by Bella Jacobs
Kite and I woke up this morning to find Leda already hunched in front of the fire, worry lines creasing her forehead and dark circles under her eyes. Neither Kite nor I had to ask why she hadn’t slept well. We’d both felt it, that Wren and Creed were worse off than they were before we turned in for the night.
Our mate and one of her four are in critical condition. There isn’t a second to waste, and for once I’m inclined to agree with Luke.
“It’s at least worth a try,” I say, buttering my fourth piece of toast. Now that Luke’s added mojo has kicked my healing into overdrive, I can’t seem to get enough food. “We’re all fair judges of bullshit. And Kite and I know a lot about how the Kin Born organization works. If she’s lying, we should be able to sort it out.”
Leda exhales sharply. “I’m telling you, we’re better off going straight to the store, where I felt Wren and Cree before. I’ve got a bad feeling about that girl. From what you told us, Luke, I’m guessing she’s a full-fledged psychopath. And they’ll play with you just for fun. There will be no appealing to her better nature ’cause the bitch ain’t got one.”
“But she respects me. She likes that I was on to her from the start.” Luke shoves his last piece of bacon into his mouth and chews, eyes narrowing. “I might be able to use that to get something useful out of her. I say we find a place where no one will hear her scream and let me try while you three go to the store.”
“No.” Kite shakes his head as he pushes his half-eaten stack of pancakes across the table to me, clearly sensing that I’m still half hollow. “We don’t split up. We’re stronger together, and we need every bit of that strength. We’re already outnumbered by the Kin Born and outclassed by Atlas. We can’t afford to weaken ourselves any more. Sticking together and getting Wren and Creedence back is our only chance.”
“And the fastest way to get them back is to go to one of the places where I’m getting a clear read on their energy,” Leda says. “And the closest location, and the one probably less defended, is here in town. No matter who’s running this thing, Atlas or the Kin Born or both, they’re not going to be able to hide an army on a city block. But we head out to the middle of nowhere, and it’s a whole other story.”
“Unless they’ve got people like Dust,” Luke says, nodding my way. “Freaks who can make shit disappear.”
“Even if shit is invisible, it still needs somewhere to exist in space,” Leda pops back, jabbing a triangle of pancake with a little too much force. “And the rest of the buildings on that block house legit human stores with legit human housing above them. Even if the empty building is packed shoulder to shoulder with invisible Kin Born or Atlas’s army or whatever, there’s a chance we can take them. If we’re smart about it and get our hands on the right artillery.”
Luke’s lips pucker and shift to one side. “I have a line on that. I did some scouting two nights ago, met a couple guys who know a couple of guys. For the right price, they can get us the good stuff—military grade weapons and explosives. And if we put the fear in them, they might even part with something special.”
“Put the fear in illegal arms dealers?” Kite arches a brow. “And how are we going to do that? When there are only four of us, and one isn’t even a little bit dangerous looking?”
“I’m five times as dangerous as you’ll ever be, baby brother.” Leda glares at him across the table. “I eat big softies like you for breakfast and pick my teeth with their bones.”
Kite rolls his eyes. “Yeah, I know, psycho. I’m just saying your scary doesn’t show on the outside. You’re not going to be much help on the intimidation front, and I don’t want to have to get in an actual fight with people who have big guns and know how to use them.”
“Leda’s intimidating as a bear.” Luke adds sugar to his coffee with a thoughtful stir. “I say we go furry on these people.”
“No,” I say, as both Kite and Leda make outraged snort-huffing sounds. “We don’t use our Kin Forms as weapons against humans.”
“Bullshit.” Luke holds my gaze, crossing his arms over his chest. “If a human hunter tried to kill you in Kin Form, you’d fight back. How’s this any different?”
“It is different. Totally, and you know it. And we don’t shift in front of people,” Leda says. “We keep a low profile. It’s the one thing every shifter species agrees on, the need to keep what we are from becoming common knowledge to the human community.”
