Ajax

Shifters.

He saw them moments before they saw him. Neither party did anything; they simply made note of each other’s presence.

“They look imposing,” Arianna said from his side.

“Security, I’m assuming,” he said, looking around the rest of the club.

It was an oval-shaped main room. Pillars lined the long sides, with space set back behind them. He could make out chairs and couches filled with people drinking and dancing, though it was clear those areas were more for relaxing than dancing. That particular activity had a clearly designated area. The middle of the oval was recessed a good five feet into the ground, and that was where the dance floor was.

There was a bar in the middle of it, underneath a huge glass chandelier that jingled in time with the bass, and lit up by various strobe lights that cast crazed patterns around the rest of the room. Two other bars were in the corners, designed to draw guests away from the middle of the room and make it appear fuller.

Upstairs appeared to have more space. Railings lined the edge, overlooking the dance floor. There were plenty of people up there, but Ajax couldn’t see a set of stairs. Perhaps it was a VIP-only type of area.

“So, what do we do now?” Arianna asked.

“Talk to the shifters,” he said.

“Right,” she said, stepping up beside him.

“Alone,” he said.

“What?”

“I need to go alone,” he told her. “They’ll know immediately we’re not together, and that will throw them off.”

He tried to ignore the feeling of sadness that came across him as he said that. What was going on with him? He barely even knew Arianna! Of course they weren’t together. Mentally shaking himself, Ajax pulled himself together, focusing on the task at hand.

“What should I do then?” she asked.

He felt bad, leaving her alone in a place like this. It clearly wasn’t her element, and he could tell she felt extremely uncomfortable. It wasn’t exactly his place either, though he had frequented more than a few clubs in his day before he moved to Genesis Valley. Still, he’d been telling the truth when he said the shifters would trust him more if he were alone.

“Get a drink?” he suggested awkwardly.

“I’m not thirs—okay,” she said in defeat as she grabbed the bill he shoved at her.

“I don’t like it, but I think it’s going to work better this way.”

“Just don’t be long, okay?”

“Unless they have all the information on where to find him, I’ll be as quick as I can,” he promised.

Arianna still looked unhappy, but he knew she understood and accepted it, even if she didn’t like it.

Without thinking, he leaned in and gave her a hug, wrapping both his arms around her. “Be right back,” he whispered into her ear, and practically took off before he could stick around to see the fallout from what he had just done.

What had he just done? Hugging her? Now is not the time for this. I need to focus.

The two shifters saw him coming from a mile away. He was the biggest person in the club, even bigger than they were, and the crowd parted for him. They were standing on either side of some steps to an upper level. A VIP area, he decided. As he got closer, he noticed a set of stairs cleverly hidden in the corner. That must be the way upstairs.

“Gentleman,” he said politely as he approached.

“Sir,” the far one replied.

Ajax focused his attention him. Training and experience had taught him, in a situation like this, the one who spoke up was also the one in charge.

“Are you on the list?” the second shifter asked after a moment of silence.

“No,” Ajax replied, “I don’t believe I am.”

“Only those on the list get inside,” the first shifter said, speaking for the first time.

Insecure in his authority. Interesting. He wondered if the man was just new, or was intimidated by Ajax. Straightening his spine, he loomed over the other man.

“I don’t recall saying I wanted to go inside. Do you?” he asked, making it very clear that he felt the other party should keep quiet.

The shifter fell silent, and Ajax turned his attention back to the first man.

“Now, I actually came over here to talk to you two,” he explained. “I had a question about someone you might know.” His tone of voice told them he was referring to other shifters. Both spines straightened immediately. They weren’t idiots; they knew what he was referring to.

“I’m looking for a Benjamin Martin.”

“Benji? He hasn’t been here in a week,” the first shifter said, earning himself a glare from his friend.

“So you know him?” Ajax asked, looking back and forth between the two.

“Maybe we do, maybe we don’t,” the one in charge replied. “Who wants to know?”

Ajax looked around. “I do,” he said simply. “A mutual friend of ours is concerned, and thinks something might have happened to him.”

The second shifter stepped forward. “And you? What do you think?” he asked, not backing down from Ajax’s larger size.

Tossing his shoulders to keep them loose, Ajax shuffled slightly to keep an equal distance between himself and both of the others. He wasn’t sure why asking after Benjamin had triggered this sort of response, but he wasn’t about to let the same thing happen to him that had happened to the other shifters. No two-bit security guards in a nightclub were going to get the better of him. He would never live down that reputation.

