“They’d feel it.” Paddy’s gaze came back to me. “There’s not a void there. It’s a disconnect. A death feels different, and they can adjust. It’s how they work. The power flow works around it—the same way a river would adjust to rocks pilling up to block the flow—or those rocks being yanked out the way. They’d adjust—stronger vampires would feel and stabilize the younger ones. But there was no warning, no backlash, no surge to warn them of Icarus’ disappearance so nobody knew to stabilize the younger ones.”
“Are they looking for him?”
Paddy nodded. “Abraham’s been off on a search for over a month.” He gave me a thin smile. “That was when I heard about this—for the record, his hunts have never lasted more than a week. He’s just that good.”
“You sound jealous.”
Paddy chuckled. “I can’t help but admire the man’s skill. But…” He sighed. “I like having a pulse.”
“A pulse is nice.” Brooding, I stared down at the floor. “Is it the same with the vamp from Whittier?”
“Nope.” Justin flicked me a look. “That one’s dead. Missing—but dead. Isaac Whittier reported his disappearance and subsequent death to the Assembly three days ago.”
“No idea where he is?”
“Just that he’s dead. They all felt it. Nobody lost it, though, from what I heard.” Justin shrugged and rose to pace. When he passed by me, there was speculation in his eyes, but I pretended not to notice. I hadn’t killed the idiot. If I was going to kill a vampire, it would be for something more important than him staring at me.
“Any guess on how many shifters have gone missing?” I asked, focusing on the next matter.
“That’s harder to say. And….” Paddy’s brown eyes moved to Justin.
Justin had stopped by the wall, studying my weapons, but when I shifted my attention to him, he looked at me.
Arms crossed over his chest, he pinned me with a hard, direct stare.
“You’re not the only one who’s been in touch with Nova lately, Kit. I hear tell a couple of cats went missing in Georgia.” His eyes gleamed. “I need you to talk to Chang for me.”
I gaped at him.
“What?”
Justin shook his head. “He won’t talk to me, you know that. All I need is some concrete info on where they were, where they were going and I can move forward. We can move forward.”
“You woke me,” I said slowly. “You came here and woke me up all so I could go and talk to Chang?”
“Well, no. I woke you up because we need you on the job.” He gave me a charming smile and added, “Come on, Kit. He’ll talk to you. You know he will.”
“No.” Hands on my hips, I glared at him. “I don’t know that.”
He cocked a brow.
I shoved my hands threw my hair.
He was wrong. Mostly. I didn’t know that Chang would talk to me. I think he would if he could.
Justin, though, was shit out of luck. Chang would toy with him the same way he’d toy with any other outsider.
Chapter Four
Chang had a last name but nobody used it.
Although, to be honest, not that many people used his name at all. Chang was one of those men who got yes, sir’ed and no, sir’ed unto death. Half the people who talked to him met his eyes for all of five seconds before looking deferentially down at the floor, hands folded meekly in front, or tucked away behind in a military fashion.
He was a shapeshifter, but I’d yet to figure out what.
That was one thing that drove me insane.
I could usually peg a shifter’s animal within minutes—sometimes within seconds—but Chang had me stumped. He was some sort of cat because he was one of Damon’s lieutenants, but I had absolutely no idea what kind and it both annoyed and intrigued me.
I was pretty sure he knew this—and I was equally sure it amused him.
At any given time, Chang could be found at the rec center. When I pulled up in front of the place, one of his men was already moving to meet me. I didn’t bother asking if Chang was around. Of course he was.
I don’t think he slept here, but any time I’d come looking for him, he was here. It wasn’t really a picture that fit, this elegant man presiding over the rough and rowdy lot of shapeshifter children, but over time, I’d come to realize why.
Chang was the self-appointed guardian of the reckless shapeshifter youth in the city. The rec center was a place where both the wolves and the cats hung out, although there were more cats than wolves. The cat clan outnumbered the wolves almost two to one here, but the relationship between the two factions was guardedly friendly, more so in the past year and a half since the previous cat Alpha had died.
Most shifter parents kept their youngest close to home—close and protected—but as they got older, the youth became…restless. It wasn’t just the hormones that any teenager would face—they had those hormones, plus the hormonal surges that would eventually precipitate the change that led to their first shift between their human forms and their animal one.
The aggression would come spilling out, but it rarely came coupled with common sense.
The club was a safe place for them to let all of that aggression out, without getting into trouble.
It was also a place where they would be protected.
I’d never seen less than fifteen dominant shifters on guard here. That was practically a platoon in human terms.
One of those guards had escorted me to Chang’s office—I’d been surprised when I’d seen her. I’d been here too often and in all my visits, I’d never seen a wolf standing guard at the gate. It was unusual enough to have me questioning Chang about it—or I would as soon as he got off the phone.
His conversation was inaudible, which told me he was speaking to a shifter.
He had yet to give anything other than a polite nod and smile when I came inside, but that didn’t mean anything. I’d like to think it meant he wasn’t talking to Damon and saying something like: Oh, shit, she’s here and asking questions, what do I do? Actually, I was almost positive Chang wouldn’t ask anything like that, but something more…urbane? Kit is here. If she starts asking questions we don’t want to answer, do I stonewall her or just wait for you to arrive?
