Authors: A. E. Jones
Jason handed plastic handcuffs to Bruce, who walked over to the semiconscious Ken and cuffed him. Jason then spoke to me. “Grab some body bags and let’s get going on the cleanup.”
I breathed through my mouth again, wishing I wasn’t already imagining what we would find out in the field. “I don’t think we have enough bags.”
“There are three in the back. Do you want my help?”
“No, I’m fine.”
I went to the van and opened the back doors. The bags were folded and stuffed under a box of equipment. I yanked on the box and groaned. What the hell did Misha have in the box, bricks? After a couple of hernia-in-the-making yanks, I was able to move it. I reached for them as someone walked up behind me.
“I don’t need any help now,” I announced, exasperated.
I looked over my shoulder, expecting to see a contrite Jason, but instead a hunched over, naked man stumbled into my line of vision. I grabbed Stanley and aimed it at him. Was this Griffin’s guard? He was bleeding from a claw mark on his side, and when he lifted his face, I was able to see his eyes.
Hatred glared back at me. Black hair sprouted from his face as it reshaped itself while his ears rounded and moved from the side of his head up toward the top. Then the half-man, half-bear lumbered toward me.
I aimed and fired three times in his heart in quick succession, and he stopped, staring at his chest. He fell forward, knocking me to the ground, and I screamed, sure I was dead. But the eyes looking back at me were vacant, and I watched as the black, coarse hair on his face and neck was absorbed back into his lifeless body.
Jason shouted somewhere to the right of me, and within seconds he was beside me, ready with the tranquilizer gun. Bruce came up behind him, pointing a rifle at the shifter.
“He’s dead,” I mumbled, not recognizing my own voice.
Bruce still held the gun in position while Jason set his down and rolled the body off me. He examined my jacket and ran his hands over it.
“I’m okay. It’s not my blood.”
He continued to survey me. “Are you sure?”
“Yes, help me up.”
He grabbed my hands and hauled me up.
I looked down at the shifter. “We definitely don’t have enough body bags.”
“Go back to the fire,” Jason ordered. “I should never have let you come over here alone.”
“Let’s keep this incident between the three of us for now.”
Jason frowned, and I continued.
“I’m fine. I can feel the overprotective testosterone clogging the air from just you two. If we tell the others right now, it will be ten times worse. Please.”
Jason and Bruce looked at each other and then back at me.
“Fine,” Jason answered, picking up the bags and scooping up the tranq gun.
“Only if you promise to tell me everything,” Bruce added.
“I’ll tell you whatever you want to know.”
Before Bruce could ask his first question, we were interrupted by a scream.
“What now?” I moaned and the three of us ran toward the voice.
The
what-now
was the wiggling snack by the name of Ken that we’d left behind in a field soaked with blood. Gil the leopard had come back for some sustenance. He must have taken a nibble of Ken already, since his shoulder was bleeding, but the leopard backed away from him when we ran into the firelight.
The leopard sniffed the air, eyes glued on us. Ken whimpered, and the cat turned, crouching to pounce again on the prone man.
“Jason,” I whispered.
Jason raised his tranquilizer gun and fired, hitting the leopard in the back leg as it leapt. The cat twisted in midair, landing in a heap. But he wasn’t through yet. He dragged himself forward using his forelegs, and Jason shot him again, the red feathers of the dart standing out against his spotted neck. His head flopped forward, and he didn’t move.
We breathed a collective sigh of relief. Bruce ran over to check Ken, and I stood there for a couple of seconds trying to steady my shaking legs. I jerked when my phone rang. It was Misha. I clicked the speaker button, and Misha started talking before I could get a word out.
“We heard shots, are you okay? The leopard is on his way back to the camp, keep an eye out.”
“Yeah, we’re fine, and we got Gil. He’s been tranquilized.”
“We’ll be back in a few minutes,” Misha said.
I clicked the phone off and stuffed it back into my pocket, trying not to notice how hard my hands were shaking. “Let’s get to work.”
Chapter 32
Hospitals make me jumpy. Even with my eyes closed and my head propped against the wall, I couldn’t escape. The air was full of conflicting odors: cleaning solution, alcohol, and a touch of new plastic. Shifter facility or human hospital, they all smelled the same.
Luckily, the smell of blood was not part of the olfactory concoction anymore. Within minutes of arriving at the shifter facility, a nurse had directed me to a shower. I stood under the hot water until my skin began to pucker. I recited a poem I’d learned in school over and over in my head as the blood off my hands ran down the drain.
Water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink
. I didn’t want to think about the wolf Jean Luc had killed, or the shifter who had slit his own throat, or the lifeless eyes of the shifter I had killed. It had not taken us long to find DeMarco and Palmer, or what was left of them, in the field. The panther guard, Nathan, was still missing.
When I stepped out of the shower, I found a set of clean scrubs folded on a stool.
Now I watched Bruce walk into the room wearing a similar outfit. He carried two cups of coffee and handed me one.
“Thanks. I feel like we are on the set of one of those nighttime medical dramas.”
He grinned. “More like a totally twisted Twilight Zone episode.”
“How’s Ken?” I asked.
“They’re sewing him up now. The—” he hesitated before continuing “—leopard bit him good on the shoulder.”
I took a sip of the strong coffee and met his eyes. “I need to apologize again for what we put you through. It wasn’t right to leave you in the dark. We weren’t expecting it to be …”
“A bloodbath?” he volunteered.
I nodded. “I’ve been doing this for ten years, and I’ve never seen anything this bad before.”
“Doing what, exactly?”
I smiled. “I told you I would answer your questions, didn’t I?” Over the course of the next twenty minutes, I explained to him how we protected the supernaturals from exposure and served as a de facto police unit when necessary. He remained remarkably calm throughout my dissertation. Of course, after what he had already seen, the explanation of the supernatural must have paled in comparison.
