Body Master (29 page)

Seneca walked into their temporary headquarters like a woman on a mission. She was beyond furious, beyond reason, and she didn’t give a damn. The Committee was going to get an earful from their most effective agent. But as she walked through the room, the hair on the back of her neck went up. Something felt off, and it wasn’t just that Price was at his desk and rest of the place was empty except for stacked boxes.

“I guess they weren’t kidding,” she said to Dempsey. He was very still, his eyes scanning the room. It felt dead, like a morgue. Lifeless.

Price looked up when they walked by and said, “I’ll need your weapons and passkey to this office.”

Seneca kept walking. “Bite me.”

She pushed open Carl’s door and found him behind the desk. “What the hell happened?”

Carl smiled at her. “And a good day to you too.”

“Not in the mood, Carl,” she said, planting her hands on his desk. “How can they shut us down?” She waved a hand toward the window. “Do they think they have someone else who can do a better job?”

“You get no arguments from me,” Carl said. “Calm down. We’ll discuss—”

“Discussion is not going to solve this,” she snapped. “Discussion is not going to find Hager.”

“But a real, planned strategy might,” Carl said. “Sit down. Please.”

Seneca pursed her lips. She’d give him thirty seconds. After that, she was taking her guns and shooting something. She sat next to Dempsey, who was unusually quiet. Everything was wrong. The office, the people, the boxes, the boss. “Where are the other agents?”

“Handing in their gear and doing exit interviews. You’re supposed to report too,” Carl said, leaning his elbows on the desk.

“We can’t do that,” Dempsey said.

“I know, but we’ll have to move fast.” Then Carl rummaged through the files on his desk, for a few seconds. “Seneca, I need the file on Price’s desk with the Committee’s last report. And don’t hurt him.”

She wrinkled her nose. “You take all the fun out of working here.” But she got up, opened the door, and closed it behind her. Price sat at his desk, watching her as she approached. Her skin began to crawl. Price was acting extra weird.

Then he lifted a gun from under his desk and shot her. She felt a sting in her stomach and looked down to find a tranquilizer dart embedded there. She yanked it out, but the damage had already been done.

The office spun violently.
No.

She opened her mouth to yell, but nothing came out. Her body had became numb in seconds, her muscles uncooperative.

Price wavered in her vision as he stood up and walked toward her, his face twisted in a smile. Shifter shadows converged behind him, ebbing and flowing against chairs and desks.

She felt the carpet under her knees and realized she’d fallen. Her fingers fumbled clumsily for her gun, but just when she thought she had it, someone yanked it away. Her hands dropped and she fell backward, staring at the long panels of fluorescent lights.

Max!
she cried, but there was only silence.

Price’s face entered her line of sight, and she heard him talk in a faraway voice. “Bite me, Seneca.”

Then she passed out.

C
arl leaned back in his chair after Seneca left to get the file. “Do you miss the good days, Max? Back when you and Ell actually had a life together?”

It was an odd question. “Sometimes.”

Carl drummed his fingers on the desk. “It would be nice if you could have that again with Seneca. I know you care about her a great deal.”

The strange feeling Max had when he first walked in turned to wariness. His old friend stood up from behind the desk and walked over to a window that overlooked rooftops. “What would you sacrifice to have that again?”

Max looked at the door behind him. What was taking Seneca so long? “Why are you asking me this now, Carl?”

Carl turned to him. “Is it too much to ask for a life? To ask for peace? For a home. For happiness. We deserve that much, don’t we? Doesn’t everyone?”

Max pushed up from his chair, his body going into full- ready mode. “Yes, we do. And we aren’t going to have it with Hager around.”

“I fear we won’t have it with humans either.”

“We haven’t given them a chance yet.” Max moved for the door.
Where was she?

“I think we have,” Carl said. “And they failed.”

Max was about to turn the doorknob when Carl’s voice stopped him.

“I have very few friends left, Max. You are one of them.” Carl gave him a crooked smile. “I don’t want to lose you.”

The smell of Shifters seeped in around the door. Max stared at him. “What have you done?”

“What was necessary.”

Sonofabitch.
Max morphed into Shifter form and smashed through the door. He rushed into the office to find it full of Shifters—some in human form with weapons, some in Primary form. In the center was Seneca, gagged, unconscious, and tied to a chair. Price stood behind her, grinning like the bastard he was, with a gun to her head. “Shift back to human, or I’ll blow her brains out.”

Rage flooded his body and Max growled low in his chest. Price’s eyes widened, but he lifted Seneca’s head by her hair and put the gun to her temple.

“Don’t do it, Max,” Carl said from behind him. “You’ll die, and so will she.”

Max swung around to face him, and realized he’d joined Hager. “You set us up.”

Carl didn’t look at all sorry. “This
is
the only way, Max.”

“Have you forgotten what he did?” he asked.

Carl shook his head. “No, but this is the best chance we have. Shift back now, Max. Please. Hager wants you both alive, but he didn’t specify how much.”

Max could move fast enough to take out Price, he knew that. But he couldn’t risk Seneca getting killed in the melee that followed. On the other hand, she’d blame him for not trying. There was no winning this. He looked at her, the way her black hair flowed around her face, the beauty inside and out that he couldn’t risk. With his last breath, he would save her.

“I shift, she lives,” Max said to Price.

He lifted his chin. “Of course.”

“And when the time comes,” Max said low, “I’m going to rip you limb from limb.”

Price blanched. Max shifted. Seconds later, he was pelted with tranquilizer darts.

