by Connie Hall
The chrome bumper of a black-and-white police car flashed in the headlights not fifty yards in front of her. Brayville Sheriff’s Department was emblazoned across the trunk. Why were they here? Were they covering up what that beast inside that shifter had done? Her skull still tingled where his massive hands had gripped her arms. The pull of those empty green eyes and the beast’s anger was something she’d never forget. At the memory, icy fingers trailed down her spine and she stopped singing.
Hoping no one saw her lights, she flicked them off and reversed back down the drive, using only her brake lights to see. She found an abandoned logging road and backed into it, driving over waist-high weeds and bushes until her car was properly hidden. She parked and cut the engine.
She eased out the door, insides churning, head hurting as if a swarm of bees were building a nest there. She gulped back the bile of rising fear in her throat. The Sixth Sense was pretty on target when it came to seeing the dead. The moments before death were the images that surrounded a spirit while they were trapped on earth. It was never pleasant, always graphic and sometimes hard to endure. She preferred discovering living creatures, ones she could help, ones that gave purpose to her life and the gift she’d been given.
The incline hadn’t felt this steep in the car, but now having to battle the elements and walk straight up made her pant to catch her breath.
Sleet stung her face, and she pulled her coat collar up around her neck. Despite the two pairs of long johns and thick jeans she was wearing, frigid air sliced right through her. She wished she’d worn two sweaters instead of one.
Fatigue gnawed at her. The shivers depleted her energy stores, particularly when she was awakened at 2:00 a.m. by them. She had been on an assignment in Monterey, Virginia, sound asleep at Sally’s B and B, a nice, quiet Victorian home she frequented when she visited Comet, a perpetually depressed bloodhound. Old and arthritic, he felt useless. Nina’s sessions with him always perked him up and made his owners happy. She wished she were helping Comet now, or nestled in that feather-down mattress she had left, anywhere but tramping through this cold and ice.
The realization hit her that she’d left her cell phone charging in the cradle. She couldn’t contact her sister, Takala, or her grandmother. They had always been overprotective of Nina. Sometimes it made her feel loved. At other times, smothered. But she didn’t want to worry them, so she periodically called them when she was on an assignment. They would be concerned when she didn’t check in. She made a mental note to call them later—if she ever got out of this mess.
She kept to the shadows. The forest gave way to split-rail fencing and open farmland. The dark outline of a little cabin rested on the very top of the mountain. Its weathered and bowed roof and faded clapboards seemed to stand like an eternal testament against the many winter mountainous storms. The little cabin had kept its inhabitants safe for many a freezing January—just not through this one, she thought ruefully. She hoped they were still alive.
She scanned the four outbuildings behind the cabin. Most were hardly more than run-down shacks. One had a crooked stovepipe chimney. Maybe a smokehouse. The barn was bigger than the cabin itself. Huge rolls of hay were stacked five deep along one side. Tarps covered them, their edges flapping sporadically in the wind.
She moved closer to the barn, keeping low. Luckily the wind was at her back now and she didn’t have to struggle to skulk along the fence.
No sign of the officers. Where were they?
When she reached the barn, she pressed her shaking back against the faded clapboards. Her whole body was a saltshaker in motion. Her lips were numb, and she knew they must have turned blue. She could hardly feel her legs and arms. She silently jogged in place to raise her body temperature; then she peeked around a corner. A pasture stretched out before her, frozen and gray. The land here was craggy with deep hollows. Dim lantern light glowed in one of the hollows. She sneaked toward it, keeping in the shadows of the fence.
When she drew close to the light, the wind carried the sounds of male voices and two shovels hitting the ground in tandem. She froze and listened.
“Go deeper, Clive. You heard what Arwan said. We don’t want anything digging up the bodies.”
“Don’t tell me how to do my job, Jake,” Clive yelled back over the wind. “Anyway, critters don’t come back to a gleaner’s kill.”
