Shifter Origins (Series-Starter Shifter Variety Packs Book 1)

by Aimee Easterling

  At which point the tables would turn and Ixchel...and the jaguar...would once again be at the thugs' mercy.

  So the vet gathered her courage and made possibly the stupidest decision of her short life. She sidestepped the red-headed thug, walked over to the jaguar, and wrapped one arm around his neck as if in restraint.

  The most terrifying part of the endeavor was that she didn't even have to bend down to reach the beast's skin.

  Then, meeting the gaze of the head thug, Ixchel finally spoke. Hoping her voice didn't make her sound as terrified as she felt, she advised her attackers: "If I were you, I'd run."

  Chapter 12

  The weight of Ixchel's arm around his neck sent shivers down the jaguar's spine. He'd never been touched like this, neither in cat nor in human form. Never been held possessively, as if the holder wanted nothing more than to cling to his strength in order to prop herself up.

  As if she were touching him by her own free will. As if she wanted to be closer to his skin.

  Of course, Finn knew that Ixchel's bravery had simply been a front, a facade intended to drive away the threat of three armed men intent upon hunting them both down. He could see the pulse in his companion's neck beating far too rapidly, could hear her inhalation catching as the thugs rounded the bend and hopped into their car before screeching out of the lot only minutes ahead of the police squad's arrival.

  The shifter also suspected that the woman wrapping her arm around his neck was seconds away from fainting. Assuming, of course, that temporary bouts of unconsciousness were her usual reaction to trauma and not simply what she did at the sight of him.

  And yet, despite knowing that Ixchel's touch was as phony as it was fleeting, it was all Finn could do to force himself to shift away from feline form. And when he was once again standing two-legged, this time with Ixchel's arm draped around his neck as if they were preparing to slow dance, it was all he could do to step back out of the deliciously scented woman's personal space rather than dipping his head down to steal a kiss.

  Because he'd stolen enough from this woman already.

  "I should go," Finn said, looking at the ground so he wouldn't be tempted to meet Ixchel's eyes. For the first time in his life, he was thoroughly ashamed of his actions. Because he'd now forced this woman out of her comfort zone and into real or perceived danger three times in quick succession, and he had a feeling the saying "three strikes and you're out" was quite literally true in this case. Plus—and this time he verbalized his thinking for Ixchel's benefit—"The police will be here soon."

  Now that she was no longer in peril, Finn expected his companion to take to her heels and run away from the beast that he had recently hidden beneath his skin. But, instead, the vet simply cocked her head to one side, her brown cheeks paling slightly as the faraway sirens neared enough to be discernible with simple human hearing.

  "We should go," Ixchel corrected. "There's no way I'm letting you walk out of my life without an explanation." She paused, then continued, "And Mirabelle's men will be back soon, so I'm safer with you anyway."

  The final sentence almost seemed like an afterthought, and Finn allowed the tiniest smile to grace his lips. Perhaps he hadn't thoroughly blown it after all. Was it possible that Ixchel felt the same attraction to Finn as he did to her?

  As enticing as it was to consider that possibility, the shifter knew the idea would have to be tabled for later if he didn't want to have to explain himself to local law enforcement. And, given his past proclivities, he really, really didn't want his fingerprints to end up in any database.

  So the shifter conceded, telling himself that he was bringing along a civilian for her own protection. No, Finn wasn't allowing Ixchel to insinuate herself into his adventure because he wanted a chance to explain away his actions and to see whether the veterinarian could forgive him for his lapses in judgment. That wasn't the case at all.

  "You're right," he said, rather than ducking down that mental rabbit hole. "I'll take you somewhere Dr. Mirabelle and his thugs can't find you. But we have to hurry...." The shifter reached out to grasp his companion's hand, but her feet appeared firmly planted in the earth as she abruptly frowned and shook her head.

  "I forgot," Ixchel said, turning back toward the door of the practice. "I'll need my driver's license. And there's a cat I have to leave food out for. And...."

