Pretty Little Lion by Suleikha Snyder

29

Dead. Mirko’s cronies were all dead. Men she’d done shots with. Whose pinches and gropes she’d batted away. But not just that. They hadn’t all been evil. Rick Keegan and her uncle went back decades in the film industry. She’d helped Dima Popov’s teenage daughter find a modeling agent. Questionable men, amoral certainly, but they hadn’t deserved to end like this. Choking, falling, burning from the inside out, being torn to pieces by machine-gun fire, bodies scattered across a ballroom in upstate New York. She’d long considered herself an arbiter of who lived and who died. This…this was completely out of her control.

Stop it. Pull yourself together.Meghna had to shake free of the death trap. She had to lock away the images, the thoughts, the sickness in her stomach. Just like the doors that had locked behind her and Elijah. She had to remember who she’d been before this week. Meghna Saxena-Saunders, ruthless assassin, cold-as-ice deep-cover operative. The woman who didn’t care and didn’t second-guess herself. It was that woman she needed now. So she could pursue Mirko Aston and end him. But her brain was slow to get the message. Her limbs too. She was still an automaton, pulled along by Elijah’s firm grip.

They were heading down a center hallway at a clip, as if that would actually help if the chemical gas could hurt them. Had Mirko assumed it would? Had he gotten off thinking of her writhing on that floor in agony? She’d known when she took the assignment that Mirko was the lowest of the low. That he sold weapons of war to fascists and trafficked women and supplied drugs to children. That he was involved with something even worse, even bigger. She’d never once guessed it would be this. The creation of a shape-shifter army. The mass murder of his enemies and then…then anyone and everyone else he deemed a threat. And even people who weren’t a threat. Like Chase…who’d hopefully been extracted by Grace and Finn by now.

Did it make her naive to think there was any difference between brokering evil and committing it? The entire United States of America had learned years ago that there was really no such thing as a slippery slope. That people always began as they meant to go on, but onlookers just chose to wave away the signs. Oh, he’s sexist? Surely, he can’t be racist. Oh, he’s racist too? Well, he can’t possibly be genocidal. Mirko had always been this person. He’d always had this agenda. So Meghna couldn’t forget hers. Kill him. Find Ayesha. Stop the project.

The center hallway split off into narrow corridors. Not as suffocating as the clinic duct they’d crawled through just days ago, but certainly no comfort either. If she remembered correctly from the blueprints, one corridor terminated at the building’s south side. A loading dock. The perfect place for a supervillain to park their getaway vehicle. There was also sufficient space on the flat roof for a helicopter to land, as well as a formal helipad about a half mile out. There was a fifty-fifty chance of Mirko picking that as his mode of escape.

Except… “He hates flying,” she murmured just as they hit the T intersection at the end of the hallway. Mirko had always popped some benzos and demanded blow jobs on their private plane trips. Hand jobs in first class on the two commercial flights they’d taken together. She shook out of Elijah’s protective grasp, her senses and her blood flooding back.

“Meg?” Elijah didn’t take the brush-off personally. He just keyed to her mumbled words with his supernatural hearing. “What’re you on about?”

“Right and then straight back,” she explained as she pivoted in that direction without even breaking stride. “Loading dock.”

Just like that, Elijah was off again. Without her this time. Running gracefully and quickly like the big cat he was. She appreciated that he didn’t patronize her by slowing down and waiting. That he trusted she’d keep up. In the brief time she’d known him, he’d always trusted that she’d keep up. And she’d trusted him in general—any mental protests to the contrary be damned. He’d reeled her in with one look from across the room. She’d plotted seduction, but he’d already succeeded in it. He’d made her one of his people. Even the true apsaras of old would be in awe of such a dance.

