by Laura Wylde
“I don't know, Rudolph, it could be. There are a lot of things in the woods that can get you. You can't go off into the Amazon and expect to come out unscathed.”
Rudolph nodded his head in agreement.
“There have been many things I have seen out in the forest that aren't supposed to be real.”
That got my attention, and I asked him what it was he had seen.
“I think you know what I'm talking about, Javier. I think you have come across them once or twice, all that time you spend out there.”
I played dumb and told him that I had no idea what he was talking about. Everyone in the town knew that we lived in the Amazon, but they didn't really know where. It wasn't like we invited people over, because we didn't want anyone to know where we lived.
“Well, since you are from around here as long as I can remember, even from when I was a kid, you know that the stories of Panthera and the panther shifters are very popular. It became somewhat of a local legend, and they are said to have magical powers. They live in an underground city in the Amazon.”
He was eyeing me in a way that I didn't like. I grimaced when he started to pull the bullet out. He never even asked me if I wanted anything for pain anymore, because I never did. I wanted to keep my wits about me, and I didn't like the feeling of modern medicine.
“Yes, I have heard the story of Panthera, but that's all they are, just stories.”
“Yes, that may be. Or maybe there is some truth to it and that is why we've had so many missing people lately. It seems like the more aggressive the poachers get, the more of them never come back. That can't just be a coincidence.”
He was getting into territory that I didn't want to talk about. I would never admit what he said was true, but at the same time I wanted to know what else he knew. I want to know what people were saying, to hear all the stories and see how close they were to the truth. There always was a sliver of truth to every story, every legend. It might have been the curiosity in me that wanted to know what it was they were saying. What our legends were.
“You know how people are, they always like a good story.”
And he started to pull the thread through the gaping hole that was left. He made a comment about what kind of bullet it was, but I didn't say anything. It was very clear to me that he knew everything. He knew exactly what was going on and all I could do was just pretend that I didn't know what he was talking about.
“Yes, they do like a good story. But that doesn't mean that the story isn’t true. I wish it was true, a shifter clan that was trying to save the Amazon. As much of it that is going away, millions of trees gone every year, we need somebody to step up and do something.”
“That is a lot to put on someone. Since they have never been seen, it would stand to reason that there aren't that many of them left. All the poachers out in the woods, killing all the panthers and taking their pelts. I would imagine that there aren't that many of them left.”
He had this earnest look on his face, and he tilted his head to the side.
“If that was the case, Javier, I would tell them not to worry, times are changing. They have a big change coming and as long as they stay open minded, they will be able to adapt just fine. Their numbers will grow again, and all will be restored. This land needs that, and nature always finds a way to replenish.”
Rudolph had stitched me up the whole time he was talking. He hadn't missed a word, or a stitch. Soon I felt his hand on my shoulder, my eyes finally pulling away from his, and I saw that he was done. He had really missed his calling. He shouldn’t be fixing cats and dogs. He should be fixing people.
I sat up on the short examination table and told him that he did a good job, like he always did. I could barely even feel the stitches as I moved around. The man was talented, and the wounds never did scar that badly. I was really more interested in what he had to say about Panthera and keeping an open mind. What did that mean? I wouldn’t have usually listened, but we were close to extinct. It wouldn’t be long if we didn’t get numbers back up.
“How much do I owe you?”
“I would do it for a story that you have. I have a feeling that you have a pretty damn good one to tell.”
I shook my head and told him that it wasn't going to happen. There was no way that I was ever going to tell my story, not even to him.
“I don't think I have a story today, Rudolph, but I do have some money. Will that work?”
“You know, I am going to be sixty-two years old in a couple of days, and I remember you when I was a child. You look the same as you did then, Javier. Nothing has changed with you, while time has ravaged my own body.”
I told him that since he was over sixty that his mind must becoming a little slower.
“How could I be around when you were a child, and I am in my thirties now, old man? You must be thinking about someone else in my family that I favor.”
“You're probably right. That was a long time ago.”
I gave him some money and left. I had a strange feeling that he knew more than he let on. I should have stayed and listened, but I wanted to get back to the temple. His patch up was still just a patch up.
He reminded me a prophet that I had met several hundred years ago, and they were quite right as well. What did he mean when he said that there was changed coming? Usually in my world, change is never a good thing. The only reason that we were still around was because of the old ways.
Whether Rudolph was right or not didn't really matter. I was still thinking about what he said when I ran into someone. She fell to the ground, and I could see that I had knocked the wind out of her. The woman was tiny, especially compared to me, and I extended my hand to help her up. When I bent down just a little bit, I got a whiff of her and I knew instantly that she was the woman from the night before in the forest. How did she get here so quickly?
“Sorry, miss. I didn't see you. Had my head somewhere else.”
