Last of the Shapeshifters

Chapter 6

Chapter Six

SASHA

“Hi, Jenny.”

The woman looked up, scowling, and Sasha found her eyes drawn to the thick fuzz that was growing on her chin.

“What are you having?” she barked.

“Two eggs, easy over, and a coffee, would you?”

“I saw your face in the free paper today, Detective.”

“Yeah, I saw that, too,” Sasha said. “I’m surprised it got out so fast.”

“So, how are you liking the promotion?”

“To be honest with you, I’m not. I got a case today…” she started, before her voice faded. She shouldn’t talk about it. It went contrary to her small town tendencies.

But the news hadn’t spread yet, and she’d help it to stay that way as long as possible, though she was certain it would be in tomorrow morning’s edition of the Salty Sentinel, the free paper Sands ran.

“Already, huh? They keeping you busy, the big boys up top?”

“Yeah.”

“Figures. Big swinging d***s, huh? Think they’re all that. Never liked O’Neill. It’s no wonder he never got married. Salt?”

“Sorry?”

“In on your eggs.”

“Yeah, a bit.”

Sipping from her coffee, she regarded Jenny. The woman was a Salty Springs lifer, like her mother before her. Her appearance matched her personality: all tendon and gristle. Sasha had always harbored a curiosity as to what Jenny, the teenager, or the young woman, might have been like. What made her this way? Perhaps it was just the desert.

“So what’s new besides the promotion?” the woman croaked. She sparked a cigarette and took a long pull. “Smoke, dear?”

“No,” Sasha said.

Jenny smiled sarcastically. “Good for you.”

“Lots new, Jenny, but I can’t talk about it.”

“Classified s**t, eh? Typical.”

“Typical of what?”

“You government types. Everything’s a goddamned secret. You ask me, if you don’t have a healthy suspicion of the government, then, as far as I’m concerned, you’re not from the same country I am.”

Sasha laughed. “It’s probably a lot more boring than you think.”

Jenny snorted. “Still got plans to travel?”

Sasha grinned, remembering that she had once talked at length to Jenny about visiting Southeast Asia. “It’s on my to-do list.”

“Well, you’d better get a fuckin’ move on. You’re no spring chicken, sugar.”

“Thanks, Jenny.”

“What about a man, Sasha?” The woman leaned forward, the corners of her lips plucked upward.

Sasha rolled her eyes.

“I take it that’s a no.”

“Not yet.”

“Optimism. I like it. But you’ll want to hurry up with that, too. Because, let me tell ya…”

“Yeah,” Sasha murmured through a bite of her eggs. “I’m no spring chicken, right?”

Jenny leaned forward then and pinched the fat on her upper arm. “It’s only going to get harder and harder to lose it.”

Sasha pulled her arm away, feeling the scrape of Jenny’s calloused fingertips on her skin. “Okay, we are definitely not having this conversation anymore.”

But Jenny continued, unfazed. “What you got hurt feelings for? Be like me. Grab life by the balls and yank.” She stubbed out her cigarette into an ashtray.

“I wish I knew you when you were younger, Jenny.”

The woman rapped her knuckles on the counter. “Did you see that new fella?”

“Lots of new fellas in town these days,” Sasha replied, “And not all of them good.” But her curiosity was piqued, especially in light of the circumstances. “Tell me about him.”

“Good looking young man. Big guy, muscles. Black hair. Was in here not five minutes ago. Asking about the police.”

Sasha was staring unblinking at Jenny by the time she had finished her description. “Big?”

“Yeah. Tall, too.”

She swallowed her mouthful, and asked Jenny with wide eyes, “And black hair? Was it shoulder-length?”

“Yep.”

Sasha put her fork back down on the plate. She turned her head and looked out of the windows. Her heart was racing. “And he was asking about the police?”

“Yep.”

“What did he ask?”

“Why were there so many of you?”

“Is that all?”

“Well I didn’t fuckin’ write it down, dear. I only take orders here, not interviews.”

“He was here five minutes ago?” Sasha turned and looked out the window into the street, but it was empty.

“Jesus, Sasha! Are you going to make me repeat everything?”

“Which way did he go?”

“I like your spirit, but he’s probably gay.” Jenny sighed wistfully. “The good ones always are.”

“Seriously, Jenny, which way?”

“Toward the gas station, I think. Why?” the woman asked, and her perpetual scowl evaporated, in its place narrowed eyes of nosiness. “Something going on?”

