The Lady and the Tigershifter: Space Shifters Chronicles Christmas

by Kara Lockharte

  “Fine.”

  I would just take him into custody afterward.

  TWO HOURS LATER…

  I started screaming.

  “Stop! Please!”

  I wondered if it was too much and decided that when faced with likely imminent death, one could never have too much screaming.

  The shifter snarled. He clearly hadn’t come to that realization. So I braced my feet against the cage wall and punched him in the ass again.

  The roar of surprise was gratifying if not absolutely terrifying. “You’re supposed to be eating me!” I hissed at him.

  It was ridiculous how loud his whisper was. “Roaring when eating doesn’t make any sense. Your food would just fall out of your mouth.”

  I rolled my eyes and screamed some more. “Help! Please help! He’s eating me!”

  The cage door slowly opened.

  “Hel—”

  The shifter surged out, with me still bound to him, and kicked the pirate in the throat. He jumped and crouched over the pirate, grabbing the disc-key from the pirate’s vambrace. There was the whine and hum of charging weapons, and I could see the rest of the pirates lowering their sights on him.

  Weapons fired, and trees and pirates receded as he leaped and ran into the treetops… with me still tied to him. I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to ignore how my stomach was trying to crawl up into my throat.

  Finally he came to a stop. I could still hear the pirates coming after us. He fiddled with the cuffs, and they came off with a click. I fell to the ground, my head spinning.

  “Are you all right?”

  “Of course,” I said, dragging myself to my feet. “I love being helplessly tied to the back of a shifter jumping across dizzying heights while being chased by space pirates.”

  “You’re a dead pussy!” someone screamed. The shifter grabbed me, pulling me against him and a chunk of rock exploded where my head had been.

  “Stay here,” he said, before leaping back toward the pirates.

  Stay here? Where was I going to go? I looked around and saw a familiar-looking round sphere lying by my feet.

  I touched it and the panels lit up. Another victim of the weird Ealen no-tech fields.

  A tiger roared. Then an explosion sent a shudder through the sound-sensitive curler vines that entwined the ruins of this place.

  I squeezed my eyes shut. Priceless, unique ruins were being destroyed, and valuable information lost forever.

  And I couldn’t do anything about it.

  I peeked my head over the ledge. Scattered bits of armor, cybernetic prostheses, cracked enslavement crowns, as well as a few bodies littered the clearing. In the midst of it all, the vandal stood in the middle, fighting with no weapons save for a shattered rifle he used as a battering ram against five seasoned space pirates in Smart Armor.

  And he was winning.

  His movements were a brutal dance of deadly efficiency. Against a circle of enemies, each parry was an attack, each dodge another counterattack. The vandal was exactly what the Ealen had bred shifters to be: a living weapon of destruction.

  At that moment, I realized I had completely underestimated the shifter. When I had come across him, he could have so clearly overwhelmed me, stopped me, killed me, or at least knocked me unconscious before I summoned the spheres.

  And yet, he had just flashed me a stupidly sexy grin and hit me with a bad pickup line.

  He turned, saw me watching, and flashed me another smile.

  Oh, he was definitely dangerous.

  There was one pirate left standing. The vandal picked him up by the throat and was about to ram him into one of the ancient priceless abstract murals that lined the walls.

  I closed my eyes and winced, unable to watch the destruction.

  But there was no crash.

  I opened them and saw the shifter watching me. He threw the man to the ground and kicked him in the head.

  He looked up at me, nodded toward the mural, and winked.

  Was he flirting with me in the middle of a fight?

  Focus, Seria. He is a vandal and a thief.

  I shook my head and turned back to the remains of the sphere I had found. A few more moments of recoding, rewiring, and cutting my fingers on the sharp metal shards and I had successfully dispatched a call for help to the Planetary Guard. Infoists were in charge of keeping trespassers from Ealen ruins and extracting stupid people from trouble when they came across Ealen tech they didn’t understand, but space pirates were another matter altogether.

