Page 47 of A Cougar's Kiss
Chapter 16
Oasis
Two Weeks Later
“Afew years ago, a curandero at the medical center came across an anomaly in two DNA strands he was tasked with identifying for the ViceSecure database. One strand belonged to Cole Linden and after a more in-depth study was linked back to one of his ancestors in the Gungi who had at some point cross-mated with a different type of feline.” Ary paused and pressed a button that switched the pictures on the screen.
Pictures that confused the hell out of Jace because they all looked like a bunch of lines moving across the screen like waves. Rome had called this private meeting at noon on a Friday. He was only going to be in Oasis for the weekend and wanted to see everyone as soon as possible. Jace had arrived earlier this morning after having returned to the Pacific Zone a week ago.
“The second strand that confounded the curandero belonged to Jacques Germain,” Ary continued and Jace squinted his eyes to see what was pictured on the screen this time.
There were multiple rows of the squiggly lines and they were in different colors. He still had no clue what that meant and from the looks on the other FLs’ faces, he wasn’t alone. Luckily, Ary was there with an explanation.
“Not only were the strands of Jacques’ different from any other documented shifter, there were too many of them. The human body has two strands of DNA per cell. A Shadow Shifter has three strands—one for the human, one for the cat and another that serves as the glue holding the two together. Jacques Germain had…has…six strands in each of his cells. The curandero was never able to figure out why and eventually stopped trying because there were many more living shifters that needed to be added to the database. He wrote reports on each of the anomalies and they were put into a confidential file and stored in a secure location on the Holodeck.”
Ary paused and cleared her throat before speaking again. “My daughter, Shya, was able to retrieve those files and stored them on her private board, which is where I found them. With the new technology we’ve developed in the past couple of years, I was able to examine Jacques’ DNA more closely, pick apart the extra strands and attempt to identify them.”
“What did you find?” Bas asked via the comlink conference system he was on.
Immediately after leaving Miami Bas had returned to Oasis to pick up Priya and Haven and traveled back to Arizona where he planned to rebuild another resort. Today was the first day anyone, besides Rome, had seen or heard from him.
“The second set of three DNA strands is not a duplicate. Each of the chromosomes that form the strands are different from the original set. And they’re not feline shifter,” Ary stated and then looked at Nick who had a grim expression.
Eli had been keeping in touch with Jace after their return from above ground. His twin brother Ezra had stayed in D.C. with Rome, while Eli came back to Oasis with Nick, Ary and Shya who was still at the medical center due to the wound to her shoulder she’d received from Jacques.
“So, you’re saying Jacques is two different people?” Ezra asked, his face fixed in a frown.
Jace couldn’t help but frown too. “This seems odd, even for us half-human, half-cats.”
“I know,” Ary said as she nodded. “Shapeshifters, two different beings living within one body, none of that is abnormal if you’re looking along the mythological or supernatural scale. A body which contained the traits of multiple different species was called a chimera in Greek mythology.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me!” Ezra shook his head.
“She’s not kidding,” Rome said grimly. “When Ary first came to me with her findings we sent them to one of the Elder curanderos in the Gungi. It’s true, hundreds of years ago there was a small tribe of Shadows that were forced to live on the outskirts of the town because of what was called their tainted skin. It was really the fact that they were made-up of more than just human and cat. Jacques is a descendent of that tribe.”
Bas cursed from the screen. “And he didn’t know it? Because I find it hard to believe that the shifter I knew for all those years was just keeping this big ass secret from me and everyone else. And even if all of this is true it doesn’t explain how Jacques survived that fire.”
As soon as Bas finished speaking the side door to Rome’s private conference room slid open and a wheelchair was rolled in.
Jewel and Nivea gasped from where they were seated next to their mates at the large conference room table. On the screen Bas gaped and Priya eased into view with an astonished look on her face. Kalina stood next to Rome smiling, a sheen of tears in her eyes while Ary smiled and Nick reached out to take her hand.
Jace stood. “Cole. You’re awake.”
Cole nodded, his dark hair curled tight to his scalp, the light honey-hue of his skin looking a pinch brighter than when Jace had last seen him lying in that bed at the medical center.
“I am,” Cole replied as he was being wheeled to the other side of the room where Rome and Kalina stood. “And I’ve got a story to tell you. It’s about one night when I was working to rescue shifters from a SIC camp, the night I first saw Jacques a.k.a. the Desert Cat.”
Fifteen minutes later the story was complete and every shifter in the room was stunned into silence. After the Unveiling, Cole’s body had washed up on the shore north of D.C. where he was nursed back to health by a woman who had no idea he was a Shadow Shifter. He spent the next few years trying to help the Shadow Shifters being captured and put into SIC camps. Blaez Trekas and his pack of lycans were helping him for a while, until that explosion at the camp in Arizona, that was the night he first saw Jacques and it was the last thing he remembered.
“I found him and brought him back to my place in Pennsylvania where he stayed asleep for almost a year until I was told he belonged here with you and I returned him.”
“You don’t look like the huge, winged creature that we saw through the clouds that night,” Gold said.
Jace watched the man who’d just spoken carefully. He’d almost mistaken him for a curandero but pulled back from that thought as he stared into the guy’s eyes. They were a startling blue that for some reason gave a hint that he wasn’t a Shadow Shifter, but he wasn’t simply a human either.
“And who the hell are you?” Bas asked.
The man shifted his gaze slowly to the screen, his broad shoulders squared. There was an air of authority about him, such that it surpassed even Rome’s superiority in the room. But not in a defensive way, no, there was no tension here. Rome obviously trusted the man, or he wouldn’t have been in Oasis.
