Kitabı oku: «The Shifters», sayfa 3

“Do you know a shifter named Ryder Mallory?” Caitlin asked suddenly, and Ryder was jarred out of his thoughts. Did she sense him?

He moved casually down the bar to get out of her range, crouched as if to reach under the sink.

Case stared at Caitlin, lifted an eyebrow. “Can’t say that I do.” He reached in front of her for her drink, lifted and drained it.

Lying, Caitlin thought. Not even bothering to cover.

He smiled at her, as if reading her thoughts. “Can’t keep track of everyone, cher.”

“Well, if anything comes to you, you’ll tell me, I’m sure,” she said.

“I’d rather come to you, cher. In you, with you, in every which way,” Case said softly, and leaned over to lift a strand of hair from her cheek, curling it around his finger, tugging her forward..

Behind the bar, Ryder abruptly stood, anger flaring, and in that moment Case turned sharply and stared toward him. Ryder adjusted his body, struggled to hold the cloak of illusion in place…and once again he was just a college kid, merely spacing out in Case’s direction.

After a long moment Case turned back to Caitlin, but Ryder could see that the younger shapeshifter was jumpy now, and figured he’d better get while the getting was good. He couldn’t afford to be caught, at least until he knew more. He picked up a case of Turbodog and headed for the kitchen door.

Caitlin didn’t know what had just gone on, but Case was suddenly edgy and hyper.

“Got to get back,” he said, jerking his head in the general direction of the stage. “My public awaits.”

“I want to talk to Danny,” she said abruptly.

She saw Case stiffen subtly, but he covered it well, smiled at her. “Why would that be, Keeper?”

There was no point in lying to him; he always knew. “I want a sitting. To see what he’s seen out there.” She knew Case would know she didn’t mean on the streets but in the astral.

Case shook his head mockingly. “Danny’s not home tonight.”

Meaning Danny was high, as if she didn’t know. Her anger burned. “How do you live with yourself?” she asked, not bothering to hide her contempt.

“Same way Danny does, cher. One hit at a time.”

Too angry to speak, she turned and stalked for the door.

His voice came from the dark behind her, mocking. “Rough night out there. Don’t forget your glamour.”

She faced him stoically. He was right, of course.

He stared across the dark courtyard, into her eyes. “And don’t forget—I taught you that, little sister.”

“Yes,” she heard herself saying bitterly. “You taught me a lot.”

She turned again and was gone.

Inside the club, she leaned against the wall in the narrow hallway and breathed deeply until she could focus enough to pull the glamour back on.

The music was blasting, but strangely, the rhythm made the glamour easier to conjure. When she straightened away from the wall, the drunk bridesmaids who tumbled by her en route to the bathroom didn’t even give her a glance.

Caitlin weaved her way across the crowded floor. On stage, Danny was at the piano, hair shimmering like dark water over his shoulders, beautiful and empty-eyed. Caitlin turned away, disturbed…and caught a glimpse of Case standing on the dance floor in front of the stage. He suddenly crouched down, dropping out of sight. Caitlin stopped, craning to see what was going on. He was on his haunches talking very seriously to a blonde little girl of maybe five, sporting a rakish, sequined hat. As the little girl watched, enthralled, Case twirled a drumstick between his fingers and then extended the drumstick toward her.

She took it and without hesitation twirled the stick in imitation. As Case laughed, his whole face transformed.

Caitlin blinked back tears and fled the club.

Chapter 5

Once out in the kaleidoscopic cacophony of the street, Caitlin realized she was so shaky she could barely hold the glamour in place. She always felt that way, seeing Case. And Danny, too. Her feelings for them were so complex…. Longing, despair, anger, protectiveness…

And failure. As shifters, they were her charges, and not only had she been manipulated and controlled by the very people she was supposed to have charge of, she hadn’t helped them. Not a bit.

She took long breaths, forcing the spell to stabilize.

