Autumn Rising

by Marissa Farrar

  “What happens to our guides if one of us dies?” Rhys asked in a rare moment of reflection.

  Blake said, “My father always told me they connect with another shifter. Sometimes it takes time, and they’re wandering alone for years, maybe even centuries. Others will find their new connection within seconds, if their death has coincided with the birth of a baby they bond with.”

  Chogan looked back down at the fallen, offering them a silent blessing. “Let’s hope their guides find new shifters soon.”

  The steady whup-whup of helicopter blades filtered through to Chogan’s sensitive ears. He felt the two men either side of him tense, as they, too, heard the approaching chopper.

  “What now?” Blake growled.

  They walked away from the line of trees, leaving the bodies behind, and stepped out into the clearing that surrounded the cabin. Within seconds, the blades of the chopper became louder, and with it came the swish of tree branches as it passed close above the forest canopy.

  The aircraft appeared in view, hovering above their heads. Someone leaned from the side of the chopper, motioning with their arm.

  “They want us to get out of the way,” said Blake.

  The person disappeared back inside, and something large and square appeared over the edge.

  “I think we should do as they say,” said Chogan, spreading out his arms and stepping backward to pull the two other, much larger men with him.

  Something huge cut the air right in front of them, hitting the ground with a massive thump. Chogan felt the vibrations along the forest floor through the bottoms of his feet. Instinctively, they had all ducked away at the impact, arms raised to shield faces. But now they stood straight again, turning back around to see what had narrowly missed them.

  A rectangular bundle, about six feet long by four feet wide, was covered in tarpaulin and bound with rope. Its job apparently done, the chopper spun in the air and headed back the way it had come.

  “What the hell is that?” asked Rhys, staring at the bundle.

  Blake stepped forward. “It’s our care package. We used to get these dropped to us when we were stationed abroad somewhere remote.”

  Chogan joined him. “Care package?”

  Blake set about untying the ropes. Chogan helped him, his fingers working the tight knots. He assumed the package was so well bound in order to stop it breaking up in the air, or upon impact, scattering the goods on those waiting below.

  “We don’t want anything from you sons of bitches,” Rhys yelled to the sky, as if hoping the people in the chopper could still hear him. He lowered his chin to address Blake and Chogan. “We should tell them to keep their shit.”

  “Don’t be an idiot,” Blake said. “We don’t know how long we’ll be here for, and I don’t know about anyone else, but I didn’t see much to eat in the cabin. We might not like it, but we need to eat, and we have people more vulnerable than us here. More than a day or two without food, and everyone will be feeling it. If you want us to stay strong, with the possibility of fighting our way out of here, then we’ll need to take what they’ve given us.”

  “It might be drugged,” Rhys said, glaring at Blake.

  “I’ll take my chances. You don’t have to eat if you don’t want to.”

  Rhys’ lips thinned, and his hand came up to rub at the blur of tattoos running up the side of his neck.

  Chogan and Blake turned away from the other man and continued untying the package. The others had begun to gather on the porch, called out by the noise and commotion. But none of them moved any closer, watching from a safe distance.

  Finally, one of the knots came apart in Chogan’s hand and he was able to pull the tarp to one side. Instead of food parcels, soft material met his hands, and he began to tug the item out.

  “Sleeping bags,” Blake confirmed. “At least they have enough decency to make sure we don’t freeze.”

  Chogan frowned. “Do you think they know about our body heat?”

  Blake shook his head. “Not as far as I’m aware. Any mention of a raised body temperature has just been dismissed as the body’s normal reaction to a pathogen.”

  “And in English?” Chogan said, lifting his eyebrows.

  “Disease ... infection ... Whatever else you want to call it. It’s pretty normal for a human to catch a cold.”

  “But not a shifter,” Chogan said, the realization that the government didn’t have all their facts straight just yet. A shifter’s body temperature was always a few degrees higher than a regular human’s, and they hardly ever succumbed to the usual bugs that plagued them either. He stored the information in the back of his mind, wondering if it was something he might be able to use in the future.

  Beside him, Blake managed to untie another knot. The ropes fell open, and Chogan pushed the tarp down with it, revealing the rest of what was inside. Sealed packages of dried foodstuffs, plastic sleeves of milk and water. Sanitary products, soap and toilet paper.

  Chogan straightened. “Let’s get all of this in the cabin.” He stepped away and waved the waiting people on the porch down to help.

  “Excellent! Food!” declared Toby, bounding toward them. “I’m starving.”

  “We need to ration it,” said Blake. “We don’t know when we’re going to get our next lot.”

  Chogan put out a hand to touch his cousin on the arm. “Blake, wait with me a moment.”

  He allowed everyone to take the supplies into the cabin, and then lifted the tarp. “I know it’s not the normal new blanket they would be wrapped in, but it’s better than nothing.”

  He cousin nodded his understanding and together they dragged the tarp over to where they’d left the bodies of Enyeto and Kasa. They would normally wrap the dead in a new blanket before they were offered to the afterworld, but in this case a tarp would have to do. Together, they wrapped and covered the bodies as best they could.

