Black Queen: Stray: Fated Mates Paranormal Shifter Romance (Shifters Among Us Book 1)

by Lidiya Foxglove

  I don’t even know if she feels that way about me, I thought. There was a book open in front of me but i was just staring out the window at the ocean. She seemed like she did for so long, but she hardly replies to my emails and letters or answers my calls anymore. And I don’t know why Waylon Silver would have anything to do with her. Why is he back?

  I could tell that when Waylon beamed into my dorm room he was thinking I was a pussy who escaped real life in Istara. I could tell he was a little jealous, but at the same time, he’d happily kick my ass. Waylon had always been the sort of punk kid who pulled a knife on you first and then said sorry days later like nothing happened. I didn’t think he’d changed. He intimidated me a little bit, but that just made me feel annoyed at my dad.

  He should have raised me to be tougher. But I can’t blame him. It’s my responsibility in the end, huh? So I just need to get tough on my own. And I need to take responsibility where my dad never would. I need to take care of Frankie. I need to be a man for her, not run away while she puts her life in danger.

  Never again.

  I knew this would test me, but I was so tired of feeling like some intellectual runaway. I couldn’t even manage top notch grades. The whole thing was a joke. It was time to let the wolf blood boil.

  I switched planes at Lisbon to go to London, in the second leg of my exhausting and ridiculous air tour of Europe. Now I had the middle seat with a sleeping fat guy at the window. A young, very expensively dressed businessman, probably from India or Dubai or something took the aisle seat. He had long legs. I had long legs.

  “Unfortunate, eh?” he said, and put his in the aisle with a good-natured smile once the drink cart went by. He ordered dry white wine and I had a beer.

  “You look like something’s really eating at you,” he said, tilting down his sunglasses. His English was perfect, with a gentle British fancypants accent, so maybe he was going home. I wasn’t really in the habit of spilling my guts to strange humans on planes, although I guess it was cheap therapy.

  “Just girl problems,” I said.

  “English girl?”

  “American.”

  He grinned at me. “The best kind.”

  “Yeah…especially certain ones.”

  “They do tend to go astray if you don’t give them enough attention,” the guy said.

  This irritated me and I started taking the bait like the Brooklyn street canine I was at heart. “She’s not cheating on me. I give her plenty of attention. I just sent her a book recently that I knew she’d like. She’s just…in a bad situation.”

  The guy spread his hand across his chin, sizing me up a little closer, and I started to realize there was a familiar scent under his rich guy smell. “Hmm…a bad situation?” he said.

  “You’re a…” I said, after a quick, subtle extra sniff of the wolf undertones.

  That was enough. He nodded and gave me a very classically wolfish smile. “Is it that kind of trouble?” he said. “That is unfortunate.”

  “Humans got her,” I said. “I don’t know what I’m gonna do about it, but I’ll do something.”

  “You have a little money?” the man asked. “Five hundred bucks or so?”

  “Uh…maybe.” He called that a ‘little’ money?

  The guy pulled his briefcase back out from under the chair and opened it. He scrawled down a phone number. “A guy I know in New York,” he said. “He can give you a good ID to pass into the human territory, and some spells. This is the good stuff. He knows me well, so just tell him Rohan sent you.”

  “Wow. Thanks, man. That’s just what I need.” Dad knew guys like this. But I needed a guy like this who didn’t know Dad. Fortunately, my seat-mate seemed like he dealt on a different level.

  “It’s nothing. I help out my own when I can.”

  “Sir.” A flight attendant suddenly came hurrying back to him. “Your seat is up there, sir.”

  In first class. Right. “You didn’t come back here to talk to me, did you?”

  He got up and shrugged. “I’m so absent minded sometimes. I did buy a first class seat, didn’t I? Have a good one.”

  Uhh.

  I looked at the phone number again and now it seemed a little more suspicious.

  After the last leg, I got to LaGuardia Airport around noon. If I told Dad, he would never let me go after Frankie. I was worried he wouldn’t dare to rescue her from anyone as important as the Merryweathers and would just write her off forever.

