by Alice Bello
Christopher called it going chipmunk.
He may have been bigger and stronger, but she was a were too—a were-fox to be exact (her father had been a were-lion, who had been seduced and had his heart captured by a sly were-fox: her mother.) Not to mention she hadn’t just spent her life studying math and quantum physics and chemistry and computers. No, she’d been in training since she was little to be able to take care of herself, if not downright murder all comers who thought they would pick a fight with Mr. Lyons’ little girl.
So she held him down as she ravished him, refusing to repeat her answer, even as he begged and pleaded for her to do so. And just as she was about to—
April’s laptop made a low-key chime, interrupting the rest of her reverie of the night before. It had found something.
She pushed her lascivious memories aside and attacked the data her search had dug up. She could multi-task with the best of them, but since she was doing this one behind her supervisor’s back, she decided it warranted her full attention.
She respected her boss, Gwendolyn Tate, very much. Even though the woman seemed to loath her, having banished her to the corner cubical by the broom closet, and only giving her the most mind-numbingly boring assignments for the last year and a half she’d worked there. But she was the first boss she’d had she didn’t need to explain her reports to. Gwendolyn had a sharp mind, and wasn’t afraid to use it to get her own way. That’s why she was head of the accounting department. That, and her warrior form were-rat was possibly the most frightening thing you could imagine.
Either way, she was the boss, and April had followed her every edict to the letter... until yesterday. That’s when Dante Enoch had come down to personally give Gwendolyn an assignment of great importance. April had just been coming out of the copier room when her preternaturally good ears heard Dante tell her supervisor that he needed an in house search done of all Enoch Industries related accounts—both business and personal—to look for any large asset transaction.
As an aside he’d said, “It has direct implications to the attacks on Gabriel’s fiancée. So I want you to spare no manpower or resources on this. Do you understand?”
“Yes, Mr. Enoch,” her supervisor had said with enthusiasm.
After Dante Enoch left, April waited for Gwendolyn to call in some of her staff to start on the assignment. She was certain, that even with her outstanding qualifications, that she would not be chosen. But she did have a good guess as to who in the department would be able to run through the search of accounts with the most speed and efficiency.
But no calls came. No mention of it circulated through the grapevine. It seemed that Gwendolyn had decided to carry out the search herself.
Which was the first red flag.
And when April had come into work today and there still wasn’t a peep on the grapevine, or an assignment registered to anyone, April decided that she needed to side step her boss and do the search herself.
That’s why she was using her laptop instead of the company desktop.
She scanned the data. There was a transfer of fifty thousand dollars to the University of California. It was earmarked for Lucy Hart’s education. And there were distributions here and there to rent out a posh restaurant that very night. That had to be for the bridal shower. Both had been drawn off one of the corporate accounts—Gabriel Enoch’s account to be specific.
She flicked through a few more accounts where large sums had been transferred. Nothing unusual. So April switched over to the personal accounts. These were almost solely trust funds. And though these privileged twenty-somethings spent money like it was water; they mostly confined their purchases to “Daddy’s credit card.” So there weren’t that many even moderately large transactions... except for two accounts.
Each account had five twenty-five thousand dollar transfers apiece. Each transfer was timed simultaneously with the other account. And all monies were sent to the same Cayman Islands bank account.
The bank accounts belonged to Olivia and Sophie Enoch, daughters of Remy Enoch, Vice President in charge of public affairs and marketing—and one seriously scary dude. She’d seen him only once in passing, but she’d shuddered and veered around him to give him a wide berth.
His daughters were the epitome of rich-spoiled-bitches, and were constantly calling to have their credit lines (through their father’s account) raised. So seeing any sums at all come out of their trust funds was like a glaring neon sign, blinking “Look Here for Suspicious Activity!”
She was about to set up a quick tracking program so she could find out to whom exactly these payments were being made, when a perfectly manicured hand pushed her laptop closed. April cringed. She recognized the huge ruby and diamond ring her supervisor always wore. Her eyes flickered up and then back down. The look on Gwendolyn Tate’s face was savage and predatory.
“Tell me, Ms. Lyons... ” Gwendolyn gently pushed the laptop further away from April. “Why are you running searches on private Enoch Industries accounts when I’m positive you have been assigned to analyzing test market cost controls for the Our Home décor line?”
It was impressive she got so many words out when murder flared in her eyes. “Just doing a little extra work. My report on the home décor line will be on your desk before I leave today.”
“A little extra work on personal Enoch Industry accounts? That’s an odd task to just decide to undertake.”
“I... I was—”
Gwendolyn raised a finger to hush her, and then pulled upon the laptop again. Amazingly, she knew April’s password, and what she’d been working on last lit up on the screen.
“I was just trying to help you with the assignment from Mr. Enoch—”
Gwendolyn’s head twisted in a flash, her eyes glowing red for a beat. “You eavesdropped on a private conversation?”
Nervously April adjusted her glasses. “I’m a were too. It’s not my fault we all have good hearing.”
Her smile turned sour. “I guess with your bad eyes, you must have amazing hearing.”
