He frowned at the coarseness of the word. “I'm sorry, Nikki. I thought...I really felt like you were choosing me.”
“I was. I mean, I did. But that was for me. I mean, oh why is this so hard? I chose you because that was what I wanted,” she said in a rush.
“Okay. Good.” He didn't look like he was convinced, but apparently she had satisfied whatever weird werebear rule he was following. “That's settled then. It's time for us to go.”
Her head was spinning. Between learning the origins of shifts and werebears and now finding that she was mated to a shapeshifter for life, she was really feeling like she'd lost her center of gravity. “Go? Where are we going?”
“Like I said, back to your world.” He walked up to her now and pulled her into a tight hug, all of his man parts pushing up against her in all of the right spots. “We're going back.”
“Well, at least I can get some clothes again. Can you maybe teleport us into a Gap or Old Navy or something?”
“I'll do my best.”
“Mind telling me why we're going back? I got a feeling it's not just to get me some pants.”
From where he held her against his chest she could hear his heartbeat. It skipped hard against his ribcage when she asked that question.
“We're going back to your law firm,” he explained. “That's where this started. We're hoping we can finish it there.”
“What?” Nikki pushed back from him, her limbs suddenly trembling. “Why?”
“That's where we sent Bulka, the first time he went into your world” he explained. “He said it didn't work, in his reports. He said he couldn't get within two blocks of the place. Now, we think he might have made it in and been captured and killed. If he was captured and replicated by a Shift, it happened there. That's where the files were that you saw on the Ursa Initiative. We need those files."
"I hate to remind you, Mister Riddle Man, but we tried to get those files once."
"We're trying again. But it's not just those that we're after. That building is where we'll find Bryson Donovan.”
“Donovan? My boss?”
“Ex-boss. I think it's fair to say you've been fired by now.”
“Yeah. That's what happens when you kill one of the firm's security guards.”
“He was a Shift, Nikki. He would have killed you and worse.”
She was tired of having this conversation over and over. “I know. That doesn't mean it don't still freak me out. I've killed these things, but they didn't have human faces. Larry the security guard was human. Until he turned into that Shift thing and I killed him. I mean, isn't it possible that there really was a Larry the security guard, once upon a time, and he got himself replicated just like Bulka did? Killing faceless pudding monsters is one thing. It's different when it has a face."
He blinked at her. "Pudding monster?"
She sighed. "Never mind. The point is, this master assassin side of me is something I'm not used to yet. It's something I'm dealing with.”
“I'll try to help you deal with it,” he promised, “but you'll have to find some way to make it all right, because we're going back, and we'll most likely have to do more killing. I can't promise none of the Shifts will be wearing a human face when we fight them.”
She shivered in spite of herself, and in spite of the warmth and electricity his body was sharing with her. “You think there'll be more of them there?”
“Of course. They'll probably expect us, too.”
“Why?”
“Because,” he said, “the Council really liked your idea.”
***
Nikki decided it would be better if she never had another idea again, ever.
At least Max had come through for them and landed them inside a shopping mall. She found clothes her size, a slamming pair of black jeans and a sleeveless purple top, and sensible panties and a sports bra to match. She had her run of the shoe store next door but figured that a sturdy pair of sneakers was the best way to go for what they were here to do. That didn't mean they couldn't pick the pair with the little pink swoop on the side.
She met Max and Arcan back in the central area of the mall. They'd been in the men's store, grabbing cargo pants and steel toed boots and black sweaters. Both of them had brown messenger bags over their shoulders that looked to be stuffed to their tops.
“Hey look,” she said. “You guys are all twinsies.”
Both of them looked at her with identical confused expressions, one eyebrow up. It made the impression of them being identical worse and she started to laugh. It died on her lips under their hard gaze.
She realized how nervous she still was around the both of them together. Her choice had been made and she wouldn't have given it a second thought if Max hadn't come at her with all that mate-for-life nonsense. After getting over the idea that she was going at it with a bear, she now had to accept that he felt way more serious about her than she did about him. This was all just a little too Disney movie for her liking.
“We should go,” Arcan said, turning away down the wide, empty bottom floor hallway of the mall. There hadn't been any security guards wandering around, which was a blessing, but Nikki knew they were pushing their luck.
Which was what they were kind of doing with this whole entire crazy plan the Council had come up with. It was suicide to force their way back into the building where her law firm took up floor after floor of office space. Especially since the real power behind everything, the Shifts, had no doubt beefed up their security since the last time she and Max had broken in. So more like double suicide. Yippee.
And she had come back with a smile and tried to pretend it was a great idea.
“This is a lousy idea,” she said to them now. “You know that, don't you?”
They looked at each other, doing that mind speak thing they did. She stood there while they talked over her head and ground her teeth until her jaw ached. “Well?”
Max turned to her apologetically. “Sorry. I know it offends you when we leave you out of the conversation.”
“Whatever. Maybe I'm just mad that I'm fighting for my life in a war that I didn't even know existed a month ago and that doesn't even involve me!”
