Autumn's Blood: The Spirit Shifters, Book One (28 page)

But as one got closer, she recognized
the build and blond hair, and knew that if he got any closer she’d
see gold flecks in his eyes.

Calvin Thorn.

“Jesus!” The security guard running at
Calvin’s side reached to grab his gun, but the mountain lion leapt,
a tightly coiled spring of muscle, knocking him to the floor. The
man’s head hit the ground with a sickening crack.

Calvin Thorn reached for his own
weapon.

“Watch out!” Mia cried.

With a snarl, the animal spun around,
the movement fast enough to blur its golden fur. A swipe of its
huge paw across Calvin’s face rendered him either unconscious or
dead, Mia couldn’t be sure. He fell to the ground, gun clattering
from his fingertips. Down the side of his face, five bright red
lines bloomed and glistened.

If the man wasn’t dead, he’d have some
pretty fearsome scars to show for it.

The beast turned its head toward Mia
and regarded her with those magnificent amber eyes.

She took a shaky breath. “Okay, I’ll
stick with you, shall I?”

It slowly lowered its head and then
lifted it back up again. If she hadn’t have known better, she’d
have thought the animal had nodded.

Chapter
Twenty-four

THE ELEVATOR PINGED open. Autumn
recognized the floor as being the same one she’d come up to the
morning of her interview with General Maxim Dumas. She could hardly
believe the event had taken place only a matter of days ago. Her
whole life had literally flipped on its head since then.

She glanced up at the man standing
beside her and her heart swelled with emotion. It had only been a
few days, too, since she’d first been introduced to Blake, and yet
now she felt as though her life was in his hands, and there was no
other place she wanted it to be.

Please don’t let him get
hurt.

She wanted them all to make it out of
this alive. She wanted to know what the future had in store for
them; if Blake would go back to his life on the reservation, or if
he’d stay in the city with her. Where she’d lived her life so far
surrounding herself in work, she now envisaged a life outside of
the laboratory.

But with what was taking place here
today, surely an inquiry of some kind would need to happen? After
all, their names and faces had been all over the news. How could
they tell anyone the truth of what actually occurred here without
coming across as lunatics? Plus, if they ended up with blood on
their hands, they would probably need to forget a future and head
straight to prison instead.

At a light-footed run, they headed
down the corridor, toward the office. The chaos on the other floors
meant this one was now deserted of people. A couple of other doors
stood open where people must have rushed out at the commotion. At
the end of the hallway, a floor-to-ceiling window looked out onto
an impressive view across the Chicago skyline. Autumn couldn’t be
sure, but she thought she glimpsed the swoop of a giant bird’s wing
block the view of the skyscrapers for the briefest of moments
before vanishing again.

Her gun was still clutched in one
hand, her palm slick with sweat against the metal. Blake locked
eyes with her and motioned with his weapon to tell her to stand on
one side of Dumas’ closed office door while he took up position on
the other side. Beneath them, somewhere in the building, came the
sounds of gunshots and people’s screams.

Autumn found herself praying for
Chogan’s safety. Though she didn’t feel the same way about him as
she did Blake, she couldn’t pretend she felt nothing. He was
special and had gone out of his way to help her, to help them. She
wanted them to all be safe together at the end of this.

Blake mouthed at
her,
“One, two, three ...”
He jumped in front of the door, drew back his
leg, and kicked the door open.

They both raced in, guns pointed. But
other than Dumas’ gleaming mahogany desk and a couple of other
items of furniture, the room was empty.

“Damn it, where the hell is he?” Blake
swore.

From behind, an arm wrapped around
Autumn’s throat and choked off the sound of her shriek. A cool
circle of metal pressed hard against the side of her head as
someone held her at gunpoint. Her heart rate leapt, pounding in her
ears as she struggled to catch a breath. Her own weapon fell from
her fingers and clattered to the floor.

“Don’t move,” Dumas breathed against
her ear.

He’d snuck in behind them!

Autumn realized their mistake. They
should have checked the rest of the floor was clear
first.

Blake spun around, gun
pointed.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,”
said Dumas. “One step forward … In fact, if you so much as breathe
in the wrong direction, I’m going to blow her pretty little head
off.”

“You wouldn’t dare,” said Blake, his
eyes burning with anger. “You need her too much.”

“Do I? Do I really? ‘Cause the way I
see it, I could blow her to pieces and simply mop up her blood to
use. I can employ enough scientists to recreate whatever is in her
blood that made the human DNA change. Then I’ll have no use for her
whatsoever.”

“You’ll have no use for her if you’re
dead. I promise you, if you harm her, I will track you down and rip
you apart, piece by piece.”

Dumas laughed, but his grip tightened
around Autumn’s throat, the muzzle of the gun jammed painfully into
her temple. “Those are big words for a big man, I’ll give you that
much. But honestly, what do you expect to happen right now? That
you’ll threaten me and I’ll just let her go running back into your
arms? And what is this all about anyway? Why the sudden protection?
I thought you loved your country, Blake. I thought you wanted us to
succeed at this. Think of all the men you’ve lost in battle over
the years. Wouldn’t it have been so much better if they could have
seen the enemy coming or if they missed something and were injured,
that their injuries healed within a matter of hours so they could
go back to their positions? Surely that is better than soldiers
coming home as injured, broken men suffering from PTSD and no good
to anyone?”

“I do want that, but not the way
you’re trying to achieve it, Dumas. Those people aren’t freaks.
They don’t deserve to be treated as such. What you’ve been doing to
them—to a woman, to a boy, for God’s sake—is barbaric.”

