Cattle grazed in a pasture, and several dogs came running out to bark at their car. Two men walked out and shushed the dogs, sending them back to lie at the men’s feet.
“The statue could be in that warehouse,” Samantha said, gripping the door handle.
She hopped out of the car, hot on the trail of the mystery. Ben slipped out of the car and walked with her up to the men in the driveway.
“What are you doing here?” the first one growled.
He had a thick black beard and piercing blue eyes. He stared intently at Ben and Samantha. The second one was slightly shorter, but stockier, with a shaggy mane of blond hair that came to his shoulders, sideburns and a goatee.
“I’m Samantha Cooper from the Historic Times. I just wanted to ask you a few questions about the original settlement that existed before the flooding of the lake,” she said.
“Who told you that we knew anything about that?”
“Aren’t you the descendants of the original settlers?” she asked. “How do you feel about the raising of the statue in honor of Ambrose Morgan?”
The first one spat on the ground, barely missing Samantha’s shoe. She looked down at the wet mark on the gravel in disgust and then looked back at the man, wide-eyed with her mouth slightly open.
“I see,” she said. “Can I quote you on that?”
“Ambrose Morgan was a coward and a liar. The land he bought us was a fraction of our original hunting grounds. We are lucky we found our benefactor.”
“Benefactor?” she asked. “Who is that?”
“That ain’t none of your business.”
“So, your pack is still angry at Morgan over having to move almost ninety years ago?”
“He did our people a disservice. Moved us off our rightful land. He never should have been honored like that.”
“So, you wanted to get back at him?”
Ben was starting to get nervous. He could smell the anger radiating off the two men. The rest of the pack were gathering in the snow-covered yards outside of their homes. A woman with a pregnant belly shooed children indoors. A dozen men began to gather behind the others.
“Samantha,” he said. “Maybe it’s time to leave.”
“So what kind of operation are you running here?” she said. “What do you do with that shop over there?”
“I suggest you listen to your man and leave, lady.”
“Samantha, it’s time to go,” Ben said.
“Thanks for your time,” she said, following Ben to the car.
“I bet you anything the statue is in that shop,” she said, as Ben started the car and began to drive away.
“I bet you’re right,” he said, having sensed something very off about these shifters. “They’re hiding something.”
“The police won’t be able to do anything without a search warrant,” she said.
“Unless we prove it ourselves.”
“What are you suggesting?” she asked.
“We wait until they open the warehouse door and get some pictures of what’s inside.”
“Genius!” she said.
“We’ll have to stay downwind, so they don’t scent us. I’ll shift and keep you warm while we wait them out. They’ve got to open that door eventually.”
“What if they don’t?”
“We’ll cross that bridge when we get there.”
Ben parked the vehicle down the road and shifted into bear form while Samantha gathered her gear. She’d dressed warmly in winter boots and her parka. As a newly turned shifter, she wasn’t as cold as she would have been as a human.
After confronting the wolves, they were both sure that the statue was in the warehouse. They just had to prove it, so the police could come out and find it.
They quietly plodded through the forest, careful to keep downwind and to remain hidden in the shadows. On the outskirts of the property, they ducked behind a thicket of underbrush and waited. Ben wrapped his body around Samantha as she focused her long lens on the warehouse door.
After a few hours of waiting, Ben was beginning to have second thoughts. Maybe this had been a fool’s errand. He sent her a message through their link, asking her if she wanted to leave. She gasped, and the camera clicked away.
“This is it,” she whispered. “It’s in there.”
She took a few dozen photos and began to fiddle with her phone. “I’m just going to email these photos to the police department,” she whispered.
Ben waited, looking up at her as he curled his body around her for warmth. “Crap. They won’t load,” she swore. “They’re closing the door. I’m going to call them anyway.”
Ben jumped up from where he’d been lying for the last two hours and sprinted through the woods.
“Ben!” she hissed. “What are you doing?”
He sent her a mental image of creating a diversion while she called the cops. He heard her speaking on the phone behind him as he ran out into the wolves’ yard. He wanted to lead them all away from the warehouse until the police came so they would see the open door.
He ran out into the yard, rolling around on his back and acting foolish. Every wolf in sight shifted and gave chase as he lumbered around the yard, staying one step ahead of them. He turned and growled, and they fell back, and then he ran again. He almost felt like he was playing tag with a group of children.
As he ran into the forest and doubled back towards the compound, he finally heard the police sirens approaching. The door to the warehouse was still open as the police gathered around. He heard a voice through a bullhorn, shouting for everyone to stop what they were doing.
The police piled out of their cars, yelling at the crowd. The wolves stopped chasing Ben and sprinted off into the woods, while the police swarmed over the compound, shouting for everyone to stay put. The women stayed hidden behind closed doors. He heard a baby’s sharp cry.
The wolves were forced to shift by the will of the alpha Sheriff Bear. Police handcuffed a group of wolves and covered them in blankets, putting them into the police cars as the officers read them their rights. Ben finally shifted, and Samantha threw a blanket over his shoulders.
