Catspell

by Colleen Shannon

  Arielle had a feeling Shelly suspected something, but when her father kissed her brow, this time her yawn was genuine. The amulet, the hard weight of its reality under her head, comforted her, taking away the bitterness and pain of her earlier thoughts to lead her back to the tantalizing prospect of possibility.

  There, in the spirit world, she was happy. There, all things seemed possible.

  She was asleep before the door closed.

  Down below in the salon, Shelly paced, certain beyond any doubt, from the misplaced panel and that butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-her-mouth Miss Priss, that another shape shifter had come calling. More than likely, it was the same one who raided Isis’s tomb. But Arielle was far too bright to wear whatever gift she’d received. She’d hide it, fondle it when alone, but its power was no less devastating acknowledged or secret.

  The Earl lounged back in a chair, watching her with wearily drooping lids. “My dear Miss Holmes, do you never rest?”

  Eyes narrowing, she was about to turn on him and inform him if he’d been more diligent perhaps his daughter wouldn’t be forming a taste for raw fish when Ethan stepped between them.

  “You hired her for her unusual level of…energy, is that not correct, old chap?”

  “Yes, but continual exposure to such intensity can be exhausting to a fellow,” the earl said petulantly.

  Ethan started to speak again but Shelly silenced him with an imperious wave of her hand. “I can relieve your household of my enervating presence at any time, my dear sir, either at your behest or my own. And leave Arielle’s protection to your proven, so-effective vigilance.”

  For an instant, his blue blood pulsed visibly in an angry vein on the side of his neck, but at her unbending gaze, the earl slumped down in his chair with a self deprecating laugh. “By Jove, no missish airs about you. You do call a spade a spade. Forgive me, my dear lady. It’s my frustrations talking. I know you have a care for Arielle and are doing your best. But I feel as if I’m tilting at windmills and exorcising ghosts. Give me a man with a sword or a cut purse ready to slice off my ear and I know what to do, but these continual forays into a world I’ve never believed in, well, they’re more than a mite off putting to a man of science.”

  Ethan went to the sideboard and poured a hefty draught of French brandy into a snifter. “Do you know what I do when I’m accursed by dismal thoughts of things I should control but cannot?”

  “No, what?” The earl took the snifter, twirling the aromatic liquid and staring down into it intently.

  “I curse the things I’ll never control, like the usurious duties we pay on such niceties as French brandy.” Ethan clicked his snifter against the earl’s. “Excellent distraction, almost as effective as cursing that inimitable irritant every man desires but wishes he could live without–the fair sex.” The two men grinned, in a perfect amity Shelly found perfectly annoying.

  Of course, from the way those sparkling green eyes sliced her way, she knew Ethan fully intended her to be annoyed, if only to distract her and disarm her, so she was careful to keep her smile benign. “I opine men of your stamp would much prefer to control everything in their lives–wine, women, and no doubt song as well.”

  “You opine wrongly, then. Women who can be controlled are boring. But my fascination with the stronger variety of your sex doesn’t mean I don’t also find you…uh, them, irritating at times.”

  With a glance that said, “It’s mutual,” Shelly nodded a regal good night to the earl and stalked out. And Ethan Perot, little lordling, had the unmitigated gall to complain about her gender being irritating? If she didn’t need his help with Arielle, she’d have sent him packing long ago. He was the biggest irritant she could imagine, a burr under her saddle, a rock in her shoe, a…

  Shelly blew a deep, calming breath and paused on the landing to look out at the moon. It was only half full tonight, but always its lure pulled powerfully at her very soul. If she still had a soul, or a ka, as the Egyptians called it, since she’d fully embraced her lupine alter ego. It felt more like her true form than this weak, womanly shape of such inconvenient urges.

  She knew what Ethan was doing. He was riling her anger, quite deliberately inciting her passions so her senses would be heightened to him in every way. And dash it, his ploy was working. The strong sexual attraction she felt for him was obviously mutual. She did not understand why he wanted her, because with his money, his title, his intellect, and his charm, he could probably have almost any vapid but stunning creature in the ton.

