Late that night, an odd silence followed the Elders’ path as they moved through the Courtyard unseen.
They prowled around the denning place where the Wolf and Grizzly and other terra indigene lived. Where the howling not-Wolf lived. They spent time learning the scents of the humans who did not leave proper markers around the patch of turned earth but were present often enough that their scent rubbed off on the ground and on the plants. Then they moved on to the buildings across from the Courtyard, identifying the dens of the humans the Elementals had told them belonged to the not-Wolf’s pack. Standing on their hind legs, they had looked in the upstairs windows of one den with mingled male and female scents. Was the female in season? That was interesting, but the male suddenly sat up as if he could sense their presence. A hunter in the human pack?
They returned to the Courtyard before the human became too uneasy and sounded an alarm. Even so, they heard a door open, saw the male come out to the open part of the den and look around. He would not see them. Could not see them since they were in their true form. But he’d known something was out there in the dark, watching him—watching his mate. Not many humans sensed their presence. That made this human different from others of his kind. Different, a hunter, but not seen as a threat by the smaller shifters. That was interesting too.
They circled the building that was the not-Wolf’s other den—the place where they had found the tasties hidden inside a tough shell. The female pushed at the door, curious about what they might find in the den this time. Then they heard a human stirring upstairs, caught the scent of metal and oil when the door above them opened—a scent they associated with a human weapon.
Another hunter in the human pack?
So easy to grab the male from his high perch and crush him in their jaws, tear open the soft belly with their claws.
Then a Wolf howled. Had the first human hunter sounded an alarm after all?
It was a single voice, but it would be enough to wake the pack. Both packs.
Disappointed that they hadn’t found the tasties, they still felt pleased by the reaction of both kinds of hunters to a potential threat. Retreating to the spot in the Courtyard that they had chosen for their resting place, they considered what they had learned—and decided it was time to let the Wolf and Grizzly know they were here.
Dear Douglas,
I hope this finds you well. Brittania survived the recent storms, which only gave our island a glancing blow on their way to Cel-Romano. The savage retaliation against the Cel-Romano Alliance of Nations for the deaths of so many shifters and the attempt to seize some of the wild country and bring it under human control has caused plenty of sleepless nights for everyone here in Brittania—especially government officials and those of us in law enforcement. It has made me grateful that I was able to spend a little time in the Lakeside Courtyard when I visited you in Juin. Having some knowledge of how to work with the Others has been a tremendous help.
Everything we’ve heard about Cel-Romano is just scraps of information coming from people who live in fishing and farming settlements in the wild country and have traded goods with Brittania for generations. And their information comes from rumors from border villages that were spared the full force of the attacks.
According to the rumors, every factory that built the weapons that were used against the shifters was destroyed. In that, the Others were merciless, and in some cases, an entire city was laid to waste. There is rumored to be a wealth of salvage in those places—metals, tires, tools, even money; it’s also rumored that few who go in to grab whatever they can carry survive the predators who have staked out those broken cities as their hunting grounds. Salvagers who enter as healthy men come out dying of some kind of plague, if they come out at all.
Many villages and towns were left untouched. There is limited fuel for motor vehicles because fuel depots are now surrounded by wild country, and only humans who have dealt fairly with the Others in the past have any chance of being allowed access to the fuel.
Cel-Romano used to be the largest area of unbroken human-controlled land in the world, encompassing all the land around the Mediterran Sea as well as the land around the western and southern shores of the Black Sea. Now each nation is divided from the rest by broad veins of wild country. It’s said the land doesn’t look different—there are still roads and human farms and villages—but it feels different. Dangerous. The people who live on the farms and in the villages claim they are safe enough during the day, but strangers trying to cross that land rarely survive. And no one is safe in the dark.
Electronic communication in Cel-Romano is limited or nonexistent. In fact, smaller villages are more likely to have working telephones than what’s left of the industrial cities. But service is erratic since many of the telephone lines running through the new veins of wild country were torn down and can’t be repaired.
That is the information that has reached us. Best guess from what I can piece together? Veins of the wild country will continue to spread throughout Cel-Romano, isolating people on smaller and smaller pieces of land. Some communities will survive, may even thrive, while other places will wither until they, and the people who lived there, are nothing more than a memory or cautionary tale.
Take care, Douglas. I hope Lakeside is one of the places in your part of the world that continues to survive and thrive. I’ll stay in touch as best I can.
—Shady
CHAPTER 6
Thaisday, Messis 9
Meg put her carry sack in the back of the BOW, then stepped back and smiled at Simon. “I want to walk to work.”
“But I need to get to the office early today.”
“Which is why you need to drive the BOW.” Okay, that wasn’t quite true. Even in human form, Simon could easily walk to the Market Square and get to Howling Good Reads in plenty of time for his early meetings. But he couldn’t get there on time if he kept to her walking pace. “I want to look at the garden and see what vegetables we can pick, and I just want to move this morning.”
He sighed, a sound that held so much disappointment that Meg almost relented. She enjoyed going into work with Simon, liked the companionship. But she didn’t want to go to the Liaison’s Office early—and she didn’t want anyone with her as she approached the Market Square, just in case whatever had triggered her distress yesterday was still there. The job fair was over, so she should be fine, but Simon would be unhappy if she had another panic attack, and she didn’t want him distracted from helping the remaining people who were waiting for a decision about whether they were going to Bennett.
“I’ll be fine, Simon.” When he continued to stand beside the BOW, she added, “I’ll let you know as soon as I reach the office.”