Croc's Return (21 page)

As if sensing her wavering resolve, the lizard beast reached out a hand, misshapen with some fingers and claws, a mash-up of human and reptile. “Nnnnno.”

The word shocked her, reaffirming the belief that this was more than just a creature. Was this thing before her the result of a shift gone wrong?

To the side of the upright reptile, where Caleb lay still, his eyes shuttered, Luke crouched. A gaze filled with moisture, he said in a tremulous voice, “Mommy. I’m scared.”

So was she, dammit, but could she shoot the thing with human eyes in front of her? What if this was a misunderstanding?

She tried reason first. “Listen, I don’t know who you are”—or what—“but I don’t want to hurt you. I just want my son back.”

The thing cocked its head. It made an odd sound, a cross between a cluck and a purr.

“I can tell there’s someone in there.” Perhaps not a sane person, given the flat chill in the eyes. “And I’m sure you have a reason why you took Luke. Perhaps you thought you were protecting him.”

“He’s bad, Mommy,” Luke cried out.

This outburst agitated the creature, and it whipped its head sideways to emit a baleful hiss. It also flicked its sinuous, scale-covered tail.

The tip of it swept across the floor in its agitation, knocking something loose from an alcove in the wall. A rock rolled and bounced, stopping at Renny’s feet.

Except it wasn’t a rock.

A perfect little skull stared up at her. A child’s skull.

This isn’t a human. It’s a monster.
Now Renny was the one with cold running through her veins as she steadied her arm. The creature read her intent and lunged as she fired—
Bang!—
and managed to miss! Unused to a gun of this caliber, Renny didn’t expect the recoil that threw off her aim. It proved a costly mistake.

The lizard thing hit her and took her to the ground hard.

“Ah!” Renny managed a short scream and stared in wide-eyed horror at the reptilian face above hers, the jaws cracked open wide, the venom dripping from its fangs.

Struggling with the body pinning her did nothing. It outweighed her too much to even rock it.

“Let go of my mommy!” Luke cried.

Oh God, her little boy. Even as her hands scrambled to hold back the nightmare visage,
she screamed
, “Run, Luke. Run and find help!”

The strength of the creature was frightening. It barely seemed to make an effort, and yet it pushed toward her face as if she didn’t hold it back at all. Fetid breath washed over her. Those big blue eyes didn’t bother to hide their malevolence.

She closed her eyes tight lest she witness her own death.

Only death didn’t come. Rescue did.

“Like fuck. Get your slimy green ass off my baby!” Caleb roared.

Opening her eyes, Renny was just in time to see the body of the creature get plucked and tossed.

The lizard hit the wall hard, but that didn’t stop it. Hitting the ground, it sprang to its feet, its forked tongue flicking.

“Food plays? Fun.” The grotesque words emerged on a sibilant hiss.

“It’s a shifter,” Renny breathed, unable to hide her horror.

“It’s an abomination,” Caleb growled, standing between Renny and the beast.

Just in time, too, as the monster dove at Caleb, and the next thing she knew, they were wrestling, the muscles in Caleb’s biceps bulging as he fought to hold the fury of the creature back.

“Get out of here, baby,” he grunted, his words so reminiscent of what she’d told Luke. But just like Luke had lingered, so would she. Caleb had made a vow to never let her down, to always protect her, and she loved him enough to do the same.

Since Luke had tucked himself out of sight around the corner, she didn’t waste time looking for him. She hit the ground on hands and knees, the faint illumination from an electrical lantern causing more shadows than revelations. She looked for the gun she’d lost as grunts and thuds sounded, the battle between man and lizard happening in earnest.

But a man couldn’t hope to hold against a monster.

“Argh.”

She turned her head in time to see the injury. A swipe of a claw across Caleb’s shoulder saw blood streaming, bright red against his skin, the coppery tang filling the air.

The monster gurgled in triumph, and Caleb stumbled back, head shaking as if dazed. “Don’t let is scratch you,” he warned, his words slurred. “Poison on its claws and saliva.”

Dropping to his knees, Caleb blinked as he tried to fight the effects of the drug. The creature let out a warble, took a step forward, and lifted its arm, claws extended, ready to swipe.

“Caleb!” she cried. No. This couldn’t be happening. They’d just found each other again.

