BOX SET: Shifter 4-Pack Vol 2 (Wolf Shifter, Dragon Shifter, Mafia, Billionaire, BBW, Alpha) (Werewolf Weredragon Paranormal Fantasy Romance Collection)

by Candace Ayers

  She sighed and put her boots on.

  He helped her to the ground and said, “This way. We need to hurry!”

  They ran to the end of Andover Street and cut into William Golden’s backyard.

  “What are we doing?” Amber asked.

  “Getting a better view of Jeremiah Parks’ backyard. Come over and get in this bush with me.”

  “I don’t like this,” Amber whispered, crouching down beside him. “I’m nervous, and you didn’t answer my question. What are we doing here?”

  “Jeremiah’s wife’s been trying to start a garden for the past few years, and she deemed Jeremiah’s huge woodpile to be the sunniest spot in the backyard. So he moved it for her.” Dunstan snickered. “Complained and hollered all day while doing it, but he did it. Peggy’s not exactly the gentlest of wives, you see. They bickered all afternoon over it.”

  “So what did you do?”

  Dunstan snickered. “I moved it back.”

  “Dunstan! No! You’re going to give them even more problems!” Amber snapped.

  “If this breaks them, they were broken already. Honestly, Amber, you should have seem them. They were fighting like toddlers. I’ve never seen two grown people act so childish.”

  “You clearly haven’t been to my parents’ pub on Saturdays,” Amber retorted.

  Jeremiah opened his backdoor and made for where he thought his firewood was. He stopped when he saw it wasn’t there and quickly turned around. When he saw it sitting in its usual spot, the spot it had been in for twenty years before his wife decided she was a professional landscaper, he could only shake his head. Had she moved it back? Why would she do such a thing? After he had spent hours moving it just for her?

  Confusion turned to anger and he stormed inside.

  “Peggy! Wake up! Peggy!”

  Dunstan stifled his laughs, but his whole body shook in laughter.

  “Dunstan, you’re horrible. That was a mean thing to do.” She stifled a giggle.

  He nodded and agreed. “Aye, it really was.” He wiped a tear away from his eye and continued to giggle.

  Amber sighed. “I’m going back to bed,”

  “Really?” he asked. “I thought maybe you’d want to hang out with me. The sun’s about to come up.”

  “No, I was up past midnight last night. The pub doesn’t close at decent hours anymore, and my father’s not one to pass up money.”

  Dunstan frowned and waved goodbye. He was going to stay and listen for further outbursts from the Parks.

  Amber was walking back home when she was stopped by Ben Norton, one of the town watchmen. “Amber, have you seen Russell Wilson?”

  Amber hesitated. “No…”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I’m just confused. Why are you looking for him? Is he OK?”

  “Someone painted over our sign. Clark Atwell says the paint that was used last night was bought by Russell Wilson last week. Right stupid if you ask me. Took me all of five minutes to find out who did it this morning.”

  Dunstan…

  “What did he do?” Amber asked.

  “He painted over our shield and motto and replaced it with… well it wasn’t very nice, he replaced it with a picture of sleeping pigs. Nicely drawn, but I wish he’d use his talents a little more respectfully.”

  Amber sighed. “I’m not sure Russell’s the kind of…” Amber stopped herself. Russell hadn’t exactly started acting better since Dunstan humiliated him. If anything, he was acting worse.

  “I’m sorry?” Ben Norton asked. “You didn’t finish.”

  “Nothing. It’s early yet. Tried his house?”

  “Well, paint’s still wet, and I thought I saw someone about his size come this way, so I took a gamble in case he was still out and about. Tell your father and mother I said hello for me.”

  What was she going to do with him? He couldn’t go through life this way. He needed to grow up and start acting maturer.

  CHAPTER 5

  Jessica and Amber were outside playing skip the stones. They had gotten their hands on some chalk at Clark Atwell’s General Store, and had colored in random stones in front of her parents’ pub.

  “No, you have to land on this one with your left foot,” Jessica said, pointing down to a light blue stone. “That color means left.”

