by A. C. Arthur
Nivea looked to Eli. He was about to say something when the clapping began.
“Thank you. Thank you,” the man stepping to the stage said, nodding his head stiffly as his way of addressing the crowd.
“That’s Crowe!” Ezra all but shouted into their ears.
Chapter 23
“We’re not making a scene. Wait until there’s a reason to act. Otherwise we’ll get him when he steps offstage,” Rome directed.
Nivea nodded, rolling her shoulders back and focusing her attention on the man dressed in the U.S. Marine Corps uniform and speaking into the microphone, acknowledging that this was how a true monster looked.
“Thank you all for graciously accepting my invitation,” Crowe began. “It is not every day that like-minded individuals of our training and caliber are gathered in one place.”
“He really means like-minded assholes,” Caprise said through the link.
Nivea didn’t even try to hide her smile.
“I won’t waste time with platitudes and chitchat, but will get right to the point. Tonight I have gathered you here to allow you to be the first to witness the next phase in the world’s defense. I introduce to you the Genesis Project, Prototype V.”
With his words Nivea’s cat reared up, her back straightening, cat’s eyes widening as she focused on the center of the stage where Crowe had just stepped from the podium, his arm extended to the curtains opening in the center. There was immediate mumbling throughout the room as one of those damned hybrids stepped through the curtain, dressed in battle fatigues and even wearing a fitted cap pulled down low over its brow. To hide the eerie green eyes, no doubt.
It took long, wide strides until coming to a stop at the edge of the stage. Crowe looked to be saying something, his lips moving. And then all hell broke loose.
The hybrid stepped right off the stage, lifting its beefy arms and slamming them down on the first table in its reach, its mouth opening so that a deafening roar vibrated throughout the room. The guests screamed, some of them getting up from their seats as the curtains moved and out came two more hybrids.
“Cut the lights! Cut the lights!” Rome yelled into his com link.
“We’ll take the one over here,” Eli said, coming up behind Nivea, touching a hand to her back.
They moved easily through the dark, whereas the humans were still scrambling around. They couldn’t see, and also, they didn’t know what the hell was roaring at them or breaking all the glassware around them. Nivea ran beside Eli until the hybrid was standing directly in front of them, roaring and dripping its sickly ooze.
“On three,” Eli told her, but Nivea ignored him.
Instead she leapt forward, catching hold of the hybrid’s arm and propelling herself up the front of its body. Her feet slammed into its chest and it began to fall backward just as her clawed hand swung out to the spot beneath its ear, knowing she would take it down. It was quick and jolting as her body almost immediately made contact with the floor. A strong arm went around her waist and pulled her upward to her relief. The angry voice in her ear was not.
“I said on three,” Eli yelled.
“Yeah, I forgot,” she replied, without the shrug that would have only irritated him more. “Behind you!” she yelled just in time for him to turn and strike the hybrid in the stomach area. It barely stopped moving but the second of contact gave Eli enough time to send another blow to its arm, then its lower leg and finally, to leap onto its back and dispatch the hybrid. He jumped down before the ashes could drop him to the floor as they had Nivea. They didn’t speak again but turned immediately to the continued chaos in the room, fighting, side by side.
* * *
Outside the Gaylord, the night seemed as normal as any other. Cars pulled into the garage to park, while people stepped out of the vehicles and headed into the hotel’s lobby. None were the wiser, not even the woman who walked directly beside him. He almost laughed at the situation. She’d looked up and smiled when he opened the door for her.
“Thank you,” she said, her long lashes blinking wildly against the smooth ivory tone of her skin.
“You’re so very welcome,” he replied with a smile of his own, one that revealed his long, sharp teeth.
She gasped and tried to hurry away but he was quicker. Reaching out he grabbed her, pulling her to him, chuckling. “What’s the matter, baby? You don’t like sharp teeth?” he asked before ducking his head and licking the cleavage she so boldly displayed through the low-cut blouse she was wearing. She let out a scream that should have broken the glass doors. And he bit her right there, teeth sinking straight into the pliant human skin, pulling his mouth away as she continued to yell, then pushing her body back until she fell onto the ground.
That one action set everything in motion and only seconds later, there were rogues and those fucking hybrids coming from every direction. They’d been in cars, behind bushes, inside the hotel, inside the garage, every one on special orders from Boden. And now, with Boden’s appearance, they were free to do whatever the hell they wanted.
Oh happy day, he thought, ripping through the lobby as his human body shifted into that of a cougar and he roared to make his presence known.
“Shit! They’re fucking everywhere out here! Cats!” Zach yelled into the com link. “They’re goddamned cats!”
Rome’s standing order was that they not shift under any circumstances. The Assembly Leader had said this time and time again, but as Zach came to a stop at the corner of Waterfront Street, after having run a block from where he’d been stationed, all he could see was pandemonium. There were cats climbing up the walls of the Gaylord, jumping through the resort windows. They stood on top of cars, crashing through hoods as they ran to the nearest human that appeared. Whoever they saw they terrorized, either by picking them up or tossing them a distance that all but assured they would be dead when they hit the ground. There was screaming and yelling and the otherwise cool air stilled with the stench that they’d all recognized … death.
