Shift Work (Carus #4) (26 page)

I bowed. “At your service.”

He glanced around, dark eyebrows furrowed in olive skin. “How are you here?”

“No idea. I’m not exactly an experienced anchor.”

“Let me rephrase. What are you doing here?” He swept his hand in front of him to indicate the room, now full of angry, insecure, and whimpering norms.

“Making your life as miserable as you’ve made mine?”

“I thought we worked things out.”

“By watching television?”

He nodded.

“Do you still plan to use me next new moon?”

He nodded again.

“Then we worked nothing out.”

Sid’s lips snarled up. He flung his hand out, palm forward and an invisible force knocked into me. “Get out of my dream!”

I sat up in my bed, still carrying Tristan’s faint scent, and smiled.

Chapter Thirty-Three

“They’re sentence enhancers, not swear words.”

~Andy McNeilly

Since Donny refused to answer his phone, I decided the best solution would be to drop by unannounced at the SRD headquarters. Sure it was tapped, but I didn’t plan to say anything incriminating.

My heart sank when unfamiliar guard faces greeted me on entry. No Ben or Matt to brighten my day. The new guards at the front door accepted my old ID. Without any hassle or ATF run-ins, I found Donny in his dusty office, cluttered with ancient texts and smelling of coyote mischief.

“Carus, what a surprise.” Donny smirked.

“Cut the crap.” I had yet to surprise the old Shifter, and he knew it.

Ma’ii, his coyote fera, popped his head up from his dog bed nestled in the corner and barred his teeth at me. I stuck my tongue out in response.

Super professional.

“How can I help you?” Donny asked.

“Do you have any idea how difficult it is to find an expert on hieroglyphics in Vancouver?” I flopped down in the empty chair across the desk from Donny.

He frowned.

“Not the complaint you expected?”

He leaned back and laced his long wrinkly fingers together. “Honestly? You whine so much it’s hard to know what to expect.”

Well, Donny certainly didn’t hold back on the truth. One of the things I liked about the old man. Sometimes, though, it would be nice if he kept his thoughts to himself. I didn’t whine that much.

“Why do you need an expert?” Donny asked.

“A logo for a pharmaceutical company seems connected to a prominent KK drug dealer and quite possibly the murder of an officer’s wife. I wanted to know if the hieroglyph has any significant meaning.”

“But you can’t find any?”

I shook my head. “Can’t exactly type it into a search engine, and the ancient Egyptian expert from UBC overdosed suspiciously on KK a few weeks ago. We think loose ends are being tied up. There’s a small Egyptian community in Surrey, but they’re not exactly experts on ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs.” If Booth, the Egyptian goddess who’d posed as an SRD Agent to find her long lost love, still roamed the mortal realm, I’d ask her, but once I reunited her with Sobek, they’d taken off.

My brain stilled.

Booth was Egyptian…The hieroglyph was Egyptian. Was Booth connected to this in some way? My gut sank, but my brain kept processing. It didn’t feel right. Not that Booth and I were besties and braided each other’s hair, but this didn’t seem like something she’d dip her goddess fingers into.

“Show me.” Donny interrupted my internal musings.

“Excuse me?”

“Show me the hieroglyph.”

“You’re an expert?”

“I’ve been around for a long time.”

My chest tightened as I pulled out the torn letterhead from my pocket, the one we retrieved from Loretta’s storage locker. Without a word, I smoothed it on the edge of the desk before sliding it across the smooth surface toward Donny.

He grunted.

“What?”

“I’m glad you’re not an investigator. Your handling of evidence is atrocious.”

My fingers twitched, but I laced them together before I did something stupid, like flash Donny an inappropriate gesture. “One, there were tons of these retrieved at the scene, and two…”

“Two?”

Two, Stan and I didn’t plan to go through the legal system for justice. I bit my lip and shrugged at Donny. He probably wouldn’t rat on us, but he didn’t deserve becoming an accessory.

Donny’s mouth twitched as he reached forward and snatched the crumpled paper from my hand. He flipped it over. And stilled.

His slight smile drooped into a flat line. Like a Vampire, Donny seemed to withdraw into the recesses of his mind, his body froze and his eyes trained on the paper before going blank and distant.

My scalp prickled.

