When Forever Died

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Chapter One

The problem with most people is that they're liars.

We all harbor a beast inside and we all know it. Most people just won't admit it. That's why I like hunting animals. There's no duplicity. They are what they are.

The leafy trees of a New England forest in spring rushed past my feline ears as I raced after a NHF preternatural. NHF stands for Non-Human Form, which means I was chasing down an animal that had more speed, stamina and strength than any 'regular' animal that a person would generally encounter in their day to day lives. In this instance, it was something like a wolf and roughly the size of a small pony. It had been terrorizing several suburban communities just outside of Adelheid with its very presence and no one else wanted to tackle it, so they called me.

My name is Dakota. I hunt things. Not just any things, but preternatural things. Despite Cameron's Law making all us preternatural creatures legal citizens, there are still some that misbehave, so I hunt down the ones that everyone else is afraid to, or isn't able to. I'm better at it than anyone else, so I get called a lot. It was my third NHF that month.

He knew that I was right behind him. The scent of wolf, cougar and magic was thick on the air. He followed the trail he thought would lead to freedom while I followed him. My preferred cat form was strong and fast. I liked cougar the best. It had a power to it that many other forms, even bigger and brawnier animals, didn't have. It made me better at my job when I felt comfortable in the skin I was wearing.

Leaping over a fallen tree trunk, I landed in a pile of leaves that crunched under my paws and the breeze shifted. I stopped abruptly and swung my head around, trying to pick up the scent I had suddenly been lost. The forest was silent, even the birds and insects were terrified by the sight of our chase. I stood perfectly still and then I caught the sound of his crashing through the trees and took off once again.

I could tell that he was growing tired. His steps slowed and lost their rhythmic pace. He'd be looking for a place to hide now, but there weren't any. I knew these woods well and with the mind of the human. He didn't. Stumbling ahead of me, I caught sight of him and surged forward, leaping on his back and sending him sprawling in a snarl with all four feet slipping at different angles.

I rolled off and got back on my feet before he did. Already, I had shifted to my human form and was pulling the tranquilizer gun off my belt. He lurched to his feet and leaped at me. I braced myself on one knee and fired. The dart caught him right in the throat, just before he landed right out of bite range. His huge jaws snapped at me and I danced back, waiting the few moments before the magically-enhanced drugs flooded his system and he collapsed in a heap of black fur at my feet.

I gazed down at the massive sleeping beast and sighed as I put the tranq gun away. This bastard was going to be heavy, but there was nothing for it. I bent down and pulled the huge frame across my shoulders and lifted with my knees. He was fucking heavy, even with all my strength, but I carried him back through the woods, expertly following my tracks back to my car where I piled the beastie in the back of my SUV and shut the hatch.

From there, everything was pretty easy. I drove him down to the office laughingly called Animal Control. I say that because really it was just a place to house animals until they figured out what to do with them. They had no one qualified to catch them, except me, and were barely qualified to keep them. But there was no where else to go, so I dropped sleeping beauty off and got my signed receipt.

Then I went home.

Home was a studio apartment above a Chinese restaurant called the Golden Dragon. The apartment was owned by the same people who owned the restaurant and they gave me a good deal in exchange for helping with pest control, both human and animal. I could hunt mice or bounce drunks with equal skill.

I had been home all of an hour, resting and eating dinner, when my cell phone rang. I answered it, after a time. I'd decided to go with one of those new smart phones to help me conduct business better, but that didn't mean that I and my phone actually got along.

"Hello?" I asked.

"Dakota." Stanton sounded exasperated.

Sadie Stanton owned the agency I worked for, although I wouldn't go so far as to call her my boss. I was an independent contractor. But no matter what you called us, she was always exasperated when she called me. Then again, she had a permanent raspy edge to her voice that made her always sounded that way. But I could tell she was exasperated in this instance.

"What did I do this time?" I sighed and tried not to roll my eyes, already feeling like a teenager in trouble with their parents, which was funny when you considered that I was four times her age.

"Are you allergic to coming into the office and letting us know when you have a job finished?" she asked. "It came through us after all and Madison likes to keep the files organized, so we need to know what's opened and what's closed."

Maybe I was allergic. Maybe I could get a doctor's note. "It was just a NHF. I didn't think it was that important."

She sighed. "I know you didn't. You never do, even if the hunt has twenty human forms. I think you just like pissing me off."

Getting to my feet to carry paper dishes to the trash, I snorted. "You got me," I said. "I just live to annoy you."

The long pause told me she wasn't impressed. "When you finish a hunt, come by or call and let us know. It's really not that difficult."

"Fine." I hung up without saying good-bye. Pleasantries were usually just a waste of time and air. I stuffed the phone back in my pocket. I had been working as the Hunter for the Stanton Agency for a few months now and I still wasn't getting the hang of this shit, but their secretaries handled a lot of the paperwork that I hated and they could sometimes be useful, so I was hanging in there anyways.

I and my aching muscles decided that I'd worked enough for one night and I threw myself onto my bed with my clothes on, asleep before I knew it.

The year is 1755.

I'm running through the forest. It's not the forests of America, but of Europe more than two centuries ago. I'm not a cougar but a wolf. There is a deer leaping ahead of me, trying to get away from me, but I haven't eaten in days and I need that deer. It's winter and food is sparse. I have no intention of surviving everything I have just to starve to death now.

It flits around, zig-zagging between trunks. I'm not at my best and my steps are erratic, but I'm still quick. I reach the deer and bite at the backs of its legs, getting it to slow down. It's bleeding and stumbles. I'm on top of it, tearing into its throat until blood spurts in my mouth and it stops twitching. I grab it in my jaws and drag it back through the sticks and rocks till I reach the cave.

