by C. T. Phipps
AN AMERICAN WEREDEER IN MICHIGAN
Book Three of The United States of Monsters Series
By C. T. Phipps and Michael Suttkus
A Mystique Press Production
Mystique Press is an imprint of Crossroad Press
Digital Edition published by Crossroad Press
Smashwords edition published at Smashwords by Crossroad Press
Digital Edition Copyright © 2017 C. T. Phipps and Michael Suttkus
Edited by: Ashley Davis
LICENSE NOTES
This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to the vendor of your choice and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Meet the Authors
C.T. Phipps is a lifelong student of horror, science fiction, and fantasy. An avid tabletop gamer, he discovered this passion led him to write and turned him into a lifelong geek. He is a regular blogger and also a reviewer for The Bookie Monster.
Bibliography
The Rules of Supervillainy (Supervillainy Saga #1)
The Games of Supervillainy (Supervillainy Saga #2)
The Secrets of Supervillainy (Supervillainy Saga #3)
The Kingdom of Supervillany (Supervillainy Saga #4)
Esoterrorism (Red Room, Vol. 1)
Eldritch Ops (Red Room, Vol. 2)
Agent G: Infiltrator
Cthulhu Armageddon (Cthulhu Armageddon, Vol. 1)
The Tower of Zhaal (Cthulhu Armageddon, Vol. 2)
Lucifer’s Star
Straight Outta Fangton
Wraith Knight
Michael Suttkus, II, lives in Leesburg, Florida, with three cats, one of which actually likes him, and his family, with whom he fares better. When not working at a game store, he’s playing games, reading science books, or otherwise being incredibly nerdy. Also writing! Because he has to feed cats whether they like him or not.
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AN AMERICAN WEREDEER IN MICHIGAN
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Epilogue
Chapter One
I swatted a mosquito from my face and wished I hadn’t bothered to come out on this hiking trip with Emma. “I hate nature. I hate nature and nature hates me.”
“How can you hate nature, Jane? You’re a deer,” Emma said cheerfully.
Emma was my—and I mean this without jealousy—gorgeous cherry-haired best friend. Mythology had a history of making female shapeshifters look gorgeous and male shapeshifters look monstrous, but the former was true. She was tall, curvy, and had that aura men just wanted to be around. That was a shame for them, since her interests were decidedly Sapphic.
Today, she was wearing a pair of shorts and a House Stark t-shirt with the bottom cut off to expose her midriff. Emma was wearing sandals and completely ignoring the fact that we were hiking through poor terrain with way too many bugs. She was also carrying a picnic basket like Little Red Riding Hood.
I, by contrast, was wearing a green fishing hat and a purple tie-dyed shirt over cargo pants. I had a thick backpack on that probably weighed more than I did (never go out hiking unless you are prepared for everything to go wrong) and a wooden staff in hand. The staff was mostly cosmetic since, weighing slightly over a hundred pounds, I still could lift about three or four times that much. It was one of the benefits of being a shapeshifter of Clan Cervid (weredeer, for occult laymen).
Compared to Emma, I was Plain Jane, rather than just the equally unfortunately named Jane Doe. My parents loved puns, you see. It’s a weredeer thing, like the fact vampires have to count sesame seed buns and werewolves are vicious buttheads with a couple of exceptions. I was short, had freckles, only had curves when I used the right bra, and looked younger than my age. Things had gotten a little better since I’d turned nineteen, but I still felt like the ugly stepsister whenever Emma and I went out. I hated feeling that way too, since I knew it was wrong. Maybe I just needed some companionship to cheer me up. Yeah, that sort of thinking had never gotten me into trouble before.
“I killed the Earthmother’s son,” I said, spraying some environmentally friendly bug spray around me in response. “I honestly think Gaia has it out for me now.”
I was referring, of course, to last year’s event where I’d joined the ranks of those very rare mortals who’d slain a god. This particular god, whom I called the Big Bad Wolf for lack of a better name, had been a mean piece of work who’d tried to make my family a human sacrifice. It had successfully corrupted and murdered Emma’s sister too. Since that time, I’d always felt vaguely uncomfortable in Bright Falls’ woods that it had been the local lord of.
The thing was, though, shapeshifters needed to go out into nature. The urge to change during the full moon could be resisted, but almost no one did it. Hell, the only way to successfully resist it was to take regular trips out into the woods and get down with your wild self. That usually wasn’t a problem in Bright Falls, but lately it was getting far more difficult with the sudden influx of tourists.
