License to Shift (21 page)

“No, he didn't,” Julie said, as she pushed the woman away. “He was exactly as enthusiastic as—”

“Oh my God!” a woman exclaimed. “You're awake!”

Only one woman could make Mark table his lust. Julie's mother rushed in and maneuvered herself in front of Mark so she could hug her daughter. Mark stepped back then as Professor Simon entered as well, moving more slowly but with no less desire.

It was family, he realized. Her family, but now his as well. They would be part of his life forever, and, oddly enough, that felt really good.

“You're going to have to come out of your basement cave, you know,” Carl said, sounding irritatingly pleased by the statement. “You can't isolate yourself in that pit any longer. She won't tolerate it, and it would be cruel to keep her from the world.”

“I know,” he said, startled to realize he was fine with it. “I can't wait.”

And then Julie called his name, easily pulling him into the circle of her parents and sister, who was just joining them.

“Hey, everyone,” she said. “I'd like to introduce you to my fiancé.” Then she looked up at him. “We're going to live a very long and very happy life together.”

What could he say to that except, “Yup.”

A
lan dragged his eyes open to a room flooded with sunlight. He'd always like the light, but this time he flinched away from it. And then suddenly, she was there.

Tonya.

Her face was drawn with worry, her hands tight where they gripped his arm.

“What's wrong?” he rasped.

She blinked twice before speaking, her voice heavy with irony. “Nothing's wrong except you've been running a temperature higher than a volcano for nearly a week.”

Huh. Is that why he felt like an overbaked biscuit? God, even his skin seemed to crackle when he moved. Thankfully, she brought him water, and he drank the cup greedily. Flashes of memory returned to him. He'd been abducted right in the courthouse parking lot. Then that damned cage and all the who-knew-what that had been shoved into his arm.

Evil Einstein and that cougar bitch. She had been the worst. Einstein had just looked at him like a science project, but that bitch had sat and stared at him. Hours upon hours just like a fucking cat, and she hadn't said a word. At least not English words. There's been weird chants and strange potions shoved down his throat. And all the while, he'd felt the caress of her like slime on his skin.

And then…

Oh, hell.
“Did I shift?”

Tonya's gaze slanted away. “Sort of.”

He looked at her face, seeing the stark fear that she tried to hide. And then he remembered the rest. The prickly agony of fur spiking out of his skin. Not in a regular way, but in patches. The horror of a nose and mouth elongated and teeth that were sharp and irregular inside his mouth. And the fever. He remembered the fever sapping his strength and the bitch hissing in his ear when he was too weak to move.

And he remembered how much he hated her.

“So I'm a freak now,” he said as he looked at his arms before him. Same bones, but the skin was patchy with dark spots. Same hands except the knuckles were larger, the fingers blunter.

“No!” Tonya said, gratifyingly vehement.

“It's okay. I was one already, though in a different way.”

She turned to look at him, her blue eyes laser bright. “What do you mean?”

He meant a lot of things, none of which he could process or explain right now. “How'd you find me?”

“Mark turned on your phone. Used the GPS.”

Right. Good idea. But…
“Why'd it take a week?”

Silence.

He looked at Tonya and a familiar ache settled into his chest. Good God. He'd been gone for a week, trapped in that cage while Einstein experimented on him. He'd missed two court dates and at least one Gladwin pack meeting. And in all that time…“You guys didn't even realize I was missing.”

She swallowed. “Carl got a text saying you had met someone. That you'd be gone for a while.”

“Because I'm so irresponsible that I disappear for a week without finding a replacement, without emailing everyone at least twice. Without—” His voice choked off. He'd been covering the Gladwin paperwork almost since he could read. His father was never happier than when Alan announced the intention of becoming a lawyer. The Gladwins needed a lawyer in the family because good ones cost too damned much.

So he'd gone. He'd studied. And he'd become his brother's right-hand man for everything that the shifters were too twitchy to deal with. Paperwork. Court filings. Hell, he even did the taxes. All the details of living in this modern age were handled by Alan.

And no one had fucking realized he'd been missing.

“I'm sorry. We're all really sorry,” she said.

Yeah. He got that. Except sorry wasn't cutting it with him right now. Fury itched right beneath his skin. A red haze of hatred rose up from his gut to choke off his words. Tonya was saying she was sorry. Tonya, the woman he'd loved since he was ten, was apologizing for not noticing him.

Like that was fucking unusual.

“Get out,” he said. Except it didn't come out in cold, clipped tones. It wasn't his precise, businesslike way. No, the words were snarled. The meaning was ripped from his heart and thrown at her face.

“Alan—”

“Get. The. Fuck. Out.”