Meghna could’ve spent hours, days, months analyzing this revelation, but she didn’t have any of that time. Not with the hallway narrowing and the gray metal fire door visible ahead. Elijah hit it at full speed, throwing it open with such force that it didn’t matter if it had been locked. It fairly flew off the hinges. She burst out just minutes after him, onto one of three loading docks that jutted out to the building’s back parking lot. In time to see Aston and his crew emerge on one of the others. Fuck. A large brown van was parked equidistant between them. Because of course.

Noticing the same thing, Elijah cursed a blue streak, adding some words in Jamaican Patwah that she’d never before heard in her life. “They can’t get away,” she cried out hoarsely. “They have to pay. They have to die.”

“All of ’em?” He looked at her askance, as if to confirm her edict.

“All right,” she acknowledged. “Just Mirko.” Though she wouldn’t complain if Tavi Estrada took a few bruises with him as a parting gift.

“Then let me clear a path for you, love.” Elijah flashed her a dazzling smile. A devious smile. One morphed into lion’s teeth within seconds. Partially shifted, he leapt easily from one loading dock to the other. Like Superman taking a tall building in a single bound…and then taking down three of the burly henchmen on Mirko’s left side. He knocked them over like bowling pins, scattering them across the concrete. Leaving the pickup for her.

Meghna vaulted off the dock and landed on the lot below. The impact on her knees was no picnic, but not so bad that she couldn’t keep going. She pulled her blades from her hair as she rounded the front of the brown van. It had been parked facing outward—ever so helpful when quickly transporting murderous global terrorists to their next lair. But no one was going to be making a quick getaway. Not if she could help it.

She took out two guards in two minutes. One with a pin to the throat, the other with a jab through the heart. Mirko had only fled with a small cadre of men. Estrada not among them. At least not right now. Between her and Elijah, they made short work of their opposition. A series of bland-faced, forgettable brutes right out of one of Chase’s movies. Human men charged them, bear shifters sprang at them…and then fell. Bodies hit the concrete like meat for the butcher. It was a whirlwind of everything she’d learned in training and everything she’d learned in the field. And watching Elijah fight, out of the corner of her eye, was like watching art in progress. She’d been too disoriented to appreciate his fighting style during their last fracas. Now, she had the full picture. The way he leapt, graceful and deadly all at once. How he easily batted at bears with his claws. The sheer power of his roar. It was chilling and energizing at the same time, and it served as a soundtrack as she delivered a roundhouse kick to a gunman’s neck, slicing his carotid with the blades embedded in her shoes.

And then Mirko Aston was the only one left standing. On the opposing loading dock still. Alone. He scrambled down to the ground, so he was on equal footing with her and Elijah. A strange choice. An arrogant one.

It hadn’t even been a week since she’d last spoken to Mirko. Since she’d last endured his clammy hands on her body. Since she’d seen him up close. It felt like years. Lifetimes. As far as her odd sense of detachment was concerned, the man standing in front of them was a veritable stranger. A little red in the face. Wild-eyed. His suit, usually impeccably fit, was rumpled. Anger rolled off him in waves. Anger and…something else. Some noxious combination of triumph and desperation. Elijah could probably smell it. Meghna could only absorb the vague essence. But they didn’t have to rely on only their supernatural senses for long. Mirko made his intentions more than clear with a snarled curse and a swiftly raised weapon.

“You bitch!” he spat out, centering his gun for a kill shot, aiming just to the left of her sternum. “You thought to cheat me? To steal from me?”

No.Those had actually been unintended consequences. But “actually, I thought to kill you” probably wasn’t the wisest correction to make to a man who looked as on edge as this one. A silver briefcase sat by his right foot, discarded and momentarily forgotten after coming face-to-face with them. Elijah’s gaze flicked to the big-ticket item just as hers did. Their eyes then met in silent communication. The shape-shifter serum. It couldn’t be anything else. It was the most valuable commodity Mirko had, and he wouldn’t trust it to anyone else at this stage in the game. How convenient. Almost everything they’d come for in one tidy package.