  “My left foot? How am I supposed to do that? I’m on my left foot right now,” Amber said,balancing. The stone in question was a leap away to her right.

  “That’s what makes it hard,” Jessica said. “That’s the game. But remember, you can use your hands. You just can’t use your right foot, and your left can only touch the colored stone.”

  “My hands? What good are my hands going to do?”

  “Do a cartwheel, silly.”

  “A cartwheel? I can’t do a cartwheel!” Amber yelled and promptly blushed. She hadn’t meant to be so loud.

  “Why not?” Jessica asked. Unlike other people in town, Jessica didn’t see a big girl in front of her. She just saw her strong and capable friend.

  Amber didn’t have a reason she would verbalize. She probably could do one, but she didn’t want anyone to see her legs, which she thought were too fat.

  “Come on,” Jessica said. “You going to hop there on one foot all day?”

  Amber raised her arms up and visualized herself doing a carthweel, but saw Clint Wallis, the town cobbler and husband to their teacher Mrs. Kimberly Wallis. He was walking nervously towards them.

  “Have you seen Yannie? Our little girl. Have you seen her?” he asked, wringing his hands. He had stains under his armpits, and his hair was disheveled, revealing his comb over.

  Amber looked back at Jessica who frowned and shook her head. “No,” Amber said answering for them both. “I’ve been with my parents all day cleaning the pub. I just came out a short while ago to play with Jessica. We just finished our chores.”

  Clint frowned. “If you see anyone, please ask them for me. She got away from her mother and I. We haven’t seen her all day. Not since this morning.”

  Both Jessica and Amber agreed and he walked back out to West High Street.

  Amber looked at Jessica, and Jessica shook her head and said, “It’s not good. It’s really not good.”

  Last winter Yannie came down with a fever. It lasted a long time, and nothing anyone did brought it down. She survived, but when it left it took a part of her with it. These days she only spoke a handful of words, and seemed to live in an ever constant state of fear. If the notion took her, she’d run and hide, which is why she spent every day with her father in his quiet shoe shop.

  “What do you think happened to her?” Amber asked, worried.

  “Who’s to say? She’s not predictable. She may have just chosen a direction and gone that way.”

  Amber worried all evening about her. They were the same age, and their moms were good friends. They had often played together as young girls, but had drifted apart before she got sick, each clinging to a different friend.

  That night, Clint’s friends skipped coming to the pub to help him search, but they didn’t find her, and news got to Mayor Haven the next morning. He quickly called a meeting at Town Square.

  “I thank the gods we had a heavy rain two nights ago,” he said to the whole town. “If she left town, we’ll be able to find her footprints. I need all the women to check every nook and cranny. Every alleyway, every root cellar. Check your own, no matter how certain you are she’s not in there. Humor Mrs. Wallis and check your closets. Men, we’re walking the perimeter. Looking for any footprint we can find that might be hers.” He made eye contact with Eli Crossman, the town hunter and breeder of bloodhounds. “Eli, Mrs. Wallis has one of Yannie’s gowns with her. I pray your dog will get a good scent.”

  He dismissed them, and everyone broke off to do his or her part. Amber watched the mayor kneel down beside Mrs. Wallis, offering quiet, consoling words as Eli walked over with his bloodhound.

  “I see you brought one of your older ones,�
�� the mayor said to Eli.

  Eli patted his dog on the head, and she wagged her tail. She seemed old and arthritic.

  “Yep, but her nose is the most trained. If I were lost, she’s the one I’d hope you’d use to find me.” He looked at Mrs. Wallis and said, “Iris’ll find your girl, Kimberly. I know she will.”

  Mrs. Wallis didn’t say anything, but held out her girl’s gown for the dog to sniff.

  Iris wagged her tail and walked back and forth around Town Square honing in on Yannie. It barked and trotted down West High Street.

  Eli and the mayor plodded behind her. Their faces grave.

  She took them to the base of the woods and started the slow, tedious climb into the mountains, unknowingly walking into restricted land.

  Eli called her back.

  Amber watched it all from the town bridge over Erith Stream.

