The Shifters

by Alexandra Sokoloff

“Those two will drag you down into the dark so fast you won’t know what hit you.”

  “No one has to tell me,” she retorted. “They’re shifters, aren’t they?”

  He flinched, and she was meanly glad to see the dig had hit its mark.

  They crossed Poydras Street toward Café Du Monde, lit up like an Edward Hopper painting against the dark backdrop of the embankment. A saxophonist was playing outside the café patio, and Ryder dropped money in his instrument case as they passed. Then they walked up the stairs to the Moonwalk.

  As soon as they reached the top of the barricade and she could see the broad, meandering curve of water, Caitlin relaxed, letting the fear and threat and strangeness of the evening recede. There was something about the river that always calmed her, settled her, made her feel at peace. Beside her, she felt the live tension in Ryder uncoiling, as well.

  They walked without speaking to the railing and stopped, looking out over the water. The river lapped at the shore, and the city lights shimmered on the waves under the moon. The air was soft and warm and alive, moist like breath.

  Caitlin could feel that Ryder was struggling with something. Finally he spoke. “Why does he call you ‘little sister’?”

  That wasn’t what she’d been expecting him to say at all. Caitlin shook her head. “He calls me all kinds of things. It doesn’t mean anything. We’re not related, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  “No, that I got,” Ryder said ironically, and Caitlin blushed, realizing he’d figured out their relationship, or ex-relationship.

  “I was young,” she said defensively. “It’s easy to get caught up when someone can shift and—” She stopped, mortified at what she’d just revealed.

  He grinned at her. “And become anyone you want them to be?” he teased. And then he became serious. “You’ve got to watch the ones who don’t know who they are at the core, that’s all, Cait. And that’s true of all men, not just shifters. You need to trust yourself to know what’s right. You can trust yourself, you know.”

  Caitlin was unbelievably uncomfortable with the conversation, not knowing what to think. “I’m supposed to trust what a shifter says about shifters?”

  “You should trust yourself,” he said again, seriously. “Ask your heart.”

  That’s all very well coming from someone who has no heart, she thought, but this time she didn’t speak. She didn’t need him to be serious or compassionate or whatever he was being. She needed…

  It was better not to think about what she was needing right now.

  Suddenly she found herself being honest. “Case is a lost cause. Anyone can see that.”

  “And you’re the patron saint of lost causes.”

  “I work with shifters, it’s an occupational hazard.”

  He laughed, a deep, warm, real laugh. “Fair enough.”

  “But Danny…” She found herself dangerously close to tears and willed them away. “He’s gifted,” she finished shortly.

  “Most shifters are.” Something stole over Ryder’s face, something so subtle it might just have been a shadow. But Caitlin felt a difference, something significant. His voice took on an edge. “But they can’t hold the center. It’s intoxicating to shift, the feel of weightlessness, the rush of being in the astral, being pure energy, completely light, more and less than human. And the power of manipulating human beings, of becoming whatever they desire, and seeing them helpless to resist you…”

  His voice was far away. Caitlin felt a chill at his words, but she knew the chill was at least half excitement.

  “It becomes an addiction, that power, the sensation, all of it. And one addiction leads to another….” He trailed off, and his face hardened. “And a shifter who’s opened himself too many times becomes open to all kinds of things. Including entities.”

  The agony in his voice was unmistakable, and Caitlin realized that he must be talking about someone he knew, someone close. She stared into the dark water beneath her, grappled with a dozen mental questions, finally asked carefully, “Is this really a job for you? Or was there something else?” She hesitated. “Someone else?”

  He looked at her in the dark, seeming for a moment startled…and then not. “My sister,” he said heavily. “I left home when I was just a teenager. She was much younger, and I rarely saw her. I could never stay in one place.”

  His mouth quirked bitterly. “I won’t lie. I haven’t been a saint. I had the same demons as any shifter, and I’ve used all my skills in every way they can be used. I’ve been a terror—for women, for humans in general.”

