“Stop talking... my head is falling off,” I murmured, burying my head under a throw pillow that did nothing to shield the unyielding sun peeking through the blinds of my living room.
“No seriously, Cameron, this is without a doubt the best moment of your life. Apparently God has answered your prayers and sent you a man!”
Hmmm, I thought wryly to myself; I didn’t know that I had been praying for a significant other. That was news to me. This whole time I thought my prayers focused on increasing my metabolism so that I could still eat ice cream without it all going to my thighs.
Apparently unfazed by my silence, Rachel was buzzing about trying to contain her excitement. At one point, I heard her whistling softly to herself as if she were admiring something, and I turned and opened both eyes to look at her. She was jumping up and down ecstatically now. I swear, my friend had the energy of a five-year-old. You wouldn’t know it, given that she dressed like an emo teenager in all black, with dark-red lipstick and a no-nonsense bob as a haircut. People assumed she was the serious one, but no. That role would go to me. I was a brunette too, but my hair was wavy and resembled a Disney princess, as one little girl had told me, and I had light blue eyes. My hair and eyes were my best features, in my opinion, given that I wasn’t a big fan of my curvy backside and almost non-existent breasts. I figured there had been a mistake made somewhere in my gene pool; I had so much going on regarding my rump, but nothing going on up top. It was a tragedy that made shopping trips uber-depressing. That’s why I wore baggy shorts and tank tops all the time; I couldn’t figure out what else could possibly fit when I was two sizes smaller on the top than I was on the bottom.
Determined to ignore my best friend and continue sleeping, I groggily said, “I don’t even like men anymore. They suck and have smelly feet.” My statement came out sounding like I was four. And I instantly felt silly. I couldn’t waste my energy thinking about a certain deadbeat ex-boyfriend who couldn’t kiss.
“Hey, not all men are like Preston,” Rachel said catching on easily to who I was referring to in my comment. She then tugged at my arm trying to get me off the couch.
“Yes they are, you just don’t know it yet,” I said pulling my arm back. Preston was my shiftless ex., and I wasn’t exactly mourning the end of our relationship. After all, it wasn’t as if he had been a prize. I had only dated him because he was just one of the hand-full of single men in town that was my age and hey, a girl has needs. He had dumped me unceremoniously one evening stating that I was too cold and aloof. He was right. I didn’t like emotional attachments. I ran from them.
As I turned my thoughts away from Preston, I realized that Rachel was stronger than I thought and had already pulled half my body off the couch. My shoulder hit the floor and I grimaced as I toppled completely off the couch hitting the thick area rug beneath me.
“Ouch!” I rubbed my shoulder and gave her a dark look.
“Shhh!!” She said walking over to the window and peering out at my front porch again. “He’s right there! Come look! Quick, quick, before he wakes up!”
“What?” I said confused still, rubbing at my eyes. “Is Preston’s brother out there? He’s always had a crush on me,” I said as I dragged myself up from the floor to a standing position and slowly made my way to where Rachel was standing. She was a ball of excited energy peering out my window.
I moved closer to her and looked to where she was pointing, “Look! Look! Right there!”
She hadn’t been making it up; there was a man lying face down on my porch. And he was a very big, very well-built man. From everything I could see, and I could see everything; he was built like a linebacker. His impossibly sculpted back muscles were a clear display of strength and power, caressed by golden tanned skin that looked as if it had been kissed by the sun. His arms were large and sinewy. His thighs were thick and muscular. And his behind was perfect. I hadn’t seen a more perfect behind since watching David Beckham play soccer one year. And this stranger’s hair, even from this distance, I could tell was dark like my own and thick and wavy as well. Although I had yet to see his face, it was as if Adonis had landed on my front porch and I thought briefly, given our town’s penchant for unusual visitors, maybe a God actually had.
“There’s a naked man on my front porch.” I said softly, shaking my head as if that would clear the image or wake me up from a dream. Clearly though, I wasn’t dreaming as the naked man was still there.
