Crash Morph: Gate Shifter Book Two (2 page)

As if he felt some measure of my thoughts, or perhaps just the direction in which they lay, Nik leaned down, nuzzling my face again as he pressed deeper against me.

“You are getting up?” he murmured. “Out of bed?”

I shrugged, flushing a little warmer when I felt the heat coming off him. “Thinking about it. Why? Have I turned you into a coffee addict already?”

Nik gripped me tighter, but didn’t move his face away from my neck.

“Did you hear a sound?” he said, instead. Raising his head, he looked down at me, and I got lost watching his eyes shift from green to a lighter gold. Smiling at me, he shook me a little, as if he’d noticed I was distracted by his face. “I heard something, Dakota,” he clarified. “...Like a machine, but irritating. Perhaps some kind of alarm?”

“Alarm?”

That got my attention.

Frowning as I looked between his now pale gold eyes, I glanced around the rest of the room. I couldn’t imagine Irene setting an alarm clock, not unless she had a really good reason.

Cocking my head, I found myself listening.
 

Once I had, it came again.

The door buzzer.

Damn it.

I quickly realized that must have been what woke me up, too. I’d heard it, enough to wake me up, but it must have stopped before I figured out what I was hearing.

“I hear something outside, too,” Nik added, watching my face. “...Someone.”

Frowning deeper, I gave him a look.
 

“Do you have animal hearing, too?” I said.

Nik looked mildly puzzled, then shrugged.
 

“We could ignore it,” he said, caressing my arm with his fingers. “Whoever they are, there are only two of them, so perhaps they would come back. We could pretend we didn’t hear the buzzing and have sex, instead.” His expression grew more intent as he looked down my body. “I would rather have sex, Dakota...”

Feeling my face flush warmer, I threw off the blanket, swinging my legs over to the side of the couch. Considering Nik and I hadn’t done that even once yet, I wasn’t about to go there with him now. Not with someone standing outside Irene’s door...or two someones.

That didn’t even get into the fact that we were on a broken down couch in the middle of Irene’s filthy living room.

I didn’t want our first time to be accompanied by someone smacking Irene’s antiquated door buzzer with their thumb. Anyway, Irene herself could wander out of the bedroom at any time...either to silence the door herself or in search of coffee.

“Forget it,” I said. “Irene sleeps almost as light as you do.”

“Should you answer that, Dakota?” Nik said, his voice sharpening. “You...yourself?”

I hesitated, glancing back at him.

Thinking over his words, I realized he had a point.

“I can’t hide out forever,” I told him with a shrug. “I’ll use the peep-hole, okay?”

That only brought back Nik’s puzzled expression, though.

It hit me again that I had a total Earth virgin on my hands.

It would take months to get Nik up to speed, even just on basics like toilet paper and how to eat in front of other people without calling attention to himself. Not like Nik was gross or anything when he ate, far from it. But there were...differences. Especially when meat was involved.

Walking in a vague zig-zag pattern over the obstacle course on the floor, I approached the door wearing nothing but the thin t-shirt hanging down to my thighs and Hello Kitty underwear (also courtesy of Irene), I peered through the fish-eye hole in the middle of the door, only to find it completely blocked.

I just stood there for a second, trying to remember if I’d seen anything hanging on Irene’s door that might have blocked it. It was that, or someone had their their hand over it, to keep me from seeing who it was.

Glancing around, I spotted the gun hanging out of a holster from Irene’s thrift-store coat rack. It was the same Glock my ex-special forces pal, Gantry, left me during his one and only visit to see me since I’d gotten back. I knew the gun probably came from his own private store. Gantry hadn’t said much about why he was giving it to me, but I guessed he hadn’t quite gotten over the fact that I’d disappeared without a trace for months on end.

Gantry also wasn’t stupid.

He probably thought I needed it, given how I showed up on Irene’s door with a blood-splattered naked guy a few weeks back. Especially since I still hadn’t given either of them much in the way of an explanation...much less an intelligible story...at least, not yet.

But telling your friends that your new boyfriend is a shape-shifting alien and that there might be a few hundred more of his kind running around Washington State and the general environs of Earth, thanks to you, wasn’t exactly going to be a fun story to tell. Especially given that said aliens arrived here inter-dimensionally with their murderous, shape-shifting terrorist leader who had a hard-on for killing humans as revenge for the enslavement of his race.

So...yeaaah.

Given that scenario, “Where to start?” would be an understatement.

So far, I’d managed to get away with telling Irene and Gantry that I’d been out of the country and that I’d gotten myself in trouble with some aliens. Which was
sort of
true...but only in the most literal, fun-with-language sense. I knew neither of them were satisfied with how little I’d said about those missing months, but I’d been giving myself some time off to think about what I wanted to tell them, and just to get used to being back here at all.

