by RJ Blain
“It burst, didn’t it?” The bitterness in Dereks’s voice caught my attention.
If Dereks wanted to truth, I’d give it to him. “No thanks to Abraham Adams,” I snarled.
Dereks faced me, and his eyes fell on the wound he’d bandaged. “Related to that?”
“Yes.”
“He has a bit of a temper.”
Had the Hope Diamond brought the man back from the dead, or had the sea claimed his body, washing it away from shore? “I really hope I don’t have to kill him again.”
Dereks tensed. “You killed him?”
“Any mystic truthsayer will verify I killed him under current self-defense laws. His husband, too.”
With a choked cry, Dereks recoiled from me. “Husband?”
I stared at him for a long time. “Is there a problem with that?”
“Abe isn’t one of them,” Dereks snapped.
“Them?”
“Homosexual.”
“Times change. Get used to it. His husband was a cheetah, and I’ve been informed most of them are either bisexual or homosexual unless they happen to be a female. You know about wolf shifters?”
“Don’t let one bite you unless you want to become one.”
Times really had changed. “That’s not how it works, Agent Dereks. No, you don’t let a wolf shifter bite you because that’s how they pick mates. Wolves are a mate-for-life species. You really didn’t know that?”
“Ma’am, shifters were kept from the general populace to prevent infection.”
“Didn’t Starfall happen in 1970? Are you seriously trying to tell me in the twenty-two years prior to Fort Lauderdale’s…” I took a few moments to think about how best to phrase what had happened to Dereks and spluttered.
“Incident?” he provided.
“Incident.” Reaching into my hair, I plucked out one of the golden eagle feathers, spinning it between my fingers and murmuring the words to summon its magic. Its golden light bathed me, and I closed my eyes to enjoy the warming sensation, not caring if it cleaned my skin and clothes. It couldn’t wash away the stains of all the blood on my hands, which seeped deeper than my skin. “You can’t become a shifter by being bitten by one. You’re either born a shifter or a mystic, or you become one in the light of a Starfall stone. The Clan Council regulates the shifter clans. The mystics voted to allow the government to regulate their activities. The Clan Council is headed by the First Gentleman, which keeps the government appraised of the shifters and their methods of self-governance with Federal law reflecting the Clan Council’s decisions. If a wolf bites a woman who doesn’t want to be bitten, he’s eligible for a bounty, which the mercenary alliances handle.”
“Mercenaries,” he spat.
“Get used to them. They supplement the policing force and work with the Secret Service.” I scowled at the man, already regretting my decision to accompany him anywhere. “Every city has guilds. The government hires them, regular folks hire them, and they take on the jobs others don’t want to do. And whatever you do, don’t reveal that opinion to the guild leaders or one of the mercenaries. They’ve forgotten more about fighting with swords than you know. Sure, you’d kill them in a gunfight, assuming your gun worked.”
“What are you?”
“Siberian tiger.”
“And everyone’s something or other?”
I shrugged. “You’ll get used to it.”
“I highly doubt that.”
Sighing, I stared at the skyscrapers looming in the distance. “I need a beer.”
“That wouldn’t be wise, ma’am.”
“Little I do is. Give me an hour. I’ll raise your blood pressure, too, just you wait and see.”
We found survivors closer to Fort Lauderdale, but I estimated seventy-five percent of the city’s victims had lost their lives between the Starfall burst that had encased them in stone and the Hope Diamond’s reversal of their curse. Most of the dead were in vehicles or buildings. My stomach churned and my shoulder hurt, throbbing with every step I took.
Crying wouldn’t change anything, but I wanted to find a place to hide until the nightmare ended. I held on by a thread, and only because Dereks’s nightmare was worse than mine.
To him, the dead had names, and he knew too many of them. Some belonged to the Secret Service. Others were staff attached to the President. He marched with determination, and I could guess where was going.
