Free Mob Mom's Christmas by Jana Leigh Page B

they had given her knocked her out and made her weak. If she had even an ounce of her normal power, she would shift and kick these guys' asses. At least, she assumed they were men, because she could smell the stench of body odor and no respecting female shifter would not have put on her deodorant if she were going to plan an abduction.
    She looked around trying to figure out where her friends had been taken. Rissa and Cherri were not going to be any happier than she was. They were down at the square when whoever it was took them. She could only hope the tracking system they put in her when she was hired all those years ago still worked. Calli shook her head; she knew it didn't work. The new tracking chip sat on her bathroom counter in the syringe that Rissa had given her. She was in charge of the program and finally convinced the higher-ups the first employees had the old version of the tracking chip. It only had a short-range and life span; the new one could reach anywhere in the world at any given time. It also would tell the computer operator if the agent was in distress, like she was right now .
    The Drekinn Agency, where they all worked, was the only regulating agency in the world, and in the year 2554, it was important to keep up with technology. If she got out of here, Calli was going to have to inject the updated version of the tracker so the geeks who watched this shit on the computer could find them.
    Things were changing fast. The shifters and magical people came out of the closet over thirty years ago, and still there were people who wanted to kill them. Calli had been kidnapped more times than she could count by radical humans, dumb ass mutant shifters, and your basic crazy assholes. The humans thought the shifters were trying to take over the world. Hell, if they wanted to they could. But as it was, they had more to worry about than the economy. The mutants, called the Ulfer , wanted free reign to do what they wanted. And the crazy assholes are just that. They thought if they could capture a shifter, they could get changed into a shifter. Not true.
    The Drekinn Agency was founded in order to regulate the magical community. The misunderstandings from the humans had been huge. They thought they could just put garlic on their doors to keep them away, as well as the sale of silver and crosses had been enormous. At first, the Drekinn Agency promoted understanding and knowledge about the magical world. Now they were a governing entity among the world community. If someone in the magical community screwed up, had a grievance or generally needed help, they turned to Drekinn.
    There were all different divisions of the Agency. Calli and her friends worked in the Enforcement section. They were high-ranking officials and were known throughout the community as serious badasses. But her childhood was what shaped her into what she was today.
    As a child, she wanted desperately to show her friends her wolf, but she was told by her parents that it was a secret. Then as she grew she understood. Humans did not live as long as they did, they were scared of the paranormal, and the television shows she watched had shown werewolves and vampires as monsters. They could be cruel and vicious to things that were not the norm for them.
    So she had to make it work for her. As she grew, she found that humans could be frightened easily. So although she couldn't act like she had superior strength or speed because she had to hide her true nature, she could still stand up for herself. She longed to join the teams that were made on the playground, but she couldn't, and because she acted like she was clumsy and awkward, she was teased. She loved to shift and howl at the moon outside of her nemesis, Judy Ann Baker's house. It freaked her out. She remembered the girl coming to school and telling anyone who would listen that she had a wolf in her back yard. Since they lived in New York City, that got her labeled a freak. Calli loved it.
    That was