by Jana Leigh
Calli frowned again, not a huge amount in this day and age; she was a little offended the bounty was such a meager amount. Hell, she had that much sitting her account if she needed it. She could buy her way out of this, but it was the principle of the thing.
"Are you freaking kidding me? A measly fifty thou for killing my ass? It's a scandal, a travesty. Hey, girls, I have a fifty thousand bounty on my head, is that shit or what?"
Rissa yelled in reply, "Hell, you're worth more than that, I think you're losing your mojo. I wouldn't waste my time on fifty thou, now if they upped it a few million, then your ass is toast, and I'm the toaster, but for now, I'm insulted right along with you."
Calli rolled her eyes; figures Rissa would be the one who answered her on this question. She was the investment genius that made them the money they had stored in so many accounts around the world. It would be a little scary if anyone actually found out their net worth.
"Fuckin' A, now before you kill me, let me point out a few facts to you," Calli said calmly.
The man grunted and looked at her breasts that were heaving. Dammit, this is why she hated sports bras; they tended to flatten you best assets when you needed them the most. Calli pushed her chest out so the idiot would continue to stare at her breasts and not pay attention to the sounds coming from the other room. With her wolf senses, she could tell that her friends were close to getting loose. She only had to keep his attention. Maybe her day of death had not arrived.
"Now, if you kill me right away, then you will be wasting that yummy hard on you have going on," Calli said seductively. She tried to look at the tiny bulge in his pants with interest, but she was sure they were talking cocktail, not ballpark, at this point.
The hyena grinned and she almost threw up a little. Her friends had better hurry their furry asses up, or she was going to shave their heads in their sleep, again. He dropped the gun a little, and she let out a breath of relief and then nodded to him.
"Yeah, I think maybe you could go out with a bang, in more ways than one," he barked, and she laughed with him while she was rolling her eyes.
"Good one, now why don't you come on over here and let me take care of that thing?" she growled and licked her lips as an invitation.
Damn, but he was stupid. The big man put the gun down on the floor and hurriedly began unsnapping his pants. She almost groaned when she saw he wore tightie whities, of course he did. She seriously thought those had gone out in the mid to late 20's.
Finally, she heard the scrape of her friends getting out of the room they were being held in. Slow Boy was too busy trying to pull the cocktail wiener out of his pants to notice. That was until Cherri slammed in the room holding a metal bar and swung it like Zena Warrior Princess at the idiot's head—Calli loved that show on the oldies channel. He had no time to react and went down like a house of cards on the floor, still holding his pecker in his hands.
Rissa walked in the room slowly and grinned when she saw the man on the floor. "Really, can we take pictures and post on the page?"
Cherri turned to her and growled, "Where the fuck were you? I thought we said we were going on three."
Rissa shrugged and kicked the gun away from the man, in case he woke up. "Your three and my three are two totally different things. You need to work on that. And we killed the other four that were outside the door, you did the same thing there; I only got to kill one."
"How the fuck, can the number three be different? It's a Goddamn number," Cherri yelled.
Calli waited patiently while they fought about the timing of their entrance, and finally, she couldn't take it anymore. Here she was, tied to a freaking wall with silver chains, and they were fighting in front of her instead of getting her loose. They sucked; she had no clue why she was best friends with them sometimes.
They were all so different. Cherri was the short, cute, perky one. She was referred to as Marilyn Monroe on more than one occasion because of her voluptuous body, and blonde, curly hair. When the girls saw that old faded pin-up, they had laughed. Men chased her constantly when they went anywhere, she was a slut. Then there was Rissa; she was the nerdy counterpart. She had brown hair that was cut into a short, spiky hairdo, and she was stick thin and tall; they could never figure out where the hell her muscles went to. Rissa was strong, but it looked like a wind could blow her over—she said it was because of her metabolism, they said she was anorexic.
