2. Carol

2

Carol

We're safer inside the plane than outside it, Carol told herself and her inner shark for the thousandth time.

It did not help.

The seatbelt lights were on. And every time the plane lurched or bucked as the storm tossed it around, she had to fight off the urge to leap up and throw herself out the emergency exit.

Tens of thousands of feet above the sea, she reminded it. Hitting the water from this height would be like hitting concrete.

Her shark stayed silent.

Shark go splat, she told it.

Still nothing.

She tensed her jaw. Her shark not talking wasn't new. It had never communicated with her. Not like other shifters' inner animals did. Her family, her colleagues—they talked about how their animals communicated with them through thoughts or feelings, or used their enhanced senses to draw their humans' attention to things. That had been why she wanted to study communication science at college, back before college became another of the things she couldn't do.

Hers just… swam. Silently. It probably wasn't even her shark making her want to jump out of the airplane. Just another screwed-up Carol thing. One more to add to the list.

She closed her eyes and forced herself to breathe slowly. There were worse things in the world than turbulence. She knew that. Some people would say she was one of those things, and on her bad days, she would agree with them. When she had her head on straight, she could tell herself that just because she looked like a monster, didn't mean she was one, but that was cold comfort when one glimpse of her teeth made people walk into traffic.

But a real monster wouldn't be so scared of being trapped that she wanted to tear open the airplane emergency exit and fling herself into the night, tens of thousands of feet above the sea. Right? Yeah.

Real monsters were frightening. Not frightened.

Her fingers tightened around the catch of her seatbelt, and she glanced quickly around the cabin. Nobody else had noticed she was white-knuckled with totally un-shifter-ly terror. Good.

This plane was like nothing she'd ever been on—not that she'd flown anywhere since her face changed. Airport security got antsy when you said you couldn't take out what they thought were Halloween contact lenses, and what sort of a weirdo filed down their teeth to points, anyway?

The few times she'd been on a plane as a kid, she'd flown economy. Not by private jet. She and the rest of her team weren't crammed in like sardines; their seats were more luxurious than the furniture in her own apartment. She had a drinks cabinet next to her. And a footrest. There was so much leg room she had a footrest.

It was fancy as hell. She should be enjoying it, not freaking out.

She closed her eyes again. Maybe, if she tried very hard, she could relax.

"Prreeep?"

Oh god.

A tiny, prickle-footed weight landed on her lap. She took a peek, and huge, luminous golden eyes filled her vision.

"Hi, Maggie."

"Pree!" Maggie straightened, preening, as Carol smiled nervously at her.

"I thought you were having a nap with Keeley?"

"Pree- oo ," the little dragon whistled dismissively.

Carol couldn't help smiling wider.

That was a mistake.

Maggie was about the size of a housecat. And, like a housecat, she was curious and agile and had sharp claws. She flexed those claws now as her glowing eyes fixed on Carol's mouth.

"Pree peep?"

Darn it. Carol pressed her lips closed and whispered, "Not now, Maggie."

"Eep!" One front claw extended and tapped at her lips. "Eep eep !"

* Not now. * Maybe telepathic speech would be more convincing than whispering?

Nope.

"Preep eep eep eep," Maggie insisted. She tapped Carol's mouth again, and an image wavered into Carol's mind: double rows of jagged, sharp teeth.

Carol's ribs tightened.

"Everything okay over there, Zhang?"

"Sir?" She snapped her attention back to the cabin.

Her boss, Lance MacInnis, was looking at her with a concerned expression on his face.

Lance wasn't the only one looking at her. Across the aisle, in his own luxury chair island, Mathis Delacourt was watching her with careful blue eyes. The pale scars on his face stretched as he gave her the sort of reassuring smile that big scary shark shifters weren't supposed to need.

Lance leaned forward. "Maggie's not bothering you, is she?"

"No, sir. All fine here," she said quickly, and pressed her lips tight over her teeth before anyone could see them.

This wasn't a vacation, even if the transport was more luxurious than any vacation she'd ever been on. This was work, and today's job was returning little Maggie to her only remaining family: dragon shifter Julian Rouse, who'd gone missing almost the moment they went looking for him.

