The Shifting Storm (Book 4)

by Jeff Hale

  The next hour was spent discussing Paradise Lost and what Milton was trying to convey with the story. Kris and I did our best to make sure we went unnoticed, and uncalled on. We both loved English Lit, but hated the thought of feeling stupid in class.

  We shuffled out with the other students when it was over, and I put a detaining hand on Kris’s arm outside the door. I wanted to wait for Celeste and ask about the makeup, because it bothered me for some reason. She came out of the room a few minutes later, giving us a nod and a smile, but before I could say anything, a fairly tall, lean built guy with dark hair moved quickly up to her. I recognized him, I’d seen him greeting her outside her classrooms for the last few months; it was her boyfriend, Travis.

  “Hey, babe,” he greeted her, putting his hands on her shoulders and leaning in to drop a kiss on her mouth. “You ready to go?”

  She gave him a smile that looked a little forced, but returned his kiss. “Jus’ a sec, Travis, I think Kat wanted ta ask me somethin’.”

  Travis draped his arm around her shoulder and turned to face us, his eyes giving both Kris and me a once over and twice over. It was nothing new; he’d done it every time he’d seen us.

  “Hello, ladies!” he said, smiling broadly. “Whatcha need?”

  I shrugged, not wanting to bring up my thoughts with Travis standing right there. “Nothing, really, was just gonna ask Celeste if she thought the mid-term on Wednesday would be all that difficult.”

  Celeste laughed lightly. “It’ll be fine, not that we have anythin’ ta worry about, between the three of us we have some of the best grades in the class.”

  I nodded at her, watching Travis surreptitiously. I had been very protective of Celeste ever since I had seen her the first time this last fall and something had seemed very familiar about her. Nothing I could place my finger on, but like I had met her somewhere before. She was such a tiny, innocent girl, you just wanted to make sure nothing hurt her.

  “Just think,” Kris commented, “a few more days, mid-terms will be over, and we’ll be free for a week or two!”

  “You two will be at the frat party on Friday?” Travis asked, eyes mischievous.

  Celeste poked him in the arm. “Duh, silly! They’re part of my sorority, remember? We’ll all be there.”

  Kris and I both nodded in unison. “And besides, Kat could use a little male attention.” Kris glanced sideways at me, waggling her eyebrows. “She finally gave up waiting for Mr. Absent to come back.”

  I tried not to glare at her, but she was right. Maybe if I started dating other guys, it would help. I’d had plenty of offers, but had turned them all down. I hadn’t slept with anyone else yet, but it was getting harder and harder to fight off the sexual frustration, despite my devotion to Aerick. All part and parcel of the fact that cat shifters tended to be highly sexualized beings.

  “Well, there’ll be plenty of guys at the party for Kat to choose from.” Travis grinned. “I’m sure she’ll have no problem finding someone to take her mind off things. But,” he looked at his watch, “we need to get going. See you girls later.”

  “Bye, Kat, Kris,” Celeste called over her shoulder as they walked away.

  “I could kill you, ya know.” I did glare at Kris now. “He’s on the football team, he’ll tell them all.”

  “And you’re a freakin’ cheerleader, not like you don’t know most of them anyway.” She batted her eyes and smiled sweetly.

  Kris had hated cheerleaders at one point (well, she didn’t really, she just claimed to hate them) and I had been on the dance squad in High School. She had just about had a coronary when I had gone to try out for the dance team at the college, had come back that evening and told her that not only had I tried out for the dance team, but the cheerleading squad as well, and had made it on to both teams. The extra strength and agility that came from being a shifter came in quite useful sometimes. Rather than be upset with me, Kris had come to the conclusion that cheerleaders must not be all that bad if they had had the good sense to recruit me.

  The rest of the week dragged by with agonizing slowness. It was the last week of classes before Spring Break; we had classes the Monday and Tuesday, and then mid-terms on Wednesday and Thursday.

