by C. J. Barry
She stood up, keeping the gun out of their line of sight and slipping it into the back of her jeans as she turned around to face them, then tried to look as innocent and naïve as possible.
The suit stopped ten feet away, and she inhaled a quick breath when she met his eyes for the first time in bright daylight. Deep brown, confident, and focused. Nice, aside from the predatory gleam. The other two men regarded her with dutiful intensity. She could handle them. This one was different from your run-of-the-mill human, which intrigued her.
He said, “I’m special agent Griffin Mercer, working for the local extraterrestrial law enforcement agency.”
Her pulse jumped. XCEL agents. Shapeshifter hunters. That explained all the guns.
“You’re under arrest,” he added smoothly.
“I’m sorry, I think you have the wrong person,” she blurted, her eyes widening in horror. It was a damn fine acting job, if she did say so herself.
While she talked, she glanced around the parking garage for security or any guests. She noticed the black van parked two spots down. That was how they’d snuck up on her. They’d planned this, and probably shut down the entire garage. Plus she was alone, and it was daytime. Daytime was a problem for a shapeshifter.
Mercer said, “Today, you’re Camille Solomon. Alien shapeshifter, twenty-eight years old, five foot five inches tall, no permanent residence, fake identity, you make your money by cheating casinos, and there’s a gun tucked against the small of your back.” Then he smiled. “How am I doing?”
Not bad, she conceded. “I’m five-six.”
“I’ll note that in your file,” he said, and his smile vanished. “Throw the gun in the trunk, please.”
The van pulled up behind him, and every molecule in her body aligned for battle. She could see a driver, and a passenger who jumped out and opened the back doors. That made five. The odds were stacking against her fast.
“What am I under arrest for?” she said. “Being different?”
A hint of anger crossed his features, ever so lightly. But she saw it.
“Cheating the casino. Federal offense.”
She laughed at the irony. “Right, like the casino doesn’t cheat anyone.”
“They tell you the odds. It’s all legal and everything,” he said, just a little too smugly. “Gun in the trunk.”
Damn, how had she tipped them off? She was very good at cheating. Like, the best. She mentally shook her head. It didn’t matter how they knew, and she needed to focus. It was time to get this show on the road. She had a dinner date in Soho tonight.
“Of course,” she said. “Anything for XCEL.”
Mercer’s eyebrows rose a fraction, but he didn’t respond to her acknowledgment of his agency. She knew all about XCEL and their weapons against Shifters—disrupters with localized effects, UVC grenades that mimicked the sun’s rays to prevent shapeshifter transformations, and tranquilizers that no one ever woke up from.
Fortunately, she didn’t see any of those weapons, just assault rifles. Not that that wasn’t bad enough.
And then every rifle was pointed at her as she reached around and tugged the Glock out of her jeans. She held it out in front of her with two fingers on the gun butt.
“You want it,” she said to Mercer. “Come and get it.”
His eyes narrowed dangerously. “Trunk. Please.”
“Here,” she said. “Please.”
“Trunk,” he repeated, more firmly this time.
She smiled. “Have it your way.”
Cam turned and hurled the gun against the open trunk top with all her might, which, considering she was a shapeshifter, was pretty mighty. It bounced off the metal and fired indiscriminately.
Every man ducked, which gave her the split second she needed to shift into Primary form. A collective gasp arose once she’d transformed.
Surprise, she thought at the looks of disbelief on their faces.
And then everything moved really fast. Someone shot at her. She thinned her molecular structure, and the bullets passed through harmlessly. Her form remained vaporous but whole, prepared for anything else they might throw at her.
“Don’t fire!” Mercer yelled. “We want her alive!”
She thinned her structure even more and “popped” through the thick air, re-forming in front of the men with the rifles. She grabbed both their rifles and jammed the butts to their heads, knocking them out in unison.
Someone screamed, “Get the disrupter!”
She popped to the van and wrenched an agent out of the back by his belt, tossing him across the garage’s concrete floor. He rolled a few times, bounced off a support column, and didn’t move. The driver came around the corner with a disrupter, and she kicked it out of his hands. It hit the ceiling and broke into pieces.
Then he had the nerve to get all pissy and reach into his jacket for a gun. She grabbed his forearm and broke it with a loud snap. He yelled, dropped to his knees, and cradled his arm with his other arm as she kicked him in the face. He flipped backward and landed ten feet away.
Then Cam turned to find Mercer holding the disrupter. Everyone else was down, and she didn’t see or hear reinforcements. Too bad for them.
“That’s quite a trick you have,” he said. “Shifting in daylight.”
