Shifter Challenge

by Selina Woods

  “Yes, sir.”

  The approaching storm must have sent a panic into Miami’s inhabitants, for most people vanished from the streets although darkness was more than an hour and a half away. We stopped at the market first and went in to find the place empty except for Derek and the kids. They all played cards on the counter, which told me the last customers had vanished a while ago.

  “Derek,” I said, “we’re taking the boys and fetching the sailor. You should get home, look after your family.”

  He glanced at me in surprise. “You don’t want me here when you come with the guns?”

  “We can handle it. This storm looks nasty, and Suzanne might get scared.”

  “Yeah.” He folded up the card game under Tony and Albert’s protests. “She never could handle lightning and thunder. Are these two coming back here in the morning?”

  I shook my head. “Kiana wants them behind the rifles at the penthouse. You two, get your stuff and get in the car.”

  “Woo hoo!” Tony screeched, then galloped to the back with Albert hot on his heels.

  “All right.” Derek straightened, yawning. “I’ll close up here and go home. Nothing going on, anyway.”

  After herding the excited boys into the car, I got into the front passenger seat while Caesar headed for the old wolf’s shop. “Check it out,” I said, pointing through the windshield. “That thing moved in fast.”

  Rain spattered the glass as we drove through the silent streets, the black clouds billowing overhead. Yet the thunder still remained distant, informing me the storm was indeed a big one. Tony and Albert played games of counting the seconds between a lightning flash and the resulting thunder, which, if correct, showed the storm was about twenty miles away.

  Redley was waiting for us as we pulled to the curb and hopped into the rear seat. Albert scooted over for him, both boys eyeing him as though he were an alien. I had turned to glance over the seat and caught his upper lip curling at them in a silent threat.

  “I sure hope you can navigate in this weather, Redley,” I commented as Caesar drove away.

  “I can navigate while blind and deaf, youngster,” he snapped. “Who’s coming along to help me? You?”

  “Yep.”

  “Then you better get used to following orders.”

  Caesar laughed and glanced sidelong at me. “I reckon it’s a good thing this gang lord business hasn’t gone to your head yet.”

  The storm was bad by the time we reached the marina, yet Redley was clear that the worst was yet to come. Caesar parked the car in the alley, and I opened the rear door to the building to let Caesar take the boys up to the penthouse. “You two mind your manners up there,” I warned them. “I find any alcohol missing, I’ll be wearing your hides for slippers this winter.”

  “Booze?” Tony made a face. “Eww.”

  I gripped Caesar’s hand before he vanished up the stairs after them. “See you in a while.”

  “You bet.”

  With Redley at my side, I faced the stinging rain and sharp wind, dashing toward the marina. In the flashes of lightning, I saw no guards on the docks, but also saw the huge waves that tossed the boats around like corks. For a moment, I was tempted to call it off and go back. Seeing Redley’s set expression, his thin hair wafting over his face, I grabbed a hold of my courage and followed him.

  “Grab that line!” he yelled at me over the roar of the wind and waves. “Untie her!”

  I obeyed him as he jumped into what I thought was a boat much too small for the weather. The engine coughed a few times, then turned over just as I threw each mooring line into the boat, then leaped aboard. Redley pushed the lever forward so fast, steering away from the shore and the docks, I was thrown flat on my back on the floor.

  “Get your damn legs under you!”

  It was an interesting task, but I stood up and held onto the back of his chair as the boat crested each wave, then slapped back down hard onto the sea. I had always thought I had natural balance, but standing in that bucking boat made me change my mind in a hurry.

  Redley charged the big fishing vessel with no lights, and I sure hoped his wolf vision at night and in a storm was far better than mine. I certainly didn’t see it until he powered the boat back, and turned it sideways to the tall hull rising high above us. “Get on up there,” he bellowed. “Throw a line down to me.”

  Only lion legs could make that jump. Crouching, my powerful hind legs under me, I leaped up and caught the gunwale with my front paws. Scrambling up and over, I changed to two legs again and found a line to throw down to Redley.