  She couldn’t hear them, but saw the two men talking at the base of the mountain. Eli pointed down to the ground— they had footprints, too.

  They walked back. Amber bit her lip. Eli pointed out a few more footprints that belonged to Yannie as they got closer.

  “Amber,” the mayor said to her when they reached her on the bridge. “Run along and ring the bell in Town Square. Time to call everyone back.”

  *

  “I can’t ask any of you to go in there. I wouldn’t dream of ordering anyone to go in. But if you’re willing, please. Time is of the essence”

  The crowd was quiet. Clint Wallis, Yannie’s father, stood in front of them beside the mayor, already dressed to go.

  Eli Crossman raised his hand and volunteered himself and his dog.

  Ed Gass raised his hand, too. He was the town’s carpenter, and unfortunately would be the man who made Yannie’s coffin if things got that far. Many visibly shifted uncomfortably when they saw he was going. He was a symbol of death among them.

  No one else spoke up. Amber looked at her father, embarrassed he didn’t volunteer. But she noticed her mother, clutching his arm, and knew she had asked him not to go. Just as probably many wives and mothers had done.

  There was no guarantee they would be coming back.

  The mayor dismissed them and the crowd dispersed. The three men got together and shook each other’s hands, then went back home to prepare and say their goodbyes.

  Amber ambled back to Starlight Tavern behind her parents. There were about five more hours of sunlight left, which wasn’t a lot of time. It really only left them two and a half hours of clear searching. Surely they wouldn’t camp overnight there. Would they?

  Out of respect for Mr. and Mrs. Wallis, her father didn’t open the pub that night. He knew the last thing they needed was to hear the chatter and guffaws of men and women engaged in drunken ruckuses.

  This was not met well by a few patrons who seemingly worked all day just so they could drink at night. Rick Backus took his seat at the bench out front regardless and lit up his pipe. Men slowly gathered in front of the tavern and talked in hushed whispers about the dangers of the expedition.

  One man looked up at Rick Backus and asked, “Has anything like this ever happened before? Should we have hope? Do you think the wolves will spare her?”

  Rick puffed out a wave of smoke and shook his head. “Oh, I’ve got stories. Et’s happened before a few times. But none of them offer anything ye want to hear.” He took his pipe out his mouth and pointed it at them. “No one’s gone into those mountains since the wolves came in and come back white as rain. No one.”

  Amber walked through the crowd respectfully and went into the tavern.

  Inside, her mother was hugging her fathering, weeping into his chest.

  “I held her when she was a baby! I changed her, and even nursed her one day Kimberly wasn’t producing. Do you think the gods are calling her to them? That this is their way?”

  Amber’s father didn’t say anything. He rubbed her back and said “Sh, now, shh. Everything’s going to be OK. Shh.”

  Amber’s mother sobbed harder into his chest.

  She had no hope.

  Amber didn’t know what to do with herself. Everyone was so sad, and she couldn’t do anything for anyone.

  She whispered to her father, “Can I go play out back?”

  He nodded quickly and shooed her along.

  Amber went through the kitchen in the back and went outside. A crowd had bottlenecked around Rick Backus out front. Despite priorly being hesitant to tell any stories, he was full into one then, and held everyone’s rapt attention.

  She walked past the storage shed and past Dunstan’s bridge over the stream. Was Dunstan at Lover’s Tree? She hadn’t seen him for a few days, but, unlike Yannie, with him that was no cause for alarm. Dunstan could only handle society in short, incremental bursts. And those short bursts usually ended with him in a fist fight.

  He was laying down on the ridge, with his right leg propped up on his left knee, looking down into the valley and smoking a pipe as expertly as Rick Backus could. His feet were bare and black with dirt. Shoes, of course, nowhere to be found.

  Amber noticed his legs were starting to get hair.

  “Ho, Amber,” he said when he noticed her. He seemed genuinely happy.

  “Hi, Dunstan. Have you heard what’s going on?” She chose to not address that he was smoking a pipe, or that he was filthy and shoeless.

  Dunstan thought this was a joke and laughed, and Amber told him what had happened. His face sobered up quickly.