Fly away
, my falcon screeched.

Donny definitely recognized the symbol and from his reaction the information was bad, real bad. My sissy falcon kept flapping her wings in my head, wanting to get away before another knowledge bomb dropped.

Would Donny even share the truth with me? Or would he try to hide it? Donny played his own game, one that had never harmed me before, but first time for everything. As one of the oldest Shifters I’d met, Donny obviously played his game very well.

After three million ticks of the second hand, or thereabouts, Donny’s stiff posture loosened; as if every muscle relaxed from his heart outward as he came back to reality.

He cleared his throat and slid the paper back to me.

“Please don’t bullshit me,” I said.

“You swear too much.” Donny’s voice had dropped an octave and gained some gravel. He cleared his throat again.

“They’re sentence enhancers, not swear words.”

Donny smirked, but the humour had drained from his face when he saw the logo.

“You recognize the symbol.” Statement. Not a question.

“I do.”

“Will you tell me what it means?”

He pushed back from his desk and clasped his hands. His gaze drifted off into never-never-land again for a minute. “I’m deciding whether it’s better for your health to remain ignorant.”

“Ignorance is rarely bliss.”

“It might be in this case.”

My blood pressure increased and an ache developed behind my eyes. “If you don’t tell me, I’ll find someone who will, even if I have to fly to Egypt.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of.”

“I’m pretty badass, Donny.”

“Not badass enough,” he muttered.

“Excuse me? There’re very few individuals who can best me in a one-on-one fight when I’m in beast form.”

Except Demons
, my beast hissed.

“At least, not on this plane of existence,” I added. “You don’t need to protect me, Donny. Besides, remaining ignorant might be more dangerous for me, since I don’t plan on stopping my investigation.”

Donny nodded slowly, his shaggy white hair fanning his face. “You’re right, very few can best you. Very few still means some.”

A slight chill travelled through my body. “This is one of the few?”

Donny nodded again.

“Then tell me who or what I’m dealing with. I’d rather go into this with full disclosure than get blindsided. I’m not going to stop just because the bad guy is scary.” Inside, my gut twisted into a complicated knot.

“Are you sure about that? This may mean your death.”

“They killed my friend’s wife. Someone I care about. Yes, I’m sure.” Truth.

Donny pursed his lips.

“Tell me. Which of the few ass-kickers am I up against?”

“The Pharaoh.”

****

The plastic of the chair creaked as I shifted my weight. Goosebumps prickled along my spine and settled like cold icicles at the base of my skull.

Donny sat across the desk, observing me like a puzzle with a missing piece. His craggy skin bunched up between his two white shaggy eyebrows.

“The Pharaoh?” I asked. “The ridiculously old Vampire who makes the new ones all pee themselves when he’s mentioned?”

Donny chuckled. “You’ve met him?”

“Briefly. At a NAVA convention when I served Lucien.”

“What did you think?” He drummed his fingertips on his desk.

“Old. He smelled old, like frail, deteriorating parchment, yet powerful.”

A pause. “You can’t best him as you currently are.”

“Time to hit the gym?”

“It will take more than a six-pack to best the Pharaoh.”

My skin rankled. I grunted. “So what’s the hieroglyph?”

“Few know it. It’s from the past, his past. From a time when he ruled as a pharaoh in ancient Egypt. The hieroglyph is a symbol of his name, from the time before he was turned.”

“Is there anything else you know about him that would be helpful?”

“No. The Pharaoh is subtle though. If he wants Vancouver as a territory, he’ll take it. If he wants King’s Krank on the street, he’ll do it.”

“Why would he want KK on the street?”

“I’ve been thinking about that myself.”

“And?”

“I got nothing. The pharmaceutical company must play a part somehow.”

Tancher Pharmaceutical. The drug company specialized in research. The company, KK, Aahil, and now the Pharaoh were connected; Donny was right, if the Pharaoh wanted KK on the streets, he had enough power to make it happen. So why the charade of the drug company?

A thought hit my brain, so dark and twisted it made my neurons recoil. My mouth grew sour and nausea heaved in my stomach.

Research.
The Pharaoh had the drug company researching KK, which meant the introduction of King’s Krank to the streets also served a purpose.

“Human trials,” I gasped. “They released KK on the streets to test it on humans.”

