Dying to Live: The Shifter City Complete Series

by Liam Kingsley

  The group was herded out of the room and then split in two, with the kids down one hallway and the three men down the other.

  “Floyd!” Chains screamed. “What do we do?”

  “Slingshots! Together if you can!”

  A guard slammed Floyd into the wall with a gun across his throat and growled in his face.

  “Check the children for weapons!” Douglas called to the guards.

  “Yes, sir!”

  “Release him,” Douglas said.

  The guard pulled the gun away and jabbed it into Floyd’s ribs, herding him farther down the hall. Pan was dying to know what slingshot meant; he was fairly certain that this pack didn’t carry weapons, but he hadn’t been nosy enough to peer into their bags. He did realize, however, that Douglas would have them patted down as well; with that in mind, he rearranged the flute within his shorts. Just in time, too, for at that moment they reached a series of four heavy steel doors.

  “Check them,” Douglas ordered.

  One guard each, and Pan was fortunate enough to get the young one, who still seemed to be in extreme emotional distress. He patted him down briefly, and just barely skimmed the hard surface of the flute. He looked up at Pan, startled, and Pan merely winked and gave him an inviting little smirk. The guard’s face flushed red and he backed away quickly.

  “He’s clear,” he said.

  The others, having also been cleared, were shoved through one of the doors. Pan followed them.

  “Don’t get too comfortable,” Douglas said with an oily grin. “Kids first, but don’t worry your pretty little canine heads. We’ll be back for you.”

  The door closed with a slam, and the three men exchanged looks.

  “Should have killed them when we had the chance,” Floyd growled, worry and rage whirling in his eyes.

  “Would have put the kids in danger,” Pan pointed out.

  “Not in the hallway it wouldn’t.”

  “We don’t know what’s in those guns. How are they going to get out of here by themselves?”

  Floyd paced the barren grey room restlessly from door to wall, then zigzagged between the two bunks, nearly kicking over the foul-smelling bucket which sat in one corner.

  “What are they doing to them? We need to get out of here,” Floyd said, his desperation shining through every move he made. He tried the door, but it was secure. The walls were solid cinder block, and Pan was certain that they were underground. The only other opening in the whole of the room was an air vent, too small for any of them to squeeze into even if it hadn’t been behind a latticework of steel bars. The only way they were getting out was with their captors’ permission, and Pan couldn’t imagine that they would be getting that any time soon.

  “Maureen told him to take samples,” Killian reminded them. “Urine, blood, and spit most likely. Nothing that will permanently harm them, I don’t think. What are their shifter makeups? Is there anyone who was conceived in a way that they may not have encountered before?”

  “You know him as Paul,” Floyd said, rubbing a hand over his beard. “First and third change, simultaneously. Got bit by a wolf when he was a human.”

  “He knew about the Omega shift,” Pan said. “Is he an Omega?”

  Floyd sighed heavily. “No,” he said, running a hand through his tawny hair. “Bender.”

  “He’s fifteen,” Pan said in shock.

  “Yeah,” Floyd said through gritted teeth. “Let’s just say there’s a reason we took him in.”

  A somber mood settled heavily over the trio. Killian was the first to break the silence with a sigh.

  “It just doesn’t get any better for our kind, does it.”

  “No,” Floyd agreed. “And it won’t. Not until we start fighting back against these entitled bastards.”

  “So what’s the plan?” Pan asked. “They said they wanted Killian’s eyes. Do you think they meant literally?”

  “I’m hoping for a more non-invasive interpretation,” Killian said wryly. “If they do mean literally, I will be forced to take this to the next level. I’ve grown rather attached to my eyes.”

  Pan smirked and rolled his eyes at Killian’s pun, appreciating him more for his ability to lighten even this mood. Footsteps sounded in the hallway outside, and each of them stiffened.

  “Should we rush them?” Pan hissed.

  “Think they can pull the trigger before we can get to them,” Killian said.

  The door slid open with a crash, and four barrels pointed at their heads.