Another three minutes passed before he wrapped up the conversation, but I didn’t let it get to me. He was the second in command of one monster group of shapeshifters. Clan business would always come before anything else. He tugged the earpiece out and gave it a distasteful look before putting it away and rising from the desk. I rose to meet him as he came to stand in front of me.
“Hello, Kit.”
“Chang.” I cocked my head. “Sorry to crash in like this…sounded like serious stuff. Am I interrupting?”
Chang had an innate courtesy. He’d brush it off. Of course not. How are you, would you like some tea—
To my surprise, the only response he made initially was to sigh.
It was a soft, heavy sigh, one that carried a world of weariness. “I had to call a family up north with grim news. An awful sort of call to make.”
“I…” I stopped for a moment. “I’m sorry. Are there…problems?”
An odd question to ask, maybe, but the look on Chang’s face wasn’t one that spoke of somebody who’d lived to see a ripe old age and then died peacefully in his sleep.
From the corner of his eye, he watched me. There was a strange expression to his features, as though he wanted to say something, but then he sighed and said, “No. Sit. I’ll fix tea. You’ll tell me why you’re here.”
There was no point in arguing.
Chang had fallen back on his role of courtesy.
There was no getting out of it now—and no chance of tugging out any details about that phone call, either.
I waited until I had my tea in hand—tea was a personal addiction of mine, almost as bad as the soaps and lotions and other girly things I bought obsessively. Breathing in the sweet and spicy scent, I sighed. I doctored it with sugar and cream. I
liked my tea, with just a little more sugar than most people. Or a lot more sugar.
“How you can drink it that way confounds me,” Chang said. “I keep trying to break you of that habit, but it doesn’t work.”
“To each their own.” I shrugged and took my first sip. Perfect.
Chang had a look of amusement and revulsion on his face.
“When you spend a good ten years of your life scrapping just to get enough water and food to fill the hole in your belly, you develop odd cravings.” I shrugged it off.
Chang’s eyes fell away.
I scowled inwardly, wished I hadn’t said anything. I’d dealt with more abuse in my life than most people had ever heard of—I’d come to grips with what my family had done and generally dealt with it, in my own unique sort of way.
Sometimes, I was even able to not be ashamed of it. But it made other people uncomfortable. Honestly, that’s just plain stupid to me—it happened to me—if I can deal with it, then why can’t they?
But then I had to deal with people looking away, or lapsing into silence…or just…fading away.
“Sorry,” I said, my voice tense.
“Why?” Chang said quietly.
I stared at him, opened my mouth—then snapped it shut. “Fuck it. Never mind.”
But he was too insightful, by far. Unlike many shifters I knew, he didn’t just go by what his senses told him. He looked at people. Saw beneath the surface. Sometimes, he saw so deep, it pissed me off.
“I’m not aggravated with you for speaking of your childhood,” he said softly. “In a way, it…humbles me. I know you don’t always speak freely of your past, Kit.”
He rose.
The languid way he moved couldn’t be called pacing, not by any means.
But Chang rarely made wasted moves and the way he moved from the window at the back of his office to his wall of weapons then to his desk to straighten the non-existent clutter there before repeating the circuit was nothing but wasted movement. And it was done with all the elegance, grace and speed he did everything else with. “At the same time, the thought that any soul could treat a child as I know you were treated makes me…”
He looked up.
For the first time in all the time I’d known him, I saw a faint glow roll across his eyes.
The flash was gone so fast, I couldn’t even place it—just a glow of color too light to belong in that dark gaze, and then it was gone. “It angers me. Children should be treasured.”
“That’s how the world works sometimes.”
His eyes held mine. “And sometimes, the world sucks.”
“I’ve found myself thinking that a lot lately.”
“Yet another reason I like you, Kit. You are a wise woman.”
At that, I snorted. “I’m a lot of things—wise isn’t one of them.”
He chuckled and the tension in the air passed. He returned to his seat and faced me. “Let’s discuss why you’re here. Not that I’m not delighted to see you, of course.”
He’d never say it, but I suspected he had things to do, secrets to pass on and people who needed to kill or be killed.
That was his job, after all.
Since I respected that, I didn’t beat around the bush.
“I’m tracking down—or trying to track down—some information. I could use your help.”
He arched a brow as he lifted his tea cup to his lips.
He’d help if he could. I knew that. Just like I knew he’d stonewall me if he couldn’t.
“NHs are disappearing. I need to know about any shifters who have gone missing…specifically some in Georgia. I need information and if anybody has it, it’s you.”
The cup froze at his mouth.
Without taking a sip, he lowered it. Then he put it down and moved behind his desk to stare out the window. “Who have you been talking to, Kit?”
I started to move my knee back and forth. “Am I going to sound terribly childish if I say I asked you first?”
“Sound as childish as you want. But you’re more likely to get answers from me if you cooperate.” His eyes narrowed ever so slightly. Then a faint smile appeared on his face. “You can always ask Damon. However, if you wanted to do that, you would have. You often end up in messes that worry him, a fact I’m sure you’re aware of. This is likely why you came to me instead.”
