Wrecked Intel (Immortal Outcasts®): An Immortal Ops® World Novel

by Mandy M. Roth

  He needed something to take the edge off his current tense state. He didn’t like feeling this way. Feeling worked up for no reason. Saying he’d been agitated was putting it mildly.

  He glanced over at his longtime friend, Wheeler Summerbee, to find the man was kissing a sexy blonde who was also in a barely there string bikini. Evidently, the group of women shopped together at a store that was all about conserving fabric.

  And bless that store for that fact.

  Wheeler’s current make-out partner was a member of the wedding party too, as noted by the sash she wore proclaiming her to be the maid of honor. Ironically, the sash had far more fabric to it than her bikini. She’d also been the one to encourage the bride to take off and have as much fun as she could before she got married.

  Wheeler had picked a real winner.

  The woman next to Cody ran her hand up his back and leaned in closer. She trailed a finger over the tribal tattoo on his upper arm. It was of a shark.

  “Tiger shark?” she asked. “Or bull?”

  Cody nearly took offense at the fact she’d guessed the wrong shark, two times in a row. “Uh, no. Great white.”

  She shuddered. “They scare me. I wish they’d gather up all the sharks and kill them. Make the waters safe for us.”

  Cody’s jaw set. He did not share her opinion.

  Then again, he was biased.

  Even if he wouldn’t have been able to change fully into a great white shark, he’d have taken exception with her comment and way of thinking. Sharks were vital to the ecosystem. Only dumbasses thought otherwise. Since it was clear her attributes didn’t extend to brain power, he kept his mouth shut.

  It would have been easy to launch into a diatribe on the decimation of a species, but he had a feeling the entire talk would go right over the woman’s head. She didn’t seem the type to have deep talks about anything other than the latest gossip about what celebrity was dating who and why. She’d also spent a good thirty minutes updating another of the women on what had happened on a television show she was obsessed with. Cody had never heard of it, but that wasn’t a huge shock. He didn’t watch much television or many movies. He’d rather be outdoors, surfing, swimming, or doing anything active rather than cooped up staring at a screen.

  While he’d totally planned to let her comment about wiping out sharks stand, he found it bothering him more and more. “Humans have been doing a pretty damn good job of wiping out sharks. Might get your wish.”

  “Good,” she said, before trying to run her hand boldly down the front of his bare torso, right to his groin.

  Talking about the slaughter of his kind was hardly going to win her any points. Even if she didn’t know what he really was—a shark-shifter.

  He caught her wrist, stopping her before she’d have made contact with his cock. The act, on her part, was brazen, and if he were feeling more like himself, it would have been welcomed. But not now.

  “Don’t you want to find a private spot with me? We could have a lot of fun.” She offered up a fake pout, combined with another of her forced laughs. It was a huge turnoff.

  He released her wrist, giving it the smallest of nudges away from him. He didn’t want to be touched by her though he couldn’t exactly explain why. She was attractive. Very much so, but he wasn’t in the mood for her or sex.

  She pushed in closer to him, lowering her voice as she spoke, not that it would do much good since Wheeler had supernatural hearing. “You can do whatever you want to me all night long.”

  When he didn’t answer right away, anger flashed through the woman’s eyes and she raked her nails over his back hard enough for him to take note, but not hard enough to draw blood.

  “I asked if you wanted to find a private spot…with me?”

  He lifted a brow. “Heard you the first time. Not interested.”

  He’d have been nicer with the rejection if she wouldn’t have scratched him the way she had. As it stood, he felt no need to spare her feelings.

  With a huff, she stood and scurried off in the direction of another group of surfer guys. It didn’t take her long to find her next mark. The man she picked headed off with her toward a darker area of the beach to no doubt spend the night doing what he wanted with her.

  Good.

  Better him than me.

  One of the surfers near where she’d been looked over at Cody and raised his beer in the air, giving a small nod. Cody returned the gesture, sipping his own beer in the process. That guy knew he’d be getting fucked soon.

  Cody found that slightly funny.

  That guy could deal with the drama that no doubt came attached to the chick.

  Cody and the other surfers flocked to the area a couple of times a year for the breaks. Costa Rica really offered it all when it came to surfing. Didn’t matter how skilled a surfer one was; the region had something for them. He’d taught more than one man to surf on the bumps there over the years whenever he was in the country.

  Many of the other surfers were familiar. Some were new. Like Cody, most of them were nomadic and went where the waves took them. Except for Wheeler. The man was about as far from a surfer as one could get. He wasn’t in Costa Rica for the surfing. He was there for Cody.

  Wheeler was not a fan of open water. He could swim. Cody had seen it. But Wheeler had an irrational fear of sharks, which was super ironic since he was one of Cody’s best friends. Wheeler also had a fear of bats. That in itself was hysterical considering his supernatural side was often linked to the flying creature.

  Wheeler was only in Costa Rica to spend some time with Cody and was due to head out soon. Another of their friends was supposed to have joined them, but he’d been a no-show. Kaiko Kahale was something of a free spirit. So much so, he made Cody look downright grounded.