In the background behind the shifters, he noticed a man sitting in a darkened section who was leaning forward intently, focused on the drama between him and the guards.

“What about him?” he asked with a nod in the man’s direction. “Does he know what’s going on?”

As if aware that he was suddenly the focus of the conversation, the shadow man stood up and walked away, disappearing into the back through an unmarked door. Ajax hadn’t been able to pick up any detail about him besides the fact that, like the guards, he was another shifter.

“Hey, hold on a minute!” Ajax shouted, stepping forward to stop him. If he had been so interested in Ajax, he clearly knew something.

The pair of shifters closed ranks in front of him, cutting him off from accessing the VIP area. He snarled in anger, scaring off a server who had been walking by with a plate of Jell-O shots in her hand.

“Listen, fellas,” he said with fake camaraderie, “I just want to talk to him. See what he knows. I just want to find Benjamin.”

The whole situation was…off. The only one who seemed surprised by what was going on was him. The revelation of shifters in the nightclub—that they knew who Benjamin was, even his nickname—surprised him. But nobody seemed surprised by his presence. It was as if they knew about him already.

Almost as if they had been expecting him…

“Ajax?”

He turned and stepped back from the guards. The voice belonged to Arianna, but something was amiss. As he rounded on her, angry that she had shown herself to the guards, he saw what had caused the quaver in her voice.

On either side of her was a second pair of hulking shifters. He knew instantly that they had “escorted” her from wherever she had parked herself to here. It was a subtle threat on the part of the guards.

“Can we go?” she asked, looking acutely uncomfortable, surrounded as she was by so many shifters.

Ajax nodded. “Yeah, you know what, I think we can go. That’s probably for the best anyway.”

He made to step toward her, but as he did a heavy hand fell on his shoulder. Ajax froze.

“If you want to keep that hand, I suggest you remove it right now,” he said, his voice utterly tranquil, completely without worry.

There was a moment of hesitation, then the weight disappeared. “My apologies,” a voice followed. This belonged to the second shifter, the one in charge. He wondered what was coming next.

“Move aside,” Ajax gestured as he came to Arianna’s side, waving the two new guards away.

They stood their ground.

“Really?” he asked, his temper beginning to flare. “Can you move…please?”

The only response was for one of them to glance past Ajax.

“I think, instead, that the two of you should come with us.”

It wasn’t an invitation; it was an order. Ajax’s teeth ground together as he tried to keep his anger in check. For the moment he was keeping it bottled up, but his cage for it was slowly coming apart at the seams as the world continued to conspire against him and Arianna.

“I’m not going with you,” Arianna spoke up from his side, her voice firmer than it had been before. “Now move out of our way so we can go home.”

Around them, the party-going crowd seemed to sense the coming conflagration and began to move backward as if pushed. An open space on the floor suddenly appeared, surrounding the six of them.

Despite that, and despite Arianna’s command, they didn’t move. Realizing that he wasn’t going to get out of this peacefully, Ajax began formulating a plan. To his left was the exit. Two behind him, two in front of him. Couches to his right. Arianna directly in front of him.

Wait. Couches. Pillows.

An idea coalesced in his head and he acted without thinking. He picked Arianna up and gave her a heave into the nearest couch. She screamed, a noise quickly picked up by the rest of the crowd as they scrambled to put as much distance between themselves and the fight as possible. Only a few, either foolhardy or drunk, stayed close enough to be in any danger. Ajax filed them away in his head, in case they were neither and in fact more reinforcements for the guard.

“Oomph,” he grunted, taking a hit to the stomach as the price for getting Arianna clear of the danger.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw her bounce on the couch, flip over once, and end up in the lap of another girl who hadn’t moved fast enough. Knowing that she was safe, and ignoring the mixed look of fear and loathing in Arianna’s eyes, Ajax went to work on getting them out of there.

He stepped back abruptly, driving his left elbow hard into the guard coming up behind him. Ajax had meant to hit him in the stomach, but he felt and then heard ribs cracking under the blow. The man cried out, the sound silenced as Ajax spun in place, driving a solid forearm into his face. Bone broke and blood began to spray freely from his mangled nose as the guard collapsed into a heap.