  Things might have gone faster if a new depression hadn’t begun to creep over me. I had gotten over Aerick being gone a long time ago, but as long as I had held onto the thought that he would come back sometime soon, and that we would pick up where we left off, I had still been semi okay. Now that I had given up, had actually finally terminated the relationship in my mind, the sadness that I assumed came after a breakup was finally hitting me.

  Friday evening finally rolled around, and although I didn’t feel much better emotionally, I was looking forward to the evening. I had decided that enough was enough and I was going to have fun tonight, one way or the other, before my Aspect took the decision totally out of my hands.

  Kris and I had gone shopping earlier in the day for new clothes for the party, and I had picked out a pair of skin-hugging, fawn-colored suede pants, the kind with leather lacing down the outer sides, and a matching vest that I paired with a sheer turquoise blouse. I had also picked up a pair of calf-high fawn-colored high-heeled boots to go with it. The light color set my eyes off rather well, and made a good contrast with my deep-red, waist length hair.

  Kris had gone a bit more conservative, but not by much. She’d found a pair of black leather pants with silver buckles down the front of each leg, and matching black, buckled ankle boots. A metallic silver, deep-necked halter topped it off.

  Makeup and hair done, I checked myself in the mirror. I wore my usual jewelry, the wide copper bracelet inset with three tear-shaped turquoise stones and engraved waves, and the little crystal unicorn on its gold chain, one of which Darien had given me before he had left for Europe, the other Aerick had given me as part of my nineteenth birthday gifts.

  I rarely ever took them off even though I couldn’t explain to myself why they meant so much to me. But now as I stared at that little unicorn from Aerick, I unclasped the chain from around my neck and dropped it in my jewelry case, replacing it with the copper necklace that matched my bracelet, the tear-shaped setting somehow appropriate.

  I dug through my top dresser drawer for the small item that I had had made special for me. It was a narrow strip of silver, maybe half an inch wide, with a pull tight latch, made to fit snugly around my wrist. On the inside were two, quarter inch long silver spikes. I slipped the copper bracelet off, wrapping the silver band around my wrist and latching it, feeling the little points of silver embed themselves into my skin on the inside of my wrist, then I slide the copper bracelet back on over top of it to hide it.

  Silver. I couldn’t heal any better than a normal human with silver intruding into my flesh. And something else I had discovered, the reason I had had the thing made in the first place; I couldn’t metabolize alcohol any better with it on either.

  Oh, there were magical alcohols out there that could get shifters drunk, but they were expensive and hard to come by, while the silver bracelet had cost me less than fifty dollars. And this way, I could blend in with everyone else. Kris knew I had it, and she knew to remove it from me if I couldn’t in case something bad happened and I needed to be instantly sober.

  The party was already beginning to take off when we got there. Kris and I were members of the same sorority that Celeste was in, the sister sorority to Travis’s fraternity. Celeste, along with some of her other friends, Tiffany and Erin, had been in charge of getting everything in order for the party.

  It was a strange dichotomy in the sorority that we had noticed. Tiffany and Erin, both a couple years older, always seemed to treat Celeste as though she didn’t mean anything to them and, in fact, was a nuisance, yet they included her in everything that they did. They pretty much didn’t bother either me or Kris, our acceptance into the sorority mainly due to Celeste’s pressure on both sides and my position as a cheerleader.

  The music was bla
ring and people were dancing in a cleared out area of the main room. It was a larger frat house, three stories and sprawling. There were quite a few people there and a press of bodies to go through to get to the kitchen area. Once there, both Kris and I waved at Travis, who was rolling a keg across the floor to sit with several others.

  “Ladies! Celeste’s in the bathroom freshening up a bit if you’re looking for her, otherwise, can I get you anything?” he shouted to us over the din.

  “Alcohol, Travis, whatever you have there that doesn’t taste too raunchy,” I told him, leaning on a counter top.

  “Same for me,” Kris said brightly.

  “Perry! Mix these two gals up something good, will ya?” Travis asked the tall, good-looking guy with dark close-cropped hair who was standing next to the counter that held several bottles of hard liquor.

