Seduction's Shift (30 page)

Yuri reached out, and Ary knew he meant to grab her other arm. She twisted away from him and yanked her arm from Davi. “Both of you can go to hell! That’s what you get for working with the devil,” she spat and turned to walk away.

When she did she slammed right into two men she knew were shifters. Each of them stared down at her with gleaming cat’s eyes, and Ary swore she wouldn’t scream. She would run, but only after she let them know she wasn’t afraid of them. With quick self-defense motions she’d learned from Lucas back in the Gungi, Ary performed a one–two punching combo that landed right in the first Rogue’s groin. She spun in a circle, dodging shifter number two, and when he reached for her landed a kick to the side of his jaw. That was all of her training she was able to show before Leo appeared, gun drawn.

He pulled Ary behind him, extending his arm with the gun to Davi and Yuri, who were still dumbfounded by Ary’s moves, and the two groaning Rogues that were quickly recovering.

“Don’t even think about it,” Leo barked when the Rogues looked ready to pounce.

They stopped but bared their teeth and growled so loudly that a few passersby stopped to see what was going on. If it weren’t so serious it would be funny the way they looked at the replica of a prehistoric elephant with tusks as long as Ary was tall.

Then they saw the gun and all hell broke loose. There was screaming and running and Leo turned, pushing Ary ahead of him. “Go!” he shouted.

She had no idea where she was going and eventually he must have figured that out because he ran up beside her and grabbed her arm, taking the lead and pulling her behind him. Before Ary could turn and see if Davi, Yuri, and/or the Rogues were following them she was pushed through a door and would have fallen down the steps if Leo hadn’t caught her by the legs, throwing her over his shoulder. Later she’d tell him she didn’t like the Neanderthal treatment, but for right now she kept her mouth shut.

Pandemonium
did not accurately describe the scene outside. People seemed to be running frantically everywhere. When they finally made it to Leo’s car, two trucks pulled up right beside it. Doors opened and shifters poured out from all directions. The one her gaze locked on was Nick.

Leo was putting her down as Nick skirted the car, coming to her and grabbing her to him. “When we get home I’m beating that pretty little ass of yours for not listening to me.”

Ary opened her mouth to speak then closed it as his lips crashed down on hers. “Don’t say a word,” he told her, pulling back and staring into her face. “Just get in the car.”

“Where are you going?” she asked when she was being pushed toward the back passenger-side door.

“I’m going to do what I should have done in the fucking forest!” he told her without looking back.

Ary did not like the sound of that.

Chapter 29

They tracked the Rogues to an underground parking lot across the street from the museum. Ezra had locked on their scent and was leading the pack toward them.

Four shifters stood near a white Hummer. All Rogues. They’d just closed the back passenger door so Nick knew someone was inside. And that someone was Davi Serino. When Ezra reported that Leo swore one of the men Ary was talking to was Serino, Nick had cursed until his eyes almost crossed. Something about that too-neat battle in the forest had been nagging at him since they’d returned, but knowing everyone was growing tired of his battle-armor attitude he had kept it to himself. Besides, the last thing he’d wanted to do was upset Ary with talk of her parents still being alive. Now he felt like an ass because he should have acted on his instinct, as usual.

Now he wasn’t going to be dissuaded. Serino and whoever else was with him were going to die. That was all there was to it.

Nick charged forward, passing Ezra and the other shifters, growling as he approached the Hummer. The Rogues turned and bared teeth and claws, ready to fight back. He didn’t give a shit. Beneath him he felt his shirt ripping, his body shifting, the cat taking charge.

The six-foot-long, 250-pound jaguar that lived inside Nick lunged through the air, landing with its underbody smacking against a Rogue smaller than him by maybe 50 pounds and darker than him in color. Dispatch was quick and lethal as Nick’s teeth sank deep into the Rogue’s neck.

When the body fell to the cement floor the cat, now irritated and pushed closer to the brink, charged the Hummer, jumping up on its roof and dropping down to break the entire front windshield. Shattered glass spread everywhere as heavy paws hit the driver’s and passenger seats, plowing past them to get to the back. Both passengers cowered, hands reaching for the door handles, eyes wide with fear.

