Prey

by Kassanna

  ***

  The acrid scent of gas and oil made his nose twitch; by products of a vehicle exhaust. He searched for an automobile. Tracking the smell, he caught sight of a structure. Not far from an old logging lane El found an old wooden shack. It sat deep among a copse of towering Evergreens. As he circled the structure, he spotted the carcass of a deer at the base of a close tree. Deep grooves in the trunk showed where claws had penetrated the wood. They were markings, a warning from one beast to another that the surrounding land was already claimed. He’d been scouring their territory for most of the night and all of the morning. He padded over to the doe and pawed at it, flipping it over. Large, familiar bite marks at the throat told him it was a lion that’d done the damage. He studied the body. The heart and liver were missing. Choice pieces to a hungry carnivore.

  He took a deep breath, sifting through the smell of blood and death. The wind ruffled his mane, and he peered at the sky, thinking. Grey clouds rolled over each other, blotting out the clear blue. Rain might erase the already faint trail Reese had left. El turned his face into wind, seeking out the slim thread of scent which would lead him to the errant lion. The paw prints he’d found had to belong to Reese, but they didn’t match the pictures Gunter had shown him. Reese wasn’t the nomad, but El caught the brief smell of trepidation which would show up every now and then in the shifter’s odor. He wasn’t the trespasser, but El would bet his pride that the older lion knew who was.

  El doubled back to the road. He would settle this bullshit today. No one would take Nae away from him. Perhaps it was time to show his people why he was actually the king of beasts.