Night runner, p.2
Night Runner, page 2
“Do you remember my mother?” I took a breath. “I don’t.”
“You didn’t know her?” His voice cracked.
I hugged myself. “No, she died in childbirth, and I only saw the hospital paperwork one time. That’s where I had seen Ty, but I don’t think I ever saw your last name, and I don’t have those papers anymore. One of my foster moms somewhere misplaced them.”
He gestured toward himself. “I’m Ty Winter. I guess your last name might have been Winter.”
“It’s Powell,” I said, a little harsher than I meant. “It was my mother’s name,” I added.
“Powell?” He groaned. “You are Bianca’s daughter. She was so beautiful and so kind when I knew her back then. I’m sorry you didn’t get a chance to know her, Maury.”
Neither of us spoke for a long moment.
“Do you have a family?” I asked.
“Yes. You’ll meet them soon.”
Shit. My throat nearly closed. Why had I asked that? I wasn’t ready to think about meeting his family, his happy family who had been around him all the time. I needed space, so I scooped up several more water bottles without counting and made my way back to the living room. It was all too much and getting away from Ty was the only fix.
“So, what are we going to do about it?” Anthony asked as he took the water bottle I offered. His wounds had finally started to close, and he cracked open the bottle and took a long drink.
Kobie grabbed a water and then winked at Laura as she scooped up my last one. Then Kobie caught her eye, and she gave him an intense look and the tiniest shake of her head. I blinked, recalling how they’d arrived at nearly the same time. I wiped my hands on my pants, wishing I’d brought my own water out of the kitchen, too. Why hadn’t I counted? Because Ty had been in there, and I’d needed breathing room.
Anthony stared out the window, probably watching the lightning in the distant thunderheads. “It’s up to us to figure out where Darius McCullough has gone, why he attacked us, and how he’s stronger than any other shifter I’ve ever fought.”
The silence lingered, as we were all lost in our own thoughts.
Finally, Anthony groaned. “Who the hell is Darius McCullough?”
Ty grimaced. “Besides a super shifter on supernatural steroids?”
Nobody answered, and a sense of foreboding settled in my chest.
CHAPTER TWO
maury
So, Darius was a superhero-level cat shifter. Great. This is freaking fantastic.
I currently rummaged in Anthony’s fridge for my own water and nearly grabbed an “adult juice box” instead, but I stopped. A bottle of water made more sense after the battle. Plus, I wasn’t sure if I had a concussion from being slammed into the wall. I didn’t feel like I did, but my feelings didn’t have anything to do with whether or not I had one. What were the symptoms of a concussion?
I wasn’t sure I knew anyway. I knew if I had a concussion, alcohol wouldn’t be smart. So, I did the responsible thing and grabbed a water. Twisting the plastic lid off, I took a long swig. Turned out life was as dangerous in the pride as it had been in the bayou. Though I had to admit, it was a helluva lot more like family than I’d ever had in the whole of my life.
I’d been in the pride for all of one week, and I’d had a lot of firsts since I’d arrived.
First interview, first job, first intentional shift into my cheetah self, first fuck…
I lowered my water bottle, turned, and studied Anthony, seated on the couch, who was deep in hushed conversation with Kobie.
Anthony still didn’t have clothes on, but he was the only one. His nakedness didn’t make me cringe now, though, so maybe I was beginning to get used to the amount of bare skin the pride lived with on the daily. The harsh cut of Anthony’s jaw highlighted the seriousness of the recent attack. His pecs and biceps flexed as he crossed his arms over the expanse of chest.
No, Anthony hadn’t been as simple as a fuck, and I wasn’t going to lie to myself about it. For the rest of my life, I’d remember our incredible night together. Everyone after would compare with him; I already knew this to be true.
Kobie stepped toward the kitchen. “Is there another water in there?”
I opened the fridge door, grabbed another, and handed it to him without a word.
“Thanks.”