  “What are you doing?”

  I jumped, not expecting to have him directly behind me.

  “What does it look like I’m doing? Calling for help.”

  He looked at me, looked at the mess of wires, and looked at me again.

  “Did you try to connect modern tech to an Ealen power source that hasn’t been used for thousands of years?”

  Well, when he put it that way, it did sound kind of odd. But it was what I had been studying for basically my whole life—to keep ancient knowledge alive and available, even if most people had no use for it.

  I shrugged. “I didn’t try. I did. It’s what I do.”

  I turned, swiped, and tapped at the stonework.

  Lines began to glow. Ancient glyphs started to light up and move along the stonework. Glyphs flickered in and out of existence. I focused and manipulated the codes with a few movements.

  There was amazement in his voice. “Can all Infoists do what you do?”

  “No. This is my specialty.” I tapped in a few more commands. “There. I’ve sent a message. The Planetary Guard should be here shortly.”

  I turned and saw him looking at me with the strangest look on his face. “Amazing,” he said.

  Another explosion rocked the ground.

  He launched himself at me, crushing me against him as he shielded me. He caged me with his big body, pressing his muscular weight against my chest and hips.

  I could even feel him against the length of my leg.

  Living weapon indeed.

  It was adrenaline, I knew, a response to fighting that happened with men.

  But as his eyes looked at mine, in that brief moment, I could almost believe it was something else.

  He said something, but the explosion had been so deafening, I couldn’t hear what it was.

  He pulled me up, shoved me into a recess.

  I read his lips, saw the determined look on his face more than I heard it, but I knew what he was saying all the same.

  “Stay.”

  And then he leaped off the edge of the temple. Again.

  I went back to my work and focused on strengthening the signal and the connection.

  Which is why I didn’t notice the pirate sneaking up on me. I froze when I felt the rifle resting on the back of my head. He grabbed me by the neck of my robe and yanked me upward, using me as a shield.

  The shifter dropped into place in front of me, his hands up. “She’s got nothing to do with this.”

  “You’ve caused enough trouble. More than half my crew is dying or dead, and you locked me out of my cargo.”

  The shifter fished something out of his pocket. An ancient Ealen data ball. Was that what he had taken from the temple?

  “Here. Take this. It’s the Codex of Mixa, and you’ll get a good price for it.”

  The Codex of Mixa? That was impossible.

  The pirate spat, his breath stinking of Spurge, a cheap drug that heightened human strength to shifter levels but was violently addictive. “I don’t give a holedark gorani-shit.”

  The shifter looked at me. “Then we are at an impasse. Because if you kill her, you won’t get the price for an enslaved Infoist.”

  The space pirate seemed taken aback by this obvious fact.

  The man held a rifle to my temple. “Go on,” he said to the shifter. “No witness, no crime.” The shifter looked at me. I pleaded with my eyes, hoping. It was against all logic, but somehow, there was a part of me that thought there was a c
hance he wouldn’t leave. That somehow we had forged some kind of bond.

  Despair sank in as he leaped off the ledge.

  My stomach felt as if it were made of stones. I should have known. No matter what frail connection we had, it didn’t beat survival.

  I tried to struggle, tried to move my limbs, but I just couldn’t move. Fear paralyzed me. The man shoved me against the wall, rifle to my throat.

  “You are gonna buy me a new starship and then some.”

  Suddenly the rifle vanished, and there was an oddly high-pitched scream of surprise. A shard of metal as long as my arm pinned his shoulder to the ground. The pirate struggled like a stuck insectoid.

  I looked up and saw the most wonderful sight of my life.

  The tiger shifter flashed me that grin. “You didn’t think I was going to leave, did you?”

  In the distance, I could hear the sirens of the Planetary Guard speeding toward us.

  “They’re coming,” I said.

  He looked at me with that green gaze.

  Right. Shifter hearing. He probably heard them five minutes ago.

