SEDUCTIVE SUPERNATURALS: 12 Tales of Shapeshifters, Vampires & Sexy Spirits (175 page)

“Exactly,” Jesse said. “The first thing we did was send Sentinels in after hours to investigate the fill dirt company, and we ruled out their direct involvement. So now we’re focusing on the Star Ridge community and the homes that the dirt was delivered to during construction.”

“How many homes are in that community?” Evelyn asked.

“There will be upwards of eighty homes once it’s all built out, but the fill dirt company only got the contract with Starbright within the last year, so we were able to narrow it down to three streets—one with seven completed mansions on it, and the two streets next to that where they’re in various phases of construction, from grading to laying foundations.”

“That’s great,” Sasha said. “It really narrows the scope.”

“So…I have a question.” Evelyn almost raised her hand but caught herself in time. “If you think you already know the neighborhood, can’t you just send in teams to search the houses?”

Jesse nodded. “In the movies, yes you can. If you want to keep your government contracts in the real world, you have to follow the law so the cases don’t get thrown out in court. We’ll need enough evidence for a search warrant before the Commissioner will issue one.”

Clark looked at Evelyn as though he wanted her to stop asking questions, then he said, “We’ve rented a home for you and Commander Hayes in the target neighborhood. You will be hosting the spirit of our former employee, Lauren Jacobs, and along with Ms. Jacobs, you and Commander Hayes will pose as a young couple looking to discreetly enter the scene and find a new host. Ms. Jacobs was an elite Sentinel in the Blue Unit until her death last year, and she’s looking forward to getting back on the job.”

Evelyn’s skin crawled. She’d known that her possession was required for this job, but learning the details brought a whole new level of anxiety to the equation. She was going to host the spirit of a Sentinel from Jesse’s unit, while Jesse and the other woman posed as kinksters looking for a new body? Holy shit.

The steward smiled at Evelyn. “Don’t worry, Dr. Vale, we’re going to keep a very close eye on you. Sasha, here, is our resident animist, and she will be the third on your team. Sasha, can you tell Evelyn a little about what she can expect from hosting our Sentinel?”

Evelyn’s stomach flipped. Immortal Bounty Central had a real animist working here? Word was there were only a few animists in all of Greater America…and one of them was now seated just across from her. If she wasn’t so flipping blown away by the whole situation, she might have asked for an autograph like a starstruck groupie.

Sasha adjusted the gun in front of her. “Lauren Jacobs was tough as nails in life, but as a spirit, she’s only around a level three. At that level, she likely won’t be able to remain in your body more than a day before she loses her hold over you. It helps though, that your threshold for resisting possession is so incredibly low.” Sasha made a face, as though realizing what she’d said. “I’m sorry. I hope that doesn’t come across as insensitive.”

Evelyn cleared her throat. “Not at all. Go ahead.”

Sasha smiled in relief. “So, I’m here to help Lauren manifest during training and to teach you how to assist her in taking over your body.”

“Okay…” Evelyn answered. “So what’s the plan to get her to manifest when you aren’t around to help? Will we be using a totem of some kind?”

“You’re exactly right,” Sasha said, “and the thing Lauren was linked most closely to was this gun. We’ll use the whole gun during training, but after that, I’m hoping one bullet will be enough.”

“Why one bullet?” Evelyn asked. She knew about totems, but she wasn’t sure only a piece of the totem would work.

Jesse met her eyes. “It’ll be impossible to get into these high-security clubs if you’re carrying a .9mm, Doc.”

Evelyn was nodding, she was sure of it, but beyond that, she was almost speechless. Guns and danger and willing possession? Was she really doing this? “Okay. Yeah. That makes sense.”

Sasha’s perpetual grin was warm and somehow maternal, like she was beaming good vibes straight into Evelyn from four feet away. “I’ll be available for emergencies, of course, but the steward thinks it’ll be best for you and Jesse to be mostly on your own, since once you start digging for contacts, if you’re lucky, you’ll most likely come under the scrutiny of the cartel.”

“We don’t have time for luck,” the steward said, then he flipped through a few other slides, stopping on the photo of a svelte blonde dressed in a tailored gray suite. When Jesse saw her picture, he all but growled.

“Who is that?” Evelyn asked.

“That is Commissioner Elizabeth Hart, our contact at the GBGA,” the steward replied. “The lovely commissioner has given me four weeks to bring these people to justice or she’s threatening to give our contract to our competitors.”

