3—Cause Shitshow
“Call for backup!” Aven shouted, saying more, but Dallas couldn’t make it out.
“What?” Dallas shouted after him. Aven kept running, then jumped and at the crest of his leap he shifted into a golden eagle and what the hell?
Dallas stopped and stared, barely able to believe it.
Aven glowed the same color as Dakota and his eagle was bigger than any eagle had a right to be.
The thing was massive, looking like an aerial apex predator able to carry off a cow or two.
It flew off after the vehicles. Behind it, a smaller hawk swooped in from nowhere and followed.
Dallas shut his mouth and pitched forward, shifting as well.
He sensed no human eyes on him, so he released the call of civil behavior in his mind and fell into his black jaguar with a snarl, claws digging into grass.
He ran, his supple body lengthening as his muscles warmed up and he gained speed.
He jumped into a ditch on the side of the highway, loving it, while one part of his mind cautiously gauged how long he had and how far he could push it before the prosthesis gave out.
Two big cats fell into step with him on either side with a snarl.
Dallas snarled in acknowledgement. These were the two ‘Cause’ shifters from earlier and he even remembered their names from when he’d met them a few days ago: Ryder and Shiloh.
They were brother and sister, a clouded leopard and a snow leopard.
The three of them ran together, their bodies feeding off of the recoil of the others, almost like birds in formation. Dallas loved it. If this was how working with ‘The Cause’ was gonna be, he was IN.
The three big cats covered several miles in minutes, their eyes on the eagle in the sky and the hawk that followed.
The terrain changed, becoming rocky, causing Dallas’ prosthesis to slip occasionally.
He slowed. The other two slowed with him and Dallas knew he was holding them back.
He snarled that they should leave him. The snow leopard snarled that they were sticking with him.
They ran on, and a warm feeling of camaraderie filled Dallas’ chest. He hadn’t felt like this since the Navy had tossed him out on his ass for getting shot.
The feeling morphed into a tight pang of loss in his gut that he struggled to shake.
That was then. This was now, and now, he was gaining what—family?
A pack? He didn’t know, but emotion swirled thick within him. He put on speed to try to run it off.
The road curved and they ran down it. Ahead, they saw mountains and Thorn’s car. He’d slowed and had his head out the window looking for a way to continue because the road was washed out ahead of him.
The moon hung low in the sky, and in the moon-shadows, Dallas spied the white van stop near the looming mountain. Dakota, glowing like a bulb inside her car, pulled up behind the van and jumped out. The glowing, oversized eagle flew directly over her shoulder as she ran toward the driver’s door.
Dakota lunged at something while human women dressed in ragged clothes with wild, unkempt hair spilled out of the van. Each woman looked strange, like gray haze swarmed the edges of their skin and hair, dulling out the contours of their features. Dallas wondered what the blur was. Vampires?
The hawk that had been following Aven dive-bombed the ground near the women and shifted to a man right in front of them!
Dallas couldn’t believe it. Didn’t ‘The Cause’ try to hide themselves from humans?
The male was tall, tanned, with shaggy black hair.
His clothes appeared around him—camo pants and a black shirt.
One of his boots was untied, the laces dragging in the dirt.
The clouded leopard also shifted into man, right there in full view.
The blue sedan came barreling around a tree, making Dallas and Shiloh turn. They snarled at it. Thorn slammed on the brakes. Shiloh moved closer to the caves, easy to see in the dark, her belly low to the ground.
Dallas ducked behind a tree and shifted into a man, not sure what his role was here.
His clothes appeared on his body, making him shake his head in absolute wonder.
This shit was fucking awesome. His belt was undone and he hastily buckled it, peeking around the tree.
Dakota and Aven had disregarded the group of women altogether and were heading for a cave entrance.
They entered the cave and Dallas lost sight of their glow.
Shiloh ran after them, and then Ryder backed away, following his sister.