None of them were in a relationship because they were all holding out hope that they would find their mate, but after one hundred years or so, they had pretty much given up and figured that scratching their itch was needed. They only had one rule, and that was no one brought a man to the apartment. It was their sanctuary.
She loved being close to the park so she could run. It was a good thing that when they shifted their clothes disappeared and then reappeared when they shifted back. It was part of their magic. But it took practice. You have no idea how many times Calli had shifted back to a human with her underwear on the outside of her clothes. Thank goodness that was just when she was young. Now she could do it without thinking.
Sitting on the top floor of a highly secured apartment building they had bought when the prices were cheap in the mid 2530's, their apartment took up the whole floor and was huge. They divided it into sections for each of them with a common area in the middle. Every high tech gadget you could think of was in the place, since Rissa invented most of them, few people had them. If a stranger came into their place, they would probably try to steal their shit.
Calli hung on the chains thinking that her bed sounded good about right now, considering the silver was making her tired, and her friends were still fighting, completely forgetting about her predicament. She growled when they began to walk out of the room, like she was supposed to follow them.
"Bitches, get me out of here," Calli said, and her friends stopped and turned to look at her. Cherri put her hands on her hips.
"Seriously, we escaped. Why can't you? I thought you were playing with him?" she said, losing her patience a little.
"Really, and what would your clue have been? Possibly the silver chains that were hanging on me? Or maybe it was the way I was hung on the wall," Calli snapped.
"Silver?" Rissa said and stepped closer and narrowed her eyes. "Well why the hell didn't you say something sooner? We were only tied to the wall with iron chains; the dipshit must have thought you were a bigger threat. You know I get sick and tired of everyone thinking you are some badass and we're like your weak, little sidekicks."
Calli laughed as her friends grumbled and unchained her. She had been held in that position for so long that she fell to the floor. Her friends stood there with their hands on their hips and watched as she struggled to get up.
"Fuck you," Calli said and finally made it to a standing position.
"Hey, wonder girl, you're the one who usually kicks everyone's ass. We just clean up your mess. I hate to ruin my nails. Oh, by the way, we have a mani/pedi scheduled for three, so we kinda need to get cleaned up. I hate going to the parlor smelling like day-old BO," Cherri said. Then walked out of the room, while Rissa and Calli watched her in horror.
"Shit, really, we have to do that again?" Calli said and growled. It was Cherri's latest thing that made them seem more like chicks instead of Enforcers. She said that you could kick ass and still look good.
Excerpt from Healing Cherri
Drekinn Series Book Two
by Jana Leigh
Prologue
Cherri Rett stood in her office for the first time in a week, and looked around. It was a freaking mess. She was gonna kick someone's ass for this, but it was going to have to be later. Kiki was the only thing she was worried about at this particular moment. Cherri had to get the information loaded into her computer, so she could figure out why their friend was still in a coma. Hell, they were in the twenty-sixth century, shit like this just didn’t happen anymore.
Too much crap had happened over the last week for her to conce
ntrate like she needed to. There were times she could just step into her lab and lose herself in the world of science. Not that anyone would believe her, other than her best friends, because her looks made it impossible for some people to take her seriously.
Cherri turned to her guard, Sabrina, and said, "Find out who the hell was in here while I was gone."
Sabrina nodded and turned to pull out her communicator. Even though she was Cherri's guard, Sabrina was also her Pack mate and friend. She would help her anyway she could. Pack mate, what a strange term for her to use right now, she never thought she would ever use that when she was referring to anyone other than her family. That was the way it was now, the laws had changed.
"Sorry, ma'am, this mess is mine." Cherri heard a low Deep-in-the-South drawl coming from somewhere in back of the stack of boxes that were in her office. She felt the tingle right down to her toes from hearing the voice. Wow, she thought, this was not normal. Just a voice sending shivers down her spine? Impossible.
However, if the face matched the voice, she would certainly give him a break, and at least let him tell her what the hell he was doing in her lab. A long break with her, in a room, with a bed, she thought. Cherri grinned; her friends were going to call her a 'slut' again. But who cared, if the man was as sexy as his voice.
