“Hardly.” He’d been there several times, from childhood onwards, even recently for meals in the restaurant and concerts on the lawn. But this evening, the breeze had the lamps in the trees swinging and brought the lilies’ scent cloying and waxy to his nose. It also ruffled the stream and pond, and something, perhaps the twilight or the bobbing circles of light from overhead, silver-dappled the ducks and flamingos, who quacked and cawed. He and Jago usually attracted attention, more so when they were out together, but that evening, every glance, gaze and double-take felt like a lash and a reproach. He didn’t want to bring Ellie into a risky situation, but he wished she was with them.
“I know.” Jago, unsurprisingly, picked up on his thoughts. “Feels like something’s missing, right?”
“It is. She is.” They’d have to complete the next stages of their union, their triad—their match. “As soon as this is over.”
“As soon as she’s come to her senses,” Jago added.
They walked through the country woodland garden and then past the fountains and walkways of the Spanish garden. “I’ll get drinks. We’d better blend into the evening.” Jago ducked under the awning of the marquee and got two beers from the bar. “Over there.”
Over there was the Tudor-style garden, replete with nooks, secret corners and high hedges—exactly the meeting place for parties not wanting to be seen or overheard. Ludo checked the digital voice recorder he carried—one of Chris’s for his lab work—was on. Jago had a similar device. Carrying their drinks, the two made their way slowly down the cloister-like walkway to the benches at the end. A man sat there and as they reached him, a second figure stepped out of the wisteria-draped archway.
“Mr…Roberts?” Jago asked, looking from the craggy-faced man on the bench to the burly dark-bearded man behind him.
“And Mr…Robertson,” the seated man replied, indicating the man at his back. “Sit.”
“Dr Elton couldn’t be here. We’re negotiating for him,” Jago continued.
“Oh, too busy?” Roberts enquired. “Putting out fires, as the saying goes?”
“People could have been killed!” Ludo burst out. His skin crawled at his proximity to these two creeps.
“What are you talking about?” Roberts’ raised brow was pure theatre.
“Never mind.” Jago shot Ludo a warning look. “See, we’re just as involved as Chris. We’ve financed his project so far. We stand to lose a bundle if he pulls the plug on his research. So, how much compensation are you offering him to sign everything over to you, to cease and desist his process?”
“And the amount matters to you because…? I know who you are, obviously.” Roberts smiled at the twins. “You’re hardly negotiators and I doubt you care about what type of fuel gets used. What are you here for?”
“We want to hear what you have to say.”
“Oh, I say, my good fellow, isn’t that feudal of one, taking care of one’s employees like that?”
Was that supposed to be an impersonation of how they spoke? Pathetic.
“I can guarantee we value those who work for us better than you’re getting treated to act as lackeys for your betters,” Jago mocked. “Plus we don’t ask our chaps to go sneaking around—yes, I know you didn’t fire bomb the lab.” His shifter sense of smell detected no contact with petrol. “Probably too busy dressing in overalls as a painter or decorator to leave a suspicious package at our building.”
“Hardly!” scoffed Roberts. “That was one of yours who did that.” He sat backs his hands in his pockets, chuckling. “Yeah, your staff’s not as loyal as you think, old chap. Ask Ms Jameson where she was between the hours of twelve and one.”
“I don’t believe you,” Ludo snapped.
“You should, when she was the one who tipped my employers off about the bio process in the first place.” Roberts laughed. “Sharp as a tack that one, and eager for more of the pie.”
Tori Jameson, Michael’s assistant? Ludo felt furious. If only they’d been able to enter the building and retrieve the package, they’d have scented her involvement at once. He hoped CCTV would reveal her presence in the building.
“Still don’t believe a word you say,” Jago drawled.
“Not even when I say she’s none too happy you turned her down? Made it clear she wasn’t good enough for the likes of you? And that she wouldn’t be heartbroken if things…came to an end with your latest piece, say as a bonus for all little Miss Jameson’s work?”
Cold dread coursed through Ludo at the man’s tone and meaning.