  Chogan headed back to where they’d left the supplies and picked up a couple of bottles of water and dried cereals. He took them back to the bodies and placed the items beside them.

  They would be for Enyeto and Kasa to use in the afterlife.

  Chapter Seven

  PETER LEFT WITH Mia, after promising to Toby’s parents that they would stay in touch and let them know as soon as they heard anything.

  Their intention was to head back to his house and get some rest. It was well into the early hours of the morning, and they were both exhausted, Mia particularly so. He needed less sleep than she did due to his shifter genetics, but, though he wouldn’t say so aloud, the events of the last twenty-four hours were taking their toll on him as well. They both needed to rest in order to make the right decision about how to proceed. A foggy head would only make them irrational.

  In truth, Peter felt at a loss. He had no idea how he was going to get Toby and the others out of the compound, or how he would be able to stop the government from rounding up more shifters. The challenge was so huge, it overwhelmed him. He felt like a very small fish in a very big pond.

  Commotion on the road up ahead caused Peter to slam on the brakes, and he quickly pulled the vehicle up behind another car. He’d known they’d been lucky to avoid trouble on the way into the city. It seemed their luck hadn’t held out. He craned his neck forward. A couple of vehicles appeared to be skewed across the street. One appeared to be a large military van. People stood in the road, gesturing at one another, though from this distance, Peter couldn’t make out who or what they were. He briefly considered using his spirit guide to learn more, but decided against it. He wanted to be right there so as not to miss something important.

  Mia jolted up right, and he realized she’d been dozing. “What’s going on?” she asked, looking around and into the dark streets beyond the car windscreen.

  Peter cracked open his door. “Wait here.”

  “What? No way!”

  “Mia, please.”

  “You’re not going anywhere without me,” she said, opening her own door.

 
; “Okay,” he relented, “but stay behind me. Something’s going on in the street up ahead. I want to know what’s happening.”

  “Shouldn’t we turn around and get out of here?”

  His instinct was to do exactly that, but the concerns he’d been having right before stopping the car remained on his mind. “How can we figure out how to undermine what the government are doing unless we know exactly what’s going on, and how they’re handling things?”

  He climbed from the car. Mia hesitated for a moment, and then followed. In order to stay hidden, she clambered over the shift stick so she exited the vehicle on the same side as he did.

  Peter crouched low to use the other cars that had come to a standstill in front of them as cover, gesturing for Mia to do the same. Together, they scuttled forward, keeping down.

  They came to a stop only a couple of car lengths in front of the ruckus in the middle of the street. The sounds of people shouting grew louder, both male and female voices. Someone, somewhere, was crying. The tang of burning rubber tainted the night’s air, but he couldn’t see any fires nearby. Most of the lights in the high rise buildings which towered over them on both sides of the street had been left on, though Peter suspected this was more to do with some idea of security than anyone working late.

  He lifted a hand to tell Mia to stay put and then leaned out around the side of the Chevy he was hiding behind, and assessed the situation. A line of civilians faced off against a number of soldiers in riot gear. Army vehicles surrounded the small crowd. The civilians seemed unarmed. With no prior warning, one of the soldiers lifted the butt of their gun and brought it down like a hammer onto the side of a young man’s head, smashing him to the ground. A woman, the man’s girlfriend, Peter assumed, screamed and ran forward. One of the soldiers caught her around the waist, lifting her from her feet so her legs pinwheeled in the air. They laughed, and then put her back down again. A different soldier pulled back his arm and lashed out, smacking the girl in the face.

  “Oh, my God,” Mia hissed. She’d edged around the side of his body to see what was going on. The feel of her hands resting lightly on his upper back were distracting. “They can’t do that!”

  “They can.”

  Peter had no intention of intervening. Within minutes, both the man and woman were bundled into the back of one of the vehicles. A scuffle began between a couple of the remaining people and the soldiers, while a number of the other civilians turned tail and ran.

  Peter began to back away, taking hold of Mia’s hand and pulling her with him. Still staying low so as not to be seen, they ran back to the car and climbed inside. Peter’s heart hammered in his chest, and he noted the slight shake in Mia’s hands as she scrambled to do her seatbelt back up. Other vehicles had pulled in behind them now, and so they sat still hoping the soldiers would be too occupied with the disturbance to warrant them doing random searches on vehicles just yet.

  “Were they shifters?” Mia asked, her voice low.

  “I’m not sure. None of them shifted to fight back. Perhaps they were people who have had loved-ones taken from them? Or else their connections to their spirit guides aren’t strong enough to allow them to shift at will.”

  “Where do you think they’re taking them? Back to the cabin, or someplace else?”

  “My guess is the cabin, or at least whatever other living quarters they might have created for shifters by now.” He paused and then said, “I don’t think we should stay in the city. It’s dangerous here for us now.”

  “What are we going to do? We’re no closer to getting Toby and the others released, and we still need to find Autumn!”

