by Amelia Jade
“I don’t get it,” she said instead. “You sound like you want him to find you.”
“I do,” Nash replied simply, not turning his gaze away from outside.
She blinked. “What?”
Now the LMC liaison turned to face her, a look of exasperation on his face. “I want Darren to come find me,” he said, inserting a deliberate pause between words as if he was speaking to a child.
“I got that,” she said sarcastically. “What I didn’t get is the why. You know he’s going to come here and kick your ass.”
A new voice joined the conversation from behind her. “I wouldn’t be so sure of that.”
The smooth, even delivery of the words practically oozed confidence in a way that sent a lightning bolt of fear down her spine. Kierra felt her stomach freeze solid as another man stepped into view, having appeared as if from nowhere. His approach had been so silent she hadn’t managed to detect a thing.
“Ah, hello Victor,” Nash said.
Kierra blinked again. Nash’s voice had definitely quivered as he spoke. It was slight, as if he was almost used to the man, but still she had heard it nonetheless. Her captor was terrified of him.
Summoning whatever shattered remains of her courage she still possessed, Kierra spoke to the newcomer.
“And who are you and why am I so scared of you?” She had no qualms with admitting her terror. Bravery was not the absence of fear, but the ability to harness and control it, instead of letting it control you. It was a motto Kierra had heard once and dedicated it to memory, reminding herself of it whenever she needed a jolt of confidence.
The tall, pale-skinned man didn’t reply, his features so immobile as to practically be stone. Like Nash, his attention seemed to be focused not on Kierra, but outside of the garage-cave they were currently in.
“This is Victor,” Nash said, his voice steadying. “He’s here to ensure things work out in favor of our boss.”
She just looked at him, not saying a word, though her eyes told him a different story. They screamed “I got that already you idiot, but what is it about him that is supposed to make me scared besides his ability to move silently?” Kierra wasn’t positive Nash could pick up on all that, but the general sentiment of her look said enough.
“Victor is a bat shifter,” he said with utter seriousness.
Kierra surprised herself and laughed out loud. “Wait,” she said, sputtering with amusement. “Are you telling me that I’m supposed to be scared of a dude who can change into a little bat? You know, the things that can usually fit in my palm?” She looked back and forth in disbelief at the two of them, though Victor didn’t so much as blink.
“Perhaps you’re more apt to be scared of the name humanity has given to bat shifters over the years,” Nash said with a nasty smile, not fazed by her outburst. “You can think of him as a vampire.”
Kierra froze abruptly. “A vampire? But they can’t go out in daylight, they drink blood, what about all those things?”
Victor spoke at last. “All nonsense I’m afraid. At least when it comes to our race as a whole.” He shook his head with what to her seemed like frustration. “Most of you humans know of us through one particular legend.”
“Count Dracula,” she said immediately.
The tall, pale-skinned man nodded. “Dracula was one of us. A shifter. He also had some…unique interests. Like drinking blood, and his skin was very sensitive to daylight.” Victor rolled his eyes. “Nothing to do with our race as a whole, I assure you,” he said, his eyes swiveling to bore into hers.
Kierra swallowed, trying to dislodge the sudden lump that had formed in her throat. “You speak like you knew him,” she said at last.
“I did,” Victor replied. “I was very young at the time, and he was very old, but I knew him. He lived until almost four hundred years ago you know.”
She shook her head at the revelation that Victor was at least four hundred years old. The entire concept boggled her mind. She had heard that shifters lived longer than humans, and if she was honest, a part of her had hoped she would live longer as well. She didn’t hold out much hope that her father had passed on any of the long-lived genes to her, but she did. It was the least he could have done for her she thought with a soft snort.
“I of course, did not know that,” she replied haughtily. Clearly these men thought that a bat shifter, or vampire, or whatever the fuck he was, would be enough to handle Darren and his friends.
She fervently hoped otherwise.
“So, since you’ve got everything planned out, suppose you tell me your master plan now?” she asked dryly, trying to figure out why they were so eager for Darren to show up. “Darren isn’t going to come alone you know,” she added.
Nash spoke up this time. “We know. In fact, we’re counting on it.”
She frowned. “But why me then? Why not just go after him?”
“Your campaign of course is why you’re involved. As for Darren, he’s not the real fish here, not where Victor is concerned at least. The addition of Darren sweetens the pot for me immeasurably, but does nothing for our overall purpose.”
She still didn’t understand. “Nash, you’re not making any damn sense. Can you at least explain so that if I’m going to die, I can die not confused?” Kierra was surprised at her own level of frustration, but clearly Nash was too giddy about his own brilliance, and was having a hard time explaining things to her. If she was going to die already, then what did she care if she mouthed off a little first?
“Fine,” he snapped angrily. She didn’t care if he was pissy, as long as he explained things to her. “Our boss has plans for the Valley. Big plans,” he said with what she could only surmise was his attempt at an evil smile.
It need a bit of work though. She thought he looked kind of constipated. She considered saying something, but Victor chose that moment to sway slightly, reminding her that he was here, and an unknown player. Fear sank its tendrils back into her system once more.
