by R. A. Boyd
The Shifter’s Soul
The Ghost Shifters Series, Book 5
R. A. Boyd
Contents
Other books in the Ghost Shifter series
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
New Release Newsletter Sign-up
A note from the author
Other Works by R.A. Boyd
Find out more about R.A. Boyd her:
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locations is entirely coincidental.
No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission.
ASIN: B07QZR3C6F
Text copyright ©2019 R.A. Boyd
All Rights Reserved
Other books in the Ghost Shifter series
The Shifter's Wish, Book 1
The Shifter's Dream, Book 2
The Shifter's Salvation, Book 3
The Shifter's Fight, Book 4
The Shifter’s Soul, Book 5 (YOU’RE ABOUT TO READ ME!!)
Chapter 1
Discomfort couldn’t even begin to describe the emotion that needled itself through Simon’s veins. He hadn’t felt anything like this in decades. Only extreme feelings like pain, hatred, or hilarity had managed to dig into his skin since he gave up his soul. But sitting under the disbelieving gazes of Cass and Paige made him really fucking uncomfortable.
Simon tapped his foot and chewed on his thumbnail. The hollow bits in his chest were filling little by little. He didn’t know if it was really good or really, really bad.
“So,” Paige said as her brown eyes moved between Simon and Cass. “You gave your soul to a witch—”
“A gypsy,” Simon corrected.
She nodded and kept going, “You gave your soul to a gypsy so you wouldn’t go crazy and start killing people like Ronin did.”
“Yep.”
“And she died twenty years ago and is now haunting your attic until you’re ready to get your soul back.”
“Yep.”
“And the only person who knows besides Cass and me is Audra. How does she know? And I still don’t know how I figured it out when the other two witches in this clan had no clue.” Page rapped the tips of her fingers against the table as she talked. “I’m not even a real witch.”
Real enough, Simon thought. He needed this conversation to be over. He’d already told her to mind her business a few nights ago, and he’d practically screamed it in her face right before she and Cass burst into his house and demanded answers as if they weren’t afraid of him. All he had to do was growl at people and utter a few curse words, and they’d go running. But not Paige. And certainly not the third in the Ghost Shifter Alpha Triad, Cass. Nope. The only thing that seemed to frighten Cass was one of her people getting hurt.
Simon cleared his throat and sat back in his kitchen chair. “It’s part of the spell she did. The only witches I usually go near are members of the Coven of the Fallen. They’re angels. She made it so angels wouldn’t be aware of my lack of a soul. But from what I hear, Paige, you are an earth witch and can sense that shit. Can you both get out now?”
The words came out of his mouth, but he didn’t feel them. That was the point of giving up his soul.
Anyone who walked the face of this planet as long as he and the rest of his fallen Ghost shifter brethren had was bound to go crazy. When they went crazy, they went full-on ape-shit from a clown car crazy. The urge to smite all those in their presence would overwhelm them and they would fall prey to the whisperings of their trapped saber-tooth.
The Creator did them a kindness by putting their beasts to sleep and preventing them from shifting. Hell, it was a kindness to the whole fucking world. Sixteen practically indestructible, fallen angel, saber-tooth shifters could do a lot of damage if they were so inclined. Ronin didn’t even have his beast when he went on the warpath, and he’d managed to kill enough people to have the Coven put his ass to sleep for the next century.
And Simon saw that he had been heading down that same path.
He could barely meet Cass’s eyes as she watched him. She toyed with her coffee cup— it started as his coffee, but she’d taken it from him after she walked in behind Paige— as she gave him a half smile. “Don’t you want to know how I know?” Cass asked. The left corner of her mouth twitched as if she were trying to keep a massive smile from splitting her face.
Simon huffed out a humorless laugh and pointed at Paige. “She told you, even after I asked her not to.”
Apparently, Paige couldn’t hold water. He would never trust her with anything. For some crazy reason Simon had been in her corner when her godfather, the actual leader of the Rogue pack that was trying to rid the world of the Ghost shifters, had tried to kill her. And damn-it, he’d even let her hold his favorite machete to behead the son of a bitch when he’d attacked them.
Paige began to protest but Cass put her hand up. With a huge smile she said, “Nope. Not Paige.” She pointed to the ceiling. “Gypsy-ghost lady who doesn’t just haunt your attic told me the night we picked Paige up from the Winston house. She told me her name is Miri, by the way.”
Everything inside of Simon stopped. His heart, his breathing, even the flow of blood that rushed through his arteries, seemed to halt at her words. Unblinking, he looked at her until his eyes began to water. Miri told Cass?
“Explain,” he said, running his large hands through his dark auburn hair. Miri came out of the attic? His only reason for successfully masturbating in his own house was the comfort that the woman couldn’t come out of the attic. More discomfort squished inside him. This sucked ass.
