“Rowan, my boy,” Alec said, clapping Viola on the shoulder. “Katherine said she thought you had Graham McCallum in tow, but I could hardly believe it. And collared, no less.” Alec extended a slender hand toward Graham, and Graham — ever the gentleman — shook it. “Mr. McCallum,” he continued, “it’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance. Your reputation precedes you.”
“As does yours, Mr. Weaver,” Graham said, though it certainly didn’t sound like a compliment.
“I’m sure it does.” The smile Alec Weaver flashed him then was dripping with sadism. I’m going to kill you, it said, and you know it. He turned on his heel then, heading into his lavishly appointed office, and beckoned them to follow, which they did.
“Let me ask you something, Mr. Weaver,” Graham said as they moved.
“Please, call me Alec.”
“Alec. How many clan leaders have you taken out so far?”
Alec moved toward the bar at the far end of the office and poured himself two fingers of fine bourbon.
“Oh, let’s see,” he mused, then: “Drink?”
“Please.”
“And for you, Rowan?”
Viola didn’t immediately respond. She wasn’t used to answering to someone else’s name. But finally, she managed to string together a few clumsy words, “Not thirsty or, no. Thanks.”
Alec quirked a brow at his son but simply poured a crystal tumbler full of bourbon for Graham and slid it across the bar toward him. He scooped it up and drank it down.
“To answer your question,” Alec said, taking a sip from his glass, “I’ve displaced the Alphas of two of the opposing clans thus far. You, sir, will be the third.”
“Opposing?” Graham said, crossing his arms across the wide valley of his chest. “We could all work together, you understand.”
“Graham,” Viola said, and when Graham turned his eyes on the source of the sound, Rowan was trembling and sweating profusely. His eyes, which were not Rowan’s eyes, were bright and blue and pleading. She was losing her grip on the foreign form; she would be in her own skin shortly.
“What’s the matter with you?” Alec said, brow furrowed over his obstinate stare.
But he had barely gotten the query out before Viola collapsed to the floor, Rowan’s clothes deflating in a balloon around her lithe form. More to the point, the gun that had been tucked into the back of her pants clamored to the hardwood floor. She scrambled to retrieve it, using Alec’s moment of wide-eyed stillness to her advantage. She was able to right herself and aim her gun at him all in one frantic motion.
“I knew it,” Alec beamed, as though he were not staring down the barrel of a gun. “Have you always known?”
“Not always,” she said. “No one bothered to show me.”
“If I’d known that was all it took…” He set down his drink and propped his hands up on his hips, adopting a stance that almost dared her to shoot him. “Viola. You’re extraordinary.”
“This is your last chance, Alec,” she said, trying to steady her breathing and the aftershocks of the tremor that sent her back into her own skin.
“My last chance to what?” he demanded, all casual charm, his hands palm up and out to either side. “What exactly is your grand master plan?”
“We’re going to usher in a new age for shapeshifters, Alec,” Graham said.
“Ah, this is all your big plan, Mr. McCallum. And what is it that you had in mind?”
“You dying, first and foremost,” Graham said, falling into a lean against the countertop. Viola had had quite enough of their flippancy: it became immediately clear to her that neither of these men had actually killed anyone, had never been present for the snuffing out of human life. To them, it was all abstract, political. But she knew. She’d felt the warm flood of blood on her hands; she’d seen someone quiver and give out; she’d seen the light leave someone’s eyes. And she did not relish it.
“Alec, you can step down, abdicate your position as Alpha to your son, and live out your years in peaceful exile.”
“Or?” he asked, challenging her. In reply, she simply cocked the hammer on her gun and took a step toward him. “Ah. Yes. I die. Except that Katherine knows my son, Viola. I think she’s had a bit of a crush on him for most of her time working for us, and I think he’s probably spent a little bit of time flirting with her in return. Oh, nothing to worry yourself about, of course; you’ll always be first in his heart. But, you see, the thing about it is that Rowan’s eyes… Well. You’ve seen them. They’re quite distinctive. Like mine. And, really, nothing like yours.”
