by Lisa Ladew
Aven chose a seat in the front row of spindly chairs, sat down, folded his arms, locked eyes with Jameson, and whispered a few words Jameson easily picked up. “You always gotta find something to be in charge of, don’t you, boss.”
Jameson frowned. Aven must be in a bad mood and Jameson wanted to know why. The word boss had been said in a sneering manner, and that wasn’t like Aven, normally. Jameson knew a few of the shifters in town talked behind his back sometimes, whispered about how he was stuffy, stuck up, thought he was better than others. He didn’t, but Jameson’s duty and his knowledge had placed a wall between them and him. He didn’t attend the barbecues, the work lunches, the weddings or get-togethers, even if he was invited. Small talk didn’t work for him. There was too much to lose.
To soothe himself from thoughts of having his job, his shaky standing, or his self-respect ripped away, Jameson ran his finger over a piece of paper on the desk in front of him. It showed the three claw marks and the congruent slash he’d added. The logo still called to him. (ingrav,) something inside him whispered too quietly to believe. (it is the ingrav of the switches, showing their utter binding with a shifter, both in the Undoing and the Prowl. you must trust yourself. you must listen to yourself.) Jameson’s skin crawled and he shuddered, thinking suddenly of the woman in the diner. He shivered although it wasn’t cold, then looked up again as another scent he knew entered the room.
It was Ryder, the male from the diner with the dark hair and the exotic face, the one who had been about to kill that human punk. He’d brought a female shifter with him, one with her animal’s scent strong in front of her. Every male head in the place turned abruptly, including Aven’s, including Jameson’s. Even Hernando’s, and Hernando had been mated to a female shifter, Molly, for close to forty years.
Females were rare as hell, and no one really knew why. Except Jameson. He would explain if they didn’t string him up first. Ryder and the female looked like photo negatives of each other; him with black hair and her with platinum, but the same exotic angles to their features. Jameson didn’t need their looks to tell him they were twins; their identifying foliage-and-danger scents were nearly identical except that hers scented of icy winds and the slightest feminine softness, while his held an in-your-face masculine punch. Jameson took a deep breath. She was young, too young for him, but still, the scent of a female shifter was exquisite. The other males in the room did the same, inhaling audibly while Molly, standing against a wall with her mate, watched them all with sour amusement.
The female stared back, meeting a few eyes straight on, a challenging twist to her lips. Her scent deepened and pushed through the room in satisfied waves, like she knew she was the glad feast at this party, and she got to choose who would partake. Males licked their lips and shifted in their seats, a few big cats shooting to their feet and rushing to greet her. Jameson watched Ryder for a moment. Would he take offense at the attention his sister was getting? No, he moved to the seats in the middle of the room and sat, eyes on Jameson. Sis could obviously take care of herself, and probably wouldn’t stand for brother to coddle her anyway.
The mood in the room veered in Jameson’s favor with a lurch he could feel. A female shifter had shown up to a meeting he had called. What else did he have up his sleeve?
Jameson looked down at the logo (ingrav) again and took a deep breath, shivering once. He had a chance of pulling this off, especially if the female shifter backed him up. Too bad she looked so young. Her brother had reacted to the logo, though, his Instinct sparking him. Females were even better at listening to the Instinct when it was quiet, or so he’d been told.
The claw and knife marks made him think of that female in the diner, the one who’d scented like he would imagine meadow flowers in Heaven did. She hadn’t been a shifter, but her green scent had held a bit of unrealized hunter in it, nonetheless. Certainly more than most humans, who were clever as hell, but rarely hunters in the way that shifters thought of hunting.
A thought speared into him like lightning, with enough mental force to knock him backwards a step.
Could she be a switch?
The possibility scent a visceral thrill through him, because no one had seen a switch in almost one-hundred-fifty years. Not since the reckoning. He’d heard rumors of sightings, yes, but had he ever met a shifter who claimed to actually have seen one first hand? No. Never.
There had been many times over the last century-plus of futility when he’d tried to convince himself switches no longer existed. But duty wouldn’t let him do it.
