Page 46 of Destined Prey
“I’m going outside with you.” Jack slid his hand in Ben’s. “We’re mates. Nothing’s going to change that.”
Ben nodded. “But Rhett—”
“M’fine. Go.” Rhett sat up and rubbed the back of his head. “No thanks to you, asshole.”
“I’ll apologize properly later,” Ben promised, stepping back onto the porch.
Jack went with him and almost retched when he saw the numerous carcasses in the yard and by the barn.
“Fuck.” Ben bent and picked up a rifle. “Here. In case you’re wrong and he isn’t our friend.”
Jack took it, and Ben released his hand before getting the other rifle.
“I don’t know a lot about other shifters, but I hope there’s not packs of Ernesto-kinds running around. He’s too lethal,” Ben observed. “He’s killed at least a dozen shifters—more, I think.”
“He said he’s the last of his kind,” Jack remembered. “Ancient, and he needs this job when he’s done being that horrifying beast.”
“I sure as shit hope Rhett told him he still had a job, because…” Ben shook his head.
“Yeah, no kidding.”
Ernesto howled again, and there were no more enemies for him to kill. They’d either run off or were dead.
Ernesto shook his coat out. The sun was almost set, but Jack knew they’d have a long night ahead of them. “The carcasses—” He had to think of them only as animals, not any part human, otherwise he’d never be able to get through it.
Ernesto picked up one with his mouth, then bounded over to drop it in the bed of Ben’s truck.
“Aw, hell,” Ben whined. “Why’re you doing that?”
Ernesto snorted at him, then tossed a second carcass in and a third.
“Should we help?” Jack whispered.
His voice cracked. The thought of stepping into that bloodbath made his stomach churn, but standing idle while Ernesto tossed carcasses like firewood made him feel useless, cowardly. He clenched the rifle tighter, trying to convince himself that courage wasn’t the absence of fear—it was acting in spite of it.
“He, uh, he looks like he’s having fun,” Ben said. “I feel kinda queasy.”
“Me, too.”
“I’m with you both on that,” said Rhett, opening the screen door. “God almighty, I’ve never seen such a mess. Does this kind of thing happen to you shifters often?”
“No, definitely not. I’ve never seen anything like this, either.” Ben cleared his throat. “But Ernesto seems right at home with it.”
“He killed a bunch of…of shifters,” Jack said. Ernesto kept tossing them in the bed of Ben’s truck, too. By the time the first howl came, off in the distance, most of the dead had been cleared from the ground. Ernesto paused mid-pickup, cocking his head. “Mine,” Ben bellowed. “That’s my family! Don’t you mess with them!”
Ernesto shifted and smiled as if he hadn’t a care in the world. “Chill, Ben. I’m not interested in taking the lives of innocents. These ones, none of them were innocent. They’d lost their souls, if you want to think of it like that, and their humanity. You know what happens to a shifter when the human part is gone?”
“What?” Ben asked.
“They become monsters, intent on killing shifters that aren’t soulless. Their beast envies the light and life in clean shifters, and they seek to destroy it. You, and your brothers and sisters, y’all are a new kind of shifter, and your souls shine brighter than most others. I don’t think y’all will have an easy walk through this life for a while.” Ernesto bent and picked up a dead coyote by one leg. “Best that I stay around to see to it no harm comes y’all’s way.”
Jack wasn’t the only one standing open-mouthed after that speech.
Ernesto just kept cleaning up the yard like he was raking leaves or bagging trash.
“No souls,” Ernesto repeated. “The worst thing that can happen to a shifter.”
Five coywolves came running down the lane leading to the house. Jack could make out their shapes. The moon kept the night from being too dark. It seemed as if some of the moon’srays caressed the coats of the wolves as they ran. One called out, and Ben tipped his head back and howled.