Carl would have blustered at him. Becca would probably pat his hand and offer to get him some pie. Tonya, however, was a straight line in his mind. No bullshit, no fudging. She'd screwed up. They'd all screwed up, but she took the brunt of his rage because she was here.

“If you ever want to talk, just call me,” she said as she straightened up. “Day or night.”

He glared at her. “Not going to happen.”

She dipped her chin, and her short honey-blond hair brushed over her eyes. He didn't know if it was an apology, an acknowledgment, or if she just had that much trouble looking at the freak he'd become. Whatever it was didn't matter. She stepped out of the room a moment later and was gone.

Six hours later, he was wide awake in his bed. It was night, the floor was quiet, and the nurses gossiped in low tones down the hall. Thanks to Becca he had a change of clothes. Thanks to Carl's visit an hour after Tonya, he had a good idea of just how bad everyone felt for not realizing he'd been abducted.

Somehow that didn't mean jack shit to him.

Now it was night, and he was dressed.

He snuck out of his room and slipped down the stairs. Ten minutes later, he was hotwiring a motorcycle. He'd never stolen so much as a kiss from anyone, but he was taking this Harley after figuring out how to jack it from a video on the Internet.

Then he roared away, relishing the throb between his thighs and nursing the hatred in his soul. He couldn't deal with the Gladwin grizzlies. He refused to think about a single one of the ungrateful, self-absorbed bastards. Instead, he focused on the cat bitch. He was going to kill her. He was going to rip her heart from her chest then laugh as the light died from her eyes.

And he was going to do it alone.

P
retty
.

Alan Carman looked up in shock at the colors of the stars. It was a dark night without moon or clouds, which left him a clear view of the heavens. Red. Blue. Yellow. Pinpricks of light with Christmas-like halos. As if the stars were a very far away holiday display.

He blinked, doing his best to focus his thoughts. It was getting harder, especially with his fever coming back. It had been a week since leaving the hospital and whatever focus he'd had was now slipping away. Colors distracted him. Scents overpowered him. And he enjoyed the brute force use of his muscles like a Neanderthal. He'd always been a man who valued thinking. He ferreted out the reasons behind the actions and quietly sneered at people who couldn't use logic.

Now he was one of the dumb ones. Distracted by trivialities. Happy in raw strength. And unable to remember anything beyond this moment in time.

Good thing he was dying. He didn't know how long he could hold on to his mission. Too much distracted him and his thoughts splintered into fragments. He remembered a command.

Look at your hands.

Something about his hands was important.

So he focused downward to the flex of tendon and bone. He remembered typing elegant phrases on a computer. Even before that, he'd played with calligraphy as a boy. Beautiful strokes of ink on parchment. But when he looked down now, he didn't see long fingers with neatly trimmed nails. He saw hairy fists, knobby knuckles, pinprick claws.

A monster.

He was a monster now, and he hated pretty.

He had to keep it together for his mission. One last thing to do before he died. Kill the bitch who'd done this to him. Kill her for making him despise pretty. Kill her for destroying a good man. And he'd been a good man, he was sure, but he wasn't anymore.

Refocused on his purpose, he looked out at the parking lot. He studied the rusted trucks and mentally dissected the stench of piss and vomit. His attention slid to minute sensations as he leaned against the brick wall of a topless bar. He was deafened by the music and nauseated by the slime on the brick where it slicked his skin. And yet, unwilling, his gaze inevitably rose to the stars.

Pretty.

Then he winced as the already loud music exploded into the air. Someone was leaving the bar. Next came a man's voice, thick with liquor. A moment later, Alan saw his target draped around a tired-looking woman.

“Come on, honey,” the bastard said. “It's a pretty night. We can see the stars.”

“Nah, Johnny. I don't like the stars. I like what you got right here.” She giggled, clearly drunk. But when Alan sniffed the air, working to isolate smells and their origin, he wasn't so sure. The man's scent was thick with alcohol, but hers wasn't so ugly. Then he watched her lift Johnny's wallet. Clever fingers, moving quickly as the two people wove their way to the back of the parking lot.

Good.

Alan kept himself in check while she pocketed all Johnny's cash then went for his watch. Might as well let her get what she needed. He counted the seconds, forcing himself to get to twenty before he struck. Long enough for the couple to stumble into the shadows with him.

Now.

Easy-peasy to reach out and grab the bastard by the throat. Monsters had quick reflexes and could crush a man's larynx with a single squeeze.

He didn't do it though it was disturbingly hard to control the impulse. Johnny was a drunk, a cheat, and a miserably bad father, but he didn't deserve death. So Alan held himself back. Besides, Alan needed the idiot alive. So he used his strength to pin the moron against a truck. And he didn't crush the larynx, though he did push it a little.