“Competitors…” Jesse snickered. “Let her do it. No one has the skill or the infrastructure to do what we do on this scale.”

The steward pressed another button on his tablet and the photo on the projector’s screen changed. All of the sudden, Commissioner Hart had red horns and a long, scaly tail. “Oh, wow,” Evelyn said. “The results of ML52?”

The steward smiled. “The results of my new photo editing software. I was simply testing it out.” Sasha laughed, and Clark continued, “Mind you, Ms. Hart was a survivor of mutating leukemia, but none of us have been able to figure out her mutation. Personally, I think she likes to make my life hell because the average IB employee makes twice as much as she does in her government position.”

Clearly there was some bad blood between Tanner Clark and IB Central’s government rep, but would that lady really cut off Immortal Bounty from the government contracts or was she bluffing? Evelyn hadn’t been here long enough to figure out the office politics, and she had more immediate concerns at this point…like giving her body over to a dead Sentinel. Worrying about sinking the whole Immortal Bounty ship would have to wait until tomorrow.

Jesse seemed to sense she was feeling overwhelmed. “So, are we finished, sir? I bet Dr. Vale is ready to get started.”

“Of course.” Clark handed her and Jesse a packet of new credentials, including electronic IDs, credit cards, and login info for a bank account seeded with $100,000 dollars to get their fake life started as a wealthy young couple in search of a new body. “Oh, one last thing, Commander… Have you decided if you’re going to pick up a dog at the shelter or would you like me to have one delivered?”

Jesse shrugged. “It doesn’t matter to me. Vale?”

Evelyn blinked. “I’m sorry. I think I missed something.”

“The steward thought it would look less suspicious if we had a dog that we could walk around the neighborhood to investigate the areas that are still under construction. You want to pick one at the shelter or have one delivered?”

“Uh…pick one?” she said, looking between the commander and the steward. “And then what are we going to do with it when the assignment is done?”

The steward looked annoyed, like she was wasting his time. “Drop it back at the shelter, I imagine. Think of it as a mini doggie vacation.”

“You wouldn’t want to use Haveland for that?” Sasha asked. “I’m just curious. It might be nice to have an extra Sentinel around.”

“No,” Jesse answered. “His mutation is canine enough, but the cartel is probably funded well enough to have scanners that can pick up humans manifesting ML52 mutations. Haveland in canine form could blow our cover on day one.”

This was crazy. To anyone looking in from the outside, it was actually Jesse and his ghostly girlfriend who were the couple, and Evelyn was just the flesh of the moment, waiting to be traded in for a newer model—used and discarded, not unlike the dog they needed to acquire. But she only had to do it this once, she reminded herself. Her next assignment would be something where she could use what she knew and really be an asset to the team.

“So, are you ready to meet Lauren?” Sasha asked her.

“Uh…yep. I’m ready.” Evelyn glanced to her partner, but Jesse’s expression was veiled, somewhere between unhappy and ambivalent.

Clark excused himself to his next appointment, and Sasha picked up the gun, then walked into the hall. Evelyn took Jesse’s arm, holding him back for a moment.

His brows rose. “Yeah?”

Touching his arm, looking into her eyes, she couldn’t shake the feeling that this man had her back. Maybe having a partner was going to be better than she’d thought. “Thanks for your help on the bonus thing. Truly, Jesse. And for being willing to have me for a partner. I know you probably drew the short straw on that one.”

“Hey, short isn’t so bad.” He winked, but there was something melancholy about him now. “Plus, the bonus is what you were due. And as for working with you…shit. We’re lucky to have you.”

Jesse Hayes was too handsome for his own good, and Evelyn revelled in the heat of his skin under her fingertips and the steel of the muscles in his forearm. “If I ask you a stupid question, would you give me an honest answer?”

“I’ll try my best.”

“You’re the lead on this Special Team, and Sasha is the third. So who’s your second? Lauren’s ghost or me?”

His gaze lingered on the hand she’d placed on his forearm, but he didn’t move away. Instead, he covered her hand with his and gave it a squeeze. “Both, short stack. I need you both.”

