The Marshals, Part 2

Being new as a supernatural marshal and as a spirit lion shifter, I need direction from my partners. Max, a hybrid gargoyle/human is not very communicative, and Gwendolyn, the tooth fairy is flighty at times. Nonetheless, we have a job to do and now we have a second clue. Two of a trio of panther-shifters were killed. The survivor is set to be euthanized by the humans who caught her. Improbably however, we need to speak with her if we have any hope of finding the murderer. 

We sit in Gwendolyn’s car, a Jeep Cherokee that holds all of us comfortably in whatever form we take, on Northeast twenty-first street in Portland, Oregon, having just investigated the site where the murders occurred. The air-conditioning is on full blast since the August heat feels sultry with moisture. “Wait a second.” Sniffing my hands, I stop to think, scooching around until I find a comfortable spot. “The smells aren’t right. I smell something off but give me a second.”

Minx searches on his phone again while he waits. 

Gwendolyn turns around in her seat to stare at me.

I nod my head. “It’s not a human; there aren’t any human smells on the cats that were here. Except for the shifter smells. It’s a glamoured creature of some sort.” My eyes sparkle as I figure something out. “I think she or he killed the cougars. 

Gwendolyn frowned. “Fey. Not good news.” 

“Wait,” Minx held up one hand reluctantly lifting his eyes from his phone. “Apparently, there was public outcry against killing a cougar. It looks like the humans didn’t euthanize her after all but gave her to the Portland Zoo.”

Gwendolyn sparkles when she’s excited. “Can you get us in there, Annie? We need to talk to the panther.” 

“With everyone’s help, sure, but we can’t try until around 4:00 AM when circumstances favor our breaking in.”

Before Gwendolyn can start the car, I tap her on the shoulder. “Wait. We should check if the fey is here first.”

Still searching on his cell phone, Minx piped up. “He or she is long gone. He probably felt us disturb the ether when we arrived.”

Gwendolyn frowns. “Damn.”

By the time we pull into the driveway of her home, nestled on a curving street in the Sylvan hills abutting the fifty-two hundred acres of Forest Park, Gwendolyn’s wings are drooping and she has the shivers. Occasionally, she moans. Gwen is going into withdrawal. She hasn’t had a tooth in weeks and if she doesn’t get one soon, she’ll be worthless at anything, all shivering and running a temperature and vomiting and horrible dreams. Without the stem cells from a baby tooth, Gwen can’t stop the noises of the forest and the land from intruding on her. She hears the flat F notes of a cedar tree in distress, the hard C sharp of an oak being cut down, the sharp cry of a bird falling from its nest. Her system just doesn’t deal with it. I hear it’s like a human getting a migraine only worse. I glance at Minx who already knows what’s coming. There was no way we were going to interrogate the panther tonight. Gwendolyn needs our help. I tell you; it’s always something with these two. She’d obviously waited too long between teeth and now Minx and I will have to scout for her. I also knew after we found the tooth and Gwendolyn ate it, that Minx would need some quiet time, so he would find the tallest building and just sit on the top all gargoyle like, not moving for hours. He hates to see Gwen in distress. What a setback. I, of course, was just fine except for having an unsuccessful hunt for our prey. Now I had this insatiable need to hunt and kill a deer or a moose. Ooo a whole moose. Yum.

Minx grimaces at me. “Annie. Stop drooling on the seats. I can’t concentrate.” He glances at Gwendolyn who’s all trembling and sweaty then goes back to searching his phone.

When we return to the house, I carry Gwen into the living room, deposit her on the couch to cushion a down pillow under her head and an ivory cashmere throw around her body. Minx returns from the kitchen with a steaming mug of, would you believe it, homemade chicken soup. He had cooked stock all summer then added chicken raised in his coop, summer fresh garden vegetables and homemade noodles all of which he had flash-frozen for the winter. That made it easy to pop in the microwave and, ta da, homemade chicken soup in a heartbeat.

As it turns out, after an hour’s sleep, Gwendolyn found her own way to a tooth. She has a bevy of children she watches over, but her favorite is a seven-year-old called Jennifer who has flowing blonde hair and startling, gorgeous big blue eyes much like Gwen’s. The child must have some fey in her the way Gwen loves her. Gwendolyn looks forward to keeping up written communications with her. It’s true. They write letters to each other and leave stickers on them for the other to enjoy. Sometimes, Gwendolyn visits Jennifer even when she doesn’t need a tooth just to watch over her to check that she’s cozy and safe, fluttering her cheeks with butterfly kisses. 

But now, after a few more hours’ sleep, Gwen’s back to normal and ready to go. Unfortunately, Minx is on top of the Koin Building downtown scowling down at people as they hurry about. And I never found a moose in the forest. Of course, not. They don’t live downtown. Not even a deer in sight tonight in the urban forest. But I did catch a rabbit, a big one and gorged on it as soon as I caught it. Poor bunny. Sometimes my human half conflicts with my feline nature. So, I headed up to bed to nap setting my alarm for 3:30 am when we three would head to the Portland Zoo. That is, if Minx returns in time.

