Page 18 of Grave Beginnings

“Guess that means you’re not a zero.”

“You heard that?”

“My hearing is remarkably good.” He tapped the side of his head. “Shifter.”

“Must suck to hear your neighbors fart and stuff.”

“Your mind goes to the strangest places. Press your thumb to the ID grid and it will open.” He demonstrated, but it didn’t open for him.

“I better not lose my thumb,” I half joked as the door popped open when I pressed my thumb to it. “Toys, deadly variety.” Guns and tasers. I’d taken extensive classes in all of them. But I’d done a few bootcamps with SWAT as I really wanted to know what happened when we called them in for an apprehend.

“Yeah, you’ll probably want to keep your other toys at home.”

“You wish you got a say on what I do with my other toys,” I snarked back.

He laughed, and it sounded good, thick and warm, like I could wrap it around me and soak in it. I stumbled from the shock of the sudden thick, sweet sensation, tripped over the bench near the locker, and landed half in my locker and half with him holding my arm, his other around my back to keep me from dropping on my ass. The sound dripped away and a sensation of warmth and home curled around my arm where he touched me. An overwhelming desire to throw myself into his arms filled me, making me half hard and confused at the same time. It was the shock that kept me from acting on the desire as I’d never felt a pull as strong from anyone before.

He ripped himself away, taking a few steps back. “Fucking SVs.”

I righted myself. “Sorry.” I studied my arm where he’d caught me. The feeling had vanished the second he stopped touching me. “I don’t know what you mean by that. I don’t know what just happened. Was that a shifter thing?”

“All shifters go through a little death with each change. Our bones break, organs shift and morph. It’s why not everyone survives the transition. You’re an SV. You’ll always be drawn to shifters because that little death is something you can call and use to fuel your strength.”

I looked at my hands and at him. “That sounds terrible. SVs can make shifters change?”

“Some, yes. If you try that shit on me or my team, expect to get knocked flat.”

“Ouch, okay. Noted.”

“But, confirms your variant type.” He sighed. “Shifters and SVs have a bad history. Your kind rose up after the Veil split, working with witches and rogue gods, enslaving my kind.”

“What? Why?”

“Why does anyone do anything? Power? Control? Whowouldn’t want a group of scary shapeshifters leading the fight against humans? But humans have tanks and major artillery. Even a shifter won’t survive being cut in half with an AK-47. But SVs would just drag their corpse up as a zombie to keep fighting.”

“Holy fuck, that really happen, or are you pulling my leg?”

“Dead serious.” He held up his right hand, displaying the tattoos swirled over the backs of his knuckles and down his wrist beneath his sleeve. “I lived through it.”

“The tattoos are some kind of spell?” I studied his fingers, but none of it made sense.

“Runes. But the bitch who did this to me is long dead. Any who’d try again would find their insides on the outside.”

I held up my hands. “Consider me warned. I wouldn’t even know where to start, and unless I go through a lobotomy, I’m not really a control an undead army kind of guy.”

He nodded and tucked his hands in his pockets. “Let’s go through your locker and I’ll bring you up to the office level, introduce you to the team. I treat them as a team, though you and I will be doing most of the fieldwork. They are our backup. You need info, you call the team. You need backup, you call the team. You need more firepower, you call the team. Don’t be an ass to them.”

“Got it.” I gave him a little salute and paid attention to his explanation of the locker. We had full riot gear, armor, and weaponry.

“Bobby will take you through Weapons and Tactical Gear. We don’t need it a lot, and there’s another team on call this week for Tactical Fieldwork. We rotate unless an incident is big enough to need all four teams. Hanna is hoping to double to eight teams by next year to keep up with the work, but we’ll have to import variants for that.”

I nodded like I understood everything he said.

“When not on TFW rotation, we work on active cases. Cases are assigned to teams based on ability. Adding you to our teammeans we’ll have more SV work, but we get a little bit of everything; shifters, fae, gods, and vampires.”

“Which means they want me to talk to dead people or control zombies or something?”

“We’ve never had anyone brand new to variance in this precinct. You’ll find most are recruited from prior military work, or the other side. I’m not sure how this is going to work. I’d like to have you shadow some of the other SVs, but they are both pretty low ability, and Merrill is on TFW rotation right now.”