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  Predator’s Fire

  Gemini Island Shifters, Book 5

  Rosanna Leo

  Published: 2014

  ISBN: 978-1-62210-149-8

  Published by Liquid Silver Books. Copyright © 2014, Rosanna Leo.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author.

  This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents and dialogues in this book are of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is completely coincidental.

  Manufactured in the USA

  Email [email protected] with questions, or inquiries about Liquid Silver Books.

  Blurb

  When Nina Suzuki discovers the body of her best friend Janine, her world turns upside down. Things go from bad to worse when Janine’s corpse seems to transform into that of a large, brown wolf. For the first time, Nina is faced to confront all the clues indicating her BFF was not what she seemed. A letter from the dead woman opens Nina’s eyes to a strange, new world. The same letter warns of a sinister group called the Alpha Brethren, and urges her to find Killian Moon of the Ursa Fishing Lodge and Resort on Gemini Island.

  Killian Moon is a jaguar shifter and teen mentor at the Ursa Lodge in Northern Ontario. He may be a comfort and inspiration to confused teen shifters, but he also has a fiery past. His past comes back to haunt him when human Nina arrives at the resort, demanding to speak with him. Demanding answers. Can he trust her with knowledge that will not only change her life, but possibly endanger those around him?

  As Killian begrudgingly tutors Nina on all things shifter, their mutual curiosity flares into passionate need. Once they touch, once they succumb to desire, there is no going back. Killian realizes Nina is his mate and they both begin to comprehend the terror threatening those on their shifter-friendly island. He is forced to confront the tragedy in his family and determines to protect Nina at all costs.

  But can they protect everyone they love from a cult of dangerous shifters, intent on horror and destruction?

  Dedication

  In writing Predator’s Fire, I knew I wanted my heroine Nina to resemble the sweet, funny girls I had as friends in my youth. This story begins with an act of friendship, with Nina trying to accept Janine’s strange world. I therefore dedicate this romance to my old school friends, the girls who saw me through all my misadventures and who inspired this one.

  Acknowledgements

  I’d like to acknowledge several fine people who helped me with this book. Firstly, I’d like to thank Nita Banks, The Book Chick, who has created all my trailers for the Gemini Island Shifters series. Nita, I bow to your genius. I’d also like to thank Krystle Watts, who graciously provided me with so much information on the day-to-day life of a dog groomer. Thank you, Krystle. As always, I’d like to thank my brilliant editors, Allie Hart and Michelle Chandler. Ladies, you have once again managed to make me look good. Thank you. Much love, as well, to my family and my readers for the constant support.

  Chapter 1

  “ERNEST, you stubborn boy. Sit still, or I’ll chop those golden locks off next time I see you. If you don’t behave, I’ll dye you pink and make you look like a poodle.”

  Nina Suzuki, dog groomer and occasional dog walker, touched a calming hand to Ernest’s flank. Mrs. Lund’s cherished doggie friend had always been skittish but his behavior today topped the cake. She stopped short in front of her best friend Janine’s apartment door.

  Strange. Janine never left her door open.

  In a show of pampered canine defiance, the golden retriever whimpered at the entrance, straining to get inside. Tugging on Ernest’s lead, she waited until he settled before she placed a tentative hand on the door. Janine always locked it. Living in downtown Toronto, one had to. You never knew what sorts of characters might stroll in.

  Ernest, the most over-indulged dog she’d ever run into in all her years as a groomer, lifted his front paws and tried to maul the door. When he couldn’t break free from Nina’s iron grip, he poked his nose in the crack of the door and whined. Boy, she’d have to tell Janine not to offer him any more fatty treats when they swung by her place. He couldn’t wait to get in and devour the contents of her cupboard.

  “Down, boy,” she urged, frowning. She didn’t want to barge in but it wasn’t like Janine not to respond to commotion at the door. Her friend had the hearing of a hungry predator. She recalled watching a soap opera with her one uncanny time. Janine retreated to the washroom and Nina had tinkered with the volume to test her friend’s weird skill. Without saying anything, she lowered the sound to almost zero when Janine called out, “Did Jackson seriously just tell Liza he’s Charlene’s baby daddy? That man is a dirt bag. To think he used to be a priest.”

