CHAPTER 15
“You think you know everything,” Ewen Mackey said with a smirk hours later. “You have no idea.”
Decan sat at the other end of the nine-foot table looking the evil bastard directly in the eye. They were back at Oasis, in a room with reinforced steel walls and automatic locked doors. The room had only this one table and four chairs. A smaller room connected by a narrow doorway held a mattress where Mackey would be sleeping for the foreseeable future. The man wore slacks and a button front white shirt, both of which were dirty and wet from the storm and the way Decan had been sure to drag him across the ground until tossing him into the trunk of the vehicle they’d traveled in. A few miles before entering into the forested area that would lead them back to an Oasis entrance, Mackey had been blindfolded and gagged and for good measure, Decan had knocked him unconscious with one punch. Nisa had frowned and called that overkill, but the fact that Gold was lying on the third row of the vehicle bleeding profusely from a wound Lial had inflicted with that fucking knife was motive enough for him.
“Then, please, fill us in,” Amelia asked, her dark hair pushed behind her ears as she sat in the chair to Mackey’s right.
She was closer to him as Jace had insisted she do the questioning instead of Decan. He probably thought that she would be more diplomatic than Decan who had made no effort to hide his rage toward the man when they arrived at the Central Zone Headquarters. Rome, Kalina and Nick, who had now delayed their trip back to Assembly Headquarters, were with Jace at the medical center where Ary was leading the curanderos in examining Cole Linden. Nisa was in the room with Decan, Amelia and the bastard. She stood by the door listening.
“Not a chance,” Mackey said with a sick grin. “I don’t answer to animals.”
“You won’t leave without providing some answers,” Amelia said in that cool, professional tone she always used.
Mackey tossed his head back, strands of his frosty white hair were sticking up giving him a crazed and delirious look.
“You don’t scare me. None of you!” he yelled.
Decan stood abruptly then, pushing the table until it pressed into Mackey’s chest, sending his chair sliding back until the man was trapped between the wall and the table.
“Why are you paying Lial to kill for you? And how long has he been working for you?” Decan asked, his tone anything but professional.
Mackey sobered as he tilted his head and glared at Decan. His beady little blue/green eyes usually hid behind wire-rimmed glasses. Tonight, the glasses were long gone and his eyes were clear as they focused on Decan. His lips pulled back from his perfect—too perfect to be real—bright white teeth and he slammed his fists onto the table before coughing.
“I swear I should’ve killed your ass when I had the opportunity! The moment that hooker you were screwing reported you, I should have had them cut your fucking head off!”
Decan pushed the table again, until this time Mackey coughed, gasped, and his face reddened.
“We want him alive, Decan,” Amelia said from where she now stood to the side of the table.
“Why?” Decan asked, whipping his head around to stare at her. “He’s never gonna tell us anything useful and even if he does, it’ll probably be all lies. You can’t trust him. He’s killing his own people as well as shifters!”
“You want me to tell you something?” Mackey asked in a wheezing voice.
Not giving a damn that he sounded like he might keel over at any moment, Decan only glared at Mackey in response.
“I’ll tell you that this dirty bastard you’ve got here is a liar and a cheater!” Mackey spat.
“Why do you say that?” Nisa asked as she stepped closer. “Because he hates you?”
“Noooo,” Mackey replied drawing the word out as he shook his head. “This isn’t about me, is it Decan? It’s never been about me?”
Decan’s fists clenched at his words. Nisa’s confusion was palpable. He did not turn so that he could look at her, but he did not need to. The questions were already running through her mind, ready to roll off her lips at any moment now. But Decan was more worried about the answers, the ones that might finally send her running.
“You know him personally?” Amelia asked before Nisa could speak.
Mackey laughed. “Oh yeah. Decan and I go way back. Don’t we Decan?”
“If you mean back to the five years you held me and thousands of other shifters captive in one of your killing camps, yeah, I guess so. Why don’t we talk about that?”
Decan knew it wasn’t going to work, the moment he said it. Mackey had latched on to his leverage and was more than ready to play his hand. He also knew what Mackey was going to say and hated like hell that this was going to play out in front of other people, instead of when he and Nisa could be alone.
“No, I think this little lady here would rather hear about how that hooker’s blood is on your hands and about how many had died since then because you and your friends wanted to play renegade.”
