(MxM) Tales Of A Shifter (P1) - The Meeting

Chapter 66 - Billy

After showering, Ezekiel separated from Brandon and met up with his father and brothers in the field.

Having personally decided to leave Erin and Drin out of the search party Ezekiel and his brothers and their father Mantilo made the slow journey out to the home that Billy, a small time bee keeper in the eastern village had kept with his only daughter Beth....before as the reports indicated form his father's sources and from Billy's own daughter Beth; Billy suddently vanished into thin air.

Ezekiel and his brothers traveled in apprehensive uncertainty that translated into silence. There had been very few missing people's events in their time as Guardians. In the last seven years there had been about twelve Clans men who had gone missing. Of that twelve five of the Shifters had come to unfortunate fates, Six had simply been misunderstandings and One case had been the work of hunters. The moon danced up into the night, kicking the sun out of its perch, before Ezekiel, his father and his brothers finally came upon their destination. The soft wisp of grass crackling in the groups wake and the shutter of pine trees in the far reaches of the night accompanied by the call of bugs was all that could be heard.

Ezekiel found that he hoped that the situation with Billy turned out to be nothing more than a misunderstanding as well, but as they came upon the shambled wreck of broken glass and shattered bee hives that was Billy's home....his gut sunk in utter dejection.

"What the fuck...?" Lander none so eloquently spoke out, what was one every one of the brother's minds as they happened upon the clean destruction that had been visited upon the area.

Billy's home was simple to look at, a cabin that possibly held three rooms looking in from the outside, while there was a wide fence that bordered the eastern field and an open area to the left of the home that was obviously where Billy cultivated his bees and the honey that he had sold to all of the villages in the Clan Lands. Tall, outlines of slightly yellow misshapen ovals and blocks stood there, and to Ezekiels the discordant....and distressed, broken sound of buzzing could just be heard.

When visiting Billy's home in the Past Ezekiel had heard a tapestry of buzzing and movement and life coming from the honey comb fields....but tonight....in the dim darkness Ezekiel suddenly suspected that there was going to be very little life to be found in those fields.

After a few more moments of stunned silence Mantilo turned and in a hushed tone he directed them to fan out. "Go and have a look around the area....Go in pairs and keep an eye out." With a snarl, that could have made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up, Ezekiel watched his father's pupils grow long and begin to glow with a savage yellow light.

"I have a bad feeling about all of this....I think were being watched." He told them, before they all broke up and went their separate ways.Mantilo and Walter paired off to investigate the inside of the cabin, while Ezekiel, Nate and Lander combed the outside of the decimated land for clues as to what had become of their mysteriously missing Clans Men.

They searched the front and back but eventually all of the brothers found themselves out by the bee homes. Seven large, rectangular rows of boxes, where the sound of furious working bees buzzing could normally be heard. But this night...all Ezekiel heard was the pitiful....and dying wing beasts of the last of the bees that had somehow survived the onslaught. Out of thousands.

It was instantly clear to Ezekiel as he examined the area, that not only had the bees come under heavy attack....but that it was by something large and with lots of claws....and ferocity. The large boxes were smashed wide open, like pumpkins that had had a hammer taken to then. Gallons of fresh uncollected honey had spilled out of the intricate and beautifully built honey combs that had been delicately built in the interiors of the boxes by the worker bees. The honey had poured out into the fields, making the grasses sticky, and littering it with the squishy white bodies of the dead larvae. There were various signs of teeth and claws in the wood in the destruction....but none of the marks were distinguishable. Honey made the earth soggy with the spongy smell of honey, but the damp gooey liquid not only made Ezekiel sad to see...but it also made any evidence or tacks muddy and smeared and un-trackable.