Series: Shifter Ops Series by Renee Rose
Total pages in book: 32
Estimated words: 30911 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 155(@200wpm)___ 124(@250wpm)___ 103(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 30911 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 155(@200wpm)___ 124(@250wpm)___ 103(@300wpm)
“Laurie!” Declan shouts. “Come help me.”
My phone beeps. I dig in the chair cushions for it, finally unearthing it. The screen reads: missed call. He Who Shall Not Be Named. I get chills, and my wolf whines and tries to hide in a corner. That’s our call sign for Lucius, King of the Vampires.
It’s a bad idea to owe a vampire a favor. They're worse than the human mafia, except if you renege, instead of sleeping with the fishes you’ll be an involuntary blood donor. Either way you’re dead.
In Lucius’ case, he took pity on us and used us for odd jobs. And no job is odder than ones you do for a vampire king. That ended after he met his mate and discharged our debt.
But he still has us on speed dial. Because just like the mob, you can never escape a vampire.
I hit replay just in time for heavy metal music to come blasting through the speakers Declan insisted on installing.
“Deck the halls with boughs of holly–” Twisted Sister sings, interspersed with Declan’s cussing and howls.
“Shut up,” I shout, holding my cell to one ear and pressing my hat over the other. “I'm trying to listen to my voicemail.”
Declan returns. He’s still naked under the apron, now with a Santa hat on his head. Laurie has a tattered wreath around his neck.
“What are you doing?” I sigh.
“I can’t find the tree.”
“There is no tree. Not any more. The firecracker incident, remember?”
“We need to buy a tree.”
“No. No tree.”
“It’ll do ya good.”
“Declan–”
“Look at Laurie!” Declan waves, stirring the air until the room resembles an explosion in a pillow factory. “He’s so stressed he’s shedding feathers.”
Laurie pokes his head out of the feathery cloud, his Adam’s apple bobbing. “B-b-birds d-d-don’t shed feathers. We m-m-molt them.”
“Shut up.” Declan sneezes.
“We’re all a little on edge,” I say. “But I’ve got good news.” I hold up the phone. “A call from the King of Vampires.”
“Shite!”
“T-t-that’s g-g-good n-n-news?”
“He’s got a job for us.” I give Laurie a sour look. “Careful what you wish for.”
Chapter Two
Parker
“W-w-what job?”
“We have to pick up a couple of packages.”
“Right.” Declan rushes away and returns wearing jeans and boots. He pulls on a shirt and rubs his hands together, his eyes flashing bright green. His animal is close to the surface. “Let’s do this.”
I’ll need to go slowly and spell things out carefully, like I’m talking to a toddler. “First we need a car or bus that will fit all of us–”
“Done.” Declan whirls around and leaps right out the window. There’s a pained yip.
“He forgot about the cacti,” I tell Laurie. “Again.” I lean out the window and shout to Declan’s retreating form. “Where are you going?”
“To see a man about a van!” he shouts over her shoulder.
“Is he going to walk there?” I ask Laurie. The owl shifter shrugs, and the movement sends more tiny, downy feathers wafting into the air.
I rub my face. It’s going to be a long December.
Two hours later, Declan pulls up in a VW bus with mismatching orange panels. There’s a huge evergreen tree lashed to the top of it, the tip of it bowing over the windshield.
Laurie and I head out of the house to meet him. “What’s this?”
“The van.”
“What’s with the tree?”
He shrugs. “It came with the bus.”
I pinch the bridge of my nose. “Declan. Did you steal this bus?”
In reply, he lays on the horn. Laurie’s already slid the side door open to climb into the back seat. He looks back, catches my eye and shrugs.
“Fine.” I growl, settling my hat firmly on my head. “But I’m driving.”
Turns out Declan is rubbish at sitting still and riding shotgun, so I banish him to the backseat while I follow my GPS to the first location coordinates Lucius sent me. We pull off the highway onto a long dirt road. After a mile of kicking up red dust, we reach the drop.
“Is this it?” Declan squints at the squat building in the middle of nowhere. There are two gas pumps out front, but the sign says gas is eighty cents a gallon, so it hasn’t been in use in a while.
I double check my phone. “I guess so. I don’t really have service, but this is where he said to go for the first package.”
“Any idea what the package is? What it looks like?”
“None.”
“Right.” Declan rubs his hands together. “Let’s see what we got.”
We spill out of the van together and approach the building. I rub grime off the old windows and cup my hands around my eyes to see into the space. It’s an old convenience store, the racks cleared out long ago, and now covered in spider webs.
Laurie prods the door, and it sighs open with a creak that makes me shiver.
“Not creepy at all.”
“Oh come on,” Declan says. “Ya think the king of the vampires sent us out here on a wild goose chase, just to get us shanked in the middle of nowhere? If he wanted to kill us, he could just rip our heads off or drink us dry.”