HOTSHOT BROTHERS: Coyote Shifters

by Hunt, Sabrina

  Willow, who’d marched forward to grab her staff, whacked me with it and then whipped it through the air to point it at Burr. “Don’t you start. We’ve been trying to, but someone keeps derailing us.”

  “Cree,” Burr sighed. “Come on, man, the girls need trainin’.”

  “How do you know it was me?” Every eye focused on me and I grinned. “Alright, fair point.”

  “Wait, you guys aren’t gonna watch, right?” Kalin’s hands twisted together.

  “Hey, Montero, we’re rooting for you,” Burr said, as he draped an arm around Willow and squeezed her shoulders. Her eyes went soft as she let herself lean against him for a second. “Plus, you’ve got the best two teachers and distraction. Perfect training simulation.”

  A slight ache went through my chest and I looked away from Burr and Willow. As happy as I was for my brothers, along with it being the spring and us being home together in Montana, all the lovebird-ing around me sometimes got to be a bit much.

  Especially for a guy who’d never been in love.

  “Alright, let’s go!” Kalin shouted, squaring off.

  “Random formations, Cree!” Willow barked. “Wes,” her lips quirked, “give it your best shot.”

  “Sometimes your girl really asks for it, Burr,” Wes rumbled, eyeing Willow.

  “I know,” Burr groaned as he moved off to the side. “She was always picking fights in school when we were kids. Where do you think I learned my peace-making skills?”

  “Sh,” Fox said, giving Willow a nervous look as her eyes blazed. “I don’t want to get whacked with that staff.”

  “Go!” Willow shouted.

  Running towards Kalin, I feinted left, then swung right. Kalin picked up on it, blocking me smoothly, her face furrowed in concentration as I darted past her.

  “You can have fun, you know,” I said, lightly tapping her shoulder with chalk. It was a way to see how much Kalin was improving. Fewer chalk marks – better blocking.

  “Ugh,” Kalin kicked out, narrowly missing me and I swung away.

  Now we were sparring for real and I tried not to go too-too fast. But every opening I saw, I marked her with chalk. I could tell Kalin was getting frustrated and I was about to open my mouth to encourage her when she swung her leg around so fast I almost didn’t block it in time.

  Laughing a little, I nodded at her, when an excited, breathless and British voice interrupted my concentration, calling out, “Mates, you’ve to come along! Right now!”

  “Hazel, what–?” I started to ask.

  “Yahh!” Kalin roared, swinging her other leg around and hitting me directly in the groin. Stars exploded across my vision as I fell to my knees and curled up in a ball, cursing profusely.

  Laughter rang out around me as Kalin gasped, “Cree! Oh my God! I didn’t mean to! It was an accident! Are you okay?”

  “Leave me for the buzzards,” I croaked. “I’m dead. Death by Kalin’s foot.”

  “Nicely done, Kay,” Willow crowed. “Excellent form.”

  “That’s one way to take him out,” Wes added.

  “Jesus, this is the crap I gotta do now?” came an annoyed voice in my ear. Ben Ofreo, “Doc,” was the healer of the group and his gesture was impatient as he touched my navel. Cool relief swam down and I rolled onto my back. “You okay?”

  Ben flicked back his dark hair from his amused eyes as I reached for him. “Am I gonna make it, Doc? Is there lasting damage? Can I have kids?”

  “You’ll be fine, idiot,” Ben stood up and nudged me with his foot. “Come on, get up.”

  Two other faces appeared in my line of sight, blocking out the sun. One was Rayner Hess, blondee, gray-eyed and trying not to laugh. The other was Hazel Pemberton, the voice who’d distracted me, looking both guilty and eager.

  Tucking her light brown curls behind her ears, her sapphire eyes danced. “Come on, Cree. You’ll be excited to hear this. It’s from Whitsy!”

  “It was a good run, brothers,” I whispered. “Remember me…” And then I closed my eyes.

  Cold water slapped my face and I sat up gasping. Rayner was holding a bucket and he grinned. “I thought a little water might make you feel better, bro.”

  Spluttering, I gazed at the faces around me, each filled with laughter, and I laughed too.

  An hour later, barely anyone was laughing. It seemed like a distant memory.

