ROMANCE: SHIFTER: Shifter to the Max Collection (Dragon, Bear, Wolf and Panther Shifter Romances) (Paranormal Fantasy Romance Collection)

by C. J. Ayers

  Finn’s mother walked into his bedroom one afternoon to find Finn stark naked and drawing strange symbols on the wall in a black marker. When she asked him why he was doing it, he replied that the dark man had told him to. When she asked him what the pictures were, Finn had replied that they weren’t pictures, but a doorway to hell.

  Caleb sighed. It was always sad to see things unfold this way, yet he wasn’t surprised. Part of his job at this point was simply to observe as things unfolded. Yet, unfortunately for Caleb and for Finn, things seemed to be progressing in the usual way. While Finn’s parents were correct in taking him to see a psychologist (and later a psychiatrist), modern medicine had no cure or treatment for what truly ailed the boy. Caleb had been called in by Department 99, under the guise of a respite worker to keep an eye on things.

  Generally speaking, respite workers were charged with the day-to-day care of emotionally disturbed children. They generally worked closely with families in order to alleviate some of the burden and exhaustion associated with parenting a severely emotionally disturbed child. Caleb looked much too large and muscular and somewhat too well-dressed for the position, but he got along with the family, and more importantly was able to keep a close eye on the boy.

  Department 99 was very specific in the details of his assignment with this family. Caleb was only to intervene if the boy’s life was in imminent danger. Otherwise, he was simply there to observe and record his findings.

  Caleb squinted as he watched Finn hop around in the sand at the small playground. Another smaller child had approached the boy, and all seemed to be progressing nicely. They seemed to be negotiating the best way to begin a game of hide-and-seek but could not agree on who should be the seeker first. A warm breeze blew through Finn’s hair and Caleb remarked to himself that he was a handsome little boy—a child that any parent would be proud to call his or her own.

  Finn’s face reddened and he stomped his left foot into the sand. “I want to hide first!” He screamed while crossing his arms sternly across his small frame. The other child’s name was Wyatt and his mother called across from a nearby bench that the boys needed to make sure they both had a turn.

  “If you both get a turn, it won’t really matter who goes first. Why don’t you two just play, and try to focus on having a good time. It’s such a nice day out here.” The mother’s comment had been innocent enough, but it triggered something in Finn. His eyes dashed over to the woman who was seated on the nearby bench and he began to whisper something in a low tone.

  Finn reached down by his feet and slowly gathered a handful of sand. He approached the woman on the bench slowly, whispering in a soft voice all the while.

  “Oh!” The woman’s face seemed to light up with compassionate understanding. “Wyatt, I don’t think your new friend speaks very good English. Why don’t you let him go first then and show your friend how nice people can be in America?” Caleb swallowed, afraid of what might come next. To the untrained eye, it might sound like Finn was speaking in Russian or perhaps some eastern European language, but it was in fact Aramaic.

  Caleb had seen enough. He jumped up from the grassy knoll on which he was seated and started to make his way over to Finn—who was still approaching his new friend’s mother seated calmly on the bench. This could be really bad.

  While Caleb didn’t know exactly what Finn had in mind, the chanting was never a good sign. Yet, he was too far away from the boy to intervene in enough time. Finn approached the woman with a smile and tugged slightly on her shirtsleeve. With his tiny finger he signaled for her to come closer. The woman obliged and leaned forward. Finn continued to chant.

  “I’m sorry, sweetheart, but I don’t speak Russian,” the woman said.

  Finn’s head cocked to one side and a twisted smile scrawled across his tiny face. He extended both of his arms towards the woman. In a fake Russian accent he said, “I love you. Hug me.”

  The woman smiled and tousled his sandy blond hair with her polished fingernails. Then, she moved in to hug the child. Before Caleb could reach them, Finn had already wrapped his arms around the woman—in a feigned hug and bit virtually half of the woman’s face off, while refusing to relinquish the tight grip he had around her.

  The woman screamed wildly and her son wet himself, while watching the terrible ordeal unfold. Urine trickled down the young boy’s shorts into the sand, while blood splattered this way and that as Finn bit deeper and deeper into the woman’s face.