“You’re telling me this because…” I drummed my fingers on the arm of the chair as I stared at him.
“Only two people possess the information you’re looking for—or possess an in-depth knowledge of it. That I know of. Damon hasn’t spoken to you—he wouldn’t, not about this. If somebody has spoken to you…” He let the words trail off.
“If you’re worried my source might be behind these disappearances, you can draw your claws back in, Chang.”
“My claws aren’t out.” A brow lifted. “Yet.”
“I’m terrified,” I said dryly. Putting my tea down, barely touched, I moved to the wall. Giving into the urge, I closed my hand around the grip of the katana. “May I?” Even I heard the wistful note in my voice.
“I’ve been wondering how long it would take you to ask.”
I looked over my shoulder at him.
He inclined his head. “By all means. I enjoy blades but I hardly do them justice.”
A thrill raced through me, muted because I couldn’t hear the katana’s song. My race has an…affinity for weapons. They speak to us, sing to us, murmur in the backs of our minds like treasured friends. But the bond I’d had with my sword had been shattered by a witch back when Jude had kidnaped me. Yet another thing to hate the bastard for.
There was an odd, empty void at the back of my head. I’d been aware of it for a while now. At first, when the weapons hadn’t whispered to me, I’d only felt an ache and I don’t think that was physical. Just something I felt with all my soul.
This void, though, I’d almost swear if you looked inside my skull, you’d see some tiny, pinprick of emptiness.
I’d grown used to it, though, and I was able to swing the blade through the air, smiling at the weight, the balance. “He was made by hand, wasn’t he?”
“Yes. By a true master of the art.”
I swung it again and again until it became a blur in front of me. Through it, I could see Chang’s eyes on me.
“I relieved him of the blade when he tried to use it to relieve me of my head.”
I stopped, mid-swing, and stared at him.
Chang cocked his head, something that might have been feral amusement dancing in his eyes. “It was almost a shame to kill him—he was nearly as good at using blades as he was at crafting them. He had a feel to him like your friend, Justin. Some sort of magic in his blood. Might have been why he almost succeeded in his mission.”
“An assassin?”
“I have my suspicions. Never could confirm them, but as I was hunting down certain people who didn’t want certain secrets revealed, it made sense.” He moved to stand in front of me, holding out his hand.
I held the katana out in front of me, balanced on my palms.
He took it, angled it so that it reflected the light back at us. “Tell me what’s going on, Kit. I can’t help you unless I know more.”
“How do you know I’m not trying to help you?”
He studied me and I had the impression he might be praying for patience—or counting to ten. Or ten thousand.
“Why don’t we help each other?” he suggested after a moment. “I’ll tell you what I can, after you tell me what I need to know.”
“Damn cats.” I’d muttered this to myself more times than I could recall ever since a certain one of those damn cats had strolled through the door of my office. As Chang’s dark eyes glinted at me, I turned away. I settled down in the chair I’d vacated, watched as he continued to angle the blade, studying it as though it held the answer to some great mystery. “My source, or sources, if you want to call them that, are a couple of witches.”
“Ah…” Chang’s no
strils flared. “And how is Justin?”
“Causing trouble.”
With a gleam in his eyes, Chang said, “Then he is well. And the other…source?”
“A friend of ours, a witch by the name of Padraig. He’s affiliated with Banner. We trust him.”
“You trust him. Under many circumstances, that would count for a lot,” Chang said.
“I’ve trusted him with my life.”
Chang turned to face me now and the blade, he studied me, eyes narrowed. “I’m still listening.”
Hard ass.
“Justin needs my help on a case…the missing NHs in Georgia. He says there are some cats missing—and he’s got good, solid info.” I was winging it here—I hoped Chang wouldn’t push, because Justin hadn’t told me what Nova had told him. “But he needs confirmation and as much information as he can get before we go in.”
“Go in.” Chang’s eyes narrowed and he leaned forward. “The three of you plan to find them?”
“You’re smart. I admire that about you.” I smiled, hesitated for a moment and then sighed. I leaned forward as well and met his eyes. “Look, witches are disappearing, too.”
Something flashed in his eyes. He waited.
“We’re hearing the same about vampires.”
When he didn’t say anything, I got up and started to pace. I found myself thinking of that time, more than a year ago, when I’d found myself standing in here, looking to interview one of the young cats. That was how I’d gotten dragged into the world—I’d only danced along the edge of shifters then, taking courier jobs, and I’d been just fine with that, too. Shifters were trouble. Especially the cats, although then, it had been because their Alpha had been crazy.
That case that had brought me here had changed my life. Most times, I think it was for the better. But when my nightmares screamed too loudly, I have to admit, I do wonder what would have happened if I’d just told Damon to take his case and shove it up his ass. Then I choked on the guilt.
“It’s not like the games,” I said softly, finding myself at the window where Chang often stood. “Padraig and Justin knew some of the witches that have gone missing. A couple were warrior-born. Tough bastards. One witch of Justin’s skill could stand against a platoon of human soldiers if you put him in the right place.” I paused and then said again, “It’s not like before.”
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