Roc

by Robert M Kerns

  Rory nodded and gulped a swallow. He turned to walk toward the barn and waved for us to follow him. Karleen and I trotted along in their wake, giving them about a ten-foot lead and then keeping pace with them. I didn’t see either deputy move, but my ears told me they followed at a respectful distance.

  The barn was a large structure that matched any ranch barn I had ever seen, whether in pictures or old Western movies or TV shows. Painted the stereotypical red with white trim, it had a set of massive doors at the front and back, and I saw both were open as we approached. Eight of Rory’s ranch hands sat atop horses. Three of the horses had tan coats with blond manes and tails. Two had a blue-gray base coat with black spots. And the last three had coats that were deeper browns with black manes, tails, and ‘boots.’ Or did horse people call the different coloring on a horse’s knees and hooves ‘socks?’ I wasn’t sure. I never grew up around horses.

  We were thirty to forty feet away when the wind shifted, and we were suddenly up-wind of the horses. Within seconds, all of the horses became restive. The ranch hands started trying to keep the horses calm as we continued to approach.

  About ten feet later, the situation worsened. All the horses snorted and started making noises, and two of them—a blue-gray with spots and a darker brown with black boots—pawed at the dirt. The other horses started stepping forward and back or side to side, despite the best efforts of their riders to keep them calm.

  We were maybe twenty feet away from the horses when one of the tan ones reared. The ranch hand kept his perch, but when the horse reared a second time, she hit the ground. The horse dropped back to the ground and pivoted, then hopped over its former rider and charged through the barn. The last I saw of it, the horse jumped over a fence and vanished from sight. My shifter hearing told me it picked up speed fast.

  At least the other horses handled me and Karleen well enough. Oh, sure… they were restive, but none of them panicked like their associate just did. We stopped around fifteen feet away from them and sat on our haunches. Over time, with treats and calm assurances from the ranch hands, the horses even seemed to calm and steady themselves.

  “How many horses did you need?” Rory asked.

  “Just four,” Alpha Steve answered. “Me and my deputies plus Wyatt’s sister.”

  Rory nodded, then replied with a new question, “Does the sister have any experience riding?”

  Both Alpha Steve and Rory turned to look at me, as if I could somehow answer them as a Smilodon. I did my best to shrug and hoped it conveyed something akin to ‘how should I know.’

  “Right,” Rory remarked. “I’ll see she gets the most sedate, well-behaved, and reliable horse we have. I’ll also speak to Cindy about bringing along a ranch hand or two to help with the horses. She didn’t say anything about hearing a vehicle, but they had to have something better than feet. We would’ve found them already by now, otherwise.”

  I felt something off to my right that made me think of Vicki, and I suspected she just broke whatever magical effect masked any tracks or scent trails the abductor left. Not seeing anything else to do at the barn, I stood and padded off toward the ranch house’s backyard. Karleen soon arrived at my side, and my ears told me everyone else in our little group fell in behind us.

  A rail fence—much like every other fence I had seen so far—blocked off the backyard from the rest of the immediate property. Karleen took off at a sprint and cleared the fence with apparent ease. The part of me that was always a big cat gave me the impression we could do the same, but the only thing I could picture in my mind was catching one of my paws on the top fence rail and bringing a whole section down. I didn’t want to add fence repair to Cindy’s already horrible day, so I trotted to the gate I saw further around the yard.

  Cindy and her sisters led Vicki and the rest of Wyatt’s hunting party into a substantial backyard that looked to be almost sixty feet square, enclosed by a rail fence. A small patio with a roof and outdoor furniture extended from the back of the house, and a permanent circle made of brick with a blackened grill on top occupied the far right corner of the patio from the house’s door.

  To Vicki, the magical effect blocking tracking smothered the area like a thick, suffocating blanket. She stepped past Gabrielle and the sisters and walked to the center of the space. She closed her eyes and concentrated on the magic. Yes… it was definitely created by some hedge magician’s charm, and she fought the urge to sneer. Those pathetic street hustlers had no business playing on the same field as true Magi, but like her grandparents had waxed eloquent many times since Vicki began her studies, not everyone was fortunate enough to be born a Magi. Vicki suppressed a growl that would’ve gone well with the suppressed sneer, then took a deep breath and shook her head as she cleared her mind.

