Chapter 1

1

Pinal County, Arizona

Early fall

When he paused on the crest of a long ridge, Alex Macalister used the cover of a cluster of ragged creosote bushes and other desert vegetation to mask his silhouette. The sunset glow and a crescent moon riding low in the sky cast a faint shadow that stretched out on the rugged ground before him. He knelt, steadied his heartbeat and breath, and then sent his senses questing in every direction. If a snake slithered, an insect crawled, or a dusk-hunting fox or coyote crept within a mile of him, he would know. Strangely, he sensed nothing. Such silence was not normal. It was not good.

Alex hunted alone. He preferred it that way. The distance and chill in his pale grey eyes kept most people at arm’s length if not even farther away. In his three years with the U.S. Border Patrol, he’d proved his skills valuable enough he could now almost write his own rules. As a special agent in the still very unofficial Paranormal Operations Unit, he surveyed the Arizona and New Mexico border with Mexico, often on foot as well as alone. Not assigned to any district, he reported directly to the southwest sector commander, going through none of the intermediate officers.

The border knew many threats: drug runners, smugglers of diverse contraband, undocumented immigrants and a variety of foreign nationals seeking to slip into the United States for an equal variety of unpleasant activities. Now one could add to the list—entities existing outside the realm of normal earthbound human life. This fact was not, as yet, common knowledge, never discussed in any official communications, and classified at the highest level of security. Still, that made it no less real—as real and serious as death and taxes. This growing new threat had become the venue of a small group of handpicked agents like Alex and the team of Liam Malone and Rhys Davis, men who possessed their own special powers to utilize against the dangerous new invaders.

::Shift!::The silent command shrieked in Alex’s mind.

He did not question the order or its source. In the duration of a heartbeat, he shut his eyes, curled in upon himself, and shimmered.A second or two later he launched into the air, clad in black feathers subtly darker than the evening sky. At the same instant, a shot rang out. He heard the bullet scream past beneath him, about midline on his human form had he still been standing on the ground.

Close, too shaggin’ close.

Casting his raptor-enhanced vision downward and ahead of where he had stopped, Alex detected movement on another ridge, almost a mile away. Soaring in that direction, he soon saw a man huddled under a mesquite just below the ridgeline. Dressed in flat charcoal grey, the stranger held a scoped rifle, one Alex identified as a powerful and accurate sniper weapon.

A raven could not smile, but the man within the bird did as he realized what a close call he’d managed to evade. Where did the warning come from?He might never know. Sometimes he thought such alerts came from an ancestor or a local spirit, sometimes a deity of his Celtic forbearers from the dim past. Other times he had no idea of the identity of the unseen, unknown friend who warned him in time to evade danger. So far, it—or they—had always saved him. Perhaps someday his luck would run out. The thought held no dread, no threat. When summoned, he would go—wherever.

A tawny brown, ivory, and grey streak sliced across his flight path, mere feet ahead of him. Then the other bird wheeled to fly under him, stealing his air for a few wing beats. After that, the second hunter soared away. Alex identified a red-tailed hawk, apparently out flying late. This hour of deepening twilight was more commonly the realm of owls. His own raven form was also out of its normal pattern, but for now, it was his safest guise.

He slowed his powerful wings to drift lower, as close as he dared go to the shooter, still crouched under the stunted tree. Even Alex’s superb vision could not form a clear picture of the man’s visage. He suspected the shooter wore camouflage face paint or a thin veil to disrupt his appearance.

Then as the wind shifted, Alex caught a whiff of the other man’s scent. He filed that away for future reference. Varied diets and many other factors acted together to give each human a distinct odor. While few other people could detect the differences, many animals could. In this form, Alex’s heightened senses were as keen as those of any wild creature. He wheeled in the sky and flew on past, over the ridge, and into a valley beyond, coming slowly to the ground where he could change back to his normal form.