  The sirens were getting closer by the second, but Finn took a moment to meet his companion's gaze head on at last. Ixchel's eyes were startlingly dark, the pupils nearly lost in the brown cornea despite the brightness of the day. And as the shifter peered more closely, he allowed himself to hope that the vet's fear truly had dissipated, that she was inserting herself into his quest through cat-like curiosity of her own.

  Wishful thinking? Finn wasn't sure. But he did know that the wonder presently illuminating his companion's features was the most attractive expression he had ever seen.

  So he spilled the rest of the beans.

  "I was that tom cat," he said simply. Then, giving Ixchel's hand another tug, the shifter led her at a trot toward her car.

  "...JUST THREE GUNS ON the ground and no blood, so the police left eventually," Betty Lou was saying, the words carrying through to the burner cell phone that Finn had handed Ixchel moments earlier. "Are you sure you're alright?"

  "Positive," the vet replied, even though the response was an out-and-out lie. She was having a hard time paying attention as her receptionist chattered on, actually. Instead, she watched Finn walk up to the car-rental counter, where he offered the clerk a smile so innocuous that it would soon be forgotten...but which Ixchel still found herself deeply resenting.

  Now, if that was Finn's usual facial expression, the clerk would be melting into a little pool of jelly at his feet. But the simple expediency of slipping small pieces of foam in between his teeth and cheeks then donning a pair of sunglasses had made her companion's face somehow quite different and markedly less memorable. So the woman's return smile was polite rather than smitten.

  Or maybe I'm the only one who has a problem keeping her heart rate at a normal pace when I look into Finn's eyes?

  Added to the subtle yet effective disguise, Ixchel had also caught other troublesome glimpses into the fugitive's life as he gathered gear out of her car in the parking lot. There had been a driver's license that didn't mention the name "Finn" anywhere on it, for example, along with a rather large wad of cash.

  Who uses paper money in this day and age, anyway? Well, except gangsters and drug dealers....

  That, plus the sheer facileness of her chosen companion's transformation, should have put the brakes on her budding attraction. But the vet instead found herself intrigued by her companion's skills, and she had a hard time lowering her gaze now as she watched from the sidelines. No, Finn wasn't trustworthy. But he was as eye-catching and alluring as a cat.

  Focus on the person you're talking to, Ixchel reminded herself.

  "I'm sorry I worried you," the vet said the next time she could get a word in edgewise, doing her best to soothe her employee sufficiently so she could hang up the phone. The apology was meant as a way of explaining without explaining, something she was becoming quite familiar with since the jaguar-shifter had sidestepped all of her own questions as she drove—at his insistence—toward the nearest airport. Because it seemed Finn's arm was paining him too much to hold the wheel. Or, perhaps, he just wanted full freedom to watch his companion while Ixchel could only catch glimpses of her passenger's face out of the corner of her eye.

  The vet had assumed that the two of them would hop onto the first departing plane in order to escape pursuit. But the fugitive had merely smiled at her naivety and explained that they'd be renting a car in his name and then ditching Ixchel's vehicle a few towns further down the highway. Finn seemed remarkably adept at throwing pursuers off his trail, another trait that Ixchel was trying not to imbue with too much meaning.

  "Look," she continued, speaking into the phone. "I've been thinking about how
you said I should get out more, take a vacation. So I've decided to close the practice for a couple of weeks. Do you mind calling in the cancellations, locking up the place, and changing our answering-machine message to send patients over to Dr. Jones if there's an emergency? It'll be a paid vacation for you too, of course...."

  "I knew you'd met someone," Betty Lou exclaimed, ever the romantic. And, as usual, she was both remarkably on and off track at the same time. "That rose..."

  "Yes," Ixchel said, abruptly cutting off her receptionist's gushing as Finn walked back toward her. "I've gotta go now, though. Thanks for holding down the fort."

  And then, punching the end button, the vet extricated herself from the best parts of her past and walked over to join her future.

