Jesse began the introductions, his voice more gentle than Micah had ever heard it. “Guys, this is Tristan Cade. Tristan, this is Nick, Kalen, and Micah,” he said, pointing to each of them. “These men are consultants to the sheriff’s department. They—”
“I don’t care what they are as long as they catch that fucking thing that killed my dad,” the kid said, his voice breaking. His eyes filled with tears.
Micah’s heart wrenched with sympathy. Shit.
“Did you see what it was?” Nick asked softly. “Was it a bear?”
Tristan blinked at him and gave a watery laugh that bordered on hysterical. “A bear? Are you being serious right now? Right, because it takes a sheriff plus four men who obviously aren’t law enforcement to come and question me about a goddamn bear.”
Clearly, he wasn’t buying their bullshit.
“No,” Tristan went on, his voice shaking with emotion. “It had w-wings, and it swooped down from the sky. It w-was f-fucking huge. It looked like something out of a bad movie.”
Micah exchanged glances with Nick. Then he asked, “What else can you remember about the creature?”
For a few moments, the kid shivered with remembered horror, clutching the covers. Taking a deep breath, he bravely pushed on. “I swear those wings were fifteen feet or more from tip to tip. When it l-landed on me, I remember looking up, way up, into its ugly face, and thinking it must be seven or eight feet tall.”
“What about its face?” Micah prodded. “What did it look like?”
“Brown feathers. Dirty, muddy brown all over, and dull. Like it wasn’t healthy. Big yellow beak, strong tal
ons. The head was sort of wrong, though.”
“How so?” Kalen asked.
“It was misshapen. Almost as if someone hit it in the head with something and the skull got flattened. The eyes were kind of off, too. Crooked.”
Micah’s brows furrowed. How would someone hide such a deformity when in human form? Unless it was only present in the shift, which would be strange.
Hell, everything about their world was strange.
Nick stepped closer to the bed. “Do you remember noticing anything before the creature attacked? Did it do anything unusual, make any noises?”
Micah knew what he was getting at. The commander wanted to know if the shifter had spoken to the boy or his dad. Made threats. But the kid shook his head.
“No. One minute we were finishing our hot dogs, and the next, this thing was attacking me. My dad tackled it and shoved it off me, and it turned on him instead,” Tristan whispered. A tear rolled down his cheek. His lids drooped.
The kid was exhausted and traumatized. Any second they were going to get kicked out by the doctor or nurses. It was clear Tristan had told them all he could, so Nick nodded to Kalen. As the Sorcerer stepped forward, Nick said, “Take away his recollection only of the attack itself, not the rest.”
Kalen’s eyes widened, not just at the order, but at the commander speaking so openly in front of the kid. “You sure? He’ll know about the creature”—he lowered his voice—“and may figure out things about us. Maybe not right away, but eventually.”
Nick’s gaze was far away—a vision. “It’s important that he knows. Now and to his future. This day will shape the man he’s to become, and he must know that what we are is also his destiny.”
Tristan looked confused, a little frightened, as Kalen laid a palm on top of his head. But one whispered word from the Sorcerer and the young man’s lashes drifted downward. He fell deeply and instantly asleep, allowing Kalen to do his work of removing the sight of his father’s murder from his mind.
As promised, Tristan would remember all else, but the terrible act itself would forever remain blank.
Finished, Kalen withdrew his hand and gazed down at the boy with sadness. “I hope Kai never has to endure what this young man did today. I’d do anything to spare my son from carrying a burden like that.”
It was a sobering thought. Shifters, and even the most powerful of Sorcerers, could be killed. They lived with that reality every single day.
Filing out as quietly as they’d arrived, they left John to guard Tristan. Nick promised to send relief in shifts, to keep the men fresh and alert. According to Jesse, once Tristan was released, he would probably go live with an aunt who was on her way to care for him. Somehow, he’d be fine.
On the drive back to the compound, Micah kept going over in his head what type of shifter they were looking for—a huge, ugly, crazy-ass bird of some kind, capable of ripping people to shreds.
They had a witness, a description, and a list from which to start narrowing down the bastard’s identity.
How hard could that be?