Fortunately, Johnny was sober enough to understand the threat. His eyes bugged out and his fists froze at his side.

“Woah, mister,” the woman began.

“Go back inside,” Alan ordered. His voice was as rusty as the truck, but he forced the words out. “Johnny and I. Chat.”

Once he'd been known for his delicate phrasing and precise word choice. But the monster was so close to the surface now, he had no complexity in his language.

“Call the—” Johnny tried, but Alan leaned in. No more oxygen for Johnny.

“Call the cops,” Alan said. “I'll tell them about your hip pocket.” It's where she'd stashed Johnny's watch.

The side of her mouth tilted up in a smirk. “Like anybody cares.”

True. He knew cops, and they didn't much care about petty theft. Not when it was someone like Johnny getting picked. Time for a different tack. With his free hand, he pulled a couple twenties out of his front pocket. He'd planned to use it for dinner, but after smelling Johnny up close, he'd lost his appetite. “Take this. We're gonna talk. About his wife. Kids.”

She took the bills quickly but kept her tone hard. “If he ends up dead, I know what you look like.”

No, she didn't. Not the real him. But he didn't argue. “Okay.”

“Okay.” She turned and sauntered back to the bar while Johnny sputtered in disgust.

Alan took a moment. It was a habit he'd developed as a man to organize his thoughts. But with the monster so strong, all he could do was think about Johnny's emotions as they marched across his face. Anger. Frustration. A slow relaxation of fear. That last one was a problem. He needed Johnny pissing-his-pants terrified. So he punched the man in his thick gut.

Johnny doubled over from the pain. Alan let him gag, but then straightened him back up. Except now he could see the bastard's eyes. Cougar slits, glowing a dull lime green. The man was trying to shift, but Alan knew it was too soon. The idiot had been a cougar just hours ago. No way was he capable of changing again this fast.

“Nice try,” Alan said as he increased pressure on Johnny's throat. “How do you think I found you? I tracked cougar piss. Followed you here.”

The bastard frowned, and Alan watched his nose twitch as he tried to sort out Alan's species by scent. Good luck with that. There was no species like him. But he did like seeing the terror of people's faces when they figured that out. So he let Johnny sniff. And just to make sure it was clear, he relaxed into the horror of his own body. It was as simple as breathing and he could do it anytime he wanted, probably because he was a monster first, and a man a distant second. He let the patchy fur rise, bringing its own stench with it. His joints ached and his muscles thickened. His sharp nails became pronounced claws and, worst of all, his nose and mouth stretched around sharp teeth. Even if Johnny couldn't see clearly what was happening, the
wrongness
of Alan's cells became clear to anyone with a shifter nose.

And that's when Johnny really began to sweat. “What are you?” he gagged. “Bear?”

“Monster. Looking for Elisabeth Oltheten.”

“She ain't part of us no more. We kicked her outta the pride.”

Lions had prides, not cougars. But maybe the cougar shifter knew best. Part of Alan wondered, but the rest of him didn't care.

“I need to find Elisabeth Oltheten,” he said.

“I don't know where she is!”

“She's one of you—”

“She started the war with the wolves. The one that got all of us kilt!” Johnny was spitting now. The wet added its own reek to the encounter, and Alan wanted nothing more than to leave.

“Killed, you idiot. Not kilt.”

“Wot?”

Not the brightest bulb and drunk as well. Alan focused on the basics: slowly choking Johnny until he had the man's full attention.

“Where's Elisabeth Oltheten?” he repeated.

“I don't know!”

“Find out.”

“How? We got no one left!”

Not true. He knew that because he'd been carefully stalking the cougars for a week now.

“You didn't die, Johnny. Your brother didn't die. You got four people left in your clan, plus your kids. Someone has to know—”

“We don't know shit!”

Truer words were never spoken, but Alan didn't have the luxury of finding better sources. “Find out or I'm going to do to your kids what she did to me.” He leaned in, making sure Johnny saw his sharp teeth in a bearlike jaw. “Take a good whiff.”

The man choked on his fear, spitting out his terrified words. “Don't you touch my boy!”

The bastard had one son and two daughters, but clearly he didn't give a shit about the girls. Which was really stupid because among cat shifters, it was the females who had the brains.

“Find Elisabeth.” He pulled a card out of his pocket. All it had was a single email address on it and a logo of an ogre. A little obvious, style wise, but it was meant for male cats with limited intelligence. He slid it into Johnny's shirt pocket. “You find something and email.”

Johnny blinked, his eyes watering either from terror or the stench. “That's it? Anything? I just email you?”

“It better be true. Or I'll hurt your boy.”

Alan waited a moment longer, letting the threat sink in. Then after a last shove against the bastard's neck, he spun around and loped off into the dark.