  Even as he nimbly climbed up, hand over hand, I ran to the bow where the anchor was. It was a hand crank, and with the big vessel heaving and bucking under the storm’s force, I started turning it to raise the anchor from its bed. From far below, the huge engines turned over, coughing out diesel fumes that the wind caught and blew away.

  Redley wheeled the boat around to face into the waves and pushed the throttle forward. I was still cranking the anchor up, and I hoped it wouldn’t catch on anything before I got it up. The ratchets finally caught and held, and I raced to the bow and Redley. “You good?” I yelled into the wind, rain, and thunder.

  Sheltered in the wheelhouse, he glanced back over his shoulder and gave me the thumbs-up sign. I stumbled, almost falling, as the boat hit and crested each huge wave, and I wondered how it could withstand a storm in the open seas. Lights from the shore gleamed even through the wind and rain, and I peered through the murk toward the penthouse.

  Kiana, Gray, and Caesar would already have left for the landing site, but I couldn’t help but wish Kiana stood there, watching me. “There’s no way she could,” I muttered. “Not without lights.”

  I found the hold and opened the hatch, sliding down the ladder rather than step to the bottom. It stank of fish, yet held stacks of wooden crates, three and four high, scattered throughout the big hold. I broke one open and caught the gleam of the faint light on metal. I picked up a semi-automatic rifle and grinned.

  “Thank you, Duke,” I muttered.

  Leaving the cache of guns, I left the hold and swayed back and forth, staggering to keep my balance, across the rolling deck until I reached the ladder that led to the wheelhouse. I went up and joined Redley inside its shelter. I wiped streaming water from my face and blinked rain from my eyes.

  “How’s it going?” I asked.

  “You don’t need to be checking on me, youngster,” he growled. “That over there is the old lighthouse, if only it were working, and that there is the point, a spit of land. See the trees?”

  The lightning only showed me the reflection of glass from the lighthouse and little else. “Okay. How far away is the boat landing from here?”

  “We go down the coast about twelve miles, see? But we’ll have the waves to our asses, and that will get tricky. Better hold on to something.”

  After about ten minutes of heading into the wind, Redley spun the wheel around the point, then the wind hit us from behind. The big boat reared like a runaway horse, then dove down into a valley between the waves. Redley cursed under his breath but held the wheel steady as the lightning flashes showed me little save huge walls of water that threatened to swamp this damn thing and sink it.

  I gripped the gunwale and braced my feet, riding the boat through every crest for the next thirty minutes or so. Then Redley pointed, excited, through the windshield and driving rain.

  “Your friends are giving us a hand,” he burst out. “The headlights.”

  I peered through the gloom and saw the dim lights that could have been from vehicles and hoped the old geezer was right. “Just run the ship right up the ramp,” I said.

  “You got it.”

  He steered the fishing boat straight toward the lights and pushed the throttle forward, hard. “She won’t sink right away,” he told me. “But the waves and storm may take her back into the sea. You gotta work fast.”

  The lights grew closer as Redley charged the ship into the
overgrown vegetation and struck the asphalt ramp with enough strength to drive it halfway up to the road. I was tossed like a toy through the air to land, breathless and winded, in a heap against the gunwale.

  Chapter Twelve

  “Get out,” Redley yelled, rushing past me.

  I scrambled to my feet, the boat’s engines still running, the propellers chewed apart by the asphalt ramp beneath the waves. The vibration it made had me tingling all over as I ran out of the wheelhouse to the hold. The headlights drew closer, voices shouted, the high waves slamming over the stern and washing my feet with icy water.

  “We got maybe ten minutes before the sea takes her back,” Redley hollered, throwing ropes over the side to help Kiana, Caesar, Gray, and the others led by Miles to climb up.

  Before I slid down the ladder into the hold, I saw lion after lion leap over the gunwale, Kiana’s lithe form in the lead, shaking the rain from their eyes. “Logan,” she called, but I ducked down into the hold. Every second counted. Down inside the boat’s belly, I felt the sea tugging on it, dragging it backward inch by inch.