They'd thought he was safely secured. Literally. Julian Rouse had been one of Gerald Harper's captives. Harper had tricked his way into Julian's trust, and then used that trust to attack Julian's home. He had murdered the other dragons and stolen a clutch of dragon eggs—all that remained of Julian's family.

And then he had threatened to destroy the eggs if Julian didn't obey his every cruel whim. He'd used Julian as an enforcer to keep his other victims in line.

Now that Harper was in prison, some of those former victims wanted their revenge on Julian, instead. And the years of captivity had been hard on him. Lance had arranged for him to recover in a remote safehouse. He'd been making slow progress.

And then the safehouse had literally blown up—because of a gas leak, if anyone believed that—and Julian had fled. Alone. Possibly injured. And without knowing that one of that precious clutch of eggs had hatched. His niece had been born.

Whatever rage or despair was driving him, they had to find him and show him he wasn't alone anymore.

And…

Every shifter on this mission to catch up with him was a predator. All except Keeley, Lance's mate, but she was human, so she had an excuse. MacInnis was a snow leopard shifter. Delacourt, a lion. Up in the cockpit, their pilot Ames was a cheetah shifter. Even the little dragon shifter they were all here to protect was presumably a predator, though so far the hatchling had only shown interest in hunting shiny jewelry and foil wrappers.

Hunting down the missing dragon shifter answered a deep instinct inside them. They were in their element.

Carol was a predator, too.

She shouldn't be so afraid.

"Not bothering you? That doesn't sound like Maggie. But I'll take your word for it." Lance flashed her a grin and turned to include the others in the conversation. "If we have to land and wait out the storm, so be it…"

Carol should have kept paying attention, but there was a baby dragon dangling off her lower lip.

"Preeee-EEEEEE- EEEEEEEE— "

With another hurried glance around the room, Carol put one hand in front of her mouth and flashed her teeth so that only Maggie could see them. The little dragon squealed like she'd just seen the Crown Jewels and opened her own mouth wide.

"…Your teeth are also very pointy?" Carol said uncertainly.

"Pree!"

"Are we sure he's heading south?" Mathis' voice was a low growl.

"His family lives—lived—in Antarctica. He doesn't have anywhere else to go. Besides—"

He broke off as lightning flared outside the plane. Lance frowned and pressed the intercom button. "Ames, what's our status? Seems like things are getting worse out there. Should we be flying in conditions like this?" His eyes darted to the back of the plane, where his mate Keeley was sleeping in the other cabin.

"Our status is—" The pilot's voice crackled into a buzz of mingled static and swearing. "I don't know what the fuck it is, buddy. Our GPS has gone all screwy, comms are out, and this storm wasn't even on the radar until it was on top of us. This is some weird shit."

"Glad to hear it," Lance said through gritted teeth.

A shiver prickled down Carol's spine. She would have put it down to her shifter intuition, except her shark didn't intuit things. It did what it was doing now. Slipping through the shadows of her mind. Staying out of the way.

Lance rubbed the permanent crease between his eyebrows. "How far are we from the nearest airstrip?"

"We're over the fucking ocean, Lance. Not a lot of airstrips around."

"The nearest land, then—"

Another bolt of lightning flared outside. Maggie shrieked and dug her claws into Carol's sweater. Carol petted her uncertainly. The little dragon was normally so fearless, it was easy to forget she'd only hatched a few weeks ago. She was only a little baby—a fact Maggie also seemed determined to ignore, given how little time she preferred to spend in her weaker human baby form.

But all her chirpy bluster couldn't stand up to a storm like this.

"It's okay," Carol murmured. "It's just a storm. We'll get through it. And then we'll be one step closer to getting you home."

"Chree chree?" Maggie snaked her head up to peer at Carol from half an inch away. A wavery image of a big, shiny dragon with very big, very sharp teeth filled her mind.

"That's right. We're going to find your uncle."

BIG DRAGON?

Carol winced. She wasn't the only one. Maggie's excitement was instant and loud. She gave up clinging to Carol's sweater and turned to face the front of the plane, her whole body stiff and trembling like a pointer dog. BIG! OVER THERE!

It wasn't words, though it felt like it. It wasn't the way an adult shifter would use telepathy to communicate. It was the hugeness of a tiny dragon's thoughts, hammering into Carol's mind.

BIG! GO NOW? NOW?

"We're going as fast as we can." Carol's voice shook with repressed laughter.

