Shifters

by Jaime Johnesee

  “I don’t want you too close to him, either, Q. You have Kelly and Angelique at home needing you in one piece.”

  “Sam, you’re my family, too. There is no way I wouldn’t be there for you. Besides, Kelly wouldn’t let me come home if I allowed anything to happen to you.”

  I patted his hand and smiled. “Thank you. I still don’t want you that close to him.”

  “I’ll go with her. I don’t have anyone waiting on me at home.” For once, Chad wasn’t being melodramatic. He was being completely serious about it.

  “Are you sure?” Quinn asked his brother.

  “Yeah.”

  “Sam, are you okay with that?”

  “If Gerry is, I am. Ultimately, it’s his call who goes where.”

  “I’ll sign off, but only on the condition that you stay back and let my agents handle things. You report to them, understand?” Gerry’s gaze went from Chad to Josh and back again.

  Though they were part of the task force set up to apprehend Grisly, they were still police and not FBI.

  “Understood,” Josh said.

  “Yeah, I got it, no worries.” Chad shrugged.

  “Good. Okay, Reece, pull up the blueprints for your house. Let’s get a game plan as well as a couple backup plans in the works.” Gerry handed me the tablet that controlled the smart screen in his office.

  I pulled up the designs for my house and we used a program to mark where we should all position ourselves during several different scenarios. I looked at my watch and was surprised to see that it had only been two hours since I had decided upon this course of action. I hoped, and silently prayed, that we would all make it out safe and intact, except for Grisly.

  We stopped to be fitted with body armor and grabbed crowd control teargas grenade guns, ammo for the tranq guns, and masks. I didn’t think the bullet-proof vests would do any good, but better safe than sorry. If that bit of Kevlar gave us a measure of protection against Grisly’s claws, I was all for it. The teargas would definitely be useful, as would the tranquilizers. As we geared up, I felt the need to remind them, “Remember, guys, that he may look like a grizzly bear, but he is still his human weight so we have to keep to the human dosage on the tranq guns. We have no idea how quickly he will be able to burn it off. We’ve not been in this situation before and we don’t want any more deaths, so the priority here is to get him down and subdued.”

  I listened to them all agree to stick to keeping the darts at safe levels. The plan was to bring the monster to justice, not kill him outright. No matter how much we may want to.

  We filed out to the garage and the SUV we would be using. Chad, Josh, and Quinn lay on the seat and floor in the back. We needed Grisly to think I was coming in alone. I’d drive into the garage and, once the door was down, the guys could climb out and take their positions.

  The drive to my house was gut-wrenchingly slow. What normally took a quick twenty minutes felt like hours. By the time I pulled into my driveway my nerves were taut and my senses were so heightened I could see, smell, and hear everything around me ten times better than I had been able to when I started out.

  I waited for the garage door to open and I swept my gaze across my property and the rearview mirror. Nobody seemed to be around. I pulled forward into the garage and hit the button for the door to close behind me. The moment I heard the thump of it being completely closed the guys sat up and moved quietly out of the Ford Expedition. I followed suit and fumbled with my keys to unlock the door to the house.

  The second I opened the door I could smell it; a wave of shifter scent, bear specifically, fell over me and I tried not to gasp or cough. Grisly was already here. I stopped everyone with a hand-signal, pointed to my nose, and held up a single finger to let them know I smelled one shifter.

  I had expected he would already be here, but a large part of me was hoping he hadn’t showed up yet. It would’ve given us the element of surprise. The only thing I could hope for now was that he hadn’t scented any of the others. I kept them behind me as we went from room to room, silently clearing them while listening—and in my case smelling—for the psychotic ursine.

  I was certain he would be in my bedroom. It seemed reasonable given he liked to shred his victims in bathtubs and my master suite had a big, beautiful clawfoot tub. As we silently entered my bedroom I took a big snort and found his scent was fainter in there. He hadn’t been in the room for some time. I cleared the closets, master bathroom, and under the bed first before we moved out of my room and toward the guestroom.

