Dragon Born 1: The Shifter's Hoard Read online

  The light washed over her, and when it faded, her cat ears were back.

  And she had a curly, swinging tail sticking from just above her ass, swishing around her thighs.

  No wonder she wore such a short skirt.

  “I’m a shifter,” Carli said, brushing a hand over one of her ears to smooth it out against her dark hair. “And unless I’m completely off base, Derek, I think you are, too.”

  Chapter 4

  “Holy shit,” I whispered, staring at Carli. “You’re a catgirl.”

  The change in Carli was immediate and extreme.

  “What!? I am not a catgirl!” She grabbed her tail with one hand, crossing the distance between herself and me in three big, angry steps. “Are you fucking kidding me?”

  I threw my hands in the air to defend myself and took a step backward. “What? What’s the big deal!? You’ve got cat ears and a cat tail, and you’re a girl. Hence, catgirl!”

  “I am not a cat shifter!” The words came out as a feral growl, torn from Carli’s throat.

  Suddenly, she seemed less like a cat than an angry tigress.

  “How dare you accuse me of being something so banal!” she accused.

  “Trust me, it’s pretty special from where I’m sitting,” I said mildly. “You’re the first catgirl I’ve ever seen in person.”

  Carli narrowed her eyes.

  “I am a Raiju shifter,” she said, sounding offended. “It’s very different, okay!”

  “Okay, okay,” I said, saying whatever I needed to say to calm her down. “That’s cool. You’re a Raiju shifter. That’s awesome, Carli. What’s a Raiju?”

  She stared at me as if I were a toddler. “You don’t know about the Raiju?”

  I tapped the side of my head, trying to still her rage. “Carli, normie brain, remember? You jingle your keys at me, everything just falls out of the back of my head?”

  That got through to her.

  “Ah, whatever,” she said, swatting an imaginary fly out of the air. “The Raiju are creatures from legend, Derek. Thunder beasts, the pets of the Thunder god from ancient mythology. They’re extremely powerful and dangerous.”

  “I see,” I said with a nod. “And they’re feline as well, I’m assuming?”

  Carli pursed her pouty lips.

  “You assume correctly,” she said in an icy tone. “But that does not make me a catgirl!”

  “Say no more,” I said with a laugh, more than happy to let her win whatever debate she felt like fighting. “And you think I’m one of these Raiju, too?”

  She cocked her head to the side. “You? Oh no, of course not. You’re not a Raiju shifter—but you’re definitely something legendary. All that remains is to see what, exactly.”

  That sounded like a whole lot of trouble. The kind of trouble I didn’t want to bother myself with.

  “Look, this all sounds very interesting,” I said, glancing out the big windows of the warehouse. “But I’ve had a really, really long night. As I said, my Mom is sick and she’s waiting on this medicine at home. I should really start heading back to her condo—”

  Carli held a finger in front of my face. “We had a deal,” she purred, gesturing at the shelf. “Help me pull, Derek.”

  I guess we did have a deal, at that. I took my position on one side of the shelving unit and pushed, Carli leaning against it right next to me. The thing refused to give for a long moment, then something shifted, and it began to move across the concrete floor, inch by inch. I had to really put my back into it.

  As I pushed, I focused my thoughts. I’d learned so much over the last few hours that I felt kind of dizzy—or maybe that was the pushing. Trolls were real. Catgirls (Raiju shifters, I could almost hear Carli screaming in my head) were real, too. There was a whole world outside of the ordinary city I thought I knew, and everyone involved in it was tuned into some program Carli called ‘hunterwave’. I’d heard it in Soojin’s apothecary shop, which meant the gorgeous mature shopkeeper was in on all this fairy tale stuff. And Soojin said she knew my Mom way back when—that the two of them were practically best friends.

  Carli knows my Mom, too, I thought, gritting my teeth as I helped her shove the shelf another few feet. It seems like all of these hunter people know her. Or they talk about her like they know her…

  The implication was clear. My Mom was caught up in all this, too. Had been for years.

