Lion Conquers All by Krystal Shannan

3

AARAV

He was on the north side of town making rounds when the cell phone in his pocket rang. It was the office line. He pulled over on the side of the road to answer.

“Deputy Di’Rham, here.”

“Di’Rham, I’ve got the Roberts, husband and his wife, in the office. And they are anxious as a hive of disturbed honeybees. They say their son Sam has been missing for two days.” Patsy’s voice held a hint of worry. It was uncommon for the sheriff’s secretary to allow stress into her voice. The woman was typically unflappable, no matter what kind of craziness happened in town.

“Isn’t it likely he’s off with his friends like the rest of the kids in this town, living up the break between summer school and next semester?”

“They were in Anchorage for their anniversary. Just got back in town. The house is empty. No note. Nothing. His phone is going straight to voicemail. They checked his Xbox and it says the last activity was two days ago.” Patsy’s voice was worried. The older woman rarely got concerned over anything, but he could hear the thready line of fear shaking her normally concrete constitution.

“No sign of forced entry or a struggle. Nothing?”

“No. Not that they could tell. They came straight here.”

“Send them home and give me their address. Let them know I’ll meet them at their house.”

“Yes, sir. Thank you.”

Aarav waited for the telltale ding of a message to come through. The magick—the technology—in this world was unlike anything he’d ever seen on Reylea.

At first it’d been quite overwhelming, but after going through training to be a deputy and the humans in the Tribe giving him what they called a “crash course” in “human stuff”, he felt quite comfortable with most of it.

He could “surf the net”, download files, answer emails, stream TV. He wasn’t the greatest with computers, but all he had to do was ask Patsy at the office or one of the humans, or former humans, in the Tribe.

They were always more than accommodating. And he caught on quick. As soon as someone showed him how to do something once, he could replicate it efficiently. Naomi called him a quick learner.

He typed the address into the map program in the car. The directions popped up. He knew exactly where the Roberts lived. He’d taken his time since being hired by the Mystery Sheriff’s Department to drive the entire town, even the outskirts on a regular basis. He was familiar with every part of the territory. The Tribe’s territory.

When and if anything happened, he would have the upper hand.

He would be prepared.

Always.

Thirty minutes puthim at the Roberts’ house. They lived outside of town on the south side. Beautiful country. Foothills of the Denali National Park.

Aarav pulled up and parked in front of their house. They were standing on the porch steps waiting. The husband was tall, short dark hair, dressed in jeans and a long sleeve thermal shirt. The wife was dressed nearly the same. Their house was much more impressive.

The enormous farmhouse sprawled on their acreage. There was a large horse barn to the right of the house and a pool peeking out from behind the home. He wondered why the boys in town hadn’t picked this house to camp out at instead of the Tragher’s.

He checked his phone again before he climbed out of the squad car, Patsy had kindly texted over their names too—Calvin and Sarah Roberts. The son’s name was Sam.

“Sir. Ma’am. I’m Deputy Li’Rham.”

“Please come in,” the male said, gesturing for him to enter. “Sam’s never done this before. And normally he always has his phone. The cameras on the house were turned off. So he did that before he left.”

Aarav cataloged what they were telling him. “No sign of any forced entry? Doors? Windows?”

“No. I personally checked every single one. Then I checked the alarm system. The last time a door was opened and closed was two days ago at 4:23am.” Calvin’s tone sounded worried, but also calculated and precise. This was a man that didn’t miss details.

“Your system tracks all of that?”

“Yes. Even if it’s been disarmed, it still monitors all activity and logs it. But Sam turned the cameras off. Which is so unlike him.” The man shrugged his shoulders, defeat and confusion darkening his expression.

Aarav turned to the wife. “Mrs. Roberts have you noticed anything missing or out of place? Anything that made you stop and pause?” In his experience, most females tended to notice small details out of place in their home faster than the males.

“I—well—“ He heard the panic in her words. Her husband was attacking the situation methodically, but her instincts as a mother were something that also needed to be taken into account.

“Would you mind walking me through your home? Through Sam’s room or anywhere he spent a lot of time?”

She complied immediately, heading deeper into the house.

Aarav took a deep breath, focusing on the scents in the house. A second male did live in the house, but it was faint. The boy definitely had been gone a couple of days.

Sarah led them to a large room with couches and two TVs and wall-to-wall shelves of sports memorabilia. “He played his games in here, but nothing looks out of place or missing. His consoles are still plugged in. Even the more portable Switch is still on its dock.”

Aarav walked through the room. The boy’s scent was stronger, but still stale. “It’s good there’s no sign of disturbance. It means he likely went wherever he is of his own free will.”

The mother took a slightly deeper breath, but went right back to chewing on her bottom lip. The husband stood behind her and put his hands on her shoulders. She let the male comfort her for only a few seconds before moving again.

“His room is upstairs.” She left the media room and Aarav trailed behind the husband.

