by J. L. Weil
A glimpse inside First Shift
Book One in the Nine Tails Series
CHAPTER ONE
Two months. Forty-two days to be exact. That was how many days I had left until I graduated from high school and got out of Washington. Not that I was counting or anything.
I slammed my locker shut and spun around, slinging my backpack stuffed with twenty pounds of books over my back. My friend Hannah talked nonstop, babbling on and on about her weekend plans, but my mind was on the hundred other things I had to do before the day was over. Forty-two days, I reminded myself.
“You coming to the game tonight?” Hannah asked.
“I can’t. I’m working.”
Hannah’s cornflower blue eyes sparkled with excitement. “Come on, K. You work too much. You deserve a little fun.”
And Hannah Tisdale knew all about fun. She didn’t have any responsibilities, didn’t know what it was like to have to work hard for everything. Still, she’d been my best friend since third grade. We couldn’t be more opposite. Hannah was blonde with big boobs and a big personality to match, yet we somehow complemented each other, rather than clashed. “Fun is a luxury I don’t have time for.” I checked my watch. “I’ve got to go.”
She followed me, matching my hurried strides. “Please? Please, K? Don’t leave me hanging.”
“Take Jesse with you,” I suggested, giving her a way to go to the game without me as her sidekick.
She rolled her pretty eyes that made most guys do double-takes. “He’s on the team. Besides, it’s not nearly as fun ogling the lacrosse team’s ass cheeks without you,” she pouted.
I smiled. “I imagine not.”
“Speaking of Jesse. When are the two of you going to admit you have the hots for each other and get it on?”
This time, I rolled my eyes. “He’s one of my best friends, Hannah. Our best friend,” I reminded her. Jesse Hart and I had been neighbors since diapers. Our parents were friends. We hung out all the time and went on family vacations together. I loved him, just not in the way Hannah was constantly suggesting … or so I told myself.
Truthfully, I wasn’t sure if I felt something more for Jesse. My life was chaotic right now. There wasn’t time for me to think about feelings. With everything going on at home, school, and at the café, I barely had time eat and sleep, let alone dwell on boys.
“You could call in sick. No one at the café would even question it. I mean, when was the last time you took a day off? Or you could say you hit a deer.” Melodramatic should have been Hannah’s middle name, which made her perfect for drama club. She could think up a hundred different lies without batting an eye.
“But I’m not sick. Nor do I want to hit anything with my car. And I really need the money.” I countered her idea, walking out the double doors of Seaside Heights High School.
Hannah scrunched her nose and stopped at the curb. “I’m not changing your mind, am I?”
We’d reached the parking lot. I turned around and walked backwards down the curb. “Nope. Text me later.”
Hannah made a face, and I knew what she was thinking: that I work too hard and needed a life outside of school. What was wrong with wanting to get good grades so I could go to college somewhere far, far away from this small, coastal, Washington town? I’d rather be inside studying than stuck at some lacrosse game where all the jocks are idolized and every girl in school shakes her pom-poms.
Ugh. No thank you.
“Fine! Go to work and make coffee all night, but you better text me back!” she ordered, yelling across the parking lot.
I held my hand in the air, waved, and kept on walking to my car. I tossed my bag into the passenger seat of my white Nissan Maxima and slid behind the wheel. Turning the key, I waited for the engine to kick over so I could get the heck out of here.
Nothing happened. Well, not nothing. It sputtered—a pathetic and miserable sound.
“No. No. No,” I said. “Don’t do this to me.” I tried again and a third time with the same disastrous result. “You stupid hunk of junk.”
This was the last thing I needed.
My eyes glanced at the clock on the dash. I was going to be late for work. “Shit,” I muttered, my head hitting the back of the seat as my throat closed, tears stinging my eyes. Why today of all days did my car decide to act up? Didn’t I have enough to deal with at home? Ever since the night of my eighteenth birthday, my mom had been ill. That had been months ago. The doctors were of little help. They hadn’t been able to pinpoint what was wrong, meaning they didn’t know how to treat it. As the days went by, I was starting to lose hope they ever would.
