Carter couldn’t help but smile as his finger tightened on the trigger. He’d been wanting to shoot this kid since the moment he met him, not necessarily with tranquilizers. He watched the boy’s eyes widen in fear as the weapon discharged, only to have the tranquilizer sail over the collapsing kid’s body and lodge itself into a tree.
The scream that followed rivaled those of 1960s era horror flicks. Carter ended it with a point-blank shot to Ben’s upper thigh.
“Son of a bitch! You shot me. You’re such an assho…” When he lost consciousness, his head fell back to the ground.
Carter bent down to check the boy’s pulse. Although Ben’s well-being wasn’t a high priority for him, his conscience won out. The smell hit him almost immediately. Unbelievable. I missed my first shot because you slipped in your own piss.
Small weapons fire filled the once silent air, and Carter knew their plan had gone sideways because of one teenager’s small bladder.
Sprinting toward the village, Carter broke through the tree line at the same time as Han. In an instant, he absorbed the scene around him. The village was in utter chaos. Women screamed as they pulled their children to their chests, frantically looking for somewhere safe. They had no way of knowing that Carter and his team would never hurt them.
Firing as he ran, Carter watched as, one by one, the Yavapai men fell to the ground. The rubber bullets wouldn’t do any serious damage, but their impact, and the pain they caused, would keep them down.
The bears were another story. Carter saw three of the Yavapai men begin to change. A well-placed bullet halted one mid-shift, but the other two became snarling beasts a moment later.
Replacing his side arm with a tranquilizer gun, Carter took aim. Click. The two shots he’d wasted on Ben were all the gun held and he hadn’t reloaded before entering the fray. “Han!”
His friend took less than a second to size up the situation and shot the bear closest to him behind its ear. The animal shook its head violently from side to side but continued its charge at Carter. Han let loose another shot that embedded itself a few inches behind the first. A couple more strides and the bear was down.
The other one, however, swatted Han to the ground with one enormous paw, then turned his attention to Carter. With no tranquilizers left, Carter did the only thing he could. He ripped off his clothes, shifted to his wolf form, and met the charging bear head-on.
Carter’s wolf was no match for the bear’s size, weight, and strength, but his speed and agility gave him a chance. The bear lunged as Carter jumped, its claws coming within a hair’s breadth of tearing through his chest. The wolf’s jaws clamped around the bear’s thick neck, tearing the flesh until he was thrown off. He hit the ground hard, but the metallic taste of the bear’s blood on his tongue more than made up for a few bumps and bruises.
Crouching on all four paws, Carter waited for the bear to come to him. It was taking its time, apparently having learned a lesson from its last failed attack, and Carter thought for a moment that it had given up. When it began its charge, Carter bared his teeth but didn’t move. He needed to wait until the very last moment. His agility was only an advantage if the bear didn’t have time to react.
Carter’s haunches shook with anticipation. Three. His jaws flexed with the promise of torn flesh and blood. Two. His muscles tensed in readiness. One.
Carter sprang from the ground just as the bear lifted onto its hind legs. His trajectory was too low and he knew he was in trouble. The bear raised its paw as Carter hurtled toward it unable to stop his forward momentum. All he could do was pull in his paws, curl into a protective ball, and brace for what would surely be searing pain.
But it wasn’t. Carter felt only the rush of wind as he was yanked through the air. He could hear the bear’s angry roar as it gave chase but had no control over his flight. Mirissa must’ve used her telekinesis to save his ass… again. If she would only put him down, he might be able to participate in the fight.
Carter’s forward motion stopped abruptly and he dropped to the ground as though Mirissa had heard his thoughts. Can she do that now? The bear, only a few yards away, closed the distance and was on top of him. But instead of giving the killing blow, it just stood over him, gently swaying back and forth. Carter’s brain didn’t put the pieces of the puzzle together until it was too late. Four hundred pounds of flesh and fur collapsed on top of him as the tranquilizers did their job.
Shifting back to his human form to gain the precious extra inches he needed to reach air, Carter saw Mirissa standing over him. “Any chance you can lift this thing off me?”
“No way! I’m pretty sure you’re naked under there and I don’t want to see anything that’s gonna make me have to bleach my eyeballs.”
He’d almost missed her snarky sense of humor these last few days. Almost.
Chapter 17
The Yavapai, those still conscious anyway, were herded into a clearing at the center of the village. Han and Myrick retrieved the sleeping Ben from the woods and dumped him at the edge of the crowd. The disgusted looks on each of their faces told Carter the kid was still soaked in his own urine. The unconscious bears were left where they lay.
“Why haven’t they changed back to their human form?” Jackie asked.
Carter shook his head. “You’ve been watching too many movies. If they’re like the Havasupai, they need to make a conscious choice to shift. Whatever form they’re in when they fall asleep, or are knocked out, is the form they’ll stay in until they wake up and choose to shift.”
Jackie nodded, reloaded her tranquilizer gun, and moved to a position where she could keep an eye on the slumbering beasts.
Carter searched the faces of the villagers cowering in front of him. Gina wasn’t there. Nor was Lou, pee-boy’s younger brother. Without knowing all the members of the tribe, he had no way to determine how many people were missing. “Myrine, we need to keep a lookout. There are at least two people unaccounted for.”