“Do you think he’s dead?” Rachel asked quietly. She then turned and looked at me and said, “I think we should poke him with a stick or something to make sure he’s okay.”
She walked toward my umbrella hanging on a hook next to the front door, grabbed it and was about to unlock the door when I grabbed her, stopping her exit.
“What do you think you’re doing?” I hissed at her, “It could be a trap. He could be a serial killer. You can’t just go out there on your own.”
“Then come with me,” Rachel said as if she was just asking me to go grocery shopping or asking me to do something else equally innocent and non-life threatening with her.
“No way. We’re staying here and calling the police.”
“Awww,” Rachel protested, already giving me her favorite pouty expression, which I studiously ignored as I walked away, chewing on my nail, trying to come up with how to deal with the nudist.
“What a stupid reason to call the police, and you know who’s going to show up; Ronnie. Blah.” She made another face and this time I had to agree with her.
Ronnie was the sheriff in the small town where we lived. He was the quintessential, stereotypical small town police officer. He spent most of his time sitting in his squad car pretending to shoot things and then riding about town harassing anyone unlucky enough to be in the right place at the wrong time. Most of us townies tried to avoid him, but when I said small town, it wasn’t an exaggeration. It was nearly impossible to avoid anyone here in Graunville; there was one stoplight, one library, one hospital, and one bank. So there was no getting away from Ronnie and his ridiculous immature antics. He was only twenty-four after all, so I tried to cut him some slack.
I lived on the outskirts of Graunville, about five miles away from my nearest neighbor. My father and mother had left me this home when they had moved to a warmer climate. Last time I heard, they were sipping margaritas in Sarasota having the best of times. I had no desire to leave. I was a country girl at heart, and I loved living in what I felt was almost a storybook of a house. It was idyllic; no noise, no neighbors, no problems, and no unexpected visitors... well, at least until now.
I directed my attention back to my immediate problem. Ronnie would probably shoot the guy and ask questions later. I wasn’t going to call him.
“How do you think he got here?” I said to Rachel, who was now blatantly staring at the guy’s butt.
“Look!” She said pointing, not even acknowledging my question, like a little kid at a zoo who sees a giraffe in person for the first time, “He has the cutest tattoo on his butt!”
I peered closer, feeling a little like a perv as my cheeks grew warm in embarrassment. I tried to act like I was a woman of the world, but truth be told, I was a little bit of a prude. I actually easily embarrassed. I tried but failed to keep my eyes away from his backside as I looked in the direction of his bare butt.
On it was a medium-sized tattoo, about the size of a fist. I couldn’t make it out from a distance, and then I moved closer. It was a circle with a flying creature in the middle. As I stared, I became aware that the guy was waking up. He started shifting, stirring in his sleep, and I hurriedly shut the blinds.
“Ok, that was close,” I admitted when my breathing was back to normal. I guess I had been hyperventilating and didn’t know it.
“Frightening? I was hoping that he would get up so that we could see the goods,” Rachel said.
I gave her an amused look and said that I was calling her husband-to-be as soon as the naked man was no longer on my porch.
“No fair and no fun.”
“That’s me,” I said with false cheerfulness, and she playfully slugged me on the shoulder.
“So what do you think we should do?”
“Sit here and wait until he goes away.” I said going back to my couch and sitting down heavily. Rachel followed me and said, “We can’t sit here indefinitely. Where do you think he’s from? How did he even get out here?”
“I don’t know. Do you think we should ask him?” I said sarcastically, and Rachel hit me with a pillow.
“Do you think he’s another one of them?” She asked suddenly, and I felt a headache start to form. I knew what she was talking about, even if I didn’t want to admit it. And if the marking on his flesh was any indication, yes, he was one of them, but I wasn’t willing to say it out loud.
