Shift Happens (A Carus Novel Book 1) (11 page)

Suppressing the memory, I followed the stale scent of Landen across the downtown core. He’d not been here in weeks, maybe not since we last spoke. I didn’t know if he handled any other agents. One time, he’d slipped and said I was “more than a handful.” Not sure if he referred to me as an agent, or my breasts. If he did have other agents, he’d have different meeting places for each of us.

I approached a building in Yaletown. Posh and trendy, with boutiques oozing glamour and the eclectic vintage look that cost a fortune, or in other words, not where I’d normally hang out.

Maybe I should quit and become a handler. My nails scraped against hard asphalt. If Landen could afford to live here…he likely had gone rogue. A government paycheck couldn’t pay for this.

I huffed and pawed the pavement to stir up the scents, confirming this was Landen’s place. The front entrance had layers of his scent. None were newer than the one I’d followed. My hackles rose with apprehension. Either Landen had run or he’d holed up soon after our meeting. Neither could be for a good reason, but it did explain why he hadn’t cleaned his scent trail.

I circled the building and my sense of unease built. No new trails. Landen was in the building or gone. Sitting back on my haunches, I scanned the building for what I needed—an open window. The night, not particularly cold or wet for once, meant there were several.

Behind a dumpster, I willed the change and stretched my wings out wide. It felt good. My falcon had been neglected since my ill-fated escape attempt. I soared, letting the wind push me up, and relishing the freedom, I hovered a little longer than needed before maneuvering through the open window.

My falcon shifted away before my feet hit the plush carpet. I looked around the room. An elderly couple slept soundly beside each other in bed holding hands above the covers.
How sweet
. The faint odour of pharmaceuticals surrounded them. Most likely, they were drugged up on a cocktail of prescription medication to get through the night with as little pain as possible. They slept on their backs with their mouths open. Spittle blew in and out with each breath before pooling at the corners of their mouths.

They both snored loudly.

I wondered why they left their window open. Old people were cold all the time. My grandmother used to complain about it. “It seeps into my bones,” she would say.

Smiling at the memory, I slunk out of the room and walked through their cluttered apartment decorated by a nation’s worth of doilies. The view from their front door peephole didn’t reveal anyone loitering in the hallway. I snuck out and sprinted to the staircase, like the roadrunner on crack. Although it would’ve been easier and less physical to ride the elevator to each floor to look for Landen, it contained too much risk. I was butt naked and it would take one person to hit the up or down button to ruin my night. Talk about an awkward elevator conversation.

Hi, how are you?

Naked and yourself?

The door to the hallway staircase wouldn’t open. I cursed. I needed a key fob, but that didn’t stop me from jiggling the doorknob a couple more times just in case I could open it with sheer strength and will power.

Admitting temporary defeat, I jogged back to the old folk’s home. It didn’t take long to find their keys because they were in a dish by the door, next to some candies. What was with old people and sweet stuff?

I made my way back to the stairs and used their key fob to get in. Landen seemed like the type to enjoy looking down on others, so I headed up the stairs. Luckily, the doors were not locked from inside the stairwell. I opened the door on each level to see if I could smell my handler. Five floors up, I found his scent.

And something else unpleasant. Death.

It would be strong enough in a couple more days for the norms to detect, which meant old death. My wolf howled in my head and the back of my neck tingled as the tiny hairs rose. This didn’t bode well. I walked to the doorway suffused with the smell of Landen and the stench of decay. There was no need to knock. The door was unlocked.

I pushed open the solid door, and bracing for what was on the other side, walked in and pulled the door closed behind me. I didn’t want the smell to get out any more than it already had and alert the norms before I had a chance to investigate.

If there was a way to turn off my nose, I would’ve gladly used it.

Landen lay splayed in the middle of his living room—his body eviscerated, with bloody entrails strewn across the hardwood flooring. A quick death, but pain stamped Landen’s once handsome face. And surprise. I reached out to check his body and hesitated.

Death surrounded me every day, but it had been awhile since it visited someone I knew, much less someone I’d fooled around with. I didn’t particularly like Landen, and I was pissed that from all appearances, he’s gone rogue and used me, but his glazed over eyes made something inside me hurt a little.

