Unleashed By The Shifter

by Juniper Hart

  “That’ll work. If we go after Ezekiel, we’ll have either died or beaten Ezekiel and taken the bounty by then.”

  Cara didn’t say anything. She had nothing to contribute. If she tried to interrogate Adrianna, she had a sneaking suspicion that the assassin would laugh at her. If she tried to drive like Eddy, they’d all end up in the hospital. It wasn’t like she had another plan.

  ‘Oh, yes, I have an idea. What if instead of freezing her in time, we put her in the blah blah blah.’

  She had no idea what they were talking about, so she just awkwardly hung back. When Reuben had whacked her with the chair, Adrianna’s attitude had gone way down. It was still there, shimmering beneath the surface, but it wasn’t so ‘in your face’ like it had been back at the hotel.

  Cara made the mistake of looking over at her.

  The moment they met eyes, Adrianna pushed the tip of her tongue against the inside of her mouth and simulated sucking sounds. While giving a mock blowjob, she gave Cara a knowing look. Cara’s cheeks colored.

  “Shut up,” she said. “Just shut up.”

  “Oh!” Adrianna cried breathily. “Oh, Reuben! Oh, Reuben! Yes! Yes! Harder! Harder!”

  Cara wasn’t entirely sure what to do, but she had to do something. She couldn’t just sit there and let Adrianna bully her. Adrianna saw her defensive expression and straightened, giving Cara a clean shot if she actually tried to hit her. A taunt.

  “Go ahead, humie. Hit me. Or are you going to shoot me again?” Adrianna said, her voice dripping with sarcasm.

  “Go screw yourself,” Cara said. “At least I’m not the one tied up.”

  Adrianna laughed. It seemed genuine.

  “You got a sparky little human, huh, Reubs? Not bad.”

  “You’re making a great case for us killing you,” Reuben replied.

  That shut her up.

  That’s about when they pulled off the road into a restaurant. Cara couldn’t see it at first, but she smelled it—greasy unhealthy, delicious food. The smell penetrated her nose and made her stomach grumble. It had been a while since she’d eaten a good meal. I mean, it was unhealthy as could be and it would go straight to her thighs, but she’d reached a point of simply not caring. The restaurant itself was a run-down fast food joint with concrete walls that had red and orange paint stripes, and a spinning sign way up on a pole that looked like a huge, car-sized plastic French fry.

  Adrianna sniffed. “Seriously, Eddy? You took us to Al’s?”

  “What’s so special about this place?” Cara asked, looking out the window.

  It looked old, like the whole place had been around since the 1950s and hadn’t undergone too many changes since then. It was fashioned to look like an old diner, with the same fonts and advertisements. It was cute in an entertaining, nostalgic sort of way.

  Reuben looked as surprised as Adrianna.

  “Eddy, Adrianna and I used to come here all the time when we worked down here.”

  Eddy pulled into the drive-through.

  “Brings back some memories, no? What do you guys want?”

  Both Reuben and Eddy listed off very particular choices that sounded complicated and specialized. Cara just ordered a veggie burger, which she was grateful they had. She didn’t like experimenting at new restaurants. It took her at least four times of going to really look at the menu and see if there was anything else that sounded tasty. She was a creature of habit to the truest extreme. Adrianna didn’t speak.

  “You want something?” Eddy asked. “Now or never.”

  “You’re going to buy me breakfast?” She appeared skeptical.

  “If you tell us about Ezekiel, yeah. And we’ll just time freeze you. We won’t even kill you… probably. How does that sound?”

  She nodded slowly, wary. Like the other two mercs, she ordered something with a lot of specifications, including a drink that she could sip without being freed. They went through the drive-through like they were a normal group of friends hanging out instead of a werewolf, a mage, a superhuman assassin, and Cara. She was by far the most normal person there, which made her just slightly uncomfortable.