  Chapter 13

  An hour before Ixchel and Finn slipped away down the highway in an anonymous rental car, Tezcatlipoca decided he would rather have stayed restfully buried in the ground rather than dealing with the realities of the modern world. I'm gonna hurl, the jaguar god thought as his stomach protested the speed with which his prison was currently flying through the air.

  Vomiting into his watery cell would be just plain disgusting, though. Plus, who knew how long the effluvia would float around before settling into the bottom of the sea? Based on how little Tezcatlipoca had been able to affect his physical surroundings in the past, the god just might be swimming in his own vomit for an eternity if he threw up now. So Tez would find a way to control the nausea and keep down his nonexistent dinner even if his prison's motion made him want to retch.

  Of course current events were much more distressing than the state of the deity's stomach. What the heck was his sole not-quite-worshiper thinking to toss Tez away like three-day-old fish?

  That were-jaguar deserves a punishing migraine...or maybe an ingrown toenail so infected he'll have to cut off the entire foot. Unfortunately, Tezcatlipoca's only current control over his so-called follower involved the latter's physical transformation, and messing with his shift might not even be possible now that the mortal was no longer touching Tez's figurine.

  It sucks to be a god without power, Tezcatlipoca thought grumpily.

  "Thank God in heaven," the new holder of the were-jaguar figurine murmured, and Tez's ears perked right up. Aha! Sure, the diminutive woman was probably praying to that other god, the one Tez was doing his best not to be jealous of for taking over half the world while Tezcatlipoca had been out of commission. (Not fair, J.C.!) But the woman hadn't specified who her words were referring to, so Tez opted to assume the prayer as being aimed at himself.

  Okay, yes, Tez admitted that he was lowering his own standards by accepting a prayer that wasn't couched in more flattering terms and that didn't come served up on a bed of human sacrifice. But whatcha gonna do? A god's gotta do what a god's gotta do, times were apparently changing, yada, yada, yada.

  Plus, accepting the prayer made Tezcatlipoca feel a little more powerful almost immediately. To test his newfound strength, the deity popped back into his prison for a moment and tried to push against the walls of his cell. Nope. One tiny prayer wasn't going to do it for him...although his stomach did feel much more settled than it had a moment earlier. Prayer—the new ginger ale. Someone could make a mint on that.

  And, wait, was that a stone beneath his feet? Smirking, Tezcatlipoca pulled his physical body up out of the water for the first time in two thousand years and shook hard enough to shed every drop of water from his fur. Dry at last!

  It won't take many more of those little prayer-a-rooskies to get me out of here, the jaguar god thought. Then he popped his spirit back into the real world to check out the praying woman more thoroughly.

  On this second appraisal, Tez determined that Ixchel was far more intriguing than he'd initially thought. And not just because of her familiar name. A thin metal chain dipping down into the woman's lab coat drew the god's attention immediately, and Tez narrowed his eyes, discovering that, yep, the woman's single prayer had restored his familiar ability to see through fabric.

  Nice knockers. Just the right size for grabbing onto....

  The woman's breasts, though, weren't what Tez was most interested in at the moment. Instead, he peered as closely as he could at the little cat figurine strung onto the woman's necklace and saw that, despite the material being too young to have originated with one of Tez's original worshipers, the metal still reeked of Olmec intention.

  Interesting.

  Now, which deity had granted his or her blessing to be passed down from mother to daughter to granddaughter and finally to this namesake of Tezcatlipoca's sister god? And was the god in question one of Tez's so-called friends...or one of his far-more-numerous enemies?

  Unfortunately, Tez's focus was drawn away from the ornament when he realized that the woman was considering tossing his prison into the bushes. Did humans have no respect for a god, albeit a trapped one?

  The jaguar deity firmly pushed the woman's inappropriate intention aside and then smiled as Ixchel thrust his prison deep down into her own pocket. Finally. Now he could relax.

  Blah, blah, blah, worry. Blah, blah, blah, physical attraction. Humans were so boring that Tez spent a few hours tuning back into his favorite radio station before being captured by the were-jaguar's thoughts once again.