Jago tensed, obviously understanding, too. “You wouldn’t be so stupid as to threaten Ellie. Because if you did—”
It happened so quickly and all at once, Jago standing as he spoke, Roberts’ signaling to his goon, a gun glimmering in Robertson’s hand, a noise, Jago falling back onto his bench with a cry and bright red stain as blooming on his chest, and Ludo leaping for Roberts. When time unfroze, Ludo’s arm was around Roberts’ throat, cutting off his air, and Jago was shouting his name.
“Ludo!” It wasn’t pain that was the overriding emotion in Jago’s voice—shifters could take a lot of punishment and could heal quickly enough. Instead his tone was laced with fear, fear for his brother, because the arm that held Roberts was becoming longer and thicker, padded with sinew and muscle and covered in pelt.
An involuntary adrenaline-overload shift. Ludo fought the excess raw norepinephrine flooding his body. The autonomic nervous system overload was a consequence of his twindom, of his link to his brother, and hadn’t happened for years, but the last time had been caused by Jago being hurt too.
“Ludo.” Jago tried to rise, hand out to him, but sank back, grimacing and clutched his chest. “You have to calm down.”
But he couldn’t. Not with the scent of his brother’s blood in his nostrils, the sight of it glowing red in the semi-dark and the piece of filth who’d hurt his brother in his grasp. In his claws. To be made to pay for his action. The human’s fear and terror seeped from his pores, into Ludo’s flattening nostrils and his molten-silver eyes saw every drop of sweat the man excreted. The clatter of his henchman dropping his handgun boomed like a thunderclap.
Roberts shrieked in pain and choked, desperate for air.
“Brother,” Jago tried again. “It’s all right. I’m fine, see?” He held up a hand, and it being blood-stained made Ludo throw back his head and roar. He couldn’t stop his transformation, not even when Jago shifted his fingernails into claws. The small silver bullet protruded from his skin, had been pushed to the surface by his shifter healing abilities, so it was easy for Jago to pluck the small pellet from his chest. He held it out for Ludo to see, but the sight and the smell of his twin’s pain enraged Ludo more.
A sound came from his left—Robertson starting to run. That couldn’t happen. Ludo’s jacket and shirt ripped with the force of his wings budding, emerging because he had to give chase. No one hurt his brother, threatened his friends, and spoke ill of his mate. He’d hunt him down just as soon as he’d incapacitated this red-faced, pop-eyed vermin. Because he had to protect his family—
Whump! The noise was Robertson hitting the ground, born down by two men who’d rushed with preternatural speed to the secluded corner, as did a woman approaching Jago, holding up her hands to show she was friendly.
“I’m a nurse,” she said, her voice calm, and she pulled free her long silk wrap to hold over Jago’s wound and apply compression.
“Shifters,” Ludo gritted out.
The same was true of the student-aged man coming to Ludo and indicating the prey he held. “Let me take him. I won’t let him escape. I’m stronger than I look, believe me,” he said, his accent Scottish.
Ludo stared at his brother, seeing Jago sitting easily and holding his makeshift pad himself. Ludo shrank back into himself, slowly, reluctantly, his adrenomedullary response calming, receding. He loosened his grip, and Roberts fell forward, wheezing, purple in the face, his hands to his throat. The young Scot stood over him,
ready, in a martial arts stance.
“I’m calling the police, Ludo. And we have to make sure Tori Jameson doesn’t get away with what she’s done.” Jago pulled out his cell. By the time he’d spoken to whoever answered, Ludo was human again. “You’re okay,” Jago whispered, slinging an arm around him, ready to shield him from the people running up, shouting, exclaiming now they’d figured out something was going on in this secluded corner. He called Michael, filling the CEO in on his assistant’s treachery.
“Who are you?” Ludo burst out, pointing to the two men who held Robertson to the floor. “Wild boar shifters—that I can tell—but…”
“Fox.” The nurse raised a hand.
“Scottish wildcat,” the student said.
“You don’t know us, and you came to our aid?”
