All Hell Breaks Loose (13 page)

Derek grinned and reached over to lift her mug and hold it to her lips for a sip.  Gabi found her eyes caught by the play of his muscles over his arms and chest. 
Again.
  She dragged her attention back to the squirrel, thinking that they were going to have to find a name for the little critter.

“What do you mean by hit and miss?” he asked her, tucking back into his peanut butter toast.

Gabi was relieved to see that, apart from the tiredness, he was looking and sounding more like himself today.

“Well, the rules are pretty straightforward with the Magi.  Two Magi parents
equals
Magi-born children.  Those children can become practising Magi when their powers show themselves at
puberty, or they can ignore the powers and stay fully human.” She shrugged when she saw Derek’s disbelieving look.  “Some kids don’t want to be the odd one out, puberty is a tough enough time without trying to develop and control some strange, inhuman power,” she said by way of explanation.

He helped her take another sip of coffee.

“The type and strength of the talents of Magi parents are usually prominent in the children.  But Shifters don’t follow any set patterns.  Two strong Shifters can produce children without an iota of ability, while a weak Shifter with a full human partner has, on occasion, produced an amazing Shifter child.  Sometimes the ability skips two generations and then kicks back in
in
the third generation.  As I said, very hit and miss.”

The squirrel had drunk its fill, and Gabi gave it a quick inspection and determined that the squirrel was a little female, then she handed it over to Razor for a wash, sure it would curl up with the cat and sleep for a few hours after that.  It really was rather cute, and there was finally another girl in the house, she thought with a smile.

“There are different degrees of being a Shifter?” Derek asked as he got up to rinse his plate and mug and stack them in the dishwasher.  Gabi downed the last of her coffee and pulled out a cereal bowl.

“I guess you could say that,” she agreed.  “Most Shifters have one shape they’re really good at changing to, usually a largish animal, and then one or two others that they can Shift to with a bit more effort.  Some of the strongest Shifters can change to almost any animal they can imagine, including some legendary ones.  They’re only limited by size.  There seems to be a minimum threshold at around the size of a medium-sized dog, and one of my fellow Hunters can shift to a Condor, though an unnaturally large one.  On the other side of the scale, the biggest animal I’ve seen someone Shift to is a horse.  I guess a really powerful Shifter might be able to do a rhino or even an elephant.”

Derek’s eyes were as round as saucers in his surprise.  “Wow, here I was imagining a dog, a wolf, maybe a big cat,” he said in wonder.

Gabi smirked as she sat down with her bowl of cereal.  “Then you get the rarest form of Shifter.  The Doppelganger,” she said, pouring an air of mystery into her voice.

“Best you not
be
leading me up the garden path, Ms Bradford,” he warned, suddenly suspicious.

She laughed.  “Would I do that?” she asked in mock innocence, but he only cocked a disbelieving eyebrow.  “You can check with Russell if you don’t believe me.  There are Shifters so powerful they can mimic a living person.  There is only one in the City, and I’ve never met her.  Apparently she doesn’t want much to do with the SMV.  I’ve heard she studied drama.”

His questions came tumbling out, but she waved him away.

“I’m eating breakfast now.  Scoot and put some more clothes on.  If you’re good, I’ll tell you more
later
.”

The chime of her
cellphone
interrupted any objections he may have had, and Gabi grabbed it, answering around a mouthful of muesli.

Kyle arrived a quarter of an hour after he’d called Gabi to warn her he was on his way.  They had some serious work to do with Derek.  The SMV Council had called a meeting as expected. They’d invited along a few other interested parties, including the local
Werewolf
Pack leaders and Julius.  They particularly wanted to hear the story from someone who was directly involved.  As the other
Werewolf
was still smarting from being captured, by a woman no less, he wasn’t talking to them.  That left Derek.  It was going to be a difficult meeting for him, but they needed him to stay human long enough to tell everyone what he knew.  So to Kyle and Gabi had fallen the unenviable task of teaching a new and dominant
Werewolf
a high level of control in one day.  The meeting was scheduled for eight p.m. to accommodate Julius’s participation.

