Bodyguard (Shifters Unbound #2.5) (21 page)

Now Rogers wanted Diego to jaunt to the
fifty-first level, where there weren't any floors, for crying out
loud, and chase a suspect who might be a Shifter. Shifters were
dangerous--people who could become animals. Or, maybe animals who
became people. The jury was still out. In any case, they'd been
classified as too dangerous to live with humans, rounded up into
Shiftertowns, and made to wear Collars that regulated their violent
tendencies.

Diego had heard that regular guns didn't
always bring them down, Shifters having amazing metabolisms.
Shifter Division used tranquilizers when they needed to shoot a
Shifter, but Diego was fresh out of those. Rogers, rotund and near
retirement, watched Diego with a bland expression, making it clear
he had no intention of going up after the Shifter himself.

A high-pitched scream rang down from on high.
It was a woman's scream--Maria Jemez--followed by a man's bellow of
surprise and pain. Then, silence.

"Damn it." Diego ran for the elevator. "Stay
down here, call Shifter Division, and get more backup. Tell them to
bring tranqs." He got into the lift and shut the doors, blocking
out Rogers' "Yes, sir."

The lift clanked its way up through the few
completed finished floors, then onto floors that were nothing but
beams and catwalks. The elevator was an open cage, so Diego got to
watch the ground and Rogers recede, far too rapidly.

Fifty-first level. Damn.

Diego had been chasing criminals through
towering hotels for years without thinking a thing about it. He and
the sheriff's department even had followed one idiot high up onto a
cable tower two hundred feet above Hoover Dam five years ago, and
Diego hadn't flinched.

A bunch of cop-hating meth dealers hang him
over a balcony, and he goes to pieces.

It
stops now. This is where I get
my own back.

Diego rolled back the gate on the fifty-first
level. The sun was rising, the mountains west of town bathed in
pink and orange splendor. The Las Vegas valley was a beautiful
place, its stark white desert contrasting with the mountains that
rose in a knifelike wall on the horizon. Visitors down in the city
kept their eyes on the gaming tables and slot machines, uncaring of
what went on outside the casinos, but the beauty of the valley
always tugged at Diego.

Diego drew his Sig and stepped off the lift
into eerie silence. Something flitted in his peripheral vision,
something that moved too lightly to be Hooper, who was a big,
muscular guy who liked big, muscular guns. Diego aimed, but the
movement vanished.

He stepped softly across the board catwalk,
moving into the deeper shadow of a beam. The catwalk groaned under
his feet. There were no lights up here, just the faint flush of
morning and the glow from the work lights down on the ground that
the power company had turned on.

Diego saw the movement again to his left, and
then, damned if he didn't see a similar flit to his right.

Son of a bitch--
two
of them?

A sound like the cross between a pop and a
kiss came from down the catwalk the instant before something pinged
above Diego's head. Diego hit the floor instinctively, trying not
to panic as his feet slid over the catwalk's edge.

His heart pounded triple-time, his throat so
dry it closed up tight.

What the hell was he doing? He should have
confessed his secret fear of heights, gone to psychiatric
evaluation, stayed behind a desk. But no, he'd been too determined
to keep his job, too determined to beat it himself, too embarrassed
to admit the weakness. Now he was endangering others because of his
stupid fear.

Shut
up and think.

Whatever had pinged hadn't been a bullet. Too
soft. Diego got his feet back onto the catwalk and crawled to find
what had fallen to the boards. A dart, he saw, the kind shot by a
tranquilizer gun.

Uniforms didn't carry tranqs, and Shifter
Division hadn't showed up yet. That meant that one of the Shifters
he was chasing up here had a tranquilizer gun. Perfect. Put the
nice cop to sleep, and then do anything you want with him,
including pushing his body over the edge.

Diego moved in a crouch across the catwalk to
the next set of shadows. The sun streaked across the valley to
Mount Charleston in the west, light radiant on its snow-covered
crown. More snow was predicted up there for the weekend. Diego had
contemplated driving up on Saturday night to sip hot toddies in a
snowbound cabin, maybe with something warm and female by his
side.

