by C. L. Bevill
The Irishman had come into the clan three years previous. He was as lethal as Wheeler and nearly as dominant. Wheeler thought Killian might challenge petite Emma but he had warned him off. Fortunately, Killian wasn’t interested in power and domination fights. He wanted a secure locale with fellow shifters that knew where he was coming from. “There’s some intelligence from New York about a group of mercenaries,” Killian said after a moment, laughter evident in his voice.
Wheeler frowned at the phone. “I’m missing the point,” he returned with a little of aggravation starting to drain away. He looked at the double doors of the ballroom and wished that Emma would reappear. He liked that she was watching him from the derelict balcony boxes. She was starting to acknowledge her interest in him. It had been a long time coming. Five years while she figured out what was happening had been torture to Wheeler. But Emma was a turned were and she wasn’t always aware of the meanings behind shifter’s actions in the Clan.
“They’ve been asking about weres,” Killian said. “Specifically cats. And several weres in the New York area have vanished.”
“Cats move all the time,” Wheeler said slowly. “They’re not big on leaving forwarding addresses.” He sniffed again. Damn, he could almost swear that Emma was still in the room from the intensity of her scent. “Especially males. Looking for territory, hunting grounds, females, and too many other things to mention.”
“I know. This is different. Some are missing females.” Killian’s voice lost its amusement. “I’ve been talking to the Alpha in New York and he’s concerned. One were left his family and his mate is pregnant with their first child. Some of the otherworlders have been talking about mercenary types looking for shifters to hire. They left New York State last week and the rumor mill said they were headed for the western states. It’s pretty much conjecture now.”
“I’ll talk to the New York Alpha this afternoon,” Wheeler said. Then he sighed.
“You sound like Emma was just in to see you,” Killian said slyly.
Wheeler’s jaw crunched as his teeth ground together.
“And there’s the jaw being snapped shut,” Killian added. “Going to need a dentist, yes?”
“Would you like to see your intestines tied in a bow around your neck?” Wheeler rumbled.
Killian was silent for a moment. “Emma’s a turned were, right?”
“What of it?” Wheeler asked warningly.
“Some of the weres talk about her. She hasn’t been around that long.”
“She’s earned every bit of what she possesses,” Wheeler stated with that same cautioning quality in his voice.
“God, yes. I’m not sure if I could take Emma in a fight,” Killian said. “Besides I like what I’m doing now. She’s the one who has to play politics and talk to new weres in town. Jay-sus, that sounds like pure torture to me.”
Emma was going to do that very thing at that moment. She was trying to improve the membership in the Clan. There were several rogue female felines in the Denver area. Most hadn’t embraced the group dynamic. But they hadn’t come into Wheeler’s clan yet and didn’t realize the benefits. Part of Emma’s job was to expand participation. Most weres loved to talk to Emma. She had a soft voice and a delicate manner, even when she was testing their defensive strategies. She was small-framed and curved in all the right places. Her chestnut brown hair sparkled in the sun and her peacock blue eyes were tilted at the edges. Best of all, she had the luscious ruby lips of a fallen angel. Who wouldn’t want to talk to her? Who wouldn’t want to kiss her?
Wheeler wanted to slam his head against the punching bag but he abruptly remembered he had destroyed another one. Crap. Accounting is going to get pissy with me again.
“Does she know?” Killian asked curiously.
“Know what?” Wheeler snapped.
“God be praised, you’re deaf, dumb, and ignorant, the both of you,” Killian laughed. “But in her case she can be forgiven.”
There was a deep growl that emanated from Wheeler’s chest.
“Glad I’m not down in the gym with you,” Killian said sincerely. “Does she know about the mating protocol?”
Wheeler started to say something like, “You idiot, Killian. Of course she knows,” when the words died in his throat. The words became a question in his head instead of a statement of fact. Instead he said, “Who does she talk to?”
