Shapeshifter Ch. 06

I had troubles sitting still and holding my tongue as they proceeded to fill Kel's newly acquired search history with enough stuff to prove that he had really, really tried before bothering the clerks. It took ages, eons, millennia, or at least enough time to have me dozing when Kel finally got up to go visit one of the supervisors.

Mike and I stayed where we were-him because he was a fucking seven feet tall Viking; me because my job showed and looking like a hardened criminal wouldn't go well with Kel's pleading. He did seem to do well enough, although his face showed increasing versions of distress and shame as he gestured and whispered with the old lady manning the desk. The way his face scrunched up made me tense up and grip the arm rests of my chair with white-knuckled hands. Had anyone asked, I probably would have said it was irritation, but nobody did, so I could be honest with myself. I didn't like those expressions on his face, just like I hadn't liked him smiling before, although for different reasons.

"Christ, why are flings so hard on a person," I muttered through gritted teeth as the wizened lady clerk sighed and started typing away on her computer. At least, Kel looked to be getting somewhere.

Mike snorted. "Yeah, fling, that's what this is, sure," he drawled, smirking lazily. "You're just in it for the money, right?"

I tried not to frown, because I'm not stupid. I heard what he wanted me to hear, and I knew what I tried not to. Not a fling. Oh boy, so not a fling. I did like money, though.

There was no good answer to his remark, so I kept my mouth shut and just watched.

The lady clerk had scooted back to make room for Kel and his second chair, so he had obviously succeeded in trying to look at the rest of the files. Problem was, Mike couldn't just saunter over and join them to have his own look-see, and both of us didn't really trust Kel's drug-addled little brain to remember everything.

"Next time, we find a way to smuggle in bugs and an ear plug," Mike grumbled, having realized the impasse, too.

"He'll get what we need," I replied, trying to sound bored, because I didn't feel confident enough to fake 'sincere'. Kel probably would get us enough information to continue our own hunt, but it would cost precious time. Time was something I didn't want to fuck with, not with a free-fire-sign on Kel's head.

There was a moment when Kel looked at us with a puzzled, unhappy expression on his face, but for most of the next hour, Mike and I just sat there, playing Solitaire on the PC and clicking through the government website connected to the archives.

I almost jumped up when Kel finally fell into a chair next to us.

"So?" Mike prompted, forgetting— at least for the moment— how little he liked cats, or Kel. I'd have bet money he would scoot back, but he didn't. Long stretches of waiting can do that to a person.

"I'm confused," Kel stated, nodding sagely to his own words. He didn't meet my eyes, or Mike's, fiddling around with the zipper of his fabulous violet hoodie. "It seems I have a quite substantial trust fund in my name, and, what did they call it, shares? I own some of them. Well, more than half of them, actually, of my father's business. And I'm supposed to get access to all of it at my twenty-first birthday."

There was so little emotion in his words, I did a double-take, just to be sure I wasn't dreaming. Kel had just given us so much information, in so little words, it was hard to make my mind digest them quickly enough. When I did, though, it all seemed quite clear.

"And your father has control over your stuff until your birthday?" I asked in a hushed voice.

Kel nodded numbly. "That's what those case files say. I read the court transcript."

I didn't know what to say. It was a first for me. My parents had been fucked-up drunks, not violent or anything, just not quite here in the head anymore, so I didn't really understand family bonds, but the thought of having someone who was supposed to love you, try to kill you? It had to hurt.

Mike didn't have the same qualms. "So, your father is behind the assassination attempt?"

"I don't know," Kel whispered. His head sagged, his shoulders rolled forward, and he carefully, slowly, rested his elbows on his thighs. "There were things I don't really understand. Something about my mother's relatives in France. If I die, they have some kind of set time period to lay claim on my money, but that's where it gets fuzzy. My father tried to get that clause to be stricken from the pre-nup, something about them having had no contact with me or my mother for more than twenty years. The judge agreed, but only if the French relatives signed a written statement, confirming they don't want anything to do with me."

Kel looked up, and his eyes glittered in the light. It wasn't tears, but emotion, some deep, dark, strong emotion setting his irises on fire. "That's when he decided to withdraw his motion."