Supernaturals had been public for the better part of eleven years now and humanity was starting to soften its abject terror thanks to a sterling propaganda campaign by the vampires. Yes, the most dangerous and evil of us all were doing the best job at marketing themselves. It had benefited the local economy, though, as Bright Falls was only a couple of hours’ drive from the Las Vegas of the Midwest in the undead-controlled New Detroit.
People who wanted to get up and close
with the supernatural but didn’t want to have their blood stolen or their wallets emptied had Bright Falls as an alternative. Someone somewhere had the bright—ha!—idea that shapeshifters were more family friendly and turned the town with the highest population of them in the country into a tourist trap. Outside of Michigan and five other states, it was legal to shoot us if you felt “threatened,” but here the bigger danger was being cornered for a selfie.
“Don’t be silly,” Emma said, turning a corner in the path and finding an abandoned picnic area that looked like it hadn’t been maintained in decades. “You’re just upset we’re in a new place and haven’t yet found a spot we can run around in.”
“Do you know what it’s like to have a bunch of horny fourteen year olds stalk you from the bushes hoping to see some skin when you transform?”
Emma gave me a sideways look. The sort of look that said she probably had much more experience with it than I did. “We don’t even get naked when we transform. That’s a myth. Clothes go wherever the rest of us goes and comes back when we return to human form.”
“Yeah, but tell them that,” I said, flopping my backpack on the table. “This spot is as good as any.”
It actually wasn’t. This particular area was a patch of dead earth full of broken picnic tables surrounded by five-foot-tall grass and ancient Eastern white pine. There was a cliff about thirty feet tall that had cut the area in half. I saw the shower and bathroom area had collapsed into rubble too. Oh well, it wasn’t like I was self-conscious about using the bathroom in deer form. There were just some things you had to get used to as shapeshifter.
“Are you sure?” Emma asked, looking around. “This doesn’t look safe.”
“We’ve literally faced down serial killers together,” I said, sorting through my stuff.
“Yes, and I’d rather not do that ever again. Crowds of pawing tourists are not so bad compared to some of the things in Bright Falls’ woods.”
She was right. The Spirit World was closer to Bright Falls than in most spots on Earth, with all manner of creepy crawly things having been attracted by the Big Bad Wolf’s death. That was in addition to all the spirits, ghosts, and monsters that had always been there. Just a few months ago, I’d had to put down a Wendigo who had been eating campers. It was the first human-like thing I’d had to kill.
“It wasn’t so bad before your sister started giving tours,” I half-joked. “Does she really want to bulldoze Shadow Pine Park and build another resort?”
“Yes,” Emma said, sighing as she unpacked our lunch. Cherry pie, two thermoses of black coffee, three mushroom sandwiches (it was a deer thing), plus five or six plastic containers full of meat. The brunch of champions. “Alice thinks Bright Falls could be even better if we had a few less miles of virgin forest and a few more golf courses.”
“I sense your inner eco-warrior has been stirred,” I said, smiling.
“This is our home and we have to fight for it,” Emma said, shaking a fist. She then spotted a small black-and-white animal nearby. “Ack, is that a skunk? Keep it away! Keep it away!”
The skunk then scurried away, thankfully not spraying us.
I tried not to giggle but failed. “You’d think she’d have more to do with all the publicity regarding the Old Wolf’s trial.”
Emma frowned.
“Sorry, sore subject?” I asked. “I know Marcus is your grandfather, but—”
“No,” Emma said, sighing. “I’m glad he’s going to jail. I just wish the trial would finish. I want to move on with my life.”
Marcus O’Henry had been, until last year, the most powerful shapeshifter in North America. He’d been head of the Werewolf Clan and a man with about half a billion dollars to his name. He’d also been an abusive evil scumbag who’d tortured his children and grandchildren. It had been him who’d unleashed the Big Bad Wolf on the community.
“Alex will make sure he spends the rest of his life in jail,” I said, confidant in the beautiful FBI agent I’d met.
“Have you and Agent Timmons talked lately?” Emma asked, picking up a piece of cherry pie and stabbing it with a fork.
“Hey, no dessert before the rest!” I said, mostly worried she’d want more pie than I was willing to share. “Yes, we text all the time.”
Emma got a mischievous look in her face. “Have you exchanged nude photos yet?”
“Perv!” I said, appalled. “Where has my innocent best friend gone?”
“Maybe I’m in heat,” Emma said.
“Or you’re just a bitch,” I said, smirking. “No, I haven’t sent him anything like that. Not that I haven’t been tempted. This long-distance thing hasn’t exactly been easy.”