“We don’t have a choice,” Zach finally said into the com link, before shifting as he ran to confront a rogue that had just pounced on the hood of a moving car.
* * *
“Shit. Shit. Shit!” Priya cursed from the back of the news van she’d been sitting in with Bas and four other guards.
Their assignment had been to wait and to monitor. Rome had been banking on exposing Crowe for his illegal arms dealing with Robert Slakeman and having Priya there to get the scoop on that story to possibly take the heat off the cat people sightings. She was sure he had no idea the scoop would be the cat people!
“I’m getting out,” Bas yelled. “You three stay with her and drive to Havenway. Now!”
He was heading to the back door when Priya grabbed him, tears already welling in her eyes as her heart pounded in her chest. She’d known who and what he was, knew what this entire situation had meant for him and his tribe, but damn if she’d let herself believe that something would happen to him, that maybe she’d never see him again. She opened her mouth but the words wouldn’t come.
“I’m coming back to you,” he told her seriously. “I promise you I’m coming back.”
She couldn’t talk, her lips trembling as his touched hers softly. “I promise,” he whispered again before disappearing through that door.
“Promise.” Priya heard her own whisper as the truck pulled off. She tried to keep looking at him, to keep Bas in her sights, but there were too many of them.
They were all over the place in what seemed like seconds, like they’d simply been waiting. Like they’d laid the trap for the Shadows and were now pouncing, killing. There was a time when the reporter in her would have demanded she get out of that truck, to follow the story wherever it led. But that was before she’d met Bas and the shifters. It was before she saw what they were and realized how quickly all of this could go bad and how the world as she’d known it could change with her words and observations. She’d vowed to do the opposite of what she’d
been taught at the Post about doing whatever was necessary for the story. Instead, she committed herself to protecting her kind and those she loved. Now, all that had seemed for nothing.
* * *
Rome and the others broke through the doors of the ballroom just in time to see more people running, this time from big cats with even bigger teeth. The roaring and chuffing sounded like they were in the middle of the jungle and not a five-star resort.
He’d heard the yelling through the com link from other Shadows. Bas and Cole had just checked in with their locations in the parking garage of the building. X had abandoned his spot at the control board and was headed out to take on as many as he could. Nick was standing right beside Rome, his cat on the verge of breaking free. Rome reached out a hand to grab his best friend’s arm.
“We are Shadow Shifters,” he said to Nick.
Nick looked right into Rome’s eyes and nodded his head. “And we will prevail,” he finished Rome’s statement.
They parted ways, each of them knowing what had to be done. Eli saw the moment Rome had made his decision and Eli was right on his heels, pulling Nivea along with him. He’d been at the stairs when something stopped him. It wasn’t a sound or an occurrence, but a feeling deep in his gut, a shifting of something other than his cat and he turned around immediately.
“What is it?” Nivea asked as she was pushed up against him by someone screaming and trying to get out of the building. “Eli?” she called to him again, lifting a hand to his chin, attempting to turn his face to hers.
He touched the wrist of that hand, holding her still as he continued to stare back toward the ballroom they’d just come from. Through the open doors, three uniformed men came running out, guns drawn. He remembered the first two had sat at the two tables closest to the stage and they hadn’t seemed at all surprised when the hybrids had appeared. The last one had been on the stage—Crowe. He had looked cocky but Eli had sensed some trepidation in him, definitely some anxiety. Now, that anxiety radiated as fear, combining with the sickening scent of terror that permeated the air. In the next moment Eli saw Ezra, and Eli’s cat roared deep inside because he knew how this confrontation was going to end.
Lawrence Crowe had emotionally and physically abused Ezra’s mate, Dawn. He’d threatened Dawn’s father and had him kidnapped. Crowe had escaped when Ezra had attempted to apprehend him back in Sedona. To say there was bad blood between them that went beyond Crowe’s creation of the hybrids was an understatement. Ezra shouted to Crowe and he turned to see who it was calling after him. Subsequently, he lifted his arm and aimed the gun at Ezra’s head and Eli knew exactly what would happen next.
His brother shifted into the huge black jaguar with glowing green eyes that Eli knew was more powerful than just about any shifter he’d ever seen. Opening his mouth wide, he roared and leapt toward Crowe, but not before Crowe fired the gun. The cat knocked Crowe to the floor and Eli was already on his way across the hallway.
He didn’t know if Nivea was still behind him because he’d released his hold on her the moment his claws extended from his fingers. Mowing people down in front of him was a necessity, his brother’s life was in danger. When he came to the spot where Crowe had gone down, it was just in time to see Ezra’s cat bite deeply into Crowe’s skull, killing the man instantly as his paws held him down by the chest.
Someone screamed so loud Eli’s ears rang. The other two military men that had been moving with Crowe were long gone as Eli looked around for them. Then he saw Nivea going to her knees, her hand on the back of Ezra’s cat’s head.
“Let him go,” she was saying as quietly as she could through all the noise. “Let him go, Ezra. It is done.”
