“Yeah, and I think he planned it that way on purpose. You’re not going to like this.”
“Goddamit, can you just tell me what’s going on over the walkie instead of this cryptic shit?”
“I smell La Fuerza,”
Bradley’s face went pale. “You’re kidding me, right? I thought Yun-soo wiped out their headquarters on his last trip below the border. We haven’t heard a peep about them in ages.”
“I don’t know what to tell you, but I know what I smell. These guys were one of my very first Hunter missions back in the day, and there’s just some things you don’t forget.”
“Dammit, fine. We’ll all pull off so we can come up with some sort of plan. I knew the Aberrant was a sneaky, conniving bastard, but this is complex even for him.”
“I told ya, the longer we leave him alive, the smarter he becomes.”
“Yeah, I’m starting to get that. Issue the pull off order, over and out.”
He threw the walkie down in disgust and Jaelle finally felt her curiosity get the better of her. “Who or what is La Fuerza?”
“It’s a gang of sorts,” Bradley answered, his voice terse. “Usually they like to stick to the deserts, but they’re known to occasionally travel where the winds take them. They were a real issue about ten years back, getting themselves involved in the slave and weapons trade.”
“Slave trade?” she repeated. “That’s a thing?”
“It was for a bit, but eventually it evolved into just butchering their captives and selling them to mystics and medicine men who sweat by certain bits of Shifter anatomy being the ultimate medicine for this or that.”
“That’s… that’s disgusting.”
“You’re not wrong. The Clan Leaders sent pretty much all the Hunter cells south to deal with the issue. They were scattered to the four winds, but there’s been rumors of a resurgence as of late. I didn’t think this would be something we’d have to face, and yet here we are.”
“Not to mention that they have a habit of destroying any nearby clans and kidnapping their children to sell off,” Javier added from the back.
“So, these guys are bad.”
“Exceptionally bad,” Bradley confirmed. “They never travel in packs of less than ten, and they’re masters of sabotage. Pitfalls, explosives, hostage situations. You name it, they’ve got a guy who’s killed a thousand people that way.”
“A thousand people? Are there enough of us Shifters in the world to survive those kinds of numbers?”
“Of course. How few of us do you think there are?”
She shrugged. “I dunno. I wasn’t exactly raised in the community.”
“Figure one out of every thousand or so humans is a Shifter, with more being born every day. Plus, La Fuerza target humans just as much as they do Shifters. Legend says their members in half-shift are what started tales of el Chupacabra.”
“Well that’s daunting. And we’re about to go into territory they’ve set themselves up in?”
“Seems like it.” He finished pulling to the side and threw the Jeep into park. “Could just be a coincidence though.”
“But is it ever actually a coincidence?
His lips straightened into a hard line. “Nope. Usually not.”
It took a couple more moments for the rest of the convoy to safely make it to the side of the road. When they finally were all piling out of the cars that were left in the mini-vehicle train, Jaelle couldn’t help but notice they were all wearing grim expressions. They knew that if their leader was calling for an unscheduled pullover that something serious had to be up.
“Everything okay?” David asked, immediately crossing to her and wrapping an arm around her waist.
“Eh, that remains to be seen. Right now, we’ve got some bad news.”
“Great. It’s been less than one day and we’re off to a great start.”
“So what’s going on, Bradley?”
“La Fuerza,” he answered shortly.
A chorus of curses rolled through the Hunters, some of which Jaelle had never heard before. It took a solid thirty seconds before Bradley got them to cool down again, but the air was still charged with energy.
“What are we going to do then?”
“Dannon, can you scent how long it’s been since they were here, or how far they might be?”
“For time, I would say twelve hours. As for distance… that I can’t tell ya.”
“Great. So, they could be anywhere.”
“Yeah, from what I’ve heard La Fuerza can run for miles in a single day. More than any wolf or bear.”
“I… I think I might be able to help on that part.”
As if on cue, all of the heads snapped toward Jaelle.
“What are you thinking?” Bradley asked.
“I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess that these slaving, murdering gangsters aren’t exactly concerned with equality.”
“I’m not following.”
“They’re all male, right?”
“Almost exclusively, yeah.”
“Right. Well, I can be a bit of a lure then. Nothing gets the attention of a male-only crew of criminals like a female Shifter in heat, right?”
“Wait, you can do that?”
“With my human body, no. But I’ve been lucky enough to volunteer at an animal rehabilitation center where I was able to run into females that were in heat, pregnant and going into whatever the animal version of menopause. Now, I can take on my form as needed.
“It’s even helped me get away a few times. Nothing slows down a group of hunters more than an in-heat female pissing all over the trail they were following.”
Bradley shook his head although the look across his face was one of utter respect. “You really are something else, you know that?”
She flushed, but tried to play it cool. “You don’t live to be the oldest Aberrant in history without having a few tricks up your sleeve.”
“But you’re willing to risk your life?” he continued. “It’s one thing to do what you have to because you’re on the run from Hunters. It’s another to willfully walk into a death trap with a bunch of rabid monsters lurking in the woods around you.”
