In response, one of the men twisted Tomás’s arms behind his back and clipped on a pair of metal handcuffs. The other fished Tomás’s phone out of his front pocket, tossed it on the ground, and stomped on it. Then he picked up the largest pieces and frisbeed them under a nearby car.
“Really not necessary,” Tomás muttered.
When neither man replied, Tomás heaved a giant sigh. “Fine. We’ll do it your way.”
When they got to the goons’ car, a large black SUV, they opened the back door and shoved Tomás inside.
“I hope you’re taking me to the exchange meeting, and not to some out-of-the-way place to do me in.” Tomás tried his best sarcastic voice but still got no response.
“Is it the accent? Is that what’s throwing you off?” he asked.
Nothing.
Okay. None of this is working. There had to be some way to get these two goons to talk. Really, even a little information on who they were working for would be helpful.
And maybe an explanation as to why they had split Tomás and Bron up.
Oh, hell. Tomás nearly cursed aloud at the realization that getting separated from Bron had become his primary worry in all this.
I am in all kinds of trouble.
Chapter 5
What kind of trouble has Tomás gotten himself into?
Bron stared out the glass door at the end of the corridor leading out to the parking garage and watched as two overly bulky bodyguard-types manhandled Tomás through the lot and into a large, black SUV.
This definitely wasn’t good.
She stared at the back of the vehicle long enough to imprint the license plate number into her memory. Then she glanced around the wide walkway, cataloging and discarding potential hiding places for the ledger in almost the same instant.
“Crap,” she muttered. turning back and scuttling toward the small gift shop. It was either that or the coffee shop across the hallway from it, and she knew the store attendant better than she knew the barista.
Ducking through the doorway, she slid behind the counter and snagged a couple of the plastic bags imprinted with the gift store name, “Sparkling Treasures.” She wrapped her hand in one of them to protect the ledger from fingerprints, pulled it out of her jacket, and slipped it into the other plastic bag. She wrapped the whole thing up and handed it to the startled attendant.
“Judy, will you hold on to this for me until I get back? It’s really, really important.” She stared intently into the other woman’s eyes, hoping to impress upon her the seriousness of the task without actually having to come out and say precisely why it mattered.
“Of course, sweetheart.” Judy’s calm, complacent expression never changed, even as she took the oddly wrapped package and slid it into the back of the shelves under the register cabinet. When she straightened her round, matronly figure, she reached out one hand and patted Bron’s cheek. “Now you go on and take care of whatever you need to do,” Judy said, calmly organizing the displays on the top of the counter.
Bron nodded and spun around to race back out the door, but paused when she heard Judy call out after her. “And you be sure to let us know if you need help with anything.” For an instant, as she glanced back, Bron saw the animal lurking beneath the apparently sedate bear shifter’s expression.
“Count on it,” Bron called back over her shoulder, even as she sped toward the doors that led to the parking garage.
The whole exchange with Judy had only taken maybe thirty seconds, but already, the black SUV was out of sight. Bron leaned over the nearest concrete barrier, stretching to see out and down to the ground.
Three levels below her, the SUV pulled out of the parking garage and turned left onto the street.
Bron stripped off her jacket and crouched down between the car and the concrete wall. Unbuttoning her shirt and pants, she closed her eyes and breathed into the shift.
All her life, Bron had heard other shifters talk about what it felt like to move into their animal forms. For some of them, it seemed to almost hurt, with bones popping and sinews twisting. Others described it as melting, overflowing into their new forms.
When Bron shifted, it felt like flight. For all that her raven form was much smaller than her human one, her soul stretched into the avian shape, taking wing with the knowledge that she would fly away. Shifting was like soaring, catching the right draft under her wings and letting it carry her where she wanted to go. And when it was complete, she shook out her feathers and hopped up to the concrete barrier, leaving the pile of clothing behind without a second glance.
Sometimes she wondered what would happen if she decided never to take human form again. There were stories about it—shifters who went full animal. They were meant to be bedtime stories designed to frighten children into maintaining their identities in both forms. But Bron had always thought of them as almost a fairy tale, like human girls thought of princesses—a life of perfection.
Right now, though, she needed to keep her human wits about her so she could track down Tomás and the men who’d taken him. With a single caw to let any nearby birds know she was on the wing, she leaped into the air and spread her wings to fly.
Circling higher and higher, she used her sharp vision to scan the ground for the SUV. There, heading away from the river and the casino. With a few beats of her wings, she corrected her course to cut across several blocks until she was directly above it, then dove down until she could make out the vehicle’s license plate.
When she was certain it was the right one, she followed the car until it came to a halt at a stoplight. Then, as lightly as possible, she landed on the roof, gripping one of the luggage rails at the top with her talons. Carefully, she leaned over until she could look into the rear passenger window.
Tomás sat in the back seat, his patrician features set in hard lines as he stared grimly ahead. Bron felt like she should know why he hadn’t shifted to take these men on, but right now, in her bird form, glorious and complete, she couldn’t think of a single reason for him to have held back.
