A Hippogriff for Christmas

by Zoe Chant

  His hippogriff spread its wings inside him.

  A shifter. We can sense it.

  Like all shifters, he could sense the presence of other shifters, even if he couldn’t tell what they shifted into. It wasn’t so uncommon to come across them when you weren’t expecting it. But now, Beau frowned.

  A shifter rustling around in the alley next to Annie’s work?

  He didn’t like it. In his experience, there were only one or two reasons why someone was scurrying around in the dark with a tank of kerosene.

  He’d have to deal with this quickly, and hopefully without scaring Annie. If the person in the alley was a shifter, they’d know what it meant when they heard the words Shifter Patrol Corps.

  But first, he’d have to make sure whoever they were didn’t slip through his fingers – and find out what they were up to, and if it was really no good.

  His hippogriff hissed, shaking its head. Beau had long since learned how to control its suspicious, animalistic nature, but in this instance, it was insisting there was danger here, and he was inclined to listen to it.

  Especially with his mate so close by.

  He glanced at Annie, motioning for her to stay by the car. She seemed to understand him, and returned his nod.

  Beau gritted his teeth. He’d only have one chance at this.

  Tensing his muscles, he spun, shooting down the alley faster than any human would ever have been able to move. The hippogriff was at the forefront of his mind, its instincts guiding his movements as he threw himself forward.

  He just had time to see the shocked expression on the man’s face as he turned, an unlit match in his hand as it hovered over the kerosene-soaked cloth.

  Beau reached out his hand to grab the man’s clothes, but even as he did so the man had already begun to shift, his body melting away, becoming the writhing, twisting form of a large, shaggy wolf.

  The wolf snapped its jaws at him, growling viciously, as the kerosene tank fell to the ground, rolling away from him.

  Just like he hadn’t known until this moment what shifter form this man had, the wolf wouldn’t be able to tell Beau was a hippogriff – but it would be able to sense that his shifted form was far, far more powerful than its own.

  The wolf flattened its ears along the back of its head, snarling, clearly not too keen to abandon whatever it had been doing – but then its instinct to flee got the better of it, and it turned tail and ran, heading for the far side of the alley.

  Oh no you don’t, Beau thought, following it. He couldn’t shift here in the close confines of the alley, but the moment he got out from between the buildings, there was no way the wolf could hope to escape.

  I’ll just have to hope everyone’s inside, Beau thought, though on a cold night like tonight, he doubted there’d be too many people out and about in the backstreets.

  Finally reaching the end of the alley, Beau shifted, sweeping upwards into the air with one mighty beat of his wings. The wolf couldn’t hope to hide, not even in the maze of small streets and laneways that wove between the backs of the shops here. Beau could see it as it desperately tried to dodge out of his sight, until finally it took a wrong turn, emerging into an open space that led onto a park. Without hesitation, Beau swooped.

  He didn’t want to injure the wolf, but still, it let out a sharp, high-pitched squeal when he buried his talons into its pelt, not deep enough to draw blood, but certainly more than enough to hold it still.

  It struggled, but Beau’s grip was firm, and he pressed his weight down until there was no possible way of escaping. Beau let out a command in the form of an eagle’s screech, but the meaning was completely clear: Shift. Now.

  The wolf let out a low whine, paws scrabbling in the snow, but then it complied, returning to the form of the man Beau had seen in the alley. He was blond haired and blue eyed, and a lot younger than Beau had initially thought.

  As the man shifted, Beau shifted too – though he kept a steady grip on the man’s clothes as he did so.

  “What the hell, man,” the blond kid said, scowling. “Didn’t we have an agreement? Why the hell are you here?”

  Beau hesitated. Had this kid mistaken him for someone else?

  “Maybe we did,” he said, deciding he might have more chance of finding out what happened if he played along. “But I don’t remember anything about this in our agreement. What’re you doing out here?”