  When Caleb finally reached the boy, he tried to pry his tiny hands from around the woman who now wailed and screamed. Her face was a tangled bloody mass and Finn seemed to giggle, as his teeth drove further and further in—time and time again, ripping the flesh and muscle right out of the woman’s face. The woman flailed about and swatted at the boy in an attempt to remove him, but his grip was relentless.

  Finally, with Caleb’s help, and the help of a random stranger, they were able to pry Finn off of the woman. He had bit her face down to the bone, and her left eye now lay flopping about on her cheek—gaping from the eye socket. Another bystander called 911, as Caleb stood holding Finn’s tiny bloodied hand in his own, telling the boy to be good, and promising him an ice-cream cone on the way home if he could calm himself down.

  “Yay! Ice-cream!” Finn chanted as he danced around, covered in the woman’s blood.

  A few hours later, Caleb found himself at a nearby hospital giving a statement. Apparently the boy had injured his lip while biting the woman’s face off and the Department of Children’s Welfare wanted Caleb’s take on what happened. Caleb wasn’t worried because his actual position with Department 99 afforded him complete immunity (and he had done nothing wrong), yet a social worker now sat in front of him berating him for his inability to stop Finn from assaulting the woman in the park. The social worker was threatening to charge Finn with neglect because the boy had injured himself while assaulting the woman. Then, of course, agents flooded the room.

  The social worker was taken away in cuffs, and Caleb’s boss sat down in front of him, offering him a cup of steaming black coffee. “Rough day, huh buddy?” Caleb’s boss sighed. Caleb accepted the cup of black coffee and sipped it down slowly.

  “So, how bad to do you think this one is?” Granger asked, kicking his feet up on the desk between them.

  Caleb swallowed. “I’ve seen some pretty bad cases, but this one takes the cake.”

  “Do you think the parents will be open to our intervention or do you think we just need to take the boy, using some kind of cover-story?” Granger asked.

  Caleb took a sip of his coffee and thought for a moment. “The mother is desperate for help. I don’t think she’ll be a problem—and if she is, we’ll just erase her memory,” Granger tapped the desk and nodded in silent agreement. “Finn bit that woman pretty bad. Social Services wants answers. We’ll just wipe everyone’s memories, though—no worries, buddy. Good work today.”

  A few hours later Granger, Caleb, and Finn’s parents were all sitting in the living room of the family’s small ranch-style home together. Granger had already introduced himself, and had already let them know that Caleb was actually employed by a department which investigated changes like the ones they had recently seen in Finn.

  Finn’s mother wiped at the corner of her eye with a tissue and sniffled a bit, “I just don’t understand how this could have happened. He was always such a good boy.”

  “We never had any problem with Finn until now,” the father chimed in. This part was always difficult.

  “I’m going to have to explain a few things to you that are going to sound pretty crazy, but I need you to hear me out,” Granger said. The young couple nodded in unison. “The little boy upstairs playing with finger-paints, is not your son. I know he looks like your son—but he isn’t your son.”

  It was as if all of the air had suddenly gone out of the room. The father looked to Caleb, then back at his wife. His face twisted in confusion. “What do you mean Finn is not my son? Jesus, did
you have an affair Kelly?” He looked to his wife, working himself up to a rage. His wife, Kelly, looked as though she wished the ground could swallow her.

  Granger placed his hands out defensively— “That’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying that the child upstairs is not the Finn you know.” Now the father seemed even more grieved. Caleb always hated this part. Every now and then he was lucky enough to encounter an open-minded parent that would understand, but usually this was the point during which parents threw him out of their homes or got violent. Caleb took in a deep breath, dreading what might come next.

  Slowly, he pulled his Department 99 badge from his pocket and started to try and explain. “I investigate supernatural occurrences related to children, and I was assigned to your case so that I could keep an eye on things, and find a way to help you.”

