Dakota’s new life deflated in front of her eyes. It wasn’t the first time a shifter had dismissed her that way, as if being half-human negated her shifter side.
Maze’s voice was a low, good-humored rumble over Dakota’s shoulder, and it patched her back together again. “She smells like every jaguar I’ve ever known.” He let the sentence hang until Shiloh backed off.
Then he spoke to Ryder. “And Ryder, you’re a clouded leopard? Incredible, man. Only met one other.” Ryder’s eyebrows went up. Like he wanted to know who this one other was, but he didn’t want to know enough to actually ask.
“But you...” Maze stepped around Dakota, getting closer to Shiloh, inhaling deep as if she were exactly the kind of female he was looking for. “You’re something special, aren’t you?”
Smooth, Maze, smooth. Dakota hoped Maze caught how impressed she was, with his ‘raptor senses’.
“Come to Sparring and find out,” Shiloh said, still challenging him like a man.
Maze gave her the sexy-cool nod and backed off immediately. “We’ll be there,” he said.
Shiloh nodded, not returning his attention. Because Maze wasn’t a cat, Dakota figured. A shifter who looked down on half-humans wasn’t likely to be panting for some cross-species-loving.
Shiloh looked at Dakota. “That’s the next step for all the new recruits,” she said slyly, condescension in her voice.
Dakota nodded tightly, any hope she had of being friends with Shiloh slipping away.
“You’re not new?” Dakota blurted. Dakota burned to find a vampire as quickly as possible and force that first shift. It had worked for Dallas, it had to work for her. First thing on her list after that happened would be showing Shiloh up.
Shiloh laughed in her face. “No, I’m not new.”
That didn’t tell Dakota much. She bit back her questions.
“Be at the BBOC at seven,” Shiloh said to Maze. She motioned to the female at the cash register. “Brittany, give them directions.” Then she was gone, out the door and into the afternoon sun.
Maze watched her go, then grinned and turned to Dakota. “I think you made an impression.”
Dakota watched Shiloh through the window, driving away. “What? I had everything under control,” she said quietly.
Maze laughed out loud. He was still smiling when Brittany showed up with the directions.
Chapter 5 - A Bird In The Hand
Dakota drove Luxe more slowly than necessary on the winding forest roads in the almost-dark. She wasn’t used to driving roads like these. Most of Arizona had been flat and straight.
To her right, the Nantahala River occasionally peeked through the trees. Dakota liked seeing it. It reminded her of rafting trips back home. She could get used to all these trees, if the river came with them. There was something about being on a raft, buffeted by rapids, tipping over waterfalls; she imagined it was the closest she would ever get to flying.
“I really can sleep in a tree,” Maze said from Luxe’s passenger seat.
Dakota shook her head, her eyes still on both road and river. “It’s not your fault there’s only one hotel room open in this entire town. We can share.”
She said it, but she didn’t like it. They’d searched all afternoon and had only found one hotel with a vacancy, and it only had one room, with one bed. That was awkward, but worse would be making Maze sleep in a tree.
Maze didn’t reply, only looked at her. She could feel his amusement from all the way over there. “Stop it,” she told him. “You don’t know what I’m thinking.”
He grinned. “You sure?”
Dakota grinned back but didn’t look at him. Something had caught her eye, something big. She leaned forward as she drove, tracking the movement through the windshield. Maze did the same. She slowed even more on the winding forest road, glad traffic was light.
A golden eagle, its feathers all shades of brown, wingtips spread like fingers, streaked out of the trees beside the river before turning back, flying faster than she thought eagles could fly, looking bigger than she thought eagles could look.
The reason why abruptly settled on her. It was a shifter. No, it was a raptor.
She nudged Maze. “You know him?”
“Yes, smartass, all birds know all other birds,” Maze said softly, but his eyes were hard and did not leave the eagle.