Ma’ii and Donny growled in unison.

“Motherfuckers,” I said. My nails dug into the soft skin of my palms as I clenched my fists tight. My gums tingled, canines aching to elongate and sink into someone’s flesh. The human trials must’ve been what Loretta stumbled upon. And it got her killed.

Hunt
, my mountain lion hissed.

Destroy
, my beast growled.

The falcon let out an eardrum-shattering screech and demanded we fly away to expunge the grime still coating my neurons. After a hurried goodbye to Donny and Ma’ii, and a thirty minute drive home, I gave her what she wanted.

Chapter Thirty-Four

“Why do people say, ‘Grow some balls’? Balls are weak and sensitive. If you want to be tough, grow a vagina. Those things can take a pounding.”

~Betty White

Stan’s hotel room reeked of old popcorn kernels, and a slew of alcohol. The air remained stiff and stagnant, invisibly weighed down by Stan’s grief.

Stan hauled me into the main room when I knocked on the door. Now he paced in front of me, back and forth, wearing down the already worn carpet, to the point of exposing the concrete underneath.

“Dish it, Andy. I waited,” he said.

“I know. You sure you don’t want to sit down? It’s a doozy.”

“Andy!”

I held my hands up. This involved his wife’s murder. I got that, but I also had no idea how to share the information in a tactful way. Sensibility training wasn’t exactly a mandatory requirement when the SRD trained me as an assassin.

Just spit it out.
Factual. Concise. Without emotion. Like I handled all the other big reveals in my life. I might lack finesse, but at least I didn’t spray poop with perfume and call it roses.

“Okay, Stan. Loretta stumbled upon Tancher Pharmaceuticals’ real purpose in Vancouver. They’re manufacturing KK and releasing it to the public as a form of human trials for their research. Aahil must be the main drug dealer spearheading the operation, but an ancient and extremely dangerous Vampire, simply known as the Pharaoh, is behind the whole thing. He’s bad. Like super bad.”

“Really? Super bad?”

“Donny, my old handler at the SRD, doesn’t think I could take him in beast form.”

Stan blanched. “Beast form?”

I winced. “Oh, right. Haven’t told you about that. In summary, even my most dangerous form can’t stand against this guy, and that’s saying a lot.”

Stan shook his head, mumbling “beast form,” a couple of times. He finally straightened, and pinned me with a steely gaze. “What’s your plan?”

“I want to make sure the Pharaoh is out of town and then take down the pharmaceutical company with the VPD. We stop their operation and raid their servers for more information. That way we can take down everyone involved. Later, after the dust settles, you get Aahil. After the fact, and off the books, so you can walk away from whatever you decide to do.”

Stan blinked.

“We’ll weaken the Pharaoh’s hold on Vancouver. Not sure how to defeat him in the long run, but at least we’ll take care of the KK threat and Aahil.”

Stan nodded. “I like it.”

My mouth twitched. Stan wasn’t exactly heavy with the compliments.

“We need surveillance,” Stan said. “Information on the building plans, and their security system. I’ll get the tech team on it, but they take time.”

The word “security” sent a pang to my heart, followed swiftly with hollow longing. “I know someone for the security side of things.”

Stan grunted. “Let’s get this done.”

****

Once again the large red double doors of Tristan’s Port Moody home stared back at me, daring me to run away or knock, mocking me, questioning whether I was good enough for the man on the other side. From the fierce bouquet of lemon with a pinch of pepper, Tristan already knew I stood here. I’d surprised him by coming to his place.

The citrus and sunshine scent of the pack permeated around the house, but a certain stiffness weighed it down.

Did they think I planned to break up with Tristan?

That would make Angie happy.

Break up with Tristan?

My heart dropped in my chest.

Could I live without him?

My stomach rolled. No. I couldn’t.

Could I forgive him for killing my birth parents? Could I accept his history, and share mine with him? I had shameful things in my past as well. I’d used people…and myself.

My breathing hitched, and the answer to my unspoken question remained hidden.

Hadn’t I dumped Wick for less? My gut grew heavy and an invisible weight plunked down on my shoulders as the recurrent thought niggled at my brain.

Wick was probably laughing his ass off at the karma of the situation. Laughing with Christine.