The Aberrants Box Set (Books 1-5)

by Sarah J. Stone

  “What happened out there?” Bradley asked, concerned as he grouched beside them.

  “The ground collapsed.” She breathed, just happy to be back. “I think it might have been a trap that they were trying to build, but hadn’t finished.”

  “A trap? So, then they are building some sort of stronghold.”

  “Or they’re here specifically to slow us down,” she offered. “For all my running around, I didn’t smell any sort of settlement, or even some sort of place they’re dumping their waste. I got pretty far, I would say a couple miles, and they were scattered all over the place without form or order.”

  “So, then they’re not here for a power coup or resource grab.”

  “They probably are, it’s just not their primary concern. If we have any doubt that this isn’t somehow the Aberrants work, now’s the time to put those away.”

  “Good to know,” Bradley said with a nod, patting her shoulder with assurance. “You did good, Jaelle. Hopefully they’ll be chasing your scent in circles and that will leave them congregated in one spot.” He looked back to his men, who were looking on with only mild interest. They probably just thought she was dramatic, but she’d like to see any of them do what she did without losing their gourd. “Gear up, men, and try to mask your scents. It’s time to see if we can teach these coyotes that it’s not that much friendlier north of the border.”

  Chapter Nine: This Town Ain’t Big Enough

  Jaelle hung toward the back, growing more and more uneasy with every step she took away from David and Dannon.

  The Hunters had taken up a very broad, spaced out formation, but it was a formation nonetheless. Javier and another Shifter were at the forefront, about a hundred feet apart in their differing forms of a bobcat and a wolf.

  Bradley and the others took up the middle wave, spreading out in a V almost as wide as a football stadium between the three of them. Then again, they were a bear, a tiger and a timber wolf, so if they were going after a stealth angle, the distance was necessary.

  Jaelle herself was just patiently trotting up the rear as a coyote, trying to arouse as little suspicion as possible. She was hoping that since the Aberrant hadn’t told David that she would be traveling with the Hunters, that he had assumed she’d escaped in the cacophony of his attack. And if he thought that she was somewhere, roaming free, then he probably hadn’t told these coyote gangsters about her either.

  David wasn’t happy with being held back, but what did he expect? He couldn’t hold his own in a massive Shifter clash and there was nowhere we could get him the high ground for cover with the coyotes scattered so haphazardly throughout the territory. So, his job was to wait at the convergence point with gun loaded in case they needed a hasty retreat.

  Which, you know, they hopefully wouldn’t.

  How often had she thought that word recently? It seemed far too much of her life was hanging by a threat and a slim chance lately. She hoped that was a pattern that would end soon.

  All of her senses were on high alert as they crept forward. The goal was to take out as many as they could before the bastards figured what was going on and an all-out brawl broke out. Sure, while coyotes might be small, they were incredibly vicious. And if any of the fight went into half-shifts, they were incredibly quick and agile fighters. When one added the booby traps which may or may not be peppering the forest, it made the situation that much more dicey.

  Then she heard in. It the distance there was a half-hint of a grown then the crunch of bones snapping. Quickly, the warm scent of coyote blood drifted on the breeze.

  And if she could smell it, so could the others of La Fuerza.

  Howls began to pierce the air all around them. It wasn’t an allout alert, but they knew one of their own had been attacked and were closing in to provide aid if needed. That gave the Hunters very little time to react, other than to try to kill any coyotes that crossed their paths on the way to the scent. Otherwise, the two Hunters that were in the center were in quite of a bit of a pickle if they ended up surrounded by half-shifted fighters.

  She picked up her pace, heading straight for Bradley who was at the center of it all. She just wished they weren’t so far apart. The part of their plan that had been for their own safety seemed to be backfiring quickly.

  She could hear the coyotes closing in on each other, racing to help their fallen brethren. At the very fringes of her senses, she thought she might have heard a tiger hiss, but it was impossible to make out over what was happening closer to her.

  The running slowed, the rhythm switching over from four small palls to large, human feet. Dammit, they were half-shifted.

  She sprinted as hard as she could, heart in her throat and her mind ahead of her body. Her blood was rushing in her ears and her coyote senses were screaming that there was danger ahead and she needed to stop.

  But she didn’t.

  She crested a small hill, bounding over a line of bushes, then burst through a thick glen of young trees. As she landed on the ground, she skidded to a stop, the world falling into quiet.

  Bradley was just a bit ahead of her, metamorphosing from bear form into a half shift.

  Her breath caught in her throat as his fur fell away and he stood in his complete glory. He was taller than his normal body, and thick, black claws tipped his fingers. She could only see his profile, but his forehead was extended almost primitively, not quite like a caveman, but speaking of something both primitive and dangerous. Fire red eyes burned below his thick, overgrown eyebrows, and his cheekbones stuck out almost painfully from his skin.

  It was a terrible, frightening form, and yet it stirred something within Jaelle. Something primal. She wasn’t sure if she wanted to challenge him or be submissive to him by rolling over and exposing her belly. Thankfully, this wasn’t the time to decide.

  A branch cracking pulled her focus back, and she shook her little furred head. There were several other Shifters around, and they were closing in on the man.

