Pretty Little Lion by Suleikha Snyder
11
They’d waited until full dark, leaving the car miles away, camouflaged in the brush, and infiltrating the clinic through the HVAC ducts. An easy fit for Meghna, but not so much for Elijah, who was broad-shouldered and thick of thigh, built like a football player. Somehow, though, he’d squeezed through. Shifting various body parts with that eerie ease he’d displayed when dispatching Sasha Nichols. As expected, they’d emerged in the basement. Now they were working their way up the four-story facility. So far, so good. Which meant something was bound to go wrong.
From the blueprints she’d looked over on Elijah’s mission tablet, it looked like the research laboratories were on the ground floor. No doubt it was easier to contain and dispose of any shady experiments if you didn’t have to haul them down four flights or wait for an elevator. The hallway was quiet, cold, sterile, with a handful of reinforced doors set at about ten feet apart. Elijah stayed behind her, moving cautiously—“guarding your six,” he’d said—mindful of cameras even though they’d activated Joaquin’s Honeybee. They had approximately fifty-four minutes before the surveillance would go back online. A lot could happen in fifty-four minutes.
Like the rattle of a lab door just ahead. And a far more menacing noise than that. The growl lifted the fine hairs along the back of Meghna’s neck. An inhuman rumble that sounded like no animal call she’d ever heard. Even before the door flew open, practically banging against the wall, she knew danger was imminent. But she couldn’t have guessed what that danger would be. A terror. What some might call an abomination. Neither wolf nor bear nor cloven-hoofed beast but some sort of chimera. The patchwork monster looked like something out of a David Cronenberg or Guillermo del Toro movie. Misshapen. Nightmarish. Horned and fanged and hairy. That was as much observation as she could make before the quasi Minotaur sprang. And before an enormous golden-furred, dark-maned lion leapt to meet it.
Elijah knocked the creature back, his fully formed paw bigger than Meghna’s entire head. She’d seen all sorts of supernatural beings in her time. Not just bear shifters or werewolves. A chupacabra. A Jersey Devil. The yeti who lived up the mountain from her training camp. The mammalian science experiment Elijah was fighting was not naturally born but made. A killing machine in truth. One that knocked Elijah into the wall while letting loose a bloodcurdling howl. But the lion shifter only roared in return and shoved right back. Like a bumper knocking forcefully at a pinball.
As they locked in battle, she rolled to the side, pulling blades from her belt. She was no physical match for shape-shifters, but neither was she helpless. So when a human male emerged from the open lab behind Elijah and his opponent, she flipped and slid to meet him—and pinned him to the wall with ease. One arm across his throat. A blade at his belly, encouraging him to stay still.
Dr. Gary Schoenlein himself. The ID photos in his dossier had been accurate. He was a pink-faced man with sparse blond hair combed over his balding pate. He didn’t look like an evil genius. In her experience, evil geniuses seldom did.
“Schoenlein,” she murmured in greeting, her register one he could hear amid the shifters’ snarls. “What the fuck have you done?”
The scientist didn’t seem inclined to answer. His watery green eyes darted back and forth behind the fogged frames of his glasses. He huffed out a sour breath that hit her nose like a slap. So she repeated the question with a bit of power behind it. The apsara’s seductive thrall.
Schoenlein fell under the spell quickly. His eyes glazed over dreamily and his thin lips curved into an eager smile before opening to do her bidding. “Everything,” he told her, pride infusing the word. “I’ve created a miracle.” She dragged him, unresisting, inside the laboratory—away from the fight, which Elijah seemed to have well in hand. Or paw, as it were. It was immediately clear where the “miracle” had come from. A huge cage that spanned the back half of the space. A quick assessment revealed a bed but also a pile of hay and other foliage on the floor. And some sort of toilet set up in one corner. It was a terrible existence for any living being. A jail cell in the name of science and progress and war.
“Tell me,” she urged Schoenlein as she held him immobile and enchanted. “Tell me all about your miracle. Was that berserker out there just a human once? I want to know how brilliant you are.”
