“I’ll lock Gene in the bathroom and meet you there.”
“No, I need to examine him. Weres aren’t supposed to act like this. We have to figure out why the Shrine’s important and how he kept his focus through the change. It could rewrite everything we know about were behavior. That’s what makes this so exciting.”
That’s what made their meet-up so exciting—not him? Jack glared at the phone.
“Sorry, Rika,” he lied, “the exam’ll have to wait. Gene’s too big for my book bag, and I’m not carrying him. He bites. Maybe next month we can borrow a pet carrier.”
“Who said anything about carrying him? Use the leash in your sock drawer. The halter’s adjustable.”
He started to deny it, then stopped. This was Rika. She wasn’t just a foxy chick with a four-point-oh in everything, including the courses that didn’t officially exist. She was a full-blooded shape-shifting fox, what the Japanese called a kitsune, with a black belt in a form of mixed martial arts supposedly developed for ninjas. She once took out a crazed cat sidhe with nothing but a metal tray. Compared to that, what was a little b-and-e in a boys-only dorm at a college she didn’t attend?
A neatly coiled red leash and halter set lay on the bottom of the drawer underneath a package of new dress socks. The socks shouldn’t have been there, either.
“Damn it, Rika, you’re worse than the NSA! A man’s got a right to privacy, especially in his sock drawer. That’s sacred space! How’d you like it if I went groping in your...”
Drawers. Do not go there. By some miracle, his mouth stopped in time. By an even bigger one, Rika didn’t notice the slip.
“I don’t see why you’re getting so upset,” she shot back. “I did you a favor. You should be grateful. Shift happens, Jack, and you need to be prepared. Now are the two of you meeting me at the Shrine, or do I have to come to your room?”
* * *
The Shrine basilica soared above the black asphalt moat of Visitor’s Parking like a mountain fortress, complete with massive, pale stone walls, narrow windows and grim doors straight out of the Evil Overlord handbook. But something had happened when the builders got to the roof. Instead of gun turrets or arrow slits, they capped their stronghold with an enormous blue, red, and yellow beanie in desperate need of a propeller. Jack was half convinced it was an epic university prank nobody knew how to fix.
The newly upscale neighborhood shared the basilica’s goofy vibe. It wasn’t dangerous by Washington, DC, standards. Still, something in Jack’s chest relaxed when he saw Rika’s old Honda parked under the streetlamp directly across from the Shrine’s monumental east portico.
And clenched all over again when she stepped out of the car. She was dressed in black from the crown of her hoodie to the tips of her leather-gloved fingers and the soles of her black-laced dance shoes.
Part of it was jealousy. If brown-skinned Jack stepped out in a hoodie like that he’d be arrested for breathing. The only reason a cop would stop a cute Asian chick with killer legs (not that anybody could see them under those loose knit pants, dammit) would be to ask for her phone number. The larger part, however, was a sinking sense of dread at the thousand different bad reasons Rika might have for dressing like a ninja—a lead weight in his gut that only got heavier when she hauled a backpack (also black) out of the backseat.
Jack spooled Gene’s leash around his elbow to keep “Uber Rat” from taking another kamikaze leap off the curb in the direction of the Shrine. He glowered sternly at Rika to forestall the kitsune equivalent. “What’s in the bag?”
Rika flashed him a smile that made his breath hitch, his heart stutter, and all his tomcat parts sit up and take notice. She hoisted the bag onto the hood of the car, and his brain short-circuited entirely. Her breasts bounced under her hoodie. The woman had killer everything.
She produced a penlight from the backpack. “Study tools. We’re looking at original research here. I could get a grant. Now try to keep Wonder Opossum still. I need to do a visual exam.”
Wonder Opossum. He should’ve known she wasn’t glowing at him. He scowled at the crown of her head as she trained her light on Gene.
The ever-present swish of traffic along Michigan Avenue exploded in a blare of horns. Gene hissed like a leaky balloon and collapsed on the sidewalk. Green opossum poo oozed from his butt.
The timing was perfect. Rika jumped from her crouch and stumbled against the car.
“That’s not dead,” she gurgled. “That’s decayed.”
