HUNT (A Shifters Short Story)

The partial Shift. It was standard procedure now, for all enforcers patrolling in human form, and it was one of the first things Faythe had taught me.

I squeezed my eyes shut tighter and forced everything else from my mind. The cold, the dark, the pain in my arm. None of that mattered. Robyn mattered. Finding her. Saving her.

Avenging the others.

Pain shot through my right eye, followed by an answering spear through my left. The pressure was enormous, as if my eyeballs would pop right out of my head. But when the pain faded and I opened my eyes, I could see. The colors were muted, of course, as they always were when I took on my cat form, but the woods were clear, each tree crisply outlined by the little available moonlight.

I grinned over the small victory. This is going to work.

My ears were next, and they were a real bitch. Shifting them was more complicated, and the pain was like needles being jabbed through my eardrums and into my brain. But the difference was unbelievable. I hadn’t realized how much I was missing in human form until I could suddenly hear like a cat.

Rodent heartbeats. Wind rustling branches far over my head and half a mile away. An owl, halfway across the damn forest, swooping in on its prey with a rush of air unique to that particular wing formation and dive pattern.

And beneath all that, the steady, low-pitched hum of machinery. My pulse spiked. A generator.

Steve’s cabin. It had to be.

I let go of my injured arm and took off through the woods, easily avoiding fallen logs and jutting branches now that I could see them. Cold air burned my lungs, but I barely felt it. I was buoyed by the hope blooming in my chest. I could save her. I could make up for failing to save Dani. And maybe in doing that, I could prove to myself for good that the cowering, helpless Abby of days past was gone. The men in the cage had killed her, but from her ashes, this new phoenix had been born, and she was ready to unleash justice on their brothers in crime.

Justice and pain.

Lots of pain.

Half a mile later, the cabin came into view, its generator growling now. The motor drowned out any sounds I might have been able to hear from inside the building, and the sound was almost too much for my pounding head to take, so I Shifted my ears back, squatting behind a shelter of tall, thick ferns. But I kept my cat eyes. Feline pupils would adjust to the light inside the cabin, once I got in.

The cabin was small—so why did they need such a big generator?—and I couldn’t see any movement through the windows. After several minutes of watching and listening, I eased my pack off my shoulders and onto the ground, then ran hunched over to crouch beneath the uncovered front window, which painted a square of untamed forest floor with light from within.

When no one charged out of the cabin wielding a knife, I dared a careful glimpse through the glass—and nearly melted with relief.

Robyn lay on the floor against the back wall of what appeared to be a hunter’s private retreat. She was bound with duct tape now, but still fully clothed. And she was completely alone, except for the half-dozen disembodied deer heads staring down at her from the rustic, paneled walls.

The trophies were grotesque, a horror only humans would find tasteful. Werecats didn’t kill for sport. We hunted for food, and we didn’t display the corpses of our prey like gruesome prizes.

Robyn didn’t see me—her eyes were closed—and I couldn’t hear anything over the growl of the generator, but there was only one door leading off the main room, and it was closed. Surely if Steve and Billy were still there, they’d have been watching their prisoner—or worse.

Maybe they’d already gone back to the campsite looking for me. They would never expect me to find them—or even to know who they were—and they’d know Robyn couldn’t escape on her own.

I pulled Olsen’s knife from the loop on my jeans, then crouch-walked to the front door. The knob didn’t turn, but it was only secured with a twist lock. I turned it hard to the right, and the lock snapped, then the door creaked open several inches. I froze. The door was louder than I’d expected, even with the generator’s constant grumbling. But when Robyn didn’t wake up and no one stormed into the room, I took a deep breath and stepped into the cabin, then closed the door softly at my back so I could listen.

The noise from the generator was muted from inside the cabin, but it still drowned out both my heartbeat and Robyn’s. My cat’s pupils narrowed, adjusting quickly to the influx of light, but I still smelled her blood before my eyes pulled her into focus. She lay on the floor fifteen feet away, blood slowly oozing through a tear in her jeans from a small wound on her calf. She was unconscious, but with any luck, I could haul her out of human hearing range before she woke up, in case she started screaming. Werecat strength was the only advantage that translated fully into human form. Thank goodness.

Aware of each fleeting moment as it slipped into the past, I raced across the room toward Robyn—then landed hard on my rump when my feet slid out from under me.