Nick moved to Davi first, giving the man a vicious growl that probably should have ripped his head off. Instead it only startled, then pricked the cat inside Davi until his claws bared and reached to swipe at Nick’s cat. Big mistake. Nick swiped back with such fierceness Davi’s body fell right out of the back door and hit the ground with a sickening
thump.
Nick jumped down on top of him. He roared once more, then let his teeth sink into the back of Davi’s neck, lifting the body slightly off the ground and holding on until all movement stopped.

Before Nick could enjoy the kill, there was noise coming from behind him. It was chanting. He let the dead body drop to the ground and remained still, trying to place the sound. Some weird smoke drifted through his nostrils. It permeated his senses, making his cat growl and roar louder. Turning to look over its shoulder, his cat spotted Yuri, the shaman, arms lifted, smoke emanating from his mouth. The cat shrank back and the man reached out a long arm, grabbing Yuri by the throat squeezing so hard he began to wheeze.

“What the fuck are you doing here? Who brought you here?” Nick yelled in the shaman’s face.

Ezra had just shifted back himself, running over to where Nick stood with Yuri. “Dead or alive?” he asked Nick, glaring down at Davi’s dead body and looking back to the shaman.

Yuri didn’t speak; he couldn’t, since Nick was probably crushing his larynx. The smoke had stopped dripping from his mouth and his eyes were watery, probably with the effort. Nick wanted to kill him, too, the healer Ary had called a friend. But that wouldn’t get the answers they needed.

“Take him with us. Bind him, and don’t let him out of your sight. And put a muzzle on this one, he has a tendency to leak,” he added, tossing Yuri’s slim body onto the ground. Another guard quickly stepped up, grabbing the shaman.

Out of the trunk of Ezra’s SUV, Nick and his guard slipped into extra jeans and T-shirts. Even though shifting in public was against their laws, one of Rome’s obsessions was to always be prepared. As they climbed in the front seats, Nick’s blood pulsed.

“Why was he still alive?” he asked the minute Ezra started the truck. “He was supposed to have died, yet he’s here in DC trying to get at Ary. And that shaman, he’s a fucking liar.”

“You know money rules here,” Ezra said as they pulled out of the garage. “Maybe it’s starting to rule the jungle as well.”

Nick pulled out his cell, growling as he punched each number. “What’s your location?” he asked Leo the minute the guard answered. “Good. I’ll meet you there. She’s not to move a muscle until I get there.”

Tossing the phone to the floor, he let his head fall into his hands. And for the first time since Ezra had come into the room to tell him about the Rogues at the museum, Nick breathed a sigh of relief that Ary was safe. Then he vowed to get to the bottom of this mess with her father and Sabar before it got her killed.

*   *   *

Ary wanted to scream. Then she wanted to cry. Her heart beat so fast she thought it would burst from her chest and then she’d die. Clenching her fists at her sides she cursed the rapidly changing emotions and the tears welling up in her eyes. She absolutely hated crying!

But the moment Nick walked through the door of the bedroom they shared and closed it behind him, she’d done just that. Turning to face him, she saw his furrowed brow and angry cat’s eyes. She scented the anger and frustration pouring from him. And she noticed the scratches on his arms and neck, which indicated he’d been in a fight.

“I didn’t know,” she began. “I thought he was dead.” The damning tears fell the minute she spoke, lining her cheek with moisture and making her feel a few millimeters shy of a weakling.

He didn’t speak, just walked to her. When he pulled her into his arms and hugged her so tight, she thought he’d break her ribs, Ary’s tears turned into full-out sobs.

“He’s dead now,” he whispered into her ear, still holding her safely in his arms.

Ary’s crying increased, her chest throbbing with the effort. She cried for so much in those few minutes—for the betrayal she thought her father had committed, for the shifters in the Gungi who’d also trusted him, for her mother, for the future of the
curanderos
and the shifters as a whole, and lastly for being a total fool about Yuri.

“You killed him,” she said through quivering lips.

She felt him stiffen against her but did not release her hold.

“I won’t say I’m sorry for killing him, because I’m not. I am sorry for how this situation continues to hurt you,” he told her.

“Everybody I trusted was lying to me,” she said when Nick finally pulled back a bit and she wiped her face with the back of her hand. “I thought we were doing good for the tribes. I thought he was teaching me because he believed in me.”