  She hadn’t fiddled with the volume since.

  Nina called through the crack. “Janine. It’s me. Open up.” She paused. “I haven’t heard from you in ages. Didn’t you get my messages?”

  When she received no response, a prickle of unease danced between her shoulder blades.

  “Janine?”

  Ernest chomped at the bit, straining at his lead. Now, just as frantic, Nina pushed the door open, watching as it swung. The dog raced into the unit and she let him go, following. As she darted through the apartment, her gaze landed on random items as she searched for signs of foul play. Had someone robbed her? It didn’t appear so. Janine’s laptop remained on her desk. The drawers seemed untouched, closets unopened. Even her prized, numbered Robert Bateman prints, the haunting pictures of wolves, still hung on the wall.

  Ernest barked, the sound echoing from the bedroom.

  “Janine?” she cried, noting the nervous break in her voice. She dashed into the bedroom, unsure what she’d find, but unable to shake the horrible sensation something was very wrong. She turned the corner into the room, and almost tripped over an upended footstool. She righted herself, looked up and gasped.

  Her friend, a woman she’d known since their teen years, hung naked from the ceiling fan, her body still twitching.

  As the scream echoed in her ears, Nina really thought for a deranged moment it had come from Ernest. The dog, lost in a mad cacophony of barks, seemed to already mourn the woman who always snuck him treats. Clapping a hand over her mouth, Nina stifled her own noise and tried to think.

  Her friend’s body continued to jerk, and she realized she might still be able to help her. Scrambling onto her bed, Nina fought back her own shakes as she reached for Janine’s bare legs and pushed up, trying to take the strain off her neck. The legs seized in her arms. She looked up. How could she ever untie her? Dammit! She hated being short.

  “What do I do?” she cried, eyeing the unseeing gaze of her friend’s already-lifeless eyes. “Oh God, Janine, what did you do?”

  Just as she worried she was too late, the body wrenched out of her grasp and Nina stood back, balancing on the mattress. Janine shook and shook and Nina feared the tremors would finish the wretched job.

  All of a sudden, she realized Ernest had stopped barking. Darting a glance at the dog, she saw him at the foot of the bed, curled up, whimpering. She looked back at Janine, as precious seconds seemed to whiz by. She clawed her cell phone from out of her pocket and dialed 9-1-1.

  Janine’s body then endured one last, vicious spasm. At her feet, Nina couldn’t help but notice how Janine’s toes curled and sprouted long brown hairs. Her gaze panned slowly up the length of the body and she wondered exactly when she’d drifted into insane territory. Janine’s shaved legs were now covered in
the same strange hairs and her muscles had morphed, taking on the dimensions of a large canine. She blinked, sure the vision before her was a result of some yet-to-be-diagnosed eye condition. How else could she explain the monstrosity before her?

  Somehow, when she wasn’t looking, Janine had transformed into a great, brown wolf.

  Nina dropped her phone.

  She stared, unable to move, as tears dripped past her nose into her open mouth. From the floor, she heard the tinny voice emanating from the phone. “9-1-1. What is your emergency?”

  She just stared at the abominable thing that had made her friend disappear. Gawked at its cutting claws and lolling tongue.

  Grandma, what big teeth you have.

  Silencing the voice of crazy in her head, the one caught in some kind of Little Red Riding Hood nightmare, Nina tried to rally but couldn’t drag her gaze from the beast. “What did you do with her?”

  “Ma’am. This is the 9-1-1 operator. What is your emergency?”

  Enraged at the animal, needing to have Janine back, Nina lashed out and hit the wolf. Over and over, she pounded its unmoving haunches. “Give her back!”

