Raptor's Peak: Switch of Fate 4

by Grace Quillen

  Aven stopped walking. “What do you mean, gone?” They knew vampires were hunting women here. Had they started doing the same out West? But Dakota was a shifter. Half-breed, sure, but if she was half the beast that Dallas was, vampires wouldn’t have been able to get near her.

  Dallas replied, “She met some guy. Some shifter. He showed her a picture that got her all turned around. She quit her job, Aven. All she ever wanted to be was a cop, and she quits?”

  Aven didn’t see the reason for the urgency Dallas was feeling. The idea of cutting ties and leaving town had never been that big a deal to Aven. Freedom was like flying: always worth the consequences.

  “Sounds like she fell in love, D,” he said.

  Dallas started arguing before Aven finished. “She didn’t quit for the guy. She quit for the picture. Some stupid thing called an ‘in-grav’.”

  Aven froze. Dakota had seen an Ingrav, the symbol that represented all the shifters and switches of The Cause, all the way in Arizona? The Cause was lighting up. Very good deal.

  “I swear, man,” Dallas was saying in his ear. “She sounded like she was joining a cult. That’s not Dakota. She’s stubborn once she makes her mind up, but she’s solid. Predictable. Until now.”

  “What’s the favor?” Aven said, buying time to think about whether he should tell Dallas about The Cause.

  “By the time she called me, it was done. Too late to talk her out of it. House packed and on the market, mail stopped. I can’t go after her myself. I’ve got…” Dallas hesitated, holding himself back from spilling something.

  Before Aven could pry, Dallas continued. “I have an appointment I can’t miss.” His voice dropped. “But she said she’s coming your way. Can you just find her? Check on her? Make sure she’s not... in trouble.” There was something he wasn’t saying, but Aven let it slide. Dallas had his reasons, he always did.

  Aven made a quick decision, missing his friend. It would be good to see him again, and if his foot was better, there was no reason to not get him out to Nantahala. “Brother, it's all good. Not only will I find her, but I’ll do one better. I’m going to send you a link to check out.”

  “You part of the cult, too?” Dallas asked, his tone turning curious.

  “Just look at the link,” Aven said.

  Dallas grunted. “I’ll send you a picture.”

  “I’ll text you when I’ve got her.”

  Dallas grunted again and hung up. Immediately, the phone beeped.

  The picture filled his screen, a stronger, more beautiful version of the face Aven remembered. Dakota Manteo had a wide, steep jaw that clashed rebelliously with full, sensuous lips, both features accented by her chin-length, dark brown hair and cocoa eyes.

  Too bad she was his buddy's little sister. Otherwise, he would enjoy seeing if he could lure her away from whatever guy she'd hooked up with. Aven loved female cops and soldiers, thought it was sexy as hell the way they handled themselves, in or out of uniform.

  As it stood, he would keep his hands to himself.

  Chapter 3 - Catbird Seat

  Dakota let her body press against the passenger door of her own Mustang - “Luxe”, she called the car, like it was her baby - as the driver took a tight turn on the winding road. They were speeding through the Nantahala Forest, along a road that would surely lead to everything Dakota had ever wanted.

  Dakota had never let anyone but her brother drive Luxe before. She wasn’t sure why she’d made an exception for the admittedly-sexy-but-not-her-type male shifter behind the wheel. So far, she wasn’t regretting it.

  “She handles like a dream,” Maze, the guy in question, said. Rushing air from the open windows made him raise his voice to be heard. Dakota arched an eyebrow at him. Luxe was cherry from fender to muffler, thank you very much.

  Except for his silky black, long-to-his-ears haircut, Maze looked like former military, and like Stuart Reardon, the rugby player-turned-model. His angular jaw and the distinguished silver at his temples made him a knockout.

  Dakota knew he was a shifter, but not what kind. If she had to, she’d guess Maze was some kind of wolf. His arm muscles were big, like all the wolves she’d known, but the rest of him was leaner, like a cat. He was something strong and fast. She had pulled him over for speeding back in Arizona, almost a week ago, when she’d still been a state cop. Dakota wished she could label him with one whiff, but her nose had never worked right.

