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

by A. C. Arthur

  Keller looked around the room. “Where’s Kyss? Have you asked her who he is?”

  “Can’t,” Gold said with a shrug. “She disappeared.”

  “What the hell? When?” Keller was thinking that maybe he and Shya should have stayed upstairs, the news down here was going from bad to worse.

  “I had eyes on her at the Paradise Center,” Decan said. “When people began pouring out of the auditorium, I saw her heading inside and I figured she was going to assist.”

  “Yeah, assist her mate,” Nisa snapped.

  At that word, Keller’s gaze found Shya’s and held for a few seconds. He was the one to look away first as he returned his attention to the FLs he knew would be staring at him now.

  “So, what does this Rebel have to say?” Rome asked from the small screen on the table.

  “He says that Kyss killed Mackey,” Decan told them.

  “After Shya left his cell,” Jace said with a pointed glare to her that had Keller growling.

  “Yes, I went to see Ewan Mackey because I wanted to ask about the Ruling Cabinet. Everybody was so preoccupied with them I wanted to see if I could get more information from him, but he was cruel instead of helpful, so I left.”

  He’d told her not to speak to anyone else about anything she knew and an hour before she was supposed to meet him, she’d gone in search of more information. Keller gritted his teeth in frustration as he realized she was probably going to deliver that information directly to him.

  “Wait, this doesn’t explain why Kyss would kill Mackey?” Keller hadn’t trusted Kyss as far as he could see her, but he would have never guessed she would have killed Mackey, not while he was in the Oasis prison.

  “Because the Ruling Cabinet apparently put a hit out on Nisa and Shya as a way to get back at the Assembly Leader and his second in command,” Decan spoke defiantly, and Keller almost went over to clap his friend on the back in appreciation.

  The two leaders thought they were the only ones who knew all the answers. Nobody could tell them anything, not that Keller had ever tried. And as much as he wouldn’t want to see Nisa or Shya hurt as a result of their parents’ actions, he was glad that the shifters were getting a healthy slice of fear fed to them because of decisions they’d made.

  “Then Mackey can rot in hell and as soon as we catch up with the rest of the Ruling Cabinet, they can join them,” Nick spat.

  “Let’s table that discussion for now,” Rome said, his tone tight and thoroughly irritated.

  “Are you just gonna keep on letting them get away with shit?” Gold asked, his anger apparent as he stared at the screen.

  “I’m doing everything I can to keep us together,” Rome shouted. “If you think running the administration over thousands of shifters is easy, then you step up and do it, Gold. But this isn’t just about you or Keller and Decan getting revenge. This is about thousands of shifters’ lives. They’re in our hands each time we decide what to do about the humans living here or above ground. Time was all we’ve had on our side these past twenty years, that and the element of surprise, which we sprung on them two days ago. Now, thanks to you we’ve got a whole other host of problems to deal with.”

  “Whoa there, Assembly Leader,” Keller chimed in. “We didn’t tell Kyss to kill Mackey. It wasn’t even our idea to keep Mackey a prisoner. So that kill and the retribution the Ruling Cabinet is now going to seek is on your hands.”

  “Decan brought Kyss into Headquarters,” Nick stated. “And you, I might add. So, we’re hanging some of this blame around your neck too.”

  “And then what?” Shya asked. “What happens after we finish blaming everybody for what’s going on? How do those thousands of shifters at Oasis live their lives at that point? All of this has been so ridiculous. Them hating us and wanting us dead. Us running from them and wanting them dead. I just wish somebody would come up with a real solution and get it done!”

  As if her words were some type of beacon there was a loud crash and a body came flying through the window. Glass splintered everywhere and Keller immediately went to grab Shya. Decan stepped in front of Nisa and Nick did the same with Ary. Gold, Jordin and Zion formed a line and bared their claws.

  But none of them moved or spoke. They didn’t know what to do or say as they stared at the tall, broad shouldered shifter standing in front of them. His hair was long and matted together, his face so dark and streaked with soot it almost looked as if he had been burned. His clothes—khaki pants and fitted t-shirt—were a contrast to the wild and deranged look in his eyes.