Meghna didn’t even blink at the weapon trained on her. She affected her most bored expression in the face of his ranting, the kind that would make a great GIF for a viral meme. “I upgraded, Mirko. That’s all,” she said. “I got tired of you.”

She felt more than saw Elijah bristle beside her. The incredulous “What are you doing?” might as well have been asked aloud. But she knew her former lover. The wound to his ego didn’t make him pull the trigger; it pushed him to more bluster. Buying them time.

“Tired? Of me?” He scoffed, patting his thin blond hair with his free hand. Vain to the end. “I was the upgrade, you ignorant tramp. A way out of your petty celebrity pool to true power. But people like you…you don’t understand that, do you? You’re content to leech from your betters. To whore.”

People like you.Ah, there was the racist dog whistle. Right on cue. During their months together, he’d made no secret of how he was doing her a favor by being with her, by having her on his arm in public spaces. Never mind that, in reality, it was actually damaging to her professional and personal image. Or that Mirko’s lust for her went hand in hand with his desire to dominate people he considered less worthy. “I’ll admit to the whoring. Hell, I’ll even take pride in it,” she shot back, slowly moving to one side, bringing Mirko’s focus with her. “But who’s the leech? You’re not even pulling the strings here, are you? You’re taking your precious serum to somebody else. Somebody with ‘true power.’”

He sputtered with outrage. So busy cursing her out in Slovak that he didn’t notice Elijah edging to the left. “You’re a middleman,” she continued, sneering back at him. “A lackey. Whatever the big agenda is, do you think you’ll be a part of it? Do you think you’ll get a dose of that magic elixir?”

“I’m first in line for it!” Mirko insisted, but she saw the doubt flicker in his watery gray eyes. And in the next instant, he was loosening his grip on his gun, reaching down for the briefcase. Probably to inject himself right then and there. Prove her wrong. Grab for the power he so craved.

He would never get the chance. Elijah sprang, his shift swift and seamless. A huge tawny lion, soaring through the air, leaving tatters of clothing behind. He tackled Mirko to the concrete as easily as a house cat batting at a toy. Elijah’s massive paw fell just below Mirko’s throat. But he didn’t rip it out. No. Her beautiful lion just rocked back on his haunches and looked up at her with amber-gold eyes. Offering her the kill. She’d read somewhere once that male lions hoarded their kills, didn’t like sharing with the pride. Probably Wikipedia, which couldn’t even be trusted. But male lion shifters…they were clearly of a different sort. Elijah yielded to her. Because this was her right.

She didn’t have to be asked twice. Meghna whipped one blade from her hair and fell into a crouch. And then she leaned in close. Until she could count the streaks in Mirko’s blown-wide pupils and feel his frantic, fetid breath fanning her cheek. Had Ayesha felt it, too? Was this despicable face the last thing she’d seen? “Where is she, you bastard?” She hissed the question, a deadly whisper, though Elijah could no doubt hear it. “Where do you send the women you’re done with?”

Mirko’s bloodied lips cracked open. A smile. A smirk. He forced out just one winded word. “Hell.”

Of course.And he would take the truth to the same fiery place. Meghna zeroed in on the organ that had allowed him to underestimate her. That had caused her so much grief. That defied her now. No, not his dick. That was too simple, too puerile. She jabbed the stiletto straight through Mirko’s eardrum and right into his brain. The blood was minimal, the death almost instantaneous. His body took a few seconds to catch up, jerking on the concrete before it finally went still. A dark stain spread across his tailored trousers as his bladder let go. Not the first time she’d seen that happen. She’d experienced enough blood and piss and shit, enough death rattles, for two lifetimes. And this probably wouldn’t be the last.

“Meg?” Elijah’s voice was a gentle prompt near her ear. He’d shifted just enough to use his human vocal cords. He was mostly near-black mane and golden fur. Still a massive cat, his weight comforting against her side. Just as well, because they’d forgotten to bring pants this time.