Gleaner? That explained a lot. The high-priestess shamans of her people had been hunting gleaners for eons. The Patomani Indian name for gleaner was dahacheewha, or lion man. Gleaners were male seniph mutants, genetic anomalies caused by sphinxes and humans procreating. When a mutant gleaner reached adulthood, their DNA began to disintegrate. They consumed human souls in order to regenerate and sustain life. When gleaners killed humans, they emitted a force that spontaneously combusted every living creature within a hundred feet. She tried to find the good in all life, but there was nothing redeemable in a gleaner. They were killing parasites who sucked the souls from the living to survive. Shifter vermin at their worst.
She now knew that the shifter she had happened upon in Brayville was a seniph. Usually when she touched a shifter, she could pinpoint their animal nature right away. Their other half couldn’t hide from her paranormal connection to them, and she might have figured out the guy was a seniph if the creature trapped beneath his skin had been a run-of-the-mill lion. But this beast was fierce, filled with anger and frustration and rage, barely contained within human skin. She’d only met two other shifters who frightened her more. One was a Kodiak bear, the other a Bengal tiger. Both were scary as hell, but neither frightened her as much as the Brayville seniph. She’d never look upon seniphs in quite the same way ever again.
Some two-skins could only shift at night when the moon was visible, some only when it was full. Most shifters were bound by the monthly cycle of the moon. Only the more powerful ones could change at will. And that seniph’s beast was powerful enough to not be governed by the heavens. No, it had no boundaries. Thoughts of him sent an eerie tremor through her.
“I don’t see why we’re hiding the fact a gleaner’s come to the area,” Jake said. “It’s pretty obvious Ethan’s come home. The council should know about it, too. They’ll find out anyway, and then it will be our asses on a platter.”
“You worry like a female. If we keep quiet, no one will find out. So shut your trap and remember—we don’t report to the council. We report to Arwan.”
Was Arwan the sheriff of that creepy village?
“I don’t like it one bit, her hiding the fact that Ethan’s home. And it’s gonna lead to trouble, mark my words. Pretty obvious why she’s doing it.” Jake snorted with disgust. “To everyone but Kane, that is.”
“You’re just pissed ’cause she won’t give you the time o’ day.”
“Oho, there you’re wrong. I don’t go following tail that’s out of my league. You’re the one with the hots for her.”
“Admit it, you wouldn’t toss her out of your bed,” Clive said, his voice growing wistful.
“Alphas are too high maintenance and just plain snotty and high-strung. I’ll keep my Mattie, thank you very much.”
“She’s about your speed. That’s what’s wrong with you, Jake, you settle too easy. You’re always settling.”
“Ain’t a thing wrong with my Mattie,” Jake said, growing indignant. “She’s given me four little cubs.”
“Okay, she’s fertile, I’ll give you that. And she’s kinda cute. But I’m aiming higher.”
“Tell you what I heard if you keep it to yourself.” Jake seemed mollified by Clive’s concessions concerning Mattie, and some of the anger had left his voice.
“Sure, what’d you hear?”
“The council’s going to call a contention in a month if Arwan doesn’t choose a mate.”
“Aw, that ain’t nothing. Every one knows that. And I won’t be out o’ the running then, now will I?” Clive said.
Nina couldn’t see Clive from her vantage point, but she had a feel
ing he was sticking out his chest like a male peacock.
“You think you got a chance against Kane?” Jake’s voice wavered as if he’d just spoken the name of the devil himself. “If I were you, I wouldn’t even embarrass myself like that.”
Nina wondered if this Kane was the alpha male.
“Just shut up, will you? You’re getting on my nerves.”
“’Cause you got no chance, and you know it.”
“I mean it, shut up and dig. I don’t want to be out here all night.”
A loud chuckle; then Jake said, “Sore loser.”
“Shut up, ’fore I shut you up.”
Another dismissive chuckle under Jake’s breath. Nina was already liking Jake over his companion.
She waited for the shovels to begin again, then got down on all fours and crawled forward. Frozen wet grass poked her gloved hands and knees as she crept to the edge of the ravine and peeked down. She gasped silently.
