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CHAPTER SIXTEEN: DEREK
Derek staggered up the beach toward the house, exhausted to his very bones.
Sharks don't have bones, his shark muttered, but the beast within him was as weary as Derek was, its efforts at shifting tested to the limits. He could now smoothly flow between the shark and himself, and keep his clothes while doing so, but the half-shark form had eluded him. Maybe he'd been too tired; maybe it was that natural shifters couldn't do it at all, and had no idea how to guide him through it.
Or maybe it was a one-off, something that had happened in the first moments of transformation as his body adjusted to the massive changes that had been wrought within him. Derek hoped not; he would feel more…capable, with the half-shark form. For all the immense grace and gratitude he felt for being able to swim in the sea as he'd once envisioned, he hadn't quite considered how limiting a shark form would be on land. Intellectually he'd known it, obviously, but he'd beached himself twice this evening while learning to shift, and it had been—
Terrifying, the shark said with a snarl. The first time, its panic had been so great that it had thrashed and flailed, unable to calm itself enough to make the shift to human. Derek, remembering its sardonic, snarky commentary when they'd first discussed coming to land, had held his tongue, mentally speaking. Intellectually—again—it seemed clear to both the human and the shark part of himself that there was no reason to fear, if the shark should wash onto the beach. But in the moment, it was much different, and he couldn't blame the shark for its terror.
The second time had been a little less frightening, and his ability to shift smoothly a little more confident. Even so, facing the reality of being cast up on the beach in shark form, five thousand pounds of boneless weight pressing into the sand, it was vividly clear that without the half-shifted shape, Derek was going to be useless on land.
Well, not useless: he had unexpected strength, perhaps accelerated healing, and all his training as a Navy SEAL. But it wasn't quite what he'd imagined, going in. That was on him, a failure of imagination. After all, what had he expected, with a sea animal as his dream shifter form?
"Derek." Candy, sounding as tired as he felt, pushed the house door open just as he reached it, casting a softly yellow rectangle of light across him and into the stairs and sand. "I was just coming out to get you. They want to move fast, maybe as soon as tomorrow. Do you think you'll be ready?"
He stepped inside, surprised at how welcome the house's warmth was, and pulled Candy into his arms. She was soft, pliant, reassuring: nothing could be entirely wrong, as long as they were together. "I don't know. I can't find the half-shark form. Are you all right?"
"They gave us a bedroom." Candy slid her hand to his and led him through the house: extensive living rooms to one side, a kitchen and open dining room with doors beyond it to the other. Derek had the sense that this was one of those houses with a kitchen for show, and that the real work was done on the other side of those doors. There were wine glasses on the dining room table, and Candy smelled of alcohol, though she was steady on her feet. Everything was the same creams and pale golds the hotel room had been, a kind of wealthy minimalist vibe, though the whitewashed wood floors were so low-key as to be pretentious in this setting.
Derek didn't care. It was warm, it was safe, and he was with Candy. He followed her through a long, wide hallway to a bedroom with a copper tub in the main room, although the toilet, at least, was in a separate en suite. The walls here were pale blue, the color of the ocean on its mildest day, but compared to the creaminess of the rest of the house, it came across as startlingly vivid. Candy sank down onto the bed, face in her hands, and Derek realized abruptly that she hadn't answered his question. Worry bordering on anger rose in him. "Are you okay?"
"I'm all right. Exhausted." She looked up through her fingers, dark eyes shadowed with weariness. "You've saved my life without even meaning to."
In human form or not, Derek could almost feel shark-skin roughness prickling on his arms. He struggled not to swell up in rage, fought the urge to go pick a fight with whomever had threatened his mate. "What do you mean?"
She patted the bed beside her, and with some effort at calming himself, Derek sat, still puffed up with anger. "Are you sure you're okay?"
"They don't really trust me," Candy said with an accepting shrug. "But just before you came in, Garius—the big guy—he told me that fate doesn't choose mates who endanger shifters. Ever. Not after or before the mate bond happens. So even if they don't trust me, everything they are also tells them they can. It tells them that I didn't hurt anyone, or betray shifterkind, even if I shouldn't have done what I did. They're…angry and confused," she finished with a faint, wry smile.
"If they've hurt you…"
"No, they haven't," Candy promised. "Not even much in the way of threats, honestly. They've got people studying my research and they're angry that I'm brilliant. Basically everything about me makes them angry, except possibly the chance I can get into the corporate psyops lab and get their remaining people out." She paused. "Although, no, that makes them angry, too, because they don't want to have to rely on me."
"What about me?" Derek rumbled. Even he thought it was a rumble.
