In Like a Lion (The Chimera Chronicles)

by Karin Shah [shifer]

  “Fortunately,” Clara purred, leaning her red-knit sheathed hip on his desk. “One can do business anywhere these days. I’ve come to check on our investment.” She examined one shiny, red fingernail.

  “He’s not here right now.”

  One dark-blond eyebrow flirted with her hairline. She probably wouldn’t do it if she knew the movement creased her forehead. “Where is he?”

  “Strategic release,” Gareth said lightly.

  “You let him go?” Her lips, painted the same color as her nails, made a moue of amazed disgust.

  “I advanced our plan, as we discussed.” Gareth refused to let her ruffle him.

  “Well, plans change.” She brushed a piece of nonexistent lint from his shoulder.

  Gareth smiled through the haze of anger shading his vision. “By whose authority?”

  “My employers.” No one could consider Clara’s pale blue eyes anything but icy. “Your plan is solid,” she said. Throwing a dog a bone. “However, the consensus is, why wait for offspring who may or may not be chimeras, when we can simply clone the one we have.”

  “Cloning?” Gareth thought he’d been successful in hiding his antipathy, but she raised that eyebrow again.

  “You have some ethical concerns?” She lowered her chin, pouted, and viewed him with wide eyes as if talking to a baby.

  “I have practical concerns. Humans have never successfully been cloned, and we have no idea of the lifespan or stability of a cloned person.”

  Clara’s features tightened. She waved a hand in the air. “Mammals have been cloned. Human cloning has been delayed only by legalities. We don’t have that problem, do we?”

  “Breeding has thousands of years of experience behind it. Cloning—”

  Clara raised a hand. “Do you have the genetic material or don’t you?”

  “I do,” Gareth said grudgingly.

  “Do you know where Finn is?” She drawled the sentence as she fluffed his tie.

  He fought the impulse to knock her hands away, then sighed and shoved his hands into his suit pockets. “I think so.”

  “Excellent, then all we have to do is tie up the loose ends.”

  “Loose ends?” When she spoke that way, he really wished he had a bodyguard with him.

  “This doctor knows too much. Yes?” She fluttered lacquered eyelashes at him.

  He nodded.

  “And we certainly can’t have our enemies getting a hold of a chimera, can we?” Her mouth firmed with challenge.

  “No.” He hadn’t worked so hard for so long to lose his advantage over the competition.

  “Good.” Her eyes gleamed with a light so implacably cold, he almost expected her to sprout fangs and hiss.

  He held back a shudder as she speared his chest with a pointed fingernail. “Call the troops. We’ve got some ‘loose ends’ to knot.”

  Chapter 14

  “Mara here.”

  He’d heard the voice before, but he was stunned by how much it sounded like recordings he’d heard of his own. He swallowed. “This is Jake. Your, your brother.”

  His chest hurt at the silence that met his words. What was his brother feeling right now? He raked his fingers through his hair.

  Kyle was the one who’d called him originally. Why didn’t he answer?

  “Damn, it’s good to hear your voice,” his brother said at last.

  Throat tight, Jake found it hard to reply. He licked his lips and cleared his throat. “I can hardly believe this. I didn’t even know I had any family.”

  That silence again, and then, “You have six brothers including me.”

  Six brothers. Jake closed his eyes and shook his head, stuffing his free hand into his pocket. “Why was I given away?”

  “We were all separated, Jake. Mom sent each of us to different relatives when she . . . got sick. Most of us ended up in foster care eventually.” His brother’s voice was husky.

  Six brothers. He had a family. He inhaled through his nose several times, fighting to take it all in.

  Finally he glanced at the ceiling. “Listen. This is going to sound weird, but, can you all . . . change?”

  “Yeah. We’re chimeras.”

  “Chimeras? Three-headed monsters?” Jake remembered drawings he’d seen of chimeras in books. He blew out a stream of air. This whole thing was even weirder than he’d thought.