  Eyes that were a glowing red.

  Keller cursed just as his claws extended, but he wasn’t fast enough, nobody was.

  Red beams came from those eyes, shooting across the room to land on the table that instantly caught on fire. The shifter’s head moved, and the aim of the laser beams changed until they were singing the walls. Nick shifted first, Jace followed and then Decan and Gold. Keller took a second to turn to Shya and yell, “Run!” before his cat burst free and he leapt toward the shifter still standing in the middle of the floor.

  The walls were burning, air from outside was blowing through the windows and the shifter never moved from that spot. The cats surrounded him now. Keller saw Jordin and Zion shift, he heard a scream, but it wasn’t Shya, so his cat kept its eyes on the shifter in the center, the one that looked like some other type of beast with claws longer than any cat’s Keller had ever seen. And its scent, that wasn’t a cat scent, it was putrid, like something left to fester and it rolled off the shifter in invisible waves that permeated the air.

  Zion leapt first and the shifter only lifted an arm as if it were swatting a fly away. Zion’s jaguar rolled across the floor to slam into a wall. Jordin roared and followed Zion’s lead, but another arm sent her soaring. Nick and Jace went for its legs just as Decan, Keller and Gold leapt for the top of it, deciding they could take it down that way. But this thing was like a tower of steel. It didn’t budge as they slammed against it and no matter how many times they bit into its skin, nothing happened. No blood, no yelling in agony especially since it wasn’t in a cat form, and no stumbling. It still stood straight in the center of the floor and when Keller released his teeth’s hold on the shifter’s shoulder and landed on all fours he looked up in disbelief, one name coming to mind—Cole Linden.

  The shifter’s head turned at that moment, its gaze going to the spot where Bas still stood in his human form, his gray eyes staring up at the shifter.

  “Jacques,” Bas whispered, and Keller continued to back away.

  The very first time Cole Linden had spoken in that room at the medical facility, he’d whispered, “The Desert Cat is Jacques Germain.”

  Every cat went still as Bas moved in closer.

  “Jacques. That’s your name isn’t it?” Bas kept walking, his gray eyes glittering in the midst of the flames behind them and the shadow of the dark shifter in front of them.

  It didn’t speak, but it did tilt its head as if looking at Bas with recognition.

  “I thought you were dead,” Bas said. “The fire at Perryville all those years ago I thought you were dead.”

  “You thought wrong,” the shifter finally replied, his voice like a man’s, but then not. There was an eerie crack at the end of his words, an ominous tone that filled the space with foreboding. “And now all of you will pay for that mistake!”

  Jacques opened his mouth and roared like none of them had ever heard before and even though the roar was enough to break all the other windows on the first level, he shot more beams from his eyes, searing other parts of the wall and hitting someone who hadn’t shifted, someone who was near the doorway but not yet through it…

  Her scream echoed throughout the air and ripped through Keller’s chest like a dagger. His cougar roared loud and charged across the room stopping when it saw her body lying on the floor.

  Chapter 16

  Oasis

  Two Weeks Later

  “A few years ago, a curandero at th
e medical center came across an anomaly in two DNA strands he was tasked with identifying for the ViceSecure database. One strand belonged to Cole Linden and after a more in-depth study was linked back to one of his ancestors in the Gungi who had at some point cross-mated with a different type of feline.” Ary paused and pressed a button that switched the pictures on the screen.

  Pictures that confused the hell out of Jace because they all looked like a bunch of lines moving across the screen like waves. Rome had called this private meeting at noon on a Friday. He was only going to be in Oasis for the weekend and wanted to see everyone as soon as possible. Jace had arrived earlier this morning after having returned to the Pacific Zone a week ago.

  “The second strand that confounded the curandero belonged to Jacques Germain,” Ary continued and Jace squinted his eyes to see what was pictured on the screen this time.