Mike's seat creaked as he leaned back. I, for my part, kept as still as I could. I would have lit a cigarette, had we been outside or something, but in here I'd probably get kicked out or arrested. Sitting still was the next best thing I had to offer. That, and blunt truth.

"Your dad didn't want your French blood relatives to find out you existed." It made sense to me. If they didn't know they had a nephew or cousin or something, they didn't have any reason to contact ol' Teddy after his wife's death. And Kel would have known about their existence, even if they just didn't care about him. "Fucked up, if you ask me."

Kel looked at me sluggishly, his eyes darting over my face, then to my eyes. He held my gaze, looking at me and through me at the same time.

"Noom," he said haltingly, his lips quivering, again not with tears, but with something deeper, something more hidden, "I think my dad wants to kill me. And he has four more days to do it."

I blinked at him. "How did you come to that conclusion?"

A shiver ran through him, my Kel, and he sighed.

"My birthday is on this Friday. The thirteenth of December. I'll be twenty-one."

**Kelaste**

"It's easy. We just have to keep you alive until Saturday, right?"

We were on our way out of the archives, heading for the baggage lockers to reclaim our stuff, and Noom was being antsy. I, for once, felt comfortably calm and collected. It was an amusing twist in behavior, but giggling about it probably would make Noom worry even more. The looks he shot at my face were clear enough— I probably didn't look anywhere near as calm and collected as I felt. I wasn't a violent heart, and I had never liked horror films or mystery stories. Zombies were my worst nightmare, and romance my biggest love. Maybe this inclination towards total non-violence made me everybody's victim. It sure felt like it most of the days, so I wasn't going to argue. Of course, things had changed over the last few days. I had killed two people, or had it been three? So far, I had been doing a pretty good job at forgetting the things I had done in my cat-form, and I probably would keep it going indefinitely. I usually let people hit me until they got bored or tired and moved on. The biggest difference had been Noom, or rather, Noom being in life-threatening danger. It had enabled me to kill without remorse.

The way Noom had treated me in the beginning and still tended to now and then, all that ordering around, the shoving, the sneering, the threats, didn't bother me at all. It still was a far cry from the way my father had treated me all my life, the difference being that Noom obviously had to force himself to do it. He tried not to let that on, but I saw it, I could taste it in the air. Something had broken Noom just as badly as I had been broken. Two cracked pots, who only had each other.

And now, my father was trying to have me killed, for money at that. Not only money, but for control over Flatlands Inc., the business he had built with my mother's money. My money, as it seemed. My hands felt numb and cold.

"-el?"

I had always known that there wasn't much love lost between my father and me, but he hadn't even tried to talk to me. I would have gladly given him a few of the shares, just enough so he could keep his god-damn power, if it bought me freedom and peace. But he hadn't. He wanted all of it, without me being a nuisance. God, it hurt my heart to think about it.

A hand grabbed my arm and shook me softly. "Kel!"

Blinking up at Noom's annoyed face, I tried to remember what he had said. I drew a blank. I hadn't listened, not for a second. "What?" I snapped, blinked again, and repeated in a much lower, softer voice, "what is it?"

"You're walking towards the highway. Our room is in the other direction," he bit, pointing a thumb over his shoulder mockingly. Now that he had my attention, he stopped, turned and walked back the way we had come, obviously expecting me to follow. A few steps after, he stopped again, this time cocking his head to the side and staring at something or someone in the sparse crowd around us. Something in his posture tensed, but he didn't go for his gun and after a few more seconds, he rolled his shoulders and walked on.

"Come on, scrap! Suicide by car goes wrong more often than not," he yelled over his shoulder, making everyone more or less stare at me.

"Sorry," I muttered, sure he wouldn't hear it, and turned to trot after him with a ducked head and people gawking at me.

We walked in silence for a good half hour, him constantly scanning the crowds for threats and snarling at everything getting too close to us, me staring at the asphalt and pondering my life. Relatives in France. That was the one thing my mind kept circling back to, which was funny, considering my own father was trying to have me killed. I had never given much thought to family, having lost my mother almost at birth. My father was a person even his own mother couldn't possibly love, and my grandparents— my father's parents— had declared me dim-witted and useless, and broken off contact. Come to think of it, why had I never asked about mother's family? I had just assumed she hadn't had any, because, why the fuck would anyone with people who loved them ever fall deep enough to consider marrying a bastard like Theodore DeLargo?

