The leader’s lip curled with disgust. She saw him raise his hand, knew that he was about to give the order to fire. Time slowed to a crawl. She’d only shifted once… she wasn’t even sure she knew how to do it again. But there was no other choice, was there? And with that realization came a cool, calm clarity. She felt her wings spread, felt her great body filling the space between the armed men and the menagerie of shifters. And she roared her defiance, a brassy bugle that seemed loud enough to tear down the whole building.
A few of the men managed to shoot. She felt the bullets glance off her scales, the impact painful, but only in the way that a punch to the shoulder was painful… nothing she couldn’t shrug off. And the men only had a few seconds to shoot at Mira before the surge of angry shifters hit them like a truck. She felt Conrad move up beside her, incredibly agile even in such a confined space, his forelegs and even his tail lashing out to send the men flying, knocking guns out of their hands.
More men were coming, but the crowded space worked to the shifters’ advantage—they could only file in one at a time, and the vengeful shifters made short work of each new soldier, jaws snapping and claws tearing at armored bodies. Before long, the men were retreating in a panic, shouting at each other as they fled. The shifters pursued, spilling through the dingy warehouse, knocking furniture flying. By the time they’d reached the front door of the building, the building behind them was all but destroyed… Mira glanced over her shoulder, grateful she’d done what she’d come here to do already. Right now, a person would be hard pressed to find a computer that hadn’t been smashed.
The humans were running back and forth in a panic, piling into vans and shouting at each other. She could see a lot of injuries and was worried for a moment that this might be about to turn into a pretty horrible scene… but the shifters were pulling back, letting the humans retreat. A wave of relief washed over her. They’d all have been well within their rights to seek revenge on the men who’d imprisoned them. Ren and Vee’s pack alone had likely been there for more than a month, and who knew how long everyone else had? But instead, they’d chosen mercy. She watched the vans skid away into the night, taking the last of the men with them. Then with a start, she realized she was still dragon-shaped. Strange, how comfortable she felt in this shape she’d barely spent an hour in. It almost felt like a shame to return to her two-legged form.
Strangely anticlimactic, the end of the evening. The shifters they’d freed left one by one, some of them murmuring their thanks or promising to stay in touch. Eventually, only a handful of wolves remained. Two new faces, the green-haired young man and a hard-eyed girl with tattoos covering the right-hand side of her face. Arrow, Vee’s mate, and the other young woman was Brie… but Ren shook his head hard when Mira opened her mouth to ask the obvious question.
“There are other facilities,” she said, fighting off the weariness. “We’ll find her, I promise.”
“You’ve done enough,” Ren said softly. He wasn’t rebuffing her help—there was genuine gratitude in his eyes. “At least for tonight, Mira. Get some rest.”
“You too,” she said, feeling oddly emotional at the prospect of parting ways. They’d known each other for barely a day… why did she already feel closer to them than half of the friends she’d known for years? Because you actually showed them who you are, she heard her inner voice murmur. That voice was louder, lately. “Stay in touch, yeah?”
“Of course.” Vee smiled and hugged her… and she yelped in surprise when she felt the other wolves pile into the hug, too, almost crushing her with the force of it. Conrad was laughing for a moment, but that changed when he, too, was hauled into the dogpile.
The wolves dropped Mira and Conrad home—it was a tight squeeze now in the truck, but neither of them minded. The truck pulled off with a squeal of rubber, and she watched it go, smiling faintly and hoping it would at least get them all home before some part of the machine gave out entirely. It felt strange to be home. She lingered on the front doorstep, feeling uneasy about the prospect of even going inside.
Then Conrad was behind her, and she remembered the feeling of her wings spreading, remembered that at any moment she could transform into a twenty-foot lizard with razor-sharp claws and a mouth full of fangs. Nothing could be hiding in her house that was scarier than that, could it? With a grin, she let them both in through the front door. Strange, how little had changed in here. Somehow, she’d expected the whole place to be trashed—but it seemed their attackers had given up pretty quickly once Conrad had mounted his daring rescue.
