One of the big things that didn’t sit well with me was the perception of the female’s status based on position and proximity to the Alpha. The senior or more-dominant female in the relationship would always be closest to the male—or in my case, Alpha—no matter what. I didn’t like that at all and wanted no hierarchy, whether actual or perceived, between Gabrielle and Karleen, so we settled on the simple expedient of changing up who was closest to me in any given moment. Some days, Karleen would be on my right and thus appear to be the senior of the two, and other times, it would be Gabrielle. No formal events in the shifter community had happened as yet, so we didn’t have any feedback on how the solution would play out in the greater shifter world. But the people of Precious and Godwin County seemed comfortable with it, and honestly, they were the only people I cared about.
The rest of the shifters could just as easily get glad in the same pants they got mad in.
There was nothing like the feeling of wind whistling through her feathers. Catching a thermal and letting it lift her higher and higher in an ever-widening spiral. It had been so long since Sloane felt relaxed enough—and safe enough—to enjoy a simple flight for nothing more than the sake of flying. For the first time in so, so long, she felt free.
A pang of hunger radiated outward from her stomach, and she considered how long it had been since she hunted, something the predator part of her nature dearly loved. Directing her attention to the forest floor, she sought convenient sustenance. The tree cover below ended, and several deer grazed in the revealed meadow. Perfect! She always had loved the taste of venison.
Her enthusiasm overtook her, and a hunting cry escaped her beak as she tucked her wings to her sides and began the dive. Every deer in the field looked up, and moments later, each and every one did something she had never seen before. They all lifted their left forelegs and waved them like they were saying hello. Why would they do that? How would they even know what a ‘hello’ wave looked… oh, no. Those weren’t animals, at least not proper prey animals. They were shifters!
Sloane threw her wings as wide as she could and locked her joints. Just like a parachute, they caught the air and ended her dive. She circled the meadow a couple times, doing her best to wave a wing or rock side to side as she soared… anything to communicate that she understood they weren’t food. A few of the deer gave her another wave before they resumed grazing like the others.
As she swept through a wide spiral and considered her options, another odd sight caught Sloane’s eye. A speck of blaze orange in the next meadow over. As she concentrated on it, the speck resolved into a man carrying a rifle; he wore a blaze orange vest and ball cap. No one had ever discussed rules for humans hunting in the forests around Precious, but those deer—including the three or four bucks with impressive racks of antlers—in the next meadow over were fellow shifters at the very least, maybe even people she knew from her limited explorations of town. She didn’t know if she had time to fly back to town for Wyatt, and she wasn’t sure if a shifter might survive an accidental headshot. That left only one option… and she’d accept whatever scolding or punishment Wyatt or the councilors felt appropriate.
Once more, she folded her wings to her side as she kept her beak pointed toward the hunter and her eyes locked on him. He was moving slowly and cautiously, and the better part of fifty yards extended between him and the tree line that would’ve saved him.
As the poor soul grew ever larger in her view, movement in the right corner of her vision drew her attention. A doe stepped out of the forest in front of the hunter. Sloane pulled her focus back to the hunter in time to see him lift his rifle.
No. Not on her watch.
It didn’t matter that the doe might not be a shifter. She was only a couple miles from town and easily still within shifter territory, and shifter territories were always no-hunting zones regardless of where they were. She needed a distraction. She filled her lungs with crisp, cool air from a deep breath.
Just as Sloane shrieked a hunting cry to the heavens, the doe threw her legs wide and dropped to the ground as the hunter squeezed the trigger of his rifle. Sloane saw bark explode from a tree trunk a few yards behind the doe as she scrambled to her feet and darted off toward town.
The hunter jerked his head to look toward the sound, and she watched his eyes widen and his jaws drop at the sight of her oh so close. She saw his shoulders tense, and she knew she had to time this just right, lest he escape her. She pushed her feet forward—toes spread wide—and the moment she felt resistance on her hallux talons, she clamped all her talons tight and flared her wings, then flapped for all she was worth.
