Page 6 of Flock Around and Find Out

“Hello?”

“Can you meet me right now?”

So much for niceties.

I almost said no, just to play hard to get—and because it felt weird to see him while I still likely had Kelvin’s scent all over me—but Porter had never reached out like this. He’d helped me when I’d needed it, but he hadn’t ever been the one to make the first move. He was more aloof, less concerned with me or the rest of the real world. The curiosity was enough to get me to agree. “Sure. Where at?”

A quickie at a hotel, a feral Were, and now a druid asking for my help?

Well, wasn’t today shaping up to be one weird fucking day?

Chapter Two

The oasis was impressive, really. We lived in the desert, which meant there wasn’t much greenery anywhere—save for the massive golf courses that spanned far too many square miles. They served for all the green space we usually got, except for these rare patches that almost didn’t make sense.

Why on earth was there an oasis here? The sign had said Big Morongo Canyon and the number of trees had impressed me, especially since more of them sat beyond the parking lot, beyond the small strip where I’d parked my car.

The high desert sat only a fifteen-minute drive away, including a road that wound through the mountains, but I rarely made the trip without reason. It always felt farther away.

If they had shaded pockets of trees like this, however, it might be worth hitting up more often.

I walked along the path—a white walkway with nice slats that lifted me up about a foot from the ground level and was probably done that way to allow animals to scurry beneath.

It didn’t shock me that Porter would meet me here. It felt like a veryhimplace to be, after all. In fact, seeing him in town, around others, would have felt like the strange thing.

I took the turns he’d told me to, following the path he’d explained. A right at the first turn, then follow that until just past a rusted car. It almost felt like someone pranking me as I walked through the space and headed off in search of him.

Sure enough, however, I spotted a familiar figure sitting on a bench on the side of the path, right where Porter had said he would be.

“Figured I’d find you somewhere off the path,” I said, far more out of breath than I should have been.

“I don’t like to disrupt things more than I have to.”

“Aren’t you a Nature, though? How is it disrupting?”

He patted the spot beside him and I took a seat. “Even things part of nature can leave too great an impact on the surrounding areas. This is one of my favorite spots locally, and I would hate to be the cause of issues here.” He paused, then added softly, “Plus, the caretakers of this preserve watch like hawks and I don’t want to piss them off.”

I peered up slightly. “Is that why the no horns thing?”

“I can’t have them out when I’m around humans, so I usually hide them unless on my own land or very far out.”

The conversation drifted away for a moment, and I found myself loath to break the easy silence. The sounds of water running somewhere near, the buzzing of some flying insect, the occasional croak of a frog, it was all a rather nice way to spend an afternoon.

In fact, I wondered why I hadn’t done this before, why I hadn’t given myself the time to relax, to take a break more often, especially out here. Sure, there was a slight scent of rot—it happened when water sat still for a while, and given the lack of rain around here, it tended to do that—but it was still one of the better afternoons I’d had.

What does that say about me and my life?

“You’ve spoken to the Weres?” Porter asked.

And just like that, I knew my afternoon wasn’t going to remain this pleasant. “Sort of.”

“Then you know what’s happening.”

“Just because I heard something doesn’t mean I know what’s going on. There are more strays, right?”

Porter stared out at the tree line rather than at me, and I wondered what he saw. Was his vision better? Did his honed senses somehow draw his gaze to things that I missed? Was he looking at lots of little creatures out there? I wasn’t sure, but I was rather curious about it all.

“Yes. However, the thing that the other clans seem to miss is that we are all connected in a way we don’t fully understand. What befalls one spills onto the others. The Weres are suffering, but it is not confined just to the Weres.”

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