“You should smell the room.”
“The curse of the five bean brain,” she said, fanning her hand in front of her face.
Jack’s eyes narrowed. “Five bean what?”
“Five bean brain,” she repeated. “An opossum’s brainpan only holds five beans. Pound for pound it has the tiniest brain of any mammal anywhere.”
“So? Cat brains are pretty small, but I don’t crap over everything when I shift.”
“Because you shift. Born shifters like us go from one form to another without losing consciousness. No matter what we look like, we’re still us inside. Weres change. They become their animal, with all its strengths and limitations. That’s why Gene’s fixation with the Shrine is so amazing. His opossum shouldn’t remember the Shrine exists, much less seek it out—assuming he did. He did, didn’t he? You didn’t drag him here.”
“Trust me,” Jack said drily, “I wouldn’t.”
“So the big question is: Why the Shrine? Well, the first big question. We can’t ask how until Gene remembers how to talk.” She slid the penlight into her hoodie pocket and held out her hand. “Show me the pictures.”
When she put it that way, he was curious, too. Still annoyed—part of him couldn’t shake the feeling were-Gene had simply found a new and improved way of being a jerk—but curious.
“These things are from the Shrine,” she said. “I saw them the other week when I...” When you snuck into my room? Her cheeks darkened as if she heard his thoughts. She hiked her chin and continued defiantly, “...when I took a tour. The Shrine’s a giant art museum. The Madonna is a silver cast of Michelangelo’s Pieta. The flower is Pope Benedict’s Golden Rose, and the crown is the papal tiara of Pope Paul the Sixth. Is Gene religious? Could he have printed these for his devotions?”
“Not a chance. Lack of religion is the only thing we have in common. If the Shrine’s like a museum, does that mean this stuff is valuable?”
She nodded enthusiastically, obviously relieved he wasn’t pressing her about her “tour.” (Yet, he promised himself.) “Oh yeah. We’re talking twenty-four karat treasure—gold, sterling silver and jewels by the pound.”
“That’s bad,” Jack said. “Gene was an Army MP—military police. He enrolled at Catholic because the FBI hires a lot of CUA graduates. If you put that together with the pictures and the way he’s acting, it sounds like he heard somebody was planning to rob the Shrine but couldn’t get a fix on the target.”
The color drained from Rika’s cheeks. “A robbery?” she whispered.
A sneeze from the direction of the pavement sounded like the opossum version of agreement. Gene lurched to his feet, oriented himself toward the Shrine and resumed plodding, seemingly unaware of the fact he wasn’t actually getting anywhere.
Rika didn’t smile at his antics. If anything, she grew more alarmed. The musky tang of kitsune fear overlay the sewer smell of Gene’s faint.
“He’s still trying to get to the Shrine. Whatever’s happening, it’s happening tonight. That’s the only way his actions make sense. We’ve got to call the police.”
“Gene would’ve done that first thing. FBI-wannabe, remember.”
“Then where are they?” She swept her arm in an arc that encompassed the parking lot and the five late-model cars huddled near the softly lit apse. A gust of wind ripped the paper from her hand and sent it cartwheeling in toward the Shrine. “Why aren’t they here?”
“Probably because he didn’t have any proof.”
She
pulled out her phone anyway.
“Rika, it won’t do any good. If the cops didn’t believe an ex-MP, they won’t believe us.”
“We have to do something! Those Shrine treasures aren’t just valuable, they’re sacred. They’ve been the object of belief, reverence and concentrated spiritual energy for years. They could’ve turned into true talismans. That’s the magical equivalent of a nuclear reactor. We can’t let that on the street. There are evil sorcerers out there who would use a true talisman to open the portal to a hell dimension just for bragging rights.”
“Don’t worry, we won’t,” he assured her. “But there’s no point calling the cops. They won’t listen to you. They’ll assume they’re being punked. But there are people in this town they have to listen to—and a lot of them know your parents. You need to call them, get one of their political friends on it. Your parents will believe you, and the cops will believe them.”
Hope flared in her eyes, and fizzled an instant later. “Can’t. They’re in Paris with Uncle Five-Tails. They won’t be up for hours. Then it’ll be too late.”
