A Cougar's Kiss (Shadow Shifters Rebellion Book 2)

by A. C. Arthur

  There were trees there, thick lines of trees, which was one of the very reasons he’d selected this location. In the dark copse of those trees were glowing red eyes. On first thought Keller figured it was a wolf because as far as he knew there were no feline shifters with red eyes. Without a second thought he moved around the bodies and broke out into a run. The eyes disappeared as he burst through the trees, but its scent was strong.

  Keller ran fast and hard listening to the rustle of the leaves on the ground as the red-eyed animal moved ahead of him. The breeze from their combined speed made the weaker limbs bend and more leaves rustle with the gust of air. He jumped over fallen logs, pushed through low-hanging branches. He would not stop, not until he found it. Instinct said it was the one who had killed those people and dropped the bodies off for him to find. Why?

  He’d ask that question right after he stomped the bastard back into human form. Sounds echoed through the space, howls, growling, moans like someone was crying out. They all mingled in his head a mixture of fear, rage, pain and blood circling the air. He should have shifted, that would have made him move faster, made him deadlier than he was in human form. But it could also get them both killed, and Keller didn’t want the shifter dead—at least not at this moment—not until he could get the information he needed.

  He pushed his human body to its limits, until he could feel the burn in his thighs and chest and when the scent had him rounding a curve heading toward the swamp, he followed it coming to a stop only when he caught a glimpse of those red eyes again. His feet skidded across the dirt-ground because the animal was standing still once again, hiding in another thicket of trees.

  “Who are you?” Keller asked it the moment he stopped. “Why did you kill those people?”

  The eyes continued to stare at him, nothing more, just stare. He thought about asking another question, then figured to hell with this bullshit, he would hunt now and talk later. But the moment Keller leapt into the air prepared to run head-on into the beast he was knocked back by a wall of black smoke that felt as if it were made of steel when his face slammed against it.

  Another growl, loud and long ripped through the air as Keller fell to the ground. On his hands and knees, he tossed his head back and roared in response, letting his claws tear through his fingertips and his own rage bubble to the surface.

  “Keller!”

  The voice stopped him from shifting. He froze the moment he heard it, fear slicing through the pit of his stomach at the thought that she would be anywhere near this beast.

  “Keller! Stop!”

  His head snapped in the direction of the voice and he saw her through the glow of his cougar’s eyes, he saw Shya standing there.

  She continued talking. “We should get inside. The police are pulling up and they’re gonna want to talk to you about the blood on the sidewalk. Gold said there’s a private path that we can use to get back into the house without them seeing us. We should go, now.”

  She was talking fast, the sound of her heart thumping wildly in her chest and yet her eyes were so calm, her voice steady.

  He stood up slowly, keeping his eyes on her. There was no use looking back to where he’d seen the eyes, but he knew they were gone. “It’s this way,” he said, his voice sounding much gruffer and more unstable than hers.

  Walking in the direction of the hidden path he heard her begin to follow him and refused once again to look back. Why was she here? Because he’d asked her to come. But why had she agreed? She’d told him because she wanted to do more than she was ever allowed to.

  “Why were you listening to Rome’s meeting and showing up in places you didn’t belong? What were you planning to do with all the information you were gathering?”

  She took a second, digesting his questions, he supposed, but she eventually answered.

  “There were rumors, whispers that had been growing louder about Uncle Rome, my dad and their friends making the wrong decisions for the shifters. People were calling them cowards.”

  Keller’s name should have been tops on the list of people saying the same. It was no secret he hated the decisions Rome had made for their kind. At least until that recap of a press conference he’d seen a short while ago.

  He was moving fast on purpose wanting to make her keep up, to make this harder for her than anything else she’d ever done, just to see if she would break or stand. He really needed to know if Shya Delgado could stand.

  “They made them hide,” he ground out the words as he took them across the street at the end of the block a distance away from the flashing lights on top of the police cars.

  “Uncle Rome said it was to keep them safe. He said in the months and then those first few years after the Unveiling shifters were being killed by the hundreds daily. He didn’t want any more lives to be lost so they needed to regroup.”

  “For twenty years?”

  “However long it took to come up with a better solution,” she replied. “I heard my dad telling my mother that one time. She questioned why they weren’t doing more either because she hated hiding as well, but Dad said it made sense, that he and Uncle Rome were taking all things and emotions into consideration.”

  “And this is what they came up with?” he asked when they were walking through another wooded area, this time as part of his property. “They’re going to bring all the shifters above ground under the pretense of some government agreement and pray that no deaths occur?”

  “What’s your plan, Keller? If you’re going to question and complain about everything the current leadership is doing, what’s your plan beyond the safe houses? How else do you think Shadow Shifters can come back above ground and prosper?”

  He turned to her at those last words, stepping right up to her face. “We should have never been kicked out!” He took a deep breath and tried to turn away, but he ended up close to her once more. “We should have stayed and fought for all those shifters that they killed, for my mother who died in a human hospital because they had no idea how to save her and for my dad who was killed when he went to avenge her death! We should have fought for all of them!”