  Kaiko was like Cody in the sense that his shifter side required the ocean. But unlike Cody, Kaiko’s shifted form was that of an orca, or more commonly known as a killer whale. More than once the two had spent time out to sea together. That had to confuse a lot of marine life, since great whites and killer whales weren’t exactly known for palling around.

  Cody laughed softly as he thought about the optics of it all. He didn’t really know why his shark side didn’t take exception to swimming around with Kaiko in orca form. He’d never really put a lot of thought into it. It could have been weirder. Kaiko could have been a weredolphin or something.

  That would have been hilarious to see.

  Kaiko hadn’t called or sent word on where he was or if he was still coming or not. That didn’t raise any red flags, since he was notorious for going off and doing what he wanted whenever the mood struck him, despite having made plans. He was probably out in the ocean, giving in to his baser needs and being one with his shifter side. A side he’d been born with—unlike Cody, who was a man-made supernatural.

  That, or he was holed up in a tiny motel room with one, two, or ten hot women.

  Yet another thing Kaiko was known for. He made womanizing look as easy as drawing in air. Didn’t hurt that everything about the guy seemed to appeal to the opposite sex. From his imposing height—which somehow managed to be even taller than Wheeler and Cody, who were both well over six feet—to his year-round tanned skin. The coloring came from his Pacific Island roots. He was Samoan, and while he held true to a lot of his past, he’d had to let just as much go over the years.

  Such was the way of it with immortals.

  While it would have been nice to spend time with Kaiko again, since it had been a couple of years since they’d been around one another, it was probably for the best he’d been a no-show. Already Wheeler and Cody were courting danger being in the same location for a week.

  It wasn’t safe for them to be together in one spot for too long. Meeting as they did was already tempting fate. Pushing for more time was foolish. Unless they wanted to end up dead or lab rats—again.

  They weren’t exactly run-of-the-mill guys.

  They were something humans wouldn’t be able to
easily wrap their minds around. That was part of why humans couldn’t know the truth about them or what was really out there. Thank the gods for that.

  Hell, Cody had been a card-carrying member of the supernatural club for decades, and even he found himself overwhelmed and shocked at different times. He learned something new daily about the underground world of the supernatural. Most of it he wished he didn’t know.

  Ignorance had certainly been bliss.

  Life before it all had been hard, for sure, but those had been simpler times.

  Innocent days.

  All of that was long gone.

  A life on the run was what it had left in its wake.

  Wheeler broke off the kiss he’d been deep into and glanced over at Cody. A cocksure grin spread over his face. “Since when do you turn down a night of whatever you want?”

  Cody tightened his hold on his beer and stared out at the ocean. The moon was reflecting off it, giving it even more appeal than it normally held for him. Considering he could shift shapes into a great white shark, that was saying something.

  “Earth to the Code-stir,” said Wheeler, his slight Southern drawl showing through as it often did. “You feeling all right there, buddy?”

  Cody managed a nod and sipped his beer. “Tired.”

  That wasn’t entirely true. Yes, he was tired, but it was more than that. He’d not been sleeping right for days. His nights had been marred by strange, disturbing dreams. They had filled him with the urgent desire to seek out some person who needed him. Someone who was in mortal peril. Who this person was had been a mystery to him. He didn’t actually see them in his dreams. He simply sensed them. Their need.

  Despite having no name, no face, no idea of who they might be, the feeling of having to get to them and help had been so overpowering that sleep eluded him.

  The pattern of fitful nights and waking from bad dreams of someone needing him had left Cody irritable and off his game, to say the least. To answer Wheeler’s question, no, he was not all right. He was pretty fucking far from all right.

  Just before morning light, Cody had shot awake in bed, disoriented, lying in a pool of his own sweat, breathing fast. For a few tense moments he’d thought his heart might pound right out of his chest and his ears were ringing.

  The lack of good sleep seemed to be having a negative effect on his shifter side as well. His shark felt volatile, as if it might force a change and eat everyone in sight if provoked. If he wasn’t careful, he’d have a lot more in common with a bull shark than he wanted to. They ate just about anything they could get their nonexistent hands on.

  “No offense, brother,” said Wheeler, studying him carefully. “But you look like hammered shit.”

  Wheeler’s lips twitched before a tiny smile tugged at them.

  “Love you too,” said Cody.

  Wheeler’s nearly ever-present acoustic guitar was sitting in its worn case that was lying open in the sand next to him. He rarely went anywhere without the thing, it being something of a security blanket for him. And he was good. Really good. He could play just about any instrument out there and sing as well.

  Cody’s musical talent was limited to the guitar, but he wasn’t anywhere near the level of skill Wheeler was. From what Cody knew of the man’s past, the guitar was something Wheeler had played since before he’d become immortal. And Cody strongly suspected it represented a tie to the man Wheeler used to be.

  To a life he could never return to.

  Such was the way of it.

  The guitar case had faded stickers from various locations around the world. One of the Eiffel Tower was not only faded to the point it was barely recognizable, it was also peeling in various spots. At the rate it was going, the Eiffel Tower would be much, much shorter than when it started.

  Cody could remember when Wheeler had gotten the sticker. They’d been on a mission in France to find others like them—Outcasts.

