Authors: A. C. Arthur
* * *
Rome and the others broke through the doors of the ballroom just in time to see more people running, this time from big cats with even bigger teeth. The roaring and chuffing sounded like they were in the middle of the jungle and not a five-star resort.
He’d heard the yelling through the com link from other Shadows. Bas and Cole had just checked in with their locations in the parking garage of the building. X had abandoned his spot at the control board and was headed out to take on as many as he could. Nick was standing right beside Rome, his cat on the verge of breaking free. Rome reached out a hand to grab his best friend’s arm.
“We are Shadow Shifters,” he said to Nick.
Nick looked right into Rome’s eyes and nodded his head. “And we will prevail,” he finished Rome’s statement.
They parted ways, each of them knowing what had to be done. Eli saw the moment Rome had made his decision and Eli was right on his heels, pulling Nivea along with him. He’d been at the stairs when something stopped him. It wasn’t a sound or an occurrence, but a feeling deep in his gut, a shifting of something other than his cat and he turned around immediately.
“What is it?” Nivea asked as she was pushed up against him by someone screaming and trying to get out of the building. “Eli?” she called to him again, lifting a hand to his chin, attempting to turn his face to hers.
He touched the wrist of that hand, holding her still as he continued to stare back toward the ballroom they’d just come from. Through the open doors, three uniformed men came running out, guns drawn. He remembered the first two had sat at the two tables closest to the stage and they hadn’t seemed at all surprised when the hybrids had appeared. The last one had been on the stage—Crowe. He had looked cocky but Eli had sensed some trepidation in him, definitely some anxiety. Now, that anxiety radiated as fear, combining with the sickening scent of terror that permeated the air. In the next moment Eli saw Ezra, and Eli’s cat roared deep inside because he knew how this confrontation was going to end.
Lawrence Crowe had emotionally and physically abused Ezra’s mate, Dawn. He’d threatened Dawn’s father and had him kidnapped. Crowe had escaped when Ezra had attempted to apprehend him back in Sedona. To say there was bad blood between them that went beyond Crowe’s creation of the hybrids was an understatement. Ezra shouted to Crowe and he turned to see who it was calling after him. Subsequently, he lifted his arm and aimed the gun at Ezra’s head and Eli knew exactly what would happen next.
His brother shifted into the huge black jaguar with glowing green eyes that Eli knew was more powerful than just about any shifter he’d ever seen. Opening his mouth wide, he roared and leapt toward Crowe, but not before Crowe fired the gun. The cat knocked Crowe to the floor and Eli was already on his way across the hallway.
He didn’t know if Nivea was still behind him because he’d released his hold on her the moment his claws extended from his fingers. Mowing people down in front of him was a necessity, his brother’s life was in danger. When he came to the spot where Crowe had gone down, it was just in time to see Ezra’s cat bite deeply into Crowe’s skull, killing the man instantly as his paws held him down by the chest.
Someone screamed so loud Eli’s ears rang. The other two military men that had been moving with Crowe were long gone as Eli looked around for them. Then he saw Nivea going to her knees, her hand on the back of Ezra’s cat’s head.
“Let him go,” she was saying as quietly as she could through all the noise. “Let him go, Ezra. It is done.”
For the first time in the last five minutes it seemed, Eli breathed, he actually sucked in air and released it, yelling into his com link, “I need a couple of guards to the ballroom, now!” he yelled. “Shifter injured. Get here now!”
He moved closer to Ezra, touching the flank of the cat where he saw the darkening of blood. “Come on, bro. Back up over here so I can look at your wound.”
Ezra’s teeth were still locked on Crowe and Eli watched the grisly sight, feeling the same deep grief he’d felt when they were back in the Sierra Leone rain forest, staring down at what they’d both done to Acacia and her guards.
“Come on, let’s go,” he said again, as both he and Nivea rubbed their palms along the cat’s heaving body.
There was another roar as Ezra finally released his hold, Crowe’s body slumping in the pool of blood beneath it. With both his arms around the cat, Eli guided his brother back into the ballroom. He didn’t have to push past people this time, because nobody wanted to be near a large adult male jaguar that had just killed a man in plain sight.
