BrightBlueMoon (6 page)

Michael pricked his ears forward as Gus fell silent, breathing a sigh like a deflating balloon.

“Holy shit,” a familiar voice growled. “Are they serious?”

Michael glanced toward Daniel, who had shifted into his human form and wore an expression of disgust so intense it would’ve been comical, if Michael hadn’t felt the same way.

The lowest of growls rumbled in the pit of Jack’s chest, but it wasn’t directed toward Daniel – Jack’s golden eyes were still trained on Gus, alight with a hard gleam.

“Can’t freaking believe this…” Daniel shook his head hard, grimacing, and returned to his wolf form.

“All right.” Gus waved a hand from his place in the center of the clearing below the ridge. “Let’s get over to that campground so we can interview those tourists whose dog got in a scuffle with something last night.” He stomped forward gracelessly, bowling over a small sapling that snapped back up to whip him across the calf.

“Damn it!” he huffed as his entourage followed, careful not to make the same mistake.

As they filed away from the scene of the accident, it was apparent that there were five team members in all – Gus, Serena, Alex and two other men laden with technical equipment. They all seemed to be in a hurry, though their burdens slowed them down. It was easy to tail them, staying close enough to follow their conversation without being spotted.

Gus rambled about a campground, interviews and searches, his conversation peppered with obscenities and technical terms that sounded made-up. Michael hung on every word, not because he found it interesting, but because he knew he’d end up re-hashing it all with Jack and the others before long. The alpha was leading the way, the fur between his shoulder blades bristling with indignation that Michael could smell.

By the time the film crew reached the edge of the woods, they were all sweating beneath their loads. Only Gus carried nothing – even tiny Serena had been laden down with the duffel bag she’d pulled a towel from.

Jack led his cousins and Michael out of the woods a different way, leaving the film team at the turn-around spot they’d parked their SUV in. Moving at a run, it only took the wolves a couple minutes to dash down the mountain to Jack’s cabin, paws flying as the world passed by in a blur of orange and gold.

The pack females – and Kimberly – had gathered on the porch. They held mugs of what was presumably coffee, a plate of cookies sat balanced on the porch railing and Mandy had a magazine open in her lap. As soon as they noticed Jack and the others, they forgot their conversation and their drinks.

Mandy stood, rubbing the small of her back as her eyes shone with interest and a hint of worry.

The males filed inside, shifted and dressed in a flurry of jeans and t-shirts.

“Well?” Mandy appeared in the doorway, and the other females gathered behind her. “Did you guys figure out what on earth Gus and his crew are up to?”

Jack breathed a snort. “Yeah, we figured it out, all right.” Raising a hand to his face, he pressed his fingers to his temples and shook his head. “They’re filming some kinda show, here in the woods. Poking around and interviewing people, too.”

“Monsters 24/7,” Daniel added. “Anyone ever heard of it?”

For several moments, silence reigned.

“It sounds vaguely familiar…” Kimberly stepped forward, pursing her lips as she stood beside her daughter. “If I’m not mistaken, I think I might’ve glimpsed it scrolling through the TV guide channel. One of those shows that comes on real late at night in the middle of the week or something.”

Jack’s brow furrowed as he crossed his arms. “So it’s real then – really on TV?”

Kimberly shrugged. “I think so, but you’d better not take my word for it. I’d try to look it up on my phone, but the 3G coverage here is terrible.”

“I’ll look online.” Mandy strode across the room to where a computer was ensconced by a hutch in one corner.

“Here it is,” she said a minute later. “Monsters 24/7. It’s a TV show that comes on Thursday nights, just after Ghost Hunting Grannies. The site says they’re a specialist team dedicated to exposing what goes bump in the night. Looks kind of like one of those ghost hunting shows, only they search for monsters, and there’s a twist…”

She scrolled a little further. “Apparently they take tips on unusual happenings and rush to the scenes to perform 24 hour investigations. They try to figure out what happened and prove that a paranormal or cryptozoological creature was behind it within the span of a day.”