Viola went pale a heartbeat before a handful of Clan Felidae agents descended the stairs. Four, all told, their semiautomatic weapons trained on Viola. She didn’t recognize any of their faces, but they all had the same gold-yellow cat eyes that bespoke their status as shifters. Clad in black with arms belts encircling their waists, they looked like a platoon of a small independent army. A lesser person would have been terrified.
Viola stepped carefully out of Rowan’s oversized shoes and planted her bare feet firmly beneath her on the hardwood floor. Her eyes had given her away. But she used them now to drink in the data that surrounded her: Five men that would need killing, and one that would need to be saved. The Glock 9mm in her hand had fifteen rounds. That, and the fact that they would all underestimate her, stacked the odds ever so slightly in her favor.
“So, we’ll just have you slide your weapon across the floor to me, then, dispense with the pleasantries, and get on to the summary execution.”
Maybe if it had been Rowan standing there, someone who actually knew who and what she was, just what she was capable of, things would have gone differently. But she began to crouch down low as though she were going to slide the gun across the floor, but fired it instead.
The bullet tore through Alec Weaver’s abdomen and sent him sprawling until he was crouched in front of the bar like some rag doll as his blood blossomed out like a red flower beneath him.
As she was firing, she dove forward, sliding across the hardwood and taking Graham down with her so that he was laid low when the bullets from the guards went flying. She scurried behind the bar — “Stay down!” she shouted to Graham — and shimmied out of Rowan’s oversized pants. They would only slow her down, and she needed access to the full breadth of her agility. Graham scrambled to join her behind the cover of the bar, and the gunfire ceased as the four guards descended the staircase. She was tracking footsteps with her eyes closed as she prepared to spring into action.
“Don’t move from this spot,” she whispered to Graham, who seemed content enough to crouch down behind a line of expensive bottles of liquor. He nodded his head quickly, happy to do precisely as she instructed.
Viola took in a deep breath and rose to her feet, springing up with smooth celerity onto the top of the bar. She landed with bare feet planted firmly on the granite countertop, aiming her weapon and firing at the first guard she saw. She dropped him instantly before collapsing down to lie flat on the bar and fire at the second guard even as bullets whizzed overhead. Placing a palm flat on the counter, she swung her legs over the front of the bar and hopped down, feeling the warm wetness of Alec Weaver’s blood as she moved. She trotted forward, leaving bloody footprints in her wake, and fired, felling a third guard with a shot that pierced his skull. Bending low, she threw the full weight of her body into the final guard, tackling him to the ground. They hit it with a thud and a grunt, and she pushed herself free, burying a bullet in his chest before she even had the chance to register that he’d been holding his hand up in surrender.
“All clear,” she said, and Graham popped out from behind the bar, his hands raised to claw at the collar around his neck. His survival instincts had been urging him to shift that entire time, and it had taken all his mental energy not to give in, not to do what his body had been telling him to do in the face of imminent danger.
Viola was panting with the adrenaline, but she turned and went back to him, raising a hand
to unclasp the collar around his neck, to free him from the thing that kept him from protecting himself in the only way he knew how.
“You killed them all,” he said, a little baffled.
“You see me differently now, don’t you?” she asked.
But he didn’t have a chance to respond. A gurgling caught their attention, and they turned to see Alec, gasping for breath as he drowned of internal bleeding. Viola made herself look at him, and he was staring up at her with the startled, bloodshot expression of someone who never thought they’d be surprised being well and truly shocked.
“Let’s get out of here,” Graham said, tugging her forward by the elbow.
“Yeah,” she agreed, and followed him out of the glass doors of the former Alpha’s office.
***
They emerged again into the lobby of Clan Felidae Headquarters, Viola clad in Rowan’s black collared shirt and boxer briefs, and a rather startled-looking Graham in tow. Katherine was the only thing standing between them and a clean exit, and even still, Viola had her gun raised.
