by Selena Scott
“Sometimes I swear that you buy this shitty furniture just to give me something to do when I’m freaking out,” he grumbled, striding over to the box and yanking his sleeves up.
His mother didn’t respond. She just shoved a glass of iced tea in his hand a few minutes later and picked up her paperback to sit down and wait for Seth and Raphael to arrive.
Seth got there a few minutes before Raph did, and without a word, sat down to help Jackson assemble the end table. They didn’t speak, but Jackson could see that Seth was worried. There was a line between his eyebrows that wasn’t usually there. And his color was high, as if he’d been running or working out before he got there.
Raphael arrived a few minutes later, a six-pack in his hands.
“Hi, family,” he said in as somber a tone as a man like Raphael could manage. He passed around a beer to each person as they went to sit on the couches, Seth arranging the newly assembled end table in perfect right angles to the wall.
“I listened to the details on the radio on the way here,” Seth said, setting his beer down without taking a sip of it. “Animal attack by the reservoir, but no signs of… eating. Purely aggression. I guess that’s why they think it’s a shifter.”
“And the fact that it was done over the full moon,” Raphael cut in, picking at the label of his beer. “God. Anything happens over a full moon, they blame it on shifters. A tornado could take down a neighborhood on a full moon and they’d find a way to chalk it up to shifter violence.”
Jackson happened to agree with Raphael, but he’d looked thoroughly into the details of the murder by the reservoir, and this time he agreed with the authorities. “I think they’re right. I think it was a shifter.”
“There’s no need to jump to conclusions,” Seth reasoned. “I think—”
“Was it one of you?” Jackson asked, his deep voice hushed. He looked back and forth between his brothers, because he needed to see their faces, needed to see the truth of their answers. He hated himself for asking, but he had to. He was as close to a father as any of them were going to get and he needed to man up and ask the hard questions.
“Jackson!” Elizabeth said in a hard tone he hadn’t heard her use since childhood. As if she were half a second away from grounding him.
Seth went white and Raphael went red.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Raph griped.
“Jacks,” Seth started.
“If it was one of you,” Jackson said, talking over everyone, “we’ll need to figure out a way to cover our tracks. We can still do it, but we have to move now. There’s no reason to keep it a secret from us if—”
“Oh. This is rich. This is just great.” Raphael, lit up with anger, rose from his seat. He was a happy-go-lucky type of person. It took quite a lot to get his temper ticking. But when it did, he was a sight to behold. “I knew this was going to happen, Jackson. I just fucking knew it.”
“You knew what was going to happen?” Jackson asked, trying to hold on to his own temper, knowing that he’d only make the situation harder if he yelled back.
“I knew that at some point, you’d hate yourself so much that you’d start to hate me and Seth too.”
Jackson reeled backward, feeling as if his brother had just cold-cocked him. He felt the blood drain from his face. His eyes snapped toward their mother, half expecting her to reprimand Raphael the way she’d reprimanded him earlier, for speaking out of line. But her expression was grim, her lips in a thin line as if… as if she agreed with Raphael’s assessment.
“I don’t hate you and I can’t believe you’d even say that to me,” Jackson said in a rough voice. “You have to know how much I love you all.”
“Of course you do, Jacks,” Raphael said, softening a little, but not letting his temper go completely. “Yet, you’re still chaining yourself to the basement floor every full moon like a fucking psycho. Don’t you think that kind of self-hatred is going to affect us? Jackson, you just accused us of murder, for fuck’s sake!”
“I didn’t accuse. I asked. Because if there was some kind of… accident,” he stressed the word, hoping it would appease Raph a little bit, “then we need to clean it up so that we can protect each other.”
“I can’t believe I have to say this, but neither Seth nor I murdered a human this last full moon, okay? We were together the entire time. We ran up the mountain, treed a raccoon, howled at the fucking moon, and fell asleep around dawn, just in time to drag our naked asses back to Mom’s house, all right?” Raphael took a huge pull on his beer, draining half of it at once before he slammed it down on the new end table. “And if you eased up on the self-hatred every once in a while and actually let your wolf off the literal chain, you’d know that shifters are not actually the bloodthirsty, out-of-control monsters that the media make us out to be.”
