Body Master

by C. J. Barry

  He spread his arms wide and took a bobbing step toward her. “Go ahead. Shoot away.”

  It wouldn’t do any good; she knew that now. He wouldn’t dare her if he hadn’t adapted to bullets. He’d simply thin his molecular structure so they’d pass right through him.

  On the other hand, she’d feel much better. So she hit him with the AA-12 in nonstop bursts. Jack simply stood there, and the ammo pelted the wall and windows behind him.

  He threw his head back and laughed, the sound echoing through the building.

  Bastard.

  She glanced at the 3GL grenades strapped to Riley, twenty feet away. Too far. With her options dwindling fast, she settled on her instincts. That, and the one thing she could always count on with Shifters—their unqualified arrogance.

  Jack suddenly vanished in a puff of black smoke and materialized a few feet away. Terrific, he was one of the more powerful ones. All Shifters were killing machines—lightning fast, deadly hands, thick armor skin. But one of their deadliest weapons was the ability to thin their structure to reduce friction so they could move fast—really fast. Becoming shadows. It was going to be a challenge to get her hands on him without being sliced to ribbons.

  She breathed and harnessed her anger and anguish, pushing them deeply into her concentration. She’d rather die here with Riley than leave this monster alive, or worse, allow him replicate to Riley’s DNA.

  Her right hand flexed in anticipation and hope. Just work one more time, she said to herself. And so far, it had. Which was why she still used it. Luck was for suckers.

  He poofed, and her second vision followed the trail he left behind. He seemed surprised as she turned to face him before he re-formed.

  He said, “Aren’t you gonna try to run? I’ll even give you a head start.”

  That’s more than I’ll give you. “No, I’m good.”

  He rushed forward in a cloud of black smoke, bringing him a few feet away. She saw the hunger in his black eyes and felt the evil in his black heart. Cold air flowed around her.

  “I like killin’ the girls,” Jack said, thoroughly enjoying his little game.

  Bud, you are in for the surprise of your life. She repositioned her hands around the shotgun. “Then you should know, I’m not like other girls.”

  “You all taste the same to me.” He lunged then, mouth open, and she jammed her gun down his throat. For a split second, he gagged, and in that second, she pressed her right hand to his chest.

  Concentrate, breathe . . . “Shift!”

  A burst of heat pumped through her hand, coming from a source she didn’t understand and didn’t question. All that mattered was what it did to Shifters. It changed them, forcing them to shift back to whoever they were last.

  She wasn’t kidding. She really wasn’t like other girls.

  The intense energy hurt, driving electricity up her arm. She pulled her hand away, stretching a ribbon of white residual energy between them until it snapped. The Shifter knocked the shotgun out of his mouth with a roar and then took a few steps back.

  She held her ground, waiting. Jack’s eyes widened as his chest began to contract around where her hand had been, and he clutched his stomach and stumbled to the floor.

  His body contorted grotesquely, and his joints began popping, skin rippling with twisted bones. The clawed hands sprouted rudimentary finger buds. The thick legs narrowed. His head imploded and then reshaped.

  All the while, she listened to his screams with cold indifference. This was what he deserved. The same mercy he’d shown Riley and the other innocent people he’d murdered. There was no compassion in his soul, no conscience in his mind. Nothing worth saving.

  She walked over to Riley and knelt to check for a pulse, even though she knew it wouldn’t be there. His Kevlar vest and chest had been sliced open cleanly.

  “Oh, Riley,” she whispered.

  A sudden sob clutched her throat, piercing her heart beneath all her armor. A hundred thoughts flooded her mind, but one was crystal clear—she’d failed him. She hung her head. I’m sorry.

  The Shifter had stopped writhing by the time she pulled herself together. Tranquilizer gun in hand, she stood over Jack’s human form, the last shape he’d used, created from stolen human DNA. He was just your average guy. Could have been her neighbor or a Wall Street broker or a husband with a wife and kids. Shifters didn’t care where or how they got their “skins.”

