Call of the Wild (8 page)

“You keep mentioning a complex beneath the house. How about you give me a tour?” he asked Marsha.

“I suppose I can show you the main areas. I have about twenty minutes until I’m on duty,” she said, checking her watch.

He lifted a hand to his family as the two of them left the room. As they walked down the hall, he wondered what she meant by “on duty.”

Back in the man cave, Steven turned to Laura. “He doesn’t have a clue Marsha is the cougar from yesterday, does he?”

She just laughed. “He didn’t at first. I think he’s figured it out now, and Marsha is going to hold his behavior against him. He’s going to have an uphill battle to win her. It should be fun to watch.”

“That’s just what I was thinking earlier when he first saw her; or more precisely, when he first saw her in this form. You think what Frieda said is true? They’re mates? How does that work?” he asked.

“It’s possible there could be other people out there they each could fall in love with. The pheromone match, which Marsha picked up on because she was shifted, told her he was her mate, or actually her soul mate. Her ability to scent is, of course, much higher in that form. Anyway, there might be another person as well matched as Aaron. Like any relationship, they have to choose to be together and work to keep it that way. What the mate scent does is tell the shifter this person is their Mary Poppins.”

“What? Mary Poppins?”

“Yeah, don’t you remember? Practically perfect in every way!” she said before laughing again. They chatted for a little while longer about Aaron. When she knew her family would be okay alone, she left the room with Sasha. They had a meeting down in the cavern.

Arriving at the large meeting room, they ran into Marsha and Aaron. “How did the tour go?” Laura asked as she took her seat at the table. She no longer had to roll up in a wheelchair, now she had a regular swivel chair.

“I’m amazed you built so much in such a short time. You only just moved in,” he said.

Laura blushed a little. “Well, actually, I’ve been planning the move for a lot longer than I told you. This place has been in progress for over five years now. The local shifters put up a lot of road blocks because they didn’t want a human moving into the middle of shifter territory. They could only delay me, though,” she said, smirking at her mate and a few others who had entered the room. “Can you find your way back upstairs?”

Aaron looked around. Something that his brain had registered during his tour suddenly fell into place. Nearly everyone in this room had a red shirt. As he toured the facility, he’d noticed that while the color and type of pant or skirt varied, the tops were all solid colors, mostly black.
They were building a shifter army, and the shirt colors must be some kind of ranking system
.
Pretty smart, a uniform without being a uniform.

“Do you mind if I stick around?” Aaron asked her. He had no qualms about inviting himself to their meeting. This was his sister’s future and he was going to make sure she remained safe.

Laura was fine with that. She was well aware of her brother’s skills. Even though it wasn’t his intent, he could contribute. And he wasn’t the type to keep silent if he had an opinion.

“Take a seat. Since I know you’ll speak up if you want to, feel free. Everyone here is aware of your experience,” she said as she waved to a seat nearby.

However, he didn’t take the seat his sister indicated; instead, he walked around the long table and took a seat next to Marsha.

It didn’t take long for everyone to find their places. A few gave questioning glances to Aaron, but no one said anything.

“All right, let’s get started. If you look at screen one, you can see a map of the area around Marlinton, West Virginia. Marlinton and the surrounding towns of Woodrow to the west and Harter to the east have heavy shifter populations. Then up along the Greenbrier River, are two towns that are entirely populated by shifters, Clover Lick and Stony Bottom. They are surrounded by wildlife areas and state forestland on three sides, it’s been ideal for us.

“Our latest intelligence is that The Society has been aware our National headquarters has been based in Marlinton for at least five years. They’ve spent those years watching and learning about us. Unfortunately, they haven’t had much of an internet presence, so it’s taken this long to figure out what they’ve been doing.

“After checking the utility and phone records, we generated a list of all new residents and we looked into all of them. More than half turned out to be Society members. The towns of Edray and Campbeltown are also heavily populated with Society members.”

Laura paused as many of the people around the room exclaimed and made angry noises. She knew there would be worse coming. She let them run down and brought up more maps.

“In less than a month, they will be executing their big plan to take down our leadership, and kill as many shifters as they can.”

There were no exclamations this time, only dead quiet. “Planned road accidents are marked in blue. They will tie up resources and block exits through town.”

“We can escape into the forests,” pointed out Marc Hunter.

“The Society is hoping we try. They’re planning fires on all three sides to trap our people and kill as many as possible. Everything east of highway one-fifty will be burned all the way to highway twenty eight in the east, sixty six in the north and thirty nine in the south. Genocide will be easier for them to get away with if most of the bodies are in animal form and burned. All of the roads will be blocked or congested with people attempting to evacuate. It won’t be difficult for them to cut us off from all possible outside help. Knock a few cell towers down, take down phone lines, and there’s only one main utility line. Blow up the substation, we’re surrounded, and they expect to pick us off fairly easily,” she concluded.

“There are also other, West Union and Warwick, to name two, that will be burned out as collateral damage if The Society succeeds,” added Alex. He had been living in this area of West Virginia for the last ten years. He was horrified when he saw what Laura had uncovered. “Stopping them here is our number one priority right now.”

As Laura so calmly explained the planned mass murder of thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of people, Aaron was slowly becoming angrier and angrier. His worst fears were coming true. Suddenly, he was right back in the woods trying to keep Kylie alive while he watched her brother get killed.
No way would he let that happen again
!

“So we know what they have planned. How do we get our people out of there without alerting The Society? Do we have a count on how many families will need to be moved?” asked Marsha.