Cass watched him over the rim of the cup as she sipped his coffee. “Willow copied me in the message she sent to Sara that Paige was going to make a run for it. I walked past your house on my way to help out, and Miri scared the crap out of me from your window.” Cass snickered and shook her head. “I thought she’d broken into your house until she stuck her head through the closed window and asked me to come and talk. She told me everything.”
“Why you?” he asked. Miri never bothered anyone. But him.
Cass shrugged. “Why does half of the crap that happens to me manage to happen to me?” A stressed tone wormed its way into her voice, and her whiskey brown eyes flickered amber. She took a deep breath and shook her head. “My only guess is what Samael and Willow said: I’m the switch that started the Ghost shifters on their road to finding their mates. I’m the conduit that makes stuff happen. That has to be it.”
“It is,” a loud, feminine voice uttered from beside them.
Simon, Cass, and Paige startled at the disembodied voice. Cass never cursed, but the phrase holy shit that made its way through her lips seemed funny and entirely appropriate right now.
Too much. All this shit was too much for Simon to take. He’d been void of most emotions for so long, and that’s the way he liked it. The way he needed it. All this stuff happening made him feel things, and he knew what end that would come to. Before nightfall, he would be picking a fight with Cass or Audra, hoping to the Creator that one of them would gut him and make the pain erase all of his sentiments until he was level again. It had been the only thing that worked for him for months.
“Miri,” Simon snarled
. “Go back to your fucking attic and stay out of my space.”
As if someone had thrust the warm room into the middle of a winter storm, the temperature plummeted several degrees. A loud smack echoed through the room, and Simon pitched forward like someone had punched him in the back of the head. Pain erupted from his neck and he fought the urge to turn around and swing on the dead woman. She was incorporeal. It wouldn’t have worked anyway. Wait. She made contact with him. She’d actually hit him, and he’d felt the sting of her touch as if she were still alive.
Puffs of fog from the cold drifted from Paige’s lips as she wrapped her hands around her thinly sleeved arms. “Holy crap,” she exclaimed. Her eyes darted around the room. “She can do that?”
Simon massaged his neck as he tried to find out where the hag was hiding. Well, she wasn’t really a hag. She’d died a few months after her fifty-eight birthday and didn’t look a day over thirty.
Sucking all the heat from the space, managing to break herself free of the attic, and making physical contact. He was screwed and out of options. The warmth returned to the room with an instant rush that made him lightheaded.
“She’s getting stronger,” Simon said. Now that was bad. “Miri doesn’t have any unfinished personal business. My soul is the one thing keeping her bound to this plane. If she’s getting stronger, that means my soul is getting too much for her to bear.”
“What does that mean, Simon?” Cass asked. Worry pooled in her eyes for him, and he hated that shit with a passion. No one needed to feel sorry for him.
He ran his hand through his hair again, this time pulling at the strands until his scalp burned. “It means that if shit goes sideways, I’ll have to be put down like Ronin.”
Tears built in Cass’s eyes. She reached across the table and took his hand, and for a brief moment, Simon felt okay. Like this was doable. What had the Ghosts gotten themselves into when they’d been given Cass to heal them?
“No,” she said, shaking her head so violently that one of her tears ran a zig-zag pattern down her full cheek. “I can do for you what I did for Audra. I can help bleed your rage into the earth, take it from you. You’ll be fine.”
He wouldn’t be. And neither would Cass if he let her try to save him. He shook his head and gave his Alpha a forced smile. “It wouldn’t be like Audra. Her madness was built up over time. She learned to deal with it. Once my soul gets popped back into my body, I’ll be just as crazy as Ronin. I haven’t dealt with the lunacy in almost fifty years. All of that rushing back at once will be damn near uncontainable. You’d never survive the process. Regardless of everything you’re able to do, you are mortal, Cass. It would either kill you or drive you insane.” And he’d never forgive himself if he was the reason she got hurt.
“What do we do?” Paige asked. The sorrow in her voice brought him sadness. That was bad. “Why is this such a secret?”
He crossed his arms over his broad chest and sat back in his chair. “We let me enjoy a few more days topside, and then we have me put down. Once I’m under, Miri can release my soul back to me. And then the earth can take me until I’m ready to walk amongst you again.”
That meant he would never see his sisters again. All of them, except Audra, would be dead within the next century. His fallen angel brethren were immortal and would live on. Or if a few of them were right in their guess, the ones who had found their mates would age and die just like normal shifters did.
Too many unanswered questions. When the Creator cursed you, you were good and cursed. Would they age like regular shifters now since they had found their mates? Would they live on through the ages like they’d been doing since the beginning of time? No answers. The only clues they were given had come from their brother Samael, the Angel of Death, and even he kept his secrets.
Simon tightened his fingers around hers and then pulled away from Cass to keep from holding onto her healing touch. He was a lost cause. It was best she saved her goodness for someone who could be helped.
