Wasn’t that what dreams were for?
They’re having breakfast in a small mountain town in Tennessee when the call comes. The previous night had been busy, and they hadn’t yet gone to bed.
A rash of drownings in the area, combined with tales of a really big snake and a mysterious, decrepit old woman, had precipitated their visit. Sure enough they’d found, then dispatched, a nasnas.
Every culture has a shape-shifter legend. What the common folk don’t know is that those legends are true. For a Jäger-Sucher, legends are the stock of their trade.
A nasnas is an Arabian shifter, which takes the form of an old man or woman and begs for help crossing bodies of water. Once in the water, the nasnas changes into a sea serpent and drags its victim beneath the surface to feed.
To kill one, the victim must yank the head of the nasnas below the water first, then hold it there. Which had proved damn difficult despite the old lady weighing about eighty pounds soaking wet and possessing the bony fingers of a baby bird.
Still, Alex managed. They celebrated with pancakes.
“Full moon tonight,” her father observes, pouring half the syrup in the pitcher atop his Paul Bunyan–size stack.
Alex, being fifteen, widens her eyes. “You think?” She counts the nights between full moons, and so does he.
Charlie doesn’t tell her to behave, be respectful, watch her mouth, or anything of the sort. Charlie pretty much lets her be. He knows the only thing that might save Alex in the long run is being tough, smart, and really, really bitchy.
“Where to?” she asks, carefully pouring syrup on only a portion of her cakes. She doesn’t like them soggy.
“Haven’t heard.” Her father speaks around a mouthful of food, and as he does, his cell phone rings. He pulls it out, glances at the display, lifts it like a toast, and greets the caller with, “Elise.”
Elise Hanover is Edward’s right hand. Alex has never met her, never spoken to her, doesn’t know all that much about her. Elise lives at the Jäger-Sucher headquarters, wherever that is, and spends what time she has that isn’t taken up coordinating the agents and their assignments trying to discover a cure for lycanthropy. Alex has always figured the best cure is to wipe every werewolf from the face of the earth. If there aren’t any left, they can’t make any more.
Of course that hadn’t stopped Hitler.
“Will do.” Charlie shuts his phone and goes back to eating pancakes.
“We’ll do what?” Alex asks.
“Not we’ll,” he corrects. “Will.”
Alex doesn’t think Elise knows that she’s been hunting with her father for two years. Although maybe Edward’s told her. According to her father, Edward knows everything.
“What will we do?”
Charlie smiles, though since the day he went looking for Alex’s mother and came back alone, that smile no longer reaches his eyes. Alex knows he feels guilty, that he believes her mother would be alive today if he’d never been a Jäger-Sucher.
But the monsters are out there, and without people like Alex and her father, every person on the earth will eventually be a victim. Charlie’s mistake wasn’t made when he became a Jäger-Sucher. His mistake was in believing he could ever not be one.
“Rogue black bear a few hours from here,” Charlie answers. “Northern Alabama.”
“Is it really a bear?” Alex lays down her fork. Her father is already pulling out his wallet to pay the bill. When Elise calls, they move, because if they don’t, people die.
Charlie merely lifts a brow. Elise wouldn’t have called if it were really a bear.
“I meant, is it a bear shifter or code for werewolf?”
“Guess we’ll find out.” Charlie tosses some money onto the table.
Ten hours later, they do. The hard way.
They perform their recon same as always. Head into town and split up, Charlie to the police station, followed by the hospital and the newspaper office, where he learns all he can with a little help from his Jäger-Sucher–supplied fake IDs. His favorites, which label him a warden for various Departments of Natural Resources, usually get him access to just about everything.
Alex works the locals, hanging out in the coffee shop, the diner, the pharmacy, the gas station—anyplace where people might discuss what’s going on in their town. They’re often more willing to talk to a kid than the hunting and fishing police.
Go figure.