  Now here they were, sharing the first day of the rest of her life.

  Dakota tried not to think about the life she’d left behind without so much as a second thought. As if he’d read her mind, Maze looked over with a half-smile. “I’m glad you came along. Something big like this, it’s good to have a friend.”

  Dakota blinked hard. Somehow, this guy she barely knew always got straight to the heart of everything. He’d done it the entire car trip from Arizona to North Carolina, but only about her. If Dakota asked a question about him, he always deflected it so smoothly that she didn’t realize until later she hadn’t gotten an answer.

  She shook her head and threw him a dirty look, irritated that she had to spill her secret already.

  But Maze was a good male, and she trusted him with the secret. No sense trying to hide what he might already suspect. Maze had named her animal as a jaguar moments after they met, which meant he’d scented her human half, too.

  “I’ve never shifted,” she said plainly.

  The mood in the car changed.

  Dakota explained quickly. “My dad was pure, though. And my brother shifted late - in his twenties.” She dropped her voice. “Because of a vampire.”

  She hadn't told Maze that part before. He'd mentioned the scent of pine and bitter herbs the very first day they met, but it had taken another day for him to say the word "vampire,” to her. Most shifters had never seen a vampire, and many didn’t believe they existed, so Maze was careful who he used the word around.

  Dakota believed in vampires, had believed from the moment Maze had connected the word with the scent of pine and bitter herbs. She’d made her brother, Dallas, tell her a story about that exact scent a dozen times over the years. The scent of pine and bitter herbs had forced Dallas into shifting for the first time as an adult, when they’d both almost accepted it would never happen.

  Dallas had described the scent repeatedly, detailing the way it pushed into his nostrils, seeming to cause him to shift immediately and like he’d been doing it his whole life. Almost like he was surprised into it. He had never known why, had never said the word vampire, but they’d speculated endlessly. In Dakota’s world of mostly humans, no one had ever said the word vampire in a serious way. Until Maze.

  Now Dakota was hoping the same would happen to her, if she could just get close enough to a vampire to give it a shot. She hadn’t told her brother where she was yet, because if she knew him, he would not be able to get past the word vampire, and would aim to keep her from trying.

  Maze looked at her with new understanding in his eyes. Dakota saw it clearly. She nodded once, tightly, without speaking. Yes, that’s why I came. Why I dropped everything to go on this crazy trip after I saw the Ingrav on the papers in your car and you mentioned pine and bitter herbs.

  Maze appraised her for a long time before he said, “That’s not the kind of thing to tell people where we’re going.”

  Dakota knew that. Growing up, she had literally had dirt kicked in her face over being a “half-breed”. But she wasn’t giving this up.

  Maze flinched at her dirty look. “I’m glad you trust me,” he said, hesitating. “But maybe you shouldn’t.”

  “Maybe I’ll shove my Glock up your ass if you try anything,” Dakota said grumpily. Dakota always trusted her gut and her gut trusted Maze. Besides, she did have the sidearm strapped to her ankle. And she did know how to use it.

  “Kinky,” he joked back, and just like that, they were okay again. Dakota settled in her seat to watch the endless evergreens whisper past.

  “You
know many raptors?” he asked, surprising her with the question.

  "As in velociraptors? Sure, a few."

  Maze fake laughed like he’d heard that joke before. “No, smartass. Shifters who are birds of prey. Eagles, falcons, hawks, owls… I get the feeling you’ve never met one before me.”

  Excitement swooped through Dakota and she couldn’t help but grin. No, she had never met a raptor before. Shifters were few and far between in her life. She’d only met mammals before, and all of them through her brother Dallas.

  “You’re the first raptor I've ever met,” she said.

  He raised his eyes and nodded, watching the road. “Would you believe me if I told you we have special senses mammals don’t have? We can sense a person’s ‘vibe’, like their innermost thoughts leaking out around them. It can tell us their emotions, intentions, even if they’re lying.”

  Uh oh. Dakota considered his statement for a long time, weighing everything she’d observed about Maze so far. Yeah, she believed it.

