They’d gone into military service in the States, where they were both raised, joining the Marine Corps. After the corps, they’d traveled and somehow ended up fighting alongside a shifter tribe of the Israel Defense Forces in Western Asia. That was where Dami had shown great promise and apparently come to the notice of King Christos Fain who was assembling what was said to be a loyal military force around himself. A loyal paladin, Dami had no choice but to answer the king’s call and Chino had gone along.
“I never wanted this… to be a leader of men,” Dami grumbled.
“A leader of men? Ha!” Chino scoffed. “You’re a fucking paladin colonel. You’ve led thousands of men in battle. Face it. It can’t be helped. You’re the best man for the job and to be honest, you’re bred to do this. Why wouldn’t Fain want the best?” Chino glanced over at Dami who was frowning. “I’m just lucky to be in the same league as you, oh great one.” He watched the corner of Dami’s lip twitch as he stared out the windshield. When he glanced over, his golden eyes were twinkling.
“You’re something else, you know that? What do I do with you?”
“Love me the way I love you,” Chino singsonged. He grinned when Dami laughed again. “So,” he asked, “you think I’ll find my mate?”
Dami snorted. “Why would you want to?”
His words sounded disdainful of the very thought of it and Chino knew until his friend’s mate actually walked up and slapped him right in the face, he wasn’t going to believe his mate even existed.
“I know you won’t believe me but for the first time in my life, I think she’s close. I think I’ll find her in California,” Chino admitted.
Chino was as straight as Dami was gay. The fact that his best friend preferred to sleep with men was something Chino never understood but hell, he couldn’t care less. Dami had saved his life numerous times, beginning when they were children in the schoolyard up until two weeks before when he’d literally taken a bullet with Chino’s name on it. He loved him for who he was, not who he slept with.
“More power to you, brother. I just hope she realizes what she has once you find her.”
Chino turned his head to look at Dami. He wore a genuine smile without a trace of sarcasm.
“Aw, that’s sweet, Dami. Who knew you had it in you?” He’d just turned back to the road when suddenly an animal darted into their path. Chino slammed on the brakes but he’d been driving the heavy Humvee at higher than average speed and before he could swerve out of the way, the front bumper of the car slammed into the creature. The tires made a high-pitched scream as they caught the asphalt and it took nearly fifty yards before he could bring the car to a stop.
“God!” Dami cried from beside him, twisting in his seat to see if he could get a look at what kind of animal they’d hit. “What was that? It looked like a cat.”
Chino’s heart was pounding as he pushed open the car door and jumped out onto the road. The desert was pitch-black with no street lighting this far out in the middle of nowhere. Shifters went to insane lengths to keep themselves from being detected by humans and both he and Dami knew Base Camp was built way out in the Southern California desert for just this reason. He’d thought that the animal was a cat but he hadn’t gotten a good look at it. As soon as he got out of the Humvee, he immediately scented shifter on the air… shifter and blood. Dami joined him a moment later, lifting his face and sniffing the night air right beside him.
“Goddamn. It’s a cat. I pray it’s not one of the askari from Base Camp.” Chino walked to the back of the Humvee and peered down the road from where they’d just come. The inky blackness of night swallowed up the road several yards ahead. Even his cat eyes couldn’t pick up any movement ahead. He knew his vision would be ten times more acute in cat form. “We need to go back. If I killed it, we need to find its tribe and if I didn’t, we need to get help.”
“Let’s drive back,” Dami said. Before Chino could think twice about it, his friend had turned and jogged back to the car. He was already inside as Chino jumped in beside him.
“Fuck. I really hope I didn’t kill it,” Chino said, turning the Humvee on the road and pointing the headlights in the direction of the cat they’d hit. He drove slowly, turning on the high beams to light up the narrow two-lane highway. There were no other cars on the road but then again, it was the middle of the night. Even out this far, during the day there wouldn’t be much traffic. In the middle of the night, the terrain ahead of them was completely deserted.
