by A. C. Arthur
When he opened the next door and was attempting to step into the hallway, he was knocked back by a foot to his chest. His body fell against the door, cracking the hinges, before his weight slammed to the floor. Looking up, he stared into the glowing blue eyes of a Lormenian shifter.
With a vicious roar Eli propelled himself upward, grabbing the Lormenian by the ankle and turning it until the bone cracked, the shifter roaring in pain. Eli released him, moving past quickly as it fell to the floor behind him. Another one charged him, claws and teeth bared. Eli ducked its first blow, slamming his clawed hand into its stomach. Pulling his hand away as the shifter bent over clutching his wound, Eli swung his hand backward, his claws slashing over the back of the shifter’s neck without him even looking back to see the damage.
He kept moving, her scent stronger, and his heart pounding louder. They came at him like ants, another Lormenian that Eli ran up to and punched in the face, and when the shifter fell back onto the floor, he stomped into its chest until it struggled for oxygen. A cheetah jumped at him from behind but Eli heard its breathing, saw its approach in his peripheral vision, and turned in just enough time to wrap his strong arms around the cheetah’s neck, choking it until it crumpled to the floor. When he turned again it was to see the cat slowly approaching.
“Your turn, motherfucker!” he yelled, running in his human form straight toward the cat. When the cat opened its mouth and came up on its hind legs to attack him, Eli jumped, twisting his body in the air and coming down into a backflip that pushed him past the cat. Landing on his feet, he jumped on the tiger’s back, his hands reaching around to grab its opened jaws and with all his strength, pulled until his head literally ripped apart.
Coming back to his feet, the tiger lying on the floor in front of him, Eli’s breath came in quick pants. And then he heard it. Laughter. Sick and demented laughter that could only come from one person, one shifter.
“Where’s your twin?” the almost seven-foot-tall man standing at the end of the hallway asked. “I know how you two like to double-team when fighting … and fucking.”
Eli had already turned around and now stared into the cat’s eyes of the most sadistic and feared Shadow Shifter ever to walk the earth. Boden looked like a god standing there dressed in a black suit, white shirt, and red tie. His body was built, strength fairly oozing from him as he stood in all his glory as a force to be reckoned with. Eli knew his story, he knew the resilience of this shifter, the tenacity that kept him alive when others condemned him to death. His head was wide, round, void of hair on top, but his eyebrows were thick and bushy, his mustache trimmed.
Beside him was Nivea, on her knees and wearing a necklace very similar to the one Eli had back at Havenway, the one that Boden had designed for Acacia.
“Let her go,” Eli said as he approached. “This is between you and me.”
Boden tossed back his head and laughed again, his entire body vibrating with the sound.
“Poor misguided Shadow,” Boden told him. “You still do not have a clue.”
“I know that I’m going to rip your fucking head off and I’d rather not get your tainted blood on my mate,” Eli told him, continuing to draw closer, moving slowly in case more of Boden’s minions came for him.
Boden reached down, petting Nivea on the head. Her cat’s teeth were extended as her mouth opened wide and she roared, nipping at his hand. There was another stronger chain around her neck with enough give to also clamp around her wrists. Eli couldn’t see behind her but he was sure her ankles had also been shackled, or she would have definitely stood up from that subservient position.
“Your mate,” Boden taunted him. “She’s a feisty little beast. Couldn’t bring herself to kill the wretched man that was her father, but that’s okay. I took care of that for her.” He shrugged. “I like being generous sometimes.”
He again ran his hand down Nivea’s head, wrapping her hair around his wrist then yanking back until her throat was bared. Nivea did not scream the way Boden was probably expecting. Instead she looked directly at Eli.
That’s right, baby, focus on me, Eli told her mentally. His cat reaching out to hers, the two mated animals linking in a way that only Shadow Shifters could. Focus on me and know that I will kill this sonofabitch for both of us.
She didn’t nod her response, couldn’t. But Eli heard her cat loud and clear. Take his ass down, now!