“You are involved, Nikki,” Arcan pointed out. “You're the bridge. You're the living embodiment of both us and the Shifts. I can't even begin to understand how important that makes you. You've already shown that you have powers beyond what the pathetic humans of the Hard World have. Maybe even beyond what the Ursallin can do.”
They had reached the entrance to the mall, where metal security gates had been rolled down over the doors and windows. Nikki stared hard at Arcan, her hand on her hip. “Why do you keep calling this the Hard World? This is the Earth. Say it with me. Ear-tha. Earth. What's with this Hard World stuff?”
Arcan swiftly slammed a fist against the security gate, twice, making a ringing, hollow metal sound that echoed off through the mall. He left behind an impression of his knuckles. “Hard. World. Everything here is steel and glass and stone and brick. Everything. You people have abandoned everything good and natural. You've buried it under the rock of your streets and the brick of your buildings. It makes me sick.”
He turned away, walking past the length of the security gate until he came to a space where the wall was a bare surface painted a light beige. Rearing back with both arms he hammered against the wall again and again, his fists morphing into bear's paws, his arms sprouting black fur, and even his face lengthening and baring sharp teeth in a snarl. Soon the sheetrock and cinder block that had stood in front of him had crumbled and broken apart and the night outside became visible through the wide hole he had created by brute strength alone. It had not been quiet, but the lighted parking lot remained empty. No one came running to see what the rage of an Ursallin could create.
Arcan turned to them, his chest heaving with each breath, his face returning to its normal human shape. His eyes burned. “Hate it,” he repeated.
Then he walked out of the mall.
/>
Nikki stared, her mouth open. “Nature lover doesn't quite cover it with him, does it?”
“He's more vocal about it than most,” Max told her, starting them toward the makeshift door Arcan had created. “But he's not wrong. That's why most of us don't want to be here in this world. It's also why the Shifts want to get into our world so badly. They've ruined almost everything here already. They want new ground to spoil. A new nature to rape. If we let them into our world, it wouldn't just mean the end of the Ursallin. It would be the end of our world altogether.”
“I...I didn't know,” Nikki said. She didn't know what else she could say.
“We haven't told you everything yet, Nikki. We weren't sure how you'd feel about it.” He took her hand as he said it, and led her out into the night. “I mean, being told you're special is one thing. Being told you're a bridge between two ancient races and oh by the way you need to help us stop a genocide, we couldn't know what you would do if we said all that to you all at once. Now I know that you can handle it. I know that you'll always be with me. I know that from what we've shared. I'll explain everything to you just as soon as I can. Right now, though, we need to get to Donovan.”
There it was again. Max pouring his heart and soul into the two of them being a couple. She didn't know how she could possibly live up to that kind of pressure. Most of the men in her life, in fact all of the men in her life, had been nothing but one night stands that loved and left and only came back when they were looking for another easy piece. Most of the time, she didn't mind. Good sex was good sex.
Max gave her good sex. He wanted to give her more than that and it was freaking her out.
She scowled, at herself and at life in general, and told herself that she needed to focus on what she was doing right now. This idiotic plan had been her idea. More or less.
The Council had listened to Max recount the disaster that had been their last trip back here. They had learned of the Shifts attacking them, how one of them had been imitating Bulka, and how she and Max and Arcan had beaten them back just enough to make their escape. Max had also been sure to tell them how Nikki had kept the Shift alive to get information from it. That was something they had never tried before. Find a Shift, kill a Shift. That was the Ursallin code.
Not this time. This time, they had instructed Max and Arcan to trap Donovan, capture him, and bring him back to their world to be interrogated.
Damn.
Arcan met them outside the mall. Tapping his foot impatiently, he shot Max a glare that probably had a thousand different meanings, then turned away and began walking up to the sidewalk. Nikki and Max had to hurry to catch up. The mall was only a few blocks from her office building. A fifteen minute walk at worst. Less, at the pace that Arcan was setting.
“You sure your friends will be in place?” she asked Max.
“The Council won't let us go in there alone. Four of our strongest fighters will be there, waiting to help us.”
“It took four of us to take down the Shift who was imitating Bulka,” she pointed out. “And even then Vallith died. You really think you, me, Arcan, and four others can take on a whole building of them?”
“Yes,” he said with a tiny smile. “We brought the right party favors.”
Patting his bag, he took her hand, and they walked on into the night.
*
The back door to the high-rise office complex wasn't guarded. It hadn't been guarded the last time she and Max had broken into the place, either. Somehow that really didn't make Nikki feel any better.
“I thought they'd have increased their security,” she said. "You know, put up No Trespassing signs or something."
Max knelt down next to her in the shadows behind the building, inhaling deeply through his nose. “I think they did. I smell something.”
“I do, too,” Arcan said from her other side. “Only one thing in the universe smells like that.”
Nikki waited for them to fill her in. When they didn't, she lost her patience. “What? What exactly are you smelling with your big bear noses?”
“Shifts,” Max answered her. “A lot of them.”
Nikki looked up at the empty, dark windows of the floors above them. “Fantastic. How many, exactly?”