And she was standing there, in front of the glass doors, looking unsurprised by Viola’s presence, or the weapon she was holding.
“So, that’s it, then?” Katherine said, inclining her head. She’d straightened her hair, and now it was a yellow satin sheet that framed her face. “You’ve killed our Alpha?”
“Kat, I’m sorry, I didn’t want to involve you in this. I’m trying to help your clan, I swear to you.”
“You think that helping us means taking out our core leadership? What are we supposed to do now?”
“Rowan will come back, and —”
“I can’t let you leave here. I can’t let you disrupt us like this. I can’t let you do this to my family.” Viola didn’t even see her shift. It was so sudden, not like what Rowan and Graham had done in her presence, not like the Ursling in the Dwelling. This was something altogether different. One moment, there was a young girl with long blond hair standing in front of her wearing a yellow dress with flowers on it, and the next, the dress was a shred on the floor and a lioness was leaping toward her.
She had to admire the beauty of the beast, all muscle and sinew, with a sleek coat the color of honey. And Katherine would have torn her throat out with ease, had not the paw of a greater beast swiped her off balance.
Graham had shifted, and he was the great Kodiak that lived inside of his psyche. He let out a growl that shook the room and placed himself between Viola and the lioness. Katherine in cat form stalked back and forth, those intelligent eyes darting from the bear to Viola and back again. A lion was a proud creature, quick and forceful. But she was no match for Graham McCallum, and she knew it.
The lion stretched its great paws out in front of it and arched its back in a stretch, waiting to see if Graham would shift back into a man, into meat she could properly handle. But when he didn’t, and when he made no move to counterattack, she retreated on deft paws, back to the relative security of the reception desk.
“Katherine,” Viola shouted, “I’m sorry.” And the lion let out a mighty roar that shook Viola to her core. Viola took in a deep breath, walking over to Graham and placing her hand on the rough fur that coated his imposing form. “Katherine,” she said, advancing slowly forward, “I need your help.”
Viola made her way over to the reception desk and looked over it. She saw Katherine, the girl, curled up naked on the marble floor behind it, her knees hugged to her chest. “Please, Katherine,” Viola gently intoned. “I need all the help I can get. And so does your clan.”
Katherine looked up at Viola, her expression irrepressibly sad, and pushed herself up to a sitting position. “What do you need?” she asked.
“I need you to gather the council, as well as the leadership from the other major clans. I need you to send them all to the Clan Ursus Dwelling. Can you do that for me?”
She sniffled, and Viola noticed that her eyes were glassy and her cheeks were streaked with tears. “You’ll take my help after I tried to kill you?”
“You wouldn’t be the first friend to turn on me,” Viola said, forcing a smile. “Nor, I imagine, the last.”
“We’re friends…?” Katherine rose to her feet, crossing her arms protectively over her small breasts.
“If you’ll let me be, I’d like to be your friend, yes.”
Graham had shifted back into his human form and had rejoined them, his clothes completely demolished in the act just as Katherine’s had been.
“It’s time for us to stop fighting one another,” he said, his voice sweet and sonorous. “We will take all the help we can get.”
“All right,” she said, heaving a sigh. “I’ll gather everyone. But where, exactly, do I send them? I have no idea where the Ursus Dwelling is.”
“You got a pen?” Graham asked. “I’ll write it down for you.”
***
Viola brought Graham’s truck around to the front, since she was actually the one with the most clothing, and he snuck out of the building under the cover of night and got into the passenger’s seat. They set off back the way they’d come, back toward the motel where Rowan was waiting.
There was a glistening midnight moon to light their way, and Viola was grateful for the darkness of night. In the silence of the drive, she was free to reflect on everything that had happened. But she was experiencing a familiar adrenaline crash, so after about twenty minutes of driving she pulled over to the side of the road.
“I’m not fit to drive anymore,” she mumbled.
“What’s the matter?” Graham asked, concerned. These were the first words they’d spoken since they’d left their lioness friend in the lobby of the Clan Felidae Headquarters.
