Shifters Escape

by Selina Woods

  “Let’s play it safe and say yes. Use what we know.”

  Morgan glanced up at the moon. “It’s almost time for the bar to close. We better get on back.”

  By the time we reached The Tiger’s Paw, Morgan’s various cuts and bites had begun to hurt him, and both of us were exhausted. Someone had been watching for us, as Jae opened the door just as we reached it. She looked us both over and beckoned us inside without asking questions. Shifting forms, the minute she closed the door and locked it, Morgan went on past her to the bar without speaking.

  “Hi,” I said, raising a kiss for her and a smile.

  “Are you both all right?”

  “I’m just tired,” I told her. “He got beat up again.”

  “Tell her who saved my ass,” Morgan called back through the doorway.

  Jae stared at me with wide eyes as I squirmed under that intense hazel regard. “You?”

  “I, er, well, I couldn’t just stand there and let them kill him.”

  “He took out two lions with a knife.”

  Taking my hand, Jae pulled me toward the bar where the murmur of voices had halted upon Morgan’s words. “We have to hear this,” she said.

  “Uh, no, we don’t. Let’s just focus on the topic of getting out of here.”

  Morgan sat wearily on a stool at the bar among Porter, Chad, and three shifters I didn’t know, a glass of something in front of him. Jae pushed me, gently yet firmly, around the bar and to my seat. “Want a soda?” she asked.

  “Sure.”

  “So, what happened?” Chad asked, then jerked his thumb at Morgan.

  I shrugged. “We found Raphael’s cache of supplies were protected by an alarm system.”

  “Boy genius here rigged it so the alarm won’t go off,” Morgan said, then took a drink from his glass. “He also glossed over killing two lion goons with a knife. Saved my ass.”

  All eyes stared at me. I felt a blush heat my face, and I made myself sit still and not squirm. “I had to.”

  “Where’s the knife?” Chad asked.

  Reaching down, I pulled it from the sheath in my boot and dropped it on the table. It gleamed under the light, silver and deadly. “I found it in a house earlier,” I explained as everyone gaped at it. “It’s old but still sharp.”

  “That’s a frigging sword,” said one of the shifters I didn’t know.

  “I didn’t see how he killed the first lion,” Morgan commented. “How did you, kid?”

  I picked up the knife by its hilt and made a stabbing motion. “Through his skull. The second had Morgan down, and made it easy for me to punch a few holes through his heart and lungs.”

  “I’m right glad this kid is on our side,” Porter muttered into his beer.

  Jae put her arms around me from behind, resting her face between my shoulder blades. “He’s a hero.”

  “Declan,” Chad said and pointed to each of the shifters I didn’t know. “These are Jimmy, Harry, and Boomer. They will all offer their help in exchange for us getting their families out.”

  “Great,” I replied, nodding to each. “I’m guessing all we have to do is raid Raphael’s caches for food and weapons, then we’ll be on our merry way?”

  “For the most part, yes,” Chad agreed. “We have to get rid of the roadblocks and that seems to be the sticky part.”

  “We don’t want rifle fire to alarm Raphael here in the city,” Boomer, a big red-headed wolf with fierce blue eyes, explained. “We all know how to shoot, but we also don’t want Raphael following us to Denver.”

  “Plus,” Porter added, “we need to not just get our supplies out and into cars; we have to blow that house up. When we do, we’ll have every goon on our tails. We may not make it.”

  I nodded, thinking. “What about this then? We creep in silently with just a couple of trucks. Get our goods, load the trucks, and get back to fetch the plow without Raphael being the wiser. But I’ll stay behind while you collect the families and head for the highway. I’ll then blow the house.”

  “No!” Jae yelled. “They’ll kill you.”

  “Baby,” I said, grinning, half turning to kiss her. “Raphael can’t kill what he can’t catch.”

  Morgan nodded. “The kid is fast. If anyone can set the explosives off and escape, he can.”

  Chad rubbed his chin, watching me thoughtfully. “Where would we pick you up?”

  I pondered the city’s layout and the highway that led south. “The roadblock on the south interstate. If I cut straight across the town, I’ll hit the highway just before you reach the roadblock. But we’ll have to time it perfectly.”