  Was she one of these shifters, like Carli?

  Was Soojin?

  Suddenly, I realized that the wolf-ear hat I’d seen her wearing in the back room might not have been a hat after all.

  The medicine in my pocket seemed a little less important than it had been a couple of hours ago.

  Mom had been keeping a secret from me all my life—a big fucking secret.

  Almost as big as who my real father was.

  Feeling like I had a stone in my stomach, I cleared my throat and spoke. “You don’t know who my father is, do you?” I asked Carli, both hoping she did and she didn’t.

  I never knew my father. Mom told me he died when I was just a baby, though of course I found myself wondering if that was the real story. Maybe he’d been a shifter too—or maybe a troll. Shit, wouldn’t that be a weird thing to discover. Either way, she’d never been what you’d call liberal with the details. “He’s dead, sweetheart,” she’d tell me whenever I got a wild hair about prying into my family line. “And nothing on Earth can bring him back. I’m so sorry, Derek.”

  Carli gave a start and turned from the shelf, a confused look on her face. “Your dad? No, I don’t know anything about him—why do you ask?”

  I shrugged. “You seem to know everything else about me. I figured it was worth asking.”

  A strange look stole over Carli’s features. “You don’t know who your dad is?”

  “He died when I was little,” I told the shifter. “I never got to know him. I thought—well, all of you seem to know a shit load more about my mother than I do. Maybe you all know who my dad is, too. Maybe he’s one of you crazy fairy tale people!”

  Sympathy filled Carli’s face—which I hated. “I’m sorry, Derek,” she said, sounding like she meant it. “I keep forgetting that this is a lot to go through for a normie.”

  I turned away, concentrating on the shelf. “Yeah, well, according to you, I might not be a normie at all,” I grunted. “So let’s not be so quick to judge, shall we?”

  Together, the two of us got the shelf all the way to the opposite corner.

  As soon as I stepped away to see the now revealed section of wall, I realized it was different from the rest of the warehouse. Either it had been put here after the rest of the place, as a kind of remodel, or it was way older than the rest of the building.

  I ran the backs of my knuckles along the surface and heard a strangely hollow sound when I knocked.

  Carli moved right to it like she knew exactly what she was doing.

  “Alright, what’s the damned combination?” She put one of her cat’s ears to the wall, as if she were listening for rats somewhere in the foundation. “I always get normie brain at this part. Is it one knock at the beginning, or two?”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I said.

  Carli glanced back over her shoulder and grinned. “Of course not,” she said breezily. “But don’t worry, you will.”

  After a little experimentation, Carli remembered. She tapped once against the different section of wall, then a quick flurry of three taps. After doing it twice, she tapped twice with one hand, then twice with the other, doing it with a slower, deliberate kind of motion. Then she stood back from the wall with a grin.

  “There we go!” she said, rubbing her hands together. “Get ready for the magic!”

  At first, nothing happened—then the section of wall moved upward, as smoothly and silently as if it had been greased.

  First trolls and catgirls, now secret passages in old warehouses, I thought, watching as a faint smattering of plaster dust fluttered to the c
oncrete floor. I’m starting to feel like I ought to dust off my old Hardy Boys novels—and maybe throw in Lord of the Rings on top of that…

  Behind the wall was a steep set of stairs leading almost directly underground.

  Carli leaned inside and tapped a switch on the side, lighting a series of bulbs suspended by a thin wire along the ceiling.

  The stairs led down and down, further than I dared guess.

  “What the hell is this place?” I asked, peering down the stairs.

  “My hideout,” Carli said with pleasure. “I’m a private investigator. Well, I was a private investigator, anyway, until some very not nice people found out what I really am.”

  “A Raiju shifter,” I whispered.

  Carli nodded. “Because I’m legendary, people want to hunt me down,” she said, sounding more serious than I’d heard from her up until now. “We should be safe down here until things get a bit more quiet up in Normie World. Once the coast is clear, I’ll drop you off at your Mom’s.”

