HUNT (A Shifters Short Story)

“I’m fine for the moment, but I don’t have much time.” With the phone pinned between my ear and my shoulder, I stood and stepped into my underwear, my teeth chattering so hard I could hardly talk.

“Okay, start from the beginning. You went camping…?”

“Yeah. Just a sec.” My shirt was next, and I had to set the phone on the ground to pull the material over my head. “We’re in Cherokee National Forest, just south of the Tennessee border.” I gave him the coordinates we’d used to find the campsite, forever grateful for GPS technology. “I went for a run by myself—the private kind—and when I got back, there were three men at our campsite, carrying big hunting knives.”

“Damn it!” he swore, and I heard as much guilt as I heard anger and concern in his voice. The concern was for me. The anger was for whatever suicidal idiot had dared put a member of Jace Hammond’s Pride in danger. A female member, at that; I was one of only three in the territory, and the only one who wasn’t Jace’s mother or sister. “I knew I should have sent someone with you to school.”

“No, you shouldn’t have. Things aren’t like they used to be, Jace.” He and Faythe had made sure of that. They’d brought a new youth and strength to the Alpha’s council, and they were in the middle of negotiating with an allied group of strays who wanted official recognition by the council. “Besides, having me watched wouldn’t have helped. Your enforcers wouldn’t have recognized the danger.” Because they would only have been monitoring the area for the scent of an intruder—a cat shifter without authorization to be in our territory.

“The aggressors are human?” he asked.

That could be assumed, based on the fact that they carried weapons—no self-respecting werecat would need them—but a good Alpha assumed nothing.

“Yeah.” Humans’ movements weren’t restricted by werecat territorial lines, and humans were almost never a threat to shifters. Jace’s enforcers wouldn’t have identified the threat until it was already too late.

“And you were in cat form?” he continued.

“Yes, but they didn’t know it was me. And I spent most of the time hiding in the bushes.” Like a coward. “They’d already gutted Mitch and Olsen by the time I got there, but the girls were just tied up, at first.” The quiver in my voice triggered a near-silent exhalation from Jace.

“You sure you’re okay?” He knew what I’d been through more than four years before.

“Yes, but they killed Danielle, and Jace, they took Robyn. I have to get her back!”

“No,” he said, and I recognized that single syllable as an order. “I understand the protective impulse, but you’re the one I have to protect. I want you to stay where you are, and—”

“I’m not just going to abandon her!” I stood and shook out my insulated cargo pants, phone pinned to my shoulder again while I stepped into the fuzzy inner lining.

“You’re going to do exactly what I—”

“This doesn’t make any sense, Jace,” I said, and his growl at being interrupted normally would have frozen me where I stood. “I know one of the men who took her. He sits behind me in psych. He’s always been so friendly before, but now he’s crazy.”

I sank onto the cold ground and swallowed another sob, trying to speak slowly and clearly, and to give him just the facts. Anything else would only slow me down and put Robyn in more danger.

“Abby, are you okay?”

“No! They know I’m out here, somewhere. They were going to wait for me until I came out in cat form and scared them off. Not that they knew that was me.” I sucked in another deep breath. “I don’t know if they followed us from campus or what, but while they were waiting for me to come back to camp, they tried to…”

The words froze in my throat, the edges sharp, as if I’d swallowed glass. I coughed, then started over. “The girls were so scared. Robyn was screaming, and she couldn’t stop him. The other one held his knife to Dani’s throat. I couldn’t just watch, and I couldn’t leave them there…” My explanation trailed into fragile silence, but for the crackle of the fire.

“What did you do, Abby?” Jace still sounded calm, but now his voice held a dark note of dread.

“I killed the one who was on Robyn.” My words all ran together, but Jace seemed to understand. “I just wanted to get him off her, so I pounced on him, and he smelled like her, and he’d bitten her, and everything just went red after that. But then Steve slashed my front leg, and the other one stabbed Dani. Then they took off into the woods.” My tears were a mercy, smearing the carnage all around me. But they couldn’t blur the overwhelming scent of blood. “I couldn’t chase them. Not with my front leg sliced up and Dani dying.”

“You shouldn’t have shown yourself, Abby. You could have been killed.” Jace’s growl was a mixture of worry for me and rage on my behalf. “Just stay there. We’re coming to get you, and once you’re secure, we’ll make an anonymous call to the cops.”