  On the fifth wallop, the creature wobbled and all its hairs seemed to shrink back into its skin. As terror froze her to her spot, Nina watched as all traces of the wolf disappeared and as Janine re-emerged from the animal’s hide.

  Dead.

  “Ma’am,” the phone voice called. “We have your location as 331 York Street. An ambulance is on its way.”

  The operator seemed to mumble something else, but Nina couldn’t tell what it was. As her heart seemed to stop and race at the same time, she dropped to the bed. Ernest shuffled over and licked her hand.

  Only then, did she see the note. It rested on Janine’s pillow, in a neat envelope, Nina’s name written on it in the familiar, rounded script. Even as sirens sounded down the street, something told her she needed to read the note, that no one else should read it. Leaning under Janine’s dangling feet, she fought revulsion as she retrieved the letter. As she ripped it open, her tears wet the stationery.

  What on earth could drive Janine to take her life? Sure, she’d been a little distant lately, but life was good. In fact, her friend had found love a couple of months ago, and was happy with her new boyfriend. Her family life was as steady as it had always been, and she’d reported no issues with her banking job. She was the last person Nina would have pegged as suicidal.

  She pulled out the very short letter.

  Nina, I’m so sorry. Some very bad people have been after me and this was the only way I could escape. The people who’ve stalked me are vicious. I can’t waste any more time and I don’t want to lead them to you or anyone I love. I have to do this now. You’ve been my friend almost all my life, but I’ve kept a big secret from you. I can’t even say the words here. Just know I would have told you if I could. Please tell Dirk this had nothing to do with him and give him my love. Don’t show the police this note. It’s imperative. I need you to find a friend of mine, Killian Moon at the Ursa Fishing Lodge on Gemini Island. He’ll help you. Tell him the Alpha Brethren are coming. He needs to know.

  I love you.

  From somewhere down the hall, heavy footsteps sounded and Nina knew the paramedics had arrived. With a shaking hand, she folded up the note, shoved it deep into her pants pocket, and waited.

  * * * *

  “Go on, kid. Try to hit me.”

  The teen boy rubbed his nose with his boxing glove, but made no other attempt to move. “I don’t know, Mr. Moon. You sure I won’t get in trouble?”

  Jaguar shifter Killian Moon stood his ground in front of the boy. After years of mentoring teenaged shape shifters, he knew the only way to help them deal with unexpected aggression was to help them let it out in a safe environment. So often, forced to hide their animal natures, shifters pretended to be human in order to fit in. Killian knew this first hand and had experienced the detrimental effects.

  His people weren’t capable of keeping things bottled up. They needed outlets for their rage and intensified emotions. Outlets somewhere far from humans.

  “You won’t get into trouble, Kyle. Here at the Ursa Resort, you’re as safe as you’ll ever be. We’re all shifters here. You need to learn how to channel your frustrations so you don’t lose your shit around humans.” He stood up straight and stuck out his chest. “Now hit me, if you can.”

  Kyle, a young wolf shifter who barely reached Killian’s shoulders, looked around to make sure no one was watching. He then pulled back with a slowness that almost made Killian groan, and launched his gloved fist at him.

  He caught the punch, stopping it before he ever made contact with his chest. When Kyle gawked at him, Killian allowed his lips to twitch in a teasing grin. It was enough to bait the boy, and he took another swing at him, and another, and another. Killian stopped each punch.

  “What the hell, dude?” shouted Kyle, panting. “Why did you tell me to hit you if you’re not gonna let me make contact?”

  “Next lesson, we work on your technique so you can best a bigger shifter like me. For now, I just want you to let it out. Get mad.”

  Kyle threw another half-hearted punch. “I don’t get mad.”

  “Oh yes, you do. You got plenty mad at your human wrestling coach a few weeks ago when you hit him.”

  The boy’s face turned pink. “That was different. He kicked me off the team.”

  During a heated meet in which Kyle was the only shifter wrestler, he managed to throttle several of the other athletes for looking at him funny and then pummeled the coach for taking action. The kid was lucky he hadn’t been suspended or expelled outright. His parents, after hearing about the success of the mentoring program at the Ursa Resort, shipped him off to Gemini Island for immediate intervention and coaching.

