Mate Claimed

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

Graham said good-bye and hung up to find Iona and Eric, and even the tiger, staring at him. “She’s a friend,” Graham said. He might actually be blushing.

“So we wait,” Iona said.

Reid interrupted by reappearing. Iona suppressed another startled scream and jammed her hand to her pounding heart.

“Who’s next?” Reid asked.

“Iona,” Eric said. “Then come back, but we’re going to look around here for a while. We might need you.”

“No,” Iona said. “If you’re staying, I am.”

“Iona, I want you safe.”

“Not if you’re running around here in danger, especially with your pain attacks. I can’t pull you out of them if I’m not here.”

“And you started to go feral downstairs,” Eric growled, green eyes hard. “You can’t risk that. I might lose you for good.”

“I’ll more likely go feral if I’m forced to sit at home and worry about you. I’ll be tearing my way back here, not caring who gets in my way.” The wild need stirred as Iona spoke, the instinct to protect her mate, no matter what.

“Reid,” Eric snapped.

Reid lifted his hands and stepped away from Iona. “I’m not getting into an argument between Shifters. No transporting against her will.”

Eric didn’t look happy, but at least he stopped arguing. Iona went to him and put her hand in his, liking the warmth of him, his scent telling her he wanted her there despite the danger.

She still saw the pain in his eyes, though, and it worried her. She knew right then that she’d rather risk going feral, or going insane from her mating heat, or being caught as a Shifter, than watch him go through that pain again.

Eric sent Reid to the roof to keep an eye out for activity while they waited for Kellerman, having Reid report via the phones Iona had taken from the researchers. Reid’s first call said that no guards were rushing to the place, and the humans he did see ignored the building.

His observations supported Eric’s idea that no one really knew what the researchers were doing in here, nor did they care. He suspected that no one took Kellerman’s research seriously, or else he’d offered to pay a lot of money to use the run-down facility.

The two researchers on the top floor were just coming around when Eric knelt next to them. Iona had hit them hard in her half-feral state, to which their bruises attested. But they were recovering. The woman wore shorts and a T-shirt with a spangled neckline; the man was still in a clean suit. Both opened their eyes now to find a naked Eric grinning into their faces.

“Hello,” he said. “I’m a Shifter. I’m about to destroy this lab and everything in it, so you might want to leave.”

The man blinked at him. “What?”

“I said…”

Iona leaned down next to him, her lovely face bearing a sweet smile. “You kidnapped me, my sister-in-law, and a newborn baby. You took my niece from her mother and stuck needles into her and wires all over her. I’d say you need to leave.”

“We weren’t hurting her,” the woman said quickly. “Just trying to figure out her gene sequence.”

“So you could clone her?” Iona’s voice continued to be deceptively pleasant.

“We only want to know how Shifters work. They could be the best weapons—”

“Shut up,” the man said quickly.

Eric said, “Is this how you got the government to fund you? Said you were creating secret weapons? You see him?” He pointed to the tiger, who was standing next to Graham, his yellow eyes pinning the researchers. “That Shifter was the only one who survived. The ‘experiments’ were a failure.”

“But we have new—” The woman broke off again when the man elbowed her.

“Shut up.”

“New DNA samples from the Lupine Shifters you abducted,” Eric supplied. “You thought you could revive the experiments, succeed where the previous ones failed. I have news. It can’t be done.”

Both researchers, the woman with her pale, lined face, and the man, younger and angry looking, said nothing.

“But we’re nice Shifters,” Eric said. “At least I am. My mate here wants to disembowel you for touching our niece. The tiger over there wants to gut you for what humans have done to him over the last forty years. The wolf just wants to shoot you because he can.”

Graham’s laughter rumbled. “And it would be fun.”

The woman flinched, but the man looked more angry.

“But I’m going to let Reid take you out of here before we get destructive,” Eric said. “Because I’ve learned how to be kind to stupid creatures.”

Eric unfolded himself and summoned Reid from the roof. The man and woman looked more perplexed than afraid as Reid approached. Lanky Reid in jeans, shirt, and jacket against the winter cold looked innocuous and obviously not Shifter.

“He’ll have to take you one at a time,” Eric said. “The male first, I think.”

“Where do you want me to leave them?” Reid asked, expression neutral.

“I’ll let you decide.”

Reid thought a moment, then he grinned. A dokk alfar was a frightening thing when he smiled, especially when his midnight eyes began to gleam. “I have just the place.”

Reid put his hands on the man’s shoulders, then both he and the man vanished.

The woman screamed. She tried to scramble away from them, but Iona put a strong foot on the woman’s leg and stopped her.

Reid slammed back in a few seconds later and reached for the woman.