  Bradley roared, sending shivers down her spine, and that seemed to set the attackers off. They converged on him all at once, not following the standard movie one-at-a-time rule for bad guys. Jaelle was sure that Bradley was good, but there was no way he was one-against-ten good.

  It looked like it was time for her to do something about it.

  Sometimes she wondered what it was like for the few people who had accidentally ended up in fights with her, and now she definitely couldn’t help but ponder what La Fuerza thought of the situation.

  One moment, they were rushing forward, about to take down a lone maverick of a bear Shifter, the next, a hippo was charging them out of nowhere, knocking them this way and that.

  It was hard not to be power drunk as she barreled through the attackers. She was a massive, powerful hunk of animal and the only thing she craved more than short grass was the blood of her enemies. After all, hippos killed more people yearly than crocodiles.

  Her teeth chomped down on what was probably an arm… or it might have been a leg – did it really matter? – and her mouth filled with blood that was almost as red and frothy as the sweat that dotted her hide.

  “What the hell are you covered in?” Bradley yelled around a laugh.

  Sweat! she responded in the strange, borderline telepathic ways that Shifters had.

  “Hippos sweat red?”

  Hippos sweat red.

  “Well, damn.”

  She laughed to herself, which sounded like a coughing bray mixed with a trumpet trill, and charged another coyote Shifter. He was smart enough to dodge out of the way, and one of his buddies jumped on her back.

  She felt tiny little pinpricks in her skin and it would have made her laugh if she was able to. Instead of rearing back, or otherwise trying to fight, Jaelle just rolled.

  If there was one thing most people would be surprised by – other than the massive death toll that hippos racked up yearly – it was how fast the blubbering death-monsters could move. One moment, she was upright, the next, she was
on her back, and the next she was on her feet again. There was a crunch somewhere in the mix of that, but it didn’t concern her too much.

  More footsteps came rushing forward and Jaelle turned to them, ready to have some more fun. She was losing herself in the pure adrenaline of her animal form, and why not? She was so tired of being powerless. So tired of being careful. It was nice to bite and rend and destroy. Almost a little like a cosmic payback for everything that she had endured.

  “Jaelle! They’re ours!”

  Well, she probably shouldn’t kill them. Then again… did they really need all of their limbs? They were in her territory after all, so they owed that to her.

  “Jaelle!”

  Oh, right. She took a deep breath and let go of the tons of raw power and adrenaline below her. In a ripple, her body returned to human and she half-sighed. She hoped she wasn’t getting addicted to Shifting. That was a dangerous road and she was sure was one of the first steps toward Aberrant madness.

  “That,” one of the Hunters breathed. “Was amazing.”

  “Thanks,” she murmured breathlessly. “Always happy to be of help.”

  “Why hasn’t the guy we’re chasing ever done that? I’m pretty sure he could take us all on.”

  “Probably because he’s never seen or interacted with one,” she answered. “In order to Shift into other animals, you have to know them.”

  “And how exactly did you get to know a hippopotamus?”

  “When I was seventeen, I spent a year hiding in a zoo as different animals. You can learn a lot that way.”

  “A zoo, really?” Bradley asked, looking to her dubiously.

  She shrugged. “You do what you gotta do. It got me off the Hunter radar for a while.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “Still, though,” Javier said, coming up behind her to clap her back. It was a little harder than necessary, but she guessed that was just macho-Hunter culture and not some sort of passive aggressive act. Like smacking each other’s butts in a sports game, maybe? She didn’t really understand a lot of human traditions like that. “That was pretty incredible. How come you didn’t pull that out on us?”

  “Didn’t have the energy to,” she answered with a shrug. “Speaking of which, I kinda need food. Immediately.”

  “You’ve certainly earned it.”

  Right as Bradley was going to give her his own pat on the back, the walkie on him crackled. He pulled it from his belt, concern evident on his face. “What is it?”

  The first thing we heard was a gunshot and my stomach might have dropped down all the way to China. “I don’t know what the hell you guys are doing, but we’re about to be surrounded!”

  “Surrounded, what are you talking about? We’re standing knee deep in La Fuerza bodies.”

  “Then they had a whole lot more than any of us scented.” More gunshots. “We need you, now! The human says they’re pouring out of everywhere and gaining fast.”

  “Gaining? What do you mean, gaining?”

  “Well… I’m kinda driving while the human hangs out of the passenger side and yells directions to me while shooting.”

  “Why are you driving!?”

  “It’s a long story! Just hurry!”

  The line went dead and there was the tiniest fraction of a second as they all exchanged glances. Then, all at once, they broke out in a sprint for where they had left David and Dannon.

  For all the time that it had taken them to reach the first coyote, it took them less than a couple of minutes to see where they had left the cars. The problem was there was a particular car missing, which just so happened to be David’s truck.

  “This way,” she said, following the tracks.

  She knew that all the Hunters were probably more than capable of following the wide tracks, but she didn’t care. She was at the head of their little sprinting formation, so they got all of her unnecessary comments as their booted feet propelled them forward. It seemed all her life of running made her slightly faster than the heavier, stronger men. Well… stronger in their human forms.

