This was San Francisco.
She had met Furries, self-professed mediums who worked with animal spirits, and a group called Otherkin that mostly seemed to live on the Net and felt either close kinship or actual identification with mythological creatures or aliens. If he was one of them, and simply a human who had an unusual and perhaps unrealistic way of dealing with life, then he was also a certified badass. And if he was something other than human... then it was she whose world view was unrealistic, as crazy as that seemed.
“I discovered their blood on the pavement and followed the scents of those who had killed them to the house where I found you. They had many guns. You are right — they must have been some kind of Mob.”
“Italians. Mafia, whatever they call themselves these days. Before now I only knew of them from the movies.” She sniffed and tucked the used tissue in her jeans pocket. “So you came to avenge Carl.”
“Yes. And his lover. When I smelled you upstairs, I came to get you. I did not....” He rubbed his mouth, eyes tracking back and forth. “Your scent confuses me. I was so certain that you were... like me. I still don't understand why what I sense from you is so different.”
She sat there blinking at him.
Please don't let him be crazy. The last thing I need in my life right now is another huge, heavily armed psycho.
He stared at her another few moments, then drew back a little bit, glancing away.
“Carl would have wanted you to be rescued. That is good enough for me.” But she could tell that he was still confused, still almost frightened, and he kept glancing at her as he crawled into the driver's seat. “Do you have somewhere that you can go?”
She hadn't even thought of it. Dennis's apartment would be a crime scene now. The truck outside his place had her belongings in it, but the apartment in Berkeley would be completely bare. She had the key, but she would have to sleep on the floor. With money tight, she couldn't afford a hotel room for the night either.
“There's my apartment in Berkeley, but I still have to buy furniture for it.”
She had no idea what to do. Now that the shock of her captivity and rescue had worn off, she felt exhausted. The idea of sleeping on the floor in an empty room on top of everything else brought fresh tears to her eyes.
He looked back at her, and his lips thinned.
“You will come with me, then. You will sleep in my home for the night.”
It wasn't a command — merely a statement, brusque but undemanding, as if he didn't quite know how to properly offer.
She heaved in a breath and let it out, weighing her options.
What options?
It was just for the night. He had been nothing but kind to her, however strange he was. Carl had trusted him. And he had saved her life.
“Thank you. I'd appreciate that.”
He nodded curtly and turned to pull the van away from the curb. She lay back against the seat and closed her eyes, the ache from her bruises and battered scalp draining her strength. As he went silent and focused on driving the van, she was left wondering if she had made the right choice in trusting him.
Time will tell.
Chapter 3: Last of His Kind
The being who called himself Jason Ember drew in the soft female scent filling the interior of his van and sighed under his breath. That scent, a gentle musk that mixed with soap, sweat and traces of floral perfume, stirred his instincts in ways he had never experienced before — so much so that he had dared to hope that she was one of his species. But as soon as he had gotten close to her, he had realized: her scent, so appealing, familiar and strangely arousing, was also completely and undeniably human.
Laurel Kendrick.
He rolled the name through his head as he drove, his eyes on the road but his mind in the back seat where she dozed, exhausted, in the grip of the shoulder belt he had clipped around her. How could she be human? He had never reacted to a human woman like this, not in the half century since his hatching. He had walked through their world, looked at humans, men and women, and felt that one and all, however friendly he was with them, they were still not his kind and thus, not attractive.
No matter how lonely he got, no matter how frustrated, no matter the longings of his body or heart, he had never before been able to look at a human and say to himself, I want that one. He had felt pain and anger at the suffering of his friends, but he had never before felt the pure, helpless anguish and near-panic that he had experienced when he had seen this complete stranger in tears.
What is going on? She's not one of my kind. She's a human!