I hit the steering wheel, taking out my frustration, anger, and sorrow on the car. “Please start. Please. I promise not to call you names ever again or threaten to drop you off at the junkyard. Cross my heart.” I closed my eyes and turned the key.
The engine purred to life.
I exhaled, a slow grin curving my lips, and kissed the steering wheel, not caring who saw me. “I swear I’ll wash you this weekend.” Yes, I talked to my car. Doesn’t everyone?
The drive from school to Sugar and Spice Café was picturesque—a view tourists gawked at but I grew tired of. The mountains were almost always visible in the distance, the air smelled of the sea, and hills and valleys were covered in miles of vineyards that bordered the small town.
I’d been working at the coffee shop after school and during summers since I was a sophomore. It had become an escape, a home away from home. The owner, Naomi, was like a second mom to me and the other high school and college students that worked for her. There were four of us that dedicated our weekends and after-school hours to Naomi Clarke, and she created a fun and safe environment. A fierce, independent, successful businesswoman, Naomi was someone I strived to be—a woman who didn’t need to depend on a man. Never married, my boss put everything she had into making the damn best coffee and baked goods in Seaside Heights.
I managed to pull into the employee parking lot with one minute to spare. Talk about cutting it close. If I was anything, I was dependable … and predictable, a punctuation queen. Boring, Jesse and Hannah would say, but boring gave me job security and a bright future. I had plans. Big ones. And this job was going to help me pay for college. Unlike Hannah’s parents, who knew the importance of saving money, mine hadn’t started a college fund, and any savings they had was spent on Mom’s health. I was relying on scholarships and hard-earned cash to get me through veterinarian school.
Grabbing my work clothes from the backseat, I raced across the street and into the alley, a shortcut that led to the back entrance of the café. My hurried footsteps echoed off the buildings lining either side of the empty street. Black garbage bags overflowed out of dumpsters along one wall. I didn’t even let my mind think about the critters scurrying about.
A trickle of unease dripped down my spine, and I reached to finger the pendant around my neck. The ancient pearl had been in my mom’s family for generations and had been given to me the day I was born. I always wore it, and the weight of it comforted me.
Seaside Heights is a safe place, I repeated to myself, picking up my pace. Just when I thought my day couldn’t get any worse, two figures appeared from the shadows, blocking my entrance to the café. My eyes volleyed between them, and I seriously regretted my decision to take the shortcut. I stopped, looked around, and then cursed. Time to get out the pepper spray. Too bad it was lip gloss in my pocket.
A dull ache took up in my gut as I slowed my pace. I guessed they weren’t here for the coffee. My legs continued to move forward regardless that my brain screamed to turn and run. Most often your instincts are right.
Both of the figures stood a few feet away and wore suits like the Men in Black with slicked back silvery hair and skin that was a tad too pale, but it was their eyes that chilled my blood. There was something not right about them. Where the color should have been in their irises there was none, just a milky white. Freaky.
I stopped dead in
my tracks.
They had to be high. What other explanation was there for the eyes and the unusually white skin?
The taller one angled his head to the side, eyes narrowing. “Karina Lang?” His comrade cracked his knuckles beside him.
Whoa. Didn’t see that coming. How did they know my name? My gaze narrowed as I eyed the pair with suspicion, racking my brain. Did I know them? I was positive I didn’t. They had faces I wasn’t likely ever to forget. The very last thing I expected was for them to know my name. “Depends. Who’s asking?” I was shocked my voice didn’t shake and that it came out with a lot more bravado than I was feeling.
The taller one smiled as he eyed me, and that smile made me think of all the horrible situations I’d ever read about a girl alone in an alley. My fear spiked. His gaze dropped to my chest, and I let a startled gasp. My worst nightmare rolled through my head. Were they going to hurt me? Violate me? I was rendered immobile with terror.
His eyes flicked back to mine. He seemed to enjoy the horror he saw on my face. “You have something I want.”