  Then she saw it up ahead. The truck, not going as fast as it could, but definitely plenty fast, considering a blind man was driving it. There was a literal horde of half-shifted attackers behind it, all of them armed with their own guns as they ran after it.

  At least they had terrible aim. As Jaelle closed in, she could see that the sides of the truck were riddled with bullets, but La Fuerza hadn’t even been able to take out the back windows. It was a Shifter critical weakness. Too much reliance on claws and uncanny strength, and not enough on actual firepower.

  But there was one thing they had down, and that was staying aware of their surroundings. Despite the fact that they all were firing off deafening guns, running after a truck on an averagely upkept road and yelling orders to each other, Jaelle could see the exact moment one of their noses twitched and a furred, fanged head turned to see them.

  Well, it looked like the element of surprise was gone.

  He snarled something and suddenly several of them stopped running, turning with their guns raised.

  “Watch out!”

  Jaelle dove to the side just in time for a hail of bullets to cut through the middle of their running formation. She heard cries as one or two Hunters hit dirt, but she didn’t have time to pay attention to any casualties.

  Rolling forward, she shifted into a weasel, skittering along the ground and behind the stopped group of Shifters.

  Thankfully, David noticed the arrival of the cavalry, and she could pick up about every other word that he yelled to Dannon. Suddenly, the trust stop, then began rapidly backing up, the farm hand still hanging out of the passenger’s side and firing with one hand.

  Several of the horde still following the truck were hit, and the rest began to toss themselves out of the way. It was the perfect distraction, and she ran straight in between the two groups of La Fuerza.

  Somehow, none of them noticed her. But she supposed people rarely paid attention to their feet when they were in the middle of the firefight. She reached the edge of the group that was standing their ground and firing at the Hunters, then transformed.

  Her first choice was the hippo again. Although she was a bit worried about how easily she had slid into bloodlust, it was just such a powerful form. But when she normally felt a rush of energy as her body slid, popped, cracked and expanded into a massive animal, this time nothing happened.

  Crap, she was too low on energy to call on such a large form. She only had a second to think of something else before she was noticed or stepped on, so she just rolled with it.

  Literally.

  Tucking herself forward, she began her somersault as a weasel and ended it as a human. It would be nice if she didn’t always have to return to her default body between changes, but that was the way being an Aberrant worked. A chink in the armor, so to say.

  A warning snarl came from the half-shifted coyotes around her, but by then it was too late. Her form was growing more muscled and her legs were bending an unnatural way. By the time she stood, she was fully animal and raring to go.

  “What the he—”

  She rocked back on her tail and kicked with all the power she had in her. The coyote went flying and she felt a familiar rush of satisfaction. While they weren’t the biggest animals in the world, one didn’t mess with a kangaroo if they didn’t want their sternum kicked in.

  She heard someone level a gun behind her and whirled, boxing at their body with her muscled arms and sharp, kangaroo claws. Sure, she had picked this form for its power, but also for the absurdity. She was sure that La Fuerza had never encountered a ‘roo other than the television, and most people didn’t understand that the marsupials were another species that could easily kill a human without breaking a sweat.

  Too bad Shifters were much more difficult to take down.

  But it seemed like she had bought enough time for the rest of the group to catch up, because suddenly she was surrounded by demi-furred men wit
h fangs and teeth who were attacking the rest of La Fuerza surrounding her.

  Abruptly the whole world was a wild cacophony of animal sounds. It was like someone took a National Geographic special and put all the noises up to eleven.

  But the blaring sound of a car horn broke through the maelstrom and Jaelle craned her head to see the truck was still barreling toward them, David taking pot shots at what La Fuerza he could establish clean line of sight with.

  Then it happened.

  They exchanged glances, him somehow knowing it was her in her tawny furred, muscled body. He gave her a little nod, then focused back to his shooting. But that split second was all it took. One of the half-shifted had the wherewithal to come up alongside the truck and dove for the farmhand. In one breath, he was no longer in the car and Dannon had no guide.

  David! she cried. Or rather, her mind did, but she knew everyone within the glen could hear her echo through their minds. That was the funny thing about Shifter communication in animal forms. There was no whispering.

  She bolted forward, her powerful legs crossing the distance in just two hops. The smell of blood was rife in the air and she felt a furor descend on her like no other.

  Of course, the coyote heard her and jumped to his feet to attack her. Jaelle tensed, ready to rip him limb from limb and douse him in a pain so intense that his ancestors felt it, when several shots sounded, the Shifter slumped forward, three bullet holes in his back.

  The rest of the battle didn’t matter anymore. Not to her. She had given the Hunters enough of an advantage anyways. The only thing that mattered was David.

  She practically fell out of the kangaroo body, reverting to human so fast that her back cracked along each vertebra.

  “David!” she choked again, tears welling up with a vengeance. “David, are you all right?”

  He groaned, trying to smile at her, but blood leaked from the corner of his mouth. That was decidedly not good. Either he had bit his tongue, or there was a puncture in one organ or another that was allowing blood to pump up into his mouth. And judging from the deep, deep lacerations in his middle, one seemed more likely than another.