Defender Raptor (Protection, Inc: Defenders, #2)

by Chant, Zoe

  For the grand finale, Renu came out as an elephant, along with the bear, the big cats, and the seals, and made human performers jump through hoops and do other tricks, rewarding them with treats after every one.

  At last, the lights went to full black, not the dim blue used for scene changes, and then came up bright and white for everyone to take their bows. The curtain call alternated between humans and animals, to give them a chance to shift backstage.

  Snickering, Dali whispered, “Is everyone getting applauded twice?”

  “The ones who performed twice are,” Merlin said. “If you think of it that way, it’s only fair.”

  They waited till the rest of the audience had filed out, and then he led her down to the ring.

  What are you doing? demanded his raptor. Run away! Run away with Dali! Drive to Las Vegas with her and get married by Elvis! As an afterthought, he added, Take the cotton candy.

  Merlin’s palms were sweating, and his raptor’s stream of suggestions didn’t help. He thought again of Dali’s comment that it was like an awkward family Thanksgiving, and couldn’t help murmuring, “You remember the escape signal, right?”

  “Of course,” she said. “If you touch your ear and cough, I remember a pressing engagement.”

  “You’re the best.”

  He was unsurprised to see that the entire company was coming out to meet him. He’d never really believed that he’d avoided their notice. They were merely very aware, as con artists themselves, that if he wasn’t greeting them there was probably a reason, and had allowed him to maintain his cover until they were in private.

  At the head of the group was the leader, owner, and alpha of the circus—and most importantly, his mother.

  She’d appeared in the show as Goldie the Amazing Talking Parrot and as the psychic Madame Fortuna, and was currently in her human form as a tiny woman with curly white hair and glasses with Coke-bottle lenses that gave her a slightly bug-eyed appearance. She never would state her age, but would reply to the question with a discussion-ending “Old.”

  He had a lot of complicated feelings about her, but when he saw her now, all he felt was love. The next thing he knew, they were hugging like they always had. Merlin lifted her off her feet, as he had ever since he’d been big enough to do it, and she said, “Put me down,” like she always did.

  Finally, Mom pushed him away, held him at arms’ length, and said, “You’re so thin! You haven’t been eating properly. You need someone to feed you.”

  Merlin tried very hard not to either turn red or catch Dali’s eyes. “Mom, I can cook.”

  “Hmph,” replied Mom. “You run away, you don’t write, you don’t call—”

  “I write,” Merlin protested. “I call!”

  “Not nearly enough,” Mom said. She raised her voice so the entire company could hear. “If I’d known you were coming, I’d have prepared a proper welcome for my returning heir.”

  “Heir?” Dali said.

  Mom gave her a distinctly suspicious glance. “Hello, young lady. May I inquire as to your relationship with my heir?”

  Run, suggested his velociraptor.

  Merlin wished he could. Everything was spinning out of control. He felt like he was strapped to the Wheel of Death, though hopefully with less puking.

  He tried to speak as fast as possible, so no one would have a chance to interrupt him before he could get everything out. And also in the hope that he could drop enough information on both Dali and Mom that they’d be distracted from the “heir” and “relationship” questions.

  “Mom, this is Dali Batiste,” Merlin rattled off. “She’s my client. Dali, this is Janet Gold, the owner of the circus. And my mother. Mom, Dali hired me to investigate the theft of an heirloom necklace by trained pigeons and since you have trained birds here at the circus, I thought someone here might have taught someone to train pigeons to do tricks, only whoever they taught how to teach the pigeons used them to steal instead.”

  Merlin gulped for breath. In that pause, he scanned the crowd. They were silent, waiting for their alpha to finish with Merlin before they greeted him or yelled at him, depending.

  Fausto Fratelli looked like he wanted to shift into a flying squirrel, fly at Merlin’s face, and scratch his eyes out. Renard Richelieu was giving Merlin a more subtle glare. The Duffy brothers, who were sparrow shifters and thieves, had looked distinctly irritated ever since Merlin had mentioned trained birds. Kalpana, the stage manager, was smiling shyly at him from the back of the crowd. Renu and Max were clearly just waiting to hug him.