“The American military thought they’d perfected shape-shifter engineering. Petty fools. They’re just one country out of many. Russia. China. So many superpowers are cashing in,” crowed the researcher. Their very own Dr. Frankenstein. “Not only have I copied their formula, but I’ve enhanced it. Our soldiers will be unstoppable.”
“Our?” she repeated.
“Aston would like to take sole credit.” Schoenlein sniffed derisively. “He’s nothing more than a thug in a shiny suit. I did the work. I produced results.”
You are an officious asshole, Meghna thought but didn’t say aloud. “Like the shifter in the hallway?” she prompted instead. “Is that one of your soldiers?”
He struggled a little in her grip, craning his neck to peer over her shoulder at the yawning doorway, where signs of obvious struggle could still be heard…and then went suddenly silent. A few seconds later, a blood-streaked and stark-naked Elijah appeared on the threshold. He was dragging his dead opponent by the scruff. “Was that one of your soldiers?” he corrected gruffly as he tossed the body into the room. Dr. Schoenlein yelped, his face reddening and limbs flailing.
“Answer him.” Meghna concentrated, expanding her power, calming him, reeling him back in. She kept one arm across his neck as she freed the pouch on her utility belt and tossed it to Elijah so he could get dressed. “Answer us both.”
“No,” Schoenlein said, gaze focusing on her face once more. “An early prototype. A failure. Our success rate with the previous iterations of the serum was dismal. But you can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs.”
These were living, breathing beings—not eggs, for fuck’s sake. Meghna swallowed her disgust and continued pressing the man. Fairly crooning her next question. “So you’ve finally perfected this serum?”
Schoenlein beamed. “Indeed. It meets Mr. Aston’s specifications and is ready for mass production. I’ve spoken with his liaison, and they should be receiving a case of the first successful batch any day now.”
Meghna’s blood chilled at the implication. And she made the logic leaps easily. The upcoming auction. It wasn’t for a weapon. It was for this. Mirko was going to sell a serum that could transform humans into shape-shifters to the highest bidder. “Are you sure you sent him all of it?” she asked. “Do you have any more here or at another facility?”
“No!” The scrawny human shook his head, a hint of fear overlaying the glaze of his eyes. “No further batches will be produced here. It’s not secure enough. I’ve even forwarded the formula to Mr. Aston’s people.”
She couldn’t waste time savoring the irony of Schoenlein acknowledging his clinic wasn’t secure. “You won’t remember this conversation,” she said softly. “You won’t know we were ever here.”
The man sank back, dazzled and dizzied, and slid down along the wall until he hit the floor with a thump. Elijah’s reaction fell more on the side of alarmed and appalled. And a thin pair of track pants did nothing to mitigate his bare brawn. He looked glorious and dangerous, skin glistening with sweat and blood. “Did you do that to me? ‘Charm’ me?” he spat the word like a curse. “Give me a little of the ol’ Jedi mind trick?”
Meghna’s skin burned with the implication. “The trick was you,” she reminded. “Sent to my bed for your mission.”
He flinched. They were already experts at causing each other pain. Just as they’d expertly given each other pleasure. “Meg…”
“Look at me.” She cut him off with a slash of her hand, gesturing across her body. “Do you think I have to force anyone to want this?” It wasn’t an egotistical assertion. Just a fact. He hid his teeth and claws. Her weapon was always on display. Her shining hair, her flawless skin, the breasts and hips she’d inherited from that woman she could barely call a mother. Her face. Her annoyingly beautiful face. It had given her powers long before she was told she had supernatural ones.
“No. You’re sodding gorgeous.” A growl tore from Elijah’s throat. His eyes flashed gold…like they had two nights ago in the hotel’s hall closet. When he’d stolen her breath and her sense. No one had forced her to want him either. But he’d never believe that. Not now that he knew her currency was lies. He exhaled loudly, grabbing the back of his head and a handful of locs in frustration. “I still want you now. What sort of fool does that make me?”
The same kind of fool she was. Forgetting she had a job to do. Wasting time on personal dramas instead of immediately pursuing the lead they’d been given. Standing here craving his hands on her, remembering the soft rasp of his beard stubble between her thighs. Many men in her life had told her she was gorgeous. Elijah had made her feel it.