  There were multiple rows of the squiggly lines and they were in different colors. He still had no clue what that meant and from the looks on the other FLs’ faces, he wasn’t alone. Luckily, Ary was there with an explanation.

  “Not only were the strands of Jacques’ different from any other documented shifter, there were too many of them. The human body has two strands of DNA per cell. A Shadow Shifter has three strands—one for the human, one for the cat and another that serves as the glue holding the two together. Jacques Germain had…has…six strands in each of his cells. The curandero was never able to figure out why and eventually stopped trying because there were many more living shifters that needed to be added to the database. He wrote reports on each of the anomalies and they were put into a confidential file and stored in a secure location on the Holodeck.”

  Ary paused and cleared her throat before speaking again. “My daughter, Shya, was able to retrieve those files and stored them on her private board, which is where I found them. With the new technology we’ve developed in the past couple of years, I was able to examine Jacques’ DNA more closely, pick apart the extra strands and attempt to identify them.”

  “What did you find?” Bas asked via the comlink conference system he was on.

  Immediately after leaving Miami Bas had returned to Oasis to pick up Priya and Haven and traveled back to Arizona where he planned to rebuild another resort. Today was the first day anyone, besides Rome, had seen or heard from him.

  “The second set of three DNA strands is not a duplicate. Each of the chromosomes that form the strands are different from the original set. And they’re not feline shifter,” Ary stated and then looked at Nick who had a grim expression.

  Eli had been keeping in touch with Jace after their return from above ground. His twin brother Ezra had stayed in D.C. with Rome, while Eli came back to Oasis with Nick, Ary and Shya who was still at the medical center due to the wound to her shoulder she’d received from Jacques.

  “So, you’re saying Jacques is two different people?” Ezra asked, his face fixed in a frown.

  Jace couldn’t help but frown too. “This seems odd, even for us half-human, half-cats.”

  “I know,” Ary said as she nodded. “Shapeshifters, two different beings living within one body, none of that is abnormal if you’re looking along the mythological or supernatural scale. A body which contained the traits of multiple different species was called a chimera in Greek mythology.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding me!” Ezra shook his head.

  “She’s not kidding,” Rome said grimly. “When Ary first came to me with her findings we sent them to one of the Elder curanderos in the Gungi. It’s true, hundreds of years ago there was a small tribe of Shadows that were forced to live on the outskirts of the town because of what was called their tainted skin. It was really the fact that they were made-up of more than just human and cat. Jacques is a descendent of that tribe.”

  Bas cursed from the screen. “And he didn’t know it? Because I find it hard to believe that the shifter I knew for all those years was just keeping this big ass secret from me and everyone else. And even if all of this is true it doesn’t explain how Jacques survived that fire.”

  As soon as Bas finished speaking the side door to Rome’s private conference room slid open and a wheelchair was rolled in.

  Jewel and Nivea gasped from where they were seated next to their mates at the large conference room table. On the screen Bas gaped and Priya eased into view with an astonished look on her face. Kalina stood next to Rome smiling, a sheen of tears in her eyes while Ary smiled and Nick reached out to take her hand.

  Jace stood. “Cole. You’re awake.”

  Cole nodded, his dark hair curled tight to his scalp, the light honey-hue of his skin looking a pinch brighter than when Jace had last seen him lying in that bed at the medical center.

  “I am,” Cole replied as he was being wheeled to the other side of the room where Rome and Kalina stood. “And I’ve got a story to tell you. It’s about one night when I was working to rescue shifters from a SIC camp, the night I first saw Jacques a.k.a. the Desert Cat.”

  Fifteen minutes later the story was complete and every shifter in the room was stunned into silence. After the Unveiling, Cole’s body had washed up on the shore north of D.C. where he was nursed back to health by a woman who had no idea he was a Shadow Shifter. He spent the next few years trying to help the Shadow Shifters being captured and put into SIC camps. Blaez Trekas and his pack of lycans were helping him for a while, until that explosion at the camp in Arizona, that was the night he first saw Jacques and it was the last thing he remembered.