Gabi didn’t just think this meeting was a bad idea, she knew it was a bad idea.  Even if Derek did manage to stay human for any length of time, it was going to be mentally, physically and emotionally exhausting for him.  But she also wanted to know why someone was going around infecting others with lycanthropy and wanted in on putting a stop to it.  Hopefully the next time she came face to face with the government agent wannabes, it wouldn’t be in broad daylight in the
middle of a suburban neighbourhood.  They could try taking on someone in their own weight division for a change.

They decided to practice outdoors in a small forest, which was part of Gabi’s land.  She didn’t want any more house repairs so soon after the last renovations.  When they broke for lunch, Derek had only shifted once.  Gabi had been able to control him and get him to shift back in very short order.  He was grey with exhaustion; sweat ran freely down his face.  Kyle was showing an edge of strain as well; he’d had to continually allow the wolf side to show itself just enough to incite Derek’s wolf.  Pulling the wolf back over and over again was the equivalent of spending the day doing weights just a couple of pounds heavier than you were used to.  She sent Derek for a shower and went to find Rose in the kitchen.

True to form, Rose was fussing over Razor and crooning to their tiny house guest.  The baby squirrel was playing coy and hiding herself in
Raz’s
long fur, just peeking out to keep her eye on Rose.  It was clear the housekeeper was already besotted.  Gabi grinned as she went to give the older woman a kiss on the cheek.

“I see you’ve met Razor’s new pet,” she said on her way to the fridge for a couple of bottles of water.

“Razor has a pet?” Kyle asked as she threw him a bottle.  He caught it easily and went to the other side of the counter to get a better look at the new arrival.  Razor growled at him, narrowing his eyes menacingly.

“Oh, quit that,” Gabi groused back at the cat.  “Kyle’s not going to harm the baby, and you know it.”  The growl trailed off, but the cat didn’t take his eyes off Kyle.  “I need to feed the squirrel.  She’s still too young to be weaned, why don’t you help Rose bring us some lunch out on the patio,” she told Kyle.

“Fine, just take Bullwinkle with you,” he said, indicating the glaring cat.

Gabi put her hand out and coaxed the little furry creature into it.  “Well, I guess that makes you Rocky, then, little one,” she crooned to it as she scooped up a saucer containing the leftover formula and the cleaned feeding syringe.  She rubbed her chin softly over its little head and called Razor to join her outside.

Derek made better progress than any of them had expected.  Gabi thought that it was due to his years of martial arts and fight training.  He was the stuntman for two of the best known action movie stars and was well respected in the industry for his professionalism and consistency.  You didn’t get that good without discipline, control and a certain degree of masochism.  The ability to handle, absorb and redirect physical pain made the difference between a good fighter and a great fighter.

They ended the training session mid afternoon and called to check on Trish.  Her condition was stable, and they expected her to regain consciousness in a day or two, Jonathon was sounding confident that she’d pull through the fever.  Gabi was intrigued by the level of concern Kyle displayed over the woman.  He offered to go in and sit with her for a few hours before the meeting while the other two caught up on some sleep.  Even more intriguingly, Derek agreed without rancour, only asking if they would take him to her after the meeting.  There was still a deep air of sadness surrounding him when he spoke of his sister.

Gabi called Russell with the hopes that he could babysit Rocky the squirrel while she was in the meeting.  It was rare for her to get home before the early hours of the morning when something this major was going down, and the squirrel needed a couple of feeds in that time.  Unfortunately, Russell was busy on a set and couldn’t help out.  Gabi sighed.  Well, she’d done it before.  She’d hand-raised Razor from just over a week old while on Hunter duty.  She had a custom-designed jacket with a large, fur-lined internal pocket that had fitted Razor until he was six weeks
old,
the squirrel would have more than enough room and would be warm and safe.  If she had to go into a situation that might be dangerous she had a special fur-lined pouch that fitted into her car’s glove compartment, and Razor had spent many hours snuggled up in it fast asleep.  She hauled the jacket and car pouch out of her storage cupboard and mixed up a good-sized batch of formula.  With that all ready, she fell gratefully into her bed for a nap, surrounded by a cat, a ferret and a tiny squirrel.

