Panther's Claim (Bitten Point #2) (6 page)

“And I love opportunities to keep my knee’s aim in shape. So you might want to wear a cup.”

It wasn’t just Daryl that laughed. “Isn’t she just Cyn-fully insane?”

“Enough of your screwing around. What is going on? Who are these people, and why are they here?” And why was she meeting them in a towel?

“It’s a gathering of the minds, and muscle,” Daryl said with a grin.

“In Daryl’s case, it’s the idiot,” grumbled the scarred fellow. “I don’t know if you remember meeting us last night. The first time, you were drooling all over the back seat.”

“I do not drool.”

“Really?” Daryl interjected. “A shame. But don’t worry, there’s lube for that.” As if he’d not said something outrageously provocative, Daryl began the introductions. “You met Wes, he of the no-smile, last night. That freak over there holding this afternoon’s snack…”
Yip!
“Okay, fine, we won’t eat Princess today, but mostly on account of the fact that Constantine is bigger than me and likes that little furball.”

“Touch my dog and I will digest you slowly.” A threat not made with much heat, and one she’d wager got tossed around often given Daryl simply laughed.

She wasn’t close enough to truly scent him properly, but the apartment wasn’t big enough for her to avoid it entirely. It tickled at her, reptilian in feel, but nothing like the gators she’d worked with when she interned at the zoo. “What are you?” she asked. Probably not the most polite query, but it wasn’t just cats who were curious.

Constantine didn’t take offense. “I’m a python.”

“He wishes,” snickered the last guy in the room. “I mean, have you seen the size of his dog?”

Grrr. The bite sized mutt took offense at the remark.

“Don’t make me sic Princess on you,” said the big snake, but it was the tiny, curled lip of the dog that proved most fascinating. Would the little thing truly attack something fifty times or more her size?

Daryl clapped his hands. “No letting Princess loose in here. Too many ankles standing on my carpet. Blood is a pain in the ass to rinse.” Daryl brought his attention back to her. “That guy bugging his little brother, who isn’t so little anymore, is the dead man formerly known as Caleb.”

“He’s also an idiot, but we like him anyway.” The blonde who’d spoken waved. “Hi, my name is Renata, but my friends call me Renny. This is my son, Luke. Say hi, Luke.”

The little boy never looked up from his tablet as he uttered, “Hi. Nice to meet you.” Of course, it sounded more like hinicetomeetyou, but Cynthia got the gist.

“Nice to meet you, too?” She couldn’t help the high note at the end. Surreal didn’t cover meeting and conversing with strangers while wearing a towel and nothing else.

Shifters might have more free concepts when it came to the wearing of clothes, but they still didn’t openly entertain naked. At least not the people she knew. She’d heard out west things were different, and a lot more naked.

“I brought clothes,” the blonde woman called Renny said, holding up a bag. “Daryl said you needed some, what with your motel room busted up last night and the cops having cordoned it off.”

So much for her suitcase and other stuff. What would she do without a wallet?

As if Daryl read her mind, he said, “I managed to sneak out your purse, but your clothes kind of got wrecked in the fight. But no worries. I’ll understand if you need to wander around naked until you have a chance to go shopping.”

She might have answered, but others beat her to it.

“Daryl!” Renny exclaimed.

“Yeah, Daryl,” Wes mocked. “Stop thinking with your little brain and let the woman get some clothes on so we can turn our attention on the big picture here.”

The big picture not including outrageous flirting with a bad kitty.

With a smile of thanks, Cynthia snatched the bag of clothes Renny offered and dove into the privacy of Daryl’s room. She hurriedly dressed, and when she exited, she heard them in the midst of discussing the attack.

“By all appearances, they’re back.”

“Not exactly,” Caleb interjected. “The dino creature can’t be the same one. The lizard thing we killed a while ago is still dead. His parts are being examined at Bittech.”

“What lizard thing?” Cynthia asked as she exited the bedroom.

