Page 45 of Midlife Shifter Unexpected

Trina leaned in and held up her hands and so did Mae. All their energy flowed together toward the vines, giving them more strength and power. Anita and Drake raised their hands also, until the entire coven was sending magic toward the vine to strengthen it. The door bulged under the pressure.

“Mon Dieu,” Jane murmured. “I have never in my whole life seen something like this. It is, how do you say, incredible.”

At that moment, the vines around in the door loosened their grip on the stone door, letting it fall forward and shatter on the ground in front of us.

Chapter 32

We all stared at the entrance to the crypt. Branson and Matheus immediately stepped forward in front of the rest of us. Drake looked around like he knew he should do it too and didn’t want to, then slowly took a hesitant step forward.

“You guys stop,” I said. You have no idea what’s in there. I know you’re both beasts, but this is Mae’s domain. let her handle it,” I said.

Mae nodded at me with a smile. “Thank you, Bianca. Whatever is in the crypt, my ancestors put it in there and I’ll be the first to take it out.”

Mae walked slowly forward, but it didn’t seem right watching her walking woman as brave as can be into the dark. She held her hands out, glowing purple and green so she could emit light, but still. Something could come at her from anywhere in the dark and she wouldn’t have a sense of what it was.

“I’m coming with you,” I said.

“Nonsense,” Mae said. But it was too late. I could feel it inside of me for the first time. I had shifted twice now, but this time, I could feel it coming. It was coming because I needed it, because I wanted it, because I knew that in order to protect Mae the best I could possibly do, I had to be a werewolf.

“Good idea,” Branson said, shifting into a cougar. We couldn’t speak, but we were animals and we understood what was going on. I sniffed the air. It was hard to describe the taste of dust and debris that wafted out of the inside of the crypt. It smelled of stale cobwebs in the floating dust and something deep; a sweet-and-sour kind of smell that left a taste in my mouth even though I was nowhere near the source of it.

I didn’t wait for Mae to give any instructions, and I sure as hell wasn’t going to wait for Branson. I was going to go and see what all the fuss was about. What was the worst that could happen? Truthfully, I didn’t want to think about it, but I needed to find my way. I entered the crypt which stretched out ahead of us into darkness. It was larger than I imagined and inside we found an inner chamber which was where the sweet stench was coming from. Lying on the center of a marble table in the dark dim recesses of the crypt was the beast or whatever word you would use to describe the thing. It was dead. I turned around and shook my head to Branson. He walked around the corpse. It was some strange type of monster, something like I’ve never seen before. As I sniffed around, I realized the smell wasn’t coming from the body; it was coming from oils that were slathered on to the body and like an oil slick under it. The monster was covered in black hair and was almost skeletal remains. Its fangs stretched down to the bottom of its lip, jutting out. It had a thick neck and long ears, but whatever it had been in real life, it was no longer.

I looked up at Mae.

“If those idiots are messing with the crypt,” Mae said. “They're trying to raise the dead. That’ll be more trouble for them than it is for me.”

“I think you have to report this to the DGC.” Trina said.

“The Demigod Corporation,” Anita explained to me.

“Even if it’s dead?” Mae asked.

“I think we have a bigger problem than reporting to the DGC,” I said, thinking of ten other problems. “There is still a killer on the loose.”

“We need to find the killer before we tell the DGC,” Mae pointed out.

“No, I suppose you’re right about telling the demigods,” Trina said. “It’s just, how are you going to hide the death of the harpies?”

“You can always pay the harpies to keep their mouths shut,” Matheus said.

Mae looked at him and raised an eyebrow. “Satyrs were always known for being a bit out of the law.”

“We get the job done.” Matheus grumbled.

I sniffed around the crypt a little more, but the smell of rotten bones was overwhelming, so I went back outside. That was when it struck me. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, but it was why it had been possible for me to shift, just because I wanted to. I was learning how to handle this, rather than random shifting when I couldn’t control it. When I blacked out, it terrified me. I never wanted to have that experience again, but right now, we had a killer to find. The truth was, I probably had the best nose for the job.

Part of me wanted to see how fast I could run on all fours. I wanted the exhilarating feeling of the free rush of the air running through my hair and I also wanted to see what I was capable of. Right now, we didn’t have any other choices. We were dead in the water, so if we were going to try to figure out who killed those harpies, we were going to have to take a different tack.

I nodded to the others and made my way to the cemetery fence. Branson cocked his head and started to follow me, but I growled and snapped at him to get him to go back. In a single bound I was over it and in the forest. This was going to be a solo job. Part of me needed time alone to process some of the things that had been going on. There was the stuff with Matheus and my fear of being a werewolf. I was afraid of ripping guts out of those people nearest and dearest to me. I needed some time to sit around and think. Going for a run in the forest might be the perfect excuse. They say killers go back to the scene of the crime, and I could only hope that the killer would show himself if a lone supernatural showed up. Maybe they would try to attack me, and we would find out who it was.

Chapter 33

I had thought that I was out on a race for a killer, and to find clues and to sniff things out, but that wasn’t what happened at all. I went to the crime scene, but it was overrun with cops and FBI. They were still looking at things, even though it had been a day, so instead I decided to go for a run. If there was something that I had learned at my age, it was that you had to take advantage of the things that were in front of you. As much as I wanted to solve the problem of the murder, and as much as I wanted to not be a werewolf, I still had to really enjoy the day and each moment I was given. I wanted to enjoy the experience that had been put before me. Here I was, standing like a wolf, able to run through the forest of my hometown and see it in a way I’d never seen before; racing with the wet ground under my pads and my claws.

I never knew I could run so much as a wolf. It had nothing to do with my age. I hadn’t gotten any younger. I just had more stamina in my four legs to carry me farther and faster than with my two legs. I raced along pathways and through the undergrowth of the forest until suddenly I stopped, not quite realizing where I was. I had an idea of the general vicinity, but it was difficult to see, exactly which way everything else lay in the deep forest.

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