  “No.” His brother chuckled. “That’s just the ancient way of describing our triple nature, man, lion, and dragon.”

  Jake reeled a little. He’d moved away from the kitchen table while he spoke and the back of his knees knocked against the low couch. He sank into it and exhaled heavily. This was all happening.

  He was a shapechanger. From a family of shapechangers.

  Anjali came over and sat next to him, her face a picture of anxious concern. The urge to reach over and take her petite hand overwhelmed him, but he fought it.

  The mixed message wasn’t fair to her, no matter how much he craved the comfort of her touch. Not to mention he had no idea whether he could stop at holding her hand.

  He closed his eyes, straining to remember what he knew about chimeras. Very little it seemed, except those pictures in mythology books. It dawned on him the third head wasn’t a man’s. “What about the goat? Am I going to turn into a goat any time soon?”

  “No.” Kyle laughed, but it wasn’t much more than another small, dry chuckle. “I think the person who drew the early illustrations must have had an axe to grind. How many times have you heard women say men are goats?”

  Jake rubbed the back of his neck. “I’m surprised it’s not a donkey.” He tried for a joke.

  “Well, in the ancient world, donkeys got more respect.” Humor threaded Kyle’s voice.

  Jake eyed the ceiling. For the first time in his life, the future sprawled ahead, a road full of promise, instead of a misty cliff with invisible dangers. There was so much to learn about his family and himself. “I want to know everything.”

  “Everything could take a while.”

  Jake dragged his hand over his face. “Let’s start with ‘Where do we come from?’”

  “Geographically or mythically? Don’t ask for a scientific explanation of what we are. I don’t have one.”

  “How about both?”

  “Geographically, we come from the mountains of Pakistan, though the region was still part of India at the time. Our line became gypsies and migrated into Europe and eventually Ireland.”

  “And mythically?”

  “The story goes we’re descended from a man who dabbled in magic. He learned the name of a demon and summoned it.”

  Jake raised his eyebrows. Demons now? “Something tells me, all didn’t go as planned.”

  He heard a snort over the line. “No. He bargained with the demon, saying he would release the demon if the creature would fulfill a request, but the demon, as demons always do, had conditions. He told the magician to go to the marketplace three days in a row and get the richest person there to give him a coin.”

  “Doesn’t sound that hard.”

  “You don’t know demons. They always stack the deck. I don’t remember the details of the story, except that he manages to accomplish his task, but in the end, afraid of death, but equally afraid of immortality, the magician asked to live three lifetimes, to be strong as a lion and attract wealth like a dragon.”

  Jake sighed. “So the demon gave him the life of a lion and a dragon.”

  “That’s the story mom told me.”

  Mom. Jake tamed an ugly spurt of jealousy. There was no use mourning the past. “When can we meet?”

  “I’m stuck here until the end of the week.” Kyle’s voice was gruff, and Jake got the impression his brother was as eager to meet as he was but couldn’t.

  The sudden fullness in his throat threatened to choke him. After all those years of having nothing and no one, of being ignored, or used, he had family.

  A crash shattered the quiet behind Kyle’s voice. Jake winced and
yanked the phone slightly away from his ear.

  “Shit.” Kyle sounded muffled, as if he were looking over his shoulder. “I’m sorry. I gotta go. Please, come here. Go to the restaurant near Central Park. Dr. Mehta knows it.”

  Another crash sounded in the background. The line disconnected with a click.

  Jake turned to Anjali. She was biting her lip. Her eyes seemed huge. “Well?” she asked.

  “He wants me to come there. He said you know his restaurant?”

  Anjali stood and sighed, brushing her hands down her bright shirt, her palms casually sweeping the places he burned to touch. “I’ll get the information.”

  Jake turned away, biting back an oath as his body hardened in response. It took everything in him not to take her in his arms. God, he was a bastard. She’d saved his life and he owed her more than a one-night stand. It was bad enough he’d drawn her into this. For all he knew, Kincaid was on his way at that very moment.