“You planned this from the beginning, didn’t you?” Eli asked Boden instead. “All this time you wanted revenge against the Shadows for sentencing you to death. Against me and Ezra for taking your woman.” He purposely did not say “mate.” His goal was to goad the lethal shifter, to enrage him so much that he came for him, thus releasing Nivea. Saying the word “mate” while Boden held his so close might go wrong, quickly, and that would not be good for anybody here.
“I am a man of many plans,” was Boden’s response.
“You are a Shadow Shifter betrayed by one tribe and cast out by another. You don’t belong anywhere because nobody wants you.”
“You are going to be a pleasure to kill!” Boden hissed.
Eli shrugged. “I am a pleasure at so many things. Isn’t that correct, my love?”
Nivea sighed her answer. “Yes, my love. You certainly are.”
Her voice had deepened to a sexy moan that infiltrated the hallway, oozing over Boden so that his gaze instantly fell to her. In that second Nivea shifted, the gorgeous jaguar that she was breaking the chains at her neck and lunging at the very shocked shifter.
But Boden was not to be discounted; he was a trained warrior who fought by his own rules. He grabbed the cat by its neck before it could sink its teeth into him, tossing it across the floor. Unfortunately, that motion had called for his back to be turned to Eli. Big mistake.
Eli shifted next, jumping onto Boden’s back and sinking his teeth instantly into the man’s skull. As he did so, all the darkness that had been heightened in him by that shaman’s smoke filled Eli completely, emptying from him as he clamped down on Boden’s skull. All that anger, all that darkness seeping out like poison, should have killed the shifter, should have taken him down instantly.
But it did not.
Boden was somehow able to shake Eli off, turning with blood dripping from the back of its head.
“You can’t kill me, you little shit! Not one of you stupid shifters can kill me!”
With that the man shifted into his cat. Eli had never seen a larger, deadlier-looking jaguar. And one that was so right, it would take two shifters to kill him.
In seconds both he and Nivea charged the cat, jumping at it from both sides. Boden reared up on his hind legs, roaring so that the windows around them shook. Nivea’s bite went into Boden’s flanks while Eli swiped at its head with powerful paws. Boden roared again and this time glass shattered, sprinkling all around them.
When the bigger jaguar came back down to his feet, Eli leapt onto its back, sinking his teeth into the top portion of its head. Boden swiped at Nivea but she wasn’t to be dissuaded, she latched onto the side of his neck, biting down with almost as much strength as Eli. Boden continued to roar and buck beneath them, trying to throw them off, and yet, moving closer and closer to the open window.
In a flash Eli saw Boden in his cat form, attacking Nivea’s cat in the rain forest, jumping at her again through the hut where she’d lay in that bed beside Eli wearing Acacia’s necklace. Boden had always been the threat to Eli’s mate. With another blink he saw Boden picking up Crowe’s battered body from that house in Arizona where Ezra had thought he’d killed the human. He saw Boden and Bianca in a truck with Crowe and then Boden and Bianca sitting in the corporate office of the Cannon Group. Boden had been the archenemy of the shifters from that first day he was exiled from the Gungi.
Blinking back to reality, Eli’s teeth sank deeper, he tasted the jaguar’s blood at the back of his cat’s throat. When Boden moved again, taking steps even with Eli and Nivea, a combined total of more than four hundred
pounds hanging onto him, Eli knew where the cat would go, what he would do. He hated to do this, hated the choice he’d been given, but Eli relinquished his hold on Boden, swiping his paws over Nivea’s head until her grip on the jaguar broke free as well. She turned to him instantly, growling and hissing as Boden, bleeding from multiple locations, his golden fur stained with red until it almost covered him completely, stumbled a few more steps. Eli ran toward him then, roaring with every ounce of rage, shaman’s poison, and Seer’s power he had in his cat, bumping the wounded jaguar with his large head until it staggered the next couple of steps before toppling over the windowsill, falling into the night.
