away from me and I rolled over to look at her. She seemed oddly hesitant to answer at first, "Because of what I saw through our connection when you had the Mark," she kind of looked ashamed actually, "I, well to be honest, I was scared. When you first moved in, I wasn't sure if you somehow would try to act out those dreams in your sleep, be drawn to the weapons for some reason, so I decided the less you knew the better. After that you seemed so intent on quitting and having nothing to do with hunting I didn't see a reason to bring it up."

"Don't blame you. Sam went months without sleeping there near the end. I couldn't sleep and would spend hours in the gun range or stabbing at things. He never officially told me but he started sleeping with his door locked and at least one gun in his room." I gave her a quick kiss, "Was probably a good move on your part. Guess that means I've got a couple hours of weapons prep to do before we head out. May as well get to it. I want to give Baby a good once over too. Especially after going all crazy on her."

"Seems fair," she said as she stretched in the most tempting, seductive way possible. "You just gave me a good once over, guess it's her turn."

"I hate you so much right now," I was seriously considering changing my mind about saving the world, again.

She paused mid stretch and blew me a kiss, "Duty calls Babe."

"Yeah, yeah. Stupid monsters." I rolled out of bed and threw on my wrenching clothes.

"I can help with the weapons," she offered, "No need for you to do all of it."

"You should probably get a hold of all your clients, finish what you can and come up with a good cover story. This will probably take longer than a week and who knows where we'll be or what we'll be doing." The last time she'd gone on an extended sort of leave was when she'd been chasing down Leaping Deer, from what I understood she'd managed to stick pretty close to major areas that had decent wifi so she'd been able to work on the road. Monsters tend to like out of the way places, course who knew what they were doing this time around.

"Yeah, I guess I should." I think it started hitting her that she was going after monsters again and everything that could mean. Leaping Deer was the first thing she'd hunted in several years and that was less a hunt and more her protecting her people from a direct threat.

"You all right darlin'?"

The last of the humor she'd shown a few seconds before faded, "I think I need to call Cougar. Prepare him and come up with something to tell everyone else here. They understood when I left to chase down Leaping Deer, this is different and I won't lie to them."

I followed her train of thought and didn't like where it led, because it'd come down to her leaving to help me, help white people. That could be a problem. Most of the folks here had made peace with my existence in the middle of their tribe. I'd kept clear of tribal business and helped out when and where I could, but this would make a lot of them nervous. It would also give ammo to the faction that had never accepted me and by extension her. "This is going to get dicey isn't it?"

"Indeed," Shaman Running Coyote was starting to assert herself, I knew when to step back.

"You do what you have to, let me know what I can do. One thing though."

"Yes." She was all business.

"If there's going to be a meeting, I'm coming." Her eyes narrowed, "Hear me out. You know who this is going to piss off and what they're liable to say. I've stood by until now because this is your world, I respect that and I've done everything I can to blend in and not offend people. I wanted to keep them from having anything to use against you since I wasn't interfereing with your job. Now though? You know as well as I do that this will get personal fast. They're going to use us to try to get to you and that I won't allow. We can't explain to them what hunting is and what's going on in a way they'll understand so I will be there to back you because you're going to need it." I thought I caught a low growl coming from her, she looked cranky enough to be growling anyway.

"I take it I don't have a choice here?" She asked.

"Nope." She didn't have a lot of room to talk since she'd pretty much just pulled the same thing on me when she declared she was hunting with me no matter what.

"Fine." Once her legs hit the ground and she started to stand up her mood shifted, I saw her shoulders relax a bit. "Thank you, for standing down as long as you have. I know it's pissed you off plenty of times."

I shrugged, "Wasn't here to fight. After all the shit I've gone through, some idiots muttering crap about me under their breath as I walk by doesn't get to me that much. Besides, you'd ended up fixing whoever I hit and I didn't think it'd be polite to give you extra work."

She laughed, it was short and laced with contempt, not towards me but towards the idiots, "Good point." She headed into the bathroom to get dressed and whatever. I walked out and went towards her Sacred Space, I had work to do.

I stopped before entering it. Now that I wasn't all hopped up on desire to wrap her up in my arms, which was probably a bit disrespectful to the space but she hadn't seemed upset about it, I took a minute to do something I hadn't done in years. "Hey, um Coyote's guides? I know I'm not exactly one of your tribe but you've hung out with me a few times so, well, we're heading into some sketchy shit and you seem to care a lot more about her and us than the god who's supposed to watch over me. So, I just wanted to ask, please, any help you can pass along would be greatly appreciated. Thanks." And, once again, her guides proved themselves a lot more interested in helping than any angel with the exception of Cas had ever been. I felt a warm breeze brush against my face and caught a flicker of something small and furry sitting in front of me for a split second, then it was gone. "Nice to know you're on our side." I figured after that I didn't have much of a chance of corrupting the room, so I walked in, picked up a few guns and headed downstairs to start fieldstripping them.