But now I had another family, and I had a name. Gael Lagrada, half French, half Spanish, if my linguistics skills didn't let me down. My cousin and the beneficiary of my mother's will if I died, and if he ever found out about it. I hadn't mentioned his name to Noom or Mike, because I was afraid what they would think. I'd find out about him all by myself, as soon as this madness was over.

"Don't look back, keep staring at my ass. Someone's following us," Noom hissed, brows knit together in a thunderous expression.

Speak of the devil. I blushed, because I actually had been staring at Noom's backside without realizing, and scuttled closer so I could walk next to him instead of trailing after him.

"Is it the same guy?" I whispered, hyper-aware of the movements in Noom's body. We were walking so close, I could hear the fibers in his muscles creak and groan.

Noom threw a few scattered glances at the displays to our right, using the reflections to keep track of whatever he had spotted, but again made no move to grab his gun. I knew where it was. I could smell it. I could almost taste the alloy it was made of on my tongue.

"Dunno, dun' care," he drawled, automatically falling back into his habitual street slang as he concentrated on his task. "There's two ways how this's gonna go. One, he has our room booby-trapped and he's creepin' after us to make sure we go pop. Two, he doesn't know where we're stayin', and he plans to assault us as soon as nobody's around to see."

Fear prickled up my back in a breath-taking rush, blowing my pupils and making the day so much brighter than it should be. My breath shuddered through half-parted lips as I tried to get a grip on my emotions, but at least my feet didn't care if I was afraid or not— they just kept following Noom's pace and let me deal with my shit. And as it always was, I suddenly remembered that I hadn't shot up for more than a day. And no shakes, so far. Huh.

"What do you think we should do?" I whispered, although our tail probably was too far away to listen in even if I talked in a normal voice.

Noom grinned. It was an ugly, evil grin, and it made his eyes sparkle with a dark kind of joy.

"Just one thing we can do. Ambush that fucker right back."

~*~

There was a special taste to the quiet panic I felt, walking up the same street we had taken in the morning. I knew in the front of my mind how I was supposed to act: natural. But now that I had to concentrate on it, I just couldn't remember how I usually acted. I kept rolling my shoulders, stumbling, hitching my breath and nudging Noom with my shoulder as I inched closer to him, and I knew I shouldn't do all those things, but I just couldn't stop.

Just as we turned into the small side street leading to the back of Strummin' Joe's, Noom grabbed me, pushed me against the wall and corralled me in by slapping his right hand against the wall next to my face. I twitched to attention, staring at him wide-eyed and shocked.

"You're giving us away, stop fidgeting," he hissed angrily, leaning close to my face. His blue eyes reminded me of cornflowers, piercing and sharp and entrancing. I could feel his breath puff against my lips, felt the rough texture of cinder stones and plastering scrape against the exposed patches of skin on my lower back, and his scent flooded my nostrils, running hotly through my veins and directly down into my crotch. My lips parted and I must have made some kind of soft noise, because Noom suddenly shuddered, hissed, and leaned in to catch my mouth with his.

His tongue traced the seam of my lips, first softly and inviting, then demanding when I didn't react fast enough. He kissed me hard enough to cut my upper lip against my teeth, coating our dancing tongues with the sweet, intoxicating flavor of blood.

I groaned, straining to press my swollen cock against his body, but he wouldn't let me. Each time I tried to move forward, closer to him, he pushed me back against the wall, sometimes hard enough to make me huff. It only inflamed me more, especially since he seemed to take a special care not to interrupt our kiss.

I had to touch him. The skin over his abs felt blazing hot to my cold fingers, and I tried to grab his sides to pull him in closer, shivering with excitement.

"Nu-uh," he whispered roughly, swiftly grabbing my arms to encircle my wrists with just one of his hands, breaking what little contact I had to his body. As he pulled my arms over my head, a trail of his unique scent wafted into my face, almost blinding me with need. I knew his scent and my body knew what usually followed soon after smelling him, loosening up in a way that sent tingles through my nerve endings.

