by Laura Bickle
Shifting Silence
Mane Shift Book 1
By Laura Bickle
Published by Syrenka Publishing LLC
Copyright © 2021, Laura Bickle
Cover art by Danielle Fine
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved. Aside from brief quotations for media coverage and reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced or distributed in any form without the author’s permission. Thank you for supporting authors and a diverse, creative culture by purchasing this book and complying with copyright laws.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
NOVELS BY LAURA BICKLE
CHAPTER 1
He was running, running as fast as four legs could carry him.
His tongue lolled from his mouth, and his sides heaved from the effort. I could hear the thundering in his heart as he ran through the darkness of the undergrowth. Burrs clung to his coat and stuck to his paws, but he still ran, paws bleeding.
“What are you running from?” I called to him, but my voice made no sound in this place. I could only watch helplessly as he loped through the forest. Behind him, in the distance, men shouted, and flashlights glinted.
He was fast. Faster than them. Ears flattened, he slipped through the undergrowth. He sprinted over deer trails and wound around trees. He slunk low to the ground, his belly brushing the earth as he skimmed through a field. The tassels of grasses swirled over his head.
A gunshot echoed in the distance. His eye rolled back, showing white.
He plunged down a hill, down into darkness at breakneck speed. Light washed over him, and he ducked...
...but a wall of bright pain slammed into him. He rolled and gasped, hot blood rising up over his tongue. The light blinded him, and voices murmured above him.
And the light faded, becoming black once again.
I JOLTED UPRIGHT IN bed, gasping.
The effort dislodged two cats, sending them rolling down my quilt to my knees. One orange cat clung to my pillow, claws wrapped in my long auburn hair. I winced and attempted to disentangle myself.
“Theo, let go,” I murmured.
Theo rolled over to show me his belly, purring like a chainsaw. I knew this was a trap.
“I’m not falling for that,” I told him. Theo rarely permitted belly rubs, and if I attempted to touch his belly, I’d have even more scratches on my hands to show for it. He was an ex-feral, and he remembered that he had once been a wild creature at odd times. He only made himself visible at night. The rest of the time, he slept in my closet, where he felt safe.
He blinked at me. Falling for what? I heard his voice in my head, soft and scratchy as his purr. That was one of my gifts as a witch: I could talk to animals. Well, it was pretty much my only gift.
I succeeded in pulling my hair from his grip and swept it over my shoulder. Theo sighed deeply and squirmed into the warm dent remaining in the center of my pillow.
A black cat was glued to my side, blinking at me with golden eyes. Are you going to feed us? Orion asked.
Orion was about a thousand years old. She’d walked into the yard fifteen years ago, and she’d been ancient then. I’d named her for the white splotches across her back that looked like stars from Orion’s belt.
I glanced at the clock. 3 a.m. “No. It’s too early.”
Then why are you awake?
“I had a bad dream,” I said. I rubbed my face. It had been so vivid—it had been years since I’d had a dream that left me breathless.
Theo rubbed against my back. Go back to sleep.
I nodded, squirming down under the quilts, arranging myself to fit around my animals. I mean, it wasn’t like either of them were about to give up an inch in bed. Theo had reclaimed most of the pillow, and I was stuck with his butt under my chin. Orion sprawled across the dead center of the bed, stretched out her full arthritic length.
I didn’t have the heart to move them. I closed my eyes and tried to think of something positive to sweep the debris of the dream away. I knew I had a long day ahead of me. Tomorrow’s schedule at the little animal clinic I ran downstairs was filling up. I had a neutering, a dental, and a handful of vaccinations to perform. In between, I had to feed the horses and see to the owl I was rehabilitating in the barn. The cats and the owl had developed a contentious relationship, and I was considering moving the owl’s cage into the house. I knew the barred owl wouldn’t appreciate the noise, but Theo felt the owl was creeping in on his rodent turf. The horses were tolerant of the situation, but...
A loud knock sounded at the front door downstairs. Orion lifted her head and gave a small huff. With great drama, she pulled herself out of bed and minced out of my room to investigate.
I groaned and stared up at the ceiling. I untangled myself from the quilts as Theo jumped out of bed and headed for my closet, no doubt intending on filling my shoes with cat fur.
I grabbed a cardigan sweater to drape over my T-shirt and sweatpants, while the knocking became louder and more insistent.
“I’m coming,” I grumbled. I headed down the hallway, decorated with pictures of the generations of Summerwood women who’d lived in the farmhouse before me, watching with shining eyes. I made my way down the creaky stairs to the first floor. Through the leaded glass window in the door, I could see a silhouette there, a familiar one with a hat.
I opened the door to find a sheriff’s deputy standing on the porch. Dalton was my age, with grey eyes that could be the color of storms or the shine of freshly-polished silver. He’d been working all night, as evidenced by the stubble on his usually clean-shaven jaw. His brow was creased with worry. I hadn’t seen his face with that much emotion since we’d broken up six months ago.