  “How long from getting the supplies to that point?” Jimmy asked. “Including loading the families?”

  “We need to have all the families meet at Porter’s.” Chad replied, gazing around. “That’s where the vehicles are. We load the people, get them out to the outskirts of town. There’s nothing out there except coyotes and antelope until we hit the roadblock. You four,” he pointed at Porter, Jimmy, Harry, and Boomer, “stay with them. We’ll get you weapons. Morgan, Declan, and I will get the supplies in two trucks. We’ll meet you there.”

  “Wait a minute,” Jae snapped, “I’m going with you. I’m staying with Declan.”

  “Jae—” Chad began.

  I turned fully, and put my hands on her hips, gazing into her irate eyes. “Please stay with the families and help protect them, Jae,” I asked, my tone soft. “You can’t keep up with me. Once Morgan and Chad leave with the trucks and supplies, I need to be able to move fast and not worry about you. Worrying about your safety will take my mind off what I can’t take my mind off. If I know you’re safe, I can focus all my attention on staying alive.”

  “You make me sound like a fucking burden.”

  “Worry over your safety is a burden. You—never.”

  Jae hesitated, at last seeing the sense of what I said. “But I’ll worry about you,” she whispered. “If you don’t come back—”

  “I will meet you on the highway, baby. I promise.”

  “Jae,” Chad interjected with a tiny smile. “Declan is right. If anyone can outrun and outsmart Raphael’s enforcers, he can. He’s a survivor.”

  I took both her hands in mine. “I’ll be there. We’ll go to Denver, find my mom, be mated. Got it?”

  At last, she nodded and put her arms around my neck. I pulled her close to me, holding her tight, feeling her tears trickle down my neck. “It’ll work out fine, Jae,” I murmured. “You’ll see.”

  As I held her, the others spoke of distance and timing, setting up the exact when, where, what, and how. All I needed was my marching orders, to be where I needed to be, and blow the house when they needed me to blow it. Sitting on my lap, Jae leaned her head against my shoulder.

  “I need to be with you tonight,” she whispered. “I don’t care what Chad or Morgan say. “If I lose you—”

  I silenced her with a kiss. “You will be. And you won’t lose me.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  It took some arguing with Chad, but by the time the meeting broke up a few hours from dawn, he and Morgan both agreed we should stay together in Jae’s apartment.

  “Meet us back here at the bar,” Chad ordered, gazing at both of us. “We’ll open as usual, but then once we close, that’s it. We never come back.”

  “We’ll be there, Chad,” I said, my arm around Jae’s waist.

  “We’ll all go with business as usual tomorrow,” Porter added. “Tomorrow night, we’ll get everyone to my shop, and into the cars. You have a human friend, correct? Get her to the bar with you, and she can go with Jae.”

  Jae nodded. “We’ll tell her as soon as we get to my apartment.”

  “All of you,” Chad announced, “tonight, tell your people how to get to where they need to be and when. We can’t wait for stragglers. They stay secret, silent, and above all stay together. Anyone who gets lost stays behind. Questions?”

  No one seemed to have any. Chad opened the door, and J
immy, Harry, and Boomer slipped out into the night. Shutting off the lights, Chad led us to his truck, and we all piled in. “I’m almost gonna miss this place,” Chad mused. “My bar anyway.”

  “I sure won’t,” Jae said from the front seat. “I bet Denver needs bars there.”

  “As long as everyone I love is safe from the gangs, I’m happy.”

  He let us out at the apartment building, then drove away to his tidy bungalow and his family. Resigned to Morgan sleeping on the couch while Jae and I went into her room, I went inside with him. “I want to go tell Chelsea to pack her things and be ready to go tomorrow,” Jae said, heading down the hall.

  I kept the door open and occasionally put my head out to see Jae talking to Chelsea as Morgan made himself comfortable on the sofa. He yawned. “You kids keep it down, all right?”

  Embarrassed, I scowled at him, but no sarcastic reply came to mind. Jae returned and closed the door. “She’ll be ready,” she said. “We need to take her to the bar with us and protect her.”

