by Amelia Jade
The older lady chuckled. “Miss, I’ve been back here for forty years in one capacity or another. There isn’t much I haven’t seen.” She gave Shay a calming smile. “One o’clock in the afternoon and you’re here with swollen eyes, no makeup, and a double shot?” She reached behind her, pulling out a fresh glass and made a second drink, taking a sip herself. “So, what’d he do?”
Despite the death threat, despite the vision of two men dying in fountains of blood, despite the explosion of her professional and personal life, despite all that, Shay felt herself wanting to smile at the bartender.
So she did.
Damn, it felt good.
The bartender smiled back, nodding her head at Shay as if she understood every thought and emotion that just played across her face.
“Something real bad,” Shay answered at last, before taking another fiery sip, her throat and stomach an inferno for a moment as the thick liquid slid down.
“What’d he do,” the bartender said with a gentle, disarming smile, “kill somebody?”
Shay forcefully kept her eyes downcast. “Something like that,” she replied over the top of her drink.
The bartender made an appreciative sound. “Sounds like he’s got a real mean streak in him. Probably best that you stopped seeing him.”
“I didn’t say either of those things,” she said.
“No, but I did,” the bartender replied. “Trust me honey, I’ve seen it all.”
Shay frowned. “So why did he run from them before—” she cut herself off. “Before. Why did he yell at them not to do it?” She shook her head. “It doesn’t add up. It’s not like I was sleeping with him. I honestly barely knew the guy, but everything about him screamed ‘good guy,’ you know? Sure he drove a motorcycle, but he was knowledgeable about it, like a mechanic. No tattoos, spoke perfectly. Opened the door for me, but he was also nice to everyone around him.”
The bartender took another sip of her own drink, spurring Shay to do the same as she tried to talk her way through it.
“Even now, after it all, your instincts are telling you he’s a good man?” the bartender asked, coming around to sit next to her.
Shay pursed her lips as she thought for a moment, about everything she knew about Justin.
“Yes,” she said at last, more confused than before. “He asked me something, the last thing he said before…”
She fell silent, lost in her own thoughts as she sipped on the drink, enjoying the warmth settling in her stomach.
“What did he say?” the bartender pressed at last.
Shay frowned, trying to come up with a way to explain it. “We had been talking about serious things. Not like marriage or relationship type of serious,” she added hurriedly. “But life serious. About how everyone deserves to be treated with decency. I had said that those who treat others inhumanely are worthless pieces of shit.”
The bartender laughed silently, her shoulders bouncing up and down as she nodded her agreement.
“The last thing he said to me was to ask if I had meant what I said there.” She dropped her head. “Then he kissed me, and that was the last time we talked,” she added in a whisper.
Shay didn’t even have to look up to see the bartender look away thoughtfully.
“Sometimes,” she said slowly, “the eyes see one thing, but the brain, your instincts, your gut, I guess, see another. They see the truth hidden in the visuals presented to you. Are you absolutely positive that there isn’t more to what you saw?”
Shay opened her mouth to say “Yes,” but she paused, taking a moment to think it through. Her brain was trying to tell her something. Justin had been trying to tell her something too.
What was it?
Why did he ask that last question? Why did knowing how she felt about people who treated shifters poorly matter so much?
“I don’t know!” she said at last, tossing back the last of her drink in distress. “Maybe. Possibly, but I don’t know what.”
The bartender finished her drink in collusion with her and got up, heading back behind the bar.
“Another please,” Shay said, but the bartender whisked the glass away and didn’t return it.
“Perhaps,” she said. “Perhaps you should have a talk with him. Tell him he needs to speak the truth, to explain everything that he’s been hiding. Let him do that,” she suggested, “and then see if your eyes and your gut are still at odds with each other.”
Shay snorted derisively. “I don’t even have a way to contact him if I wanted to do something like that.”
“What’s this guy of yours look like anyway?” the bartender asked after a moment.
Her head snapped up at the tone in the woman’s voice. “Very tall, muscular without looking like he takes steroids. Classically good-looking face, eyes so light blue they look gray,” she said, a smile tugging at her face as she pictured him in her mind.
“Mmm,” the waitress said. “Short brown hair, almost shaved, but not quite? Not much in the way of facial hair? Looks like a lost puppy dog?”
It was then that Shay noticed the bartender wasn’t looking at her, but past her.
She spun in her seat.
***
Standing there in the lobby of her hotel, looking distraught, was none other than Justin Renne.
Like the pasta.
Shay, horrified at herself that she would think of that lame little joke at such a serious time, hid any emotion that might play across her face. Laughing just then was not appropriate.
He had seen her, and had indeed been watching her as she thought over the bartender’s last few words. His long strides carried him across the distance.
“I’m in room 606. In case…” she shrugged.
“I’ll have housekeeping send up a bottle of wine in an hour,” the bartender said with a knowing wink.
“Thank you,” Shay said as she slid off the barstool. “For, you know, everything.”
The bartender just smiled.
