Shifter Wars Complete Series

by Sarah J. Stone

  "Sure," I said, slipping my badge out of my pocket and handing it over.

  Dammit, Nadia. Whatever you're doing, do it fast.

  ***

  I darted through the narrow vents of the hospital, my paws light on the metal. Nice thing about being a fox- you can move quickly and without much noise. The vents were long and square-shaped, and really, I had no idea where I was going. Jack told me to make a distraction, but what did that mean? Stick my paw out and swat someone on the back of the head?

  I took a turn to the right, my tail brushing against the top of the vent as I ran, making some hushing sound.

  Okay, okay. Think. What's the one thing that someone at a hospital wouldn't want to have happen?

  And right as the thought crossed my mind, I saw a bright light shining down from one of the nearby vent shafts. I inched toward it and peered through the vent cover. Down below was a large operating room, one of those theater rooms where students could watch surgery being performed. In the middle was a team of doctors at work, and the audience had a dozen or so people in it.

  Well, if I want to get attention, then this would be the way to do it.

  I shifted back into my human form, needing my fingers to unscrew the vent covering. My body was about burst through the vent, but it was just barely big enough. Once the screws were taken out, I carefully pulled off the vent and placed it at my side. Down below I heard the beep and whirring of the machines along with the head surgeon as he narrated what he was doing. The way was now clear, and the drop seemed doable.

  Here goes nothing, I thought, shifting into my fox shape.

  I took a deep breath as I stepped back. Then, I ran toward the opening and leaped out, sailing through the air and landing on the cool white floor. It took a second for them notice me.

  "What the hell is that?" one of the doctors shouted, pointing to me with the red-tipped instrument that was seconds earlier in the body of the patient.

  "Is that…a fox?" one of the nurses asked.

  The people in attendance began to point and chatter among themselves.

  Well, if I wanted attention, I got it.

  "Get that thing out of the OR!" the lead surgeon shouted.

  The blue scrub-clad nurses moved toward me hesitantly, and I let out a bared-tooth hiss. The nurses staggered backward, and I turned my head toward the door. Right at that moment, a nurse came through, and I took the opportunity to dart across the operating room floor and head out the door.

  "Get someone on the line and let them know there's a…goddamn critter running around!"

  Mission accomplished! I dashed through the prep room and out into the hallway. Shrieks and screams sounded from patients and doctors as I ran down the hallway.

  "What the hell?"

  "Is that a dog?"

  "Oh, my God!"

  Looking over my shoulder, I saw a pair of security guards chasing after me. Figuring that was more than enough attention, I darted under a passing stretcher, the guards slamming into it as they tried to catch me. A set of elevator doors opened at the far end of the hall, and I cut the distance down and entered them as they slid shut.

  "It's going down!" someone shouted as the doors closed.

  I scanned the elevator for cameras, and seeing that it was clear, I shifted back to my human form and looked over the map to the side of the buttons. The lower level was the morgue, and I figured that had to be where Jack was.

  Hopefully, that did the job… I held tight and waited for the elevator to make its descent.

  ***

  "Umm, you're going to need to, uh, stay put for a minute," the doctor said.

  "There a problem?" I asked, pleased that he seemed to be distracted from checking my credentials, at least for the moment.

  He said nothing, his eyes fixed on his phone.

  "We got a, uh, something running around. Just stay put."

  With that, he dashed out of the room, leaving me alone. Just how I wanted it.

  The doctor gone, I turned my attention to the puncture wound on Emmanuel's thigh. There was something to it, and I needed to figure out just what before the doctor returned. I bent over, getting close to the wound. In the inside of the wound, right at the bottom, was something hard and pointed. I grabbed a large pair of tweezers from the silver tray nearby and, taking a deep breath, reached into the wound and grabbed hold of it. Once I got it, I saw that it was a hard, pointed nub…like something on the end of a claw.

  Or a dragon's tail.