Orion sat on the rug beside the door and peered at the deputy. Her right ear flicked. I smell blood.
“Dalton,” I said. “What’s wrong?”
He jabbed a thumb over at his cruiser, still running in the gravel driveway with the lights on, casting twisting shadows on the porch. “I’ve got a fox or a coyote...not sure which...but it was hit by a car. I hoped you would—”
“Of course,” I interrupted him. “Bring it around to the back of the clinic.”
I turned to rush down the back hallway, flipping on lights as I went to illuminate plaster walls covered with faded velvet wallpaper.
“What’s going on?”
I glanced back at my aunt, Celeste, coming down the steps. She was dressed in a black velvet robe, her greying hair braided down her back. She still wore makeup to bed, but it was a little smeared on one side. One eyebrow was comically lifted upward in a surprised expression.
“Dalton brought an animal hit by a car,” I said.
Celeste nodded sharply. “I’ll get the cauldron and the books.”
“Thank you.”
She retreated up the stairs. Orion, having lost interest in the situation, followed her. No doubt she would claim the enti
rety of my bed.
I opened pocket doors, managing not to smash my fingers, to what would have been a parlor in any other Victorian-era farmhouse. In the Summerwood home, it was the beginning of an addition that had become the veterinary office I ran. It wasn’t much: one exam room, a kennel room, an operating room the size of a closet, and a tiny sitting room. It wasn’t the veterinary practice I’d envisioned for myself once upon a time when I’d gone to veterinary school. Then, I had visions of working for a major metropolitan zoo or aquarium, doing dental extractions for lions or doing ultrasounds on beluga whales. But I’d wound up in the house I’d grown up in, warning small animal owners about pet obesity and checking horse teeth.
I unlocked the clinic door to find Dalton carrying a blanket-covered burden. He
followed me into the back operating room, to a stainless-steel table.
“I got a call about a car accident about forty-five minutes ago,” he said. “Family from the city traveling back from vacation hit something, and it was still moving. The kids were traumatized as hell.”
I slipped on a pair of Kevlar gloves and donned a thick leather apron and a plastic visor. With wild animals, I knew I had to be cautious. Sick and injured animals could lash out. I had the scars to prove it. Dalton had been brave to handle it.
I laid my hands down on the blanket. “I’m here to help you, okay?”
There was no response from the blanket. I unwrapped it slowly, revealing rusty blood stains, until I got to a filthy and bloody tangle of legs and fur. The animal’s eyes were closed, and I feared for the worst. But when I placed my hand on its ribs, I felt a flutter of breath.
The door to the exam room opened. Celeste appeared, carrying an iron cauldron. She had at least ditched the long black robe for a purple velveteen sweatsuit. But her eyebrow still crawled halfway up her forehead. She placed the cauldron on the counter.
She and Dalton exchanged uncomfortable glances. As she turned to light a candle in the cauldron, he gave me a look that said: WTF is she doing here with that witchy shit?
I deliberately did not answer the unspoken question. Dalton couldn’t resist, though, and said: “Really, Celeste?”
My aunt jerked her chin to him. “A little sage never hurt anything.”
Dalton rolled his eyes. He didn’t believe in things he couldn’t see. That was part of the reason we weren’t a thing anymore.
I didn’t have time for their squabbling. I turned my attention back to the animal. Though he was filthy and matted, I could see that he had a broken hind leg. It wasn’t broken at a joint, fortunately. Joints could be very difficult to repair, if they ever healed at all. I ran my fingers over his body. His abdomen was distended, perhaps full of fluid. That didn’t look good.
“I have to get him under X-ray,” I said. “See what I’m dealing with.”
Celeste flicked a few drops of moon water onto the unfortunate animal.
Dalton grimaced. “What is it, anyway? At first, I thought fox. Then, maybe coyote...”
I stared at it. Reddish-brown fur covered the animal, shading down to black on the strangely long legs. The animal was taller than a fox; I figured that it would stand about thigh-height. “Coyote. I think.” Truthfully, I hadn’t seen anything like it. But it didn’t matter what it was. I needed to get it fixed.
I didn’t like anesthetizing an injured animal. But whatever this was, it was a wild creature, and I didn’t want to add to its stress or get a hand bitten off. Even though I could talk to animals like Dr. Doolittle, wild ones did not trust humans so readily. It might seem unconscious now, but that could change at any time. I got an IV started with fluids, drew up some anesthetic, and injected it into the animal’s line.
Meanwhile, Celeste was muttering in the corner and arranging crystals on the counter. She had a remarkable ability to ignore Dalton’s irritated looks. In between the crystal fiddling, she got out a box of sterile gloves, prepped some syringes, and helped me wipe some of the blood from the animal. Dalton’s irritation seemed to dial down when he saw her doing something that had things to do with science.
I got the animal under the X-ray and frowned at the films. I was right about the rear leg break. That was nasty, but it was fixable. I would have to set and pin it together. But I also saw cracked ribs. With X-ray, it was difficult to tell what was going on with the abdomen. If I had an ultrasound machine, I might be able to see more clearly. But I didn’t. I was shooting in the dark. When I drew some fluid off with a syringe, it showed red blood, not bile. So that was something.