The two deputies were digging a mass grave. Light from a gas lantern shrouded their forms. They worked at superhuman speed, seniph speed, their shovels in fast- forward. One was tall, tow-headed with a buzz cut and a handlebar mustache. The other was shorter, stockier, with a gnomelike face. Both had the wide necks and meaty, solid musculature of two-skins. Even in human form they couldn’t hide the fact that a muscular animal resided beneath their flesh. She would bet the gnome-faced one was Clive, because short, unattractive men overcompensated by flaunting their masculinity. And poor Clive had a lot of flaunting to do.
She glanced past them, toward the pasture. Her jaw fell open as she blinked away the sleet from her eyelashes. Carcasses, dozens of them. She counted a hundred sheep, ten cows and a flock of chickens all charred from being burned alive. All had been thrown into a crematorium, and the fire had gone out before they’d turned to ash. Their combined horror and misery crawled along her skin and crashed in her mind. It was too much, and her world began rocking.
She squeezed her eyes closed and let images of the Quiet Place, the serenity there, the tranquil peace, take the place of the mind storm.
When she achieved some semblance of control, she looked up again. The animals’ spirits hovered above their bodies, advancing and ebbing in a palette of white mist. They resembled snowy figures on a television with bad reception, but their graven images at the moment of death were clearly discernible. Flames consumed the animals, their flesh melting away from bone. But it was the frightened look in their eyes that caused Nina to blink back tears. She glanced down at her gloved hands long enough to gather herself; then her sympathy turned to anger at the senseless and violent death the creatures had suffered.
Gleaners usually weren’t this sloppy and destroyed the physical bodies they left behind by turning them to cinder and ash. This one must have been interrupted.
Nina forced herself to look up again. Where were the owners of the farm? Their spirits wouldn’t be present, because the gleaner had consumed them. But since the gleaner hadn’t finished tidying up, some evidence of their physical remains should be there.
She glanced back at the area around Jake and Clive. No evidence of human bodies near them. Had they already disposed of them?
Her attention shifted back to the animals’ spirits hovering above their bodies, circling the air in chaotic flaming patterns. They were caught on a frightening merry-go-round and didn’t know how to get off. She had seen this behavior among animals that hadn’t resigned themselves to death and died suddenly or in turmoil. Sometimes it happened in slaughterhouses or dog pounds where animals where frightened and disoriented when they were put down. She detested the shivers that called her to these places.
Hear me, all of you. Her magic instantly translated the command to the language of the dead creatures.
The animal spirits turned in unison, all eyes gazing at her. A sudden stillness entered her mind, and the rapt quiet brought tears to her eyes. You will be fine now. You can leave the earth in peace. I’m sorry you had to die this way, and I’ll punish the gleaner who did this. Now rise and embrace your new destiny.
The air suddenly thinned as if the earth’s reality took a deep breath. The wind and sleet stopped. The earth’s reality caught in a sudden suspended animation. The sky above her sucked the gravity from the air, and her body grew weightless. She grabbed a fence post and braced herself for what would happen next.
A fissure tore through the dark ominous clouds and into another dimension. The air smelled heavily of ions, like after a lightning strike, cleansed and pure. The sound of heaven’s heartbeat rumbled from the opening. Then bright rays unfurled like a rolled-up tongue and fell to the earth. Grace and happiness flowed from this corridor, and the animals’ spirits were drawn toward it. One by one they stepped onto the Path of Light. When all the souls were grasped, the corridor rolled back up in all its magnificence and disappeared in a flash and a twinkle. The wind and sleet returned in gale force and hit Nina. The sudden reality knocked her out of the trance that always caught her when spirits left the earth.
She held tight to the post, knowing Clive and Jake were oblivious to the ascension. She was one of the few chosen ones who could witness the transfer of spirits to the other side. Her people called it the Crossover. Koda said it was Nina’s consolation prize for having suffered the shivers, one of his feeble attempts at making her feel better. Sometimes it worked, though, for it gratified her to know she was helping other souls.
Nina felt her body temperature rising again and her shaking slowing down. She crept away from the edge and turned to leave when voices broke the calm in her mind.