On the other side of the next beam, Diego
found Bud Hooper and Maria Jemez. Maria was fairly new, just out of
the academy, too baby-faced to be up here chasing crazy Shifters.
The two cops were slumped together in a heap, still warm, breathing
slowly.

Diego heard footsteps, running fast--too fast
to be human. He swung around as a shadow detached itself from the
catwalk in front of him and rose in a graceful leap to the next
level.

Diego stared, open-mouthed. The thing wasn't
human--it had the long limbs of a cat, but its face was half human,
like a cross between human and animal. Did Shifters look like that?
He'd thought they were either animal or human, but as he watched,
gun ready, he realized he was seeing one in midshift.

The Shifter landed on open beams on the next
floor up, then its shape flowed, as it ran, into the lithe form of
a big cat. Morning sunlight caught on white fur and the flash of
green eyes. Snow leopard? It sprinted along the beam, never losing
its balance, and vanished back into the shadows.

Diego heard a step behind him. He whipped
around in time to see the flash of a rifle barrel in the sunlight,
aiming directly at him. He heard the pop as his reflexes made him
dive for the floor.

He came up on his elbows to return fire, but
there was nothing to aim at. Whoever had the tranq rifle had
vanished back into the shadows.

All was silence. Nothing but rising wind
humming through the building.

Diego reassessed his situation. He had a
Shifter running around up here, plus one asshole with a
tranquilizer gun. Someone hunting a Shifter? Could be. The laws
about humans hunting un-Collared Shifters--those Shifters who had
refused to take the Collar and live in Shiftertowns--had loosened
in the last couple years.

But this Shifter hunter had pegged Jemez and
Hooper with tranqs, and was trying to shoot Diego too. Why, if the
guy was hunting the Shifter legally?

Another pop had him rolling out of the way
just before a dart struck the catwalk where Diego's head had
been.

As he scrambled up again, the catwalk,
loosened and dry-rotted from years under the desert sun, slid out
from under his feet. Diego lunged at the nearest steel beam, the
metal burning his skin as he tried and failed to grab it.

The catwalk's boards splintered and came away
from the bolts. Diego's heart jammed in his throat as his body
dropped. Splinters rained past him. At the last desperate moment,
he got one arm hooked around a girder, and he hung there, stuck
like a bug fifty-one stories up.

Son
of a fucking--

He couldn't swing his feet around to get them
back on the girder. His arm shook hard. He realized he still held
his Sig in his other hand, but for some reason, he could not make
himself open his fingers and let it go.

His arm was aching, and he was slipping. He
was going to fall. Five hundred feet to the ground. Why the hell
hadn't he asked to be put on desk duty?

Diego tried to swing his feet up again, but
he missed the girder. The jolt of his feet swinging back down
nearly jarred him loose. That's it, his hold was going.
Damn it,
damn it, damn it . . .

Two strong hands caught Diego under his
shoulders; two very strong arms dragged him up and up, stomach
grating on the beam, and onto the catwalk. Diego lay facedown on
the relative solidity of a catwalk, drawing long, shuddering
breaths.

When he could, he rolled onto his back, and
found himself looking up into the white green eyes and ferocious
face of the Shifter, again in its half-shifted state. A female
Shifter, from the hint of breasts under the fur and from the sheer,
strange beauty of her. She had a wildcat's face, and the morning
light glinted on silver links of a chain around her neck.

Before Diego could find his voice, the
Shifter spun away in another gravity-defying leap. She landed on
all fours, flowing back into the shape of a snow leopard. Diego sat
up and watched her, stunned by the beauty of the long, powerful
animal running with inhuman grace fifty stories above the
ground.

Another pop of the tranq gun had him on the
floor on his stomach again, this catwalk staying in place. Diego
raised his head, finger on his trigger. He heard a snarl, the
leopard's angry growl, and then running feet, both human and
animal.

Diego pointed the gun through the shadows,
but he could see nothing. The rising sun showed that he was on this
floor alone, though the footsteps continued above him. Lights
approached on the road below, Shifter Division finally arriving,
bringing a couple patrol cars and an SUV.

