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Authors: Cathy Clamp
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and go freely. The Alpha Female down in Texas reminded me how rare it is for a group of powerful people who make people nervous to descend on an area without notice. I’m afraid that this delay is part of the plan of whoever is doing this. If the council puts Wolven in a smaller and smaller box to keep everyone happy, we’ll wind up existing, but ineffective. I’m not willing to let that happen, so we’re back to square one. Hang on for a sec.”
Lucas turned the dial on the radio to a new setting and started to call the Goodland Airport to check in. I’d been to Kansas City plenty of times, but we were going to be landing the old prop job that Lucas had rented on a private airfield in the middle of nowhere. I’d heard of Goodland since it was on a main eastwest interstate and shows up from time to time on the Weather Channel updates, but had no idea where we were headed. Frankly, I’d rather be in the corporate jet we used to get to Denver from Central America. Pipers don’t have enough legroom for my taste. It occurred to me that Lucas had started talking again and I couldn’t remember what he’d said. “Um, my bad. Tell me again what you said. I was sort of lost in thought. Sorry.”
He sighed, not like he was angry, but like he was starting to figure out I wasn’t going to be much help on the trip. “You’ll have to try to pay attention. I know it’ll be hard, considering the circumstances, but this is an important mission and I need your head with me. I was trying to give you some more background on why we’re here. Last week I got a call from one of the women in the Boulder pack. A man named Paul Kendall got her number from the regional emergency hotline we have set up for relatives and he told her he needed to get ahold of someone from Wolven right away. He has reason to believe his daughter, Liz Sutton-Kendall, had her first change last month and wrecked part of the town. But there are no other shifters in his family and he’s afraid for both her and the locals if she goes feral.”
I furrowed my brow and tried to think it through, but failed. “You’d think there wouldn’t be a question about that. Either she changed or didn’t. Why doesn’t he know? Doesn’t she live at home anymore? Did she disappear and come back bloody?”
Lucas started to look out the window. “Watch for a pair of grain towers next to a red barn. That’s the farm we’re looking for. It should be coming up in the next few miles. No, he doesn’t know because there was a tornado in Hansen . . . that’s the name of the town, the night of the last full moon. The local press is attributing the damage to the storm, but he doesn’t think so. She was found unconscious under the wreckage of the tower the next morning—stark naked, but without a scratch on her. If he’s to be believed, the girl is a badger-shifter, and he seems certain she dug a burrow under the foundation of the water tower to escape the storm, which collapsed onto a good part of the downtown.”
My laugh was unavoidable, despite Lucas’s warning growl. “Oh, c’mon, how can that not be funny? It just screams tabloid cover story: ‘Local Badgergirl Makes Big Splash in Town!’ ” I framed the headline in the air with my fingers. Lucas wasn’t quite as amused as I, but I saw the corner of his mouth twitch a fraction.
“It’s fine to laugh in the plane, but keep your jokes to yourself when we land. This is actually quite a serious situation. There’s only one badger-shifter in the entire world right now, and if something happens to him, there’s nobody to train her. The nightmare I had earlier was about the last time Nigel went berserk in a crowded opera hall in London.” He turned his head enough that I could see his lightly glowing eyes. “It wasn’t pretty. A lot of people died that day for no good reason and it was hell to keep the press and officials from digging too deep. If the girl really is a badger, and she’s feral . . .
Lucas turned the dial on the radio to a new setting and started to call the Goodland Airport to check in. I’d been to Kansas City plenty of times, but we were going to be landing the old prop job that Lucas had rented on a private airfield in the middle of nowhere. I’d heard of Goodland since it was on a main eastwest interstate and shows up from time to time on the Weather Channel updates, but had no idea where we were headed. Frankly, I’d rather be in the corporate jet we used to get to Denver from Central America. Pipers don’t have enough legroom for my taste. It occurred to me that Lucas had started talking again and I couldn’t remember what he’d said. “Um, my bad. Tell me again what you said. I was sort of lost in thought. Sorry.”
He sighed, not like he was angry, but like he was starting to figure out I wasn’t going to be much help on the trip. “You’ll have to try to pay attention. I know it’ll be hard, considering the circumstances, but this is an important mission and I need your head with me. I was trying to give you some more background on why we’re here. Last week I got a call from one of the women in the Boulder pack. A man named Paul Kendall got her number from the regional emergency hotline we have set up for relatives and he told her he needed to get ahold of someone from Wolven right away. He has reason to believe his daughter, Liz Sutton-Kendall, had her first change last month and wrecked part of the town. But there are no other shifters in his family and he’s afraid for both her and the locals if she goes feral.”
I furrowed my brow and tried to think it through, but failed. “You’d think there wouldn’t be a question about that. Either she changed or didn’t. Why doesn’t he know? Doesn’t she live at home anymore? Did she disappear and come back bloody?”
Lucas started to look out the window. “Watch for a pair of grain towers next to a red barn. That’s the farm we’re looking for. It should be coming up in the next few miles. No, he doesn’t know because there was a tornado in Hansen . . . that’s the name of the town, the night of the last full moon. The local press is attributing the damage to the storm, but he doesn’t think so. She was found unconscious under the wreckage of the tower the next morning—stark naked, but without a scratch on her. If he’s to be believed, the girl is a badger-shifter, and he seems certain she dug a burrow under the foundation of the water tower to escape the storm, which collapsed onto a good part of the downtown.”
My laugh was unavoidable, despite Lucas’s warning growl. “Oh, c’mon, how can that not be funny? It just screams tabloid cover story: ‘Local Badgergirl Makes Big Splash in Town!’ ” I framed the headline in the air with my fingers. Lucas wasn’t quite as amused as I, but I saw the corner of his mouth twitch a fraction.
“It’s fine to laugh in the plane, but keep your jokes to yourself when we land. This is actually quite a serious situation. There’s only one badger-shifter in the entire world right now, and if something happens to him, there’s nobody to train her. The nightmare I had earlier was about the last time Nigel went berserk in a crowded opera hall in London.” He turned his head enough that I could see his lightly glowing eyes. “It wasn’t pretty. A lot of people died that day for no good reason and it was hell to keep the press and officials from digging too deep. If the girl really is a badger, and she’s feral . . .
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