Crash Morph: Gate Shifter Book Two

by JC Andrijeski

  “I thought we came here to work,” he said, meeting my gaze.

  Even so, his hand slid down to mine, caressing my fingers briefly before pressing them more deeply against his thigh. I felt that heat start up in my chest again, right before his eyes drifted down the rest of me, taking in my body slowly. I’m not sure what he could see, exactly. Underneath the leather jacket, I just wore a regular, if a bit clingy, dark blue T-shirt.

  I saw the distraction he’d mentioned clearly in his eyes, though.

  After a few seconds, I found Nik’s fingers pretty distracting, too.

  Then his mouth when he leaned down to kiss the base of my neck.

  “Dakota,” he said through the link. “I want to talk to you tonight.”

  “We will,” I assured him.

  “I don’t want to sleep on the floor again.”

  Feeling the meaning behind his words, I felt my neck flush, and not in embarrassment.

  I only nodded, however.

  “I understand,” I told him.

  He looked at me directly that time, and I felt that heat through the lock intensify.

  My mind got pulled off that when I refocused on the mirror, looking at the guy on the phone. The grumpy Slav ended his conversation while I watched, tossing his smart phone to the top of the table with what sounded like a curse. I watched as he raised his hand to the wall, using his knuckles to rap on the mirrored glass with three sharp taps.

  A door opened in the wall not far from the edge of the booth...making me jump.

  The wall had been seamless, unbroken until that opening appeared.

  A big guy stood there. A really big guy, wearing a colored silk shirt and suit jacket.

  I didn’t get a good look at his face. First the door itself blocked his features from my view, then, when he fully emerged from that opening behind the mirror, he turned so that all I could see was his broad back. His features fell even deeper into shadow as he faced the guy who’d rapped on the glass, then leaned down to talk to him.

  He listened to something the younger, shorter and much thinner guy in the booth said, leaning further over the back of the seat so they could speak in low voices. I still couldn’t see either of their faces, which was frustrating.

  I only heard enough to know they didn’t speak English.

  Then the big guy nodded and straightened. I watched as he disappeared back through the mirrored door in the wall.

  Once he was gone, I frowned again.

  While I was impressed that Nik picked up on so much from minimal clues, I still wasn’t sure of the significance of what I’d just seen. I mean, okay, so the guy in the booth might be the bar’s owner, given his rap on the glass and his obvious authority over the giant in the back room. I just wasn’t sure how that information would help me.

  Truthfully, I was starting to wonder what we were doing here.

  I didn’t really want to approach those guys, much less ask anyone here about modeling shows or Culare’s Modeling School.

  I at least needed a better cover story than...well, none.

  Truthfully, given everything going on in my life at the moment, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to approach them even with a decent cover story. I was determined to find the girls, but until I had a better idea of who I was screwing with, I didn’t want the potential kidnappers to know my face, or get a name from me they might be able to trace.

  So yeah, I was gathering impressions, sure, but I was beginning to question how useful this little field trip was. Frankly, if this whole operation was what I suspected it was, I was in over my head and I knew it.

  Maybe I needed to get Gantry in on this one. For real, that is.

  I could even try to get the FBI involved, although it would probably have to be through a tip; I wasn’t confident I could get close enough to the kidnappers’ real operation to pull usable evidence without getting myself killed.

  I glanced at Nik, about to tell him it was time for us to go, when someone else walked through the door from the street. They moved aside the plastic flaps separating the foyer from the main floor even as I heard the squeak of that heavy, S&M door as it started to close behind him. The man who entered moved faster than the door, and those hanging strips let in a brief but disorienting scatter of sun rays before falling back into place in thick, rubbery strips.

  Seeing the face that appeared there, I felt my heart start hammering violently in my chest, hard enough that I worried it might crack a rib.

  It was pretty much the last person I expected to see here. His was also maybe the most unwelcome face I could imagine at that particular moment...including Michael Evers.

  It was Razmun.

  As in, yeah, that Razmun...leader of the rebellion of free, shape-shifting morph originating from the planet of Vilandt, of the not-Earth dimension of...wherever.

  The same Razmun who’d sworn to wipe out the human race, by any means necessary.

  He just stood there by the door for a few seconds, surveying the same dark space that me and Nik occupied, probably waiting for his human eyes to adjust.

  And yeah, it occurred to me.

  Meaning, yes...it had already crossed my mind that things could get really bad in here, once he and Nik saw one another.

  13

  A Face Only A Mother Could Love

  I couldn’t believe Razmun was standing there, frankly.

  I also figured, pretty much immediately, that he’d been following us.

  I mean, what were the odds he would come to this place, if he wasn’t following me and Nik? How could he have picked today, of all days, to check out a tacky, quasi-eighties bar and sample Earth-made and probably watered-down alcoholic drinks?

  What would he even be doing here, if he wasn’t following Nik and me?

  Around the time I thought that, I heard a strange sound behind me.

  The sound wasn’t loud.

  In fact, I barely heard it at all with the jukebox blaring an old Prince song from the nearest corner to the right of the bar. But there was a distinctive kind of whump noise, kind of like throwing a pile of something soft and relatively light on the floor.