“Look!” Dami suddenly pointed straight ahead.
Chino spotted the thick smear of blood on the road at the same moment Dami did. He pulled up to the place and stopped the vehicle, climbing out as his best friend did the same. They walked over to the blood on the road. It was a significant amount and judging by the scent on the air, whatever animal they’d hit was still in the vicinity. They searched the desert with their human eyes.
“We need to shift, Dami. I can’t see it.” Chino glanced over to Dami and noticed the man was already shedding clothes. In less than a minute, they were both naked and shifted, making the transition to cats in the blink of an eye as all paladin were able to do. Dami was even faster than Chino, in fact, Dami made the shift from human to huge sleek gold, black and white striped tiger in the blink of an eye, whereas Chino’s shift to golden panther took mere seconds. The moment they were in large cat form, Chino raised his muzzle in the air and sniffed. A strong scent of blood and large cat met his nostrils and he bounded off into the desert, following closely on the heels of his best friend.
The farther they went, the better he felt. If the cat had been able to get this far, it meant it hadn’t been too badly injured after all. As they ran, the smell of blood got stronger. Dami pulled up short and put his nose to the ground. Chino looked down to see the puddle of blood that had bled into the sand. He looked up and over at Dami who nodded fiercely, staring out into the desert another hundred yards. Up ahead, Chino could clearly see the form of a large cat lying on its side. It was whimpering and judging by the way its chest moved up and down taking ragged breaths, it was barely alive. He glanced back at Dami but his friend had taken off again, charging toward the still form. Chino bounded after him, barely able to stay with him. They stopped the moment they got to the cat.
The long sleek spotted cheetah lay on its side, gasping. Its beautiful white and orange black-spotted coat was smeared with blood on one side and the gurgling sound coming out of its mouth sounded horrible. The moment Chino met the yellow eyes of the cat, he spotted the green glow around the irises which marked the cheetah as an askari, one of the king’s common soldiers. The pain in the cat’s eyes was obvious. His blood-tinged tongue sagged out of his jaws as he grimaced in agony.
Chino felt intense sorrow. Being responsible for hitting this brave soldier made his stomach turn. The guilt over killing him would never leave him if the cheetah died but he’d darted right in front of the Humvee. If he’d only been paying attention to the road instead of joking with his best friend and going on about finding a pretty girl to mate with, he wouldn’t have killed this noble creature. He shifted and bent over the cat as Dami instantly shifted beside him. Chino reached down and ran a hand over the cat’s forehead.
“I’m so sorry. I didn’t see you on the road, Askari. You have to shift and heal yourself,” Chino said, encouraging the cheetah to do as he should. Big cat shifters could heal more and more by shifting back and forth, repairing even the worst internal bleeding by the metamorphosis that came over them during a shift from human to cat and back to human.
“Look at him, Chino. He can’t shift. He’s too weak.” Dami reached out and ran a hand down the cheetah’s bloody side, finding an open wound there. He put both hands on it to stem the bleeding but the cat just shook his large head and gasped in another breath. The wet sounds in his lungs didn’t give Chino any hope that the cat would survive even the next few minutes, much less the time it would take to carry him back to the Humvee and get him help.
&nb
sp; “Please accept my apologies, great askari,” Chino whispered, placing his hand over his own heart as he pledged his regrets to the cat. The cheetah nodded ever so slightly and gasped once more, expelling one final breath before changing form right in front of them. Only a second later, they were looking at the bloody body of a man who lay completely still on the desert sand. Chino looked down at the naked man, now in human form as they both were, and felt such sorrow leach from his pores, it nearly stole his breath.
****
Damiano Satriale squatted by the man’s side and reached out, wiping a hand over the askari’s eyes as he closed them for the very last time. When he stood up, he glanced at Chino. His friend was grieving the death of a cat neither of them knew… it was written all over his best friend’s face. He’d only seen that grief a few times before and never when Chino had killed on purpose. He was as deadly as Damiano but his friend’s soft heart was really something special.
