Forbidden (8 page)

They were sharp, like twin razor blades, but it still took multiple snips to get through the packaging. Alek handed the scissors back before slowly removing a cardboard file folder from the envelope. A slim stack of pages lay inside.

Alek closed his eyes. Was his little sister found at last?

 

CHAPTER 7

Claire was definitely in a cat lair. The back office of the police station where she sat, waiting for the chief and the mayor to finish talking in the front room, was thick with scents and none of them were good. Granted, she had expected the lingering scents of fear, anger, and worry. Those could be expected in any law enforcement office. But aggression? Pain? Blood? No, there was definitely something wrong here. The thing was, she couldn't seem to reach her Alphas in her head. Maybe the Alpha here was just strong enough that she couldn't get through his magic.

Hopefully they were listening in.

The door behind her opened. She pretended not to notice and continued to fill out the generic form that requested information about where she had been and what her skills were. It was like a job resume for a Sazi employment agency. Even without looking, she could now recognize which cat was which by the smell. The police chief was a cougar—not a predator to be messed with. The mayor was one of the smaller mountain cats, maybe bobcat or lynx. She didn't know all the great cats by smell, but she'd know him in the future. She tapped the pen at the bottom of the form after signing it and passed the clipboard back to Chief Gabriel. “Okay, I think that's it. Is there anything I need to fill out for the school, or will they give that to me on Monday?”

She wanted to give the opening to the mayor and chief to see if they knew her background and what had been set up by her pack. She had graduated from an online college with a degree in teaching and was certified to teach in Texas. She'd been told it would be easy to transfer her credentials to Washington. Her pack had applied for her to take a position working as a teaching assistant since she could gather a lot of information easily through talking to people. The town leaders should know that. But pack leaders who weren't in touch with their pack might not have a clue what was going on.

Chief Gabriel nodded. “Yeah, the administration over at the school does their own paperwork that has to be filed with the state Board of Education. But before we do that, we figured we should …
chat
with you.”

The word had a high-pitched snarl at the end and the stink of aggression filled the air. Claire looked up sharply, frowning. Her muscles tensed involuntarily as she looked from one man to the other. “Is something wrong?”

The chief filled the room with magic enough to sting her skin. “Well, not so much
wrong
. It's just that you don't really look like a Sanchez. I don't know a whole lot of blue-eyed, blond Mexicans.”

Ah. So that's where this was going. She was immediately suspect because her skin wasn't the right color for her surname. Fortunately, that was the first thing her pack leaders had schooled her on. But it was hard not to be antagonistic, just by their tone. “The preferred term is
Latina
for a woman or
Latino
for a man. They're pretty sensitive about that where I come from, since a lot of people aren't specifically from Mexico … but just for the record, there are actually quite a few fair-haired Mexicans. Still, to answer what I presume was a question, I was legally adopted by my pack leaders after the plague. I lost my parents.” In a manner of speaking it was true, so there would be no scent of deceit for the cats to pick up.

Most Sazi she'd met let the topic go after that, but the moment the police chief opened his mouth, Claire knew he wouldn't be one of them. “Sorry for
offending
you. So what was your surname before the plague? What pack were your parents attached to?”

He wanted to check her out further. Why? In the packs, the plague had become a dividing point. Before and after. After was all that mattered for those who'd survived. It wasn't information she was willing to give him, so she gave a sad smile and shrugged. “I was an attack victim. I'd rather not talk about it.”

That had better be the end of it. It was the height of rudeness to ask an attack victim to relive their first change. Most were formerly human, many didn't survive it, and those who did were usually mentally scarred by the experience.

Like her.

She brought her gaze up to meet the eyes of the big cougar shifter, trying to keep her scent and body language firm but respectful. She felt her fingers clench on the denim covering her legs and breathed slow and even. It seemed to work. Chief Gabriel's shoulders relaxed a bit and the tiny dip of his brows and the light scent that drifted to her nose held more sympathy than distrust. He didn't look at the mayor for his opinion—he hadn't deferred to the mayor once since she'd first encountered them, on the street with Alek. She was starting to wonder who the Alpha here really was. “Sorry.” The one word was gruff, seemingly filled with images and memories that he wasn't willing to divulge. He picked up a random stack of papers on his desk and tapped the edge several times to break the tension. “So, you're a teacher?”

“Hoping to be. Working with kids is all I've ever wanted. I am
so
excited to be here.” It was easy to gush about her life's dream and the smile came without any forcing. “I hope I can show your principal that I'll be a great teacher. Every child deserves to
love
learning, y'know?”

Whatever they were expecting her to say, that wasn't it. They both looked genuinely surprised at her reaction. It was the mayor who spoke first. “Well. That's … good. Um, glad to know you're excited. We do have great kids here.”

Claire kept smiling, keeping them off guard by her sheer cheerfulness.
Happy vibe, girl. Don't let them in your head
. She'd been taught that the most successful undercover people were those who could live the part of their assignment and focus their minds so even the best alphas couldn't break through. “So who do I check in with? I'd like to get the lay of the school and maybe observe a class.”

Chief Gabriel took a deep breath and let it out slowly before picking up a pen and starting to write something on a notepad. “You'll need to see the principal, Nathan Burrows. But that's for tomorrow. For today, you'll need to write up your version of what happened in the accident last night and then get ready for your first challenge. It'll be at sundown.”

Challenge?
“Excuse me? What sort of challenge?”

The mayor smiled, like this was an everyday request. “Well, we have to establish your place in the pack, of course.”