  I was sitting on Aunt Sil’s favorite couch, holding a bag of cold peas over my groin and listening as arguments went around the room. Ben’s healing touch had done the trick, but I was still a little sore and secretly worried.

  So I’d quietly asked Aunt Sil for a bag of peas. She’d shaken her head, but obligingly went and got them.

  Adjusting the peas, I continued to scroll through the webpage I’d opened on the laptop next to me. It belonged to one, “Wise Madman.” A self-proclaimed Sasquatch, or Bigfoot, expert, he had reams of writing and tons of out-of-focus pictures dedicated to finding the elusive cryptid.

  Cryptozoology. The study of finding beasts that may or may not exist. You couldn’t be a wilderness guy – firefighter, shifter, enthusiast or otherwise – without running into it. But, I mean, hey, whatever floats your boat, right?

  It was incredible how much the creature held people’s imagination in sway. Some so much so, they dedicated all their free time to it, like this Wise Madman fellow.

  We Hotshot Brothers had encountered these kinds of people before. Usually they were a treat. An interesting, enthusiastic, and often strange bunch traipsing around looking for things that didn’t exist. I could dig it. Yet, as a shifter, I was always inclined to laugh.

  I’d seen the secrets that lived and lurked in the woods. The wonder and the horror.

  But I’d never seen a Bigfoot. Or “a lingering legend,” as Aunt Sil called it.

  Professor Whitlock, “Whitsy,” who had been on speakerphone, hadn’t spoken for over twenty minutes. Not since the argument had broken out about whether this Wise Madman was worth our precious coyote shifter time. He spoke up nervously now, clearing his throat, but barely audible over the din.

  I hollered out, “Shut up, Whitsy’s talkin’!”

  Whitsy and I had become buds last summer. He’d lived at Sil’s while leading a team on a nearby cave excavation. The man knew everything worth knowing about the Native Americans of Montana – the Crow, the Blackfoot, the Salish, and so forth. And he could spin a mean story.

  However, he was also a bit cracked. Definitely the nutty professor type, no matter what Hazel said. He could be qualified to join Mensa, sure. Didn’t mean he wasn’t outta his tree. We did agree that Whitsy was a gem, though.

  But I was leaning the other way when agreeing with her and Whitsy on this guy.

  “Folks, folks, please. I’m only suggesting it might be worth looking into. No matter what his other hobbies, Otis is a dear old friend with a Ph.D. from Standford. An excellent ecophysiologist, dendrologist, silviculturist–”

  “The guy likes trees, Whitsy, we get it,” Burr said, frowning as he scrolled through his phone, even as his lips twitched. “But his hobbies have to concern us. We try to avoid the crazies. We don’t want to encourage them to try to track down anything that could get them hurt.”

  “He’s not crazy!” Whitsy demurred. “Merely open-minded.”

  “I guess that’s one way to put it,” Wes muttered, making Kalin and I laugh.

  “Well, when he’s not off looking for hominin hybrids, Otis’s academic work involves studying wildfire patterns. Otherwise, I would not have wasted my breath making this call.” Whitsy huffed. “I knew you would all make fun.”

  “Ira, you must admit this sounds utterly farfetched,” Aunt Sil said, folding her wrinkled hands in her lap. Her eyes were filled with mirth and her gray braids shone like silver in the light coming through the window.

  While Aunt Sil was not our aunt in any strict sense – everyone called her that – she was also my only aunt and I adored her. We all did. Out of all the Elder
s that helped us learn our skills, she was the one who’d helped hone our abilities and become unstoppable as a team. Individually, too, she’d helped us deal with our questions and fears involving being a shifter.

  “So would any of the things that you all do!” Whitsy exclaimed. “I tell you, I felt the same, but after reading his field notebooks and seeing the pictures, I am convinced. He stumbled across the Ash Walkers. And the other horror that walks.”

  A chill went through the room and everyone fell silent.

  Burr was gazing out the window, his face darkening. I knew what he’d been driving at when he’d lightly mentioned the “crazies.”

  There were monsters in the woods. We’d faced them too many times to count. Creatures of ash and fire, polluted horrors that had slain innocents.

  One dark summer night, six years ago, just south of here – we’d almost joined their numbers. Instead, we’d stumbled into our destiny.

