Shifters 0f The Seventh Moon Complete Series Bks 1-4

by Selena Scott

  Martine wasn’t the only one in their group who knew how to track a demon.

  But Arturo didn’t make it further than the next hallway when he was drawn by the voices of the three other men.

  They did this often, he noticed, huddled together in some hidden room to talk and discuss the goings-on. In fact, these three men gossiped more than the women did.

  He hesitated outside the door.

  “It’s cool, man. Kinda badass,” Tre said in the room.

  “That’s what I hoped for when I bought it,” Jean Luc said, clearing what sounded like nerves out of his throat. “I knew she wasn’t going to want a classic diamond or anything gaudy and her tattoos are so colorful, I just thought…”

  “She’s gonna love it,” Jack said reassuringly. “And if she doesn’t, who cares? Pick out a new one. She’s marrying you for you, not the ring.”

  “She hasn’t agreed to marry me yet. Anyways, thanks for holding on to the ring, Jack. I just didn’t want Celia to accidentally find it,” Jean Luc said, clearing his throat again.

  Something like vindictive joy rose in Arturo’s gut. Even when he’d been mortal, he’d been an asshole, and four centuries of enslavement by a demon hadn’t made him any sweeter. He glanced behind him to make sure that Caroline wasn’t around to witness and reprimand him for what he was about to do. But he couldn’t stop himself. It was just too good.

  Arturo stepped into the room and clicked the door shut behind him, a sparkle in his eye that had all three of the other men’s eyes narrowing in suspicion.

  “What?” Tre demanded.

  “Nothing,” Arturo said, his tongue pressing against his cheek as he studied his own fingernails. He raised his eyes pointedly. “What’s that you got there?”

  Jean Luc was obviously weighing the pros and cons of lying to Arturo. Eventually he answered in a voice that sounded like he was pressing sand through a screen door. “It’s an engagement ring. For Celia.”

  He didn’t show it to Arturo.

  “You’re going to get married! How sweet.” Arturo couldn’t keep the sly grin off his face.

  “Oh, Jesus, you asshole. Just tell us what’s making you smile like a psycho already.” Tre sat down heavily on the bed and glared. Tre hated Arturo on principle. Arturo had kissed Caroline last month. He’d accidentally hurt Caroline. So, yeah. Tre figured he’d hate him for life. What Tre admitted privately, within the confines of his own head, was that maybe Arturo wasn’t so bad. They couldn’t have fought the demon without Arturo. Which would have meant Tre and Caroline would currently be having their souls feasted on by pure evil if not for Arturo. There was something about battling a demon together that sort of brought you shoulder to shoulder with a man. Tre supposed he felt a sort of grudging kinship with Arturo. Not that he would admit to that when the guy was acting like a dick.

  Arturo opened his mouth to spring the truth on them, that Thea had somehow seen that ring and thought it was for her. That now Jack was in a hard spot, Thea was going to be embarrassed and Jean Luc’s proposal to Celia was going to be dampened by the knowledge that this whole thing had gone off the rails. But suddenly, Thea’s face flashed in Arturo’s mind.

  He thought of her nervous excitement in the car, so unlike her usual demeanor.

  Thea and Arturo were technically related. His descendants were her ancestors, settled on the land she still owned and worked. They both had the same inky black hair. The same perfect bone structure, imperious and icily good-looking. Neither were particularly warm.

  It was a strange moment for a familial loyalty to crop up, and Arturo could not, for the life of him, have predicted this unexpected turn of sympathy, but suddenly, he didn’t want to laugh in Thea’s face over this misunderstanding. Maybe it was because he’d had more than his fair share of embarrassment over the last 24 hours. But suddenly, he understood how mortifying this might be for her.

  All three men looked at him expectantly. Soon, confusion stole over their faces and Arturo could only guess it was because his own expression had fallen from sadistic glee to deflated befuddlement.

