HUNT (A Shifters Short Story)

What the hell?

Stunned, I sat on the floor, still gripping the knife in one hand. I was too surprised to think, my mouth open, trying to drag in the breath I’d lost. My empty hand curled in the carpet, and I froze.

The cabin wasn’t carpeted; I’d slipped on a rug. A very familiar feeling rug, which had slid out from under my feet as I ran.

No…

I closed my mouth and drew in a deep breath through my nose.

Nonononono! The rug was fur. Smooth, soft, sold black fur.

Werecat fur.

I scrambled away from the gruesome accent piece until my back hit the wall. My hands shook, my knife clattering against the floor over and over again.

I didn’t recognize the individual scent from the rug. If I had—if I’d known the tom who’d died to make that carpet—I might have lost it right then. I was still shaking in Dani’s boots when the front door opened a second later, and Steve walked in carrying my hiking pack.

“Hello, Abby.” He dropped my pack at his feet and closed the door, his knife glinting in the overhead light. His blade was much bigger than mine. “We’ve been waiting for you.”

Waiting for me? Hadn’t they been searching for me?

My fist clenched around the handle of my own knife, but I was no longer sure it would do any good. The truth tapped at the back of my mind like soft knock on a thick door, but I couldn’t let it in. It didn’t make sense. It wasn’t possible.

The door on my left creaked open, and Billy stepped out of a dark stairwell leading beneath the cabin. With him came the scents of fresh blood, fur, and some harsh, acrid chemical. What the hell were they doing in that basement? Slaughtering more innocent college students? Or skinning animals to make macabre décor?

Had they personally killed and skinned the cat whose fur I’d slipped on?

Humans didn’t know about shifters, and natural jaguars had never been native to Kentucky, so what did they think they’d caught? An escapee from an animal preserve?

“What do you want?” I asked, trying to keep them both in sight at once.

“For now? Just your company,” Steve said, but his words had an oddly upbeat ring to them. His voice sounded…eager. Saturated with some dark, dangerous desire. “But soon, we’re gonna need you to shift. That’s what you call it, right?”

I stared at him, stunned. Surely I’d misunderstood. He couldn’t know what I was.

Steve raised his knife, still stained with Dani’s blood, and pointed to the far end of the room. My gaze tracked the motion reluctantly, and that’s when I saw what hadn’t been visible through the small front window.

I gasped, then choked on my next breath. I blinked, but the gruesome images didn’t go away. They wouldn’t even blur mercifully, as Mitch’s body had beneath my traumatized gaze. Instead, they stared down at me through eyes too much like my own.

Four werecat heads were mounted in a row on the far wall, on identical wooden plaques. Their mouths were open, lips curled back as if they were hissing, but the pose was artificial. Arranged post mortem. I could see that, even Steve and Billy couldn’t.

Three of the cats were strangers. Strays, most likely—Jace would have told me if several Pride cats had gone missing. But the fourth, the last one on the right, was Leo Brown, one of Jace’s enforcers. He’d disappeared during his vacation a couple of months before, and no one had found a single sign of him. Until now.

“I…” I closed my eyes, then forced my gaze back to Steve. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Denial. It was instinct, if not exactly flawless logic.

“Oh?” Steve raised one brow, glancing at my blood-soaked sleeve, then back to my face. “How’s your arm? Or would that be your front paw?”

That’s when the truth became too much to deny. They knew what I was. They’d known all along. They’d followed me into the woods, hunting me, and my friends had become collateral damage.

Wood creaked on my left as Billy squatted next to me, unfazed by my knife. Or maybe he couldn’t see it, held so close to my opposite thigh. “You’re the first girl shifter we’ve ever found. Been watching you for weeks now.”

“Psyc. 204?” I whispered, glancing up at Steve, who now leaned against the front door, blocking the exit.

He nodded. “A stroke of genius, right? That’s also how I met your girl Robyn, and good ol’ Mitch. When he mentioned you all were going camping, I was happy to suggest a good, private campsite. Not many people know about this place.”

Which was why it had seemed perfect for my solitary run.