Shepherd's Moon (23 page)

Despite my aversion to alarm clocks, I love mornings — it’s the quietest time of the day, the one time I wasn’t harassed with phone calls or email or pack problems. Inhaling deeply, I began my daily ritual.

I had stayed up later than I intended working on Daniel’s file the previous evening. I hate to leave things incomplete and no one came into our home without me knowing a lot about them. Yet, my searches had all come up with far less information than I had hoped for. The extensive databases available to me were largely useless in turning up anything about the cat. Even Cassie’s files were incomplete. I had expected to see something related to testing in Parallax’s file, yet all she had found were the intake records for the animals they tested on. Nothing in terms of medical records or findings—and that very obvious lack of information told me more about what was going on than having actual records might have.

After nearly three days with only a few short naps, I was exhausted this morning. And I looked it. The dark circles under my eyes were a testament to my new hectic schedule, and my pale skin told me I was working far too many nights.

I made a face in the mirror before opening the cabinet mirror to grab my toothbrush.

The last thing I wanted was to look like the creatures I hunted. Then again, I suppose that would be the perfect disguise. Finishing my teeth, I flipped the remaining water off my toothbrush and placed it back into the cabinet thinking about using a light concealer, then discarded the idea.

I am what I am.

I made my way downstairs and into the kitchen, immediately cringing against the loud TV cartoons that assaulted my quiet morning.

“Is that really necessary?” I moaned, sitting at the table and placing my head in my hands.

Billy glanced over at me, then obediently reached for the remote control and turned the television off while Brock made a cup of coffee. It was obvious they’d been talking, but they had fallen silent when I entered the room.

“Thanks,” I said, nodding towards the TV. “Morning, boys.”

“Morning,” Billy mumbled, obviously bothered by something more than the abrupt end of his cartoons.

Brock kissed the top of my head before placing a cup of coffee in front of me along with a carefully folded, and obviously well read, section of the newspaper.
Ah, coffee…

My delight was short-lived as I took a sip of the bitter liquid and screwed up my nose.

“Geez, who made this?”

Billy glanced up at me. “I did.”

“When did you make it—last night?” I moved to the sink and rinsed out the cup. Brock had water boiling in the pot on the stove, so I snagged a diffuser from the drawer and filled it with a rare Assam black tea, then carried it back to my plate.

“Where is everyone?” Usually the kitchen was the busiest place in the house during the mornings. Most of our animals are crepuscular by nature, most active at dusk and dawn.

“Jace is out with your newest arrival doing the orientation tour. Billy and I wanted to talk to you this morning.”

That didn’t sound good…

“What’s up?”

“Just curious about the new cat,” Billy answered, a bit more sarcastically than necessary. I stared hard at him over my coffee.

“No pun intended,” he smirked.

“Alright, I’ll bite… What’s the problem?”

Brock shot Billy a withering look. “He just seems… off.”

“Well, he’s been living with an old woman as her housecat for the last year. Wouldn’t you be a little off?”

“It’s not just that,” Brock paused. “This is something different.”

I wrapped my hands around the hot mug, letting the heat warm me. “Unless you can be a little more specific, I don’t really know what to tell you.”

“He’s weird, Alex,” Billy almost snapped the words at me.

“What — did he do something weird?”

I walked over to the stove and helped myself to a plate of eggs and bacon. Brock placed a plate of toast on the table. I smiled my thanks and ignored his look of disapproval as I crumbled the bacon over top of the eggs, and ate a forkful of the makeshift omelet I had created. I was starving today, and Brock was an excellent chef.

“No, he didn’t do anything weird.” Brock answered, silencing Billy with a glance. “But there is something off about him.”

Billy snickered. “Yeah, like the inability to remember anything about his life.”

Taking a bite of toast, I chewed slowly before glancing up at him. “What are you talking about?”

“He can’t remember anything before he showed up on that old woman’s steps,” Billy blurted out. “That’s weird. Weres and shifters have long-term memory. And for something that’s been in cat form for so long, he’s acting more like a human than an animal.”

“He’s chimera, not a shifter,” I countered. “And no matter what he is, everything has some type of long-term memory.”

