He cried for only a few minutes before he pulled back in, stifling his mourning and putting on a brave face. The memory of Dr. Sawyer saying that cats were good at concealing pain and illness rose in her mind, and she wondered if the same was true for rakshasas and emotional pain. She stroked his hair once more before he pulled away, wiping at his eyes in embarrassment.
“I’m sorry,” he said, standing up and walking over to a box of tissues across the room. “I’m normally not that kind of…”
“Stop. You’re grieving. It’s perfectly natural.”
“I just don’t want you to think badly of me.”
She sighed and walked up to him, stopping before she touched him, uncertain if he’d welcome it. “Honestly, I’d think badly of you if you didn’t cry over your mom and sister dying.”
“You don’t think I’m weak?” His voice was small, and he had his back to her.
“No. Not at all.”
He nodded, but he still didn’t turn around. “Thank you. You know, I knew my dad was dead, but I really hoped that my mom and sis would still be around when I got loose.” He hung his head. “I’d give anything to see them again.”
Eliza’s stomach tightened in fear she didn’t understand until she heard a feminine voice behind them.
“You don’t have to give anything, Pan. I’m right here.”
The both froze, and a smell like sulfur wafted into the air around them like smoke. She put her hand on his back, but he pulled away. He started to unbutton his shirt, and she helped him pull it free of the waistband of his jeans.
The voice spoke again, and it carried so much menace that Eliza’s hands shook to hear it. She was terrified.
“Pangur, turn around. Don’t you want to see your mother?”
He pulled off his shirt and tossed it aside. He unbuttoned and unzipped his jeans, and Eliza grabbed the denim and the cotton underwear beneath and pulled them down to his ankles. He stepped out of the garments, free at last to shift. She looked toward the door and saw the ghostly image of a beautiful Indian lady, her body wrapped in a white sari. She smiled, but the sight of it made Eliza’s blood run cold.
“You are not my mother,” he snarled.
The asura at the edge of the room laughed, and Pangur dropped onto all fours, his skin blossoming with white fur. He snarled and launched himself at the demon. She shifted into a lioness, her sari vanishing, and caught him with teeth and claws. Pangur screamed in rage and pain, his own natural daggers slashing. The demon threw him aside, and he flew into the wall beside the fireplace, making the whole house shake. He slid down and hit the floor, where he lay panting, the breath knocked out of him. The rakshasa statue toppled from the impact and landed on the ground between Pangur and Eliza.
The asura laughed and changed its appearance once again. This time, it presented the face of Dr. Armstrong. He glowered at her.
“Miss Benson, you have gravely disappointed me. You were entrusted with…”
Pangur growled and gathered himself, ready to spring again. He shook his head to clear it.
The asura laughed at him.
The snow leopard hissed, his long fangs glistening, and he leaped again, his powerful legs carrying him all the way across the room in one bound. This time, he knocked the asura onto his back, taking advantage of the too-solid form it had adopted. He snarled and bit, slashed and clawed, but the asura punched him hard in the side of the head.
Eliza looked around for something she could use as a weapon to help him. The only thing she could find was the sword from the statue. She grabbed it and rushed at the combatants. At first she couldn’t find room to hit the asura, but Pangur saw her and leaped out of the way, leaving a trail of blood across the breakfast nook floor. Eliza screamed and brought the sword down on Armstrong’s head as hard as she possibly could. She was rewarded with a foul squelching sound and an even more foul stench. The demon tried to shift again, but it died halfway between man and monster, lying in a pool of its own brackish blood.
The house rumbled, the ground shaking beneath them. Eliza struggled to stay on her feet as the foundation pitched and rolled. Things fell from shelves and out of cupboards whose doors were knocked off kilter by the sudden unleveling of the building. Eliza grabbed Pangur and dragged him out through the patio doors to the yard behind the house. He squeaked at her, either in distress or in pain. She wasn’t sure which. She only knew that she had to get both of them out of the house before it collapsed on top of them.
As it happened, the house went in the opposite direction. Instead of falling down into its own basement, the entire structure lifted from the ground, crumpling like a piece of paper in a giant’s hand. She huddled with her body over Pangur’s wounded head, trying to protect him from shards of glass as the windows exploded under the pressure of whatever was crushing the house into bits. Shrapnel from the destruction cut into her back, and she cried out in fear more than from the pain. All around the fenced-in yard, neighbors were gathering, gaping at the display and at the rare cat that huddled beneath her.
A sound of a thousand voices yelling in a language she didn’t understand cut through the air, and the shapeless lump that had been the house vanished into the ether with a deafening pop. The air went still, with no wind and no sound, as if the world itself was holding its breath. Slowly, carefully, Eliza lifted her head and looked.
There was nothing left of what had been Shashi’s house but the foundation. An iron cage sat in the bottom of what had been the basement, but everything else had been scrubbed clean as if no house had ever stood on the property. Pangur licked her arm, trying to heal her cuts despite the lacerations and bites he had suffered in his battle.