  “Sure thing!” Perry gave us a wide grin, pulling out a couple of tall plastic cups and pouring little bits of this that and the other into them from the bottles. “Here you go!” He held the cups out to us and we each took one.

  I took a long drink out of mine. It didn’t taste half bad, a semi fruity overtone to it, but it had a big kick. Warmth flooded my head and my throat burned. We both made our way back out of the kitchen, looking for relatively safe places to stand and drink while still being able to observe the party.

  I saw Celeste come down the stairs, and waved at her. She smiled, waving back at me, before disappearing into the kitchen. I knew she had just gone in to check on things, maybe keep Travis company. I’d been to several parties with Celeste before and had never seen her drink.

  I was most of the way through my drink, bobbing to the music, when I felt a tap on my shoulder. I looked up to see a grinning face peering down at me. It belonged to Warren Shaltz. He was a big guy, easily six foot six, with gold flecked brown eyes and short, light-brown hair. He was broad built, fairly good looking, and one of the guys that had asked me out a few times over the last year.

  I gave him a brilliant smile. I was beyond buzzed and quickly heading towards drunk; I was pretty sure Perry had overloaded the drinks he made for me and Kris. “Hi, Warren!” I greeted him brightly.

  I saw Kris roll her eyes next to me, give me a wink, and she squeezed her way further into the crowd of people to give me some space.

  Warren leaned down, putting his mouth close to my ear to better hear him over the music. “So, I heard that you finally gave up on that guy? That you’re back in the dating pool?”

  I considered him a moment. He was a nice guy; I’d talked with him quite a few times, seen him play on the field. I could easily do worse. “You heard right,” I told him, a pang of sadness going through me, but I didn’t let him see it.

  His face lit up. “Want to dance?”

  I nodded up at him. He took the almost empty cup from my hands, set it down somewhere I couldn’t see, and led me into the middle of the dancers. It was a faster song, and I moved along with the beat, feeling good about myself at the way his eyes roamed over me.

  The song changed, to something a bit slower, with a heavy bass, and he snaked his arm around my waist, pulling me into him, so that we were moving in time with the music, our bodies pressed together.

  At first, I wasn’t sure about it, but as I felt the warmth from him, the strength of his hand pressed against my lower back, I felt something else I hadn’t felt in a while. Desire for another man that wasn’t borne only of my beast’s inner wants.

  I sighed, letting my arms rise up to clasp around his neck, nuzzling my face into his chest, and as his hand slid lower, to rest along the curve of my butt, I felt the cat inside wake up and prowl close to the surface.

  I had been fighting the cat for months now in her desire for sex from someone, anyone, only barely holding out here recently. I had denied her for too long and she let me know it. The alcohol, coupled with my own cat shifter tendencies, combined to make my inhibitions almost non-existent. I was going to have fun tonight, in every way.

  Warren didn’t know just how lucky he was going to get.

  TWO

  ALEX

  I stared at the fraternity house in front of me, hearing the taxi pull away from the curb behind me over the extremely loud music. I ran a hand through my dark-blonde hair—it had gotten a little shaggy over the last year—and sighed. I had come into town a couple hours ago and it had taken me awhile to track Katelyn down.

  I had gone by the Velvet Flame first. That was the place she had been staying the last I had talked to her, where I had sent a postcard from Greece to. The owner, Lucien, had told me that Katelyn had actually gotten an apartment, that Kris had moved to Las Vegas as well, and that they were rooming together. I had been a bit surprised, figuring, if anything, that she might have moved in with Aerick by now.

  So I had gone to the address that Lucien, The Phoenix, had given me, only to find that no one was home. I called her cell phone and got no answer. Back to the Velvet Flame I went, looking for more information. Lucien thought she might be at some school function, but he hadn’t seen her much, so he couldn’t tell me where. He suggested that Nina might know, and that she was in the DJ booth off the dance floor.

  After surviving a death hug from Nina, who was a wilder like Katelyn had been, but was still considering whether she wanted to propel herself into full shifterhood, I got more news. Not that I minded the hug, Nina was a very pretty girl with a trim figure, and sporting hair with all the colors of the rainbow mixed in at the moment.

