Pixie The Lion Tamer (Shifters, Inc.) (2 page)

“My phone!” the woman wailed.
“My purse!  Make him pay for that, baby!”

She shot Pixie a look of disgust. 
“You. Get away from my car. I’m already going to have to fumigate it the second we get home.”

“That does it.” Pixie flung open the door to the Lexus and leaped in.  She slammed the door shut behind her and hit the gas, tearing out of the parking lot with a screech of rubber on the asphalt.

Glancing in the rearview mirror behind her, she saw Dominick leap into his car.  The blonde was literally stamping her feet up and down on the ground with rage.  Hillary just stood there with her mouth hanging open.

Pixie was annoyed enough that she
deliberately led Dominick on a good half hour long chase, bobbing and weaving all through town before she ditched him.  He was very good, but when it came to evading capture, she was better.   Then she turned around and headed back towards Shifters, Inc.

She grabbed her cell phone and called the main office line to tell them she’d
be back in a couple of minutes, and to have someone on hand to keep Dominick from ripping her face off when she pulled in.

To her surprise, the phone went straight to voicemail.
  That was unusual. There was always a live person answering the phone.

She tried to call Bobbi, and the phone
rang half a dozen times, and then went to voicemail.  Then she tried Hillary.  Then Kenneth.

Voicemail.

What the heck was happening? Was she wrong to be worried?  She could understand one or two lines being busy, but all of them?

By then, she was
pulling up in front of the building, behind Dominick’s parked car.   There was another car parked in front of Dominick’s, a limousine with darkened windows, and the engine was running.

A new client?
She’d worry about that later.

She hadn’t survived
growing up in the worst neighborhood of Playa Linda without developing an instinct for sensing trouble.  Something was wrong;  fear hummed along her nerves and quickened her heartbeat.  She quickly parked and leaped out of the car, leaving it running, and dashed to the front door.

Dominick stood there, his back to her. The front door was wide open.  Dominick was backing away slowly, and as she ran up the sidewalk, he spun to face her.

“Pixie, stop!” he bellowed, holding up a warning hand. 

He didn’t look angry.  He looked
panicked.  Pixie had never seen that look on his face before.

For once, Pixie didn’t challenge him.  She did what he said; she stopped in her tracks
. “What is it?”  she called out.

She looked past him, and her heart froze in her chest.

There were at least half a dozen people sprawled on the floor of the lobby, not moving.   The receptionist was slumped over her desk. 

             
Her boss, Kenneth.  Kenneth’s wife, Chloe.  Her best friend Bobbi.  Bobbi’s husband, Jax.  Hillary.  Kory. Hans. Were they unconscious, or dead? From where she stood, Pixie couldn’t tell. 

Furniture was overturned.  A blue glass vase which had rested on the
desk was shattered on the floor, flowers and little glass marbles scattered around it.  A chair was broken.

             
In the distance, sirens wailed, and grew louder.

              “Don’t take another step,” Dominick called out to her. “Don’t come close to me, I might be contaminated.  I checked on them, and they’re all burning up with fever.   I’m waiting for Haz-Mat to arrive.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t bother with that. They won’t have what you need to save your friends.” The voice was deep and mocking, and it came from
inside the building, behind Dominick.

             
A tall, silver haired man stood in the lobby.  He wore shiny mirrored sunglasses which obscured much of his narrow face.  He was clad in a black tailored suit of raw silk, with a red handkerchief in the pocket, and his shoes were shiny and black, and he held up a syringe in one hand.

             
“They won’t have this,” he said.  He spoke with an Eastern European accent, but Pixie couldn’t quite place it.

             
Pixie let out a yell of anger and tried to run past Dominick, who grabbed her by the arm.

             
“Pixie, don’t!” His grip on her arm was firm. “The air could be contaminated. You don’t know what’s in there.”

             
“He’s standing there breathing just fine. Let go of me!” Pixie struggled, but she was no match for a lion shifter’s strength.

             
The man in black didn’t seem the least bit concerned with Pixie or Dominick.  “Let’s see, who shall I revive?”

             
There were at least a dozen shifters scattered around the room.   Some were crumpled in a heap, some lay sprawled out on their backs.  All of them were flushed with fever and completely still.

The man glanced around
the room, then bent down over Hillary and jabbed the syringe into her leg.  He swiftly capped it and shoved it in his pocket.

             
Hillary sat up with a gasp, her eyes huge, her chest heaving.   Her hair was matted to her forehead with sweat.  Her glasses had fallen onto the floor.  She stared around her, eyes wild.

             
“What happened?” she cried out.

             
Dominick let out a roar of rage and rushed forward, with Pixie hot on his heels.  He shoved the man backwards, and the man fell back against the reception desk, laughing.

             
“Who are you? What the hell have you done?” Dominick growled, his hand closing on the man’s throat. “Answer me, or I’ll rip your god damned throat out.”

             
“Oh, but that would be such a terrible mistake.” The man showed no sign of fear.  “Because I only bought enough antidote to revive one of your friends.  I have the rest stored…elsewhere.  They’ve got days to live, if that.  And if you want to save the rest of them, you will do exactly as I say, when I say.”

             
Pixie ran over to Hillary, who’d found her glasses and was staring around her with a bewildered look on her face.  Her face was flushed, her face covered with a sheen of perspiration, her hair plastered to her forehead, but overall she looked all right.  Pixie reached out and grabbed her hand and pulled her to her feet.