  The kid shook his head. “No, that’s what it was. That Scott whatever-his-name-is missed his payment, third time in a row. He was warned. The boss says he’s had enough chances. You know that. Honestly, I’d rather not get humans mixed up in this stuff either, but when the boss says do something, are you going to be the one to argue about it?”

  Mixed up with this stuff?

  Beau narrowed his eyes. Clearly, somehow, that man, Scott – the one who’d been hassling Annie in the bakery when he’d arrived – had gotten himself caught up in something nasty.

  Something involving shifter criminals.

  Which meant it was most definitely something Beau needed to know about.

  He was about to identify himself and haul the kid to his feet when he started talking again.

  “Anyway, can you let me go finish this off now?” he complained, trying to jerk himself out of Beau’s grip. “The boss said that place has to burn, and so it’s gotta burn. Quick – I have to get back to HQ by eight.”

  Beau just raised an eyebrow. Clearly, this kid had been lumped with the high-risk grunt work – and he wasn’t exactly bright, either.

  “Burn? Did he say… that the bakery was going to burn?”

  Both Beau and the kid turned at the sound of Annie’s voice behind them. Obviously, she’d gotten worried and managed to track them out here to the darkened park.

  Beau grimaced. He’d rather Annie hadn’t seen this, but then, he wouldn’t have been able to keep it from her for long. If this kid was involved in something as heavy as arson – and, by the sound of things, something that involved large amounts of money – then Beau would have been remiss in his duties if he hadn’t looked into it, no matter how much he wanted to take Annie straight home to meet his family.

  “What the hell is this human doing here?” the kid snarled, a flash of the wolf’s yellow showing in his blue eyes for a moment. “Get rid of her – or I’ll do it, I don’t care.”

  He threatened our mate! He has to bleed!

  Immediately, Beau’s hippogriff reared up, extending its claws and tearing at the air, as if demonstrating what it’d do to the kid if only Beau would let it.

  With difficulty, Beau pushed down the creature’s rage, forcing his own rational human mind to take control.

  “No chance of that,” Beau said. “I don’t know who you think I am, but I’m with the Shifter Patrol Corps. And it seems like you might have something to tell me.”

  He strengthened his grip on the kid’s shirt as he started struggling, eyes going wide with shock.

  “And don’t even think about shifting,” Beau told him. “You’ve seen my shifted form now – so you know there’s no point in running. Your best chance right now is to just tell me what exactly is going on.”

  Beau could see the kid thinking it over, weighing up his chances of escape… and deciding they were very slim indeed.

  Maybe he had more brains that it had first seemed, Beau thought, as the kid sighed, and at last stopped struggling.

  “All right – fine,” he said. “But if I do, you gotta promise me, like, witness protection or something, right? You can do that, right?”

  Beau couldn’t – but Hardwicke could. But first, he’d have to find out more information.

  “We’ll see what you have to tell me, and then we’ll talk about deals,” Beau said. “No – come on. Faster you start talking, the faster we can get this over with.”

  Chapter 10

  This, Annie thought, has been a really weird day.

  It was fine to admit that, she thought – it had, after all, been reall
y weird, in ways she wasn’t sure she could think too closely about yet. She knew at some point she’d have to deal with it all – with the existence of mythical creatures and shifters and that one of them was her soulmate – but right now probably wasn’t the time.

  She was sitting in the corner of the room, staring at the young man who had apparently been trying to burn down the bakery – and who had turned from a wolf into a human being in front of her very eyes.

  Probably, she thought, that part should’ve been at least a little less surprising than it had been, considering she’d already seen Beau turning into something way more unusual than a wolf – but then, she wasn’t up to interrogating herself about these things right now.

  Beau had hauled the wolf-man back to the bakery at Annie’s suggestion since she had a key to open the back door, and she’d guessed they needed somewhere inside to figure out what had been going on.

  They were in the storeroom now, Beau on the phone on the other side of the room, and the wolf guy sitting sulkily on a metal chair, hands cuffed behind his back.