  Chapter 11

  Bright lights illuminated the air, a strong wind brushed through the trees and the roaring sound of a helicopter entered the scene. Keller didn’t bother to look up, he crossed the short space between him and Shya, grabbed her arm and pulled her along behind him as he raced the last few feet to the door that would lead to the crawlspace beneath the building.

  He did not loosen his grip and did not turn back, just held tight to her hand until his cat’s eyes could see a glimmer of the chain peeking through thick foliage on the ground. Falling to his knees once he was upon it, Keller yanked that chain until dried leaves and dirt went flying into the air and the links of metal snapped beneath his strength. There was a slim handle which the chain had been wrapped around, he grabbed it and waited the few seconds it took for the recognition system embedded in the handle to read his heat and DNA signature and grant access with a loud click. He pulled the door open and immediately tossed Shya inside, following her seconds later and slamming the door closed behind him.

  If they dared to enter the forested area on his private property, they would see the door as he had no way of pushing foliage on top of it to hide at this moment, but they would never get the door open. Houses and structures in Miami didn’t historically have basements because the water table was so high, they would have run into too much moisture at a shallow level. But Keller had this five by three reinforced steel crawlspace installed for emergency exits and he was in the process of using the same technology that had allowed them to build Oasis deep within the earth to create holding spaces beneath the house just in case a shifter that wasn’t quite ready to act civilized needed to be contained. Those spaces weren’t complete, but it’s where he’d directed Gold and the others to take those bodies.

  They crawled on hands and knees, Keller grabbing Shya at the ankle to stop her so that he could ease past her and take the
lead. As the space was only three feet wide, sliding his body past hers had been close and when they were almost perfectly aligned, her gaze caught his. For endless seconds they just stared at each other, him replaying all the things that had happened between them in the past few days, all the admissions he’d made to her and she’d made to him. It was a lot in a short span of time and now floating between them in this measured space, but Keller couldn’t deal with any of that right now. He kept moving until a dim light shone from another narrow opening. Easing through that space, he jumped down into the ten-foot ditch that had been dug and was now protected from water intrusion by steel and tempered glass walls that stretched forward about twenty feet. Reaching back up into what now looked like a giant hole in the wall, he grabbed Shya’s arms and helped her down.

  “What is this?” she asked the moment her feet touched the ground.

  “Every safe house will have spaces where we can contain shifters that get out of hand. There’s gonna be a lot of emotional baggage that will need to be addressed when reunifying the shifters with this world and we’re not really the type to lay on a couch and listen calmly as a therapist tells us how to cope with our problems. So, we decided it would be best to have a sort of holding facility until the cats could calm down a bit.” By the time he finished speaking Keller realized he was still touching her arms. He pulled his hands away and started walking toward the scent of blood and other voices.

  “What now?” Jordin was saying. “We can’t just keep human bodies down here, that makes us just as guilty as the animal that did this.”

  “She’s right, this space wasn’t built to house dead people,” Gold said stiffly the moment Keller stepped up beside them and nodded.

  “We’ll get them out in one of the Tracers and drop them at a hospital or morgue. The humans will deal with it from there. But we have to wait until the police clear the area first,” he told them.

  “They’ve been at the gate pressing on the entrance buzzer for the last ten to fifteen minutes. How long do you think it’ll take before they figure out who owns the place and start kicking down the doors?” Kyss asked.

  “They can’t,” Shya spoke up and all eyes immediately turned to her. “I mean, wouldn’t that be illegal in some way, to barge onto someone’s property without permission or a warrant?”

  Kyss was the one to shake her head this time. “This isn’t twenty years ago honey, when your dad’s law degree made sense. This is the time of the Ruling Cabinet and their specific set of rules when dealing with the Shadow Shifters.”

  “Yeah, they’ll bust down walls shooting without ever thinking to ask a question or produce a silly piece of paper,” Zion quipped.

  “No,” Shya continued. “If Uncle Rome worked out an agreement, he would definitely protect the civil rights of shifters and everyone else. He believed in the U.S. Constitution and the laws of the land.”

  “Oh, you mean that bogus justice system that discriminated just as much against humans of a certain race as it eventually did to the shifters. Girl, you’ve got a lot to learn,” Kyss continued.

  “But I did learn all of this without anyone bothering to teach me and I’m telling you that a treaty could be a good start to all of us living together peacefully,” Shya insisted.

  Keller felt the tension rising in the small space along with the scent of the dead bodies. There were four shifters who weren’t inclined to fall in step with Rome’s new agreement and there was Shya who was filled with naïve optimism. Then there was Keller who right at this moment had no clue how he was feeling about any of these new developments. What he knew for certain was that this current situation needed to be rectified in the quickest and smartest way possible.

  “We’ll move the bodies in a few hours. Shya and I will head up to the house, get cleaned up and if need be, open the door to the cops. I’ve had my share of confrontations with humans who despised me—not for the color of my skin—but because of the DNA that they could not see or verify and she has her father’s law degree so the Q&A session should be interesting.”