It was his job to hold with the cause of the switches and search for the Steward until he took his last breath, and it was a responsibility he took very seriously. Maybe the woman had been a switch. Shit. He would deal with this meeting, then figure out how to find her.
Flint entered the room with a huff, sitting down near his brother in the back and signaling to Jameson. It was time. Jameson nodded, letting the warm, full-blooded bear scent of the brothers remind him of the stake he had in Five Hills, the history. Jameson had known the males for twenty-five years, since Bryce had been a baby. The two of them lived like roommates in the other half of the duplex Jameson owned. They worked well together, running the Black Bear Outfitting Company. The BBOC normally ran whitewater rafting tours and provided wilderness outfitting. The back room of their building was as big as a gymnasium and used for shifter-exclusive weight training, martial arts instruction, sparring bouts, and now this meeting.
Flint stared hard at Jameson, waiting for Jameson’s words with an eager hostility. He and his brother looked and acted very little alike. Where Bryce was a good-natured goof, Flint was more reserved and had been for as long as Jameson had known him. The contrast between Flint’s resting thug face and Bryce’s perpetual grin was jarring. The jagged, webbed scar across the older brother’s neck didn’t soften his look, but Flint never tried to hide it. To him, it was a reminder of things he refused to forget. Flint was Jameson’s only guaranteed ally in the room.
Jameson stood straight and looked over the crowd. He snatched up his notes, then threw them back onto the desk. This crowd would respond better to words that were unscripted. Jameson stepped around the desk and held his hands up until all talking stopped.
The Instinct told him what to say at once, surprising him, rippling his muscles with a soft wave of satisfied strength. He projected his voice across the room. “Shifters of Five Hills, welcome.”
A few males shuffled in their seats and looked around, as if the words made them nervous. There were no underground meetings of shifters, it just wasn’t done, because if the humans found out about them… No one knew exactly what the billions of humans would do, but all could imagine it wouldn’t be some version of live and let live. More like imprison and experiment in the name of science, or weapons, or hell, maybe even oil. Who knew what scared mobs and greedy governments could devise?
Jameson nodded at the sentiment. “We are all shifters here, I assure you. The room is soundproofed and the doors are locked. No one who doesn’t belong will wander in. Anyway, you all came because of the message on the website. This is a law-abiding meeting extolling the virtues of Sparring, trying to get you to spend your money and join our gym. We are doing nothing wrong here.”
Jameson checked in on as many expressions as he could, reading the truth there. He hadn’t said the word logo (ingrav!) but he knew they were all thinking it. The website was practically hidden on the web, where only those who felt a pull to the logo would bother to look for it. Those who found it saw a message urging them to tell any shifter they knew, but keep the message from humans. Most had come out of curiosity, but was it possible many more stayed home out of fear? Jameson didn’t know. All of his acquaintances were present.
He gestured widely. “You are safe. I assure you of that.” He was in his street clothes; ironed jeans, boots, and a khaki shirt, displaying no connection to his job or the government. Not that his audience would mistrust him for it. Many shifters worked
for the government, not just Jameson and Aven.
The Instinct spoke inside him again. He repeated the words out loud, thrilled for the uncustomary guidance coming to him for such a trivial matter. Or maybe it wasn’t trivial. He’d long felt something big was coming to Five Hills. Maybe the danger to him and his kind was greater and closer than he knew. “I stand before you, the Keeper of the Forest, the White Wolf of Nantahala. Who among you knows what this means?”
The crowd reacted mildly, as if the words Jameson spoke weren’t revolutionary. Except Flint, who straightened in his seat, a scent of aggression coming off him. Not just Flint, against the wall Hernando and Molly linked hands. Molly made the sign of the cross and gazed upward.
Jameson waited. He would not pull their knowing from them. They would have to offer it.
Flint seemed to be losing his battle with an ancient anger. He stood and paced in the back. Hernando watched him, then stepped forward. “I know. My grandfather told me of the Keeper and Steward. Molly knows, too.” He looked around at the small crowd. “You’ve all heard of the white wolf, everyone in Five Hills has. The four hundred pound beast that has been said to live in the forest since these trees were saplings. Don’t deny that you have.”