Myrine directed Ken, Asteria, Myrick, and Greco to positions in the woods surrounding the village. She then addressed the crowd. “My name is Myrine. I have no wish to see any of you hurt, but every member of my team has been instructed to defend themselves by whatever means necessary should their safety be threatened. If you cooperate fully, the guilty parties will be removed and the rest of you can go on with your lives.”
“Who the hell do you think you are? We’ve done nothing wrong.”
Carter recognized the Yavapai chief as soon as he stood. Chief Istaqa, unlike most in his tribe, kept his hair cut short, and he still wore the same offensive necklace he’d sported for years. Wolf’s teeth and claws were strung together and splattered with red paint to look like blood. Carter knew they weren’t from Havasupai wolves, but the symbolism was clear, and it set his blood to boil.
Carter stormed through the crowd until he was face-to-face with the chief. He called on his wolf to extend the claws on his right hand, and used them to tear the necklace from the chief’s neck. It took every ounce of his willpower to not do the same thing to the man’s throat. “You’ve done nothing wrong? That’s all you’ve ever done, but this time you’ve gone too far.”
A sneer formed on the chief’s face. “I should have known you would have something to do with this. It’s not enough that you violate our women, now you spread lies about our tribe?”
“Lies? You —”
“Stop it! Both of you!” Gina’s voice cut through Carter like ice water. She and Lou were being escorted to the group by an amused-looking Myrick.
“I found these two on their way back to the village,” Myrick said. “She didn’t get feisty until she saw you.”
His statement was accentuated when Gina tore loose of Myrick’s grip on her elbow and stomped toward the villagers. “What the hell are you doing, Carter?”
“What needs to be done,” Carter said through clenched teeth. “Now sit down.”
The flush on her cheeks turned three shades darker as her temper flared. “Wh
o do you think you are? You can’t —”
“That’s what I said.” The chief puffed up his chest, ready to begin his own tirade, until Gina cut him off.
“You shut up too, Chief. I don’t know what you did to cause all of this, but I will find out.”
The spark of anger in the chief’s eyes billowed into outrage. “You insolent little bitch. How dare you speak to me that way?”
In a flash, Carter’s hand was wrapped around Istaqa’s throat, pulling him close as he squeezed.
“Um, Carter? I think we might be getting a bit off track here.” Han laid one hand gently on Carter’s shoulder.
His friend’s words slowly seeped through the rage that enveloped him, and he loosened his grip, letting his hand drop to his side. The chief buckled over, hands on his knees, gasping for air. Although Carter regretted losing control like that, he couldn’t help but enjoy the chief’s suffering just a little bit.
Gina spoke up, this time without the indignant attitude. “What did he do?”
Carter took a deep breath to calm himself. “That’s what we’re here to find out. Hikers have been disappearing for hours at a time, with no memory of where they were or who they were with. Violence has skyrocketed throughout the area. Something is very wrong here, Gina.”
“And you just assumed it was us?” Her irritation was evident.
“Of course not, but as soon as our plane landed, one of your guys opened fire on us. A few hours later your tribe raided the Havasupai village. Then I get kidnapped and dragged here before two more of you tried to blow us up on the side of the road. It wasn’t real difficult to connect the dots.”
The chief started blubbering about his innocence but was silenced by a glare from Carter that said “speak and I will kill you where you stand.”
When he turned back toward Gina, he saw her eyes widen. Not in fear as would be expected in this situation, but in what looked like shock. When she finally spoke, she couldn’t even form a full thought.
“Oh my God,” she said. “I just assumed… I thought the Havasupai were… How could I have let this happen?”
Carter walked over and placed his hands on her shoulders. “Calm down, Gina. I don’t understand what you’re trying to say.”
Before she could answer, a familiar voice came from the tree line. “Am I too late?”
Carter stared as Greco walked a stricken-looking Bidzil toward him. “This guy says he’s a friend of yours.”
Carter nodded. He could only imagine what the Havasupai healer was thinking seeing him with his team, all holding weapons on the Yavapai villagers. “It’s not what it looks like, Bidzil. None of them are seriously hurt. We’re here to stop them from doing whatever it is that they’re doing.”
Bidzil let loose a sigh of relief. “Then I am just in time, young one. You have been fooled.” He turned his attention to encompass everyone there and opened his arms wide. “You have all been fooled. Your fight is not with each other, nor is it with the Havasupai. We are all victims in this.”
Myrine came forward and introduced herself. “I understand your wish to prevent any unnecessary violence, sir. I have always had the same wish. But some, or all, of these people are the perpetrators of unnecessary violence. They brutally attacked your own village, not to mention their multiple attempts on my people’s lives.”
Gina finally found her voice. “The attack on your village was in retaliation for the kidnapping of four of our men.”
“But we did not kidnap your men. Just as, I think, you did not kidnap ours,” Bidzil said.
“But the man that shot at us at the airport was definitely Yavapai. I don’t know his name, but he had a scar under his right eye the shape of a crescent moon.”