Chapter 7

The meeting
place
was the conference room
at the Riverview Hotel
,
a small, boutique hotel on the edges of the City centre.
It was owned and run by the local Magi Council and catered mostly to non-humans.  They’d used the venue often for this kind of conference, as it was well protected from prying eyes, both human and non-human.  Even the streets outside were surrounded by wards, which encouraged humans to take other routes or turn a blind eye to anything unusual.  The staff were all part of the Community, mostly Magi and Shape-shifters.

Byron called Gabi on the way over to tell her they had arranged a suite on another level for Derek to relax in until they were ready to hear from him.  They all knew how hard it would be for him to be in the same room with all the other
Werewolves
and didn’t expect him be in the conference room for the entire meeting.  Gabi thanked him and, on arriving at the hotel, took Derek through the rear entrance to avoid unnecessarily meeting any
Werewolves
on the way in.  Kyle joined them in the suite soon after they’d arrived, and he was followed by Julius and Alexander.

“Hellcat,” Alexander greeted her brightly and then suddenly wrinkled his nose.  “Why do you smell like a rodent?”

“Well, hello to you too,
Lex
Boy,” she drawled.  “Why do you smell like
A
positive?”

Amusement glinted in the Vampire’s eyes.  “Well, now.  That would be telling, wouldn’t it?” he answered, pointedly running his tongue over his slightly elongated canines.

Julius sighed, shaking his head, and strode forward to lay a gentle finger under her chin and tilt her head up for him to place a chaste kiss on her lips.

“Good evening, Gabrielle,” he said.  His gaze locked with hers.

She smiled a little secret smile and went up on her tiptoes to give him a slightly less chaste kiss back.  As he’d swept into the room in his floor-length leather coat, dark pants and
crisp cotton
shirt, with his power coiled tightly around him like a well-trained tornado, she’d felt her heart do little flip-flops inside her chest.  She’d almost rolled her eyes at herself.  Since when did she feel like a hormone-fuelled teenager in love?

“No offense, Lea,” he suddenly said with a tiny frown on his face, “but Alexander is correct, you do smell like a rodent.”

Gabi laughed out loud and unbuttoned her jacket to pull open the special pocket.  A tiny, furry face popped out immediately, surveyed the incredulous faces staring at it, and popped straight back down into the safe depths of its hideaway.

“Razor brought a new pet home,” she explained.  “Apparently he thought if I got to have a new pet, so did he.”  As she closed up the jacket again, she noticed the Vampires both glance at Derek.

“I didn’t mean Derek,” she muttered with an exasperated shake of her head.  “I’m looking after Trish’s dog until we can find him somewhere else to go.  You know how dogs react to
Weres
.”  But her glance at the stuntman had told her he was not coping well with the Vampires in the suite.  His face had gone blank and hard.  She quickly suggested that the Vampires go down to join the meeting.

Once the Vampires and Kyle had left for the conference room, she asked Derek again if he was going to be all right on his own while she joined the meeting.  She’d arranged to have her say at the meeting before Derek came in so that she could be with him afterwards if he needed her.  She still didn’t like leaving him alone.  Misery and depression seemed to have settled over him in an oppressive cloud once again.

“I’ll be fine, Gabi,” he snapped.  “Just go to the meeting.”  He seemed to realise he’d sounded unusually harsh, as he suddenly looked away from her and said in a softer voice, “I’ll just practise my meditating until you come and get me.”  He tried for a smile, but it wasn’t convincing.