Jackson couldn’t stop the shiver that worked its way up his spine. This was far from the first time he’d had this conversation with his family. But even the idea of being out in the world in his wolf form sent white-hot fear coursing through every vein in his body.
It was true that in animal form, a shifter’s brain worked differently than in human form. There was no English language. No thoughts of philosophy or God or tomorrow. There was only the present. And their finely tuned senses.
There was also very little control. The few times that Jackson had shifted outdoors, he’d felt a wild exhilaration, a rightness, but the next morning, back in his human form, he’d had to admit that he couldn’t be sure what he would have done had he come across a human. Would he have been able to override his animal instinct? Would he have attacked?
He hadn’t known the answer. And to him, that was all the evidence he’d needed to make sure that he never, ever encountered a human during his shift. He’d started chaining himself up after that, refusing to let himself loose on the world.
The fact that his brothers chose to run free was a constant worry for him. One that was merely amplified by the recent murder at the reservoir.
“Obviously shifters aren’t monsters,” Seth said after a minute, ever the peace maker. “But we all know that if there’s a shifter out there who is alone, who is scared or just newly shifting, or doesn’t know how to get far enough away from civilization before the shift, then this type of accident could definitely happen. Has anyone seen signs of another shifter in the area? I thought for sure we were the only ones.”
Both Jackson and Raphael shook their heads. All three boys turned to look at their mother and were shocked to see her white-faced and shaking, one hand over her mouth.
“Ma?” Jackson asked, alarmed to see her acting this way. She was generally fully in charge. Nothing scared her.
She didn’t answer. She shot out of her chair, turning the corner out of the living room and picking up the pellet rifle she kept in the hall closet on the way.
“Stay there!” she shouted back to her boys.
All of them immediately disregarded her order and instantly rose from their seats.
Jackson was halfway across the room when he heard the garage door slam and the sounds of a scuffle. He was all the way across the room when, to his complete and utter shock, his mother came striding back into the room, dragging an old man by the ear.
“Jesus Christ, woman! You’re going to tear my ear off!” the man shouted, his silvery hair flashing in the evening light.
Elizabeth shoved him through the living room doorway, past Jackson, and slammed him down on the couch, right between where Seth and Raphael were standing.
As soon as he was down and she had both hands available, she positioned the rifle on her shoulder and pointed it square between his eyes.
“Ma!” Seth shouted, clearly as bamboozled by this turn of events as Jackson was.
“What the hell is going on?” Raphael asked, looking between his mother and the stranger.
“Jackson, be a dear and fetch my bear spray from the kitchen counter,” Elizabeth said in a deadly calm voice that made fear zip down
the spines of each of her sons. When she used that voice, it meant all hell was about to rain down. No one was safe.
Jackson was back in a flash and flanked his mother, facing the stranger who was still rubbing at his ear and scowling up at Elizabeth.
“Was it you?” she asked him.
The man was wiry and a little worse for wear, but he had an intelligent look in his eye that made Jackson instantly suspicious of him. “You’re talking about the murder at the reservoir.”
The stranger didn’t try to feign ignorance.
“Damn right, I am. Was it you?”
“No, it wasn’t me. I don’t kill people. I barely kill animals. Only to keep me from starving to death.”
“You’re a shifter,” Seth guessed flatly.
“Ding ding ding,” the man replied, just as flatly.
“Ma,” Raphael said, his eyebrows high with surprise. “Why the hell was this guy in your garage?”
Elizabeth took a breath. “I’ve been housing him this week.”
Jackson felt his mouth drop straight open. Disappointment in himself bubbled in his gut. Here he was, trying to keep an eye on his family, trying to keep them safe, and apparently his mother had been housing a murderous shifter and he hadn’t known a thing about it.