  “Well?” Gabrielle asked just as she approached the calm serenity she preferred for casting.

  Vicki opened her eyes and turned to her audience. She offered her perky, happy cheerleader smile, saying, “Oh, it’s the work of a hedge charm. When I break the masking, there should be plenty of residual scent and trail to track whatever idiot did this.”

  Lyssa angled her head to the side, frowning. “Why do you say the abductor was an idiot?”

  “Hedge work is third-rate magic at best, and whoever created the charm that did this…” Vicki clenched her jaw for a moment. “…there are Magi children just nearing puberty who could create a better masking effect than this. If the situation were not so grave, I think I’d feel offended.”

  Gabrielle and the lioness sisters shared a look before Gabrielle said, “So, it won’t be any more difficult to break than the mask at the nanny’s house?”

  Vicki snorted. “I could break this with the cantrip they use to teach dispelling.” Vicki’s expression became thoughtful, and she tapped her chin. “Matter of fact, I think I will.”

  Without further ado, Vicki pivoted on her heel and lifted her staff until she appeared to be something like an odd mirror to the Statue of Liberty. She took a breath and rattled off a handful of words like a machine gun. The crystal atop her staff flared brighter than the sun for a split second, and in the blink of an eye, the backyard lost its pristine appearance. The grass and sod sprouted missing divots and gashes where Bonnie must have dug her feet into the lawn as she fought her abductor, and the gate lost its latch.

  Gabrielle turned to the sisters. “Cindy, do you have a scent article for Bonnie?”

  “Yes, of course.” She darted into the house.

  “Vicki,” Gabrielle began, “would you gather our clothes into our packs, please? This duffel has Wyatt’s and Karleen’s with room for mine.”

  Vicki nodded and accepted the duffel, while the guys—Earl, Paul, Buddy, and his posse—stripped and shifted. Gabrielle followed suit, and just as Cindy returned with a pull-over hoodie, Karleen as a dire wolf leaped over the fence and trotted up to Gabrielle’s jaguar and sat on her haunches. Moments later, a sabertooth cat nosed the backyard’s gate open and trotted up to Karleen and Gabrielle also.

  Lyssa’s sisters gaped at Wyatt and directed incredulous expressions to her as they pointed at him. Lyssa just smiled and nodded as Vicki gathered Gabrielle’s clothes into the duffel. Alpha Steve, his deputies, Rory, and the ranch hands arrived with the horses as Cindy approached Gabrielle with the hoodie. Earl, Paul, and Karleen moved in to take their own sniffs of the hoodie, too.

  As the bears moved deeper into the backyard toward the gate, Rory said, “We lost Sugar. Wyatt came within about twenty feet of her, and she dumped Daisy to the dirt and bolted, tack and all.”

  “Is Daisy hurt?” Cindy asked.

  Rory shrugged. “Just her pride, and maybe a bruise or two. Nothing serious. I figured we’d put Wyatt’s sister on Mabel, since she’s best with new riders, and I’d take a couple ranch hands along on the other horses.”

  Megan took the hoodie and zipper bag Cindy gave her and pushed the hoodie inside before sealing it as Cindy walked over to Rory.

  “No, my
sisters and I will take the other three trail horses,” Cindy countered. “We all grew up riding, so we can keep an eye on Vicki and help her if she runs into trouble.”

  Vicki looked up from where she was putting a person’s clothes into the proper pack, saying, “Oh, you don’t need to worry about me. I’ve been riding horses since I was little.”

  After she finished collecting the clothes, Vicki walked over to where Karleen and the two bears milled about near the gate. “Well, how about it, team? Do you have a scent trail?”

  Both bears and a dire wolf turned to her and made obvious nods to answer ‘yes.’

  “So, we’re ready to go?”

  Another obvious nod to answer ‘yes.’

  Vicki turned back to the rest of us and said, “Well, folks, what are we waiting for?”

  That set off a flurry of activity during which those still bipedal with thumbs moved packs to horses, and everyone gradually gathered outside the fence gate. As soon as Alpha Steve, his deputies, Vicki, and the sisters sat astride their mounts, Alpha Steve spoke in a raised voice, “Okay, let’s go hunting!”