My weapons cleaning gear was always packed in my bags when I'd hunted so I'd had it with me ever since I'd moved in. I'd ended up storing it in a closet in the garage. I had no reason to have it near by since I wasn't firing my gun that much anymore, at least compared to how much I'd used it before. Field stripping guns had been one way I'd de-stressed back in the day, which is kind of ironic when you think about it. I guess it's like when women crochet or knit, which is a pretty horrible analogy, but it's the same type of activity. It's repetitive, keeps your hands busy and you can kind of zone out doing it. There weren't a whole hell of a lot of other options when you're on the road twenty four/seven and I'd tried just about all of them. If nothing else it was probably one of the healthier ones.

I set the guns down on the kitchen table on the way out to the garage, dug out the kit, went back in and settled down at the table. She had two rifles, three nine mils, two forty fives, a twenty two and a sawed off shotgun. I'd brought down most of the handguns and started in on one of the nine mils when she came down the staiirs.

She was on the phone, "Yeah, if you can come over as soon as possible that'd help." She paused and frowned, "No, I'm not leaving today. Yes, I know how this looks, not much I can do about that. Thanks." She hung up, took a deep breath, let it out and went to her desk.

That didn't look good, "Cougar?"

"Yes. He'll be here in about fifteen minutes. He's not happy, not mad, but not happy."

"Ah, okay." Cougar, Coyote and I had an odd relationship. After he'd gotten over the whole wanting to beat me into a bloody pulp for giving her nightmares I'd hoped that he and I would work things out. We hadn't, he didn't hate me, but I would never be on his Christmas card list. At first I thought there was some wierd jealousy going on, then I found out Cougar wasn't interested in her like that. Turns out he was gay, so that wasn't the problem. I'd tried to get Coyote to fill me in on what she thought was causing the problem, she never gave me a straight answer, which was weird for her. A few months back I finally asked him. He said it wasn't so much me personally he had an issue with, he thought overall I was a good guy, it was that my entire existence in her life and what I represented was a constant source of tension in the tribe and he'd run a lot of interference for her over the years.

She was like a sister to him and he'd take a bullet for her in a heartbeat. His childhood had sucked; her and her family had sort of taken him in, watched over him. Even after she left to go to school they'd stayed as close as possible, he'd even taken on people that said anything negative about her while she halfway across the country. Then she got into hunting, which he'd never approved of; then met me, which he approved of even less and now I was living with her, which, unknown to me, had caused a huge rift. She already knew how he felt so he hadn't rehashed old territory by starting more fights but he'd kept his distance from us.

After I found all that out I understood why she dodged the question. If she'd told me early on that I was coming between her and her best friend I might have left and not given us a fair shot. By the time I'd found all this out I was far past the point where I was going to let that be an issue if it wasn't one for her, but, since I was on an honesty kick I told her that I'd talked to Cougar and what he'd said. We'd been sitting on the porch, having our after dinner drinks. She waited until I finished talking, took a drink of her wine and stared out into the night for a long ass minute.

"He used to get bullied because he was gay, at least until he grew bigger than everyone else here," she said, "I beat the hell out of so many kids growing up because of that. Got my ass kicked a fair amount of times too. My parents protected him as best as they could, so did Rising Dove. He has to meet guys off Res land because there's not a lot of options here. Rising Dove's generation were okay with who he was, it was the younger generation that was taking out their frustration on anyone they could. Anyway, when I decided to leave and started getting crap for it, he said it was my turn to be protected by him. After I saw the vamp and got into the life, he was the only one that knew what I was really doing. I lied to everyone else. When I went to school he saw it as something worthy because I could use when I learned to help our people. To him hunting was me turning my back, not only on the tribe but him and my parents. That I was dishonoring them by throwing away my skills and gifts. When I came back after my father died, he thought that meant I was getting back on the right path. Then I told him about you, about our hookups, all of it. I was missing you bad one night and drank too much. I don't remember much from that night, but I do remember the next morning." She stopped, took another drink and shifted her gaze to me, "He told me that he knew what it was like to be torn into two directions and that I could not be a true Shaman if I cared more for someone in another world than I did for the tribe. I told him that the tribe was my world now, I had ignored them for long enough. His reply was that I had just lied to him and myself, that I was using the tribe and the position of Shaman to escape from the pain of losing my father and not being with you. I told him to shut the hell up. He left and we never talked about it again, our relationship wasn't the same after that." She finished off her wine in one long swallow, didn't say another word and left.

I chose to let the topic drop after that. I didn't push to spend time with Cougar, he avoided me and Coyote was caught somewhere in the middle of it. Now this whole mess was going to bring all of that back up again and I wasn't too sure where Cougar would stand. This might push him past what even he was willing to go to the mat for. I know how complicated things get when someone you loved was doing crap you didn't approve of, I just hoped they'd still have some sort of relationship at the end of it all.