  Seriously? Couldn't these mortals focus on something important for a change? Like a god, maybe?

  Time for a word from on high.

  Unfortunately, his wishes would need to go through the mortal female conduit since Tez wasn't quite powerful enough yet to influence the male from a distance. But after channeling his intentions as carefully as possible—since speaking into a mortal's mind was draining under the best of circumstances and nearly impossible in his current weakened state—the god finally made his presence, and his wishes, known.

  And the woman, rather than responding with awe and rapture to the divine voice within her noggin, instead jerked in her seat as if she'd been struck. "Now I'm schizophrenic?!" she exclaimed loudly, before popping a hand over her mouth and shooting a glance over at her companion.

  This isn't going at all well, Tez thought resignedly. Not at all well.

  Chapter 14

  Tell him about the cat charm. The words that popped into Ixchel's head came from a voice that the vet could've sworn wasn't her own. Instead, it sounded deep and reverberant, like that of a swoon-worthy announcer you might hear on late-night radio.

  But the experience didn't make Ixchel swoon. Not when the voice was inside her own head.

  "Now I'm schizophrenic?!"

  Oops. Had she said that aloud? Casting a glance at her companion out of the corner of her eye, the vet saw that she had, indeed, made the incriminating observation at a high enough volume to attract the shifter's attention.

  "Hmm?" he asked, eyes still firmly focused on the road. The pair had been riding in silence for the last hour, Finn lost in (she suspected) plans for ridding himself of the woman whom he'd been saddled with, while Ixchel spent the same minutes trying to figure out how not to get dumped by the side of the road.

  Because, after working with dozens of half-feral cats, Ixchel thoroughly recognized the glint in Finn's eyes that said he was regretting allowing his chivalry to overcome his good sense. Had her companion currently sported four feet and a tail, Ixchel would be preparing herself for the inevitable scratching claws and then for a quick dart away between her feet in search of safety somewhere as distant as possible from humankind.

  The vet was thoroughly expecting Finn to utilize the biped equivalent of those evasive maneuvers at any moment, which was why she'd squashed down her need to know more about her companion's physical abilities and had restrained herself from pumping him for details. After all, Ixchel was kinda hoping the shifter would forget she was there and would maybe allow her to observe his transformation up close and personal one more time. Better to wait and collect her own data firsthand rather than scaring away this intriguing cat-shifter by showing too much interest too
soon.

  "Do you want to tell me about it?"

  Unlike Ixchel, Finn evidently wasn't as willing to wait out his companion's jitters. And, to be honest, Ixchel had to admit that she probably wouldn't have been able to resist such an intriguing conversational gambit either. Nothing like tossing mental-illness diagnoses around to capture people's attention.

  But who wanted to admit to hearing voices in her head?

  Will you get over yourself and move this quest along to its inevitable conclusion?

  Ixchel closed her eyes and rubbed her temples. She really was going crazy. Once might be a fluke caused by unaccustomed stress. But to hear the voice in her head a second time suggested that the vet should make a quick trip to the emergency room.

  "Hey, it's going to be okay." Ixchel wasn't sure how long she'd sat in silence, trying to squeeze the male voice back out of her mind, but she suspected it wasn't very long. If only because her uninvited visitor seemed to be the impatient sort who wouldn't take kindly to being ignored.

  You got that right.

  It was easier to accept the voice now that Ixchel felt the car slow and then stop, especially when Finn removed his hands from the steering wheel and replaced the vet's own fingertips, gently probing the skin atop her head. And as the shifter massaged her scalp, Ixchel allowed herself to relax into the sensation. It had been so long since she'd enjoyed a touch even this intimate, and it would be a shame to let the experience go to waste due to minor extenuating circumstances like schizophrenia and gunshot wounds.

  "Whatever you heard, chances are pretty good you're not schizophrenic," the shifter whispered into her ear a few moments later. Ixchel shivered in response, trying not to imagine that her companion's words were pillow talk after a wild night of passion.