Although they were young, no more than thirteen years old, they were nearing their full physical potential. Like their sire, they were precocious shifters, coming into their power before they'd turned two years old; Gar started their training shortly afterward. Back home in the Everglades, the pair of velociraptors were already the deadliest beasts in the swamp, trained since birth to hunt as a single, cohesive unit, and every other living creature in the area knew it. When the raptors hunted, everything else hid -- or got eaten. Not even the predators who usually ruled the wetlands -- gators, bobcats, bear, snakes, and owls -- dared remain in the open.

Here in the forest of north central Florida, miles from their usual haunts, their scent was unfamiliar to the other denizens of the woods. It was enough to make their prey wary, but not enough to cause a panic.

Yet.

That would change relatively quickly. The more the pair hunted in this area, the scarcer and more difficult to track their prey would become. Animals were not stupid. They quickly added the scent of raptor to their list of creatures best avoided, and would vacate the area in a panic as soon as they scented the deadly reptiles. All too soon, the raptors would need to move on, to find new hunting grounds elsewhere.

For now, they feasted.

They'd already nearly reached their full physical potential. At five feet tall and nearly fifteen feet long from their snouts to the tips of their long serpentine tails, both came equipped with a mouthful of long, wickedly sharp teeth and an elongated, curved, retractable claw on each hind foot. The weapons nature granted them helped to swiftly bring their prey down. Though they might grow another foot in height and up to five more in length, already there was nothing quite like them anywhere on the face of the planet -- anymore.

They'd been told their sire, Cain, a tyrannosaur-shifter, had been much, much larger and three times as fierce. The earth shook with each footstep he took, and nothing in his path drew breath for very long if he was hungry.

His great size was both his advantage and his downfall. He wasn't graceful; he was incapable of maintaining speed, powerless to camouflage himself because of his size, and he hunted alone.

Not so them. They were quick, smart, and so finely attuned to one another that it sometimes appeared they were two manifestations of the same creature. By the time they reached adulthood, nothing in nature would be able to stand against them. If they could catch it, they could eat it.

They hunted as often as possible, both to gain skill and to assuage the almost constant hunger gnawing at their bellies. Contrary to popular science, they weren't cold-blooded like their rivals in the swamps, the alligators. Their metabolisms were fast, and needed large amounts of fuel to work efficiently. Reptile was actually a misnomer; they were more closely related to birds. Their bones were hollow and light, enabling them to move swiftly. They were as warm-blooded as any of the mammals they hunted, and needed to eat regularly and often to thrive.

Watching the carnage from a distance, Gar smiled, leaning back against the driver's side door of the primer gray-and-blue, dented and scratched Ford pick-up, and waiting patiently for the two teens to finish their dinner. Twenty minutes later, two naked young youths, identical from their midnight-black hair to the soles of their feet, walked out of the forest and up the small hill to where he stood. Their faces and bodies were splashed with blood that looked black in the darkness.

"What are the three rules?" Gar asked the twins.

"Eat. Dominate. Propagate," they answered dutifully, their voices blending seamlessly in a harmony so perfect they were barely distinguishable from one another.

"What are you?"

"We are the Ultimate Predators. We are gods."

"And what is everyone else?"

"Food."

Continued in First Section