Odd.

My stay at Wick Wonderland had made me soft. I might be spending eternity as Clint’s sexy-time play-toy. I shouldn’t feel bad for this guy. Hell, if he hadn’t already been killed, I might’ve done it myself.

I stole a quick breath and picked up his hands to examine them. There didn’t appear to be any defensive wounds; his arms and hands one of the only unblemished parts left.

What remained of his clothes told me when he’d died. He wore the same thing the night he gave me my assignment, which meant he’d turned cadaverous soon after. This whole thing reeked of a set-up. Someone was tying up loose ends, and unfortunately for Landen, that meant him.
What did he drag me into?

His place gave nothing away. It reminded me of a luxury hotel room or a staged home in a realty show. Few personal belongings. I hadn’t pegged Landen as a minimalist, but then again, this might not have been his only home and his job required him to pick up and disappear at a moment’s notice. People could say the same thing about my place.

I opened a window to let some of the stagnant air out and shifted into my wolf. I sniffed the dead meat.

Wait a minute
. I shook my head.
The body. Landen’s body
. The last thing I needed was my wolf’s instincts to kick in fully. Yeah, I might’ve disliked Landen, but I didn’t want to get snout deep into his bloody corpse because my wolf mistook it for a free meal.

My perfume still clung to Landen’s clothes. It confirmed his time of death. But underneath the putrid smell of decay was something else.

Cat.

Big cat.

My hackles rose. Padding around the room, I looked for other clues. The cat scent clung to a chair in the corner of the room and mingled with the subtle fragrance of male cologne. There was something enticing about the smell, but when I focused, the faint appeal escaped, like water slipping through fingers.

A growl escaped before I could stop it. Either a Shifter or a feline Were sat and waited for Landen to return home before killing him. Landen knew his attacker, or he would’ve put up more of a fight.
Another SRD agent, maybe?
His death had to be related to my current situation.

Shifting into my falcon, I flew out the window into the cool night air. The wind refreshed my body, cleaning the repugnant smell of death that clung to it, but the wind couldn’t wipe away the look on Landen’s face, nor the sinking feeling I was screwed.

My arm looked like a well-loved chew toy, burning and angry red as my nails dug in, scratching back and forth. Wick had injected the microchip under my skin after returning from Lucien’s and instead of feeling better with time, it managed to feel worse. Now I knew how micro-chipped pets felt. I sent a heartfelt apology to Spanky, the affectionate American Staffordshire we had when I was a kid. Easily excitable, Spanky’d practically vibrate before jumping up and freaking out our guests. Having a seventy pound “vicious pitbull” lunging at them meant many family friends avoided us at first. Once they got to know him, they realized their fear was baseless. A few tummy rubs and free range licking and Spanky’s heart would be theirs. God, I loved that dog.

“No amount of scratching will get that tracker out.”

I turned around to see Wick leaning against the door frame. There was no point in locking me in now that I had a tracker injected
under my skin
. Gross. It felt foreign and wrong. Worse, no amount of shapeshifting had dislodged it from its home.

Hesitating, I considered taking a knife to it.
They could always inject another one.

“It itches.”

“That will go away eventually.” He sounded confident. My face scrunched up with doubt and he turned his forearm out so I could see a similar small lump under his skin.

“
Eventually
is too far away for my liking,” I grumbled and turned back to the laptop on the floor I lay in front of. “Has Lucien ever removed a chip from one of his tagged supes?” I asked, dreading the answer.

“No.”

“What if I deliver on my promise?”

Wick cast his gaze up to the ceiling before walking into the room. “He has claimed you. Even ordered you to remain in my house, under my watch despite the tracking chip so we can
observe you better
. You tried to kill his human servant. As far as he is concerned, you are in his debt.”

I huffed. The air blew my bangs off my face. “Great. Not much incentive to make good on my promise.”

“Besides your life?”

I closed the laptop and banged my head on it repeatedly—not hard enough to damage anything important, but enough that I felt better. I wanted to go home.