  “So what are you?” she finally said. “Hawk? Eagle?” Something big and badass, she knew that by looking at him.

  He seemed surprised. “You don’t know?”

  “Not yet.” Dakota should be able to scent a shifter in any crowd. Her brother Dallas was half-human, too, but he’d always been able to scent. Not Dakota.

  She never explained why, confident that if she could just shift, just one time, she could figure it out. Dallas had helped her through childhood scrapes with other shifters, worked out secret signals. Dakota was done with that. She would shift or die trying. That’s why she was here.

  Maze muttered something that was lost to the wind, but Dakota was pretty sure it was about scenting vampires. She shook her head. She hadn’t even thought of that. Would she be able to do that?

  The day Dakota and Maze met, on the side of the highway, he’d told her the Ingrav was part of his research. When Dakota asked what kind of research, all he would say was, “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.” Those words echoed in her mind as he maneuvered Luxe around the winding forest road. He was a mystery, this Maze.

  They were deep in the forest now, looking for the restaurant that Maze had said was “the place” for shifters to go when they first rolled into Five Hills. Dakota was glad she wasn’t going in solo. Half-shifters weren’t guaranteed to be welcome by pure shifters.

  Dakota scanned the roadside ahead, looking for signs for the Bear Claw Diner. On the right, in a paved shoulder overlooking a bend in the river, sat a dark blue sedan. There was no reason for it to catch her eye, but it did, and it was... wrong. Whoever was inside there was up to something, Dakota knew it. She twisted in her seat as they passed, eyes glued on the interior of the car. She wasn’t a cop anymore, and yet, she couldn’t stop being a cop.

  A man behind the wheel. Longer, brownish hair pulled back into a too-fancy man-ponytail. A glare in the window obscured his face. He gripped the steering wheel with both hands.

  He didn’t move, but she felt like he was looking right at her. Off. Off! The need to check him out screamed in her bones, until she had to admit it wasn’t cop habit, it was... Instinct? Was she finally feeling real Instinct?

  Then they were past. Dakota relaxed in her seat, trying not to notice Maze noticing her. He hadn’t had any special interest in the car. She breathed deep, saw the sign for The Bear Claw restaurant.

  “There it is!”

  “Nice,” Maze breathed. He slowed her baby and pulled into the parking lot, gravel crunching as he inched forward and stopped.

  They got out of the car and fell into step side-by-side, following the smell of good food cooking. Both of them stopped in their tracks when the restaurant’s full sign came into view, with its forest green font next to an image of three claws ripping through the wood of the sign. Three big claws.

  “Whoa,” Maze said, in a reverent tone, his eyes on the sign. “You feel that?”

  Dakota sure as hell felt something. A stirring in her soul that told her this was where she belonged. She was born to be part of what Maze called The Cause, whatever it turned out to be. This feeling was what had made her pack up, sell everything, and head east with a perfect stranger.

  Dakota looked up at Maze. “I do. It’s… what? Destiny, right?”

  Maze laughed. “I was going to say hunger.”

  Dakota punched him on the arm and he laughed again.

  “Bullshit,” she said.

  They went inside.

  Chapter 4 - Birds Of A Feather

  Inside the diner, a small sign next to the hostess stand read: Please Seat Yourself. The smell of comfort food welcomed them. “Smell that?” Dakota said, her mouth watering.

  Maze grunted. “Right? They must have every species of shifter come through here every day.”

  Oh. Right. That, too. Dakota got busy on her own surveillance.

  There was a young female standing behind the cash register, surreptitiously scrolling her phone, her jaw working a wad of gum. At the other end of the counter space, through a swinging door behind which Dakota could hear kitchen sounds, came an older Latina woman with a round face and straight black hair that ended halfway down her back.

  The younger female heard the noise of the woman behind her and startled, dropping her phone into the pocket of her apron. She grabbed a rag in front of her and started wiping down the counter.

  The older woman’s dark eyes fixed immediately on the younger female, as if drawn by her conspicuous moves. She called out, “Nice try, Brittany,” to the young female’s back, then deposited a tray of pastries in the display case. She walked back to the kitchen with a teasing smile.

