Shape Shifting Assholes

125.

"Shape shifting assholes." Clarissa and Gilbert had mostly been quiet since they got the cheap hotel room. Both had seen the other in various forms of naked for a while now so neither were bothered by taking showers in the presence of the other. Gilbert was the first one to really speak as he was drying his hair.

"What are?"

"Skin walkers, you hadn't asked, but I figured you would eventually. They are a native american demon, or at least natives ran across them first. They tend to hide as a lot of different animals, even people, but really they are just shape shifting assholes." Gilbert still didn't like what had happened, and unsprung trap is scary, it shows intent but not follow through.

"So what do they want normally?"

"To torture people mentally and physically and then kill and eat them. They are like an evil shape changing cat, usually pack hunters too." Clarissa shivered the air felt too cold all at once.

"So how do we kill them?"

"Elk horn of a living elk right to the heart."

"Living Elk?"

"Means you can't have killed it, not that we have to like get an elk to ram one through the chest, though I admit the idea of tricking a pack of skin walkers into a pack of elk is amusing."

"So do you have some of this elk stuff available?"

"I have one knife, but I know where I can get more, and we'll need more, this pack of skin walkers are not just some monster hiding in the forest, they have a plan here and that's worrying to me, come on lets get to Missing Persons, Garcia and Micheals won't wait all day.

****

Missing Persons was in the sub basement of the sub basement. It wasn't even the official branch of the missing person's department, that was upstairs in the regular department areas. Where Micheals and Garcia worked was next to a bunch of things that wouldn't have looked out of place in the X-Files. Officially the Seattle Police Department did not believe in monsters, nor sending officers to chase them, unofficially if you pissed off the right people you wound up in "missing persons". Tasked with chasing down every bump in the night and every dumb kook in the city who claimed they saw a bigfoot. Micheals actually had some wins since she got busted down from Lieutenant due to a nebulous personnel complaint. She had Gilbert to thank for those when she called him up on a whim when reading the back of some Cryptozoological magazine.

"Christ every time I come here it looks sadder than the last time." Gilbert laughed at the two desk set up and the "wanted bigfoot" poster on big display between them.

"Nothing quite as sad as your sense of humor Gilbert, what took you two so long?"

"Imp juice soaks your skin, you have to scrub for a few minutes." Clarissa ever the haggard old hand at killing monsters spoke for Gilbert.

"I was trying to balance cheap and won't get a disease from being in the room when selecting my motel." Gilbert still didn't like how much he had to pay, but he made due with at least the shower was hot.

"Well while you two were dinking around we found out shit, Simmons the ranger, and the two joggers are now missing, so the trap was sprung." Garcia got up and put the pictures of the three missing people on the board underneath big foot. Gilbert shook his head, that didn't make sense, why kill people after you'd lured them to a location. He paced for a second, no one said anything, and then he stopped and slapped Micheals desk.

"Yeah they are missing, but not the ones you met."

"You're not making sense Gilbert." Micheals was confused, but Gilbert generally did that to her.

"The trap, it wasn't to catch some joggers or a park ranger. If you're a predator you know that you aren't the only one out there, you know that there are other predators, so you set up a trap and see who comes." It dawned on Garcia and Micheals at the same time, the weird awkward nature of Simmons and him being confused missing persons was there.

"Shit they were looking for us." Garcia sat in his chair slightly worried about his interaction with Simmons and the Joggers.

"But what they didn't see was us." Clarissa could feel confidence creeping into her thoughts.

"Right, they saw you two, but I didn't see a park ranger or joggers when I pulled up, so they got your scent but not mine, and the imp guts would have made the actual scent worse. Which makes you two bait for our own trap."

"I don't like this plan at all."

"Sure you don't Micheals, but you'll love it when we catch these shape shifting assholes."

"Or I'll be dead and eaten and not have an opinion on it."

"Try and stay positive Micheals, they might just capture us and torture us." Garcia didn't like the plan either, but he also didn't have plans for the weekend anyway.