“Once you’ve gone out with Pete, with any guy, for longer than a minute,” I told her, “then you get to shaft me with “best friend” blind dates. Deal?”
“If that’s what you’re holding out for,” she groaned, “we’ll both be dead before you have any fun.”
“Hey!” I flashed her a mock-indignant frown. “Who says I didn’t have my own semi-naked guy on a sofa last night?”
“And did you?”
Full disclosure hovered on the tip of my tongue. I wasn’t sure why I hadn’t said anything to her yet.
Then again, what was there to tell?
I generally tried to filter out as much of my Demor hunting as I could get away with, and it wasn’t as if Roman La Mar had stuck around for long enough to warrant a mention.
“Yeah, thought so,” Beth interpreted my hesitation.
I left it at that, put the keys in the ignition and prodded her with a raised brow. “Seatbelt?”
She folded her arms instead. After months of badgering, she was finally digging in her heels. Her hazel eyes warmed, though, and her expression softened. “I’m not saying you should stop, Raine. I loved your parents like my own.”
“I know.” My throat tightened with emotion. Although Beth didn’t quite share my Demor hunting obsession, I always had her full support. “But…?”
“I’m not going to say it’s been three years, that it’s time to move on. I don’t believe that.” Her eyes held mine a long moment, a sympathetic smile twisting her lips. “But that can’t be all you do, all that you are. There has to be more.”
“There is,” I protested weakly. “You’re forgetting Caffé Brazelle.”
“I’d give you that cop-out,” she drawled, “if it were more than your name on a piece of paper. You own the chain, but Simon manages everything. You wouldn’t even know how to order a coffee bean.”
What could I say? Beth knew me as well as I knew her.
My fingers drummed the steering wheel. There has to be more. The sentiment resonated deep within, rustling every argument that came to mind. But that didn’t mean I had any intention of being suckered into a blind date.
“Did I mention I was thinking of expanding here, into Chiswick?” I said brightly.
“Seriously?” She unfolded her arms to throw her hands up in a huff. “You’d open a whole new coffee shop just to get out of one measly date?”
“It would be a lot more fun than stilted dinner conversation with some poor fool who has no idea it can’t ever lead to—”
“Okay, okay…” Beth waved me silent. “Change of tactics. No date. Friday we’re going to Club Zero for Pete’s birthday. No set up, I swear. Just a group of friends hanging out.”
“Maybe,” I relented. Partly because her ‘meaning of life’ speech had made some inroads. Mostly because Friday was six days away and that was four days longer than Beth’s longest fling. There was a slim-to-none chance Pete would still be in the picture. “I’ll think about it.”
Beth grinned. “Excellent.”
“Hey, I only said I’d think—” My gaze snapped forward at the shadow moving across the windshield.
My brow puckered and my mouth went slack. Of all the places my thoughts could have gone, they back-flipped to last night, to a man who had no problem believing his own eyes.
Let’s cut the bullshit, shall we? I know what I saw.
Well, I was staring into flecked emerald eyes, slit through with vertical black pupils, and I didn’t believe what was I seeing, not for one second.
My breath snagged, then released on a sigh of mesmerised wonderment. I shrank back in my seat, my gaze going wide, taking in the whole of the magnificent, lithe, sleek beast. The black nose pressed to the glass, razor sharp claws extruding from massive paws pressed end-to-end across the windshield. Muscle rippled beneath the glossy pelt, midnight black.
I was hallucinating, obviously. Too little sleep, too restless, cycled through with that reoccurring nightmare on an endless loop.
There was not a panther, lithe, sleek, menacingly beautiful, wrapped around the front of my car.
A whimper from Beth pierced the bubble of my bedazzled awe.
The beast vanished.
There one instant; gone the next.
I hadn’t even blinked.
“Where did it go?” Beth squeaked. Her arm lashed out, fingers clamping around my wrist in a steel vice.
I whipped my head around to stare at her. I was almost afraid to ask. I swallowed past the dry itch in my throat. “You saw that?”