Hannah comes out. She's in wolf form, too. She eyes the deer and I don't have to ask to know what she's thinking. She's had more trouble handling the raw, recently-living meals than I've had. I can't make it any easier on her, although I would if I could. She's my sister, after all, and I just want to take care of her. But I can't do everything, no matter how hard I try.

'Hexe, hexe…'

I hear a voice on the wind, but Hannah doesn't seem to notice. I must have heard nothing, so I shake it off. I close my eyes and say a quick prayer, trying to stop feeling everything that I'm feeling: the fear, the guilt… I try not to think, because now is not the time for thinking.

We both eventually tear into the animal's flesh, however, because we are starving and there's nothing else. We're new in this area and don't know what plants are safe to eat, and there aren't many plants left now anyways. We have no home and no family so no money and we are too terrified to try to go into human society. It's too soon.

Eventually, we have eaten everything that can be eaten. Hannah looks like she feels as stuffed as I am, but we don't know when we'll eat again so it's best to make the most of it now, and so we do. Then, we slink to the back of the cave and curl up together.

What else is there to do?

The next day started like any other when I wasn't on the hunt, which is to say rather boring.

I got up and ate and showered. I took care of some paperwork from last night's hunt and then I took care of some things around the house. By the time I was done, it was getting dark and I decided that I would be a good little soldier and go into the office. Generally speaking, I tried to avoid any place that held the name 'office' but sometimes, there was no hiding. I had to check in and make sure Stanton wasn't foaming at the mouth about last night.

In truth, I wasn't really giving the woman enough credit. Blood suckers weren't my favorite, but she was a capable and level-headed creature and she was a good boss, even if I wasn't exactly an employee. She was fair and considerate. In my more magnanimous moments, I thought she didn't really deserve all the shit I gave her, but those moments were thankfully rare.

Piling into my car, I wrinkled my nose at the lingering scent of dog that I could do nothing about and I pulled onto the road. It was a little less than ten minutes till I pulled into a parking spot at the Stanton Agency and sauntered in. Madison, who was the secretary through the night shift, looked like she was just getting set up. This place was its busiest over night, seeing as how the boss couldn't even get out of her daytime coma to come in until sunset and that was the case for many of our clients, too.

"Surprise, surprise," Madison said with the frighteningly sweet smile that said she really wanted to poke me with something sharp but was playing nice because that was her job. A passably pretty girl, werewolf, with blonde hair and big blue eyes, I always thought she looked like she should be on a box of Swiss Miss in pigtails rather than working in an office.

"Is Stanton in?" I didn't like to call people by their first names, unless I know them really well and I don't get to know people that well that often. Some people I can't help it with, though, like Madison.

Madison nodded. "She is," she said. I knew the two of them lived together, so maybe they drove in together too. "She also happens to be free at the moment and, as far as I know, isn't on the phone. So, if you feel like putting your head in the bear's mouth you can go on in."

I gave her a dry look. "I like bears," I muttered with fervor, walking past her desk and into the office behind her without knocking on the door.

"I'd be mad at you for not knocking if I wasn't just so bowled over that you actually decided to grace us with your presence," Stanton said before I even had both feet over the threshold. I paused, batting down a serious urge to turn around and walk right back out because she was a smart ass. "Shut the door."

"This must be what it's like for school kids that get called into the principal's office," I commented. This wasn't something I had first hand knowledge in, but I could guess it felt something like this. I shut the door and sat down. She hadn't invited me to sit, but I did it anyways. Contrary to what most people thought, I actually did know what was proper and in keeping with manners in most situations. I just chose to ignore it.

Stanton folded her hands on the edge of her desk and leaned forward. From inside her long dark hair, I could see the thin scar line around her neck from where she'd been nearly strangled by a silver wire a few months ago. Silver would always leave marks, when it was deep enough. It's where the rasp in her voice came from.

I knew that this was going to be an oh-so-fun speech from how long it was taking her to get the first words together.

"I know that our arrangement isn't exactly employer and employee," she began and I already knew this. I considered not listening but resisted the rebelliousness. "You work in a profession that has you working alone. I get that you're just contracted to work with us, but in doing so, you aren't an island."

"I'm never an island," I pointed out, "I don't have the mass for it."

Her mouth twitched. She wanted to laugh. I could tell. Her self restraint impressed me, however. "If you are going to work with us then there are some times that you are going to have to do just that: work with us and you'll have to do it whether you like it or not. Because sometimes, grown-ups have to do things we don't like, and I know that you're about twenty times older than the rest of us, so you should be better at it."

"Hey." I frowned. She knew how old I was. She was just goading me. I hated when she did that, because she was really fucking good at it sometimes. "I think my age grants me the right to not do anything I don't want to do."

"Doesn't work that way," she told me without missing a beat. "You're a damn good hunter and I don't want to lose you. Having you on the letterhead, so to speak, brings in a lot more business in the hunting game. I also sometimes even like you as a person, when you're not being a pain in the ass. That's not often, but sometimes. I'd like for you to continue working with us but you will have to do the team thing some of the time, which means keeping us in the loop better, for one."

I looked around, plotting my escape. "I can work on it." This definitely had to be what it felt like to get called into the principal's office. "Just don't nag me."

She shrugged, looking unimpressed. "I'll nag you when it needs doing, but if you work with us as needed and keep doing your job then I won't have to hound you."

"I suppose so," I said. I hated giving up ground just on principle, really, but I knew she was kind of right.

The fact of the matter was that I did sort of like working with the agency. Madison was very good at her job and her job saved me from a lot of things I loathed, like the paperwork but also customer service and appointment-making. I would rather be out on the road or in the woods, doing the actual tracking and hunting and catching.

"Are we done?" I asked.

"Yeah." She nodded. "Go see Madison. She has a job for you."