Smilodon

Chapter 1-2

Gabrielle barely swallowed a snarl as she led her team through the national forest. They were tracking a rogue cougar, and he’d already killed ten people so far. She was the best hunter for the job—the best hunter period full stop—and a part of her seethed that the Shifter Council hadn’t given her this task when the toxicology report came back on the first person mauled to death. The rogue cougar stalking the national forest was a shifter, and no human hunting party from the Forest Service had any hope of finding him, let alone dealing with him. Not unless they fielded the better part of a battalion to get the job done.

The sole bright spot in the cougar’s rampage was that he killed his victims. Shifters—like vampires—could turn humans into shifters. A turned shifter was never as powerful as a born shifter, with a few exceptions so rare they were almost fables, but they still made humans seem like weak, undeveloped children in comparison. If life had existed in any of the victims—even the minutest sliver of life—they’d now have ten new cougars on their hands… and if whatever drove the rogue in its slaughter was a sickness, he could pass that sickness to anyone he turned.

She spied tracks in a stretch of mud that was still damp from the recent rain, and Gabrielle stopped and knelt. The stride here was closer to a walk, and by the far end of the mud, the stride looked closer to a stalk. Gabrielle glared at the tracks for just a moment. Then, she closed her eyes and reached out to the part of her that wasn’t human… and never had been.

The wind had shifted at some point. It no longer drifted down the valley. Now, it blew into their faces, and there was… something. She identified the normal scents of the forest and set them aside. There was something there, but she was too limited in human form to identify it. A very feline-like huff escaped her.

So be it. There was more than one way to chase a cat.

“Hey,” Gabrielle said, as she pushed herself back to her feet. The other members of her team all turned to her. “I’m going over behind that big oak to shift. There’s something on the wind. Bring my pack, please, and try to keep up.”

Nods and affirmative vocalizations came back to her, and she nodded once. She turned and made her way to the large oak tree that was more than sufficient to grant her some privacy. She never understood why all the humans writing shifter fiction just seemed to assume shifters would take a casual approach to nudity. Sure, sometimes one didn’t have other options, but no shifter she’d ever met liked to walk around naked as the day they were born.

It was a quick task to strip and stuff her clothes into her pack, tying her boots to a convenient carabiner she kept for such an occasion. Then it was a simple matter to touch the part of her mind that had never been human, for unlike a couple of people in her party, Gabrielle was a born shifter.

The change was also unlike most shifter fiction depicted. Everyone seemed to think it would hurt… or the human would just wink out and the animal would appear. But for Gabrielle it was neither uncomfortable nor immediate, and every born shifter she asked described an experience like hers. The change was as normal as standing up, sitting down, or walking across a room. Yes, she felt her physical form shifting. Her limbs shortened. Her muzzle elongated. But there was no pain. There was no discomfort. In fact, there were times it felt like she was coming home, becoming the truest version of herself.

The change complete, Gabrielle enjoyed a moment to luxuriate in her form. Stretch all four legs. Flex her claws. Lash her tail. She only took a couple of heartbeats, though. She had an important task.

Cats did not have the same quality of olfactory sense that canines do, but cats weren’t exactly nose-blind, either. She opened her mouth and took a slow, deep breath, drawing the air across the roof of her mouth. She closed her eyes and concentrated. A second breath. The forest was normal, not important. She didn’t care about the scent of pine or mint or spruce. The cougar’s scent was faint, hours old but still recent enough to identify. And there it was. Human. The cougar had new prey.

Gabrielle hoped she would be in time as she darted out from behind the oak.

* * * *

It was always an experience hunting with Gabrielle. Almost every predator shifter was a natural hunter, but Gabrielle was in a class by herself. She held several medals and titles from various shifter hunting games or contests. Several of her hunting party turned toward the tree as a four-legged shadow shot across the track they’d been following and disappeared into the forest’s undergrowth.

A melanistic jaguar. One type of the so-called black panther. Gabrielle.

One of the veteran hunters stared at the patch of foliage where the jaguar vanished and sighed. He muttered, “Keep up, my ass,” even though every shifter around him heard it with ease. Then, at a normal volume, “Well, gang… we just became the clean-up crew.”