But there was something weird about his anatomy. He didn’t look like any coyote I’d ever seen. His anatomy was pretty close to canid—the organs were where I’d expect them to be in a large dog. But the legs were entirely too long for a coyote. They and the ear tips were black. Coyotes around here didn’t look like that. Maybe this one was an outlier. But it was certainly weird.
“How is it?” Dalton asked. “Was it shot?”
“No. I’m seeing fractures, internal lacerations, and blunt trauma injuries. But no birdshot or buckshot...why do you ask?”
“I heard gunshots when I arrived at the scene of the accident,” he said. “Distant, but there. Coulda been a farmer trying to scare this coyote off.”
“Or kill him,” I sighed. I was a country girl, through and through, but I disliked the idea of killing another creature because it was an inconvenience.
The radio pinned to Dalton’s shoulder chirped. “D-2, we’ve got a 10-5 at Rathbourne and 354. Copy.”
“Copy, Base. I’m en route in five.” He turned to wash his hands in the operating room's sink, deliberately dripping water on Celeste’s crystals.
I lifted an eyebrow. “Sounds like not much fun.”
“Car accident,” he said, turning to the door. “You got this little fella?”
“I got him. I’ll keep you posted,” I said.
He nodded at me awkwardly and left. Things were often awkward between us these days. As big as Gibson County was, you’d think it would be easy to avoid an ex. But that was not my luck.
I turned back to the canine. I sponged his wounds, mulling where to start. I decided to begin work on his leg. The rib fractures should heal if he was kept still, but a lame leg could cost him his life in the wild.
Celeste was mopping water off the counter that threatened to drown her rose quartz. “That man has no respect.”
“That’s not true,” I said. “He loves animals. He took a risk handling a wild animal like that. Anyone else would have let this little guy die. Or they would have shot him to end his suffering. He didn’t have to bring him here.”
Celeste huffed, sweeping her selenite wand over the prone creature as I scrubbed in to do surgery. “Well, it’s a good thing he did.”
“Remember that. If this animal makes it, it’s due to Dalton’s efforts.”
Celeste’s wand stilled, hovering over its ruddy fur. “This isn’t just a wounded animal. He’s magic.”
I paused in scrubbing under my nails. “What?”
“He’s magic. I can feel it.”
I rinsed and dried my hands, then got gloved up. “What do you mean?”
Celeste put her hand over his chest. “This. Feel it.”
I hovered my hand over the animal. I felt a warm tingle, like that one time I’d visited the ocean as a child, and the waves washed over my open hand.
My brow wrinkled. “How is that possible? Why?”
My aunt shook her head. “I don’t know. But you have to save him.”
I did my best. Celeste ringed the operating room with a circle of protective stones and called down the elements before I began. I stood before the table, within the circle, feeling the familiar warmth of Summerwood magic envelop me. I was grateful for any edge I could have in saving this life. Even if Dalton couldn’t see it.
As I worked on the animal, I confirmed my belief that he wasn’t a coyote after all. I asked Celeste to pull up pictures of canids on her phone, thinking perhaps I wa
s dealing with an exotic species of dog, some newly bred variety that we just wouldn’t see in the backwater of Gibson county. She scrolled through pages and pages before I saw something that looked familiar.
“There,” I said as I was suturing up his leg. “Stop.”
Celeste squinted through her glasses at it. “This is a maned wolf. From South America.”
I stared down at the wounded animal. “That can’t be it.” We were most decidedly in North America. But as I studied the pictures and anatomy diagrams, I became more and more convinced that he was something special, even beyond the magic my aunt had detected. Something that didn’t belong here.
I finished as dawn began to lighten the windows. In the distance, one of our roosters crowed. I cleaned up the animal as best I could. I wrapped him up in a blanket and put him in the largest cage in the back of the clinic, with his IV line snaking through the door to a pump machine standing outside the cage.
I knelt beside the cage and pushed my fingers through the bars to stroke the still-anesthetized creature.
“You’re gonna be okay,” I said.
But it wasn’t a promise I was sure I could keep.
The only other residents of the kennel room were a pair of guinea pigs I was boarding. The names their owners had given them were Blossom and Ginger, but that’s not what they called themselves. They preferred to be known as Beast and Goblin. Mostly, I think it was an effort to puff up their chests and give the illusion of courage in an unfamiliar environment. The little monsters stirred when the light came on and watched me with interest.
What is that? Goblin’s nose twitched. It smells like...predator.
“It’s okay, guys,” I said. “He can’t get to you.”
The guinea pigs fled to the corner of their cage, to a shoebox I’d placed there for them. From the depths of the box, Beast yelped: You’re not keeping it, are you?
“What? No,” I said automatically. “Once he heals up, he will...” and then I faltered. If he truly was an exotic animal, then I couldn’t release him into the wild. I would have to find him a zoo, or something, right?