Meghna choked down vulnerability she couldn’t afford. She let the charm Elijah had insulted spread across her skin like armor. Not enough to affect him. Just enough to protect her. “I won’t apologize for what I am,” she said. “Apsaras were the original influencers. We changed the course of history. Started and stopped wars. Put kings on the throne. Created dynasties.”
His brows quirked with amusement. “Is that what you’re about then? Creating dynasties?”
“No,” she assured. “I’m more into ending them. But right now, we need to go after Aston. Stop the auction and whatever else he has planned. Your evaluation of my supernatural abilities and interrogation of my career goals can wait. Nothing else matters except the job.”
“The job. Right. Can’t let anything get in the way of the bottom line.” He huffed, his frustration obvious. At her? At himself? The circumstances? She couldn’t let herself wonder. Couldn’t care. Not right now.
“What would you tell your operatives?” she asked coolly. “To pursue a potential asset or to address their personal shit on company time? What should the priority be?”
To her surprise, Elijah found the questions hilarious instead of needling. “You’ve met my operatives, love. They multitask.” He roared with laughter, every bit the lion, as he called back to their bedsport of that morning. When she’d been equal parts distracted and disarmed as he moved inside her.
And the gorgeous sound of his amusement reverberated through her body, echoed to her bones, setting every nerve alight. Reminding her why she’d multitasked, nearly compromising everything for this man. Why she wanted to do it again and again.
* * *
He’d spent months studying her—stalking her, really—and two glorious days in her bed. And he had no idea who she really was. That much was crystal clear as they left Dr. Schoenlein napping in his locked laboratory and quickly checked the rest of the doors. All locked with keypad access. All easily unlocked, thanks to a digital unscrambler. Only the last was occupied, by a man who didn’t even have the chance to reach for the gun he wore at his hip.
Elijah watched Meghna clean the blood from her stiletto blade in quick, efficient movements before tossing the scrap of cloth away. As easily as she’d discarded the men in her path. Charming one. Stabbing the other. The slender blade went back into the knot of her hair, and it was only then that she acknowledged he’d been staring.
“Draupadi, the cursed queen of the Mahabharata, swore she wouldn’t tie up her hair again until she could wash it in the blood of her enemies,” she said, dusting her palms off on her black pants. “I think about that every time I use my pins. Not particularly sanitary as vows go, don’t you think?”
“Does being sanitary really matter in times of war? When all you want is revenge?” He shrugged. “She made her promise and spoke it into being, didn’t she? There’s power in blood. And there’s power in hair. My mum taught me that—that cutting it lets the weakness in. Like Samson in the Bible.”
Meghna cocked her head, a hint of a smile playing at her lips. Lips that had shilled high-end makeup on billboards all around New York City for those lucky sods who could still afford it. “Are you afraid I’m your Delilah, Elijah?”
Oh, and wasn’t that a loaded question. Her eyes were liquid and dark with knowing. He could imagine her tying him to a chair like in the song. Cutting his locs and drawing “hallelujah” from his lips. “Hallelujah” and “fuck you” and “damn me to hell.” He could imagine it…but that didn’t mean he believed it or feared it would come true. “I’m afraid of a lot of things, love, but not that,” he assured before pivoting and peering down the corridor.
Elijah’s eyes sharpened with his natural night vision. The clinic was still dark. Eerily silent. It wouldn’t remain so for long. He had no doubt they’d tripped an alarm somewhere or landed on some security footage despite Joaquin’s looper. Or maybe Schoenlein had woken up from his impromptu nap and set loose more hounds. They couldn’t afford to linger. Elijah didn’t want to linger, knowing what they did now. That it wasn’t a bioweapon Aston’s cabal was shopping but a bio serum. One of the fruits of which lay rapidly cooling at Meghna’s feet. Distracted, Elijah hadn’t caught his scent. But now that he was dead, the man’s supernatural status was obvious. Feathers had begun to sprout from the back of his head. Now they were tinged with red from the fatal wound in his eardrum. Meg had drawn far less blood than Lije’s average kill. But she’d still drawn blood. Which meant they had to go. Now.