  “He sensed your aggression. You let it get the best of you.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Look, Kyle.” He urged the teen to drop the boxing gloves. “We need to be really careful around humans. Our survival as a species depends on our discretion and our ability to blend in. Yes, I recommend letting your anger out, but not around the enemy.”

  “Mr. Snow says humans aren’t our enemies.”

  Killian sighed. Ryland Snow, owner of the Ursa Fishing Lodge and Resort, was also one of his best friends. However, he couldn’t help feeling ever since Ryland mated with his human wife Lia, he’d softened in his stance toward humans. When Ryland first built the humble fishing lodge, he’d intended it as a sanctuary for shifters, a place where they could be themselves without suffering the scrutiny of prying human eyes. The lodge expanded over the years, becoming a huge 5-star shifter resort. Now shifter families from everywhere traveled to Gemini Island in Northern Ontario for their vacations. The resort’s famed mentoring program catered to shifter teens in need, ones who had trouble adjusting to their unique abilities.

  Although Ryland had developed sympathies for humans, Killian was still of the mind that non-shifters didn’t belong there at the resort. Sure, he’d become friends with the humans-turned-shifters on the island, but he certainly didn’t encourage others to visit.

  As if in agreement, his inner jaguar snarled.

  It wasn’t that he disliked humans, far from it. They were simply better off keeping to themselves, for a number of reasons, chief among those being their safety.

  “Maybe enemy is a bad choice of word. Let’s just say, when it comes to non-shifters, you need to be cautious. Reserved. And even when they instigate trouble, you need to learn to back down. If you don’t, you’ll end up with human blood on your hands.”

  “I didn’t mean to hurt Mr. Laughlin.”

  “I know, and your parents know, and that’s why they sent you to our program. We can help you focus your emotions so you don’t lash out inappropriately. Put a punching bag in your room at home. Go for a run when someone pisses you off. By all means, defend the ones you love, but you can’t go looking fo
r trouble. If you lash out, your inner animal will manifest, and it’ll be hard to cage it once it’s escaped.”

  The teen nodded. “I hear you. Thanks, Mr. Moon.” He handed Killian the boxing gloves and offered him a shy smile. “I bet I hit you for real tomorrow.”

  Killian grinned. “We’ll see.”

  * * * *

  Killian knotted his running shoes at the front door of the Ursa Resort, taking a quick moment to breathe in the bracing air. Using his jaguar senses, he inhaled deeply and smelled the buds in the nearby trees, even though they hadn’t broken through bark yet. Spring would arrive soon. At least most of the snow had melted, leaving a pristine surface around Lake Gemini. The pathways and boardwalks, now clear of ice, provided an ideal running space.

  Not quite dark yet, an indigo veil loomed over the western sky, but enough light remained for even a human jogger. With his shifter abilities, Killian had no trouble maneuvering as he ran. Rocky obstacles and fallen branches would not slow him down. He could have shifted into his jaguar, but sometimes he needed to stretch his human muscles, too. Needed to feel the air course through human lungs.

  He ran on the spot for a few seconds, his eyes focused on the horizon. Breathing hard, like a bull preparing to ram its pen, he set off for the lake boardwalk.

  It took a lot to get him tired, one of the blessings of being a shifter, so he ran at break-neck pace. A “jog” for him would have brought on cardiac arrest for a human. However, after a long day mentoring teens, some of whom had petulance down to a fine art, he needed the physical release.

  Of course, cursed with the insatiable appetites of a shape shifter, his release of choice would have been sex. There was nothing he enjoyed more than teasing a woman into a state of blissful oblivion, relaxing himself at the same time. Sure, he could have hit up one of his usual partners. He was on friends-with-benefits terms with a couple of ladies who worked at the resort. They wouldn’t have turned him down if he cocked an appreciative brow at them.