  There was no one new in the company. And the only person missing was Natalie.

  “Hmph,” said Mom.

  “Heir?” repeated Dali.

  Merlin waved his hands frantically. As much to Mom and the rest of the company as to Dali, he said, “I’m not the heir. This is just a visit. A business visit. And a friendly catch-up, of course. Where’s Natalie?”

  To Merlin’s surprise, Kalpana spoke first. Though maybe that shouldn’t have been surprising; as two of the few non-shifters, she and Natalie had been close, though not as close as Natalie and Merlin.

  “She left,” Kalpana said.

  “Left?” Merlin repeated blankly. “Left the circus? Why?”

  At that, everyone broke in, talking on top of each other. In the next thirty seconds, Merlin heard that Natalie had gotten bored, had fallen in love, had decided to find herself, and had wanted to pursue acting, cooking, rock climbing, and history. From which Merlin concluded that no one had any idea.

  In the midst of the hubbub, Merlin caught Dali mouthing “Heir?” at him.

  Spotting the Duffy brothers starting to head for the exits in a “casual” manner designed to get out as fast as possible while not looking like that was what you were doing, he murmured in her ear, “Let me corner them alone.”

  She grabbed him by the shoulder. Her eyebrows were pulled together in a way that clearly meant business. Not even bothering to lower her voice, she said, “Nope. You and me are having a talk. Now.”

  “Wait,” Merlin protested as she began to march him up the aisle and into the empty audience section. “I’ll explain everything in the car—everyone is watching—”

  Unfortunately, everyone was not only watching, they were cracking up and yelling encouragement. She didn’t look back, but she could undoubtedly hear the chorus of “Yep, that’s the way to handle him!” and “You go, girl!” and “Don’t fall for the old ‘there’s a tiger behind you’ trick!”

  When they were halfway up the aisle—far enough from the ring to be able to speak without being overheard—she put a hand on each shoulder and sat him down in a seat. Hard.

  “Ow,” he protested reflexively, though it hadn’t hurt. It was drowned out in a chorus of cheers, catcalls, and applause from the circus folk below.

  Dali sat in the seat in front of him, leaning over the back to talk face-to-face. This put him in the embarrassing position of having to see both her and the laughing circus folk in the ring below as they talked.

  “Can you please wait outside?” Merlin yelled down. “Change out of your costumes! I won’t go anywhere!”

  They yelled back stuff like “You better not!” and “We’ll put guards at the exits!” and “I’ll loan you a spoon to tunnel your way out!” But they did leave, to his immense relief. Dali twisted around to watch them go, then turned back to him.

  “I’ve put up with your evasions long enough,” Dali said. Her dark eyes seemed to gaze directly into his soul. “I want to know what’s going on.”

  She’s especially sexy when she’s pissed off, his raptor remarked unhelpfully. You should kiss her right now.

  “Shut UP,” Merlin said, and realized a second later that he’d spoken aloud. “Sorry! Sorry!” Lowering his voice, he hastily said, “That wasn’t to you! That was to my raptor! He talks inside my head—”

  “You hear voices,” Dali said flatly. He could see that she couldn’t decide whether to be annoyed that he’d tol
d her to shut up, annoyed that he was lying about it, or annoyed that his lie was so ridiculous.

  “Yes, all shifters do. Well, one voice. We hear the animal we shift into. It’s not really a separate being from us. It’s like the voice of our subconscious. Or, well, not really ‘sub’ in my case. That’s why sometimes I seem kind of distractible—well, it’s one of the reasons—anyway—”

  “Fine,” Dali said, jerking her hand to cut off that subject. “We’ll talk about that later. Right now, I want you to explain this heir thing. In brief. No long stories where ‘it all began’ thirty years ago, no ‘look, a triceratops!’ Just the facts.”

