"Can't a bear drink in peace?" he asked.
But by then the first man had recovered. He stood facing Jerrod, and giving a quick roll of his shoulders, he began to shift. Moments later, he'd changed into a hulking, snorting gorilla.
Goddamnit!
The second man put some distance between Jerrod and me, shifting into his gorilla form as soon as he'd gotten far back. Now, it was Jerrod and I against two of the most powerful animals in the shifter kingdom. Jerrod looked at his gun for a moment before tossing it aside. He pulled his jacket off, tossed it onto the bar, and closed his eyes. With a roar, he shifted into his bear form and began staring down the two beasts, steam shooting out of his wet nose, his eyes two coals.
I ducked down, grabbed the gun from the ground and raised it at one of the gorillas. Squeezing the trigger again and again, I drained the rest of the ammo, but to no avail. The shot hit, but trying to take down a gorilla with a pistol was like trying to bring down a house with a baseball bat. No lucky shot for me this time.
Here goes nothing, I thought as I began to shift into my panther form.
The first gorilla made a move. Beating his chest, he stormed toward Jerrod on his hands and feet, the ground shaking with each impact. Jerrod responded by standing up on his hind legs and letting out a mighty, deafening roar, bringing his claws down on the charging gorilla as soon as it came within attacking distance. The two of them locked in a struggle, the second gorilla turned to me. I needed to get ready; a panther against a gorilla could be a fight that might not last very long if I let him use his brute strength against me.
With silent paws, I darted away from the melee, the second gorilla locking eyes on me all the while.
Go for the throat, I told myself. These fuckers are big and tough, but it won't matter a damn bit if I can get my jaws around his neck.
But how to do it? Before I could consider it for too long, the gorilla roared and began charging toward me. I waited until the last moment before darting to the side, the beast running straight through where I was, crushing glasses and bar tables as he did, only coming to a stop when he slammed hard into the wall behind me. I flicked my eyes to Jerrod and the other gorilla, who were both still locked in a close-quarters fight. I needed to take care of this gorilla and help Jerrod before that fucker got the upper-hand.
Easier said than done, however.
By now, the second gorilla had gotten his bearings. Turning back toward me, he pounded his chest again while letting out another roar. I let out a snarl myself, the "wow-wow" of my roar cutting through the commotion. He was getting ready to charge again, and I knew that while I might be able to play the matador another time or two, there was no way I'd be able to keep it up forever; he'd eventually get the upper-hand and snap me like a dry branch.
Now or never, I thought as the beast prepared for another charge.
I didn't have time for any more thinking. The gorilla stormed at me once again, and I focused in on his neck. Darting to the side, I moved out of the way just in time. And using the impact of my landing to propel me yet again, I jumped through the air at the passing gorilla, opening my mouth and latching onto the soft flesh of the back of his neck. He roared in pain as I sunk my teeth into him, his fists flying wildly through the air.
Fuck, fuck!
I didn't know if I was going to take him out before he'd be able to grab hold of me and take me with him. The warm, sticky blood filled my mouth with the taste of dirty copper, and I held on for dear life, praying he'd fall before he could get me. But to my horror, I felt the firm, strong hand of the gorilla clasp onto my hind leg. With a yank, he pulled me off and held me in front of him. I swiped at his face with my paws, but he was holding me far enough back that I could hit him. Blood seeped down his body, thick and dark, and he looked weak. But still strong enough to kill me if he wanted.
And that was clearly what he had in mind.
I struggled and struggled, but to no avail. But just when all seemed lost, Jerrod's paw slammed down on top of the gorilla's head, knocking him onto the floor into a heap. Now free, I turned and saw that Jerrod had disposed of his gorilla, and had been free to save my life.
We both shifted back and surveyed the scene, taking in deep, ragged breaths.
"I think now would be a good time to get the hell out of here," he said.
"I agree."
CHAPTER 5
JERROD
"Just what I fucking needed," I said as the two of us hurried back to my car. "Another bar that I'm banned from."
"That's what you're worried about right now?" Harper asked, running hard what looked to be a hurt leg.
"You know how many shifter-friendly bars there are in this city? Not as many as you might think."
We turned the corner where my car, a blood red Dodge Charger, was parked. As we drew closer, I spotted the orange and white of a parking ticket tucked under one of the windshields.
"God-fucking-damn it," I said, pulling out the ticket and looking it over. "Two hundred and forty dollars for…"
I looked up at the baffling street sign in some attempt to figure out what obscure parking law I'd broken today.
"…parking on a Sunday? Who the fuck knows."
"You've certainly got a way to stay focused on the important things."
This girl had gotten under my skin from the get-go and hadn't wriggled her way out. I hit my fob and opened the locks.
"Get in," I said.
"Where are we going?" she asked. "And I need to know whether or not you're on board for this thing I told you about."
"Can we at least wait for the adrenaline to leave my system before we start talking about shit like this? I went from having a relaxing night to needing to kill three thugs in a dive bar. Give me, I dunno, five minutes to get my head straight."
That shut her up. I opened the driver's side door and slid inside. Harper did the same on the other side, and once we were both in, she glanced around the car interior with an impressed expression on her face.
