Page 41 of Secret Shifters Next Door

My ears pricked up. “What do you have?”

“Well, we’ve lost several members. Two of them we… found, afterward. Both were in similar shape to the one you guys found out in the woods. Tortured, killed.” He paused and looked off into the distance. I could only imagine how tough it had to be to find a member of your pack, a friend, like that. “Anyway, both of them had something in common before they went missing. They each mentioned seeing a woman. Someone following them. She wasn’t familiar to either of them. They didn’t think anything of it, just thought it was weird. I didn’t either until the second guy disappeared.”

We all looked at each other. Strange. Shifters sometimes dated human women, but it was always a short-lived casual affair. For the most part, we never told anyone what we are, plus you couldn’t mate with or have kids with humans. Well, at least we thought that couldn’t happen—until me. The same woman hanging around shortly before two shifters were abducted, tortured, and killed? Pretty damning evidence.

“Hunters?” Miles asked.

Female hunters weren’t unheard of. They weren’t even that rare. The thing was, it took one special kind of woman to takedown a wolf shifter. Usually, men led the way when it came to attacking and killing shifters. That’s the way it had been for hundreds of years. Things could always change, though.

We nodded in agreement. Nothing made sense other than it being a group of hunters. The only one who didn’t nod was Steff. He’d been standing off to the side, staring at the ground, deep in thought. He finally pulled a folded manila envelope out of his back pocket and stepped forward.

“It’s a witch,” he said.

We all froze and stared at him. Witches were not a common occurrence, even in the world of shifters. Oh, they were out there, but I’d never had any dealings with them.

“What makes you say that?” Doug asked.

“This,” he said, holding up the envelope. “Pictures I took of the body we found.” He pulled them out. The image of the desecrated man brought a new wave of nausea to my gut. “The cuts here all across the body. Some of them are from a silver knife or something, sure. Miles smelled the silver, but most of these wounds aren’t from a blade, they look more like a whip or a lash. Look.”

We passed the pictures around. I was the last in line, and I had to force myself to look at the wounds. He was right. Most of the wounds were thin and even, like a slice of a knife. The bigger wounds were laid open, like the skin had split. It did look like he had been whipped. I frowned as I handed the pictures back to Steff.

“A silver whip?” I asked, thinking it sounded stupid even as I said it.

Steff shook his head. “Not possible. They could have maybe had a custom-made cable woven from silver and used that, but the wounds would have been even bigger. No, this is magic. Witches can use their spells like weapons. In my old pack, we worked with a coven once. I watched them use their magic likethat, like a weapon. One of the spells they used the most was like a whip of mystical energy. It worked just like that. When I saw this body, I knew the wounds looked familiar, but it took me a little while to remember where I’d seen it before. Either a witch is hunting shifters, or even worse, a group of hunters has recruited a witch to help them.”

The news slammed into us. Hunters were dangerous in their own right. They knew about us, had learned how to track and find us over the centuries, had specialized weapons and equipment, but to also have a witch working with them? It was like giving a nuclear missile to a splinter terrorist group. There was nothing worse.

“Well, the only way I know of to catch a witch is with the help of another one. I know who to call. I’ll be gone for a couple of days. She doesn’t have a cell phone or anything,” Miles said.

“Are you sure that’s safe?” I asked.

He nodded. “I’ll be fine, I’ll keep my head on a swivel. I’ll text you guys every few hours so you know I’m good. I better get going.”

With that, our little group broke apart, scattering to the wind as we left in our separate cars. I drove back to Lilly Valley, my mind swirling with the implications of what we’d discovered. A witch? Fucking terrifying. A human I could kill. Another shifter? I knew how to fight that. A witch? I was in the unknown. Unlike Miles and Steff, I’d never met one. How would I know when I met one? Would I have any wayofknowing?

Once I got back to town, I stopped by the auto shop to check on Harley’s car. It would take another day for the repairs, and yet another day for the paint job. Leaving, I called Harley to see if she had any plans for dinner.

“Hello?” she answered.

“It’s me. How’s it going?”

“Things are fine. Is your work meeting all done?”

“Yeah, I stopped to check on your car. Still another day or two until it’s ready. I wanted to see what you guys were doing for dinner?”

“Well, the girls made some new friends and went out for pizza with them.”

I laughed. “Didn’t you guys have pizza yesterday?”

“Tate, they’re teenagers, they’d eat pizza for every meal if I let them.”

“Fair enough. What are you going to have for dinner?”

“With the girls out, I was thinking maybe a bowl of cereal or a grilled cheese, something like that.”

“How about I pick something up? Bring it over there. Is there anything you’ve been craving?”

There was a long pause, then she finally said, “Tate, you don’t need to do that, I wouldn’t want to put you out.”

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