“It's Kayla, and it's no problem. I was looking down, thinking about something else as well. You are quite solid, sir, it's like hitting a brick wall.”
I pulled her up and was quite surprised at how light she was. She was lighter than she seemed to be, and I felt a connection when our hands touched. It made me jerk her up a little too fast, and she fell against my chest. Both hands raised herself against me to right herself, and it didn't help. I know that I should have helped, but I didn't help at all. I liked feeling her small hands against my chest as her bright green eyes stared up at me.
“I have never seen you in the village. Have you been here long?”
“No, I just got here about a week ago.”
“What are you doing here?”
She was taken aback by my question and my forwardness. I am sure that wherever she was from, she was not used to people being so straightforward with her, but I knew no other way. I never had learned to silver my tongue and twist things around to make them more palatable.
“Well, I don't think that it is any of your business, but we are here looking for a temple. We found it, and now we're going to learn everything we can about it. It is quite extraordinary.”
She stopped all of a sudden like she just realized she wasn't supposed to be talking about it. I prodded her for more answers, but she had decided that she didn't want to say anything else. I didn't want her snooping around at the temple because she could find more than she bargained for. We lived there, all of the panther shifters did, and I was not going to let thousands of years of hiding go to waste by being found now.
“You shouldn't be out there in the forest by yourself. There are a lot of things that can hurt a pretty lady like yourself.”
“I have been in worse situations, and I'm never alone.”
“Don't you think that it should just be left alone? Maybe the ancient people don't want to be stomped on and have their things rifled through by the likes of you and your people.”
“Is that really what you think?”
I should have acted like it was
no big deal, but I wanted her to not go there again. I had to keep the entrance to our city a secret. I had to keep Panthera safe and that meant keeping it from the eyes of the public. It also meant keeping it away from people like her. She was too interested, looking for answers.
“I think that foreigners shouldn’t come here and try to dig up our past. You're not welcome here. You should take your people and go back home. That would be the safest place for a woman like you.”
“I have all the permits from your government, and I won't be going anywhere. I was brought here for a reason, sir, and I'm not going anywhere.”
She had seemed so serene moments before, but now there was a fire in her eyes that made me smile.
“Well, I don't want you to go anywhere. I just don't think you should be out there in the Amazon. It’s for your own safety that I worry.”
I had upset her. She turned around and walked away without another word. It looked like she was going to say something for a moment, but then she had snapped her mouth shut and gave me the dirtiest look.
That had not gone well. It was not at all what I thought would happen in my head when I saw her last night. There had been something inside of me that had awakened, but I was still more worried about her getting too close to Panthera. While I was trying to talk her out of it, some of the people in my pack would go to extreme lengths to keep us all safe.
Damien was walking out when she was walking away.
“That's the chick from last night, isn't it?”
“Yeah, she is the one who is camped out in the temple, and she made it clear that she is not going anywhere.”
“What is she doing here then?”
“I don't know, but we need to find out. I have a feeling that we better keep our eyes on her.”
“Sounds like a plan, Javier. Tyler and I were just talking about her. She is something else, isn’t she?”
I agreed with Damien. She certainly was something else, but not knowing what she was bothered me. All I could see was disaster in the making. Kayla was a walking disaster that we all decided to follow. She was a hurricane gaining strength, and we were walking in anyways.
Maybe that was why our clan was getting smaller and smaller. We should have walked away from the woman, the trouble incarnate, but instead we walked towards her.
Chapter 5
Kayla
I was getting a lot of mixed reactions that we were in the Amazon and we had found the temple. I wanted to keep it a secret, but they already knew that it was found before I got back, mainly because of the call we had made to the rest of the people back at the town. The rest of the team had celebrated and gotten a little too loose-lipped apparently. Now everyone knew and that was good and bad.
The bad came from that tall, dark-eyed man who had stopped me on the road. He wanted me to stop checking out the temple, and I hadn’t known why. He asked how I thought the ancients felt about it. It was a strange thing to say that I was trampling on the bones of a civilization from long ago. Why should we care? And why did he?
But that wasn’t all I heard about the temple. Some of the townspeople were quick to tell me that it wasn’t just a temple, but a whole city out there. They named it Panthera and said that there were many panther shifters that lived there.
While I tried to assure them that I hadn’t seen a city out there, it made me wonder. Ancient lore and stories were always fun for me, but this was different. The people here were very suspicious and convinced that I was treading on a civilization of supernatural beings. It was almost as unbelievable as the tales of mummies and curses that plagued the Egyptian communities. They still lived in the past as well.
I was waiting on the last go-ahead with Ethan from the company that was funding the expedition. I had sent them a few pictures of the walls that I’d taken the day before, and he was supposed to be calling me back.