Shay turned back as Justin came to a halt several paces away from her. He opened his mouth, looking like he had something to say. Then he hesitated.
She decided to speak, but the words caught in her throat.
Gathering herself, she forced them out.
“We need to talk,” they said in unison as Justin found his words as well.
A ghost of a smile played across her lips, and she saw his eyes twinkle, though it didn’t reach the serious expression written upon his face.
By way of unspoken agreement they headed toward the elevators and her room, silence hanging in the air. Both of them seemed to startle when the doors slid open, the chime dinging to indicate they had reached the sixth floor.
“Don’t mind the mess,” she said awkwardly, indicating her trail of things from earlier.
Wow, I really made a mess of this place.
It hadn’t seemed so bad when she had left for the bar.
She gestured at a pair of seats in the front of the room, where the TV was located.
They sat, still in silence, neither of them knowing what to say, only knowing that things had to be said.
The fabric-covered chairs squeaked as they settled into them, looking at each other. Finally, Shay could help it no more.
“Why did you kill those men?” she blurted out.
Justin shuddered, torment filling his eyes.
“Because they gave me no choice,” he said, then held up his hand as her face scrunched up in confusion. “None of the men who work for the Agency ever give us a choice.”
There was no question who he was talking about when he said “us.” He meant shifters. His kind.
The line about wanting to know if she truly felt the way she did about people who hunted shifters down and experimented on them echoed through her mind again.
“The Agency?” she asked when no more words were forthcoming.
“They likely have another name, but we don’t know it. They are an extremely well-funded, well-connected, and, unfortunately,
well-established group.”
There was no shame in Justin’s voice now. Just cold hard facts. Shay swallowed as she saw this side of him for the first time. The trained killer.
“Why are they after you?” she asked, trying to keep her own voice just as steady. She needed to. Justin was finally revealing things to her that she wanted to know.
“Because of what I am,” he said heavily. “The Agency has somehow managed to develop a serum that when injected into a blackblood, gives them the powers of a shifter, with the sole exception of the ability to shapeshift.”
Shay felt her jaw drop open. “I’m sorry, what? They can give humans your abilities? All of them?”
Justin’s jaw tightened. “Yes. Increased strength and speed. Faster healing, better eyesight, etcetera. But not to humans, no. Only to those born with shifter blood in them. Born of a shifter and a human, but without the full blood of a shifter. A blackblood.”
“Right,” she said with a nod, remembering him telling her about what that term meant. “So they have this serum. But why are they after you?”
She could hear him gritting his teeth. “To develop the serum, they need the blood of a full-blown shifter.”
“How much blood?” she asked tightly, unsure she wanted to know the answer, yet equally sure she already knew.
“All of it,” he ground out. “In a short timespan. We still don’t understand why or how, but we’ve learned that they have to drain one of my kind dry in a short timeframe to have enough blood to then create their serum.”
“Oh my God,” she whispered.
“Those two men,” he said after a moment, banishing the silence, “were both injected with the serum.”
Shay jerked as if she’d been shot. “Two of them?” she asked in horrified awe. “That means that…”
He nodded angrily. “Two of my kind died to create those two men.”
“That’s terrible,” she said shakily, the implications of everything that Justin was involved in just beginning to sink in. Shay was sure there was far more to it than she was aware of. “I can’t even begin to comprehend the atrocity that’s being committed against your kind.”
Shay desperately wanted to reach out, to hold him. The emotions playing across his face were as clear as day for her to read. Distress. Anguish. Anger. Horror. Confusion. Justin was far more overwhelmed by what he knew than he let on. She could see that now, and it took everything within her not to reach out and pull him to her.
Not yet.
“Why are they doing this?” she asked. Shay needed answers. She needed to know more.
“To kill us all. To rid the world of our kind, so that it can be pure once more.” He practically spat the words out, disgusted by their content.
Shay nodded, things falling into place.
“Who are you?” she asked at last, getting to the crux of the issue.
Justin knew what she was asking. “I am a Sentinel,” he told her. “Trained in Genesis Valley, a safe haven for shifters and friends of our kind. My team and I were sent here, to try and protect the shifters of King City from the Agency. To prevent their wholesale slaughter.”
“What is a Sentinel?”
He grimaced. “A warrior. I fled there when my family was murdered in front of my eyes for supporting shifters, for being their allies. I was trained by Valen and Marcus Kedyn, the shifter owners of a mining company that runs the Valley. They taught me how to protect myself, and others.” He paused, his shoulders trembling as he took another breath. “They taught me how to kill.”
Shay did reach out now, to rest her palm on his forearm. Justin jerked like he had just been stung, but he didn’t pull away.
He didn’t meet her eyes either.
“It’s okay,” she said, forgiving him. “I understand now. You killed them, but they would have done the same to you. That doesn’t make you a murderer,” she explained. “That was done in self-defense.”
Justin didn’t respond, sitting so still in the chair he could be a statue, if it weren’t for the incredible amounts of heat roiling off of him. Shay still couldn’t get over how warm he was.