  Turning back towards the bar, I glanced at Nik.

  Only Nik wasn’t sitting there anymore.

  I looked around in kind of a dazed panic, unable to believe he no longer sat on the stool next to me. My mind tried to connect that fact clumsily to Razmun’s appearance, even as I fought to remain calm so I wouldn’t attract attention. I wondered briefly if Razmun could have done something to Nik from all the way across the room.

  Then I saw the pile of clothes under the bar.

  Staring at the boots there and the leather jacket, I realized that had been the noise I’d heard: Nik’s clothes falling to the floor when he transformed into something not-human.

  Presumably, he’d turned into something smaller than human, given the clothes thing...likely something that could wriggle out of that pile of boots, socks and pants pretty danged quick and without making much noise.

  Then I saw the cat lurking around the end of the bar.

  As I watched, that same cat disappeared silently around the chrome corner until I couldn’t see any part of it at all.

  I had to assume the cat was Nik.

  It was a damned big cat, for one thing.

  Also, I couldn’t imagine Nik making himself much smaller than a house cat, no matter what his talents, and that was the only other animal in here apart from me and the rest of the humans. Remembering those humans with another jolt of adrenaline, I looked around as subtly as I could, including at the bartender, who––thank goodness––wasn’t looking in our direction but restocking bottles at the other end of the bar.

  I glanced casually over my shoulder at the people filling the scattered booths behind us a few seconds later, but none of them appeared to be looking in our direction either, or at the pile of clothes on the floor. More to the point, none of them looked like they’d seen anything so extraordinary as a person turning into a cat.
<
br />   I was only mildly reassured.

  Nik told me before that making himself different sizes, in either direction, tended to be taxing. Or at least, more taxing than taking forms that roughly approximated the size and shape of his base form...which for Nik, meant a human one. So being a cat would potentially tire Nik out, unless he could find a way to turn himself into something closer to human-sized.

  Then again, Nik told Gantry and the rest of us that making new facial features on a base form was difficult, too. So becoming a different human––meaning a human Razmun wouldn’t recognize––might not help him much.

  Although it might keep him from getting hit with a broom.

  Something furry and short rubbed warmly against my leg.

  I glanced down. The cat had returned, and was rubbing its head and body against my shins. It had green eyes, and a large, triangular face covered in thick, black fur.

  He hasn’t seen you yet, Nik whispered through the lock connection we shared, using the contact to speak with me. Stay still, and he might not.

  And if he does? I thought back testily.

  If he does, I may have to fight him.

  Swallowing, I glanced down, seeing and feeling the black cat rubbing against my jean-clad legs again where I’d propped my boot heels on the chrome support bar at the base of the stool. Then, seeming to feel he’d said enough, Nik the cat turned around casually, like any cat who’s had his fill of human contact. I watched as he sauntered back behind the bar.

  If the situation had been different, I probably would have laughed.

  As it was, I felt myself tense as I watched him go.

  Again, I hoped like hell no one saw Nik transform...or noticed the pile of clothes next to me under the bar. Or if they did see any part of that, I hoped they were drunk enough to assume they’d imagined the whole thing.

  Even so, I used my booted toe to push Nik’s clothes a little deeper into the shadow under the bar.

  Hunching down on my barstool, I slowly pulled myself deeper into the shadows, too, wishing I’d worn a hoodie after all. Not much I could do about it now, so I just sat statue-still once I’d gotten my face as far out of the light as I could.

  I knew for human beings, being motionless made you disappear to a lot of people––a little nugget Gantry passed on to me from his Special Ops training.

  I’d tested it on enough jobs to know it was more or less true.

  Surprisingly, consistently true, really.

  When Gantry first told me that, I’d scoffed at him...but he assured me he’d had a lot of practice not being noticed, given his line of work. Since he wasn’t exactly the kind of guy you didn’t notice, given that he was pretty bulked out from an intense exercise regimen and a good-looking guy on top of it, Gantry’s very insistence made me pause.

  By then, I knew he’d worked in countries where he would have stood out, and not only for his blue eyes and boyish face. Gantry had worked in countries where the people might be brown, but they generally didn’t stand at his height, or carry his weight, much less wear his tattoos or his eye color and whatever else that made Gantry stand out to most people.

  Of course, I had no idea if the same tactic would work on a morph.

  That hope diminished further as I watched Razmun look around, sure again that he’d come in here specifically to find me and Nik.

  Well, I thought that until the maybe-owner, Slavic guy who’d recently been swearing on his smart phone noticed him.

  After he looked Razmun over, leather-jacket guy rapped on the mirrored wall a second time.

  Seconds after he did, that hidden door popped open again in the mirror-covered wall. The same giant in the loud, silk shirt emerged, jutting his head and thick neck out of the back room.

  That time, I got a good look at the big guy’s face.

  He looked Russian all right.

  Not like I was some expert, but from what I remembered of the Russian crowd in New York, he had roughly similar features. Really, he could have been from any number of European countries, especially in the East, but also a few in the South and West.

  He did look European to me, though, not American.