  I rummaged through the supply shelves and found a small baggie. Dropping the nub into it, I prepared to shove it into my pocket. But just as I did, the door opened. Fuck! I knew that if the doctor saw me taking something from the body, my cover was blown.

  But to my surprise, it wasn't the doctor—it was Nadia. She wore a flustered expression that shifted to relief as she laid eyes on me.

  "There you are," she said. "You get what you need?"

  "I think so," I said. "We need to get the hell out of here."

  "You're telling me," she said as we hurried through the doors and to the elevator. "The entire goddamn hospital's on fox-watch right now."

  "I was hoping that was you," I said with a smirk as we stepped into the elevator. "How'd you pull that one off?"

  "Oh, no big deal," she said. "Just crashed a surgery in progress."

  "That's one way to do it," I said.

  As we hurried through the main floor of the hospital, I saw that the place was abuzz with activity, even more so than before. Moving past the crowds, I heard the word "fox" about a dozen times. Luckily, no one seemed to be paying the least bit of attention to us.

  We arrived outside and made our way to the car. Once in, I gunned the engine and we were off. The little nub was burning a hole in my pocket, so I pulled over once I was feeling comfortable about how far we were from the hospital.

  "What'd you find out?" Nadia asked, her tone eager.

  I fished the baggie out my pocket and dumped the contents out into my hand. The nub was pointed, hard, smooth, and cool to the touch.

  "What is that?" Nadia asked, poking the thing with her finger.

  "I'm not positive, but I think this is dragon spine."

  "What?"

  "You ever see a dragon before?" I asked, tossing the thing in my hand, noting just how dense and heavy it was.

  "Not in person."

  "Well, some dragons, on their tails at least, have hard spines sticking out. Emmanuel was cut hard by something—looked to me like a wolf—but this was found buried in his thigh. Dragon spines are hard, but the tips can be brittle, since they're the oldest parts."

  "So…what are you thinking happened?" she asked.

  "I'm thinking that our friend Mr. Ax came into Emmanuel's apartment, maybe with some sneaky fucker wolf in tow, and using this, pinned him down. Wolf probably gave him a good slash across the chest to make it seem like it was a tiger-wolf dispute, then tossed the poor sap out the window just to make sure that every shifter in the city heard what went down."

  "This dragon, the one I saw at Grand Central," Nadia said, "he's pulling things behind the strings to get the wolves and the tigers go to war?"

  "Looks that way," I sad, tucking the spine tip back into the baggie and slipping it into my pocket. "But something about this just seems…off. Dragons do what dragons do, but they usually leave the actual plots to the species themselves. Their involvement is usually to whisper to a high-up, letting him know that there's money and power for him or her in it if they can make a war happen. Getting blood on their hands like this…seems off."

  "Maybe the dragon is acting alone?"

  "Possibly. Dragon might be trying to start a war for his own reasons. What they might be, I have no idea."

  Nadia fell silent

  "But we don't even know who this dragon is," I said. "Though I've got some idea." The image of the dragon I suspected appeared in my mind, and I felt myself grow angrier by the second at the thought of him. "But we have to confirm."


  "Hmm," Nadia said, clearly considering something. "And we wouldn't have any way to test this at Sapien HQ, right?"

  "We could get some information from the spine, but our information on dragons is weak. Not to mention the goddamn paperwork. By the time we got a result back—if we got one—it'd be a week from now. If we were lucky."

  "Hmm," she said again.

  "Okay, you've got something on your mind," I said. "Let's hear it."

  "Um, so my clan, the Koenigs, we're pretty rich, right?"

  "Right."

  "And, well, we're foxes, so we like to keep on top of things."

  "Right."

  "Um, well, if you want to go to my parent's home, then we might be able to have access to their intelligence databases."

  "'Intelligence databases'?" I asked.

  "Yeah, those," she said. "The Sapiens aren't the only group that makes sure to know what there is to know. It's been a while since I've looked through them, but we might have something that could lead us in the right direction. And my father's lab could scan that spine and maybe find something out."