“Why wouldn’t we?” the larger of the boar shifters replied from the ground. “We should look out for one another.”
“We’re better together,” his friend added.
“We all have things to offer. To one another, and society.” Ludo swallowed. He looked at Jago, who, of course, understood. Understood what a different but equal united coalition could do, or should do, or should be able to do, formed of shifters, and not just for shifters. For society. And it should be formed by those who understood, who lived it. Shifters.
“Wanting to be separatists, that’s more like Malcolm X, right? But being together, with humans, we’d be more like Martin Luther King’s dream,” said the Scottish man.
“I…think we have to speak to Ellie.” Jago moved back out of the pandemonium, guiding Ludo with him.
“Jago, look.”
Smith was making his way towards them, flicking his gaze from one to the other, taking in their less than pristine appearances.
“Why aren’t you with Ellie? You’re supposed to be guarding her!” Jago snapped before the bodyguard could question him.
Smith shook his head. “She made me stop the car, and then she informed me that what I was doing was unlawful detention and false imprisonment. Oh, and kidnaping. That I couldn’t detain her; I had no right. She banged on the window until people gathered, and she slipped away in the confusion. But she called out that she wouldn’t be pressing charges.”
“What?”
Before Ludo could question Smith further, his cell signalled a message. So did Jago’s. They both opened them and read them. Both were the same. sent by the same person.
As you don’t respect me or my beliefs, my goals and work and treat me as a lesser, weaker being, practically as a pet, and don’t take me or my intelligence or capabilities seriously, our whatever it was is at an end. I hereby declare this match null and void. Do not attempt to contact me. Sincerely, Dr Eleanor Maxwell.
“Ellie’s gone!” Ludo cried, raising anguished eyes to his brother. “Jago! We have to get her back! What do we do?”
“I don’t know.” Jago sat heavily. “But, whatever it takes, we’ll do it. Agreed?”
As if there could be any doubt. They’d move the sky and the earth to get their mate back. Just as soon as they figured out how.
Chapter Eleven
A month. A whole month since Ellie had left them. She refused to answer her phone or her door or see them at work. Anything sent to her was returned to the Calter HQ. She’d reluctantly agreed via Smith to accept a discreet, arms’-length bodyguard while they dealt with the aftermath of the Lytton company attempting to suppress Chris’s formula, and Tori Jameson’s treachery, and she’d relayed a message on that occasion that she was fine and they had to figure out what they wanted.
It would have cut deeper, if they hadn’t been consumed day and night, body and soul, in their project, their goal. They had no idea if this would work, but what choice did they have? If not, they’d… Well. Jago had no idea, but didn’t say that. He was the eldest, had to keep his younger brother going.
He stretched in his desk chair, groaning as his bones cracked. He looked around the office, at the charts and maps, the files, the reference books, the law books, the sheaves of paper. And they’d pulled it all together in a month. “This must be how Bob Geldof felt when he organized Live Aid,” he said.
“Who? Organised what?” questioned Ross, squinting up from his own piles of papers and laptop.
“Bob Geld— Are you taking the piss?” Jago narrowed his eyes at the young Scots shifter who’d come to their aid a month ago in the Kensington rooftop gardens and who they’d persuaded to help formalize and organize the Shifter Coalition, which they now headed.
In truth, the young Scot hadn’t needed much arm-twisting. A recent Business and Marketing graduate, he’d been looking for work. And he found it here, thought Jago. He’d proven more than capable of doing what needed to be done while the twins were off up and down the country, meeting with the varying shifter groups, with representatives from government and opposition, with civil servants, policy groups…
“I didn’t think we’d do it,” Ludo admitted.
“Me neither.” Michael grinned from the doorway, casting a glance around the cluttered space.
The twins had given up their rarely used office in the Calter Group building and turned most of their apartment above it into their own workspace. Having formed Calter-Gryphon Ltd, they’d divested their own forays into business from the family group and estate holdings, deeming that fairer on the existing staff. It was up to them to find their own and manage their own businesses, while still adhering to their responsibilities and obligations in the group, although as Ludo had said, they’d never find anyone as loyal and dedicated as Michael.