  Maze leaned in close, so only Dakota would hear him. “Brittany’s like you.”

  Dakota looked at him. Did he mean-? Maze nodded, his eyebrows raised as if to say, Good news, you probably won’t get your ass kicked just for being half-human.

  Only one other person was in this area of the restaurant. A striking female sprawled casually at a small table, her feet on the chair beside her, reading a book. She was small-framed, probably shorter than Dakota, but her arms and shoulders were ripped, showed off by the man’s white tank she was wearing. Her platinum bob and tan skin made her distinct. Her muscles marked her a badass.

  Shifter, was Dakota’s first thought.

  Females shifters were even more rare than male shifters. Dakota had never seen one before today, even a half-human. She wished her stupid nose worked, so she could be sure.

  Maze picked a table in a far corner, herded Dakota that way. They sat down. Maze beat her to the chair that could see the front door and out the window. She saw him check out Luxe in the parking lot, doing exactly what Dakota would do if she had gotten that chair first. She shrugged. He could have it.

  That left Dakota with a view of the empty restaurant. She would watch the female and try to figure out what kind of a shifter she was.

  An employee pushed through the door from the kitchen. A tall, lean man, with black hair that swept across his head and managed to shadow and yet enhance the planes of his face.

  Maze’s low whistle sounded in Dakota’s ear, then his voice, tighter than usual and somehow impressed. “Couple of big cats,” he said.

  The male bussing the table leaned over to gather flatware and glasses, and the woman at the table finally looked his way. She smirked. Checking out his ass, it looked like.

  Until her hand shot out and came back with a notebook from the rear pocket of the guy’s shorts. The female was up and taunting him in a second. “Say you’ll go and I’ll give it back.” The male glared and lunged at her, but the female darted around tables to evade him, staying just out of reach. She gave him an intense look. “Come on. It’s not going to kill you.”

  Dakota watched, insanely interested, not even pretending she wasn’t watching. Maze stared out the window, but his face said he was catching way more than she was.

  The guy didn’t say a word. He grabbed for his book, eyes shooting daggers. T
he female was backing up, closer and closer to Dakota.

  Dakota didn’t think, she grabbed. Instinct, one might say, even if she wouldn’t. Surely her Instinct wouldn’t have told her to do something so colossally stupid as snatch the book and toss it back to its owner, and yet, oh shit, she did exactly that.

  The female she’d grabbed it from turned to face Dakota, her hand held up like it still had a book in it, her face incredulous, her aggression restrained, but barely. “Who the hell are you?” she demanded.

  Dakota squared off. She had no choice. This was not going to be good. Maze pushed his chair back, but Dakota shot him a look. Stay out of it.

  The other guy moved in fast, inserting his shoulder between Dakota and the other female like a brick wall. The shorter woman shoved at him unsuccessfully. Her voice turned petulant. “Dammit, Ry. Move!”

  Dakota immediately knew she’d fucked up. These two were close. She should have known. Way to make an entrance.

  “Sorry,” she apologized. “I don’t want any trouble.” She tried to sit down, but the other female wasn’t having it.

  “Who are you?” she demanded again.

  Dakota stuck out her hand to the male first, hoping it would cool the female. “I’m Dakota Manteo.” She jutted her thumb over her shoulder at Maze, who had stood and was walking up beside her. “This is Maze.” The dark-haired guy, who so far hadn’t said a word, shook her hand with a nod, then shook Maze’s.

  The tough blonde shoved her hands in her pockets and backed up. Dakota relaxed. A little.

  “That’s Ryder,” the female said to Maze with a lift of her chin.. “I’m Shiloh,” she finished.

  Dakota nodded hello but Shiloh wouldn’t look at her. Maze took a swing at breaking the iceberg. “We just rolled in. This is where the website said to come.”

  Ryder’s mouth curved in half-smile, but Shiloh’s face screwed up tight. “You’re here for The Cause?” She looked Dakota up and down, her nostrils flaring. “You aren’t a shifter,” she finally said, a sneer in her words.