“Good lord.” Daniel shook his head. “What a load of—”

“Twenty-four hours, you said?” Jack interrupted.

“Yeah.” Mandy nodded.

“So all we gotta do is tail these idiots for one day and make sure they don’t stir up too much trouble.”
 

“They seem stupid enough to cause plenty of trouble in one day, if you ask me,” Daniel said, glowering.

“We’ll see.” Jack started for the door, gesturing toward Daniel, Noah and Michael. “You three come with me – I wanna see what they get up to at that campground, and find out where they’re heading after that.”

* * * * *

Normally, Michael wouldn’t have minded all the sneaking around. After decades of hunting prey far more dangerous than the clumsy Monsters 24/7 crew, he was used to it. Laying low in the woods that surrounded a basic campground with tent lots spread among the trees was easy, and he didn’t feel particularly threatened now that they knew what Gus and his companions were all about. All he really wanted to do was get back to Kimberly, but…

Jack had asked him to come along, to accompany him, Daniel and Noah on the surveillance mission. And that mattered, because Jack was his daughter’s mate, the alpha of their pack. God knew that after the past twenty-nine years, he wanted to do whatever he could to get along with the family he’d had to abandon. So he listened, ears trained forward, picking up Gus Oliver’s every word.

“Dog has a chunk taken out of its ear,” Gus said, leaning against the SUV as the four others lingered nearby, a captive audience. “This is a goldmine. I called in a vet, and we’ll get a quick quote from her, then finish the interview segment. She should be here in twenty minutes.”

“Did the campers even see anything?” Alex asked, glancing over his shoulder toward the nearest campsite, his expression doubtful.

A family of four was gathered by a tent, and a mutt of indeterminate heritage lay on a dog bed by its entrance, gnawing on a rawhide bone. From the wolves’ hiding place behind a screen of pines, Michael could just make out a notch in the creature’s left ear.

“They damn well better have seen
something
,” Gus said. “They were right there in the tent with the dog staked outside, and spilling their guts is the least they can do in exchange for a free vet visit.” Gus shook his head at Alex. “Seriously, you’ve been a part of this crew for a year and have filmed dozens of hicks like these blabbing in front of the camera. People are always itching for their fifteen minutes of fame. This—” Gus clapped his hands together, then rubbed them vigorously “—will be a piece of cake. Just point and shoot, Alex – point and shoot.”

Alex shot Gus a glance that would’ve been fatal, if looks could kill.

Gus was oblivious, already barking instructions at Serena. Alex wandered off to mess with a camera, and Gus spent the next twenty minutes generally micromanaging the rest of the crew, until the vet arrived.

Her examination of the dog took all of five minutes.

“Well,” Gus asked, “any idea what took a chunk out of this pooch’s ear?”

Alex was faithfully pointing and shooting, the camera trained on Gus and the veterinarian.

 
The vet held her hands up in a cautionary gesture. “These things can be difficult to determine, especially since we have such diverse and abundant wildlife here in the Smokies. It really could’ve been any number of animals. However… In my opinion, this looks canine.”

“Canine?” Gus arched a brow, and Michael could practically see the wheels turning in his head, no doubt trying to determine the most sinister spin he could put on the woman’s words.

The vet nodded. “We have plenty of coyotes here in the mountains, and although it’s not common for them to attack pets, it is possible, especially if any food was left out overnight. Human leftovers or garbage can pose quite the temptation to wild animals.”

Gus seemed to be trying hard to appear to be deep in thought, but he couldn’t keep a frown off his face. “Do you have any other theories, Dr. Mattick?”

“If any other campers had a dog they left untethered…” She gestured at the surrounding trees. “This dog’s injury could easily have been caused by a tussle with another tourist’s pet.”

Gus grimaced.

“Like I said,” Dr. Mattick continued, “it really could’ve been anything.”

“Thank you, Dr. Mattick.” Gus gestured quickly to Alex, motioning for him to stop filming. “That’ll be all.”

She raised a brow. “Don’t you want me to treat this dog’s injured ear?”

