by Amelia Jade
“Well, something obviously just happened,” Ajax said, looking pointedly at the blood on Justin’s pants and the lack of shirt.
Justin shrugged, trying to hide his discomfort. “Normal things accumulated while dealing with the Agency. You should know about that,” he said as nonchalantly as possible. “I need to go though. I have other things to do. It was good to see you.” He headed for the door.
“Sit.”
The single word cracked the room with whip-like force, slamming into Justin with the force of command that only an Alpha shifter possessed. His spine straightened involuntarily so quickly he was positive he heard several pops. Without hesitation, he backed up two steps and plunked himself down into the chair.
The idea of defying Ajax any further never even occurred to him. The sharp, emotionless tone of his voice had shown Justin a side of the Alpha shifter he had never seen before. Although the two knew each other, they hadn’t truly been exposed to one another for an extended period of time in a private setting.
“Better,” Ajax said, his voice resuming the more gentle, mature tone of someone who had been through it all before. “Now, why don’t you tell me what’s going on?”
Justin grimaced, thinking of all the time it would take, but one look over at the big man and he began to lay it all out. From landing on his back at her feet, to his being chased by Agents across the building rooftops. Ajax nodded sagely at the key points, then sat back as Justin finished his story.
“I see.”
“Good,” Justin said, “so now you see why I have to get to Shay.”
“You’ll get there,” Ajax said, “but only after you tell me what’s going on.”
Justin felt his jaw drop open. “But...I just…what more do you want me to say?” he asked in disbelief.
“You’ve told me what happened,” Ajax said calmly, waving a hand in the air as if it didn’t matter. Then he leveled a finger at Justin. “But you haven’t told me what’s going on.”
He frowned. “I don’t understand what you mean.”
“Is that why you look more distressed than a dog who can’t find his bone?” Ajax asked softly. “Something is bothering you.”
Something inside Justin crumbled at the knowing tone, as if Ajax knew exactly what it was that was bothering Justin, and that he sympathized too. He just wanted the young Sentinel to give voice to it himself.
“I’m afraid,” he said at last.
“Afraid of what?” Ajax asked gently.
Justin closed his eyes, taking a deep steadying breath. “That if I continue to kill, that I’ll learn to like it. That I’ll lose myself in it.”
Ajax nodded sagely. “You’re afraid it’s already begun.”
He shuddered as tension he hadn’t known he was carrying flowed out of him as he admitting everything.
“I am,” he said, his voice a near-whisper.
Chapter Nine
Shay
The door wouldn’t slam. It closed slowly behind her, air hissing from the contraption preventing her from expressing herself.
The instant the bolt clicked into place she threw the lock across, spinning to face away from it, her back pressing against the cold metal door. As secure as she could be, the tears began to flow. Great heaving sobs racked her shoulders as she slid to the ground, pulling her knees to her chest and hunching over them.
Justin had murdered those two men! Right in front of her!
She barely made it to the washroom before her stomach emptied its contents as she remembered the way he had transformed into that huge animal and ripped the two of them apart. Blood had been dripping from his jaw. Human blood.
Her stomach heaved some more until it came up empty.
What the hell had she gotten herself into? Falling for a man who murdered government or police agents?
Is that truly what happened? You don’t know who those men were.
Shay growled at her inner voice. She knew what she had seen. They wore uniforms. Official uniforms. That meant government. Besides, why would anyone else be trying to go after Justin? No, only the government would do that, and that meant he had done something very bad.
Had he killed before?
The abyss yawned in front of her, opening up to swallow all the hope she had been building. About finding her father. Hope that she might be able to race again one day. That maybe she had something with this mysterious shifter. That she might have found a place in life that she could stay for more than a few days at a time.
It had been a long time since Shay had considered the feasibility of settling down, of living in a city for an extended period of time. Her skills didn’t transfer to that sort of life, but to her surprise, since meeting Justin she had begun to realize she would do it anyway, for him.
Now I’ve gone and opened my heart, only to have it wrecked worse than the time I plowed headfirst into the concrete barrier in Jarkova City. You’d think I would have learned what to avoid by now.
Shay got up off the ground, her disgust morphing toward anger. Anger that was directed at herself for not knowing any better. Glancing up from the sink, she caught a look at herself.
Bright eyes overshadowed by puffy redness from crying, runny makeup, and a distant look on her face summed up the day so far. She thanked her lucky stars that she hadn’t popped a blood vessel in her eye while her stomach flipped itself upside down. That would have just been the capper on a fantastic twenty-four hours.
First she’d been threatened with a gun for some unknown reason. Now the man she thought was cute turned out to be a murderer.
Do murderers run from their victims first? Do they plead for them not to make them do this?
Shay shook her head, not interested in the philosophical questions that kept popping into her head. It was as if her subconscious or something wanted her to find a way to make it look like Justin wasn’t actually the bad guy.
“My head hurts,” she muttered aloud, and she finished washing her face.