  Would he? He loves Frankie, doesn’t he, tough as he is?

  I would rather exist in the space where I didn’t have to find out the answer, because if that path went the wrong way…I would never forgive him. Besides that, I would rather find my own way to save her, rather than just asking my dad, for crying out loud.

  I called the number and got a pretty friendly guy on the other line.

  “Oh, Rohan sent you? Sure. I’ll hook you up.”

  By the time I was walking downstairs to his basement apartment with my guitar case bumping against the narrow stairwell, as the scent of herbs of dubious origin assaulted my nose, I thought I was definitely in over my head.

  “You need a place to put that guitar?” The man greeting me at the bottom of the stairs had sounded like a nice normal dude over the phone, and in person looked like an old Indian guru that the Beatles would follow, with long gray hair and a wiry yoga master body. He was wearing faded black jeans and a shirt that said “There is No Planet B”. I guess this was what sorcerers were like in real life. I didn’t get to meet very many in the course of my overly normal education.

  “You’re Andy?” I said.

  He nodded. “Ian? Come in. Tell me what you’re planning and I will do my best to give you a spell.”

  “I just need to go to Manhattan and get my girl back. She was taken by humans.”

  “I see. That’s rough. I can give you a protection spell and a human ID. And I can give you something to mask your scent. And I can give you a gun.”

  “I don’t know how to use one.”

  “Then wave it around,” he said, although I was dubious on this strategy.

  “Is there something a little less aggressive? Maybe a cloak of invisibility or something?”

  He laughed heartily. “I don’t think you have that kind of money, and I don’t have that kind of merchandise. I’ll give you a quick lesson on how to hold it so you don’t look completely incompetent.”

  “I just want my girl back. I don’t want to shoot anyone.”

  Andy looked at me gravely. “Your girl might be tortured. Bred. Forced to fight for sport. This is not a game, Ian. Take a gun. Make sure if you transform that you’re wearing it in this special holster so it stays on your body.”

  “I do know this isn’t a game.” Thinking about Frankie in any of those situations made me think I could shoot someone after all. “Do you have any spells for sneaking around?”

  “I don’t have any Hands for sale, if that’s what you are implying.” He sounded like he expected I already knew what this was and that it was bad, but I didn’t. I had no idea about magic besides that there were a lot of holes you didn’t want to go down. I certainly wasn’t going to ask where one sourced ‘Hands’. “I can give you a spell to unlock doors,” he added. “It’s hit or miss.”

  “I’ll keep your guitar safe and sound for you,” Andy said. “You only have to pay me half the fee until you come back. I’ll consider this a pawn.”

  “Don’t let anything happen to it.”

  “Never.”

  He showed me how to hold the gun and turn the safety on and off, but that was as far as we got. No place to practice shooting in the apartment, he said. “Neighbors don’t like noise.” (As if that was the only problem with shooting in his messy apartment.)

  “It doesn’t matter,” he said. “Either you run into people who are intimidated at the sight of a gun, or you run into people who know what they’re doing and can easily kill you.”

  “Do you think I’ll co
me back alive?” I asked.

  He laughed. “Why ask that question?”

  Yeah, why ask that question? I was unsettled that he was sending me into a dangerous situation without trying to convince me otherwise.

  “When a shifter is captured there, time is often very short before they’re trafficked somewhere out of reach,” Andy said. “Their only hope is someone cares about them enough to try. Of course it’s dangerous, but I know you will always, always regret it if you lose her.”

  He spoke like he knew. Like he would rather have died himself than let it happen, in hindsight.

  All right, Frankie. I’m coming. I’ll never leave you again. I’m going to stay and learn to fight. I’m going to learn this life and how to protect you so you never have to go into enemy territory again.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Frankie

  “So is this…a nightclub, then?” I asked, as we got into one of the luxury cars owned by the Merryweathers, with a driver and a bodyguard in the front. We headed out later than I expected, after a very exhausting day of shopping, dinner, and Mina fussing with my hair and makeup.