He chuckled as he looked at Nisa. Decan was about to push the table again, this time hard enough to crush that sorry bastard’s insides. But Nisa was faster. She moved around him, going to stand right next to where Mackey was pressed against the wall.
“Tell me everything,” she said.
“Nisa, he’s our prisoner,” Amelia began after tossing an irritated look at Decan. “We need to find out where Lial is now and who else might die because of the work he’s doing for the Ruling Cabinet.”
“No!” Nisa shouted and looked back at Amelia first, and then Decan. “I need to hear this.”
And she did, he thought as she slowly turned back to Mackey. She needed to know all the dark and ugly secrets so she would understand and stop looking at him with hope in her eyes. Or had that been his own reflection he’d seen each time he stared into her cat’s eyes? Had he been hoping that the companheiro calor they shared would lead to a joining? Had he finally accepted that this woman, this stubborn and inquisitive warrior was the perfect mate for him?
“He ravaged her every night,” Mackey said, his thin lips turning up as if in disgust. “Right in front of us he continuously took poor Marlee because he wanted to get her pregnant with his animal spawn. Then, when given a choice, he’d watched as her limbs were cut off while he decided whether or not to give up the name of the Desert Cat.”
“Who? I’ve never heard of a Desert Cat,” Nisa said.
“I have,” Amelia added. “Years after the Unveiling, talk surfaced above ground of an elusive shifter that traveled through the desert land in the Pacific and Mountain Zones burning down the camps the humans built to contain us.”
“This one here thought he was better than all the rest of the animals we had caged up,” Mackey continued, his tirade against Decan.
This time it was Nisa who leaned in close, slapping her palms on the table in front of him.
“We’re not animals!” she yelled into his face. “And you’re going to start showing some respect or the next time, nobody will be around to keep him from ripping your throat out!”
A spurt of pride spread through Decan as he watched her. From the start of this mission she’d told him that she was in charge. He’d shot her down quickly enough and thought she’d shown exemplary training and respect for their security hierarchy by not continuing to argue over control with him. Instead, she’d continued to do her job, the one thing she knew that he could not do in place of her. She’d done it so well he hadn’t even known about the things she’d uncovered until she’d told him, Jace and Amelia when they arrived at Central Headquarters.
“All he had to do was cooperate and he refused,” Mackey continued as if Nisa hadn’t spoken at all. “Then the Desert Cat struck again.”
“Burning the New Mexico hell hole you unlawfully kept too many shifters in, to the ground, that’s what happened next,” Decan stated evenly.
“Yes, there was a fire,” he said. “And then there was the break-in at my office and the taunting of the other members of the Ruling Cabinet. You and your friends have been busy these past months breaking into our computers, and stealing from us. You gave me no choice but to hire security.”
“That’s what Lial Johansen is to you?” Amelia asked. “He’s security?”
“He’s protecting us from the Desert Cat and this little band of mercenaries that unlawfully broke into my house tonight, assaulted and kidnapped me!” he yelled.
“I should have killed you!” Decan replied and flipped the table over.
As Amelia and Nisa avoided getting hit, Decan moved quickly to Mackey, yanking him up by the front of his shirt and slamming the man’s back against the wall.
“When I watched you running from that fire in New Mexico I should have hunted you down and gutted you right then and there. And tonight—” he paused because he could feel her gaze on his back.
Mackey laughed.
“What? You can’t control this you dirty forest scum! There are people in place to pick up where I leave off, so no matter what you do to me we’re gonna get rid of all your kind. You don’t belong here and we’re gonna see to it that you get exactly what you deserve for trespassing.”
Decan growled, his teeth bared. But he had control, now. He tossed Mackey across the room until he bounced off the other wall like a discarded toy before storming out of the room.
Nisa’s mind was whirling.
She came out of the room where they had been questioning Ewen Mackey, took two steps and had to lean against the wall to keep from falling to the floor. So many voices had been slamming into her head while she stood in that room listening. So many scenes had replayed right before her eyes.
One in particular had her gasping for air now.
The walls were cinderblock, layered in four rows. The single door was made of thick iron bars, no latch or lock in sight. The cement floor was dirty and probably cold in the dark 9x9 space. Yet the smell there was sterile, clean, almost devoid of any identifying scent.
It was the same smell she’d picked up that first night at Keller’s bunker when she was looking for a way out.