Dakota barely heard Maze. She could not take her eyes off of the raptor, tracking him as he rose to soar above the trees. Looking at the beast gave Dakota new appreciation for the word, and new appreciation for Maze. She was seized with the desire to see her friend shift, even though she still didn’t know what type of bird he was and was too ashamed to ask.
As she watched the eagle, she realized that what she really wanted was to see what that massive raptor looked like, when he shifted.
She just knew he was a male shifter.
Maze’s ironic jab finally cut through her thoughts. Dakota was about to bust his balls for it, when he said, “There goes our turn.”
His eyes were still on the sky, though. just like hers. The eagle flew in a tight circle near the river, as if watching something important in that one spot.
Trees blocked their view. They sat back in their seats in unison.
“Like I’ve never seen a bird before,” Dakota muttered to herself. She found a place to turn around. By the time she turned into the rutted gravel driveway of the Black Bear Outfitting Company in plenty of time for 7:00 sparring, she had almost forgotten about the eagle.
A tremor of excitement moved from Luxe’s steering wheel, up Dakota’s hands and arms, into her shoulders and the rest of her body. She was here. She’d made it. This was the first step into The Cause, which was the first step to getting close to a vampire, which had to be the first step to finally shifting.
Time to work some magic.
* * *
Aven hovered on a current of air, scanned the BBOC parking lot one more time for Hernando’s beat-up truck. No joy. The old condor shifter’s vehicle was nowhere to be seen. Aven tipped his wings, swooping over the Nantahala River as the sun set, following the dim sparkle of rippling water. He peeled off toward the Bear Claw Diner.
He circled the diner once and spotted a figure lugging a trash bag to the dumpster. Brittany, the waitress. Aven tucked his wings and tipped into a steep dive, pulling out just in time to land on his boot heels a couple yards away from her. Damn, he loved that everweft.
Brittany was less impressed.
“Oh my deer!” she yelled, and dropped the trash bag, leaping back a few small jumps before she realized it was him. Brittany was half-human, half-white-tailed deer shifter. She startled easily.
But it wasn’t only that. Inside Brittany’s startle was something else. Anticipation, laced with hope. She was looking for someone, but it wasn’t Aven. Not a man at all, from the way she vibed. More like her personal hero.
“Aven,” she scolded with a smile, smacking her gum like she was chewing grass. “Jameson will have your ass if I die of a heart attack because of you, after all he did to save me.”
Aven scooped up the trash bag Brittany had dropped, tossing it into the dumpster. “You can’t die. I need you to be on the lookout for someone for me.”
Brittany had only been shifting for a few weeks. Her mom was a human and her dad was a buck. Half-humans sometimes shifted, and sometimes didn’t. Brittany had always wanted to shift, so when her boyfriend, Toby, suggested an intensive camping trip as a way for her to trigger her first time, she’d agreed.
It had worked, but then he’d been killed by a vampire, which sucked. Only a switch could kill a vampire, but at least predator animals had a chance. Toby had been a deer, like Brittany, and he hadn’t had any chance at all. Brittany had only made it out with her life because a local legend, known as the Warrior Woman, appeared out of nowhere and fought the vampire off.
Toby’s murder had been a turning point for Aven and the shifters he worked with. For most of his life, vampires had bee
n a myth, a story, a legend, just like they were for humans, but with an extra layer. Growing up an eagle shifter in a home where shifting and flying were embraced as necessary and life-giving, sometimes whispers flew that so-and-so had scented a vampire. If they were real, why not the Warrior Woman?
Was that who Brittany was hoping to see? Aven had never seen the Warrior Woman, but he kept his eyes sharpened for wild black hair and Cherokee-style leather garments on every flyover. He’d never one hundred percent believed the legend, but hearing Brittany tell the story of her rescue, he’d known she wasn’t lying. So Aven looked.
Until Brittany, the stories they’d catalogued said the Warrior Woman had only ever appeared at night, always to men, and she always made mischief for them. Aven had been surprised when she’d saved Brittany, but thankful as hell. Every shifter in town knew Brittany was the only glue holding her dad and little brother together ever since her mom disappeared.