"And that answers our question about where Rouse is. Whether his destination is Antarctica or somewhere closer, we're on his tail." Lance rubbed his face, wincing. "If this storm sets him back, maybe that's a good thing. We might catch him before he leaves the continent."

And arrives on an icier one, Carol added silently.

"This whole mission, we've been a step behind. If we'd made it to the safehouse a few hours earlier, maybe—" Lance jerked his head to the side. "No point wishing for would-have-beens. Let's focus on what we've got."

"A homing device in the form of a baby dragon, and enough tiny bottles of whiskey to get all of Santa's elves drunk off their faces?" Mathis suggested.

"Wrong Pole," Lance said dryly. "And keep those out of Maggie's sight. Bad enough she's keeping old beer bottles in her treasure box without hard liquor rattling around in there as well." He sighed. "And in case you thought this mission wasn't complicated enough—remember, Rouse can shield himself using his dragon magic."

"But so can we," Mathis rumbled.

Lance nodded. "And we know something he doesn't."

Everyone looked at Maggie, who preened at the attention.

"He isn't the last dragon shifter," Carol whispered.

It was hard to believe the little dragon had only hatched a few weeks ago. Harder still to believe the world Carol and her colleagues suddenly found themselves living in. As animal shifters, they were all used to hiding their abilities from humans.

Except it turned out there was more magic hiding in the world than even normal shifters dreamed of.

Most of her life, Carol would have called dragon shifters a myth. Everyone knew that shifters only turned into animals that actually existed. And dragons didn't. Period.

And then a little dragon hatched in the subway in New York City, and everything changed.

Humans still didn't know that shifters existed. But now, regular animal shifters knew they weren't alone. And if dragon shifters could exist… what else might be out there?

Carol glanced out the window. The stormy night outside turned the glass into a shadowed mirror, and her reflection peered anxiously back at her. Lips pressed tightly over teeth that belonged in a shark's mouth, not a human's. Eyes with no whites, just eerily flat, gray-black irises like something off a corpse.

Maybe there were others out there who…

She looked away quickly. She wasn't like this because she was born this way. She was like this because she was broken.

It would be cruel to hope there was someone else out there like her.

Something flickered in the corner of her eye. She snapped her head back to the window, but there was nothing outside but storm clouds. It must have been more lightning. Maybe further away? That was good, right? The sooner they got out of this storm, the better.

Maggie wriggled with frustration. BIG, she insisted, and then went still and shivering. A questioning nervousness filled Carol's mind.

The intercom crackled. "Shit."

"That's not the sort of thing I want to hear from my pilot, Ames," Lance said through gritted teeth.

"You're not wrong," their pilot responded. "There's something—"

His voice disappeared in a burst of static.

Trepidation prickled icily down Carol's back. Lance frowned. "What do you—"

The plane jolted, metal and engines screaming. Carol doubled over, seatbelt cutting across her stomach. Maggie exploded out of her arms and dashed down the aisle.

"Pree! Pree! Pree!"

Carol fumbled with her seatbelt catch. "Maggie!"

"What the hell was that?" Mathis growled.

Intercom crackled. "Storm's caught us properly now," Ames said. "It's coming at us from above, so I'm heading low. The seatbelt light is on for a reason, people. Don't make me turn this thing around."

"Back to your seat, Zhang!" Lance called as the plane dipped. The door to the rear cabin opened, revealing his mate, Keeley, with a black pack slung over her shoulder. He raised his voice as the engines roared louder. "Keeley, you think we can strap Maggie down somehow?"

At the words "strap Maggie down," the dragonling let out a shriek of pure defiance and leapt into the air again. Carol reached for her and stumbled as the cabin lurched.

Lightning forked outside.

"Did you see—" Mathis half stood, eyes glowing lion-gold.

"I said seatbelts on , assholes," Ames called over the intercom. "You—"

He broke off, swearing. "What the hell?"

"You see that?"

*Something's out there.* Lance's telepathic voice was sharp with threat. The hairs on the back of Carol's neck rose.

She reached for Maggie and missed. Maggie flew up to the ceiling and dug her claws in. Lightning flashed again, illuminating a face outside the nearest window.

Then it was gone.

"Please tell me someone else saw that," Keeley said, her voice tight. "Carol? Is there—is there someone outside the plane?"

