Highland Shapeshifter (2 page)

“You know I wouldn’t walk in here with that kind of cash on me.” She’d brought two thousand dollars for the supplies, more than enough. “One thousand now and three in the morning. I have it stashed, don’t even need to do a bank run.”

Starch’s nostrils twitched. He was greedy, but in his line of work, cash on the table always outweighed a future promise of a sale.

“Fifteen hundred now,” he countered.

Gainy’s front pocket lit up. The burr of a cell phone vibrated.

“Fine. Deal.” Lenore held out her hand.

“Uh, boss.” The thin cell phone looked incongruous against Gainy’s fleshy ear. “Another interested party just showed. Lan’s got them out front.”

“Really?” Starch swiveled in the small space, clearly surprised. “What’s the offer?”

Gainy turned away, speaking into the phone.

Lenore glanced back at the man. She couldn’t let this happen. “Hold up a minute. We have a deal.”

“Not yet.” Distracted, Starch watched Gainy.

The ogre held his hand over the phone. “He says triple what anyone else will offer.”

“Triple?” What could only be described as delight lit Starch’s features. “Tell Lan to bring them back.”

“Wait, no. Starch, you can’t.”

“That’s the beauty of it. I can.”

“I raise my offer.” This would deplete her emergency funds.

Starch was already squeezing back out between the crates. “Yes, do that. That will make the buyer up his price. A bidding war. Come along.”

“No, Starch. My sister…”

He stopped and looked back, brow bones lowered. “Here’s what I’ll do. For one G, I’ll give you an hour to get answers out of him. I’ll even have my guys work him over to make it easier for you.” His lips spread in a parody of a smile meant to placate.

Seriously? Dread knotted her belly, even as she felt herself nod. “One hour.”

“Done.”

Starch inclined his head and walked past the crates into the open area of the storeroom where Gainy waited.

Lenore leaned against one of the crates, suddenly shaky, her mind running through scenarios of wealthy buyers dragging the shapeshifter off to do who knows what with him. Geez, why should she even care? He was nothing to her. She didn’t even know for sure what the other buyers wanted with him. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad. She internally rolled her eyes at how bad she was at trying to rationalize and looked back to where the shifter slumped against the bonds on his arms, her heart squeezing at that sudden flash of whatever it was that had passed between them. She couldn’t do it. She couldn’t just get her answers and walk away.

Damn it to hell
. That sentiment spilled out without any coaxing. Look at her mouthy mind go.
  

She swallowed. This was going to cost her. If not her entire savings, then in her underground supply contacts. Too bad, she actually kind of liked Starch and he always came through with the rare supplies.
 
 

She moved to the end of the crates to see who her competitors for the shifter were. The door from the main bar room swung inward and another ogre, Starch’s bouncer Lan—like a bar full of ogres needed a specified bouncer—ducked through, followed by two men and a woman.

They wore expensive leather and jeans, each young and attractive. They looked like a yuppie biker group, out to buy an exotic shapeshifter with daddy’s money. She instantly disliked them, not to mention if their attire was anything to go by, they could outbid her a hundred times over.

“We want him,” one of the men got right to it.

“Slow down,” Starch said. “I like new acquaintances. I’m a friendly sort after all, but first we need to verify the color of your money. And none of those Canadian monopoly bills.”

Lenore eased back between the crates, and slid to her knees beside the shifter.

She touched his arm and again that current of electricity jolted between them.

His head snapped up and he tried to focus on her with red-rimmed eyes beneath long sweaty bangs.

“Shh, easy. I’m going to get you out of here.” She pressed him forward to look at how he was bound. His wrists were clamped together behind the pipe with a plastic zip tie instead of cuffs or rope. Good. Easy peasy.

She pulled her pocket knife from inside her boot and clicked it open.

A thud banged loudly. A pulse of energy ripped across Lenore’s flesh, raising the tiny hairs on her arms. Some freakish sort of blue light flashed across the ceiling. The crates rocked, one tipping and crashed with a cloud of dust lifting off the floor.

What was that?

She slashed through the zip tie, releasing the guy.

Shouts and growls echoed through the store room, followed by staccato bangs. That sound she recognized. Gunfire. Starch must not have liked the yuppie buyers’ offer.

In a motion more fluid than his drugged state should have allowed, the shifter was on his feet. Light shimmered across his skin in a build-up of magic.

“Hey!” Lenore swung around to his front and jabbed a finger up in his face. He was taller than she’d expected.
 
“You’re doped up! No shifting.”

Blurry eyes blinked down at her. She couldn’t tell if he was coherent enough to understand until finally he nodded and the shimmer around him dimmed.

Gainy sailed back into the crates. Wood and glass flew everywhere, boxes spilling across the floor. More shots rang out. Resilient, the ogre shook it off and rushed back into the fray.

Lenore grabbed the shifter’s wrist. “We got to get out of here.” She glanced around. She’d never been back this far in the storeroom before.

“He’s here!” One of the yuppies, a blond guy, came around a tarped crate. He was carrying some weird kind of wide-butted gun.