Cats normally land on their feet and for a minute Eli worried that Boden in all his sadistic rage would somehow manage to survive that fall from eighteen floors up. But the sound of rapid gunfire and the loud roaring of other cats in the area indicated that that had not happened. Boden Estevez was dead. Finally.
* * *
The two jaguars made their way down the stairs, crossing the walkway into the garage but not before looking out to see that chaos still reigned.
Lights flashed from police cars, ambulances, and news cameras. There were people everywhere, police attempting to form perimeter blocks, yellow tape going up around bodies stretched out on the ground. When gunshots sounded from somewhere higher up, Eli pushed his cat against Nivea’s, keeping her shielded as they picked up the pace. There had been guard SUVs parked throughout the garage in anticipation of the shifters needing to make quick getaways. Keys were taped behind the front wheels so that it didn’t matter which vehicle was taken by what shifter.
They ran until Eli stopped at one he knew to be a guard vehicle. He came along its side and shifted back into his human form. Hurriedly going down on one knee, he snatched the key from its hiding place and opened the back door, going straight for the duffle bags the shifters kept filled with clothes. Nivea had shifted as well and was now at his side. It was as he tossed her sweatpants and a T-shirt he thought she could fit into that he noticed her hissing. Turning toward her, he scented her blood and was ready to roar again.
Instead he touched her shoulder, turning her and seeing the blood oozing from several angry gashes at her side.
“It’s okay,” she told him, pulling the shirt down over the scars and putting a hand to his face to divert his attention to her eyes instead. “I’m okay, Eli. Really. Once we get back to Havenway, Ary will sew that right up,” she told him with confidence.
Eli gritted his teeth.
“We don’t have time to stand here, babe. We have to go,” she insisted.
Eli agreed but he wasn’t happy about that wound. Hell, he wasn’t happy about anything that had taken place here tonight.
In the next moments they were both dressed and sitting in the front seat of the truck. He pulled out of the parking spot and was attempting to get out of the garage only to find that he was one of many. When two cougars jumped out of nowhere onto the car directly in front of them, Eli quickly put the truck in reverse and maneuvered the vehicle until it was moving around several other cars, crashing into some.
He drove like a madman, but he was determined to get them out of there. Outside there were policemen in the street, attempting to barricade the resort. But more cats appeared, more hybrids stomped along the ground like Neanderthals. The cops were outnumbered and quite possibly outpowered even though they diligently pulled their weapons, aimed, and fired at the assailants. As for Eli, he knew Rome’s original order had been the correct one. They had to get out and get out now; there was no other choice for the Shadows. Vastly outnumbered and now exposed to the world, they had no other option. The world now knew who and what they were. Now everything would change.
CHAPTER 25
Sitting in a recliner with a cup of hot tea cooling in her hands, Kalina watched the television screen as if she expected something to jump through it at any moment. She was still a bit stiff as the stitches at her side healed. Beside her in another chair Ary sat close, rubbing her hand over Kalina’s back in an effort to keep her and the baby she was carrying calm.
“He’s all right,” Ary said slowly, her gaze also intent on the television screen. “They’re all coming back to us, Kalina. You cannot think otherwise.”
“They’re everywhere,” Kalina said softly. “Just everywhere and they’re killing whatever is in their way. Humans and shifters.”
In the corner, which was his favorite spot in any room that he occupied, Baxter held Shya in his arms, rubbing his chin along the little girl’s soft ebony curls. She’d flourished so much in the weeks since the blood transfusion from Ezra. Her chubby cheeks were the highlight of her cherubic face, she had a smooth, heavily-creamed coffee complexion and hazel-brown eyes. She’d even grown two teeth at the bottom front of her mouth and now held tight to the spirit-filled stick that had been converted into a rattle Baxter had given her the day she was born. Magdalena had given him the stick when he’d first left the Gungi to travel to the States with the Reynolds family. It was for protection, strength, and solace, so Baxter had given it to Shya as the firstborn of the newest shifter generation. The Seer had already sent another spirited object for the first child of the Assembly Leader upon its birth.