  Annie took some time to look him over. No ears, no tail, no paws – he was definitely completely human now that he was no longer a wolf.

  But then again, I spent a decent amount of time looking at pretty much every inch of Beau, and he definitely didn’t have any hippogriff features in his human form either, Annie thought, swallowing heavily at the memory.

  She didn’t have any more time to think about it, though, since at that moment Beau wrapped up his quiet conversation on the phone and crossed the room to her.

  “Done – I’ve called it in,” he said. “Since he’s a shifter, I needed to report this to my agency. They’re sending someone over.” His expression hardened as he turned his head to look at the handcuffed man on the chair. “In the meantime, though, I think I’d like some answers of my own. Starting with your name.”

  “You said I could get some witness protection or some shit,” the man said, glaring at them from beneath his brows.

  Beau’s expression darkened further. “I didn’t promise anything. And first, you need to tell me something actually useful. Like what your name is, and why you were trying to burn down this building.”

  Annie’s breath hitched in her throat.

  She had to admit that although she didn’t know anything about Beau’s line of work or the world of shifters in general, she was starting to have a few suspicions of her own about what was going on here.

  Like Scott acting so weird this morning, being so desperate to get money out of the register. He’s always been a bit slimy, but that was the first time he’s acted like that.

  But she’d overheard this man saying that Scott had missed his payments – whatever they were payments for, exactly – and so it wasn’t exactly some Sherlock Holmes level of deduction to figure out why he’d been behaving so strangely this morning.

  Clearly, he’d needed money quickly. And he hadn’t been too fussy about how he got it.

  She was certain Beau must’ve figured out at least that much for himself too. So now the question was why Scott owed the money, and to who.

  The wolf-man huffed out a sulky sigh, his eyes shifting back and forth warily between Annie and Beau.

  “Okay – fine. Whatever. If I tell you, you’ll leave me alone, right? I was getting bored working for the boss anyway. It’s not all it’s cracked up to be.”

  Annie frowned. The boss?

  “I got sent over here because that Scott what’s-his-name, he turned up again this morning saying he couldn’t get the money he owed the boss,” the wolf-man said. “It was the third time in a row. The boss’d been pretty easy-going about it, but enough’s enough, right?” He looked up at them, as if seeking their agreement.

  “Money for what?” asked Beau.

  The wolf-man laughed. “Jeez, you’re really out of the loop around here, aren’t you? What d’you think? Gambling debts, obviously. He owes at least ten thousand. Stupid idiot got in over his head, and now he thinks he can bargain his way out.”

  Annie glanced at Beau, wondering what he made of being told he was out of the loop. Beau wasn’t from around here, of course, but it made Annie wonder just what had been going on right under her nose this whole time.

  Is there some secret society of shifters here in the mountains that everyone knows about except me? Shifters running illegal gambling dens?

  Beau’s expression hadn’t changed, though. He was still looking at the wolf-man with the same flinty glare.

  “So why burn down the bakery, then?” he asked, voice hard.

  Annie thought she had an inkling why, but she guessed Beau wanted to hear this guy say it out loud.

  The man shrugged, a sneer crossing his face. “Scott turned up this morning, all apologetic, saying he didn’t have the money but he would soon, he was sure of it – that his dad would be handing the bakery over to him soon, he just knew it, and then he’d have access to the whole amount.”

  Annie couldn’t stop her short, shocked inhalation. Had Mr. Dearborn really decided to give his business to Scott so soon?

  I’m sure he wouldn’t have, Annie thought desperately. Or if he had, he would have told me so I’d have time to find another job…

  Her thoughts were cut off as the wolf-man continued.

  “But the boss wasn’t having it – I mean, he’s been saying this shit for months. So the boss said that if Scott was so sure he’d be able to get his hands on the money when his dad retired, then he’d also be able to get his hands on the insurance payment when the place burned down.” The man shrugged. “I didn’t exactly wanna do it, but like I said, who’s gonna argue with the boss? Not me, that’s for sure.”

  Annie’s throat constricted in horror.