“Right.” Gus nodded. “Yeah, of course. I meant, that’ll be all for the interview.”

Michael had no doubt that the veterinarian’s interview session would be heavily edited, probably whittled down to “this looks canine” and “it really could’ve been anything”. In any case, the family that owned the dog gathered round, watching and offering quick pats as their pet had its ear cleaned and patched up by the vet.

As soon as Dr. Mattick drove away, Gus motioned toward Alex again. “Let’s get rolling – the clock’s a-ticking.”

In no time, Gus was poised to deliver another dramatic monologue. “Here at the very campground where Braden Spencer was last seen alive, a menace with a violent bent has struck again. The Peppard family narrowly avoided injury, but their beloved dog wasn’t so fortunate. Rescued from an animal shelter by the Peppards three years ago, Roscoe is luckier than ever to be alive.”

Alex went to work filming the dog from various angles, no doubt zooming in on the bandages. Roscoe endured the filming with good humor, especially for an animal with a cone on its head.

When they were done shooting the dog, they interviewed the kid first. Bright-eyed and maybe ten or eleven, the boy was all too eager to have a group of adults with cameras and microphones giving him their undivided attention.

“Tell me what happened last night, Aiden. Did you see or hear the creature that attacked Roscoe?”

Aiden nodded. “Yeah! It woke me right up. It was like, maybe midnight, and I heard Roscoe barking, then some growling sounds. Then Roscoe started whimpering all high-pitched like dogs do when they get hurt. I unzipped the tent and my dad ran out with a flashlight – Roscoe was going crazy at the end of his cable, and something else was running away into the woods.”

“Did you see it as it ran away?” Gus’ excitement was nearly palpable, even from a distance.

So was the kid’s. “Yeah! Well, sort of. It kind of looked like a wolf or something, only all shadowy. It was really fast, and it was dark out.”

They interviewed the parents after that, who both supported their son’s claims of growling sounds, and said that the animal that had disappeared into the woods had definitely run on four legs and might have been some sort of large canine.

Afterward, Gus retreated to where they’d parked the SUV and paced furiously, the gravel crunching beneath the hiking boots he’d been wearing all day. Eventually, he pulled out a laptop and began clacking away on its keyboard. “Okay,” he said after fifteen minutes of silence that the rest of the crew seemed to relish. “Okay, I’m ready – Alex, get that camera on me.”

Moving slowly, Alex readied his camera and trained it on an impatient Gus.

“Serena, we’ll film your bit after this.” Straightening, Gus looked right into the camera. “Wolves once roamed the Southeastern United States, at home among the mountains I’m standing in right now. Relentless hunting and the urbanization of previously untouched wilderness drove them to extinction, and it’s been over one hundred years since Canis lupus has called this region home.” He paused, presumably for dramatic effect. “At least, that’s what we’ve all been led to believe.

“But have these apex predators really been banished entirely from their native hunting grounds?

“Perhaps not. In the early nineties, efforts were made to reintroduce them to the Great Smoky Mountains. Due to malnutrition, disease and unruly wolves roaming beyond the park’s boundaries, the project was eventually brought to a halt. The reintroduction attempt was considered a failure, but if Braden Spencer and Roscoe the dog were able to speak, they might just tell us differently. Are hungry wolves roaming among unsuspecting tourists, as dark and treacherous as the night itself?

“Here – tonight – we’ll delve deep into the Tennessee wilderness in search of the shadow wolves ourselves.”

Alex shut off the camera as Gus turned on one heel and marched toward the SUV, opening a door and collapsing into a seat like he’d just run a marathon.

“C’mon, Serena,” Alex said, sounding less hostile than usual as he turned to the girl, who’d commandeered the laptop Gus had been using just minutes ago. “Let’s get your two cents in.”

Serena set the computer aside, stepped forward, cleared her throat and introduced herself as the team’s “research expert”. In less than half the time Gus had taken, she rattled off a few facts about wolves, their hunting patterns and various instances of reintroduction efforts.