Beth swung her head wildly, all the way left, all the way right, again and again, trying to keep one pair of eyes on the full three-hundred-sixty degrees circle of our surroundings.
She was in a such a frenzy, I doubt she’d heard me, but I had my answer.
So, not an hallucination then. I should be happy. It wasn’t as if I needed to add a couple of psychotic disorders to my sadly lacking life.
“Stay here,” I said quietly, extracting my wrist from Beth’s grip so I could unclip my seatbelt and open the door.
“What are you doing?” Beth hissed through her teeth, suddenly focussed.
I slid one foot out the car and to the ground, scanning the area as I did so, seeing nothing out of the ordinary. “If it’s still out there—”
“Are you crazy?” Her voice pitched.
“Hey,” I said, using my most smoothing tone as I turned to look at her. “You know I’ll be fine.”
“I’m coming with you!”
“No, you’re not.”
Beth was half-Angeon, half-human. I loved her to bits, but she was weak, defenceless. She could barely summon enough power from her Angeon core to light kindling for a fire.
Her chin edged up.
“I’ll be safer if I don’t have to worry about you,” I said gently.
I hated watching the emotions play across her face. I hated that I’d put them there. Guilt. Desperation. Frustration. I tried not to play this card too often, but there was a freaking black panther out there.
Defeat.
“Hurry,” she whispered.
“I’ll just take a quick look.” I climbed out, clicking the door quietly shut behind me.
We’d parked in a small lot just off the high street, closed in on three sides by windowless brick walls. A dozen parking bays, all taken, and a few extra cars jammed into illegal spots. Traffic flowed smoothly in the street beyond, bumper to bumper but moving. Three teenage girls crossed the exit, strolling along the sidewalk. A mother pushing a pram followed at an unhurried pace.
No blistering screams, honking cars, swerving, darting.
None of the chaos that would surely erupt from a three-hundred pound panther streaking out a parking lot on a sunny, late spring, Saturday morning.
Keeping my eyes pricked, my senses alert, I wove a path through the parking bays. I had to fight the urge to peer inside and under every car. First, I needed to cover the entire parking lot, before any one of the owners returned from their business. I’d do the inside and under bit on the second sweep.
A minute passed, then another, and another, each minute mocking my footfalls with a chilling taunt that sounded a lot like Roman La Mar inside my head. I know what I saw.
Wild cats didn’t appear out of nowhere, and then disappear back into thin air. Black panthers did not prowl the streets of London boroughs.
I knew exactly what I’d seen.
Beth was out the car when I spun about during my second sweep, hanging onto the open passenger door with one hand, her eyes tracking me.
My jaw tightened as I made my way back to her, dark forebodings snaking up my spine. This panther wasn’t slinking in dark corners or under cars. This panther was long gone.
“Get in,” I called, striding around to the driver’s side, yanking the door open so hard, I nearly unhinged it.
As soon as she’d ducked inside, I started the engine.
“That wasn’t a wild animal,” I bit out. “It was a damn Demor
-fading—”
“—shape-shifting—”
“—panther,” I finished, then blinked at her. “You agree? I thought I’d finally lost my mind.”
Beth dragged up the cuff of her long-sleeved T-Shirt and showed me her arm.
Three thin lines of dried blood marked the tender skin of her inner forearm. Three long, rusted scratches that printed an image of massive claws inside my head.
Stupid, stupid, stupid. I should never have left Beth alone. “It came back.”
“No… I don’t think so.” Her gaze flashed into mine, then sliced past my shoulder to the windshield, the dashboard, anywhere but her arm. She’d never been able to handle the sight of blood, her own least of all. “I noticed as soon as you’d climbed out. It doesn’t hurt. It must have been when…”
When?
We looked at each other, matching frowns burrowing deep lines between our eyes.
“When it was on the windshield?” I rasped.
Could Demors fade in and out that fast?
Faster than a blur?