“Not that way.” Scrabbling at the shifter’s shirt, her fingers catching in the tears already there, she pulled, dodging behind more crates. The material of his shirt ripped, even as he kept close behind her.

Shots whined around them, ricocheting off the cinder-block walls and impacting wood. The blue glowing streaks whirled in the air. Whatever the yuppies wanted the shifter for they weren’t concerned about leaving holes in him.
 
Then again, the ray guns hadn’t opened up any of the ogres either.

They came to a dead-end, cornered between walls and heavy shelves. They spun at the quiet snick of a boot on cement.

The second yuppie guy with dark hair had them in his cross-sights.
 
At least the gun he carried was a regular handgun. And who knew if that was a good or bad thing? The other came at them, shoving a box out of his way. Where had the woman gotten off to? The shifter edged to the side, putting himself between her and the gun’s muzzle.

“All right now,” Yuppie Ken Doll said. “Don’t move.”

His lip curled at the same instant he flew into the wall, body-checked by a raging bulldozer of Starch.

“You think you can come into my pl—”

The blond yuppie jerked his weapon toward the ogre and the shifter pounced into action, running straight into the guy, flipping him off his feet and kept on going.

Lenore stared after his retreating backside wide-eyed. Well, he was gone. She’d never see his hide again, not that she blamed him.

Crashes banged up front. Gainy and the woman?

Starch lifted the guy he had body-slammed off the floor. The guy moaned. Lenore would not want to be him. Starch’s eyes bulged.

“Wanna run by me again how you’re just gonna take my property?”

Lenore edged around them. Time to play scarce while she was still in one piece.

“No.” A feminine voice barked. She came face-to-muzzle with the business end of the really strange looking gun. Up close and way too personal, it looked more like something out of a video game. The yuppie woman’s eyes narrowed. “Where’s the shifter?” The gun hummed, ramping up to recharge for another blast of blue. Yep, definitely a weapon straight out of the comics. Must be some homemade tech junkie’s dream.

Lenore eased her head sideways out of the line of fire. “Did what shifters do best. Tucked tail and ran.”

The woman frowned. Her eyes tracked toward the ogre pounding the snot out of her friend.

“You gonna deal with that?” Lenore lifted her hands. “’Cause I’m not in this.”

The woman’s gun shifted back toward her. “Oh, you’re in this.”

She had short blond hair, almost silver blond, with long side-swept bangs, which she flipped out of her eyes with a toss of her head.

“Bekah!” The yuppie guy sailed through the air, arms and legs flailing, and landed in a jarring heap.

“Dammit.” The woman shot at Starch, a streak of blue light and whirring purr that pushed the ogre back into a pile of crates. Okay, so the ray gun did pack enough of a punch to throw a two-ton ogre like that. She’d be impressed if she wasn’t so stunned. The following concussion of force vibrated through the floor.

Whoa. What a kick. Nearly rocked off her feet, Lenore took that as her cue to high-tail it. She ducked between swaying crates, narrowly escaping as they crashed behind her. Score one for being small. Packets of orange crystals broke across the floor, lifting in clouds of noxious powder. She hoped it wasn’t anything toxic, quickly covering her face and trying not to breathe it in, and slammed into a wall of ogre.

“Hey!” Lan’s meaty fists grabbed her, swallowing most of her upper arms between his fingers. The ogre bouncer was on his knees, huge eyes dazed and way too heavy, dragging her down as he tried to use her as support. Apparently whatever those blue streaks the yuppies shot could only immobilize ogres for so long.

“Lan, let go. Starch is back there. He needs your help!” She tried to shrug out of his grasp, but he was still too out of it and pushing down on her as an aide to make it to his own lumbering feet. His bulk was crushing her. “Lan!”

“The lass said tae let go.”

Both their heads snapped up.

The shapeshifter leapt out of nowhere, taking them all to the floor. Lenore hit the ogre’s belly hard and was immediately dragged up around the waist and set on her feet. The shifter’s head canted, looking her over.

“Stop!” The yuppie woman called out and that whining build-up of her weapon purred out. The shifter yanked Lenore between another row of crates as blue light exploded beside them, the concussion of it rocking through the air.

Hand in hand, they ran. Shouts and thuds poured after them.

“Do you know where you’re going?” Lenore shouted.

The guy twisted to look back at her. Dark brows pulled together like a shrug. “Away from the noise. I thought that would be best.”

Of course. Geez, why didn’t she think of that? Poor guy was still completely out of it. Yet even drugged to the gills…Lenore’s heart squeezed a little…he’d come back for her.

Another pulse of light whined close. The guy’s hand tugged on hers.

“Let me lead.” She squeezed past him, not letting go and pulled him along. There had to be a rear door. Starch would never let himself be boxed in without an escape in his own place, but so far she hadn’t seen any windows or doors beyond the stacks and stacks of boxes.

She really didn’t want to head back through—wait, were those stairs? Veering that way, Lenore tried to see beyond a tall partly covered gilded picture frame to where a set of rusted metal steps led. There was a single door high up in the cinderblock wall. The steps and door didn’t look wide enough to support an ogre’s frame though, but you never knew. Starch was good at taking care of Starch. Was it a dead end?