It was Daryl who told her. “A few weeks ago, we actually ran into another one of those lizard things. It tried to kidnap my sister, Melanie, and then went after Caleb’s boy.” He waved to the child playing.

Caleb took over. “We had to track it down and, even then, only found the thing by luck. It was hiding out atop an almost impassable rocky spire in the swamp. At the time, we didn’t know it could fly.”

“Can it?” Her brow furrowed. She knew enough about shifter structure to know how exact the physique for an avian shifter had to be. Because of the huge mass involved, and strength, only those who truly kept off the weight and worked hard built the muscle needed to make it all work.

Aria could do it, but she admitted it was tough, and exhilarating. Cynthia preferred her two feet on the ground, yet her preference didn’t mean that lizard thing stuck to walking.

“Flying is the only logical explanation for how this thing keeps popping up out of the blue.”

“It would also explain the way the scent trails start and stop. It can simply swoop in, grab the person it wants, and fly out without triggering any alarms.”

“That’s all well and good,” Renny said, “except lizards can’t fly.”

“Some dinosaurs can,” said Luke, showing he was listening more than it appeared.

“Dragons can, too.” Several pairs of eyes focused on Cynthia, and she squirmed. “What? Just because we have never met a dragon doesn’t mean they don’t exist. I mean, look at all the stories that have them. They had to have some basis.”

“Unproven fears that are given shape,” Constantine said with disdain. “Dragons aren’t real.”

“They’re making them.”

This time, the eyes swung to Luke, who kept tapping at his screen, boomeranging some Angry Birds at mocking green pigs.

“Hey, little bug.” Renny crouched alongside her son. “What makes you say that?”

“I heard it.”

Judging by Renny’s clenched jaw, Cynthia wasn’t the only one chafing at the speed of the revelations.

“Heard it where, bug?” Renny asked.

Luke finally turned his gaze toward his mother. “I can’t say.” He turned back to his game.

Caleb knelt beside his son. “Listen here, big man, if you know something about this lizard thing, then you need to tell us.”

“Why are we asking a kid?” Wes asked aloud. “Kids know nothing. He is probably thinking of some baby cartoon he watched.”

Cynthia saw Caleb ready to retort, except Renny placed her hand on his arm and shook her head.

“Wasn’t a cartoon.” With a knot on his forehead, Luke glared. “I heard Tatum and Rory’s daddy talking about how the dinosaur was a poor ’scuse for a dragon.”

“Andrew? Andrew knows about these things? Why that no-good bastard.” Daryl bristled as he pushed away from the counter he leaned on.

Constantine blocked his path to the door, placing a hand on Daryl’s chest to prevent him from leaving. “Slow down. You can’t go after Andrew based on what one little boy says. Don’t forget, Andrew is the CEO over at Bittech. For all we know, what Luke overhead was part of a conversation about some of the research done on the one they’ve got in the labs for testing.”

“Yeah, not likely,” Wes volunteered. “They stopped testing.”

“What do you mean? I thought they were supposed to run a gamut of blood work and tissue samples from the one we killed.” Caleb frowned.

“Funny thing that. The initial results returned inconclusive. So they did them again. Lo and behold, they claim the corpse we brought them was not a lizard man but a caiman.”

“That was no croc. Look at the body.”

“There is no body. In order to hide it from curious human scientists working there, they had it cut into pieces and made sure none of them appeared like actual body parts. Those parts were accidentally incinerated with the other waste.”

“So, there’s still the pictures that were taken. Refute those.”

“What pics?” Wes’s smile held no trace of amusement. “They’re gone. That entire folder dedicated to the creature, locked behind a secure firewall, deleted. Vanished. It doesn’t even show on the backup.”

“All of it’s gone?” An incredulous note hued Renny’s query.

“This is bull—” Caleb slid a glance over to his son. “Brown gooey stuff. The guys over at Bittech are covering it up. Someone’s trying to get rid of the evidence because that was no croc. Not even a hybrid one. It kept its half-shape after death.”