He kept an eye on me, but I wasn’t his principal. Former President Wilson was, and I worried what Dereks would find in the heart of Fort Lauderdale. Like the Secret Service agent, the majority of those who had lived were younger and still within their prime. Presidents tended to be older.
Those who had survived stared at the carnage of their lives, vacant eyed and gaping. Some responded when I or Dereks approached them, but their tenuous grip on their emotions shattered easily. I had no idea how to comfort them.
I doubted anyone could.
The storm eased by midday, and although the wind still howled, the rain subsided to a chilly drizzle. I needed something a hell of a lot stronger than a beer by the time we reached the Presidential motorcade. Three black-suited men stood beside the longest vehicle I’d ever seen that wasn’t a train. Dereks abandoned me, broke into a jog, and joined them. They conferred, and the three other agents stole glances at me. Some of them stared at the beads and feathers in my hair.
I returned my golden eagle feather where it belonged, conscious of them watching me.
After several long minutes, Dereks waved me over, and I staggered the first few steps before evening my stride. “Agent Dereks?”
“Runs Against Wind,” he replied, his voice as dead as his expression.
Grief manifested in many ways, and I heard his as much as I saw it. What could I say to the men who had dedicated their lives to protecting one person, only to lose him to something completely out of their control? While I assumed President Wilson had died, a sick need to know consumed me. “He’s dead, isn’t he?”
The Secret Service agents winced, and in the end, Dereks nodded. “Tell her what happened.”
The oldest of the surviving agents might have been in his thirties if I added a few years to be generous. He lifted his chin as though his pride was the only thing keeping him going. Dark hair plastered against his paler skin, and his brown eyes focused on the Hope Diamond around my throat. “He regained consciousness briefly, but then he suffered a heart attack.”
“How old was President Wilson?”
“Seventy-six.”
Magic could do a lot, but it didn’t stop the cycle of life and death. Shifters lived longer than mystics, mystics lived longer than documented pre-Starfall humans, and I suspected time had caught up with everyone in Fort Lauderdale. At a hundred and nine years old, time had caught up with him, and I understood why he had suffered a heart attack. Most mystics didn’t live that long, although few died of old age to begin with. “President Miller is sixty, but that’s not quite middle-aged for a shifter. Shifters live the longest, heal the fastest without magic, and she’s a grizzly bear. They’re a vigorous species.”
Dereks grimaced. “Our communication channels no longer work. How does the Secret Service communicate with each other? Do you know?”
I stared at him, remembering the pin and ear piece I’d been given, although I had no idea what had happened to the devices. They’d been in my pocket at some point, but I couldn’t remember if they’d been in my jeans, which were in the ocean somewhere. During my captivity, I hadn’t been able to do anything with the devices. Neither Abraham or Edmund Fitzgerald had given me a chance.
Even if they had, I doubted they’d gotten anywhere near the towers required to use the device. Had I even regained consciousness before the batteries had died?
“They have little things they put in their ears and some pin they wear. I’m not a mystic or a tech. I’m a shifter.” I lowered my eyes and stared at the asphalt. “Sorry.”
An apology wouldn’t change anything for them. It wou
ldn’t remove my responsibility the deaths. It wouldn’t change the fact Abraham and Edmund Fitzgerald almost accomplished every last one of their goals using me to do it.
No one had anticipated President Wilson’s would die upon being freed from his red crystal prison. Then again, maybe I’d known all along the dead waited in Fort Lauderdale; I had heard them whisper in the silent streets.
Without knowing what else to do, I turned my back to the car and sank down to the ground, staring at the parade of stalled cars, dead bodies, and those mourning their lost lives.
Pain, shock, and fever conspired against me, but I did my best to hide the symptoms from the Secret Service agents struggling to make sense of their situation. They didn’t need me adding to their mountain of problems. For the most part, they ignored me, although Dereks kept a closer eye on me than I liked.
They had questions about President Miller, and I recognized their need to cling to something they understood. They understood Presidents. To them, shifters and mystics remained more of an exception than a rule. I wondered how many survivors of Starfall had hidden their magic from the rest of the world to avoid prejudice.