  “Uh,” Arturo searched for something to say. He wracked his emotional brain for some sort of moral compass, no matter how rusty it might be. He came up with nothing. “Nothing. Just—” He yanked a flat hand over his newly shorn hair. “Just don’t do anything with that.” He pointed at the ring. “Not yet, okay?”

  Jean Luc’s face crimped with surprise but as his eyes read Arturo’s expression, he flattened out with something like surrender. There was a note of unexpected earnestness in Arturo’s tone that kept Jean Luc from dismissing him. “Yeah. Uh. Okay, I won’t.”

  Arturo nodded once and disappeared out of the bedroom.

  “What the hell you suppose that was about?” Jack asked the other two.

  “I’m not even sure he knew what that was about,” Tre answered.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Arturo found Caroline in the room she shared with Tre. She was admiring the new scarf she’d bought that day and murmuring to herself when he burst in.

  “Arturo!” Caroline jumped. “What are you doing?”

  Arturo closed the door behind him but he kept a healthy distance between them. “I need to tell you something.”

  “Go ahead.” Caroline lowered herself down on the bed.

  “But I’m not sure I should tell you.”

  “Is it about the demon?” she asked, suddenly extremely somber.

  “No! No. It’s… Look, I’m just going to say it. The ring that Thea found isn’t for her.”

  “Oh, dear.” Caroline’s face crumpled down. “Shoot. She was so excited. I mean, she was pretending to play it cool but…”

  “I know. And I figured out the truth and was just—“”

  “Worried for her,” Caroline said with something like wonder in her eye. “You were just worried that she’d get hurt.”

  “I—” Stymied, Arturo crossed his arms over his chest. He wasn’t sure whether to agree or disagree with Caroline’s assessment. “I just wasn’t sure what to do with the information, is all.”

  Caroline crowed happily. She whirled on her heel, sunshine in every line of her face. “Can you believe that?” she asked the corner.

  No, wait. Arturo did a double take—that wasn’t an empty chair in the corner. Martine sat there, quiet and delicate as a moth. Her calm green eyes contrasted sharply with her strawberry hair and her chin sat gently on one palm. She was staring at Arturo like he was a cloud whose shape she couldn’t quite decipher.

  “How do you do that? Disappear like that?” he griped in self-defense, feeling foolish for not having noticed her sitting there. “God, you blend in like a chameleon.”

  Any other day, he wouldn’t have troubled himself quite so much over that expression on her face. Was she abashed? Was she challenging him? Judging him? Was she… turned on?

  Damn. He had no earthly clue. What was the point of being a bear-shifting, energy-wielding, kick-ass immortal if just a look from a pretty woman was knocking him so far off his game?

  She shrugged in response to his question and then her eyes fastened back onto Caroline. “Yes, I actually can believe this.”

  “You can?” Caroline asked. “I would never have guessed that Arturo would be so secretly sweet.”

  “Sweet?” he asked caustically.

  “You forget that I knew him when he was still mortal.” Her hand still on her chin, one leg crossed gracefully over the other, Martine swung her gaze back to Arturo. “He used to be quite considerate.”

  Caroline made a sad little noise in the back of her throat. Arturo interpreted this as pity. When he’d been a mortal, he’d had the love of a good woman, then he’d gone and done the dumbest thing of his existence. He’d sacrificed himself for her. The demon, unwilling to outright murder such an interesting soul as Arturo’s, had instead decided to enslave him. Amelia, Arturo’s love, had grown old, never recovering from the loss of him. And he’d suffered for centuries, watching helplessl
y as she eventually coupled with a man she never really loved. And then watching even more helplessly as she grew old and died. All while the demon tortured Arturo and used him as a pawn on this search for souls.

  Win-win.

  He felt sick just thinking about it. He didn’t want pity or sympathy. He just wanted Caroline to take the reins on this Thea/ring thing and then he wanted to go back to his dark bedroom, away from Martine’s bright, discerning gaze.

  Belatedly, Arturo realized that Caroline was approaching him with her arms out, as if to hug him. He stumbled back, grappling for the door knob.