“Is that important?” Cynthia asked. She knew some things about shifters, but was really more knowledgeable when it came to animals.

Caleb rubbed his face, looking tired. “Half-shapes aren’t something everyone can do. You have to really have a handle on the beast if you want to be able to balance equal power in the body and mind. It’s not easy to do and, because it involves having a foot in each world, not meant to be. So if someone dies in the midst of it, the control slips and the body snaps back to its natural form, which is human.”

“Except the dinoman stayed a dinoman.”

“Did he? We now have scientists saying otherwise.” Wes pushed away from the wall. “The body was destroyed, and the samples swapped for a reason. Someone is trying to prevent us from getting at the truth. The question is, who?”

Funny how a knock at the door, a firm, no-nonsense knock at such a serious moment, could result in utter silence.

Everyone looked at each other, but no one said a word as the knock came again, this time even more insistent.

Cynthia found it odd the dog didn’t bark, but a glance showed Princess was well aware there was something trying to obtain entry. Her tiny ears were pricked, her eyes intent on the door, and her muzzle drawn back over pointed teeth.

“Are you going to get that?” Constantine whispered.

Daryl jolted. “Shit. I guess I should.” With a predatory grace, Daryl strode to the door and peeked through the hole. “Who is it?”

“Pete.”

Who is Pete?

A question she apparently uttered aloud because Renny answered. “He’s the sheriff for the town.”

Daryl quickly opened the door, and a big fellow, dressed in a dark uniform loomed in the opening, filling it with his bulk. The man’s jowly cheeks sported a prickly shadow that matched the short spikes atop his head. Pete gave everyone a nod and said in a low voice to Daryl, “I need to speak with you outside.”

“Whatever it is you’ve got to tell me, might as well come in and tell us all.”

“This message is just for you.”

“I have no secrets.”

“That’s just it. You need to start keeping some,” Pete snapped.

At the numerous inquiring looks, the portly sheriff sighed. “Fuck me, I need to retire. I don’t need this political fucking shit complicating my life.”

“What shit? What the hell is going on, Pete?” Daryl demanded.

“I don’t know what the fuck is happening. All I know is I’ve been told to drop the investigation on that attack at the hotel, to burn my personal notes based on what Daryl told me at the scene, and I was ordered to tell Daryl to keep his mouth shut, or else.”

“Or else what?” Cynthia said.

“Doesn’t matter.” Daryl scoffed. “I am not going to keep quiet about this. There is something seriously wrong happening here. Mutant shifters or animals or something. And they’re dangerous. We need to warn the people. Tell the council and get them involved. To…” Daryl trailed off, probably because Pete kept shaking his head.

“Don’t you get it yet? Who the hell do you think has the clout to call me and tell me what to do? Did you really think I’d roll over and bare my belly to just anyone?”

It was Wes who got it first. “The fucking council knows about those creatures.”

“Impossible,” Cynthia exclaimed. “If they knew, then they’d be wanting us to do something about it, not zip our mouths.”

“And yet that’s exactly where my coded orders came from,” said Pete with a shrug. “I don’t know who sent them, or why, but there was no mistaking the council’s seal.”

Most shifter groups tended to rule themselves, usually under the leadership of an alpha, or someone elected—often by battle—to keep their secret society running smoother. But while groups had a certain autonomy, it was only because the shifter high council allowed it.

The SHC, as Cynthia had been taught, had been around for centuries, setting shifter policies in order to help prevent the spread of their secret. They acted in cases where some of their kind got out of line or brought too much attention to themselves.

Judge and executioner, without a trial. The wild nature of most shifters meant a need for speed in such matters and a swift resolution. Often that resulted in a very final outcome.

So if the council was involved in this mess and had demanded Daryl and all the others abstain, then the choice was clear. They’d have to drop the investigation.