  Caitlin stared out at the reflected lights, silent, her thoughts racing. It was nothing she hadn’t known about him—all the things that made him dangerous, that made her want to run from him. Still, she was shocked that he was being so open, so forthcoming. More than that, she could feel his pain, feel what was yet to come in the story.

  “Little sister,” she murmured.

  “Yes, my little sister.” There was such emotion on his face that his features seemed insubstantial, on the verge of shift. “While I was out raising hell all over the world, my little sister found friends like yours back there, and they got her started down a path that took over her life—and soul.” His voice was bitter. “I didn’t know, and if I had known, I’m not sure I would have cared. I had my own poisons.”

  He gripped the railing in front of them, and Caitlin was silent, letting him gather himself to continue again.

  “I was lucky. A shifter who had been through the same journey that I had found me. He said I could do better with my gifts. He hired me and trained me for the work I do now—tracking, containing, casting out. And then one night I heard her…in the astral.”

  His face was so haunted that Caitlin had to keep herself from reaching out, touching him…. She grasped the railing and was silent.

  “I heard my sister crying…and I knew it was her, and I knew I had to go to her.” And now there were tears in his eyes, grief in his voice. “And then I heard the raging of that…thing.” The loathing seethed through his entire body. Caitlin remembered how he had leaped out of his chair when that alien voice had come through Danny, the fury on his face, the killing rage….

  “I was too late. She was young, by shapeshifter terms, and her body was weak from the drugs she’d been doing. That…entity got into her and burned through her like wildfire. She was dead before I could get there.”

  Caitlin felt a sharp stab of pain. She knew too well how it felt just to have a sister threatened. To lose one…to miss the chance of saving Fiona or Shauna… She shivered, her heart aching for him. “I’m so sorry,” she murmured. Her hands stirred on the rail, wanting to reach for him, but she kept them still.

  Ryder nodded but didn’t look at her. He was a mil lion miles away, staring out over the black and rippling water. So Caitlin kept her hands where they were and said nothing.

  Chapter 15

  It was a silent walk back to the compound, Ryder sunk in thought, and Caitlin not knowing what to say. It was a relief to reach the gate.

  She stopped in front of it, drawing herself up. “Okay, you’ve walked me home. I’m fine. You can—”

  “Come in and say good-night to your sisters,” Ryder said unexpectedly, and reached past her to push the gate open.

  Caitlin was reeling that the gate was unlocked, thinking that either her sisters had gone crazy to make a mistake like that, or that Ryder could actually open gates without that little tool of his…and then she realized the gate had actually opened from inside, and Shauna was standing there, looking royally pissed. “Of all the stupid, thoughtless, insensitive stunts…!”

  Fiona was right behind her, nudging Shauna aside with a warning look. “All right, all’s well that ends well.”

  Fiona shot Ryder a grateful look as she hugged and kissed Caitlin, and as soon as her sister’s arms went around her, Caitlin felt a wave of guilt. She hadn’t meant to cause anyone any grief, but then again, she never meant harm with anything she did, a
nd somehow it always ended in disaster anyway.

  “I’m sorry,” Caitlin mumbled.

  “Where were you?” Shauna demanded.

  “We did find the shifters. And we did learn some fairly interesting things,” Ryder said, stepping in smoothly, and Caitlin was aware that on some level he was trying to help her off the hot seat.

  Well, fine, let him explain, then.

  She shot Ryder a chilly look. “You can fill them in. I’m going to bed.” And before anyone could say a word to stop her, she was stalking toward her wing of the house, fleeing through the garden toward welcome solitude.

  In her bedroom, she jerked impatiently at the laces of her bodice, roiling with uncontrolled thoughts and feelings. As she pulled the dress over her head, she smelled the acrid residue of crack smoke clinging to the fabric and felt a stab of guilt, unease, even fear. For a moment she could hear the seething hatred of the thing that had spoken through Danny.

  She tossed the dress aside with revulsion, wrapped her short silk robe around her and stepped to the French doors to look up at the moon, brooding.