Part of the trouble was that she had known Case forever, it seemed, since she was just a teenager. As the middle MacDonald child, she’d had a rebellious streak. Fiona was so good, so perfect, and Shauna so outgoing and loved, and their parents had been such pillars of the community, all the communities. Caitlin never felt she could live up to any of them. So she found relief by sneaking out of the house, out of the compound, up to big bad Bourbon Street, to listen to music, drink the Hurricanes that older guys would buy her..

Case had saved her from a bad situation one night, when a drunker than usual frat boy thought that buying Caitlin a drink meant anything went, including date rape. Of course, that turned out to be the proverbial “out of the frying pan, into the fire” scenario in the end, but at first Case had been so charming, as rebellious as Caitlin herself, but also a naturally talented shifter as well as singer, and very willing to teach her. She had spent many hours after-hours in clubs, listening to Case and Danny jamming with their band of the moment, and learning the shortcuts of shapeshifting.

Then came the War, and her parents’ deaths had devastated Caitlin and her sisters. Caitlin, in particular, had been consumed by guilt. She’d taken her parents for granted, had gone behind their backs, and now she could never make up for any of it. In her zeal to reform she had become completely devoted to her sisters, obedient to Fiona and fiercely protective of Shauna.

Caitlin had kept her distance from Case as well as she could, as the three MacDonald sisters had thrown themselves into the grueling task of building the trust and connection with the communities of Others that their parents had had.

But in recent years she had been increasingly disturbed by rumors of his drug use—Danny’s, too. Rumors that they had fallen prey to the drugs and disillusion that claimed so many shifters. Caitlin had tried to intervene, in her official capacity as a Keeper. But old feelings proved overwhelming. She’d slipped and reconnected with Case, wanting to believe his stories of being clean, of reforming…only to be horrified to discover the extent of his new addictions. She had pressured and badgered and ranted, and then sunk into despair, all the time hiding it from her sisters, until, ironically, it was Case who dumped her, unable to take her condemnation.

That had been just before a series of nightgown-clad blondes started turning up in New Orleans cemeteries, bodies drained of blood.

If Caitlin’s brain hadn’t been so scrambled, she surely would have seen the killer for what it really was. Instead, because of her confusion, her inattention, both she and Fiona had almost been killed….

And Caitlin had been living with that guilt, ever since.

But I’m going to do it right, this time, she vowed.

She straightened, squaring her shoulders, and moved down the crowded street, slipping like water around the drunken revelers—frat boys, businessmen, pimps.

The noise of the street was overwhelming, distracting, and she turned down a side street, heading for quieter Rue Royal so she could hear herself think. She was past the Rainbow line, St. Ann Street, where hetero clubs turned gay and the side streets turned seedier, but she had on the glamour and Royal was just one long block down.

Even so, she instinctively walked a little more quickly as she brooded over the clearest clue she had gotten from Case: these were tourists dropping dead, not junkies. Tourists doing meth? No wonder Jagger was perturbed. And despite his nonchalance, she could tell even Case thought it was strange.

Caitlin was so deep in thought that she didn’t notice the footsteps until they were right up on her—heavy, pounding, manic—and before she could even turn, a heavy, live, stinking weight had tackled her, hurling her to the ground.

She hit the pavement so hard that her breath was knocked out of her and she heard as well as felt her head crack against the curb, and the pain was blinding; through the haze, she knew for the first time what it was like to see stars. Through her confusion she thought, How can he see me? Who is this?

Despite overwhelming pain, Caitlin heaved herself up and called on a weakening spell, something quick and forceful to stun her attacker.

She gathered energy in her mind and shoved…

The assailant—she had just enough time to register a Bourbon-Faced T-shirt and a man’s face so distorted with rage it barely looked human—growled like a bear and tackled her again.

Not human, Caitlin realized. He’s Other. And then she hit the sidewalk again, was crushed into the cobblestones.

Whoever was on top of her was so heavy she couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe, and the smell was strange. Under the familiar sick-sweetness of too many Hurricanes was not the reek of human sweat, but something like ammonia, and then there were hands around her neck, squeezing, squeezing, and through the pain and descending blackness she realized she was being killed….