  The bakery… everything Mr. Dearborn has worked so hard for for decades… everything his family has always worked for… it all could have been destroyed if we hadn’t arrived just then? All because of Scott’s gambling debts?

  She’d never had a high opinion of Scott. But even she hadn’t imagined he could be so selfish and so… so stupid.

  How could he possibly have thought getting involved with some obviously dangerous shifter criminals would end well? And also, how had Scott known about shifters to begin with?!

  “All right,” Beau said, his tone measured. “I see. So where’s Scott now, then?”

  Annie glanced at him, her eyes widening. Beau was clearly a professional – he’d been cool, calm and collected this whole time, and obviously knew what questions to ask.

  Annie had to admit she hadn’t even thought about where Scott might be now. She’d been too caught up in her own thoughts, and then too angry at the idea Scott’s stupidity might have cost his father the bakery he loved. But thankfully, Beau hadn’t forgotten about it at all.

  “He’s still up at HQ, as far as I know,” the wolf-man said with a nonchalant shrug. “Couldn’t have him running back here to alert the cops or whatever. They got him locked up there until the job’s done. Which it’s not gonna get done now, for obvious reasons.” The man gave them a pointed look, as if this was all their fault.

  Annie bit her lip, tension churning in her gut.

  Whatever she thought of Scott, he didn’t deserve whatever fate might be in store for him if he was left in the hands of dangerous criminals who were willing to go to such lengths as arson to get their way.

  If word gets back to them that the bakery didn’t burn down and their man has been arrested, what might they do next? Annie wondered, and one look at Beau told her he’d had exactly the same thought.

  And even if Scott did deserve to be in the hands of people like that, Mr. Dearborn doesn't deserve for his son to be in that kind of danger, Annie thought. She knew that whatever Scott’s failings might be, he was still Mr. Dearborn’s son, and he loved him.

  And even if Scott was stupid and selfish, there was still time for him to change, as well.

  “Beau,” she said, low and urgent. “We can’t let them hold o
nto him once they find out the bakery’s still here. What if –”

  Looking down at her, Beau nodded. “I know. Getting Scott out of danger is the first thing we’ll need to do. But until the agent my boss is sending arrives, we have to sit tight – I can’t risk this guy getting back to wherever his HQ is and clearing them out before we can get there.”

  “Hey, I said I’d help you!” the wolf-man complained. “And I have! I’ve told you everything!”

  “True enough,” Beau conceded. “But you keep mentioning this HQ – what do you mean by that?”

  Now, the man’s expression turned cagey. “Well, I could tell you. But it seems weird you don’t already know. Are you not from around here?”

  Beau shook his head. “No. Whoever you think I am, chances are I’m not. So you’re going to need to spell everything out for me, nice and simple.”

  The man looked doubtful. “Shifter Patrol Corps, right? You really don’t know about this stuff?”

  Beau just shook his head again. “Like I said. Spell it out for me.”

  The wolf-man frowned. “Okay, well. HQ – it’s the boss’s cabin in the woods. I can give you the coordinates… if I get my protection. Like I said, I don’t like working there anymore. I’d rather get out of this life, if I can. You think it’s gonna be all glamorous, but it’s just grunt work and shit.”

  He keeps talking about ‘the boss’, Annie thought, exchanging a glance with Beau. Who on earth is ‘the boss’?

  Beau might’ve asked the same question himself, but a knock at the bakery’s side door made them all turn their heads.

  Annie sensed it as Beau tensed up, his fists balling at his sides.

  It could be one of this wolf-man’s accomplices, she realized, come to see what was taking him so long. But a moment later she heard a voice on the other side of the door calling out, “Hey, Beau. It’s me, Declan.”

  Beau immediately relaxed, looking down at Annie reassuringly. “Don’t worry about it – it’s my colleague at the Corps.”

  “Oh, and what does he turn into?” Annie asked, as Beau headed toward the door. “A manticore? A griffin? A kraken?”