Near the van, the women were packed close together, looking like shipwreck survivors, or hardcore drug users—with torn clothing, matted hair, wild eyes, plus red sores on their wrists and necks. They looked weak and anemic, with bags under their eyes and their skin hanging off their bones.
Dallas rubbed his eyes. Now that Dakota’s glow was gone the light was dim, and still the women appeared blurry… or covered in a thin gel-like haze. It was harder to see, but definitely still there.
The guy who’d been a hawk lifted his hands and motioned to the women that they should back up.
The women murmured, then angry shouts rang out and the ragged group rushed him!
Dallas swore and sprinted into the melee.
He pulled a few of the women off the hawk, but they leapt back, furious, clawing and screaming.
The hawk wasn’t fighting—he was protecting his face and neck, while blood flowed from multiple furrows on his arms already.
Dallas grabbed two women by their elbows. His fingers moved right through the gray haze on them like it wasn’t there. It felt like nothing, scented like nothing.
“Hold on, now!” he yelled. “What’s going on? What’s your problem?”
“Don’t bother,” the hawk yelled. “They’re charmed outta their minds. We’ve got to keep them out of the caves—there’s vampires in there!”
“My sister’s in there!”
“She’s safe—she’s a switch! These women are…” His expression darkened. “Food.”
Dallas got a strong whiff of the guy’s scent for the first time, and it caught him off guard, making him falter.
“Who the hell are you?” he snarled.
“I’m Maze. I’m new, too.”
“How do you know so much then?” Dallas demanded. “And why do you smell like a dead man?”
Pain sliced down Dallas’ neck and shoulder as one of the women clawed at him, drawing blood. She shrieked and he backed out of her reach, now thinking if this was what working with ‘The Cause’ was like, then he was out.
Maze backed away with him, saying, “I heard this already.”
Dallas threw him a what-the-fuck look.
Maze shook his head once. “The eagle already told me I scent like some dead guy.”
“Not some dead guy. Cage.” Dallas snarled. His friend.
A memory from that awful night when Cage was last seen and Dallas got shot pushed its way into his mind, surpassing everything.
Dark sky, dangerous operation, secrets, and hours spent spying, then creeping under cover with his uniform soaked with ocean water and his senses muddled by cold. Something fell on him from above. The night lit with gunfire. Pain, confusion, enemy attack, blood everywhere—
Dallas shook his head, pulling himself from the memory with massive effort, focusing on the palms of his hands, then the sole of his foot, breathing with long exhales, looking sharply to the sides—using every trick he'd been taught by the military shrink.
Somehow, he managed to haul himself out of the memory before the memory pulled him under, but it left him weak and shaking...
and realizing Maze was staring at him with something like pity.
Dallas snarled. He didn’t need anyone’s fucking pity.
He looked at the women, and they still looked fucking blurry.
FUCK! Was he seeing things? The whole house of cards fell in on him.
He wasn’t fucking better. He still was having flashbacks to the horrible night, and now he was seeing things, too? He was a liability and he hated it.
“We’ve got reservations!” a short, curvy woman yelled, running around Maze to get to Dallas.
She had limp dark hair and was wearing only a dirty nightgown in the chilly evening air, her face contorted in rage, her feet bare.
She twitched hard, seeming knocked dumb for a moment, then her sneer returned.
Her skin and the edges of her body looked even more blurry up close, like Dallas was viewing her on a malfunctioning television.
Dallas threw a look at Maze, but he didn’t seem to see it.
“Yeah!” another woman shouted indignantly. “Reser-fucking-VA-TIONS!”
The group reformed, standing close together for warmth or strength, some of them with bloody fingernails, all of them fuming with anger, looking ready to make a rush for the cave’s entrance at any time.
From the direction of the washed-out road, a man came close. It was Thorn. “What’s going on?” he asked, looking directly at Dallas.
“Got me,” Dallas said, forcing the words out. He looked at Maze.
Maze shrugged, making blood rivulets flow faster down his arms. “No clue,” Maze said.
“Fuck,” Dallas muttered, looking around.
The fucking new guys were on their own.