“As soon as he could, he took off as fast as his wings could carry him, back to his friends and family on the other side of the marshy area, where he could add his light to theirs, and stay safe from pouncing, curious cats. He carried with him the lessen he learned that day—never, ever fly off on his own again. He came to understand the importance of being a part of something, rather than wanting to shine all alone in the dark.”
Soren cheered along with the others as she finished her story, then he brushed his sweaty palms down his jeans and stood, waved to the kitty he’d been sitting beside, and headed in, having learned a lesson of his own.
The story would have been much more fun if he and Taggart had been curled up in their daddy’s arms listening to it together, but in order to make that happen, the bad people had to go away first. In the back of his head, there was a nagging memory, one he’d never shared with anyone else. A shadowy face that could unlock another piece of the puzzle they were working to solve, now that he felt brave enough to share it with them.
Arlo
“Daddy, I have something I need to tell them,” Soren whispered, his presence beside Arlo startling him, as he hadn’t noticed his other boy slip into the warehouse.
Frowning, Arlo turned to study him and seeing the fierce determination on Soren’s face, nodded and loudly cleared his throat, drawing everyone’s attention. “This is Soren, my other boy, and a new resident of Cookietown. He’s an oxpecker, who comes to us from clear across the country and he has something he wants to share with us,” Arlo announced and all eyes turnedto Soren, so Arlo placed a steadying hand at the base of Soren’s back, feeling him tremble. “Go on, Soren.”I’m right here for you.
Thank you, Daddy.“Hi, umm, I’m Soren, and my family shared a homeland with a crash of rare black rhinos. Several months ago, most were killed, though some got captured and dragged away to I don’t know where. They got led by a foul, smelling thing, like the one that stole into my mate’s home.” He shook his head projecting how sorry he was for not mentioning this earlier to Arlington, who thankfully didn’t look cross, just shocked. “I don’t think it was the same being. The one I saw before I hid in a dried hole in the wallow had long red hair. It could make fire without matches. He used it to burn many of the homes and buildings to the ground. I think the fire came from within him. He wasn’t alone. Chains tethered two massive tigers to him with barbed hooks that dug into them, coating their fur with their blood. I smelled and saw it when I flew past them on my escape. They seemed furious, but they weren’t really fighting the rhinos. At least it seemed that way to me, but I was scared, so I might have that wrong,” he confessed. “I never saw the thing again. I can still see his face in my head, and if that other smelly thing was his mate, then I’m afraid he might come to Cookietown and do the same thing.”
Soren’s words brought a stunned state of silence to the meeting. What followed was an explosion of questions and curses that left him clinging to Arlo’s hand and trembling until Arlo wrapped an arm around him and held him close enough there was no space between them.
“Let’s have order!” Bree declared before commanding silence with an ear-splitting whistle.
Once they’d all settled down, she turned her focus on Soren. “Are you saying that this creature was able to turn itself into a living flame?”
“Y-yes, m-ma’am,” Soren stammered, “that was what it looked like to me before I fled and hid. It was too scary to watch him destroy everything.” Arlo felt how fast Soren’s heart beat as he continued bravely. “When I came out, there was little left that hadn’t gotten burned, at least partially, including the home I’d grown up in. Part of it only got saved because there was a downpour that put out the fires he left raging. I could smell the smoke mingling with the rain and didn’t come out until I couldn’t smell anything burning or hear anything else out there creeping around,” he finished in a breathy whisper.
“This presents a serious problem,” Evander declared, his gaze narrowing. “How do we combat that kind of power?”
“How do we survive that kind of power is what I want to know,” Bree growled, teeth snapping.
“The melted cameras,” Taggart murmured. “That must be why we couldn’t see what caused the heat that fried them.”
“We had cameras up for security when the new shifters came and animals started disappearing, only no warning came,” Soren explained to those wearing confused looks. “They must have interfered with them somehow to sneak up on us that way.”
Taggart turned towards Arlo, eyes wide as he thought about the encounter they’d had at his storage unit.
“Daddy,” Taggart hissed, “do you think that the security guard could be here for more than just protecting the storage units?”
“That’s a very good question,” Arlo responded, his mind racing with possibilities. “I haven’t made much headway in learning more about him, but it might be time we changed that.”
“Do you have something you wish to add to this discussion?” Evander questioned; his gaze fixed on Arlo.
“Only that we encountered a tiger just the other day, new to town. Not been here more than a few months at best,” Arlo declared. “The storage place in town—he’s the security guard there. Though the vibe I got from him was way too intense formere security. I’ve been doing some background checks and so far have come up with nothing.”
“With all the talk of tigers that has just taken place, I’m going to task you and Bash with unearthing his true intentions here and determining if he is a friend or foe. Either way, I’d like an audience with him sooner rather than later. I’m trusting you both to make that happen,” Evan, the pride leader, stated adamantly.
“It will be done,” Arlo muttered as he pulled Soren into his lap, at the wave of uncertainty coming from him.
If that snarky bastard proved to be a foe, Arlo was going to take great pleasure in making sure he regretted ever stepping one claw into Cookietown.
Chapter Seventeen
Taggart
No matter how tired he was, Taggart wasn’t letting Arlo head back to the storage unit without him. He wasn’t the bravest meerkat, but he could get real scrappy when it came to protecting his family.
“You don’t need to come—”
“Daddy, I’m coming,” Taggart insisted, squeezing Soren’s hand when he nodded vigorously. “We both are. Family sticks together, isn’t that what you said after you spanked me?” Hemade sure to add that when he felt Arlo was about to say that they were to stay home. He didn’t want to go home and have to imagine what was happening. No, that would be torture after everything they’d been through in the last week. Much worse than the spanking, for sure.
Bash, who was standing next to Arlo, made a kind of choking noise in the back of his throat as Arlo released the most disgruntled sigh.
“He’s got you there,” Bash finally said when he stopped making the weird throat noise.
