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

Chapter 41 - Final Outcome

"Do you know what it is? Or where it's gone too?" She asked him, swiping a piece of straw off of his shirt and dropping it off the bed.

"No....I only have a vague hunch to go on right now. I'll do more research on its ID later...." Mantilo said in response to the first question then shrugged to the second. "As for the killer's location, the boys are scouring the Martians farm for clues. Then I assigned each of them to making individual rounds in each of the villages but I fear that the menace has had its fill of free food and will be laying low for the next few days."

"So what will you do?" She asked him. "If it goes to ground it will take you even longer to find it, and if it's randomly traveling all over the place killing things it could pop up anywhere next time."

"Exactly, so the only thing I can do..." "Mantilo sighed coming to a conclusion in that moment. "Is something that's going to make me terribly unpopular for the next few days with the entire Clan?"

Glen gasped. Her gaze sparking with light as she quickly realized what he was moving towards. "You putting the Village on Lock Down, aren't you?"

"It's for the best....Right now, this thing....whether I'm right about its identity or not....its vicious and aggressive." Mantilo hissed. "And it's bold. Taking out full grown moose which is big intelligent game for any predator to tackle. Then it finishes by attacking Ezekiel, Nate and now a farm full of horses...." Mantilo shook his head. "I think it's going to kill someone if we don't find it soon."

"But a Lock Down Mantilo?" Glen pushed softly. "It will only a few more weeks before the Celebration is scheduled to take place in the Clan. Preparation will be totally crushed if we are forced to stop all travel and remain confined in our separate villages. Please tell me this is going to be less of a disaster then the Lock Down we had to enact when that terrible orange Fever broke out last fall."

Mantilo shook his head, even as he sort of shuttered inside. He remembered that particular Lock Down all too well. The orange fever, so named by his Mate and the other Healers in the village, because the effected Shifter that contacted it broke out in hives and swelling complemented by the whites of their eyes acquiring a healthy orange tine....all before the Shifter fell into shock and died. The orange fever had been a mysterious plague on his land that had seemed to come from nothing and eventually disappear altogether.

But in an attempt to save lives and slow the spread of the sickness, Mantilo had had to enact a massive, unforgiving Lock Down that had lasted nearly three months. Banning all traffic through the villages except by the Healers, his eldest sons and a Few Clans men brave enough to risk infection to pass out food.

"Well...." Mantilo breathed coming out of his own thoughts. "Hopefully this it won't be as severe as past Lock downs or as long. I'm planning on enacting a simple curfew and a band on most travel in the forests or along the edges of the Village, which seems to be the main areas where this thing is choosing to strike form."

A small smile curved Glen lips as he brushed her hair behind her shoulder. It was a simple smile, but it was a smile that he felt was about to out maneuver him somehow.

Glen asked him another veiled question. "So basically there won't be any travel allowed?"

"Well travel among the four Villages will be risky, but outside of that, I'm more concerned about the fringes of the Village. So I'll be limiting travel across the Clan Lands for the next few days until the beast is brought down. So yes, I'm putting the entire Clan on the same exact leash."

"The entire Clan? Everyone in the Clan?" Glen asked him slowly as though she were trying to line up her own thoughts as well as clarify his own.

Mantilo hissed softly at her. He felt it coming, the purely male part of him sense her quietly maneuvering him the way that she wanted him to go, but he wasn't sure what she was doing just yet. "Yes, everyone in the Clan.....Glen what are you doing?" he asked her sharply.