  “That one first,” Douglas said, pointing at Floyd. “You two stay put.”

  Pan vibrated with the impulse to tear them apart, and Killian put a hand over his. He and Floyd shared a look, and Pan knew with absolute certainty that Floyd would tear them apart if he had to. The moment was over quickly, and before he knew it the door was sliding shut once more. He and Killian were alone in the dank little room with nothing but a dim, bare bulb for company.

  “Two beds, three prisoners,” Pan observed out loud. “Think he’s coming back?”

  “No,” Killian said. “I talked to them all night, and here’s what I figure. They’re extracting DNA from different shifters and combining it with the DNA of other shifters. I don’t think they caught all three hundred that they’re holding captive here. I think they’re creating them.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Dead serious. Maureen hasn’t been a shifter for long. I don’t know whether it was an accident in the lab or if she just got too close to one of her subjects, but she is obsessed with finding a cure that doesn’t exist. I don’t think she can see halos. That young soldier, the one who freaked out? He can’t see them either. I’m not sure why. Douglas seems to think that it’s an evolutionary quirk of the bugs, maybe that they’re losing steam the longer they exist or something. Whatever it is, they’re getting desperate.”

  “Desperation never ends well,” Pan said, biting his lip.

  “Tell me about it,” Killian sighed. “I’m sorry about that, by the way.”

  “Sorry about what?”

  “Your accidental double-dip.”

  “Yeah, about that…you said that you’d had that dream before. What did you mean, exactly?”

  Killian sighed and rubbed his hands over his face. He stood and began pacing the room, radiating guilt and embarrassment in equal parts.

  “Is this really the time for this conversation?” He asked suddenly. “We could be fighting for our lives any minute.”

  “Then it’s exactly the time for this conversation,” Pan told him adamantly. “We might never get another chance.”

  Killian sat down, stood up, then sat down again and linked his fingers together.

  “Okay. So. Do you remember what we were talking about right before you lost control?”

  Pan thought back to that day. It seemed like a dream, an eternity ago.

  “We were talking about you being a teacher,” he said slowly. “Something about getting caught out on a date with a guy, and that being a problem?”

  “Teaching elementary school in the middle of the bible belt,” Killian sighed. “Yeah. Lost three jobs in two years, that kind of thing. But out there, there was always somewhere else to go. Another district. Another town. Once I started the school in Regis Thyme…I had too much to lose. I couldn’t risk it. I haven’t dated anyone in more than thirteen years.”

  “Okay, so, that doesn’t make sense.”

  Killian looked at him sharply, ripped away from his cloud of internal thoughts. “It makes perfect sense. What isn’t making sense to you?”

  “Well, Broderick has the final say on who does what, right?”

  “For the most part, yeah.”

  “When it comes to community jobs like teaching and whatever.”

  “Yeah.”

  “So…?”

  “So what?”

  Pan sighed and cocked his head. “So, Broderick is married to the most flamboyant gay shifter in the city? So they have three kids together?
So…gay sex isn’t a deal breaker around these parts?”

  “That’s different,” Killian said. “Broderick’s head honcho, for one. He can do what and who he likes. For two, he isn’t teaching the offspring of the straight couples in town. I am. You should have seen what happened when I tried to argue with him, he’s a total diplomat. He wouldn’t tell a parent to go to hell if they were complaining about someone like me teaching their precious little fuzz ball.”

  “He wouldn’t need to put it that way, exactly….”

  “He wouldn’t put it any way. He’d pander to their tempers, and I would be out of a job. So what if I laid the foundation for the entire shifter school system. Facts are the devil to diplomacy, obviously. No. It was never worth the risk. There is…was… too much I still had to do.”

  “Okay, and that confuses me all over again.”

  “What does?”

  “You’re saying it isn’t worth the risk, but you didn’t hesitate to sleep with me.”

  “I thought you were a dream. Because you’ve been in my dreams, over and over again, for years. If I’m making a deathbed confession here, I might as well go all the way. I’ve been completely, unhealthily, obsessed with you forever.”

