Crash Morph: Gate Shifter Book Two by JC Andrijeski

convinced.
    When none of us moved or spoke, he seemed to give up, giving us each a last look before he finished climbing the stairs leading up to the black-glass building.
    Nik turned back to Bundy.
    “Do you remember me?” he said, softer.
    “Yes,” Bundy said, gripping Nik’s fingers, trying to give himself more room to breathe. “Motherfucker. Kill you the next time I see you...”
    Nik shook him again, still not hard, but enough that the other guy’s expensive shoes knocked together.
    “No,” Nik said. “You won’t. You won’t see me again. You won’t see Dakota again, either. If you come near her, for any reason, I will hurt you. More than last time.”
    “You put me in the fucking hospital last time,” the guy gasped. “Dyke-loving freak...”
    Nik frowned, but his eyes didn’t stop examining the other’s face.
    After another pause, Nik looked at me, without releasing Bundy.
    “There is something wrong with him,” he informed me. “With his mind.”
    “Yeah, Nik. No shit. Now put him down, okay?” I couldn’t help staring around at passersby, smiling at them like this whole thing was as normal as can be. “Nik. You can’t afford to be this conspicuous,” I hissed. “Put him down. I mean it.”
    That time, Nik seemed to think about my words.
    He lowered Bundy back down to his feet and released him, but didn’t move away.
    “This is not a fight you can win,” Nik told him. “You must see that.”
    “Yeah, fucker. We’ll see,” Bundy said, rubbing his neck. “We’ll just fucking see.”
    Arranging his red, silk tie, now the same color as his face, Bundy glared around at all three of us. Then, without another word, he turned, taking the stairs two at a time before he disappeared back through the high doors into the black glass building.
    “Well, that was fun,” I muttered, hands on my hips as I stared after him.
    When I looked back at the other two, Jake was looking at Nik like he wanted to rip his clothes off, right then and there.
    I gave Nik a slightly less appreciative look.
    “Nik,” I said, my hands still on my hips. “You’re going to end up naked on a stainless steel table somewhere. Either in a garage with that psycho you just assaulted, or one paid for with taxpayer dollars. Do you get that? Is that sinking in at all, that we’re trying to keep a low profile for you? For me, too, for that matter?”
    Nik only looked at me, not answering.
    I could see and feel shimmers of his own anger there, however.
    I certainly didn’t see any kind of remorse on his face.
    Then again, I probably needed to spell this stuff out for him a lot more clearly, in a way that would make sense to him, given the life he’d just left behind in that other world. Nik knew all about incarceration. He knew what it meant to have his freedom stripped away, and his rights revoked. He just wasn’t getting that it could happen to him here, too, and almost as easily as it had in that other place, especially if anyone here found out what he really was.
    “I do get that,” Nik said, his voice taut.
    “Then what the hell are you doing?” I said.
    “What are you doing, Dakota?” Nik said, his voice sharper. His irises slid magically to a near black. “You know his mind isn’t right. You know he is targeting you. But he sees you here, and you tell Gantry not to let me come? Why?”
    Realizing what he meant, I shielded my eyes from the sun, squinting up at him.
    As I studied his expression, it dawned on me that Nik saw this whole scene as my fault.  
    He thought I put myself in danger by not doing as he asked and bringing him along as back-up, probably. He was definitely pissed I hadn’t let him act as my bodyguard overtly, the minute I knew Bundy worked in the building.  
    I could feel now, probably through the lock, that Nik thought things never would have escalated to that extent if he’d been with me the whole time.
    Sighing a bit, I realized he might be right.
    At the same time, I knew I had to