Shifter's Claim (The Shadow Shifters) (31 page)

Why was she sitting here waiting for something bad to happen? Wasn’t she more of a proactive than a reactive woman?

Nothing is going to happen to you. Nothing at all.

That’s what Bas had said.

I just need you to stay here until I come back for you.

Yeah, or wait until somebody or something else comes back for her. To hell with that!

Priya reached for the door handle just as it was pulled from the other side. She stumbled a bit, keeping a grip on the cell phone and looking up into the deadliest eyes she’d ever seen.

*   *   *

Bas chased Kaz down the stretch of road before he turned off into a copse of trees. He could have shot him, could have just shot that bastard traitor in the back but they weren’t in a private location.

Kaz had stopped the truck about a quarter mile away from a cul-de-sac town house development. If he fired his gun the neighbors would surely hear and call the cops. Cursing, he stopped running and turned back toward the truck. Priya was there alone. He had to get back to her and call Jacques to tell him what was going on. He had to …

The scream ricocheted off the trees, cutting through Bas like a heated blade. Inside his cat roared, his human feet picked up, and he ran full-on toward the truck only to come up short when he saw Priya … and the two full-grown male jaguars standing on either side of her. From behind the truck came a man that possibly matched Bas in height and weight; the glow of his eyes and the foul stench that rested heavily against the dry air branded him a shifter, a rogue shifter.

One of the cats knocked its head against the back of Priya’s legs and she fell to her knees. Bas moved in and the one still in human form stepped in front of him.

“We meet again, Sebastian,” Palermo Greer said, a wicked gleam in his cat’s eyes. “This time you have something that belongs to me and I have something that belongs to you. You wanna trade?”

The last was said as if the words tasted like a dead fowl on his lips and were followed by a laugh that echoed in the night. Bas didn’t flinch and he didn’t give a damn what he had that Palermo thought belonged to him, Priya was not a part of this, not now and not ever.

“Let her go and I won’t kill your sorry ass,” was his response.

The rogue tossed back his head and laughed again, showing the tattoos on his long, dark, orange skin-toned neck.

“Like you did all those years ago when we were in the forest? Oh, wait, you didn’t do anything that time and look what happened.” Both cats, already shifted and standing just behind Palermo, replied with open-mouthed growls that echoed off the mountaintops.

Bas wanted to shift and break Palermo’s spine with his bare teeth. He wanted to rip the bastard shifter apart the same way he’d watched him and his cohorts kill Mariah. But this wasn’t Mariah. She was dead. This was Priya and his chest ached with the possibility that she could suffer the same fate, because of him.

“I’m not that man anymore,” Bas told him steadily.

“You’re not a man at all, are you? Or maybe you didn’t tell your lovely little human mate about your true nature?” Palermo continued.

Oh but he had, Bas thought fleetingly. “This is not going to end the way you want it to, Greer. I’m not giving you back the blood.”

There was an endless second of silence while Bas’s words were digested. “Then I’ll just have to take hers,” Palermo finally spat, his teeth elongating, head tilting as he leaned in closer to Priya’s head.

Bas’s gaze rested on Priya, who had only made a slight gasp as Palermo pulled her up around the waist, pushing her head forward. He would go for the back of her neck, paralyzing her before he actually killed her, just like he’d done with Mariah. But Priya was different—a fact Bas had already discovered—she wasn’t crying even though fear engulfed her … no wait, anger was mixed with that fear. And as Bas looked even closer, he saw what she held in her hand, his cell phone and the screen was lit indicating she’d made a call.

Unfortunately, having Jacques on his way wasn’t going to get that mangy rogue’s hands off her and for Bas that was priority number one.

Returning his gaze to Greer, Bas moved slightly, aimed, and fired, hitting the filthy rogue in the shoulder. The sound of the gunshot brought the cats behind Greer into full action and they both lunged past Priya toward him. Bas had maybe two seconds to decide whether he was going to use all his bullets trying to shoot the cats down then take out their leader, or simply shift and kill all the bastards. Shifting would mean exposure, but Priya had already seen him and right about now he didn’t give a flying fuck who saw him. She was the priority, saving her was all he cared about. A repeat of fourteen years ago with him burying a dead human body so that no one would ever find it was not going to happen, not this time.