  “So you would rather lose your mind than take a tiny little risk and maybe actually be happy.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “It was implied.”

  Killian sighed. “Have you ever been on a diet in the middle of summer?”

  “Only every summer,” Pan grinned.

  “And has anyone ever offered you ice cream? You think about taking it because it satisfies your momentary craving, and you justify your weakness by saying that it’s hot outside, which it is, and that the ice cream will cool you down, which it…well, it’ll cool your lips down but it won’t do much for the rest of you. Digesting dairy fats makes your body work harder, which actually increases your body temperature, but you aren’t thinking about that. You’re thinking about how nice it will feel when it slides down your throat. You’re thinking of how it will taste on your lips, how it will sit on your tongue. The heat is real, and the solution is almost rational, but deep down you know it’s an excuse.”

  “So…am I ice cream in this scenario?”

  “Yes.”

  “Aw, you think I’m sweet!”

  “Too literal.”

  “Oh.”

  “True, though.”

  “Aw!”

  “Stop that.”

  “Never!”

  Killian finally cracked a smile, and Pan mentally marked it as a win. He glanced around the tiny grey room, and sighed as the weight of reality settled over him once more.

  “If we ever get out of here, you and I are going on a date,” he told Killian adamantly. “And I will prove to you that Regis Thyme doesn’t give a damn who you love.”

  “I’ll hold you to it,” Killian grinned.

  Footsteps in the hallway silenced them. The shifter traitors were back.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  The door slid open to reveal an unconscious Floyd, supported on either side by shifter guards. Douglas pointed at Killian and as two guards deposited Floyd on a cot, the other two pulled Killian up by his elbows and led him to the door. He cast a look over his shoulder at Pan, who offered him an encouraging smile. Killian couldn’t return it. He was terrified and furious in equal measure, and both emotions grew stronger with every step. Douglas slammed the door behind them, then scurried in front of them to lead the way. They didn’t go far. Down another hallway and to the left, a mere thirty feet from their cell, was another room. It housed a medical chair fitted with restraints, a long counter cluttered with tools and various liquids, and an excessively bright light on a swiveling arm which was currently pointed at the seat of the chair. Killian’s gut twisted. He should have known that they would make it impossible to fight. He wondered briefly what they had done to Floyd.

  “She wants his eyes,” Douglas said as the guards forced Killian to the chair. “Preserve them carefully.”

  Preserve. This would not be a non-invasive procedure. A buzzing began in Killian’s mind as the guards struggled to move him closer and closer to the chair. He couldn’t lose his eyes. The tools on the counter came into sharp focus, as did the doctor who had just finished washing his hands. He had black webbing across his hands and face. He was stuck, somehow, in mid-third shift; at least, that was Killian’s rapid conclusion. The yellow eyes in his bald head and the fangs protruding from his human mouth seemed to confirm. They were going to take his eyes and make a monster out of them. They were going to turn him into a monster. Alarm bells in his brain exploded in a fiery flash, and as the door closed Douglas out of the room, Killian lost his mind.

  He was a beast, then they were too, ripping out of their fatigues. He tore through their flesh with his claws, but they fought back just as hard. He called upon his training, the training that he had never thought he would need, and fell to the floor. As they moved to fall onto him, he sliced the tendons in their ankles in a whirling, circular motion which propelled him away from them as they tumbled to the ground. The doctor had something in his hands, some kind of weapon. Killian didn’t take the time to see what it was. He leapt from floor to wall to counter, slashing the doctor’s wrists as he flew through the air. The doctor shrieked and the weapon fell to the floor, still encased in the doctor’s disembodied palms, then discharged at the writhing pile of shifters. Electricity snaked over them, stripping them of their consciousness and their beast forms as the doctor collapsed in a pool of his own blood. Killian sank his claws into the wall at the ceiling and perched, waiting for someone to burst in and kill him.