“I know this firmly boots me into the ‘old fool’ category,” she said, her own disappointment clear in her eyes. “But I had a reason for letting him stay.”
“What could that possibly be?” Jackson demanded.
Elizabeth’s spine straightened, but the gun stayed pointed at the man’s head. “Since he’s been here, I’ve seen him shift twice.”
“You’ve been hiding him for two months?” Raphael said, his eyes bulging.
“No,” Seth cut in, a strange expression crossing his face. “You’re not listening, Raph. She’s saying that this man has shifted twice this week.”
Elizabeth nodded.
“That’s impossible,” Jackson muttered.
“Whatever you say,” the man muttered back, looking deceptively bored of the conversation.
“Ma,” Raph said slowly. “You’re positive?”
“Don’t insult me, Raphael,” she snapped, reassuring them all more in that moment than if she’d been sweet and calm. “I know what I saw. A few days after the full moon, a full-grown coyote joined me on my porch. Ten seconds later, it was this here man. And earlier this week, I walked back into my garage and he was in his coyote form again, on the cot I’d laid out for him.”
“Your shift isn’t beholden to the full moon?” Jackson demanded, stepping around his mother to face the man.
“Of course it is,” the man snapped back.
“Then how the hell did you shift twice in a week?” Raph demanded.
The man sat back, crossing his arms. “I’m not telling you people anything. You don’t want me here? Fine, I’ll go. I won’t bother you another minute. But I’m not sticking around to get roughed up by some upstarts who can’t control their shifts, shot by a pellet gun, and framed for a murder I didn’t commit.”
He pushed up to his feet but Jackson stepped forward. “Sit. Back. Down.”
The man hesitated, but then eyed the bear spray that Jackson had pointed at him and ultimately acquiesced.
“What’s your name?” Jackson asked, trying to get ahold of this conversation, of this crazy fucking moment when his entire world was tipping on its edge.
The man, obviously sensing he was in for a long night, leaned forward and scrubbed his hands over his face. “Bauer Clark. And I’d just like to repeat that I have no ill intent. My only ambition is to disappear and die of old age. Why the hell would I ever murder someone when I’ve been doing everything I can to keep a low profile?”
“He escaped from a shifter camp a few years back,” Elizabeth put in. “I verified it in the shifter database. It’s a matter of public record.”
“What do you mean ‘escaped?’” Jackson demanded of Bauer. “No one escapes once they're interned.”
Bauer laughed but there was no humor in it. “Ain’t that the truth. Lost a lot of friends to those camps.” He was quiet for a moment. “I didn’t Shawshank my way out, if that’s what you’re thinking. There was a fire one night. I didn’t stick around to see how it all turned out. The next time I was able to check the database, they had me registered as deceased. Worked fine for me, considering I didn’t want them looking for me. But this is yet more reason why I would never murder someone. Why would I ever risk an investigation that could reveal me to be alive?”
Jackson scoffed. “You talk about shifter violence as if you’d have a choice in the matter. As if you could decide whether or not you’d hurt a human. But we all know that shifters can’t reason in their animal forms—”
“Maybe you can’t, son. But I sure as hell can.”
Jackson gaped at Bauer and from the corner of his eye, he could see Seth and Raphael making the exact same expression.
“You’re lying,” Jackson said hoarsely.
“I’m not. I can control myself when I’m in animal form. Even on a full moon.”
“So, you’re admitting that you can shift when it’s not a full moon?” Raphael cut in.
Bauer sighed and dropped his head again. “I guess I am.”
“You’re lying,” Jackson said again, more vehemently this time. He’d done decades’ worth of research into shifters. Every study, he’d pored over. Every psychological assessment that was published, he’d read. There was nothing he didn’t know about shifters. How could he possibly reconcile this stranger’s words with what he’d always known to be true, to what he’d resigned himself to years ago?