  Wherever he was from, he clearly recognized Razmun, even without his boss telling him why he’d been summoned from behind the hidden door. Glancing back at the Slav lounging in the leather booth, the big guy nodded to something his boss said in that other language, then went back to staring at Razmun.

  When Razmun didn’t return his stare, the big guy hailed him with a few clicks of his fingers, followed by a pointed wave of his ring-clad hand.

  The clicking fingers immediately drew Razmun’s eyes.

  They also made him frown.

  I wondered if that sound held the same significance for Razmun as it did for most Earth humans––meaning, I wondered if clicking fingers on Palarine was normally reserved for dogs and waiters, and then only if you were a total asshat.

  Even though these guys clearly knew Razmun, from the look on Razmun’s face, Razmun didn’t know them. Moreover, they obviously weren’t the people Razmun expected to see when he came in here. Razmun looked like he’d expected to see someone he knew when he walked through that door...just not these jokers.

  As it was, I saw zero recognition in his handsome face.

  The impression strengthened the longer I watched him.

  I also started to wonder if maybe Razmun wasn’t in here looking for me and Nik, after all. I watched the whole scene in my peripherals, only looking at them directly via the bar mirror, and then just long enough to memorize details on the six guys I didn’t know. Even so, I saw enough to wonder about Razmun’s motives. He didn’t look like someone on the hunt. He didn’t look like someone trying not to be seen, either.

  Truthfully? He looked like an ordinary business guy here for a meeting.

  Of course, in saying that, I was using human, Earth criteria and signals.

  Still, I couldn’t help thinking I was right. I also couldn’t help noticing that Razmun wore an Earth suit...an expensive-looking one. He looked similar to how he had on the television the other night, in fact, like a young politician making his mark on the local scene.

  The thought made me sink deeper into my chair, hunching my shoulders.

  After the barest hesitation, Razmun crossed the floor, approaching the booth full of Slavs and the mirrored wall door. The giant Slav continued to stand there, waiting for him. Razmun continued to move cautiously, I noted, taking in every detail of the men in front of him, as if he thought things might take a sudden, nasty turn.

  As he got closer to that mirrored wall, the guy in the leather booth rose to his feet, too.

  For the first time, I got a look at his face.

  Once I had, I started a bit, staring at him openly, if via the mirror.

  He was pretty cute.

  More to the point, he was the guy from Laurie Devereaux’s phone––meaning, the guy Hilary snapped a sneak picture of outside her favorite clothing store in Westlake Mall.

  The same guy who had been handing out flyers to teenaged girls, inviting them to an open call for young models.

  As for the giant Russian in the silk shirt, he reminded me more and more of something out of a cartoon, or maybe that old Dick Tracy movie with the villains with the weird-looking faces. He stood around six-foot-five and weighed maybe three hundred pounds...so yeah, a hulk of a guy, even for his age, which I estimated at late thirties, early forties.

  Now that I could see him more or less directly, I noted that he had a face like he’d lost a fight with a tractor, or maybe an eighteen-wheeler truck. His whole countenance looked squashed as a result. Scars ran down both of his cheeks in a nearly symmetrical pattern. I glimpsed scars on visible portions of his body, too, including on his neck and hands.

  The young guy, with the svelte body and the designer leather jacket, looked a lot more like the son of someone powerful versus someone who’d earned what he had on his own. He was young, for one thing. But something els
e about him screamed inherited money, too...something I had no way of cataloguing specifically. Maybe it was the fact that his friends reminded me more of a high school posse than true business associates.

  Either way, I distinctly got the feeling that tractor-face had a much longer connection to this organization, whatever it was, then the young guy with the Italian shoes.

  The giant with the fucked-up face also looked like he’d been in the States longer.

  While he still had a lingering flavor of “new immigrant” to his clothes and jewelry, something told me he’d spent more time here, maybe not all of it in Seattle. His loud but expensive-looking shirt looked like he bought it when he’d been about thirty pounds lighter. It pooched just enough between the buttons to show off bits of his thick, pale flesh.

  Like the younger guys from the booth, he had some kind of grease in his dark blond hair, and wore at least one gold chain around his neck.

  All in all, he looked a lot more like guys I’d seen in New York than what I usually ran into on the West Coast.

  Moreover, he had career criminal written all over him.

  I watched Razmun approach him and the other Europeans, still using the mirror and my peripherals. Right as the morph got within speaking distance, the young guy stepped in front of the giant with the squashed face and extended his hand. They shook, Razmun still looking wary, and the younger guy grinned at him, flashing white teeth in the dark area by the mirrored door.

  Then two things happened.

  One, I caught a glimpse of a fast-moving, black, furry shape right as it disappeared through the still-open mirrored door, behind the feet of the big Russian.

  Shit. That had to be Nik.

  Then the second thing happened.

  Another person burst into the bar, moving fast and causing a ripple of tense energy to course through the room ahead of him. He moved like he was late, or really tightly wound...or both. Either way, I couldn’t help looking towards the door and towards him as he entered.

  When I did, again using the mirror, I sucked in a surprised breath.

  Holy crap. Evers.

  As in Michael Evers, the guy who wanted both me and Nik dead.