  That sounded good. But I couldn’t help but notice something Carli had said. Because she was legendary, she’d told me, people wanted to hunt her down. I assumed these people weren’t looking for her in order to do good things to her, either—whatever they planned might make the troll in the alley look tame in comparison.

  Carli had also said she thought I was legendary. I was having trouble wrapping my head around the idea that I might be a shifter like her, much less a legendary one.

  But if I was, did that mean the same people would be gunning for me?

  Would they come after my Mom, too?

  I followed Carli down the steps. The temperature dropped the further we got beneath the warehouse, then suddenly began to warm back up again. “Central heating,” Carli explained with a grin. “I keep it so toasty in my hideout, you don’t even have to wear clothes. Of course you can if you want to—I just like lounging around in the nude. Especially after a big, action-packed mission.”

  “All the adrenaline,” I said, remembering my hand between her thighs.

  Suddenly, I was thinking about more than the danger. I was about to be alone down here with Carli—who’d definitely shown more than a little interest in me up until now.

  What might she be planning to do with me in her safe house?

  Despite everything, I was looking forward to finding out.

  The stairs ended in an ordinary, nondescript door.

  I guess when you put this much security into your secret lair, I thought, watching Carli open the thing up, you don’t need to worry about security this far in.

  The door opened—and we were standing in the Batcave.

  Okay, not exactly the Batcave.

  There was no butler, no utility belt, nothing that would cause a copyright lawyer to start salivating. But the comparison was so stark, so obvious, that it was the first thing that came to mind when I saw Carli’s hideout for the first time.

  The place was huge, cavernous, carved directly out of the stone beneath the warehouse.

  The air was body-warm, as Carli had promised, and so muggy I felt the desire to take my jacket and outer layers off almost immediately.

  The area immediately around the entrance had a homey feel, like an apartment that had just happened to be teleported into the middle of an underground cave. That feeling quickly evaporated further into the darkness, where the rest of the complex looked like nothing so much as a big cave someone had found and decided to take advantage of.

  I wondered if Carli had built it, and decided she probably hadn’t. More likely, she or whoever she worked for as a private investigator had mapped out the cave systems under the city and decided to build a tunnel leading to one of them.

  So it probably wasn’t the Batcave, and I probably wouldn’t be driving a sleek black battle sedan out of a hidden tunnel by the bay or anything like that.

  Still, it was cool as hell.

  “Home sweet home,” Carli purred, unbuttoning her top as she stretched and sighed at the entrance.

  She’d never had more of the cat about her than she did in that moment, as she took in the lay of her own personal kingdom.

  Chapter 5

  “Forgive me for not cleaning up more before you got here, Derek,” Carli said. “It’s rare that I get company these days.”

  Was she joking?

  “That’s fine,” I said, deciding to hedge my bets.

  Normally, I would have been thinking clearer, but the size and scope of the cavernous hideout I’d been led to knocked out my critical thinking skills.

  “This place is huge, Carli!” I said. “Did you build all this yourself?”

  Carli’s eyes narrowed, and I knew my attempt to pump her for information hadn’t gone unnoticed.

  “Those aren’t really first date kind of questions, Derek,” she said. “I’ve gotta get to know you a little bit better first before I let you peek that deep under the hood.”

  “Fine by me,” I said with a shrug. I was just glad to no longer have anything threatening my life. “How do we get to know each other better, Carli?”

  I’d been hoping she’d suggest the obvious. Besides, it was so warm in her lair that it made perfect sense for us to take off all our clothes.

  But Carli just grinned at me knowingly, as if she was thinking the same thing but wasn’t quite ready to take that step.

  Instead, she led me further into the cave.

  “Feel free to hang your jacket up,” she said, indicating a coat rack sitting next to a bare rock wall. “It’s gotta be uncomfortable wearing that down here.”

  “I’m fine, thanks,” I said, shaking my head.