  His scent was stronger here. Man, he was going to kill me in the cheesy basic old bathtub/shower combo? What a jerk. I’d at least have killed me in the clawfoot tub; it seemed a little classier. I guess when a soul wants to kill someone they’re not thinking what is classiest.

  Before I reached the guestroom his scent grew extremely strong and I turned toward it too late as he leapt from my hall closet onto me. He dragged me up from the floor, holding me in front of him like a shield. I tried to kick him but he head-butted me and I saw stars for a moment.

  He was in bear form and Grisly’s small but thick ursine skull slammed into my human one yet again, knocking me even further for a loop. I shifted quickly and his paws were unable to hold my feline shape. I slashed my right front claw across his left eye and grabbed hold of his nose with my teeth, then I brought my hind-feet up and started slashing at him. Those with cats at home will recognize the abdominal slashing madness that I’m referring to.

  He yowled as my back claws found purchase in his gut and I wounded him. I bit down harder on his nose, only to be loosened when his paw pounded into the side of my face, twice. He jumped back and I did the same. We circled each other, my backup trying to get a lock on him and failing in the tight confines of the hall. I had to get Grisly somewhere open where they could shoot him.

  I shouted, “Run to the living room!” at my team, then turned tail and ran, leading Grisly on a slippery chase through my house on my freshly polished hardwood floors.

  I winced internally at the thought of the scratches our claws would leave in my beautiful and expensively redone floors. Repairing the damage would no doubt take me a whole week.

  I watched as Josh and Chad set up atop bookshelves by the kitchen door. They’d have a good shot at Grisly with the tranq guns. I was just grateful they had moved fast enough to avoid being run over by us as we scrambled and slid our animal selves into the room.

  As I ran into the center of the living room I turned, ready to face the bear. He wasn’t there.

  “Fuck!” I yelled out. “Where’d he go? Anyone have eyes on him?”

  “You cheated,” Grisly’s cold booming voice rang out.

  “There were no rules. You’re in my territory, I can do whatever I need to in order to make you leave.”

  “Oh, please, make me leave. I’d like to see that, you vile shifter whore.” I could hear his smile in the words.

  “Pot calling kettle there, douchebag.”

  “I am no whore!”

  “Neither am I!” I had been listening closely as he spoke and put his position in the hall just a few feet outside the living room. I needed to get him in here so the guys could shoot him.

  “You’re a woman. You’re inherently a whore.”

  “Wow. Well, you’re a misogynistic piece of shit. Which inherently makes you a loser. I’m going to guess you didn’t get laid in high school or college. Take your cousin to the prom, did ya?”

  “Shut your filthy whore mouth.”

  “Is that the only insult you have? Seriously? You’re going to have to do far better than that, but I’m sure that’s probably something you’re used to hearing by now.”

  Grisly roared and rushed into the room, bounding toward me at what seemed like a hundred miles per hour.

  “Somebody shoot the fucker!” I yelled.

  I tensed myself for the blow but he hit me much harder than I thought was possible. As we tumbled through the air together his claws slashed at me,
tearing open my left side a little.

  In a rage at being injured, and having to deal with a misogynistic pig, I slashed back and tried my best to position myself for the fall. When we hit the floor I rolled and got up easily. It took him a moment. And that moment was all Josh needed.

  He fired twice and two long red tufted darts went into Grisly’s neck. The bear stood and came at me, making it four feet before the sedatives kicked in and he lost his footing. It took another ten minutes of his scrabbling around trying to bite me and me twirling and leaping out of his reach for the drugs to fully kick in. We checked on him after he went down and stopped moving. Once we were sure he wasn’t getting back up to attack we called in an ambulance. I’d done my job and he was going to face a judge, instead of a coroner. While it was likely he’d cop an insanity plea I didn’t think he’d go anywhere except jail.