“Then call your brother and have him hack into their address book. You can fake your mom’s voice—though I suggest doing it in the car. It’s getting cold, and if we’re inside, you won’t have to worry about the wind screwing up your illusion.”
Jack held his breath. If she went for it, he might save the evening yet. He’d even figured out how to tether Gene’s leash to the outside of the door.
She shook her head. “There’s no time. But you’re right. The cops need something solid. Well, I’ll give them solid.” She unzipped another pocket of backpack, extracted a blue and gray Hoyas baseball cap and tossed it at him. “You’re going to need this.”
“Why?” he asked suspiciously as she wriggled into the bag’s shoulder straps.
“CCTVs. I’m breaking into the Shrine.” She darted across the lot, pulling up her hood as she ran.
“What? No!” he yelled.
But Rika wasn’t listening. She had the do-gooder bit between her teeth, damn the torpedoes and any look-outs the bad guys might have posted—and nobody to save her except him. Jack yanked the cap over his hair and gave the opossum its head. Gene chittered and wheezed, pushing his stumpy legs faster than they were meant to go. It wasn’t nearly fast enough. By himself, Jack would’ve overtaken her before she reached the first of the two flights of stairs leading to the east portico. With Gene in tow, he was still halfway down the first flight when she veered right across the intervening terrace.
Gritting his teeth and hoping he didn’t get bit, Jack grabbed the opossum by the halter and took the rest of the stairs two at a time. The trees bordering the terrace were shadows on black. A dozen people could be hiding there. All they had to do was stand still. He’d never hear them.
A brass lantern illuminated a descending stairwell tucked against the side of the portico’s upper staircase. At the bottom, directly under the lantern, stood two wooden doors. Rika hunched over their handles, a pair of lock picks glinting in the gloved darkness of her hands. Jack jumped the last four steps into the stairwell. He released Gene’s halter and captured her wrists.
“Stop it,” he whispered hoarsely, praying the shadow of his cap was enough to hide his face from any security cameras. “Wearing black does not make you a ninja.”
She flicked her hands from his grasp. “Being a ninja makes you a ninja. It’s a Zen thing. Back up. You’re in my light. We need to get the doors open.
“No, we don’t.”
“It’s the only solution. The door alarm will buzz security, and they’ll call the cops. All we’ll have to do is run away.” Her arm torqued. “Ah.”
The doors were heavy and far too loud. Rika retrieved her penlight and brandished it at the darkness. He glimpsed a corridor and a matching set of doors before the beam settled on a tiny box mounted on the doorjamb.
“Uh oh,” Rika said.
Despite the comparative warmth of the stairwell, despite his sweatshirt and the long-sleeved tee he wore underneath, he went ice bucket cold. “What?”
“The sensor’s off.” She waved her hand in front of the box.
Gene tried to break for the interior. Jack hauled him back.
“So it’s a silent alarm. Let’s get out of here.”
Rika shook her head. He started to protest. She incinerated him with a glare. “I’m a fox. I can hear the heartbeat of a field mouse sleeping in its burrow under a foot of snow. If the sensor was working I’d hear current humming in the wire. I don’t. The alarm is dead.”
“We’re going. Now.” He grabbed her arm.
A whiff of stale cigarettes tweaked his nose. Before Jack could parse what it meant, a large body landed in the stairwell. An instant later, something cold and hard jabbed the back of his skull. It felt like a gun.
Rika’s horrified gaze angled upward to a point past the top of his head. Gene growled and snapped.
“Control your rat, or he eats the second bullet,” a mechanically distorted voice thrummed behind him.
Oh crap. It was a gun, a gun behind his left ear. Jack couldn’t think past the reality of the gun pressed against his head. Sweat flushed his armpits, worsening his chill. Carefully, oh so carefully, he wound Gene’s leash around his hand until the opossum was forced to heel.
“Keep your hands where I can see them,” the voice continued.
Rika nodded. She slowly spread her arms to the side. Please, Jack thought as hard as he could, don’t try anything. He can’t miss.
The voice said, “We’re going to the Crypt. Move slowly, or the boy dies.”