“Moved? You’re not going to stay and fight?” asked Aaron.

“If we stay and fight, we’ll be running on their plan and their timetable. We have to get our non-combatants out of the area before we can put any counter-offensive in place. There are innocent humans in those towns and likely campers and hikers throughout the parks. The Society considers them collateral damage. We can’t do that; we hold every life as sacred. No, we’ll have to preempt them, somehow,” she said.

“We also need to come up with a cover story. Just in case The Society is able to enact any part of their plan and also to cover our own asses if we have to actually kill any of these assholes,” said Laura.

“If not for my mate’s intelligence, we wouldn’t know this much. We have time to plan, get our people to safety, and prevent needless deaths. Now, let’s get to work. There are no bad ideas here so start thinking up scenarios where we save my former corner of West Virginia,” said Alexander. He was using his alpha voice and every shifter in the room recognized his authority.

Aaron was an intelligent man. He could easily see what they were up against. They basically had a secret group of people trying to maintain their anonymity against a terrorist force and they couldn’t ask the state police, Homeland Security or the Federal Government for assistance.

As ideas were bounced around, Aaron didn’t say another word. In his head, he was coming up with a few ideas of his own, so he waited and listened. As he listened, he noticed Marsha was also spending more time using her ears instead of her mouth.

He watched as a person sitting across from him tapped the surface of the conference table. A section of the table slid back to reveal a screen and keyboard. Aaron tapped the table in front of his own seat and the same thing happened. This was good; he was wondering how he could make some notes. It took a few minutes to familiarize himself with the system, then he went to town.

Right away he recognized he was working on an operating system and software that must have been designed by his sister. She could give Bill Gates a real run for his money if she wanted to; the functionality was off the charts.

Now the conversations going on in the room were just background noise. All of his years in Delta Force had given him a lot of knowledge about planning missions. He knew how to use every asset, every advantage, to its full potential. He picked up the stylus next to the screen in front of him and pulled up Laura’s maps. He began to transfer his ideas to the map, making diagrams and listing ideas and contingencies. It was kind of like when sportscasters write on the screen during a replay, except Laura’s system was much more dynamic.

Aaron could enlarge part of the map with a flick of his fingers, add notes, and then shrink it down again. The notes also reduced in size allowing him room to add more information in another location on the map. First, he quickly reviewed Laura’s intelligence to find out exactly what The Society had planned. Once he had all of his ideas listed in order of difficulty, he pulled up a file called personnel.

Good, it had a listing of all the shifters recruited for defense. He started reviewing each person’s strengths and weaknesses. He could then assign them tasks they were best suited for. Of course, if this were going to work, he would need more information on the people in West Virginia. People there would have to get involved, too.

Aaron was so involved in what he was doing—he hadn’t noticed the room had gone quiet. Finally the lack of noise got through and he glanced up.

“What’d I miss?” he asked, just before he noticed his screen was blown up and spread over the big screens on the wall.

“I guess it pays to get people with the right experience. Many of the shifters here have served. We don’t tend to stay in for a career, though. It’s hard to keep our animal side under wraps for that long. There’s a lot you could teach us,” said Alexander.

Like the others, Marsha had been reading over Aaron’s plans. She had been the one to alert Laura to what he was doing. As she reviewed his work, she easily saw where he was going and it was brilliant. She was already figuring out the best area for her team to go in. Like the others in the room, she felt they might be able to pull this off.

At first, Aaron had participated in the planning simply because it was the right thing to do. He worked steadily on the plans, pushing any emotions away to keep his head clear. When he found out Marsha wasn’t just an analyst, that she was one of the team leaders, everything gained another level of importance.

He wasn’t quite sure what drew him so strongly to this particular woman. He only knew it was vital to him to keep her safe. His life up until now had been flowing along. He didn’t have any complaints. Now he knew there was so much more out there. It was time to make some changes.

After so many years in the Army, he’d steadily worked his way up the ranks. His most recent promotion was likely going to lead to a desk job the next time he received orders to change assignments. Like Laura and his brothers, he had started taking college courses early. Mom had to homeschool Laura, so he and the others decided to stick with her. They all ended up graduating early, and he’d entered the Army as an officer at the age of eighteen.

In a few months, he’d have his twenty years in and could retire at full pension. He’d originally thought to stay on. The military life was all he knew. Now, he had a new war to fight. They couldn’t go to the authorities with their problems. Laura wanted a shifter army? If there was one thing Aaron knew, it was Army.

He thought this would be a quick in and out visit. Get Laura, take the blonde to bed and go back to life as he knew it. Well, the more he discovered the more he realized he wanted to be here. No one here seemed to have his skills, he was needed. There was also the upside of the blonde in close proximity.

The hours flew by as the others in the room took his basic ideas and elaborated on them. They knew the people better and were able to make suggestions on who should be placed where.

There was a small argument going on between Marsha and one of the others, when the door opened. Two little girls were pushing enormous carts through the door of the conference room. He immediately jumped up to help them, and then he realized this was Lola and her sister, Lila.
He could see them! Damn! That blood thing really worked!

He soon discovered that whoever helps the Kobold gets first pass at the lunch buffet. He didn’t have any idea how they accomplished it, and he didn’t really care. What he loved was the abundance of great tasting food. Give him a grill and he could cook just about anything—but the kitchen he was basically lost in. After years of MREs, the Army’s infamous Meals Ready to Eat, he loved home cooked food, he just had no concept how to cook it himself. When he was home he ate all his meals in restaurants or grilled out on his apartment’s tiny balcony.