  That was until he came to long before he should have. He jumped up, somewhat off kilter from the drugs, but still extraordinarily strong, and raked his claws across Josh, leaving four long bleeding wounds deep in his chest.

  I heard the snick of those claws on the wood floor as Grisly turned and came for me. I could hear the scratching as he tried to gain proper footing for a full blown assault and the rage had contorted the shifter’s face making it look unlike any bear I had ever seen.

  The all-too-human emotion of hatred contaminated every inch of the grizzly’s countenance; it was something real animals weren’t capable of. It made the bear look even more terrifying and wrong.

  It made me pause in fear.

  I stood, transfixed by the sight of the bear coming for me. I waited for him to get close and I leaned backward as he hit, taking him in my front paws and pushing him off me with my back legs. He flipped over my head, claws raking down my shoulders, and landed with a thud and a squeal. I smiled, got to my feet and turned to face him. Two more darts stuck out of his side and he went down. He was unable to hold form and he shifted back into a man, the darts sticking out from his ribs.

  “He said I was doing God’s work,” the man slurred.

  “He lied. Who is he?”

  “You won’t ever know until he takes your throat in his mouth and bites,” the man said before he began to laugh maniacally.

  “How did he find you?” I kept hoping he would tell me something.

  “He found all of us the same way, through our hatred of you evil ones.”

  “How many is all of us?”

  “More than you can take on, whore.”

  “You really need to buy a thesaurus.”

  “You jest when your kind is so close to eradication?”

  “What do you mean?” I asked it as innocently as possible, hoping he’d spill his guts since the confrontational approach didn’t seem to be working.

  “They will take all the supers to hell. There will be no more evil on this planet come Judgment Day.” His words had taken on a slur from the drugs.

  “Can’t any of you evil buggers ever come up with anything original? Come on, I mean the term Judgment Day is so overused. Haven’t you guys ever had a shred of originality?”

  “You won’t be so flippant when the Commander comes for you, bitch.”

  “At least you didn’t say whore again.” I thought of that knock-knock joke with the orange and banana after I said it, and I chuckled.

  It’s safe to say that the exhaustion from not sleeping well probably had a little something to do with the laughter, too.

  “Your death will be my honor.”

  “Okay, now that just sounded outright stupid. This isn’t feudal Japan, pal.”

  He growled as he raised himself from the floor. Two more darts joined the first two. When I followed their trajectory and looked at the shooter I saw Chad shrug at me.

  “He was getting threatening, and extremely redundant. We can grill him at the station.” He came out and hauled Grisly to his feet.

  We started walking him out the door. Chad stopped us and asked me to get the killer a towel. It hit me at that point Grisly was in his human form. He was also stark naked. I reached into my linen closet and grabbed a twin size sheet left over from my college days. I handed it to Josh. The new darts kicked in and Grisly finally collapsed in a heap with a snore. Josh carefully draped the sheet over him.

  “We’ll wait for the ambulance. They can cart him off. No way am I carrying this guy, especially when he’s bare-assed,” Chad said wrinkling up his nose.

  “Ha, ha. Nice pun.”

  “I didn’t even mean it like that, but damn that was good.”

  “Sam, are you okay?” Quinn’s voice crackled over the radio.

  “Yes. Thanks. How are you doing up in your perch?”

  “I feel like a yellow-bellied sap sucker, thanks.”

  “Hey, that’s on my life list, you know.”

  “Sam, you’re a geek.”

  “Yes, yes I am. Proud of it.”

  Grisly started coming around after help arrived and Chad wrapped the sheet around his waist after he got the killer cuffed and upright. Quinn had climbed down from the tree he was perched in and joined us, helping me to look after Josh until the ambulance arrived. Officer Joshua Hahn had four deep gashes in the center of his chest, but though they were bleeding, there didn’t seem to be any serious damage. The paramedics checked everyone out after determining Grisly was not going to die from lack of treatment.