Watching Kalina as she worked her fingers together, then released them and started the process again, Baxter wondered if that would come to fruition. The First Female looked tired after the injuries and subsequent surgery she’d endured because of the car accident. She’d lost a little weight but Ary assured them all that the baby inside her still thrived.
“There’s so much death,” Kalina whispered. “So much hate.”
Ary sighed. “I know. I know. But Rome is a good Leader. He’ll get them all out of there. I know he will.”
But even to Baxter’s ears she did not sound confident.
In the next few minutes the mood in the tunnels shifted quickly. The first SUVs came barreling into the parking area. Calls came in rushed screams over the intercom system that had been installed into each room and the hallways of the tunnel. “Medical assistance needed! Medical assistance ASAP!”
Ary immediately rose from where she was seated. “You stay right here,” she told Kalina. “Do not move. I’ll come get you if it’s Rome.”
Kalina had already come to the edge of her seat, about to get up.
“Baxter, make her stay,” Ary called to him.
Baxter moved slowly from the corner, going to kneel in front of the First Female. “I need you to hold Shya, while I make sure all is well. Sit back and hold the baby,” he told her.
She looked up at him in a way that said she knew exactly what he was doing and wasn’t fooled one bit, but she did take Shya into her arms, cuddling the little girl close to her chest. Standing, Baxter nodded to Ary and watched the curandera rush from the room to take care of the wounded.
Within the next hour more trucks came in with more wounded Shadow Shifters, some already dead.
* * *
When Kalina thought she would go out of her mind, and Shya had fallen asleep in her lap, she stood. With a resigned sigh and no knowledge of exactly how much time had passed, she laid Shya in the cradle that had been brought down for her. As she stood, still fighting back the tears of dread, a hand touched her shoulder. Tears fell as she exhaled slowly, her entire body filling with warmth at his touch.
“Meu companheiro,” he said in his deep voice and Kalina’s shoulders began to shake. “Don’t. Please don’t cry,” Rome said, turning Kalina to face him.
She fell into his embrace, holding onto him so tightly she thought she might actually break him, or her arms, in the process. “I was so afraid,” she whispered into his shirt. “So afraid for you and for everyone.”
He rubbed his hands down the back of her head, then cupped her face and tilted her head back until she stared up at him. “I am safe and I am here. I love you,” he told her, letting one hand slip down to rub over her protruding belly.
Kalina nodded. “Y
ou are safe and I love you.”
* * *
“Rome’s called a meeting in half an hour,” Eli said after he and Nivea had walked from their truck to the room one of the guard’s had directed them to. It was sparsely decorated with just a bed, one table, and one chair, but the bathroom had a shower and they were told their clothes had been brought down here. “We have just enough time to grab a quick shower, stop by the infirmary to check on Ezra, and then get to the meeting on time.”
He continued to talk, not sure why it was so imperative to keep moving. Especially when he knew Nivea had come in and sat on the edge of the bed, remaining very quiet.
“Jax called me on the e-band to say that Ezra’s already in surgery. Ary’s working on him,” he said while pulling clothes from one of the bins that had been labeled with his name. “I want to get down there as soon as possible.”
Nivea still didn’t speak.
“He also said your sisters were doing well,” Eli continued. “I asked about your mother too.”
“Stop,” she said softly. “Just stop.”
Eli did. He turned to face her and wanted to hit something, curse, or simply collapse at how sullen and helpless she looked at that very moment. Instead, he summoned the strength to go to her, sitting on the bed beside her and wrapping one arm around her.
“It’s done,” he said. “We can’t go back and change it. We tried to stop it, but it’s done.”
Tears streamed from her eyes. Eli didn’t look at her but he could smell them, salty and sad, and something clenched inside his chest tightly.