Twenty-two years separated Starfall from Fort Lauderdale’s imprisonment in crystal. Were two decades really not enough time for people to adapt to a new reality? I’d always been under the impression those who had survived Starfall had become either a mystic or a shifter. The existence of four men who swore they lacked magic of their own astounded me.
I’d always known I’d become a shifter, although I’d lived most of my life without knowing what species I’d become. I’d taken my falls and endured my bumps and bruises along the way. Some things I had made a mess of, including being raised to be a man but choosing to become a woman instead.
The rain kept falling, but the winds calmed to breezes prone to gusting, and the chill sank deep in my bones, numbing me between the spikes in my fever. By nightfall, chaos took over Fort Lauderdale as the shock wore off, and the survivors came to terms with reality.
With hundreds of thousands dead, when the sun rose and baked the scattered islets of Florida, the bodies would begin to rot. The impossible task of burying so many dead in a place where land was at a premium loomed before me.
At sunset, the chiming of crystal drowned all other sounds, and within minutes, the freed sea washed through the streets. The surf slammed into my back and shoved me several feet before I could stand, staggering under the steady onslaught of water.
The Secret Service agents cursed. Dereks reached me first, grabbing my right arm to keep me from falling again. “Where’s the nearest city?”
I considered my options and decided I couldn’t handle trying to explain Miami’s fate to men who likely expected to find the city intact. “Pompano Beach. It’s the nearest place with a coach station.”
“Coach station?” Dereks asked.
“To hire a carriage. If we walk through the night, we should be able to reach it by morning.” In Pompano Beach, I’d be able to go to the couriers’ headquarters and have a mystic message sent to Charlotte. “A mystic can send word to Charlotte from there.”
“Not by telephone?”
I shook my head. “By mystic.”
“Phone would be better.”
My patience thinned. My right arm didn’t work quite right, and I doubted it would for a long time, so I used my left hand to peel the man’s hand off me. “Fine. I’ll go to Pompano Beach. You go right on ahead and try to find a phone.”
I made it two steps before Dereks grabbed me again. My anger and pain surged, a match for the ocean waves pounding through Fort Lauderdale. I began my roar as a human and finished it as a tiger, the sound echoing between the buildings..
Dereks jumped away from me with a startled cry.
Hissing at the Secret Service agents, I retreated on three paws, my right foreleg dragging uselessly and refusing to hold any weight. The ocean tugged at my fur, spraying my face and stinging my eyes.
The Hope Diamond clung to my throat, tight enough to pinch the skin beneath my fur. Dereks was the only one who didn’t reach for his gun, straightening his back and assuming a calm expression. “Don’t bother. They won’t work,” he said, his tone factual, although I heard a faint trace of his frustration in his voice. “I already tried.”
I had the feeling he wouldn’t be against trying again, and I flattened my ears, showed him my teeth, and growled. My growl built into another roar, the sound resonating deep within my chest.
A horse squealed, cutting over the final echoes of my cry, and I twisted, forgot to avoid my right paw, and flopped into the water rushing between the streets. I spluttered and struggled to rise.
My tired, worn body chose that moment to give up, and I had to use every bit of my strength to keep my nose above the water. Dereks spat curses, sloshed through the current, and reached down, grabbing the scruff of my neck to hold my head above the surface.
The horse squealed again, the sound drawing closer. A splash gave me a moment of warning before a pair of black legs slammed down on either side of my head. A proud, jet-black head rammed Dereks in the chest and shoved him towards the other Secret Service agents. I got my left forepaw under me and managed to get my head above the water.
There was only one stallion I knew that black and large enough to take on a train and possibly win. Todd lifted his hoof, slammed it into the water, and whinnied. A roar answered him, as did the frightened screams of the survivors who had no idea what to make of a giant stallion playing guard to me, a half-dead tigress wearing the Hope Diamond as a collar.
I sighed and wondered if I would ever accept the insanity my life had become.