“No,” Sasha said. She walked out of the diner, and looked down the street toward the gas station. There was nobody in sight. The road shimmered with heat waves, and the sun was severe.

“s**t,” Sasha said to herself. She set off down the road, jogging slightly, looking up and down each cross-street, each alley in between single-story buildings. She spotted the tall figure of a man, blurred in the distance down the space between two houses, and she ran back to her car, drove around the block with the intention of cutting him off at the other side.

Rounding the corner, she saw nothing. There was no sign of him. She stopped the car, climbed out, and looked up the small path between two bungalows. There was nobody there. Had he seen her? Had he run? Either that, or she’d missed him.

For the first time that morning, Sasha felt like she’d caught a break in the case. Maybe Mrs. Clark’s jogger was the real deal. Some new guy in town, asking about the police on the day there was a gruesome murder who just happened to fit the description given by a woman living next door to the victim? Unlikely to be a coincidence. Sasha knew that coincidence didn’t make a case, but she also knew not to ignore it.

She went back to her car and radioed the station dispatch.

“This is Detective Monroe, I need a couple of uniforms right now for a canvass. Target is a person of interest, wearing jeans and a dark t-shirt, either black or brown. He’s tall, over six feet, and he’s a big guy with shoulder-length black hair.”

Surprised that the case seemed to be coming together before her eyes so quickly, Sasha tempered her excitement with three slow, deep breaths. Though she might get lucky on her first case, she might also have it all completely wrong. Making an assumption either way would simply lead to mistakes.

And so, for now, she’d consider the man she’d seen a person of interest, rather than a full-blown suspect. If she was going to do this, she was going to do it right.

DYLAN

Dylan left the small restaurant, the taste of coffee strong in his mouth. It was too dry for that, and so he popped into a*****e opposite the restaurant to buy some gum and a bottle of water. While standing at the till, he saw a woman jog past. He only caught a glimpse of her, but he was instantly drawn to her. She was beautiful, with full lips, and she had the kind of thick body that he liked.

His eyes followed her as she ran out of sight, and he felt distinctly drawn to her. His instincts were telling him to pursue her, but he chalked it up to it having been a long time. No, he had other things to focus on. A beautiful woman could wait.

“Thanks,” he said, dropping a tip in the jar. When he left the store, a blanket of heat slammed into him. It felt almost physical.

He took a turn between two houses just up the empty street. He had no lead on the wolf, and as a man, couldn’t detect any trace of a scent. If he shifted into a bear, though, he’d never make it through the day without being spotted, or succumbing to heat stroke.

For now, he’d just have to walk around, and see if he could glean anything. A hint, a clue, a thread. The fact that wolf sightings had been made on three separate occasions around the greater area cemented his confidence in the wolf being here. He had caught the scent of canis lupus. All these things added up; this was no coincidence.

But why come to this town? Why travel across the country to a remote and somewhat-troubled desert settlement?

He wondered about the rumors of the wolf. Two people had written letters to the local papers in a few towns bordering the desert. They’d apparently heard a wolf howling, seen its silhouette stalking in the night, or silhouetted against the moon atop a jagged ridge. That last part sounded like embellishment to Dylan, who had learned over the course of his search to sharpen his cynical edge. But the wolf howling? That was obviously very possible, if not for the strange contradiction of a wolf in the desert.

Another rumor had come on an online message board. Somebody had claimed they’d seen a yellow-eyed wolf, huge and hulking, stalking the streets of a mining town not too far away from Salty Springs. That post had definitely snared Dylan’s attention.

For a decade he had been searching for another like him, another Shapeshifter, somebody to be a companion to his bear. He followed every rumor he heard, every sighting of animals where they shouldn’t be, but had never come across anybody else like himself.

He wondered, idly, how many reports of bear sightings he’d left in places that bears weren’t native to. Perhaps he had someone following him, just like he was following the wolf?

It amused him, the thought of shapeshifters following each other while searching for each other. The blind leading the blind.

But he wasn’t going to stop looking. Despite never finding success, he couldn’t think of what else to do with his life. He had exhausted his drive for l**t and for wealth, had given up on love, and now sought truth. Why was he the way he was? There must be others, and surely one of them would have answers. Was it genetic? Hereditary? He’d seen no evidence of shapeshifting in his mother or father before they died. Had he been a chance birth? A strange alignment of mutated alleles?

And how long did shapeshifters live for? That particular question burned in his mind. He’d been alive for eighty years, and yet had the body and face of an athletic twenty-eight year old.