  The bears set off a shambling jog that we had no trouble maintaining. Karleen trotted behind them, then Gabrielle and I, before the rest of our hunting party spread out behind us. The occasional equine sound told me the horses still weren’t too comfortable with me, but I didn’t hear any shouts of alarm. So, they must not have been too unhappy.

  The tracks that even I could follow soon met tire tracks, and the bears stopped for a moment. One took deep breaths with his nose held high, while the other sniffed the ground. After a few moments, they turned to each other as if they somehow communicated before taking off at that shambling jog again.

  The tire tracks were obvious as we progressed through the ranch’s fields and pastures, but we soon came to a creek or river. It looked to be about thirty feet wide but seemed shallow. One of the bears dove right in and splashed his way to the far bank. He walked that far bank for about twenty feet in either direction before coming back to us. He shook his head to communicate ‘no,’ and the bears set off on the ranch house’s side of the waterway as it meandered in a generally southwest direction.

  We followed the waterway—whatever type it was—for quite a while until we arrived at another crossing. This time, even I could see tire tracks on the far bank, leading out of the water, and I resolved myself to getting wet just as the bears sent huge plumes of water into the air as they charged across. The water barely covered my paws in most places, but I seemed to have inherited the near-universal dislike of being wet that most cats have. After climbing out of the crossing, I stopped to shake off the excess before running to resume my position beside Gabrielle.

  * * *

  The bears led us at a steady pace, relentless in their pursuit of the scent trail, and only the top quarter or so of the sun remained above the peaks of the Rockies far to the west when the bears slowed to a stop. One of them took the time to tamp down a circle of the brush that surrounded us before he shifted, and Earl motioned for us to gather around him as he crouched. The riders dismounted and fixed weights to one of the reins before joining the rest of us.

  “Okay. The scent trail is getting really strong, and I think we’re close. I’m also smelling wood smoke and hints of gasoline. I think there’s a cabin somewhere close. But that’s not why I stopped.” Earl pointed to the south with his right arm. “I smell water that way. Is there a river or a lake over there?”

  Lyssa and her sisters looked to one another as Alpha Steve pawed at one of the pouches on his duty belt.

  Cindy said, “I don’t know how far south we are, but we’ll come to Pawnee Fork eventually. Could that be the body of water you’re smelling?”

  Alpha Steve produced a decent handheld GPS, and I heard it beep as he powered it on. After a few moments, he said, “You’re right, Cindy. From the looks of the map, we’re no more than a tenth of a mile north of Pawnee Fork.”

  “Didn’t Oliver have a fishing cabin or something somewhere along Pawnee Fork?” Megan asked.

  Cindy frowned, her brow furrowing with thought. “Yes, but I’m pretty sure it’s in the next county over. Uncle Steve, we may be outside your jurisdiction.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” Lyssa interjected and pointed at me. “If we’re not in Loch County anymore and the local sheriff gets wound up about it, he—or she—can take it up with Wyatt. The Shifter Council named Wyatt Consul of the Shifters of North America, so as long as we’re between the Arctic Ocean and the southern border of Mexico, we’re inside his jurisdiction.”

  Well, damn… maybe this ‘Consul’ thing wasn’t so bad after all.

  Without another word, Earl shifted back to his grizzly bear, and we set off on the scent trail once more. One thing I learned over the course of the afternoon and evening was that grizzlies can be quiet, no matter their size. Don’t get me wrong; compared to me and especially Karleen or Gabrielle, they were noisy. But… I had to concentrate to hear them over the horses behind us. I was not expecting that.

  The sun had well and truly set by the time we broke through the underbrush on the edge of a clearing. It looked to be seventy-five to a hundred yards on a side, and the centerpiece of the clearing was a cabin that someone converted into a rough, two-story house at some point in time. Its origins as a cabin were obvious, because the oldest lumber in the construction showed its age more than the rest. A chimney rose up the side of the structure closest to us, and it spewed a thick steam of smoke into the sky. Flickering lights through the windows led me to believe lamps or candles or something of the sort lit the interior. Each visible wall of the house sported at least two massive floodlights, large bowls or bells and looking like the massive lights used in the old-time school gymnasiums. A four-seat side-by-side sat in front of the house, and scattered throughout the yard within about twenty-five yards of the house, many posts supported even more of those floodlights, four per post.

