The humans, and there were lots of those roaming the aisles, mostly nodded and said hi, some of the women smiling at him but never approaching. None of the humans he encountered were tainted with the distinctive fizzy orange scent he associated with magic users. To everyone else mages appeared human. At least until they unleashed their weapon. Nathan was one of four Enforcers, no, he amended, now three, since one was missing presumed killed, that could smell expended magic.
Since the bear wasn’t talking, Nathan used his time to add to his knowledge of how humans thought and spoke. It had been ten years since he’d spent any time at all among this many and that was in the Army. He’d never been surrounded by them without a common mission—get through basic training, get through the damn valley, get through the goddamn war alive. He’d much prefer to be on the hill watching from afar but he didn’t have a target yet.
Nathan scanned to find Cass, something he’d found himself doing frequently throughout the morning. The confusing woman never stood still. She reminded him of a hummingbird, frail yet frenetic.
Throughout the day he’d seen her ride horses, lift and drag ten foot poles in the arenas to set jumps for instructors, and scoop up a little girl who had bounced sideways off a horse as it trotted. He watched her cuddle the child, wipe her tears and pretend to reprimand the speckled, stout horse. A minute later the kid was giggling and was boosted back into the saddle. He overheard her mediate a heated argument between a tiger and the bobcat, Vivi. He didn’t hear her words, but their low murmur was soothing and by the end of the conversation the two women walked down the aisle hip bumping each other playfully.
A hundred yards away he spotted Cass with her legs dangling off the back of the white flatbed moving slowly down the driveway. Her blond hair was covered by a hot pink baseball cap and she held the cotton lead ropes of the four horses following. She saw him, grinned, and then gave him two tangled thumbs up. Without thinking, Nathan pointed to the tear in his jeans then pointed at her.
She threw her head back and laughed. The sound was musical to Nathan’s ears and at the same time punched him in the gut. Two of the horses slowed and nearly pulled her off the truck. He heard her laugh again then scold the offenders which then obediently caught up.
He inhaled deeply but the wind was wrong to smell her intoxicating scent of lavender and lemon. She was a small boned and weak human, but also fearless and trusting; a dynamo of energy yet vulnerable, perhaps even ill. This slightly odd woman had unknowingly surrounded herself with predators and humans alike. Given the behavior of her staff, he was sure she had no clue they were nearly all Joined, the true name for their kind.
Shapeshifters and humans gave Enforcers a wide berth as a rule, humans not even knowing why they crossed the street or moved their seats. Yet Cass had poked him, mocked him, and called him names. She intrigued him. And she thought he had a tingly voice. He wasn’t exactly sure what that meant but it sounded like a compliment.
A water bottle thunked at his feet. Ozz said nothing. The bear hooked a size 15 boot on the bottom rung of the weathered pasture fence next to the barn, took a long pull of his own water then leaned his large forearms on the top rail. He stared in Cass’s direction, the truck not visible now past the bend in the driveway. Nathan wiped the condensation and dirt from his bottle, drank half, then mirrored Ozz’s stance.
The bulk of the hundred-acre property was spread out in front of them, six huge grass pastures, the ground rolling and dipping gently. He knew Cass’s house was hidden behind the tree line that followed the creek on the right. Horses grazed, wind blew, dogs barked. Eden on the surface. What would arise when he scratched it?
Nathan had to play this carefully. Over the past few hours he’d observed how the big man watched out for Cass; taking the handle of the wheelbarrow loaded with bales of hay she was struggling to bump over a doorway’s threshold, pushing apples and water bottles into her hand and using his cold stare to divert an asshole lesson dad obviously hungry to add the woman to his string of conquests.
Although all her employees seemed to watch over Cass, Ozz was literally her strongest protector. Ozz rolled the nearly empty bottle between his huge, calloused hands, the thin plastic cracking and popping. Yeah, Ozz could probably take him and his wolf, but not without dying or at least wanting to.
Nathan waited for the bear to speak. Grizzlies weren’t known for their sparkling conversation skills. They were, however, very well known for their slashing and killing anything in their way skills. In all his years as an Enforcer, this was only his second encounter with the reclusive shifter species. The first one hadn’t ended well for either of them.
“Why are you here? And before you try to bullshit me, I know who you are, Destroyer,” Ozz said, his voice low and dangerous although his dark eyes were calm as he turned his head to meet his gaze. Nathan didn’t flinch at the ridiculous nickname. He’d heard it before. In the Endless War against the magic-users he was the Enforcement Agency’s deadliest weapon, eliminating more of their enemies—magic-users, the foul hybrid Omegas working with them and even shapeshifters who lost control of their beast—than any other Enforcer. He wasn’t proud of it. He wasn’t ashamed of it. It just was.