"Nice ride," she said.
"Now, who's focused on the important things?" I asked, flashing her a half-grin.
She shook her head as I gunned the engine and drove us the hell out of Bushwick, back up to the West Village where I lived. We drove in silence, which I was more than thankful for. Last thing I needed was this hardass in a pantsuit giving me the business during the drive back.
After a time, we pulled in front of my apartment building and got out.
"Living in the village, huh?" she asked, craning her neck to look up at the building we'd stopped in front of. "Pretty far from bear territory."
In fact, it wasn't anyone's territory. The West Village was one of the handfuls of neighborhoods in the city that the species agreed would be neutral zones. Anyone of any species who wanted to live here could, but any shit that broke out between any rival species, for whatever reason, got come down on—hard. Everyone had to play nice in the West Village, which led to some interesting encounters in the supermarket.
"That's by design," I said as we walked up to the large, silver double front doors. "I wanted to get as far away from the bullshit as possible."
I swiped my keycard in front of the lock and it opened with a green light and a beep. "But," I continued, "the bullshit has a way of finding you."
"And I'd be the ‘bullshit' in this example?"
"Call yourself whatever you want; I just don't want to be a part of it."
I opened the door for Harper and she walked in.
"Fancy condo," she said, scanning the sleek, modern lobby.
I said nothing, instead heading over to the elevator and hitting the call button. The elevator arrived moments later and the doors silently opened.
"Shit," Harper said, stepping in, "even the elevator's fancy."
"It's all fancy," I said. "I bought this place a few years back when some of my investments paid off. Let's just say, back then I was a little more of a conspicuous consumer."
Harper's eyes latched ont
o the letters "PH" on the display.
"All the way to the top?"
"All the way to the top."
The doors opened several seconds later, the elevator leading right to my penthouse apartment.
"Wow…" Harper said, stepping in and taking a wide-eyed look around. "Quite the place."
"I know."
And I did. Though the place was a little much, I was happy to have an apartment like this to call home. The floor-to-ceiling windows looked out over the city, and the cathedral ceilings gave the place a roomy feel. It was a great bachelor pad, back in those days. And now that it was just me, the emptiness of the apartment had been becoming a little difficult to bear.
"You want to rent it?" I asked through a smirk. "I'm fine with a studio in Bed-Stuy these days."
"I could clone myself three times and work my job non-stop and I still don't think I'd be able to afford whatever the rent would be for this place."
"Worth a shot," I said, heading into the kitchen to make myself a drink. "You want anything?"
"What, the double whiskey the God-knows how many you had before that weren't enough?"
"Not an answer."
"N—" she stopped herself. "You know what? I'll take some vodka if you have it; mix it with something sweet."
I chuckled a little as I reached for the bottle.
"What?" she asked.
"Only a chick would think a vodka cran is being adventurous."
"Hey, I said I don't drink much."
"I can tell." I started making the drinks, watching as Harper walked toward the windows and looked out onto the city. I hated that I noticed it, but I'd be damned if she wasn't a looker. Slim, curvy body, long blonde hair, sexy little green cat eyes, and one of those mouths that you can't help but think about kissing. And she couldn't have been older than twenty-five.
"How the hell did a girl as young as you end up leading a team for the Sapiens? They usually wait until agents have at least ten years before gifting them that kind of gig."
"No one ‘gifted' me anything," she said, not turning away from the view. "I busted my ass and worked some hard cases."
"Anything I'd know about?"
"You know the Rocheford case a couple years back? The one with the tigers running the hitmen-for-hire ring out of Harlem?"
"Vaguely."
Truth is I did know about it, and it was why her name sounded so familiar, now that she mentioned it.
"That was all me," she said. "Well, I had some good help, but I did most of the grunt work."
"Impressive."
"I had a few other successful ops, but that was the one that got Lieutenant Armitage to take a chance on putting me in charge of a team. I guess I showed him."
I approached Harper with the glass and handed it to her. "This is the wrong gig to be in if you're gonna be hard on yourself," I said.
Harper took the drink, sipped it, and turned around. She scanned the spacious living room, zeroing in the sorry, messy state it was in. "Looks like you'd know a thing or two about that."
"That's fuckin' right," I said. "That's why I got out of that damned agency. Wanted to be hard on myself in peace."
"And you think that's the right call, to send your liver to hell while you waste away in this fancy-ass apartment?"
"Hey," I said, my voice taking a sharp tone, "you lose your…partner in the line of duty like I did and you let me know exactly how much of a team player you feel like."
She stepped back a bit, both literally and figuratively. I didn't know just how much of my file Harper had read, but the odds were good that she knew about my history with Sophia- enough to know that she should choose her next words very carefully.
"I'm…sorry," she said, measuring her tone carefully. "But you're not the only one who's lost people here. Right now, the bodies of my entire team are sitting on goddamn slabs, one of whom they had to pick up from the pavement after a fall from a damn skyscraper. So, if you think I don't know what I'm talking about here, you're dead fucking wrong."