  “Yeah!” Mina was looking at her phone. “Shangri-La. It’s right on the edge of SoHo.”

  “And it’s nice?”

  “It’s very nice,” Alistair said. “We go there once a month or so. They have excellent singing acts.”

  “And really cute waitresses,” Mina said.

  “Well, I would hardly notice that,” Alistair said. “I don’t look at other women, Mina.”

  “Whatever.” She smiled at me sheepishly.

  “I’ve heard bad things about shifter nightclubs,” I said.

  “There are good and bad ones,” Alistair said. “But most bad things happen with the cats and wolves. Especially the wolves. They fight for sport.”

  “Especially the half breeds,” Mina murmured, looking a little nervous. “Mongrels.”

  “Don’t call them that,” Alistair said. “It’s insensitive.”

  “Half breeds?” I asked. “You don’t mean half-humans.”

  “Half dogs,” she said. “Or, really, anyone with dog blood.”

  “It’s a shameful part of history,” Alistair said, his voice sharp like he’d rather not talk about it. His cool, rich boy bearing seemed to bristle at the very thought, and his grip on Mina grew more protective.

  In the 19th century humans attempted to breed wolf shifters with domesticated dogs. In hindsight, it was so obvious that this would lead to nothing good. They thought they might get the intelligence of shifters with the loyalty and obedience of dogs. And in some instances they sort of did, I guess. Those shifters did tend to be more subservient on the surface. But they also had the tendency to violently snap in a way that few pureblood wolf shifters ever would. Ordinary shifters would think of the consequences and hesitate to attack a human, knowing they would lose their own life as a result. With dog blood, a shifter lived more in the present, and had less will to temper their anger or fear. They often looked more bestial too, and I guess all this made for an entertaining fight.

  Ugh. Definitely not something I wanted to see.

  The birds, being the most beautiful and non-threatening of all shifters, were of course the most high-brow. The street reflected this; clubs with glamorous names like “Birds of Paradise” and “Kingfisher’s Palace” were lit with retro-styled signs and played lounge, Latin big band and jazz to evoke old nightclubs and exotic locales like Paris, Rio de Janeiro, or Tahiti. There was the carnival atmosphere of “Kookaburra” and the 1980s new wave style of “Jinx”, which seemed to attract a bit of a younger crowd, and the fully modern vibe of the graffiti-covered “Zest”.

  “Ooh! What a cute dress!” Mina dragged Alistair to a halt in front of a shop. The lights were on but the “Closed” sign was up. “Wouldn’t I look cute in that? Too bad it’s closed.”

  Alistair looked in the window and banged on the door. “I see someone still in there. I’ll get it for you.”

  It really was true. Mina could have anything she wanted. I guess it would be hard to seek your freedom if you turned into a shopping addict, but I found the whole thing cringeworthy. The shop owner unlocked the door. “We’re closed for the night.”

  “We just want the dress on the mannequin. For my girl. Name your price.”

  “The purple one!” Mina said. “With the ruffles.”

  “The belt doesn’t come with it.”

  “Do you want the belt?” Alistair asked her.

  “Yeah! I do want the belt! What about the shoes?”

  I waited just outside. Alistair looked at me before he went into the shop with Mina, silently ordering me to stay put. I was wearing the collar anyway, so I couldn’t go far unless I managed to get it off me first.

  I saw Shangri-La’s sign about a block ahead. Across from it was more of a dive tucked in a narrow building. The Raven’s Nest.

  For some reason I was very drawn to the Raven’s Nest, even though I was not a club kid by any means, and especially not a gothy club kid who would normally be attracted to the dim, smoky lighting with flashes of purple peeking out the door, and broody music emanating in a low bass to the sidewalk.

  I edged closer to it while Mina was trying on boots.

  I saw a tall slender guy with black hair that fell in his eyes, finishing off a drink while he glanced at the street as if waiting for someone. He was lean, but his arms were muscular and from what I could see, covered in tattoos. He wore a dark red shirt with a shimmer to it, sleeves rolled up, half unbuttoned so I could see how tough he was. He looked like someone I really didn’t need to mess with, but, I was admittedly drawn to men I shouldn’t be messing with sometimes. I was tough too, but I could tell when I was looking at a peer—with a man’s strength. But he also looked familiar. Really familiar.