  It wasn't exactly along protocol to use a civilian shifter's resources like this without going through the proper channels. But if this situation was as bad as I thought, we didn't exactly have time to do things by the book.

  "Fine," I said. "Just tell me where to go."

  Nadia let out a little squeal. Figures that the rich girl would be happy to make a stop by mommy and daddy's. "Just take a turn up here. I'll tell you the rest of the way…"

  CHAPTER 11

  NADIA

  We soon arrived in Brooklyn, and then Carroll Gardens, the neighborhood where my parents lived. As we pulled up to the red-brick townhome that was my childhood home, a wave of warmth overcame me. As stupid as it felt, after the events of the last couple of days, being home sounded really nice, even if only for a little while.

  "Pretty fancy digs," Jack said, letting out a whistle as he looked over the house.

  "Oh, yeah," I said. "It's a nice home."

  "'Nice' doesn't even begin to cover it. You've got a damn yard big enough to put a housing project on. A corner of that backyard of yours is probably worth more than most people's apartments. And three stories? Quite a pad."

  "I guess," I said. "But, I mean, I'm not that rich."

  Jack smiled and shook his head. "No one ever thinks they're rich. They always look up at the next guy with the most money and say, ‘no, that's the rich person.'"

  "Well, whatever. You want to get this done or you want to give me shit for being rich all day?"

  "Can't I do both?"

  I couldn't get over Jack’s way of making me want to kiss him and punch him all at the same time. We pulled into a parking spot and were soon out and onto the front yard. I loved my home—the yard was so big and the border of heavy-branched trees hid it from the neighborhood around us. It was almost like having a suburban house in the middle of the city. The house had been in our clan since the Koenigs first arrived in the city, and I knew that someday it would be passed down to me.

  We arrived at the front door and I gave it a rap. "You doing all right over there?" I asked Jack.

  "I can already tell this isn't my kind of scene."

  I looked Jack up and down. True, his jeans and T-shirt look wouldn't exactly make him fit in with my parents’ social circles, but I figured it'd be fine for now. Besides, he was just my partner. It's not like he was my boyfriend who I was introducing to my parents for the first time.

  My mind caught on this thought, at the idea of considering Jack as a romantic partner. I mean, we did sleep together after all. But that had to just be a weird, one-time thing. Why would I ever get involved with a total jerk like him?

  But still… Part of me was interested in having a little repeat of our fun last night.

  Focus!

  "Oh, and give me that spine piece," I said.

  "What? Why?"

  "Because my father's not too crazy about people getting into his personal area. I might need to sneak off and find out what I can on my own."

  "That mean I might have to spend some QT with your blue-blood parents?"

  "Maybe. Just try to be on your best behavior."

  "I'll do what I can," Jack said, taking the baggie from the interior pocket of his coat and handing it to me.

  And at that moment, I brought myself back to reality, the large, ornate front doors of the house opened revealing my mother and father. I shoved the spine into my purse and opened my arms.

  "There's our girl!" my mother said. She was a slim, elegant woman whose striking blond hair and harp features were just as lovely as they were when I was a child, throwing her arms around me and bringing me close.

  "Come here, gem," my father said, a stout-chested, serious-faced man, giving me a kiss.

  Gem? Jack mouthed.

  "And, um, who's the gentleman?" my mother asked, looking him over with a glance that seemed to be part-skepticism and part-attraction.

  "This is Jack Swift," I said, feeling a little ill at the idea of my mom checking someone out. "He's my partner with the Sapiens."

  My father's expression hardened a bit. He hated the fact that his little girl was in the Sapiens. "Still with that crew, huh?" he said, gesturing for us to come in.

  "Ugh, so dreadful," my mother, who shared the same sentiments, said.

  If it were up to her, I'd be another one of those rich fox girls who did nothing but shop and fight over which fox man they'd marry. I loved my parents, but they both had very old-fashioned ideas about what a woman my age should be doing. And solving murders involving dragons wasn't one of them.

  "Fancy pad, indeed," Jack said, stepping into our grand entrance hall and looking up at the rotunda ceiling above.