  “Does she have anyone she wants to bring with her?” I asked. “Someone she loves?”

  “She said no; she’s alone.”

  On the sofa, Morgan closed his eyes, and I took that as our signal to go to the bedroom. We held hands as we closed the door, and I reminded myself this was not the last time we would spend the night in each other’s arms. “I will be back, Jae,” I whispered, cupping her cheeks as I gazed into her eyes. “I swear it.”

  “I know,” she murmured, her arms sliding around my neck. “I’m just scared, you know? Full of all these ‘what ifs.’ Most of all, what if you don’t come back?”

  “Don’t think like that. Stay positive; keep it in the front of your mind that we will make it to Denver.”

  “Okay.”

  Jae kissed me, and all thoughts of tomorrow flew from my brain. We undressed each other slowly, caressing one another’s skin with sensual lightness, letting our love for each other flow freely. Jae lay back on the bed as I sat beside her, trailing my fingers over her flat stomach and feeling her delighted shiver. Leaning over, I kissed her, my tongue tangled with hers, our passion rising together.

  Stroking my palms over her small boobs, my staff raging, I forced myself to go slow, to not just arouse her, but make the moments last longer. Her hand around my shaft made that difficult, and I longed to bury it deep into her warm wetness. My fingers trailed down to her mound, dipping into her folds, teasing her nub. Jae moaned against my mouth.

  Pulling me to her, she encouraged me to mount her. I spread her legs with my knees, pushing the head of my rod into her only a short way. Pulling back out, I teased her fully, kissing her, my hands buried in her hair. Entering her only an inch at a time made her thrash under me with need, driving her crazy with lust.

  Her gasps and moans in my ear told me exactly how much I pleasured her. When my own insane need overtook me at last, I drove in deep and hard. Jae pulled her knees back and wrapped them around my hips, her nails digging into my shoulders. Quickening my pace, I thrust hard, feeling the rush of sheer ecstasy flow from my shaft to my belly, my head spinning behind my closed eyes.

  Jae’s explosion rocked through her, and I knew she fought not to cry out. Shaking under me, she clutched me tightly to her body, her moans came in breathy gasps. My own climax was imminent, following upon hers as she clamped down on my thrusting erection. It burst from my balls, and I tried to keep my shuddering groan quiet as the pleasure, the sheer intense sensations, consumed me as I continued to stroke her.

  Panting, I rolled off her, my arm around her belly pulling her to me. I threw the covers over us both, exhausted, feeling her pulse slow under my skin. She relaxed against me, cuddling her body into mine. I neared sleep when Jae spoke.

  “If you get killed, Declan, I can’t live without you.”

  I brushed her hair back from her face and neck and kissed her lovingly. “I won’t get killed, Jae. I swear it.”

  I’m not sure if my instincts were dulled by the prospects of leaving this town, or whether it was because there were four of us on the street. There was certainly an element of safety by being in a group, but even then, I should have kept a sharper watch out for danger.

  The four of us—Morgan, Chelsea, Jae, and I—had walked halfway to the bar when five cars screamed in to park not just at the curb but over the sidewalk itself. Our escape blocked, we bunched together, ready to fight and die. Chelsea gave a long slow moan of terror while my gut dropped, and my only thought was of Jae’s safety. How could I protect her against the enforcers who leaped from the cars with their semi-automatic weapons trained on us?

  “Well, finally,” said a smooth, urbane voice as the rear door of a sleek, black car opened, and Raphael stepped out. As I had seen him before, he wore all black clothes with heavy shades over his eyes, and a wild thought entered my mind. Does Jae still think he’s a fox? “I’ve been wanting to have a chat with you, little man,” he said, the shades turned toward me. “Get in the car.”

  My mouth dry, staring at the heavy armament arrayed before us, I managed to reply without my voice squeaking. “No.”

  Raphael sighed, tapping his hip absently with his fingers. “Get in the car peacefully, or my boys will mow your friends down, and you’ll still come with me. What will it be? Your friends dead or your friends alive?”