  She jumped down with me, followed by all the others. “We have to get these off now,” I told them, hefting a crate. “The waves will take the boat and sink it in minutes.”

  Shifting into his human with the others, Gray pointed at a long crack in the hull, water seeping in while the others grabbed crates. “We may have less time than that,” he said.

  Forming a chain, we passed the heavy boxes from hand to hand and up to the deck above. I guessed there to be about twenty-five of them, and even as we worked, the hold started to fill with water. First over our toes, then over our ankles, and by the time the last one had been heaved up, the icy saltwater had reached our shins.

  “Go,” I yelled, shoving Kiana toward the ladder and following her up.

  On the deck, Redley had organized others to use the ropes to lower the crates down to the waiting hands on the ground. The boat rocked from side to side, making the deck pitch even as the waves pounded over the stern.

  “Get to the ground, Kiana,” I ordered over the thunder and the crashing sea.

  Expecting an argument, I felt a little surprised when she shifted to four legs and leaped down, then helped carry the crates into the waiting truck. I lowered the boxes below, my arms straining, the ropes sliding through my palms to burn the skin from them. The work went quickly, however, as the shifters lowered box after box to those on the ground.

  “Get off,” Redley bellowed, then put action to his words by shifting into his wolf and jumping to the edge of the gunwale. He hung there, precariously for a few moments, and the boat tilted sideways. Vanishing into the rain and dark, I hoped his limbs weren’t as breakable as I suspected them to be.

  I, too, altered to my lion, then jumped to the pavement below as the ship shuddered.

  Its rolling and pitching increased, and a long screech, almost like a cry of pain, burst from it as the sea stretched forth its fingers and dragged it backward. It shook like a live thing and skewed towards us, its port side toppling like a steel wall.

  “Get back!” I roared, running toward the truck and the car.

  As though on a string, the boat righted itself, and skidded back into the sea several more feet. In my human body again, I grabbed another crate and rushed it to the truck. The driving rain in my eyes didn’t stop me from watching the sea finally claim the vessel, drawing it to its death. The boat sank in the water of the small inlet and capsized to rest on its port side.

  Redley limped toward me. “She was a grand old gal,” he yelled over the wind and thunder. “Hated to see her go like that.”

  “You’re hurt,” I told him, throwing my wet hair from my eyes. “Get in the car.”

  With a quick wave of his hand, the old wolf headed for the sedan and got into the back. The last of the crates were loaded, nearly filling the truck to its roof. I grabbed Miles’s arm. “There’s no room for the others.”

  Wiping rain from his face, he grinned. “The rest will head to the market on four legs. They may get there before we do.”

  Sure enough, lions and wolves stood ready to go, and I strode over to them as Miles got in behind the wheel of the truck. “Be careful,” I said. “Stay together. The night hunters may be out, even on a night like this.”

  One of the lions laughed. “Our pack is bigger than theirs. But we’ll keep an eye out.”

  They loped into the darkness and vanished around the old warehouses. Taking Kiana’s arm, I hustled her to the car as Gray got into the truck with Miles, while Caesar slid into the sedan’s driver’s seat. I got into the front beside him, glad to finally be out of the rain. “We’re ruining your seats,” I commented, wiping rain from my eyes.

  Caesar shrugged with a grin, backing up the car to turn it around even as the truck did the same to follow us. “I don’t care. They’ll dry.”

  The truck’s headlights went out as Caesar turned his off, but the wipers continued to flick the rain from the windshield. I half-turned to see Kiana and Redley in the back seat, Kiana busy combing her fingers through her drenched hair. “You okay, Redley?” I asked.

  “Aw, just not as able to jump from heights as I used to be, youngster,” he replied with a small smile. “I believe one of those rifles in that there truck has my name on it.”

  Kiana glanced at him in surprise as I raised my brow. “Then you’re welcome to join us. We need every hand.”

  I caught Caesar’s quick glance of skepticism, but then he turned back to watch the road ahead. Lightning flashes lit up the area, and thunder cracked on our heels, nearly turning the night into brightly lit noon. In its brief brilliance, I saw a small pack of night hunters dashing into the shelter of a nearly destroyed gas station.