“More than I've ever smelled in one place.” Arcan growled and managed to look even more disgusted than he had before. “You two really poked the wasp's nest the last time you were here, didn't you?”
“We may have hurt their feelings a bit,” Max admitted.
“Yeah,” Nikki quipped. “You really missed a good party. What makes you think that Donovan is even here now?”
“We smell him,” both werebears said together.
“You...what? How in God's name are you smelling him?” It hit her suddenly. The reason was obvious. Donovan wasn't a man trying to work with the Shifts. He wasn't a mere human being doing evil things. He was evil.
He was a Shift.
“Oh, dear God save us," she breathed. "Fine. My boss was a Shift. Why not? But how can you smell him among all the others in there?” she asked, still nervously checking out the shadows around the building and the blank windows above for any sign of movement. “If there's that many of them here then how come he stands out?”
Arcan raised his head up to look over Nikki at Max. “I thought you told her?”
Max shrugged, a little sheepishly. “Hadn't come up yet.”
“Think she needs to know now?”
“She needs to not be here,” Max countered. “But I was overruled by the Council. They wanted her skills to help us.”
“What skills?” Nikki demanded and then had the good sense to lower her voice again, knowing that if there were that many Shifts around then anything could draw them down on her. “I don't have any skills! I'm just a city girl trying to figure out why two bears are dragging her to her death!”
“You've killed more Shifts with your little city girl hands than most Ursallin ever do in their lives,” Arcan said to her harshly. “Even you can't deny what you can do. That's why you're here.”
“Whatever.” She really couldn't argue about it, even though she wanted to. Whatever inner genetic code she had been born with had all the right stuff to make her a super fighter. Killing was easy for her. She didn't know how she felt about that. “Just tell me what's so important about Donovan the Shift.”
“It's not difficult to grasp,” Arcan said in that smug voice of his. “He's the Primus Secor.”
“He's the...what?” Nikki felt like throttling both men until they could start speaking English. “What the Hell is the Primus Seeker?”
“Nikki,” Max said to her in a gentle whisper, “Arcan explained our history to you. Our ancestor leapt from his ruined world into ours. In the process, his shadow was sheared off and became the very first Shift. Our ancestor is known as the Primus. The first of all of us. His shadow, the first Shift, we call the Primus Secor. The second part of the first. The evil half of the Primus.”
Nikki felt like she had been hit in the face with something very large and very heavy. She was stunned. “So you're saying Donovan is a centuries old evil entity bent on destroying every Ursallin in existence.”
“No, of course not,” Arcan said to her. “He's much older than that.”
Nikki felt her heart pounding. The world was closing in on her. She couldn't breathe. She couldn't think. “You bastards! You didn't think to mention this to me before? I've been working for the big baddy himself and you just led me right back to him!”
Both of them rose up into a low crouch, their faces serious.
“That's right,” Nikki went on, sure they were scared of the little Black woman ranting at them. “You'd better be respecting me.”
“Shh,” Arcan said to her.
“Don't you shush me!” she snapped. “I will not be—”
“Nikki, be quiet,” Max said.
She gaped at him, but then realized neither of them was looking at her. Both of them had their eyes focused on the bui
lding.
“What is it?” she asked.
Max's answer was one word. “Death.”
From above them, a dark shape flew out of a window on the sixth floor, glass shattering around it and raining down with the sound of shattered crystal. Darcy knew it was a Shift, a monster coming to devour them and drink the blood from their lifeless corpses, or liquify their brains and suck them out with a straw, or pour its oily body into their mouths and suffocate them from within.
Or something like that. The possibilities seemed to be endless with the Shifts.
Then she noticed the size of the thing that descended on them. Small for a Shift. No bigger than Max, to be sure, and this one wasn't changing shape. Instead of an insane collection of black arms and legs and heads all put together with no regard for logic or physiology, this shape coming at them had two legs and two arms and one head.
Well. Most of one head anyway.
It was a person. A muscular man with brown skin and normal features except for how half of his head was simply missing. Gone. Chewed off or torn off or hacked off with a rusty saw. Nikki didn't have time to get the finer details before the dead body splatted into the paved alleyway with enough force to liquefy what was left of it into a bloody pulp.
“Oh, dear God,” Nikki whispered. “Who was that?”
“Cirillo,” Max answered, his eyes wide and feral. “He was one of us. An Ursallin.”
That was not good.
“So, the death you two were smelling?” Nikki asked.
"The Ursallin who were here to back us up,” was Arcan's reply. “They've all been killed. The Shift's got to each one of them.”
“We should go,” Max said, standing up the rest of the way. “Come on. This is an ambush.”
From the broken window where the Ursallin's body had been sent flying, a voice called down to them. “Of course it's an ambush, you idiots! It's an ambush that you walked into with your bear eyes wide open!”
Nikki knew that voice. Oh, damn, she knew that voice.
“Nice to see you again, Nikki,” he said to her, his voice raised to carry from the sixth floor like that. “Sorry I missed you the last time you were here. Your boyfriend over there didn't want me to see you.”
Simply Bears: A Ten Book Paranormal Bear Shifter Romance Collection Page 38
