Sedona, Arizona, present day…
           

The night’s blackness cloaked the land, hiding those who didn’t wish to be seen and giving freedom to countless nocturnal activities of both animal and human. Across the wide expanse of manicured lawn the forest loomed expectantly. All that dwelt within its dark, protective interior embraced the stillness, waiting and watching. He would hunt again this night.

Naked, Aiden Calhoun stepped through his back door and lifted his face to the sky, inhaling the crisp air. Varied scents rode on the slight breeze: forest creatures, including shape-shifters in their animal forms, the earth and the surrounding greenery. He felt the watchfulness of the forest creatures; knew he was the cause of their tension, their wariness. His relentless searches had disturbed the land and its occupants for the past month.

He was frustrated and it showed, rippling off him in waves as he moved through the dark paths in the dead of night. His potent rage hovered just beneath the surface, a silent warning to any who would cross his path while he stalked his elusive prey.

His sleek, muscled body moved with supple grace as he stepped onto the cool, crisp lawn. His six-foot form blurred as he broke into a lope, then a run. His speed increased until the moon’s luminous rays caught glints of black, and nothing more. Thick unruly waves of coal-black hair rippled over his shoulders, gleaming with blue-black tints in the faint glow of moonlight. Charcoal-gray eyes blazed with a cold fire that fueled his strength and speed. His sleek muscles and tall frame sinuously blended, shifting into a form just short of seven feet in length from flattened nose to long, winding tail. Large paws, equipped with razor-sharp retractile claws, replaced human hands. Toned arms and strong legs morphed into furred limbs, which raced across the ground without missing a step.

Tufted ears lay flat against his rounded head with the force of his bursting speed. His wide mouth gaped in a feline grimace, deadly shearing teeth glittering in the moonlight. The emerging fur retained the coal-blackness of his hair and, although the eyes were now more narrow and slanted, they retained their silver-gray glow.
 
Aiden Calhoun was a shape-shifter, a man of immense preternatural powers, his creature-counterpart the form of a black cougar. No stranger to the night, he was a deadly hunter without equal. The need for vengeance burned deep within his soul, a darkness so strong it threatened to overpower his humanity. It urged him into the forest’s interior, pushed him to find answers. He glided silently across the forest floor, seeming to barely touch the brittle leaves. Stealth and deadly intent pulsed through his powerful form. His uniquely colored eyes glowed with piercing purpose as he scanned the pathways, the undergrowth.

Each night his final destination remained the same. He slowed his run as the secluded place came into view. Cautiously he walked into the small clearing where his younger brother Kyle had been brutally murdered, his blood still staining the ground where he had been found. Stubs of black candles remained in a burnt circle, dark symbols drawn with black ash surrounding their perimeter.  The stench of black magic still lingered in the smoky air and it was a smell Aiden would never forget. He growled low in his throat, remembering the gruesome scene that he and his younger brother Gavin, had found.

Kyle’s body had been savagely burnt, barely recognizable in this place of sacrificial rite. They had found his wife, Sonia, outside the circle, her flesh cooling in death, a goblet containing poison near her body. When they had moved the bodies, a note, saying ‘forgive me—’ had been found under her hip. Aiden had been shocked beyond measure. He had known his brother and sister in law had been having some problems but this... obscenity was incomprehensible.

He couldn’t ... wouldn’t rest until he understood why Sonia had murdered Kyle, and who had helped her. To die at the hands of one who supposedly loved you had to be the most horrendous of deaths. Aiden’s need for justice didn’t care that Sonia had also taken her own life.

I hope she is burning in whatever hell she was sent to.
She might have committed suicide before they had been able to get any information, killing herself after massacring her beloved, but she had unwittingly left them clues. Aiden vowed to uncover the identity of her accomplice, make them pay for the heartache they had caused his family. All he knew was that they were a magic-user, someone extremely proficient in the black arts. He’d searched relentless and Aiden was sure he was closing in now, that he was getting closer to the truth. He felt it in the air.
Change was coming.

He lifted his head and roared his challenge into the night. He was ready, willing, to destroy whatever, or whoever, might be the source of his family’s pain.  There was no place his enemy could hide. His family would be avenged.

He’d find him... or her.