Several people in the crowd gasped at his statement, and one woman wailed an unintelligible cry. Gina looked at the chief, who had thankfully stayed silent, then spoke to Carter. “That was Rick. He disappeared more than two months ago. A few days ago, the day you arrived, I thought I saw him in the woods by Long Jim Canyon. I tried to catch up to him, but he was too fast. Then I heard the shooting coming from the airport. When I got there, he was in his bear form and someone was shooting at him. I lost him again in the woods.”
Carter’s thoughts whirled through his mind. If what they were saying was true, someone else had been pulling their strings this entire time. Setting them up to blame each other. I hate being a puppet. Something still didn’t make sense. “How did you figure all of this out, Bidzil?”
A self-deprecating smile decorated his face. “I didn’t. At least, not on my own.”
Chapter 18
The story Bidzil told was difficult for Carter to believe. Although his daily life was filled with the unbelievable, he still had a hard time accepting things that he couldn’t see or touch for himself. He’d grown up to tales of Chief Ahiga’s tribe shifting for the first time. His bedtime stories revolved around their god, Tochapa, and the vision he sent their healer. He knew those stories were true—he was living proof—and could easily accept that those things happened a thousand years ago. But that was the last time, as far as anyone knew, that Tochapa had sent someone a message.
Until today, according to Bidzil.
That morning, the Havasupai council had met to discuss their plan of retaliation for the Yavapai attack. Bidzil said he was unable to calm their bloodlust and went home to pray for guidance. That prayer turned into a vision.
********
A man stood at the edge of a cliff draped in a long black robe, the hood of which obscured his face. His hands moved like those of a maestro directing his orchestra, but instead of music, the sounds of battle filled the air.
Far below, unaware of the hooded man’s presence, two groups were in the midst of a bloody assault. Bodies—human, wolf, and bear—littered the battlefield. Hungry buzzards circled overhead, eagerly awaiting their chance to feast upon the remains of the fallen.
A lone canary swooped in and out of the scene, watching the action from far above.
Each time the fighting slowed, the maestro’s movements increased their fervor, and the conflict below would reach yet another crescendo. One by one, the warriors fell until there was no one left to fight.
********
Everyone present looked enraptured by Bidzil’s story, even the Yavapai chief. Bidzil himself was the only one not under the spell.
“There are things from my vision that I, as yet, do not understand.”
Although visions were symbolic by nature, Carter thought the message of this one was pretty clear. “What things?”
Bidzil furrowed his brow, as though struggling to find the right words. “It is more of a feeling I received. Tochapa seemed upset that his vision was being ignored. I don’t know why, but I felt like I should have been acting upon what the canary told me, but the canary in my vision told me nothing.”
Before Carter had a chance to ruminate on that bit of craziness, rumblings from the Yavapai villagers drew his attention. Almost every head had turned toward an old man kneeling by the fire. He seemed to wilt under their gazes.
The chief spoke first. “What do you know about this, Dyami?”
The old man stood, eyes darting left and right before finally settling on the ground at his feet. “I did have a vision, as you know, but I didn’t see the same meaning as Bidzil did. These things leave much room for interpretation and I don’t think I can be faulted if a mistake was made.”
Gina stepped forward, pushing past Carter. “But its meaning was clear enough for you to make us pick up and move back to the canyon. You knew exactly how and when the gift of shifting would be bestowed upon us. You even knew what animal we would be linked with. Do you really expect us to believe that you had difficulty interpreting Tochapa’s meaning?”
The old man didn’t answer. He reminded Carter of a child caught in a lie, not sure whether to come clean or continue the deception in hopes of getting away with it. But how did they all know who to blame? “Who is he, Gina? What doe
s he have to do with all of this?”
Keeping her gaze on Dyami she said, “He is the canary. He’s our healer and has had a tattoo of the yellow bird on his shoulder for as long as I can remember. Tochapa must have showed him the truth months ago, but he kept it secret. His hatred and desire for revenge meant more to him than the safety of his people… again.” A tear slid down her cheek and she angrily swiped it away.
Carter took a step, instinctively wanting to comfort her, but stopped himself before he could. No matter what this man was guilty of, it didn’t change what Gina had done all those years ago.
Myrine stepped forward and spoke for the first time since Bidzil began his story. “It seems we’ve all been duped. Regardless of how we got here,” she glanced at Dyami, “we need to move on and figure out exactly who the maestro is, and why he’s pitting your tribes against each other.”
“Oh, shit.” Han’s eyes widened as he watched Asteria emerge from the tree line with yet another straggler in tow.
Ranger Kell Christner looked terrified.
Chapter 19
The scene in the conference room at the El Tovar hotel reminded Carter of a Congressional meeting. Both sides, in this case the Havasupai and the Yavapai, were represented by their council members and a few select others, and the arguing was incessant.
After the revelations of the evening before, Myrine decided it was time to put both parties together. She rented the small room so as to hold the early morning meeting on neutral ground. She thought they could discuss their situation and work together to find the maestro.
So far, things were not going as planned.
Both tribes’ representatives arrived wearing full ceremonial gear and raring for a fight. Hostilities, both new and ancient, found their voice as tensions grew.
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