Wild Country (The World of the Others #2)- Anne Bishop Page 0,17

to the terra indigene living in the Midwest to come to Bennett and participate in a mixed community. There were already several shifter gards here, along with the five Sanguinati who had joined him from Toland, but more terra indigene would be needed to keep the Elders from reacting harshly to an influx of humans.

He placed a call to Jesse Walker, doodling on a message pad while he listened to the phone ringing. Doodling was a new human activity, one he found surprisingly enjoyable. He filled the top part of the paper with crosshatching before a female voice said, “Walker’s General Store.”

“Good afternoon, Rachel. This is Tolya Sanguinati. May I speak to Jesse Walker?”

“Are you sure you want to?”

Not anymore. “Is there a reason why I wouldn’t want to speak with her?”

“She’s growling at paper. I don’t know why. Well, a piece of paper cut her finger and she said words I’m not supposed to learn. I offered to bite the paper because I have better teeth, but she said she didn’t need help. I was on a ladder, dusting the top shelves in the store. That’s why the phone rang and rang.”

That made sense, except he was fairly sure Jesse Walker also had a phone in the back room, where, presumably, her desk for paperwork was located. Could she be so injured she couldn’t answer the phone? Or was she ignoring the thing?

Some background noise, then Rachel said, “It’s Tolya Sanguinati. He wants to talk to you.”

“Mr. Sanguinati,” Jesse said once the phone exchanged hands.

She sounded cornered. No. Stressed? Prey was so difficult to gauge by just a voice coming over wires.

Not prey. Not edible. But the courtesy he didn’t hear in her voice suggested he should skip the back-and-forth words that usually began conversations with humans. “The Lakeside Courtyard is holding a job fair next week. Hopefully the new citizens will start arriving by the end of next week and early the following week. I don’t know how many they will find that they consider suitable, but they will try to find the humans—”

Virgil called.

“—you indicated were a priority,” he finished.

A beat of silence. “Thank you.” Jesse sighed. “Thank you.”

Her relief sounded excessive and he wanted to ask what was wrong, but Stazia Sanguianti, who was the manager of the bank, said,

“I have to go. I’ll call with more information when I have it.” He hung up and hurried out of his office.

Instead of answering the question, Virgil said,

The mayor’s office looked out over the square, but trees blocked his view of the spring. He opened the window, shifted to his smoke form, and flowed down the side of the building and across the street, moving at a speed he couldn’t match in his human form.

As soon as he was in sight of the spring—and the two females, one of them being Barbara Ellen—he stopped to assess the danger. Virgil was there in human form, Kane in Wolf form. Stazia was in human form. Isobel, who was in charge of the post office, was a column of smoke partially hidden by one of the trees.

“Do you need help?” Barbara Ellen asked the female who was drinking spring water out of cupped hands. “Have you had anything to eat?” A hesitation. “Do you understand my words?”

That was a good question. The female was terra indigene. That much Tolya sensed. But the form? Something dangerous. Something lethal, even to the rest of them. Something even Virgil had hesitated to confront, despite another Wolf and two Sanguinati supporting him.

Tolya shifted to his human form, the movement drawing the female’s attention. When she straightened and turned to face him—and streaks of black suddenly appeared in her gold, blue, and red hair—he felt the unpleasant sensation of being genuinely afraid.

Harvester. Plague Rider. A rare form of terra indigene that, for the most part, were solitary because they were so deadly. When a Harvester’s hair turned solid black, he or she could kill another creature with just a look. The Sanguinati mostly lived on blood taken fresh from their prey. A Harvester took the prey’s life energy, turning organs into black sludge.

She looked human enough to pass for human at a distance, if her hair wasn’t coiling and changing color at the moment she was seen. But her eyes were black or so dark a brown to