“American pants or British pants?”

“I think you know where I stand on British pants.”

She clapped one hand over her mouth to stifle the ill-timed laugh, used the other to retrieve her blade before she scrambled back from Mirko Aston’s corpse. “I’m all right,” she insisted, even though it wasn’t entirely true. “I’m okay. We should get out of here.” Back to the clearing where the chopper had dropped them off. And then back to New York City, to Third Shift HQ. Back to the drawing board as far as Ayesha’s whereabouts were concerned. She wiped her stiletto off on Mirko’s trousers and then stood, dusting off her clothes and her hands.

The sun was no longer high in the sky, but a shadow still fell across them. A shadow…and a pair of gray sweatpants. They landed on Elijah’s flanks as Tavi Estrada strolled up like he was arriving late to a garden party and not a scene of carnage. “The compound is clear,” he said, brown eyes cool and unconcerned, voice as chilled as a glass of good champagne. “Finian and the good doctor got the hostage out. He’ll live to make a dozen more mindless blockbusters.”

Chase was safe. Oh, thank god. Meghna allowed herself one small sigh of relief. If she hadn’t seen Mirko in days…she hadn’t seen her ex-husband in months. And she couldn’t afford to see him now, here, lest he connect her to his kidnapping. But he was okay. That was the most important thing.

Elijah shifted back in the moments it took her to process Chase’s fate. He tugged on the sweats with no self-consciousness whatsoever—not that he had anything to be self-conscious about, hewn like a work of art as he was. His expression was thunderous. “And just where were you, Estrada?” he demanded. “Keeping those hands clean? Doing your taxes? Watching a little telly? We didn’t let you go so you could do absolute fuck-all.”

“You have your missions, I have mine,” the vampire said with a shrug. He grinned, snatching up the silver briefcase from where it still lay by Mirko’s side. “I’m sorry. I have a prior engagement.” And with a blur of movement, a burst of vampiric super speed, he was across the parking lot. Gone. With the shape-shifter serum.

They needed to go after him. Even if he posed no immediate threat, he couldn’t just run off with something so valuable. “Well, shit.” Meghna sighed wearily, rolling her head and cracking her neck. “We should’ve seen that coming.” Understatement of the year, but it still felt necessary to say. To own their glaring mistake.

“Once a backstabbing arsehole, always a backstabbing arsehole.” Elijah snorted, shaking out his arms as he prepared to give chase. “Finn had his number all right.”

And then the McCammon Lodge exploded behind them. Around them. On top of them. They should’ve seen that coming, too. It was Meghna’s last thought before she felt the sharp prick of a needle in her neck—Dart? Hypodermic?—and she passed out cold.

* * *

They were three klicks from the lodge, nearly to where they’d left the car, when the cacophonous boom shattered the mid-evening quiet and red-orange flames and smoke rose up in the distance behind them. Finn stumbled in surprise, nearly dropping Chase Saunders, heartthrob extraordinaire, in an inelegant heap on the ground. Grace reached out to steady them, even as dread crawled up her spine and out her throat in a sharp scream. It all happened in seconds, and then they were swiftly pivoting to stare back at the inferno. The actor’s head lolled against Finn’s shoulder, but he was still out like a light. If they were lucky, Chase would write this entire kidnapping escapade off as some kind of post-gunshot fever dream.

Grace couldn’t do the same. Because this was the job she’d signed up for. The one she’d long ago chosen over full-time medicine. Sometimes it bled, and sometimes it burned. Like the old, dusty resort that might still have people in it. Her skin prickled. First do no harm, right? “Should we go back?”

“No, love.” Finn didn’t hesitate. “You know the protocol. We keep moving forward. Straight on.”

Because that was the life he’d signed up for. A vampire who watched the decades fly by and kept going. How many fires had he walked away from? How many partners had he buried? She had some inkling, but she would never know all of it. Of course, they also had to get Chase to safety and back under round-the-clock medical care. That was the priority, regardless of Finn’s past choices or her present ones.