The high-pitched, incoherent scream—not to mention the weight hanging from her legs—told Sloane she was successful. As she gained altitude to keep her prize above the treetops, a thought struck her out of nowhere: she didn’t remember if the hunter had his rifle on a sling.
7
As he crossed one of the many meadows in west-central Godwin County, Lewis Mitchell reflected on the state banning hunting in several counties, Godwin being one of them. It made no sense to him. None of the counties had a military base or any structure that the government might want to keep random citizens from approaching. There were no reported geological problems, like random sinkholes or anything like that. The state hadn’t marked any of the counties as nature or wildlife preserves or designated them as parks. He simply could not see any reason to ban hunting here.
And so, when Paul bet him five-hundred dollars that he wouldn’t have the nerve to hunt and kill something from one of the no-hunting zones, Lewis finished off his beer, crushed the can, and thought, Why not?
Now? He damn well knew why not.
The talons digging into his back sent hot spikes of pain radiating across his torso; how this dumb bird managed to slip its talons around his arms at his shoulders and only stab him with one talon each—while missing all the major arteries—he didn’t know, but he was grateful all the same. The overhead view of the terrain sent his mind swirling through a vicious cycle of vertigo, panic attacks, and disbelief that this was even happening. Oh… and to top it all off, he’d messed himself—both #1 and #2—as he felt his feet leave the ground.
This day was shaping up to be just lovely all the way around.
At least he still had his rifle. It hung from the sling diagonally across his body. He wasn’t stupid enough to try shooting this crazy bird while he hung hundreds of feet in the air, but it had to land sometime. He’d be ready when it did. Lewis Mitchell was not on the menu—not on any menu—if he had anything to say about it.
After what seemed like an eternity but was no more than thirty minutes or so, Lewis watched the outskirts of a town pass under him. Given where he’d been when this bird snatched him and the direction they flew, the only town this could be was Precious, the county seat. Oh, shit… if someone saw this bird flying away with a person, would they take a shot?
Before Lewis’s thoughts could spiral out along that thread, the bird started shrieking some kind of cry as it began circling over what looked like the center of town, at least as far as Lewis could judge. People soon gathered along the main street, filling the sidewalks as they laughed and pointed at him.
This made no sense. What was this dumb bird doing? It wasn’t behaving like an animal at all.
The bird must have seen what or who it wanted, because it swung out wide back the way they came before looping around and coming in like a 747 on a glide path to land. His heels striking the pavement created just enough of a drag that the hot fire of the two talons piercing his back renewed and intensified. Then, at some point that only made sense to the bird, it released its grip on him and continued to glide ahead of him until he stopped sliding on the pavement.
Lewis fought to remain conscious as pain unlike anything he’d ever felt raged through his body. Part of him felt like just giving up. Just go ahead and pass out, not caring whether he woke again. But he cared too much for his family to let that happen. His lit
tle girl would be five soon and start Kindergarten next year.
The crowd around him parted, and a man that didn’t look any older than his younger brother Wes stood over him. Brown hair. Clean-shaven. Unhappy expression. The man’s fists rested on his hips as he looked down at Lewis, and soon, the damned bird leaned into view beside the man, looking down at Lewis as well.
What the hell was going on? Was he dreaming? Was this an hallucination from major head trauma? He didn’t remember falling, but if he had and this was an hallucination, would he know it?
“Well, what have we here?” the young man said, then looked at the bird standing beside him as if that was a normal occurrence. “Sloane, Karleen has your clothes. She should be along any moment now.”
The bird bobbed its head in an exaggerated nod of all things, then backed away and disappeared behind the crowd. This definitely had to be some kind of hallucination. Did he get into a patch of happy ‘shrooms without realizing it?
Just then, he heard a young voice shouting, “Alpha Wyatt! Alpha Wyatt!”