Immortal Possession: Chapter Six

Sasha led them to a room with mats similar to where the Sentinels worked out, but it was smaller and access was only granted after a positive retinal scan. The animist laid the gun on the mat and sat cross-legged on the floor beside it. In her yoga pants, snug T-shirt, and black hair back in a braid, Sasha looked more like a fitness instructor than a woman who could temporarily give flesh to spirits.

Life had changed so much since The Great Collision. Scientists had sworn that their experiments in colliding subatomic particles together at the world’s largest particle accelerator would not result in creating dangerous black holes that were capable of consuming the earth.

Evelyn’s parents had been among the masses protesting the experiments, but it turned out the scientists were right. Instead of the earth and all of its matter being consumed by a black hole, a wormhole had opened, spilling the energy of hundreds of millions of the dead back into this dimension before the wormhole could be closed.

The chaos that had ensued after the spirits of the dead were back among the living was bad enough, but what no one foresaw was the effect all of that radiation would have on the living. More than a hundred million died within the first year. Within five years of The Great Collision, millions more began to show symptoms of mutating leukemia. The few who survived ML52 manifested physical changes to their bodies that seemed to be a scrambling of the DNA of other species, as though their bodies had forgotten the genetic code that made us quintessentially human.

And then there was another category altogether—those whose natural energy and dormant gifts were amplified by the energy unleashed from the other dimension. Those people were often immune to ML52, but they had their own concerns to contend with. Evelyn was trying not to stare at Sasha, but of all the gifted individuals she’d seen, an animist was one of the coolest. They were a rare and treasured commodity across the globe and the only class of Marks who could use their energy to temporarily bring mass to a spirit’s body.

“Come on. Sit down,” Sasha said, waving Evelyn over to a spot near her on the mat. “You too, Jesse.”

Evelyn sat with her legs tucked up under her, vowing never to wear her pencil skirt to work again. Jesse sat across from her and Sasha, and a thin film of sweat covered his brow. Evelyn figured he couldn’t be scared of ghosts, so maybe it was something about Lauren herself that had him nervous.

“Have you ever summoned a spirit?” Sasha asked her. “You certainly have the joules to pull it off.”

“I have summoned spirits before, yes. It was required to get my Master’s degree. But…uh…it was suggested that I not do it often. As you might imagine, I’m sort of a magnet for SSUs. Uh…do you call them that here—Souls in a State of Unrest?”

“Yeah, SSUs. And thanks for letting me know. We can’t get around a summoning with Lauren, but I’ll keep the fact that you’ve had a little trouble in mind for the future.”

A little trouble? It had been an absolute nightmare. Evelyn had summoned the spirit as part of her group project on her final exam and had woken up hours later in the faculty break room with all her professors gathered around and her arms duct taped to her chair.

They’d discussed failing her, but her academic advisor had warned that she was protected under the Students with Disabilities Act. So technically, the university’s fear of a lawsuit was the only reason she sat here today with her doctorate. And if that juicy tidbit wasn’t in her IB file, she wasn’t going to be the one to tell them.

Sasha nodded, taking it all in. “And how are your joules specialized? Clark has told me a little about you, but I couldn’t find anything about that in your profile.”

It was only Evelyn’s tight skirt and awkward sitting position that kept her from squirming. “Actually, they’re not specialized.”

Sasha’s brow knit. “What do you mean?”

A rumbly sigh broke from Jesse’s chest. “She means they’re not specialized, Sash. She’s packing ten thousand joules per second of raw, undifferentiated energy. That’s more than you, my friend.”

“And you tested negative for ML52?” the animist asked.

Evelyn nodded. “I know it’s strange. But yeah, I was retested yesterday, and I’m still negative for mutating leukemia. When I never manifested any gifts, my doctors thought maybe my energy build up was the precursor to a major mutation, but there’s no trace of ML52 in my blood. My excess energy is just an anomaly, and one I’ve learned to live with.” But learning to live with such a low possession threshold…that wasn’t so easy.

“I see.” Sasha’s face was so naturally expressive that her every thought was visible, from her attempt to show no reaction to the fact that she was completely bowled over. “That’s…interesting.”

“I’m working on figuring out how those joules might actually work to my advantage,” Evelyn added. Sasha seemed like a pretty cool person so far, and Evelyn hated the idea of losing one more potential friend to the vast sea of people who either pitied her or were scared of the massive amount of raw energy she possessed. “I was even thinking that Immortal Bounty might have someone here who could help me hone the energy into something more…productive.”