Fire Weaver (Fall of the Fey #1)

Chapter 22

It was difficult to track scents in a town that was full of smells, both good and bad. Dresdan hadn't needed to track through a city like this in the three years, you didn't need a nose to be a miner. He shook his head, he still couldn't believe he worked as a miner. He sucked at it, he knew he sucked at it and still he did it. Mining was one of the best paying jobs and he was trying to get as much as he could.

He breathed in the air through his nose and could still smell the spices from the main street even though he was on the other side of the city. Farroway was filled with restaurants and the smell made it hard to concentrate but it was everywhere. Underneath it though he could scent the vague smell of earth, which Ferra and Toby carried like a cloak. They could fool the humans but they couldn't fool anyone with a strong sense of smell. Dresdan considered shifting but shrugged the thought off. It wasn't necessary and it would take forever.

Dresdan wandered the streets, his shoulders relaxed and his head bent down. He didn't want to look like he was searching for something in case there was a lookout where the kids were kept.. When he lost the woodsy scent track he'd loop around to find it again. It was a slow process but it meant no one who noticed him would think anything of him, just a guy getting lost on the street, or a man going on an afternoon stroll. Unremarkable, one in a million.

The track led to two places, one he knew well was abandoned because he used to take his teenage girlfriends there, and the other in the middle of a busy crossroad. He backtracked to the first place and knocked on the house next door. When there was no answer he grabbed the handle and turned, feeling the burn of his muscles shift slightly and felt the sudden release of the lock breaking. He pushed open the door and walked in confidently, he knew glancing around before entering would be more suspicious.

Luckily the house was also abandoned. It was unusual to have two unoccupied houses beside each other but it was probably due to a vermin issue. Rodents were plenty in Farroway and once they decided to take up residence in a house they were almost impossible to get rid of. Dresdan sighed and rubbed his face before getting undressed.

His was not sudden or seamless. Muscles stretched taught and bones cracked and jutted, all the while Dresdan clenched his face tight and tried not to scream as his body rearranged itself unnaturally to the size of a large rat. He collapsed onto his now furry stomach at the end but didn't worry about getting up straight away because he knew if he did he could cause himself damage.

When he was ready he pulled himself up and shook out his tan coat his pink nose wiggling. From this view he felt like he was in a giants place and it took him a few steps before he got the hang of walking on three legs. Again he was struck by jealousy of the shifters, the lucky bastards. They could shift seamlessly without pain and be ready to go without vertigo or pain.

He used the scent tracks that rodents had already left to find his way to the house next door where he was certain one of the kids were being kept. Then went to find the kids scent so that he could see which one it was in the house. He kept to the inside of the walls as he checked first the bottom level, then the second level and that is where he found Tobi. Curled up by himself staring at the wall, his face puffy from crying. He was fiddling with the bracelet on his wrist. Dresdan heard a thunderous crack and peaked out a bit more to find the guard, another minotaur sitting on an old wooden chair reading a book. Dresdan guessed that the minotaur didn't think that Tobi posed much of a flight risk.

With that done he left the way he came and stared dejectedly at his pile of clothes before he started the gruelling process of shifting back. When he shifted back onto his hands and knees he fell to his side with a groan. He was covered with sweat and was shivering convulsively.

'Fucking shifters.' He said through his panting, thinking again of how easy they had it. He pulled himself up and got dressed.  All he could think about as he walked back to Stairwell and though the plain door into Gregor's house was of a bath and a nice big cup of scotch.