  She was especially sexy when she was pissed off. Her eyes were like black diamonds, her cheeks were flushed, and even her lips had gone a darker shade of brown-pink, like a dusty peach. A peach that he’d really like to taste. It would be so sweet...

  “NOW,” Dali said ominously.

  Merlin gathered his wits together, and told her the truth. “Mom and I aren’t biologically related. She adopted me when I was a boy. She’s the head of the circus, and when I came of age, she announced that she was naming me as her heir. Only I wasn’t a shifter, and the head of the circus has always been a shifter. Her decision split the circus in half. It set families against each other. It caused so much trouble that I asked her to take it back. She refused. She’s stubborn as hell. People were threatening to leave over it. The only way I could save the circus was to leave myself.”

  He stopped suddenly, his eyes prickling and his face hot. He’d managed to say that much by trying to blurt it out without thinking about it, but he could only manage a few sentences before his mind caught up to his mouth. And then all that grief and loss and frustration hit him like a tidal wave, like it had happened the day before instead of years ago.

  “It was my home,” Merlin said. And then his throat closed up, and he could say no more.

  “I think I understand,” Dali said. “The Navy was mine.”

  And then she did the last thing he’d have expected. She leaned over the back of her seat and put her arms around him. Instinctively, he wrapped his around her. And they sat together, holding each other, two lost people seeking and finding comfort in each other’s touch. Merlin breathed in Dali’s sweet-spicy scent and felt the softness and warmth of her skin. They were so close that he could feel her breathing.

  He didn’t know which of them moved first, or if they both moved at the same time. All he knew was that their lips were touching, then opening to each other. His hands tightened over the slippery silk of her blouse and the warm body beneath it as they kissed. Her mouth was hot and intoxicating. She wound her arms around his neck, and he felt her breathing catch. His heart was racing. He’d never wanted a woman so much in his life.

  And then they both tried to get closer, and banged into something hard.

  “Ow,” muttered Dali.

  Merlin opened his eyes, which had closed without him noticing it. He felt as if he’d woken up from a dream in a strange place. He’d completely forgotten where he was. Now he could see that they were both leaning way over, and had collided with the hard seat back that was between them.

  Dali’s eyes were wide, her lips parted, her hair slightly mussed. He couldn’t help wondering if that was what she looked like when she was making love. Forget when she was angry, now when she was most beautiful.

  She blinked as if she too felt like she’d just woken up. “I hope you don’t regret that, because I don’t.”

  “Never,” Merlin swore.

  Their eyes met, then glanced away. He laughed as he realized that they were both doing the same thing: looking around to see if there was anywhere more comfortable where they could continue making out.

  “I’m afraid this is it,” he said. “Also there’s a bunch of circus people waiting for us outside.”

  “And you have interviews to do,” she said, sounding as regretful as he felt. “But afterward...”

  “Afterward, we have a date,” he promised.

  She ran her fingers through his hair, then brushed them over his lips. He kissed them. Merlin felt light as a feather, as if he might float away from sheer joy. As if his entire life had changed in the last few minutes.

  “So...” Dali said slowly. “You couldn’t inherit the circus because you weren’t a shifter. But you’re one now. Would they care that you weren’t born one?”

  “No, no.” Merlin waved his hand dismissively. “If I shifted in front of them, they’d have to accept me.”

  The light in Dali’s eyes faded. She looked uncertain now, as if bracing herself for a blow that she knew was coming, but not when it would fall. “Will you?”

  Merlin heaved a sigh, and once again told her the hard, blunt truth. “I haven’t decided. I love the circus, but there’s been a lot of water under the bridge since I left. It’s been hanging over my head ever since I got turned into a shifter. Anyway, I wanted to decide on my own. If they know I can shift now, it’ll blow up everything all over again and I’ll have Mom pressuring me even more.”

  “Wow. That’s a lot.” Dali put her hand on his shoulder.

  Her touch was incredibly comforting. Not to mention distracting him with the delicious prospect of their upcoming date. “Let’s go out and meet the family. I’ll track down the Duffy brothers and see if they know your pigeon thieves. If it wasn’t them, I’ll at least get a start on interviewing everyone else until I find out who it was. And then...”