"You," Candy said slowly, "are a shifter. Regardless of how you became one, they see you as one of their own. They trust you. It's the only reason they trust me, the only reason they're willing to try to send me in to get their people. Which is fine. I just hope I won't let them down."
"You won't. I won't let that happen. I won't let anything happen to you."
"I know." Candy leaned into him, a soft tired breath momentarily warming his skin. "How did it go? The shifting?"
"I can't do the halfway form," Derek said, frustrated. "The rest of it is fine."
"Maybe that was just a temporary reaction to the process," Candy murmured.
Despite himself, Derek chuckled quietly. "I thought of that. I hope not."
"Me too. It would be much more impressive to haul you in, in cuffs, as a half-shark."
Derek straightened, making Candy tip over before she sat up straight, too, and blinked indignantly at his own indignant expression. "Oh, is that what it's all about?" he asked. "Is it just about making you look cool and bad-ass?"
Candy blinked at him again, clearly taken aback, and Derek couldn't keep his laughter down. "Sorry. I thought I was funny."
She crashed her shoulder into his, smiling. "You are funny. And it's not just about making me look like a bad-ass!"
He laughed again. "But it doesn't hurt?"
"Obviously not!"
"I'll see what I can do," he promised, and Candy slid both her arms around his waist, pulling herself close.
"Maybe it'll be easier after some sleep. It's been a really long couple of days. You've already been through so much. You were meant to have…" She sighed, shaking her head against his chest. "Weeks of recuperation and tests to see how your body responded to the formula. To see if we could find markers to help us repeat the success with other base animals. To…" She trailed off, and then finally, very quietly indeed, said, "To become a lab rat, really. It's not how I thought of it, but all of this has made me see it all differently. And see myself differently. Not in a flattering light."
"And yet my soul recognizes yours," Derek replied just as softly. "It tells me that we're meant to be together. That fate drew us both down this road so we could meet."
"Fate works in mysterious ways, then."
"Notoriously so." He kissed Candy's hair, then nodded toward the tub. "You want me to fill that for you?"
"Only if you're going to stay up and make sure I don't fall asleep and drown in it. I think if I sit in hot water I'll just go limp. What about you?" She looked up at him with a smile. "Does the shark in you like a bath, or just the ice cold sea?"
The sensation Derek got from the shark was one of sheer bafflement. It had enjoyed the shower, but because it was wet, not because it was warm. It simply couldn't imagine being immersed in hot water. Derek chuckled again. "I'll let you know. Actually…" He hesitated. "I think a bath sounds great. I wasn't cold this evening, exactly, but…"
Candy tilted her chin up to steal a long, sweet kiss, then rose and went to fill the tub for him. "Tell me about that. You weren't cold, but…?"
"The ocean is the shark's natural habitat, and it's cold-blooded, so it doesn't get cold, exactly." Derek stood, too, stripping his shirt off. "But the mammal part of my brain...thinks it was cold?" Candy bent over the tub, giving him a terrific view of her jeans-clad rear end, and for a moment the mammal part of his brain came very alive. It took him a moment to get his thoughts back on track. "When I shifted to human, I didn't feel it as much as I should have, being wet and in fifty degree water, but I wasn't exactly warm, either."
"Technically great white are thermoregulating," Candy said, barely above the sound of the tub filling, as if she didn't quite want to be heard.
Derek grinned. "Did you just 'well, actually' me? But…thermoregulating? I understand the word, but not in this context."
She looked over her shoulder at him with a sniff. "Technicalities are important in my line of work. It means your big swimming muscles generate heat so they're not quite the same temperature as the water around you. It gives great whites and some other shark species their speed." She trailed a hand in the bath water, turned the temperature up a little, then waved her wet fingers through the air. "There's more to it, but that sums it up in layman's terms."
Derek crossed to her, sliding his hands over her hips and pulling her bottom back against himself a little. "'Layman's terms.' I think I like the sound of that."
"I didn't say getting laid man's terms!" Despite the amused protest, Candy turned and wound her arms around his neck, nuzzling at his mouth when he lifted her easily. "I'll overheat if we try any terms in the tub."
"I didn't want a bath anyway," Derek said quickly, and changed her weight so he could reach down and turn the water off without letting go of her. Candy squeaked and clung to him, laughing, as he carried her back to the bed, and in the end, they were warmed up enough to not need a bath anyway.
***
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: CANDY
Someone outside the bedroom door said, "We have the location," early the next morning, and although Candy had been deeply asleep, she came fully awake between one heartbeat and the next. Derek, at her side, sat up with the tense wariness of a man trained to fight, and only relaxed again after a few hyper-alert seconds of absolute silence.