  The fact that he’d fixated on a woman of little money, no birth and less beauty, well, that either spoke volumes about him, or her, she was not quite sure which. And she was also not quite sure she wanted to know the answer to that quandary.

  She didn’t need the complications of this quickened breathing or prickly skin when she was facing the most difficult case of her career.

  She’d fought many adversaries from the nether world, but they had been concrete foes that bled when scratched. Even vampires, who could turn into mist, had weaknesses. But how could she a nightmare that only took form as its whim as a cat, and could as easily escape back into the human world? And the more Ethan distracted her the less attention she had for the tiniest details that often made the difference between success and disaster.

  What she needed was…dirt.

  Dirt under her bare feet. Tree branches scraping her hide. She needed to feel alive to Mother Earth and know, as no human ever could, the true power of freedom. Free from thought, or woe, or hope or despair for the future. To know nothing but the taste of the night upon the tongue and the scent of the beckoning verdure visible only to her in the darkness.

  In her lupine form, the night didn’t rule her; she ruled the night. And instinctively she knew the creatures she battled felt the same temptation of the night. Who better to catch a shape shifter than another shape shifter?

  Shelly went to her room to remove her clothes.

  Below, Ethan made his goodbyes to the earl and exited the house. However, instead of calling for his carriage as he normally did, he looked around to be sure he was unobserved. The guest quarters faced the back lawn, and the earl had informed him he’d given Shelly the best guest suite in the house.

  Walking quietly, to be sure he was unobserved, the earl kept to the shadows and the trees, finally reaching what he recognized as the guest quarters from the dark blue curtains. Then…he climbed the tree directly opposite Miss Holmes’ room. He cursed softly when his foot slipped and he splayed sideways before he caught himself. He heard a tearing sound and knew he’d ripped his tight, formal pants at the rear seam. The things he did to prove a theory to himself…

  Settling himself comfortably in the tree, careful to keep shielded under the leafy canopy with room only for his opera glasses to peek through, the earl waited, watching the closed curtains. Gaslights had come on shortly after he reached his perch, but he was hoping they’d go off and the curtains would be whisked aside.

  Shelly was a nocturnal creature. He’d noted that her unusually acute senses seemed to grow razor keen with nightfall. A couple of times on their way to the crypt after midnight, he’d seen her lift her face to the night and sniff the air, somewhat like a dog testing his territory for danger. As ludicrous as the image seemed, it was the only one that fit.

  A few times he swore he’d seen her gray eyes glow green in the darkness, but then she’d looked away, as if trying to hide that peculiar radiance. When she looked back, her eyes were gray again.

  On more than one occasion, he’d also seen her look up and wait for the entrance of someone into a room well before Ethan heard the approaching footsteps. Sometimes, she stroked a silken pillow or velvet bolster with an innate sensuality that made every tiny hair–and another uncooperative appendage–stand on end. From the first time he saw her, Ethan had sensed a wildness beneath the steely will and brilliant mind. Urges she controlled, but with difficulty.

  And the more they sparred verbally, the more he longed t
o touch her physically and learn for himself the source of that wildness. Every man wanted a passionate lover. Beautiful, sensual women were abundant in his world.

  But Ethan had tired of the shallowness of a quenched body and thirsting soul. He wanted more, a woman who could meet him toe to toe and match him in bed and out of it. He’d searched his entire life for a mate of equal intellect, will and curiosity about the world and never found her.

  Until now. But the inimitable Shelly Holmes hid something from them all, a secret that went beyond her natural reserve. He had to solve the mystery of that core of wildness if he were to win her for his own. He knew it as surely as he knew that when they made love his own world of certainty and boring routine would quake to a cataclysmic end and a new beginning: the man who won Shelly Holmes would always be challenged, but he’d never be bored.