  She’d expected Adrianna to yell or scream or something when Eddy rolled down the window, but the assassin kept her lips sealed. She probably knew she’d gotten off lucky with the whole ‘time freeze’ thing instead of execution. Cara had no clue what that was, but based off the name, it sounded like she’d be frozen for a little while, like Han Solo in Star Wars. She felt a tad nerdy for making that reference so quickly, but then again… she embraced her inner nerd. She’d always been a writer, and with that came a love for all forms of media. She’d watch any movie and read any book as long as it told a good story and wasn’t too violent.

  Ten minutes later, Eddy had pulled up in the parking lot of some obscure, broken down old building where nobody could see them. He passed the bags of food to Reuben, who distributed heaping plates of oily, cheaply made meals out to everyone.

  Cara felt guilty about eating the food.

  Looking at it, she knew her stomach would likely hurt later. French fries. Onion rings. The bun. All kinds of condiments. Even the veggie burger was fried, so that didn’t constitute healthy. It only took a moment or two until her stomach won out over her self-control and she bit in.

  In a word, it was delightful.

  She understood why they had apparently stopped there so often. Despite it’s obvious calorie challenges, the burger was delicious. It didn’t stand a chance. Usually, Cara was always the last one to finish eating. She picked at food and it took her forever to eat a full meal. It wasn’t like she tried to take a long time. She just… did. She was, in many ways, the queen of picky eaters. But right then, she tossed all reservations out the window and chowed down. She finished her last onion ring first.

  “Hungry, huh?” Reuben had watched her eat. “I don’t know about you guys, but I’m impressed…”

  She gave a bashful expression. “I was hungry!”

  Chapter 3

  As she finished off her drink, Cara glanced out the window.

  There was a man on a motorcycle in the parking lot across the street, staring at Eddy’s car through a motorcycle helmet. His helmet was ridiculous. Someone had painted a wild smiley face across the front, spanning from the visor to the back. But it wasn’t a nice smiley face, like the nice families often have painted in the dust of their back windshield.

  The face was… disturbed and just a little off. The teeth weren’t even and the smile was off-centered. Creepy. That was the only way she could explain it. Looking at the helmet and the man wearing it made the hair on the nape of her neck stand up.

  “Guys, check it out,” she said, pointing to him.

  Adrianna was the first one who saw him. “Eddy, get us out of here!” she ordered. “Now!”

  Eddy, to his credit, didn’t ask why. He just shifted the car into reverse and slammed on the accelerator. After a second, he jerked it into drive with his foot firmly placed on the pedal. The car’s wheels spun wildly as they tried to get traction before it shot off towards the road.

  “What the hell?” Reuben demanded, picking the remains of his burger off his lap. He had not been prepared for the sudden movement.

  Cara looked out the back window. The guy hadn’t moved. He was simply turning his head slowly, tracking their movements before he vanished behind a building. He wasn’t chasing them. He appeared to be content just watching.

  Adrianna wasn’t looking back. She was busy explaining to an angry Reuben why she had convinced Eddy to speed off. “Did you not see him?”

  “See who?” Reuben’s voice was a low growl. He had gotten most of the ketchup off his pants, but not all of it.

  “Jacob,” she said. “Widowmaker.”

  As far as cool names went, “Widowmaker” was right near the top. It caused a physical reaction from Eddy and Reuben. Reuben’s face went white.

  “Are you serious? There?” He shook it off. “I don’t believe you.”

&n
bsp; “Cara saw it too!”

  Everyone looked at Cara.

  “Well?” Reuben asked. “Did you see him?”

  “I have no idea who that is,” she replied. “But I saw some dude on a motorcycle with a smiley helmet.”

  Reuben let out a breath.

  “Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me.”

  Cara didn’t like it. She was okay not knowing everything about Reuben’s increasingly suspicious past, but it was another thing entirely to not know about who everyone was apparently scared of.

  “Who’s this Widowmaker guy?”

  Reuben was looking out the back window, but he obviously couldn’t see the motorcyclist. They’d left him far behind.

  “He’s a killer.”

  “A mercenary?” she asked.

  “Oh, he’s way worse. He’s a merc, but not like me. He only accepts death contracts. That’s why he has the nickname Widowmaker. He doesn’t care about right or wrong, good or evil. He just murders and brings back evidence—an ear or a ring or something. It’s always small enough to pack on him, but identifiable to the person he was sent after. Every now and then, it’s a picture. Point is he’s bad news. Very bad news. I’ve heard he’s never missed a target.”