"We're looking clearer down below." Ames's voice was raw with relief. "Wait—the fuck? This isn't right. First the storm comes out of nowhere, now it's like it's following us?"

Maggie clung to the ceiling, screeching. Carol's shark pressed against her skin. It was so close there was no room for anything else in her brain.

This never happened. Not since the night she'd almost died.

She barely registered Keeley's words until the other woman grabbed her shoulder and shook her.

"Carol, we need to know if someone's outside!"

But we're in the air, she wanted to say. How could anyone be outside?

"Carol, please ." Keeley's eyes were pleading.

"Zhang—" MacInnis called out.

Carol shook herself. Her shark retreated, slipping silently into the dark recesses of her mind. "On it. Sir."

She closed her eyes and called on her shark's abilities.

All shifters had some remnant of their animal's powers even in human form. Heightened senses. Enhanced speed and strength.

Carol could sense other living creatures.

Her shark used its electroreceptors to track prey, and she tried not to use that terminology when she told other shifters about this particular power. She used her shark's senses to tell if there were other beating hearts around her. How many, and where they were.

Not to hunt anyone, not to eat them, just to know. She was always very clear about that. Not that it helped, given her looks.

She concentrated.

The hum of the airplane was almost too much. The roar it made in her ears was nothing compared to the confusing thrum of its electronics. But if she forced her focus further out, past the blanketing static, to…

Movement. Shapes. Life.

What? Carol staggered. Her shark loomed up, pressing close beneath her skin.

Telepathy was quicker than speaking aloud. * Six of them. Birds of some sort. But—big.*

The plane jerked again. The blood poured from Carol's face. * That's one of them.*

"A bird did that?" Mathis swore. "You're sure that isn't Rouse out there? Maybe he decided to return our call after all."

"What do you mean, birds?" Keeley was still holding on to Carol's arm. Shit. She was human; she couldn't hear telepathic speech. She was the one who'd reminded Carol to use her power, and Carol hadn't even told her what she'd found.

Carol wet her lips. "There's—there's something out there. It's—it feels like—there's, there's six of them—"

What's wrong with you? she was screaming behind her own eyes. Just say the words!

"Six—" she tried again.

The screech of metal drowned her out.

Metallic talons tore through the wall of the cabin. The others shouted and jumped to their feet. More rips appeared. Three, then four. An alarm went off. Masks dropped above the seats. The air pressure dipped, wind roaring out through the gashes. Maggie wailed with terror. She clung to the ceiling, wings fluttering as the loss of air pressure tried to tear her away.

Then the wind dropped. Light-headed, Carol thought it was as though a bubble had formed around the plane.

"Screeee!"

A bronze-colored beak the length of Carol's forearm appeared through one of the holes, two feet from where Maggie had flattened herself in terror.

Maggie shrieked. Carol shrieked, too. Her heart felt like it was about to burst out of her chest. She was trapped, helpless, the same way she had been when—

Shift. Transform. She couldn't. They were in a narrow metal tube hurtling through the sky. If she shifted, she would just be another danger to the others. A shark panicking as it drowned in the open air.

"Get away from her!" Keeley thrust the pack into Carol's arms and dashed towards Maggie. "Maggie! Come to me!"

The little dragon leaped into her waiting hands. Keeley sprinted down the aisle towards the cockpit. Lance positioned himself in front of her, his eyes glowing an eerie green as his inner snow leopard rose up in defense of his mate.

"CRRAAAAAWWWWW!"

An unearthly screech filled the cabin. One of the creatures was almost through. The sucking wind of decompression had stopped— How? Carol thought wildly, How is that possible? —but the air was thin and brutally cold.

Mathis shifted into his lion form and roared. It probably wasn't voluntary. It was taking all of Carol's focus to keep her shark under her skin.

Another creature shrieked on the other side of the cabin. A third behind it.

Then something dropped heavily through the hole in the ceiling, a tangle of green-bronze feathers that rang like sheet metal.

It raised its head, and Carol's mind whited out.

It's like me, Carol thought, ice dripping through her veins. Oh, god, it's like me.

Another creature tore through the ceiling, then another. Three of them. Which means there are still three out there, Carol told herself, but the thought was submerged beneath the static terror filling her mind.

She'd thought she was the only monstrous shifter in the world.

