Hard Mated

Traffic was light at this hour, but in Austin, never truly gone. Spike flowed with the cars on MLK, keeping Myka’s truck in sight. The car that followed was a generic sedan—every car company made a plain, inexpensive model, and Spike couldn’t distinguish this one. If it had been a motorcycle, he’d have known every detail about it, but sedans were all the same to him.

Myka drove through the heart of Austin and out the other side to a neighborhood along the bluffs near Shoal Creek. She turned onto a street holding a row of modest houses and pulled into a driveway, using an automatic door opener to enter the garage.

The car halted across the street and killed its lights. Spike pulled up right behind it, leapt off the bike, and started for the car. The guy behind the wheel saw him, gunned the car, and took off down the street, tires squealing.

The noise brought Myka out of her garage. She stood in her driveway, hands on hips, exposing herself to any and all danger.

Spike killed his bike’s engine and rolled it quietly across the street. Myka whirled and saw him.

“Spike, what the hell?”

Spike stopped her words with a hand on her lips. “Close that door.”

Myka gaped for a second then hit the control to lower the garage door, while Spike parked his bike next to her car.

“Now are you going to tell me what’s going on?” she asked, unlocking her back door.

Without a word, Spike shoved himself past her and went inside, checking the small back hall then moving on to the kitchen. He turned on no lights, using his Shifter sight to look over the house, room by room. He felt Myka close behind him, smelled her warm scent, tinged with anxiety.

Spike lowered blinds and closed curtains, checking every room and making sure every door was locked before he said that she could turn on a light. He didn’t need one, but light comforted humans, so he’d heard.

Myka didn’t turn on the light. “Spike, what is it? Who was in the car?”

“I didn’t recognize him, but Gavan is dead meat.”

“He had someone following me? What for?”

“To let me know he can have eyes on you any time he wants. I didn’t like the look on his face today when I didn’t immediately kiss his ass.”

Myka frowned in the darkness. “What a butthole. What about Jordan? Is he okay?”

“Ellison and Dylan are on it. You haven’t met Dylan, Liam’s dad. No one will get past those two.”

“Well, thanks for chasing the other guy away. I didn’t even see him following me.”

“He was good.” Spike went to the window in her living room and cracked the blinds to peer out. The street remained empty, but that didn’t mean Gavan didn’t have Shifters sneaking around the back. “I’m staying here.”

“What? Why?”

“It’s either that or you come back to Shiftertown with me.”

“I can’t. I have that meeting tomorrow . . .”

“That’s why I’m staying here. There’s more room, and you’ll be comfortable in your own bed.”

“Spike . . .”

“Eron.”

She fluttered her hands in exasperation. “If you’re name’s Eron, why does everyone call you Spike?”

“Long story.”

“We have all night.”

They did. The darkness held silence and stillness. Nothing moved in the front or the back, and Spike scented no other Shifters.

Didn’t mean they wouldn’t return, possibly in the small hours of the morning, when Myka would be asleep and at her most vulnerable.

“My grandmother almost died when we were first moved into a Shiftertown,” Spike said, looking out the window to the front yard. “She was already sick, she’d never lived anywhere but the middle of nowhere before, and living in a city with other Shifters was making her sicker. To distract her, I got a VCR and some tapes, and we started watching television shows. Over and over again. The only thing that kept her going was looking forward to getting up and sitting on the couch in front of the television with me every day. We watched the tapes and whatever was on the few channels we got until she started to recover. A couple different shows had a character called Spike, and that character was always some bad-ass dude—or thought he was a bad-ass dude. I said one day that if I were on a TV show, they’d probably call me Spike. Grandma thought that was funny and started calling me that, then everyone in Shiftertown picked it up.” He shrugged. “It was a joke at first, but it stuck. I’m a fighter. It fits.”

He delivered the story swiftly, without inflection, trying to hide the pain and fear he’d tasted every waking day and in every dream, that his grandmother would go to the Summerland and leave him alone. Spike had lost everyone in his life—mother and father, grandfather, as horrible as he’d been, cubs his mother had brought in who’d died as infants. Everyone but his grandmother, and the roundup and move to Shiftertown had started taking her away too.

He’d have done anything to save her, and watching videotapes of inane television shows and a new nickname had been a small price to pay.

Myka was watching him. In the dark, her eyes shone, and he saw a second later that they were filled with tears.

“What is it?” he asked softly, turning to her.

“I don’t think anyone in the world realizes how wonderful you are.”

Chapter Eleven

The words were a whisper, and every one struck Spike’s heart. He stepped closer to her, right into her warmth.