Hunt: A Shifters Short Story

  HUNT

  A Shifters Short Story

  By

  Rachel Vincent

  Text

  copyright © 2014 by Rachel Vincent.

  Cover art copyright © 2014 by Killswitch Media

  Distributed by Smashwords

  All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the author, Rachel Vincent.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events or locals is entirely coincidental.

  Rachelvincent.com

  To my husband—my number one fan, my other half,

  and my partner in this first independent project.

  The forest was singing, and its song was all mine. The others, with their human ears, heard only the crackle of the campfire and their own voices. Huddled in down jackets and sleeping bags, they thought they owned the world by virtue of their ability to tame it, and that was an understandable mistake. But they’d never really seen the forest. Not like I saw it.

  They couldn’t feel it like I felt it either, poking at my paws with sticks and thorns. Blowing through my fur with the scents of pine, and ash, and warm, plump rodent. Winding through my soul, with the knowledge that I was but part of a whole, a single predator serving nature as surely as it served me.

  Soon I’d have to go back to the campfire. To my friends’ idea of “roughing it” with battery powered radios, canned food, and no-rinse bathing wipes, guaranteed to keep you fresh even days into a showerless camping trip. Soon I’d have to put on my human skin so I could be Abby Wade, normal college sophomore. I’d been hiding the feline half of my life for a year and a half, and my secret forest run was just a temporary reprieve from all things human.

  Still, the next few moments were mine.

  My paws snapped through twigs and sank into underbrush, pushing against the earth to propel me faster, higher. I was a streak of black against the night, darker than the forest, yet a part of it, as I hadn’t been in weeks. Small animals fled ahead of my paws, scurrying through tangles of fallen leaves and branches. The scents of oak, birch, maple, and pine were familiar comforts, relaxing me even as they pushed me for more speed, greater distance. Thorns caught in my fur. Cold air burned in my nose and stroked the length of my body as I ran, like a caress from the universe itself.

  I was welcome in the woods. I belonged there, as I’d never truly belonged anywhere else.

  When I’d been gone as long as I could stay away without worrying the others, I slowed to a gradual stop, huffing from exertion. It was time for a snack, to replace the energy I’d burned during my shift.

  My ears swiveled on my head, pinpointing the telltale sounds of prey. Werecats can’t track by scent, like a dog, so we hunt with our ears and our eyes. On my run, I’d smelled mice and a couple of weasels, both of which stay active in the winter, but I was holding out for a rabbit, or even a beaver. No use wasting a deer with only me there to feed on it.

  Something scuttled through the underbrush several yards to the southeast, too fast and light to be raccoon. Probably a mouse or a rat. Too much effort for too little meat.

  I slowed my breathing and listened harder. From the north came a soft, rapid swooshy heartbeat, but no movement. Whatever it was, it knew I was close and hungry. I turned my head and sniffed toward the north—I could pinpoint prey with my ears, but could only ID it with my nose, which told me I was hunting rabbit. Perfect. Its fur wouldn’t be white yet—not in mid-October—but my feline eyes would have no trouble distinguishing it from its surroundings.

  I pounced. The rabbit sprang from the underbrush and landed three feet away. I caught a glimpse of brown and white fur, then it was off again, racing through the woods and vaulting over low shrubs and fallen logs.

  I ran after it at half speed, reluctant to end the chase too soon—who knew when I’d have another chance to hunt? But seconds later, a scream shattered the cold, quiet night with a sharp echo of pain and terror.

  A sudden spike of fear froze me where I stood. I knew that scream—that voice. Robyn. My roommate of more than three years, and for the next three nights, my tent-mate.

  No!

  I turned and raced through the woods toward the campsite, my lungs burning, my heart trying to beat its way through my sternum. I had no plan, no thought beyond simply getting there, and only the vaguest understanding that if I burst into the camp in cat form, I’d scare her far worse than whatever had made her scream.