  We were still looking the place over—or at least I was—when motion above the cabin’s porch drew my eyes. A window right over the center of the porch eased open, and a person clambered out and onto the porch roof. As the person moved more fully into the light from the overhead full moon, I decided the person was a female who was roughly adolescent in age.

  “Bonnie,” I heard Cindy gasp behind me, just as the teenager neared the edge of the porch’s roof.

  We all watched in silence as the would-be escapist’s feet slipped out from under her. She hit the porch roof with a thud that even we heard—well, at least we shifters—before rolling off to land on the ground with a slightly more muffled thud. The young lady pushed herself to a sitting position and shook her head as she rose to stand. She had moved from sitting on the ground to kneeling with one knee on the grass when the house’s front door opened to reveal a man’s lanky frame.

  The man looked over his shoulder and shouted, “Dammit, Ollie… she’s free!”

  22

  I erupted into motion, and it took all my willpower to keep from roaring my challenge to the heavens. The non-aggression pact the horses and I enjoyed was still new enough that I wasn’t sure it extended to them not minding if I roared. At my second stride, I approached the bears’ hind quarters, and I extended all my claws, tearing up the sod with my extra traction as I shouldered my way between them.

  As I ran toward the house, my shifter hearing picked up a faint, “Well, don’t just stand there. Go get her!”

  The voice was so faint that I decided it came from deeper in the cabin, and the man in the doorway charged across the porch and down the steps. In seconds, he was up to a full sprint, and I altered my course to intercept him. Bonnie risked a glance behind her and put on more speed, but I could tell she was now putting everything she had into her flight. It wasn’t enough. The man ever so slowly closed the distance between them.

  A thick mass of clouds occluded the moon overhead, plunging everything into a darkness nearing pitch black, just as Cindy shrieked at the top of her
lungs, “Bonnie!”

  The sprinting teenager looked our way, but shifters in human form didn’t have much better night vision than humans. Still, one should never doubt a child’s ability—regardless of age—to recognize her mother’s voice. Bonnie cut a hard right turn, and I marveled at her ability to—first—complete such a maneuver and—second—not break an ankle or something regardless of being a shifter. She damn near turned on a dime and gave back a nickel in change.

  I maintained my ‘target lock’ on the man chasing Bonnie, who now angled more toward us. I couldn’t quite make out his facial expression this far away, but he seemed to recognize Cindy’s voice, too. On the bright side, though, he didn’t seem to react to me charging toward him with everything I had.

  “Someone hit the lights!” the pursuer shouted as he ran. “It’s blacker than a lawyer’s heart out here!”

  Seconds passed as the distance between me and the pursuer dropped by yards with every tick of the clock. I wasn’t counting them, but I knew it wouldn’t be too long before those floodlights came on and ruined my surprise.

  My whole awareness became the man chasing Bonnie, my perceptions shrinking down to the most severe case of tunnel vision I could remember. Nothing else mattered. Not the house. Not my people behind me. Not even Bonnie. Just my full-body sprint and my target… no. My prey.

  How in the world he never heard a thousand-pound cat charging at him across the yard, I’ll never know. Maybe he did hear me but just didn’t process the sound’s true meaning. It didn’t matter.

  The distance closed to the point that my feline side roared, Now!, and I put every ounce of muscle into a leap toward the man. I was halfway to him when the floodlights came on, and I loved the sheer terror that claimed his expression when he saw me flying toward him.

  He squeaked out, “What the hell,” mere moments before my front paws touched his shoulders. I rode him down to the ground and forced my forelegs to fold with me as gravity re-asserted its claim. I think every bone between the fifth cervical vertebra in his neck and his pelvis shattered in a single, ghastly CRACK! that mimicked a lightning strike and thunderclap no more than a hundred yards away. The gruesome cacophony even overshadowed the combined sound of the man striking the ground and my bulk landing on him.