Whew, and that accent. She loved a man with a Southern drawl. She had never heard one in real life, merely on the surveillance vids of criminals, and in the movies, both her only actual entertainment these days. New York wasn’t known for having anything but a New York accent, a Brooklyn accent, or a Long Island accent. Then there was the Jersey accent, and the snobby 5th Ave accent, the list went on. But nowhere was there a Southern accent, especially one that made her think of some very naughty things, things that would definitely not be professional.
Cherri frowned a little and thought for a second. Shifters were not really allowed to move around that much now. Before, they had been able to migrate and find a Pack they fit into. However, with the new human laws, shifters didn’t move unless they had family close by. The ones that did usually did so illegally, and therefore, ended up in the surveillance vids for them to study.
"Well, who are you?" Cherri said softly. She could try her seductive voice, but with Sabrina in the room, that would be awkward. Shit, Sabrina. She turned just as the other woman was pulling out her weapon and getting ready to push Cherri out of the way to make sure the man was not a threat. Someone still wanted them dead, and having a stranger in the room was not good. Even if his voice was smooth, like a good whiskey on a cold winter night, Cherri shivered again thinking about curling up in front of a fire place. Where the fuck are these images coming from? She was not one of those whimpering girls who wanted to get MARRIED!
"Well, ma'am, HOLY SHIT! Now, why the hell are you pointing that gun at me?" The Southern voice said with a firm tone.
Cherri once again felt herself shiver. He was strong and commanding. She just wanted a peek at him. There was no way he could be a lab rat like some of her other assistants. He had to be built with that voice.
"Hands up, and state your business," Sabrina ordered and then said, "Badge number, and ID password."
Cherri rolled her eyes and looked at her nails. Damn it, she was going to have to go to the salon again, they were chipping. Her communicator went off, and Cherri pulled it from her pocket. It was her friend and Alpha, Kade.
"Hi, Kade," she said into the communicator.
"Why is Sabrina's alarm going off?" Kade said calmly.
"Because there is a stranger in the lab," Cherri said.
"Fuck," Kade said and hung up. The Calvary was coming.
"Hey mister, you had better get those credentials out quick, ‘cause there's gonna be two pissed-off Alphas coming in the door in three...two...one," Cherri said and the door burst open with Kade, Calli, and Thomas with guns drawn.
Cherri loved it when there were hot men with guns. Even if Kade was her best friend's new mate, she could still appreciate a prime piece of male ass. And his was fine. Cherri looked out to see her best friend Calli frown at her, and then motion with her head to the other side of the room where the stranger was standing still out of her line of sight. Cherri shrugged her shoulders and then grinned.
“I have no idea who this is. I came into the lab to load up the latest data about Kiki and he started talking. You know, I kinda thought for a second that my lack of sleep was affecting my mind and creating a person’s voice to talk to me. You know how I am, I would have made it all sexy and rough like his is. However, I never would have put the Southern drawl into it, that’s when I realized he was not my imagination.”
“Damn it, Cherri, stop prattling on, and figure out who the fuck he is before I actually have to shoot someone. And right now, you're like at the top of the list just for annoying me,” Calli ground out.
“Watch those teeth, hun, because you know what grinding them can do. I have told you over and over, I'm a doctor not a dentist, and I can’t help you if you break one,” Cherri chided her friend.
“Grrr,” her friend said, flipped Cherri off with one hand while still holding her gun in the other.
Cherri rolled her eyes. “Hey sexy man voice, who the fuck are you and why are you in my lab?” Cherri called and smiled sweetly at her friend. She loved driving her nuts.