  "What species did you say you were, ah, John, was it?" my father asked.

  "It's Jack. And I didn't. I'm a bear."

  My father shuddered as we walked through the entrance hall into the lounge. Along with their old-fashioned ideas about gender, they had old-fashioned ideas about the different species. That is, foxes were the most refined and important of them all, aside from the dragons, of course. Bears on the other hand, were brutish, unmannered, and rough. As far as my family, along with many other foxes, were concerned, bears could stay on the opposite side of Brooklyn where the foxes could pretend that they didn't exist.

  "A bear," my father said, not bothering to mask his tone. "Wonderful."

  "Got a problem with bears?" Jack asked.

  Uh-oh.

  "No, no, no," my father said, appearing to sense a conflict and putting out that fire before it had a chance to smolder. "Just prefer to stick with our own kind, is all."

  "The Sapiens don't share that same attitude," Jack said. "We take whoever can get the job done."

  "Which is why I prefer that your group stays in the shadows."

  My mother gestured to a set of couches and chairs in the living room, and Jack flopped down like a kid home from college getting ready to settle in for a Netflix binge. My parents shared a glance, and I felt my face go hot.

  "We like it in the shadows," Jack said. "The shadows is where can do all the work that it takes to make sure people like you can live lives like this."

  "'People like us'?" my father asked.

  I saw a brief look of contemplation cross Jack's face as he realized that he'd just stepped into a minefield. And the daggers I shot in his direction made it very clear that he needed to get his act together, and fast.

  His eyes flicked to the large landscape painting that hung above our fireplace. "Now, that's a lovely painting." Jack stood and strolled over to it. "Hudson River Valley School?" he asked, his eyes tracking along the rolling hills and deep greens in the picture.

  "Why, yes," my father said. "A Cole, if you know your painters."

  "I prefer Church, myself, but I've always had a soft spot for Cole."

  My eyes went wide. I never would've imagined Jack to be an art connoisseur.

 
"Something to drink?" my mother asked.

  "A whis—" Jack started, but seemingly realizing that booze wouldn't grease the wheels in the way he was thinking, he changed his mind. "Have Coke Zero?"

  My father asked for some ginger ale, and I mumbled for water. As my mother went off to fetch the drinks and my father and Jack discussed the painting, along with the other art in the room, I leaned to the side and spotted the staircase.

  "I'm gonna, um, go get something from my old room," I said.

  My father mumbled something with a wave of his hand, and I was off. I grabbed onto the railing and made my way up the stairs as quickly as I could without drawing attention to myself. Once I reached the top floor I made my way to my father's study. It was a cozy space with dark wood and walls lined with bookshelves, the computer on the desk the only modern touch. I slid into the chair and booted up the desktop. It was password-protected, but nothing I couldn't get past. The computer was connected to the Koenig intelligence network, and after masking my IP address, I got into the system.

  Sure enough, there was plenty of information on dragons. I did a little quick reading, and I was able to learn that a dragon's spine was something like a human's fingerprint. Each cross-section was different, and a dragon could be identified by it. I scanned through the different dragons my clan had information on, and it wasn't too much more than what the Sapiens had access to. All of the dragons, men and women alike, had strange, beautiful faces and names that seemed nearly impossible to pronounce with a human tongue. There was limited information about dragons, along with a picture of the spine cross-section, if one was available.

  There were only a dozen or so dragons, but eventually, I came across the man—or beast—that I was searching for. It was that same beautiful blond with otherworldly blue eyes I'd seen at Grand Central. Thankfully, there was a cross-section of one of his spines. I pulled out the baggie and compared. The odd coiling of vein-like chambers through the spine seemed to be exactly what I was looking for.

  This was him.

  My eyes flicked up to his name. Anandrox. Weird, but seemed to be pronounceable. And something else caught my eye as I printed the screen and went back to general dragon information. I read that killing dragons was thought to be impossible, but it's been thought that by using a part of the dragon's body in a weapon, it can be done.