“But I’m glad you did,” Michael continued. “I didn’t really understand at first. Any of it. Why you wanted to branch out from the traditional property and retail field, for instance. At first, I put it down to youth. Rebellion and all that.”
“Youth?” the irreverent Ross scoffed, looking from himself to Jago to Ludo.
“There was an element of that,” Jago confessed. He threw a screwed-up ball of paper at Ross and found Michael a chair.
“Maybe.” Michael tilted his head. “But it was always more about helping people you thought deserved a helping hand. Your friends, yes, but people who you believed needed to catch a break. Your version of giving back.”
“It’s not exactly charity,” Ludo protested. “All three ventures we’ve started so far are proving solid.”
“And useful,” Ross chipped in. Well, he would—one of the first residents at Haliford House, the reduced-rent serviced apartment building, he was benefiting from their commercial undertakings.
“And I didn’t really see why you wanted to step into the limelight.” Michael shook his head. “That’s never been the Calter way.”
“Maybe it should have been,” Ludo replied.
“You sound just like El—”
“It’s all right. You can say her name,” Ludo assured the stricken Michael. It didn’t hurt now as much as it had done a month ago. Her loss didn’t wrench quite so hard. Especially with how busy they’d been.
“And I suppose a lot of it is down to her,” Jago said. “We had to step up.”
“Because she works in this field?” Ross questioned. “I’ve heard of her, of course. Read her studies, her articles…”
“Yes, we had to stop being selfish and elitist.”
“Elitist? How?” Ross gasped.
“Picking and choosing who to help, for instance. For whatever reason.” Jago acknowledged Michael with a wry twist of his lips. “Perhaps to allay our guilt at having been born with so much. Who knows.”
“And wanting to be acknowledged at little cost to ourselves,” Ludo added. “And, yes, we do have to live up to Ellie, and I very much hope she’s proud of us. Because she’s our mate.”
“Oh, wow!” Ross stood and clapped them on the backs.
Michael stood, too. “You know your father is not in agreement with your course of action, with what you’re doing.” He had to clear his throat to speak. “But I know he’s p
roud of you.”
Ludo quirked a brow. “You’re not getting all mushy in your old age, are you?” he enquired of the man who’d been a strict taskmaster, one who, even now, kept their noses to the grindstone.
“And if I am?” Michael surprised them by asking.
“Then please just keep it together this afternoon,” Jago begged. “You’re coming?”
“The big meeting? The culmination of all your work, all that time and money spent? Wouldn’t miss it for the world,” their CEO assured them.
* * *
“Kind of wish I could,” Jago confessed a few hours later as they walked onto the famous grass of Lord's Cricket Ground in St John's Wood, the iconic venue chosen for its size and accessibility. The Coalition had provided coaches and busses so anyone who wanted to attend the historic meeting could do so. The stands could seat almost thirty thousand, and add the capacity of the pitch to that…
“Blood-y hell!” Ludo exclaimed, his gaze drawn by the size of the crowd.
“Oh, man!” Vikram cried, spotting them. He led the applause.
Jago, led to the largest of the stands, shook his head. Someone thrust a mic into his hand. “I’m not making a speech,” he announced. “This isn’t about that. It’s about you.” He indicated the various stands and areas of the grass, all bearing various groups, from shifter species assemblies and their heads to government officials. Representatives had flown in from US shifter communities, from alphas of packs to law enforcement liaison, to explain or be available to answer questions on any and all aspects of shifter communities there. The space-age-looking bubble of the media centre was full, too. “That’s it.”
He handed back the mic and refused all further questions and plaudits.
“Is this like Woodstock?” Ross queried of the Calters.
“How old do you bloody think we are?” Jago fumed.
“Just, anybody who’s anybody seems to be here,” Ross said, before he was swept off to talk to the BBC.
Paranormal Dating Agency: Think of England (Kindle Worlds Novella) (Roar Britannia Book 1) Page 9