Chino was unusual for a paladin. The species of fighters were bred for their cool regard for cat or human as well as their high intelligence. They generally didn’t make friends and were coveted as warriors or guardians of their king for just this reason. They could remain impassive and aloof like a common house cat but were deadly when guarding what was theirs, like any cat with its prey. Damiano had no feelings for anyone but Chino, but that was because they’d been together since birth and he regarded him more as a brother than a friend. He reached out and put his hand on Chino’s massive shoulder, giving it a squeeze. Chino immediately stood and glanced at him.
“Come on. Let’s run back to the road and get the Humvee. We can’t carry him across the desert without shoes and he deserves a decent pyre. If we can’t locate his people or if he doesn’t belong to the askari at Base Camp, we’ll do him the honors but we’re expected there and they’ll send out a search party if we don’t check in.” Damiano watched as Chino instantly shifted back to his golden panther form and bounded away from him, headed back the way they’d come. He followed suit, changing to his tiger form and charging after his best friend.
What in the hell was the askari doing out here in the middle of nowhere? We’re ten miles from Base Camp where he would have been quartered, assuming that’s where he was quartered. Sure, big cats could cover great distances when in their shifted forms but usually, askari didn’t run alone and they never patrolled alone. They always went out in pairs, yet this cheetah was clearly running out here alone. Is it possible he was running from someone? That might make sense. Was someone chasing him? If so, who? And how long has he been running? Nothing quite made sense at the moment but once they learned his identity, maybe they’d have their answers. Until then, there was no use in speculating.
Chapter Two
T he shifter Base Camp was located in a flat patch of desert just off of Pearblossom Highway, outside of Victorville between Los Angeles and Las Vegas. It was called Base Camp because it was a stopping over place where askari troops were headquartered and trained. The palace, where King Christos Fain and his court resided, was buried deep in the San Gabriel Mountains, almost five thousand feet and a half hour drive above Phelan in the small town of Wrightwood. With ever-encroaching human civilian populations, shifters had to keep moving to avoid scrutiny. They had no intention of coming out to humans the way the vampires did in the True Blood series on TV, which Damiano hated with the heat of a thousand suns. Such TV drivel was one reason he preferred to stick his nose in a book rather than watch crap like that.
As the cats had designed the camp, it would have been perceived as just another industrial compound situated out in the middle of nowhere. When Chino turned off the main road and onto a narrower single-lane road, he had to drive another five minutes to get to the place they were headed. The industrial park was a series of simple single-story buildings painted a dull gray and numbered with large orange stencils near the top of the buildings. They looked like any public storage buildings anywhere in America, but the entire compound was surrounded by what appeared to be several miles of chain-link fencing topped with razor wire. Up close, the whole thing looked almost like a prison, not a storage facility or military camp.
Base Camp was patrolled by several men in gray askari uniforms who walked patrols just inside the fence line. Damiano wondered how the shifters got away with remaining unnoticed with the firepower on their persons. Each askari carried a semi-automatic weapon and made no effort to hide it. As they got closer, it became easier to see why they probably went unnoticed. A large red and white sign was situated just outside the double gate. It read “Butler Security Contractors”. A large guard house butted up to the left side of the road just in front of the electronic gates, and the moment they approached from the one road leading up to the compound, an armed guard stepped out of the building and waited for them to drive up.
Damiano looked up and noted the sophisticated security cameras that were mounted not only on top of the building and at the gate, but at intervals along the top of the fence. Up close, he could see that the fence was not chain link as he’d first thought. Instead, it was made up of some sort of intricately woven metal, probably stainless steel and ten times as heavy. He’d seen less fortified fences surrounding housing settlements on the West Bank of Israel. To the naked eye, it appeared there was no way anyone was getting inside and anywhere close to the buildings without being admitted.