It was a back handed remark. But April held herself back. She needed this job. She needed it desperately. Maybe if she showed Ms. Tate what she’d found, it might smooth things over.
She reached over and started flipping through the account pages again, rushing through the preliminary results and getting straight to Olivia and Sophie Enoch’s trust fund accounts.
“So my search shows that the only sizable transactions in the entire company have been from the two sisters here. I was about to start tracking where the money had gone and to whom, when you came over.”
Gwendolyn just stared at her—very unnerving.
“It wasn’t that hard to find... I’m surprised you—” and April stopped talking. It suddenly dawned on her that it would’ve been practically impossible for Gwendolyn Tate to have missed such large transactions.
The only answer was that she hadn’t looked. But that was preposterous. Her supervisor was always looking for a way to impress the heads of the company. She would have lit herself on fire if she thought it would put her in a better light with Dante Enoch, or Gabriel.
That was... if she wanted to find the results...
April licked her lips nervously and gazed into Gwendolyn Tate’s glowing red eyes. She could practically feel the power radiating off her supervisor. She was seconds away from shifting into her warrior form. And that much strength, April wouldn’t be able to handle.
Gwendolyn took a breath to say something, but April reached up and pulled free one of the silver chopsticks that held her hair in place and stabbed it right into Gwendolyn’s throat.
Gwendolyn almost laughed, until she felt the silver start to burn her from the inside out. She coughed and hissed, and reached up to pull it out of her throat, but the chopstick had more than enough silver in it to burn the hell out of any shifter.
Any shifter except April. Not only had she gotten her mother’s recessive were-fox genes, and bad eyesight on top of that, but she wa
s not allergic to silver at all. And since she was a shifter, and all shifters were allergic to silver, everyone always assumed her silver chopsticks were faux.
As Gwendolyn forced herself to pull the chopstick out of her throat, the flesh of her hand burning with the effort, April sprinted for the doors. She needed to make it up to the fifth floor executive offices. She might not be able to keep her boss from killing her, but she knew the Enochs would be very interested to hear about what her boss had been trying to hide from them.
She heard Gwendolyn scream in a rage behind her. Even with the silver extricated from her throat, it would be a while before she could shift. So that was a plus. Lucy raced for the stairs. The elevator would be far too slow, and Gwendolyn would be waiting for her when the door clanged open. So she took the stairs three at a time, slipping once in her haste, listening for the sounds of her boss approaching from behind her.
She burst through doors to the fifth floor, gasping for breath. She still heard not a sound from behind her. Maybe Gwendolyn had decided to cut and run. April took a step forward and heard the scrape of a window being opened from a few feet away. She turned to see Gwendolyn Tate slither in through the window—she’d obviously opted to scale the outside of the building—and lunged right at her. April tried to get out of the way, but the were-rat was far too quick. She collided with her and brought her down to the ground. She held April to the floor with one hand, and with the other she held up April’s silver chopstick.
“I think you lost this!” she hissed and with blazing speed she skewered April’s shoulder to the floor with it.
It hurt, but not like it must have when she shoved it into Gwendolyn’s throat. Lucy bit off a scream, and instead pulled both knees up until her feet were firmly planted on Gwendolyn’s hips. And with everything she had in her, she kicked her boss across the room. The were-rat crashed into a wall of filing cabinets, and then tumbled to the floor. But no more than a heartbeat later she was back on her feet, teeth bared, seething. She’d recovered enough that her face had started to shift. And a partial shift from woman to rat was a hideous thing to behold.
April scrambled to her feet, pulled the silver chopstick from her shoulder and then yanked out the one still holding her hair up. Her dark curls fell around her face and she shook them out of her eyes. She took a stance that looked like it was out of a bad Kung Fu movie... but she was well versed in Kung Fu, so she didn’t feel too foolish.
But as her boss’s teeth started to elongate, and her hands turned to flesh ripping claws about four inches long, April gulped. She was well trained, but she knew any shifter that could shift after having silver shoved into them, and be able to shift just their face and hands, was a shifter to turn and run like hell from.
She herself shifted quickly, but only into her full animal form. She didn’t even possess a warrior form.
Gwendolyn stalked a few steps closer, and April moved backward accordingly.
April felt her entire body shaking with fear. She’d had no idea she’d be dying today. If so, she might have made love to her fiancé again this morning... she might have worn nicer undies... she might have just called off all together.
Gwendolyn scented the air, and sneered at her. “You stink of fear, little half-breed.” Her red eyes burned all the brighter as she chuckled. “I’ll enjoy killing you.”
April’s body stopped shaking. Her heartbeat slowed down, and she stood up straighter, canting her head to the side as she stared at her horrific looking boss. This wasn’t just anger that had suddenly boiled up inside her, this was a pissed off that had been roiling around inside her all her life. Her mother and father had loved her, but she belonged to neither pack, simply because there was such a prejudice against children of mixed marriages like her parents’.
And to have a foul, disgusting betrayer like Gwendolyn Tate dare even breathe the word “half-breed” in her presence was just too much.