Jameson nodded at the old condor, his rich scent much more mellow than that of Aven’s. Jameson’s wolf was massive, if not quite four hundred pounds.
A few shifters murmured. Jameson knew he had only a few minutes to grab them. He walked back behind the table and turned to the computer in the middle of it, clicking a button.
His drawing popped up on the screen, accompanied by several sharp intakes of breath. Flint stopped pacing and stared, eyes flashing. Bryce leaned back and grinned, lifting ankle over knee like he didn’t have a care in the world. Molly crossed herself again. Ryder stared impassively, drinking everything in, while his sister leaned forward, her eyes crawling over Jameson. Her expression was interested and hungry, but not in the bears and pumas who surrounded her.
Jameson left the image up and walked directly in front of the group again. “You’ve all seen this image, or at least part of it. You’ve all felt the pull of it, the truth of it. Who knows what the knife mark signifies?”
No one said a word, not even Hernando. No one looked around, they all seemed frozen.
Jameson waited another beat, then spoke. He was rolling now, knew exactly how to move forward. “No rumors? No inklings? No long shots?”
A male spoke from the back of the room. Grunted, really. One word. “Switches.”
The room erupted, everyone talking at once, some of the males shooting to their feet. One large guy with a dark beard walked straight out the door before anyone could stop him, not that they would have tried. He’d been six foot eight and wide as a Sequoia. All bear and nasty attitude.
Jameson didn’t try to quiet them. He stood silent and jubilant, leaning against the desk. They already knew. And even if they didn’t want to believe, they would.
Chapter 7
Cora lay quietly in the bed of a private room on the fourth floor of the Shady Pines Hospital, otherwise known as the psych ward. She did not pull at her restraints, she did not eye the camera pointed at her from the door. She only stared out the window and tried very hard to look sane, while inside she knew she was anything but.
She’d been arrested when the cops showed up, still trying to kick and scream and bite. She hadn’t wanted to resist arrest, would never have imagined herself fighting the cops for any reason, but then it had happened. They’d told the bodyguards to let her up, one cop looking concerned, like maybe she might be hurt under there. None of them believed she could be a threat in any way. She was small, practically a pixie.
She been still for a moment, until she got her breath back, but as they were calling in medical she’d shot to her feet and sprinted in the direction the councilman had gone. She was fast, and she’d gotten far, all the way to a limousine she could tell he’d gotten in. She’d punched through the back window with a strength that shocked her and was reaching inside for the lock when the cops caught up.
It had taken six of them to get her in the back of one of their cars. Cora’s cheeks heated as she remembered what she’d done after they handcuffed her and thrown her in headfirst. She’d rammed her feet into the panel between her and the front seat repeatedly until she’d cracked the strong partition there. She’d faded then, her anger finally leaking away, but not before a cop had yelled at her through the glass so she’d slammed her forehead against the window to shut him up.
She hadn’t yet seen or felt the goose egg on her forehead. But the way it pulsed sickly with her heartbeat, the way the pain traveled all the way down her face, told her it had surely blackened both her eyes.
When the rage had finally leaked away, seemingly burned away by her exertions, reason returned and she’d had the good sense not to say a word more, except to demand a lawyer. She’d never had a lawyer before, never needed one, but now she did. And the woman was dynamite, a square-jawed firecracker with a brassy voice, wide smile, and round glasses that Cora thought were only for show. Probably to make her look more smart and less bombshell, so clients and colleagues alike would take her seriously. Cora had found her in the phone book, not realizing such things still existed until a cop had slapped one down in front of her. She’d chosen the name Bonhi Candor out of all the ones listed, in the hopes it might bode well for her attorney’s integrity.