  But I’d only gone a few yards when a second scream split the night again, followed by two deeper, masculine shouts of fear and pain.

  I pushed myself harder, my brain racing through the possibilities. Bear? There’d been no growling or roaring, and I hadn’t smelled anything even slightly ursine. Besides, black bears typically shy away from humans. As do bruins, though to my knowledge, no one had ever spotted a bear Shifter in the heart of the Appalachian Territory.

  So what the hell was happening?

  I flew through the forest, retracing my own path with no thought for the living buffet scurrying all around me. The screaming continued, and I heard terror from Robyn and Dani, but sheer agony from their boyfriends. I’d seen a friend murdered once, which was how I knew exactly what I was hearing in that moment—my friends were being slaughtered.

  My clothes hung on branches ahead, but I raced past them. The screaming was louder now, but there were fewer voices. Dani’s boyfriend Mitch had gone silent. I was too late to help him, and before I’d gone another few yards, Olsen’s screaming ended in a horrible, inarticulate gurgle.

  My lungs burned and my legs ached—werecats are sprinters, not long-distance runners—but I pushed forward, demanding more from my body than I’d ever had reason to expect from it.

  This couldn’t be real. Werecat strays were always slugging it out in territorial disputes and dominance challenges, but the most dangerous thing I’d ever encountered in the human/college world was my Chemistry professor’s hardline no-late-work policy.

  Robyn’s screams intensified with her boyfriend’s silence, then suddenly stopped, and for a moment, my heart refused to beat. Not Robyn. I couldn’t lose my roommate of more than a year and the best friend I had in the human world. The girl who left her toothpaste open on the bathroom counter and made me hot chocolate in the middle of the night, when nightmares woke me up.

  Then in the sudden quiet, the forest produced a new voice, and my next steps were fueled by simultaneous terror and relief.

  “…mouth shut, bitch, or I’ll slice you wide open. Her too.”

  Robyn and Dani were alive—so far, anyway. But who the hell was with them?

  I’d gone a few more steps when the smell of blood rolled across the forest floor like an olfactory fog, overwhelming my senses and shredding my heart. The sheer strength of the scent was horrifying, and the thought of how much Mitch and Olsen must have lost made me sick to my stomach.

  I slowed as I approached the campsite and logic and caution finally overcame the terror that had propelled my dash through the woods. There was nothing I could do for the guys, and I’d be no good to the girls if I burst into the clearing and got shot by some psycho, backwoods hunter. So I snuck the last thirty feet or so, silent and virtually invisible in the dark, as only a werecat can be.

  Flames flickered through a tangle of branches; the campfire
still burned bright. Blinking, I edged forward slowly, mostly hidden by a thick, fat bush. I saw Olsen first and had to swallow the traumatized whine sliding up from my throat. He lay on his back in the clearing, his shadow twitching on the ground with every lick of the orange flames. His blue eyes were open, his mouth slack. His coat was unzipped, his shirt completely drenched in blood, which now soaked into the ground beneath him.

  He’d been gutted.

  Mitch lay in the same position, a quarter of the way around the campfire, his face forever frozen in a grimace of agony. His stomach and chest had been sliced up the middle, but unlike Olsen’s, Mitch’s coat and shirt had been spread open, showcasing the full extent of the damage. So the girls would know the same thing could happen to them.

  The wound was long, and deep, and straight. The weapon could only be a blade, wielded by a human hand. This was not shifter violence.

  Nausea rolled over me for the first time ever, in cat form. I’d seen a lot of slaughtered deer in the seven years since my first shift, at age thirteen. I’d even brought down a couple myself. But these weren’t deer. They were friends.

  My vision blurred until I couldn’t keep Mitch’s body in focus, yet when I glanced away, visual clarity returned, as if my brain didn’t want to interpret the images of carnage my eyes were sending.

  I blinked and forced the slaughter back into focus. If I couldn’t even look at the corpses, how could I hope to save Robyn and Dani?