Then Anthony strolled into the kitchen and stopped near Kobie. “What do you think we should do?”
The happy-go-lucky white tiger shifter was as serious as I had ever seen him. “We have to go after him. I don’t disagree.”
I stared at them in shock. What the hell was this? Darius had nearly ended both Anthony and Ty. Now they wanted to chase Darius out into the bayou and try to kill him back.
“Are you kidding me? You want to go after that guy? Why? He went back to wherever he came from. Leave it that way. He was nearly too strong for all of you. You’re insane. How can you want to risk your life? I can’t believe—” It all came flooding out.
“Maury.” Anthony glared at me, interrupting my nerve-ramble. “Maury. You don’t know what it takes to keep a pride safe, and we aren’t safe while this rogue is out there attacking people.”
Shit. My stomach twisted and threatened to reject the water. Timid me was back, demanding to upend my stomach. I put my hand over my mouth and darted into the bathroom, hoping I’d make it inside. My foot slipped against the smoothness of the tile, and I dropped to the ground next to the porcelain seat.
I heaved over the bowl, but nothing else happened. Doubt curled inside me like a snake. Maybe I wasn’t cut out to be a shifter. The jaguar stone was still here, in this building, in the case where I’d originally found it. Using it was still an option. I could use it and leave. Just leave and wash my hands of the whole mess.
Anthony’s voice boomed through the house, and I bit back a whimper. Leaving him to deal with Darius wasn’t the choice I would make, no matter how hard any of this got. As I came to that understanding, my stomach settled enough that I didn’t feel like gagging anymore, so I made my way out.
When I came out of the bathroom, the group had gone, but their voices filtered up through the staircase leading to the lower levels of the Cool Cats Art Gallery building. The door to the stairwell stood open as it usually did. After a check to make sure I hadn’t gotten anything on my shoes, I followed the others down the first flight of stairs.
When my foot touched the riser of the first stair, Anthony raced back up the stairs to face me, as though he’d been waiting to pounce on me. Though he stopped two steps down from me. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”
My jaw went slack, and I tipped my head to the side as I tried to understand his anger. Why was he suddenly furious at me? “I’m coming with you. This mess is on me.”
The others followed him back up as far as the landing between the floors. Laura scowled at Anthony and then studied me. Yet nothing came out of her mouth. Kobie seemed as shocked as Laura.
Behind them, Ty leaned against the wall, and a war played out on his face. Maybe he had a little of his own fury at Anthony for speaking to me like that… He was my father or wanted to be… or something.
“Answer me,” Anthony demanded as though he had some right to command me.
Ty’s mouth tightened but the corners twitched.
My gaze narrowed. Or maybe Ty had his approval? How the hell did Ty think he had any right to have an opinion on anything? Heat rushed through me, a wildfire of pissed-off-ness, and timid me died in the flames.
I cocked my hips to the side and crossed my arms. “I said I’m coming with you.”
Anthony growled. “You don’t even want to be here. You don’t want to be a shifter or a part of the pride. That’s the whole reason you showed up. To become a regular human again. Or have you forgotten?”
“Darius attacked me, too,” I snapped, stung by his words, reeling from the acid in them. “I’m going, Anthony, and you’re not going to talk me out of it.” Gesturing backward toward the jaguar stone in the display case at the top of the stairs, I glanced behind me, through the open door, and horror niggled in my brain. My gasp echoed up and down the staircase.
Everybody froze, and the quiet turned oppressive.
“Where’s the stone?” I murmured. A tremble rolled through me as my heartbeat thundered in my ears.
Laura bolted back up the stairs toward me and grabbed my hand. “What is it?”
“Laura, where’s the jaguar stone?”
“What the—” She jumped around me and then up several more steps. When she peered at the display, she also gasped.
“What is it?” Kobie asked.
“It’s gone,” she yelled, her voice two-parts roar and one-part shriek. “The talisman is gone.”