“Used to agree on, you mean.” Luke points at the television in the corner, tuned to a twenty-four-hour news station with coverage of the Shifter Riots in heavy rotation.
The protests—both for and against shifter rights—are ongoing and there are new reports of kin going furry in public every day. A segment of human society still seems to think it’s all a hoax, but the number of believers is growing.
Luke’s right—hiding in plain sight will likely soon be a thing of the past, but that makes caution even more important.
“That’s even more reason not to come off as aggressive or dangerous.” I finish the last bite of Kite’s pancakes and slide the now empty plate to the center of the table. “We want to allay humanity’s fears, not exacerbate them.”
“These guys aren’t humanity,” Luke counters. “They’re gang members.”
Leda leans in, arms crossed on the table, not even bothering to keep her phone to her ear. “Doesn’t matter, Luke. If we act like bloodthirsty monsters who use our teeth and claws to get what we want, it’s only going to come back to bite us on our own asses in the end. We’re outnumbered. By the millions. And there are a lot of scared people out there, just looking for an excuse to round us up and keep us in cages. We don’t want to give it to them. This is a hard no, and you’re outnumbered. Deal with it.”
Luke lifts his hands in surrender. “Fine, we don’t go furry on the bad guys. We let our fat wad of cash do the talking and hope for the best.”
“Decent plan,” Kite says, “but how are we going to get that kind of cash without Creedence? He’s our money guy.”
“Two birds with one stone.” Stacking the plates to clear a space, Leda guides her phone to the middle of the table. She taps at the screen, opening an app that lets her draw on it with her finger. She starts with a box at the top and then a line that drops down from the left side. “The store where I’m getting Creedence and Wren vibes has a safe in the basement, a massive beast of a thing, built to take up an entire room. I saw it when I was scrolling through the building plans, looking for underground tunnels or something that would explain why they still felt so far away when I was parked in a car on the street right outside.”
“Are there tunnels?” I ask. “If so, that gives Atlas and the Kin Born more places to hide guards and weapons.”
Leda shakes her head. “No, there aren’t. Not as far as I can tell. But there are at least three levels of the building hidden completely underground. Maybe more. The plans only show three, but the elevator shaft appears to go much deeper. So there might be other stuff down there that didn’t make it into the final draft.”
Kite scrubs a hand back and forth under his chin. “Like tunnels. Or prison cells. Or weapons storage.”
“Not to be a party pooper,” Luke adds, “but even if that safe is chock-full of money, it’s not going to help our case. We want the weapons before we head into the building, not after. These guys aren’t going to let us buy guns on credit.”
“That’s why we don’t buy,” Leda says, lips curving. “We borrow. We tell the guys with the guns all about the massive score hidden in this apparently shitty ghetto store, and we offer them seventy-five percent of the take if they help us do the job.” She pops open a fist, fingers spreading wide. “Boom, we’ve got guns, backup, and spending money, all in one swoop. And if we’re lucky, we leave with Wren and Creedence. So more like four birds with one stone. Maybe five.”
Luke sits back, arms crossed over his chest. “And if there’s no score in the safe once we get inside?”
“Then we go
furry, tear out a few throats, and make a run for it.” Leda shrugs, glancing my way. “That work for you, governor?”
I clear my throat, turning the idea over in my head. It’s not a great plan—there are too many variables, too many things that can and probably will go wrong—but it would provide desperately needed backup and a real chance of getting to Wren. And at this point, it’s the best we’ve got.
I arch a brow Luke’s way. “How soon can we meet with these people?”
He smiles. “Right now. We’ll bring donuts. They’ll be thrilled to see us.”
“How about pie?” Leda nods toward the front of the diner. “Looks like they’ve got some kick-ass meringue. The super fluffy kind.”
“Because gang bangers are going to appreciate a fluffy meringue,” Kite says dryly.
