Chapter 15 #2
My expression flattened at him just before the shapeshifter seized the front of my shirt and wrenched me back onto my feet.
Cliff’s doppelganger flashed perfect teeth at me, a cold pleasure on his face that I’d never seen directed at me.
As he slid a hand around my throat, his other pressed the metal barrel of his rifle to my stomach in warning.
Color snagged my periphery: a decorative vase on the marble pedestal beside us, made of blown glass in radiant sunset hues.
Surely worth a fortune. I seized it with my free hand and smashed it against the side of the shifter’s face, sending him staggering backward as the rifle clattered from his grasp.
Rage simmered behind Cliff’s stolen eyes—and amusement. This asshole was having the time of his life.
Our blows connected, my arms shaking with the effort of preventing a bash to my head. The shifter grunted, working in a powerful kick to my stomach instead. Pain exploded, and I was once again thrown to the floor.
He was over me in seconds, seizing the table runner off the pedestal, winding it around my neck. My airflow reduced at once, making my heart pound with brutal survivalism.
“Shh,” Cliff’s imposter said, kneeling over me from behind. “Relax, Jonny. I’m not gonna kill you unless you force my hand.”
“Don’t—call me that,” I strained out.
The shifter gripped the gauzy fabric tighter, until it felt like sandpaper digging against my neck. Fingers combed through my hair, grabbing a fistful to pull my gaze upward and force me to look back at him.
“You know, I got a taste of his memories, being close to him,” the shifter said near my ear, his breath warm. “Your friend’s imagined his hands around your throat more than once. Plenty of times, actually. Such a gruesome imagination, that one.”
Not Cliff, I reminded myself. Liar. Monster. Not Cliff.
My vision blurred. I clawed at the fabric around my neck, but I couldn’t find leeway with how he was knotting it behind my head. Sheer adrenaline gave me the strength to slam my back against his chest and throw an elbow into his stomach. Anything to shake his grip and get air in my lungs.
The blow connected, but I was punished swiftly for it, forced down onto my stomach. The shifter pinned my left shoulder down with his knee and stretched far to grasp something in his free hand. I couldn’t spot it clearly, but I felt the blunt object swing hard into my arm—the rifle.
A crack sounded. The pain was blinding. Flexing my fingers felt like driving needles up my arm.
Movement stirred by the steel door—Lee was only a few feet away, straining to twist his bound arms enough to painstakingly urge something out of his pants pocket.
The taser. It finally slid into his palms. He gritted his teeth with the effort of sitting up, positioning himself at a painful angle to aim toward us, keeping his eyes on his target with his hands still bound at the wrists behind his back.
Even when he strained to such feverish extents, Lee managed to look like a movie star—a few chestnut locks splayed across his forehead like they’d been professionally styled to fall that way. It was getting on my goddamn nerves.
Lee discharged the device. The probe narrowly missed me, and for a moment, I thought it was a missed shot, that I was fucked.
The probe hit the shifter squarely in the stomach. His muscular frame seized up at once, going rigid. A violent, high-frequency crackling echoed through the room. The shifter gasped and jerked, wielding incredible willpower to reach up a hand and seize the prongs dug into him.
I threw an elbow back, garnering leeway to pry the cloth from around my neck so I could draw in some ragged breaths. The shifter kept one hand on me while he wrenched off the sizzling probe with his other.
My arm. It was all I could do not to whimper. This fucker might’ve broken my arm. Even moving it an inch was agony.
“Gun,” I choked out at Lee, furiously jutting my chin at the silver-loaded pistol that had been tossed near the loading bay doorway. “Use the fucking gun!”
The stench of scorched fabric and flesh filled the air as the shifter tossed the still-sparking taser prongs aside. His grip tightened on my neck, his knees keeping my arms pinned. Just like that, my oxygen was gone again.
From the corner of my eye, I glimpsed Lee painstakingly forcing himself to his feet, knees buckling from the effort of his bound arms working against him. He staggered toward the pistol.
The movement caught the shifter’s attention, Cliff’s eyes narrowing upon Lee’s destination.
He yanked my head up and just as swiftly slammed it back down, making my vision go black for a second.
For a wavering moment, I wished for a clean, quick death.
That might be better than this humiliation ritual.
Through the fog of wavering consciousness, I heard the shifter bark a threat at Lee. The pressure eased from my neck as the shifter lunged in Lee’s direction.
I shoved myself to a seat, blinking hard as Lee planted one foot and kicked the pistol toward me. The weapon spun across the floor.
