Chapter 6

Jameson, standing behind the folding table topped with a weight bench that Flint had rigged to double as a podium, looked around the room at Black Bear Outfitting Company. He was both thrilled and dismayed to see the place filling up with shifters. Only twenty or so, but some he’d never seen before.

He’d done it. Called the meeting. Told shifter to call shifter to call shifter and hoped that all of them, resident or just-passing-through, got the word. It had been three days since the diner, when he’d scrawled onto a napkin the image that had popped into his mind from nowhere. The napkin was now pressed inside the pages of The Keepers Book, locked inside a fire-safe box, and hidden under a floorboard in Jameson’s home. Seeing the image, finally realizing what had always been missing from it, had been the catalyst to do what he’d been telling himself he needed to do for years.

Time to spill his secrets, and hope enough of his folk had heard legends or rumors or even bedtime stories about switches and vampires that he wouldn’t be run out of the small town as a someone who needed a shrink, a good one. With a rubber room to match.

The door opened and Aven walked in to the space that normally housed shifter sparring bouts. Jameson lifted his chin at the male. He had told Aven of the meeting himself, even though it was a risk. Aven might fly straight to their bosses and insist Jameson lose his job, if Aven decided Jameson was insane after hearing his tale.

Aven was a member of Search & Rescue in neighboring Cheoah National Forest, which put Jameson directly in his chain of command. They were the only two shifters in the forest service in the area, that Jameson knew of. Aven’s bird of prey scent swirled through the room, causing the furred shifters sitting in the rows of folding seats to look his way, and a few to sneer and pop a fang or two. The big cats especially, clashed with the eagles and condor shifters that favored the lush Natanhala Forest.

An eagle, Aven had the clear, sharp smell of a raptor. Jameson had worked closely with him on a few projects and considered him a friend, but not a close one. Aven had issues with authority, like all who were born with the ultimate freedom of flying.

Aven chose a seat in the front row of spindly chairs, sat down, folded his arms, locked eyes with Jameson, and whispered a few words Jameson easily picked up. “You always gotta find something to be in charge of, don’t you, boss.”

Jameson frowned. Aven must be in a bad mood and Jameson wanted to know why. The word boss had been said in a sneering manner, and that wasn’t like Aven, normally. Jameson knew a few of the shifters in town talked behind his back sometimes, whispered about how he was stuffy, stuck up, thought he was better than others. He didn’t, but Jameson’s duty and his knowledge had placed a wall between them and him. He didn’t attend the barbecues, the work lunches, the weddings or get-togethers, even if he was invited. Small talk didn’t work for him. There was too much to lose.

To soothe himself from thoughts of having his job, his shaky standing, or his self-respect ripped away, Jameson ran his finger over a piece of paper on the desk in front of him. It showed the three claw marks and the congruent slash he’d added. The logo still called to him. (ingrav,) something inside him whispered too quietly to believe. (it is the ingrav of the switches, showing their utter binding with a shifter, both in the Undoing and the Prowl. you must trust yourself. you must listen to yourself.) Jameson’s skin crawled and he shuddered, thinking suddenly of the woman in the diner. He shivered although it wasn’t cold, then looked up again as another scent he knew entered the room.

It was Ryder, the male from the diner with the dark hair and the exotic face, the one who had been about to kill that human punk. He’d brought a female shifter with him, one with her animal’s scent strong in front of her. Every male head in the place turned abruptly, including Aven’s, including Jameson’s. Even Hernando’s, and Hernando had been mated to a female shifter, Molly, for close to forty years.

Females were rare as hell, and no one really knew why. Except Jameson. He would explain if they didn’t string him up first. Ryder and the female looked like photo negatives of each other; him with black hair and her with platinum, but the same exotic angles to their features. Jameson didn’t need their looks to tell him they were twins; their identifying foliage-and-danger scents were nearly identical except that hers scented of icy winds and the slightest feminine softness, while his held an in-your-face masculine punch. Jameson took a deep breath. She was young, too young for him, but still, the scent of a female shifter was exquisite. The other males in the room did the same, inhaling audibly while Molly, standing against a wall with her mate, watched them all with sour amusement.

The female stared back, meeting a few eyes straight on, a challenging twist to her lips. Her scent deepened and pushed through the room in satisfied waves, like she knew she was the glad feast at this party, and she got to choose who would partake. Males licked their lips and shifted in their seats, a few big cats shooting to their feet and rushing to greet her. Jameson watched Ryder for a moment. Would he take offense at the attention his sister was getting? No, he moved to the seats in the middle of the room and sat, eyes on Jameson. Sis could obviously take care of herself, and probably wouldn’t stand for brother to coddle her anyway.

The mood in the room veered in Jameson’s favor with a lurch he could feel. A female shifter had shown up to a meeting he had called. What else did he have up his sleeve?

Jameson looked down at the logo (ingrav) again and took a deep breath, shivering once. He had a chance of pulling this off, especially if the female shifter backed him up. Too bad she looked so young. Her brother had reacted to the logo, though, his Instinct sparking him. Females were even better at listening to the Instinct when it was quiet, or so he’d been told.

The claw and knife marks made him think of that female in the diner, the one who’d scented like he would imagine meadow flowers in Heaven did. She hadn’t been a shifter, but her green scent had held a bit of unrealized hunter in it, nonetheless. Certainly more than most humans, who were clever as hell, but rarely hunters in the way that shifters thought of hunting.

A thought speared into him like lightning, with enough mental force to knock him backwards a step.

Could she be a switch?

The possibility scent a visceral thrill through him, because no one had seen a switch in almost one-hundred-fifty years. Not since the reckoning. He’d heard rumors of sightings, yes, but had he ever met a shifter who claimed to actually have seen one first hand? No. Never.