Miraculously, he did. He must have some internal clock that triggers him and by 4:00 AM, we were rounding the back of the zoo where the trees hid our shapes under a Saracen moon, just enough light for shifters to see. I jump over the fence to race behind the children’s train ride track and hide behind the engine car. Glancing around, I find that Gwendolyn had taken out the surveillance cameras, a handy bit of magic on her part. Minx keeps on running to the lion’s den not even a little mindful of the cameras. Really, who’s going to believe a moving statue on camera except that his outer self appears human, so yeah, that happened. When we arrive at the den, Minx is watching the lions. Most appear to be dozing, but I’m not fooled. Lions can go from zero to sixty in a twinkle of an eye. They know we’re here. I scan the area seeking the panther. I can feel her trying not to notice. When I spot her, my fur shifts from tawny to sleek black as Gwendolyn grabs me to lift us over the fence and into the enclosure while Minx stands guard. He’s really good at that and, like the lions, can be as explosively lethal in a heartbeat. When we land, I pad over to the panther, sit in front of her, staring into her eyes. I see surprise and interest. As she watches, I shift to human. “We’re here to help.”

She wriggles then works hard at a shift, but she can’t quite manage it. Gwendolyn settles cross-legged in front of her beginning to chant. Having been around Gwen for a while, I can now see the magic flowing out of her directed at the panther whose shift begins in starts and stops. As painful as it is to watch muscles flowing on the outside of the body and the bone crunching sounds of shifting, the panther finally manages the change. She pants for a while all curled up on the ground then pushes herself up to sitting. Her scratchy voice rasps out, “who are you and why are you here?”

Gwendolyn hands her sweatpants and a tee shirt which the panther struggles to don. Finally, after a few gasps, she stares at us.

I let her settle then ask, “who hurt you and killed your sisters?”

She frowns, “I’m fine by the way, just stuck here.”

I feel ashamed. I should have asked her about herself but there is so little time before the cameras return to filming. At least we didn’t have to go through the stalking posture and sniffing each other ritual. Sighing, “We’re on a tight schedule.”

She turns her head away and huffs.

I lean forward to make eye contact with Gwen who grabs the panther shifter lifting her up out of the den. Minx grabs her in a hug and runs out of the zoo. Gwendolyn returns, lifts me out and we race toward the car we have waiting. We hop over the fence surrounding the zoo to reach the idling car shutting the door just as the cameras come back on. The panther screams. I’m not sure if it is relief or anger. Nonetheless, Minx knocks her out to shut her up and we hustle back home. Minx sometimes overreacts but there wasn’t a chance to counter him this time. The panther is breathing but still except for an occasional muscle twitch. I grimace at Minx. “What?” he says. I shake my head as I stare out the window as we drive through the light downtown traffic toward home.

As we turn into the driveway, the now shifted panther begins to rouse. He hair is a matted brown that reaches her shoulders. Her face is pasty and her golden-brown eyes seem tired and sad. She’s leery of us now and why wouldn’t she be with Minx knocking her out and Gwendolyn and I kidnapping her without her permission. She sits up in the seat sulking checking each of us out with wary eyes. 

“I’m sorry about this.”  I say to her, “but it’s the only way we could get you out before we were discovered and you were forced back into the zoo enclosure.

She huffs and stares out the window her hands fisting and releasing as we head home.  “Where are we and am I free to go?”

Gwendolyn grimaces at me while Minx turns around in his seat saying, “do you mind if we talk about this inside? You’ll probably want a bath and some food. We have some questions to ask first, but then if you want to go, of course, go.” 

I can tell she doesn’t believe him, but she opens the door along with the rest of us and we head into the house.

The young woman hesitates at the front door, glances at the distance to the forest. 

I smell the heady scent of pine and cedar and the lure of the dense Pacific Northwest forest. I understand her need. Who wouldn’t want to run into the safety of the fifty-two hundred acres of urban forest. I tap her on the shoulder. “Run if you want. We won’t chase you. But if you come inside, we’ll try to help. Remember that we did free you from the confines of the zoo and helped you shift back to human.”  I step back from her so she doesn’t feel trapped and can decide for herself.  “And I’m sorry Minx knocked you out. That wasn’t part of the original plan. He just gets impulsive sometimes when he’s under the clock.”

Minx turns to her, “yea, sorry about that but you were ready to scream and struggle, and the cameras were coming on and would have recorded all that.”

The woman sighed and, as Gwendolyn opened the door, the woman steps in with us.”

We stumble into the living where we settle on chairs and the sofa. Minx starts offering her food choices, but while he drones on about chicken soup and asking if she minds waiting for a rib roast to cook, her eyes droop. Gwendolyn pops into the kitchen for a bottle of water which she hands to her when she returns. The woman gulps it down. “I’m not very hungry.”

I sit forward in the chair across from her. “If you don’t mind my asking, what is a panther doing this far north?”

Swallowing the rest of her water, she places the bottle on the coaster on the coffee table and frowns. “My pride lives in southern Florida but lately we’re being decimated by this man.”  Her words are slurred and slow. “He passes himself off as a Native American Shaman but he’s fey, unseelie fey. Apparently, once he was not that powerful, but he did some magic and now, if he kills and eats a shifter, he also eats their power” Tears flow down her cheeks. “So far, he’s eaten half our pride.  My sisters and I headed here to see if we could find some territory of our own far away from this beast.” Her head slumps, “but he tracked us. He gains the most power from young feline shifters and we are, were, the last of the young ones.”

We’re all quiet for a moment thinking. Gwendolyn says, “do you have any idea what he wants all that power for?”

The woman shakes her head. 

Minx gets up, heading into the kitchen to make her an omelet figuring she has to be hungry. As the two of us sit silently absorbing this information, Minx pulls out a frying pan and eggs.  Between the silence of the three of us and Minx making ambient noise cooking, the woman slips from a sitting position to lying on the couch falling asleep, tears still flowing from her eyes.

“Well,” Gwendolyn whispers, “at least we have part of the picture.”

To Be Continued…