On the other hand, now that she had found them, she wasn’t sure what to do next. Tracking him was definitely in order, but she wasn’t sure who to trust once she knew where they were taking him. Suddenly, Tomás was the only person in the shifter world—other than Judy—that she trusted.
Anyway, he was supposed to be the expert in this kind of thing.
Who do you call when the hostage negotiator gets taken hostage? she wondered.
Irritated the lack of answers, Bron decided to take matters into her own hands—or wings, as the case might be.
She had time, as long as the SUV was in town and stopping regularly at lights. She waited until the next stoplight, and then she tapped lightly on the window with her beak. Inside the car, Tomás turned his head very slightly toward the window to make eye contact with her and gave a tiny nod. By the time one of his abductors had turned around to see what was going on, Tomás was facing the front again, and Bron had drawn back from the window.
After a few seconds, the glint of sunlight on something metal flashing inside the car caught her attention, and she glanced back inside. Tomás had leaned forward slightly, exposing the metal cuffs the men had clamped around his wrists.
Tension radiated through his entire body for a full five seconds before a single, sharp cat’s claw popped out from the tip of one forefinger. With slow, careful deliberation, Tomás slipped the tip of it into the keyhole.
Tomás half expected one of his abductors to turn around at the click of the cuffs coming unlocked, but he covered the sound with the scuffing of one boot along the floorboard and no one responded.
He needed to wait until they came to a stoplight—preferably one in a secluded area. He hoped Bronwyn could keep up with them until then.
“How long does it take to get to New Orleans?” One of the thugs in the front seat asked the other.
“Check the map. About five hours, usually.” The other man gestured vaguely out the window. “At
least, it would be, if we weren’t taking the back roads.”
The first one grunted in reply, punching details into the SUV’s navigation system.
Tomás considered what he knew of Louisiana geography. Even if they were taking back roads, Shreveport to New Orleans meant they’d be getting some kind of highway or interstate soon, and Tomás would lose his chance entirely.
No more time to wait. At the next light, he glanced outside, where he could barely see the top of Bronwyn’s sleek black head as she again landed and peered down into the window. With a twist of one wrist, Tomás popped open the cuffs and waggled his fingers at Bron. She nodded at him and fluffed her feathers up in preparation for some kind of action.
Just in time, too—soon after they started up again, the SUV was slowing down to take the entrance onto Louisiana Highway 1. As the vehicle entered the turn, Tomás burst into motion, pulling the handle on the door and kicking it with all his shifter strength, then throwing himself out of the moving car. With his hands still partially shifted, he hit the ground in a roll, using his claws to push himself back up into position, coming up on one knee with both hands on the ground to balance himself. Bron had followed him perfectly, her own explosion into motion adding to the kidnappers’ confusion.
The SUV’s tires squealed as it slung around and came to a stop. In the middle of the afternoon, the entrance to the old highway was deserted.
Tomás remained poised on the side of the road, his front claws unsheathed and digging into the dirt, ready to shove him into a leap. Bron circled over his head once, then settled down onto his shoulder, her talons grasping in a way that Tomás found oddly comforting.
The two men exited the SUV warily, leaving the doors standing open as they moved to flank Tomás and Bron. The raven Shifter let out of warning caw, and Tomás raised one side of his lip and sneer, showing the teeth in his half-shifted mouth.
“You don’t want to do this, man,” the driver called out.
“Come with us, and we will make sure nobody gets hurt,” the second one added.
“Do not take another step,” Tomás ground out, his half-shifted mouth almost mangling the words. However, the men understood him. They glanced at one another, passing some communication that, although Tomás did not entirely understand, he knew meant they wouldn’t be stopping anytime soon.
“Don’t move,” the raven on his shoulder croaked. Tomás glanced up at her in surprise. That’s right. Even natural-born ravens could mimic human speech. It probably shouldn’t come as a surprise that raven shifters could talk.
That would be a useful skill in his animal form, Tomás thought—but then his time for considering Bron’s strengths was over because apparently, the two men’s communication had been an agreement to attack.
The first man jumped forward with knives flashing in his hands, protecting the second man in order to give him time to shift.
Tomás couldn’t allow that. He needed to get past the first man and his flashing knives in order to take out the second one. At least, that’s what he thought. But as the knife wielder lunged toward him, Bronwyn launched herself from his shoulder. Tomás quickly lost sight of her, focused as he was on avoiding the knives that slashed at him. He used his claws to strike out in return, but his opponent had shifter speed, as well. He ducked out of the way almost as fast as Tomás could lash out at him.
Tomás didn’t want to face them in their wolf form. Not unless he, too, could finish shifting. He backed away and the two men circled one another, looking for an opening.
A sudden, howling scream from the second man surprised Tomás enough that it might have offered his adversary an opening, had the kidnapper not been equally as surprised. One glance told Tomás everything he needed to know, and he almost laughed aloud.
Bron had taken advantage of the other shifter’s momentary incapacitation in the middle of the shift, diving down and landing on his head, where she had taken the opportunity to peck out his eyes.
Just a bird, my ass, he thought, a strange, wild elation rising up in him at the thought of the tiny bird shifter attacking to protect him.