Aria would remain lost, and those monsters would continue to roam.

Lost in her depressing thoughts, Cynthia barely noticed when Pete left. It took Daryl’s clapped hands and, “Okay, now that he’s gone, let’s assign some tasks,” for her to realize the group had not given up.

“You’re going to keep looking? But what about the SHC?” she asked.

“The SHC is asking for a tribal accounting if they think we’re going to sit back while some monsters prey on our town,” Constantine said with a hint of a sneer.

“While those monsters roam, my family is at risk,” was Caleb’s reply.

“They took my brother.”

“And we need to find your friend,” Daryl said, finishing off the reasons.

In that moment, Bitten Point started growing on Cynthia, and a lot more pleasantly than that fungus that had claimed her razor in the motel shower.

I
n downtown Bitten Point
later that day…

“Why did we get stuck with the library research as our task?” Cynthia grumbled. “Shouldn’t that smart Constantine fellow and his little dog be here? I hate reading.”

Not true. She liked reading interesting stuff. Sifting through boring newspaper articles for mentions of weird shit happening was time consuming—and didn’t feature bare-chested Vikings sweeping damsels off their feet for ravishment.

Who needs a Viking when I have Daryl?

Stupid, yummy Daryl, who looked good in anything he wore, which, at the moment, was comprised of well-worn yet snug jeans, a T-shirt that claimed he was a Bikini Inspector, and flip-flops.

The man had his own sense of style, and damned if it didn’t work for him.

“Constantine would be the one best suited for this task if he wasn’t working.”

“What does he work as anyhow?” Atlas? The big dude who held the world up on his shoulders?

“Fireman. He’s on the roster and can’t just take a day off on a whim.”

“I would hardly call tracking murderous lizardmen and dogs a whim,” Cynthia hissed as she followed Daryl through the winding stacks of metal shelving that bore the weight of books.

“And I’m sure if he told the fire chief what we were about, he’d agree, but given we were just warned by Pete to not say a word, we thought it best we not be too blatant with our flaunting. So Constantine went to work as if everything was normal, but meanwhile, he’ll be milking the boys at the station to see if anyone knows anything.”

“How is that being discreet? Won’t he get in trouble if he’s caught?”

“Constantine knows how to keep it on the down low.”

“You must be able to if you’ve kept the secret of shifter existence in Bitten Point so long. Is everyone in this town one of us?” Cyn asked as they passed a petite woman, her red hair caught in a loose bun. “And was that really a fox?” She craned to look over her shoulder. “My dad said they were killed off by the British in the hunts overseas.” She knew the smell because she’d treated a few mundane ones during her time interning at the zoo.

“A few vixens and their mates survived. They managed to make it across the ocean and settled here. They are, however, very rare. As to your other question, no, not everyone in town is a shifter. At last count, there were about a thousand residents, not counting transients and visitors. Only about half are shifters. We’re too close to the Everglades and too big of a town to get completely bypassed by the humans.”

“I noticed Renny’s human, and she knows our secret.”

“Of course she does. Not only is she mated to Caleb, but she’s also a dormant descendent.”

Dormant, a term often used to describe those who held the shifter gene in their body yet never managed to touch their animal. While a few youngsters manifested young, most shifters didn’t fully change until their teens. Puberty was rough and hairy for those who managed to find their inner beast.

But not all could get that line of communication going. Some found their other side remained dormant. Yet, even for their inability, they were still capable of possibly passing on the gene, which screwed with those who’d chosen science as a profession and studied them because, for all intents and purposes, dormants were human.

“I can understand why Renny knows, but I’ve seen other humans in town, people who don’t act like they know.” Ignorance wasn’t just a bliss. It was a smell.

“They act that way because they probably don’t. I’d say almost half the humans roaming our streets have no idea.” Amazing how most folks would explain away strange things just so they didn’t have to face the possibility that maybe their world wasn’t what it seemed.

“Isn’t it dangerous to have them around?”