  One that now involved a Skinwalker who we called the Crooked Man. No matter the name or the face it presented, it remained a dark shadow falling across our spring days.

  An enemy who’d fallen silent, yet never far away enough not to feel its sordid chill breathing down our necks. A constant reminder that we still had so much work to do and time was against us.

  “But pictures?” Kalin asked. She now knew that the only reason she was able to get a blurry picture of the Skinwalker’s true face was because in that moment it was his true, human face. Cameras couldn’t capture spirits or demons. It would be a far different world if they could.

  “I know!” Whitsy sounded agitated. “None of the creatures, I’ll grant you. But of what they left behind. And the stranger who lurked there… Listen, his team was south of you, at Rampart Mountain. A five-day hike from any kind of civilization. Otis saw a blonde man in the distance…” He sighed. “You must talk to Otis. He will explain far better than I could.”

  Rayner, who had been quiet up to this point, now spoke, slowly and thoughtfully. “You say your friend Otis was in the Flathead Mountains. He saw a blonde man and was compelled to follow him. Then Otis wound up in a place that seemed dark and removed from the rest of the world. Almost alien. With traces of old forest fire. And then he saw the Ash Walker, not burning, not destroying – just standing there. With this man.”

  “Then they both vanished, yes! And Otis stumbled back, coughing and ill. He began to look into this – his curiosity is second to none. He began to find other stories, other reports and he is putting them together. It is a wonder!”

  “Whitsy, if what you’re saying – no, you are saying… This man has, what, seven years of information on the Skinwalker?” Rayner asked.

  “Yes,” Whitsy said. “That and some Sasquatches, but you can feel free to ignore all that!”

  My brothers and I exchanged looks.

  “Now, I have a class soon, so I must let you all go. But I hope you come to Seattle, and soon.” He paused. “I tried to talk Otis out of revealing any of this. Not to hide this from the world, but rather for his own safety. I fear he has strayed into something he doesn’t understand.”

  My stomach clenched, thinking about those other poor souls who’d run afoul of the shadows. “If we do come, perhaps we can convince him. I can charm the pants off anyone.”

  “That you could, young Cree!” Whitsy sounded like his old self. “I do hope you can. Otis is giving a talk in five days and I have a feeling he might bring all this up. I hope at least a few of you are there.” He paused. “Alright, now, I wish you all the best. Ta!”

  After a chorus of goodbyes, there was a pause and everyone looked up at Rayner. He smiled slightly, but his eyes were troubled. “So, who’s coming to Seattle with me?”

  Chapter 2

  Opening my email, I whipped through my inbox, murmuring, “Come on, come on… Oh, come on!” Putting a hand to my forehead, I sighed and stared out the window.

  The soggy gray sky and raw air matched my doleful mood. Fog had crept in across Elliot Bay, obscuring the distant mountains and winding its way through Belltown. My favorite neighborhood in Seattle, Washington and where I currently lived.

  Though if I didn’t find someone to take over my roommate’s sublet, not for much longer.

  “What is this, Universe?” I muttered out loud. “This is Seattle. Tourists are hungry to stay in Belltown. Why can’t I find someone to live here for a few weeks?!”

  Not only that, but the apartment was beautiful. Belonging to my friend Harper, it was a top floor loft in a turn-of-the-century building. The windows were tall and arched, the wood floors shining and gold-flecked, and the walls covered in art. Everything had a vintage touch.

  I’d been here for about a year and I still marveled at it.

  And previously, any time Harper’s work had taken her out of the city for an extended period of time, we’d found someone to take over her room in hours. Not days. Certainly not a week.

  It wasn’t that Harper couldn’t pay – she could. She was also smart and money-conscious enough to know that in the age of Airbnb, not renting out an empty room in the apartment was the height of foolishness. It was how she could afford a place like this and charge me lower rent.

  I mean, Harper had renting out this apartment down to an art form. I’d helped her write up the ad, she’d taken the pictures, and that was that. We didn’t even rent her room – but our spare guest room. Usually, we had our pick of guests, too, fabulous ladies on vacation from abroad. Girls with cool accents and incredible sartorial panache.

  Now it was crickets.

  Harper is going to kill me.