“Emma?” Killian repeated stupidly. “Well, there’s Siko, the cheetah from Kenya. No, I guess they’re not really friends. And there’s Ciana, that Italian feline, and well, I guess maybe not her, either. She talks to a lot of the guys but some of them are…” his voice petered out.
“Are what?” Wheeler demanded.
“The born weres don’t always treat the turned weres like they’re part of the family.” Killian sighed over the line. “You know that. The DNA gene has a way of picking the most robust. It’s never made a difference to me but it does to a few of them. Those few don’t talk to her unless they have to, but then they don’t talk to each other either.” He paused for a long moment and added, “I don’t think she talks to anyone. Not really.”
Wheeler knew about the differences that some weres held against each other but had disregarded the information. The Cat Clan stuck together because they were all each other had. Slowly he picked up the knife that Emma had left behind. He studied it as if it could give him the answers he sought.
“It’s possible that Emma doesn’t know anything about the mating process,” Killian offered. “I can have Siko talk to her. Siko just mated with Edward and it’ll be fresh in her mind.”
Emma isn’t aware of what was happening to them? Wheeler cursed viciously. He’d assumed. It wasn’t typical of Emma to play games and he’d never thought that she was toying with him. Considering her background, he thought that she was easing her way into their lifestyle. But she was also taking crap from the natural born weres. Some of them rejected her offhand because of what she was, through no fault of her own. And he was a natural born were.
Does sweet little Emma think that I will reject her as well? Does she even know of my interest? Does she know what she’s really feeling and what that means?
Wheeler scowled. “Where did Emma go today?”
Chapter Two
I gave an order to a cat and the cat gave it to its tail. – Chinese Proverb
Emma’s face was red all the way down the mountain although she had the windows of her Jeep wide open while she drove. So what? Wheeler had kissed her. He’d held her as if she was…precious. He’d flirted with her. Caught him in a horny moment, she thought disdainfully. That’s all. What’s the saying about all cats looking the same in the dark?
It hurt a little to think that.
At the age of fourteen she had been bitten by an ocelot in Central America. Her family had taken a vacation and was touring Aztec and Mayan ruins. One isolated minute Emma had wandered into the lush forest looking for a diversion. She had found a rather large one. The boy was a half-feral were a few years older than Emma and thought that she would be a good companion. He’d deliberately savaged her leg, where she still bore scars. Her family hadn’t understood what was happening to their eldest daughter. Days after being released the boy were had followed Emma and taken her in the night.
It had been a crash course in learning how to survive for her. The authorities in Mexico thought she’d been kidnapped by local rebels. Local rebels denied the charges. A curandero, a traditional folk healer and shaman, had come to see her father. The shaman had told her family that she was alive and would return to them, but changed. Her father had thought the curandero was a kook.
After eight weeks, Emma escaped the boy were by virtue of a fight until only one of them was able to walk away. She followed streams in the forests until they ran into larger streams, and then further on until she finally came to the ocean. A village took her in and tended to all her various wounds. Her family came to get her two days later and realized the curandero had been correct. The
Emma who had left them was not the Emma who had come back.
For a short time Emma was able to keep the secret that the boy were had forced upon her. But her family knew something was wrong. A fourteen year old can only keep so much to herself. Finally she showed her parents what had happened to her, hoping that they would accept her. The result was that when she ran away at fifteen her family didn’t report her disappearance. As far as she knew, ten years later, they still hadn’t reported it.
Emma made her way on the streets. She traveled wherever she felt like going, roaming with any whim she took. Often she had felt as if she were truly alone. She worked under the table in a variety of locales, often in restaurants and bars, managing to keep herself fed and the bare bones of a shelter above her head. When she was legally of age she requested her birth certificate and social security card. She was able to find minimum wage jobs and roommates who didn’t ask questions about her frequent absences. She worked on obtaining a GED. She let herself believe that her life could be…normal. Then she found Wheeler.