  In her mind’s eye, the Shifter’s demon form shimmered around him like a ghost. He was still an alien, but right now he was as vulnerable as any human.

  She fought the urge to use her Glock instead of a tranquilizer. She could easily blame it on self-defense. She could even justify it with Riley’s death. No one would question her. No one would care if one more Shifter died.

  But her orders were to bring in Shifters alive whenever possible, and she was a good agent, like Riley. She wouldn’t disgrace his memory. Not today.

  Today, she lifted the tranquilizer gun, aimed, and hit Jack the Ripper in the heart.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Seneca knocked once and walked into her boss’s office. He looked up from behind the placard that read XCEL: Extraterrestrial Criminal Enforcement Locality, New York City Division, and motioned for her to sit down.

  Director Rory MacGregor was as solid on the inside as he was on the outside. A twenty-year veteran of the politics and bullshit that went along with running a newly created, clandestine perimeter law enforcement operation like XCEL. Seneca was pretty sure he’d started with a full head of hair when he was assigned to this post last year. He was a good man, and he hated Shifters as much as she did.

  “You barked?” she asked wearily, but already she could tell it was something bad. Although at this point, “bad” was relative.

  MacGregor closed the file he was reviewing to give her his full attention. “I have some news you aren’t going to like.”

  If MacGregor thought she wouldn’t like it, it was beyond bad. “I had to go over and tell Riley’s wife that the man she loved, the father of her four children, had been killed. Nothing can be worse than that.”

  His expression didn’t change. “You have a new partner.”

  Her mouth dropped open. “Riley’s body isn’t even cold yet. What the hell?”

  MacGregor muttered, “News travels fast.”

  “What, are they lined up in the wings?” she said testily.

  “You weren’t supposed to get him until the end of the month—”

  “What? And you didn’t tell me?”

  MacGregor said, “Because I knew you’d react like this.”

  If she wasn’t so pissed, she’d be speechless. “Like someone who already had a partner?”

  He raised a hand. “It’s for the good of the agency—”

  That was crap. “We don’t break up partners,” she said. “We don’t work that way. You don’t work that way.”

  “I do now,” he said. “You have a new partner.”

  She squinted as he pursed his lips until they turned white. There was more. “And?”

  There was a long pause, which really worried her because MacGregor was a blunt, direct kind of guy. “And he’s a Shifter.”

  She blinked once. She’d been up all night and all day after handing Jack over to the cryogenics boys to put on ice, taking Riley’s body to the morgue, and consoling Mara. It was 4:00 P.M. now, and her sleep-deprived brain wasn’t firing on all pistons. Because she thought she heard MacGregor say that her new partner was a Shifter.

  “Come again?”

  He looked at her apologetically. “It wasn’t my idea. This comes from the top. A new initiative.”

  She shook her head, disbelief turning to dread. “This is a joke, right?”

  He pursed his lips again. Sonofabitch, she thought. “What the hell kind of initiative puts a shapeshifter on the force that’s supposed to be getting rid of them?”

  MacGregor gave a big sigh. “Apparently, this one.”

  Well, she
was wide-awake now and all she wanted to say was, Are you fucking crazy? Luckily, a few responsible brain cells thought better and she said, “No. We aren’t doing this.”

  He held up his palm. “Don’t even try. This is bigger than you or me.”

  Apparently he hadn’t heard her the first time. “Okay, let me rephrase. I’m not doing this.”

  MacGregor pushed back in his chair and regarded her for a serious moment. “If you don’t take him, the Committee will shut us down.”

  She leaned over his desk. “We go out there and face death every night. We’re the only thing standing between the public and murderers who come in all shapes. How can the Committee even think about shutting us down?”

  He shrugged. “Because they’re paying the bills?”

  She couldn’t believe this was MacGregor. The man who handpicked every member of this team. The man who never left this office. The man who’d built this agency from the ground up. “Why are you buying into this crap?”