She took a step toward him, wary of the disrupter. It wouldn’t slow her down for long, but it would hurt like hell. “I find it comes in handy, especially since Shifters aren’t supposed to do that. Keeps you guys on your toes.”
“We just want to talk to you.”
She laughed. “Right. And the rifles and disrupter are, what, conversation pieces?”
He pursed his lips. “I know you don’t trust us—”
“Why would I?” she snapped. “XCEL has spent the last two years hunting us, freezing us, killing us, and moving the lucky ones to prisons.”
“They aren’t prisons,” he said. “They’re safe zones.”
Now she was getting mad. The disrupter would hurt for a moment, but it would totally be worth it to kick his ass. “When you lock someone up and don’t let them leave, that’s a prison. Even for humans.”
“You’re not human,” he said, challenge in his eyes.
That did it. Cam popped a split second before he dropped the rifle. When she re-formed beside him, he gripped her arm. Shocked by his speed and strength, she froze. How did he know where she was going to re-form?
She tried to strike him, but her arms wouldn’t move. In fact, nothing would move. She stared at him in disbelief and panic. What was happening to her?
“I have a few tricks of my own,” he said softly.
Then he jabbed a tranquilizer dart into her arm. The tranquilizer swamped her senses, and she couldn’t do anything to fight it. Her body simply wouldn’t respond, and it occurred to her that he was the reason.
Just before she blacked out, she heard him say, “Sorry about this.”
Griffin stood on the safe side of a bulletproof, shatterproof, Shifter-proof glass wall and watched his captive sleep. She hadn’t moved since they’d dumped her on the bed in the holding cell two hours ago.
Her Primary form was a charcoal black humanoid- like body that was just female enough to be interesting. Her face was more delicately featured than the male Shifters he’d seen, her body leaner, and her frame tall and leggy. In Primary form, shifters looked like blank canvases, and they were. All they needed was a little bit of DNA to replicate any human they wanted.
The door behind him flung open.
“For Christ’s sake, what were you thinking?” Griffin’s boss yelled, loud enough to shake the long glass. “You think that tranquilizing her is going to help our cause? Did you not understand your orders?”
Griffin didn’t look at Roger Harding. “I understood them.”
His boss stood next to him, his cologne sucking up all the good oxygen. He wore a black suit, as always, along with a black tie and black shoes to go with his black personality.
“Those order
s came from the President. Do you want to be the one who tells him that our one chance of protecting this country was blown because you couldn’t apprehend one shapeshifter without incident?”
Griffin responded calmly, “No sir, I wouldn’t.”
“Then what was the fucking problem?” Harding said, his voice getting higher by the minute. If Griffin was at all lucky, Harding would have a heart attack right then and there. He waited, but it didn’t happen. Maybe next time.
“We didn’t have a choice. She shifted.”
Harding frowned. “You were supposed to prevent that from happening. You blew the operation—”
“She shifted in broad daylight,” Griffin amended.
Then Harding put his hands on his hips. “Bullshit. Shifters can’t do that.”
“She can. Ask the team. I don’t know how, but she converted completely in a millisecond. All her abilities were full-strength. It didn’t slow her down at all.”
“Christ, what next with these damn things?” Harding said, running his hand through his hair. He stared at her through the glass. “Has anyone else reported that ability?”
“No,” Griffin said. “Obviously, she’s more special than we originally thought. It will certainly work to our advantage.”
Harding sighed. “Well, that’s just ducky. But we can’t force her to work with us, and this was not a good takedown.”
Griffin took offense to that but didn’t say so. The fact was, the takedown had gone as well as it could have. Everyone survived. Camille Solomon had been captured unharmed and was recovering nicely. And no one outside of XCEL even knew it had happened. It couldn’t have gone better. Except the part where he tranquilized her.
Harding asked, “So how do you intend to guarantee her cooperation now?”
“We have plenty of motivation for her.”
“Those motivations better be bulletproof, Mercer,” Harding muttered.
They were. Griffin hadn’t spent the last month tracking her for nothing. Hadn’t spent hours going over her file, watching her on video, and tracking her movements and every single one of her identities. He knew more about her than she probably knew about herself.
Harding asked, “You’re positive that you can handle her? If she gets off your leash and does something stupid, it’s my head that will roll.”
Griffin could always count on Harding to cover his own ass. “I’m positive.”
For a moment, Harding just stood there staring at him, and Griffin knew he was considering putting another agent on this case. Someone who didn’t drink too much, who followed orders to the letter, and who would kiss his uptight ass. Well, screw that. Griffin wasn’t the perfect agent, but he was for this case. And that was why Harding hated him.
“Let me know when she wakes up,” Harding said as he turned to leave.
Griffin smiled. Right. “Yes, sir.”