“Change is coming, and for it we need what is buried here,” he continued with a sweep of his hands to indicate the mountains. “But we’ve run into considerable interference in our efforts by certain individuals you’ve recently become acquainted with. So we put a plan in place to try and catch them. Several months ago, I adopted a codename that you might be familiar with.”
This time she had to give him credit, his smile truly was nasty.
“Unity,” she breathed with sudden understanding. “You’re the one who’s been giving me information. But why?”
“I had to make sure you trusted me, so that when I gave you the last message, you would act upon it.”
She thought back to what his last message had been about. Unity, or Nash she now knew, had told her that the Stone Bears were compromised, that the Sentinels were not loyal to them.
“The Stone Bears. That’s your true target in all of this,” she said. “You gave me that message in hopes that I would tell one of them, so that they would move against you, giving you the excuse to finally deal with them.”
Nash nodded. “And we knew they would bring along as many of those loyal to them as possible. We didn’t plan on Darren falling in love with you and getting involved, but we can adapt quickly. Besides, he had it coming.”
Kierra arched her eyebrows. “What did Darren ever do to you?”
“He stole from me. She was my girl, not his, and that asshole just waltzed in like I was a nobody and took her.” Nash tilted his head slightly sideways, his eyes distantly focused. “So I got him sent to prison,” he said happily. Then his face hardened. “Now I’m going to bury him for good.”
“Patience,” Victor said, his eerily smooth voice raising the hairs on Kierra’s neck.
Nash nodded. “So now, we’ll have eliminated a great many thorns in our side. Gabriel and Darren have no idea how many men we have here, so they will bring everyone they can trust, I’m sure.” He grimaced, looking around at the three other men in the room, the shifters clad all in
black. They were all that remained she knew, having overheard Nash raging about the loss of so many of his men.
“I still don’t understand. Why me though?” she said.
“Must I explain everything?” Nash said with an over-the-top sigh. “We need the LMC in place the way it is, the structure of it, the operations. Your election campaign was based on principles that would effectively topple it and as such would have made life very hard for us. So we framed you to discredit you, and now you’ll disappear like so many others have. It’ll be easy,” he said.
Kierra found herself utterly unenthused about how easily he spoke of her death.
“Why do you need the Mining Consortium in place?” she asked, trying to pry as much information as possible from him. She couldn’t give up hope, and if she managed to survive, the more information she had the better chance her side would have to stop Nash and Victor’s boss, whoever it was.
“We need them because the mining must not stop,” Victor interjected. “We do not wish to interrupt that. We need only change what is done with the results.”
Kierra frowned, wishing for the millionth time that she knew what the hell was actually being mined by the shifters. She was sure it would explain a lot more. She opened her mouth to say more, but she saw Victor stiffen. Given how little he had moved until now, she knew it hadn’t been by accident.
Something was happening…
Chapter Thirteen
Darren
He had every reason to feel confident about the outcome. An entire convoy worth of pickup trucks was rumbling up the mountain with him, each filled with shifters angry at what was going on in their valley.
“We’re missing something,” he said out loud, his fingers gripping the steering wheel tighter.
Corey glanced over at him as he spoke. The entire might of the Ridgebacks was on its way to help rescue Kierra. Not one of them had hesitated when the call went out, and they weren’t the only ones. In the trucks following came Raphael and Gabriel, Ajax, his second Cedric, and another Emerald, Cayleb. It was a lot of muscle.
But Darren still felt that something didn’t add up.
“What do you mean?” Corey asked.
“Think about it,” he said, still mulling things over as he guided the truck through another sharp turn. The mansion was almost in sight. “This blew up too quickly to be an accident. This morning the only problem was someone stalking Kierra and taking unwanted pictures of her. With what’s about to happen, I’d say we jumped in levels of seriousness rather quickly. Now we’ve practically got an all-out war on our hands. How did it get there so fast?”
Corey shook his head. He and the others had been filled in quickly by Darren and Garrett, but none of them truly knew why things had taken such a left-hand turn.
“Could we have surprised them? Caught them off guard?” Corey suggested.
Darren frowned. “I’m not sure. If this is how they react when they’re not prepared, I’d hate to see what happens when they are.”
Corey didn’t respond, and Darren didn’t blame him. He didn’t want to envision what would have happened if their enemies had had more time to plan before acting.
Still… “I don’t think that’s it,” he said at last. “I don’t know why, it just doesn’t feel right.” He shrugged, at a loss for better words to explain his thoughts.
There was no more time to think, however, because the road leveled out in front of them, revealing the large mansion which had been converted and expanded to house the ever-growing offices of the Lionshead Mining Consortium.
“Here we go,” he said instead, not taking the time to park his vehicle properly, simply killing the engine and rolling to a stop. He did leave the keys in it, just in case something bad happened.
The other trucks came to a halt behind him, and shifters emerged. Nothing was said; nothing needed to be. They had gone over their plan from the start. Enter through the Stone Bear garage to hopefully gain easy access to the complex. From there, split up into two-man teams and scour the complex. There wasn’t much more they could plan for without an inkling of what they might be up against. It was late, so at least there would be very little in the way of bystanders to get in the way.