That was understating things. I wasn’t sure we were even dating, which wasn’t something you should have to ask about your boyfriend. Alex and I had had a moment together last year after taking down Marcus, a moment that could have been more if he wasn’t so damned chivalrous. We’d only started getting flirty a few months ago and hadn’t been able to see each other face-to-face since then. The perils of being an FBI special agent with a specialization in occult crimes.
Oh, and a wizard.
“Does he know you slept with his brother?” Emma asked, taking a big mouthful of cherry pie as she did so.
I turned bright red then stared at her. “No, no he doesn’t.”
Lucien Lyons and I had also had a thing. Unfortunately, said thing had died after we’d both gotten drunk one night and had amazing sex that I’d immediately regretted. Our friendship had suffered tremendously as a result. Lucien was, by the way, the gorgeous local crime lord and owner of a variety of vice-related businesses. He was also, as Emma had mentioned, Alex’s foster brother.
Funny how these things work out, huh?
“You should definitely tell Alex before you sleep with him,” Emma said, sagely. “It will not go well if he finds out after.”
“Yes, because you are the sage of relationships, Oh Teen Wolf.”
Emma giggled and I picked up my mushroom sandwich to take a bite when I heard two humans moving through the underbrush around us.
“Oh, that’s not good,” Emma said.
“Do you think it’s more tourists?” I asked, chomping down and chewing.
“Or something worse.”
That was another drawback of recent events. Marcus O’Henry wasn’t exactly still in his cell. There had already been attempts on the lives of family members and Alex had texted me a couple of warnings. I was, after all, just as much responsible for his downfall as anyone else. It turned out even when you stripped a billionaire of all his visible assets, he still likely had a few million stuffed away here and there for a rainy day. There was also the possibility it was one of the region’s many monsters too. You know, just in case I wasn’t paranoid enough.
Moments later, a pair of heavily armed hikers stepped through the tall grass and weeds. That was not a good sign. The first one was a large white man with a cowboy hat, jeans, boots, and built like a linebacker. He had the same kind of build most male shapeshifters did, but something about his posture told me he was human. He was openly armed with a pair of holstered Berettas on his side as well as a knife on his side like an action-movie hero. He was carrying, of all things, a dowsing rod that I would have dismissed outright if not for the fact it radiated familiar magical energy that made me wonder if it had been created by someone I knew.
The second person was significantly more threatening, as she was outright carrying a futuristic rifle with laser sight, multiple clips, and a silencer on the barrel. She was an African-American woman about five foot six and built like Serena Williams. She was wearing camouflage fatigues with her hair pulled back in a ponytail. I felt the bullets inside their gun radiate out the “aura” of silver, and it smelled like their clothes had been doused in silver.
Oh crap, hunters. Not the kind that went after unintelligent animals, either.
“Howdy!” the man in the cowboy hat said, waving his dowsing rod arou
nd. “Nice to meet you.”
The woman approached more cautiously.
Emma and I exchanged glances, both of us having come to the same conclusion we were in a life-or-death situation. Hunters were those humans who spent their lives going after supernaturals because we were unnatural abominations against God or whatever. Every shapeshifter child was warned about them growing up, though they’d become a legal issue after the Reveal. It was the reason virtually the entire shapeshifter population no longer lived in the states where varmint laws were still in effect.
Emma opened her mouth painfully before saying, “Hi.”
I stared at them with undisguised hatred. “Move along, bigots.”
“Excuse me?” The man said.
“That’s Emma O’Henry, Larry, one of the daughters of the big werewolf family,” the woman said.
“She’s a werewolf?” the man asked, unable to believe it. “She doesn’t look like it.”
Emma said, “That’s racist.”
“You don’t get to talk about racism,” the woman said. “Racism is for people.”
I stared at her. “My grandfather was an Odawa Indian. I’m pretty sure I know when people are out for genocide and murder. You know, what with plenty of people wanting it.”
The woman glared. It was the kind of broken angry glare of someone who’d suffered terribly in their lives and needed someone to blame for it. “And what are you?”
“Weredeer,” I said.
“Of course,” the man called Larry said. “We have a werewolf practically cowering behind the least-dangerous shapeshifter of them all who’s calling us a bunch of murderous bigots. I swear to God, I hate this job sometimes.”
“I call a spade a spade,” I said.
“Hey!” the woman said.
“That’s an expression from Plutarch and literally means a shovel is a shovel. An FBI agent told us that,” Emma said, coming out from behind me. “I’m also not cowering. You just smell awful!”