  “This doesn’t mean anything. I’m not—I’m absolved of this, all right? This is in your hands now.” He ducked out the door and didn’t look back.

  ***

  It was the stillest part of the night. Martine breathed deeply. She’d opened every window in her glass cage of a bedroom and the unusual desert perfume swirled around her. Night blooming flowers and sage and red dirt. There was rain somewhere in the distance.

  Her eyes were closed and she wore her hair down over her bare shoulders. She wore a long, black nightgown that she liked because it reminded her of another time. It was slightly old-fashioned she supposed, but then, so was she.

  She let her mind disconnect from her thoughts. Away from the feel of the silk against her skin, away from the scent of the desert on the air. In her mind’s eye, she was in her hawk form, though her corporeal body sat on the floor of her bedroom, her hands laid gently on her thighs. In her mind, she swooped over the desert terrain.

  She passed over silvery shrubs and rivers that ran red with dirt, looking coppery and aged. She swooped over the cracking and crumbling roofs of houses thirty years past needing a bulldozer. And then over some of the fancier houses in the hills. She came through a city and thought she scented him.

  In her mind, she banked and chased the scent of the demon. He wasn’t there now, but he’d been there. Close to them, not more than a few hundred miles away. He was hunting for the group. Making large, delirious circles around their area. She knew that the demon was disoriented and injured from their last interaction.

  She’d almost gotten him. It had been so close. She’d never felt more powerful.

  Or more scared.

  Not of herself, but of what would happen when the demon was really gone. She knew that it would be the end of herself. Her life force was connected to the demon. When he died, by her own hand, she would die too. She wasn’t scared of that. That was part of her life. She’d always known it.

  She’d been scared of what would happen to Arturo. Who was no doubt linked to the demon as well. She thought of killing the demon. And then she thought of Arturo blinking out of existence. And she’d hesitated.

  The demon had gotten away.

  Even now, the thought of Arturo had her mind stuttering. She was no longer swooping as a hawk in her mind’s eye. She was blinking her eyes open on the floor of her bedroom, staring at her own reflection in the black glass of the dark windows.

  She rose up.

  She took one step and then another toward her reflection.

  Look at that woman there. She tilted her head to one side and the other. Pretty, she thought. Wild hair that could probably stand to get a trim. Strong shoulders. Strange eyes. Not just the light green color, but the expression in them. Martine had never managed to look particularly human. Her eyes always gave her away.

  Her expression was too young and too old all at once. She knew both too much and too little.

  She reached the window and her glass fingers reached up and made contact with her flesh-and-blood fingers. Her face twisted with a helpless sort of thought.

  Did Arturo see a woman when he looked at her?

  For a moment, she let her energy surface. She let it wash over her skin the way it had last night when she’d sat across his hips.

  No. There was no way in hell that he saw a woman when he looked at her. He must see this odd, glowing creature. Not quite a woman and not quite a hawk and not quite light. What was she?

  She turned away from her reflection, pained by it and lonely.

  A movement in the darkness outside, below her bedroom, caught her eye. It was a shadow moving against another shadow, like a lover.

  When she focused her eyes, she saw that it was really just Arturo, slipping through the shadows. He was checking the perimeter for evidence of the demon, just as she’d just been doing within the confines of her mind.

  She just watched him walk for a moment. He moved like a cat, fluid and slinky. His body, though quite tall, seemed to keep its center of gravity close to earth. He paused and, as if her gaze had drawn him, he turned to look up at her room.

  Martine suddenly realized how she looked, leaning halfway out her window, watching him with her chin on her palm, her black nightgown swirling at her ankles. He could certainly see the entirety of her body, considering that even the bottom panels of the wall were made of glass.

  He tucked his hands into his pockets and stared up at her. She stared back. A long minute passed.

  “If we were mortals, we’d probably say hi to one another,” Arturo called up to her.

  She laughed and brought her chin up off her hand. “If we were mortals, we probably wouldn’t be using our supernatural powers to do perimeter checks.”