“Where did you take him?” Iona asked.

“Las Vegas Police Department,” Reid said. “Processing cell.” He closed his hands on the woman’s shoulders, and then they were gone.

“Huh,” Graham said. “Good sense of humor, for a Fae.” He looked around the room. “So they brought the blood and tissue samples from my wolves here?”

“Maybe egg and sperm samples too,” Iona said. “If they’re trying to breed Shifters.”

“Shit.”

Graham strode to the cooling cabinets, ripped one open, and started throwing the test tubes to the floor. They shattered, whatever agar preserved the samples oozing out and mixing with the broken glass.

The tiger Shifter watched Graham a moment, then he walked to the next glass cabinet and tipped it over, without bothering to open it. The resounding crash was satisfying, and Graham gave triumphant cheer.

“You all right?” Iona came back to Eric, her hands warm on his arms, her blue eyes soft with worry.

“Much better. The mate bond is helping.”

“The mate bond,” she said. “Cassidy told me about that. She said it was magic.”

Eric cradled Iona’s face in his hands, thumbs brushing her cheekbones. “Whatever it comes from, it’s filling me. It’s making me know I love you.”

He saw the hunger in her eyes. “I love you.” She touched his face. “I never knew—I never thought I could love like this.”

“The Goddess must have known. I’m glad she did.”

Around them, crashes sounded, along with the satisfied growls of two Shifters enjoying themselves. Eric slid his arms around Iona. “I love you. I’m going to keep saying that because I like hearing it. I love you. I love you. I love you.”

Iona smiled as she leaned into the warm curve of his body. “I wish we were home.”

“Soon, love. And then, we won’t come out for days.”

Graham looked around at them. “Will you two take it out of here? Your pheromones are making me crazy.”

He’d strapped the tranq rifle across his back while he found and broke things. The tiger ignored them all while he swept his arms over the lab benches and punched the glass out of the hoods. He finally looked happy.

“Watch him,” Eric said to Graham.

“Don’t worry. I’m on it.”

Eric craved Iona with his entire body, but he knew that would have to wait. “We need to search the rest of the floors.”

“Yes,” Iona said. “Unfortunately.”

But later, when he had her home…

Eric fixed what they needed into a pack around his waist, then they walked together, hand in hand, to the stairwell, where Eric had the pleasure of watching Iona remove her clothes again. Then they shifted to their wildcats and descended to see what they could find.

An hour later, Reid, back on the roof, alerted Eric that Kellerman had arrived.

Eric and Iona had found little downstairs—the rooms hadn’t been used for years. Fortunately they found no more victims of the researchers’ experiments, no more captive Shifters. The researchers had used the top floor, the lowest basement, and Cassidy’s room, and that was it.

Reid’s message was to the point. “He’s here.”

“Go down and tell Graham.” Eric flipped the phone closed, his heart beating in rage and anticipation. He looked at Iona, who returned the look with the same anger in her eyes. “Let’s go meet him.”

Kellerman headed up, not down when he walked into the building. He took the one working elevator to the top floor and emerged, a semiautomatic in his hand.

Eric’s half-leopard beast twisted the pistol away.

Kellerman’s eyes widened, and he tried to leap back into the elevator, but Eric grabbed him by the collar and jerked him forward as the elevator doors closed. Iona stepped behind Kellerman and checked his pockets for more weapons, relieving him of his phone and a magazine of bullets.

Iona had resumed her clothes upon arriving on the top floor, but Eric and Graham had left theirs far away in the desert. Kellerman gave them a contemptuous look.

“I have backup coming,” he said. He tried to sound unworried, but he couldn’t conceal the tremor in his voice as he took in the ruined lab, the floor a river of broken glass.

“We’ll be long gone before they get here,” Eric said.

Graham aimed the tranq rifle at Kellerman. “I have backup too. Except I don’t know his name.” He whistled, and Tiger Man stepped from behind the pile of wreckage that used to be a lab table.

Kellerman’s face drained of color. “You let him out?”

“He looked unhappy,” Iona said. “So I opened the cage.”

“But he’s dangerous. He could kill us all.”

“Why?” Iona asked. “He’s only a Shifter.”

“No, he isn’t.” Kellerman wet his lips. “He’s a programmed Shifter. He’s been coded to kill. To fight the enemy and not stop until that enemy is destroyed.”

“Oh.” Iona looked ill. “So you didn’t only breed him, you also messed with his DNA?”

“I didn’t,” Kellerman said. “The people who ran this facility before me did. They were brilliant. They blended genetics from animals, humans, and other Shifters to create the perfect Shifters, but ones obedient to human wills. The perfect fighting machines. Military weapons. They imagined whole armies of them.”