“You didn’t have to do that,” she said, bundling him up and guiding him over to his SUV that she’d pulled around once the police had arrived. The warm air in the car felt like heaven on his chilled skin. “I had the pictures to prove everything.”
“It worked out, didn’t it?” he said with a smirk.
“It did work out,” she said, giving him a hug and climbing in beside him. “I was just so worried you’d get hurt.”
“I’m fine, babe. Those wolves couldn’t have hurt me anyway.”
The police swarmed the warehouse, finding the statue inside. Ben and Samantha smiled at each other with satisfaction from the backseat of his car.
“We did it,” she said, embracing him.
Out of nowhere, a black figure rose up from the roof of the warehouse. He gasped, and Samantha looked up from hugging him. She screamed. He couldn’t believe what his eyes were telling him.
“It’s a dragon,” Samantha screamed.
Shots were fired, but they all missed. The black dragon flew through the sky, screeching and breathing fire over the crowd. None of the fire touched down, but everyone in the ground fell to their knees to avoid the flames. The dragon screamed like an eagle and flew speedily away, over the winter forest.
Chapter 23
“I can’t believe what I just saw,” Samantha said sitting beside Ben in the back of his car.
“That couldn’t have been,” he heard one of the officers scream outside the car window.
Ben’s arms were around her, but she felt like she might faint.
“That can’t have been real. That can’t have been real,” she repeated.
The sheriff walked over to their car and knocked on the window. Ben rolled it down.
“We found the statue,” he said, “Good work, you two.”
“That can’t have been a dragon,” Samantha said aga
in. “Tell me I didn’t just see a dragon.”
“I’m afraid you did, ma’am,” he said, running his hands through his hair. “I didn’t know they existed either. It’s news to all of us. Until now, it was just a myth. Some shifters talked about it like they existed, but no one really believed it was true.”
“I still don’t believe it, even though I saw it with my own eyes.”
The women and children were being questioned. A crane had already arrived to lift the statue of Ambrose Morgan onto a flatbed truck. It would soon be returned to the town square.
“I guess we know how they lifted the statue in the middle of the night with no one hearing or seeing anything,” Ben said.
“It’s just so unreal,” she said.
“How are you going to find it and bring it to justice?”
“We got a chopper in the sky. But the guy’s probably long gone by now. I want you two to go home and get a good night’s sleep,” Sheriff Bear said. “You’ve done enough for today.”
“Okay,” Samantha said, before climbing out of the backseat and sitting behind the wheel.
On the way down the road, she noticed one of the punks from the Midwest Mayhem group standing on the side of the road, glaring at them as they passed. She looked at him and met his glare.
“I think I know who the dragon is,” she said.
“Who?” Ben asked from the backseat.
“You know how you said the punks didn’t smell right?”
“Yeah.”
“I think one of them is the dragon.”
“You’re right!” he gasped.
“What should we do?” she asked him.
“Call the cops and tell them what you think,” he suggested.
“Sheriff Bear told us to go home.”
“But this is a good hunch. I’m going to call him now.”
She heard Ben talking on the phone in the backseat. The conversation didn’t seem to be going well.
“I know, sir. But we believe we know the identity of the dragon…Can you at least send someone out there?” Ben said into the phone. “Alright. I understand.”
“What did they say?” she asked after he hung up.
“He said they’ve thoroughly questioned Midwest Mayhem and that the shifter officers never smelled anything strange at their camp.”
“The dragon probably left the camp when police cars arrived.”
“Or he wasn’t there at the time.”
“What should we do?”
“I say we catch them ourselves.”
“Sheriff Bear won’t be happy with us,” she said.
“We can’t just let them get away with this. The only dragon known to exist is in our town, taking our founder’s statue? I want to get to the bottom of this. Don’t you?”
“Of course. What should we do?”
“Same thing we did at the wolfpack compound. Spy on them until we get the evidence we need.”
“Can we at least wait until tomorrow? I’m starving.”
“Let’s go eat and come back tonight. They’ll never suspect us.”
“Sounds like a plan. But I’m putting on three pairs of socks this time.”
When Samantha and Ben got back to his house, Ben made them turkey sandwiches from fresh rye bread slathered in his special sandwich spread. He heated up leftover beef stew from the other night. They sat at the kitchen table with sodas and potato chips.
“Where do you think the dragon came from?” she asked, as she took a bite of his delicious dinner.
“I have no idea. I didn’t know they existed until half an hour ago.”
“How could they keep it a secret so long?
“Beats me. I’ve been a shifter all my life, living in a shifter town. I would’ve thought that we’d have known something about it.”
“You didn’t know about the wolves out at Big River Falls.”
“We did know about them, we just didn’t know that they were related to the original settlers. They were just guys that nobody wanted to mess with.”
“I’m going to do some more research about Midwest Mayhem.” Samantha said, scrolling through her phone as they ate their dinner.