Cherri was a contradiction in terms. Yeah, she had the blonde hair, which she had dyed the other day to a nice rich brown because she needed a change. After all the shit that happened over the last few weeks, she felt she deserved it. But when people normally looked at her, they saw a blonde, ditzy bombshell, they didn’t see the real her. She had three Doctorate degrees as did her two best friends, all in different things that complimented each other. Cherri was a doctor and a damn good one. She was also a shifter, or what humans liked to call them, the Breyting, a fancy word for shifters thought up by humans to make it sound better to their ears. And according to her parents, she and her friends were descendants of some powerful wolves from a butt ass long time ago. That was the big news last week, look what that got her, now people were trying to actively kill her. Sad really, some people just wanted her and her friends dead because of the positions they held at the Drekinn Agency.
Cherri was the lead medical doctor for the Drekinn; it entailed a lot of research and more patience. But getting to the top, she had stepped on a few toes, so had her friends. Calli was the Lead Enforcer with her new mate. This meant she got to kick shifters’ asses regularly and not apologize. That, in and of itself, could get you killed in this world. Rissa was just your run-of-the-mill computer genius who could also build a nuclear weapon if she wanted to. On a Killable scale of one to ten, probably a seven, not exactly a good number to have on that particular scale.
This all came out when her best friend found her mate, after they had been kidnapped by an Ulfer, or a stupid-ass mutant shifter that had no control over his shifting or emotions. They lacked a piece of the DNA which allowed them to be good doggies, kitties, or bears, basically magical people with no conscience. The humans feared all of them because of a few bad apples. And all the assholes were led by King Bondi, better known to Cherri and her friends as, ‘The Fucking Dipshit who put a hit out on our Asses'. It was exhausting making up names for all these people because of the freaks they had flowing around; someone had come up with that name. They voted it was one of the stupid asses with a hero worship thing going on, but so far, no confirmation has been made.
Let’s just put it this way, the bad guys really didn’t like the name the medical people gave them. Since the Ulfer technically, in some weird foreign language, means mutant. They took offense, which seems impossible because they really do lack the moral fiber to actually care about what someone thinks. However, for some reason, this was a sticking point? So they elected the meanest asshole of the lot and called him the King, stupid yet simple.
Then there was ‘Mr. Twisted’, another sick fuck who was making their lives hell. He was the King’s ri
ght-hand man, so he did all the dirty work, and apparently loved it. The torture some of the Breyting had gone through over the last few weeks had been horrific. Cherri grimaced when she thought about the shifters in the morgue area. They had to still do autopsies to see what the actual cause of death was. The poor shifters, they thought they had been injected with some kind of drug which supposedly turned the Ulfer into a Breyting. Confusing? Yes, Cherri thought, and continued to stare at her nails and ignored the people around her. However, something just didn’t seem right about the drug they were injecting, but so far Cherri had been unable to run the tests she wanted. She just didn’t have the time or the energy to have this drama. Of course, if someone ended up dead, then she would have to help.
“Hey,” Cherri called, suddenly paying attention to her friends, who were still tensely holding the guns in the general direction she’d heard the voice. “Country, just give them your ID and shit, and let’s get this over with. Calli here has an itchy trigger finger, and she's dying to try out the new bullets she has for her gun. The psycho bitch that she is, she would just shoot your ass for fun, so let’s move it along.”
“Blonde Bitch,” Calli murmured.
“Ha, not blonde anymore,” Cherri crooned. Her friends loved to call her the blonde bimbo of the group.
“Once a blonde always a blonde, there's no going back,” Calli drawled and then lowered her gun when Sabrina called from the other end of the room that it was all clear.
Cherri stepped out from behind the large wall she had been pushed behind when Calli and Kade entered. She really just wanted to get to her computer and upload her information. She had an idea and wanted to see if she could make it work. If she could, then maybe Kiki would wake up. When he was shot in the head, they gave him a drug to help him repair his brain; part of the drug was a strange mixture of a sedative and regenerating drug. Cherri thought possibly Kiki was having a reaction to the sedative. Ah, modern technology, a bullet to the head was no longer deadly, well only if you missed the important area on a shifter that needed to be hit. There were only a few ways to kill a shifter; the tried and true bullet was one of the deadliest.
