by Zoe Chant
“Thanks.” His voice was roughened with emotion.
Rather than pretending not to notice, Justin said, “Yeah. It takes some getting used to. But it’s worth it.”
Nick caught Justin’s elbow as he started to turn a corner. “Wait. Go the other way.”
“What’s there?” Shane asked.
Nick sniffed the air. “Not sure. It smells interesting, though.”
“Dinosaurs?” Merlin asked eagerly.
“This whole place smells like reptile. Nah, this is something else. Maybe…” Nick sniffed again. “Cats?”
With equal eagerness, Catalina said, “Oh, let’s go look. Maybe they’re experimenting on cats. We should rescue them!”
Ethan couldn’t help noticing the distinct split between the people giving Catalina looks of total (Pete and Ransom), doubt (Roland), and genuine enthusiasm at following her lead (Shane, Justin, Destiny, Nick, and Merlin). Personally, he was in favor of rescuing the cats, especially now that he was one himself, always assuming they didn’t turn out to be Apex agents in saber-tooth tiger form.
They turned in the direction Nick had indicated, now following his lead. Needless to say, it was yet another white corridor.
“A maze of twisty passages, all alike,” Destiny remarked.
“I know what ancient text game that’s from,” replied Ethan. “Nerd.”
“Double nerd.”
“Super-nerd.”
“Ultra-nerd.”
“Hey, nerd-mates,” Nick interrupted. “It’s here.”
He stopped in front of a door. While everyone fell into defensive positions, Ethan used his security guard ID to open it.
Nick sniffed the air and told them what Ethan could already see. “No humans inside.”
They hurried inside and locked the door behind them. As Catalina had guessed, it was full of cages sized to fit cats or dogs. They were made of thick bulletproof plastic webbed with hair-thin strands of faintly glowing silvery metal that made it difficult to see what was inside any of them. The latches on the cages were made of the same metal.
As they peered at the cages, trying to see inside, a few sad meows arose.
“I knew it! Poor things. We have to rescue them.” Catalina reached for the latch of the nearest cage.
Shane caught her hand. “Hold on. That same metal is on their collars.” He jerked his head at Ransom and Roland.
Catalina froze, hand in mid-air. “What do the collars do?”
Both men shrugged.
“Neither of you can shift, can you?” Destiny asked. When they shook their heads, she said, “Maybe these are imprisoned shifters.”
“No,” Ransom said. “They’re animals.”
“How do you know?” Justin asked.
“That’s his power,” Merlin said. “He… knows things. Right?”
Ransom gave a reluctant nod.
“Are the animals dangerous?” Merlin asked.
Ransom frowned, as if struggling to put what he saw or knew into words, and finally said, “They won’t hurt us.”
“I hate to rain on the pet rescue parade,” Pete remarked. “But I don’t want to be juggling a bunch of loose cats if we get attacked.”
Merlin, who had been prowling around the lab, raised his head. “I found some carrying cages. We can stash them in there.”
As if in response, a chorus of plaintive meows arose, and also several canine whines.
“Dogs!” Justin said indignantly. “No way we’re leaving helpless dogs for Apex to experiment on.”
“Or helpless cats!” added Catalina. With that, she opened the nearest cage.
It contained a fluffy black kitten with enormous yellow eyes and wings like a Monarch butterfly, striped and spotted in black and orange. It blinked at her, gave an excited squeak, and flew into her arms. She instinctively caught it. The flying kitten rubbed its head against her chest and began to loudly purr.
“What the…” Pete began.
“No weirder than dinosaurs and monsters and shapeshifters,” Merlin said with a shrug.
“Yes, it is!” Pete said to Merlin. “This is the weirdest yet.”
“It’s definitely the cutest yet.” Destiny reached for the nearest unopened cage.
Ethan chuckled. “You want your own nerdly pet, don’t you?”
She grinned, unabashed. “So do you. Admit it.”
“I want one,” he admitted. “But you go first.”
Destiny opened the cage. Ethan leaned forward, eager to see her winged kitten and secretly hoping it would be even more adorable than Catalina’s, if such a thing was possible. His mate deserved the cutest flying kitten of them all.