Here was the strange thing about our town; we attracted interesting visitors, to say the least; visitors of the paranormal variety. Just as Roswell was rumored to attract aliens, well, our little town, Graunville, attracted werewolves, vampires, Sasquatch and I swear I’ve seen a unicorn or two. We townies weren’t sure if the beings flocked here because it was a safe haven of some kind, or if it was because we were very good at keeping secrets. You see, we townies had a secret of our own, if you were born here, you could “see” the creatures for what they were, so no one else outside of our town knew they existed or could see them. A prime example was the unicorns I saw every now and then, to an outsider a unicorn would look simply like a horse.
Did I mention that was also the reason my parents moved? They were determined to live a normal existence and were, frankly, tired of all the freaks and surprises, they said. I had responded that, from what I saw on the news, Florida had its own share of freaks and surprises, just of the human kind, but they had still moved.
As a result, growing up with a school teacher who was part werewolf or going to school with a girl who was a vampire wasn’t that big of a deal. It was just a way of life. Nevertheless, they normally showed up with clothes on. This was the first naked one, unless he was just a random dude wandering through the woods, but that was too much of a coincidence for me. Not to mention, there was that tattoo on him. It reminded me of something, something other worldly, but I couldn’t quite come up with what.
“What do you think he is?” Rachel said.
I shrugged, “With any hope; he’s just a drunk human. But there’s only one way to find out... ”
I looked at her; she looked at me and resigned; we both went toward the door.
“Ready?”
“We might as well.”
“Here’s hoping he’s not a vampire,” Rachel said, “Their personalities are always off-putting; it’s no wonder they’re loners who hang out in coffins.”
Chapter Two
We stood next to the stranger and tried to wake him. Rachel again had the umbrella in hand and stood there fearlessly, poking him with it.
I tried speaking to him, hoping the sound of my voice would wake him up. But all my mutterings of “Hello!” and “Hey you!” fell on seemingly deaf ears.
In frustration, I took the umbrella from Rachel and poked him a little more forcefully in the ribs. He moved a little bit and we responded by jumping back in fear and then repeated that process again, for a couple of times before he finally opened his eyes.
And when he did, my heart skipped a beat; his eyes were green with huge black pupils. He was clearly not one of us. And then as he tried to stand up, I was torn between trying to help him and standing back far enough so if he had the urge to bite me, he couldn’t. Not that I had ever encountered a paranormal creature that had become violent, but even I wasn’t insusceptible to being influenced by the media’s negative depiction of the paranormal. Even though none of them had attacked me or even looked at me funny, horror movies did a good job of scaring me; which was funny since all the paranormal creatures I knew found horror movies offensive and stereotypical. I was pretty sure if they weren’t busy hiding among humans they would have united to form some sort of political party to end misrepresentation of their kind.
I thought the idea alone held merit, and was also hilarious to think about. I could imagine the conversation as a segment on NPR.
I pulled my thoughts back to the man in front of me. Unfortunately, his eyes became unfocused again and he couldn’t get himself up. With a slight moan, he collapsed onto the ground again, unconscious.
“Let’s drag him inside,” Rachel said with a sigh.
“Seriously?”
“Well, we can’t just leave him here.”
“I would.”
“Of course you would, Cameron.”
We went to reach for him when he awoke again, focused his gaze on mine and whispered, “Help me,” before losing consciousness as he clutched his side.
Something about his plea for help made my heart ache. I had a weakness for helping others even to the detriment of myself and so I had Rachel help me move him inside. He was heavy; I would guess about two hundred pounds of solid muscle and he was at least 6’3”. We managed to get him as far into my living room as possible, and then we sat him down softly.
“Well, that’s that,” Rachel said dusting off her hands. She then turned to me and suggested, “Why don’t you give Jackie a call?”
Jackie, why hadn’t I thought of that? Jackie was not only our mayor, but she was the person who kept a record of all sightings of new paranormal arrivals in our town. She would know exactly what we were dealing with and how to help him. As I looked closer, I realized that he had left a trail of dark-red blood from the door to the hall. Gasping, I bent down to where he had touched his side. There was blood there. He was injured. I assumed it was a bullet hole and wondered how we hadn’t noticed it before.