“Well, your new cat doesn’t,” Brock said. “And I have to agree with Billy on this one — it’s a little weird.”

Shrugging, I took another sip of tea. “Maybe he just doesn’t want to tell you what he remembers. Dogs and cats have a bit of a sordid history.”

“None of us lie, though,” Billy answered, taking the seat next to me. “Fine,” he said, catching my look of disbelief. “We may twist the truth, but we don’t lie. And he’s hiding something.”

“So, hiding the fact you’re all werecreatures that aren’t supposed to exist isn’t lying?” I scoffed. It was true that animals don’t lie and Weres are half animal, which makes that side of them incapable of lying. The human side, however, is perfectly capable of making things up. It’s just not as active in Weres due to their animal influence.

“Well, we don’t lie to one another,” Brock amended.

Leaning back in my chair, I stared at the two of them. “What’s
weird
is that this seems to bother you so much.”

Billy glanced at Brock, then back at me. “What’s with the necklace he wears?”

I couldn’t recall Daniel wearing any jewelry, so I shrugged. “I didn’t realize he was wearing one. But assuming he is, what about it?”

“We don’t wear jewelry,” Brock answered.

I thought about it a moment. That was true. Jewelry gets in the way of shifting and if it were silver, it could prevent a shift altogether. “I wouldn’t worry about it, guys. Really. If anything comes up, we’ll learn about it. In the meantime, he needs a place to live, and he needs to learn how to live as a human.”

I added cream and a spoonful of sugar to my tea, stirring slowly. “I’m trusting that you’ll treat him like a member of the pack until he gives a real reason not to.” I glanced up from my little tea project to ensure the message was getting through. “Are we good?”

Billy gave me a half-hearted nod.

“As long as you’re aware of the potential problem,” Brock agreed. “And on a separate note, we’ve got another situation to deal with.” He motioned to the newspaper in front of me.

I maneuvered the neatly folded paper to the side of my plate and read over the headlining article as I worked on finishing my eggs.

Mountain Lion Calls University Home

Recent sightings of a cougar on the ASU campus have many alarmed, and experts say these nocturnal animals pose a real threat. Last night, a professor was mauled on campus.

Clay Carson, Arizona Fish and Game attributed the mauling to the man’s attempt to escape during the attack. “You don’t run away from cats,” Carson said. “You don’t play dead with lions. Wave your arms, make noise, throw something, charge the animal—whatever you can do to make yourself appear bigger than you are.”

Recent sightings of a single mountain lion near the ASU campus had many alarmed in August.

Alma Rise, Director of ASU Campus Security, reports they are “…asking students to walk in groups. Campus residents should remain vigilant until we have found and relocated the lion.”

I raised an eyebrow at Brock. “They’re telling people to fight them? That’s ridiculous.”

He nodded and stood to flip through another paper.

“There’s more…”

“What the hell is a cougar doing on a campus in the middle of Tempe anyway?” I muttered. “Late bloomer? Big cats rarely enter the city. By nature, they are shy, secretive animals.”

“I thought the same thing until I saw this.” He circled the table and reached over my shoulder, pointing to a second article.

Two Cougars Terrorize Local Watering Hole

Tempe, AZ — Two rabid mountain lions are terrorizing a local college town and have critically injured three students.

The first victim, a young female, reportedly hit one of the mountain lions with her car. The animal leapt on her as she exited the vehicle, then retreated to the parking lot of The Watering Hole where it threatened a worker, but did not attack. Within an hour, two mountain lions appeared at Chaparral, a popular nightspot with students at ASU.

Bartender Scott Hughes told witnesses that several patrons exited the bar at about 11:00 p.m.

But as soon as they walked out the door, they ran back in, trailed by two large cougars.

“One of them jumped on the bar, and the other jumped onto the pool table,” he told reporters.

Patrons rushed the exit, followed by at least one of the cougars. Witnesses report that the second animal calmly walked outside, moving toward a police officer, who shot twice at the animal. Authorities believe the cougars are still alive, but possibly injured, and urge the public to contact authorities if sighted.