  Both of Finn’s parents’ faces turned sheet-while. The mother looked as if she might pass out. Then suddenly, tears swelled up in her eyes again. “I told you! I told you that we needed to get out of this house as soon as possible,” she elbowed her husband hard.

  “I believed you honey, I just thought that we could handle things ourselves. I had no idea that things would get this bad,” Finn’s father pleaded. In unison, Finn’s parents turned to Caleb and began to explain.

  “When we moved into this house a few months ago, we knew that something wasn’t right. I can’t explain exactly how I knew, but on a soul-level I could just feel that there was something here that didn’t belong. All the kids started having nightmares, and we all got the sense that there was something watching us virtually all of the time.” Finn’s mother swallowed.

  Finn’s father grumbled a bit and began his own story. “I’m ashamed to admit that I didn’t believe a word of it until one night I came downstairs to get a glass of water in the middle of the night and saw a dark figure staring at me from in front of the fireplace. It was so dark that it looked like a shadow. I blinked my eyes, thinking that it was perhaps some kind of trick of the light, but it wasn’t. I think it was a demon. I can’t really explain the feeling I got when that evil thing looked at me, but I stumbled backwards to try and get away from it and then it just walked right through the living room wall. Then I could hear all kinds of thumping overhead upstairs coming from Finn’s room. When I ran upstairs to check on him, he was sound asleep. Well, it looked like he was sound asleep. But then this weird grin just crept across his face. Then, he sat straight up in the bed and opened his eyes and his eyes were black—entirely black. He asked me if I was ready to do die, and I ran from the room and locked him in there.”

  Caleb shuddered, imagining what the scene might have looked like. Demonic possessions weren’t generally uncommon, but when demons targeted a child of Finn’s age, it usually meant very bad news. Caleb swallowed hard. “Has anyone in the home ever dabbled in dark magic?” Caleb asked. Both parents shook their heads no. “Was Caleb ever baptized? Perhaps by a priest that was possessed?” Again, the parents looked puzzled and shook their heads no. “Do you have any idea why this might be happening to your son?” Caleb finally asked.

  Finn’s mother shifted uncomfortably in her seat and smoothed her blonde hair down on the right side of her face. “Back before Finn’s grandfather died, we used to take Finn to visit him in a nursing home. There was an old man across the hall named Thomas who struck up a friendship with Finn, but none of us thought it was a problem because their relationship seemed innocent enough. Anyway, after Thomas died, Finn started reporting that he was seeing him walking around our house at night. At first, we just chalked it up to his imagination and grief, but then strange things started to happen. Tom delivered warnings through Finn. He told Finn that there was an electrical wiring problem in our house and that the house was going to catch fire and burn down. That night, a fire started in the basement and all of us had to jump out of the second story window. The whole thing had to be gutted and rebuilt.”

  Granger grumbled a bit, growing impatient with the young couple. “You stayed at the same location after all that, why?”

  Finn’s mother looked over to her husband. “Insurance paid for the repairs and we couldn’t afford to move to a new house.” She answered flatly.

  Caleb pulled out a small pad of paper and began to scratch out a few notes to himself. Demons didn’t generally concern themselves with warning people and looking out for individuals’ safety. It sounded like Tom was actually the good-guy in the equation, and perhaps Tom’s ghost might be able to give them some information about the demon.

  “How would you feel about calling in a few other professionals tonight?” Granger asked. Finn’s mother’s eyes widened. “I know a few people that I think can help us figure out exactly what’s going on.” Caleb added. Before the young couple could argue, Caleb was on the phone with various members of Department 99, setting up a séance and calling in a few ghost-hunters.

  Granger received another call and had to run, but shook both of the parents’ hands before leaving. He assured them that they were in good hands under Caleb’s care.

  The first person to arrive was Lillian Smithson. Caleb hadn’t expected Lillian to be assigned tonight. Caleb would be the first to admit that he harbored a crush on Lillian. Every time he saw her, he was struck slightly breathless. Tonight, he was caught a bit off-guard by the sheen of her bright red hair. Although short in stature, Lillian was quite brazen and direct. In her arms, she carried a heavy large black box. Although she struggled to manage the weight of the device, Caleb knew better than to ask Lillian if she’d like any help carrying the heavy container. Lillian liked to do things for herself, and seemed to take pride in her strength. Still, there was a sense of vulnerability beneath her exterior, and Caleb wondered much too often what it might be like to witness her letting down her guard.

