Bingo. She must have run upstream.
I slowly tracked her movements, sensing she was somewhere south. A broken stick here. More dislodged rocks, there. Had she not shifted? No blood could be smelled up here, and where the showdown had happened, almost all the blood was from the human and a bit from two shifters. She was relatively unharmed, or at least, not so badly injured that she couldn’t flee to safety.
Talin started to say something, but I held up my hand to stop him. I moved faster and faster, keeping a sharp eye out for overturned rocks and snapped twigs. After what felt like an eternity for me, but must've only been a few minutes of running for her, footsteps branched out from the stream and led me left until we reach the highway.
“The police scanner suggested that she was going to a town over that way,” he said, motioning to the left.
I shook my head. “Look at these tracks. She must have caught a car around here.” Her tracks marched back and forth for a stretch of the highway. She’d been pacing, and given how many cars there always were on this road, that must have meant people didn't initially help her. The mere thought of these stupid humans not helping my mate when she was in danger made my blood boil.
“The only reason the scanner would tell us to go the other way is if they're trying to throw non-complicit police off of their tracks. There's absolutely no way that if we can track her footsteps this way, that the others didn't.”
Talin looked upset. “I didn't think to hide her tracks, but I didn't realize she had run up the stream and I was so focused on getting my cubs…”
“Don’t. You’re good,” I said. And I meant it. If I had cubs, I would prioritize them above almost everything else on this world. And as much as it frustrated me that she had left enough of a trail for me to follow, let alone the humans, I could not blame Talin. The mere thought of one cub, let alone several, taking on a homicidal abuser made my heart both contract with fear and swell with pride.
“They’re good cubs,” Talin said gruffly. “Although their mother is going to have something to say about their late-night activities after this. But about your mate, if you sense her south of here, but not very far off, there’s a town called Seyville she might have fled too. Small enough that it wouldn’t be too obvious, large enough to vanish in. Has a bus depot, too.”
“She might also shift and be in the woods,” I pointed out, but a second later, shook my head. “No. Her scent ends here. Wherever she is, she took a car to get there.”
Talin glanced at me, the car headlights lighting up his face every half minute. “I meant to ask you about that. How is it that she was able to live so close to us—her father as well—and we had no idea that there were two shifters around us? We never saw strange shifters around, or smelled them before. They must have done something to disguise themselves from us. And if that's possible, it's really important that we know what it was because that puts everyone at risk from rogue shifters.”
“And possibly wizards.” More often than not, we depended on their slightly metallic scent to survive the bastards. “I trust that you will be able to handle finding her father and handling that?”
“Yes. I’ll call when we find him.”
“Good. I want to know everything he’s been up to since he fled decades ago.”
“Apparently the cops have her car, but we’ll get it back from them soon. Your mate’s job is at a bar and lives with a bunch of roommates. More to come soon. Her father, on the other hand, is a troublemaker. Obstruction of peace, drunk and disorderly conduct, illegally gambling and fighting, all that good stuff.”
“Also taking my mate away from me and putting us all in danger,” I added. “He'll have to answer for what he's done but for now, I need to find her before these humans do.”
***
Seyville, Nebraska
Cara
I lay wide awake in the cheap motel bed, shaking. Everything felt different. I thought I had just been flying high on adrenaline, but now that my heart rate was normal, or as normal as it could be, everything still felt off. My skin felt hot and irritated like I didn't belong in it, and all of my senses were in turns intensely sharp, and then dull again. Almost like a radio trying to tune into the right frequency. One moment I felt completely normal, and then the next I swear I could see ants marching ten feet ahead of me, and smell baking breads from the bakery four blocks away.
And the heat. It was like a giant electric storm gathering on the edge of the horizon of my mind. Too far away for me to do anything to understand what was going on, but dark and dangerous enough that I felt like a target had been painted on my back, and all of a sudden, it wasn’t just the sheriff after me. Something else wanted me. Something was connected to me. The birthmark on my leg itched and I used the rough bedding to rub it raw.
The woman at the front desk of the motel had barely looked at me, far more interested in the forty bucks I had plopped down for a room for one night. Unfortunately, she didn’t know who Dorothy’s cousin was around these parts, and the question piqued her interest in a way that made me wish I’d never asked.
I had some cash in my pocket, but not enough to last me much longer. Pains me to say it, but I swiped a twenty from the nice old man who had given me a lift. For what it's worth, the crumpled bill wedged in between the seat cushions, so I highly doubt that he knew it was there. One day, I would find him and repay him for his kindness by giving him far more money than I had taken.
I had a direct view onto the parking lot in the front, which was exactly what I wanted. Anyone headed this way I could see before they’d even turned into the parking lot. Even so, it just didn't feel like enough. The people hunting me had both law enforcement and criminals at their disposal, and how the hell was I supposed to compete with that?
Who else wanted to find me? What was the deal with the necklace? Who could be bad enough that my father had hidden me from them, but good enough that they would save me from the sheriff? Whoever it was, I hoped they could answer all my questions.
Was the necklace really from my mother, or had my father lied to me, again? Which really shouldn't be a surprise, but this…this went beyond anything else he’d ever done. Whatever secret he was hiding, it would probably change my life. Hell, it already had.
And not to sound like I had cracked under pressure, but given all the weird stuff that had gone down tonight, could the huge secret be something… supernatural?
I laughed out loud, the sound jarring in the small, dusty room.
Okay, I’d officially lost it. Supernatural shit did not exist. The strange feelings and symptoms that I was experiencing? Just a result of stress. I told myself it was stress over and over and over again until I almost started believing it. Never mind that when I got up to glance out the window again, I could count the individual leaves on a bush three stories below. In the middle of the night.
I was about to head back to bed to try to get some sleep when some strange instinct stepped in and told me to stay where I was.
Sure enough a few seconds later, a police cruiser turned into the parking lot, lights turned on high as snowflakes began to fall, fast and thick.
That officer could be just checking in on a friend crashing here, or following up with some drunk who caused trouble earlier at a town bar. But too many weird things have happened tonight. I really didn’t want to be that foolish person in every horror movie who saw all the warning signs but still didn't do anything until it was too late.