Therearea few trucks and pieces of equipment parked around the site,Hector had said.Some excavation tools and some stuff for hauling away waste. But not the kind of thing you’d expect to see from a Hargreaves operation.
Maybe not,Trent had said,but right now it’s all we have to go on.
Zina wished she could settle the swirling feeling of unease in her stomach. But right now, she wasn’t sure whether it was normal unease at heading into a mission with less than perfect preparation, or if there reallywassomething amiss here.
I’ll just have to keep us both on our toes,her antelope said with a light kick of its back legs – and Zina had to admit, she was grateful to have it back.
Trent unclipped the backpack he was carrying, placing it down on the ground. It contained water, flashlights, goggles, and a hand-held excavator – things they might need once they were down in the tunnels, since they weren’t sure if they’d be able to stay in their shifted forms down there. Trent, at least, as a giant kangaroo, was likely going to need more headroom than a mineshaft was likely to provide.
“Okay,” he said. “Here I go.”
As Zina watched, his skin rippled, becoming dark brown fur. Trent was alreadytall– but now he grew taller still, shooting up to eight feet high, as a thick, heavy tail swung out behind him. He kept his powerful shoulder muscles, however, even as his hands became clawed forepaws, and his legs long, powerful jumping machines. Zina had never seen him in his shifted form before, and she had to admit, it was kind of impressive. She usually thought of kangaroos as being kind of cute and fuzzy, but there wasn’t much that was cute and fuzzy about Trent right now – he was a tall, broad, heavily muscled beast, and she couldn’t imagine there would be much, aside from other giant prehistorical Australian animals, that could do him much damage.
“Okay. Let’s get this back onto you,” Zina murmured, lifting the backpack. “Oof.This is heavier than I expected.”
Trent didn’t answer – he just swung his head toward her, twitching his ears.At least he kept his nice long eyelashes,she thought as she clipped the pack back around him – and at least he waskind ofthe right shape for it.
“You know, we wouldn’t need this if you had a pouch like a proper kangaroo,” she informed him, whichdidelicit a soft, slightly annoyed clicking sound from Trent, and a quiet chuckle from Euan.
“All right,” she said, once the pack was secured in place. “Here we go.”
Her own shift felt natural and smooth, thankfully – her antelope came forward as easily as it ever had, ever since she’d learned how to shift properly and work in harmony with it when she was a teenager. Even though her senses in her human form were heightened, they were nothing compared to how sensitive they were in her antelope form – as she shifted, the night suddenly came alive with scents and sounds, from the distant smell of diesel from the trucks used to haul away excavated rock, to the sounds of nocturnal animals shuffling around on the sand and through the sparse vegetation.
She looked across at Trent – and Euan, who had shifted into his own form of a marsupial lion – and then kicked up her heels, andran.
It had been a long time since Zina had had the chance to really let loose in her antelope form, and now she found the exhilarating thrill of it almost getting the better of her, her antelope forgetting for a moment that they were here on business and simply glorying in the feel of speed and power, bounding over the sandy hills and over the brush and scrub as if nothing could ever slow it down.
She leapt, she bounded, she threw up her back legs in joy – until she realized that she was leaving Trent and Euan far, far behind her, and she forced herself to slow down, limiting her speed to something they could more easily keep up with.
Not that Trent was any slouch – Zina might have beenfast, but he was powerful and could move at a pretty good pace, taking massive bounds across the landscape, his long feet perfectly suited to moving through this kind of terrain. And he was surprisingly maneuverable as well, changing directions to avoid obstacles he couldn’t leap over, like the occasional gum trees that grew here and there.
At the speed they were going, the dark shapes of Hargreaves’s mining equipment loomed up after only a short time – or whatseemedlike a short time to Zina, but maybe that was just the adrenaline of her run, and the joy of being back in her antelope form, despite the seriousness of the reason they were here. She detected Euan veering off from them, bounding off toward the parked vehicles, presumably to begin his sentry duty. She knew, somewhere above then, Hector was flying in his griffin form, ready to tell them the moment he saw anyone approaching from the dirt track that led to Hargreaves’s operation.
Well, I guess it’s pretty much all up to us now,Zina thought as she began to slow her run.Trent and I will have to go down the mine, try to see if we can figure out what’s going on – and hopefully find this egg.
She didn’t know how they’d succeed – Hargreaves hadn’t found it, after all, even after all their looking. But she knew they had to try.
In a few more long bounds, she came to the semi-concealed entrance of the mine, covered in a rusty sheet of corrugated iron. Clearly, Hargreaves were trying to make this look like nothing too special – just a normal prospector, digging and hoping for a stroke of luck.
Trotting to a halt, Zina shook herself, sending a cloud of dust flying from her hide.
More – please, let’s run some more!her antelope insisted, twisting suddenly and prancing over the ground, still wild with delight at their frantic run.
Zina forced the antelope back under her control before it could set her off at a run back the way she’d come – or farther out into the desert.
Later,she promised it soothingly.Once this is taken care of, I promise we’ll run until we drop, okay?
Zinahopedit’d be a recreational run, but, as her antelope sulkily complied with her wishes and let her shift back into her human form, Zina couldn’t help but wonder if it might be a run for her life.
No pessimistic thoughts,she told herself firmly. She’d always gone into every mission without any expectations whatsoever. Too much defeatist thinking or too much overconfidence, and you were setting yourself up for failure. She had trained herself carefully to simply take every mission as it came, and deal with situations as they arose.
“You good?” she asked Trent, turning to where he towered over her, still in his kangaroo form. The only answer she got was a whickering sound and then a loud snort, so Zina decided that that meantyes.
“Hold still,” she said, reaching up to unclip the pack on his back. She held it as he shifted back into his human form.
“I was worried for a moment there I wasn’t going to get my human side back,” Trent said, shaking his head. “Not that I necessarily blame the kangaroo, after getting shut away like that.”
“I know what you mean,” Zina said, nodding. “When this is all over, I think I’ll spend a week in antelope form, just having a good old frolic.”