  It was a label Cody wore with pride. To him, the term Outcast represented everything he’d gone through in his life, and fought for every day, and why he’d dedicated his life to helping those like him who were in trouble. It was a badge of honor. Not the pejorative some saw it as.

  No. To him, Outcasts should hold their heads high. Sure, they weren’t natural-born supernaturals, as was the case with most of the operatives who worked for Paranormal Security and Intelligence (PSI), save the vampire division, but the Outcasts had come out of the other side of a shit hand dealt to them by life, and stronger for it all.

  That was worth taking pride in.

  Years ago, he’d volunteered for testing while he was serving as a soldier. He’d been told the testing would be minimal, noninvasive, and would more than likely result in him being able to go longer without sleep and possibly increase his reflexes. It had done far more than that. Those conducting the experiments (his own government) had lied to the men they’d recruited. In truth, the testing was nothing short of torture, and in some respects, they’d succeeded in making the men monsters.

  Thinking about everything he and his fellow brothers-in-arms had been subjected to still made Cody shudder and his pulse race to this very day. He’d endured atrocities the likes of which others could only think of in their worst nightmares, all in the name of science, and the government’s quest to create a super soldier.

  Men who were stronger, faster, and deadlier.

  While the scientists had ultimately been successful in their mission—creating supernatural males from humans—their path to glory was littered with botched experiments. Failed attempts. Broken soldiers. Ones they considered to be failures.

  Cody was part of that group.

  So was Wheeler.

  The rejects.

  The Outcasts.

  The broken operatives who had been pulled from the testing and from duty and tucked away in various private, secret facilities around the world until the day the people in charge decided it was too costly to keep them alive and too risky to set them free.

  Their solution?

  Kill the Outcasts.

  To hell with the fact the men had put their trust in them. That they’d given up everything and everyone they knew in their previous lives to be part of the experiments and had gone through hell in the name of science. None of that had mattered to the government in the end.

  It all had come down to money and liability. The government didn’t want the public to know what it’d been doing. Especially since around the same time they’d decided to get rid of the evidence, Hitler was in the height of his Nazi eugenics craze. His creation of a master race.

  No.

  America, and the other governments who had stood with them in the testing, didn’t want to sully their names with the truth. That they’d started it all. That Hitler had recruited a large number of their scientists to carry out his sadistic plans of racial cleansing and mass genocide.

  They’d succeeded in killing a number of the men he thought of as brothers, but many had gotten away and gone to ground. Cody had spent decades helping them and any others like them. Over the years, that help morphed into something bigger, leaving him and a select number of others assisting those who needed aid.

  He liked what he did.

  Most of it was highly illegal, but he was a walking dead man, so he didn’t much give a shit. On paper, he’d died in battle during a war that happened before most humans were born. He was a ghost who didn’t exist.

  In reality, he was a force to be reckoned with.

  And he was fine with that.

  It had taken him a long time to come to grips with what they’d made him—a man who could shape-shift into a great white shark.

  It was enough to make some men fold and throw up a white flag of surrender.

  Not him.

  Wheeler had it worse than Cody. The gargoyle and vampire DNA introduced to his system had left Wheeler a mix of both, yet not fully either. A dangerous and deadly hodgepodge with an around-the-clock hunger for blood and a sensitivity to full sunlight.


  His life wasn’t easy, yet he rarely if ever complained.

  Wheeler reached and grabbed his guitar, which was near Cody’s, and positioned himself just right on his beach blanket in the sand. The woman he’d been making out with smiled and rested her chin on his bare shoulder as the man started to strum the guitar.

  Wheeler began to sing an Eagles song whose title had the word sunrise in it. Ironic, since Wheeler was a vampire and sunrises weren’t exactly welcome by him. Didn’t stop the man from belting out the lyrics as he moved his foot along with the beat.

  It wasn’t long before additional surfers joined them, sitting around singing and drinking as they watched the fire burn. Their song choices made Cody feel like he’d taken a step back into the ’70s. Not that he’d minded that era. It had fit well with his lifestyle of driving around in an old van that was converted with a bed in the back and everything he needed to basically live out of it. The top of the van had surfboards mounted to it and anything else he might want or need. He’d had the same van for decades and whenever he was back in North America, it was where he basically lived.

  Much to Wheeler’s chagrin, who could not fathom living out of a small van. Wheeler liked his creature comforts far too much to ever give them all up for the carefree lifestyle Cody tended to lead.

  When duty called, Cody answered, but any other time, he could be found on a beach or in the water, in shark or human form.

  He liked to think his nomadic lifestyle had something to do with him being part shark. If sharks stopped swimming, they died. That biology was what kept him always on the go, always on the move. But deep down, he knew there was more to it than that. Like on a Freudian level. He just didn’t want to delve deeper. Doing so would mean he’d have to take a good hard look at his life, his emotions, his fears, and his desires.

  No thanks.

  He’d settle for open water and freedom. No psychoanalyzing shit for him. He didn’t need his urge to be on the go all the time explained. He clung to any excuse he could to avoid examining himself and his life choices. That was fine. He excelled at fixing other people’s problems but was shit at solving his own.