“Are you alright?” Those blue eyes on her, always watchful. She smiled, reaching out to grab his hand and pull him closer.
“I am more alright than I’ve been in a long time,” she told him, squeezing his hands in hers. “Are you alright?”
A faint smile. “Yes.”
“Would you tell me if you weren’t?”
“Probably.” A moment’s hesitation. “Perhaps a little homesick, if I were looking for a complaint to make.”
“Of course you are.” She wrapped her arms around him and smiled as he hugged her back, feeling herself dissolve into the warmth of him… “That can be our next project, getting you home.” That reminded her… they weren’t quite done with their current project, were they? She bustled into her room to grab her laptop, setting it up on the coffee table. Conrad settled onto the couch behind her, dropping his head back against the backrest with a soft sigh.
She’d really only intended to check the drives to see how much information they’d gotten away with, that was all. But once she’d gotten the machine set up and started clicking through the files, she found herself entranced… and before she knew it, Conrad was fast asleep on the couch behind her, and she was wide awake, lost in the wealth of information she’d stolen. She dragged herself away from the screen just long enough to shoot a quick text to Heather, letting her know that everyone was safe—and that whatever magic she’d worked with the thumbsticks had worked a treat.
And by the time the sun rose, a bleary-eyed Mira shut the screen of her laptop with a soft click. The sound roused Conrad, who stirred a little on the couch behind her, murmuring a sleepy question.
“What’d you find out?”
“Everything,” she said softly. “I know everything.”
Chapter 26 - Conrad
He felt a little guilty for falling asleep on the couch while Mira was still researching, but when he woke to find her still hunched over the laptop as the dawn gradually began to lighten the room, he knew from the look on her face that it would have been pointless to try and coax her to come to bed with him. When a Virgo was on a mission like this one, there was nothing that would stand in her way… hadn’t she proven that back at the warehouse? He grinned to himself at the thought, wondering if the news had spread through the organization about what had happened to their headquarters. He hoped so. Remembering the fear on the faces of those shifters, the awful burn marks on their wrists from protracted exposure to silver, he hoped each and every one of those men was suffering enormously today.
Mira began to fill him in on what she’d learned from the computer as the sky steadily brightened. He listened, curiosity quickly giving way to shock at the extent not only of what she’d managed to steal from their computers… but of what she’d learned about the organization. They’d had a few pieces of it right already, as had the wolves. The attacks were all connected, organized by the same shadowy organization, and they were targeting shifters. As for why some shifters were captured but not others…
“It’s some kind of weird eugenics thing,” Mira explained, sounding disgusted by what she’d read. “I found their manifesto and some of their so-called research materials—even I could tell that it was mostly crap. I didn’t bother with much of it. They call themselves Purists, which … yuck.” A roll of those gorgeous golden eyes. “But basically, they think shifters and humans should stay away from each other. Not that they’reprejudiced, of course,” she added with another theatrical eye roll. “But given that it’s mostly humans in the organization, you can kind of guess how they feel about shifters.”
“And that’s why they’ve been kidnapping them?”
“Yeah, that’s the thing. Remember when Vee and Ren were telling us about their parents? That’s why the Purists let them go. The rest of their pack had mixed heritage, human and shifter, so they kept them.”
“What were they going to do with them?” Conrad wanted to know, feeling an uneasy weight in his stomach at the idea of the shifters he’d met last night being held prisoner because of their parentage. “Did they plan to kill them?”
“I don’t know,” Mira said, frowning at the screen. “A bunch of these files is encrypted, and I got interrupted before I could get everything. But this is still useful stuff. I have to get it to Vee and the others, get them to spread it to their networks, warn all the shifters in the city that these guys are around… they’re in other states, too,” she added, tabbing into another window and showing him a map. “They’ve got headquarters all over.”
He blinked at the map, mystified. “I thought only a handful of humans knew about shifters.”