Seneca could hear men talking. She was cold and damp, and laid out on something hard. Her head weighed a ton and pounded steadily. Her neck and shoulders hurt. Her throat was like sandpaper. She opened her eyes to pitch blackness. When she tried to touch her face to see if her eyes were really open, she realized her hands and feet were bound together.

Where was she? Where was Max? Her eyes adjusted slowly, and she noticed a thin strip of light outlining a door to her right. A door meant a room. It smelled of mold and dirt, like somewhere underground. Had to be Hager’s lair. She tried her restraints again, but the straps were tight around her wrists and she was lashed to the table with a big strap over her chest. She wriggled but there was no way to reach the strap.

For a long moment, she imagined what she was going to do to that weasel Price next time she saw him. Death was too good for him. He’d betrayed her and Max. And Carl too? She didn’t know.

Another even more disturbing thought arose above the throbbing in her head: She was alive. Why? She’d heard enough about Hager to know that he’d do just about anything with little to no provocation. So why spare her?

Outside the door, voices rose and drew closer. Shadows moved across the sliver of light.

“You promised peace this time,” someone said. “This is war.” His accent was thick and Irish.

Another voice replied, “In order to have peace, you must be prepared for war, Puck. I’m simply ensuring our superior position.”

The one with the accent said, “Like on Govan? When you traded Shifter lives for a superior position? A life of luxury while others died.”

They were talking about how Hager had betrayed the Shifters. Seneca closed her eyes and hung on every word. One of them had to be Hager. Who was the man with the accent?

Hager said, “You didn’t complain then. Your life was good. You had everything you ever needed.”

“Until the government betrayed us, and we lost it all.”

Seneca smirked. Hager betrayed his people to the Govan government and then the government betrayed him? Now,
that
was justice.

Hager said, “It worked out to our advantage too. We moved to a better home with these humans. Nearly perfect DNA to replicate. The plan is going exactly as we agreed.”

Moved
to a better home? Wait. She’d been told that they crashed here by mistake. But what if they didn’t? What if Hager
targeted
Earth on purpose? She suddenly felt sick to her stomach.

“I like these humans.”

Hager replied, “Well, they don’t like us, and that’s all that matters. We destroyed the ship. We can’t flee this planet like we did the last one. There are no other options. We live here in peace, or we die here fighting. One way or the other, we will be accepted.”

Seneca felt her mouth open in disbelief. Hager destroyed the ship. It was no mistake. He had stranded the Shifters here. Why?

The other man said, “You destroyed it because you were afraid the Govan government would find out that you stole it from them.”

Unbelievable,
Seneca thought. He stole the ship and then used it to transport as many Shifters as he could here. Those Shifters thought they were leaving to find a new home. All they were doing was providing Hager with an army. What kind of monster did that? He had to die.

The Irishman stuttered. “We . . . we ruined our people . . . We have no children. No future.”

There was a short pause. “You and I agreed when we left Govan that we would do whatever was necessary to survive. If that means we fight for our place, then that’s what we do, little brother.”

Hager had a brother? Oh great, there were two of them.

“And what of the humans?” the brother asked. “Do you plan to wipe them out too?”

Seneca froze, waiting. Hager replied, “Not at all. In fact, they will serve us. We can live forever through their bodies. We’re immortal here, Puck.
Immortal.
”

Seneca felt horror ice up her veins. It was a scenario she had never imagined in her worst nightmares, and she’d had some bad nightmares. She couldn’t let that happen. Not to her people. Not to Max or the Shifters. They didn’t know any of this, she was sure of it. If they did, Hager wouldn’t be alive right now.

The door opened, and she pretended to be unconscious. She heard them approach and fought the instinct to open her eyes. Although, if they wanted her dead, she’d already be dead.

“She’s still out.”

Hager said, “Good. Move her to the chamber before the others arrive. I want her to wake up surrounded by Shifters.”

Bastard.
Like she needed one more reason to hate him.

“She won’t join us,” the brother said. “She’s stubborn.”

Stubborn?
They had no idea.

“I can be very persuasive,” Hager said, with a chill in his voice.

“And then what?”

“Then we either have a celebration or an execution.”

Seneca waited for Hager to leave the room. She felt his brother gently remove the thick strap that held her to the table. Her mind raced through her options and settled on the only one that held a glimmer of hope.

“Your name is Puck?” she asked.

The man stepped back, surprised by the fact that she was awake. She turned her head and looked at him, silhouetted in the doorway. He was a small man, hunched and old. But the light behind him highlighted the biggest Shifter shadow she’d ever seen. Larger even than Max. Powerful, pure energy pulsed around him, his frail human figure nearly lost inside it.

He stepped closer to her. “I am. How do you feel?”

She studied his face and found genuine kindness. What was he doing with the likes of Hager? “I have a headache.”

“Aye, I bet you do. I apologize for this . . . situation.”

She sat up slowly and swung her bound feet over the edge of the table. “It’s not your fault. Your brother means a great deal to you. I understand that.”

Puck’s shoulder rounded slightly and he bowed his head. “He is all I have left.”

“I know what your people have suffered.” Seneca eyed the distance between them. She couldn’t jump far enough to force-shift him. She needed to get him closer. She needed common ground. “Do you think, when he’s done, there will be peace?”

The little man looked up at her with great sadness. “I hope so.”

“Did it work on Govan?” she pressed.

He shook his head. “No.”

“How many lives were lost there? How many more will be lost here? Or does he only care about his own life?”