A pair of beautiful wings, as translucent blue as a morning sky, unfolded. But they didn’t belong to any kind of kitten. The little blue dragon launched itself from the cage.
But it didn’t go to Destiny. It flew straight to Nick. Startled, he raised his arm. It landed on his forearm and cocked its head, examining him with sapphire eyes. After the briefest hesitation, Nick extended his arm to Destiny. The little dragon didn’t budge. Instead, it coiled its tail around his tattooed wrist.
“Guess it likes you, Nick,” Destiny said. With a toss of her braids, she said, “No accounting for taste.”
But he was too enchanted with the tiny dragon to even tease her back. “What a gorgeous little thing. Raluca will love it.”
“Maybe it can sense that your mate’s a dragon shifter,” Ethan suggested, knowing that Destiny was disappointed even though she didn’t let it show.
The blue dragon let out a trill, as if in agreement. There was an answering meow from the next cage.
“That one’s yours,” Catalina said to Destiny. Cradling her butterfly-winged kitten in one arm, she flipped the latch.
Another winged kitten flew out of the cage. But it too bypassed Destiny, and Catalina as well. Instead, it made a beeline for Shane. He stood perfectly still as the sleek gray tabby landed on his shoulder. Its wings were more like a moth’s than a butterfly’s, a soft pearly gray like the sky before dawn. The kitten folded them neatly, gave his ear an exploratory nip, and tried to climb onto his head.
“Ow.” Shane gently detached the kitten and settled it back on his shoulder.
It meowed in protest, then jumped off and dove down like a hawk. The kitten landed on his shoe, grabbed his ankle with all four paws, and ferociously attacked his pants.
“All yours, Shane,” Destiny said as he attempted to pry it off his leg.
Ethan turned to the cage below the ones that had already been opened, but Justin was already kneeling there. That cage was the size of the other three put together, and emitted a chorus of excited canine yelps and whines and yips.
“A litter of puppies,” Justin said confidently. “Sounds like three of them. Fiona and me already have six dogs. We don’t have room for nine. Ethan, Destiny, want to take the other two?”
Destiny nudged Ethan. “Think you can cope with a pair of flying puppies?”
“Oh, hell yeah.” He was already grinning at the thought.
Justin opened the cage. Three little husky puppies stared up at him adoringly with three sets of ice-blue eyes, then scrambled out to jump all over him, barking ecstatically and wagging their tails…
Tail.
Wagging its tail.
Ethan blinked hard, but when he opened his eyes, the three-headed puppy was still there, licking Justin with three little pink tongues.
Pete’s disbelieving stare moved from the puppy to Justin to Merlin. “Okay, forget what I said earlier. That’s the weirdest yet.”
Merlin gave an elaborately unconcerned shrug. “It’s just a Cerberus puppy.”
“Who’s a good boy?” Justin asked the puppy as it rolled over to get its belly scratched.
One head panted happily, one barked, and one went on licking him.
Justin ruffled the puppy’s furry heads. “You! You! You! You’re a good boy!”
Roland cleared his throat. “This is all very
…”
“Fucking bizarre?” Pete suggested.
Roland, apparently at a loss for words, didn’t finish the sentence. Instead, he said, “Let’s just put the animals in the carrying cages and keep searching the place. We can sort out who gets what later. There’s still a human prisoner we need to rescue.”
Everyone guiltily scrambled to unlatch the rest of the cages, Shane a little hampered by the gray kitten that was now clinging to his right arm, flapping its wings and squeaking.
As Ethan opened the nearest cage, he realized that only Ransom hadn’t moved. In fact, now that he thought back, Ransom hadn’t moved a muscle since they’d started opening the cages. Ethan had gotten so used to him being quiet and watchful, it hadn’t registered before. But now that he was paying attention, he could see that Ransom wasn’t merely still, but seemed to be frozen in place. Only his dark eyes, now locked on Ethan’s, betrayed his desperation to convey some terrible warning.
Ethan reacted instantly, trusting in his gut feeling and Ransom’s intuition.