  He stepped forward a few steps, which made him tip his head back to keep looking at her. She had the strange wish that she wasn’t on the second floor. That she could reach out her hand and he could reach out his and they’d be touching. But there was too much distance between them.

  He was quiet for another moment. “Did you mean what you said? About who I was when I was a mortal?”

  “That you were considerate?” Martine cocked her head to one side. “Of course I meant that. You were a very considerate man. Do you disagree?”

  Arturo dropped his head for a moment, dipping his hands into his pockets again. “No, I guess I don’t disagree. But it’s more like, I don’t really remember.”

  “You don’t remember who you were then?” It was such a strange thought to Martine. She remembered Arturo so sparklingly clearly. As if he were a movie she’d just watched last night.

  He said nothing, but his body went slightly stiff and Martine understood.

  “Oh,” she whispered. “You’ve made yourself forget.”

  “More or less,” he replied after a minute. “Try watching your entire family grow old and die without you.”

  “And the woman you loved,” Martine added sadly.

  “Yes. And Amelia.”

  “Arturo,” Martine said gently. “If I get a chance to truly destroy the demon, I’m taking it.”

  “I know,” he said, appearing confused that she’d even have to say that out loud.

  “Regardless of what happens to those of us connected to him.”

  “Ah,” Arturo understood then. She was going to kill the demon even if it meant that she was destroyed in the process. Even if it meant that Arturo was destroyed in the process. “I understand, Martine. I don’t know how you feel, but I’ve lived for long enough already.”

  She peered down at him. “I think we need to let some energy off, don’t you?”

  She stepped back from the window and reached up to the sleeve of her nightgown, pulling it down and exposing the rounded half-moon of her shoulder.

  Arturo’s breath caught in his chest.

  Wait, hold on. Was she—yeah. Yup. She was stripping for him. Her nightgown slipped off one shoulder and then the other and then it was an inky black puddle on the ground at her feet. She was gorgeously naked in the dark of her room.

  Arturo was violently confused. Her attractiveness warred with her innocence. She was bending over, carefully folding her silk nightgown on her bed. Was he supposed to be going back into the house? Heading up to her room? Was he supposed to stay down here and strip for her? What the hell was going on?

  “Oh. Right,” he muttered to himself as Martine turned back to face him
and quickly shifted into her hawk form.

  She wasn’t stripping for him, or inviting him to partake in her body. No. She was just taking her dress off so that she could shift. That was the kind of energy she was interested in burning right now. Not sexual energy.

  Arturo let out a gusting breath and pulled his shirt off over his head. His pants and underwear and shoes came next. He folded everything as neatly as Martine had and set it on the back porch of the house before he turned toward the hawk circling him overhead and shifted quickly into his bear form.

  With his heightened bear senses, he could scent her above him. An organic scent, like sand and water and grain, emanated from her feathers. He could hear the almost-silent beat of her wings against the air. The grate of her breath in her bird chest.

  Without waiting to see if she would follow, Arturo plunged forward, doing his perimeter check. They couldn’t speak to one another, verbally or telepathically, when they were in their animal forms, but they also didn’t have to. Both of them found themselves extremely comforted by the silence that was somehow defined by camaraderie. Words had been uncomfortable lately, but this wasn’t uncomfortable. This swoop on the wind and the dirt under the paws.

  When they’d completed the perimeter check, Arturo didn’t think twice before plunging off into the darkness, away from the house. The land was still warm from the heat of the day but he welcomed the chill on the air. She was right, he had needed this. Arturo picked up speed, full on galloping in the dark. He could feel and hear and smell Martine swooping through the air above him, but he didn’t look.

  They made a gigantic, arching circle around their house, running their engines for almost an hour before they were back at the same spot they’d started. Both of them were satisfied that the demon wasn’t anywhere close to their people tonight. And both of them were finally sufficiently exhausted enough to potentially sleep.

  Arturo froze in the same place where he’d been standing before, under Martine’s window. She just flew right through her open window, shifting before she hit the ground. Arturo didn’t shift. He stayed in his bear form and watched her, slim and naked, lean back out the window.