  “I found him and brought him back to my place in Pennsylvania where he stayed asleep for almost a year until I was told he belonged here with you and I returned him.”

  “You don’t look like the huge, winged creature that we saw through the clouds that night,” Gold said.

  Jace watched the man who’d just spoken carefully. He’d almost mistaken him for a curandero but pulled back from that thought as he stared into the guy’s eyes. They were a startling blue that for some reason gave a hint that he wasn’t a Shadow Shifter, but he wasn’t simply a human either.

  “And who the hell are you?” Bas asked.

  The man shifted his gaze slowly to the screen, his broad shoulders squared. There was an air of authority about him, such that it surpassed even Rome’s superiority in the room. But not in a defensive way, no, there was no tension here. Rome obviously trusted the man, or he wouldn’t have been in Oasis.

  “My name is Theo Masters.”

  “And all we need to know about Theo at the moment is that he brought Cole back to us and that his security team has taken care of the remnants of our raid on Tavarus Lancombe’s house,” Rome said.

  That’s right, the Ruling Cabinet was no more after all the FLs—Rome, Jace and Decan—along with Nick, Gold, X, Eli and Ezra set out on a secret mission three days following Lancombe’s rally at the Paradise Center. Zion and Jordin were sent back to the Central Zone to personally guard Nisa because they still weren’t certain the hit Mackey had taken out on her and Shya had been cancelled due to his death. Immediately after the mission—which left no survivors at Lancombe’s beach house—Rome had contacted Dorian Wilson, who worked out a statement on behalf of the Oasis Treaty, announcing the disbandment of the Ruling Cabinet. Dorian’s consulting firm was also working to re-institute the democracy and branches of government that had been ravaged by the Ruling Cabinet’s tyrannical reign.

  So, for all intent and purposes things were going right in the shifter world.

  “What will we do about Jacques? We can’t just leave him out there to run around killing at will or whatever he’s doing to get back at me for leaving him to die,” Bas said after a few moments of silence.

  “You had every reason to believe he was dead, Bas, there’s no need for you to carry any guilt about this. Besides, if this is a manifestation of Jacques’ multiple DNA, it was only a matter of time before it would have happened anyway,” Ary told him.

  “Still, there’s no doubt Jacques is holding a grudg
e against Bas,” Decan, who was also participating via conference call, said. “Up until two weeks ago it had been reported that the Desert Cat had been killing shifters. The fact that he dropped those three human bodies off in front of Keller’s center meant he knew exactly what he was doing.”

  “Starting a war,” Gold spoke again. “If he had a reputation for killing shifters, but then he switched things up and left human bodies in front of a shifter-owned building he did it to actively engage both parties, thus starting a war between the humans and the shifters.”

  “For what purpose? I mean, there was already a war between us. And how would he have known who owned that building?” Jace asked because he was sort of following the line of thought from these new shifters in leadership, he just wanted to make sure they were dotting all the I’s in their scenario.

  “He would have smelled them,” Bas offered. “Jacques was an excellent tracker, he could scent anything from almost a mile away. He knew I was there, and he wanted me to know he was alive.”

  “But he didn’t kill us,” Gold said. “When we all ran to help Shya, he just left as if his job there was done. That’s the part that doesn’t make any sense.”

  Jace looked around the room at all the shifters gathered. They were a family even after all that had happened—a family that may be starting to come apart at the seams. He hoped that wasn’t the case, hoped that combined with this new generation of rebellious shifters they would really be able to start over again.

  “It does if his goal was to simply tell us that he was only beginning to get even,” Bas said. “Look, I’m not blaming myself for what’s happened. But Jacques was like a brother to me. If he’s suffering, I want him healed, the same way we all wanted to find Cole and to get him out of that coma.”

  “I’ll take care of him,” Theo said, his words and tone as mysterious as the man dressed in a black suit, white shirt and sapphire blue tie. “My company specializes in things of this nature.”