“You really think he went somewhere? Just left?”

“I can’t say for sure, Mr. Roberts. Your home doesn’t look disturbed. Did you and Sam fight about anything recently?”

“No. And we’ve left him for several days like this before. He likes having the house to himself. Usually he eats a bunch of junk food and stays up really late. Sometimes he’ll have friends over and when we get back the refrigerator is empty…but, we expect that. We never tell him he can’t have friends over. They don’t trash the place. They are all gamers. They sit around and play Fortnite and Need for Speed.”

They made their way up the staircase and turned to the right into a large bedroom. The walls were light grey. A red rug with some bean bag chairs sat in front of another TV.

“Anything out of place up here?”

“Yes.” Mrs. Roberts voice was shaking.

Aarav waited patiently for her to share.

She took another deep breath and pointed to the closet. “His backpack is missing. A pair of hiking boots. And his bow is gone. I would assume clothes are probably gone too, but it’s hard to say only looking at the drawers.”

He walked to the closet and opened the door. “How could you tell?”

She walked closer and pointed to an empty spot on a shelf. “The boots were there.” Then she pushed a section of clothes to the end of a rod on her right. The bow was back there in its case.” And then she pointed to the back of the door where several random things were hanging on hooks. “The backpack hung there. I haven’t seen it anywhere in the house and he really only used it when he was staying over at a friend’s place.”

“Good. This is helpful. Thank you, Mrs. Roberts.”

“What are you going to do to find him? We’ve already called his friends. No one has seen him.”

They shut the closet and Aarav moved back to the center of their son’s room. There was another scent in the room. So faint. But enough that he was quite sure it was female.

“I hadn’t asked yet, but does Sam have a girlfriend?”

Both the parents shook their heads at the same time. Mr. Roberts spoke quietly. “If he does, he hasn’t shared it with us.”

“You said his phone was still here?”

“No,” Mr. Roberts answered. “But it goes to voicemail. So it’s either dead or he’s turned it off. We assume it’s off, because when we run the locator app, it can’t pinpoint it.”

Aarav pressed his lips tight. This boy had run away. He had planned it. Taken supplies. Likely he knew he could be located with his phone and so had it off to avoid detection. Still, at least the boy had taken it for emergencies.

“I’m going to start by canvasing your neighbors and Sam’s friends. Sometimes people notice things they don’t think are important, but turn out to be. Since he’s been gone quite a while already…nearly forty-eight hours, depending on what I find out today, I will start organizing a search and rescue team.”

“Where are you going to look?” The mother’s voice was barely more than a whisper.

Aarav forced himself not to frown. Finding a boy in the wilderness of Alaska, especially if he didn’t want to be found, was not going to be easy. Mystery sat adjacent to Denali National Park. There were thousands of acres of land and mountains. And he couldn’t shift into his lion and track him.

Or send one of the wolves out to do the same.

The Tribe was staying off the radar. Nothing suspicious. No one shifted close to town. Ever. And they only shifted for a few hours each to hunt on the Tribe’s land in the dark with lookouts posted to watch for humans.

He couldn’t even bring one of the wolves in and pretend it was a search and rescue dog. Reylean wolves were huge. Bigger than the biggest “dog” varieties and bigger than the natural wolves that lived out here too.

“We will look everywhere. I’m going to see if I can get Anchorage Search and Rescue to come up ASAP to help.”

Aarav pulled a card from his front breast pocket and handed it to Mr. Roberts. “This has my cell on it. If you think of anything, or need anything, call me.”

“May I take a couple pieces of Sam’s clothes from his laundry?”

“Of course. Whatever you need.” Mrs. Roberts grabbed a couple of shirts from a hamper in the corner and handed them over. “Please find my son.”

“We are going to do everything we can, ma’am.”

Well, not everything.

Because we can’t use our biggest advantage in public.

But we are going to do everything we can right up to that line.

But he couldn’t say that.

No one could know what they were. What they could do. It was imperative and he knew it was. He’d learned enough about the world to understand the repercussion for going public as an alien.

That’s what they would be called.

Or an animal. He wasn’t sure which would be worse.

Ever since Connie made the comment that the town was suspicious. Col had the Tribe locked down tight. No one shifted alone. And no one shifted unless the whole tribe knew about it.

Aarav didn’t blame Col. He was protecting the tribe the best way he could.

“I’ll be in touch, Mr. Roberts, Mrs. Roberts.” They didn’t respond. They were still looking around their son’s room in a daze.

He couldn’t imagine what the terror of losing a child felt like, but he could see it manifesting in their expressions and it cut into his chest like a knife to the heart.

Aarav left them standing in the center of their son’s room and quietly made his way back to his car outside. The first place he needed to go was the Tragher’s house. Helen’s boys knew everyone in town and usually knew what everyone was doing. Hell, most of the time, they were doing something on the Tragher property.