  “But we can beat him, right?” She was starting to get nervous. The group seemed to have lost much of their confidence. “I mean, you guys are a bunch of hardcore guys… and woman-thing, whatever Adrianna is.”

  “Go suck a cock,” Adrianna said sweetly.

  Reuben took Cara’s question seriously. “Widowmaker is not the kind of man you want to mess with. I don’t know. I wouldn’t want to go up against him.”

  “Is he a human?”

  “No, but nobody’s really sure what he is.”

  “Thanks for clearing that up,” Cara said sarcastically.

  ‘So this guy’s name is Jacob? But kind of not, because he gets called by the name Widowmaker?’

  ‘Yeah, that’s right.’

  ‘So this guy is not human, but nobody knows what he is despite knowing his first name?’

  ‘Yeah, that sounds about right.’

  Adrianna started shifting in her seat. Whoever this Widowmaker guy was, she didn’t want to interact with him. Cara was starting to hope they’d been wrong and it had been some other guy with a strangely painted helmet. Adrianna had been shot, thrown through several walls, drowned in a swimming pool, used as a sledgehammer to break a glass door, and basically ever other form of punishment out there. She wasn’t scared of Reuben or Eddy, but she was terrified of Widowmaker.

  Cara did not want to meet anyone or anything that frightened the assassin.

  Reuben had immediately dropped the nice werewolf act and started drilling Adrianna on everything she knew. She was still stunned from seeing the man on the bike, almost like she’d seen her own death. She robotically answered everything Reuben asked.

  “Where’s Ezekiel?”

  “He’s in Minneapolis. Or at least he was when I last saw him two days ago. He’s coming our way.”

  “Who else went after the bounty?”

  “I don’t know. I was the first to investigate the posting he put up. Widowmaker, apparently, wasn’t far behind.”

  The car suddenly accelerated, pushing the remainder of the lettuce on Reuben’s crotch into the seat. He cursed.

  “Eddy!”

  “We’ve got issues,” Eddy said. He swerved around one car and back again. “Look back!”

  Everyone turned as one. Cara spotted a motorcycle zipping between traffic. She thought for a second it was the smiley face guy, but upon closer examination, she saw that his helmet was completely normal except for a tiny shark fin up the middle. A moment later, there was another one from the right – and another behind that. Soon, she saw a fleet of bikes dangerously flying through traffic with something in their hands.

  It took her a second to see the “somethings” were actually compact submachine guns.

  “Who are they?” Cara yelped. “Is that Widowmaker?”

  “Goblins,” Reuben said. “Keep your head down!”

  He reached down into the backseat and shoved Cara down out of the way, turning into that alpha male that she was so attracted to. There wasn’t really enough room for both her and Adrianna to lie down and be protected if they started shooting. But because of Reuben’s helping hand, Cara won the battle. Unfortunately, her landing space was between Adrianna’s legs.

  “Get off me!” Adrianna shouted at her. “And dammit, Reuben, untie me!”

  “Shut up and lie down!”

  “Let me defend myself!”

  Reuben roared. “Eddy, let her go!”

  Eddy didn’t even worry about questioning Reuben. He simply just allowed the bonds to vanish by saying some sort of magic phrase. Adrianna looked down at Cara in her lap, looking like she about to rip Cara’s head straight off. She glanced up at Reuben. When he gave her a dangerous glare, she pulled her hands away from Cara’s body and ducked down.

  Despite Eddy’s best attempts to get ahead of the motorcyclists, the pursuers had the better vehicle for getting in and out of small places. Cara couldn’t see much else other than Adrianna’s muscular thighs, but she could hear angry commuters honking, the sound of a motorcycle zooming closer, and then, the one sound she’d been dreading.

  Gunfire.