  I was still thinking about the medicine I had in my pocket. Soojin had made it sound really, really important. Although I was pretty sure it would be safe down here with Carli, I wasn’t about to let the packet out of my sight.

  “Suit yourself.” Carli shrugged as she removed the top layer of her clothing.

  Underneath her tight blue policewoman’s top, she wore nothing but a form-fitting tank top. No bra held up those perky tits—she didn’t need one. She let out a purr as she stretched, her nipples poking through the thin fabric.

  I would have kept on staring at them all night, but she turned away and led me to the edge of her caveside apartment.

  Right where the furnished section gave way to open space, she or someone else had set up a kind of miniature laboratory, with a tube in the middle that looked like the thing they put you in at the airport when you set off the metal detector a few too many times.

  “I once went through Dallas airport with a condom wrapper in my back pocket,” I muttered, staring at the glass tube. “They couldn’t figure out why I kept setting off the alarms—started getting worried I might be some kind of a terrorist. It was pretty embarrassing once security figured it out.”

  Carli grinned. “I bet. Who was the condom for?”

  I glanced over my shoulder at her. “Just a girlfriend.”

  “Really?” The catgirl—shifter, I kept reminding myself, she gets mad when I call her anything else—nibbled her bottom lip as she looked me up and down. “Can’t believe she made you wear a rubber. Anyway, up on the platform, Derek.”

  Rather than debate Carli on the effectiveness of birth control, I did as she said.

  It slid closed behind me with another of those nearly soundless hisses, trapping me inside the machinery.

  “I should warn you,” Carli said. “This is going to hurt—a lot. A lot a lot. But don’t worry, it’ll be worth it. We’re going to find out what you’re made of, Derek.”

  “What I’m made of? And what do you mean a lot?”

  “I think you have something special. I think you are something special. You want to see magic? You want to find out whether you’ve got some arcane secret laying in wait inside of you? Hop into the machine.”

  I grimaced. “If it means I’ll discover some magical ability I never knew I had, then I’m all for it.”

  Carli paused and l
ooked at me with new eyes, as though she wondered whether I was truly man enough to go through with this. I didn’t see it as a question. Finding out I had magical abilities? Well, hell, that was something I wouldn’t turn down.

  “Are you sure you don’t want to back out now?” Carli asked me. “I won’t hold it against you.”

  “No. I’m game,” I said firmly. “Let’s do it.”

  The glass around the tube retracted as Carli pushed a button, opening with a hiss of steam. I peered inside intently, wondering what the hell this contraption was supposed to do.

  I braced myself for the pain as the tube began to whir and shake. The smell of ozone filled the air, and suddenly, a bolt of energy shot from the glass to my right shoulder. It felt like a hundred hornets had touched down, stung me, and flew back off again.

  “Fuck!” I roared as every muscle in my body tensed.

  “Just sit tight,” Carli said. “Try not to touch the wall. It’ll all be worth it, I promise.”

  I bellowed as two more of those strange shocks hit me. One slapped my shin, the other shot across my neck to make me feel as if I’d been punched in the throat.

  “Hang in there, Derek!” the shifter yelled above my pained groans.

  More pulses of energy filled the glass tube. The machine whirred at a fever pitch, as if it had spooled up to its maximum speed.

  Pain flared up and down my body—yet at the same time, a strange new awareness had begun to dawn within me.

  I felt power. Incredible power.

  My arms and legs felt different. I slammed a fist against the glass tube, growling with pain, and to my shock, something inside the machinery gave with a snap.

  Carli made a panicked face and shut it down quickly, the engine rumbling to a stop as I kept on hitting the inside of my makeshift prison.

  “Stop, stop!” Carli called, racing to the tube. “You’ll break it! Or worse—it’ll break you, Derek!”

  I didn’t care. Reason had fled me—I felt like a caged animal, desperate to break out of the trap.

  The tube opened just as I would have crashed through it, allowing me to step back out into the cave. The air no longer felt quite so hot.