The tapping grew louder and louder, the source, a long stick with a metal edge and a black handle held by a man around five-feet eleven-inches tall. The man wore black leather gloves. His shoes were shiny tie-ups that clicked as he moved across the cement floor. He wore a business suit and tie, an outfit that did not seem to fit in this surrounding. He was tapping the end of the stick to the iron bars. Over and over. Tap. Tap. Tap.
Just like Nisa recalled hearing that night at Keller’s place.
Her heart was beating wildly now, so fast and furious she lifted a hand to her neck as she tried desperately to take deeper breaths.
Finally, the iron bars lifted upward and the man stepped through the opening inside the small space. He chuckled as he looked toward one corner where a naked man’s body lay crumpled on the floor. The man moved immediately, rolling over, leaving streaks of blood on the cement as he did. He stood quickly on strong legs, standing until his head was only a few feet from the ceiling. His chest was bloody, some old blood that had dried and was now peeling, other parts oozing fresh fluid. And his face…it wasn’t distorted this time. It was the face of a man, the eyes of a lion.
Decan.
“Nisa.”
Familiar hands touched her shoulders and Nisa leaned into them. Her eyes were closed, her hands shaking as the scene cleared from her mind, the remnants of it still sifting through her soul.
“Let’s go in here and sit down,” her mother said and guided her down the hall to another room.
This was a more homely place with tiled floors and deep cushioned hunter green couches. The walls were painted a warm orange color, a large screen TV was on one wall, a mahogany based bar in a corner. Nisa sat and Kalina did the same.
Just like when she was a child waking from a bad dream, Kalina kept one arm around Nisa’s shoulders and grasped Nisa’s hand with her free one.
“It’s been an eventful night,” Kalina began when Nisa was still trying to get the right words to form in her mind.
“It’s been an eventful week,” she said. “Or more like the last six months.”
“What do you mean?”
Nisa looked to her mother. To the familiar hazel eyes and bronze hued short hair. She knew every part of her mother’s beautiful face and the different tones of her voice. Her mother’s scent was unique, the sound of her heartbeat still welcomed even though Nisa was now an adult.
“Did you know that Decan was at Headquarters all that time?” Nisa asked her. “Did you know he was in our home?”
Kalina replied immediately, “I knew when he first arrived. I knew of the meetings your father was having with him. And I knew of the plan to send him here with you.”
“I knew too,” she said and then sighed. “I didn’t then, but now, thinking back, there were times that I felt different.”
Her mother’s lips lifted in a soft smile. “You were awakening.”
“No,” Nisa answered immediately. “I had my awakening long before that. You said I was early with my first shift, but it was still before I met Decan.”
“I am speaking of another level of awakening,” Kalina told her. “Think about it as a new awareness of yourself and everything around you.”
Nisa waited a beat, recalling the times she’d felt tense in the last six months and that she’d attempted to do as she always did and please herself. It had grown increasingly harder to reach her own precipice. Her body wanted more. Even her mind had changed. When she would lay down to sleep at night her thoughts that normally circled around creating something new and innovative for the shifters, or fighting for the shifters, or trying to figure out how to change the world for the shifters. But with each night lately, her mind had grasped the fact that she was lying alone in a bed. That was why she hadn’t minded when Decan first lay in the bed beside her and why she’d accepted these past nights that she spent in his arms.
“The awakening of a shifter female and a mate,” Kalina continued rubbing her fingers over her daughter’s. “It’s different than simply accepting that you are a shapeshifter, Nisa. Because mine came so late in my life, my emotions and actions were different. But yours, I could see it blossoming in you in the weeks before your father announced this trip.”
“You knew I had a mate out there and that I would soon find him?” Nisa asked because as much as she prided herself on knowing about the Shadow Shifters, she was now accepting that she hadn’t paid nearly as much attention to the origin of the shifter mating as she should have.
“No,” Kalina said with a slow shake of her head. “I didn’t know who. Not at the time. I just knew that something was changing in you. I hoped that this mission would bring you closer to your place in this world. I think it did.”
Nisa slipped her hand from her mother’s and brought her fingers to rub her temples. She didn’t know what to think at this moment, or how to come to terms with all that had happened in a seemingly short amount of time.
“He’s not who I thought he was,” she said after a few moments. “He’s done things…unsanctioned things from what Mackey just said.”
“You believe the human who has created camps to house the shifters that he captures, then tortures and kills them?”