The disappointment that gnawed at his belly was as keen as his inexplicable attraction to her. All his adult life, he had spent using various covers as he had searched the world for his kin. All he had found that entire time had been legends, rumors, secondhand anecdotes; sometimes bones, passed off as those of dinosaurs in world museums. He had stared at the remains through the display glass and seen familiar contours: horns taken for those of prehistoric narwhals, wing-bones passed off as those of proto-birds and Pteranodons, jaws and ribs and tail bones mixed in with the bones of other creatures, to create dinosaur species that had never existed — all of it to make some sense of his ancestors' scattered bones. That was as close as he had ever come to finding traces of his own people. At least, until he had smelled her scent over the fire and burning human flesh, and cracked the stairs under his native form's bulk going up to investigate.
The urge to protect her was born of instinct. Taking her home with him was, again, instinct-driven. None of his reactions to her were logical, and that worried him. He desired her in ways completely unfamiliar and almost uncomfortable, he was deeply troubled by her suffering, and worst of all of it, he could not lie to her. He could not hide what he was from her. She might think he was kidding, or fanciful, or even crazy, but when he looked into her gentle blue eyes, there was no concealing anything from her — least of all, his nature.
Right now, fortunately, there was little chance she would figure out the full truth from what he had said. She had bruises all over her. Her scalp had split and bled from being knocked against a wall. She smelled of the exhaustion that came after extreme fear. As he drove, he boiled with an ambivalent mix of feelings: worry and rage, the desire to protect and the desire to avenge — but the latter softened by the knowledge that those who had hurt her had already died screaming at the end of his claws. For her, the suffering was over. But as he stopped at an intersection, and looked back at her as if the sight of her could never get old in his eyes, he knew that his own suffering was only beginning. I don't know what to do. I should not desire a human woman as my mate. She's not my species. It's... unnatural.
He had a loft building in the Embarcadero District that he had bought out entirely, to give him the privacy he needed. He lived on the eleventh floor, with his “bedroom” taking up the entire penthouse: a vast glassed-in space, usually heavily curtained, where he could stretch out in his native form and sleep without being either too boxed-in or at risk of being seen. In addition, the rooftop garden gave him a needed bit of green — and a place to take off from if he needed to.
Tonight, he had driven the van around the city instead of flying unseen. He had meant to come to Carl in human guise and surprise him with a vintage graphic novel that his friend had been looking for, for a decade. Instead he had rolled up onto a scene of blood and gunsmoke and crime scene tape, police and ambulance lights whirling as Carl and his mate were zipped into body bags and taken away. He had come to the edge of the tape, sickened and enraged, and caught the scents of the men who had pulled the trigger on them both.
He had followed their stink of sweat and cordite and bad cologne halfway across the city to the house he had burned — the house where he had found her. Ironic: if he hadn't had the van now, he would have had to risk flying her home — and her possibly waking up in the middle, a quarter mile over the city, and screaming her head off. That would have just complicated things even further: the
last thing he needed, right now.
He drove into the underground parking lot beneath his loft complex and parked in the rear next to one of his cover vehicles: a white panel truck with interchangeable signage. The rest of the garage yawned empty. In this brutally tight housing market, he knew that essentially what he was doing was hoarding real estate, but he found it necessary. Cramming himself in with too many humans for too long ended in bad things, for himself and for them. And since he had to be in San Francisco for an extended time, he knew that this arrangement was best.
Laurel had fainted from exhaustion, and now breathed softly with her head drooping. He looked back at her for a moment, and then came back and opened her door, unfastening her seatbelt and scooping her into his arms.
She felt so light and soft and warm against him, he almost stumbled as he headed for the elevator. Stop it, he thought, fighting the urge to stroke her tangled hair, but he still cradled her close, feeling his skin tingle at the contact. He managed to carry her in and punch the button, the old office elevator rattling to life and taking him up to the main floor of his suite.
He had a few ordinary bedrooms set up there, a story beneath his real one, for the few times he had Carl or another friend over and they drank too much of his wine collection to make it home. As they rumbled upward in the old but well-kept elevator, he caught himself breathing in the scent of her hair, again and again.