Then he nodded and they both rose, Derek to drain the tub that had been filled but not used the night before, and Candy to take a swift shower, her hair tied up so it wouldn't need to be dried. She dressed in her 'battle gear,' the skirt and lab coat outfit that always made her feel like she could take on anything, while Derek took his own shower and they made their way to a kitchen that had the feeling of a war room.
"The psyops team is in Nevada," Conri announced over coffee that people drank in quick, wincing slurps instead of
waiting for it to cool. The sky was barely grey with dawn, a promise of gold more imagined than real, as tired-looking people emerged from the house to head for the beach, where a helicopter was waiting. Candy didn't know all of the faces; some, she thought, were the people who had been going over her research, and while all the shifters she'd met were there, Anna and the Beren toddler weren't. That seemed reasonable: they were going to do something dangerous, and bringing kids into it was a bad idea.
She scalded her tongue on another sip as she said, "Not Area 51," in a light tone that got half a dozen cool looks from the shifters escorting her down the beach. And they were escorting her: she was at the center of a phalanx, as if she might otherwise try to escape.
The coffee turned to pure acid in her belly. "Seriously? Area 51? I thought they did aliens. I mean, not really, but—" She broke off, nauseated. The idea that the government—or corporations—had, for decades,
been hiding shifter research under the auspice of alien research made a kind of horrible sense. It could well have kept people looking for just enough of the wrong thing to not see what was really happening.
"We can get you to Vegas in a few hours," Conri said. "And we can have a vehicle waiting there so you can drive out to Eternity, but we can't go that far with you. Not outright, anyway."
"Eternity?"
"It's the closest town to Area 51," Joash said.
"I've never heard of it."
"You wouldn't have."
For a moment Candy had the overwhelming urge to push through her escort and throttle the tiger shifter. Obviously it would never work; no one would let her get that close to him. But the urge was considerable, and she tightened her fingers around her coffee cup, staring at him, until it had more or less passed. He didn't break eye contact the entire time, a dark smile pulling at the corner of his lip, while Derek, walking at Candy's side, almost audibly
growled.
"Enough," Garius said quietly. "None of us had heard of Eternity before your research began, Dr Mallus. It's not on the maps. It's not even on the satellites, and as someone who's spent a lifetime hiding whole shifter communities, I would like very much to know how they've managed that. But it's not what we're here for."
"It's a town of about two hundred," Conri said. "Mostly corporate personnel with some military oversight. The Air Force facility is the only obvious source of employment for the town; vehicles go back and forth regularly." They reached the helicopter, which was blissfully quiet right now, its blades still as people began to load in.
"But I'm the head of R&D at the Corpus Corporation," Candy said. "Obviously I'm aware of the Area 51 site, even if I haven't previously visited there. I can do this," she said with a confidence she actually felt. "I'm just not sure how we're getting your people out, assuming they're there to begin with."
"They're
shifters," Alma said with a note of disgust as she settled into her seat. "As long as they're not drugged out of their skulls, if you can get them out of the cells they're being kept in, escaping isn't the issue."
"What kinds of shifters are we expecting?" Derek asked in his low, authoritative voice. "If there are—" He gestured, indicating he didn't necessarily know what he was talking about— "tortoises, for example, they won't be as fast as, say, lions, in an escape."
"Most shifters are predators. Lions, wolves and bears are who we've been unable to recover," Joash said. "We'll fill you in on the rest once we're in the air. Not in this," he said with a dismissive gesture toward the helicopter. "I've got a jet fueled at a private airport nearby."
Candice tried, briefly, to imagine what it would be like to command the shape of the world around her as effortlessly as Joash did. Money really was a superpower. Someone came by to take everybody's coffee cups, and Candy
handed hers over wordlessly, waiting for the caffeine and the rotary blades to kick in. It wasn't a long flight to the air field, but she could feel the tension in Derek's body as she leaned into him. He hadn't said anything on yesterday's flight, and didn't today, either, but she knew he didn't like flying in helicopters. She wouldn't either, with his history. After the crash he'd been in, she thought he was incredibly brave just to get in one again.
Brave or not, he was visibly relieved to disembark when the copter set down at an air field. Someone in a safety jacket guided them toward a solitary airplane on the runway, and the sun cut over the horizon in a golden blast as Candy climbed the small jet's stairs. Someone behind her groaned, almost a laugh, and mumbled, "God it's early."
Candy was glad somebody had said it, because she didn't think it would have gone over well from her. The interior of the plane glowed with the sun's light as she stepped inside and choked down a
laugh of her own: the word opulent sprang to mind again, as it had in Joash's offices. The jet's interior was smaller than she expected from seeing them in movies, but the floor was comfortably carpeted, the swivel seats were real leather, and there was, in fact, a wet bar tucked into the kitchen area. Bathed in the early morning sunshine, it looked like a scene from a modern El Dorado, golden and glorious. She took a seat and Derek joined her, both of them a little wide-eyed as they accepted coffee from a flight attendant.
