Autumn's Blood: The Spirit Shifters, Book One (9 page)

Autumn turned and ran from the house,
the back of her knuckles pressed against her mouth. She ran out
onto the street and straight into someone. The person caught her by
the wrists, but she shook them off.

“Hey, it’s okay!” A male voice spoke.
“You ran into me.”

She put out a hand and pushed past the
man, barely glancing at him. “I’m sorry ...”

“Wait up a minute.” Footsteps ran
along beside her, and she picked up her pace. “Hey,
wait!”

She spun around. “Why should I?” Her
temper flared, taking her hurt out on him rather than the person
actually responsible for her mood.

“You seem upset.”

“Why should you care?” she shot
back.

“I don’t like to see someone
upset.”

“You’re a stranger.”

His voice softened. “Yeah, and I’m
guessing it isn’t a stranger who’s made you cry.”

“I’m not crying—” But, with dismay,
she realized her cheeks were damp. The anger burned out of her and
her shoulders slumped. For the first time, she took in the sight of
the concerned stranger. A man with long dark hair tied back, over
six feet tall, broad shoulders, high cheekbones and dark eyes. A
flutter of recognition appeared inside her, but she couldn’t place
it.

“Man trouble?” he asked, a hint of a
smile playing on his lips.

She couldn’t help smile back, and
sniffed. “I guess you could say that.”

“Well, I’d also say he’s a
fool.”

She sniffed again. “You got that
right.”

The man held out his hand. “I’m Chogan
Pallaton. I just got into town.”

She reached out and shook it. His skin
was warm. Too warm. “I’m Autumn. Please don’t think I’m being rude,
but I’m not going to offer to show you around if that’s what you’re
after. I’ve had a really long day ...”

He held up both hands in defense, his
dark eyes lighting with amusement. “Hey, I wouldn’t dream of
imposing. Another time, perhaps?”

“Yeah.” She glanced at him, suddenly
shy. “Perhaps.”

He gave her a nod and stuffed his
hands into his pockets. He ducked his head as he walked away, then
threw a glance back over his shoulder, smiling again as Autumn
stood watching him.

Why did she feel like she knew him
from somewhere?

Chapter
Eight

AUTUMN OPENED THE front door of her
apartment and paused. Something was wrong. The usual blare of music
and smell of cooking didn’t greet her. The apartment was in
silence. Had Mia gone out without letting her know she wouldn’t be
home? That wasn’t like her. They normally looked out for one
another. But no, she realized, the place wasn’t in total silence. A
muffled sobbing came from deeper within the building.

Alarm spiked through her.
“Mia?”

She rushed to her roommate’s bedroom
to find the door closed. The crying was definitely coming from
inside the room. She lifted her hand and gently knocked before
cracking open the door. The cries grew louder. Mia had the drapes
drawn and the light was off, so Autumn barely made out her small
form curled in on itself on her bed.

“Mia? What’s wrong?” Her own problems
forgotten, she rushed to her friend’s side. She took a seat on the
edge of the bed, one hand rubbing Mia’s back.

Mia lifted her head from her pillow.
In the light from the hallway, Autumn noted her face was puffy from
crying, her eyes red-rimmed, and her skin blotchy. “They cut the
budget for Missing Lives for next year.”

“What? Who has?”

“The government. If I don’t find the
money, I’ll have to shut down.”

“That’s crazy. How much did they cut
it by?”

“Everything. They’ve pulled the whole
lot.”

“Are they able to do that?”

“They’re the government; they can do
whatever they want.” She buried her head in her hands. “I’m going
to have to let Tina go, and I’ve just taken on a new case. I can’t
believe I’m going to let the parents down like this, with
everything they’re already going through.”

“I’m sure they’ll understand.” She
paused. “Who is the new case?”

“A boy—Toby West. He’s been missing
for nine days now.”

Autumn reached out and covered Mia’s
hand with her own, squeezed it, hoping to offer some kind of
comfort. She understood Mia’s reason for tending to take on similar
cases—teenage boys, often suspected runaways with troubled
backgrounds.

“Listen to me. I have money sitting in
my account, not doing anything. I’ll make a good-sized donation,
enough to keep you going for a few months. Perhaps then you’ll be
able to figure out something else.” She smiled. “Maybe we could
organize a fundraiser event. There’s bound to be other people who
know what an amazing job you do and who will be willing to
help.”

Mia lifted her eyes. It pained Autumn
to see their dark pools swimming in tears. “I can’t expect you to
do that.”

“Mia, honey, you’re my best friend and
the closest thing I have to real family. I know how important
Missing Lives is to you. It’s your whole life and you’ve helped so
many people. I’m not going to let you go under when I have money
that can help you. I mean, what else am I going to do with
it?”

What she said was true. She never took
a vacation, rarely dated. Her wardrobe consisted of smart but
inexpensive suits for work, and then she lived in jeans and
sneakers on the weekend. She didn’t even have a gym membership,
preferring to run the streets of the city plugged into her iPod
instead.

“Really? Are you sure?” Mia’s chin
wobbled and fresh tears sprang to her eyes.

“I wouldn’t say something if I didn’t
mean it.” Autumn laughed. “Now stop crying or you’re going to make
me cry too.”

Mia sat up and threw her arms around
Autumn’s neck in a tight squeeze. “Oh my God. Thank you so much.
You’re the best friend a girl could have. And I’ll pay you back, I
swear I will.”

“I don’t want paying back. It’s a
donation, not a loan.”