“It would draw more attention to push them away. In order to maintain a façade of normalcy, Bitten Point can’t reject people. We just encourage them not to stay.”

“How?”

“Shitty service and food are a good start.”

“But what of those you want to stay? How do you seduce them?” Innocuous words, and yet, was that a teasing smile on her lips?

“How’s this for a reason?” Daryl dragged her to him and mashed his mouth against hers, catching her startled gasp, feeling the pliant softness of her lips against his.

The fire that simmered on low whenever she was around ignited. She opened her mouth and let the tip of her tongue touch his. A bold strike. A sensual one.

Flames raced through his veins and heated his skin as he sipped from her.

“Ahem.” The cleared throat had them separating, but instead of showing embarrassment, Cyn’s cheeks dimpled as she smiled. “I’m sorry. Are we in your way?” She threw herself on Daryl, pressing him against the book stack. “There you go, plenty of room to go around. Or did you want to stay and watch?”

It wasn’t the invitation to linger that intrigued him, but the hint they weren’t done.

The older woman pressed her lips tight in disapproval. “Hussy.” She flounced off with a sniff of disdain.

Cyn giggled. “Wow, talk about uptight. Then again, she is a cat.”

“Hey!” he protested.

With another giggle, and no repentance, she moved away from him. A shame.

“Are you going to deny felines think they’re better than everyone else?” she queried.

“Why would I deny the truth?” His turn to grin.

“Such a bad kitty.” She shook her head, but smiled. “This town is a mish-mash of castes.”

“The bayou is just one of those places where all kinds of life flourishes, but it is also every man, cat, canine, or reptile for himself.”

“I’ve never run into so many different flavors of shifters. Actually, I’ve never been in a place where the humans are outnumbered.”

“Really? Where did you grow up?”

“In Atlanta.”

“I thought that was big lion country?” He couldn’t help his disdain for the snobby fellows enamored with their manes.

“It is, but they allowed us to live there when my mom’s family objected to her marrying Daddy.”

Nothing could have stopped him from asking, “Why did they object?”

“He’s a bear. A loner bear, with not even one sleuth to call his own. When he met my mom, he was renting a bedroom and all his stuff fit in a duffel bag. My grandparents apparently thought he was beneath them. They forbid them from dating.”

“I take it that didn’t go over well.”

“My parents decided to risk it all and eloped. They never went back.”

“Did she regret it?” An answer Daryl really wanted to know because his own parents had followed a similar path, except, in their case, Dad was the one from the well-to-do family. His mother was considered the trash from the wrong side of the tracks. The lack of amenities and the hardness of their life eventually led to his dad leaving.

“Regret?” She laughed. “Never.”

“You were lucky.”

“I guess. Why do I think your story doesn’t have the same happy ending?”

“Let’s just say my dad missed the benefits of money and prestige. We became an embarrassing mistake of his youth.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. My mother said, if he wasn’t smart enough to know what a good thing he had, then we were better off without him.”

“So you never see him?”

“Oh, every so often he’d pop in with his fancy car and expensive gifts. He stopped, though, after we gave him crabs.”

“You infected your father with a disease?”

“Not those kinds of crabs.” He rolled his eyes. “We filled his expensive BMW with real ones. Turns out they’re rough on leather.”

How he loved the sound of her laughter.

“So you have a sister?”

“Melanie. Yeah. She’s married to Andrew, who runs Bittech Industries. They’ve got boys known as Terror 1 and Terror 2.”

“I’m going to guess they take after you.”

He adopted the most innocent expression he could. “Are you implying I’m bad?”

“Yes.” She didn’t even attempt to lie.

“You already know me so well, Cyn.” And he wanted to know more about her, but as they’d talked, they’d reached the door to the microfiche room, to which he held the key. “It occurs to me that I never asked if your friend was a shifter.”

“Aria is a bird. An eagle to be exact. But she’s not bald.”