I glanced up at Brock and Billy who sat across the table cradling their coffee. “Who wrote this? Geez…”

Despite my aversion to climbing from bed prior to the alarm going off, I normally handled mornings pretty well, especially when compared to the very few friends I had, and the creatures I lived with. But I couldn’t figure out if it was just my being over-tired or if the news just couldn’t penetrate my brain. Mountain lions are some of the most secretive, isolated mammals in the world. They rarely travel together and unless the entire state of Arizona was in a drought, they stayed in the isolated mountainous region, far from human population. I had never heard of one showing up in the middle of a college campus or a public bar.

Especially not two at a time.

I reread the articles, then rested my head on the large wooden table, a long ago gift to my father from a Mexican wolf shifter. The comforting scent of pine permeated my senses and I inhaled deeply, letting it calm me.

I just wasn’t up for another mystery and I certainly didn’t want to spend my week looking for a couple of arrogant college students who could shift into mountain lions—assuming, of course, that the animals were even shifters. Chances were just as good that it was an errant cougar that had set up shop on campus in hopes of an easy meal as civilization continued to encroach on its territory and deplete its game.

Either way, I needed to handle it before Game and Fish handled it…

Besides just not wanting to deal with the problem, the big issue lay in the very limited amount of time I had available to handle the matter. With Parallax reigning large on the ‘to do’ list, a Nephilim following me around, and a Handler turning innocent people into werecreatures, time was a luxury I didn’t have at the moment.

And it would take a lot of time to trap these cougars.

Billy started to speak, but Brock cut him off with a brisk shake of his head. That wolf knew me far too well. He waited until I took another sip of tea and a deep breath as I considered the options.

“Game and Fish won’t play nice with these cats.” Although part of me wanted to say it served the cats right. “Have they killed anyone yet?”

“Not yet.” Brock frowned. “But, if they’re as young and stupid as they’re acting, you know it’s only a matter of time.”

I sighed heavily, “Where the hell are all these cats coming from?”

Brock shook his head, wondering the same thing, but Billy smiled. “Maybe if more people spayed and neutered their pets…”

I playfully tapped him against the head. “Not funny…”

“Any chance it has something to do with the lead you got from Richard the other day?” Brock asked.

I shrugged. “Whether it does or not, we need to get these cats out of there.”

“Cats…” Billy rolled his eyes. “If I don’t see another cat for the rest of my life, it’ll be too soon.”

“I still say that about coyotes,” I said, taunting him. “But, like me, I think you’ll eventually get used to having them around. Apparently cats are the hot commodity these days.”

My phone rang and a glance at caller ID told me that Richard had also read the papers this morning.

“Morning, Richard.”

“Good morning, Alexandra.” His voice was bright and he was obviously pleased I had practiced good phone etiquette.

“I assume you’ve read the papers today?”

I smiled. “I have. And yes, we’ll get them trapped this evening.”

“Good. I’m up to eyeballs in press on these cases. I’ve been able to offset most of it by claiming a rabies outbreak. We’ve got reporters telling everyone to take their pets in for rabies vaccinations.”

“You really need to work on your cover stories, Richard. But, I’m sure the veterinarians will all adore you.”

He grunted. “Be sure you bring these two in — alive if you can, but at the very least, I’ll need a DNA sample. I’ve got a theory I’m working.”

That set off an alarm in my head. The only people who catalogued shifter DNA were Shepherds. And the fact that he was collecting it set me on edge. But, if Richard said he had a theory, I wouldn’t bet against him.

And I trusted Richard with my life, which meant I trusted him with my pack’s lives.

“You got it,” I said, hanging up the phone.

And now my eggs were cold…

“All right,” Brock said, frowning at the overheard conversation. “I’ll get the traps together. We’ll go pick them up tonight.”

“My, aren’t we optimistic?” Billy quipped.

Billy was right. Trapping cats, particularly large wild cats, was not easy under the best of conditions. When time was a limiting factor, it only complicated the issue. I lifted my eyebrows anyway. “A little optimism would do this house some good. So would some good will towards the cats we already have. Maybe you just need to spend some time with them? Let them roll around on you for awhile?”