“You did good,” Eli told Ezra when they were finally in the ballroom, the cat lying on its side against the wall.
Its flanks heaved up and down as if it was the hardest thing it ever had to do.
“You’re going to be fine,” Nivea told Ezra. “Just fine. As soon as the team gets here they’ll take you back to Havenway and Ary will fix you right up.”
There was a hitch in her last words and Eli rubbed his hand down his brother’s head. “Yeah, he’s strong. He’ll be fine.”
Five guards came running into the room, stopping when they saw Ezra’s cat lying on the floor. They looked grim, barely constraining their anger.
Eli stood, directing them immediately. “Get him back to Havenway, now! Radio someone there to tell them he’s coming and to be ready.”
There was a nod and then the shifters were moving, lifting the cat together as if it weighed no more than a child. They moved fast across the ballroom floor over the broken glass and overturned furniture, bursting through the exit door and disappearing as quickly as they’d come.
“We have to go,” Nivea said, touching a hand to Eli’s back.
Eli nodded.
“Rome and Nick are heading to the garage to help Bas there,” she continued.
He nodded again, his body trembling with rage, his teeth clenching to keep the cat at bay.
“Pull back! Pull back!” They both heard blaring through their com links from the Assembly Leader. “Reporters are here, humans are dying. Pull back!”
Rome was calling them off, commanding them all to stand down and head back to Havenway. They’d been exposed and there was nothing any of them could do about it. Around him Eli heard the sirens of law officials and ambulances, he heard the screams of humans both afraid and wounded, and the unmistakable roaring of big cats enraged and hunting. The two worlds mixed, human and shifter, and it was nothing like the Assembly Leader had envisioned, nothing at all.
“Eli?” Nivea said more urgently. “We must go now!”
He turned to her then, staring directly into her glowing cat’s eyes. “Boden is here.”
Eli was moving quickly and Nivea was struggling to stay behind him. He reached for her and she extended her hand to grasp his. He pulled her along, while people were everywhere, yelling and screaming and crying. The acidic stench of blood permeated her senses as she looked over and upward to see a cheetah jumping from its perch on a counter into the crowd, biting down on whomever it landed on. Her chest clenched at the sight, her ears ringing with every cry she heard.
Each way she turned it was the same thing, a big cat, or one of those horrid hybrids, mowing through the crowd with force and destruction in their eyes. They were killing and pillaging like some prehistoric scene come horribly to life. Her chest heaved as her cat roared inside, ready at any moment to break free, to defend and protect.
Something or someone slammed into her back and pain radiated up her left side. She yelled out, turning her head back to see what it was and completely froze as she looked pure evil directly in the eye.
It happened so quickly she wouldn’t have been able to stop it even if she could. In the next seconds she was wrenched through the crowd, lifted above everyone, and carried over a huge shoulder. The rogue that had her moved fast, leaping over people and slamming her into an elevator. Nivea fell to the floor and pain soared up her side. Looking down, she saw that she’d been cut. The sonofabitch had sunk his claws into her side, no doubt to cut down on her fighting back. It obviously had no idea who the hell it was dealing with.
She quickly came to her feet and faced her attacker the moment the elevator doors closed and prayed for once in her life that everything she’d learned, everything she knew would see her through this moment. She could not die, that was not an option. Not only was she more than ready to live her life with her mate, but she knew unequivocally that Eli would carry her death as his third strike of guilt over females. After seeing his brother wounded this would destroy him, and Nivea was determined not to let that happen.
Fists clenching at her sides, she was more than prepared to fight when the elevator doors opened and the rogue stepped out. It shifted into a cheetah and ran immediately to her left.
“What the—” she began to say, looking down the hall to the cheetah leaving the scene.
She was just about to turn back and get onto the elevator so she could head back down to where Eli was, but a familiar scent stopped her. Standing still for a moment, Nivea cursed under her breath. She had been looking down toward the elevator buttons, but slowly lifted her head, turning in the opposite direction from where the cheetah had gone, frowning when she saw his smiling face.