Glancing at the clock to ensure it wasn’t too early, she headed downstairs to the hotel lobby. Just then, she couldn’t care less about her appearance, or if anyone judged her for it.
The hotel bar was empty minus a couple sitting at the far end. Shay marched herself up to the counter.
“Rye. Double. On the rocks,” she said briskly, then added belatedly, “please.”
The bartender, an older woman with gray hair that hung just below her chin, sized Shay up as she made the drink, not needing to watch her hands. They moved on their own, a likely result of decades of experience. Two cubes slid into the tumbler, followed by an extra big splash of liquid. Then the whole thing slid across the bartop on a thick wooden coaster to end up in front of Shay, the movement doing just enough to splash the liquid across the ice.
She picked it up and took an appreciative sip.
“Ahh,” she said, sighing as the liquid warmly burned its way into her stomach.
“What’d he do?” the bartender asked.
Shay felt her eyes widen in surprise, both at the accuracy of the question, and also at the comfort of the bartender in asking it.
The older lady chuckled. “Miss, I’ve been back here for forty years in one capacity or another. There isn’t much I haven’t seen.” She gave Shay a calming smile. “One o’clock in the afternoon and you’re here with swollen eyes, no makeup, and a double shot?” She reached behind her, pulling out a fresh glass and made a second drink, taking a sip herself. “So, what’d he do?”
Despite the death threat, despite the vision of two men dying in fountains of blood, despite the explosion of her professional and personal life, despite all that, Shay felt herself wanting to smile at the bartender.
So she did.
Damn, it felt good.
The bartender smiled back, nodding her head at Shay as if she understood every thought and emotion that just played across her face.
“Something real bad,” Shay answered at last, before taking another fiery sip, her throat and
stomach an inferno for a moment as the thick liquid slid down.
“What’d he do,” the bartender said with a gentle, disarming smile, “kill somebody?”
Shay forcefully kept her eyes downcast. “Something like that,” she replied over the top of her drink.
The bartender made an appreciative sound. “Sounds like he’s got a real mean streak in him. Probably best that you stopped seeing him.”
“I didn’t say either of those things,” she said.
“No, but I did,” the bartender replied. “Trust me honey, I’ve seen it all.”
Shay frowned. “So why did he run from them before—” she cut herself off. “Before. Why did he yell at them not to do it?” She shook her head. “It doesn’t add up. It’s not like I was sleeping with him. I honestly barely knew the guy, but everything about him screamed ‘good guy,’ you know? Sure he drove a motorcycle, but he was knowledgeable about it, like a mechanic. No tattoos, spoke perfectly. Opened the door for me, but he was also nice to everyone around him.”
The bartender took another sip of her own drink, spurring Shay to do the same as she tried to talk her way through it.
“Even now, after it all, your instincts are telling you he’s a good man?” the bartender asked, coming around to sit next to her.
Shay pursed her lips as she thought for a moment, about everything she knew about Justin.
“Yes,” she said at last, more confused than before. “He asked me something, the last thing he said before…”
She fell silent, lost in her own thoughts as she sipped on the drink, enjoying the warmth settling in her stomach.
“What did he say?” the bartender pressed at last.
Shay frowned, trying to come up with a way to explain it. “We had been talking about serious things. Not like marriage or relationship type of serious,” she added hurriedly. “But life serious. About how everyone deserves to be treated with decency. I had said that those who treat others inhumanely are worthless pieces of shit.”
The bartender laughed silently, her shoulders bouncing up and down as she nodded her agreement.
“The last thing he said to me was to ask if I had meant what I said there.” She dropped her head. “Then he kissed me, and that was the last time we talked,” she added in a whisper.
Shay didn’t even have to look up to see the bartender look away thoughtfully.
“Sometimes,” she said slowly, “the eyes see one thing, but the brain, your instincts, your gut, I guess, see another. They see the truth hidden in the visuals presented to you. Are you absolutely positive that there isn’t more to what you saw?”
Shay opened her mouth to say “Yes,” but she paused, taking a moment to think it through. Her brain was trying to tell her something. Justin had been trying to tell her something too.
What was it?
Why did he ask that last question? Why did knowing how she felt about people who treated shifters poorly matter so much?
“I don’t know!” she said at last, tossing back the last of her drink in distress. “Maybe. Possibly, but I don’t know what.”
The bartender finished her drink in collusion with her and got up, heading back behind the bar.
“Another please,” Shay said, but the bartender whisked the glass away and didn’t return it.
“Perhaps,” she said. “Perhaps you should have a talk with him. Tell him he needs to speak the truth, to explain everything that he’s been hiding. Let him do that,” she suggested, “and then see if your eyes and your gut are still at odds with each other.”
Shay snorted derisively. “I don’t even have a way to contact him if I wanted to do something like that.”
“What’s this guy of yours look like anyway?” the bartender asked after a moment.