Rather it was the other way around. Wheeler had found her. He had come into a restaurant where Emma was a busboy in Albuquerque, New Mexico. He’d sat in her section with two other large men who looked not like him in appearance but seemed like him in temperament. They’d stared at her until she had fairly bristled with rage. Wheeler had made them leave before she could tell her boss about the oddly behaving customers. Then he’d waited for her to leave work so he could tell her about the world she could live in with the Cat Clan.
Relationships were sparse for Emma. Trust issues were paramount. Her own father had called her a freak before she realized he was going to do something terrible to her. She’d fled before anything had happened, hoping that without her provoking presence her family would resume some semblance of normality. There had been others who had been suspicious of her feline nature. The human world, for the most part, didn’t know about the paranormal one and even before she was associated with a shifter’s organization she knew not to blab.
Recruiting rogue female weres was a pet project for Emma. They were out there. The DNA gene was discerning. Those who were bitten often didn’t survive. Most autopsy reports stated a type of infection produced by animal bites as a cause of death. The authorities sometimes would hunt down particularly dangerous beasts that caused multiple deaths. The glimpse of exotic cats in locales was attributed to negligent owners. But there was always a backlash. There were enough weres who bit first and worried about consequences later. After all, bites didn’t always result in transformations. It wasn’t a huge number and Wheeler had clamped down on incidents. But it still happened.
There was a cougar were located in Aurora who also happened to be a nineteen year old college student. Her name was Sage Ingram and she had been hiking in the mountains when a cougar attacked her. The cougar had escaped and Sage had limped down the trail after applying a tourniquet to her leg. Fortunately, the nurse attending to the college student was also a were. He had smelled the aggressive were all over Sage and reported it to Wheeler. Emma had made contact in the following week and convinced Sage that she wasn’t insane. Emma had also convinced Sage that she could live a fairly normal life.
“If a normal life includes someone like Wheeler,” Emma muttered. She carefully negotiated the two lane road down the mountain. “He kissed me. What am I supposed to do about that? How am I supposed to look at him tomorrow?” She swerved to avoid some rocks in the road.
Glancing at the clock in the dash, Emma cursed. She was running late. Staring at the Cat Clan’s leader’s butt in a lurid manner had shot her time schedule to hell. And she was talking to herself. “I’m talking to myself,” she said aloud, for emphasis. “Who else am I supposed to talk to about Wheeler? Can’t talk to my human friends. Can’t talk to any of the guys up there. The ones who don’t mind talking to me don’t want to talk about my obsession with Wheeler. God, they would cringe and then probably tear off fingers to stuff in their ears. The girls are uncomfortable with me mostly because I’m the Second.”
Her phone rang and Emma glanced down. She snatched the Bluetooth up and arranged it on her ear. Then she pushed the receive button. “Emma?” a voice came falteringly.
“Sage,” Emma said. “I’m sorry I’m running a little late. I’m on my way right now. You’re still at the coffee shop?”
“I’m in the park down the street from the coffee shop,” Sage said carefully.
Emma blinked. Sage was a tentative young woman. In some ways she reminded Emma of herself but Sage had advantages that Emma never had. Emma was hoping that Sage would keep all the advantages and have a smooth psychological transition. She still had her family and she could still have her career. No one would drag her into a rain forest for eight weeks and…
“Okay,” Emma said. “I’ll meet you in the park.” She looked outside. The skies were blue and clear. The sun was edging the mountains and would soon be casting monstrous shadows. There was a jacket in the back seat if she needed it. “Should I bring you a latte?”
There was a brief gasp and then Sage said, “Uh, no. I’m good. Maybe we can get one later.”
“Sure,” Emma replied. Is Sage having second thoughts? Emma hated to break it to her but the change was permanent. Sage was now a were, for better or worse, until the day she died. She’d already made her first change, which was why she had been open to the way Emma spoke to her. Emma had shown Sage her own cat in a private place. Fortunately, Sage hadn’t had a moment of indecision about Emma telling the truth or not. “Be there in about ten minutes.”