Darren led the way with a dark look upon his face. The road that led up to the complex flattened out into the parking lot, but off to the right along the cliff face a ramp descended out of sight. That was his target. The ramp led down and then curled back to the left into the mountain. The entrance to the garage was located there, and the other shifters followed him down the ramp. As the road bent around the corner, the opening became visible at least.
As did what was waiting for them.
“Heads up boys,” he said softly, not breaking his stride.
The line of shifters walked confidently toward the garage, not slowed by who was inside. Darren took center, flanked to his right by Garrett with Gabriel on the other side. Beyond his Alpha was the rest of the Ridgebacks, while to his left were the other Stone Bears—including a sore but mostly healed Uriel—and the three Emeralds.
He came to a halt just inside the garage.
“Who’s the tall bald guy?” he asked, pitching his voice low so it wouldn’t carry too well across the distance. They were still at least a hundred feet apart. Darren’s eyes noted that there were only three of the henchmen dressed in black standing near Nash. He wondered if that was all he had left, or if they were waiting elsewhere. “Cayleb, Joel, head back out, take a look around.”
The two shifters he had named were also the fleetest of foot, easily able to move faster than many of the larger shifters with him. They looked at each other and then peeled off into the night, disappearing quickly into the darkness as they scouted the area.
“Let her go, Nash,” Darren said.
“I think not,” the liaison said rather contemptuously. “I do, however, want to thank you all for coming like this. It makes things so much easier.”
Darren saw red, stepping forward angrily as he prepared to shift. The men in black around Nash tensed, but it was the heavy restraining hand of Ajax, who had moved swifter than any of them expected, that stopped his headlong rush.
“Careful,” Ajax murmured, ignoring the rage-filled glare that Darren gave him. “Do you recognize what he is?” the Emerald Alpha asked with a slight glance toward the man next to Nash.
“A nobody,” Darren said stonily, but he took another look at the man. He didn’t see anything out of place. Knowing Ajax must have a point, however, he relaxed and let his bear flow to the surface, taking advantage of its enhanced senses. It was there, on the slight wind inside the chamber. “What is that?” he asked, not recognizing the scent. The man was a shifter, that much was identifiable. But of what sort, he had no idea.
“Bat,” Ajax said, pulling Darren back toward the line of shifters.
He didn’t fight it.
A bat shifter? Oh no…
“Fuck,” he said bitterly. “We did not prepare for that,” he said angrily.
Meanwhile, he stared at Kierra. They didn’t speak; neither of them had to. Their eyes stayed focused on each other. She knew why he was there. It was no secret. If he wanted to survive and ensure that she survived, they would have to be very, very careful.
Bat shifters were not powerful in their animal form. Although they were much closer in size to the largest birds of prey, they were still fairly small, and that lack of size could hurt them. But though they didn’t have the mass, they had the muscle, and in their human form they were an extreme danger. Thankfully, they were extremely rare.
Which did not help the fact that one of them was currently looking at him as if he were no more than an ant to be crushed. It was their lifespan that gave bat shifters their strength. The longer a shifter lived, the stronger they became. That was why dragons were at the top; they lived longer than anyone else. Bears lived longer than wolves and a bunch of the less-populous types. But several, including bats and gryphons, lived longer than them by a good spa
n.
“Okay, this is going to hurt, but we can still take him,” Darren said. “He could be more powerful than some of us, but not all of us together.”
“Actually,” the bat shifter spoke for the first time, “that would be rather incorrect.” He strode forward. The shifters spread out, forming an arc around him as he approached. “You see, I am stronger than all of you.”
Then he attacked. On the far end of the line, Corey was closest to his grip. The bat shifter moved, closing the distance faster than Darren thought possible, and without warning, his friend went flying across the cavern, slamming into a pile of metal boxes and knocking them over, collapsing into them with a cry of anguish.
Darren had heard his ribs breaking from the single blow.
He should have retreated. Come up with a better, more organized plan, and tried again. He should have called for more help, more shifters. There were any number of things that Darren should have done. But in the instant he saw what had just happened to his friend, he couldn’t stand by and do nothing. He had to act.
His bear erupted from his skin, the massive beast landing on all fours, charging before he had even stopped his downward momentum. Next to him Ajax, Gabriel, and Garrett joined him, the four colossal bears charging down on the single attacker. Darren bunched his legs and leapt at the shifter, taking the lead...
...and slammed to the ground thirty feet away, his arm broken. The smooth composite floor of the garage allowed his body to slide until it landed hard against one of the armored vehicles the Stone Bears drove around, rocking the vehicle wildly.
Darren struggled to his feet, desperate to resume his attack. But as he watched, he felt his hopes fading.
The bat shifter was toying with them he realized, as he systematically demolished the coordinated attack of all the shifters. Cedric, the Emerald second-in-command, fell heavily into a heap close to Darren. Shifting back into his human form, cradling his broken arm, he went to him.