  There was a bigger malevolence to these entities than she had realized. The one they had talked to through Danny had a controlled, cunning plan to wreak havoc. And that very same entity had killed Ryder’s sister. That fact gave the whole convergence of forces a fatedness that Caitlin was not about to take lightly.

  She turned from the French doors—and almost screamed.

  Ryder was standing in the middle of her bedroom floor, watching her.

  She bit back the scream and crossed her arms, glaring at him. “Can you walk through walls now?”

  “Spiders, remember?” he answered, arms crossed, looking down at her. “I don’t usually do arachnids, but I needed something quick and small. And it’s very easy to shift right now….”

  Samhain, she thought.

  “Oh. Right,” she conceded sullenly. “Well, you can’t just walk in anywhere you want to. It’s trespassing.”

  She moved to step around him, but he sidestepped with her, blocking her.

  “I’ll leave if you want me to. The thing is…” He moved in closer, almost touching her. “I don’t think you want me to.”

  She could feel the heat of his whole body resonating against hers. Another inch and he would be brushing against her, and her whole being seemed concentrated in that hot core of her. “And I certainly don’t want to,” he added huskily.

  She wasn’t breathing now, and her entire skin seemed magnetically drawn to his, and yet he didn’t touch her.

  “Tell me not to kiss you,” he said.

  “Don’t kiss me,” she said, and closed her eyes as his mouth crushed down on hers.

  His lips were hot and demanding; his hands were on the curve of her butt, pulling her against him, grinding sensuously through the thin cloth of her robe; and she was making those animal sounds again.

  “God,” he said roughly against her ear, and then she felt his tongue slide down her neck and she nearly fainted, except that his arm around her waist kept her upright.

  Her breasts were straining under his hands, her nipples hard pellets of sensation. He ripped open her robe and closed his mouth around her left breast, sucking and licking until she was moaning…. She tried to push him away, but she had no strength in her arms. Her nails dug into his shoulder, and he transferred his mouth to the other breast, his hair brushing her skin as he tongued her aching nipple.

  His hand slid between her legs, pulling her panties aside, and his thumb was stroking her then, his fingers dipping into her hot wetness, and she arched her back, moving in rhythm with his fingers, her breath coming short and fast as she felt her orgasm spiraling up through her, coiling her body as her muscles contracted in waves of heat and her wetness poured down his fingers. He groaned, lifting his head from her breast and covering her mouth with his, invading her with his tongue as he lowered her down onto the edge of the bed.

  As she sank back in delirious exhaustion, he pulled her robe off her shoulders, tossing it against the wall, then stood to strip off his pants. He was huge; the thick length of him engorged, his pelvic muscles taut and cut, his abs jumping with the tension of his desire.

  She pushed herself up on her elbows and edged back instinctively, overwhelmed by the hard maleness of him, the unmistakable purpose in his eyes.

  He grabbed her ankles and pulled her down to the edge of the bed, took her wrists and held them above her head as he pushed her thighs apart with one knee, and now the head of his shaft was brushing against her sex, teasing her swollen flesh, stroking the cleft of her as she arched her back, straining toward him, incoherent, begging him, “Please…please…” And then he thrust forward and drove the length of him into her hot wetness, and she cried out with the rough friction against her sensitized flesh, the waves of sensation already building as he plunged into her. She was filled to overflowing, insane with the pleasure of his hugeness inside her, the weight of him on top of her, the stroke of his naked skin against hers. And then the wave broke and she was gasping in tandem with his growl of release, the hot waves of his pleasure as she contracted compulsively around him…both of them crying out in rhythm as their bodies spasmed together.

  They sank into her pillows, sweating, panting, shaking…. Caitlin felt raw, more naked than she had ever been, completely stripped, exposed to her very core.

  Ryder reached over and took her face in his hands as he wrapped a leg possessively around her, drawing her body against his as he kissed her mouth, her brow, her eyes.

  “You are so lovely.”