Her mother’s question was spoken in a level tone as if to soften the blow of shock she had in her daughter. Nisa rested her elbows on her knees and leaned forward.
“Decan did not deny the accusations. He’s been keeping secrets this whole time,” she said. “From me, from dad and the Assembly.”
She was speaking specifically of Keller’s bunker and all the things that Mackey had said Keller and Decan had done in the past year. None of it was mentioned in the databases. There was no record of any assignment that Decan and Keller were on that would have taken them above ground or anywhere near Mackey and his camps. None.
The comlink on Kalina’s wrist buzzed and she looked down before dropping her arm from Nisa and standing.
“Ary has news about Cole,” she told Nisa. “But before I go I want you to think about something.”
Nisa stood as well because she planned to go to the medical center with her mother.
Kalina pushed back the hair that had fallen onto Nisa’s forehead. She touched her daughter’s cheek as she smiled gently at her.
“Finding a mate is unlike any other experience a shifter will ever have. There is no rule book as to when or how it occurs. It is just there one day and you are tasked with believing and accepting.”
“What if I don’t accept? What about love?” Nisa asked.
“Do you feel like you are in love with Decan? Think about it, Nisa. Think about your feelings from months back up to now. Consider how you felt in those first moments he was near you and in the moments tonight when things were happening and there was a chance that you could never see him again.”
Nisa did think about those things. She thought about how tender and enticing his touch was and how heart wrenching it had been to see those horrible scars on him. She thought about how horrible five years in the SIC must have been for him and how she might feel if it had happened to her. Then she thought about how he hadn’t told her father she was sneaking out to run above ground, but instead had followed her to protect her. Then, she thought about Marlee and the secret mission he and Keller seemed to be on.
She sighed heavily and replied honestly, “How can I know if I love him when I’m not even sure I can trust him?”
It had taken him longer than usual to calm down.
Hell, Decan wasn’t certain he was totally calm at this moment. Not this time.
She’d stopped him from killing Mackey. He wished she hadn’t. Then again, he recalled the feeling of total contentment as he’d heard her voice through all the chaos that had broken out around him. It had been like a bright light through the darkness Decan swore he’d been in for the last ten years. Longer than that, if he were being totally honest. Growing up without his family had taken a bigger toll on him than he’d ever admitted. Until now. Until her.
He could leave now. Cole Linden was back and that’s what the Assembly Leader had wanted him to do. Mackey was now a captive of the Shadow Shifters, the irony in that hadn’t gone unnoticed. To an extent Decan figured that may have been better than the quick death he’d intended for the evil bastard. He would likely never see above ground again and even though he was pretty sure Rome would never order the man killed or tortured, living underground among the very species he detested wasn’t going to be a walk in the park for the twisted leader.
There was no way that Decan was getting the job of Faction Leader now. Not with the calor surrounding him and the Assembly Leader’s daughter. So there was nothing more here for him. He could move back to the eastern zone with Keller and they could continue to work to dismantle the Ruling Cabinet and all the havoc and destruction it had caused in the last years.
But he could do none of that without seeing her first. One last time, he told himself, and then he would walk out of her life. Decan had never heard of companheiros that did not stay together, so he had no idea how that scenario would actually work out. What he did know was that she deserved better. She deserved a mate she could be proud of, one that could stand beside her and fight for the same causes as she and her father before her. Decan wasn’t that shifter.
He turned the corner into the medical center where he figured Nisa would be since the rest of her family was here waiting for information about Cole Linden. The first person he saw was the Assembly Leader.
“I’d like a moment, Decan,” Rome said with a nod of his head toward one of the doors across from the waiting area where he was standing.
Decan thought about telling him it wasn’t necessary and that he would simply leave right now, but he silently walked toward the door instead. Letting himself inside the tiny bright room, he waited while Rome followed and closed the door behind him.
“Tell me about what happened up there tonight,” Rome said.
Roman Reynolds was a force. There was just no other way to put it. The man had been one of the top litigators in the country, running a billion dollar law firm and sitting comfortably on his family’s fortune. He had been unanimously named Assembly Leader and was respected throughout the world for the strides the Shadows had taken in the years of his rule. Decan had nothing but respect for the man, even if he didn’t agree with all of his methods.