Derek caught Candy's eye and they both bit back giggles: this was not the level of service, or life, that either of them were accustomed to. The others cast them impatient glances, and as they settled in, Candy realized they were all shifters: the human mates had stayed behind. Joash, Alma, Elissa, Conri, Maggie and Garius were the ones she knew; there were four others, including the buffalo shifter whose name she'd never gotten. "Will you all be going to
Eternity?"
"I will," Alma said like she was starting a fight, and though Joash glanced her way, he didn't argue.
"Maggie and Conri will be running ops outside of Eternity," the tiger shifter said. "They're both too recognizable to bring in as part of a strike team."
Candy's gaze skittered to the wolf shifter, whom she wouldn't have thought all that recognizable. Derek breathed, "He owns the NOTE: PRO WRESTLING CORPORATION. You might not recognize him, but his face is on the entertainment feeds a lot."
Joash ignored his commentary, nodding toward Garius. "Garius is a notorious recluse despite being the head of the Gladiator Foundation, so he can go in without attracting notice."
"He's six and a half feet tall," Candy said, unable to stop herself. "He's gonna attract attention."
Garius sent a thin smile her way. "You should see me in grizzly form."
"I'd love to," Candy said sincerely. "I imagine you're a magnificent specimen."
Derek said, "Hey!" and clearly
despite himself, Joash smirked.
"Gods forbid Anna should hear you say that. Reggie, Erin, Kaiya and Brian are most likely to be our forward guard, with the rest of us backing them up." He nodded toward the buffalo shifter—Reggie, evidently—and the other three shifters Candy hadn't met yet.
"May I ask?" she said cautiously. "I've seen Reggie in action, so I know why you'd put him on the vanguard, but the rest of you?"
"I'm a boar," Kaiya said. Candy blinked, and Kaiya gave her a feral grin. "You've never seen a boar, have you?"
"Not even in a zoo," Candy admitted. "I don't know anything about them."
"Huge and vicious," Brian murmured in a distinct Australian accent. "Three hundred kilos of sharp-tusked rage and tough hide."
Kaiya fluttered her eyelashes at him. "You say the nicest things."
"I say the truest things. Erin and I are both cassowaries," he added with a head-tilt toward the other woman.
Candy's eyebrows flew up. "Cassowaries. I didn't know there
were any bird shifters. How does that work? The mass conversion just doesn't make sense. None of it does," she said with an irritable hand-wave. "It's one thing science can't explain. But even the biggest birds only weigh as much as a slight human."
"Even true female cassowaries can weigh up to seventy kilos," Erin drawled in an accent like Brian's. "I bet that's about what you weigh, Doc." The last word was unfriendly, and Erin, who was about Candy's height but broader, all but snapped her teeth on it. "You'll shit yourself when you see me all turned out."
"Hopefully not," Candy muttered, but could see it wasn't a topic she was going to get any more information on.
"If it's necessary to engage," Joash said in the tone of a man bringing a conversation back under control, "these four have the shock factor of unfamiliarity going for them. You've focused on the big predators," he said to Candy, coolly. "As evidenced by the fact you didn't even know bird shifters existed. So we
anticipate a certain degree of confusion and fear if a fight opens with a handful of rare shifters. Those of us who are of more familiar breeds will take up the rear, but an advantage that all three of their species have—"
"Thick hides," Candy said. "The one thing I do know about boars is they were notoriously difficult to hunt. I'm a little surprised you don't have rhinos or elephants with you. Or hippos." She was questing for information, and not only she, but Joash, knew it: he gave her a hard look, and didn't answer. Candy shrugged it off. "And I assume if a normal boar is hard to hunt, a shifter boar is even more difficult. Same with buffalo, and most of what I know about cassowaries is they're regarded as murder birds."
Erin offered another toothy smile. "I can show you, if you like."
Joash said, "Erin," with a note of faint impatience, and at Candy's side, Derek growled. Erin curled her lip and settled back down as Joash tossed Candy a file folder. "You'll want to
read up on that. It's everything we've got about the psyops site and their work. If you're going to pull off pretending to have known about it all along, you'll need to memorize a lot of what's in there. You have three hours," he said as the plane began to taxi. "Get reading."
Candy opened the file. "Am I driving myself out to Eternity?"
"We don't have anybody on the inside who can get you," Joash said as he closed his eyes and relaxed back into his seat. "You're going to be entirely on your own."
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