  I half turned, seeing the fury on Morgan’s expression, the panic on Chelsea’s. Jae met my eyes with a calm rage that stunned me for a moment, and I knew she wanted to fight and die. I was dead; I knew that for certain. But they didn’t have to die. I could go with Raphael with peace in my soul as long as I knew she was safe and alive.

  “You swear you won’t kill them?” I asked.

  “I have no interest in them,” Raphael replied. “Only you.”

  I nodded. “Okay.”

  I dared not hug or kiss Jae or indicate she was more to me than a casual companion. Meeting Morgan’s eyes briefly, I flicked mine to her and back, silently asking him to look after her. He gave me nothing in return that indicated he got my message and continued to scowl dangerously. At least he didn’t provoke the enforcers into shooting him.

  Turning, I got into the black sedan’s rear seat, Raphael sliding in behind me. I stared through the rear window, seeing his enforcers also getting into their cars. They didn’t shoot Jae, Morgan, and Chelsea down as I feared, and I watched them fade, alive and standing, into the distance as the chauffeur drove the big car away.

  “What exactly do you want with me?” I asked.

  “Information.”

  Raphael pulled the shades from his face and looked at me with pale, green eyes. “You killed Barry the Blade, didn’t you?”

  There wasn’t much point in lying. “Yeah.”

  “How come?”

  “He was going to rape a friend of mine. I couldn’t let him.”

  Raphael nodded. “The girl back there?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Barry never could control his urges,” Raphael commented. “I don’t mourn his loss, believe me; the idiot was a pain in my ass. I normally might not have cared he was dead; except he stole something important from me.”

  I kept my tongue still when it wanted to ask, the source of all magic? “How’d you know I killed Barry?”

  Raphael smiled. “You left something behind on his corpse.”

  “What?”

  From his pocket, the gang lord pulled a plastic baggie and held it up to my eyes. Inside were several red-gold hairs, exactly the same shade as my own. I gaped. “How’d you find those and match them to me?”

  “They were snagged on his jacket,” Raphael explained. “And as for how I knew they belonged to you; you are the only one known to my boys to have that color on your head. You know Jonesy?”

  Stunned, I nodded.

  “He’s the one who saw the hairs and said, ‘They belong to the little lion runt.’ You were seen going into The Tiger’s Paw a few times, so it wasn’t hard to find you.”

&nbs
p; “Shit,” I muttered. “Now what?”

  “You’re going to tell me what you found on Barry.”

  “Cash,” I replied. “Is that what he took from you?”

  “No.” Raphael stared out the front windshield. “What else did you find?”

  “Some jewels. I sold those.”

  His eyes came back to me. “No, you didn’t. Where are they?”

  “Gone. Sold for cash.”

  Raphael shook his head and placed his sunglasses back on his face. “You’re going to make this too hard on yourself, kid. Tell me, and I’ll let you live. I want them, not you.”

  Then check the sewers because they got flushed down the john. “They’re gone.”

  “Do you really want me to go back and slaughter your little girlfriend?”

  “No.”

  “Then tell me where they are.”

  “They were flushed down the can.”

  Raphael sighed. “Now that I will never believe.”

  “I’m telling you the truth,” I said, frantic. “The big lion said they could connect me to Barry and got rid of them.”

  The cars pulled up the long drive to Raphael’s huge mansion, gangsters with semi-automatic rifles watching as one by one, the vehicles parked in front of the house. One enforcer opened the door for Raphael, and as I got out too, I wondered if I could make a break for it. Raphael wouldn’t want his goons to shoot me, thus I thought that if I were fast enough, I might actually escape.

  I readied myself to shift and bolt when heavy hands gripped me by the back of my neck and my arms. Two shifters, both twice my size and ten times my strength, yanked me along behind Raphael as he strode on long legs toward the front door.

  That, too, opened for him before he reached it, and as we entered the foyer, he said to an enforcer, “Get the iron collar.”

  “What?” I demanded as the goon nodded and strode quickly away.

  Without answering me, Raphael walked away while his goons dragged me in the opposite direction. They took me to a room down a short hallway and pushed me into a single chair. The place was bare of much furniture and contained only the chair and a table with various items on it. My blood ran cold. I was going to be tortured for information I didn’t have.