“So this has nothing to do with
catching yourself a bit of blonde ass? It wasn’t that you were
worried our little scientist here was going to end up in one of the
holding cells beside these people you suddenly care so much about?
And please don’t make out like you’re some kind of innocent. You’ve
been in the field, you know about taking sides and doing whatever
is necessary for your country. You betrayed yours the day you
decided to take the wrong side instead of working for your
own.”

“Those people are still American
citizens! They deserve our protection.”

“They’re not even people. They deserve
nothing!”

Blake gritted his teeth and Autumn
watched him trying to get a grip on himself. Was she imagining
things, or did she just see a ring of gold light glow from edges of
his otherwise dark pupils?

“I don’t care about any of that
anymore,” Blake said. “Just let Autumn go.”

“Sorry, Blake. I liked you once, but
you’ve betrayed your country. Now drop your weapon and kick it over
to me.”

“Don’t do it, Blake,” she managed to
croak.

“Slowly,” Dumas warned.

She saw the hesitation on Blake’s
features, the way his eyes darted over Dumas and herself, trying to
figure out if he’d be able to get a clean shot. But even though
Dumas was a tall man, Autumn was also tall, offering him almost
full body protection.

“Damn it.” With his free hand held up
in surrender, Blake bent and dropped the gun to the
floor.

“Now kick the gun over
here.”

Blake raised his booted foot and
kicked the weapon so it slid over to stop at Dumas’
feet.

Autumn’s eyes flicked to where she’d
dropped her own gun, the one stolen from the security guards.
Perhaps Dumas wouldn’t notice.

But he was too smart for that. Yanking
her down with him in a choke hold that felt like her esophagus
would be bruised for weeks, he ducked down and grabbed both
weapons, tucking them into the waistband of his suit.

Dumas backed out, taking Autumn with
him. He dragged her down the corridor.

Autumn battered at his arms. “Let go
of me, you son of a bitch,” she said, her voice hoarse.

“Shut up. Not a word or I’ll do
exactly as I said and blow your head off.”

A familiar sound reached her ears, a
cracking, followed by a howl of pain.

“What the fuck was that?” Dumas
slowed, his head darting one way and then the next, trying to
figure out where the sound was coming from.

The mournful howl of a wolf echoed
down the corridor.

Oh no, Blake, don’t do
it,
she prayed.

“What the fuck?” Dumas’ arm loosened
from around Autumn’s throat, and she took the opportunity to slip
from his grasp, and grabbed for the gun.

She felt the blast of hot air scrape
her cheek before she heard the shot. The bang left her ear ringing
and she fell to the ground, certain she’d been badly wounded.
Behind her, she heard the crack of glass as the bullet punctured
the window at the end of the corridor.

She just had time to touch her hand to
her cheek before Dumas grabbed her again, hauling her to her feet.
Her fingers came away bloodied, but she was relieved to find the
wound to only be a scratch.

“You stupid little bitch,” he snarled.
“Don’t you ever…”

His words trailed off as his eyes
locked on something, widening in fear. From around the corner of
his office door, a huge silver wolf prowled, dwarfing the
corridor.

“What the …?” He started to take
uncertain steps backward. Finally, the penny dropped.
“Blake?”

The wolf lowered to a crouch and at
leapt at Dumas. Dumas turned the gun from Autumn and fired, one,
two, three times. Blake’s body jerked with every shot, but he kept
coming, blood dripping on the floor, and landed on Dumas, his
massive paws planting on the man’s chest, knocking him backward.
Dumas flew back and hit the already damaged window at the end of
the corridor. The window exploded in a thousand splintered pieces
and the general vanished through the gap.

Just short of the gaping hole, Blake
dropped to the floor.

“Oh God, Blake!” Autumn ran to his
side.

Unconscious, his wolf’s
body shifted back to human, leaving him lying on the floor,
bleeding and naked. A puncture wound gaped in his shoulder, another
in his stomach, and a third grazed his bicep. The sight of the
wounds made Autumn want to weep.
I need to
get help!

Movement at the opposite end of the
corridor drew her attention and she lifted her head, tears blurring
her eyes. Unsure of what she was seeing for a moment, she swiped at
the tears, clearing her vision. But the thing she saw standing in
the hallway didn’t change.

A massive mountain lion regarded her
with solemn, golden eyes.

She gave a cry of shock, forgetting
what they were for a moment. But then a young woman raced around
the corner, coming to a sudden halt right behind the
beast.

“Mia!”

Her friend didn’t show any reaction at
the mountain lion. Instead, she ran past it, toward where Autumn
was still crouched on the floor beside a now human
Blake.

“Autumn! Oh, thank God you’re all
right.”

Mia dropped to her knees beside her
and they fell into each other’s arms, tears rolling down both of
their faces.

“What the hell is going on here?”
asked Mia, pulling away. “I can hardly believe this is real.” She
focused on the naked, bleeding man on the floor and lifted a hand
to her mouth. “Did you shoot him?”

“No! Of course not.” She realized Mia
had made the assumption from what she must have seen on the news.
“Blake is one of the good guys.”

An iron tang filled her nostrils. The
sticky pool of blood forming on the floor beneath his body scared
her, his skin turning pale, his breath shallow. “We need help. Do
you have your phone?”

Behind them, the mountain lion
snarled, pawing at its face as if something was bothering it. Bones
cracked and the creature began to shrink, its ears folding back
into its head, tail curling back in on itself to vanish between its
legs. The fur melted from its body and the amber eyes darkened to a
green-gray.

The man straightened.

Peter Haverly!

He stood naked before her, his body
more thickly muscled than she’d ever given him credit for beneath
the suit and lab coat. But in her mind, he was still her superior
and the sight brought heat to her cheeks. She glanced over at Mia
to find her staring, her dark eyes wide.