  Maybe I couldn’t. I wasn’t a cop. I wasn’t even an enforcer. My summer training sessions with Faythe had included neither rescue missions nor hostage negotiation. But I had to try. I was all they had.

  My roommate and her best friend knelt on the ground on the other side of the fire, and watching them through the flames sent chills through me. As if I were already seeing them die. They cried and huddled together, alternately staring at their butchered boyfriends and cringing up at their captors.

  Three men stood with their backs to me, each dressed in hunter’s camouflage. Two of them held hunting knives, still dripping blood onto the packed dirt. They were human, based on both their scent and their weapons, yet every bit as monstrous as the cruelest shifters I’d ever met.

  One of them smelled vaguely familiar, though I couldn’t quite place his scent.

  I backed carefully away from the bush concealing me and began to circle the clearing slowly and silently. I’d have to be within pouncing distance before I made my move.

  “Where is she?” the man in the middle demanded, and my heart actually skipped a beat. Did he mean me? Had they been watching us? Or had they simply seen five hiking packs and deduced an absence?

  “Where’s who?” Robyn said through chattering teeth, loyal to a fault. She would keep me out of this, even if it cost her last breath. But I couldn’t let that happen. They were scared and defenseless against men with knives, and I remembered being scared and defenseless. I remembered way too well…

  The man in the middle backhanded her, and Robyn fell over sideways, unable to right herself with her hands taped together in her lap. It took all of my self-control to hold in the growl itching at the back of my throat as I rounded the halfway point of the clearing. Drawing attention to myself before I was ready to fight would get us all killed. That was one of the first things Faythe had taught me.

  The tallest of the men hauled Robyn upright by one arm as I continued to circle silently, aching inside while she cried. “We know Abby was with you,” he said, and I froze mid-step. I recognized that voice. A few more feet, and my eyes confirmed what my ears already knew.

  Steve… something. He’d transferred into my psych class a week into the semester and had sat in the chair behind me ever since, trying to make conversation while I nodded and pretended to be absorbed in my notes.

  What the hell was going on? Had he followed us?

  “Where’d she go?” the second man demanded, and I noticed as I edged along the clearing that the contents of both tents had been dumped in a pile about three feet from the campfire, including my sleeping bag and purse. Was this a robbery, or were they actually looking for me? Neither possibility made much sense—I hardly knew Steve and had never even met his accomplices, and how much cash could they possibly hope to score from a campsite?

  The third man stepped forward, silently threatening Robyn and Dani with the knife when no one answered. My blood boiled, even as fear spiked my veins with a rush of adrenalin.

  Tears poured down Robyn’s cheeks, but Dani answered, staring at the blade now inches from her throat. “She went for a hike!”

  “In the dark?” Steve crossed bulky arms over a bulkier chest, the tip of his knife tapping against the waist of his thick camo pants.

  Dani shrugged, and I saw a spark of the stubborn defiance that made her fun to debate—and might soon get her killed. “She likes nature.”

  “And she took a flashlight,” Robyn added, shaking violently, either from the cold or from shock. “Please, you can have anything you want. My purse is over there.” She nodded toward the pile of supplies. “Just take it and let us go.”

  “Oh come on, this is a party!” Steve glanced at his friends with a look of anticipation that chilled my blood. “But we’re one girl shy. You have her number?” Robyn nodded slowly, and Steve glanced at the third man. “Tim, give her a call.”

  I’d circled to within feet of my roommate by the time Tim—shorter and thicker than Steve—hauled Robyn to her feet. She whimpered when his hand slid into the front pocket of her jeans, and fresh tears rolled down her face. My claws curled into the underbrush, itching to rip through his flesh instead.

  I watched Robyn and Tim, waiting for my opportunity to pounce, but in my head, I saw something else. Another man. Another place. A bruising grip on my own arm. A cruel, unwelcome hand, followed by pain, and screaming, and humiliation.