  “Help,” I added, in an unnatural squeak.

  He arched an eyebrow at me.

  “Help is coming,” I said again, finding it necessary to restate the obvious.

  He stopped before me. “You can’t tell the library I was here.”

  I blinked, stumbling toward coherence as I remembered my anger. “I caught you vandalizing the ruin. And now you’re asking me to not arrest you, but to also keep secrets from the institution that not only employed me but raised me?”

  Another arched eyebrow. “Yes.”

  “That’s bold.”

  “Yes.”

  “Why would I do this for you?” Other than the fact he probably saved my life.

  I waited for him to point that salient fact out. But he didn’t. “I’m not the type to go around desecrating historic relics for fun. I have been in search of this Ealen Codex for many years. Wouldn’t you like to know the story behind my discovery?”

  Oh, this shifter was good. He may not have liked Infoists, but he certainly knew how to grab the interest of one.

  I felt something wet on my cheeks and looked up.

  Snow. And the hovering speeders of the first Planetary Guard on the scene.

  I looked back at the shifter with an inquiring gaze. “One that involves the lost Codex of Mixa and a star map to the last-known planet to host the Dragonlords?”

  He looked surprised by my words, but surprised in an… interesting way. A way that just made me keep babbling as I tried to pretend his gaze wasn’t a potent weapon against my common sense. “It would be logical that the Infoist stationed here on Tranquility would have some knowledge of obscure Dragonlord history, right?”

  “I think you’d be very interested in my story,” he said softly.

  The Planetary Guard speeders began to descend.

  I straightened and met his gaze. “I’m an Infoist of the Universal Library. I have no need of more fables.”

  There was an odd note of seriousness in his voice. “I am no saga teller. I only have true stories.”

  If I reported him to the Planetary Guard, they’d confiscate the codex, and I almost certainly wouldn’t be getting it back for study for the next decade or so. Getting into a jurisdictional fight with the Coalition was the very definition of an exercise in frustration.

  Though the real truth was that I was a sucker for stories.

  He watched me expectantly.

  Especially stories told by handsome shifters who happened to have saved my life.

  I knew it was folly. Guys like him didn’t look at big plain-looking girls like me. But then again, he was a shifter, and shifters… well, everyone knew that shifters were just weird.

  A figure in Smart Armor leaped off a speeder.

  I said, under my breath, knowing he could hear me, “I want the codex to remain under the Library’s jurisdiction.”

  To my surprise, he took my hand and dropped it into my palm. It was warm from the heat of his skin. He closed his big hands around mine. “I’m giving this to you as a promise that we will talk.”

  “Infoist Callax-Smith,” said a familiar female voice loudly.

  I pulled back from him and faced one of the shortest members of the Planetary Guard. Her visor opened, revealing the face of Captain Pilar Tanaka. Captain Tanaka was a well-respected veteran of the Planetary Guard and a lover of First Earth romance sagas. I had strict instructions to forward ancient manuscripts by beloved authors as they were rediscovered.

  “Infoist Callax-Smith,” said Captain Tanaka. “I was getting tired of sitting around making cookies and playing xiangqi games with my grandson. I said to myself, ‘I could use a stroll out into the stinking swamp in the middle of a snow storm.’ Looks like you dealt with the space pirates for us.” She looked at the shifter beside me with interest. “Who is this?”

  I looked at him.

  He nodded.

  “A tourist,” he said at the same time I said, “A friend.”

  "I see,” said Captain Pilar, with an amused intonation. I could feel my skin flush warm.

  “We’re not—I’m not—”

  Captain Pilar turned and issued quick orders to the other arriving members of the Planetary Guard.

  She pulled up a floating screen. “Come on, let’s get through with the interview, and then we can get you out of this snow and send you both home.” She turned to him. “State your name and origins for the record.”

  “Kai Eversea,” he said, looking at me. “My name is Kai Eversea, a citizen of the Tigrantine Empire.”