  She went to her laptop, open on the black granite tile counter.

  Jake scooped up his book and the lab coat he’d taken from the locker room, hiding the evidence of how she affected him. He needed to get moving, but damnit, he didn’t want to say goodbye.

  He should have left two hours ago, before she came home. Now, as much as he wanted to go, he didn’t want to leave. The few minutes they’d spent eating, talking, just being together, had been the happiest he could remember. He hated to let it go. To let her go, but what choice did he have? He was a wanted man, might always be wanted, and she was a respected scientist.

  Anjali brought him a piece of paper. He reached for it, but she yanked it back, eyes determined. “I’m coming with you.”

  The long, slow shake of Jake’s head spawned an ache in Anjali’s chest. She’d known it was coming. She had no hold on him, but the need to go with him was almost overpowering.

  Going with him was insane. She should be glad to be rid of him. He did things to her body that were frighteningly powerful, triggered emotions far too likely to endanger her heart, but everything in her told her she had to go with him.

  She shuffled through the reasons she should go, trying to formulate a convincing argument, but couldn’t find one.

  “Please,” she said, letting him see the pleading in her eyes.

  His cheeks filled with a sigh. He tucked his hands in the pockets of the lab coat. His expression was shuttered, that beautiful, square jaw tight under his clean shave. “You have to show up for work tomorrow, Anjali. Otherwise, they’ll know you were involved.”

  “I can call in sick. Say I’ve been shaken by the ordeal.”

  Jake took her hand. Anjali almost staggered at the surge of electricity sparked by his fingers meshed with hers.

  He raised her fingers to his mouth and brushed his lips, warm and moist across the back of her hand. Goosebumps sped like wildfire from her fingers and up her arms. Her nipples contracted with a sweet ache.

  “I can’t—” he said.

  “You can,” she countered, thinking he meant he couldn’t kiss her. Regardless of the many reasons she shouldn’t, in that moment there was nothing she wanted more than the touch of his firm lips.

  “—put you in danger,” he finished.

  “Oh.” The heat of embarrassment spread over her cheeks. Her eyes fell.

  When she glanced up, his gaze was latched on her lips, still rounded from her last word. She licked them. His eyelids lowered over those blue, blue eyes, dark lashes nearly dusting his high cheekbones.

  Despite everything, despite the situation, despite his rather distant behavior this evening, and no matter what he said—he still wanted her.

  The thought made her lightheaded. She walked up to his chest, slid her free hand up his arm, relishing the firm, sleek flesh beneath the pads of her fingers. He gasped, just a tiny sound, but full of hunger and his pupils expanded as if to take her in.

  She let her fingers taste his nape through the raw silk of his hair, and then tangled them in the thick mass, cradling his head, and brought his mouth down to hers.

  For a moment, he hesitated, his breath feathering, hot and tantalizing, against the sensitive skin of her lips.

  Pleasure so intense it was almost pain, knotted her chest and curled in her belly. If he stopped now, she would collapse to the floor. Please, don’t let him stop.

  And he didn’t. His lips closed on hers with the poignant softness of a prayer, sweet, so sweet, and then his hand was on the back of her neck, urging her to him, but no urging was necessary.

  The feeling of his body against hers made her want to laugh with joy, sing out loud like a Bollywood actress, “He wants me, he wants me!”

  She sighed into his mouth, eased her hand from his, and wrapped her arms around his neck. He took her sigh as an invitation.

  His tongue touched hers and she groaned at the tender invasion. Desire pooled in her abdomen. She rubbed herself against him, frantic to be closer, desperate to end the hungry ache between her legs. He ran his hand down her thigh and lifted her knee, pressing her pleading flesh against his arousal. She gasped in excitement. He moaned in response and ripped his mouth from hers, finding the receptive skin under her ear with his fervent mouth.