“That’s what I’m trained to be,” he said in a haunted whisper. “I’m a killer. Everyone expects me to be a killing machine, simply because I can. That because I have the training, I should just do it, because it has to be done.” He looked up at her at last, shattering Shay’s heart with the pain in his eyes. “But does it have to be done? I’m not convinced, and I hate myself more every time I’m forced to end someone.”
Shay had never heard someone refer to killing like that, but she quickly got the gist of it.
“I don’t think you’re a horrible person,” she said at last. “I think the fact that you’re so tormented by what you do speaks volumes to the strength of your person. It is a redeeming quality in someone who does what you do.”
Justin smiled, but it was devoid of joy. “Thank you. That’s what Ajax tried to tell me too. I understand that logically, I really do. But logic and emotion are two completely different facets, and unfortunately, they don’t agree. I feel that I’m a black mark.” He snorted again. “Fitting, since I’m a blackblood, that I would engage in the blackness of something such as death.”
“That’s enough,” she said sharply, catching them both off guard with the harshness of her voice. “All you’re doing now is wallowing in your own self-pity. You just said you can logically see the good in what you’ve done. The people you’ve saved. The shifters who live here are alive because of you,” she said.
“Not all of them,” he said.
Shay didn’t object. Not because she disagreed, but because it wasn’t depression she had heard in his voice then, but something else.
Anger.
Hating herself, she reached out and stoked that feeling.
“Perhaps,” she agreed. “Maybe you haven’t saved them all.”
Justin’s head snapped up, his eyes blazing with an inner fire. An inferno that he had lacked since the day she first met him.
“What did you say?”
“You heard me,” she said, staring right back, not backing down as his spine straightened until he loomed over her. “And you won’t intimidate me like that either.”
That wasn’t entirely true. She was terrified right now, but she couldn’t let on that she was.
“I said that no, you didn’t save all of them. You couldn’t have. Despite your awesome powers, you’re still half-human. And we humans have a saying. It goes: ‘You’re only human’. Do you know what that means, Justin Renne?” she said, her tone as hard as steel, colder than ice.
“What?” he asked through clenched teeth.
“It means that you can try your best, do absolutely everything, and that you still might make mistakes. But I can tell you this. If you continue to wallow around, letting them get the better of you, more people are going to die. And this time, it is going to be your fault. Because you were too busy worrying about yourself instead of those around you.”
She could see muscles bunching all over Justin as she spoke, but when she delivered the last line, they seemed to deflate almost instantly.
“You’re right,” he whispered.
“Of course I’m right,” she said, mimicking his sarcastic snort from earlier. “I’m very good at analyzing things very quickly. If I don’t,” she said with a harsh laugh, “I crash into concrete walls. And trust me,” she added wryly, “once was enough for me.”
“You crashed into a concrete wall?” he asked, his voice full of relief at the change of subject.
Shay didn’t press him. Justin had a lot to think about now. She had confidence that in time, he would not only arrive at the right decision, but he would be okay with it as well.
“If I tell you about that, will you tell me more about what you do?” she asked softly, gently caressing his arm.
“I’ll tell you anything you want to know,” he said solemnly.
She smiled as his other hand came to rest on top of hers,
giving it a squeeze.
“I promise.” His words were full of strength, and she could see it surging through him. He was still battling his inner demons, but for the moment, he had found a reprieve.
“Okay,” she said, feeling her timidity dissipate at the same time. “But I have one other condition.”
Justin looked at her, his eyes narrowing in suspicion. “And that is?”
“You left a little business unfinished in the dry cleaner, before you were forced to leave,” she teased, hoping that he would focus on her, and not the other memories from then.
“I did?”
She laughed at his genuine confusion.
“Get over here and finish kissing me, before I lose my nerve,” she ordered.
The words were barely out of her mouth before Justin launched himself at her.
***
He lifted her from the chair, knocking it over onto its side as his muscular arms wrapped around her waist.
Shay squealed in delight, the sound muffled as his lips pressed hard against hers. She put her hands around the back of his head and pulled him close, holding tight as he pressed her shoulders none too gently into the wall.
Their lips parted, tongues hungrily dancing with each other as they finally gave in to the tension that had been building between them for days now.
In the back of her mind, Shay was astonished at how quickly she’d swung from one emotion to the other where Justin was concerned. But like the bartender had said, she needed to trust her instincts. There would still be time needed for her to come to grips with what she’d seen. But the reasons behind it made sense now. Everything added up in her mind. The visuals would keep her awake at night she was sure, but the knowledge of why would allow her to eventually fall asleep.
Not that she had any interest in sleep just then. Her body was responding, her temperature rising as blood raced through her body and Justin’s skin pressed against her.
“Clothes, off, now,” she gasped out between kisses. It was too hot. She needed to cool down. Getting rid of clothes seemed the fastest way.
Justin’s hands moved until he was now holding her up in the air by grasping her ass, his big hands covering most of her cheeks, the tips of his fingers coming dangerously close to between her legs.