“Stop,” she said. “I’ll be okay. We just need to go…”
She turned back toward the house and started to laugh, because it was easier than crying.
“My car was in there. We’re not going anywhere.”
-They’ll come home eventually.-
She could hear sirens approaching. Of course the neighbors had called the cops, and probably the fire department. She didn’t know if Shashi had a gas line, but if so, there was a danger that a spark could make the whole street go up in flames. It was probably good that someone had made that call.
She bent and cradled his head in her lap. His breathing was ragged.
“Hold on for me, Pangur. Please.”
He rested his chin on her thigh and his body went lax. She stared at his nostrils, then at his side, hoping against hope that he was still breathing. After a long and painful wait, he took a deep breath.
“Oh, God. Don’t do that to me,” she begged him. “Please... hold on.”
His answer was a chuff, and then he was quiet again.
Chapter Eight
The authorities came and took Pangur to the nearest zoo, which was in Bismarck. The firemen and the police were still trying to figure out what rational explanation they could fall back on for the disappearance of the house when she was put into the back of the ambulance. In the emergency room, after the doctors had finished pulling all of the glass out of her back, she was arrested for possession of an endangered species and taken off to county jail.
In the morning, bright and early, she was arraigned and bail was set. She used her one phone call to reach out to Pete, but he didn’t answer, leaving her in the lurch again. She should have known better.
That afternoon, Eliza sat in her holding cell, her back hurting and her head full of worries about Pangur. There were other women in the cellblock with her. Some of them were clearly inebriated or otherwise intoxicated, while others just seemed to be having the worst luck of their lives. Eliza was pretty sure she was in the throes of rotten luck, herself.
An officer came to the door and unlocked it. “Eliza Benson?” she called.
She stood. “Yes?”
“Your lawyer’s here with bail.”
Eliza was surprised. “That was fast.”
The office said nothing further, but led her out of
the holding area and to the lobby. A dark-haired man in an immaculately-tailored three-piece suit stood there, a briefcase in his hand. He offered a handshake when she reached him.
“Attorney Dev Basu,” he said. “Come with me, please.”
There was something about him, something leonine, and she asked, “Wait. Dev? You said your name was Dev?”
“Yes, Miss Benson. Come along, please, and say nothing further.”
She followed him wordlessly out to his SUV. He waited behind the wheel until she had settled gingerly into her seat and buckled her safety belt.
“You’re Pangur’s brother,” she said.
He nodded. “Yes.”
“Where have you been?”
“Well… law school, for starters.”
“They’ve been looking for you.”
“And I for them. But it seems we’ve all found one another, haven’t we?” He smiled at her.
“How did you know to find me here?”
“I heard about a strangely vanishing house on the news. They gave my brother’s name as the owner, and I took the chance that it was the same Shashi Basu. It was. From there, it was relatively easy to track you down in the system, post bail and get you out of stir.”
“Thank you so much for that,” she said, her relief almost overwhelming. “But what about Pangur?”
“He’s been retrieved by the Armstrong Cat Park. Dr. Armstrong was more than happy to reclaim him. In point of fact, he’s waiting with my brothers now.”
Dev sounded entirely too calm. She said, “Dr. Armstrong is an asura.”
“Was an asura. You killed him.”
“But… if that’s so, then how could he…?”
“We’re shifters. We can be any feline we want to be, and any human we want to be, as well.” He glanced at her, one eyebrow raised. “Chance said he told you this.”
Eliza put her hand to her head. “Honest to God, I don’t remember half of what I’ve been told anymore. My head is just grey cheese right now.”
“Hmm. Sounds unappetizing.”
“Well, you shouldn’t eat brains, anyway.”
Dev chuckled.
“Do you know if they found Ghost?”
His mirth faded. “They did.”
“And? How did it go?”
“He was being impersonated by an asura, like Armstrong was. I think he’s dead.”
She was afraid to ask how it had happened. She hoped that duty hadn’t fallen to Raja. “Oh…”
He was silent for a while, the passivity of his expression belied by the tension in his white-knuckled grip on the steering wheel. She regretted bringing up such a painful subject, although she knew that there was no way she could have expected the news that she’d heard. She knew that the brothers would be heartbroken, but for herself, she was relieved.
“So Armstrong wasn’t born an asura?”
“Probably not. Most likely he once was a real wildlife expert who was killed and replaced by the asura. You might never have met the real Dr. Armstrong.”
He got on the expressway headed south out of Bismarck. They drove toward the southwest for a long while. She couldn’t handle the curiosity anymore.
“Where are we going?”
“We’re going to meet up with my brothers. Then we’re going to do what wild cats have been best at for centuries: we’re going to disappear.”
“And I…?”
“You’re part of the family now, if you want to be.”
She took a deep breath.
“I think I would like that very much.”
Dev nodded. “Good.” He looked at her with a wan smile. “It seems we’re all ghost cats now.”