“Am—” he started to shout. But before he could complete the word, the ambush happened.
“Freeze,” said a quiet male voice behind him. “No shifting, no powers, no movement.”
Ethan couldn’t move. It was like nightmares he’d had where he was under attack and paralyzed, only in real life. He tried to struggle, but couldn’t move a muscle except to breathe and blink his eyes. Everyone he could see was frozen too.
At least, the humans were. But their pets could move, and they did. Catalina’s butterfly kitten arched its back, spread its wings wide, and let out a tiny hiss. Shane’s gray moth kitten flew up toward the ceiling, where Ethan lost sight of it. Nick’s blue dragon breathed out a tiny puff of flame. The Cerberus puppy tugged at Justin’s sleeve with one head, while another whined to get his attention and the third growled at their unseen enemy.
Ethan’s right hand was still on the cage latch that he’d just lifted. He felt it move as whatever creature had been inside pushed the door open.
“No!” shouted the enemy behind him. “McNeil, close that door! Don’t let that beast open a portal!”
Ethan tried not to obey, but his hand moved anyway, slamming the cage door shut. But it seemed to be too late, based on the angry yell from their unseen enemy.
Though he strained to look down and around, to see what creature had emerged, he couldn’t do that anymore than he could turn and see his enemy. All he could do was use the blurred edges of his peripheral vision to observe the abrupt flurry of movement from the cages that had been unlatched but not yet opened. He couldn’t see what creatures were fleeing their cages or where they went. But he heard doors banging open, a chorus of squeaks and yelps and flapping wings, and saw a confusion of multicolored movement.
There was a flash of brilliant light. And then total silence. All the imprisoned beasts were gone, except for Catalina’s butterfly kitten, Nick’s miniature dragon, and Justin’s Cerberus puppy. Ethan wasn’t sure about Shane’s moth kitten, but suspected that it was out of his line of sight rather than vanished through the portal. Whatever the portal was.
The unseen man spoke again. “Everyone with animals, control them. Hold them and don’t let them attack. That is the only way you are permitted to move.”
Catalina, Nick, and Justin pulled their pets into their arms and held them, gently but firmly. None of them spoke, but he could see the fear and fury and confusion in their eyes. Worst of all, he could see it in Destiny’s, as they stood beside each other and couldn’t touch, couldn’t comfort each other, couldn’t do anything but share the same helplessness.
Shane hadn’t moved. His ice blue eyes held neither fear nor rage, but a chilly detachment coupled with a touch of ironic amusement, as if to say, And what am I supposed to do?
With a tinge of annoyance in his voice, the enemy behind them said, “Garrity, just capture your feline the next time it comes within your reach. Now, everyone, turn and gaze upon your master.”
Ethan felt himself move without volition, as if his body was no more than a puppet controlled by another. But as horrifying as that was, he was relieved as well. At least now he’d see his enemy. There was nothing worse than being controlled by some unknown force.
The man before him had apparently stepped out of some hidden door. Or teleported. Or walked through a wall. Who the hell even knew. Ethan gave up on trying to figure out how the enemy had gotten in, and focused on who he was. The man had gray hair and a gray beard, both neatly trimmed, and wore a long white coat embroidered in black thread.
“My name is Lamorat,” said the man in the white coat. “I forbid you from attacking me or leaving your places. But you may move your bodies otherwise.”
Ethan couldn’t help breathing a sigh of relief as he found that he could shake out his stiff muscles, look around, and take Destiny’s hand. She squeezed it tight.
“And don’t bother expecting a rescue,” Lamorat went on. “The doors are sealed with an override lock. Mere security IDs won’t open them. Yes, that includes the secret door I entered from. Only I can open them now.”
Ethan had first focused on the white coat, and thought, He’s a doctor or a scientist. Then he noticed the embroidery, and thought, to his own disbelief, He’s a wizard.
His third inspection left him more confused than his first two. He knew some of the embroidered symbols: the two snakes twining around a stick that symbolized medicine, the skull and crossbones for poison, and, most eerily of all, an atom. But others looked distinctly magical: a pentagram in a circle, a staring eye, and a snake with its tail in its mouth. There were others that he’d never seen before.