“Yeah, well whatever gets the job done, right?”
“I mean, why not?” another Hunter offered. “We brought her along to give us an edge. So, let her give us an edge.”
Bradley looked uncertain, but surprisingly it was David who piped up, “If Jaelle says she can do it, then she can do it.”
“That’s right,” she added, trying to sound as confident as David made her out to be. “And I can do this. So let me.”
Bradley let out a long breath of air. “Allright then. Well, if we’re going to have bait, we’re going to need a trap.”
*
Jaelle trotted along, her small feet making almost no noise in the forest floor.
It was a bit colder than she liked, but not terrible. A certain need rumbled in her belly, pushing her to keep moving.
A fullness reached her bladder again and she stopped to relieve herself against a tree.
So far, it had been pretty anti-climactic, trekking through the woods and marking everything she reached. The only thing that gave it any sort of pizzazz was the urgent need to be filled again.
Fortunately, it was nothing like slipping into one of her feral states, so it wasn’t the worst thing in the world. It was just… unpleasant.
Then again, depending on how this whole trap thing went, it could get a whole lot more unpleasant.
It was hard to keep track of time in an animal body, but Jaelle began to grow hungry. When was the last time she had had a complete meal? One not from a gas station and filled with enough preservatives to make sure her body stayed intact for years after her death? Would it be so wrong to find a little nibble? She hadn’t eaten raw in at least a couple of years.
The smell of a squirrel drifted across the air to her and the rumbling in her stomach grew even stronger.
Without even th
inking about it, she turned in the direction of the scent. Nothing like a bit of tasty protein to keep her going strong.
Her steps picked up in pace, food tantalizingly close. All thoughts of the mission and being bait and everything else began to fade now that she was on the hunt.
Until, of course, a very particular scent drifted across her nose.
It was another coyote, male and decidedly aggressive. Would he be a strong mate? She’d have to give him a good sniff to find out. After all, if she was going to have any sort of progeny she needed to make sure that their genes were—
Whoa! What was she thinking? She was getting too lost in the animal form. Normally that wasn’t something she had problem with, but normally she didn’t trot around as an in-heat animal with a thirst for a little one on one action.
She needed to get her head straight, and fast. Already she could smell more male coyotes pouring into the area. She picked up speed, leading them toward the choke point where the rest of the Hunters were waiting.
She was close, just a few more minutes and she would reach them—
Her feet landed on a slab of stone that instantly started to give way. Her claws skittered across the stone, but before she could recover, both she and the rock were falling.
Down she went, tumbling as the ground collapsed underneath her. Roots and bugs cascaded down on her heat and a coyote scream burst from her mouth. She lost her grip on the edges of the form. She slammed into a rock only for her paws to turn into human hands and feet. She got caught in a bough of brambles and her tail turned into one like a rat. By the time she finally stopped, she was a strange mishmash of features that would have horrified even Picasso.
“Ow…” she groaned, slowly finding her human form and lying in the dirt. “Where am I?”
She wiped the grit from her face and looked up. She could see a sliver of sunlight up above, but it was much too far to reach. At least until she recovered enough to take on a different form.
Since that was a no-go, she took a moment to look around. She was in some sort of cave, but it didn’t look like it was made out of rock, rather loosely shifting dirt. That could make things tricky.
But still, she’d been in worse situations. This was nothing that a good effort couldn-
“Did you see where she went?”
“No, but the punta can’t be far. I can smell her like she’s right on top of me.”
“Play your cards right, and she will be on top of you, eh.”
...well, shit. That was just going to make things complicated.
Chapter Eight: Stealth Run
Slowly, she found her focus and transitioned into a groundhog. She supposed a mole would have been more apt, but she had never seen one in person so she couldn’t shift into one. The rules were prickly like that.
Keeping her hearing tuned to what was happening above her head, she trundled along, looking for a way out. She could still turn this around, all she needed to do was get herself back to the surface without tipping anyone off to her whereabouts, make sure she had the proper distance so they couldn’t surround her, then still channel them into the trap the other Hunters had set up for them.
It’s no big deal, right?
It felt like a very, very big deal.
But it wasn’t like she could just stop and throw the towel in, so she kept on.
For being an animal with ‘ground’ literally in their name, she was having a hell of a time climbing upwards. Her little feet and huge behind seemed good for channeling through earth, but not really that great at going upwards. She could feel her furry body growing tired very quickly, but it wasn’t like she could return to her human form halfway up the crevasse she had wandered into.
Finally, the faintest scent of fresh air drifted across her little snout. Clambering upwards, she wiggled and waggled, passing up plenty of tasty clover and coltsfoot roots as she went. It seemed to take forever before she finally crested the last line of dirt and waddled to the closest tree.
She could smell that she was surrounded by predators, but none of them seemed to be coming directly toward her. That was good. The best way to have them lose her scent was to take to the sky, get her bearings and find where to go next.