  She’d fired guns before. She hadn’t made a practice of it, but she’d done it once or twice in self-defense, like the time she’d shot Adrianna. It had never seemed terribly loud then because it had been so close to her and she had known when it was coming. But when she’d heard other people fire weapons, it absolutely boomed. It sounded like a cannon going off. Strangely, when the bikers started shooting, it sounded quiet as though Cara was wearing noise-cancelling headphones. She lifted her head and spotted one biker speed by with his gun in his hand. The gun had a narrow attachment on the end. A silencer. These guys were professionals. Why they had decided to attack in the middle of an interstate, Cara didn’t know. All she knew was that they had, and that they were in the middle of a firefight with a series of armed shooters in a very public place.

  Something shattered the glass over her head, showering her in shards of sharp glass. She shrieked and tried to brush it off her head, which resulted in half a dozen little cuts on her fingers.

  Reuben lunged into the backseat and grabbed something from the weapons box that suddenly seemed like a great idea. He loaded it up and started firing at their pursuers. Not quickly – he didn’t want to hit an innocent bystander – but he carefully aimed and fired round after round.

  Something hit the back of the car. Adrianna turned to see, which tossed Cara off her lap. There were two men on the back of the car. Well, they weren’t really men. They had the same basic shape as your typical classic action movie thugs, but instead of shoes they were barefoot with huge, dagger-like claws that sank into the steel of the car and kept them from flying off. Adrianna shoved Cara out of her way and grabbed a gun from the weapons box.

  She’d barely loaded it before they shot her in the chest with some sort of blue bullet. When it hit her skin, it didn’t go straight through like a normal round. Instead, it burst into a thousand bright blue fragments. A bolt of electricity shot through each of the fragments, making Adrianna jitter and fall between the seats.

  Cara scrambled for a weapon while Adrianna’s body jittered violently next to her, but she didn’t know how to fight the creatures that were coming at them. Adrianna, to her credit, was starting to get up with tendrils of electricity shooting through her hands. Most of her hair was standing straight up from the electricity that was suddenly in the air, but she was obviously not ready to fight anyone.

  Cara took matters into her own hands, pointing the baby handgun she’d found at the guys on the back of the car and pulling the trigger. The resulting recoil was puny. It was a small handgun and couldn’t do much damage to most things. It could, however, do a considerable amount of damage to flesh. The tiny bullet streaked into on
e of the guy’s legs. He grabbed at it in surprise, lost his balance, and fell off the car. He tumbled across the ground once or twice before the tank following them plowed him over.

  Wait. What? A tank?

  “You’ve got to be kidding me!” Adrianna snapped, firing at the second guy, who ended up having the same rather unfortunate fate as the first guy. “A tank? Really?”

  It wasn’t a typical tank, like a modern day military war machine. It was somehow older, like the industrial train that had taken Reuben and Cara to South Dakota. Instead of pistons, there were clear reserves of a sort of gooey orange substance. The tank itself was littered with memorabilia from all over the place – from a pirate flag flying high to a bumper sticker that said Share the Road. A Respect Cyclists sticker stuck to the front of the monster. The part that especially stood out to Cara was the huge speakers strapped to the front that were playing “Born to be Wild!”

  “Guys,” Adrianna said, “I think stuff is about to get serious.”

  Chapter 4

  Eddy was laying into the horn, trying to get everyone ahead of them out of the way. If they could just speed up, they could easily leave the tank behind. It was a tank, and they were in a sports car. Do the math. But the problem was that the interstate was so busy that it was all Eddy could do to avoid them getting run over by the tank, all while being shot at by the remaining motorcyclists.

  “Ye-ye-ye-ye!” howled one of the bikers on Cara’s side, jumping from his bike towards the car. At the last second, Eddy saw it coming and spun the wheel to mess up his trajectory. The biker slammed into the side of the car loudly, busting open the window and also his visor. His face was a sickly yellow with serious goblin-like features. If Cara had seen a picture of him in a book, she would have known: goblin. The large nose, small eyes, sharp fangs, and ugly features were all a dead giveaway of a classic goblin.

  He grabbed something from his belt and tossed it through the now-open window. “Catch, ladies!”

  Adrianna shot the unfortunate goblin in the face.