I had just got done talking to another local about Panthera, and I was glad the phone rang to pull me away. It was just all too unbelievable for me. I didn’t believe in such nonsense, but I did believe that we had found something amazing and I was eager to get to work. This is what I was here for after all.
“Okay, Ethan, give me some good news.”
“I think you are the one who is giving me the good news. We don't know what the hell language that is, do you know what that means?”
I knew what it meant, but I still wanted to hear him say it. I wanted to hear him say that I had discovered a new civilization that no one had ever heard of before.
“It means, Kayla, that we are looking at something completely new. We have no idea what civilization you’ve uncovered or that there was even one there to see,” he said.
“Well, if you talk to the locals, the temple is the beginning of a whole city of panther shifters.”
“What?”
He sounded like he hadn't heard me, or he was still in disbelief as much as I was.
“You heard me. That’s the lore here about the place.”
There was silence on the other end for a moment, and I was a bit surprised because I had just been joking. There were all kinds of old stories out there that were far out of the realm of possibility. This, of course, was just one of them. But for some reason Ethan seemed to be taking it seriously.
“I would like you to leave someone in the town to get some of the stories from the locals.”
“Are you serious? I can’t really spare anyone right now.”
He said that he was, and I was a bit surprised about it. It wasn't very scientific at all and that's what I was here for. I wasn't here for some good stories from thousands of years ago.
“Yeah, I am serious, Kayla. I know that you think it's irrelevant, I can tell by the way you are acting, but if that is all we have to go off of, I want to hear it.”
“Is there something in particular that you are looking for?”
“No, why would you say that?”
He sounded defensive for a moment and then he relented.
“I have heard something about that before. It isn't the reason that I sent you out there, but I was curious. And to think that you actually found the place, and everyone around you agrees that it is shifters that occupy it, it makes me want to see what is real about it. There really is no telling what you stumbled upon out there in the Amazon, Kayla, don't you want to find out what it is?”
“Of course, I do, sir. You know that I want that more than anything else. But I think we need to stick to scientific information instead of listening to ghost stories and bedtime stories from the locals.”
“I would never ask you to do that. But I am asking you to leave one member of your team behind to do it for me. I know that's going to leave you a little short, but if you give me a couple of days, I will send another team your way. I feel like I'm going to put a lot of resources into you, we're going to get to the bottom of this.”
It was exciting that he was willing to go so far. I could only go as far as I was allowed to go by funding. Doing this, hiring people, was expensive business and it was also hard to get people to go off into the Amazon, especially when there were so many stories about the place that we were going to. I didn't even know if it was the same place that they were referring to, but apparently, they were already making the connection. I wished that people could have shut their mouths about our discovery until we had learned a little bit more.
I got off the phone with Ethan, and I had to say that I was a little upset with him. I felt like he was having me chase leads that were going to lead to nothing. It was just going to be a waste of time and now I was one person down from my very small team.
After I got the supplies straightened out and everybody was starting on their way back later that afternoon, I decided to go ahead by myself. I wanted to get back to the temple and see it for myself for a little while, feel the energy about it. I felt it the moment I had stepped into the clearing around the temple, and I was drawn to that feeling.
Starting down the path I was quickly learnin
g, I decided that I was just going to go in on foot. I needed some time to think, and I knew that was the best way to do it. There were so many things that I wanted to do, but sometimes I was held down by having a team behind me. I was the boss now, not the research assistant who could get lost in the hunt if I wanted to.
I wasn't paying attention, and again I almost ran into someone. It was like before, but this time I didn't get knocked on my ass. What I found strange was that one of the four men standing in my way on the path was the same man who had warned me against going into the Amazon in town. I never caught his name, all I had been able to focus on was the dark gaze that had been leveled at me. It made me shiver inside, and even thinking about it did the same thing now.
“What are you doing out here?”
“I think we need to talk, Kayla. I told you before that it’s not safe for you to be out here.”
“Yeah, and I told you before that nothing is going to stand in my way. This is a whole new civilization, and the world deserves to know about it. It shouldn't be hiding in the forest, hidden away where no one can ever find it or learn about it. Would it not be a worse disservice to the ancient civilization if the world doesn't even know it existed?”
“Sometimes it is for the best.”
I had no idea what he was talking about, but I could tell that he was going to make this hard on me. I didn't get what had him so worked up about it, but I didn't really care. He could be upset all they wanted to be, I was still going to do my job.
I started to take a step forward, and the four men in front of me started to walk towards me, making it so that I was even closer to them. I didn't like the way they towered over me, and I told them so. I wasn't usually wanting to confront someone, but since I was by myself, I was going to have to. I didn't want to show them that I was afraid, even though I was shaking inside. It wasn't from fear, it was from something else, something that I didn't understand and that was what I was afraid of. I was afraid of the unknown that was affecting me.