Panicked thoughts flooded her brain. She would never see her sisters again, never meet the love of her life….

So this is how it ends….

And then suddenly she felt the pressure lift and gulped in air….

Ryder seized the man in the Bourbon Street T-shirt in a full-out fury and hauled him off Caitlin. The attacker snarled and spun on Ryder, hulking and wired with superhuman strength. He was dressed like a tourist, but the face was a mask of inhuman rage, and beneath the innocuous jeans and T-shirt he was completely out of control, like someone on PCP and steroids at the same time, some drug-crazed, murderous, rapacious zombie.

Ryder seized the tourist by the scruff of his “Bourbon-Faced” T-shirt and slammed him against the side of the voodoo shop beside them. The tourist’s head hit the wall with a sickening thud. But the man merely roared and barreled forward again. Ryder sidestepped, grabbed the man’s arm and used his own momentum against him to snap the bone.

On the pavement behind them, Caitlin flinched as she heard the crack of her attacker’s arm breaking. The limb dropped against his side at an unnatural angle, but even with blood streaming from his head and the useless, dangling arm, he seemed to be feeling no pain at all. He roared again and scuttled off, listing to one side.

Ryder sprinted back to where Caitlin was crumpled on the street, stooped and picked her up in his arms as if she weighed nothing, and strode across the sidewalk to set her carefully up against the wall of the nearest shop. He knelt in front of her and took her face in his hands, looked into her eyes. She could feel the heat of him, the adrenaline of the fight—and more—a molten anger, which she realized, startled, was rage that she’d been attacked. “Are you hurt?” he demanded.

She swallowed, overwhelmed.

“Caitlin,” he said roughly. “Do you know who I am?”

“Who?” she answered weakly. It was a joke, but he seemed to take it seriously.

“Do you know where you are?” he asked more urgently.

“St. Ann Street,” she answered meekly.

“What day is it?”

“Thursday. I’m fine,” she protested and started to struggle to her feet. Ryder took her firmly by the waist and sat her down again, and she gasped, not from pain, but from the electrically sexual feeling of his hands on her. Heat suddenly pulsed through her entire body.

It’s adrenaline, that’s all. You just almost died, of course you’ve got a rush, she told herself.

He took her face in his hands and leaned over her, and she went light-headed, sure he was going to kiss her. But he only turned her head gently to one side, then the other, examining her throat. She felt limp in his hands, overwhelmed with the chemistry of their contact.

Suddenly he was still, no longer examining her but just looking into her eyes. His were green as the sea.

“Keeper,” he said, and his voice was hoarse. His eyes looked into her, through her, and this time his thumbs brushed her lips, sending another electric current through her.. She could feel the rise and fall of his chest, and she knew that whatever she was feeling, he was feeling it, too..

Abruptly he pulled back, looked down the street. “I don’t have much time. That guy will be dead in minutes. I have to get to him first.” He gripped her arms once again. “I’ll be back for you.”

Before she could speak, he was on his feet and sprinting down the street in the direction the tourist had gone.

Caitlin slammed her palms on the sidewalk and pushed herself up. “The hell with that,” she muttered aloud.

She staggered, dizzy, and had to hold herself up on the wall…then tore off down the street after him.

The next block was empty and dark. Down the street Caitlin could see Ryder barreling after the tourist, who was moving fast but stumbling like a drunk zombie.

Ryder put on a burst of speed, long, hard-muscled legs pumping, but before he could tackle the tourist, the man did a sudden spin—and then his body jackknifed backward, his spine arching until his head nearly touched his ass. Caitlin stopped in her tracks with a gasp of horror. Then the tourist jerked again, his chest bulging as if his heart was about to break free.

He was making choking noises, foaming at the mouth, as his body bowed backward and forward in horrific contortions.

Either this is a massive heart attack or an alien is

about to burst out through his ribs, Caitlin thought wildly.