So yeah, while it was nice to have a gun and thus not be
completely
defenseless, truthfully, I had no idea how much good the gun would do me if one of those shape-shifting aliens stood at Irene’s door now. And apart from the aforementioned pissed off shape-shifting aliens, I had no idea who else might be looking for me at that point.

For all I knew, my biggest worry right now might be the cops.

Or, more realistically...Homeland Security.

I waited until the buzzer chittered again, so high of a sound that probably only dogs, Irene and Nik could hear it, at least without someone pointing it out to them.

After another sigh, and feeling reckless for some reason, I wrenched open the door.

My brother, Jake, faced me, grinning from ear to ear.

I gaped at him, sure I was hallucinating.

Jake looked exactly the same as I remembered him, from the expensive-looking designer jeans and clubby silk shirt welded to his muscular body...to the faint smirk on his full lips and the massive amounts of hair gel sticking up his thick, black hair.
 

I could tell he’d picked out the shirt’s color because the jade green silk highlighted and emphasized his bright hazel eyes. His shoes looked like bowling shoes, I noticed, with neon pink laces, and the jeans looked well-worn. Knowing Jake, however, those two articles of clothing alone probably cost more than what Irene paid in grocery bills over the past year.

Even more than me, the mixed-race thing really worked for Jake.

His high-cheekboned face had the best of our mother’s half-Japanese ancestry and our father’s Cuban roots. His skin always wore a light tan, and his eyes had a faint tilt at the corners that gave him an exotic look, even without the hairless body and the incongruously light color of his irises. His actual eye color was pure European, light enough that he got a lot of stares for those alone, even without the full lips, meticulously gym-sculpted body and wicked smile.

To bastardize an old Mickey Spillane quote, he was trouble on two legs, my brother Jake.

I wasn’t sure if it was better or worse that I could see that, even being related to him.

Before I could wrap my mind around the fact of Jake’s even
being
there, on Irene’s front porch, much less make a peep of noise in his direction, Jake opened his arms and flung himself at me, squeezing me against his athletic chest and swinging me around in a dizzying arc.
 

That was another thing about Jake.
 

He was like a little kid. In both the good and the bad ways.

It could be really endearing, sure, but most of the time, I wanted to strangle him for it.
 

Either way, if I’d had anything in my stomach at all at that point, it likely would have ended up all over the front of Jake’s designer shirt. As it was, I let out a surprised yelp, holding him off with my arms as he laughed and spun me around again.
 

I was still staring up...and then down...at his face in total bewilderment when Jake set me back on my feet, still beaming at me in delight.

Then I glanced to my right, and saw Gantry leaning against the doorframe, a wry smile on his broad, tanned face, his own light eyes catching the early morning sunlight.

“Mornin’, gorgeous,” Gantry said, inclining his head.

Blinking at him, and seeing the grim set of his mouth, even below that faint but still charming smile, I couldn’t help but think, uh oh.

Whatever this is, it can’t be good.

“I thought you’d be happier to see me,” Jake pouted. “I came all the way here!” He folded his arms tight against his broad chest, in part, I suspected, to show off his rippling muscles.
 

Being a full-time scam artist had its perks, I guess.

Lifetime gym memberships always seemed to be one of them.

Knowing Jake, he thought keeping his body in primo shape was a part of his job. Like being an actor or a male model, he had to look the part.

“I’m ecstatic, Jake,” I said, sighing in sarcastic drama as I combed my fingers through my tangled black hair. “I can hardly contain my overflow of joy...it’s like a rainbow of giddiness on the inside...if only you could see.”
 

Switching back to my regular voice, I gave Jake a direct look over my shoulder.
 

“Are we drinking it black these days?” I said, holding out the chipped mug where I’d poured his coffee. “Or what?”

On the front of the mug was a poodle with a bubble over its head with the words
I Luv You
in looping cursive strokes.
 

Only Irene could get away with owning a mug like that.
 

When Jake didn’t answer me, I shoved the mug closer to his face.
 

“...Black, Jake?” I prompted. “Or are we doing the sugar and cream thing these days?”

Jake smiled sweetly, settling deeper into the plastic padded chair with his folded arms. “Cream, baby. Give me the cream.”

Jake had a lot of eccentricities. One of them was that he took his coffee however his current mistress (or boyfriend, as the case may be) took their coffee.

I guess since they paid for everything, it made sense to get the details right.

Still, it skeeved me out.

After sniffing the carton, I plopped a few dollops of cream into his cup and plunked the mug down in front of him dutifully.
 

With Gantry, I didn’t have to ask. He’d taken it black for as long as I’d known him. Adding a few generous teaspoons of sugar and a few splashes of cream to my own mug, I sat down heavily on a third chrome-legged chair around Irene’s lime-green, formica kitchen table.

“So, to what do I owe this glorious honor?” I asked, glancing from Jake’s face to Gantry’s, then back to Jake’s. “What are you doing here, Jake?”