The red in Gwendolyn’s eyes flickered, and she stepped back a single step before she caught herself. She didn’t realize it yet, but somewhere inside she sensed it. The woman looking at her was going to kill her, hard.
“Then come and get it, you dumpster diving bitch!” April’s voice ricocheted off the walls like a bullet. Gwendolyn lost her smug look for a second, but then charged April with such speed she was just a furry blur in a nice suit.
~*~
Dante set the phone down and shrugged. “I don’t know why she hasn’t gotten back to us, but this isn’t at all like her. I’ve never known Gwendolyn to pass on the chance to impress me.”
Gabriel pulled his hands trough his hair. It was so irritating. There had to be a way to find out where these assassins where coming from. In this day and age, and with Enoch Industries’ resources, it was preposterous that they didn’t know anything more than they did.
“I’ll go down and speak with her personally,” Gabriel said. “See what the holdup is.”
Just then the phone on Gabriel’s desk rang, and Dante answered it. His uncle’s dark blue eyes drew down into slits as he listened. He pulled the receiver from his ear and covered it with his hand.
“Lucy is missing.”
Gabriel jumped to his feet and was immediately by his uncle’s side. “What?”
“The guards say she left with Olivia and Sophie to go to her bridal shower, but then Elaina called and reported that they never arrived.”
Gabriel’s stomach sank to the soles of his feet. No, they couldn’t have gotten to her. She was with his cousins, and though they were spoiled rotten bitches, they would be hard for even the most capable hit man to get past.
He was about to tell Dante to call out all their men to put on this, when the door to his office exploded inward, the door itself turned to chunks of broken wood and splinters. A furred, fanged, and clawed were-rat in a torn and bloodied designer dress suit flew through the air and landed on its back on his desk. Another young woman dashed into the office, jumped into the air, and landed on her knees, straddling the stunned were-rat.
The young woman had a long silver chopstick in either hand, and with one brutal, lightning quick move, she stabbed the sticks into each of the were-rat’s shoulders, hard enough they sank with a thunk into the mahogany beneath.
The were-rat screeched in agony as smoke spewed from her wounds.
The younger woman punched her hard in the mouth, knocking two teeth out of the rat’s maw and onto the blotter on Gabriel’s desk... that and a gush of blood.
“Ms. Tate,” Dante said in his usual unflappable tone of voice, “what is the meaning of this?”
The were-rat sputtered and tried to speak through her ruined dentition, but the young woman atop her just punched her again.
“I’m trying to ask Ms Tate a question.” Dante turned his inscrutable gaze to the woman with the bloodied fists. “What is your name?”
The woman gasped and swiped a stray curl of dark hair from her face. “I’m April Lyons,” she said. She smiled and there was a mega watt dazzle going on there, but just as quickly she frowned and glared down at Ms. Tate. “I work in accounting, and this piece of crap knows where the money for the hit men coming after your fiancée has been coming from.”
The were-rat cried out and tried to slash at April with her claws, but Dante caught her arm and snapped the bones in it with one lethally elegant move.
“We’ll deal with Ms. Tate later,” Dante said. Gabriel still couldn’t believe what was going on. It was bedlam in his office, yet his uncle was so cool and calm about it all. “But first, tell us who’s behind the attempts on Miss Hart’s life.”
Chapter 11
The white light had faded away to black. It was so calm, as if it could wait forever for her. Everything seemed so peaceful.
And then the blackness turned to a gauzy gray, like strips of cotton being pulled apart. In the distance, almost out of her notice, something huge and blue watched her. It, like the darkness, exuded an abundance of patience. But unlike the darkness, which didn’t
seem to care about anything, this vast blue was watching her with interest. Lucy had the definite feeling that it was waiting to see what she was going to do.
But why would I do anything? I’m asleep, aren’t I? Why should I wake up for some weird glowing specter that doesn’t have the balls to come forward and introduce itself?
The vast blue light flickered, as if it were laughing, but she couldn’t make any sound.
And then the darkness receded, and the white hot light of consciousness took hold again.
~*~
Lucy woke with her face in the dirt. The ground had been freshly disturbed, and piled in a heap. There was soil in her mouth and she spit it out. Her head was so fuzzy. Why was she here again? And where was here?
She rolled over and took a look around.
It was a graveyard—big shock there. Every time something went really spectacularly wrong in her life, it happened in a freaking graveyard!
Moonlight slipped through the branches of some rather tall pine trees. It caressed the grass and the rows and rows of headstones. It also outlined the lack of grass about five feet away from her. The hole gaped black and empty, its void calling to her.
“It’s yours,” Olivia said, her alto voice rough and caustic.
Lucy jerked up, and pain exploded in her head. She reached up to hold onto where it hurt, and her hand came back sticky and covered in her own blood; black in the moon light.
Something hit her in the back and Lucy smacked face first into the ground again. The world spun and she had to fight not to vomit. Bare feet walked into view. Demure pink polish made the dainty toes glisten in the darkness.