Raven’s Instinct (A Day Care for Shifters #6)

13. Alan

13

ALAN

W hy would Kendra drive to an abandoned gravel pit with a toddler in the middle of the night?

Alan could not make sense of their destination, and he spent some time at the highway pullout doing research on the property with his phone before deciding to follow her further in. His headlights were off, so his eyes had adjusted somewhat to the darkness. There was most of a moon to light his way, and Alan kept his speed low, not wanting to spook Kendra.

When he spotted her van, he stopped, figuring that he’d be less threatening on foot. He didn’t want to be threatening.

What did he want to be? Alan only knew that he needed to be here, that it was important , but instinct was no more helpful than that.

Alan turned to shut the door behind him and nearly jumped out of his skin as a silent white shape ghosted down out of the sky at him, just as instinct recognized the proximity of another shifter.

“Kendra!” he exclaimed.

She shifted and stood up from a crouched landing, fury and suspicion in her eyes. “Are you following me?”

“Yes, obviously.” Alan saw no point in trying to hide the fact. “I don’t often lurk around in dark gravel pits with my lights off.”

“ Why are you following me?” Kendra rephrased her question.

“Would you believe me if I said that instinct said I should come here?” It didn’t exactly cover the fact that he’d hacked Cherry’s computer and found Kendra’s fake home address and then followed her.

“ Should I believe you?” Kendra countered.

No, Alan wanted to tell her. He was so deeply ensconced in secrets that sometimes Alan himself wasn’t sure of the truth. No one should believe him. He barely believed himself sometimes.

He’d been silent for too long. “I saw you leave the laundromat, and I knew you needed help. Instinct is harder to understand than half the kids at Tiny Paws, but I had to follow you and find out.”

Kendra looked like she was having a conversation in her head. She doesn’t trust us, Alan’s raven said.

Smart woman, Alan retorted.

Clever, his raven agreed admiringly. Clever and canny.

Before Alan could plead his case, he felt the tingle of a second shifter coming into range, and an unexpected pressure at his back. A sharp , unexpected pressure. Every one of Alan’s trained senses overwhelmed the quiet murmur of instinct that he wasn’t in danger, and he turned instantly with a chopping downward blow that slammed into a massive bovine horn.

He barely budged the big head that the horn was attached to, but his momentum danced him out of immediate stabbing range. The bull swung his head after him, snorting, but Alan was faster, darting to the side, out of reach. The animal cornered better than something of that mass ought to be able to, spinning in place while Alan tried to decide whether he should shift and escape upwards, or attempt a full body vault like some kind of Minoan bull dancer. He had a gun in the car, but he wasn’t actually sure it would take down an animal of this mass.

“If you guys are done?” Kendra didn’t seem alarmed by the size of the animal or his sudden appearance.

“A friend of yours?” Alan guessed. He was surprised by a jolt of jealousy when it occurred to him that this might be Amy’s mysterious father.

“This is Ferdinand,” Kendra said. “That’s probably not his name.”

“I don’t mean any harm,” Alan assured them. “We can talk about this like humans .”

The bull made no move to shift, only huffed and stomped in place.

“He can’t shift,” Kendra said. “He’s stuck like this.”

Alan looked at him again. The light was not good, but the bull did look sort of roughed up and dirty for a shifter. One of his back legs was bandaged below the knee. This was probably Kendra’s earlier medical emergency.

“Stuck?” Alan’s brain geared up again as the immediate danger passed. “We had a case like this. Is he branded?”

The bull shuffled in place, and at first Alan thought he was turning to kick, but it was only to show the appropriate flank.

Alan couldn’t make out the brand at all. It was black burn scars on black hide on a black night, and Alan thought when he ran his fingers over it that the image itself was not very clear; it would have been hard to make out on white hide in daylight.

“You’re really not a nanny,” Kendra observed.

Ferdinand snorted in agreement.

Alan saw no point in continuing the charade with these two. “I work for a federal agency specializing in supernormal incidents and shifters.”

“Super normal ?”

“Super natural has a certain amount of notoriety and a television show with a rabid fandom. We didn’t want any confusion.”

“Oh good,” Kendra muttered. “No one wants any confusion. ”

The bull huffed.

“Why are you moonlighting at Tiny Paws ?” Kendra asked, then she side-eyed the bull like she hadn’t meant to bring that up in front of him. “Does Cherry know that you’re a fraud?”

“Cherry knows why I’m there. But I assure you that I’ve got all the necessary certification, there’s nothing fake about that.”

Kendra snorted. “That doesn’t really answer my question.”

“We’re investigating a gene company, Stork Inc, that has been involved with a number of shifter disappearances.”

“Jackson,” Kendra guessed. “Theo’s kid. I knew he’d been kidnapped. He warned the parents at the day care to be extra careful for a while, and probably that was your spokesperson that showed up to a meeting. But that was last winter. The local shifter community has been on alert and nothing has happened.”

“No offense, but we didn’t think a neighborhood watch group and a phone tree was going to be as effective as a professional.”

“That’s not the part I find offensive,” Kendra snapped. “What I want to know is why now , and why you thought the rest of us shouldn’t know? Those are our kids at Tiny Paws, and if there’s more risk to them all of a sudden, you need to tell us. We get to make choices about their safety, not you.”

“Those choices were made above my pay grade,” Alan said. “I honestly wanted to tell you.”

“That must be very comforting,” Kendra said sarcastically. “Wait here. Amy’s about to wake up and yell her head off. I’m going to get her down to bed and then we’ll talk about what you can actually do for us.”

True to her prediction, there was a thin wail of protest from the cab when Kendra was about halfway back to her van. She collected Amy out of the car seat and took her into the back of the van while Alan lingered behind with the bull.

“So. Ferdinand isn’t really your name?”

The bull sighed.