“So, what happened?” Eric asked. “I don’t see any armies of Shifters.”

Kellerman shook his head. “The prototypes didn’t last. Too unstable. The project got cut because they didn’t produce results fast enough.” Derision entered his voice. “The government was too shortsighted.”

“How do you know about what went on here?” Iona asked. “You were wandering through Area Fifty-one and stumbled across it?”

“No, I stumbled across it researching Shifters,” Kellerman said with a touch of his usual arrogance. “When I was put in charge of the Shifter council a few years ago, I did my homework on them. I found a file on this project, parts of it declassified because it was forty years old. I looked into it. I had ideas for how to make the project actually work, so I put together a team and got permission to research what people had done here. They had good ideas back then, but not the technology to implement them.”

“And when you had to combine Shiftertowns,” Eric finished, “you saw an opportunity to take fresh DNA and other samples without anyone being the wiser. So you thought. Graham was going to notice when some of his Shifters went missing—why did you think he wouldn’t?”

“They took too long,” Kellerman said impatiently. “The whole transfer and tissue harvesting was supposed to take only an hour or so. I’m surrounded by idiots.”

“Tough break,” Eric said. He understood why Kellerman used the compound in the desert for the blood taking—it was closer to Shiftertown, and he’d never have gotten permission to haul twenty cages of Shifters into Area 51. He’d have his researchers take all the samples there then transport them to this facility later.

“How did you get that other compound built?” Eric asked. “Without anyone being the wiser? No one noticed?”

“I didn’t have to build it. It was already there. Researching the effect of radiation from the nuclear testing sites, or something like that. Another project that got defunded, and the buildings left there for me to find in another file. Temporary buildings just means they get left until someone remembers to take them down. I appropriated the place for my purpose.”

“But you didn’t get enough?” Eric asked, letting his voice go deceptively soft. “So you thought taking my sister and her newborn was a good idea?”

“Again, I’m surrounded by idiots,” Kellerman snapped. “I have a nurse on staff at that clinic who supplies me with samples from time to time. She called my researchers. They decided they couldn’t pass up the opportunity to study a Shifter baby, especially one that was half-human. So she drugged them and had them sent here. And once more, they took too long. They should have had them back to you by now. Scientists are like children with ADD. They get fixed into their experiments and forget what time it is. They wouldn’t change their socks if no one was there to tell them.”

As he finished, Eric took the magazine out of Kellerman’s gun and crushed it in his strong, half-shifted hand. Bullets rained harmlessly to the floor, most of them bent. Eric then twisted the pistol in two in front of Kellerman’s face.

Eric dropped the broken pieces of pistol. “Well, my friend, you won’t have to worry about your pet scientists anymore. We’re closing you down.”

“You don’t have that much power, Warden,” Kellerman said, still too confident. “You’ll be arrested for abducting me, probably executed. And everyone in this room with you. Except Ms. Duncan. She’ll go to prison for aiding you, and her mother will likely lose her nice business.”

“I’m not a Shifter,” Reid said quietly.

Kellerman jumped. The Fae had remained in the shadows, and now he leaned against the elevator’s doorframe. “I used to be a cop before I resigned,” Reid said. “Believe it or not, abducting Shifters is against the law, and experimenting on them is too.”

“I wasn’t experimenting on them,” Kellerman said quickly.

“No, you were harvesting from them,” Eric said, anger in his voice. “To make a new species of Shifter. It didn’t work before. Why did you think it would work now?”

“I told you. Technology has improved in the last forty years.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Reid said. “Shifters were never bred by men in the first place. They were created by the Fae, in Faerie. The Fae used genetic engineering and technology, sure, but also a good dose of magic. That, you don’t have, and you never will, thank the Goddess. That kind of magic doesn’t work outside Faerie anyway.”

“Fairies?” Kellerman laughed. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“Fae,” Reid corrected. “Or hoch alfar, as my people called them. Evil bastards. It’s interesting to me that, no matter how bad you are, you’ll never be as evil as the high Fae. You’re too petty and full of yourself.”

“My backup should be here any minute,” Kellerman said angrily. “You are the overconfident ones. You’re going down. Fae, my ass.”

“Why don’t you demonstrate, Reid?” Graham suggested, sounding eager. “Show him a little Fae magic.”

Reid shrugged. “Nah. Waste of energy.”

“Aw,” Graham said. “You’re no fun.”

Kellerman looked Reid up and down, then back at Eric, his fear not as great as it should have been. “The fact that you stand around without clothes and don’t notice proves you’re animals. No one cares what happens to you, in the long run. Remember that.”

And there were many Shifters, Eric though silently, who didn’t care what happened to humans. Humans walked a knife-edge, and they didn’t even know it.