  “We’re going too fast for them to attack,” Caesar stated noncommittally, meeting my glance.

  “Hopefully, they’ll think twice about going after the others.”

  We reached the downtown region, and Caesar turned the car down the main drag that led to the market. We had gone perhaps halfway down the street when a coughing explosion tore through the air.

  “What the hell?” Caesar yelled, braking the car to a halt.

  Fire blossomed straight ahead of us, a boiling column of flame that challenged the storm, black smoke billowing up in a dense cloud. Headlights spun toward us an instant later, and no one except enforcers used their headlights at night.

  “Get down,” I bellowed, ducking my head below the level of the dash as the cars sped toward us.

  Whether the enforcers saw us or not, they raced on past, down the street, and vanished around the corner. Caesar and I popped up, and I shot a glance over my shoulder at Kiana and Redley, then beyond them to the truck. Ahead, the fire continued to grow, blazing despite the rain that must have hammered at it.

  Realization hit me like a sharp blow between my eyes. “No,” I moaned, staring. “No, no, no.”

  “Logan,” Kiana cried. “What is it?”

  Caesar floored the accelerator and the car leaped forward, squealing down the street. I felt sick as the fire loomed bigger in my sight, the death of all my work, Derek’s work, now being consumed by the flames. The L and D Market burned merrily, setting nearby stores aflame, spreading faster than the rain could quench it.

  Caesar braked to a halt a safe distance away, and I climbed slowly out, feeling more grief than I ever thought possible as my store burned. Even from where I stood, the heat crisped my wet skin. I hardly noticed the rain beating down on me, the howling wind, the crashing thunder, until a small body worked her way under my arm. Kiana shook, trembled violently, and I glanced down at her.

  “Tony,” she whispered, and I almost didn’t hear her. “Albert. They could have been inside it. They could have been killed.”

  “They weren’t.” I enfolded her close to me, her head against my chest.

  But the memory of my taking the boys to the penthouse collided with the thought of Derek. I gulped, my pulse beating wildly. “De
rek,” I said, my voice thick. “He said he’d go home; he’d not hang around.”

  Her eyes huge, Kiana stared up at me. “Surely he wasn’t in there.”

  “I gotta know. I gotta go find him.”

  “I’ll come with you.”

  “No.” I gently pushed her toward Caesar and Redley, even as Miles and Gray stepped out of the truck. “You’re safer with them. Stay here.”

  I went lion and galloped down the street to an alley, then made a skidding right turn. A band of shifters, a mix of lions and wolves, nearly collided with me as I ran down the next block. I stopped, sliding on loose gravel as they quickly surrounded me.

  “Logan? What’s happening?”

  “The store was torched,” I growled. “Enforcers. I have to check on Derek.”

  “He wasn’t in there?” The lion glanced from me to the flames and smoke churning up over the rooftops.

  “I hope not. I’m on my way to his house to check. We’ll distribute the guns later.”

  I started galloping again and discovered half the pack running at my tail. I shot a swift look behind me and counted four lions there.

  “It’s too dangerous for one alone,” the guy called to me. “And you’re too important to lose.”

  Derek didn’t live very far from the store, and while no citizen emerged from their homes to investigate the explosion and the flames, I thought Derek would have. My heart in my throat, I feared the worst—that he had indeed remained behind to wait for us to come back with the guns. His house stood just ahead of me, dark and silent.

  Running up the porch steps, I turned human as the other lions waited on the lawn, watching for trouble. I beat on the door and yelled, “Derek! It’s me, open up.”

  The door creaked open, and an eye peered out. “Logan?”

  “Suzanne.” I gulped, my heart ripping open and bleeding into my chest. “Where’s Derek?”

  It opened wider, revealing Suzanne’s frightened and pale face. “He’s at the store, Logan. He came home for dinner, then went back.”

  My knees shook even as my breath snagged in my throat and choked me. Derek! I stumbled back and almost fell, lifting my hands to cover my face. “I told him to go home,” I muttered thickly. “I told him.”