And then there was the sound of a siren approaching, followed by feet pounding, and she was seized around the waist as Ryder grabbed her and hauled her back into a storefront, holding her against his side.

A patrol car skidded around the corner, past the doorway where they were hiding. Uniformed cops were jumping out even before the vehicle came to a complete stop.

The cops ran for the tourist, who did one final, impossible jackknife and collapsed in the middle of the street.

The cops surrounded him with weapons drawn.

“Hands behind your head!” one shouted. The tourist didn’t move.

“Put your hands behind your head!” the officer repeated grimly.

The body lay still. The uniforms advanced cautiously, weapons at the ready.

At Ryder’s side, Caitlin strained to see around the corner of the doorway. In death, a shapeshifter’s body returned to its original form, and she wanted to see what that original form was.

The tourist’s head had dropped to the side, and his face was angled straight toward the doorway where she and Ryder stood. The streetlamps provided a perfectly lit view. Cait held her breath, waiting for the change..

The tourist’s eyes were wide and staring. Definitely dead.

But his features remained the same, as did the proportions of his body. Caitlin shook her head, not understanding. “But…”

Ryder said quietly beside her, “He wasn’t a shapeshifter.”

Chapter 6

Caitlin grabbed Ryder’s arm with a ferocity that she could tell startled him. “Then what was he? I want to know now,” she demanded—then stopped dead as he put his fingers on her mouth and she felt a tingle in her lips, again that raw, aching electricity.

“Shh,” he said against her face. “We need to get out of here first. That vampire friend of yours will be here any second.”

“He’s not my—”

Before she could finish, he was taking her arm and moving her back into the narrow alley between the shops, away from the gathering crowd of police.

The iron gate to the courtyard was padlocked, but Ryder did something with some kind of tool he pulled from an inside pocket of his leather coat, and the lock clicked open. Once they were through, he reached back through the bars and snapped the lock shut before taking her arm again to move into the darkness of the inner courtyard. This time Caitlin pulled her arm away and grabbed for the tool in his hand.

He let her take it, amused, and watched her as she examined it greedily. He could still feel the softness of her lips on his fingertips and entertained the thought of kissing that mouth, of forcing those lush lips open and plunging his tongue into her, hearing her moan and soften under him as he pulled her hips against his..

She looked up from the device, frowning. It was a skeleton key, nothing more than that. “Is it enchanted?”

“Just a little.”

Her eyes narrowed, and he could tell she wanted it. He pressed his advantage. “You can have it—if we can talk.”

She clenched her jaw, but he could tell he had her. “If you talk first,” she agreed sullenly.

“Deal,” he said.

The key got them through two more back doors and a front gate, and then they were on St. Philip Street.

Ryder turned to Caitlin and presented her with the key with a mock bow. She narrowed her eyes again and then snatched it from his hand. To his delight, she pulled a little bag from her cleavage, which he recognized as a gris-gris pouch, a voodoo charm bag, and dropped the key in, before returning the bag to the enticing cleft between her breasts. First the key and then me, he thought, and felt himself stir in anticipation.

She suddenly blushed as if she’d read his thoughts. Before she could turn away, he grabbed her hand and felt her pull back from him—but just a little. “Now we talk, that’s the deal. How about Maguire’s?” he said, hoping the tavern was still there.

She looked startled. “It hasn’t been Maguire’s for almost a hundred years. It’s called the Mississippi River Bottom, now….” She frowned. “How did you know.?” Then she stopped, and after a moment she nodded warily.

The tavern had two entrances—one on the street and one off the side courtyard. Ryder moved through the side gates to the courtyard automatically; that had been the main door when last he’d visited the place.

He looked around curiously. There were neon bar signs hung on the brick, but the building was still the same, and the old twisted tree still grew out of an ancient brick planter, though bigger now than ever.

“Hasn’t changed,” he said aloud, approvingly.

“Since when?” she asked, watching him warily.

“Eighteen.” He paused. “Eighteen eighty-four, it was.”