Help, help.
Oh, no.
Our mistress.
Nina cringed as the words and anxiety drifted through her thoughts. By the faint weakness of the signal, she could tell there weren’t that many souls. But where were they?
She crept back along the fence and let the voices guide her past another open pasture, toward a trail that led straight into the woods. She hurried down the rocky path, careful not to turn an ankle. Traces of the rising sun tried to break through the dark storm clouds but had little success. She had to pick her way through the murky shadows.
The forest thickened into twisted brambles, cedars, hollies and pines. The wind failed to penetrate its denseness. The unnatural silence that teemed in the air raised the fine hairs along the back of her neck. She glanced behind her and saw no one.
She picked up her pace and reached a brook. It snaked along the path, its water gleaming dark blood-red in the shadows. Ground mist swelled along its sides, and gray vaporous fingers grasped at her feet and legs.
The path curved away from the stream, and she spotted two apparitions. Birds. Parakeets, maybe. Their tiny spiritual bodies blazed with misty flames as they flew around and around in circles.
Bring back our Emma, the birds chorused, their voices shrill with apprehension. Gone. Gone. Followed her here. Lion monster took her.
Nina drew closer. Even though it was sleeting, the moisture did little to mask the unmistakable smell of burned human flesh. Something about the odor made her deathly ill, and she stopped to vomit. When she felt better, she knelt beside a small pile of ashes and touched them. They were cold. All that was left of Emma.
Hear me. Nina caught the attention of the parakeets, and they stopped flying in frantic circles and hovered, looking at her. Was anyone else hurt? Nina asked, hoping that the gleaner hadn’t disposed of another human.
Only our mistress, Emma Baldoon. She loves us. We sing to her and we love her.
Nina felt their heartache and loss. Whoever believed animals didn’t feel emotion or attachment knew nothing of their spirits. How could she explain to them that they’d never see Emma Baldoon alive again because she was nothing more than fodder for a gleaner?
Nina always thought of herself as the most levelheaded of her sisters. She hated confrontation, easily forgave and wasn’t quick to anger. But when innocent creatures and people suffered needlessly, all her restraint snapped. R
ighteous indignation for Emma Baldoon and all of her farm animals smoldered in her as she asked, Which way did the gleaner go after he did this?
You don’t want to know. Stay away from him.
Nina would like nothing better. The thought of tracking a gleaner made her insides churn, but she wasn’t about to let this two-skin mutant continue to kill innocents. Thank you for the warning, but I have to know.
Into the rising sun.
East. Now that she knew where to look for the gleaner, she took a deep breath and enlightened them about Emma’s death. She assured them that Emma would not be coming back and they need not wait for her.
The birds calmed and accepted the loss; then she helped their spirits ascend.
She turned to head east. That’s when she saw two bright eyes staring at her, the fires of hell burning in the bottomless pits. Gleaner eyes.
Chapter 3
Nina froze, transfixed by fear. She couldn’t let the gleaner believe he had the upper hand or he’d certainly kill her. At the moment, he had no idea of the extent of her power. Keep them guessing was an edge she’d discovered at an early age in dealing with the shifter and animal kingdom. She forced herself to remain calm.
The fiery eyes slunk out of the mist, and the gleaner’s huge sleekness emerged. He appeared in lion form, walking on all fours. She knew from the stories passed down from the Guardians that gleaners and seniphs could shift their arm and leg joints and walk upright on their hind legs like humans. She also knew grown lions weighed between four hundred and six hundred pounds. This gleaner looked every bit as large. It was one thing seeing a lion behind bars in a zoo, quite another being stalked by a supernatural lion-beast.
Nina felt a cold fist of fear contract in her gut as she watched the agile muscles pumping beneath the tawny fur. His mighty mane quivered with each step. He moved with the stealth and confidence of a predator high on the food chain. A reddish aura emanated from his body, evidence that he’d just fed off of Emma Baldoon’s spirit. His scorching eyes never left her as he ran a huge pink tongue over his lips, exposing three-inch-long fangs.