For the first time in the last five minutes it seemed, Eli breathed, he actually sucked in air and released it, yelling into his com link, “I need a couple of guards to the ballroom, now!” he yelled. “Shifter injured. Get here now!”
He moved closer to Ezra, touching the flank of the cat where he saw the darkening of blood. “Come on, bro. Back up over here so I can look at your wound.”
Ezra’s teeth were still locked on Crowe and Eli watched the grisly sight, feeling the same deep grief he’d felt when they were back in the Sierra Leone rain forest, staring down at what they’d both done to Acacia and her guards.
“Come on, let’s go,” he said again, as both he and Nivea rubbed their palms along the cat’s heaving body.
There was another roar as Ezra finally released his hold, Crowe’s body slumping in the pool of blood beneath it. With both his arms around the cat, Eli guided his brother back into the ballroom. He didn’t have to push past people this time, because nobody wanted to be near a large adult male jaguar that had just killed a man in plain sight.
“You did good,” Eli told Ezra when they were finally in the ballroom, the cat lying on its side against the wall.
Its flanks heaved up and down as if it was the hardest thing it ever had to do.
“You’re going to be fine,” Nivea told Ezra. “Just fine. As soon as the team gets here they’ll take you back to Havenway and Ary will fix you right up.”
There was a hitch in her last words and Eli rubbed his hand down his brother’s head. “Yeah, he’s strong. He’ll be fine.”
Five guards came running into the room, stopping when they saw Ezra’s cat lying on the floor. They looked grim, barely constraining their anger.
Eli stood, directing them immediately. “Get him back to Havenway, now! Radio someone there to tell them he’s coming and to be ready.”
There was a nod and then the shifters were moving, lifting the cat together as if it weighed no more than a child. They moved fast across the ballroom floor over the broken glass and overturned furniture, bursting through the exit door and disappearing as quickly as they’d come.
“We have to go,” Nivea said, touching a hand to Eli’s back.
Eli nodded.
“Rome and Nick are heading to the garage to help Bas there,” she continued.
He nodded again, his body trembling with rage, his teeth clenching to keep the cat at bay.
“Pull back! Pull back!” They both heard blaring through their com links from the Assembly Leader. “Reporters are here, humans are dying. Pull back!”
Rome was calling them off, commanding them all to stand down and head back to Havenway. They’d been exposed and there was nothing any of them could do about it. Around him Eli heard the sirens of law officials and ambulances, he heard the screams of humans both afraid and wounded, and the unmistakable roaring of big cats enraged and hunting. The two worlds mixed, human and shifter, and it was nothing like the Assembly Leader had envisioned, nothing at all.
“Eli?” Nivea said more urgently. “We must go now!”
He turned to her then, staring directly into her glowing cat’s eyes. “Boden is here.”
Chapter 24
Eli was moving quickly and Nivea was struggling to stay behind him. He reached for her and she extended her hand to grasp his. He pulled her along, while people were everywhere, yelling and screaming and crying. The acidic stench of blood permeated her senses as she looked over and upward to see a cheetah jumping from its perch on a counter into the crowd, biting down on whomever it landed on. Her chest clenched at the sight, her ears ringing with every cry she heard.
Each way she turned it was the same thing, a big cat, or one of those horrid hybrids, mowing through the crowd with force and destruction in their eyes. They were killing and pillaging like some prehistoric scene come horribly to life. Her chest heaved as her cat roared inside, ready at any moment to break free, to defend and protect.
Something or someone slammed into her back and pain radiated up her left side. She yelled out, turning her head back to see what it was and completely froze as she looked pure evil directly in the eye.
It happened so quickly she wouldn’t have been able to stop it even if she could. In the next seconds she was wrenched through the crowd, lifted above everyone, and carried
over a huge shoulder. The rogue that had her moved fast, leaping over people and slamming her into an elevator. Nivea fell to the floor and pain soared up her side. Looking down, she saw that she’d been cut. The sonofabitch had sunk his claws into her side, no doubt to cut down on her fighting back. It obviously had no idea who the hell it was dealing with.
She quickly came to her feet and faced her attacker the moment the elevator doors closed and prayed for once in her life that everything she’d learned, everything she knew would see her through this moment. She could not die, that was not an option. Not only was she more than ready to live her life with her mate, but she knew unequivocally that Eli would carry her death as his third strike of guilt over females. After seeing his brother wounded this would destroy him, and Nivea was determined not to let that happen.
Fists clenching at her sides, she was more than prepared to fight when the elevator doors opened and the rogue stepped out. It shifted into a cheetah and ran immediately to her left.
“What the—” she began to say, looking down the hall to the cheetah leaving the scene.
She was just about to turn back and get onto the elevator so she could head back down to where Eli was, but a familiar scent stopped her. Standing still for a moment, Nivea cursed under her breath. She had been looking down toward the elevator buttons, but slowly lifted her head, turning in the opposite direction from where the cheetah had gone, frowning when she saw his smiling face.
“It always boils down to you and me.” Richard Cannon spoke slowly, his hands clasped in front of him as he stood at the end of the hall near a bank of windows.
“There is no you and me,” Nivea told him, noting the elevator doors closing, leaving her alone with him, once again.