Grace set her fingers to the pale, clammy skin of Chase’s throat. His pulse was weak but there. His chest moved with regularity under the loose drape of Finn’s arm, indicating that his lungs were in working order. And his wound hadn’t reopened. He was hanging in there despite his ordeal. But there was no guarantee that he’d be stable for long. She tapped her earpiece and reactivated her wrist comm. “We’ll need a pickup. Just north of our drop-off.” The car had never been an option for their return trip and had probably already been removed by someone from the 3S motor pool. “The lodge is a literal hot zone,” she added, though HQ had likely already registered the blast. “Possible casualties. I assume you’re already en route.”

“Affirmative.” Joaquin’s voice crackled in her ear. “Jack’s got the helo headed your way. Sit tight. Stand tight. Whatever you’re doing, make it tight.”

“I’m not even touching that one. It’s too easy.” Finn laughed, hefting Chase more securely in his arms.

“Your restraint is noted,” Jackson interjected on the same channel. “ETA five minutes. Keep your eyes on the sky. I’ve got a cranky lawyer at HQ swearing to sue me if I don’t get you two back in one piece.”

Nate. Sweet, steady, gentlemanly Nate. Grace met Finn’s gaze, and the personal feelings they’d banked for the op blazed up in that space between them. “Well, we don’t want any lawsuits now, do we?” she murmured before muting her comm once more.

“Wouldn’t be the first time someone went to court over me,” Finn said in that outrageous way of his, eyebrows doing double time.

Chase shifted then, a small moan escaping his lips. But he stayed mercifully, conveniently unconscious. Finn frowned down at his charge. “Hush,” he chided. “No one asked you.” If he was tired of hauling the actor around, he gave no indication of it.

The two men were as different as the proverbial night and day—and not just because only one was conscious and the other was the only one technically human. Or because Chase was blond and Finn a brunet. Chase was adored by millions. He craved the spotlight. Finn, for all his flirtation, lived in the shadows. They were both objectively beautiful, but it was only Finn’s face that moved her and irritated her in turns. She’d put up a decent resistance to his charms…until she didn’t. Her restraint could also be noted.

Nate’s arrival in the picture had changed everything for them. Pushed them together when, by all logic, he should’ve moved them further apart. Grace had watched enough TV shows to know how this went. The Black woman sidekick never got her happily-ever-after. The two white men got all the fans. But Nate was Jewish and Finian was a vampire, and reality was stranger than fiction.

The chopper landing, though eerily quiet as far as helos went, jerked her from her thoughts. She hadn’t kept her eye on the sky, and it had come to ground without her vigilance. Grace watched as JP ran a gurney out to scoop up Chase and secure him. His movements were quick, efficient. And his wolf-shifter strength meant that he could practically carry the entire contraption, Chase and all, back onto the Black Hawk with little effort. The newest Third Shift operative was acclimating well, for all that he’d been on the run from mobsters and law enforcement alike just last month. He’d had some training as a medic while in Afghanistan, and that meant Grace wasn’t the only one on staff who could hand out bandages and insert IVs.

“Well, that’s a relief.” Finn sighed, making a show of shaking out his limbs. “I do love holding a handsome man, but I prefer them awake.”

“Nate’s probably staying up for us,” she said with a smile. She could picture him sitting up in a tangle of black silk sheets, his reading glasses perched on his nose and a tablet full of casework propped on his knee. Funny how that felt familiar already. Comfortable. Even though it was new.

She followed Finn to the helicopter and accepted his hand for the step up into the hold. And then she held onto it for a few extra seconds. Grace had always thought medicine was her calling. Medicine. Surgery. Performing miracles in the OR. But no. She understood the truth now. She’d made the right choice in deciding to quit that work and embrace Third Shift full-time. Her calling was saving lives in general. And saving loves.