Now it was my turn to step back. She was right, after all—this wasn't some big-eyed, naïve rookie I was working with here, someone who was all ambition and big dreams about making the city safe; this was someone who'd seen death in the line of duty. But I wasn't ready to concede so easily.
"Then you know what this can do to you."
"I do." She tapped her slim finger on the side of her glass. "And that's why I'm not going to waste a goddamn second sitting around and hoping for the best. You can drink up all the whiskey in Lower Manhattan, but I'm going to get out there and bust this Aubrey asshole if it fucking kills me."
Girl's got spirit. Gotta give her that.
I wasn't up for a fight—I was too tired and too drunk. Walking away from Harper, I plopped onto the huge, L-shaped black leather couch that dominated the living room. Thoughts stumbled through my mind in that hurried, clumsy way that they did when you had a solid buzz going. Bringing my drink up to my lips, I took a slow sip. But the whiskey hit my tongue sour; something about it just didn't taste as good. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Harper watching me, her body tense as if preparing for me to say the exact wrong thing, the thing that would get her to storm out of this place and leave me to rot like the drunk I was.
"Sit down, Dupree," I said, setting my drink down on the glass-top coffee table and gesturing to the perpendicular section of the couch across from me.
She was still for a moment, as if not sure what kind of game I was playing. I gestured again, this time more gently, as if coaxing a bunny to come over. Harper came over this time, sitting on the couch and taking a closed-off style of sitting.
"I want to know about you."
"What, now you're feeling all chummy?" she asked.
"Put away the claws for just a minute," I said. "I still haven't figured out how much I'm gonna help you here—if I'm even going to at all—but I figure I should at least know a little about the woman in my home who's giving me the third degree."
"What do you want to know?" she asked, her words careful.
"Start by telling me why you got into this whole game. You're smart, beautiful—a panther like you could easily get a private sector job working for your species' elite; why would you get involved in all this shit? This gig's an easy way to knock a few decades off your lifespan, as I'm sure you know by now."
She raised her eyebrows and nodded, as if conceding the point. "No big, grand story, I'm afraid. My dad works as a liaison to one of the clan elders, sort of a body man, the guy who gets whatever the elder need—a personal assistant and a diplomat and a tough-looking guy to stand in your corner during negotiations, all in one. He was mum about the details of his job- the kind of dad who prefers to leave all that shit at the office. So, when I was a little older, getting into my mid-teens, I started to poke around in his world."
"I'm sure Dad loved that."
"Dad never found out," she said with a sly smile. "That was my first hint that I've got some skill and finding out things people don't necessarily want me to know about."
"And what did you find out?"
"I found out that as much as the clan elders and the Three above them like to keep things looking like it's all a smooth-operating machine, that's not really the case. Not at all."
"No kidding."
"Well, to people like you and I it's obvious as hell, but when you're a kid you just kinda figure that the adults have everything worked out, that smart, mature people are in charge and things will just go the way they should."
I had to stifle a laugh.
"But when I found some debriefings my dad wrote, one that was about a diplomatic incident between the panthers and the foxes, that changed. You know, I can't even remember what the incident was—some stupid shit about one of the fox Three offending one of the panther clan elders—but I learned that it nearly brought our two species. Only some quick diplomacy and concessions that my dad help bring to the table cooled things down. I mean, think about that- we almost ha
d a war that could've resulted in dozens, if not hundreds of casualties, and all over some snooty elder taking offense over one goddamn thing or another. Then, the more I looked into my dad's work, the more I found that shit like this happened all the time. Not only were things not a smooth-operating machine, we were all constantly one slip-up away from war."
I leaned forward, listening carefully.
"So, by this point I'd graduated from high school with the kind of grades that would've gotten me into wherever I wanted to go. But I was shaken by all that I'd learned; I couldn't go back to the world of shifters knowing that the peace our societies lived in was all about as stable as a sandcastle being built on a fault line. Only through the hard work of people like my dad was peace possible, through constant care and maintenance."
"Yep," I said. "This thing with all of us living in the same city's like a machine that needs a team of skilled mechanics to constantly be tending to it, or it sputters to a stop and falls to pieces."
"Exactly," I said. "And I knew I didn't want to be a diplomat like my dad. So, I did some digging and found out about the Sapiens. Seemed like a perfect fit. I kicked ass through intelligence academy, and I kicked ass through training, then I kicked more ass during my first year as a rookie. Up until this week, I'd been thinking that I was maybe something like a gifted agent, able to skate through this world without taking a scratch. Well, consider that lesson learned."
It was strange listening to Harper talk. Her guard was down a little—maybe thanks to that vodka cran—and as she spoke I could see the emotions she clearly put effort into keeping in check come out. There was passion, there was duty, and there was tenacity.
And damned if she wasn't gorgeous.
"Any more questions there, Sixty Minutes?"
"Nah," I said. "That's good. Thanks for opening up."
Her eyes went wide as saucers and her hand shot to her mouth. She set her drink down and pushed it away. "See, this is why I don't touch this shit. Just makes all the things that people should keep to themselves come out in a big, sloppy mess."
Shifter Wars Complete Series Page 29