  “Florian?” I called.

  I started running.

  The man stared me down as I got closer and realized just how much he looked like Ansel. His face was a little more angular, with prominent cheekbones, but otherwise…they could have been brothers.

  “Who the fuck are you?” he said, and then he pitched his empty bottle in a recycling bin and turned back to the club.

  No way, I thought. No way. And anyway, I don’t owe Ansel any help with his family. He abandoned me.

  But I’d lost my mom. I barely knew who I really was. I’d do anything to have a sibling or a parent. I couldn’t help but feel for Ansel.

  “Hey!” I called, before the guy made it back through the door. “Is your name Florian, by any chance?”

  “No,” he said. “Hey, can I give you a tip, kitten? Don’t talk to strangers in this neighborhood. You’ll get yourself killed in two seconds flat…or worse. Lots worse.”

  A tall darker-skinned guy in shades, a suit jacket and striped pants started walking up to the guy. “Good evening,” he said. He was reaching into an inner pocket of the jacket but when he saw me, he stopped. “Who is the kid, Flor?”

  I looked at ‘Flor’.

  Florian grabbed my arm and pulled a knife on me, pressing it gently to my chest. “I think someone’s looking for you,” he said.

  “If I had my knives I would show you a thing or two, birdie,” I growled.

  Florian laughed dryly and shoved me back. “You’re no coward, I’ll give you that.”

  Of course, now Alistair was striding up to me, carrying Mina’s bag for her, his other hand in his pocket. His hot glare struck Florian, glanced off the other man’s casual disregard, and landed on me. “Don’t go running off by yourself, Frankie.”

  Florian and his associate slipped back into his club. I watched him go.

  “I wasn’t running off,” I said. “I’m just extremely burned out on shopping by now, and I thought this club looked…fun.” I don’t know why I said ‘fun’. The music pouring out of it sounded like a corpse dragging himself out of the grave with a decent bass line.

  “Ohmigod, not my scene. The boys are too skinny in goth clubs,” M
ina said, and then she looked at Alistair. “It would actually work really well for you, though!”

  Nice little burn. He gave her a knowing smile like she did this to him all the time.

  “I’m fine,” he said. “Let’s go. We have work to do. This is no place to recruit.”

  “So serious…,” Mina said, mostly in an undertone to me, or maybe herself.

  We crossed the street at the intersection and Shangri-La was on the corner, with a grander entrance than most other clubs on the street, with a big art decoish sign and two sets of double glass doors and potted palms, more like a hotel than a good dance club.

  The bouncer was a guy with pecs as big as my head. “Good evening, Mr. Merryweather, and Miss Nash…brought a friend tonight?”

  “This is Frankie,” Alistair said. “She’ll be staying with us for a while.”

  The bouncer checked me out a little, giving me a head to toe swipe with his eyes. “I hope to see a lot more of you, then, Frankie.”

  “Ooh, Lev thinks you’re hot!” Mina said as we walked in.

  “I don’t want Lev to think I’m hot!” I tugged at my skirt in back a little, wishing I had gone for a long and flowy look.

  “She’ll get more comfortable with it all eventually,” Alistair said.

  “You can talk to me directly,” I said. “And I’m sure I won’t. I hope I don’t. This place is…”

  Once we passed through a short hall with an old box office—I guess this building was a theater once—we were in a club lit dimly but decorated with flashes of glitter and shiny metallic costumes for all the waitresses, who were scantily clad bird shifters. They all had the silver bands on their arms so it was easy to tell, and they were all especially beautiful and light on their feet, like they had all taken ballet. A woman was singing on the stage with the accompaniment of a band; I think she was singing some classic rock song in the style of an old 1940s type torch song, but I couldn’t place it. I guess all of this was meant to evoke a glamorous mood to the humans dancing and drinking here, but it weirded me out every bit as much as I expected.