The Marshals: Part 1
I’m not quite human anymore, and I’m not sure I like it. I’m new at being a hunter and a tracker. One of three marshals in charge of keeping the supernatural peace in the Pacific Northwest. I’ve just been handed a new assignment. The document kind of floats down from above written in the angelic language, which I’m still learning so I turn and head inside the house. My name is Annie. My brown sugar hair is overdue for a cut. I’m short and lean. If you catch me in the sunshine, you’ll see my hard brown eyes the color of bark on a Douglas fir. If you catch me at night, however, you’ll also notice they reflect light back.
I live and work with two others, part of a three-person marshal team. One of my team is ethereal. Gwendolyn is fey and an addict. Genus, fairy; species, tooth. Since it takes the synergy of all three of our particular magics to solve the assignments, to bring justice, we work with her. As long as she has a tooth, she’s all right. But she’s very beautiful, which means she can’t be the person who goes undercover or tries to blend in as we track criminals. People notice her waist length flowing hair, bright yellow like new sunshine after a long dark winter, and her sapphire blue eyes bordered by thick golden lashes. But mostly, they notice the ears that rise to a point at the top, and, of course, the wings, clear with tiny veins of silver and silver capping the outside, although you’ll also see traces of dentin from all the baby teeth she crushes and eats. If she keeps doing that, her wings will get too heavy to fly. I have to say she does a good job folding them around her, bat-like, and keeping them under wraps. In a fight, she’s fast and pretty vicious when she’s angry, which she is often. Gwendolyn has a bad temper.
I place the message on the coffee table as Gwen bursts through the front door, one wing curled under and her hair wet and draggled. She’s been out all night again and only returns with the sunrise. She takes one look at the message, flutters her wings and settles on the couch.
“Fucking Fuck,” she repeats as she shivers the curled wing.
While she huffs at the new assignment, I plop myself on the rug to face the coffee table. Our third team member dribbles into the living room rubbing his eyes of sleep. He wears gray flannel pajamas over a six-foot frame. His black hair falls over brooding gray eyes that storm in his stony face, which presents as all angles and planes. Like the rest of us, he appears perennially twenty years old. Minx is a hybrid, half human, half gargoyle and I know two truths about him. First, that his soft skin covers an inside as hard and stony as bedrock, his gargoyle half. The second: that this incongruous blend of bedrock and flesh causes him physical pain: pink flesh jamming into rock hard organs. His breath catches in his throat as he shuffles across the floor. He hurts but the cold, hard strength of his gargoyle dominates. Minx believes in heroes.
He nods at us, yawning and stumbles off to the kitchen to grab a cup of coffee. “I thought we’d get a whole week off after that last assignment.”
I settle onto the floor, cross-legged like a Buddha and call my spirit animal. I’m not like other shifters. Apparently, I’m a once every four to five centuries spirit lion. I’m still learning what special magics I possess, but I do know that I carry the spirits of all wild felines and my transformation is a different process then other shifters. Plus, I don’t control when I shift or what specific feline I change into. Right now, it’s all based on fear or critical need. And here one comes. In the darkness at the edges of the room, something tall and feathery drifts through on weltering fog only I can see. The smoke gathers into suggestions of legs as it rolls nearer. Trickles of sweat gather under the front of my blue cotton tee shirt, yet I shiver. The form coalesces into four stout legs and a thick body, all tawny brown with golden eyes and large claws; 180 pounds of predatory muscles flex and ripple beneath tight skin: my spirit animal, the mountain lion. She roars, announcing herself.
I tremble as she stalks me. Since I’m new to shape shifting, every time the lion pounces, my instinct remains to run like prey. I force myself: I gather my fortitude, hold my breath and allow her near. She inches closer, sniffs the air around me, curls her upper lip so I view the cutting teeth. I stare her in the eyes, person to lion. She huffs a breath, meat rich. She hunches her front feet downward and sways her rump side to side. In a flash, her tail snaps up and she launches at me. Her vicious mouth opens wide and wider still as she flies through the air. The heat of her copper bloody breath engulfs me as her impossibly wide maw closes around my head and convulses it into her mouth. She swallows my shoulders, my legs, my feet in one galloping movement of jaw muscles. I am a culinary Jonah sucked into the belly of the beast, alone and trembling. I collapse with the fear that I would be gone, digested into the mountain lion. As I shiver and shimmy with the stress, she settles over me like a blanket: my skin melts into her skin, my mouth, hers. She drips saliva but it pours out of my mouth. I mean look at me, no wonder I don’t date. As the transformation completes, my breathing slows. I accept her and I wonder if I protect her or she protects me from the wild magic energies that pulse through this part of the world.
All three of us settle onto the floor. I sigh at the wreckage; I just want to buy a pair of expensive denim jeans and not find them clawed into pieces at some point but spear the message on a talon and hand it to Gwendolyn.
She reads the accusation, her voice sweet like warm honey except for her foul language. “Oh, oh, oh. Caught another murder.” She scans the document, “and I quote ‘murder most foul.’ Well, fuck, is there a murder not most foul? What are the bosses thinking?”
A low growl escapes my lips, but Gwendolyn just slaps me over the head with the missive, and I crouch ready to pounce. Playing with a fairy who can fly like a bird entertains my cat nature.
Minx grabs the paper. “Stop it you two.” He examines the photo that accompanies the message, a partially chewed human male inside a copse of blackberries. He turns it upside down and sideways as he studies it. The message flares into ash, which drifts to the floor leaving only the photo. Minx’s stony voice cuts through the playful moment between Gwen and me. “Great clue. How do we find a specific bunch of wild blackberries in this city where they grow like weeds?” Apparently, blackberries grow like weeds in Portland, Oregon.
