Chapter Thirty-Two
“What the hell?” Trask stared at the incoming text, wondering briefly if his partner had lost his mind. “Babe, I’ve got to go. Coop needs me.”
Christian stepped to his side, taking the baby his husband had been cuddling after his late night feeding and lifting his cheek for a kiss. “Be careful.”
“Always.” Reaching for the holstered gun on top of the refrigerator, he clipped it to his belt. A few strides of his long legs had him punching in the combination to the gun safe in the hall closet. Strapping on his ankle holster, he shoved his feet into his beat-up cowboy boots and reached to the back of the safe for the leather pouch he knew was there.
Watching silently from the doorway, Christian’s eyes widened. “You’re taking those?”
“Lamar says he has the shifter in his sights but needs a way to contain it,” he said grimly. “That’s exactly what those cuffs are for.” Dropping one last kiss on his son’s head, Trask pulled the door shut behind him and headed out to his truck.
~*~
The ride to the hospital took forever, in Lamar’s opinion. He watched silently as the EMT’s worked on the boy, cleaning and patching injuries as the strobing lights bounced off the surrounding buildings and reflected in through the large windows, giving everything an eerie glow.
He kept his right hand on his thigh, within easy distance of the butt of his gun and tried to convince himself that he was capable of shooting the animal while it was wearing Aeren’s face. The truth was that he wasn’t sure he was.
Luckily, it didn’t come to that.
Lamar followed the gurney off the ambulance, trotting to keep up with it as it wound through the halls of the emergency department. When Vic silently fell in at his flank, he allowed himself a small sigh of relief.
With the gurney parked in one of the curtained cubicles, the nurses began to flutter about as they took the injured being’s vitals and checked for additional injuries. Once they’d all cleared out with a promise that the doctor would be right in, Lamar stepped up to his side again.
“You remember my partner, Vic, don’t you, Ren?”
“Yes.” The boy nodded, wincing.
“How are you feeling?” Trask asked, stepping up to the opposite side of the gurney. “Have they checked you for a head injury?”
“I’m not sure,” the boy responded with a confused look his direction.
Lamar frowned as the blood continued to drip from the cut on his cheek. He grazed his knuckles along the injury. “Is that painful?”
“What? Um, I mean, yeah. A little.” He turned back to look at Lamar. “What happens now”?
“Now?” Lamar murmured, his voice soothing as a metallic click sounded. “Now, we arrest you, you sick fucker.” Raising his voice, he stepped back and called for Genov, who popped his head around the curtain as the creature on the bed screeched and fought against the handcuff holding it to the bed.
“You got’im?” Genov smirked in the general direction of the bed and held his fist out for Vic to bump. “Hey, man. Good to see you.”
“You, too.” Vic nodded to the bed. “The cuff is made of charmed silver-plated stainless steel. It will keep him from shifting as long as it is in place.” He flexed his fingers, casually calling his talons free and using one to slit the fabric of the killer’s sleeve, severing it from the shirt and leaving his arm bare. Shaking his hands as his talons receded, Vic sneered at the shocked look on his face. “We wouldn’t want to risk the fabric getting in the way, now, would we?”
“Now,” Lamar started conversationally. “Where is the real Aeren?”
“I am the real one,” the creature sniveled, tears running down his face.
Genov’s brow wrinkled, and even Vic looked concerned.
“It’s not him,” Lamar assured them. When Genov raised his brow, Lamar pointed to the injury on the right cheek. “That’s where the first vic – Parker – scratched it while he was dying. Your impersonator, Scaline’s, even the version of Mandy on the security video all had the same cut, remember?”
Vic snorted. “Of course. It takes a lot of energy to hold a shift. That would slow the healing process down significantly. Each time it changed form, the wound reopened.”
Lamar stared down at the killer who was glaring back with hate-filled eyes and shrugged. “Okay, if it’s not going to talk, we may as well haul it to the station.” He shook his head. “I’ll put in a call for a para-transport. In the meantime, don’t take off those handcuffs.”
“No worries,” Trask assured him, dropping into a chair and stretching his legs out, crossing them at the ankle. “There’s literally nothing this twerp can shift into that a real dragon can’t take out in a single bite.”
Genov stretched and yawned, showing his fangs. “Besides, if he’s killed in the commission of a crime, it’s legal for me to feed on him.” He snarled in the direction of the prisoner. “I’m getting a bit peckish.”
Lamar laughed to himself as a look of horror crossed the killer’s face. “Since you two have things under control here, I’m going to get a search started for the real Aeren.”
Genov’s face fell.
Vic’s jaw tensed.
Lamar shook his head. “He’s not dead,” he stated confidently. When Genov raised a questioning brow, he shrugged and tapped two fingers to his chest. “He’s not. I’d know.”
Vic pulled his keys out of his pocket and tossed them, reminding Lamar that he’d arrived in the ambulance. Catching them, Lamar left the two best non-humans he knew to deal with the prisoner and headed for the parking lot.
He cranked the engine in Vic’s personal truck and listened as the diesel sputtered to life. Reaching for his cell phone as the truck warmed up, a sudden thought occurred to him. Crossing his fingers that he was right, Lamar tossed the phone onto the passenger seat and headed off down the street.