A girl with a runner’s build—plus wearing running shorts and the local school jersey—burst out of the crowd and almost skidded to a stop at the young man’s side. As she gasped for air, she said, “Alpha Wyatt… there’s a… hunter…”
The young man—Alpha Wyatt, apparently—lifted a hand and pointed at the ground. Lewis watched the girl look down and lock eyes with him. Then, she said, “Oh. Okay.”
“Thanks anyway, Sally,” the young man said. “Sloane dropped him off.”
“I was so scared,” Sally replied. “If Sloane hadn’t been there, I think he would’ve shot me.”
Say what now? Okay. He had to be hallucinating. He would never shoot a person, not intentionally at least. Was this girl in the forest behind that doe and he didn’t see her? Was that what made her think he was going to shoot her?
“Excuse me?” the young man—Wyatt apparently—asked. His tone dripped offense and disbelief. “He did what now?”
“He was in the middle of lifting his rifle when Sloane shrieked. He did fire, but I dropped flat, and the shot went over me. If she hadn’t been there, I’m afraid he would’ve shot me.”
Wyatt’s expression shifted from disbelief and surprise to heated anger that looked fit to vaporize lava. He crouched to the point that he was little more than a foot or so above Lewis, and the look in Wyatt’s eyes told Lewis in no uncertain terms he was a dead man. And when he spoke, Wyatt’s voice was colder than an arctic graveyard… at night… in January.
“Neighbor, you have no idea how difficult it is for me to resist ripping off your head for someone to use as a chamberpot. If you’d like to have even the slightest hope of living to see the end of the week, you will use two fingers to unlatch and withdraw the bolt of that rifle. You will then unclasp the sling from each attachment point. You will then grasp the rifle with one hand on the stock and one hand on the barrel. If you do anything other than what I’ve directed, I’ll smash your skull into pudding right now. Do you understand me?”
All Lewis could do was nod in the affirmative.
Wyatt’s eyes narrowed. “I didn’t hear you.”
“Y-y-yes, sir. I understand.” Lewis almost didn’t recognize the sound of his own voice. He’d never sounded like a coward before.
“Do it now.”
Lewis slowly and deliberately performed the actions Wyatt instructed… and only those actions. When he pulled the bolt back, the spent casing from his shot flew out and pinged as it struck the asphalt. There was something about Wyatt that frightened him to the very core of his being. His lizard brain that hadn’t evolved past the Stone Age—otherwise known as the amygdala—was gibbering in uncontrolled terror.
“Good. Maintain that pose and do not move.” Wyatt stood and scanned the crowd, then said, “Anyone know where Sheriff Clyde is?”
“Right here, Alpha Wyatt,” a man replied. The man in a sheriff’s uniform who pushed his way into view looked to be a tall, no-nonsense block of granite right out of a John Wayne western. The hand-cannon that rode at his right hip had to be either a .454 Casull or .44 Magnum. Oh, shit… might even be a Smith & Wesson .500.
Wyatt pointed at Lewis. “Book this idiot for trespassing, hunting in a restricted zone, and assault. I’ll leave it up to your judgment whether to escalate it to assault with intent to kill and attempted murder, once you have statements from Sally and Sloane. You better hose him down, too; from the smell, he failed potty training.”
Sheriff Clyde looked down at Lewis for a moment before lifting his head to look at Wyatt again. “Well, damn… I’m kinda surprised I don’t need to clean up his corpse. You have a tendency to be a mite overprotective.”
“It’s taking everything I have not to turn him into bloody vertical blinds. Maybe use his skull for a soccer match afterward.”
Sheriff Clyde erupted into a huge grin. “There we go. That’s the Wyatt we all know and love.”
All this talk of dismembering or rending him wore on Lewis to the point that his last nerve snapped. “Okay. Can we tone down the threats a little? I don’t see what the big deal is. I never saw this girl. A buddy bet me $500 that I wouldn’t go hunting in one of the prohibited zones, and I took a shot at a doe that looked like it just grew out of its spots. This kid was nowhere in sight; I don’t care what she says.”