“Hey, everyone likes pie,” Leda says. “Male or female, shifter or human, bad guy or hero with a heart of gold—pie love is universal. That’s the kind of shit that unites, baby brother. And we need some unity right now.”
Kite sighs but holds a fist out for his sister to bump. “Then let’s buy some fucking pie and get the hell out of here. I need to make something happen before I go crazy.”
“I’m with you.” Leda reaches for the check the waitress dropped off when she delivered the food. “But we’ve got something to deal with before we talk guns over slices.” She jabs a thumb at the car parked outside. “We’ve got a bitch in our trunk.”
I stand, clearing the way for Leda to slide out.
“She’s a bunny, actually,” Luke says, rising from his side of the table. “Big lop-eared one, but she’ll still fit in a cage. No problem.”
Kite and Leda exchange a look as they scoot across the shiny red pleather before lifting matching brown eyes my way. Whatever they inherited from their different fathers, they both have their mother’s almost eerily expressive gaze.
“Sounds like a plan,” I say, following Luke toward the door without another word.
Under normal circumstances, imprisoning another shifter without a trial, or at least formal charges filed with their pack, leaders, family, and/or significant other, would be a serious breach of shifter protocol, the kind that starts wars and creates bad blood that can last for generations.
But these aren’t normal circumstances. The future hangs in the balance, and this girl is fighting for the wrong side.
As long as she’s allowed to shift into her two-legged form every few days, she won’t go furry full time. But if we’re killed trying to free Wren and Creedence, and there’s no one to let Clover Apple Blossom out of her cage before she forgets how to be human…
“Then so be it,” I murmur, stepping out into the warm summer afternoon with Luke and Kite while Leda orders pie. Lots of pie.
Hope the gangbangers are hungry.
Chapter 17
Creedence
At first, I think they’ve put me in a different cell—it’s smaller, tighter, with no window or portal or any source of light to break the impenetrable gloom.
And then I find the rock…
The one I buried near the window…
The one with the sharp side I thought would make a decent weapon in a pinch.
I claw at the edges of the stone, pulling it free from the dirt and probing every inch of it with my fingers. It’s the same one, the exact shape, from the thicker, rougher edge on one side to the razor edge on the other.
It’s real. And so am I.
But I’m beginning to think other things are not…
Things like this cell. And a dimension where Wren is Atlas’s prisoner.
And maybe Wren herself…
When I close my eyes and reach out along the unbreakable tether of our bond, I can feel her, but not in a room in a castle far above me. It feels like she’s here, by my side, close enough to touch if I just knew where to look.
But of course, she isn’t here, I’ve explored every inch of this cell.
Haven’t I?
I roll onto my side in the utter blackness, searching my memories, but my mind is filled with shifting veils, filters that let in flashes of colored light, but almost nothing of substance. And when there is a memory, it often doesn’t come alone. There are twin memories, triplets, different versions of events warring for dominance in my head.
Maybe it’s my Kin Gift going rogue, torturing me with different versions of the past this time, instead of the future.
But that’s never happened before, a voice in my head offers, quiet but firm.
It’s true; it hasn’t happened before. Gripping the rock tight in my hand, I drag it slowly up my chest, muscles screaming in protest. It suddenly feels as if it weighs a hundred pounds, two hundred. By the time I bring the sharp edge to press against my throat, I’m sweating and trembling.
And thirsty.
So fucking thirsty. The guards gave me water last night—on Wren’s orders, they said—but it feels like I haven’t had a drop in days. Every ounce of moisture in my body has evaporated, leaving my mouth an arid wasteland and my throat raw.
I nudge the rock closer to the racing pulse in my neck, a sick part of me imagining what a relief it would be to set my blood free. At least it would be wet and alive as it flowed out to soak into the earth beneath my cheek.
No…not earth.
I nudge my head to the left, a strange glitching sensation zipping across my skin. There is the cold earth of the cell, but there is also something burning hot and soft.