  He looked at her, and she caught his frustration full bore. “I’ve lost twenty-seven agents in the past year. Two-thirds of my force. It’s the same in the XCEL offices in Chicago, LA, Vegas, Miami . . . The Committee doesn’t find that acceptable, and frankly, neither do I. I’m tired of seeing my agents come back to me in body bags.”

  He didn’t need to quote statistics to her. Twenty-six funerals were forever burned in her memory. Soon to be twenty-seven. She knew the stakes. She also knew what would happen if they stopped trying.

  “We’ve also captured over eighty Shifters,” she reminded him.

  “Sixty-two of those were in the first nine months,” he pointed out. “Now they’ve adapted to every conventional weapon we have, and R and D can’t develop new ones fast enough. And hell, we still don’t have equipment to identify a Shifter on sight. One could walk in that door, and we wouldn’t know it.”

  “We can handle this ourselves,” she told him, feeling her dread grow. “All those deaths will have been for nothing if the Committee lets Shifters in here.”

  “You can’t look at it that way,” he said. “It isn’t about vengeance. It’s about finding a policy that works.” He stood up slowly with a grunt and walked to the window overlooking Manhattan. “All we’re doing now is wasting time and lives.”

  “That’s not true,” she said, her fists clenching in her lap.

  “Maybe not, but something needs to change.”

  She rubbed her forehead where the dull headache she’d had for the past few hours was turning to thunder. “I have an idea. How about we round all the Shifters up, put them on the space shuttle, and send them back where they came from?”

  MacGregor snorted. “If only it were that easy, and they were that stupid. Christ. They’ve managed to master to our DNA, learn our language and our customs, blend in. This is a great place to live if you can become anyone you want.”

  The bastards could be any human they wanted to, become an exact replica. She’d seen them on the streets, walking around like they belonged here. They didn’t. But XCEL agents were strung out thin as it was, and she was too busy dealing with the bad ones to worry about the ones posing as model citizens.

  Besides, unless she wanted everyone to know she could see Shifters, she’d have to keep her mouth shut. If she didn’t, she’d be labeled a freak, lose her XCEL job, and her second vision would be worthless. Nothing but pure torture.

  Seneca crossed her arms. “It doesn’t help that we have to catch these guys and keep it all quiet, like they don’t exist. We can’t even go after them in the daylight, when they don’t have the ability to shift.”

  MacGregor sat back down at his desk. “No argument from me. I’m too goddamned old to work all these nights, but the Committee thinks we’d cause too much chaos.”

  “God forbid their secret gets out,” she muttered.

  He sighed. “Don’t start. The Committee also wants alternatives to freezing these guys. Something more productive.”

  Seneca looked at him. “Alternatives to freezing? Do they really think these criminals can be rehabilitated?”

  MacGregor only shrugged, and Seneca added, “There’s nothing wrong with putting them on ice after they maim and murder until we figure out what to do with them.”

  “Except that we’ve never successfully thawed one out,” he pointed out.

  Her turn to shrug. “Minor detail. If it were up to me, I’d put them all out of our misery.”

  “This is still America,” MacGregor reminded her.

  “Not for long.”

  “You don’t know that.” But he didn’t sound entirely convinced. “Try to look at this from the point of view that we could do better. This guy is a prototype shapeshifter XCEL agent. He volunteered for this. Gave us more information about Shifters than we could ever get on our own. He’s been tested, retested, studied, probed God knows where, and passed all our training with flying colors. He can ID his own kind, get into places we can’t, and he can take them on head-to-head.”

  Like she cared. She could do those things too. “If he’s so great, why does he need us?”

  MacGregor gave her a telling look. “They want to see how he partners with one of our own.”

  Real fear replaced the dread in her bones, and that took some doing. “They want to change our partner structure? One Shifter and one human?”

  “Maybe,” he hedged.

  Or worse. Her heart sank in understanding. “All-Shifter teams.”