“This always happens to me after a kill,” she explained. “I have the adrenaline I need to focus, to get the job done, and then when it wears off, I just totally crash. I think it’s my body’s way of coping with what could otherwise be a very psychologically trying line of work.”
Parking the truck, they both climbed out, meeting in the glare of the headlights. Graham caught her by the elbow and tugged her to him, wrapping her up in his strong arms. He held her tight, and she let him, drawing comfort from his familiar, musky scent, from the sturdy feeling of his limbs around her body. They stayed that way for a long stretch of silence until she became heavy in his arms and he realized that she wasn’t joking — she really was ready to drop. He helped her into the passenger’s seat and closed the door behind her, jogging naked in the moonlight over to the driver’s side.
Once back on the road, he saw her curl up in her seat and rest her head against the window. “You really were extraordinary back there,” he said quietly. “You handled yourself very well.”
“Thanks,” she said absently. “Rowan trained me.”
“He did a good job.”
“You think?”
“I do.”
Graham switched on the radio, and a generic country song wafted through the empty air between them. It was soothing; she was grateful for the sound.
“Graham?” she asked after a while, her voice muffled by the soft purr of the engine.
“Hm?”
“What happens if the clans don’t go for our plan? What then?”
He hadn’t thought much about it, but he supposed it was a very real possibility. It was entirely possible that their people would cast them out — Graham, Viola and Rowan, all three of them. And what then? He took in a deep breath and answered before he really knew he had an answer: “Well,” he said, “I suppose, then, we make a clan of our own.”
UNION OF ALPHAS
(ALPHA ASSASSINS GUILD: PART 5)
Love.
With the exception of my sister, love was never really a part of my life. Attention, maybe; sex, sure; affection, occasionally. But love was absent, a spectre, a ghost in the house of my experience. I was taken in by the artful postures of love, the romantic comedy grandstanding. I could get into a good romance. But I never knew the taste of it, bi
ttersweet, in my own mouth.
Once, just before we left the St. James Academy, Verity sat down on my bed, her legs crossed underneath her, elbows resting on her knees, and informed me—in solemn, somber tones—that she was in love.
“With who?” I demanded, astonished.
“Leo Devins,” she said matter-of-factly, as though it should have been obvious.
I blinked, owlish. “Who?”
“Leo Devins,” she repeated, “He’s a year behind me.” She paused, examining me with a stern expression. “Oh, come on. You know who I’m talking about. Leo Devins? He’s, like, really tall? He has curly red hair and a spray of light freckles across the bridge of his nose.” She was trailing her fingertips over her face as though she were touching his face and getting lost in the sensation of it. I rolled my eyes.
“Right,” I said at length, “the ginger.”
“Yeah. Leo Devins.”
I sort of shrugged, not entirely certain as to why this revelation was as all-important as Verity was making it out to be. But her slight, pale form was unmoving, and she seemed calm and assured as she reached up to tie her ink-black hair into a high ponytail.
“So, anyway, I am in love with him.”
“Good for you, kid,” I said and leaned back on the mattress so that I was resting on my elbows. She had her gaze locked on me, and I couldn’t quite read her expression, but I didn’t like how she was pressing the matter. “What?” I urged her on, wanting her to just get on with whatever else she had to say.
“I was just thinking,” she continued, her resolve faltering ever so slightly, “that maybe I’d stay on through my eighteenth birthday.”
I shot up where I sat, suddenly alert. I was older by two years and had just reached my eighteenth birthday, making me a legal adult. Verity and I were staying at the Academy to finish up the school year, but then the both of us were being transitioned out. We would be given an apartment, and I would get a job, and Verity would live with me and commute to the local high school to finish her education, and that would be that. We had planned it for years, and we were looking forward to having our autonomy. I couldn’t wait to get out of the Academy at that point: I felt like an adult, and I was treated like a child. But there was no way I would be separated from my sister.
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