The Warrior Woman hadn’t shown Brittany how to get home, though. Members of The Cause had gone to the forest to find her. Ever since then, Brittany had been The Cause’s biggest fan. Ready to help in any way she could, even if it was just keeping The Cause shifters well-fed by handing out extra-large portions of pie when they stopped by the diner.
He pulled out his phone and brought up the photo of Dakota to show to Brittany. She blew a bubble and popped it, nodding. “She was here this afternoon. Had a totally hot raptor daddy with her.”
Aven tamped down his excitement. Dakota was here? Already? “Did they say where they were staying?”
Brittany shrugged. “I gave them the names of a few hotels, but they’ll be at Sparring tonight. Shiloh told them to come.”
Whoa. Nobody made it to Sparring without passing muster at the Bear Claw first, and usually it took a few tries. With Shiloh, more like five. But Dakota and her companion had leveled up on their very first visit.
Aven thanked Brittany for her help and walked her to her car, watched as she drove away. Then he backed into the shadows and launched himself into the sky.
Sparring had started already.
Chapter 6 - A Room Full Of Rocking Chairs
Dakota parked Luxe by the back door of the BBOC, next to a tricked-out black SUV with a back-window sticker of a bear in a canoe. She got out of the car quickly and headed to the building, already on full alert. Maze's door closed seconds after hers, his footsteps crunching on gravel as he jogged to catch up.
He grumbled beside her. “You got a plan?”
Dakota wondered if he thought this was a bad idea, going to Sparring. Shiloh had called her out for being half-blood, and yet here Dakota was, walking into a building of full-on predators.
She nodded. “Same as always. Don’t get dead.”
They were almost at the back door, and Dakota strode forward before Maze could say another word. She knew this was stupid. She also knew it was her best option.
Dakota pulled the metal door open. Sights, sounds, and scents hit her in the face. Fluorescent lights, weight-training gear, and more sweaty male shifters than she had ever seen before in one place. She liked it.
A crowd was gathered to one side of the huge space, forming a rough ring around a clearing in the center. Animal noises, followed by shouts from the spectators, rose up every few seconds. The press of bodies was so thick, Dakota couldn’t see what kind of shifters fought inside it.
Maze scanned the room. Dakota was buzzing from all the excitement, but he stood relaxed and open, stance wide and dominant, even in this overwhelming place. He probably had every scent identified, classified, and filed away in his database. Dakota imagined Maze’s special raptor senses telling him things like what each shifter had for breakfast, and if they’d had sex the night before.
Maze must have caught her mood again - she wished he would quit doing that - because he looked at her, a playful scold in his eyes that broke the tension building inside Dakota. “You’ve got to get over this jealousy.”
Dakota gave him a fake-angry look. He laughed at that, his gaze going back to the crowd in front of them.
Together they moved deeper into the space. Growls and yowls came from the ring, hidden from their view by spectators. Big cats fighting, right here in this room.
Dakota’s adrenaline spiked. This she had to see.
She made her way to the front of the crowd, pushing against other shifters as she slipped between them. One big shifter pushed back, before he saw she was a female. His nose screwed up and he gave her a who the hell are you? look.
Yeah, she got it. She didn’t scent right.
Dakota turned to the fight. A tan puma with a black diamond shape on its forehead crouched at one end of the ring. Puncture wounds on its shoulder and flanks trickled fresh blood over darker, dried tracks. Its ribs moved with measured breaths. Green eyes narrowed at its opponent.
The puma faced off against some kind of cat Dakota had never seen before. Its fur was a pattern of large, dark tan patches on a background of reddish-black. It was smaller than the puma, but clearly no less deadly; it had the longest fangs she’d ever seen. They were blood-stained.
Maze pushed through the crowd to get close to Dakota. He nodded at the long-toothed cat and mouthed a name: “Ryder.”
So that was a clouded leopard. Sexy.