I struggled as he held my arms up against the wall, effectively trapping me. I could have gotten him off me easily, but I seemed to forget my own strength as soon as he touched my body, and I honestly couldn't think of anything more erotic than him manhandling me in public where everyone could see. He ended my weak fight with a sharp, quick bite in my lower lip and another wash of watered-down blood. The only thing holding my body together was my new set of clothes. Without them, I probably would have been set aflame by now.

Noom didn't need to touch my dick, I was ready to shoot right there, pressed against that dirty wall.

There was a strange noise to my left at the end of the street, but I was too busy to give it a second thought. Noom didn't react to it, so I didn't, and instead whimpered when he moved his left leg, pressing his muscular thigh against my raging cock, nailing me to the wall even more securely. That simple contact, the heat spreading though his jeans and into my crotch, made me see stars.

I couldn't stand it anymore. Moaning, I started to hump his leg, my eyes closed with ecstasy, my breath huffing against his lips where they hovered just an inch away from mine. Just a few movements brought me so close to the brink, I had to bite my lip once more to keep from coming. I didn't fully understand why I didn't want to shoot yet, but I didn't question it. The pain of denial was exquisite.

Noom, unfortunately, was ready to shoot too. As he kept me pinned against the wall and groaning like a wanton whore, he did a strange little twist with his hips and suddenly had his gun sandwiched between us. I didn't realize what he did until a muffled shot reverberated against my chest, blinding my sense of smell with a blazing hot cloud of burnt gunpowder, and a bullet shell that made its way right into my collar. I was deaf from the whip-like crack of the gun, nose-blind from the stink of sulfur, and a small, blazing hot shell burned lines of pain across my chest and belly as it merrily clinked through my shirt, out at the bottom hem and onto the street.

Chaos.

In that moment of absolute, acute, panicked silence, there was only Noom.

Noom, staring derisively towards the end of the street, where a guy in a trench coat was in the process of falling down backwards, dropping the gun he had pointed at me just a second ago. Noom, putting up his gun, letting my arms go to switch on the safeguard, Noom and his winter-calm, blue eyes, giving me a lazy, self-satisfied smirk. His lips formed a few words, but there was just silence and a ringing in my ears.

It took him a few tries to understand I couldn't hear him. When he did, he grabbed my arm and pulled me towards the creaky stairs leading up to our apartment. I stumbled after him, every step an echoing, dull thud through my body. I had experienced partial deafness once, when my father had slapped me wrong and ruined my ear, and it was just like it. I had healed quickly enough back then, and I would again, this time.

I wanted to ask Noom what we should do about the dead man lying in the street, about what we were going to tell the police when— not if, I was sure— they'd come knocking, and I wanted to talk about where we should run to next. But being unable to hear, I was afraid to talk, too disoriented to make the first move. It was a simpler thing to just follow Noom's lead.

Noom stopped me at the door, leaning forward to inspect the edge of the door frame. It took him almost a minute to find the single strand of hair he had jammed in the upper edge between door and frame when we had left, but he did. The door hadn't been opened since we had left. He shoved me into the dark hallway like an unruly child, making me stumble and catch myself at the bathroom door. When I turned around, he was already closing the door between us. Huh.

Frowning, I hurried into the bathroom to catch a glimpse at the dead man from the window. My ears were still ringing, but my hearing was already coming back in bits and pieces. It was an irritating feeling and it made my eyes water in the most annoying way, as I tried to watch Noom pick up the empty shell. He also went through the corpse's pockets and took his gun, switched the safety off and shuffled around a bit, hovering above the dead man. When he seemed to have found the best position, he shot the body once more and then simply walked back.

I felt something beneath the sole of my boot, a short, soft vibration, almost impalpable. I blinked, then my body just dropped, quicker than my brain could catch up, quicker than I thought was possible.

The window glass above me shattered into a million tiny shards as a bullet crashed through it.

The next bullet bit right through my hand as I rolled towards the door and my attacker. Where the hell had he come from?

The third shot hit me right above my left clavicle and I could feel the bullet ricocheting through my rib cage, tearing up at least one of my lungs and god knew what other organs, but the adrenaline kept me going. My attacker did get two more shots off, but they went wide as I barreled into him, crashing him into the wall opposite of the bathroom door. I still couldn't hear everything, but the way the plastering cracked and puffed up clouds of dust was enough of a sign for the force of our altercation.