The Mating Call: Drekinn Series (3 page)

None of them were in a relationship because they were all holding out hope that they would find their mate, but after one hundred years or so, they had pretty much given up and figured that scratching their itch was needed. They only had one rule, and that was no one brought a man to the apartment. It was their sanctuary.

She loved being close to the park, so she could run. It was a good thing that when they shifted, their clothes disappeared and then reappeared when they shifted back. It was part of their magic. But it took practice; you have no idea how many times Calli had shifted back to a human with her underwear on the outside of her clothes. Thank goodness that was just when she was young. Now she could do it without thinking.

Sitting on the top floor of a highly secured apartment building they had bought when the prices were cheap in the mid 2530's, their apartment took up the whole floor and was huge. They divided it into sections for each of them with a common area in the middle. Every high tech gadget you could think of was in the place, since Rissa invented most of them, few people had them. If a stranger came into their place, they would probably try to steal their shit.

Calli hung on the chains thinking that her bed sounded good about right now, considering the silver was making her tired, and her friends were still fighting, completely forgetting about her predicament. She growled when they began to walk out of the room, like she was supposed to follow them.

"Bitches, get me out of here," Calli said, and her friends stopped and turned to look at her. Cherri put her hands on her hips.

"Seriously, we escaped. Why can't you? I thought you were playing with him?" she said losing her patience a little.

"Really, and what would your clue have been? Possibly, the silver chains that were hanging on me? Or maybe it was the way I was hung on the wall," Calli snapped.

"Silver?" Rissa said and stepped closer and narrowed her eyes. "Well why the hell didn't you say something sooner? We were only tied to the wall with iron chains; the dipshit must have thought you were a bigger threat. You know I get sick and tired of everyone thinking you are some badass and we're like your weak, little sidekicks."

Calli laughed as her friends grumbled and unchained her. She had been held in that position for so long that she fell to the floor. Her friends stood there with their hands on their hips and watched as she struggled to get up.

"Fuck you," Calli said and finally made it to a standing position.

"Hey, wonder girl, you're the one who usually kicks everyone's ass. We just clean up your mess. I hate to ruin my nails. Oh, by the way, we have a mani/pedi scheduled for three, so we kinda need to get cleaned up. I hate going to the parlor smelling like day-old BO," Cherri said. Then walked out of the room, while Rissa and Calli watched her in horror.

"Shit, really, we have to do that again?" Calli said and growled. It was Cherri's latest thing that made them seem more like chicks instead of Enforcers. She said that you could kick ass and still look good.

Chapter 2

Being kidnapped, and almost killed seemed so much easier than actually going to the beauty salon. Cherri refused to change the appointment, so there they were sitting in their hot massage chairs while the workers ran around and got their supplies ready. At least, they were soaking their feet in the nice, hot water already.

Calli flipped her communication device open, and touched the small screen to call her boss. She loved the cool things they had developed over the years. Her boss appeared on the small screen, and she grimaced when he began yelling right away.

"Where the hell are you? I have gotten a million calls from your crazy mother reporting you dead. And the tracking device is malfunctioning. Tell me what's going on!" Brooks said, and she chuckled.

"We had a slight problem last night. Apparently, Rissa, Cherri and I have a bounty on our heads, compliments of
King Bondi
, fifty thou for us, dead or alive."

"Really? So little? I guess you haven't been doing your job very well, maybe we need to review your records again, Commander Young. I thought you would have fetched a higher price. The Intel is being sorted now; we should know why the
King
wants you dead so bad, other than the obvious, that you are a pain in the ass." The head of her division, Brooks Trech, had been there almost as long as she had. He wanted to be the head of the department, whereas when they offered her the position, she had told them to piss off, because she liked working the streets.

There was a hierarchy to the Drekinn Agency. The only people employed in the place were
Breyting
; no humans were allowed to be in the building at all, unless they were being questioned in the dungeons. The head of the Agency, Ms. Praton, made that rule when she started the Agency.

Elizabeth Praton was a dragon shifter. She was raised in Ireland, but when the big reveal came, she and her family had not been prepared for the hatred of the humans. Like many of the
Breyting
, they fled their homeland and made their way to New York City, which had become the Mecca of the shifter world. Sure there were some humans that lived in the city still, but nowadays New York was considered the home base of the
Breyting
. The human government recognized their area as the
Breyting
headquarters and had even pronounced a declaration to the government that New York was their home. This, of course, was after the war they tried to wage and lost. Just outside of New York is where the last battle had been waged. Their prize was the huge city that they had invaded.

So shifters and magical people moved from all over to live in the safety of the city that they now called home. At first, it was hard, because the humans tried to control what came in and went out of New York, but slowly they came to realize what an asset they were. But, instead of spreading out, the
Breyting
remained in the city, for the most part, although she knew that some shifters preferred to have wide-open space to run.

With the technology they had, cars had become obsolete and shuttles were now the preferred mode of transportation. So flying your shuttle to the woods wasn't that hard. Airplanes were no longer needed because families could fly themselves, although you had to have permits to fly to different countries.

Grocery stores were by delivery only, and all restaurants delivered, even the fast food, although with the whole movement toward healthy eating was full of shit.

Talking to anyone face to face, became obsolete with the new communicator, it was transmitted through the airways, so regular telephones were history.