A blinding flash lit up the floor above him.
Diego squinted through the spaces in the catwalks, aiming, but the
light vanished as suddenly as it had appeared. The running ceased,
and all was silent except for the patrol cars' sirens wailing
below.

Diego lowered his Sig and was about to sit up
when two feet landed on the catwalk in front of his face.

Two human feet, female feet, naked feet.
Diego lifted his head to find two strong female legs, skin tanned
from the desert sun, right in front of him. He looked up those legs
to two strong thighs, with an enticing thatch of dark blond between
them.

Diego forced his gaze to continue upward,
over her flat stomach with a small gold stud in her navel to firm
human breasts tipped with dusky nipples. He made his gaze move past
them
--though he knew he'd dream about them for a long time
coming--to be rewarded by a breathtaking face.

The Shifter woman's face was strong but
contained the softness of beauty. Her eyes were light green, a
shimmer of jade in the darkness. Sleek, pale hair fell past her
shoulders, and a chain with a Celtic cross fused to it glinted
around her slender throat.

Damn. And
damn
.

She was definitely all woman, not in any
in-between state now. Diego had never seen a female Shifter before.
His cases had never taken him to Shiftertown, which lay north of
North Las Vegas, and he'd only ever seen the male Shiftertown
leader, Eric Warden. He'd had no idea that their females were this
tall or this crazy gorgeous.

Her breasts rose with her even breath, and
she expressed no embarrassment at her nakedness, didn't even seem
to notice it. "He's gone," she said. "You all right?"

"Alive," Diego croaked. He dragged himself to
his feet, trying not to look at her delectable body or to imagine
what that smooth, tanned skin would feel like under his hands.
"Where'd he go? The guy with the tranq gun?"

"I don't know." The answer seemed to trouble
her. The man hadn't fallen, the lift wasn't moving, and no one
below was chasing him.

"At least I've got one of you," Diego
said.

"Wha--?" She stared at him, stunned, then her
light-colored eyes flicked to the beams above, calculated the
distance. Diego brought up his pistol.

"Don't try it, sweetheart. Get facedown on
the floor, hands behind your back."

"Why? I just saved your ass."

"You're trespassing on private property,
that's why, and I have two cops down. On the floor."

He gestured with the gun. The Shifter woman
drew an enraged breath, eyes flashing almost pure white. For a
moment, Diego thought she'd leap at him, maybe change into the
wildcat or half Shifter and try to shred him. He'd have to plug
her, and he really didn't want to. It would be a shame to kill
something so beautiful.

The Shifter woman let out her breath, gave
him an angry glare, and then carefully lowered herself facedown on
the catwalk. Diego unclipped his handcuffs.

"What's your name?" Diego asked.

Her jaw tightened. "Cassidy."

"Nice to meet you, Cassidy," Diego said. "You
have the right to remain silent." He droned on through Miranda as
he closed the handcuffs on her perfect wrists. The Shifter woman
lay still and radiated rage.

Diego's hands were shaking by the time he
finished. But that had less to do with his fear of heights than
with the tall, beautiful naked woman on the floor in front of him,
hands locked together on her sweet, tight ass. The best ass he'd
ever seen in his life. He wanted nothing more than to stay up here
and lick that beautiful backside, and maybe apply his tongue to the
rest of her body.

Diego broke into a sweat, despite the cool
wind wafting from below, and made himself haul her to her feet. The
Shifter woman's look was still defiant, but he couldn't help
himself imagining crushing her against him to kiss that wide,
enticing mouth.

Diego made himself steer her to the lift.

Not until they were rapidly descending did
Diego realize that since Cassidy in her human form had come into
his view, he'd not once thought about how far he might have fallen
had she not caught him, and the spectacular splat he'd have made
when he hit the ground.

* * * * *

Pride Mates

Shifters Unbound

Book One

by Jennifer Ashley

Chapter One

A
girl walks into a bar . .
.

No. A human girl walks into a Shifter bar . .
.

The bar was empty, not yet open to customers.
It looked normal--windowless walls painted black, rows of glass
bottles, the smell of beer and stale air. But it wasn't normal,
standing on the edge of Shiftertown like it did.