There had been many times over the last century-plus of futility when he’d tried to convince himself switches no longer existed. But duty wouldn’t let him do it.

It was his job to hold with the cause of the switches and search for the Steward until he took his last breath, and it was a responsibility he took very seriously. Maybe the woman had been a switch. Shit. He would deal with this meeting, then figure out how to find her.

Flint entered the room with a huff, sitting down near his brother in the back and signaling to Jameson. It was time. Jameson nodded, letting the warm, full-blooded bear scent of the brothers remind him of the stake he had in Five Hills, the history. Jameson had known the males for twenty-five years, since Bryce had been a baby. The two of them lived like roommates in the other half of the duplex Jameson owned. They worked well together, running the Black Bear Outfitting Company. The BBOC normally ran whitewater rafting tours and provided wilderness outfitting. The back room of their building was as big as a gymnasium and used for shifter-exclusive weight training, martial arts instruction, sparring bouts, and now this meeting.

Flint stared hard at Jameson, waiting for Jameson’s words with an eager hostility. He and his brother looked and acted very little alike. Where Bryce was a good-natured goof, Flint was more reserved and had been for as long as Jameson had known him. The contrast between Flint’s resting thug face and Bryce’s perpetual grin was jarring. The jagged, webbed scar across the older brother’s neck didn’t soften his look, but Flint never tried to hide it. To him, it was a reminder of things he refused to forget. Flint was Jameson’s only guaranteed ally in the room.

Jameson stood straight and looked over the crowd. He snatched up his notes, then threw them back onto the desk. This crowd would respond better to words that were unscripted. Jameson stepped around the desk and held his hands up until all talking stopped.

The Instinct told him what to say at once, surprising him, rippling his muscles with a soft wave of satisfied strength. He projected his voice across the room. “Shifters of Five Hills, welcome.”

A few males shuffled in their seats and looked around, as if the words made them nervous. There were no underground meetings of shifters, it just wasn’t done, because if the humans found out about them… No one knew exactly what the billions of humans would do, but all could imagine it wouldn’t be some version of live and let live. More like imprison and experiment in the name of science, or weapons, or hell, maybe even oil. Who knew what scared mobs and greedy governments could devise?

Jameson nodded at the sentiment. “We are all shifters here, I assure you. The room is soundproofed and the doors are locked. No one who doesn’t belong will wander in. Anyway, you all came because of the message on the website. This is a law-abiding meeting extolling the virtues of Sparring, trying to get you to spend your money and join our gym. We are doing nothing wrong here.”

Jameson checked in on as many expressions as he could, reading the truth there. He hadn’t said the word logo (ingrav!) but he knew they were all thinking it. The website was practically hidden on the web, where only those who felt a pull to the logo would bother to look for it. Those who found it saw a message urging them to tell any shifter they knew, but keep the message from humans. Most had come out of curiosity, but was it possible many more stayed home out of fear? Jameson didn’t know. All of his acquaintances were present.

He gestured widely. “You are safe. I assure you of that.” He was in his street clothes; ironed jeans, boots, and a khaki shirt, displaying no connection to his job or the government. Not that his audience would mistrust him for it. Many shifters worked for the government, not just Jameson and Aven.

The Instinct spoke inside him again. He repeated the words out loud, thrilled for the uncustomary guidance coming to him for such a trivial matter. Or maybe it wasn’t trivial. He’d long felt something big was coming to Five Hills. Maybe the danger to him and his kind was greater and closer than he knew. “I stand before you, the Keeper of the Forest, the White Wolf of Nantahala. Who among you knows what this means?”

The crowd reacted mildly, as if the words Jameson spoke weren’t revolutionary. Except Flint, who straightened in his seat, a scent of aggression coming off him. Not just Flint, against the wall Hernando and Molly linked hands. Molly made the sign of the cross and gazed upward.

Jameson waited. He would not pull their knowing from them. They would have to offer it.

Flint seemed to be losing his battle with an ancient anger. He stood and paced in the back. Hernando watched him, then stepped forward. “I know. My grandfather told me of the Keeper and Steward. Molly knows, too.” He looked around at the small crowd. “You’ve all heard of the white wolf, everyone in Five Hills has. The four hundred pound beast that has been said to live in the forest since these trees were saplings. Don’t deny that you have.”

Jameson nodded at the old condor, his rich scent much more mellow than that of Aven’s. Jameson’s wolf was massive, if not quite four hundred pounds.

A few shifters murmured. Jameson knew he had only a few minutes to grab them. He walked back behind the table and turned to the computer in the middle of it, clicking a button.

His drawing popped up on the screen, accompanied by several sharp intakes of breath. Flint stopped pacing and stared, eyes flashing. Bryce leaned back and grinned, lifting ankle over knee like he didn’t have a care in the world. Molly crossed herself again. Ryder stared impassively, drinking everything in, while his sister leaned forward, her eyes crawling over Jameson. Her expression was interested and hungry, but not in the bears and pumas who surrounded her.

Jameson left the image up and walked directly in front of the group again. “You’ve all seen this image, or at least part of it. You’ve all felt the pull of it, the truth of it. Who knows what the knife mark signifies?”

No one said a word, not even Hernando. No one looked around, they all seemed frozen.

Jameson waited another beat, then spoke. He was rolling now, knew exactly how to move forward. “No rumors? No inklings? No long shots?”

A male spoke from the back of the room. Grunted, really. One word. “Switches.”

The room erupted, everyone talking at once, some of the males shooting to their feet. One large guy with a dark beard walked straight out the door before anyone could stop him, not that they would have tried. He’d been six foot eight and wide as a Sequoia. All bear and nasty attitude.

Jameson didn’t try to quiet them. He stood silent and jubilant, leaning against the desk. They already knew. And even if they didn’t want to believe, they would.