  All of that aside, Lillian was one of the best in the ghost hunting business. She knew how to track spirits and to get answers from them better than anyone else. She worked specifically with the dead—never with demons though—so it was unusual that she had been assigned to this detail.

  Normally, Caleb would have called in his friend, Ocean—who was an experienced psychic. Unfortunately, Ocean was on maternity leave so Department 99 assigned a new psychic named Magda to their case. Magda was supposed to make initial contact with the spirit in order to determine what it wanted, while Lillian tracked the electrical signals using her box.

  Caleb had never met nor worked with Magda before and when she pulled up to the exterior of the house, he felt embarrassed for his profession. Magda’s car was missing the front bumper and was covered in flowers painted in house-paint. When she stepped out of the car, she was wearing a multi-colored moo-moo and thick-framed glasses. Her frizzy hair stuck up on top of her head and looked like a bird’s nest. Bizarrely enough, Magda was carrying a small orange cat in her arms.

  Caleb looked to Lillian for help. “The new woman’s here,” he said flatly.

  “Oh good!” Lillian said. Then, she looked out the window at the woman waddling up the front steps and frowned. “Has our profession really come to this?” Lillian asked Caleb with a frustrated sigh, before turning back to her black box.

  Caleb rushed to open the door for Magda. Finn’s parents were rushing around the kitchen gathering up paper plates for everyone. They’d ordered some pizza for the crew and seemed to be trying to keep their nerves under wraps. Their twin daughters had been sent to spend the night at the neighbor’s house. Finn was quietly playing in the corner with a red truck. He made the little metal truck fly up in the air with whizzing sounds, then brought it crashing back down to the floor with a loud thud and laughed.

  Caleb extended a handshake to Magda, and was both surprised and a bit offended when she refused to touch him. Magda shook her head feverishly. “I need to keep my energy signatures clean, so it’s better if we don’t touch.” She said with a slight southern accent. When Magda stepped across the threshold to the family home, her heavy perfume invaded the entire space. As if
reading his mind, Magda turned to Caleb and smiled. “I smudge myself with sage before a thing like this, plus I like to add a little frankincense and garlic to put my mind at ease.” Caleb nodded silently fearing that she was some kind of con artist.

  Magda lowered the rims of her thick glasses and walked quietly over to Finn. The orange cat in her arms began to purr loudly. Finn seemed to ignore her, but as she grew nearer he froze in the spot but did not look up. “I know who you are,” Magda said in a voice scarcely above a whisper. “I’ve met you before and I’d recognize you anywhere,” she said, her voice trembling slightly.

  Finn looked up. His eyes were now as black as night. “Go home Magda,” he said in a deep scratchy horrible voice. Faraway from inside the kitchen, Finn’s mother Kelly had heard the voice escape from Finn’s mouth and had dropped a glass of ice water all over the floor. Lillian quickly flipped on the equipment within her black box and Caleb stood back to watch.

  Finn’s head cocked eerily to the side. “I like to play with trucks,” he spoke in a man’s voice. This time the voice was deep and threatening. All of a sudden, all of the lights in the house flickered off.

  Magda continued to converse with the demon inside of Finn. “What is your name?” She asked the demon.

  “You say that we’ve met before—so why do you ask?” the demon responded.

  “Why have you chosen to attack this child and his family?” Magda asked.

  The demon responded with a low and terrible cackle…then he paused, “Because it’s fun,” he said. Suddenly the lights flickered back on. When Caleb’s eyes readjusted to the light he could see that Magda was now holding a bottle of holy water in her hand. She must have pulled it out while they were all in the dark. Finn’s eyes changed back to an innocent blue shade when he saw the bottle of holy water, and his lip turned upward and began to quiver. “Mommy! She’s gonna hurt me!” Finn cried.