  At that moment my phone rang and I stared up at the ceiling, slitting my eyes. “Really?” Picking up the phone, I forced my voice into cheeriness. “Hello?”

  “Starry Sky, my love, my daughter, why are you so down this morning?” My mother’s voice seemed to float down the line and jab me between the eyes. “I could feel it.”

  “What’s wrong, love?” My dad’s voice came through now. “Do you need some new crystals?”

  Eyeing the bowl of crystals next to my computer and the several hanging on my wall, I blew out a sigh. “No, it’s not that,” I hesitated. “I can’t find a roommate and I’m getting worried.”

  “Oh my,” my mother laughed and so did my dad. “Don’t worry, one will come. Perhaps you’re manifesting the wrong desire. You’re so worried about finding one, you can’t find one.”

  “Perhaps,” I mustered out. Or perhaps this ad sucks and the universe hates me.

  “The universe doesn’t hate you, Sky,” my mom said quietly and a chill went down my spine.

  When I was young, the fact that my parents were hippies, living off the grid and to the beat of their own drum had created a magical world for me and my brother. We’d spent our days gardening and laughing, chasing our dogs and wearing flowers in our hair. When we went on vacation, we went to places like Tibet and India.

  Nowadays, however, as a young urban professional, it was a weird and embarrassing secret I kept to myself. I told people the bare minimum about my parents. Dad was a tenured professor at Stanford and Mom was a yoga teacher. They were both writers, like me. It wasn’t a lie, per se.

  I left out the part how they lived in a tiny town in the middle of nowhere between the Redwood Forest and Castle Rock in California, and how my childhood home was filled with meditation cushions, Buddha statues, and chanting.

  Yet, as much as I wanted to write off that world, some part of me couldn’t. It was as though there was a stubborn little girl in me with a crooked ponytail and a jutted out lower lip, stomping her foot, demanding I not give up on magic.

  Maybe that’s why I’d pulled away from my parents and that world. I’d spent the beginning of my twenties slowly watching everything become mundane, hopeless, and gray. There was no connectivity, nothing. There was hard work and fighting to hold your spot.

  “Darling, we called to cheer you up and to let you know, well, I’ll let your mother tell you,” my dad�
�s warm voice was in my ear and a knot in my chest loosened.

  “What is it?” I asked, that little girl’s curiosity getting the better of me.

  “It’s about your brother,” Mom started to say, and I stood up.

  Anger and bitterness rose up in me like a poison. I vaguely wondered if my mother could sense how sour and pitch black my aura was now. “I don’t want to hear about him,” I said flatly. “He doesn’t care about us anymore. He’s too obsessed with his job and making money and God knows what else.”

  “That isn’t true,” my mother said gently.

  “Mom, he missed Christmas! My birthday! My twenty-fifth birthday!” I cried out.

  We’d always made a big deal about how I’d been born on Christmas. My brother had insisted that when I turned twenty-five on December twenty-fifth, we’d have a blow-out. A night I’d never forget.

  But he’d simply not shown up this past Christmas. I’d left California in tears, catching a redeye on December twenty-fourth. And my twenty-fifth birthday consisted of me sitting alone in a bar in Seattle, ignoring my parents’ phone calls and getting drunk. Then I’d stumbled home and spent Boxing Day with a hangover the size of Montana.

  He hadn’t called since, either. In fact, my brother had all but vanished on us, sending the occasional email saying he was fine, things were good, and he’d see us soon.

  I knew, in a way, I’d come to blame our parents and their weird parenting on my big brother’s vanishing act. He’d been pulling away for years, becoming the kind of workaholic we’d once laughed at. And I missed him. Once he’d been a constant, steady presence in my life. We’d talked almost every day. He was my go-to.

  Now he was a ghost.

  It was terrible, but now sometimes I forgot I had a brother – especially during these last six months.

  “No, Sky, listen, I had a dream.”

  “Oh, God, one of those,” I muttered and my mother made a hurt sound. “Sorry, go ahead.”

  “You two were children again, sitting at the edge of the ocean and a full moon was rising. It was so peaceful and warm.” She sighed happily. “There was a laughing, dark brown coyote on the other side of you. I’m not sure what that was about. Perhaps it’s a guide. Keep an eye out.”