Crypt? Jack’s mind yelped. Rika gulped and nodded again.
Cigarette Crook directed Rika to open a pair of doors in the middle of the corridor. “No tricks.”
No kidding. Dim light radiated from the basement of the church, illuminating a short staircase and a passage beyond.
Gene flopped against Jack’s foot. The stink hit a second later. Cigarette Crook didn’t flinch. He must be wearing a mask. None of them had seen his face. They might yet survive. They just had to be smart.
The passage ended in a second, wider flight of stairs, which fed into a stone hall bigger than Jack’s entire dorm. The overhead lights were off, but hard white light blazed from an elevated stone bridge to his left. As he turned for a better look, two sharp barbs dug into his shoulder. His muscles convulsed. Pain exploded inside him—bone-breaking, muscle-shearing, lung-burning, heart-bursting agony. His vision flashed white and black. The world winked out to the sound of Rika’s scream.
* * *
Heaven smelled like incense, beeswax, and polished stone. Jack’s cheek pressed against a slick, cold surface. His mouth tasted like dirt, only drier. Okay, not heaven. He forced his aching eyelids apart. Soft light dappled a glossy stone floor. There were people on the floor—strangers with zip-tied feet and hands bound behind their backs.
Rika!
He struggled to sit up and crashed to the floor, landing on his bruised shoulder. The pain made him want to throw up, but it cleared his head. He was bound like the others. He strained against the zip ties, but the plastic wouldn’t give, and he couldn’t wrestle his arms over his hips. Praying his human clothes wouldn’t dislocate his cat shoulders, he forced himself to shift.
The change left him sore, panting and nearly smothered by his shirts. When he wriggled free, he found himself in a lamp-lit underground church with pews, stands of votive candles and a low vaulted ceiling. He stood in a rectangular space between the back pews and the triple-arched entrance to a darkened side room. The other captives—a chubby, middle-aged man in a black suit and clerical collar, and three guys in the gray trousers, blue jackets and yellow hazard vests worn by Shrine security—lay on the floor between Jack and the votive stands to his right. To his left, past the last opening in the archway, a narrow, gold-tiled alcove framed the mosaic portrait of a black-haired Madonna. One of her cat-like eyes appeared to be winking at an unmoving huddle of blac
k dumped at the entrance to the alcove.
Jack tore across the cold floor. His pulse thundered in his ears. It wasn’t until he crouched next to Rika’s face that her slow, steady heartbeat and the soft sounds of her respiration penetrated the din of his fear. Her scent was a little crisped around the edges, but okay. She was going to be okay. Cat knees buckled in relief.
She opened her eyes. Her lips crooked in a small, lopsided smile. His heart pounded against his ribs as if they really were a cage.
“Pocket,” she gasped. “Nail clipper.”
He nodded and scampered back to his clothes before shifting to human. As he skinned into his pants, he glanced at the back of the church and froze. Three sets of tall glass doors overlooked the hall where he’d been tased. If the bad guys had seen…His heart stuttered. But the hall was empty, and strain as he might, he couldn’t hear anyone shouting or running toward the doors. The only witnesses to his stupidity appeared to be the Madonna and ‘Possum Gene, who was too busy pawing the center doors to notice. Jack ducked behind the pews and scuttled to Rika’s side.
“Left pocket.” Her voice sounded stronger.
He reached into her pants pocket, trying not to think of where he was putting his fingers. A different set of muscles tensed when he saw her hands. The zip tie dug into her gloves. He couldn’t work the clipper under the plastic without cutting something else. He didn’t want it to be her skin.
“Can you shift?”
“Can’t. Tried.”
But her abilities were stronger than his. She could even stop shifting partway.
She must have seen the horror on his face. She moistened her lips. “Need more time. Smaller than you.”
A fierce protectiveness swelled inside him, filling his chest so fast he couldn’t breathe. Rika was slight, small-boned and five inches shorter than him. She was also smarter, her animal was stronger, she had martial arts training, but none of it mattered, because when it came to doing what she believed the right thing, she had no sense of self-preservation. None. And with the terrible clarity achieved in crisis, he knew if he couldn’t keep her safe he would die.
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