“What do you think?” Eric asked Graham. “Burn the place to the ground before we go?”

“Sounds good to me. Lots of acetylene and gas around here. Make a nice little inferno.”

Kellerman looked at the faces surrounding him. Eric saw him realize that they weren’t joking—Eric, for one, did not intend to let this building or anything in it remain.

“You fucking bastards,” Kellerman said hotly. “This is years of work. Science. And money. My money.”

“Can we stop talking?” Graham asked. “And start torching?”

“Wait.” Iona stepped forward. “What about Eric? What did your files on Shifter research tell you was done to him?”

“I’m not a scientist,” Kellerman said testily. “I don’t have all the details. But he was part of this—he and some others. They were messing around with chemical cocktails, bioengineering, trying to see if they could turn regular Shifters into killing machines, but under their direct control. Those experiments didn’t work.” He gave Eric a small smile. “They said you were too old. Their notes said they were annoyed that they had to work on you, not your son.”

Eric went cold. Twenty years ago, Jace had been a true cub, a little over ten years old, and scared about the move to Shiftertown and taking the Collar. And these people had wanted to change Jace into something like Tiger Man, who was standing motionlessly behind Kellerman, the rage in his eyes mirroring what Eric felt.

“And then they were ordered to cease,” Kellerman went on, oblivious of his danger.

He was counting too much on his backup, who were taking their time. Eric remembered Diego’s grim enthusiasm about causing a diversion at the front gate if necessary, and he wondered if Diego was taking care of that.

“I imagined it pissed them off,” Eric said. “But not as much as it pissed me off.”

Something in Eric’s voice made Kellerman take a step back. Iona growled, with her panther’s anger, and Kellerman’s eyes widened suddenly. “Son of a bitch. You’re one of them! Ms. Duncan, you’re a Shifter.”

Instinctively, Eric stepped in front of Iona. “A fact that you’ll forget.”

“The hell I will.” Kellerman looked both disgusted and gleeful. “You’re going down, woman. You’ve been Collarless all this time, which is against about fifteen laws. Your pretty little mom is going down too, for not reporting that a Shifter got her pregnant—or is she a Shifter too? What about your sister?”

Iona tried to get around Eric. “You leave them the hell alone.”

“Control her, asshole,” Kellerman snarled.

His words were drowned by a long, low growl, one of terrible menace that rattled the broken glass all over the room.

Tiger Man had come to life, the big man’s stance radiating that he did not like Kellerman threatening Iona. At all.

Kellerman blanched. He came out of his daze and tried to get to Graham, reaching for the tranq rifle Graham still held.

Graham back-stepped out of the way, but before he could bring the rifle around to shoot Kellerman with it, Tiger, with a roar that filled the room, slammed himself into Kellerman.

“Graham!” Eric shouted.

Graham aimed the rifle, but the tiger had Kellerman pinned beneath him, Kellerman screaming as they grappled. Tiger shifted to his cat, a Bengal twice the size of a regular tiger. He’d been bred to be stronger than other Shifters—a killer, Kellerman had said.

Eric changed to his half beast and sprang into the fray—he saw Graham shove the tranq gun at Iona and shift to half wolf.

He and Graham tried to pull the tiger off Kellerman, but the tiger was far gone in rage, taking out his long life of fear, pain, and loneliness on Kellerman. Tiger fought for himself, for his dead cub, and for Iona, the first person to try to give him his freedom.

Kellerman screamed as claws ripped into him, peeling flesh from his bones and bloodying the floor. The tiger slashed in hard, rapid strokes, then dove to latch his teeth around Kellerman’s throat.

Eric heard the thunk of the tranq rifle, and Tiger Man shuddered. He let go of Kellerman, and Kellerman fell in a limp heap, his head bloody and lolling.

Iona stood over them, holding the tranq rifle ready. Eric and Graham together grabbed the tiger and hauled him off Kellerman. The tiger landed on his side, still awake, his black and orange sides heaving.

Kellerman was a mess. The smug face that Eric had often wanted to punch was now a bloody pulp, the man’s breath coming in bubbling gasps.

“I can get him to an emergency room,” Reid said.

Eric nodded and moved aside to let him, but Kellerman raised his head and glared at Eric. “Fucking Shifter bastards,” he whispered, then the life went out of his eyes, and he slumped back to the floor.

“Shit,” Graham said.

Eric studied Kellerman, the Shifter in him feeling glee, the man in him relieved that Kellerman would not now be able to expose Iona. He reached down and closed Kellerman’s eyes.

“The Goddess go with you,” he said quietly.

From outside, they heard the wail of sirens, security police, Kellerman’s backup finally arriving.