Claire's chest seized and her stomach felt as though lead had been dropped inside. “You want me to
fight
on my first day here? I thought my Alphas explained where I stood in the pack.” She'd never actually had to face a dominance challenge. Her Alphas didn't believe in fighting and most of the members were content with their place in the hierarchy so disputes were rare. They'd told the leadership here that she was fifth in line of the females—high enough in the pack to be respected, but not high enough to be threatening to those already here.

“And that's fine for
your
pack. But we aren't a normal pack here in Luna Lake.” The smile was closer to a sneer. No warmth and enjoying her confusion. “We're packs and prides and flocks, all doing our best to live together safely.” He stepped a little closer, invading the hell out of her personal space. “So you can see where everyone needs the chance to meet you … see your talents firsthand. Right?”

While it
did
sort of make sense, she couldn't help but shiver. “I guess.”

The mayor raised his hands, shrugging his shoulders at the same time—as though everything was out of his control. “And today just happens to be Ascension Day. Since it's already happening, we just decided to add you to the roster.”

Ascension Day
? What in the heck was that? But Claire didn't want to sidetrack the conversation. The
what
didn't matter as much as the
why.
“But I'm injured. That doesn't seem like it'll be a very fair contest.”

“Well…” Chief Gabriel's tone told her he'd considered the same thing. “The others on the roster are omegas. Even injured, you shouldn't have any problems.”

That revelation shocked her. “I'll be fighting
omegas
? Dear Lord, someone could get
killed
!” Omegas were the Sazi with the lowest magical ability in the pack. Without help from their pack leaders, they had trouble even shifting on full moon nights. It could be a painful existence unless the whole pack helped them. Many omegas Claire had heard of were depressed and angry at their lot in life. Some had even committed suicide rather than live that way.

The chief was quick to speak. “Oh, no, no. There's no actual
fighting
. These are tests of skill that show the equivalent of fighting ability. If we had actual battles, everybody would have died years ago. We don't have many alphas, so the Ascension Day challenges lessen aggression in a safe way.”

Oh. Well, then. That didn't sound so bad. “What kind of tests? What do I need to do?”

The chief stood and walked around the desk. “Let's go downstairs. We'll get started.”

He held open the door. The mayor led the way, followed by Claire. The chief took up the rear as they headed down the hallway to a metal door that was scarred with deep claw marks that bulged the door outward, toward them. What the hell?

She stopped cold in the dimly lit space as her nose picked up the scent of fear and feathers coming from under the door. The whisper of a female voice below their feet made her catch her breath. The door opened and she felt a sudden shove against her back. Then she was falling down and down, couldn't seem to stop herself. The doorway dissolved before her eyes, to be replaced by cool, damp rock walls.

She was back in the cave, huddled in a foul, ammonia-scented corner of her cell.
It isn't real
. It couldn't be. People didn't just transform into birds. But they were. Dozens … maybe hundreds of boys and girls in cages, scattered through the underground complex. They were all bound with shiny silver manacles around one leg or both arms, bolted to the solid rock. Clarissa stared at her bloody wrist. How many times had she tried to slip out of the cuff while screams echoed through the air? Her shoulder hurt from where she had tugged and yanked in a sobbing frenzy, trying to get loose when she thought they were coming for her. But the next cage was the target, Justin. He was just eight, with freckles across his nose and wide green eyes.

Clarissa's fear had turned to leaden knowledge that she would die here when Justin had been dragged back down the hall, his head thumping hollowly against the uneven floor. He was horribly deformed from trying to make the shift to bird form. She'd watched the guards' eyes as they dragged him, not even trying to hide the result of the forced change from the others. There was no feeling in those dark eyes.

Poor Justin, with thin bird talons where his feet had been, and his arms hanging limp, covered in feathers. One eye was still green, the other round and amber. Both stared unseeing, dead, as they pulled him down to The Room.

She tried not to think about The Room, but she'd heard about it in the whispers of those who had been here longer. The dead fed those who had survived the shift. The birds didn't think like people anymore. They ate what they were given, even if the meat had once been a cellmate or a sibling.

Hours became days, then weeks, then months. If fear was a tactic to whittle down the will of the captives, it worked. Soon there were no screams, except from the new arrivals. Nobody wanted to be the squeaky wheel, because the loud ones were taken first. Clarissa had thought she would trudge to her fate like the others … sure in the knowledge that there was nothing that she, a skinny girl from Kansas, could do to stop these alien beings who could become a giant bird or snake, at will.

But when her cage door opened and the two burly men came inside to take her away, she was surprised to find an inner strength. She started fighting for her life. She kicked and punched and bit while the guards hit her and yanked her arms, trying to keep her still. She managed to slip from their grasp and run. Tripping and falling over stones toward the small patch of daylight in the distance, slipping on black-and-white bird feces and other, worse things. She didn't care.

The light grew in size as she ran, the air began to smell less like choking ammonia and more like trees and dust. Her chest heaved, trying to get in enough air to keep moving.

Almost there. Almost there!

Then, inches away from freedom, the light was shut off—blocked by a snake, black as coal, that filled the entire entrance. He made short hissing noises, as though amused. “Oh, you are a feisty one. I like that.”

The guards finally caught up and grabbed both arms tight enough that she cried out. They bowed their heads to the black snake. “Apologies, Lord Nasil, she surprised us. We wouldn't have let her escape.”

The snake shrunk down to human size, became a man with dark hair and intelligent eyes. He turned those eyes, narrowed in anger, to the man holding her as she continued to yank and pull away. “She already
had
escaped you. But she won't escape
me.
Will you?” He put one finger under her chin and then gripped her throat so fast that she couldn't breathe, couldn't move. His fingers were stronger than the iron shackles. His voice older than the stone. “No. You'll never escape, never be free again.” The amusement in his voice became a threat. “You are
mine
. My feathered guardian, my warrior, my
slave,
little Clarissa. Do you hear me?”