Large, powerful arms closed around Ajax from behind, pinning his arms to his side. With a roar, Ajax jumped, pulling his feet to his stomach, then lashing out with them to hit the shifter coming at him. This combined to send all three shifters flying. The one he hit tripped over his prone comrade and went down into a nearby table, glassware and liquid flying everywhere.

Ajax and the shifter whose arms were around him were less lucky. They went backward, right over the edge of the lip and down onto the dance floor, scattering patrons as they went. His rage slipping free of its cage, Ajax got to his feet first, grabbing the man he had landed on and with another triumphant roar, he hurled him across the dance floor and into the bar. The shifter thumped off the top of the bar and half-slid half-flew into the wall of alcohol bottles behind it. The sounds of dozens of bottles breaking was deafening, and it told the crowd that the night was over. A panic ensued as they stampeded for the exits.

With a growl, Ajax leapt back up to where he had been, tackling the remaining shifter before he could close on Arianna. With the civilians dispersing she was no longer hidden among them, and he knew they would use her for leverage if they could get their hands on her.

He hit the man in the waist, and they both went down, falling awkwardly among the furniture. Ajax felt one of his fingers give way as it caught on the corner of a table that was bolted down, but he shunted the pain aside, pulling back his other fist to deliver a blow.

It never landed, though, as the shifter who had taken his feet to the chest returned to the fray with a kick to Ajax’s ribs that sent him sprawling.

“Ajax come on. Let’s get out of here!” Arianna shouted from behind him.

“I am in complete agreement,” he muttered, taking a deep breath and then wincing as his right side protested the movement.

He needed to end it, and end it now. His initial thought that the shifters were just big, untrained lackeys was turning out to be slightly unfounded. They had enough to make the odds against him unpleasant.

Readying himself, he began to circle his opponents, banking on them not having any true combat training. As he stepped slowly to his right, the pair of them shuffled to keep him in front of them. He breathed a sigh of relief internally. If they had known what they were doing, they would have split up, preventing him from doing that.

Behind him he heard glass breaking and sliding all over the place. The music had gone quiet at some point he realized, allowing him to hear the third shifter getting to his feet. Arianna was sticking behind him, and he was relying on her to let him know if anyone came at his back.

With a roar, Ajax charged, giving no warning at all to his opponents. Just like he had hoped, they flinched at the noise. It wasn’t much, but the hesitation was enough for him to exploit. He bodily slammed into the first shifter, the force of his charge sending him back to collide heavily with the wall. The second turned, throwing his fist at Ajax’s face, but he brushed the blow aside, taking just a grazing hit off the shoulder.

In return, his fist slammed into the bottom of the man’s jaw in a vicious uppercut that knocked at least one tooth loose, and sent the guard into the air and then straight down to the floor in a heap.

“Time to go!” he shouted, picking Arianna up off her feet before she could protest and making a mad dash for the door.

Behind him, the guard covered in shards of glass recovered enough to come at him, vaulting the bar and charging after them. He was too far though; they would be outside before he caught them.

From his arms, he heard what sounded like a giggle.

“Are you…laughing?” he asked, shocked that she didn’t seem more worried at the situation.

“Actually, I’m trying not to,” she said.

They burst through the doors without issue, the regular security well aware that they were outclassed by Ajax and not even bothering. The sight of what awaited them made Ajax slow his run, and then come to a halt.

“So,” he asked, trying to diffuse Arianna’s reaction. “Just why is it that you’re trying not to laugh?”

“It’s not often that I’m right like this,” she told him, sticking close by his side as she too surveyed the view and came to the same conclusion he did.

“Umm, and how exactly is it that you are right? Did you see this coming?” he said with a wave of his hands. “Because if you did, I really would have appreciated a warning.”

Now Arianna did laugh. “No,” she said as they slowly backed away. “Not that. But just think what this means!”

Ajax was confused. “Ari,” he said without thinking, “this really isn’t the best time to make me have to puzzle something out.”

“Oh, right,” she apologized, her arms clinging tight through the crook of his elbow. “It means that I was right, that there is some sort of organization behind all of this.”

His gaze flicked between her and the four new shifter guards that had been waiting for them out front, on either side of a large black SUV.

“You know, you might be on to something there,” he said slowly.

To their right, two guards emerged from within the club, looking bruised and sore, but more than ready to continue the fight.

“Stay behind me,” he urged.

One the six shifters moved to confront him, their half-circle contracting to ensure there was no escape. With a low but very audible growl, Ajax rolled his shoulders and went to meet them.