  “Unless we can prove we’re good for something,” he admitted.

  “Good for something? How about to keep an eye on them?” she shot back. He didn’t say anything, and the reality of it hit her. She’d be out of the loop, and they would be in control. Good God, what was this world coming to?

  “We can’t trust them, Mac. You’re giving them too much credit. And the Committee is talking out of their collective asses. Have they ever seen a Shifter in action?”

  MacGregor answered, “The majority of Shifters keep to themselves.”

  “It’s only a matter of time before that changes. Once the Shifters feel they can take us, they will. And they can.”

  MacGregor shook his head. “I’m just saying, they aren’t all bad.”

  “Tell that to my mutilated partner.”

  He rubbed his eyes. “I get it, okay? But we don’t have a choice, Seneca. The Committee has spoken. Our job is to keep America safe from the Shifter criminal element so we don’t have rioting in the streets. And that’s just what you are going to do.”

  She slumped further in her chair. This day was pure hell.

  “And another thing,” he went on. “Everyone is watching this collaboration. Consider your ass under a microscope, because your new partner is writing the final report. Apparently, he has friends in higher places than you or me.” He paused. “Be very careful.”

  Although they never discussed her extraordinary abilities, MacGregor knew she was different from the other agents. Only a handful of people knew exactly how different. And one of them was stretched out in the morgue.

  “Do I get to write my report on him?” she asked.

  He replied, “Fine by me. But I can’t promise you it’ll go anywhere.”

  Perfect. She pushed to her feet, fighting the weight of the day. “Why me?”

  “That’s what you get for being the best.” MacGregor smiled and folded his hands on his belly. “He’s waiting outside. Name’s Max Dempsey. And I’d prefer you keep his secret identity just between the two of us. No sense in causing undue friction.”

  She stared at him, trying to restrain herself from doing something stupid like telling her boss to shove it. All she could do was say, “You call keeping our agents informed that there’s a Shifter among them ‘undue friction’?”

  He raised his hands. “Don’t shoot the messenger. No one is supposed to know until we get the final report. The fate of this entire operation depends on you. So play nice.”

  “I don’t have to be nice to do my job.�
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  “Fine, just don’t kill him.” He handed her a folder. “Your next assignment. Code name ‘Dillinger.’ Confirmed Shifter. He murdered six people in a bar in lower Manhattan last week.”

  Seneca stormed out of the office with Dillinger’s folder and slammed the door behind her. The outer office area was an open suite lined with desks in the center and private offices around the perimeter. It was usually a noisy, hopping place, but as soon as she stepped out, it got real quiet. Heads poked out from every cubicle and corner.

  An agent wearing a lanyard badge stood in front of her. He was well over six foot tall and solidly built under a leather jacket, white-collared shirt, and blue jeans. His hair was thick and brown, eyes a muted shade of gray, face angular, hard, and serious.

  A Shifter shadow pulsed around him that no one except her or another Shifter could see.

  He studied her for a moment and wisely didn’t offer a hand to shake. “Agent Max Dempsey. Nice to meet you, Seneca.”

  Fuck you, was on the tip of her tongue, and he must have seen it in her eyes because one of his eyebrows rose marginally.

  The enemy stood in the center of her sanctuary. It wasn’t fair. She’d busted her ass to get here and, along the way, lost more friends than she could count. She’d put in seventy-hour weeks, become a permanent night owl, and bore scars of missions gone wrong. She hated the bastards ripping her world apart with a passion second to none. If she could give her life to get rid of every single one of them, she would.

  The other agents and staff were pretending to be busy, but a few were watching with growing interest.

  The fate of this entire operation depends on you.

  Boy, did they pick the wrong person. But like a good little soldier, she flashed the folder and walked around him toward her office. “We have a case.”

  He let her pass, but she heard his footsteps as he followed. She sat behind her desk while he closed the door and took Riley’s chair at the desk facing her. Her throat tightened up when she heard his chair creak.