Crash Morph: Gate Shifter Book Two (31 page)

He listened to something the younger, shorter and much thinner guy in the booth said, leaning further over the back of the seat so they could speak in low voices. I still couldn’t see either of their faces, which was frustrating.
 

I only heard enough to know they didn’t speak English.

Then the big guy nodded and straightened. I watched as he disappeared back through the mirrored door in the wall.

Once he was gone, I frowned again.

While I was impressed that Nik picked up on so much from minimal clues, I still wasn’t sure of the significance of what I’d just seen. I mean, okay, so the guy in the booth might be the bar’s owner, given his rap on the glass and his obvious authority over the giant in the back room. I just wasn’t sure how that information would help me.

Truthfully, I was starting to wonder what we were doing here.

I didn’t really want to approach those guys, much less ask anyone here about modeling shows or Culare’s Modeling School.

I at least needed a better cover story than...well, none.

Truthfully, given everything going on in my life at the moment, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to approach them even with a decent cover story. I was determined to find the girls, but until I had a better idea of who I was screwing with, I didn’t want the potential kidnappers to know my face, or get a name from me they might be able to trace.
 

So yeah, I was gathering impressions, sure, but I was beginning to question how useful this little field trip was. Frankly, if this whole operation was what I suspected it was, I was in over my head and I knew it.
 

Maybe I needed to get Gantry in on this one. For real, that is.

I could even try to get the FBI involved, although it would probably have to be through a tip; I wasn’t confident I could get close enough to the kidnappers’ real operation to pull usable evidence without getting myself killed.

I glanced at Nik, about to tell him it was time for us to go, when someone else walked through the door from the street. They moved aside the plastic flaps separating the foyer from the main floor even as I heard the squeak of that heavy, S&M door as it started to close behind him. The man who entered moved faster than the door, and those hanging strips let in a brief but disorienting scatter of sun rays before falling back into place in thick, rubbery strips.

Seeing the face that appeared there, I felt my heart start hammering violently in my chest, hard enough that I worried it might crack a rib.

It was pretty much the last person I expected to see here. His was also maybe the most unwelcome face I could imagine at that particular moment...including Michael Evers.

It was Razmun.

As in, yeah,
that
Razmun...leader of the rebellion of free, shape-shifting morph originating from the planet of Vilandt, of the not-Earth dimension of...wherever.

The same Razmun who’d sworn to wipe out the human race, by any means necessary.

He just stood there by the door for a few seconds, surveying the same dark space that me and Nik occupied, probably waiting for his human eyes to adjust.

And yeah, it occurred to me.

Meaning, yes...it had already crossed my mind that things could get really bad in here, once he and Nik saw one another.

13

A Face Only A Mother Could Love

I couldn’t believe Razmun was standing there, frankly.

I also figured, pretty much immediately, that he’d been following us.

I mean, what were the odds he would come to
this
place, if he wasn’t following me and Nik? How could he have picked today, of all days, to check out a tacky, quasi-eighties bar and sample Earth-made and probably watered-down alcoholic drinks?

What would he even be
doing
here, if he wasn’t following Nik and me?

Around the time I thought that, I heard a strange sound behind me.
 

The sound wasn’t loud.

In fact, I barely heard it at all with the jukebox blaring an old Prince song from the nearest corner to the right of the bar. But there was a distinctive kind of
whump
noise, kind of like throwing a pile of something soft and relatively light on the floor.

Turning back towards the bar, I glanced at Nik.

Only Nik wasn’t sitting there anymore.

I looked around in kind of a dazed panic, unable to believe he no longer sat on the stool next to me. My mind tried to connect that fact clumsily to Razmun’s appearance, even as I fought to remain calm so I wouldn’t attract attention. I wondered briefly if Razmun could have done something to Nik from all the way across the room.

Then I saw the pile of clothes under the bar.
 

Staring at the boots there and the leather jacket, I realized that had been the noise I’d heard: Nik’s clothes falling to the floor when he transformed into something not-human.

Presumably, he’d turned into something smaller than human, given the clothes thing...likely something that could wriggle out of that pile of boots, socks and pants pretty danged quick and without making much noise.

Then I saw the cat lurking around the end of the bar.

As I watched, that same cat disappeared silently around the chrome corner until I couldn’t see any part of it at all.

I had to assume the cat was Nik.

It was a damned big cat, for one thing.

Also, I couldn’t imagine Nik making himself much smaller than a house cat, no matter what his talents, and that was the only other animal in here apart from me and the rest of the humans. Remembering those humans with another jolt of adrenaline, I looked around as subtly as I could, including at the bartender, who––thank goodness––wasn’t looking in our direction but restocking bottles at the other end of the bar.