Entertainment was vastly different, you could watch a Broadway Show live from your living room, and football was of course still the sport of choice. Although, more entertaining now that they allowed shifters into the league.

Nowadays, the world's info-structure was a lot different. Each of the countries had an ambassador, and they sat on the World Assembly Congress, or the WAC. In July 20, 2236, the WAC was formed because the economic crisis finally reached epic proportions and all the countries collectively declared bankruptcy. It was a tremulous time, and all due to the war they had waged on the
Breyting
, although no one would admit it. Each country tried to round up the
Breyting
and cage them. None of them realized that it was impossible to round them all up. Some humans had the DNA strand and didn't even know it. Basically, they shot themselves in the foot, and then the
Breyting
helped them reorganize.

Callie and her friends had wanted to be a part of the Drekinn Agency from the first day they saw Ms. Praton announce she was heading up the Agency for the regulation of the
Breyting
and
Ulfer
world. The humans had no clue how to deal with us, so they quickly handed it over to Ms. Praton. There were positive and negatives to that. Basically, if everything was running smoothly, then the WAC patted themselves on the back for thinking of letting the animal's police themselves. But if a highly public
Ulfer
incident happened, they tried to flex. It never worked. Ms. Praton was one scary dragon when she was pissed. No one knew exactly how old she was, but according to other dragon shifters, they had about a five hundred year life span, just like the rest of them. She had to be at least three hundred. Calli thought she was beginning to show her wrinkles.

"Uh, thank you, sir. We'll be reporting in within the hour. Uh, we're currently healing from the traumatic torture we endured. I will send my report via my com. Sir, we're going to have to talk about moving a little faster on the training."

"I'm already ahead of you. We have been lucky enough to obtain help from our overseas division. Our newest Commander will be reporting this afternoon. I expect you all to be here to greet him. He will be helping with the training, and hopefully he will stay and become our fourth Commander, you know we have been looking for one for a while now, but no one was qualified. This guy came totally out of the blue, but he passed the background check. I will forward it to you. And hurry up and get your toe nails painted so you can get back to work," her boss laughed and hung up.

Calli frowned into the link and then turned to her friend and growled. "See what happens? They find out that we get our toe nails painted, and suddenly they have someone who's going to replace us. This is what I was talking about when you decided to go all girly on me."

Cherri shrugged and looked down at her finger nails and said, "Shut up, bitch and don't worry, no one can take your 'Queen Bad Ass' position in the company. You're solid."

Rissa opened one of her eyes and peered at her, "You know how he likes to rile you up. Let it go. This guy is nowhere close to your skills; he probably is a wannabe military dude. I love when they come in fresh from basic training and think that they are ready to take on the
Ulfer
. Hmmm, maybe I will take a small trip out to the training facility and see the new recruits."

Cherri clapped her hands and said, "I'm so there. We can say we're updating the tracking chips. Hey, did you already inject yours, Calli?"

Calli nodded absently and said, "Right when I got home." It was a good thing her friends were the ones who developed the tracking chip in the first place. They had been telling them for years that the life of the chip was only twenty years. So they needed to look through the old files and get the ones who accepted the tracking device updated. It would take months. Rissa already placed an ad for a geek to come in and help them.

Calli sent the report to her boss and then waited impatiently for the file on the new so-called Commander. She would be the judge of that. Ms. Praton would trust her to evaluate any new hire who would be placed in that position. Finally, the ladies had completed their
relaxation therapy
, as Cherri liked to call it, Calli called it
torture
.

"We need to get to the office and find out what the hell is going on. I feel like we have stepped into a pile of shit and haven't washed our shoes off yet," Callie said and her friends stopped and stared at her. "What?"

"Really, you had to go with the pile of shit analogy?" Rissa said and shook her head. "I'm so disappointed."

Calli growled at her friends, and then stalked to her shuttle and got into the driver seat. At least, they wouldn't bitch about her driving, because she was the only one with an active license. Cherri had lost hers because she rammed a storefront when she was applying makeup, and Rissa forgot to have hers renewed and had to take the test again.

"Buckle up, bitches, it's the law." Calli grinned and then laughed when her friends rolled their eyes. They hated it when she said that. But the shuttle computer repeated the request, without the cussing part, when Calli pushed the start button.

The shuttle slowly rose until it was at the right level, about a hundred thirty feet off the ground, and then Calli looked over her shoulder to see when she could enter the traffic. It was about one hundred forty feet off the ground for the slow lanes, but every twenty feet or so higher the lanes were faster. Soon they were cruising about above the building where the fast traffic was and Rissa was already on her computer trying to gather information from the geek squad.

Cherri was putting on her happy face, finding out if their blood samples had returned from the lab. She would have done it herself, but Cherri wanted the official documentation that they had been drugged. So she sent a small sample of all of their blood to the human lab and the Drekinn Lab. Hopefully they would be back soon.

Calli pulled the shuttle around and circled the Drekinn Agency from above. She loved to look at the compound. It was in upper Manhattan and was four blocks long. Ms. Praton had bought all the property herself and changed it into the Agency. Each block held a different section of the facility. The Enforcers were in the tallest building; Calli slid her shuttle into the above building parking lot and claimed her space. She had been proud when she received the space with her name on it. Cherri and Rissa had one next to hers, but they were always empty.