When I stopped, he looked down at his cold coffee. “Now what?”
“What do you mean?” I asked, confused.
“What are you going to do with me? Are you going to make me forget?”
“Honestly? I thought about it but after what you went through I felt you deserved an explanation. Do you want me to? It would be easier for you to go back to the way it was.”
He thought for a moment. “No. I want to know. If anything, I want to be prepared in case someone we didn’t take out comes after me for revenge.”
“Okay,” I replied. “You can go back home, then. Back to normal.”
“Normal?” He scoffed. “I don’t know if anything will ever be normal again. I do have another question. The first night you approached me, there was a tall skinny guy with you, where was he tonight?”
“Matthew? He’s our surveillance guy. We try to keep him out of the really hairy stuff.”
“Was he watching my shop? He must be good, because I didn’t see him.”
I stifled a smile. “He was undercover with me on the inside.”
“What are you talking about?”
The smile wouldn’t stay hidden anymore. “Sparky?”
Bruce’s mouth dropped open, and he plopped down hard on the couch. Shit, I had pushed him over the edge. Everything I told him tonight, and he loses it over a domestic short-hair?
Jason walked into the room sporting green scrubs. He took one look at Bruce’s face and grimaced. “She told you, huh? Sorry man, I went through the same thing you did. It’ll get better.”
Bruce nodded, but the look on his face said he didn’t believe him.
I interrupted. “Where are Jean Luc and Misha?”
“They’re taking the bodies to our facility.”
“Where’s Griffin?”
“He’s up talking to the security team who stayed on-site to find the remaining shifter.”
“And?”
“And they found Nathan. He didn’t make it.”
I knew Griffin would take it personally. How could he handle this day in and day out?
Jason looked at Bruce and smiled. “I know this is a lot. Think of it this way. When I found out about supes a couple years ago, I thought they were all out to kill me, so I went on the run. At least you know from the get-go that they’re not all crazy, sadistic killers.”
A female voice came from the doorway. “What a lovely thing to say, Jason.”
He turned and blushed. “Sorry, I meant no offense.”
Beatrice smiled at him. “None taken.”
She stepped into the room, and Bruce stood immediately. She was striking as usual, in a light brown cashmere sweater and off-white silk pants. With her auburn hair pulled back, she looked regal but friendly. I glanced at my rumpled scrubs as I sat slouched in a chair. Why did I insist on hanging out with svelte beauty queens?
Bea gazed at Bruce and me before speaking. “Aren’t you going to introduce us?”
“Sorry. Bea, this is Bruce Smith. He’s helping us on the case.”
The wattage of her smile increased. “So this is the man of the hour?”
Bruce opened his mouth and nothing came out. Finally, he cleared his throat and, in an
aw, shucks
sort of way, mumbled, “Hardly.”
“Don’t underestimate what you did. If it hadn’t been for you, we would have never been able to stop these poachers. My family is safe because of you.”
“Bea is Griffin’s sister,” I explained.
“So you’re a…?” Bruce stopped himself.
“Shifter. But don’t worry, as Jason already explained, I’m not a crazy, sadistic killer.”
“How’s Gil doing?” I asked, hastening to change the subject.
Bea frowned. “Griffin has asked Doctor Jensen to call in Sabrina to help analyze whatever they injected into Gil. It’s disturbing, because normally when we’re in our animal form, we remain cognizant of our surroundings and who we are. But with Gil, his animal self overrode his humanity. He’s finding it easier to maintain his human self, so I thought I would sit with him until his wife arrives. If you’ll excuse me.”
“Be careful,” Bruce blurted.
Bea’s eyes widened for a second in surprise. “I’m always careful.” She turned and walked out of the room.
What an interesting conversation. I glanced at Jason, who must have agreed, since he was smirking.
“Sounds like Sabrina should be here soon,” I announced. “You might want to find a vending machine. I doubt it will have chocolate-covered pretzels, but she likes any type of chocolate.”
Jason’s cocky grin faded. “Funny. I actually am hungry. Think I’ll go find some food. Do you want some?”
I wasn’t hungry, but the coffee I drank earlier was turning to acid in my empty stomach. “Sure.”
Jason opened the door and let me walk first into the hall. I had taken a step when a voice hissed, “Stop.”
I came to a halt and looked to the left. Bea was standing with her hands up in a defensive gesture, staring past me. I turned slowly to my right and saw Gil crouching halfway down the hall, or rather his leopard form. I gulped. This day sucked.
Bea whispered to me. “Step back into the room, Kyle, slowly.”
“What about you?” I murmured.
“I’ll be fine.”
I took a baby step, and the leopard leaped, landing within two feet of me.
“Stop. He’s honed in on you,” Bruce said from behind me.
No shit
, I wanted to scream, but I held still, trying not to shake. Bea spoke in a calm, modulated tone. “Bruce can you grab Kyle when I nod at you?”
“Yes.”
I watched out of the corner of my eye as Bea slowly crouched down. A light shimmered around her, and she began to change, a beautiful symphony of skin transfiguring into orange and black fur as her clothes ripped and fell away from her. The leopard cocked his head and watched, as transfixed as I was by the change. I heard Bruce’s sharp intake of breath. He must have been able to see what was happening from where he stood.
Bea looked toward the door and nodded her tiger head.
Bruce’s arms wrapped around my middle, and he swung me around, using his body as a shield when the leopard jumped. He flung me back into Jason’s arms, but wasn’t fast enough to get away from the cat as it bit down on his arm. The tiger pounced, knocking the leopard off Bruce while Jason dragged him back into the room. I slammed the door shut.
Jason stripped off his shirt and wrapped it around Bruce’s arm while he struggled.