Almost spongy…
I’m here and there, this pit and somewhere else, but the rock is there in both worlds. The point is tight and dangerous against my skin, sharpening my focus, my awareness.
I open my eyes wider, searching the inky black. I still see nothing. But not because there’s nothing to see.
The problem is that this cell, this darkness, these eyes are the dream…
The cold earth is a dream. The water glass pressed to my lips last night was a dream. The portal and Wren’s face and watching her close me up in the dark was a dream.
She isn’t in a castle at the top of a mountain, and I’m not in a cell miles beneath it. She’s here, close. If I can just reach out, get out.
Get out.
Get.
Out.
I push the rock deeper into my throat, arm trembling and nerve endings screaming as the sharp edge breaks the skin. Almost immediately, the hot spongy world becomes more real, and I become aware of something covering my eyes. While the second world is still solid, I move fast, clawing at my face, dragging away thick handfuls of the spongy shit.
I dig faster, swiping the ooze from my nose, gasping in relief as I’m able to draw a deeper breath.
My chest heaves, and I cough hard enough to lift my body off the floor, letting in a puff of slightly fresher air. I am fully boiling now, sweltering in the unbearable heat with nothing left to sweat out or cool me down, but the warmth makes it easier to finish clearing my eyes and open them wide.
When I do, I discover a small cave lit by a single orange light above a rough wooden door. A nearly rotted corpse slumps against the wall beside it, and that’s not my only company. There’s a woman with long black hair trapped not three feet away from me. Her face and body are covered with the same black growth I’ve just clawed free of, but she’s breathing—slow and shallow, but steady—and she’s Wren. I would know her anywhere, even if I were still blind.
Wren is here. Right beside me.
Yet…not here, too.
She’s still trapped in the other world, but not for long. I’m going to wake her up and then we’re going to get out of this hell. Because this isn’t the way our story ends, not by a long shot.
Chapter 18
Luke
It’s a good night to get killed.
There isn’t a step in this process that isn’t dangerous, ill-advised, or ballsy to the point of idiocy.
But the danger doesn’t scare me nearly as much as the thought of never seeing Wren again, and ill-advised
might as well be my middle name.
Besides, between the five of us, we’ve got more than enough balls to go around.
Even Leda. She’s got brass nuts, that one. When the Triad thugs at the entrance to the warehouse give her chest special attention during the pat down, she doesn’t flinch. She just stares them down with a crazy smile that changes their mind about fucking with her, pretty quick.
The goons move on to the rest of us and within a few minutes, they’re escorting us toward the rear of the building, where a group of men in expertly tailored suits stand around a fire pit, laughing with beers in hand. We cross the wide-open floor of the warehouse, which is filled with men and women in scrubs and surgical masks measuring and packing a variety of illegal substances for transport.
I glimpse powders of half a dozen different colors. The Triad still traffics in heroin and cocaine, but it looks like they’ve expanded their reach to include some of the new synthetics out of Asia. I’m not sure what most of them are called, but the Japanese have developed a whole host of weird club shit. There are drugs that turn your skin blue, pink, or purple for the night, pills that make your sweat turn to glitter on contact with the air, even a cream that swells the eyes and lips until you look like a walking, talking cartoon.
The sight of the relatively soft core—though still banned in Canada—contraband gives me pause. The men I talked to said their boss still had plenty of guns to sell, but can an organization effectively peddle both body glitter and rocket launchers?
Turns out, they can.
“Anything you see here we could have ready for delivery by tomorrow morning.” The broad-shouldered man in the gray suit—Nico, the boss, or at least a leader in the organization, as evidenced by the dozens of hen-scratch kill-tally tattoos on the backs of both his hands—motions toward the walls of the annex at the back of the warehouse, an armory on wheels that can be quickly driven away at the first sign of trouble. “Anti-aircraft missiles take a little longer, but forty-eight hours advance notice is usually sufficient.”