Eliza sat back, getting comfortable for a long ride away from everything she’d ever known, heading into a future she couldn’t predict but found herself excited to begin.
“So it seems.”
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About the Author
Tiegan Clyne has been writing for longer than most of her friends have been alive. Armed with university degrees in Spanish, anthropology and history, she writes stories with dark edges and fantastical elements. She also sometimes writes harmless fluff pieces about magical animals and the witches who love them. She enjoys music, could not stop writing if you paid her, and is a crazy cat lady in training.
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She also writes as J. A. Cummings.
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Read More of Tiegan’s Books
Cryptomorphs series
Ghost U series
No Treats for Charlie
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Writing as J. A. Cummings
Arthur Rex Series
The Rune Romance Series
Phoenix Rising Duology
Reunited with her Bratva Boyfriend
The Drakon Brava
Meghyn King
About Reunited with her Bratva Boyfriend
Yulian Dragomirov let Chelsea leave him four years ago without fighting for her and it was his biggest regret. When he meets her again in Central Park, he believes destiny is at play and decides to make her stay this time.
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Chelsea Morning has always hated what Yulian’s family does. The Drakon Bratva kill people, but she’s always loved Yulian no matter what. Running into him was an accident she didn’t plan for and now he’s in front of her again, asking her to stay, she’s not sure she has the strength to say no this time around.
Yulian Dragomirov
New York City in fall was at its prettiest, with yellow, orange, and red leaves fluttering in the lazy wind that sang its way through Central Park. The grass was turning dull as summer disappeared and winter began to creep its way closer, but the weather was warm enough to sit on a picnic blanket without worrying about it being too cold.
I was not in the frame of mind to enjoy the time of year, though, not when I had a job to do. My cousin, Misha was the boss of our bratva and letting him down wasn’t an option. He gave me one assignment: find and take out Rafael Salazar, the bastard who was selling on our territory. It sounded easy enough, but Salazar was like a rat, scampering to the sewers whenever we got close. And he knew when we were coming, too, as though he had a spy on the inside. Suggesting that to Misha wouldn’t end well, however.
“Zhizn’ ebet meya,” I muttered, glaring at the crowd that had gathered in the park. There were too many to take the risk of pulling out my gun, and while we paid the cops handsomely, it wasn’t enough to do anything we wanted. Salazar was gone, disappearing into the throng of families that crowded the wide expanse of grass.
“Well that’s rude,” a soft voice said behind me.
I froze, the familiarity of the lyrical tone making my shoulders tense. There was no way in hell I could forget that sound, and my body agreed because my belly grew hot. How many years had it been? Four, at least. I spun around and was already smiling because I recognized that beautiful face with her rosy cheeks and long blonde hair that danced in the wind around her shoulders. She looked no older than she had the last time I’d seen her. If anything, she was more attractive, an ageless beauty that left me breathless.
I’d seen many attractive women in my life. Being in a bratva brought the pretty whores and ladies who craved a bad boy’s cock, but none had ever compared to my teenage crush and girlfriend.
“Chelsea.”
She grinned, flashed her straight white teeth at me, and dragged her gray cotton trench coat tighter around her slim body. “Zdravstvuyte, Yulian.”
I laughed before I could help myself, equally stunned by seeing her and the fact that she still remembered some of the Russian I’d taught her. Her accent on the word wasn’t perfect, but it wasn’t terrible. I’d heard our language murdered a lot worse than what she’d done. “You remember how to say hello.”
&
nbsp; “I do, and that’s about all I remember, other than a few curse words here and there. Don’t think I didn’t understand what you said a minute ago.” She waggled a finger at me and chuckled.
“What are you doing back in New York? I thought you lived somewhere in the south now.” I stepped closer before I could stop myself, my heart thumping wildly. If I thought I could get away with reaching out and touching her, I would’ve, but she’d never let me. She seemed sweet, looked it, too, but she was razor smart and fierce when she needed to be. I’d learned that the hard way when she left me all those years ago.
Chelsea cocked her head, squinting as though the sun was in her eyes. “I was. Am. I’m here for a conference. I’m a personal assistant to Marcos Johansson. He’s a corporate raider.”
“How long are you here?”
“Five days.” She licked her apple red lips and my gaze followed the movement. I wanted to devour her as much as I always had and claim her for mine. She would never allow it, just like she’d never allowed it back when we were twenty, and I was joining the bratva. She’d told me she couldn’t be with a mobster.
“Five days isn’t long.”
She brushed her blonde curls away from her face and smiled again. “No, it’s not. I thought I’d go for a walk through Central Park. I missed it. This.” She gestured around at the greenery and sighed dreamily. “I’m not used to the weather here anymore, though. It’s hot and humid in Louisiana, not like New York.” Tugging the coat closer to her body, she laughed.
Falling for Shifters: A Limited Edition Autumn Shifters Collection Page 38