“You want us to see if we can pinch that thing hiding out there.”
“Or find a trace. I’ve done some patrols on my own, but I could use a second set of eyes.”
“I can’t believe we’re going dinosaur hunting. Want me to keep an eye open for the wolfman, too?”
Wes didn’t even crack a smile when he said, “I see you’ve gotten a bit of a recap of what’s been sighted.”
“A story about a wolfman kidnapping folks? Yeah. I heard it from my brother. But I’m less worried about the guy with a hair problem than I am of this dino thing people keep talking about. It went after my son last night.” It still made Caleb’s blood boil and run cold at the same time, given how close Luke had come to being snatched.
“That fucking lizard bastard gets around.”
“You make it sound like you’ve encountered it before.”
“In a sense.” Swiveling in his seat, Wes turned to face a bank of monitors. “About a week ago, some of the institute’s smokers said they saw something in the bayou. I’ll be honest, since they were human”—because most shifters tended to shy from anything with flame and smoke—“I thought maybe they’d sniffed some swamp gasses. I mean, a walking lizard man? Sounds fucking crazy, except turns out it’s true. Check out what I spotted on one of the surveillance cameras.”
With a few rapid taps on a keyboard, a screen, showing a very boring white hallway, changed to another view. Given the greenish cast to the surroundings, it was easy to surmise the video was filmed at night. As to the setting, the empty concrete bay of a loading dock.
“This is so fascinating,” Caleb couldn’t resist saying.
“Fuck off and watch.” The time stamp zoomed ahead, and suddenly something lurched into view. Human eyes in an alien face stared into the camera a quick moment only before it loped away.
Dropped jaw, meet floor. Caleb couldn’t say a thing as Wes mumbled.
“Shit, I went too far. Hold on a second.” Wes rewound, and Caleb leaned forward, intent on confirming what he thought he’d seen.
Bare pavement, illuminated by a light above the bay door. A barren spot circled by darkness, a darkness that birthed motion.
At the edge of the circle of light, a body lumbered into view. Two legs, one thicker than the other, the skinny one pale and shod in a shoe, while the other was bare and definitely not sporting piggly little toes. The creature had a long torso, dark in color with two arms. A misshapen figure that loped close to the loading dock and paused for a moment to peek up, big eyes, human eyes, staring at the lens taping it.
Human eyes in a monstrous face.
“Holy fucking hell, it is a lizard man.”
Or to a child, a dinosaur since it walked upright and kept its arms tight to its sides.
Slowing the video, Wes took it frame by frame to the moment the ghastly visage stared at the camera. No mistaking the baleful glare in the eyes.
The frame froze.
“What the hell is that?” Caleb asked.
“A hybrid of some sort.”
“Well, duh. I get that, but how?” While the species could interbreed, with the exception of some big cat species, hybrid crosses just didn’t happen.
A bear and a wolf mated, the child was one or the other. A gator took up with a feline, the child, again, was one or the other. But this thing on the screen…
“It’s got a beak. And I think that this here”—Wes leaned forward and traced the outline of a shape over its shoulder—“is a wing.”
“Are you implying it’s a bloody dragon?” Caleb couldn’t help it, he laughed.
Wes scowled. “I don’t know what the fuck it is. Just like I don’t know where the fuck it lives. But I do know it’s screwing with the people in town.”
That was a sobering reminder. “Haven’t you been able to track it? It’s got a pretty distinctive scent.”
“A scent that disappears into thin air in the middle of the swamp. Not a tree in sight. Nothing. Not even a footprint in the mud.”
Caleb’s turn to frown. From a young age, everyone recognized the Mercers as some of the best trackers around. People whispered they had to know how to hunt in order to feed all those bastard mouths.
But even if they didn’t do it by necessity, the skill was inherent, and one that Caleb respected. Unlike the canine or feline breeds, reptiles like Wes and himself were at a disadvantage on land. While their eyesight and hearing were quite excellent, their sense of smell wasn’t as developed as, say, a wolf’s.
However, what the nose couldn’t smell, the eyes could see, and if Wes said the tracks stopped dead, Caleb had no reason to disbelieve him, even if it seemed farfetched.
“That’s why you want me to help you tonight. But surely you could have asked someone else.”
“I did.”
“And?” Caleb prodded.
“It didn’t end up well.” No mistaking the flash of pain in Wes’s eyes, a quick glimpse that transformed into anger.
This was personal for Wes. “Who else has gone looking for it?”