Caitlin looked at him, jolted. Shapeshifters weren’t immortal, like vampires, but every time they passed through the astral it arrested the aging process, so a shifter who was able to shift often, providing he was able to stay out of other kinds of trouble, could live a long, long life.

If Mallory was telling the truth—always a big “if” when you were dealing with a shifter—he was very good and had been around for a very long time. It must be lonely, she found herself thinking.

He was still lost in reverie. “This used to be a brothel, you know. Sweet little thing named Marie hanged herself from that tree when her sailor man came back in a coffin.”

Another jolt. Caitlin knew that story—it was a staple of the local ghost tours. But Ryder actually sounded as if he’d known her..

“Some guides say you can still feel the energy from—” she started.

But she never got to finish, because he turned to her and said, “Let’s find out,” just before he pulled her toward him and kissed her.

Heat flooded through her instantly, from her lips to the very core of her; she felt she’d just burst into flame. She opened her mouth—to protest or sigh, she didn’t know which—and his tongue was inside her mouth, tasting, teasing, entwining with hers, and then plunging, sliding so deep that she lost her balance. He caught her, lifted her up and set her on the low wall around the tree, bending her backward so he could crush her mouth under his. Her back was against the trunk, and he was stepping between her legs, pulling her hips forward against his, as he kissed her, deep and slow and hot, cupping her breasts in his hands. Her nipples strained through her dress against his palms, and now he moaned, and lifted his head to kiss down her neck, biting, sucking, until she lost her breath and turned to jelly inside. Her legs were wrapped around his thighs, and the huge bulge of his arousal was rubbing against her. She heard herself making sounds she’d never made before as he kissed her cleavage, tongued her nipples through the thin cotton fabric, and she could feel him throbbing against her cleft, half inside her even through their clothes.

Someone spoke harshly somewhere near them, a deep, male voice, and Caitlin felt Ryder’s warmth move slightly back from her, leaving her dazed and wanting.

She heard her own name, and she looked past Ryder into the dark of the courtyard, too dazed to recognize him at first…and then her heart plummeted.

Jagger.

Caitlin felt a sharp jolt of dismay. She was beyond flustered. What had he seen? They’d been practically doing it against the tree. She slipped from the wall, but her legs were so shaky that they barely held her up; her mouth felt bruised, and inside, she was still throbbing.

Beside her, Ryder seemed completely unperturbed, even relaxed. “I believe it’s the Vampire DeFarge.”

Jagger took a sharp step forward and pulled Caitlin to his side. “Are you all right?” he demanded. Caitlin nodded, mortified, and saw his concern for her replaced by anger. “Do you realize you just left a crime scene?”

“You know very well if we’d stayed it would have been more trouble for you in the long run,” Ryder said calmly.

Through her embarrassment, Caitlin was becoming aware that the two of them were talking like old—well, not friends, but old enemies, anyway.

“I was watching out for her,” Ryder was saying.

“That’s what you call watching out for her?” Jagger said murderously, glancing at the tree.

“That’s the pot calling the kettle black, isn’t it? I hardly have to tell you about the allure of a Keeper,” Ryder shot back.

Caitlin could feel Jagger’s anger flare, and her own pulse spiked in alarm as she realized the men were a breath away from fighting.

“Jagger. Jagger,” she repeated sharply. “He knows about the dead man. He’s a shapesh—”

“I know who he is.” Jagger bit off the words, his eyes never leaving Ryder’s face. “As I recall, you were run out of town on a rail.”

Ryder half smiled, and despite herself Caitlin was fascinated, feeling something ancient and powerful at work. These…beings, who were to all outward appearance men in their prime, had been alive long before even her parents had been born.

“A complete misunderstanding on the part of the girl’s family,” Ryder answered Jagger.

Caitlin felt herself freezing up at his words. That’s right, she told herself, pushing her feelings down hard. Always remember he’s a shifter. That’s his nature. Using people and leaving them. Stay away.