Maybe, when in panther form. I wouldn’t know. How could I? Shape shifting was a thread from a far-forgotten time, a time before The Terror. It belonged to the past, lost to the mists of thousands of millennia.
“Is there any tingling? Burning?” I lifted her arm closer to inspect the damage, but couldn’t discern where the skin was cut beneath the blood. I took a deep breath. Beth was half Angeon. It was okay. She’d be okay. “Do you feel light-headed?”
“Nothing.” She shook her head. “I didn’t even feel it happen.”
She tried to take her arm back but I held on.
I ran a light thumb over the scratches, then again with measured pressure, testing. “And now?”
Another shake of her head. “It’s already healed, hasn’t it?”
She still hadn’t looked for herself.
“Probably. Let’s make sure.” I spat on the pad of my thumb, grimaced at her. “Sorry, disgusting…”
I rubbed at the blood, there really wasn’t much. What lay beneath stabbed like a dagger to my heart. Three long, uneven, paper-cut thin marks.
“Beth,” I said slowly, cautiously, “you should look at this.”
Her nose wrinkled, but she looked down, and immediately snatched her arm back.
“It was barely a scratch.” She stared at the offensive scars, as if she could glare them into submission. “I don’t understand.”
That made two of us.
Demor wounds took longer to recover from than any other. I had firsthand experience with Demor fire that had burnt raw for three days straight before healing. But the thing was, once we did heal, it was absolute and seamless. Beth’s power was diluted, her body took longer to respond, but even with her, the properties of our Angeon self-healing abilities remained the same, constant, true. Cells rejuvenated, organs reconstructed, veins sealed, skin knitted flawlessly.
We didn’t scar.
Not ever.
“A special feature?” Fury swept through me, trembling to my fingertips as I slammed the gears into reverse. Fury born of disbelief, of this new, incredulous reality. “What do we actually know about Demor panther form?”
I did know this: Demors could only procreate when in panther form. New Life. New Demor life.
Beth fell back in her seat, arms folded. “I’d love to shove a special feature up every damn Guardians’ butt.”
“This isn’t necessarily the Guardians’ doing.” I revved out of the parking lot in a series of jerks. “They wouldn’t!”
“They ripped Angatora apart with the full might of their Furies,” Beth snorted. “The Guardians do exactly as they please.”
“No.” I shook my head. “They sought to end the ageless war. Demoran suffered the same. They wouldn’t act on a whim. They don’t pick sides.”
None had been left unscathed by the unceasing anger of Alecto and the vengeance of Tisiphone.
The Terror, as it had later become known.
Fifteen millennia ago.
Three days when night had ruled, when the Guardians stepped down with a high hand to deliver the full wrath of the Furies and Fates, smiting the power of the Demors in the North and Angeons in the South.
And when there was nothing left, nothing but the ruins of two glorious kingdoms, the Fates had decreed:
Angeons would no more be immortal on earth. The Angeons had felt the hand of Lachesis, the Fate determining the length of life.
Demors would no more procreate. Clotho, the spinner of the thread of life, had stripped Demors of the power to shape shift, effectively refusing to spin new Demor life.
Silenced to our horrific thoughts, I concentrated on soothing my spiking nerves so I could navigate the busy Chiswick roads without leaving a trail of casualties in our wake.
Deep, calming breaths to level out my anger.
I had to keep faith in something. Whatever the Demors were up to, however they’d snatched back their panther power, it couldn’t be a secret Demor and Guardian alliance.
“IS THAT KIAL’S LAND DROVER?” Beth said when I pulled up outside my front door. She was looking out her window, over the low hedge that separated my driveway from next door. “Wasn’t he only supposed to be moving in at the end of the month?”
“The heating in his apartment died again,” I explained. “He decided that was that and packed a bag. Moved in last night, sans furniture.”
“Oh, I see.” The clipped response brimmed with censure.
I cut the engine, offering an apologetic grimace. How had I not mentioned this during the course of our morning? I’d be mad at me, too. “It completely slipped my mind, Beth. I’m really sorry.”