She tabbed over to their website and read everything she could about them. When she was satisfied there were no clues there, she continued to search the Internet for references about them.
“It looks like they were founded sometime in the early 2000’s. They started traveling the country, recording their pranks and posting them on the Internet.”
“Why would a mythical dragon be involved with a group like that?”
“Why would any shifter, for that matter?”
“Not all shifters are as good as the people in the Fate Valley Shifters Association, or the ones who helped bring an end to the Great War. Some of them are scoundrels and criminals. I read that about ten years ago, the crime rate among hyenas spiked exponentially.”
“That’s true,” Samantha said. “It still doesn’t explain where the dragon came from.
“We probably won’t find much on the Internet.” Ben took his last spoonful of soup. “If the answer was there, we would’ve known about it already.”
“I just can’t help feeling like we’ve missed something.”
“The only way we’re going to figure any of this out is by catching the guy, red-handed.”
“How are we going to catch a dragon? None of the other shifters in town can fly.”
“We aren’t going to catch him. We’ll catch him on film and then call the cops. They’ll have to catch him in human form.”
“This is going to be tricky,” she said.
“I know. But we’ve got to try.”
They bundled up in warm clothing and headed back out to the car, driving toward the campground where Midwest Mayhem was camped.
“Maybe we shouldn’t be doing this,” she said.
“Are you having second thoughts?” he asked. “I can take you back and spy on them myself.”
“No, I want to go,” she said, holding her cold fingers to the heater vent.
“A fire-breathing dragon is awfully dangerous. I don’t want you to get hurt.”
“I’ll be all right. We’re just going to take pictures, remember? Then we’ll send them to the police.”
“Okay. If you’re sure.”
“I am sure. You just don’t do anything crazy like you did last time.”
“I won’t.”
“Okay. Promise?” She put up her pinky for him to pinky swear. He smiled at her from the driver seat and grabbed her pinky with his.
“Pinky swear,” he said.
He stopped the car about a quarter-mile from the campsite, and parked well out of sight from the road.
“How do you want to do this?” she asked as they sat in the dark car.
“Same as last time. You bring the camera. I’ll shift into the bear form. We’ll make sure that we stay hidden and downwind.
“Okay. We’re going to find this guy and bring him to justice.”
Ben pulled off his clothes and tossed them on the backseat of his SUV before shifting into bear form. Samantha checked her equipment and made sure everything was working properly. She even sent herself an email with pictures to make sure that her phone would transfer the images from her camera.
“I’m ready,” she said. “Let’s go.”
They carefully walked through the forest, skirting around the campground to come up behind it. They ducked behind a grove of thick trees downwind from the travelers’ camp. Samantha pulled out her camera and focused her long lens on the punk rockers. They seemed to be having a party. Many were drinking forty-ounce bottles of malt liquor and dancing around the campfire. Everyone was hooting and hollering.
“Why are they so happy?” she muttered to Ben under her breath.
He grunted.
“Do you think they’re happy that the wolves got arrested?” she asked.
Questions streamed through her mind and she couldn’t answer any of them. She also did
n’t see any sign of the dragon.
She’d thought that Ambrose was a bad guy when she’d learned that he had an affair with her great-grandmother. But now, she thought he must be a good guy. He had bought the Big River Falls wolfpack land where their ancestors still lived today. It seemed awfully greedy to still be sore about having to move to free land. It seemed to Samantha that Ambrose had done everything he could to help them.
She didn’t know what to think. She was more confused than ever. As she focused her lens on the partying punk rockers, she saw something that made her do a double take. There was a man in a business suit, standing amongst the punk rockers. She gasped when she remembered where she’d seen him before. He was the developer who’d come into Ben’s shop and offered to buy it. She clicked a few pictures of the businessman.
“I should call the police.”
Ben nuzzled his nose into her arm encouragingly, but she knew that it wasn’t enough evidence to bring the police out here. Just because Mr. Hart was out here with a bunch of punk rockers didn’t mean that they could arrest him.
She sent Ben an image through their link, letting him know what she thought. Ben grunted in agreement. She looked away for just a second and almost missed it when it happened: Mr. Hart walked away from the partiers and shifted from his human form into a dragon.
Samantha gasped and almost didn’t get a picture of the dragon before he bounded into the dark night. But she clicked her camera as quickly as she could and got the pictures she needed to prove that the dragon was involved with Midwest Mayhem.
“I think I have what I need,” she said. “I know the identity of the dragon. And I can send proof to the police.”
They hurried back to the car as her heart pounded hard in her chest. She couldn’t believe what she’d found.
“Good job, Samantha,” Ben said as he changed back into his clothes near the car.
Samantha sent the pictures of Mr. Hart shifting into a dragon to Sheriff Bear on his direct line.
“Good work, Ms. Cooper. But I do wish that you would leave sleuthing to the professionals.”
“We’ll try harder next time.”
“We have officers on their way to Mr. Hart’s home. We’re going to take this guy down.”