He scratched his beard and nodded. “It’s been a secret because I shouldn’t have done it. Souls are powerful. The soul of an angel is coveted and can be used to do terrible things. Destructible things. Imagine the atomic bomb all in one body. That’s the kind of power one would wield if they had control of an angel’s soul.” He sucked his teeth and cleared his throat, swallowing his dumb ass emotions down to the pit of his stomach. “Miri is good. Always has been. I met her when she was a kid. When I needed a break from the rest of my family, I spent time with the Karela clan. She was the youngest when I got there. They knew what I was but still treated me like I was one of them.”
He’d traveled with Miri and her family for the better part of forty years. Some part of him was happy that his people were finding their mates. The main part of him didn’t give much of a shit about anything. Or at least that’s how it used to be. The last few years had been splotchy. He was starting to care about things, and the caring had made him a glutton for pain. It was the only real thing he could feel. Pain erased everything else, every other emotion that made him want to beg for death. Not the temporary kind that came with sleeping in the earth for a century. No. That wasn’t good enough. He yearned for the permanent kind that would dispatch him to his final destination.
Bones mending, muscle gluing and reshaping itself, skin knitting back together after one of them had shredded him. That would keep him from ripping this world apart. Pain and suffering from being tortured after inviting it onto himself. That was all he had needed.
But now, he wanted more. Needed more. He could sense his soul calling out to his mate that may or may not even exist. Back then, his beast was plotting to bathe in the blood of every living being he would set his eyes on, but his soul was praying, pleading for salvation. That’s why he had Mira Karela rip it from his body and keep it safe. To keep everyone safe.
Chapter 2
“I’ll take a large caramel latte, a bacon egg, and cheese sandwich, and a strawberry tart. Oh, and a chocolate pastry to go,” Charlie said as she dug into the bottom of her handbag for her wallet. Gum, keys, pink handheld stun gun, three pens, a tampon, and all the other crap she kept in her bag. Everything but her wallet.
She spent most of her mornings at New Rose Book and Eatery, soaking up the free Wi-Fi service to look for a job. Charlie had only been in town for a little over a week and was just about to move out of the New Rose Inn and into a one-bedroom apartment. It was a month-to-month lease, and that was precisely what she needed. She didn’t know how long she would be in New Rose, but keeping some kind of a job was the one and only reason she had been able to save the money in her savings account neatly stashed away. But if she didn’t find a job soon, she’d be digging into her money pot to pay for everyday expenses.
“Found it,” she sang, showing her wallet to the woman behind the counter. Her bag was the image of the blue time and space traveling machine that was bigger on the inside, and the handbag had seemed to take on a life of its own. The damned bag wasn’t huge, but she always had to sort through the thing just to find what she was looking for. She loved the show and the spaceship the little handbag was modeled after.
The shop girl, her nametag read Daria, accepted her cash, and started fixing the latte. “Hey. You’re looking for a job, right?”
Charlie’s ears and eyes perked up. “I sure am.”
“Well,” she said, handing her the drink and reaching for a brown paper bag for the treats and a plate for her sandwich. “I just got accepted into one of the universities in Baltimore and I’m leaving to find an apartment and a job in two weeks. You’re the only person I know looking for a job, and you don’t seem creepy. Riley would sure love the help. She’s the owner here.”
That was the best news Charlie had heard since she got here. The shit-show she witnessed last week when the Ghost shifters were attacked by a freaking angel almost sent her running out of town. She’d thrown up when the woman cut the asshat’s head off, but he was asking for it. Putting that
aside, something kept her here in town. Well, the fact that no one knew her in New Rose and her dad hadn’t yet found her had kept her here. At least for now.
“Is Riley the one with the big, coily hair and always wears red?” That woman was a walking goddess. She knew her sex appeal and carried it like a badge.
Daria pushed her glasses up her nose. “That would be her.”
New Rose would be her new home if she could find a job, and the thought of staying here lit her up on the inside. This town was perfect. Small enough where she’d gotten to know enough people just by hanging around town and being nice, but big enough that everyone seemed to mind their own business. Kind of.
Like fire, word spread through New Rose that an angel had formed the infamous Rogue pack that was trying to kill off the Ghost shifters and their mates. It was all everyone spoke of. But they’d managed to keep the secret in town. Someone had set an unspoken rule that no one outside of New Rose should find out. A news team from Baltimore had come up to see what went down at the Town Hall and the town went on lockdown, denying anything out of the ordinary occurred.
She admired the town for their loyalty to the Ghosts. It was also a bit frightening. But it showed Charlie that they could keep secrets and would protect their own. Maybe they would keep her safe if her father ever found her.
Charlie shook her head to pull away from her thoughts. “Thanks. I’d really appreciate it if you put in a word for me with the owner. Got an application?” She grabbed her plate from Daria and then almost dropped it. She just managed to grab the side of the plate and balance it before it slipped through her fingers and splatted on the floor. Two pastries had met their final end in the same fashion just a few days ago. Being clumsy was her second most hated trait about herself.
