A Cursed Embrace(19)

We probably could have sprinted out of the way, but I would have risked contacting one of the bears. Animals and my “weirdness” didn’t play nice. With my protective shields down, I’d fall to the ground in a massive seizure and emerge as Celia the Bear. Considering that I’d have no way to change back to Celia the sort-of-human or Celia the formidable tigress, shifting us from harm seemed like the ideal way to go.

Aric’s and Gemini’s mouths parted as they examined their forms. I’d never shifted them before and they seemed surprised all their important parts remained intact. “Sorry. I didn’t have time to warn you.” My face heated, but my unease kept me from experiencing the full range of my humiliation.

“It’s all right,” Aric said. We stepped back onto the path cautiously, unsure what lay ahead. Aric didn’t finish watching the bears disappear around the bend. Instead his preternatural side searched where I searched, in the direction they’d run from. “Gem,” he said, his voice bordering close to a growl.

Gemini slipped his sweater over his head, revealing the muscular T-build common of all wolves. Taran’s jaw fell open and I think she might have drooled. “Will you hold this?” he asked.

She nodded. This time it was her turn to fall speechless. Gemini cracked his neck from side to side. A large black wolf punched his head through Gemini’s back, sniffing the air. Like solidifying ink, he slid his powerful form onto the hard soil and sped off in a blur of black. The human half of Gemini that remained blinked his dark eyes. “Come. I’ll let you know if I find anything.”

Gemini’s ability to split into two remained, hands down, the coolest supernatural feat I’d ever seen. Taran squeaked when he whisked her into his arms and raced after Aric and me.

My tigress made us fast, faster than wolves. Common sense, and the realization that “danger lurked, Will Robinson,” kept me from bolting ahead. Aric still felt I moved too quick despite being a breath behind me. “Don’t get ahead of me, Celia.”

“I found it,” Gemini’s low voice said behind us. “This way.”

The path veered in two separate directions. One led deeper into the woods. Gemini kept us on the one paralleling the river.

The sour stench of death stung my nose just as Gemini’s other half appeared before us, baring his teeth. We followed behind him. Our pace slowing as we ambled down a small, steep hill where an abandoned mill hugged the edge of the river. The large broken wheel sat in the water, moving just enough to squeal. The rest of the large structure dented inward where the moss-covered roof had partially collapsed. A death trap in the making, and one long forgotten. Someone should have demolished it decades ago, but the small town didn’t strike me as possessing funds to see its destruction through.

The closer we neared the mill, the more the foul odor increased, its acidic scent sharp enough to make my eyes water. “Son of a bitch,” Taran muttered. Her blue eyes blanched to clear. Something skulked inside. And it didn’t want us there.

Aric whispered into his phone. “We found something. Track us.”

“On our way,” Koda said on the other end.

Gem eased Taran onto the ground as we crept onto the rickety porch steps. A few good tigress strikes and the moldy and graffiti-lined brown building would collapse inward. Too bad we had to investigate before sending it, and the malevolence lurking inside, to hell’s trash heap.

A padlock the size of my palm lay discarded on the mud-splattered floor, its hook twisted as if broken off. Slowly, Aric opened the creaky door.

Foot marks cut into the thick layer of dust. Drops of dried blood splattered like raindrops alongside each step. My growl rumbled in sync with the wolves. My tigress didn’t like it here. But she hated what waited even more.

Pockets of light trickled through the holes in the wall, illuminating sections here and there in the otherwise pitch-black room. The increasing aroma of death forced my claws and fangs to shoot out. I barely kept my tigress from emerging.

A set of stairs led up to the second floor. A small office with a door opening to another room sat to our far left. The vast room on our right housed bent and broken pieces of metal office furniture. This must have been the area where the administrative staff worked back when the mill had still struggled to stay open.

We abandoned the small sectioned-off area without so much as a sniff. After all, the revolting fragrance of sulfur permeated stronger to our right. A few folding chairs leaned against the dirty 1960s wood-paneled walls, and a tattered armchair lay tucked in the corner. The calendar push-pinned into one of the panels remained opened to February of many years past.