  After our on-site interview, the Planetery Guard put us on different shuttles for further processing. I hesitated to be separated from him because I was still unsure if I was doing the right thing. After all, it would be his chance to escape.

  Yet, something in his eyes told me I would see him again. The fact that he had surreptitiously handed the Ealen data ball to me helped, too.

  I had sent him instructions on where to meet me. The drone spheres of the Universal Library were always recording, which is why we couldn’t meet in my office, and the impending snowstorm outside meant a meeting outdoors was out of the question. With the Solstice Week closures of most public eateries, there was only one place left where we could have privacy and I felt absolutely secure.

  Is this your home address? he had replied almost instantaneously.

  * * *

  I don’t usually invite strange men home

  It’s Solstice Week

  I assumed you don’t want your conversation recorded by data spheres of the Universal Library. They are always listening in the office.

  * * *

  Your discretion is appreciated. I’ll bring dinner.

  * * *

  Dinner? I wrote back quickly.

  I have a nutrit-bar dispenser.

  * * *

  An even better reason for me to bring dinner.

  He sat across from me at my living room table, clean and shaven with a crisp white shirt that made him look more than respectable. Because it was Solstice Week, ancient First Earth music played in the background—appropriately enough, some song about it being cold outside. A crazy feast with enough natural food to feed five people lay before us.

  Or one shifter and a human, I thought as I watched him eat.

  I clicked my chopsticks together and took a bite of the most amazing charred vegetable I had ever tasted, seductive in its softness, multifaceted in its smoky deliciousness. I couldn’t even remember the last time I had eaten a meal made up of things that had been allowed to grow and live with soil, light, and air. Meals like these were luxuries for holidays with families, something I’d never had.

  I leaned back, feeling a strange fullness and contentment. Nutrit-bars provided all the nutrients necessary for optimal functioning, but they didn’t fill you up like a meal that took time to taste and savor. “Where did you get all this during Solstice Week?”<
br />
  “I have friends,” he said with a mysterious smile. He kept looking at me in a way that made my skin flush inconveniently warm.

  It was unsettling to say the least. I had to remember why I had brought him here. “More artifact-hunting, ruin-desecrating friends?”

  He ignored my jab. “Did you find the star map inside the codex?”

  I swiped at my vambrace. The room darkened. A glowing star map appeared between us. Curling symbols floated in the air as a glowing golden line bounced from star to star, indicating the flight of the Dragonlords. Finally the line rested, and curling Ealen symbols surged from a glowing blue dot. Here they said.

  “I have been searching for the Dragonlords for my entire life,” he said in that low voice of his that was irritatingly sexy.

  Even now, the realm of civilized space was defined by the still-stable wyrmholes the ancient Dragonlords had created, allowing for near-instant space travel. Stories of the magical godlike beings had said that they could manipulate atoms like code, and breathed fire that could both create and destroy.

  I looked at him, truly looked at him, and saw the faint circles under his eyes, the tiredness of his expression. Nothing could change the fact that he personified the word handsome. But in his face, I saw something I recognized. This was a man who had dedicated his life to searching for answers. I knew that look because I too had spent my life searching for answers to the past in a quest that had proven to be more futile than his.

  And yet he had offered the codex to the pirate to save my life.

  I looked down and away from him, tucking loose curls of hair behind my ear.

  The possible reasons for that unnerved me. I wasn’t ready to think about it.

  I decided not to point out the Dragonlords were extinct. ”Why are you so intent on finding the Dragonlords?”

  “The Lost Ealen Fleet of the Dead is coming.”

  I blinked. I set my chopsticks down slowly and picked up a napkin, carefully wiping my mouth as my mind raced. The existence of the fleet had been one of the Library’s most carefully guarded secrets for millennia. Even I wasn’t supposed to know about it, but I had come across its existence in the Deep Archives when searching for any hint or trace of my family.