Her terror sent my stomach twisting, and my heart fell. What could a strong shifter like Darius do with a magical talisman in his hand? Though he’d known all along where it was. He’d mumbled on and on about it.
Anthony, Kobie, and Ty raced back up the risers between us, moving around me without stopping. They circled the display, all of them shaking their heads.
When Anthony reached the display, he roared. “No. It can’t be!”
Kobie returned to the top step and Laura joined him there. Kobie pressed his lips into a tight line and rubbed the back of his neck. Then he leaned close to Laura to whisper something in her ear.
She nodded, her expression grim. “No shit.”
“What is it?” I asked, not liking how they wanted to keep me in the dark, so I made my way to the display. “What did Kobie say?”
Before she could tell me, Anthony cursed, and he gestured toward the empty case. “It’s reasonable to believe Darius’s attack was merely a distraction, and he wanted this part of the talisman.”
I frowned as I considered Anthony’s words and tone. “You say that like there’s more parts to the talisman?”
His mouth tightened. The group exchanged a long look, but none of them spoke.
“Are there more parts, Anthony?” I pressed, growing irritated with his desire to keep me out of the whole ordeal. Pride alpha or not, he couldn’t possibly keep me out of the mess that was so intricately tied to me already.
Laura stepped forward. “Supposedly, the talisman has been snapped in two. Anthony had the part of the hilt with a stone in it, but the blade is still out there… somewhere. According to legend.”
Anthony shot Laura a dark look, and if looks could kill, she would have died right then. “Joey says so.”
“Joey?” I repeated, glancing from one to the other.
“Pride historian,” Laura answered.
“I didn’t know the stone was a hilt. It didn’t look like a hilt,” I said. And Darius had never mumbled anything about two pieces in his fitful sleep after attacking me, when he’d set me on the path to find Anthony two years ago.
“It’s been worn down by being handled through the years,” she said. “That’s why Anthony put it in a case.”
I turned my attention to the woman with the answers instead of my lover, intent on this endless supply of dangers we seemed to face at every turn. “Do you think it’s true?”
“The two parts?”
“Yeah.”
She shrugged and shook her head, staring into the space somewhere beyond me. “I think it’s possible, but I don’t know. I’ve never seen the other part, so who knows?”
“It might explain how Darius was so strong,” Anthony added. “If he had the blade portion, he might be able to use it to do whatever he’d done to himself to nearly beat us.”
“So, beating you this time wasn’t the point,” I said. “At least it doesn’t look like it now.”
Anthony took a deep breath. “No, I think stealing the talisman was the point.”
“Probably, but that’s not the worst part of it,” Ty said.
“What’s worse than him stealing an ancient talisman? That shit’s priceless,” Kobie interjected.
Laura crossed her arms and glared at Anthony. “It means a rogue knows something about it that we don’t. One, he knows where the rest of the talisman is, and it’s supposedly been lost for decades. Two, he’s decided he knows how to benefit from reunifying the two parts.”
“The blade has been missing for decades?” Kobie asked.
“Yeah,” she said.
I chewed my bottom lip, thinking of the shifter history book I’d left in Laura’s apartment. Had fated mates gone out of existence at that time, too? The question burned on my tongue, but I didn’t want to ask it and expose how little I knew about anything, so I kept my mouth shut.
“What happened?” Kobie asked.
“Didn’t you learn anything in your shifter lore?” Laura scoffed. “It wasn’t that long ago.”
“A hundred years.”
“Still…”
“Fine. I learned how to take a nap without pissing off the teacher. That’s what I learned.”
She rolled her eyes.
“A long time ago, all the cat shifter prides got shaken up by changes in our abilities, and our magics changed,” Anthony said.
“How so?” The words slipped out before I could stop them.
“Fated mates disappeared, our abilities as a species diminished, there were many things recorded, but I don’t know what was real and what wasn’t. Like leaping long distances…”
I snorted. So, Darius might really be a fucking cat shifter superhero. “If Darius is already so strong, why would he steal the stone hilt? He doesn’t want to get rid of his powers.”