“It always boils down to you and me.” Richard Cannon spoke slowly, his hands clasped in front of him as he stood at the end of the hall near a bank of windows.
“There is no you and me,” Nivea told him, noting the elevator doors closing, leaving her alone with him, once again.
He walked toward her and Nivea felt no fear at all. Richard hadn’t shifted into a jaguar in years, he had no training at all, in fact, he was absolutely no threat to her. Not anymore.
So she walked in his direction, determined to show him how little she thought of his presence here and all that he’d done to her and to others in his miserable lifetime.
“You didn’t think I was smart enough to get away from those shifters you love so much,” Richard said to her.
They stood about ten feet apart now. He was dressed in khakis and a plaid shirt, his leather tie-ups shined, gold watch on his left wrist gleaming. He looked much older to her now, his hairline receding and the mustache he’d always worn sprinkled with gray hairs.
“Actually,” she told him, “I think that’s just another dumb thing you’ve done to be added to the long list you’ve been working on.”
“Still so fucking smart,” he snapped. “You still think you’re going to win. Look around you, Nivea, you and your Shadows are going down! You’re never going to make it out of here alive.” He laughed at that, looking toward the windows where lights from police cars and ambulances flashed against the night sky.
“That’s where you are wrong again, Richard.” She said his name with all the contempt she felt for him. “Boden has been using you all along. He has no use for you now, you’ve done everything he required.
You
are the one that’s not going to leave here alive.”
“You have no idea what you’re talking about, little girl. No idea what’s been going on right under your nose.”
“I know that you’ve been a liar and a pretender all your life and that the moment I threatened all by simply questioning you and what you believed, you felt like you had to shut me up, to keep me down so far that I’d never look up and see who and what you truly were. Well, you were wrong!” she shouted and dodged out of his way the moment Richard lunged for her.
He fell face-first to the floor as she turned to see him cursing and turning to get back up. Nivea moved quickly, until she was standing over him, her foot at his neck. He looked up to her then, that appalling grin spreading across his face.
“What are you going to do?” he asked, no, he taunted her. “Are you really going to kill your father, Nivea? Are you that much of a savage, an animal?”
At her sides, Nivea’s claws extended, her teeth lengthening sharp and lethal as a ferocious growl escaped her throat.
“That’s right, Nivea, kill the bastard that raped you. Take his miserable life so that none of us will have to see him again.”
Nivea heard the deep voice behind her and didn’t have to turn to verify who it was. His scent was powerful, almost overwhelming with contempt, hate, and disgustingly, lust.
From the floor Richard laughed. “She won’t kill me. She can’t.”
To prove him wrong, Nivea leaned in, her foot pressing harder against his throat until he choked at her efforts. He lifted his hands, grabbing her ankle in an effort to push her away, but she was much stronger than him. With two quick swings of her arms, her claws swiped at his arms until he tried to yell with the pain of the deep slashes now in both his arms. The sound was a muted growl and she pushed her foot with more force, watching as his face reddened, his eyes bulging.
“Kill him!” Boden yelled from behind her. “Kill him!”
Nivea could do it. Despite what Richard said, what he obviously thought of her, the contempt he’d had for her all her life, she knew she could kill him. She should kill him, the miserable bastard.
But what would that make her if she did? How would it help or even justify all the counseling she’d endured, all of the training as a guard, the woman that she’d fought so hard to become?
Even as her claws retracted, her foot was easing off Richard’s windpipe, her cat pulling back from its prey. She’d just taken two steps away from Richard’s body when from behind her a huge white lion leaped into the air, landing on top of Richard’s body where it immediately bit into his head, crushing his skull.
* * *
He couldn’t find her.
One second he felt her right there with him, her hand in his, her cat running alongside his own. They were headed up to where he instinctively knew Boden would be hiding.
And then she was gone.
For the second time tonight Eli felt as if his soul was being yanked from his body. This time the sensation was much more powerful, ripping the breath from his lungs so that he made some awfully painful sound the second he turned around in the stairwell and found himself alone. Almost dislocating his shoulder, he wrenched the door open to hurry back out to find Nivea. The second he was in that hallway again he knew she wasn’t there.