  “Yannie? Quiet Yannie? Mrs. Wallis’s girl? She went up Avondale?”

  Amber nodded.

  Dunstan snuffed out his pipe and scattered the ashes with his bare hand. “How long has she been gone?”

  “Since yesterday morning,” Amber said.

  She could see him mentally calculating in his head. He seemed to be determining how far she probably was.

  “Those men don’t stand a chance. They don’t know what is actually…” He bit his tongue. Just like always did when he talked about Bowland Mountains.

  “Come on,” he said. “I’ll take you back home. Can you sneak out some food for me from your dad’s storage shed? It’s not for me. Yannie will need something to eat. I doubt I’ll be able to get to her and bring her back before sunfall. Come on, we’ve got to run!”

  He ran through the forest as nimble as a wolf.

  “Do you think you’ll be able to find her?” Amber said running behind him.

  “Yes,” Dunstan said. “But how she is when I find her… well, that’s why we’re running.”

  They crossed the stream, and went quickly up the slope to her parents’ storage shed.

  Amber went in and grabbed some cheese wedges and a loaf of hard bread. She plunged her hand into a barrel full of sawdust, and pulled out four apples one at a time.

  “That’s enough,” Dunstan said. “I just need enough to give her belly some energy.”

  Amber found a potato bag and shoved the food into it.

  “Don’t tell anyone I went in after her. Promise?” Dunstan said taking it from her as she held it out.

  “I promise,” she said. “But why?”

  He ran off, back into the woods, without any shoes, without a jacket, and without answering her. Dirty as any wild animal he’d find in there.

  He was the only one for whom Amber held any faith.

  *

  Clint Wallis, Eli Crossman, and Ed Gass did come back that night, though it was well after sundown. They slept at the base of the mountain, and vowed to set off again at first light. No one would have known they returned if not for the town’s night watchmen, Ben Norton. He told a few stragglers walking around, and word spread. Soon the whole town brought them various foods and drinks.

  “We lost sight of her footprints, but Iris knew where she was taking us,” Eli explained to them. “A full day’s march, and I think we’ll get right close to her tomorrow.” Every man shook Clint’s hand and told him that that was good news. But they all walked away thinking, “Yannie’s going to be
out there again, all alone, another night?”

  True to their word, the three men left at first light.

  The next day they didn’t get any word from anyone. Amber started to worry as much about the men as she did Yannie, but not about Dunstan. Dunstan, more than the whole town combined, could take care of himself. You don’t lose your parents, get adopted by an evil aunt, and then live out on your own without learning a few things about survival.

  Seeing as how Mrs. Wallis was the town teacher, school was cancelled. Jessica and Amber went with their moms to see her on Hythe street. They went inside but were quickly kicked out by their moms. Mrs. Wallis needed to be able to grieve openly.

  Amber didn’t realize it until then, but Mrs. Wallis was very likely to soon lose both of the people she loved in her life. Both Mr. Wallis and Yannie were now in extreme danger.

  Their house might soon be a tomb to her.

  Amber and Jessica sat on the horse fence behind Ian Chapman’s house. He was wrangling a new colt, but it was going well. The creature was running steady, even circles around him. He waved and smiled at them. He was good at what he did.

  “Do you think any of them will be back?” Jessica asked Amber.

  “I just hope that if Yannie does get back, that Mr. Wallis, Eli, and Ed will give up in a proper amount of time.”

  “What do you mean?” Jessica said. “Why would she come back without them?”

  Amber’s face flushed and she got really still. She screwed up.

  Though it was early September, the sun was beating down directly, and she felt like she was baking inside of her dress. Combined with everything going on, she wasn’t thinking straight. She had forgotten about her promise.

  Jessica peered at her as only a good friend can and saw she was hiding something. “What do you know?” she asked.

  Amber shook her head. “No, I can’t tell you,” she said. “It’s a secret.”

  “You don’t have secrets. I’m the only…,” she looked at Jessica again. “Where’s Dunstan?” she asked, still staring at her. “I haven’t seen him lately. He’s the only other person you see.”