“Uh, I think you have me mixed up with someone else. I don’t have anything but a work uniform, a granola bar, and my cell phone.” I tended to ramble when I was afraid. “And a knife,” I added, my hand flying to the back pocket of my jeans, pretending to grab onto an invisible blade.
His buddy’s form rippled like liquid, making him go in and out of focus.
I squinted.
Crap on a graham cracker. What were these guys? Aliens?
Either that or I was hallucinating.
He gave a sardonic twist of his lips. “Give us your soul.”
So they didn’t want my body, just my soul. In that moment, I realized they intended to kill me. How else would they get my soul? I took a step backward. “You guys aren’t from around here, are you?”
Neither of them found my sense of humor funny. Their faces remained stoic. Enough of the chitchat. I dropped everything, turned, and ran. Behind me, I heard them both lurch forward and give chase, but I pushed myself harder. I darted to the side around a corner, but I wasn’t quick enough. I didn’t know what these two guys were or what kind of steroids they were popping, but no human could move that fast.
A beefy arm whisked around my waist. “Gotcha,” one of them said with victory in his voice. He grasped a handful of my hair, wrenching my head back against his chest. His grubby fingers fumbled with the front of my shirt. “Let’s see what we have here.”
Panic flooded me, and like a wild cat, I clawed and scratched anywhere and everywhere I could reach. I didn’t care that he still clutched my long dark hair or the agony every moment cost me. I just wanted to break free and save myself from whatever horrible fate they had in store for me. One of my swipes landed across his face, deep enough to draw blood, but not the kind of blood I expected. The cut along his cheek oozed black liquid, bubbling out of the wound like hot tar.
WTF.
My astonishment lasted two whole seconds. He gave a growl that rattled my bones. I’d pissed him off, and my punishment was a backhand across the face, hard enough that it sent me flying. Pain exploded down my face as I hit the ground, shooting through my limbs.
With nowhere else to run, no strength to fight, I curled into a ball against the brick building, huddling into the shadows. Suddenly, I felt something strange. I couldn’t explain what happened inside me, maybe I was bleeding internally, but there was tension in my muscles as if they were morphing, stretching, and changing. Tiny needle pricks of heat traveled throughout my body. It wasn’t exactly painful, but foreign, a sensation I’d never felt before. But I didn’t have time to worry about what bizarre sickness I was coming down with. I had bigger problems.
“Great. She shifted,” the one I called Ike said.
What did he mean by shifted?
I scurried backward on my hands and feet, except … they weren’t hands or feet.
My eyes popped.
What the—
White fur covered my entire body from head to … tail? Holy shit. I had a puffy tail, which might also explain why I stood on all four paws instead of two legs. My long obsidian hair was gone. What had they done to me? Turned me into some kind of animal?
My butt bumped into the wall, and I tried to scream, but all that came out was a low growl that sounded like a warning. My teeth were bared.
Okay, this was going to send me over the edge.
“Easy,” Mike said, crouching. “Just give us your powers and we won’t hurt you … again,” he added.
I tried to tell him I didn’t have any powers, but instead a whine came out of my throat.
“Quiet,” he hissed, raising his big hand.
I lowered my head, my ears going down as I waited for the impact.
“How about you pick on someone your own size?”
Mike and Ike both froze in response to the deep, unfamiliar, yet very welcomed voice. Lifting my furry chin, I got my first glimpse of my savior.
The mystery man stood well over six feet with hair as dark as the sea at midnight. His expressive brows arched over green eyes that glowed in the dim light. He oozed authority. Power. And sexiness. I wasn’t in the position to appreciate his mind-bending attractiveness, but it couldn’t be helped. He had the kind of look that demanded to be ogled.
It became clear that neither Mike nor Ike were happy to see the newcomer, giving me a glimmer of hope. Maybe I wouldn’t die after all, but truthfully, this new guy was just as much dangerous looking as Mike and Ike were.