“State your business,” the guard said as Chino rolled down the driver’s side window of the Humvee.
“Paladin Cortez and Paladin Primero Satriale to see your captain,” Chino clipped, handing the man their orders.
The askari stared at the orders that were stamped with King Fain’s seal and then looked Chino over critically. He did the same to Satriale, pausing to stare hard before reaching for a scanner at his hip. He held it out as Chino extended his arm, producing a laminated card with a holographic image of himself that every paladin carried as ID. The man scanned the card and looked at the screen of his scanner, nodding. Damiano extended his arm and showed his own ID to be scanned. Once the askari was satisfied, he handed the orders back to Chino, straightened, stepped back, and gave a sharp salute.
“Welcome, Paladin Primero. Please proceed to building one. Captain Bennett is expecting you.”
Damiano saluted back and the gate began to open. They drove through and he looked into the rearview mirror and watched the gate close behind them before glancing over at Chino. His friend had been grim ever since picking up the dead cheetah in the desert. The man was currently rolled up in plastic sheeting in the back of the Humvee. He wondered whether the askari had been injured before running right into the path of their truck. Damiano hadn’t had the chance to really check him over but he intended on doing that as soon as they got somewhere they could unload the soldier. Chino parked in front of building one and they got out.
“What do you know about this Captain Bennett?”
“Nothing. The first time I heard his name was at the gate,” Damiano replied. “I expect he probably runs the place though.”
“Sure looks efficient,” Chino said. He paused at the back of the Humvee, placing his palm on the tailgate before glancing at him. “You think it’s okay to leave him here?”
Damiano reached up and put a comforting hand on his best friend’s shoulder. “Chino, it’s not your fault. He ran in front of the Humvee. If I’d been driving, I would have hit him too. Besides that, I think there’s something strange going on here.”
Chino frowned. “What? Tell me, Dami.”
His voice had lowered to a sort of growl and Damiano shook his head. “Don’t know yet. Just a feeling.” He shrugged. “We’ll figure it out. Until then, you have to trust me, Cortez. It’s a just a feeling.”
Chino offered a forced smile. “Always, brother.”
They turned and walked over to the metal entry door to the gray building which looked almost like a warehouse from the outside. Damiano checked the door and found it locked. He turned his face up to the camera mou
nted on the wall beside the door and a few seconds later, the door vibrated with a loud buzz as the lock disengaged. He turned the handle and they stepped into the room which appeared to be an outer office of some sort. A receptionist dressed in a gray uniform wearing the standard askari attire, stood at attention the moment they walked in. He wouldn’t meet Damiano’s eyes, looking straight forward.
“At ease, Askari,” Damiano ordered. The man immediately relaxed and glanced over at them both.
“Welcome, Paladin Primero. Captain Bennett will be right up.”
“Thank you, Askari,” Damiano replied. He turned toward Chino, giving his friend a glance. He stood in front of a plexiglass case where several black-and-white photographs were displayed. They showed companies of men and women in askari uniform and appeared to be class photos. The graduation date of each class was noted on signs placed on the ground in front of the first row of soldiers.
Damiano turned as he heard another lock disengage. An inner door swung open and two askari stepped into the room. One was a massive Asian man about Chino’s size and the other was a petite woman, both dressed in the gray askari uniforms. The woman’s uniform was decorated with red piping and captain’s bars. Damiano stepped forward as they walked over, the man hanging back two steps behind his superior officer. They both saluted Satriale the moment they saw him, picking him out because he wore a gold star on his collar while Chino did not. Damiano saluted back.
Paladins were superior in rank to the askari though one didn’t make it into paladin ranks except by birth. They were genetically bred differently than askari, the common soldiers. Any shifter could join the ranks of an askari if they so desired. Nevertheless, the ranks of the askari were made up of common soldiers and they were run like any other nation’s military with strict discipline and a uniform code of conduct.
The Tiger King (Paladin Shifters Book 1) Page 2