They wordlessly moved the dead shifter’s body back inside the lab from which he’d come and conducted a quick sweep, turning up another huge cage but little else. Elijah swallowed bile and repressed a shudder. Americans liked to pretend they were only recently in the business of putting people in cages, but a look at history proved differently. Like the circuses and traveling shows that had hawked looks at kidnapped Africans and people with disabilities. Like chattel slavery, the effects of which still impacted America and the Caribbean today. People who were in any way different had always, always been deprived of dignity and freedom.
Elijah liked to think that Third Shift was changing the world little by little…but moments like this made him wonder if they’d made any difference at all. He exited the room without looking closely at the lab benches or searching any of the file cabinets—suddenly needing nothing more than to put distance between himself and the metal bars and the narrow cot within them. He moved forward, up the hallway, trusting that Meghna would follow. And she did, her footsteps light and sure. Almost as if she were a cat shifter, too. Maybe a cat burglar. His chest rumbled with a much-needed laugh that he didn’t dare let escape. Not until they’d escaped at least. They still had three floors of the clinic to clear—and less than forty minutes in which to accomplish that—and then a hike to where they’d stashed the car.
Their mental countdown clocks ticked away as they took to the stairwells. He’d recovered his shoes, so the flights weren’t as belabored as they could’ve been, but the aches and pains that had come from fighting the Minotaur-like hybrid didn’t make it easy. By his estimation, he’d cracked at least two ribs, sprained his shoulder, and pulled a leg muscle that corresponded to his leonine form’s hindquarters. Nothing that wouldn’t heal swiftly, nothing to really complain about, but Lije wasn’t getting any younger and pain was a reminder.
Most people didn’t retire from black ops. They left it toes up. Elijah had no desire to cark it for his country, especially after surviving multiple deployments with coalition forces in the Gulf, but he knew it was a likelihood. Each and every mission could be his last. So he took care as he and Meghna worked their way from the fourth floor down to the third and then the second. Senses on high alert. Listening, watching, feeling for anything that might be wrong. They encountered no more engineered shifters. No other researchers working late on the weekend. It was quiet. Almost too quiet.
The reason for that became obvious when they retraced their steps to their entry point in the basement and came face-to-face with another of Schoenlein’s prototypes. The shifter had scales like a snake or a lizard, the slitted pupils of a reptile as well, but bat-like wings sprouted from his shoulder blades. He didn’t run toward them so much as flutter and slither. “Intruders!” he hissed like a cartoon villain. “How dare you hurt the doctor?”
“He’s not hurt,” Meghna murmured, and Elijah recognized the lulling quality of her voice from the magic she’d worked on Schoenlein. “He’s just asleep. As you should be. It’s so late. Aren’t you tired?”
The power wasn’t just her voice, though. She wasn’t simply singing a siren’s song. As he repositioned himself to better cover her, Elijah noticed a subtle glow emanating from her skin. Likely invisible to human eyes or shifters with other things to worry about. There was something suddenly otherworldly about her. She looked more beautiful, ethereal, like one of the elves from Lord of the Rings. He could very well believe she’d come from the heavens. And if their new friend wasn’t amenable to enchantment, she would swiftly consign him to hell.
Fortunately for all of them, the reptilian shifter was nodding along to Meghna’s observations. As if, yes, it was indeed incredibly late and he’d far rather be tucked away in bed instead of confronting them in front of the air ducts. She began humming. A haunting melody Lije couldn’t identify. All he knew was that it sent uncomfortable shivers down his spine. And either it or Meghna’s powers further transfixed their opponent. He swayed on his feet for a few seconds before passing out.
Meghna waited a few seconds and then cautiously prodded him with one boot. When he didn’t move, she turned to Elijah. “It was a snake-charming song from a Bollywood movie.” Her preternatural apsara glow dimmed as she shrugged ruefully. “I’ve always wanted to know if it would work.”
Elijah didn’t know whether to laugh or shake her for taking the risk. “And did it?” he asked instead of either of those options.
She hopped over the prone supe and scrambled up the wall to the ventilation duct, as nimble as a teenage gymnast. And then she glanced back and gave Elijah a wink. “You’ll just have to live with the mystery, Mr. Richter.”