  They sort of left him in a heap on a gurney while they attended us and our various scrapes and claw marks. Okay, so they mostly treated me and my various scrapes and claw marks, but Josh had some seriously bad wounds to go with the baseball sized bruise forming on the left side of his face from where he’d collided with the living room doorway while running.

  As we were walking Grisly out to a waiting ambulance a shot rang out. Everyone took cover and after several moments, and no other shots, we dispersed to check the area. Grisly had been shot in the head. It was clean and right in the center of his forehead. There was no doubt that whoever had taken the shot was a pro.

  Several officers and agents fanned out toward where the shot had come from. I had a sinking suspicion they wouldn’t find anything. I was pretty sure that Grisly’s God-spouting benefactor had taken care of a loose end. He couldn’t allow Grisly to spill the beans about who he was and what he was planning.

  I was pissed, because in the end it didn’t matter if I’d come in shooting or not. We never would have managed to get Grisly alive; the guy who had recruited him saw to that. I just wish I had gotten more off the bear shifter while he was in our custody. I went to my room and wrote down word for word what had been said during our time together. Maybe there was a clue in there somewhere.

  Chapter 18

  I HAD A GUT FEELING AMERICANS FOR A WERE-FREE AMERICA had something to do with it all. I just didn’t know what. I did, however, know there was a larger game plan at play and I knew I had to do something to stop it.

  At least we could ID Grisly and start digging into him. It didn’t matter that he was dead, he’d still lead us to whomever had corrupted his brain with so much anti-shifter sentiment that he could slice and dice several women into so much meat without remorse.

  As crime scene techs came and went, going through every single item I owned and cataloguing it just in case he had touched something, I sat in my home feeling violated and angry. Not only did this group know about me, they knew where I lived. I loved my home and now I was no longer safe in it.

  Don’t worry, I wasn’t about to let anyone run me off my land, and so I decided to make a call to a former coworker and very good friend who went into private security a few years back. I’d make damned sure my home was safe even if it took half my paycheck every month to do it. I took in the claw marks in my floor, including the deep gashes where we had collided and dug in to gain purchase. That could have been me. It was only luck, and Kevlar, that saved Josh and I from being taken away by Quinn’s corpse grabbers.

  A shiver ran down my spine as I dug out the phone an
d immediately called my friend’s security company. I was hoping they could send someone down tomorrow after the scene was processed and released. Preferably even before then. My friend, Alex Baltazar, assured me they’d meet me at the FBI office and someone would stick with me while he sent someone else to secure my house.

  “Look, Sam, we will have someone there the entire time the cops and feds are there, as well as make sure the place is secure, then build a security system just for you. In the meantime, one of my guys will meet you at your office and I think I should bring a lawyer in.”

  “A lawyer? There’s no need—”

  “Hey, you never know what these people are capable of. I think it’s best you protect yourself in all ways.”

  I’d always been able to trust and count on most of my FBI brethren. The idea that one of them could betray me never even crossed my mind. I thought back to those who never liked me from the moment I revealed my shifter nature and I wondered if any one of them were a part of this plot Grisly and his puppet-master had. Then I wondered when I had become so paranoid.

  I smiled a moment and thought, Is it really being paranoid if someone’s really out to get you.

  They’d known where I lived. They’d sent Grisly there earlier. Somehow the big bad had known right where his pet psychopath would be. Sure, perhaps they spoke beforehand, but Grisly didn’t seem like the sort who would take well to being micromanaged. He had his orders and that was all he needed.

  He thought he was acting in service to God, which meant military type tactics were out. They would have to give him space to complete his mission. If that was the case then the person behind everything had to have known where Grisly was from the FBI or police’s end of things. I didn’t like the implications that carried.

  Still, better safe than sorry.

  Until I had things figured out I’d spend my time where it mattered most, investigating the whole shebang. I knew Grisly was a pawn to them because he was too messy for them to keep standing behind. It was only a matter of time before he was caught. If he was a game piece then who was the one playing him?