She slid into her human body, bones creaking and popping in protest. She had never shifted so often, into so many different creatures and it seemed her anatomy wasn’t super thrilled about the endeavor. Once this was all over – if they didn’t kill her on sight once the mad Aberrant was defeated – she was going to take a long soak in a very hot tub.
The thought made her smile and gave her enough energy to take on a bird form, her body shrinking down then taking on wings.
Hmm, maybe she should have climbed the tree before shifting, as it always took so much energy to get to the air from the ground. Grumbling to herself, Jaelle forced herself to flap harder until she caught an updraft and took to the sky.
Crap, she thought to herself once she was carried high enough. She was must further than the choke point that the Hunters had set up. Would they lose their patience with how long she was taking? Would they think she had betrayed their little pact and run off into the woods?
She hoped not. She dreaded to think what would happen to David if they thought she had truly bailed.
Which meant she needed to hurry.
Gathering her strength, she guided herself to the next current, and then the next. She thought about broadcasting her thoughts in that strange, slip-shod kind of way that Shifters had, but from this range it meant that any Shifter who was close by would be able to hear them, and that was the opposite of what she wanted in a stealth situation.
God, this was so much more complicated than making it on her own. There were so many variables and lives to consider. How did the Hunters do this on a day to day basis?
She didn’t know, and she hoped she wouldn’t be stuck with them for so long that she had to find out.
Switching to another current drew her that much closer and she could feel hope come back. She was almost there. However, as tempting as it was to feel like she was in the clear, she couldn’t allow herself to get too comfortable. Although this coyote gang didn’t have an avian form, that didn’t mean the sky belonged to her alone.
Almost as soon as she thought the words, she heard a familiar whooshing of displaced air. Banking hard, an arrow shot past her and up into the sky.
Dammit!
The last time she had been hunted like this was when she had been mistaken enough to take on the form of a Canadian Goose on the east coast. If there was one thing she learned, anyone who lived in an area that was “upstate” hated the birds with a virulent passion. She had learned hard and fast then how to avoid the deadly bolts, but that didn’t make it any less terrifying now.
Another bolt flew past her and she knew it wasn’t safe. Whether she was being specifically targeted because the gang knew she was a Shifter, or just because they were hungry didn’t matter. Both had the end result of her dying a painful death. And not from the arrows, either, but rather the sudden impact of hitting the ground.
Tucking her wings into her sides, she dove down, racing toward the tree-line. The arrows picked up in frequency, the shooter of them no doubt growing more desperate and irritated that she kept evading them.
Against all odds, she reached the canopy. The moment her little talons landed on a branch, she birdie-ran to a thicker branch then returned to human once more.
Jaelle paused for the briefest of moments, realizing that she was dripping sweat and utterly exhausted. She knew she couldn’t stay in one place for long, but she still wiped her face with her shirt. Through the magic of shifting, it wasn’t that filthy considering the literal hole in the earth she had crawled through, but she didn’t have the time to think about it. Questions like that for when she wasn’t yet again running for her life.
Her break was up. Taking another deep breath, she switched into a form of a squirrel. Suddenly, everything was both very exciting and very intense. Sh
e had forgotten what it was like to be in the mind and body of the bushy tailed version of a hyperactive tree-rat with ADHD She took off, lightning in rodent form, racing to the thinnest of branches and leaping tree to tree.
She was covering distance at a great pace, even though her body was equivalent in length to a size nine shoe. Her little heart thundered away like an entire percussion line that was playing an aggressive crescendo, but that just made her rush faster.
Her vision was just a blur of green and brown, and yet somehow her brain could recognize the perfect path to go. She could hear some howling of coyotes below. They were still on the trail she had left at the start of the whole fiasco. That was good; at least all her faffing about wasn’t going to ruin the plan she and the Hunters had made together.
Her squirrel body also didn’t falter, like it had its only little nuclear reactor of energy in its center. It took her in a straight line toward the Hunters without a single fault, until finally she reached the edge of the trees.
This was it. Taking a chittering gulp, she didn’t even hesitate for a second. One moment, she was running along a branch. The next, she was leaping into the air.
Her furred little body flew like it was her bird form, and for a moment she felt almost majestic. She picked up speed as she grew closer to the ground, but since her tiny little squirrel self was so small, it didn’t pick up momentum like it would if she were larger.
Jaelle waited until the last moment, the brown and green moraine of the forest floor rushing to meet her, before returning to her human form and tucking forward.
In a move that probably shouldn’t have been possible, she hit the ground but rolled, using that to kill her speed and force until she stopped in a crouch, only slightly muddy and worse for wear.
“Jaelle?”
She looked up to see both David and Bradley looking at her in concern. She had made it!
…wow… she had made it.
Shakily getting to her feet, she stumbled the last few feet to them, the farmhand quickly catching her as she collapsed into his warm and safe arms. She probably could have stayed standing for a few more minutes, but why bother when he was so strong and there?
The Aberrants Box Set (Books 1-5) Page 18