Their attackers were part-bird, part-human, the mixture different in each one—a human face there, feet or claws, arms and wings or only wings. Their bird parts were green-stained bronze. Long, vicious beaks and claws, and metallic feathers that scraped together as they moved.

"Who are you?" Lance demanded. He was still in human form, standing braced in front of Keeley. Maggie was safe behind them both, and Delacourt's lion form filled the aisle between their attackers and the cockpit.

Carol was the only one on her own. Her heart thudded.

Ames's voice murmured into her mind. * Engines are fine, they just hit the cabin. Get on the oxygen before decompression fucks you, and keep them occupied while I find somewhere to put us down.*

But weren't they miles from land? Carol's chest went tight.

Because if the fight went badly, the bronze birds could fly away. Out of all the shifters on their side? Only Maggie had wings.

One of the bird-people, a woman, clacked her beak at Lance. A jarring buzz filled Carol's mind, like a radio tuned to the wrong frequency.

It was… kind of like listening to Maggie. Another chill went through her as she saw all three bird-people had their eyes fixed on the little dragonling.

Keep them occupied, Ames had said.

She licked her lips. She'd never met another shifter like her.

Maybe they hadn't, either.

"Hey!" she shouted. "Hey! Over here!" She gritted her teeth and concentrated on the strange, off-tune grating of their minds. * Who are you? Why are you attacking us?*

She was too agitated to strip the emotion from her telepathic speech. Her thoughts left her mind wreathed with confusion and terror and—hope?

What could I possibly have to hope for? Her chest hurt, so suddenly and unexpectedly that she gasped.

The three bird-people all whipped around to face her. She tried to gather herself enough to reach out to Lance and tell him she would keep them distracted while he did—she didn't even know, but something —but the expressions on their faces stopped her.

The woman who'd tried to communicate before stepped forward. Carol got the impression she was the group's leader. Her face was mostly human, her eyes a piercing brown-gold.

One of the others—a man with an eagle's vicious beak and hands that ended in claws—said something. Carol heard it as another burst of static in her mind, but this time, there was something more. A hint of an image. A sense of uncertainty. A question?

Their leader made an impatient tutting noise and jerked her head sideways. But when she turned her gaze to Carol again, her expression was strangely gentle.

The bird-woman reached out one hand. Her thumb and first finger were human, the nails ragged; the rest of her hand was twisted, the fingers curving unevenly into claws as though the bones underneath didn't fit properly.

Her mind pressed against Carol's—gentle and kind as the expression in her eyes. The static was still there, but lessened. Carol was getting the hang of their speech now. The same way most shifters' telepathic voices were woven through with emotion, if they didn't pay attention and strip it out, these shifters' voices were a tapestry of thought and image and history and something else, some context she was still missing that translated to static in her head.

But it wasn't all static. And what she could interpret was… Question. Surprise. Welcome.

Welcome?

The woman gestured. * Us,* she sent into Carol's mind. * Like us. Come with us. Help.*

"Help what?" Carol burst out. "Help you attack my friends? Who are you?"

Their languages were so different, she didn't expect the woman to understand her. But the woman's eyes flickered, and another burst of speech echoed between her and the other bird-people.

* Zhang.* Lance's voice slid into her mind, quiet as a whisper. * Whatever you're doing, it's working. Keep them occupied. We—*

* They want me to come with them!*

She'd only meant to speak to Lance, but her thoughts must have leaked. Maggie shrieked with dismay and launched herself into the air. Keeley grabbed her in a bear hug. Maggie darted her head out from Keeley's arms, her neck stretched long and taut as she fought to get free—

Then her head spikes all stood on end, she went completely still, and she vanished.

Carol opened her mouth to shout, and something went pop against her chest. She raised her arms automatically and Maggie tumbled into them, chirping urgently.

Teleportation. Maggie could teleport. She knew that, but knowing it was different than watching the baby shifter disappear into thin air.

And reappear. In her arms. With three strange, monstrous shifters between them and the others.

And three more outside.

Metal shrieked. Razor-sharp claws ripped through the fuselage all around her. The floor tipped. Icy storm-winds lashed into the cabin. The air was full of bronze feathers and claws and the sound of tearing metal.

The wall of the plane sheared off and she was falling, with Maggie still in her arms.