  Tiny stinging bites ignited a trail of lapping flames in their aftermath. She clutched Jake’s head, wanting more of the same, wanting more of everything.

  She took his hand and guided his palm to her breasts. He shuddered as he contacted her pliant flesh. She reveled in his blatant pleasure.

  He stiffened abruptly then jerked away. Cold washed over her with bracing savagery and she thought she must have somehow mistaken desire for disgust.

  A lancing pain in her chest brought tears to her eyes.

  He held up his hand. His eyes were golden. “Someone is coming.”

  Chapter 15

  The smell of gunpowder and metal and the sound of booted feet told him the men outside were not residents of the apartment complex coming home.

  The lion awoke. Danger. Protect. Standing by the door, Jake didn’t just want to kill something, he wanted to tear it limb from limb and eat the gory carcass, but he had to stay in control for Anjali.

  Ignoring the lion roaring for blood inside him, he held one finger to lips still humming from the heady sweetness of Anjali’s kiss. She nodded. He gestured to her to go into the bathroom. “Duck down in the tub,” he whispered. It wasn’t very deep, but it was the most protected spot in the apartment.

  She shook her head. “I’m not leaving you alone,” she mouthed, eyes stubborn.

  “You know I can take care of myself.” He pointed to the bathroom again. “Please.”

  She pressed her lips together mutinously, her expression dark and worried, body language screaming reluctance, but she went.

  Jake heaved a sigh of relief. If he had to, he was going to do something he’d never done before. He was going to try and call the beast.

  And he had no idea if once summoned, he would be able to put the genie back in the bottle.

  The men outside were climbing the stairs now.

  It was the slamming of so many doors in swift succession that had first drawn his attention from Anjali’s incendiary embrace.

  She’d lit a fire in him, and without the proper fuel, it raged to expend itself in pure destruction.

  He smiled with teeth that were now too big for his human mouth. After viewing the discs, he knew what Kincaid had been trying to do when they’d carved him up before his last escape.

  He’d been trying to force Jake to change.

  Luckily, he’d had more control in those days. Lately, the beast had been all to close to the surface. Only the thought of Anjali seeing him in the grip of his madness had stopped him from giving in to the urge to transform when Sanchez and the others had pushed her back at the facility.

  Now he knew what he was, if not all the details, and it was time to welcome the beast. For the first time, the decision felt proper, right. The lion inside him knew no higher purpose than to
protect his mate.

  The thought halted the progression of his change. No matter what the beast’s instincts told him, Anjali wasn’t—couldn’t be—his mate. His life was too messed up for him to drag her further into it.

  The men stopped outside Anjali’s door and he could hear them conferring almost silently, confirming this was the proper door and directing assignments.

  From the number of heartbeats, he thought there were eight men in the hall.

  Kincaid was one of them. Jake recognized his aftershave.

  Seven men would fight.

  Kincaid wasn’t the type to do his own dirty work.

  Jake was surprised he’d even come. A slight odor of fear emanated from the older man. Maybe someone else was pulling his strings. It would serve the bastard right.

  Jake welcomed the surge of adrenaline speeding through his veins. If Kincaid entered the room, he’d better have a gun.

  They rammed the door with something, and it flew open with a loud bang, leaving the guts of the wooden trim spilling from the deadbolt plate.

  As they burst in, adrenaline surged through him. The men, dressed in black, had their weapons out and the closest one fired on sight. Heart rate on overdrive, Jake dodged out of the way and seized the man.

  The smell of gunpowder and smoke burned his nose. The bullet slammed into the back wall and Jake prayed Anjali had followed his directions.

  Growling, teeth bared, Jake stripped the gun away from the man he held.

  Anger and fear rose in a cloud from the invaders. He held the guard in front of him, using the man’s body armor to shield his own chest. He knew he healed quickly, but he had no idea what kind of punishment his body could take.

  The men shouted to each other, and him. His eyes watered at the noise, but he didn’t move.

  “Release our man and put down the gun,” one of the men yelled.