“And they lied. But that’s not your fault,” Nick told her. “They’re the assholes here, not you. And believe me, all of them will pay for their treachery.”

“Davi already did,” she said brokenly.

“It had to be done,” he said with a sigh then sat down on the bed.

He reached out to grab her hand, pulling her down beside him. “I know you think I have a kill-now, think-later mentality. I won’t deny that. But I also will not allow anyone to hurt you, not ever again,” he said adamantly.

She didn’t respond. Couldn’t really, because there was a part of her that had already accepted Davi’s death. Another part was still processing that the man she was in love with had been the one to kill her father. It should cause her more pain, that hideous fact, but it didn’t. She couldn’t allow it to. Davi betrayed the tribe; Nick was a protector of the tribe. He was also her mate. That was all she needed to know.

“Ezra took Yuri out to the guest house to lock him down while Rome figured out what to do with him.”

“Do you think he’ll kill him?” If so, that would be another death she’d have to come to terms with. Another person she’d allowed into her life whom she shouldn’t have trusted.

Nick kept her hand tightly in his. “There might not be any other choice. If he’s determined to help Sabar, we can’t let him live.”

She nodded, sniffling. “I don’t understand how Yuri’s involved,” she told Nick.

“I don’t, either, but he was spitting some foul-smelling smoke into the air until I started choking his ass.”

Ary looked up quickly. “A foul-smelling smoke? Coming from his mouth?”

Nick nodded. “Yeah, I could smell it, but then I was so pissed off I just grabbed him. I wanted to strangle him right there.”

She was nodding her head, too, everything making perfect sense to her now. “It’s ayahuasca. That’s the other element in the drug Sabar’s making. Ayahuasca.”

“What are you talking about?”

Ary turned on the bed, still keeping her hand in Nick’s and looking him directly in the eye. “Ayahuasca is an infusion. It’s a psychoactive infusion from the banisteriopsis, a vine found in the jungle. They call it the Spirit Vine because it’s said to give shamans the ability to speak to a person’s spirit directly.”

He looked like he was concentrating deeply on every word she spoke. “And that’s what was coming from Yuri’s mouth?”

She nodded. “And that’s what I think Sabar is adding to that drug. Without the ayahuasca ceremony, which can only be performed by a shaman, the vine can be used in a tea form. It opens up the soul, but doesn’t give it any direction. The unpurified damiana adds its negative energy, and that’s why anyone who takes the drug goes crazy.”

“Damn, I don’t know why but that makes sense. So Yuri was giving him the ayahuasca?” Nick asked, his cat’s eyes subsiding as Ary continued to rub her fingers over the back of his hand.

He’d been so wound up when he came in. For that matter, so had she. They’d had a tumultuous last couple of hours. But now he seemed to be coming down; his brow wasn’t as furrowed, either. She liked him so much better this way.

“Why else would he be with Davi and Sabar?”

Nick shook his head. “I can’t think of another reason. I guess money is starting to rule even in the jungle. Ezra said that earlier but I was having a hard time believing a shaman would be attracted to money. Guess I was wrong.”

There was a knock at the door and Ary jumped. Nick dropped her hand and wrapped his arm around her, pulling her closer.

“Come in,” he said when she looked up at him with relief.

“Hey man, you okay?” X said entering the room.

Nick nodded. “Yeah. I’m cool.”

“How about you, Ary? You didn’t get injured, did you?”

Ary almost smiled. She really was starting to feel like a part of this family. “I’m cool, too,” she said, trying to keep her voice steady like Nick’s.

“Heard you had some impressive moves in the museum,” X said to her.

She shrugged. “I can defend myself.”

Folding his beefy arms over his chest, X nodded. “That’s good to know. Because I’ve got some bad news.”

Nick sighed. “What now?”

“Rogues, what else?” X began. “Local news is broadcasting a robbery at Rigory National.”

“So they’re through selling drugs, now they’re robbing banks?” Ary asked, not sure she believed the connection.

X frowned. “Looks like it. Every human in the bank is dead, necks snapped, blood all over. Close to two million gone.”

Nick cursed. “Dammit! He’s doing whatever he wants and we’re just sitting back with our heads up our ass.”

“I wouldn’t say that,” X started. “It was definitely a setup, though. How did you know to go to the museum, Ary?”