He shifted, falling to his haunches instantly and the second the first cat approached, Bas jumped upward and bit deep into its skull. The second one attacked him from behind, but he twisted with the animal, pounding at it with his paws.

*   *   *

Priya moved quickly the second she heard the gunshot. The man holding her had faltered and she’d fallen to the ground once more, almost on her face. Not hesitating, she rolled over and came to a standing position, calling on her year of self-defense and kickboxing training at the Y. The man fell against the truck holding his shoulder and she went at him instantly. Fists balled, arms raised, she stepped toward him, angled her body, then put all her weight on her left leg, swinging her right leg into the air. The heel of her foot caught the man on his chin. His head jerked back and she moved in closer, punching him in the throat and taking away whatever air he had left.

He crumpled to his knees and she stepped away, looking over to where the cats were battling. The sounds were horrendous, the pounding against their massive bodies, the growls and roars. It all played in horrific stereo that only amplified the sight before her. These were vicious animals fighting possibly to the death and Bas, the man she’d been sleeping with these past couple of days, was one of them.

With her heart beating way too fast to be normal, Priya ran toward the cats, falling to her knees just a few feet away from the truck where Bas had dropped his gun. Once she had the cool metal in her hands, she fumbled through her mind to figure out how to use it. She’d taken self-defense classes, not classes at the gun range. But Malik had never been a stranger to guns or how to use them, so this wasn’t the first time she’d held one in her hands. It was, however, the first time she held one with the intention of actually shooting someone.

Later she would wonder how she heard him, how she knew he was coming for her again but right now Priya turned quickly, gun raised, and pulled the trigger. The huge black cat that had been lunging for her hit the ground with a horrendous thump. Kickback from the gun pushed at her until she fell on her ass and in the next instant she was staring up into the face of one angry-ass big cat, teeth bared and ready to strike.

Chapter 26

Washington, D.C.

Agent Dorian Wilson was nowhere to be found. Nivea had gone to his apartment once more, she’d waited hours for him to leave, but he hadn’t. Sure, because of Bas’s call she’d been an hour late getting to his apartment near the D.C. and northern Virginia border, but he wasn’t due into work for another forty-five minutes, so she’d thought she still had time. Now, at almost ten o’clock in the morning, she knew something was wrong. A search of the parking garage where he held a monthly pass, proved her point. Wilson’s car wasn’t there.

Cursing to herself as she drove out onto the street once more, she reached for her cell phone, which was based on the dashboard and pressed for a stored number to be dialed. Before the number could be connected and she could speak through her Bluetooth, reporting her location and current situation to the guards at Havenway, she received an incoming text that read:

Search complete. IP location: 9091⁄2 29th street NW.

With the call back to base completely disregarded, Nivea punched the address into her GPS and drove with every intention of finding out who was holding Malik Drake hostage and threatening the shifters at the same time.

Forty minutes later she parked her car directly in front of a brownstone that displayed the same address as the one in her phone. Grabbing her phone off the dash, sticking it in her back pocket, and checking the weapon under her right pants leg, she climbed out of the car and headed up the steps. Three presses to the doorbell but there was no answer. Two sturdy knocks and even an attempted yell through the door that she was with the utility company, and still no answer, but there was a scent.

Closing her eyes, Nivea pressed her forehead to the door and took a deep inhale. Cars drove by on the street behind her, somewhere in the distance a dog barked, and above the sun shone like a beacon. Nivea, however, remained perfectly still as she focused totally on the scent tickling her nose.