Bonhi had advised Cora that temporary insanity was her best defense, but that it would mean a short trip to the psych ward. That had been yesterday. In the last 24 hours, Cora had been strip searched, placed in a straightjacket, spoken about like she didn’t exist, examined, poked and prodded, all while she’d desperately tried to meet anyone’s eyes. But none of the nurses and doctors would look at her or speak to her in anything but short commands that they seemed surprised to see she willingly obeyed.
Cora moaned and closed her eyes, keeping her face turned away from the camera. What had she been thinking, agreeing to an insanity plea just to get out of the cellblock?
Her job. Her tenure. It all floated away before her eyes. As soon as Dean Aulander found out she’d been arrested, her sanity evaluated, tenure would be forever out of her reach. Hell, she wouldn’t even be able to get a job as a fifth grade teacher’s assistant.
But it had been her best shot at not spending thirty days in jail, the lawyer had said. Probably she’d just get mandatory counseling. Which she must fucking need. She still didn’t know why she had tried to kill that politician.
Was she insane? Maybe.
What in the hell was she going to do?
Chapter 8
It took a while, but Jameson waited until every member of his small but determined audience had stopped arguing and returned to their seats. Even Flint was sitting. The switches weren’t what interested him.
Jameson faced them all, his voice measured. “I have a story to tell, one I’ve never shared with anyone. An unbelievable story, but I know that if each of you listens with your animal instinct, rather than your human brains, you will hear the truth in it.”
None moved, no one even seemed to breathe. Jameson plunged ahead. The moment would never be better. “The year was 1870. I was eleven years old.” Aven snorted and looked out the window, while Bryce shifted in his seat and popped a rare frown. All else only stared, waiting for more. There was no scent of disbelief in the room, not even from Aven.
Jameson went on. “I’d known I would be the next Keeper since the day I first shifted at four years old. My parents had not been worried about my late shifting, in fact, they’d been excited, anticipating that the delay was a clue to my destiny. To be chosen as the next Keeper was an incredible honor.”
An image of his mother and father, lost too soon, flitted through his mind. It had been so long since he’d seen them, heard their voices, but he still remembered the feel of their love. He lingered for only a moment before moving on. “Keepers have been born into the Montrea
t family for over a thousand years. The one born as the white wolf is always the Keeper, chosen by a process none of us understand. We do our duty, we don’t question it.”
Jameson’s heart turned over at the words. William, his uncle, the last Keeper, had said those exact words to him, his life blood draining out around the fingers at his chest. So many secrets about to be locked away forever behind his blueing lips, and still William had focused on Jameson’s commitment rather than what his duty entailed. Perhaps he had thought Jameson would find his own way… somehow. But all Jameson had was a book that could be neither damaged nor read, the ability to turn into a wolf twice the size of his person, and his story.
“I had a normal childhood, as was customary. I helped with the farm work but had playmates and an abundance of time to roam the forest, to sharpen my claws and my wit, to get myself into and out of scrapes, learning more of survival each year.”
“My parents spoke of William, my uncle, the then-Keeper with reverence, and all in the town treated him with respect. But he never talked to me about my future duties, in fact I rarely saw him. My apprenticeship was to officially begin when I turned twelve, when I would leave my family and work with him every day to learn what a Keeper actually did.”
Jameson took a deep breath. The sound of fighting rang through his imagination, the clash of switch and shifter and vampire coming to him as easily as it had the day after the battle, when he’d walked away with The Keeper’s Book tucked under his arm.
Bryce spoke up from the back of the room, trying to lighten the mood at exactly the wrong time. “You expect us to believe you’re over a hundred years old, J? I mean, I know you’re uptight, but even you aren’t that stuffy.”
No one laughed. Bryce would be the most likely to question the story as he was among the youngest in the room, along with Ryder and his sister, and one other. A lean mountain lion in the third row with a dangerous, almost ravenous scent. His skin was more ink than flesh tone; his black hair long on top, shaved on the sides and back, hanging over his eyes like a shield. Dangerous looking rings covered both hands. Strange. Shifters almost never wore rings. Jameson had seen the male in sparring before, even pulled him out of an unsanctioned fight. Riot, name was, although why anyone would name their young that, Jameson had no clue.