I can’t lose him.

Cold metal met her fingers, and she spared a quick glance down to see Luke had found the gun and placed it in her hand. She didn’t need his solemn gaze to know what had to be done.

“Die!” Renny screamed the word as she fired the weapon, this time holding it with both hands, but even then, the recoil screwed with her, and she hit the lizard in the shoulder. Missed. Fire again. Hit. The lower belly.

Then it was on her, and it was all she could do to avoid its wide-open jaws. Luckily, it wasn’t drooling hard enough to poison her. On the contrary, it seemed to be most careful that she remained conscious for its pleasure.

“Eat you alive.” The sibilant words brought her level of terror to a whole new level.

Renny heard screaming—hers, Luke’s, hers again. And then she went silent, her cry lost at the sight of Caleb, but a Caleb like she’d never seen. Half-man, half-croc, big, muscled and oh so very pissed. Caleb loomed, and in this hybrid shape, in fury and size, he was more than a match for the monster.

With webbed fingers, tipped in claws, Caleb grabbed the thing and lifted it. Tossed it. It hit the wall and rose, just like before. However, this time, her half-shifted lover was there to greet it.

“Don’t. Hurt. My Family!” Caleb managed to spit the words out of a less-than-human mouth filled with teeth as he grappled the thing into submission.

He wrapped a thickly muscled forearm around its neck and squeezed. Squeezed tight enough that those blue eyes widened. The mouth, lined with venomous teeth, gaped as it gasped for air.

But Caleb didn’t relent. He kept applying pressure until the light in those uncanny blue eyes faded. The body went limp. He held on a while longer, but there wasn’t a single twitch.

Caleb released the creature, but when Renny would have run to him, he held up a scaled hand and said, “Don’t. I’m not myself. I don’t want to hurt you.” While more guttural than usual, she had no problem understanding his words. She just didn’t agree with them.

What a load of… “Bullshit.” Renny said the word and smiled at the shock in his eyes. No matter what shape he wore, she knew those eyes. Just like she knew him. “You would never hurt me. Never hurt us,” she amended as Luke threw himself at Caleb.

Still in his half-shape, Caleb caught the little body and held his son gently against him.

Renny approached and placed a hand on his chest, not caring if it was covered in scales. Not caring if, right now, Caleb was caught between two worlds, man and beast. This was who he was, and he needed to know that.

“I love you, Caleb.”

“Me, too!” Luke piped in. “Daddy killed the dinosaur.”

Or not. Renny screamed as a hand closed around her ankle, the sharp points of the claws digging into her boots.

Bang
.

“Stubborn fucker. Heal from that,” Wes snapped. Turning his gaze on Caleb, Wes smirked. “Dude, put some fucking clothes on. No one needs to see your shriveled green lizard.”

Caleb glared, and Renny probably didn’t help the situation by bursting into giggles.

The burning scowl Caleb turned Wes’s way didn’t deter the other man from giving a sneered, “You’re welcome. Looks like I got here just in time.”

“I had things under control,” Caleb managed to say through his strangely shaped jaw. Weird didn’t begin to describe his partial shift, a shift he was losing his hold on as his adrenaline dissipated.

Renny stepped away, Luke cradled in her arms, a situation his son was not happy about it.

“Put me down. I’m not a baby,” Luke protested.

If his jaw wasn’t in the process of realigning itself, Caleb might have laughed at her indignant look.

Ignoring them all, Wes knelt by the monster’s corpse. “Well, this is fucking interesting,” Wes muttered as Caleb’s last joint popped back into its human shape.

“What did you find?” Renny asked, crouching down to look at what held Wes’s interest.

The other man held up the mottled arm of the dead creature. Even through the scaling and discoloration, Caleb noted the tattoo.

“Recognize it?” Caleb asked.

“No, but then again, I don’t go around cataloguing people’s tats.”

“Hold on a second,” Renny said with a frown. “I thought shifters couldn’t do tattoos, something about your skin rejecting the ink.”

“Natural-born shifters can’t have them, but someone who was turned with one already…” Wes shrugged. “Possible, I guess. I don’t know too many converts, though, so I couldn’t say for sure.”