  “Then our date.” Dali grinned at him. She looked so different when she smiled, as if another, happier woman lived below her somber surface, just waiting to come up for air.

  Merlin led her down the aisle and into the ring. It was the quickest way out, and he was sure she’d enjoy seeing the backstage area. As they walked across the ring, he heard the tiniest creaking sound. He looked up.

  The entire trapeze apparatus, with its heavy metal bars, had somehow come loose from the ceiling and was plummeting down, directly above Dali.

  Protect Dali!

  Merlin didn’t know if the shout inside his head came from him or his raptor. All he knew was that the apparatus was far too big for him to simply push her out of the way.

  For the first time since he’d gained his powers, he was completely confident that when he shifted, he’d be the exact size that he needed to be.

  Merlin became a raptor and lunged forward, shielding Dali with his body.

  He was struck so hard that he felt nothing but the impact—not even the pain.

  CHAPTER 10

  Dali slammed into the floor. Metal crashed and clanged all around her, and a leather strap struck her shoulder like a whip. But nothing hard or heavy fell on her. Merlin had protected her from that.

  “Merlin!” Dali shouted. “Are you all right?”

  The huge raptor that he had become lay heavy and still atop her, pinning her legs. She twisted around frantically, trying to tell if he was breathing. Blood trickled down his head, and his eyes were closed.

  “Merlin!” She sat up, her legs still pinned under the great raptor’s body. Dali strained forward to reach his throat, where she fumbled for a pulse. Before she could find one, his great yellow eyes blinked open. She sagged with relief. “Oh, Merlin.”

  She stroked his throat and shoulder. His hide was smooth to the touch rather than scaly, velvety like old worn leather. Then it changed under her fingers, and Merlin lay sprawled across her legs, with his head in her lap and blood matting his bright hair.

  He clutched at her frantically. “Dali! Are you hurt?”

  “I’m fine,” she reassured him. “Maybe a little bruised. Don’t move, Merlin, you might have back or neck injuries.”

  “I’m fine,” he protested, then winced. “Mostly.”

  He looked past her, and his expression changed from relief to dismay. Following his line of sight, she turned her head. And saw a crowd of circus folk standing behind her.

  They had obviously come rushing back at the sound of the crash. Some
were only half-dressed, or had been caught halfway through changing out of a costume and into regular clothes. Rather horrifyingly, one woman wore full clown makeup and a sexy black dress. Others, mostly the large predators, had shifted, so the crowd included lions, tigers, and a bear, plus a flying squirrel excitedly chittering atop the shoulder of a man wearing a shirt and no pants.

  The pantless man knelt beside Merlin and began examining him, ignoring his protests that he was fine, just a little banged up.

  “Are you a doctor?” Dali asked.

  The pantsless man shook his head. “I’m a healer.”

  “What are your actual medical qualifications?” Dali inquired, barely stopping herself from adding, “If any.”

  “Zane’s a paramedic, Dali, it’s fine,” Merlin said. “And he’s had doctor-level training from other shifter medical people.”

  She was about to point out that unofficial training was no substitute for X-Rays when the crowd parted to make way for Janet, who couldn’t move as fast as the younger people.

  “You nearly gave me a heart attack,” she scolded Merlin. “I thought you might be dead!”

  “No, no, Mom, I’m fine,” he assured her. “Everyone’s making a big fuss over nothing.”

  “They certainly are not. Don’t you dare move until Zane is finished examining you.” Janet knelt beside Merlin and took his hand with a gentleness and concern that touched Dali’s heart. As soon as Zane finished his examination and sat back, she turned to him. “Well?”

  “No broken bones,” Zane said. Dali would have been more relieved, except she didn’t particularly trust the “healer’s” expertise. She was also annoyed that he addressed Janet rather than Merlin. “Just cuts and bruises and the shock of the impact. He’ll be fine with a little rest. His shift form was so big and strong, it protected him from the worst of it.”