  Seconds ticked by. The two guards breathed quick and shallow, but didn’t move. The doctor didn’t breathe at all. Killian’s beast eyes didn’t pick up the blinding flash of red which would indicate a camera, and with a flash of hope, he realized that it was entirely possible he had gotten away with it for the moment. Crawling down from the wall like a spider, he examined the room. After a quick consultation with his higher mind, he chose to secure the guards in the table restraints, one on either side, using the ankle restraints as additional wrist restraints. He snatched the electric pulse gun off the floor, shaking away the loose hands, then crept to the door. Through the window the hallway appeared to be empty. He pushed the door open. Looked left, then right. Listened hard for a long moment. A radio hissed on the floor and he jumped, startled, then fell on it, scooping it up. He took the rifles as well, and the other radio. Once he had relieved the empty clothes of anything useful, he returned to the hallway. The extra chore had taken too long. There were brisk, clicking footsteps coming toward him. Maureen. He ran away from the sound, loaded down with weapons he couldn’t use in his current form, and ducked around the next corner.

  He was in a small service hallway which appeared to zig-zag through the building diagonally, leading back to where they’d come from. Filing that information into his plan B, he waited to see what Maureen would do. Click, click, click…she was at the door to the medical room. He heard her turn the handle. Then, from the other side of the building, came the bloodcurdling scream of an adolescent girl. He was instinct and fury racing through the labyrinthine corridors. Another scream, this time Maureen’s, only pushed him faster. He heard the gurgling grunts of a beast in mid-shift and chased it to a door. Flinging it open, he found the three teenagers locked to the wall, spread-eagle, staring in terror at the other side of the room. He whipped his head around and found Ghost, between forms, with needles in his neck. He had been restrained like the others, but he’d broken through them. The wall between them was a mirror, and instinct prevailed once more as Killian flung himself through the pane of glass.

  Douglas. Three guards. Recording equipment. Killian smashed all of it without hesitation. In his beast form, he scream-snarled words that he knew they couldn’t understand, but he didn’t care. “They are children! You do not…touch…children!” His snarls punctuated his wild sl
ashes, and nobody in that room stood a chance. One guard escaped into the hallway. One tried to fight, and was immediately immobilized. Douglas himself was torn to shreds before he knew what was happening, along with every other thing in that room.

  “Help!” Chains screamed. Killian whirled and leapt back through the open wall, tackling Jacob as he began to thrash and writhe, lost in the madness of an unnatural turn. Killian wrapped his arms and legs around the boy, much as he’d done with Damian, only in beast form. Still, the pre-teen was large, his body coursing with unknown substances, his mind lost to the will of the beast. Killian was tossed across the room, and Ghost charged at his pack-mates, hanging on the wall like so many steaks. The pulse gun. Killian didn’t have time to shift, so he slid a claw over the trigger and pulled, hoping that it would hit its target. It did, barely. The ball of blue energy hit Ghost on his spine between his shoulders just as he launched himself through the air at Chains’ head. He crashed to the floor twitching and writhing into his human form.

  “Is he dead?” Chains asked, her voice trembling.

  Out of danger for the moment, Killian shimmered back into his human form and crouched beside the unconscious shifter. “No,” he said, feeling Ghost’s pulse. “Just unconscious. Let’s get you out of there.” He stood, shifted, and sliced through the restraints. Each shifter teen thudded feet-first to the floor, and Killian handed each of them a gun. “Do any of you know how to shoot?” He asked.

  They shook their heads.

  “Then just point it at the enemy. Go for intimidation if we find we need it.” They nodded their understanding, and Killian hauled Ghost up onto his shoulders. He wondered why Maureen hadn’t sounded an alarm yet, and anxiously checked the hall before leading the kids out. They crept through the empty hallways single-file, Killian in front and Paul behind. After a moment, soothing music reached their ears. Hypnotically it drew them through the building, leading them to the room where Pan was being kept. Just before they reached it, Killian stopped short. The room was surrounded. Maureen and two shifter guards stood, staring at the door, swaying slightly with the tune. Shrugging, Killian knocked each of them out cold with the butt of his gun, none reacting as the others fell.