“We received news of a private meeting Mackey was having with some of the Ruling Cabinet members. It was my decision not to take a full team above ground to carry out the mission. Once the attendees of this meeting were either contained or deceased, we left the premises. Blaez Trekas and his pack were there. Something left Cole Linden in the middle of the street. We brought the Faction Leader and Ewen Mackey back with us.”
That was a succinct and fairly accurate version but Decan could tell by the way Rome was looking at him that it wasn’t going to be enough.
“Is that all?” Rome asked.
Decan waited a beat before replying. “That is what happened while we were above ground.”
And that was not a lie. It had happened that way. The fact that the mission above ground was unapproved and their goal was to kill and not kidnap which they ended up doing, was an omission. Not a lie.
“You took my daughter with you on this mission?” Rome asked him.
“Yes, sir,” he answered immediately.
He was not going to tell Rome that his daughter had followed them into an unauthorized situation that involved guns, shifters fighting in cat form and something big and powerful enough to cause the ground to tremble. That was not an option.
Rome flexed his hands at his sides. He was standing with his back facing the door, his legs partially spread, arms at his side. “Did you really think I had no idea what was going on?” he asked. “I’m the Assembly Leader. I’m the one the Shadow Shifters look to for guidance. My team and I took down Sabar, Crowe and Boden. We’ve been to the Gungi and back and forth across the US fighting for our cause, for our lives. So when some young renegades think they’ve got a better idea and decide to work outside my authority, I make it my business to watch every step they take carefully.”
Decan did not reply.
“I knew who you were before your father introduced us and I knew who your friends were. Keller Cross believes he’s been operating under the radar but I know about his bunker in Florida. I also know that he was the one who hacked into the vehicle security. X received an alert on the vehicles and I had Jace call you to see what was going on. And while I don’t have proof just yet, I’m inclined to believe he’s the one who broke into two classified files on the holodeck. Although, I have yet to figure out why.”
Keep your enemies close. Isn’t that what Nisa said her father had taught her? But he wasn’t Rome’s enemy, at least he didn’t believe so.
“Our mission was personal,” he said to the Assembly Leader.
“Because you knew I wouldn’t approve,” Rome replied. “We do not kill without being provoked.”
“We were provoked. I was tortured and scarred for five years. Gold’s parents were killed right in front of him. And Keller lost everything he’d worked to build when Mackey and his cohorts exposed him as a shifter and beat him until he had no choice but to shift in front of an office full of people and attack. A pregnant woman died in the stampede of humans hurrying to get away from the vicious cougar, scarring him mentally for the rest of his life. If that’s not provocation, I don’t know what is.”
“We’ve all lost in this war, Decan.”
“With all due respect, Assembly Leader, this is not a war,” he said barely holding on to his anger at the moment. “You packed every shifter up and put them into a life of hiding with no escape plan. You’ve created this underground world with all the luxuries you could possibly think of. You’re using your personal fortune to finance the bulk of this effort and you think that’s fighting a war. I know what it means to fight a war! I’ve been on the frontlines of battle and this is not it. Not down here.”
Rome gave a curt nod. “So you and your friends decided that the smart move was to take the battle to the doorstep of those responsible. Well, I can tell you that in the beginning, the other FLs and I contemplated doing the exact same thing. The problem with that was collateral damage. How many innocent lives would be lost because we stormed into what was once the White House, or the new Ruling Cabinet’s house, shifted into our cat form and killed the ones responsible for causing the widespread panic about our kind? How many of the people who we want to convince we’re not animals, would see that as an animalistic act?”
“We just think differently,” Decan told him, refusing to back down.
“We’ve lived differently,” Rome said. “We come from a different cat species. But our goal is the same, Decan. I not only wanted to keep you close so that I could be there to stop you the moment I felt like you were messing up for more than just yourself, but I also wanted to show our people that we could come together. That we could work on one accord.”
“One accord meaning your way,” Decan said.
“One accord meaning the right way,” Rome stated and then turned to open the door.
When he had his hand on the knob, Rome paused and then turned back to look at Decan.
“In addition to leading the Shadows, you should remember that I’m her father.”
His gaze was intent, the yellow of his cat’s eyes, flickering between the dark brown of his human ones.
Well, damn.
“I have no intention of hurting her,” Decan told him because he didn’t. That had never been a possibility for him. Which also solidified the fact that leaving her was the best idea.
“You will have no mission, no revenge to appease, no life, if you hurt her,” Rome said and then walked out of the room.