“I’m investigating a murder,” he said. Ozz waved his hand with impatience.
“Bullshit,” Ozz said, his voice taking on a rumble that didn’t bode well for Nathan. “No human has been reported hurt. The body in the forest preserve was pack-killed, just pack taking care of pack. It is done every day. No business of EA’s.” Ozz’s face was grim. “So I ask you again, wolf. Why are you here?”
Nathan hid his surprise. The bear knew of the coyote shifter’s death. Was he pretending not to know of the missing heart?
Two days earlier Nathan had been pulled from a job in Indiana, a silver mission—meaning extermination—for a Lost coyote shapeshifter. Or a suspected Lost shifter anyway. He’d followed the shifter for two days and never saw him transform at all, much less in front of humans. He didn’t seem Lost. He seemed clean, wholesome even. And with a kid, for fuck’s sake. A kid who wasn’t mentioned in the EA brief. That meant his boss, Daryl Issing, was either misinformed or had flat out lied to him. Since the former was improbable given what happened to those who lied to the EA, that left the latter, which made Nathan unsettled and edgy.
When Issing called Friday afternoon to pull him, Nathan had already decided to delay the coyote’s extermination. A delay, he told himself, was not outright defiance of an order.
Five hours after Issing’s call he stared down grimly at the photos of a distorted corpse lying on a fluffy yellow comforter. The forest preserve district officer, named Daniel Turner and another goddamn coyote, had said no words, just met him on the porch and handed him two items; a metal container and a packet of pictures.
The first photo showed the body was definitely male, fairly young, early 20s. Pack-killed. Skin, tissue, and muscle were a shredded mess, his left leg almost completely torn off, and his throat nothing more than a dark, gaping hole echoing the empty space in the chest cavity where his heart used to be. Nathan’s pulse picked up.
The process of returning to animal form, if a shapeshifter was unfortunate enough die in his human form, happened quickly. The photos caught the man halfway through it; frontal bone receding, nose and jaw lengthening, fur sprouting haphazardly on the cheeks, limbs retracting, the torso already narrowing. A small white scar, perhaps from an ill-advised silver piercing, was still visible on the right nostril.
Could still be a pack-kill, if Turner could explain the missing heart.
“Did you get a sample of this?” He pointed to a tiny pale smudge on the right leg and arm. It was a long shot but worth asking. In his experience, coyotes weren’t the most observant species, more concerned about socializing, gossiping, and getting back to the party.
Turner drew on a cigarette, back rigid against the buffeting gusts of wind. He was tall and leanly muscled, dressed in a dark blue uniform, black gloves covering his
hands. His sandy blond hair was shorn, like Nathan’s. Must be required for the job as forest preserve district officer, Nathan thought, because the coyotes he’d met and killed were shaggy headed.
“It’s in the tin, in a plastic bag.” Turner’s voice was icily polite. Nathan grunted, surprised.
“How’d you find the body?”
“Issing called.”
Nathan said nothing, relying on the coyote’s natural wariness of his wolf and the shifter’s fear of being labeled “unhelpful” to the EA to persuade him to talk. With a jerky movement, Turner stabbed the cigarette in a bare planter now littered with a half dozen butts, his distaste at Nathan’s presence barely disguised. Yeah, the guy wasn’t happy at being forced to cooperate, but he would. They all did, eventually.
“This is a loose pack but he’s not one of ours as far as I know,” Turner said through a clenched jaw. Nathan nodded. He made it his business to know the area. The Chicago pack covered a thousand square miles, one of the largest shapeshifter territories in the country and bizarrely, the most populated by humans. Hell, Chicago alone accounted for almost three million humans. Add in the surrounding counties and the number jumped to nearly ten million. Coyote shifters entering this territory had to check in with the alpha, which happened to be Turner’s cousin. Nathan waited for more in silence.
“And he definitely didn’t lose a challenge to our alpha.”
There it was. A tremor of excitement buzzed through him which shoved his prior unease with Issing out of his head. Winning alphas tore out and ate the hearts of the losers, a bloody but effective tactic to deter other aspiring alphas. If this was a pack-kill for some transgression, perhaps showing Lost symptoms, the heart wouldn’t be missing. No, the only other reason to take the heart would be for blood magic, and that could be his Omega, just as Issing suspected.
Showing none of the blood lust roaring in his head, Nathan requested, nicely for an Enforcer, a map of the forest preserve marking the spot where the body was found. Turner raised an eyebrow and motioned to the swirling wind raising vortexes of last year’s leaves and twigs then scattering them in all directions in the front yard. Presumably it was doing the same thing to the crime scene.
Nathan grunted. “Yeah, I’m that good.”
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