“If this guy was intentionally changed, who did it? And what?” Even with all Caleb had seen, he’d never come across anything like it. “I’ve never heard or seen anything like it.”

“Me either. And it doesn’t smell right,” Wes mumbled, reiterating the problem Caleb had since their first encounter with the thing.

“It’s like a mishmash of stuff I know, with something else thrown into the mix.”

Wes looked up at him. “Yup. And look at this.” This time, their attention was drawn to the neck of the creature, where singed flesh formed a ring.

“What the hell would do that?”

“Makes me think of a shock collar,” Renny observed.

Which only served to deepen the mystery.

What also proved complicated? Getting them all back to dry land. Lucky for them, Wes had a weatherproof bag he’d brought along on the hunt—
“A must have for all swamp predators so they don’t get caught out in the open with no underwear.”
He also had a phone.

It wasn’t long before they were back on dry land, Bittech property to be exact, inside one of the docking bays, shifters of all castes called in for the search and eventual rescue gathered around the corpse of the lizard thing.

While everyone stared, eyes wide with confusion and shock, only a few whispers were uttered.

“Who was it?” No one seemed to recognize the body or the tattoo.

“What is it?” The hybrid mix was not something anyone ever recalled seeing or hearing about.

“Who did this?” The question that haunted them most of all.

Who would do such a thing? And why?

Bittech claimed no knowledge of the creature, and despite Wes’s suspicions, Caleb had seen Andrew’s face. Either the man was an excellent actor or he’d never seen the monster before. No one could fake the revulsion on his face.

Yet, the fact remained, this thing wasn’t naturally born. It had been made.

A mystery that would require solving, but not tonight. Tonight, Caleb took his family home. Not the new one with its bare rooms, but his childhood home, where he knew they would all feel safe.

Constantine, who it turned out had done his fair share of searching but in another direction of the swamp, had arrived before them. He sat on the couch, freshly showered, with his dog sleeping on his lap. Or not.

Princess opened a single eye, just a slit, and the corner of her mouth lifted. Her canine version of hello or the one he suspected of meaning, “I’ve got my eye on you.”

As Renny bathed Luke, Caleb hit the outdoor shower unit to sluice the bayou from his skin. Rinsing it, though, didn’t help him from reliving the moment in the cave when he’d thought the creature would kill Renny.

This finally brought on the shakes. He dropped to his knees as the realization he could have lost Renny and Luke truly hit him.

So close, so close to losing to that monster.

He’d known he couldn’t fight the beast as a man, and his croc knew that it wasn’t the right weapon either, but when they decided to partner together… Together they formed an incredible duo. For the first time, they’d truly shared everything—body and mind.

And he hadn’t eaten anybody.
Score!
Except now he was kind of hungry.

Feed me. Lots of fish in the bayou.
Crunch. Crunch.

Sometimes I’m really tempted to see you made into a purse.

But their banter wasn’t acerbic in nature. Caleb finally understood his croc’s cold sense of humor, and he now knew he could trust it.

Trust himself.

To placate them both, he made himself the thickest roast beef sandwich ever using the reddest parts he could find.

Compromise, the key to living in harmony with himself.

A clean Luke was spat out from the bathroom, dressed in clean pajamas with dogs on them—sigh—and wet hair. “Watch him, would you, while I shower?”

Seemed simple enough. Caleb swung his son into his arms and carried him to his room. He tucked him in bed, worried at how quiet his boy was, but at a loss as to what to do. He pulled a book from the nightstand, something with a happy title and happy cartoon faces, but he hesitated.

He put the book aside and paced. “Your mom should be out of the shower any second now.” She would know what to do. The right thing to say.
But I’m his father. I should know how to handle this.

“Do you need anything?”

Luke gave a slow shake of his head, then his mini me peered up at him, and the surge of love for this child—
my son—
took Caleb to his knees so he could meet Luke’s gaze without making him crane.

“Are you all right?” Caleb asked, knowing all too well how some events could mark a man and weaken him. Except…he’d not caved to weakness or anxiety. Not this time. As a matter of fact, Caleb realized he’d not felt that debilitating panic hardly at all in the last week. And since Renny had slept with him, he’d not needed his pills because being with her held the nightmares at bay.

She’s better than any head shrink or drug.