Then he saw something he recognized all too easily: the smug sneer of the enemy who thinks he’s better than you, and can’t wait to make sure you know it too.
“You seemed intrigued by the symbols on my robe, McNeil,” Lamorat said, and the sneer deepened. “Would you like to know what they represent?”
Here comes the monologue, Ethan thought, resigned.
Then his mood brightened. Monologues were good. Monologues should be encouraged. Ayers’s monologue had led to his defeat. And this man’s monologue would keep him there, doing nothing more harmful than boring them, until Fiona and Rafa and Lucas got the jump on him.
He caught Destiny’s eyes, and she gave him the very subtlest of winks. Ethan relaxed. He was with his mate, who understood him perfectly. All they had to do was stall for time, and encourage the blabbermouth to keep on blabbering.
“Yes, I would like to know,” Ethan said.
Lamorat cleared his throat as if he was a professor about to begin a lecture. “They represent the mystic marriage of magic and science, which enables those of us with the greatest intellect and power to rule lower beings like yourselves. I suppose you’re all ignorant enough to believe that you have been captured by Apex?”
“The thought did occur to me,” Justin remarked. “I can’t imagine why.”
Lamorat missed the sarcasm entirely. “It’s because this base was built by Apex and is staffed by personnel who believe that it’s an Apex facility. But the council of wizard-scientists is its true owner, and we don’t answer to anything so small and petty. We’re only making use of its infrastructure and techniques for our own purposes.” To Ethan’s dismay, he glanced at the clock on the wall. “But, alas, time is getting on. Enough talk—”
“Hey, Lamo-rat-face,” Nick interrupted. “You know what my mate is? She’s a dragon. When she finds out what you’re doing to me, she’s gonna be fucking pissed.”
“Be silent, dog,” said Lamorat. Nick’s face turned red as he tried and failed to speak. “I am well aware of who your mate is. We have ways of dealing with mythic shifters here. Or has your puny canine brain failed to register the meaning of shiftsilver?”
Nick rolled his eyes and shrugged: Don’t know and don’t care.
“The metal on the magical animal cages.” Lamorat waved his hand at the empty cages, then indicate
d Ransom and Roland. “And on their collars. It has no effect on ordinary shifters and animals, or even extinct shifters and animals. But it negates the inherent magic of mythical beasts, preventing their escape. And when it touches the skin of humans who can become mythical beasts, it prevents them from shifting.”
Ethan kept his face carefully blank, but made a mental promise to buy Nick a beer once this was over. He’d goaded Lamorat into not only forgetting that he was wasting time, but telling them what the collars did—and that all they needed to do to let Roland and Ransom become… something… was to get their collars off.
He wondered what they turned into. Dragons, he supposed. Those were the only mythic shifters he’d heard of. It would definitely be good to have a pair of dragons on their side right now.
“And also, I have the power to control all shifters with my mind, mythic or otherwise.” Lamorat’s smug little sneer returned. “Anyone else feel the need to threaten me? Anyone?”
“Bueller?” Catalina called.
“Silence, feline,” the wizard snapped. Her snicker cut off like he’d turned off a TV. “Now—”
“What happened to the woman who was with me?” Roland asked.
“She was of no importance,” Lamorat said with a shrug. “You were the intended target. She was only taken because she refused to leave you.”
“So you didn’t do anything to her?”
“By no means. Since we already had her, we decided we might as well get some use out of her. She went through the Ultimate Predator process, just like the rest of you.”
“And?” Roland’s fists were clenched at his sides. “Where is she?”
“Dead.”
The wizard’s word fell on the room like a heavy stone, crushing everything in its path. Ethan’s horror was echoed in the clench of Destiny’s solid grip on his hand.
Roland’s face went as ashen as if he’d been shot. Very softly, he said, “What was her name?”
Lamorat shrugged again. “What does it matter? The process killed her. We’ve improved the casualty rate a great deal, but there are always risks. You were a failure too, in fact. You were all intended to have one power in your shift form and another in your human form. But your human form has no power.”