“You come back into town and people start dropping dead. That kind of coincidence doesn’t sit well with me,” the detective said icily.

“No coincidence at all,” Ryder retorted. “We have a mutual problem, and I’m on the job.” Jagger eyed him suspiciously, but Caitlin sensed a hesitation. Apparently Ryder did, too. “We might get farther by pooling information,” he suggested. “Our friend on the other block wasn’t the first death, was he? And the deaths are presenting as overdoses, right? You’re probably thinking a bad batch of meth.”

Now it was Caitlin’s turn to eye Ryder suspiciously. That was exactly what Jagger had said to her. It set off alarm bells.

“It’s not meth,” Ryder said.

“What, then?” Jagger said, the words clipped.

“I want to see the bodies,” Ryder said.

Even as they were walking through the doors of the morgue, Caitlin had no clear idea of how they’d ended up there. Saying “yes” to Ryder was the last thing she had expected Jagger to do; she could barely wrap her mind around it.

The medical examiner’s office was in the Central Business District, a five-story brick building.

The halls were eerie at night, shining linoleum reflecting the blue light from the streetlights outside the windows. The vampire, the shapeshifter and the Keeper walked together through the watery light.

Caitlin was uncomfortably aware of Ryder’s body beside hers; the hall wasn’t narrow, but he was walking so close beside her that their arms and thighs were constantly brushing. Getting in my space, she thought resentfully. Imprinting.

The truth was, her body was still buzzing from their… “kiss” didn’t even begin to cover it. She could feel him electrically beside her, and she could smell him in her hair, smell the leather of his jacket on her skin. He looked at her through the reflected blue light, and she turned to fire in the darkness, remembering his mouth hot and demanding on hers, his hands slipping over her breasts..

Jagger stopped in front of a door and unlocked it, pushing it open for Caitlin to step through. The room on the other side was chilly and uncomfortable—grim, dark, with two walls of lockers. Meat lockers, Caitlin thought morbidly, which, in the end, was exactly what they were.

Jagger flipped on the lights, a stark, too-white glow of fluorescence, checked a slip of paper in his hand and walked to a locker midway down the wall. He opened it and slid out the drawer. Caitlin and Ryder moved closer, and the three of them looked down at the stiff, gray-fleshed corpse.

“Victim number four. Stephen Boylan, a tourist from Biloxi. Car salesman. In town with his wife, celebrating their sixth anniversary. Dropped dead on Bourbon, October 20. Coroner ruled methamphetamine overdose.”

Ryder bent over the body, all focus now. “No meth here. Normal, healthy-looking teeth, hair, skin. No scabs or sores. No malnutrition.” He took the corpse’s head in both hands and examined it, as well. “No irritation of nasal tissues.”

“Those are indicators of long-term use. You wouldn’t necessarily see that in a first-time user,” Jagger said tightly.

Ryder looked across the corpse at Jagger. “What about previous victims? Any of those indicators?”

“No,” Jagger answered.

“And the chemicals in the tox screens are close but just don’t add up, right?” Ryder said, his eyes steady on Jagger’s face.

“No,” Jagger said slowly. “They don’t add up.”

“What are the chances that…four?—now five?—tourists in a row decide to try crank for the first time and all end up OD’ing? Within two weeks?”

“Not good,” Jagger agreed—not happily, Caitlin thought.

“And what did the coroner say about the levels of adrenaline?”

Caitlin saw Jagger stiffen.

“Wildly high,” the detective admitted, his reluctance obvious. “He thought it was an anomaly.”

“An anomaly that just happens to present in every single one of the victims?” Ryder asked.

Jagger was silent, and Caitlin could tell Ryder’s words grated on him.

Ryder glanced at Caitlin, then back to Jagger. “We saw that last one die,” he said softly. “It looked like his heart was about to explode out of his chest.”

Now Jagger looked to Caitlin—for confirmation, she realized. She nodded silently.

Ryder nodded, too. “And that, right there, is your main clue. That adrenaline overdose is what happens when a walk-in leaves a body.”