  The bastard leered at Robyn until she closed her eyes, then he shoved her down again and slid one finger across the screen of her phone to wake it up. He was already scrolling through the contacts list by the time she hit the ground. Tim pressed a couple of buttons, then held the phone to his ear, and they all waited.

  But I already knew what would happen, and sure enough, my phone rang from inside my purse on the edge of the pile of sleeping bags and hiking packs.

  “Damn it!” Steve kicked my purse across the clearing without bothering to open it, as his dark-haired accomplice ended the call from Robyn’s phone.

  I’d left my phone in my purse because my feline form suffered an obvious and bothersome lack of pockets.

  “Fine,” Steve said at last, having resigned himself to the inconvenient conclusion. “She’ll come back—where else could she go?” He shrugged. “We’ll just start the party without her.”

  No… I recognized that tone. That slimy, hungry grin. I knew what would happen next, if I didn’t stop it.

  Tim dragged Robyn away from Dani and closer to me. Robyn screamed and kicked, trying to twist free, but none of it fazed him. He dropped her on the ground and her head hit a fallen tree branch. Robyn moaned, dazed, and I could practically see the fight drain out of her.

  “Get off her!” Dani shouted, struggling to get to her feet without the use of her hands. Her cheeks were dry and scarlet, fury eclipsing her fear, at least for the moment. She would fight them. And that would get her killed.

  The third man glanced at Steve, brows raised, silently asking for permission. He hadn’t said a word so far, but his clenched fists spoke volumes.

  Steve nodded and tossed an openhanded gesture toward Dani. “She’s all yours, Billy. I’m holdin’ out for the little redhead.”

  Me of course.

  Wouldn’t he be surprised to see me sporting black fur and claws instead of my usual mass of curls? One hundred and four pounds was only a scrap of a woman, but added up to one hell of cat. Not that he’d ever know it was me.

  Billy shoved Dani down, then kicked her in the ribs before she could roll away. My sharp, feline ears heard
bones crack, and I cringed. Dani’s shout became a scream of pain, then he dropped on top of her, his huge, bloody hunting knife pressed into her throat. “One more sound, and I’ll cut your fucking head off.”

  Silent tears rolled down Dani’s face, and each breath was a pained gasp. Her eyes closed and her head rolled to one side as he fumbled at the waistband of her jeans, and suddenly I couldn’t move.

  Bars. Tears. Pain. Blood. Terror.

  No, that was all over. All but the fear. It had been more than four years, yet the terror was suddenly back like a razor-tipped Boom-a-rang. My heart beat too hard. The whole world began to go gray beneath memories of my own helplessness and humiliation.

  No! This can’t be happening… Not again. Not in the human world. Not while I cower in the bushes.

  Run! the voice inside my head shouted, as each breath slipped from my throat faster than the last. They’ll do the same thing to you if they find you. You can’t survive it again.

  But that was a lie told by the scared little girl still huddling in a dark corner of my mind. I’d grown up. I’d moved on. I’d learned to fight. True, my skills were unproven, but they were real, and they were a game changer. Beyond all of that, I was in cat form. They’d never recognize the Abby they were looking for in my current configuration of flesh and bone—and fur.

  I could survive this. I could prevent this. I could end those men.

  “No!” Robyn screamed, trying to shove Tim off with her bound hands. “Don’t, please!”

  That was all I could take.

  I leapt out of the bushes, fury pulsing through my veins hotter than blood. A growl rumbled from my throat and rolled across the clearing. I slammed into Tim’s side, knocking him off Robyn and onto the ground. My front paws pinned him to the dirt.

  Around me, everyone froze. For one long second, no one even breathed, and several hearts actually skipped beats. Then Robyn took a single, shaky breath and began edging away from us slowly, pushing herself with her feet because her hands were still tied. She was clearly as scared of me as she was of him, and terror had now driven comprehension from her eyes. For the moment at least, Robyn had checked out.