Diego glanced at him, but Eric was looking out the window. It must have cost Eric, leader of all Shiftertown, to admit he was wrong.
“Why did you?” Diego asked.
“Because it’s the one-year anniversary of her mate’s death. There are rituals we do for that. Cassidy will do one in the place her mate died, and then we’ll have a family memorial, which these days includes everyone in our Shiftertown. Rituals are important for us, damned important. Important enough to risk danger for. Stay for the memorial-you’ll understand.”
Eric issued the invitation offhandedly, but Diego sensed that it was significant. First, though, they had to find Cassidy.
Shiftertown stood on the northern edge of North Las Vegas. As always, Diego marveled at how quickly city turned to open desert, developments and convenience stores soon falling behind. The street became a two-lane highway, running north.
Eric told Diego to take a turnoff to a smaller highway that went due west into the foothills of mountains north of Mount Charleston. After a few miles, the road started climbing, the dry, treeless landscape giving way to pines and scrub. The world was completely different up here, a damp and cool contrast to the desert floor. Pines soared, the clean smell of woods was in every breath, and the air became cold, even frigid.
Eric rode in silence, folding his arms with eyes closed, as though taking the opportunity for a nap. Just when Diego thought the man asleep, Eric opened his eyes, alert as anything, and told Diego to turn on the next dirt road to the right.
It was nearly dark now, and Diego had to look hard for the road. He found it after passing it once and having to back up to it, a faint strip winding into darkening woods.
The sun dove behind the trees and things got black fast. Diego drove slowly, taking care of his car on the washboard road. There was nothing out here, no cabins or ranger stations-just trees and sky, and a large Shifter saying nothing in his passenger seat.
Eric went from lounging to straight-up alert in a split second. “Stop. Here.”
Diego stood on the breaks. The car slid sideways, catching on the soft, slippery dirt, then stopped. Diego could see nothing in his headlights but the bank of a hill and the trunks of aspens, leading off into darkness.
Eric opened his door and slid out into the night. Diego quickly got himself out, his gun comfortingly at his side.
Eric hadn’t run off. He waited while Diego opened the trunk, got rid of his suit coat and tie, and pulled on a padded jacket against the cold. Diego lifted out a tranquilizer rifle he’d checked out from Shifter Division-just in case-loading a dart into it. He tucked a box of more darts into his pockets, plus extra ammo for the Sig in his shoulder holster.
When he looked up, Eric was giving the rifle a hard look. “You won’t need that.”
Diego slammed the trunk. “I’m out here, alone, with a Shifter who claims he’s got other Shifter guards around. Yeah, I need it.”
Eric growled in his throat again, a long, low sound. Which was exactly why Diego had brought the gun. He’d learned, in his ten years on the force, that while you didn’t use firepower recklessly, you didn’t hesitate to use it when the danger was real. Jobe had hesitated, and now he was dead.
“This won’t kill her,” Diego said. “Tranqs are strong enough to knock out a Shifter in its animal form but they don’t do any permanent damage.”
“I know,” Eric said. “Who do you think they experimented on to find the right mix?”
Shifters themselves, Diego had learned. And not always willing volunteers.
Diego hadn’t realized the extent of the research performed on Shifters until last night when he’d stayed up late to sift through files from Shifter Division. Some of the things he’d found out made him sick. “I’m sorry about that. Seriously. Experiments on Shifters are restricted now.”
“Shifters died in those experiments.” Eric’s eyes were sharp. “Males, females, cubs. I know this, because I was one of the ones they experimented on.”
Diego slung the rifle over one shoulder, his survival pack over the other. Eric was angry, and Diego didn’t blame him, but he wasn’t about to let Eric take out his rage at all humans on him.
“I’m sorry it happened,” Diego said. “I didn’t know about it until yesterday. I was only a kid at the time.”
“So was my son. When they wanted to poke and jab him, I told them I’d go in his place.”
Diego couldn’t think of an answer to that. Would Diego have volunteered to let people stick chemicals in him or perform weird experiments on him in order to save Xavier? Or his mother? Or Jobe?
Hell, yes.
Eric seemed to sense Diego’s understanding. He gave Diego a little nod, then turned around and started pulling off his shirt and boots.
“Whoa,” Diego said as Eric unbuckled his jeans. “What are you doing?”
“I can move around better out here if I shift. Plus Cassidy and the other Shifters will scent me faster and won’t attack.”
Good to know. Diego looked away as Eric slid off his pants.
When he glanced back, Eric was stark naked, moonlight shining on a honed body and the tattoo that spread from his right shoulder down his arm and across his upper back. Diego looked quickly away again, and Eric huffed a laugh.
“Humans. Terrified of nudity.”
“Not terror. Respecting space and privacy.”
“Right. Humans are all about their space,” Eric said, then he shifted.
He didn’t roar or howl or make strange noises like werewolves did in movies. The change was smooth, practiced, and fast.
Eric’s face distorted first, his nose and mouth elongating, his slit-pupiled eyes going from deep jade to light green. His chest became the thick chest of a big cat, his legs bent into powerful back limbs, and his feet and hands sprouted claws and fur.
The whole process took about thirty seconds, but it was a very long thirty seconds. At the end of it, Diego found himself facing a huge, exotic wildcat.
Shifter cats were a combination of all the big cats, the files said, bred together long ago-by fairies, according to the Shifters, though Diego wasn’t sure he believed that.
Shifter cats had different characteristics from family to family, clan to clan. Eric and Cassidy resembled snow leopards, but Eric was a hell of lot bigger than a usual snow leopard. He had black spots on a thick white coat, tufted ears, and a well-muscled chest, but he also had the powerhouse limbs of a lion.
Eric’s family had lived in the ragged wilds of Scotland, Diego had learned, until the family turned themselves in as part of the Shifters coming out. How snow leopards had bred in the Highlands, Diego didn’t know. But there was a lot about Shifters no one understood yet, and the Shifters didn’t exactly volunteer information about themselves.
Eric studied Diego with an almost amused look on his cat face before he turned and loped off into the darkness.
Diego switched on a lantern flashlight and hiked after him. They were far from paved roads and civilization out here on the edge of the Sierras. Towns and farms were nonexistent, and the mountains were vast.
Eric could be leading Diego anywhere-into an ambush with other Shifters maybe-but Diego wasn’t afraid. He was armed, he had his cell phone and radio, and he knew how to fight. Hand-to-hand combat was his specialty, and he was a more than decent marksman.
No, the only thing that terrified Diego Escobar was being held upside down off a balcony thirty stories up. If those drug runners had met Diego in the middle of a flat field, he’d have won the day. They’d be incarcerated now instead of running loose somewhere south of the border.
The leopard trotted along the cut of a dry wash and up a ridge on the other side of it. Eric was at least nice enough to let Diego keep him in sight.
At the top of the ridge, Eric stopped and sniffed the wind. To Diego, the chill breeze smelled like pine and dust, but Eric made a sudden, fierce growl and loped away, disappearing quickly beneath the trees.