THE NEXT MORNING, back in the
facility, Autumn had seen no sign of Blake, and she found her heart
beat too hard in her chest at the prospect of bumping into him
again. She wondered how he’d act when their paths did eventually
cross, as they surely would. Would he be cool with her or ignore
her completely? Why was this even bothering her so much?

She sat down at the equipment, running
back over the slides she’d been working on. Even though much of the
work had already been completed by her predecessors, she’d decided
to start from scratch by replicating the original mutation. She
couldn’t trust that things had been done right the first
time.

A number of cups of coffee
and several hours later, she’d achieved the original
mutation
,
a single base pair amino acid
substitution at position five of the polypeptide chain. But the
expression of the gene mutation into whole chromosomes replicating
simply wasn’t happening.

It’s early days
yet
, she reminded herself.
Far too soon to start panicking.

The ping of the elevator doors opening
caught her attention. She turned to see Peter Haverly emerge from
the elevator. He donned a white coat and headed over to her. “Hey,
how’s our newest recruit doing?”

Autumn pulled off her protective
glasses and dropped them on the counter. “Slow, though I hope I’m
making some progress.”

He offered her a smile. “I’m sure you
are. Any chance you can run me through what you’ve done so
far?”

His interest confused her.
Surely they couldn’t expect her to have achieved something already?
This could take weeks, if not months.
If
, in fact, she managed to do what
they wanted at all. But what could she say? While he might not be
her direct boss, he was certainly her superior.

She picked her glasses back up and
slid them onto her face. “Sure. I was just about to apply a
catalyst to the recombinant DNA. I’m hoping we might see some of
the changes we’ve seen in the original samples.”

He pulled up a stool beside her.
“Sounds good.”

Autumn slid a new slide containing the
sample she’d created beneath the electron microscope and locked it
into place. Immediately, the strands appeared on the computer
screen—like fat X-shaped sausages—clearly made out on the powerful
equipment. She took out a pipette and added a drop of clear fluid
chemical. She reached in with another, much thinner slide to drop
on top of the DNA in order to increase the focus. As she reached
in, she pressed too hard and the small sliver of glass snapped, one
piece embedding into the fleshy pad of her finger.

“Shit!” She pulled her hand back,
careful not to disturb the already primed slide, but before she got
clear, a single drop of blood fell onto the sample.

“Oh crap,” she swore. “I’m so sorry. I
guess I’ll need to start again.”

Damn it. Why did things
like that happen when someone else was watching?
She reached out to remove the ruined slide, but a
hand caught her by the arm, Haverly’s grip hard, stronger than
she’d given him credit for.

“Wait!”

She looked in surprise from the man’s
hand on her arm to his wide-eyed, suddenly pale face which was
locked on the monitor screen.

“Look.” His voice was breathy, and
slowly he dropped his hold on her arm.

Autumn turned to the monitor, a frown
creasing her forehead. Then she caught sight of what was happening
on screen and gave a gasp.

“I can’t believe it.”

On the computer, the chromosomes began
to separate, creating a different sequence and number, one that
might be a different species all together.

“How is that even possible?” she
asked, her voice hushed.

He caught hold of her hand once more
and lifted it up. Blood ran from the tip, drops spattering the
floor.

“Get another slide.” His words weren’t
a request.

She looked at him and then nodded,
realizing that whatever had happened needed to be replicated
immediately or they might lose the answer to the puzzle she’d been
paid to solve.

Quickly, Autumn replicated the
experiment, using the sample of recombinant human DNA she’d created
herself. On screen, the slide showed a regular number of
chromosomes for human DNA. “Now what?” she asked.

“Your blood. You need to add your
blood.”

With her heart in her throat, she held
her finger over the slide, squeezing her finger with her other hand
to force a drop of her blood onto the slide.

The moment her blood hit, the
chromosomes began to split and reform.

“Oh. My. God.”

Haverly leapt to his feet and ran to
each corner, flicking something on the security cameras.

“What are you doing?”

“General Dumas can’t know about this.
Your life is in danger.”

The excitement she’d been experiencing
flipped to alarm. She jumped up. “What?”

“We don’t have long. Security is going
to notice the cameras are out soon enough and come to find out
what’s wrong.

He pulled the slides from beneath the
microscope. “We need to destroy these, not that it’s going to make
much difference. Your work’s been recorded since you started and as
soon as Dumas reviews the recordings, he’s going to see what’s
happened and come after you.”

“Come after me? Why would he do
that?”

“Because you’re the answer, Doctor
Anderson. Your blood is the key to turning regular humans into
shifters.”

That word again.
“Into
what
?!”

“I can’t explain now. I have to get
you out of here.” He pulled his cell from his pocket and hit a
couple of buttons. He spoke into the handset. “You need to get down
here right now. Something’s happened that will change
everything.”

A fresh set of nerves spiked through
Autumn’s stomach. Where only seconds earlier she’d been excited and
disbelieving about what had just happened, she suddenly wondered if
she had something to fear.

The elevator pinged open. Haverly
grabbed her and pushed her behind him. Blake emerged and Haverly’s
grip on her loosened. Autumn’s heart picked up pace for a different
reason.

The big man strode in, his bright,
dark eyes darting around the room. “What’s happened?” he
demanded.

“You’re not going to believe this, but
Autumn’s blood contaminated her experiment samples and the human
DNA shifted.”

Blake looked at her, curiosity in his
eyes. “Your blood made the DNA change?”

“I think so. I’d need to re-run the
experiment again to make sure, but it was the only outside
factor.”

“We don’t have time for you to
replicate the experiment,” said Blake. “If Haverly is right, we
need to get you out of here right now.”