“We need to call Jackie. Now.”
Rachel jumped up for her cellphone and froze in place. I looked at her, startled. She literally looked like she was frozen. Her eyes were empty. Her entire body was still. She was suddenly motionless, as if she were a statue. I grabbed her arm and shook it, “Rachel? Rachel? Are you okay?” She wasn’t moving. She didn’t make eye contact. Her eyes just stared straight ahead. I felt panic rising in my chest.
“She’ll be fine,” came a soft voice from behind me, and I instantly turned around, scared beyond reason.
The man was now sitting up, holding his side. And as I watched, a red glow appeared under his palm, like a burning red charcoal, and then his hand moved away, revealing that the wound he had mere seconds ago was no longer there.
“What did you do to her? What did you do to my friend?” I yelled, backing away from him.
“Your friend is fine. I just need no one, besides you and me, to know I am here. Alive.” He stood up slowly, and I tried to train my eyes elsewhere. His nudity made me highly uncomfortable suddenly. I tried my best to keep my eyes off of his member, but against my control, my eyes kept wandering down there, and I gulped, forcing myself to meet his eyes.
“Listen,” I said drawing my eyes to his, which were regarding me with amusement now, “I don’t know what you are or where you come from, but if you want me to keep your arrival a secret; no problem. Just please, unfreeze my friend.”
He scratched at the short salt and pepper beard that had suddenly appeared on his face and shrugged his shoulders. “If that is what you want.”
Suddenly, Rachel was moving again, but instead of looking at me, she had a blank expression in her eyes as she walked out of the house and away from me. Never looking back. I ran behind her, calling her name.
“Rachel? Rachel! Are you okay? Rachel!” I grabbed her arm, but she just kept on moving as if I were invisible. In a zombie-like state, she shook me off and climbed into her car and drove away without sparing me a parting glance.
I stared at her car for a long moment, watching it disappear down the dirt road that led away from my property. I looked back at my house and instead of feeling fear towards the man waiting for me in there, I felt anger. He was about
to pay for whatever he did to my friend.
I marched back up the stairs to my porch, through the doorway and slammed the door shut with a bang.
“What did you do to her?” I demanded, putting my fists on my hips as I faced him. He had been looking around my house, and he stopped to stare at me curiously as I came through the door. Even in my anger, I couldn’t help but notice how handsome he was. His lips were full, his cheeks perfectly sculpted. And those eyes of his, an alarming shade of grey, different from the eerie green from before, seemed to undress me as I stood there. My attraction to him was so strong suddenly that I had to struggle to remember why I was so angry. Focusing, I glared at him waiting for a response, hoping he didn’t notice that my body was a traitor.
“Nothing. I did nothing to your friend. I just needed her to leave. So I told her to go home.”
“Told her?” I shook my head in confusion, “What are you?” I asked at last.
“Isn’t it obvious? I’m a warlock.”
Ten minutes later, I had found a towel, and he was wrapped in it. He sat on my couch looking around and then stood up and started perusing my pictures. Picking one up at a time, he studied pictures of my parents and my friends. I had the mantle covered with pictures of my travels and excursions. I had been quite the adventurer in my early twenties, and into a few extreme sports before I started working full-time from home as a travel writer. I wondered what he thought of all my photos and I watched with interest as his towel rode dangerously low on his hips. I couldn’t see how he was keeping it up. Actually, I knew exactly how, and as a result I was even more determined to keep my eyes above his waist.
“You’ve traveled many places.” He commented, turning around just to glance at me, before turning back and studying the pictures closely. I realized then that his eyes weren’t actually only gray. When they weren’t the eerie green color, they were almost a bluish gray, the color of a clear, cloudless summer day, and I found myself drawn into his gaze.
Cade (Alexander Shifter Brothers Book 2) Page 47