“Jacks,” Elizabeth said quietly, pressing her hand to his shoulder, and Jackson realized that he was breathing like a bull, his nostrils flaring and his knuckles white where he gripped the bear spray. He must look like a lunatic.
“Bottom line,” Seth said, looking back and forth between Bauer and his family. “You can’t prove that you didn’t kill that human at the reservoir. So, no matter what information you may or may not be able to bestow upon us about shifting, you can’t stay. You have to go. I won’t have a potential murderer at my mother’s house.”
“I can prove it,” Bauer said, staring around at them. “Or, the investigators will prove it for me. It won’t be a coyote attack, that’s for sure. Sometime soon, they’ll announce they’re looking for a mountain lion shifter, or maybe even a wolf shifter. But it sure as hell won’t be a coyote.”
Raphael turned on his heel and strode to the TV in the corner, pressing it on. The local news was covering the murder in horrifying detail and Jackson felt his stomach churn. They watched for twenty minutes before a so-called shifter expert was interviewed. The man opined on what kind of shifter they were dealing with and sure enough, he was one hundred percent certain it was a mountain lion shifter who’d done the damage.
“Or just a natural born mountain lion,” Raph growled in frustration. He dropped his head back and then stared at Bauer. “So, now that we know he’s not a murderer, what the hell do we do with this guy?”
“We just let him walk out of here,” Seth reasoned. “If he truly wants to keep a low profile, he’s no danger to us. I doubt he’d report us and run the risk of revealing himself in the process.”
“I don’t like it,” Jackson growled, pacing back and forth and staring at Bauer.
“I don’t like it either, to be honest,” Bauer said, still sitting with his hands folded on his lap.
“What?” Elizabeth asked.
Bauer sighed and lifted his hands, palms out. “I’m not getting any younger. Days or weeks in my animal form takes a toll on me. I… don’t know how much longer I’ll make it, living like that. It was a stroke of luck for me to stumble on this place. To realize that there were shifters living here undetected. I thought it was a safehouse. I didn’t realize it was a family home.”
“You’re… saying that you want to stay?” Elizabeth asked.
The li
nes in Bauer’s face deepened as if he were aging before their very eyes. “I’m saying that I really don’t want to go. The winter is coming. Hunting season. I won’t trouble you. I’ll stay in the garage.”
He leaned forward and for a moment, Jackson saw a man with great dignity, a man who didn’t want to be begging for scraps. But this was the life of a shifter. You got the scraps and you were grateful for them. For just a moment, his immense distrust in the man ebbed a bit, an unwelcome empathy taking its place.
Apparently, Elizabeth was feeling no such empathy. “Why would I let you stay here? Why would I ever put you up, in the house where I raised my children, if you purposefully withhold information from us? Information that could be the difference between survival and …” She couldn’t bring herself to speak of her sons’ deaths, even hypothetically.
“You mean you want to know more about how I shift?”
“And how you control it,” Jackson broke in.
Bauer bowed his head again, looking at the ground. “I’m not a teacher. Not a good one anyways.”
“You’re saying what you can do… it can be taught?” Seth asked incredulously.
“Well, I learned it somewhere, didn’t I?”
“You’re expecting us to let you stay in our mother’s home simply because you’re offering to teach us something that may or may not be real?” Jackson asked slowly.
Bauer’s leg started to jounce. “I can prove it.”
Ten minutes later the group stood in Elizabeth’s secluded backyard that butted up into the mountains. The boys separated Bauer from their mother and she didn’t fight them on it. They’d always been protective of her. She was used to it by now.
“Go on, then,” Jackson prompted Bauer as he stood before them, stark naked.
The man shrugged his shoulders, tossed his head to the sky, and shifted down into his animal form.
Jackson felt unwilling tears spring to his eyes. He’d never really witnessed a shift before. Because every single time one of his brothers was shifting, the moon was forcing him to shift as well. There was no fighting it, and no time to check out his surroundings.