  Chapter 16

  She was half asleep, but she could tell that she was in bed, naked and wanton from a second bout of lovemaking. She felt raw and tender inside, but still hungry. Ryder was kissing her breasts, her neck, and crazily, she felt her nipples harden again, her sex start to ache. His fingers slipped between her legs, stroking and teasing until she moaned and opened under him…and then he was moving on top of her, pinning her with the weight of him. She was incoherent now, begging for him, and he shoved his hands under her, lifted her buttocks in both hands and thrust himself in to the hilt, filling her with his throbbing heat….

  Her eyes were closed as she writhed against the pillows, gasping as each hot thrust took her to the edge of madness….

  She opened her eyes…and saw a demonic face, monstrous, forked tongue waggling, vile with lust.

  She screamed.

  Someone was shaking her then, calling her name. “Cait. Cait!”

  She scrambled up in terror, pressing her back against the headboard of the bed, eyes wide with shock.

  “Cait,” Ryder said. “It’s not real. You were dreaming.”

  She gasped, let her breath out shakily, as she recognized her own room around her and saw Ryder kneeling on the bed beside her, freaked.

  “Oh, God,” she managed shakily. Gently he pulled her into his arms, and she slowly settled against his chest, felt his heart beating in time with hers, strong and real.

  “I’m sorry,” she said automatically, and he tensed.

  “You have nothing to be sorry about.” He pulled back slightly so he could look down at her. “You’ve been through way too much in the last few days. It’s about time you got frightened.”

  She felt an uncomfortable wave of vulnerability and tried to pull back from him, but he held her more firmly.

  “Oh, no. You stay here. No pulling away.” He leaned back and cuddled her against him until she breathed out and relaxed into him, letting him hold her. “Better,” he whispered, kissing her hair.

  She shivered violently. “It was that thing. It was trying to get inside me. Forcing itself inside me. It was horrible.” To her chagrin, she found herself in tears. Ryder held her closer. “I knew it would kill, that it wanted to kill me.”

  She twisted in his arms and looked at him. “They don’t care about staying in one body. They like burning through bodies. They’ll never be satisfied. We have to stop them.”

&
nbsp; “We do,” Ryder agreed. His face was troubled. “The question is, how? Mass exorcism? Mass binding? I’ve never seen such a huge collection of entities before. They can be bound one at a time, but a whole flock of them…” His face was shadowed in the candlelight. “I don’t know how to start.”

  “We need a council meeting,” Caitlin said. “All the communities. Some of the vampires have been around for centuries. Someone must know how to stop them.”

  Ryder was silent beside her.

  “What?” she asked softly.

  “I’m not used to working with anyone,” he admitted. “Much less a whole community.”

  Caitlin thought of her parents, the dream they had of the communities working together, working for peace, and felt for the first time that she might understand it.

  “It’s our best hope,” she said, and meant it. Ryder was silent, but she felt his arms tighten around her, and she was overwhelmed by the desire to stay there, always stay exactly as they were. Her heart hurt with it.

  Ryder put his hand to her face suddenly and turned her head toward him, looking deep into her eyes. “Yes,” he said, and she had no time to wonder what he meant before he kissed her, and then she forgot everything else as her body rose to his.

  When Caitlin woke again to soft daylight, Ryder was wrapped around her. She lay still, feeling the huge weight of him, the silky softness of his skin, the power in the bulging muscles in his arms and thighs, the enticingly flat plane of his stomach against her back.

  She was sore all over, most especially inside. And she was dismayed to find the throbbing she felt between her legs was not just soreness but desire. She wanted more, wanted him again, wanted him to hold her down and take her, again and again and again, until she was begging him to stop….

  Begging. Oh, she had begged, all right, but not for him to stop. She had begged him for more…and more and more.

  Her face flamed, remembering. She felt exposed, vulnerable, owned, used, helpless. That was the worst. She felt dependent, weaker than she’d ever felt in her life. She needed him, craved him, and he could go away any second. He was a shifter; there was no way to trust him.