“It doesn’t just take powers away,” Anthony said. “It can pull power into the wielder, also.”
“So, he clearly wants to be the biggest, baddest shifter out there.” I frowned as her words lodged in my brain. “Unless…”
Kobie took a step toward me. “Unless, what?”
Laura gasped as my same thought hit her. “Unless he wants to try forcibly taking the power from someone and maybe he needs the hilt to do that.”
“Someone like Anthony?” I asked.
“Likely,” Ty murmured.
Anthony growled. “And we need to go after him and make it so he can’t do whatever sick thing he’s got planned,” he added.
I crossed my arms, scowled, and shook my head. “No, if he’s after Anthony, Anthony shouldn’t be the one to go looking for him. Maybe that’s what Darius wants.”
“What do you mean?” Kobie asked.
“If Darius wants Anthony in the bayou, then Anthony shouldn’t be the one to go to the bayou.”
Ty’s eyes widened and his head whipped around to the gape-jawed alpha as though he hadn’t heard me challenge him. Not that I cared.
But when I put my hands on my hips and quirked my eyebrow, to sort of double-down on my challenge of Anthony’s plan, Laura’s expression exploded in a smile she quickly hid by tipping her face toward the ground.
Kobie cursed under his breath and went to stand next to Anthony.
But Anthony charged toward me and brought his face within an inch of mine. The heat from his breath spread over my forehead and cheeks. Recoiling wasn’t an option, so I refused to wipe the smirk from my face.
“You can bully me all you want, Anthony, but I’m not going to back down,” I said.
“Don’t you understand I’m trying to keep you safe?” He whispered through clenched teeth, like some kind of angry ventriloquist.
“I didn’t ask you to do that.”
“You don’t have to ask me. It’s my job. I’m the alpha.”
“And I was a stray last week. What does either of those things have to do with anything?”
“Well, you’re… I’m… we’re…” He dissolved in sputtering. “You need to stay safe. You have to stay safe.”
Laura snorted and rolled her eyes. “What he’s trying to tell you is that he has feelings, Maury, for you. Those accursed and pesky feelings.”
Kobie laughed at that, the sound bursting from him. “Good one.”
Laura’s eyes sparkled as she studied Anthony’s best friend.
Something was definitely up with those two. Laura and Kobie, that was.
“You can’t go,” Anthony repeated. “I forbid it.”
“And I’m not going to listen, Anthony. I’m going if you are. In fact, you’ll probably endanger the mission even more than I will.” I glared at him, daring him to argue.
Anthony’s mouth opened and closed, and fury burned in his eyes. I’d pissed Anthony off—royally, and I couldn’t help the flare of enjoyment through my middle. Anthony could boss a lot of folks without question, but I wasn’t one of those. I wasn’t a door mat for him to walk all over.
Before Anthony could drop a two-ton tirade on my head, Ty stepped forward. “You know,” he said. “I think it will be okay if she goes. She won’t be able to learn about being a shifter if she’s trapped in an apartment. Besides, you probably need to call Joey Books and check up on some lore.”
CHAPTER THREE
maury
Ty—my father?! How the hell was I out on assignment with my father?! Another life-changing first!—and I stood at the edge of the bayou, and the humidity turned the night air hazy. Clouds boiled on the midnight horizon, and lightning zigzagged between the thunderheads. My ears pricked at the chorus of familiar welcoming sounds all around.
Ty peered into the shadows as though waiting for something. Maybe he was waiting on me, but I took a deep breath. The scent of the wet earth tickled my nose, and frogs sang their happy, croaking songs.
Water dripped from the leaves to the ground, droplets leftover from the thunderstorm that had hidden Darius’s intrusion into Anthony’s apartment. How long had it been since I’d been in the bayou? The bayou had been my hideout for two years of running from the foster care system. The wilds here had become my home, and the mossy trees had hidden me as one of their own.