             
Then Pixie knelt down next to Bobbi.  Bobbi lay sprawled on her back on the carpeted floor. Her face was flushed, and her forehead beaded with sweat; Pixie could feel the heat radiating off her. Her chest rose and fell with each breath, and Pixie quickly found her pulse, which was slow but steady.  Her eyes were closed, and when Pixie pinched her wrist hard, she didn’t respond or show a flicker of consciousness.

             
A wave of panic swept over Pixie, threatening to choke her. 

Bobbi was the one who’d befriended Pixie when Pixie was still a
thief and a hustler, living in empty tenement buildings and making her living in ways she didn’t like to remember.  Bobbi had gotten her the job at Shifters Inc., and had always believed in her.  She’d never patronized her, or smothered her, or tried to change her.  She’d just believed that Pixie could be a better person and lead a better life.

             
Now she lay there like a barely breathing corpse.

             
“Answer me, motherfucker!” Dominick grabbed the front of the man’s collar and slammed him into the reception desk, knocking his sunglasses loose.  The man threw back his head and laughed

             
The sirens were growing closer.  Pixie looked up at the tall silver-haired man, looked right into his eyes. They were dark pools, dark like black holes which absorbed and trapped all that was light and good. 

             
She felt an icy shiver run through her.  She’d been in some pretty bad spots over the years, and she’d felt afraid before, but she’d never felt anything like this.  There was a sickness in the man.  Normally only witches could sense the presence of magic in other people.  Pixie wasn’t a witch, but she could sense the presence of something dark and foul clinging to him.

             
He was also the man who’d somehow caused all of her friends to be sickened with a mysterious plague, however, and she’d find out what he’d done, or die trying. 

She shot
to her feet as Dominick slammed the man against the desk.  The man turned and shoved Dominick so hard that Dominick flew halfway across the room, crashing into a wooden table by the reception area.  He shouldn’t have been able to do that; even in human form, shifters were much stronger than non- shifters.

If Dominick couldn’t take this guy, there was no chance that she could, but she never was one to let common sense stand in her way.  She pulled her
switchblade from her pocket and ran towards him, screaming with fury.

             
At the same time, Dominick charged forward, launched himself at the man, and in a moment Pixie, Dominick and the man were on the floor, punching and clawing.

             
Then the man somehow pulled free, and leaped gracefully to his feet.

             
The sirens were much closer now.

             
The man reached into his suit pocket and tossed Pixie a cell phone.

             
“Pixie Montana,” the man said, and when he looked at Pixie his pupils were so big that she couldn’t even see what color his eyes were. He shoved the sunglasses back in place.

              “All of this rests with you,” he said. “You have what I need.  Keep that phone with you. I’ll be in touch.”

             
The silver haired man turned and dashed out, and Pixie ran after him.  He climbed into the back of the limousine and the limo quickly pulled away.

             
Ambulances and fire trucks and police cars pulled up a block away, and stopped.

             
Dominick ran up behind Pixie, breathing hard. “Why the hell did you get in my way?” he demanded, his voice a low, rumbling growl.  “I had him.”

             
“You so did not have him,” Pixie said.  She held up an empty hypodermic needle, which had been capped; it was the needle he’d used to jab Hillary.  “But I got this, from his pocket. Score one for Pixie.”

             
Dominick patted his neck and looked around uneasily. “Have you seen my necklace?”

             
“What? No, I haven’t seen your damned necklace, you jackass.  It’s a freaking strip of leather. I’ll make you another one in arts and craft class. Can we focus on the problem here?”

The
firefighters down the street were pulling on haz-mat suits.  Nobody was approaching the building yet.

Dominick grabbed Pixie’s arm, and dragged her
back inside. 

“When I called
911, I told them that everyone in the building was unconscious, and they all had high fevers.” Dominick said.  “The authorities have no idea what they’re dealing with here.  For public safety reasons, they’re going to want to quarantine us.  We’ll be locked up in a hospital room, probably for days.  We won’t be able to do anything to help our friends in time.  You heard that guy, he said that they won’t survive like this for more than a few days.”

“Do you think we’re contagious?” Pixie asked. “I don’t want to risk infecting anyone.”

“I don’t think so,” Dominick said. “Whatever hit these people knocked them out immediately.  We went inside and it didn’t affect us.”

“What should we do?” Hillary
asked, her voice weak.  She stood leaning on the desk, clutching her stomach and looking queasy.

Pixie could
n’t imagine Hillary being any good in the field. “You should just go home.  Maybe go to the hospital, get checked out.”

“No, I have to help.  These are my friends too,
” Hillary insisted. “I can’t just sit back and let everyone die. Unless…unless you don’t want me to help.  If you don’t think I’d be useful…” her voice quavered.

Pixie didn’t have the time or energy to deal with Hillary’s histrionics.

“Fine. You can come with us if you do exactly what I say, when I say.” She could keep Hillary busy with internet research, where she wouldn’t be a danger to herself and others.

Dominick glanced at their friends and co-workers who lay sprawled out on the floor.

“He’s got the cure to whatever this is.  We need to be able to investigate, to hunt this motherfucker down, and we can’t do that if we stay here,” he said. “None of us can go to our homes; the authorities might be able to track us down there, and they’d drag us off to the hospital.”

Pixie took a deep breath. 
“So we need a place we can lay low while we work on finding this psycho.  All right, come with me.  I know a guy.”