I briefly locked eyes with the shifter, but I wouldn’t, couldn’t be shaken by the flicker of fear that he was so utterly Cliff.
Snatching the gun, I aimed and fired.
Bullets punched the air, catching the shifter’s torso and making him stagger from the close range. He moved in my direction with urgency befitting a soldier, seized my fractured arm. A horrible strangled sound cut the air, and I realized it was my own voice.
“Don’t you know when to quit?” the shifter spat. He wore a vicious, murderous look that Cliff had never aimed my way—not even during our ugliest fights.
“Never have,” I gritted through my teeth.
I unloaded what was left of my strength in one final push. With a groan of pain, I managed to break his hold, throwing my weight so I had him pinned against the wall. From the white spots in my vision, I guessed it may have worsened the break in the bone, but that would have to wait.
I pressed the barrel of the pistol to the shifter’s heart. A single tense of my finger, and this would be over.
“Wait, wait!” he pleaded.
And suddenly, it wasn’t Cliff I had pinned. There was a glint of light like shifting scales—and then it was Sylvia cowering against the wall, those perfect eyes wide with horror as she gazed up at me.
My breath caught. The illusion was staggering. She appeared human and as breathtaking as I’d ever seen her. She was shaking under my arm, where I had her pinned by her throat, her pale hands gripping me pleadingly.
“Jon, please,” she whispered, her voice wobbling through tears. “Please don’t hurt me.”
The urge to sweep her into my arms and apologize nearly overwhelmed me. But those swirling black runes on her cheek were distorted, a mere mimicry of the traitor mark Sylvia had earned when she had saved my life at the cost of her own sanity all those months ago.
This fucker wouldn’t survive to make the mistake of stealing my girl’s face twice.
I readjusted the barrel over her heart and fired.
A soft, broken gasp left Sylvia’s lips.
Just another monster. Just another fucking monster.
Even knowing it wasn’t really the woman I loved, every nerve ending in my body revolted.
The chest wound oozed blood down her chest in thick rivulets, soaking the bodice of the glittering midnight-blue gown that the shifter had seen fit to cloak itself in.
My throat closed painfully around a guttural apology as her pleading faded into an incoherent whisper.
The shifter slumped onto me, motionless. The final cruelty was cradling Sylvia’s limp body in my arms. Still warm. Still real.
Labored grunts across the hall made me tear my eyes away from the glassy eyes resting on my shoulder.
“Some help?” Lee called.
I hastily knelt and laid the shifter’s body on the floor. Red, tousled hair fanned out, and her limbs splayed limply. I paused just long enough to grab the rifle and reclaim the iron cuff from the shifter’s pocket before moving toward Lee.
Numbly, I knelt behind him and sliced through the zip ties. Every movement with my left arm sent white-hot thrills of agony through me. Definitely fractured, if not broken. It was swelling rapidly under my blood-stained sleeve, but at least it wasn’t my dominant arm. Small blessings.
Lee’s sigh of relief morphed into a grimace at the residual splatter of the shapeshifter’s blood on his hands. He wrenched Delilah’s amulet out, turning it this way and that to inspect the enchanted color.
“She’s still alive,” he said. “How much of what he said was bullshit? I mean… If he charged in looking like Cliff, shit hit the fan somewhere, right? Someone knew enough to send him like that.”
I chewed it over, still breathing raggedly.
Delilah was still alive, and shifters typically kept the source of their stolen face alive for information, so that put optimistic odds in Cliff and Sylvia’s favor, too.
For how long, I couldn’t be sure. Every instinct screamed for me to run, to find Cliff and Sylvia and make sure they were safe.
I cast a peripheral glance at the fallen shifter, nauseous still at how much it looked like Sylvia. The puddle of blood slowly grew along the tile floor. How long until Eros’ crew sent someone else to collect us when the shifter didn’t return?
“Whoever sent him doesn’t want us in this loading bay,” I said, pressing the iron cuff back into Lee's hands for safekeeping. “We keep to the plan. Maybe raising a lot more hell in there will give us the distraction we need to get back to them and get the fuck out of here.”
Lee hesitated, then nodded.
“How’s your arm?” he asked, frowning at how I held it tenderly near my side.
“Fucked, but I’ll manage,” I said gruffly.
I mopped blood and sweat on my sleeve as I armed myself as thoroughly as possible and strode through the open steel door. I forced myself not to look back at the motionless shifter’s body one last time.