  “And what are we supposed to do while the two of you go playhouse?” Kyss snapped.

  Keller had had just about enough of her. He moved the few steps until he was standing in front of her. She tilted her head back to keep eye contact, not one part of her giving in to fear or intimidation.

  “You’re going to cool your heels right here until I give the word for you to move these bodies. And,” he said holding up a finger to stop her when she opened her mouth prepared to speak. “You’re going to keep any comments that don’t directly deal with this body or tomorrow’s mission to yourself because my patience has worn thin and unlike the Assembly Leader I don’t follow any rules written on a piece of paper, I’ll kick your ass out of here in a flash and break you if you even think to start trouble on your way out.”

  He didn’t wait for any reaction to his words but walked through the area where they were standing and toward another door that would lead to the stairs. Once he was at that door, he could feel Shya behind him, she was silent but anxious. Her cat was antsy and wanted to break free again after having a taste of freedom. He had no idea how long it had been since she’d shifted but from the restless energy he’d observed in her cat, he’d bet it was too long.

  The stairs opened to yet another door and soon they were on the elevator leading up to his private room again. This time, Keller stood to the side and let Shya enter first. He closed and secured the door behind them and watched as she walked slowly toward the bed.

  “I don’t know what’s happening,” she said quietly, and he thought she’d developed the power to read his mind.

  Some shifters did have secondary powers to their natural shifter state, like the seer and healers at Headquarters. So, it was possible for her to be a mind reader, but he didn’t really think that was true. No, this insight into each other was shared between him and Shya, just one of the many things he was tired of fighting.

  “A lot is happening,” he replied. “But we can’t deal with all of it right now. For the moment we’re going to strive for normalcy. So, let’s change out of these now sweaty clothes, grab a quick shower, and get downstairs. We’re going to go out and meet our visitors.”

  He’d crossed the room and was now pulling off his shirt and heading to the bathroom. When he looked up it was to see Shya following his lead, lifting her shirt up over her head and dropping it on the bed.

  “Because the best defense is a good offense,” she said slowly, keeping her eyes on him. “My Uncle X taught me that.”

  Keller gave a slight smile. Xavier Santos Markland was one of the few members of the Assembly leadership that Keller had any respect for. The shifter and his hot-tempered wife, Caprise were legendary and known for their strength, unbridled passion and dangerously good looks. The last Keller attributed solely to Caprise who happened to be Nick’s sister and Shya’s aunt. With an inward groan he made a note to smack himself later for getting involved with the group of people he had sworn to hate the most.

  “Right,” was all he could say as he turned and headed into the bathroom.

  He should have known she would join him in the shower, after all, she’d been following his lead all night. He didn’t know why she was being so cooperative and when they were out there, he hadn’t questioned it, but now, as their naked bodies were standing close beneath the warm spray of water he wondered if her apparent acquiescence was a good idea.

  To her credit, Shya didn’t touch him. She reached for a cloth and a bottle of soap, going about the task of washing without paying him any attention. He tried to do the same, but his gaze insisted on following the drag of that soapy cloth over her skin, the line of water running down between her breasts and disappearing in the nest of hair at her juncture. When she eased in front of him to receive more of the water, he stepped back and enjoyed the view of her rounded ass, soap bubbles sliding down the crease, toned legs lifting as she rinsed the front of her body, feet touching the shower f
loor once more. She finished washing and rinsing and stepped out of the shower while Keller was still holding his un-soaped cloth in the corner of the stall.

  “You’d better hurry if you want to do the meet ‘n greet thing before they come knocking,” she said before walking…no, before switching her cute little ass, out of the bathroom.

  Fifteen minutes later, Shya and Keller stood at the open front door staring at the badge and surly face of Sergeant Hayes Blandings.

  “You say you’ve been here all night and didn’t hear a thing?” Blandings asked them for the second time since they’d been standing there.

  “We were…busy,” Keller told him as he slipped an arm around Shya’s shoulders.

  She’d come up with the idea to go down in their robes and freshly showered bodies because they needed a reason why the sirens and lights hadn’t brought them out of the house sooner.

  Blandings’ wide red-rimmed eye stare devoured Shya as she stood in the silky pink robe that barely grazed her upper thigh and stuck to the parts of her skin she’d purposely left wet. Her feet were bare as was Keller’s chest, his basketball shorts riding low on his hips.

  “What happened?” she asked in the smallest voice she could muster because something told her Blandings had one idea for women in this world.

  The medium-height and average-built police officer squared his shoulders—and if she wasn’t mistaken, sucked in his gut—before clearing his throat. “There’s a pool of blood out here on your sidewalk. We’d like to find out what happened as well, that’s why we’ve been trying to buzz you for the last twenty-five minutes or so.”

  “Well, I’m usually proud of my longevity,” Keller said with a waggle of his eyebrows. “But I’m kind of sorry that I missed all the action. As our house sits back a good distance from the public sidewalk, I don’t know that we would have heard anything even if we weren’t…ah, otherwise occupied.”