It was a human, a bleeding human and it was coming from inside this house. She didn’t think beyond that, couldn’t really, as her adrenaline kicked immediately into action. Pulling a pin from her ponytail she went to work on the lock, disengaging it about ten seconds after she’d first touched it. The knob turned at her command and in the next instant Nivea was inside the house. The scent instantly intensified and she stopped only long enough to pull her gun from its holster before fully moving in. Letting her senses guide her, Nivea moved through what looked like a very well-to-do person’s house with its crystal-and-gold chandelier gleaming from above, plush carpets, and lavish furniture. She ignored all that in pursuit of the aroma, passing the living and dining rooms, coming to a pause at a door. With no one there to stop her, Nivea opened that door and hurried down the steps only to be welcomed by the ring of gunshots.

Ducking quickly behind an old armoire she extended her arm and returned the fire, seeing two men standing in front of a third man tied to a chair—the bleeding human.

A hail of bullets rained down at that moment and Nivea didn’t dare peek out from behind the armoire again. Her heart thumped wildly in her chest as she finally cursed herself for not making the call to Havenway, for not asking for backup before entering this damned house. Now she was trapped with dismal chances of getting herself, let alone the bleeding human out of here alive.

“Here kitty, kitty, kitty,” a male voice taunted when the shooting subsided. “Come out and play with us.”

Dammit, a rogue.

Why hadn’t she smelled them first? Why had she only scented the human? It didn’t matter now, they weren’t shooting so now was her chance. With her back to the armoire she gripped her gun and got low, coming around the side aiming and shooting the one rogue right in the balls. The other received a shot between his eyes and another squarely in the center of his chest. But those shots hadn’t come from her. Whirling around she saw immediately who had fired.

“What the hell are you doing here?” she asked.

“Saving your simple ass,” was Eli Preston’s quick retort.

“Wait a goddamned—” Nivea had started, only to be cut off by Eli and that cocky-ass swagger of his walking right past her as if he had heard all he wanted to hear.

“Save it,” he told her as he continued to move across the room. “Let’s get him out of here before the owners of this house are notified we’re here by the alarm you set off when you broke in.”

There hadn’t been an alarm. Had there? Nivea stood, holding her gun down as she walked over to where Eli was. He clicked the safety on his gun, tucking it into his back waistband and pulling a knife from his front pocket. Kneeling down, he went to work on the ropes binding the human. The very bloody and unconscious, but still alive, human that Nivea was almost positive was Malik Drake. Next, and as if she weren’t even standing there, Eli lifted the man over his shoulder and headed for the back door.

“Text your boyfriend Bas that we’re taking his human to George Washington Hospital and don’t forget to tell him he owes me one for saving your ass.”

Gritting her teeth, Nivea had no choice but to follow him out. If she had triggered an alarm, the company had no doubt already contacted the police and the owners. They had to move fast. Faster than it would take for her to cuss Eli Preston out for following her and then to begrudgingly thank him for, yes, saving her ass.

Sedona, Arizona

Bas covered her body with his to shield her from any more of the fighting. Even though he’d taken out the two cats on his side, Palermo had shifted before she got off her shot and could possibly get up again. Or not. He had no idea where the cat had been shot, or if the bullet had hit the animal at all. And right at this moment it didn’t matter. What mattered was getting Priya to safety. Palermo’s words, his threats to do to Priya what he had done to Mariah, still echoed in Bas’s head, spurring on a rage that ran so deep he’d come to believe it was an intricate part of the man and the cat.

He’d been outnumbered just as he was that night in the Gungi and at one point they’d had Priya surrounded. She could be dead right at this moment. The thought roared through his mind like a hurricane and his cat bared its teeth, yelling into the night once again. Then there was movement and he looked down into her face, saw that she was breathing rapidly, her eyes so wide they’d completely bulge out any minute now.

In the next moments Bas shifted, returning to his human form. He moved off of her but stayed close, helping her into a sitting position.

“Are you okay?” he asked, raking his eyes over every part of Priya’s body to be sure she wasn’t hurt in any way.

“F—fine,” she mumbled, brushing off the front of her dress and standing up. “I’m okay but you need to get dressed.”

She was right. It was night but the altercation had been noisy. As Bas stood and looked around for his clothes he noticed the carcasses of the two cats he’d taken out and the one that Priya had shot. Looking back to where she’d been lying, he retrieved his gun and moved closer to the lead cat. It wasn’t moving.