Her head snapped up at the tone in the woman’s voice. “Very tall, muscular without looking like he takes steroids. Classically good-looking face, eyes so light blue they look gray,” she said, a smile tugging at her face as she pictured him in her mind.
“Mmm,” the waitress said. “Short brown hair, almost shaved, but not quite? Not much in the way of facial hair? Looks like a lost puppy dog?”
It was then that Shay noticed the bartender wasn’t looking at her, but past her.
She spun in her seat.
***
Standing there in the lobby of her hotel, looking distraught, was none other than Justin Renne.
Like the pasta.
Shay, horrified at herself that she would think of that lame little joke at such a serious time, hid any emotion that might play across her face. Laughing just then was not appropriate.
He had seen her, and had indeed been watching her as she thought over the bartender’s last few words. His long strides carried him across the distance.
“I’m in room 606. In case…” she shrugged.
“I’ll have housekeeping send up a bottle of wine in an hour,” the bartender said with a knowing wink.
“Thank you,” Shay said as she slid off the barstool. “For, you know, everything.”
The bartender just smiled.
Shay turned back as Justin came to a halt several paces away from her. He opened his mouth, looking like he had something to say. Then he hesitated.
She decided to speak, but the words caught in her throat.
Gathering herself, she forced them out.
“We need to talk,” they said in unison as Justin found his words as well.
A ghost of a smile played across her lips, and she saw his eyes twinkle, though it didn’t reach the serious expression written upon his face.
By way of unspoken agreement they headed toward the elevators and her room, silence hanging in the air. Both of them seemed to startle when the doors slid open, the chime dinging to indicate they had reached the sixth floor.
“Don’t mind the mess,” she said awkwardly, indicating her trail of things from earlier.
Wow, I really made a mess of this place.
It hadn’t seemed so bad when she had left for the bar.
She gestured at a pair of seats in the front of the room, where the TV was located.
They sat, still in silence, neither of them knowing what to say, only knowing that things had to be said.
The fabric-covered chairs squeaked as they settled into them, looking at each other. Finally, Shay could help it no more.
“Why did you kill those men?” she blurted out.
Justin shuddered, torment filling his eyes.
“Because they gave me no choice,” he said, then held up his hand as her face scrunched up in confusion. “None of the men who work for the Agency ever give us a choice.”
There was no question who he was talking about when he said “us.” He meant shifters. His kind.
The line about wanting to know if she truly felt the way she did about people who hunted shifters down and experimented on them echoed through her mind again.
“The Agency?” she asked when no more words were forthcoming.
“They likely have another name, but we don’t know it. They are an extremely well-funded, well-connected, and, unfortunately, well-established group.”
There was no shame in Justin’s voice now. Just cold hard facts. Shay swallowed as she saw this side of him for the first time. The trained killer.
“Why are they after you?” she asked, trying to keep her own voice just as steady. She needed to. Justin was finally revealing things to her that she wanted to know.
“Because of what I am,” he said heavily. “The Agency has somehow managed to develop a serum that when injected into a blackblood, gives them the powers of a shifter, with the sole exception of the ability to shapeshift.”
Shay felt her jaw drop open. “I’m sorry, what? They can give humans your abilities? All of them?”
Justin’s jaw tightened. “Yes. Increased strength and speed. Faster healing, better eyesight, etcetera. But not to humans, no. Only to those born with shifter blood in them. Born of a shifter and a human, but witho
ut the full blood of a shifter. A blackblood.”
“Right,” she said with a nod, remembering him telling her about what that term meant. “So they have this serum. But why are they after you?”
She could hear him gritting his teeth. “To develop the serum, they need the blood of a full-blown shifter.”
“How much blood?” she asked tightly, unsure she wanted to know the answer, yet equally sure she already knew.
“All of it,” he ground out. “In a short timespan. We still don’t understand why or how, but we’ve learned that they have to drain one of my kind dry in a short timeframe to have enough blood to then create their serum.”
“Oh my God,” she whispered.
“Those two men,” he said after a moment, banishing the silence, “were both injected with the serum.”
Shay jerked as if she’d been shot. “Two of them?” she asked in horrified awe. “That means that…”
He nodded angrily. “Two of my kind died to create those two men.”
“That’s terrible,” she said shakily, the implications of everything that Justin was involved in just beginning to sink in. Shay was sure there was far more to it than she was aware of. “I can’t even begin to comprehend the atrocity that’s being committed against your kind.”
Shay desperately wanted to reach out, to hold him. The emotions playing across his face were as clear as day for her to read. Distress. Anguish. Anger. Horror. Confusion. Justin was far more overwhelmed by what he knew than he let on. She could see that now, and it took everything within her not to reach out and pull him to her.
Not yet.
“Why are they doing this?” she asked. Shay needed answers. She needed to know more.
“To kill us all. To rid the world of our kind, so that it can be pure once more.” He practically spat the words out, disgusted by their content.
Shay nodded, things falling into place.
“Who are you?” she asked at last, getting to the crux of the issue.