By the time Lewis ended his tirade, everyone in sight glared at him, and more than few growled. Wyatt and Sheriff Clyde included.
Clyde shook his head as he scooped the fired casing from the hunter’s rifle into an evidence bag. “You just confessed to attempted murder and signed your buddy up for rough ride.”
“What? How? Are you deaf? I’m telling you… that girl wasn’t there! It was just a young doe and that ginormous bird!”
Clyde growled as he took Lewis’s rifle and grabbed the collar of his shirt and vest, then started dragging Lewis away. “You stupid bugger, she was the doe. Alpha Wyatt, I’ll send one of the deputies to locate the slug this idiot fired and another over with a mop and bucket for the trail he’s leaving on the pavement.”
“Thanks, Sheriff,” Wyatt responded. “Book him and hold him for now. Might want to have Doc look him over, too.”
“You might want to call your sister, while you’re at it. I doubt this guy’s dumb enough to cough up his buddy’s name, now that he knows I want to charge the guy for accessory to attempted murder. The Attorney General is going to love us; there hasn’t been a case like this in forty or fifty years.”
Come to find out, shifter society averaged a case like that of the hunter about one every eight to ten years. On the one side, that kind of blew my mind; I would’ve thought there’d either be at least one every hunting season, or it would go for decades between them.
Then, a rather chilling thought occurred to me. Were cases like these only reported every eight to ten years? I seemed to remember something from radio or TV a few years back—one of those ‘random facts about our society’ segments—that listed a surprising number of hunters that go missing every year. No body. No blood. No trail. No ‘hunting accident.’ Just… gone. Did these missing hunters run afoul of a shifter or shifters? Is that why they vanished?
My thoughts spiraled down that rabbit hole as I crossed the distance to the hotel. Through the front doors’ windows, I saw a collection of councilors lining up at the front desk, and as I opened the door, I heard the feline councilor at the front of the line say that she was ready to check out.
The polar bear councilor saw me before the others did, and she gave me a respectful nod of greeting, which I returned, and said, “Hello again, Alpha Wyatt. Have you come to see us off?”
“I planned to do just that, but I’m afraid a matter has arisen that I would like to discuss if any of you have twenty minutes.”
By now, the feline councilor turned away from the front desk and adopted a playful smile. “Raising more hell already, are you? Why, Alpha Wyatt, you are incorrigible.”
I la
ughed. “Unfortunately, I can’t claim this one at all, but I will if you really want me to.”
The deer councilor who had been silent through much of the presentations regarding Sloane’s situation stepped forward as he said, “Well, young man, you have our attention. You might as well lay everything on us.”
“Sloane and one of our deer shifters encountered a hunter a couple miles outside of town. According to the would-be victim, the hunter took a shot at her while she was in deer form, but Sloane interrupted him, scooped him up, and flew him back to town. Sheriff Clyde has him right now, and I hope he’s hosing the guy down before he puts him in our jail.”
Several councilors frowned their confusion. The avian councilor asked, “Why is that?”
“I guess being scooped into the sky like a fish out of a river by a huge raptor was sufficient grounds for the fellow to void himself. He smelled rather nasty when I was standing over him outside in the street.”
The councilors all replied with understanding nods and a few grimaces.
“I’m willing to hear the matter,” the feline councilor said, looking to her associates. “What of the rest of you?”
The deer councilor and the bear councilor both gave firm nods, the deer councilor saying, “Oh, I absolutely want to hear this case. I do not appreciate such a violation of our territory, which ultimately is another violation of our treaty with the United States.”
Nods of agreement began rippling through the assembled councilors until all of them had agreed to stay.
“Thank you for your help,” I said. “If any of you will miss your flight over this, I’m happy to cover a replacement ticket out of county funds.”
The polar bear councilor made a dismissive wave as she said, “Sonny, we flew two of the Council’s jets out here, because there were so many of us. Those planes won’t leave Spokane International until we say they do.”
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