Standing tall at the edge of the property, Grant shifted into his bare human form. Looking into the orange illuminated windows of the two-story antebellum home, he sniffed the air out with the keen scents of different humans mingling the air.
Jordan spread next to him, along with Julibee, who was close by.
"Why am I heah?" She asked.
"So they know you're under command & that they know you," Jordan responded.
She observed Grant, who had salt-and-pepper hair, a short beard, white but extremely tan from doing council work outside all day, & muscular from knowing how to kill someone with his bare hands. Julibee remained cautious as all three came up to the Hewitt home's front door and were let in by Malachi.
"Just what do you want?" Malachi demanded at Grant with his hand at the handle of his machete. The rest of the family is also on edge, some having their guns out while another has a chainsaw at the ready.
"Listen, listen," Grant started with a smile and carefree attitude, "Ain't here to fight no one. I know we got off on the wrong foot since you saw me that night we raided your family property. But I am under much different and fair orders."
Qiana stood up to be next to Malachais's side. "What are the orders, Grant? Does it have to do with the humans?"
Grant looked her up and down, noticing her hands' shallow cuts, knowing well he was in the middle of a common ground agreement before answering, "It deals with everyone, which is why Julibee is here to tell the others since I have no time to collect them all."
Crossing his arms, he put his attention on all humans in the room, "Okay, first order of business! It is well known by now that you humans live quite the private lives, so private in fact that you have been killing for a couple of years now, decades even. Which is a benefit to the clan; we make a large living off getting rid of some people. However, this takes a lot of time and work, and frankly, not too many people are cut out for it, which is where you all come in."
"So you just want the rest of the family extended into the agreement we had made with Rothman?" Darla asked, to which Grant shook his head no.
"Well close, but not exactly," he continued. "The agreement you have with Rothman still stands to clear the surrounding Texas land with any passerby so the clan can do their business. However, the difference now is that it includes our prisoners we sent to y'all."
"You mean sentencing executions? How do you expect the humans to comply with that?" Qiana narrowed her eyes.
"Why do you think the Aussies stay here now? Got them here to go after them if they escape. It's all just a hint, but those prisoners would be too weak to escape by the time they're dropped off here for execution. The catch is, honestly, we don't care what y'all do with their remains, but I have a hunch you already got that figured out."
They all knew he referenced the food they had to eat for survival. But now, shapeshifters were being added to that menu. "I guess, shoot won't do us any harm, would it?"
Grant was confused until he connected the dots. "Oh, eating them? Naw, naw, once they die in whatever form they choose, they stay that way. Also, as they are convicted prisoners, all their property is seized. Anything of value they owned is also yours. Except for land ownership, which stays with the clan's higher-ups. But any gold jewelry or what have you goes to you all as an added benefit."
Hoyt pursed his lips, hearing it would be a burden on the family to keep up with the clan's demand for killing, but that the pros of keeping their flesh and items as well as clean protection from the outside world outweighed the negatives. Still, he had to set family boundaries.
"Heh, sure thang, just one request," the sheriff asked as Grant paid him attention.
"We got the right to refuse service, my house can only fit enough dead bodies and I bough people able to bury them all."
Cracking a wide smile, the hairs on his beard stretching, he said, "Perfect! I'll be dropping by a week from now with the first shipment. We'll try week increments and see where we go from there
The two men shook on it, and Grant and Jordan made their way out the door and into the sky.
Hoyt laughed to himself and shook his head, watching the bats flying into the night.
"Hoyt, you sure they listen?" Luda Mae asked him in a hushed tone.
He put a reassuring arm around the woman he knew best all his life. "They need us, remember? We don't need them."
A blessing in disguise, the lord may have brought us," he thought to himself, thinking about Qiana's prayer over the dinner table and the subsequent blood oath she took after revealing everything about her kind and the savagery in entows.
Out of all the killings that collectively done through survival through dodging the law through family death and separation they all continued to see another day.
But now it would involve satan himself more than ever.
"What a fucking curse." Hoyt muttered to himself.