“We need to search the Ephemera.” Gwen uncrosses her legs, “I’ll set up a fairy circle of protection, Annie, get your fricking runny nose working. I hear you sniffing. You’re going to use that incredibly sensitive schnauze of yours to catch the scent of any significant blood patches on blackberry bushes, and Minx, you be ready to pound anything malevolent that tries to break through my circle.” She glances at the two of us. “O.K. with you guys? You ready to travel?”
Gwen grabs the supplies from the kitchen. On the bamboo floor, she draws a circle with sea salt. Inside of that she places nine wide white beeswax candles, lights them with a snap of her thin fingers. The three of us sit lotus like and face the candles, forming the third inside circle. Three smudge pots, one in front of each of us, burns sage. As the smoke billows out of the smudge pots, Gwen, Minx and I lock hands then take seven deep, relaxing breaths, seven being a magical number, heavenly. I feel the wafts of wing beats as Gwen breaths and note the precise equally spaced movement of air in and out of Minx. My heartbeat slows and my thoughts drift deeper into meditation until the drift of magical wind, all light purple and mauve like a sunset rolling over me. I open my eyes, the Ephemera, a magical dimension that is separate from yet connected to the city. I scan the images that flow past us, like streaming pictures. Blood, deeper purple splattered on wild bushes, a half dozen of them. I poke my soft furred nose into the images and smell rabbit, deer, and something else entirely.
But then an arm, long, sinuous, sucker covered slaps over us and taps the circle protection. Gwen flutters her wings. Minx unfolds his legs and shoots up. The suckered arm slaps the circle, harder. Gwen winces. I roar and bare teeth, stalk closer to the circle’s edge. When the arm, must have been twelve feet long and thick, muscled, again slams against the circle, Minx pulls his arm back and lashes out in a granite punch so hard, the circle reverberates with sound. We cover our ears. Gwen grabs our hands and pulls us from the Ephemera back to the house. We open our eyes to the view of our couch beyond the circle, the candles burned halfway, the salt circle broken.
“Whoa. What was that?” I mumble but only a low growl emits from my lion throat.
Gwen turns to me. “I’m not sure what that was, smelled hungry, but is everyone all right?”
We nod as Minx slaps the images of the half dozen blood splattered bushes on the floor. It’s our only lead. One is in Forest Park, the one hundred fifty-seven-acre urban forest in the northwest side of the city. Two are in west side suburbs, two are in east side suburbs and one is in northeast Portland. We decide to hop in the SUV and check out the locations. The added bonus, it is a beautiful day absent any rain. Lush deep green foliage that had been water soaked and draped in compost all of a wet winter blossoms and ripens deep green and lush in the heat of August. An unexpected sunny day. We decide to start with the northeast Portland site and circle around so we end up in Forest Park where we can run, fly, hunt in the deeper sections of the forest. I salivate at the thought of freshly killed deer, assuming they aren’t part of the shifter herd that roams the park. I really want to sink my teeth into a buck, rip its throat out, lap its blood, suck out its marrow.
“Annie,” Minx’s voice cuts through my reverie. “Stop thinking about food, you’re roaring and growling. I can’t hear myself think.” He swivels around to glare at me. “Gwen’s getting the car. C’mon.”
Someone save us all from fairies who want to drive cars. I shudder at the thought. Gwen can be erratic and flighty at the worst of times, but she loves driving. I always wonder why. If I could fly, I’d be in the air all the time. She pulls the black Jeep Grand Cherokee with dark tinted windows in front of the house. Minx rides shotgun and I lope into the back where my mountain lion form can study the outside while hidden from view.
“So where are we headed, Annie?” Minx holds the image in front of his iPhone, which is set to Google maps. I sniff, roll my eyes and point a talon at the spot on the map. Minx searches the site and huffs to Gwen. “Head toward NE 121st. That neighborhood.”
We roll along for half an hour, rush hour having ended hours ago. Then, I sheath my talons and tap Gwen on the shoulder taking care to avoid the wings that drape over the back of the seat. She parks at the curb in a neighborhood of old homes, a mixed neighborhood of some well cared for, some neglected houses. Late in the morning, we luck out. No one is walking around. Gwen wraps us in a ‘don’t-notice-me’ spell and we head out into the backyard of a white clapboard two story that has seen better days. The back yard is covered in blackberry bushes that form tunnels and caves inside. I duck into the bushes to scent the air, pad over the ground. Within a few minutes, I settle on the dirt and release the spirit of mountain lion. Afterward, I lay quivering under the vines, naked, shivering, oddly alone. Gwen marches over and pulls a thin cotton tee and blue jean shorts from a backpack she has slung over her shoulder.
After I dress, we hustle to the car. Annie tracks up the air conditioning and they both stare at me. “Cougars.” I grab a bottle of water from the pack and rip off the cap, slug it down. “Yep, shape shifters. Human shape to cougar. But something’s off. They’re not from the shifter pride here.” I scratch my ear. “And there are some remnants of human brains. They killed here. Right in the neighborhood.”
Minx stares out the window. “Wasn’t a cougar treed and captured around here somewhere recently.” He taps on his iPhone. “Yes, the single forms, aka, humans, caught it not far from here. Euthanized it.”
We stare at each other.
“So, a big fat, fricking clue,” Gwen says.