The sound of a man shouting snatched him out of reverie.

“Stop! Police!”

Dylan turned around to see a uniformed officer pointing a finger at him, and walking quickly toward him, his hand on his holster.

“Don’t move!”

Dylan put up his hands, and turned his head to the side, lips curling into a smile. The cop had a pale face, with large eyes and a sharp nose, and he looked very eager. That was a bad quality in a police officer. At least, Dylan thought, if that policeman was after you.

“Just stay where you are,” the policeman said with a hand held out, fingers outstretched.

“Am I under arrest?”

“No, but there’s a detective who’d like to speak with you.”

“A detective, eh?” Dylan asked, drawing out the syllables of the word. “It wouldn’t be that pretty newly promoted detective I saw in the paper this morning, would it?”

“I said don’t move!”

With a hardened voice, Dylan said, “I’m not doing anything.”

“Don’t move a muscle,” the policeman said. “I’m serious, sir. I’m f*****g serious.”

“What’s wrong with you?” Dylan asked. His tone had changed, and though he was not physically advancing on the young man, he could tell his presence was affecting the police officer. “This how you normally interact with innocent people? Why don’t you just relax a touch before you do something stupid? Like piss me off.”

But the young officer didn’t respond. He stepped back instead, and talked quietly into his radio. Dylan looked across the street, saw the officer’s partner on the other side, quickly approaching them, his hand also on his holster. A police cruiser was parked at the end of the block.

“What’s this about?” Could it be something to do with the wolf? That seemed an unlikely coincidence.

“Just be quiet and wait.”

“I’ll wait because I choose to comply with you,” Dylan said, his voice lowering into a growl. “But do not tell me to be quiet again.”

“Fine,” the young policeman said, taking another step backward. “Just stay there. Don’t move.”

“Why are you so jumpy?”

The cop shook his head. “There’s a tot going on.”

Dylan nodded slowly. “I can tell. Tell me why you’ve stopped me, that’s part of your protocol. You need to tell me why you are detaining me.”

The policeman still didn’t respond verbally, but shook his head.

“So you’re not detaining me?” Dylan asked. “So I can go?”

“Damn it,” the cop said, growing flustered. “Will you just please cooperate and wait a moment? I’m a f*****g cop, okay? Do you have to be such an asshole?”

Dylan smirked. “Yes. If you’re not going to arrest me, you can’t hold me, so I’m going.”

He began to turn around when both officers ran up to him, shouting words over each other. Dylan saw them both unbutton the leather strap of their holsters, freeing their pistols.

“Don’t go anywhere,” the young cop said, his voice breaking. “I’m serious.”

“Isn’t this some kind of violation of my rights?” Dylan asked, his tone playful. He raised an eyebrow at them, and looked at each of the young men in turn.

“You match a description.”

“Do I?”

“Yes.”

“In relation to what?”

“I can’t tell you that right now. A detective will be along shortly. You’ll know soon enough.”

“So you’re telling me that I just have to wait out here and cook in the sun while your detective takes his sweet time to drive down here? s**t, take me into the station if that’s the case. I’d prefer somewhere with a little air-conditioning.”

“Can’t do that, sir. Those aren’t my orders.”

Dylan smiled. “I haven’t broken any law.”

“That’s not for me to decide.”

That was an odd answer, Dylan thought. He was about to speak when a dusty white coupe rounded the corner and slowed beside him, groaning to a stop. The car needed work.

He bent down and looked inside the window, and then he laughed. It was the pretty promoted detective he had seen in the newspaper that morning.

“Detective Monroe.” He greeted her as she climbed out of her car. The sun was reflecting off her windshield and ended up silhouetting her figure. Dylan saw delicious curves, and he licked his lips. Beautiful and thick? And she wanted to detain him?

This was getting better by the minute.

He smirked at her. “I read about you this morning.” His eyes sought out every inch of her. She had wide eyes and full lips, looked determined, strong, but not naïve. No, this lady had seen some things and done some things. He suspected that she was more than a little fierce. Good.

His eyes traveled down her body, and he felt his throat tighten with anticipation. Her generous breasts strained against her shirt, and ensnared his attention, and then he allowed his gaze to travel farther down, and he imagined, for a brief moment, her thighs wrapped around his waist.

Jesus, he thought to himself. No woman had done this to him in a long time. He was completely distracted.

He met her eyes, his mouth rising to one side with an amused grin. “If I’d have known it was you who wanted to talk to me,” he said, “I’d not have given your boys so much trouble.”