Leaving her own wounded opponent cradling his ruined face and cursing her virulently, Bron launched herself back in the sky. Tomás let his gaze flicker to a point directly behind his adversary’s head. He didn’t even have to say anything—the man ducked off the invisible circle he been holding, turning enough to look behind where he had been and keep Tomás in his vision, at the same time. Tomás chuffed out a laugh as Bronwyn swooped down to peck the top of the man’s head.
We do work well together.
His amusement evaporated as the man swung both arms up to slice at the air where Bronwyn had been, barely missing one of her wings with the blade.
Better get his attention back where it belonged.
Tomás swiped out with one paw, landing a blow for the first time. A long, thin red line appeared across the man’s shirt, blood welling out to soak the fabric even as Tomás stepped back.
That had hit deep enough that he was going to have to shift if he had any hope of healing it. The other shifter knew it, too. He took one staggering step away from Tomás, one of his knives clattering to the ground as he reached up to clutch his wound.
It wasn’t going to be enough.
With a quick, assessing glance at the surrounding landscape, he found what he needed—a place to dump the bodies.
A single slice across the wolf shifter’s throat was enough to finish the job. Tomás matched the killing blow with one against the blinded shifter, as well. Then, using his shifter strength, he heaved the two bodies into the water-filled ditch nearby. It wasn’t perfect cover, but it should give them time to get away.
“Come on,” Tomás half growled at Bronwyn. Then he dashed toward the still-running SUV, the bird swooping behind him. He waited long enough to make sure Bronwyn was in the cab, perched on the seat, before he slammed both doors shut and threw the vehicle into gear. “Hang on,” he commanded as he hit the gas, slung them around, and accelerated onto the highway.
Chapter 6
Bronwyn settled on the dash and tilted her head as she looked at Tomás. “Had to kill them?” she asked.
Had that been completely necessary?
She didn’t really want to murder anyone—not even shifters who were apparently intent on hurting them—but she also realized that it would have been dangerous to leave them alive.
Then again, she hadn’t relished the thought of leaving behind the one whose eyes she’d pecked out. She’d heard of major injuries being healed during shifting, but she knew that the more serious an injury was, the more likely it was to outlast a shift. She wasn’t sure if anyone had ever re-grown eyes. He would have had a compelling reason to hunt her down.
No, she finally decided. It was for the best that the men were dead.
Now that she and Tomas were in the SUV and on the road, she wanted to shift back into her human form to discuss what happened. However, she was oddly reluctant to change, given the fact that she didn’t have any clothing with her. Shifter culture was often unconcerned with nudity, given how often people shifted in front of one another. Human skin became no more inherently embarrassing than fur or feathers. Bron couldn’t count the number of times she had shifted from bird to human in front of other shifters. It had never bothered her before. Now, however, she could imagine the hot blush crawling up her cheeks. Part of it was imagining Tomás’s gold-green eyes examining her, sweeping across her from hair to toes.
At the thought, a shiver raced down her spine, and Bronwyn shook out her feathers to try to dispel it. With a single hop, she moved between the two bucket seats in the front and into the back seat.
Nothing there.
Another hop took her to the back of the bench seat that led into the trunk space. She peered over into the back, spotting what looked like a folded blanket toward the bottom of the canvas box holding a variety of supplies. Grasping the edge of the blanket, she tugged at it with her beak, but with n
o effect.
Dammit.
She tried a few more times, but the blanket wasn’t coming out.
Fine. I’ll do this where he can’t see.
Dropping down in the back seat, Bron huddled down as small as she could make herself, then blinked, focusing on the movement from avian to human.
She always felt it in her wings first, the way they stretched out to either side, her wingtips expanding into hands even as her talons lost their ability to grasp and hold, becoming simply feet to walk with. The hardest part of changing from raven to human, though, was always the loss of flight, that moment when gravity reasserted itself and her bones became heavy, holding her to the ground. When she first came back to her human shape, she always felt enormous, lumbering, ungainly.
Earthbound.
This time was no exception. It was all she could do to pull herself back up to sitting, then onto her knees so she could lean over the back seat and into the trunk, where she grabbed the edge of the blanket poking up out of its spot in the box. With a single tug, she pulled it all the way out and used it to wrap around herself.
It always took her a minute to recover from a shift this direction, almost as if her bird were her natural form and her human form an intruder. She understood how some shifters got trapped in their animal forms. The reverse had never made any sense to her. Why would anyone stay human so long that they lost themselves in it, unable to find their way back to their animal side?
Shifting also made her thirsty. And really hungry.
“Anything to drink up there?” she asked, the croak of her voice sounding remarkably similar to her raven voice.
“I haven’t seen anything, but there was a sign back there for a truck stop up ahead,” Tomás said.
“Good. They’ll have food. And maybe clothes, too,” Bron rasped.
A quick glance into the rearview mirror showed Tomás’s startled gaze resting on her, taking in the blanket wrapped around her torso, the ends tucked in to hold it in place.
Magic After Dark: A Collection of Urban Fantasy and Paranormal Romance Novels Page 5