The smell and feel of her filled him with a strange contentment, while at the same time driving him wild with desires he didn't understand. He wanted to tend her wounds, and taste her skin; he wanted to feel her whole warm, bare length under his human shape, and then—
He leaned against the wall of the elevator heavily, squeezing his eyes shut as he held her. He had to focus. This strange human had a mystery surrounding her, and he had to unravel it in the short time that he had her staying with him. After that, for all he knew, he might never see her again.
That prospect made his chest hurt, alarming him further. Who was she? What strange power did she hold over him, and why?
Finally, the elevator shuddered to a stop. The motion made her stir, and she let out a soft, interrogative whimper as she blinked her eyes open.
“We've returned to my home,” he explained carefully, wondering why he constantly felt like he was going to stumble over his words around her. “Laurel. Can you walk?”
“I... think I can, yes.”
He gently set her down and gave her his arm to lean on as they walked out into his sprawling loft.
The main floor was comprised of six rooms branching off a central great room, done in creams, browns and golds, including a polished expanse of underfloor heated concrete dyed in shades of dark amber. At the far end, a broad spiral staircase of hammered copper led up to the upper floor.
A matching copper fountain tinkled away beside it, and on the other side, a broad, brown-leather movie-lounger style couch sat in front of an enormous flat-screen television. The center of the room was dominated by his long, polished mahogany dining table and accompanying massive chairs. Of the remaining rooms, he had one very large bathroom, the kitchen and a well-stocked pantry (and a walk-in freezer, to keep up with his prodigious appetite for meat), a computer room crammed with equipment, and three bedrooms. He helped her toward the bathroom as she gazed around at the great room with widened eyes. “Your home is beautiful,” she said softly, and he felt her nervous grip on him relax slightly.
“Thank you. I do not have many visitors, but you are welcome. Do you need assistance in getting cleaned up? I will find you something to wear.” He pushed open the bathroom door, revealing a cream and blue tiled wet-room fixtured in white porcelain and sea green glass: a jacuzzi, an enormous bathtub, doors to the water closet and sauna, and the huge walk-in shower stall he showed her to. “You will probably feel better once the blood is out of your hair.”
She nodded, eyes down.
“I can manage on my own. In fact, I think I need a few minutes, if you don't mind.”
He nodded, swallowing past a sudden tightness in his throat, and turned to go.
“Towels and soaps are in the tall, mirrored cabinet. I will knock when I return with something for you to change into.”
“Thank you, Jason,” she murmured, and he felt that unfamiliar tingle run through his chest again.
His step seemed to go a little lighter, and he shook his head in confusion at it all as he closed the door behind him.
He knew that she would be a while, so he went first to his computer room to check the usual leads. One system tracked news feeds worldwide, both fringe and mainstream. One system tracked social media. Another was dedicated to decrypting and tracking relevant Dark Web information. A fourth scanned data from libraries and universities across the globe. The fifth tracked governmental systems. All day, all night, for the three years since his natural aptitudes for carnage and finance had earned him an adequate fortune, he had run these systems, constantly upgrading and expanding them to more efficiently search for information on the remnants of his people.
But tonight, as with most nights, there was nothing new to report. Just more myths, legends, hearsay. He had lost count of how many lake monsters and “remnant dinosaurs” he had chased after, especially in his younger days, and seeing rumors of another one in a reservoir in Upstate New York didn't exactly excite him. The search would just have to go on.
The only physical search he conducted any more happened in this city, where he flew and stalked invisibly night after night, looking for a certain trove of unearthed artifacts that were the closest thing he had to a solid lead on the existence of more of his people. These antiquities, dug from the volcanic soil of dead Pompeii, had included a clutch of eggs of an unusual size and configuration, far larger than ostrich eggs, their shells thick and stony. One such egg had been taken to the New York Museum of Natural History for closer examination in the sixties, while the rest of the clutch was, as of two months ago anyway, still somewhere in San Francisco. He hadn't had any luck locating exactly where, but he at least knew that it was still here.