I glanced casually over my shoulder at the people filling the scattered booths behind us a few seconds later, but none of them appeared to be looking in our direction either, or at the pile of clothes on the floor. More to the point, none of them looked like they’d seen anything so extraordinary as a person turning into a cat.

I was only mildly reassured.

Nik told me before that making himself different sizes, in either direction, tended to be taxing. Or at least,
more
taxing than taking forms that roughly approximated the size and shape of his base form...which for Nik, meant a human one. So being a cat would potentially tire Nik out, unless he could find a way to turn himself into something closer to human-sized.

Then again, Nik told Gantry and the rest of us that making new facial features on a base form was difficult, too. So becoming a
different
human––meaning a human Razmun wouldn’t recognize––might not help him much.

Although it might keep him from getting hit with a broom.

Something furry and short rubbed warmly against my leg.

I glanced down. The cat had returned, and was rubbing its head and body against my shins. It had green eyes, and a large, triangular face covered in thick, black fur.

He hasn’t seen you yet,
Nik whispered through the lock connection we shared, using the contact to speak with me.
Stay still, and he might not.

And if he does?
I thought back testily.

If he does, I may have to fight him.

Swallowing, I glanced down, seeing and feeling the black cat rubbing against my jean-clad legs again where I’d propped my boot heels on the chrome support bar at the base of the stool. Then, seeming to feel he’d said enough, Nik the cat turned around casually, like any cat who’s had his fill of human contact. I watched as he sauntered back behind the bar.

If the situation had been different, I probably would have laughed.

As it was, I felt myself tense as I watched him go.

Again, I hoped like hell no one saw Nik transform...or noticed the pile of clothes next to me under the bar. Or if they did see any part of that, I hoped they were drunk enough to assume they’d imagined the whole thing.

Even so, I used my booted toe to push Nik’s clothes a little deeper into the shadow under the bar.

Hunching down on my barstool, I slowly pulled myself deeper into the shadows, too, wishing I’d worn a hoodie after all. Not much I could do about it now, so I just sat statue-still once I’d gotten my face as far out of the light as I could.

I knew for human beings, being motionless made you disappear to a lot of people––a little nugget Gantry passed on to me from his Special Ops training.

I’d tested it on enough jobs to know it was more or less true.

Surprisingly, consistently true, really.

When Gantry first told me that, I’d scoffed at him...but he assured me he’d had a lot of practice not being noticed, given his line of work. Since he wasn’t exactly the kind of guy you
didn’t
notice, given that he was pretty bulked out from an intense exercise regimen and a good-looking guy on top of it, Gantry’s very insistence made me pause.

By then, I knew he’d worked in countries where he would have stood out, and not only for his blue eyes and boyish face. Gantry had worked in countries where the people might be brown, but they generally didn’t stand at his height, or carry his weight, much less wear his tattoos or his eye color and whatever else that made Gantry stand out to most people.

Of course, I had no idea if the same tactic would work on a morph.

That hope diminished further as I watched Razmun look around, sure again that he’d come in here specifically to find me and Nik.

Well, I thought that until the maybe-owner, Slavic guy who’d recently been swearing on his smart phone noticed him.

After he looked Razmun over, leather-jacket guy rapped on the mirrored wall a second time.
 

Seconds after he did, that hidden door popped open again in the mirror-covered wall. The same giant in the loud, silk shirt emerged, jutting his head and thick neck out of the back room.

That time, I got a good look at the big guy’s face.

He looked Russian all right.
 

Not like I was some expert, but from what I remembered of the Russian crowd in New York, he had roughly similar features. Really, he could have been from any number of European countries, especially in the East, but also a few in the South and West.

He did look European to me, though, not American.

Wherever he was from, he clearly recognized Razmun, even without his boss telling him why he’d been summoned from behind the hidden door. Glancing back at the Slav lounging in the leather booth, the big guy nodded to something his boss said in that other language, then went back to staring at Razmun.

When Razmun didn’t return his stare, the big guy hailed him with a few clicks of his fingers, followed by a pointed wave of his ring-clad hand.

The clicking fingers immediately drew Razmun’s eyes.

They also made him frown.

I wondered if that sound held the same significance for Razmun as it did for most Earth humans––meaning, I wondered if clicking fingers on Palarine was normally reserved for dogs and waiters, and then only if you were a total asshat.

Even though these guys clearly knew Razmun, from the look on Razmun’s face, Razmun didn’t know them. Moreover, they obviously weren’t the people Razmun expected to see when he came in here. Razmun looked like he’d expected to see
someone
he knew when he walked through that door...just not
these
jokers.