  As he trained his opera glasses on that tiny, bright crack of light, Ethan thought back to his own quiet investigation of the investigator.

  Discreet questioning of her lady’s maid on loan from Arielle had also yielded the information that sometimes, when the woman took Shelly’s nightly sherry to her room, her mistress was gone. The clothes Shelly had worn that day were neatly draped over the clothes stand for her to clean and press, and yet the night rail and dressing gown awaited at the foot of the bed, unworn.. But Ethan had not really needed the servants to verify that Miss Holmes was a most unusual companion with even more unusual proclivities.

  The question was–why? What had made her so unique? He sensed that the answer lay in deducing her nightly activities. Since he much doubted she’d taken the earl for a lover, which could certainly account for her absences, she must be leaving the house. Because of his fear for Arielle’s safety, at bedtime, the earl had the entire house bolted and turned into a veritable fortress with key locks for which only he and the housekeeper had copies.

  If Shelly were leaving the house, she was doing so through her own window.

  He’d barely concluded his own logical train of thought when the lights in her room went out. He held his breath, hoping, waiting, wondering if he could even see her if she did open the curtains, but then the half full moon, which had been playing tag with clouds, obligingly peeked at just the right angle into the room as the curtains were flung wide.

  Through the glasses, Ethan could see a tall, white form standing there. She was hidden in the dark shadows, but he saw the pale gleam of skin and realized, with a thrill of excitement, that she was nude. As he watched, she stepped closer to the sill, and he almost dropped the glasses when he caught a good look at her stunning figure from the waist up.

  She was quite well endowed, her large breasts with rosy aureoles firm for a mature woman. So firm he had to assume she’d never been with child. Her skin was so pale and creamy that his mouth watered just for the taste of it. His trembling fingers tightened on the glasses, bringing them slightly more into focus, but when she leaned outside, her arms flung wide to embrace the night, his throat choked up. She threw back her head and sniffed the air.

  She was all healthy, sensual woman. A female who enjoyed the night air on her bare skin. There was nothing strange about that.

  He was about to lower the glasses, feeling like a Peeping Tom, when her long, powerful arms, lifted to the moonlight, began to change. Ethan blinked rapidly, thinking he was seeing things. He focused again, but the hairs growing on her arms were clear and growing longer as he watched. The musculature was changing, too, the human arms bending like a canine’s leg, and the hands, why, they had developed paws.

  “Holy Mary Mother of God,” Ethan whispered. And he was not a religious man.

  Surely he was imagining things, the winsome moon, shining more brightly than ever on that window, tricking him into seeing not a woman, but a, but a…Ethan couldn’t say the word. While he believed in many strange phenomena, including astral projection, he’d never believed in something so fanciful as..as…

  Ethan pulled the glasses away and rubbed his eyes, but when he looked back in still resisting disbelief, he saw her face changing too. The rounded jaw grew long, with a snout and menacing fangs. The feminine bosom now boasted a powerful rib cage, with lungs that inhaled the scents of the night as if they owned them. Numbly, Ethan let the glasses drop, for he no longer needed them, indeed they seemed to help him beg the questions he’d been so determined to answer with his spying.

  Who was this indomitable woman, he’d wondered. What was the source of her wild power?

  The answers met his eyes if he had strength enough to believe them.

  Then, with the moon shining beatifically on every inch of her now hairy form, as if on a chosen one, the only woman Ethan Perot had ever been drawn to in mind, in body, and in spirit, completed her transformation into an enormous wolf. Her greenish gray eyes luminous in the moonlight, she effortlessly leaped over the window sill and landed lightly on the grass three stories below.

  She shook from head to toe, like a dog shakes off water, but he sensed she was casting off her frail human form with the act. Then, like a puppy, she rolled over and over on the ground. Her thick brown fur matted with leaves and dirt, she crouched on her forelegs, her hind quarters in the air. Tail wagging, she threw back her head to howl. But curiously, she caught herself, cautiously looking around.