  Peter frowned, a list of his old colleagues racing through his mind. Was there anyone he trusted enough to ask for help, someone who might also have intel on where Calvin Thorne took Autumn? He could only assume Thorne wouldn’t be stupid enough to take her back to the Chicago facility. Besides, the place was barely up and running after the incident which freed both him and Mia, and the captive shifters as well. If someone kept Operation Pursuit running, they must have needed to move all of the research equipment. Things like blood samples didn’t always travel well, so he could assume that they’d not taken everything hundreds of miles from the city. But even if the distance was less than a hundred miles, that still made a lot of square miles to cover. How many research facilities that he knew of were even in that radius, and how many more that he didn’t know about?

  But was there anyone he could contact? The only person he’d trusted back at the facility had been Blake. Contacting someone else might simply land him either in jail or back at the cabin with Blake and the others. What about before Blake had become his colleague, he wondered? Who had he trusted back then?

  There was one person, someone who would know about any covert facilities in the area, but he wasn’t sure if he could go down the route. The last time he’d spoken to that particular person, they wished him dead.

  He glanced at Mia, at the distress in her eyes. Mia’s whole life revolved around finding people. How would she be able to cope with her best friend missing? She’d never be able to let it go. It would consume her.

  “Okay,” he said, eventually. “I have someone I can contact, but we need to make a deal.”

  She frowned. “What kind of deal?”

  “I need to take you somewhere safe, somewhere with people we can trust.”

  “You want me to hide away?”

  “It’s not hiding, Mia. It’s staying safe. I don’t know if this person will just turn me in as soon as I contact them, but if they do, I don’t want you with me. Is that understood?”

  Panic flitted across her delicate features. “I don’t want you to get in trouble either!”

  “If we’re going to get your friend back, there’s going to be some kind of risk.”

  “But she’s my friend. It should be me taking the risks!”

  “Please, Mia. Either you let me take you out of the city, or I don’t help. End of story.”

  She glared at him. “So you’re blackmailing me now? I never knew you could be such a jackass.”

  He hated the way she was looking at him, but he wouldn’t allow himself to buckle.

  “If something happens to both of us, how is anyone else going to know where Blake and Chogan, and even Toby, are being held? I need you to stay safe, Mia, and it’s not just because you’re a woman or any such crap like that.” That wasn’t completely the truth, but he wasn’t about to let Mia know. Something about her stirred up some deep primal urge that made him want to protect her. She seemed so fragile to him, young, and petite, and delicate. Like all it would take was the slightest knock and it would crush her. He knew this was stupid, she found missing people for a living, and had probably been in even more dangerous situations while searching for lost loved ones. But that didn’t change how he felt.

  “Okay, fine. You win,” said Mia, with a sigh. “But you’ve got to tell me where you’re taking me this time. No more, ‘it’s a surprise’ bullshit.”

  They waited until the army vehicles had driven off, the people they’d taken safely stashed in the back of one of the trucks, and then the traffic started to pull forward. Peter shifted the car into gear and got moving too.

  “I’m taking you to Blake’s home.”

  She frowned. “But he lives in the city.”

  “I mean his ancestral home. I’m taking you to the reservation.”

  “That must be miles away.”

  “Yeah, miles away from here, and safe as well. No one will think to look for you there.”

  “And what am I supposed to do? Sit quietly and be a good girl?”

  “Not at all. You can fill Blake’s father in on what has happened to his son, daughter, and nephew. You’re the one who deals with the families of missing people all the time. It’s utilizing your skills, not hiding you away. Most of Lakota Wolfcollar’s family has been taken by the military, plus there is what’s happened to Tala. The old man is bound to be distraught.”
>
  “You’re right. I’m sorry. I forget how many others are affected.”

  They fell into silence as the big car ate the miles out of the city. They drove by a number of other disturbances, each time with big, military vehicles, and soldiers, armed and intent on violence. People screamed as loved ones were dragged away, battering their bare fists against men in riot gear. Yet, Peter noted, no one had shifted. Perhaps everyone was too scared now, hoping to deny what they were right up until the last possible moment.

  He expected at any moment for their car to be stopped, for them to be questioned about what they were doing and where they were going, but miraculously, they passed through the city unharrassed.

  Chapter Eight

  CHOGAN AND BLAKE rationed out a little of the food to the other shifters before setting about storing everything away. Everyone had been through a lot, including a shift, which always left a shifter ravenous, so all but Rhys, who was still sulking and insisting the supplies might be poisoned, took the food with thanks. Once they’d eaten, a couple carried their sleeping bags into the adjoining bedrooms and settled down to get some rest. Toby had got chatting with Leah, though Chogan was perfectly aware of the glances Leah was sending him, even while she spoke to the boy. He didn’t want the girl to get the wrong idea. He’d put his arm around her, but only as a gesture of comfort, nothing more. She’d been the one ally he’d had when Tala turned against him, and he didn’t want to be forced into the position of having to reject her.

  Tala was still sleeping—part woman, part something else—on the floor. Not wanting to move her, he and Blake had laid a sleeping bag over her body, and placed another beneath her head.

  “Will her shift start again when she wakes up?” Chogan asked.

  Blake shook his head. “I have no idea. This is completely new to all of us. But I guess it’ll need to ‘cause she can’t stay as she is. She needs to shift one way or the other.”

  “I hate what she did to Autumn, but I can’t stand to see her like this either.”