He went into one of the bedrooms and dug through a closet, looking for something suitable for a woman to wear. His choice of clothing always matched his natural hide as much as he could manage, but he kept around a few brighter-colored and more ordinary things for guests, again for when the wine got out of hand. He found a white t-shirt big enough for her to swim around in, and a pair of soft drawstring shorts of gray fleece. An outsized pair of athletic socks would keep her feet warm. In the back of his head he realized that she might be a little embarrassed to dress this way, but it was best that nothing she wore would rub or pull against her injuries. Besides, perhaps if she looked more like a kid playing dress-up his mind would stop wandering into such... unfamiliar territory... when he looked at her.
He set the folded mass of cloth in front of the bathroom door and knocked twice, hearing the shower running through the door.
“I have left clothing outside for you,” he called. “The washing machine is at the rear if you wish to launder what you were wearing.”
He then withdrew, walking into the bedroom that served as his dressing room to rid himself of a few layers.
He sighed with relief and wiggled his toes against the warmed concrete floor after kicking off boots and socks, then peeled off his gloves, shucking the jacket and the vest beneath it as well. Barefoot and clad in his leather trousers and the black knit silk tank top he always wore under his vest, he padded out, rolling his cramped shoulders and popping his back as he went. Sometimes this form left him feeling claustrophobic. If she had not been there, he would have already climbed the spiral staircase, changed back, and stretched out against the warm soapstone flooring he’d had put in upstairs. Instead, he found himself sitting in one of the dining chairs, facing the bathroom door and waiting for Laurel to emerge.
She finally came shuffling out, hair fluffy from towel-drying and face glowing and pink from the shower steam. She limped
a little, and her movements were sluggish; he got up to help her, the urge to touch her another instinct that he didn't fully understand. She took his arm lightly, her eyes shy.
“I'm feeling much better.”
“Good. Are you hungry?” he asked softly.
She shook her head.
“I'm sorry, I... I just need to sleep, I think.”
She gave him a heavy-lidded smile, and his breath caught in his chest.
“Of course. I will make sure that there is breakfast in the morning, then. Rest as long as you need.” He gently led her to the third bedroom, which like the rest was outfitted with plain but well-built furnishings of heavy oak. “Here,” he said. “Sleep. I will come down to check on you once dawn comes.”
“Thank you,” she murmured again, and he felt that tingling flush of warmth run through him again, leaving him both unnerved and wanting more.
She crawled into a canopy bed, that could have slept four of her, and snuggled in under the covers as he watched. Her exhaustion claimed her again in under a minute. He stood at her bedside, watching her chest rise and fall beneath the comforter, until he realized that he had been staring down at her for some time, and forced himself outside.
He took a whole roast chicken from his refrigerator and tucked it under his arm as he wandered upstairs, so impatient for change that he felt his wings start sprouting from his back before he was halfway up the copper spiral. Shape-shifting his clothes took focus, one of the reasons why he always shucked most of his expensive leathers before he tried it. This time the silk of his tank top did not tear; it vanished like smoke as his body swelled and darkened. He put the chicken in his jaws and lumbered the last few steps, his tail sliding against the stairs behind him.
The den was nothing more or less than an artificial cavern, walled and floored in stone, with the lights gleaming softly behind quartz panels in the ceiling. The office building's original windows still lined the walls, but were covered with heavy forest-green velvet curtains to give him privacy. Not that many people had the means to look through twelfth-floor windows, but he had long since learned that it paid to be more cautious than he thought he needed to be. His claws clicked against the floor as he moved to the far wall, nosing aside the curtain so he could peer out at the city below. San Francisco was as close to sleeping as the city ever came. He should be out searching for the clutch. But then he thought of Laurel downstairs, and how she had to be protected. Even if his instincts had not screamed it, he didn't want Carl and Dennis's sacrifice to be in vain. They would want her kept safe.
Bound to Change: A Limited Edition Spring Shifter Romance Collection Page 62