His black T-shirt stretched across his broad chest as he lifted both hands in a crisscross over his head, whipping out two blades that had been strapped behind his back. Dayum. He looked about my age, and I was impressed with his apparent skills to wield not one, but two, blades. They looked at home in his hands.
And that was when I noticed the snakes.
I shivered.
Scaly reptiles gave me a mad case of the willies.
The handles on his blades interwove with serpents’ tails, extending to coil around his wrists and part of his forearm, making him appear one with the weapons. They hissed with wrath, their heads near the middle of his arm. I’d never seen anything like them. One second they’d been ornaments on the handles, and the next, they were living, breathing vipers.
“This doesn’t concern you, Sin Eater,” spat one of the odd men, glaring at the mystery man like he was something he scraped off the bottom of his overpriced shit-kickers.
He moved into the alley. “That’s where you’re wrong. It’s my job to protect her.”
Protect me?
I snuck farther into the corner, my tail tucked against the wall. Tail. God, I had a tail! And as I looked to the new guy, I realized I was a whole lot smaller—about the size of a medium dog.
“You think you can take both of us?” the two chuckled, their cockiness showing in their disregard of the one they called “Sin Eater.”
A whisper of a smirk pulled at his lips. “Without breaking a sweat. Now, can we get this over with? You’re interrupting my job.”
The lanky man’s fingers curled into fists. Things were about to blow south, and I needed to make sure I didn’t get swept away. But at the first slash of the Sin Eater’s sword, I found my paws wouldn’t move. Really, where could I go as a … what was I?
One of them made a low snarl deep in his throat, an animal-like sound. Together, the two idiots lunged toward the stranger. A second before they reached him, the mysterious guy spun, letting his blades whiz through the air. There was a hiss like a thousand snakes at once, and then one of the blades sliced through the abdomen of the one who was slightly smaller.
As if things could have gotten any weirder, once the blade cleared his flesh, his milky eyes went wide. His mouth dropped open in a silent scream, and then the bastard exploded in a dark cloud of smoke that hovered in the air like thick smog. The head of the snake from the blade that pierced him reared up off the mysterious man’s forearm and opened its mouth. A forked
tongue shot out, siphoning the dark smoke from the air until there was nothing left of Ike.
“Enjoy the trip back to the otherworld.” The strange man pointed his other sword at the other—the one that dripped black gunk. “Your turn.”
His eyes bounced between the sword and the stranger’s face. He must not have liked his chances. The coward turned and ran.
The Sin Eater’s lips curved. “Oh good, a runner.”
He didn’t get more than a few steps. Like a whip, the Sin Eater lashed one of the snakes out at the attacker’s feet. It coiled, tripping him up so he kissed the ground. Black blood dripped from his nose, but he wasn’t about to give up his chance at escape. He scrambled to get back on his feet, but the swordsman was at his side and tossed him across the alley. His body slammed into the brick wall before crumbling to the ground. The impact should have knocked him out, but not this dude.
“Is that the best you can do?” The attacker didn’t seem to be in a position to talk smack in my opinion.
“Please. I’m just getting started, Silvermyst.” The dark-haired guy flicked his wrists, spinning the sword in his left hand. With no hesitation in his movements, the Sin Eater slammed the tip of a blade into the gut of the Silvermyst, as he had called him.
The Silvermyst met the same fate as his partner—the other snake taking a turn at gulping up his hovering ashes.
I had definitely stumbled into the Twilight Zone or an alternate universe. This kind of shit didn’t happen in Seaside Heights, Washington. We had our share of weirdos, but this took it to a whole new level of strange.
I was going to puke.
The assassin sheathed both of his weapons behind his back and came to crouch in front of me. I stared into his green eyes. His thick lashes circled them, and I felt myself drowning in the depths of color. Wariness fluttered in my belly. What was he planning to do? Would he kill me next? Or was it possible he would know how to help me?
“My name is Devyn St. Cyr, and I won’t hurt you. I’m here to help, Kitten.” He laid a hand on my furry head, and I let out a whimper.