He whistled. “An avian caste. We don’t see many of those. I think Bitten Point currently has two that I know of. Used to be three, but one of them disappeared a few years back when we first spotted signs of trouble.”

Cyn fingered the machine instead of him. Lucky hunk of metal. “And that’s what we’re looking for? News about old attacks? Shouldn’t we be using the Internet?”

He slapped the microfiche box on the table. “Not if we want shifter news. Ol’ Gary, who has to be close to a hundred, because tortoises tend to be long-lived, has been running a periodical for our kind for years now. Paper only. Limited copies. And much like some
Mission Impossible
episode, the copies are burned after being read. Except for…” He flourished his hand over the boxed film.

“And this is considered safer than having it scanned and uploaded to a Dropbox or closed online forum?” she grumbled as she pulled out the first strip and squinted at it.

“Not everyone trusts the Internet. Especially not with all those hackers who do their best to steal and dump info. The library is managed by our kind. Only a shifter can ask to see these.”

“And what if a human accidentally gets their hands on them and tells the world?”

“Who’s going to take this seriously?” he said, gesturing to the screen.

A picture of George Mercer, in his massive gator shape, lurking in the water, eyeballs peeking. The headline?
Bayou Hunters Target Gators and Crocs.
The gist of the article was how to play safe.

But not everything was a help piece. It talked about births, deaths—not all of them natural. Poachers were a worry for many of their kind.

Problem was, when someone disappeared, the reason wasn’t always clear. Were they caught by a hunter? Did they run into trouble or find a bigger predator? Did they move on? Turn wild? Or was there something more nefarious at work?

With Cyn perched in a chair beside him, they fed the machine a page of film and scrolled through the images, each square a page from the periodical. They began with an issue starting a few years ago when the first batch of trouble cropped up.

Chili cook-off. Swamp Bite Races. Street sale. Mundane items that he quickly skipped through.

As soon as he finished one slide, Cyn had the next ready.

“This doesn’t make sense,” she muttered as she held a microfiche page in the air. She peered at it. “It looks like there’re items missing.”

“What do you mean missing? Maybe someone put the slides in out of order.” He glanced over at her.

“You’re misunderstanding.” She pulled several microfiche sheets out and placed them in a row. Jabbing her finger at them she said, “Look.” Each sheet had about twenty squares of film. The tops of them were labeled with the date the paper came out.

“The dates all line up. I don’t see any missing.”

“No, because the info they were trying to hide was wiped.”

It was then he focused more on the individual film sheets and noted what she had. To be sure, he fed one into the machine. He quickly scrolled through the Bitten Point family picnic article. The garage sale with lots of baby stuff. Then a smear. The next page was fine. Then another smear and another. Then the rest of the paper, fine.

He swapped it for another, the week after. Same thing. Some of the film blocks were too damaged to see.

“It’s like someone wiped them,” Cyn said, jabbing at the screen. “You can see it used to be an image.”

“Wiped on purpose, or was it an accident?”

“Well, it seems kind of suspicious. I mean, those are the dates you wanted to peek at, yet look.” She pulled out some later ones, ones for the fall, after the first round of troubles died down. “See? These ones are completely intact. As are the early ones.” She showed him a few of those, too. “But all of the ones over this two-month period have the wiped spots.”

“It still could be an accident.”

“If someone spilled something, it would smear across a few of them, not specific boxes. Someone got to these before us.”

But who? The librarian seemed surprised when they told her what they’d found. According to her, no one had asked to see them recently, and they didn’t keep a log.

“We need to find out what was in those missing spots,” Daryl said as they left the library and emerged to mid-afternoon sunshine.

“But how can we find out? You said it yourself, the papers are destroyed.”

“Unless you’re a hoarder. Come on, I’m going to take you to meet Gary.”

They needed answers, as more and more it looked as if a giant cover-up was in effect. Someone didn’t want people digging or finding answers.

Too bad. This curious cat wasn’t giving up.