The Bluetooth made a buzzing noise. Sage had already disconnected.
Emma frowned. She’d helped about a half dozen weres in the last four years. All of them had made successful transitions. Four had moved and joined other clans. A fifth had moved to Spain when she’d met her European mate. One was still in the Colorado faction but she was visiting relatives in Canada at the moment. None were as diffident as Sage.
Thirteen minutes later Emma pulled into the parking lot of the park. It was close to Cherry Creek Lake and was part of the State Park there. It was a Monday and Emma wasn’t sure how late the park was open. There wasn’t an attendant at the entry booth so she had passed it and driven through the open gates. She stopped when she saw Sage’s beat up Toyota and put the Jeep next to it. When she got out she saw that there were only a few vehicles left in the area. Furthermore, she couldn’t see anyone at all.
Emma put her cell phone in her pocket, got out, and locked the door. She craned her neck and then used her were senses to sniff around. The previous days had been warm and dry so she could scent many people who had come and gone. There was the aroma of hot dogs, sunscreen, sweat, and the like. It was a place where people came to picnic, boat, and swim. Pausing for a moment, she scented gun metal. Then she remembered that there was a gun range in the park and relaxed.
Walking toward the beach and picnic areas, Emma continued to look around. She didn’t see anyone. The place was dead quiet with only the noise of planes from nearby Denver International Airport disrupting the silence. There wasn’t even a light breeze trickling over her flesh. The birds weren’t making any noise.
Emma started to bristle, feeling something was wrong. She’d been so caught up in the memory of Wheeler’s kiss that she’d forgotten to be cautious about everything no matter how innocuous. Yes, something is wrong. She halted in her tracks and slowly swung her gaze around. There was the scent of something feline. Sage? Then there was the prevalent smell of sweat and gun metal. Too prevalent.
Directly ahead of her the brush moved and Sage came into view. Someone was standing behind her with his hands on her shoulders. Emma didn’t say anything at all. Even from a short distance she could see that Sage was terrified. Damn. Damn. Damn. Damn me for thinking like a stupid ninny.
“Emma?” Sage said and her voice quavered. There was a bruise on one of Sage’s cheeks and her hands were behind her back. Handcuffed?
T
he man behind Sage was just as tall as Wheeler but his hair was black and his eyes glinted greenly at Emma. Like many of their kind, he had a particular look and a certain stance. Shifter of some kind. Another cat. The thoughts careened through Emma’s head. Some kind of trap?
It was a bittersweet realization. Some were had deliberately bitten Sage just to see if she survived, and then to see who would come to call on the Denver area’s newest shifter. They’d waited some more to see if they could track Emma and failed because Emma was predominantly cautious. And look, here again was the Cat Clan’s Second, Emma Lucia. “Who are you?” she said forcefully. One of her hands found a knife.
“My name is Martinez,” the man said with a heavy accent. “Mucho gusto, Senorita.”
Emma shuddered inwardly. The accent reminded her of the boy who had turned her. It was South or Central American. Is it possible that there’s a connection with that boy? There were some large feline were populations in Central and South America. Emma didn’t think so but the possibility still made her insides cramp.
It was more likely that this Martinez had nothing to do with that long ago boy. But some weres were infinitely more dangerous. Female, feline weres were rare. They were prized. The Cat Clan had warnings about some that had been snatched by various groups for purposes that no one wanted to put into words.
Shit. Emma took out another knife. She cast a look around her, searching for others. No one was apparent but she could smell freshly oiled weapons. She could scent potent odors such as the chili burrito someone had had for lunch and the underarm deodorant that had been over applied. Martinez wasn’t alone. But the good news was that the rest were humans.
Fortunately it wasn’t a threat from the werewolves again. The werewolf faction in Oregon had been eliminated the year before by a coalition of the Clan, the Land of Light, and, she could hardly believe it, dragons. The remaining groups were negotiating with the various feline clans.
