Graham"s hand tightened on the rifle. "Careful, Iona. Why did you bring him in here anyway?"
"Because I think he can help break the bonds that hold Ca.s.sidy. Have you noticed how strong he is? He"s like a super Shifter."
"Come over here," Eric told the tiger, who still looked at Amanda. "Stay sane, or Graham gives you two shots. Easier on me if you"re asleep."
The tiger man nodded. He came forward slowly, moving like a Shifter trying not to startle anyone. His golden-eyed gaze remained on Amanda, the sorrow on his face heartbreaking.
Ca.s.sidy watched him come, expression guarded, but she was letting him. Iona followed, her fingertips on her lips, the compa.s.sion in her warring with her protectiveness. Eric knew that as much as Iona felt sorry for the tiger, if Tiger made one wrong move toward Amanda or Ca.s.s, Iona would be on him, probably even faster than Eric was.
Tiger Man reached the table, stretched out one blunt finger, and touched Amanda"s downy hair. He swallowed, his eyes softening.
"Can you break these?" Eric asked, touching a cuff.
The tiger studied them, then he hooked his fingers under the metal and tore upward. Ca.s.sidy cried out in pain, then the cuff broke from its bolts and clanked to the floor. Ca.s.sidy s.n.a.t.c.hed her hand away and shook it hard.
"Thank you," she breathed.
She clenched her teeth while the tiger broke the other cuff, then the ones on her ankles. Ca.s.sidy sat up, cradling Amanda, anger making her strong.
Eric put his arms around Ca.s.sidy again, lending whatever strength he could, then he kissed her, took up the equipment Xavier had given him, and started taking photos of the room.
Both Iona and the tiger watched, mystified, as Eric hooked the camera to the sat phone the way Xavier had shown him and dialed the number.
"Xav," he said when the man answered. "Send these to Reid and tell him to get his dokk alfar a.s.s out here."
"Xavier"s there?" Ca.s.sidy asked, leaping down from the table. "Where"s Diego?"
Iona picked up one of the phones she must have stolen from the researchers, smiled when she got a signal, and handed it to her. Ca.s.sidy punched in a number with one thumb and eagerly lifted the phone to her ear.
Eric heard Diego"s voice loud and clear. "Who is this?"
"Diego?" Ca.s.sidy said.
"Ca.s.sidy." His voice flooded with relief. "f.u.c.k." He flowed into a long string of Spanish, while Ca.s.sidy laughed, tears in her eyes.
Then air displaced with a little bang, and Stuart Reid stood in the room. Iona let out a startled scream, and the tiger snarled.
Iona blew out her breath, hand on her heart. "I didn"t know he could do that. How did he do that?"
"Diego?" Ca.s.sidy yelled into the phone. "I"m coming home. With Amanda. You"ll be there, right?"
"I"m on my way, amorcita," Diego said and clicked off.
Reid studied the roomful of Shifters, all naked except Ca.s.sidy in her hospital gown. His dark Fae eyes narrowed at the sight of the tiger. "Is that a Shifter?"
"Long story," Eric said. "Time to go."
"I can"t take you all at once," Reid said. "One at a time, maybe two with the kid."
"Start with Ca.s.sidy and Amanda, then. Make sure they"re okay and get back here."
Reid went to Ca.s.sidy and put his slender arms around her, touching Amanda as well. "This place gives me the creeps."
Eric grunted a laugh. "This from a man who can make iron bars turn to raining bullets."
"That"s natural. Area Fifty-one is just weird."
He flashed a look around, then light flared, and Reid, Ca.s.sidy, and Amanda were gone.
"I hope he hurries," Graham said, while Iona and the tiger stared at the empty s.p.a.ce in amazement.
"Before he does," Eric said, "I want to find out everything I can about this place and exactly what they"re doing here. You." Eric walked to the tiger, feeling his strength return, the pain nearly gone. "You are going to tell me everything you know, starting from the moment you first were aware of being here, and leaving nothing out."
Iona dressed herself while Tiger Man leaned against the table Ca.s.sidy had vacated and told his story.
There wasn"t much to it, but Iona listened in dismay and sympathy. Tiger Man had lived in his cage most of his life, let out only when humans wanted to watch him shift or run around, or when they carried him off to other rooms to put needles and probes in him. They"d lock him into gla.s.s-windowed rooms sometimes to watch what he"d do.
Tiger remembered only bits and pieces of his life, which, if Iona judged aright, was about forty years. He remembered his Transition, the pain of it, during which time they"d given him a female they"d made for him to mate with.
He remembered only flashes of that, then they showed him the cub she"d brought forth, but the female had died having it, they"d said. The tiger had touched the cub only once before it was taken away from him. Later, when he"d asked, a human had told him that the cub had died.
There had been more Shifters here, Tiger said. When he"d been young, the facility had been full of people working-the place had teemed with them. What they"d meant to accomplish, he didn"t know. He"d stopped wondering the why of things a long time ago.
For the last about ten years, the place had been quiet. Most of the humans had gone away, the bodies of the dead Shifters gone, and the tiger had been left alone. Fed and watered, and that was it.
Then, about six months ago, some humans had come back and started poking at him again. Tiger hadn"t seen any other Shifters, but he"d been taken from time to time to the top floor and put through different scanners, tranqed, scanned, and probed again.
When Tiger finished his story, Iona folded her arms, shivering. Even Graham was quiet, his usual bl.u.s.ter replaced by angry sympathy. Eric watched Tiger with a stillness Iona had come to know masked deep rage.
"If he"s about forty," Iona said, "then that means humans were doing the experiments before the existence of Shifters was revealed. The Shifters were outed only a little over twenty years ago."
"I thought of that," Eric said grimly. "The experiments they did on me weren"t here, but in a similar place. The humans that studied me knew nothing about us, were trying to figure out what Shifters could do."
"So a different set of scientists?" Graham asked. "Doing G.o.ddess knows what?"
"The people here were trying to make their own Shifters," Iona said. "But they didn"t work. I bet when the Shifters started dying, not being viable, the program got its funding cut."
"And started back up again?" Eric looked around at the old room. "This doesn"t look like a refurbished facility."
Iona shrugged. "Maybe whoever started it again wasn"t forthcoming about exactly what he was doing in here. Told the government it was for weapons or something and then went back to trying to create Shifters."
"Kellerman," Eric said.
"I was just thinking that," Graham said. "He"s up to something, that"s for certain. I"m betting even if he didn"t do this himself, he knows who did. He d.a.m.n well knew my wolves had gone missing and why."
"How about if we ask him?" Eric said, rage making his eyes hard green. "We have phones."
Iona broke in. "If you tell him you"ve found this place, won"t he just call more guards out here to raid the building?"
"Possibly," Graham said. "I was thinking about using a sneakier method. Make him need to come out here and see for himself."
"How are you going to do that?" Iona asked in puzzlement.
"Give me the sat phone, and I"ll show you."
Eric handed over the big phone. Graham took it and started punching in numbers. After a few seconds of ringing, Iona heard a sleepy human female voice on the other end say, "h.e.l.lo?"
"Misty. Sweetheart. This is Graham. I need you to do something for me. Call Kellerman-no, I don"t care if it"s the middle of the night-and tell him you heard me saying something about checking out his place in Area Fifty-one. Yep, I said Area Fifty-one. Tell him you"re not sure, but I seemed excited about something. Got it? Thank you, sweetie. Drinks are on me."
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.
"h.e.l.lo," 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.