Ryder stalked the edge of the ring around his opponent, slinking low, possibly looking for a chance to go for the other cat's throat. The bigger puma kept its eyes locked on Ryder. Its tail twitched and whipped as it growled threateningly. Ryder stayed completely silent, eyes never moving from the other cat. He passed in front of Dakota and she saw the wounds on his side, fur hanging in bloody tatters. Red stained the concrete floor.
Reality kicked Dakota in the teeth in a way she could no longer deny. She’d seen a lot of horrible shit in her short career as a cop, and if she ever managed to shift, she bet she would see things she could only currently imagine. But the fact remained, Dakota could not shift. She couldn’t heal, like these shifters could. She didn’t belong, and she could not fake it till she made it.
She’d thought she’d shift or die trying? The fight in front of her made it plain, Dakota just might get her wish.
She couldn’t watch this. She didn’t want to see how it ended.
Dakota twisted away from the ring and tried to breathe.
* * *
Aven pushed through the back door of the BBOC and into a full-blown sparring session, the most crowded one he’d ever seen. More evidence of the influx of shifters they had. Fresh meat was scattered around the room, lifting weights, taking turns on the speed bag or heavy bag, trying to prove themselves worthy.
He passed the sparring ring, trying to take in the whole room at once. There was Jameson, talking to Shiloh as they both looked through the crowd, probably evaluating the new recruits.
Aven should show them the photo of Dakota. Two minutes, and he’d have a team on this mission. It was a good plan.
And then it all went to hell.
A scent assaulted Aven, impossible to ignore. He stopped in the middle of the milling bodies. Was that-? No, it couldn’t be. Motherfucking could not be. That hawk was dead.
Aven’s gaze ripped through the crowd, his eyes darting to every face around him, looking for… what? A ghost? He aimed his nose and breathed, searching the room. Searching his mind for another explanation for what he’d scented. But the smell wasn’t changing, wasn’t letting up.
He turned, his nose latching onto the source of the scent. Aven barreled past two big bear shifters and saw Ryder, just-shifted from bloody leopard to human in sweat-heavy workout clothes. He was shaking the hand of a hawk shifter who had his back to Aven. That’s who the scent was coming from.
The male was tall, tan, with straight, black hair… what the HELL was going on? Aven felt like his head was going to split in two with the impossibility of what he was seeing. What he was scenting.
He couldn’t speak, just walked up behind the male facing Ryder and grabbed his arm, spi
nning him around. Ready for whatever came at him, even if it was a fist.
No recognition showed in the shifter’s eyes, and his face was all wrong for his scent. Aven’s head squeezed with pain. His stomach rolled in violent protest at the evidence in front of him, contradicting everything his gut told him was true.
Images flashed behind his eyes, sensation charging his body with each one. Cage’s ruined apartment. Aven watching the world spin just before he hit the ground, pain screaming through his shoulder. Foreign faces and sirens and voices, in his space, keeping him from shifting, from healing himself.
It all came back with the stranger’s scent.
Aven spat his words at the hawk in front of him. “Why do you smell like a dead man?”
Chapter 7 - Cat’s Meow
Dakota had lost Maze, but she didn’t care. She needed out, she needed away from all these males, away from the fight. She stuck her fingers in her belt in that backwards way she’d always done with a Sam Browne belt when she was on duty, using the leverage to feel stronger, more in control of herself in the moment. Her confidence had been shaken by the fight and the blood. She needed a breather. She pushed her way through the males thronging the fight and headed toward the wall, then along the wall toward the exit.
Maybe if she hurried, she could get her job back. Ha. The thought was a dark one, but the sight of blood always made her dark. It made everyone dark.
Who was she kidding? She might never shift. Finding a vampire might not even work to force it, and it might be the last thing she ever did. You couldn’t shoot those things, right?
Dakota gripped her belt tighter and fixed her eyes on the far wall, trying to regain her footing, remember why she’d thought she could do this. Maybe all she needed was a task. She looked around, her mind seizing on the thought. What was her next move? Identify the chain of command.
Raptor's Peak: Switch of Fate 4 Page 3