“Don’t be.” Beth turned from me, fumbling with the door, practically falling out when she finally got it open. “It hardly matters.”
I followed, popping the hatch with my remote and meeting her around the back to collect our shopping.
“You’re allowed to be mad,” I told her. “You’ve been chewed on by a big cat, we’ve just learned Demors may be shape-shifting again, and your best friend is a scatter-brained idiot.”
“You’re not.” She released a laboured sigh as she scooped up her designer paper bags. “And besides, Kial living in your back pocket isn’t exactly our biggest concern.”
With my head inside the trunk as I reached for my one small parcel (a fabulous pair of soft blue denim), I almost missed it.
I pulled my head out and flipped down the hatch, giving her a puzzled look. “But it is a concern?”
Beth eyed me squarely. “Don’t you think it is?”
“I’ll have to get back to you on that.” A short, uncertain laugh burst from me. “It all happened so quickly, I’ve scarcely had a chance to process.”
The ‘To Let’ sign had only gone up last Monday, and Kial had made some throwaway comment about having outgrown his apartment. A few days later, he’d signed the lease. Last night, he’d moved into the four-bedroom detached next door.
“Yeah,” Beth drawled. “You seem to have that effect on him.”
“”What effect would that be?”
“Spurts of uncharacteristic spontaneity.”
“Firstly, how can you be sure it’s that uncharacteristic?” I linked my arm in Beth’s, dragging her up the driveway.
Three years ago, Kial had rocked up at my parents’ funeral, introducing himself as a distant, distant cousin from Sidney. He’d been so easy to lean on, an instant friend to draw strength from. He was Angeon, part of our world, the bond established before we’d ever met. But Kial was the kind of guy who gave a lot of himself without revealing much, without ever fully letting anyone in.
“Secondly,” I said lightly, “don’t blame me for his crazy.”
“He’s in love with you.”
I blinked. Of all the things I’d been blind-sided by today, this one topped the list. Yeah, even higher up there than Demors’ shape shifting. “What?”
“Oh, come on, you’ve never noti
ced?” She gave me the ‘don’t be coy’ look. “How he follows you with his eyes, with every one of his ninety-nine senses? He’s head over heels, love at first sight, all that bullshit, all the way.”
“You’re kidding, right?”
“About the senses? Okay, that might be a slight exaggeration.”
“You are so wrong, I’m not even going to bother arguing.” I rolled my eyes at her. I might not have had a date in three years, but I wasn’t totally oblivious to signals from the opposite sex. “Kial’s never crossed the line.”
“He bought the house next door,” Beth huffed, clearly losing patience. “He came across from Sidney for the funeral, took one look at you, and forgot all about going home.”
“He stayed for the Demors,” I said, arguing despite my sensible intentions. We knew their base was somewhere here, possibly further up north. “If he stayed for me, it was only to help me eradicate them once and for all.”
Beth slid her arm from mine and stalked ahead. “You’re impossible to— Raine!” She came to an abrupt halt. “The window!” Her voice dropped. “Do you think it followed us?”
“No,” I said quickly, taking in the gaping hole that still marred the front of my house. The window company had assured me they’d get here by ten. So much for that. “We had an unexpected visit last night.”
“Demors?”
The way she glared at me, as if the window was all my fault, was precisely why I censured so much of my life from my best friend. As much as I could get away with, anyway. “Who else?”
“So, they know where you live now?”
I shrugged. “It was bound to happen.”
“You promised you wouldn’t be reckless.”
“I’m not!”
“You promised you’d—” She took a deep breath, mangled her lower lip for a long moment. “Okay,” she sighed. “At least Kial’s next door.”
“Now that’s a good omen?”
She threw me a scowl. “You know, maybe I’m wrong and he’s not madly in love with you,” she said, walking again. “Maybe he took one look at you and knew he’d need to stick around to save your ass one day.”
Where Dark Collides: Part 1 (Shades of Dark) Page 3