  Instead, she trotted into the trees, walking right beneath him. He went very still, holding his breath, aware how acute her senses were, but then, with a bound that didn’t so much as rustle a single dead leaf or twig, she’d disappeared into the shrubbery.

  Ethan rested his swimming head against the tree trunk. Of all the answers he’d expected when he saw her true self in that window, this revelation was the least likely. A white witch, perhaps, or some other practitioner of the occult, or even a scientist such as himself playing with vials and chemicals, he’d theorized.

  But…a werewolf? And a werewolf who could think, by the looks of it. A werewolf who could control her changes, for Ethan knew the myth. Werewolves were supposedly only afflicted at a full moon, and the moon was only half full. Furthermore, this woman, this half were creature Shelly Holmes, seemed totally unafraid and unresisting to her deformity. She reveled in it, in fact.

  Ethan shimmied down the tree, his thoughts making him unwontedly clumsy so that he skinned his knees and both hands. Was it possible she could control the transformation at will?

  It certainly seemed so. When she opened the curtains, she paused to look around carefully in all directions before she began changing. Such a skill would certainly explain how she could face down what was, by Arielle’s garbled report, a lion, and remain unscathed. Who better to battle a shapeshifter than another shapeshifter?

  And yet, Ethan decided as he walked around to the stables, his knees so shaky he wondered how he remained erect, if she had these skills, she could well be as unpredictable and potentially evil as the creatures she battled.

  On a more personal level, he had to wonder what sort of man of sound mind would willingly bed a were woman. And yet, the mere memory of her standing there, her arms thrown wide in the empowering glow of the moon, bosom firm and begging for the touch of male hands, made him grow stiff. His own hunger was as basic and animalistic as hers. His body, whether his mind approved or not, answered her elemental call with primal needs that made a mockery of rational doubts.

  Those needs, empowered as they were by primitive instinct, feared her in neither form. Those needs wanted to touch her in both shapes and learn her without fear. To win that power for their own mutual pleasure.

  Leaning weakly against the squabs of his carriage as the yawning coachman took them home, Ethan stared out at the sly grin of the moon. This night had answered the questions that had haunted him since he met Shelly, but the answers only raised more tormenting dilemmas.

  Should he tell the earl the truth? No, for Shelly could be in danger. They’d likely cart him off to Bedlam anyway, but he could not bear the thought of any creature, were woman or fully female, who reveled so
in freedom, pinned up and poked and prodded and tested. So what should he do? Was Arielle safe in the protection of such a creature?

  Equally important, somehow he must he hide his feelings of trepidation mixed with fascination the next time he saw her.

  More to the point, if she realized he’d discovered her secret, would she kill him?

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Rupert Blaylock, the Earl of Darby, was a man who believed, if variety was the spice of life, then routine was its glue. Without it, households, empires--and father daughter relationships--could not function. When his rigidly managed estate operated as he dictated, he accounted life good. Given the extreme uncertainties of that normal routine since Arielle had taken ill, then, Rupert had become in the habit of reviewing the previous day’s events with his butler over morning tea, especially if any were unusual.

  The morning after Shelly’s nocturnal ramblings, Rupert enjoyed his usual tea and scones with his usual three newspapers, nodding as the butler reported an uneventful night. Arielle, for once, slept peacefully when her father checked on her, her hand curled under her pillow but her dreams apparently blissful. Miss Holmes had retired early and told her lady’s maid she did not need her services, locking her door, and Ethan Perot had left shortly after they arrived back at the house from their game of cards. All was right and tight as it should be.

  The earl was nodding his satisfaction, hoping things were back to normal, when a stable lad hurried into the dining room, his face pale. “S-Sor,” he said, dipping a quick, awkward bow before the butler’s stern gaze. As he looked around nervously at the fine room, he stammered, “The g-game warden, h-he sent me to f-find ye, he says ye m-must come right smart, there be a susp–suspicuous–”

  “You mean suspicious, boy?” the butler inquired loftily.