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Shift Happens: A Change is as Good as a Quest

In the jungles of South America, photojournalist Mackenzie Thorne is seized by evil men and forced to work in a drug lab under life-threatening conditions. When an opportunity to escape presents itself, Mac doesn’t hesitate. Using courage and cunning and a little help from an unforeseen ally, she escapes her evil captors only to find herself partnered with… a giant, man-killing jaguar on a mission. Together Mac and her furry companion travel an unpaved road through dangerous rainforests and the dreamscape of the spirit lands, encountering myth, magic, truth, and love.
 

Excerpt

PROLOGUE: COLOMBIA, SOUTH AMERICA

Lightning slashes ripped across seething skies. Rain thrashed the jungle. Clouds crashed a thunderous opus, the cacophony of the gods.

Greedy fronds clutched at Mac as she fled through the rainforest, undergrowth tearing at her sodden khakis and T-shirt. Mud oozed around every step, sucking at her boots and leeching her strength, each footprint a puddled signpost to those tracking her.

The same thunder hiding the noise of her flight also masked the sounds of pursuit. Her gut clenched each time a vine snagged her, a phantom hand reaching out to yank her back to hell.

Her sopping hair whipped her face, blinding her. Were they behind? Ahead? Circling back in ambush? She crashed on in panic, frantic to escape.

Something seized her ankle. She stumbled, falling hard, mouthing stinking mud. For long moments she lay gasping, listening, willing herself to move again.

“I need a moment. Just a moment. Please. Please. Please,” she begged. Prayed. Beseeching someone. Something.

“Let me go. Let me go. I promise I’ll be good. I’ll volunteer more, give more to charity, stay out of bad relationships.”

Her empty stomach roiled, blood-bitter regrets tasting foul on her tongue. “I’ll be good. I’ll be better. I’ll make amends.” Amends to whom? She was the one people stomped on. “I’ll grow a spine,” she mumbled.

Icy rain sluiced away mud and blood from nicks and gashes; stinging crimson stripes, the legacy of razor-sharp foliage. Mac rolled onto her back, panting, baptized by ancient jungle gods.

A Sunday school sentence screamed in her drug-addled brain: My God, my God. Why have you forsaken me?

Over the thunder, and the rhythmic tattoo of the rain on the leafy canopy came the sound of a new pursuer: the ragged scream of a jungle cat. Lightning illuminated a huge shape looming above her. A black jaguar leaned toward her, breath steaming on her rain-chilled cheek. She scuttled backward through the mud, smashing into trees, escape thwarted by rocky walls. The cat approached slowly, head lowered, muscles poised to spring.

TORONTO, CANADA, Three months earlier

Magic Man-Cat Walks Among Us
Nude Alien Autopsy Photos!
Elvis Outs Self in Phoenix!
Class-Action Suit seeks Dental Benefits for Vampires!

Mac scanned the headlines as they crawled down her computer screen, trying to sort the ridiculous from the merely bizarre.

World Health Organization Deploys Secret Death Squad
Egyptian Mummy Reveals Sex Secrets of the Ancient Pharaohs!

Her news aggregator was “set to stun,” configured to feed her all the truly weird news stories in one long listing.

New Designer Drug Gives Cops the Blues
Woman with 140 Cats Eaten Alive!

Mac shuddered at that particular headline. Damn cats. Not a story she’d write even if it were the one truly newsworthy lead she sought. Not after a traumatic childhood incident involving an oversized Persian, a curling iron, and a kiddy pool. The episode left her with an aversion to anything feline. Not to mention bad perms. She bypassed the man-eating kitties and read on.

Family Battles Killer Bees with cola!
Rich Doc Blows Fortune Seeking Jungle Cure

She clicked on the one about the Jungle Doctor. It sounded a little more likely than the rest, although she wouldn’t be surprised if, once she dug deeper, she’d find a story involving shoplifting kangaroos, or a new diet that claimed to burn fat by spreading real sand on sandwiches. Maybe real witches, too.

She sipped the last of her super-sized mug of water, the bendy straw making rude slurping noises. Good thing she’d closed her office door. The water was lukewarm and tasted of plastic. She felt bloated and needed to pee. Again. She hated drinking this much, but “it’s an important part or your success with the Slenderizer weight loss program!” according to her perky group leader. She marked the water down on the little pink card, along with the chicken broth, half-slice of whole wheat bread, and exactly six carrot sticks she’d called lunch.

Mac re-focused on her computer, wanting to finish this bit of personal side-research before her lunch hour officially ended, or one of her colleagues stuck his head in her door. She followed the Jungle Doc link back to its source—a press release on a reputable site. Oh, sure, the Knights of the Round Planet were a bunch of deeply spiritual tree-huggers with an anti-corporate bent (which was odd since most of their funding came from big business), but they only pursued legitimate causes, although usually lost causes.

According to the press release, this wealthy British research scientist sought medical miracles in the South America rainforest. The story was poorly crafted, and Mac would know, having spent the seven years since graduating college learning to write effective and evocative promotional copy. Still, that this man had blown his entire fortune trying to find a cure for malaria resonated with her.

Ignoring the urge to correct the grammar, she read on. She clicked on links and googled info. Malaria was big news now, or should be. National Geographic’s recent cover story warned that climate change, destruction of the rainforest, and lack of funding for treatment were making malaria once again one of the worst pandemics on the globe. But since most of the world’s wealth resided in countries where malaria wasn’t the new black plague, nobody cared.

Except this one guy. Dr. Basil Deerborne had put his family fortune where his heart was. Yanking her sort-of-blonde curls back in a messy ponytail, Mac opened her word processor and began to make notes.

As the professional in Mac scrutinized him, the humanitarian in Mac grew to admire him. At the same time, the woman in her found him very attractive. She hoped he liked Rubinesque Canadians with an antipathy for cats. Along side her notes on the rainforest doctor, she jotted:

1. Visit hairdresser.

2. Lose weight.

She sighed. She’d been trying to lose the same five pounds for so long it was now thirty.

She clicked on another link, surprised and delighted to find Dr. Deerborne was being honored at a fundraiser here in Toronto later this month. It must be a sign! Mac wasn’t usually superstitious; her college minor in anthropology had taught her one man’s faith was another man’s mythology.

Clearly she was meant to do an article on Deerborne. Even the $100-a-plate price tag couldn’t douse her enthusiasm.

Help End Pain, an organization dedicated to researching cures was running the event. HEP ran a fundraising campaign using a Survivor strategy whereby the five charities competed for the proceeds of the evening. The strategy had been the brain-child of Mac’s boss, Sebastian Phelps. It was brash and garish and exactly his style. Love it or hate it, the media reported it. A lot!

The lineup for this particular event featured the reigning champion, breast cancer, competing against juvenile diabetes, the common cold, stem cell research, as well as malaria.

HEP was the Prime Minister’s charity of choice. Snagging a ticket would be near impossible. She’d have to wait by the stage door, along with all the other philanthropist groupies to try and catch Deerborne as he was leaving.

Mac clicked on the link to the corporate sponsor’s page, and was delighted to find Phelps Advertising and Promotions Agency Inc. listed among the minimum purchase patrons. They must have given Sebastian a table in return for his help on their campaign. He’d add it to the list of “good works” he never failed to trot out during new client pitches.

“Now I know I’m supposed to do my article on this guy,” she said aloud.

Continued…