Chapter Fifty-Six
I clamped my teeth around Todd’s foreleg and growled so he wouldn’t kill the four Secret Service agents, who had no idea how close they were to dying. I used most my strength to remain upright, sparing what I could to restrain the enraged stallion.
Todd tasted of sweat, salt, and the sea; I wanted to spit him out, but if I released him, he’d trample Dereks and his colleagues into paste, which the ocean would wash away. After losing Abraham and Edmund Fitzgerald’s bodies, killing the men who could verify the events surrounding Fort Lauderdale’s fall and resurrection wouldn’t do anyone any good.
Whether he was afraid of hurting me even more or aware I could bite through his spindly little leg, the stallion settled with angry snorts, the occasional squeal, and headache-inducing whinnies. Roars—several—answered the stallion’s calls, warning me a lot of unwanted attention was coming our way.
I could keep Todd from killing the unsuspecting agents who had no way to defend themselves against a shifter who’d been honing his abilities since Starfall. I doubted I’d be able to protect them from men like Gentry and Anatoly.
The four Secret Service agents, displaced by over thirty years, gaped at the massive stallion and stood so still I wondered if they had reverted to the statues they’d been trapped as for so long. Splashing warned me someone was approaching, and I growled. Todd swung his head around.
Moments later, he shifted and crouched over me as a human, his arm between my teeth. Black fabric fell over us, blocking my view of the Secret Service agents. “I have no idea who they are, but I smell her blood, and she won’t let me kill them,” Charlotte’s premier stallion snarled in a good imitation of a predator.
“Presidential detail, Secret Service,” Randal replied. “I know them. President Wilson?”
I flinched at Randal’s emotionless tone.
“Dead,” Dereks answered. “Heart attack.”
Todd stepped over me and knelt at my side, his cloak falling away and clearing my view. With a gentle tug, he pulled his arm out of my mouth. He slipped his hand beneath my chin and kept my head above the water. “What happened to her?”
Dereks held his hands up in surrender. “Wasn’t us. She was like that, although quite human, when I met her.”
Randal knelt on the ground on the other side of me and dug
his fingers into the fur around my neck. “Looks like we guessed right, Mr. Jacobson. They took her to trigger the burst. Well, we won’t have to track down the Hope Diamond. The clasp appears to be stuck.” Inhaling, the Secret Service agent looked over the city, opened his mouth, and spewed so many curses I flattened my ears and stared at him with wide eyes.
“Their plan worked, too, from the looks of it.” Todd sat in the water and worked his way beneath me until my head rested on his legs. “Check her right foreleg and shoulder, Randal. She couldn’t put any weight on her paw.”
“Sword to the shoulder. Broken clavicle, likely a shattered shoulder blade. She refused treatment. Said something about mystics.”
I growled at the scorn in the man’s voice. With his attitude, he wasn’t going to win himself any friends.
Randal snorted. “Next time, listen to her. She’s right—she usually is. Nothing you’re familiar with as emergency care would’ve worked; this city’s not wired. Hell, until yesterday, this city wasn’t even on the map. No one’s had a chance to find out if there’s a combustion zone here. Where are you going to find a doctor or a mystic here capable of handling a predator? Oh, right. You’re a bit behind. Your President, President Miller, lawfully elected for eight consecutive terms, transforms into a grizzly bear weighing over nine hundred pounds. Her husband is a black man who transforms into a rabbit who weighs maybe ten pounds on a good day, but he browbeats the biggest, baddest predators on the block on a daily basis. Adjust your attitude, and I recommend you do so now before you’re introduced around. Life’s changed since 1992, so change your channel and get with the program.”
Maybe I had no idea what Randal meant with his rebuke, but the four other Secret Service agents straightened. Dereks snapped a salute, which the other three mirrored a moment later.
“Where are Cleo and Henry? We’re going to need them both, I think.”
“With the others. Think you can get her shifted so we can get her to dry land? This water is damned cold—too damned cold.”