AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Or magic by choice. Because someone in the Pack tried magic, and it did something very, very bad. I didn’t detect anything like this with Beth.”
He rubbed his temple. “I was just thinking that. But it was windy last night, could have dissipated faster. The air is still tonight. Let’s check this area,” he said. “If the magic is strong enough to detect it here, maybe that’s not all they left behind.”
We nodded and split up. He moved back to the bank of thecreek, and I moved to the edges of what passed for the trail, looking for broken branches or other signs someone had passed through.
It took only a moment.
I was moving away from the water when something flagged my attention. I wasn’t sure what I’d seen—something different enough to have my brain clicking to alert—so I stepped back, looked around. Then crouched in front of a boulder on the edge of the path.
There was grass around the base, and it was trampled flat as if someone had moved near the rock—stood or sat on it—and flattened the grass in the process. They also left a set of footprints that definitely weren’t human.
The marks had the general look of paw prints—toe impressions atop a central pad. But the impressions were elongated, as if the pads were longer and more narrow than a standard wolf’s. And they were massive.
“Connor,” I called out, and heard footsteps behind me a moment later. “Tracks,” I said, pointing toward them. “And I don’t think they’re yours.”
He studied them.
“They look canine, right? But they aren’t shifter.”
“No,” he agreed. “They aren’t. Too wide, too long.”
I held back the obvious joke and was inordinately proud of myself.
“Whatever made them was very large and very heavy,” he said. “That’s what she said.”
I couldn’t help but grin. “I’m glad you said it. I was trying to be serious. So what could make them? A really big dog? A wolverine?”
Connor stood. “There’s been no canine in North America big enough to do this in tens of thousands of years. I don’t know anyliving creature that makes prints like that—Supernatural or otherwise.”
“What about a cryptid?”
He gave me a dry look.
“What? The Beast of Owatonna is the best lead we’ve got.”
“That’s not a lead. It’s ignorance disguised as science.”
“Okay, then let’s add some science into it. Maybe we don’t need to figure out if this is the Beast. Maybe we just need to figure out what the Beast actually is.”
He blinked. “That’s not bad.”
“I’m feeling very intellectually spry today.”
“Then riddle me this,” he said, turning back to me. “What looks like a cryptid, but smells like Pack?”
“Like Pack,” I said, leaning around him to look at the track. “That’s all you smell?”
“That’s it.”
“Then I have no idea, unless you’ve got a Pack member with a really unusual podiatric condition.”
“I’m not aware of any. Take photos, will you? I don’t have my screen.”
“Because you’re naked,” I said and, reminded of that, had to work very hard to focus on his face.
His smile was wide, cocky. “I am, yes.”
I pulled out my screen, took pictures of the footprints. “How about I send these to Petra?”