Lucien’s orders gave me a new goal in life—find the person behind my hit on Clint, but it also gave me something to drive toward—freedom. Once I lost it, I realized how much I wanted it back. After I paid my debt to Lucien, I planned to get the hell out of here and find something more productive to do with my life, something more than being an SRD agent. Find a real home. No more A to B.

What would I do, exactly?

No fucking clue.

Maybe track down my birth parents, if they lived, and ask some pointed questions, maybe learn more about what the heck I was, maybe find a new job, or maybe work on being a better person, healing all the hurt I buried deep inside.

Whoa. Where’d that come from?
Back up.

“Did you find anything?” Wick asked.

Glad he interrupted my mental life planning before I cried and called the SRD shrink, I rolled over on to my side and stared up at him. “Besides my handler being dead? No.”

“Dead! Why didn’t you say something sooner? Like an hour ago when you came back.”

“Do you know who killed him?”

Wick exhaled slowly and perched on the corner of my bed. He shook his head.

“Then telling you didn’t help, did it?”

“Andy.” Wick’s tone was a reprimand. “You should let me help you.”

“No offense, but you’re Lucien’s lapdog. Conflict of interest.”

“My
interest
is to help you.” His voice sounded calm, but emotion flashed across his face, too quick to catch.

“You smelled happy when Lucien claimed me. I don’t trust you.” I got up and stalked out of the room.

A firm grip on my arm stopped me. Before I could break free, Wick reached over and grabbed my other arm. Pulling me back into his body, he breathed into my ear. “I was upset Lucien claimed you. I do not like the idea of any man’s mark on or in you. But, you are right, I was also happy, because it meant you are staying.” His lips brushed my ear, sending a tingle down my body. “Here. With me.” His lean muscles pressed against me and any thoughts about my current predicament flew from my mind. I was thinking about something else entirely now.

I shook my head to clear the pornographic images—Wick tearing off my clothes, me raking my nails down his hot sweaty back, his hips pumping. I shook my head again. “Tracker or no tracker. I will not be trapped like a caged animal.” I pulled my arms out of Wick’s grip and walked away.

And stopped abruptly when I walked into the living room.

“Andy!” A familiar woman’s voice bounced off the walls. Looking over, I met Mel’s piercing blue eyes.

The painful memory that haunted me every night slammed into my brain and froze me on the spot.

Sweat and fear mixed with the acrid scent of blood, rolled off the pack women huddled in the corner of the room. Naked. Hair plastered to their heads. Waiting for their turn. They avoided eye contact to save me further humiliation, except one. My friend Mel mouthed our mantra, “Survive.”

Dylan’s hot breath seared my neck as he pinned my arms over my head and forced my bruised thighs apart with his knee. “Andrea McNeilly, you are mine.”

Anger. Hot, searing, molten rage. And hatred. Long repressed, it rose fast and furious, twisting and tangling with something else inside me. Something feral. Something fierce.

Power rippled through my skin. My eyes snapped open, burning with dark energy. My face turned to the side. I met the desperation and fear in Mel’s gaze.

The final trigger.

My body shifted. Transitioning into a monster caged deep within me.

And then all hell broke loose.

“Andy?” Melissa cocked her head.

Paralyzed as the memory faded, I stared at the blonde beauty. I’d not seen Mel since I escaped Dylan’s pack. Not since I broke his alpha control and destroyed half the males in the process. Mel had been in a forced union as well—with David. I’d torn his guts out.

My eyelids squeezed shut on the bloody images the memories brought up. That night, something more than my mountain lion, wolf and falcon combined—a beast—had risen from within, answering my desperate call and it went wild—uncontrollable.

It took years of surviving as a mountain lion in the wilderness before a sane woman could walk out of the forest.

Two arms wrapped around my body as Mel enveloped me in a hug, her blonde hair fluttering in my face. She smelled of apple blossoms, her favorite shampoo. “I can’t believe it’s you. I’ve missed you so much.” She squeezed me hard before pulling back. “I owe you so much.”

A wave of hot and cold pinpricks surged against my spine, ran up my neck, crashed against my brain and settled behind my eyes. I blinked. And realized Mel waited for a response.