  She told me that Katelyn and Kris were actually going to school full time at UNLV, that she was pretty sure that mid-terms had just gotten over, and they might be at their sorority house, which she gave me the address to.

  I had arrived at the sorority house not much after that, only to find no one there, and a large sign saying that if anyone was looking for any of the sisters, they’d more than likely be at the house of their brother fraternity for the Spring Break Party. I’d found someone who knew where that was, and now here I was, standing outside said frat house, where the music was loud, I could hear happy, excited voices inside, and the smell of alcohol, at least to my supernatural senses, was so strong I wondered if they had a beer truck inside.

  I was stopped at the door by a rather large human male, who probably outweighed me by over a hundred pounds. I could have made mincemeat of him had I been so inclined, but I let him think that he had the upper hand. He didn’t recognize me, so wanted to know who had invited me. I tossed Katelyn’s name his direction and a big grin cracked his face. Apparently he knew who she was, and I was more than welcome if she had invited me.

  The press of bodies inside was almost overwhelming, and the music was almost deafening. I glanced around the room, looking for the familiar dark-red hair, getting my hopes up a few times from the few other redheads milling about, but not seeing Katelyn.

  I saw Kris dancing energetically with a young man, but I couldn’t seem to catch her attention. I was about to push my way through to her when I caught the faintest whiff of Katelyn’s personal scent mixed with that of melon, one I could never forget, and turned to follow it instead. I desperately needed to talk to her. We could snag Kris on the way out if need be.

  I headed up the stairs to the next landing, testing the air, and was just about ready to head up the second set of stairs when I heard a young female voice raised in agitation from a shadowed alcove.

  “—know I don’t drink, Travis!” the female voice protested with a definitive southern accent. There was the sound of flesh hitting flesh, as though someone had been slapped, and the girl made a muffled noise of pain.

  “Do you know how embarrassing it is to throw a party like this and my own girlfriend won’t even have fun like everyone else?” a male voice asked in anger.

  I was already detouring to the alcove, not liking what I was hearing. As I came into sight of the couple, I saw the young man, tall, with short dark hair, raising a hand to slap the girl again. She was small, her large breasts in contrast with her
petiteness, with pale-blonde hair. Her brilliant green eyes were wide in fear and her left cheek was bright red.

  “Oi!” My hand shot out, grabbing him by the wrist to prevent the forward motion he was intent on making. “I wouldn’t do that again if I were you, mate,” I told him. My voice was harsh with controlled anger, my slight Aussie accent more apparent. It galled me that he would resort to laying a hand on the girl in front of him.

  “Stay out of it, asshole, this is none of your concern!” The young man turned a dangerous gaze towards me, trying to pull away from my grip.

  I glanced at the girl, who was looking at me gratefully. She was angelically beautiful, and if she hadn’t been a fragile human, I might have tried to chat her up. “I’m making it my concern. Back off and leave her alone.”

  He did back off, deciding to take a swing at me instead with his free hand. I ducked, then grabbed him by the throat and shoved him against the wall, lifting him until his feet dangled, despite the fact that he had a good three or more inches on me in height. I squeezed, just enough to let him know that it wouldn’t take much for me to not only crush his windpipe, but break his neck as well.

  “You will let her be, do you understand?” I asked, enunciating each word precisely as I stared at him.

  His eyes were bulging, and I could smell the fear on him. He nodded at me, as best he could, and I let him down. He gave me a look of hatred, then stalked off down the stairs.

  “You okay?” I turned to ask the girl.

  “Yeah, thanks,” she whispered, smiling shyly at me. She rubbed at her cheek, the mark starting to fade. “I need ta go, thanks again.” She hurried after her boyfriend and I shook my head.

  Why? Why do they always seem to want to forgive them?

  I put the girl out of my head, hoping that maybe she’d come to her senses one day before that ass she was with decided a slap just wasn’t cutting it anymore. I caught Katelyn’s scent again near the top of the second set of stairs, and followed it to a closed door. I knocked, but didn’t hear a response, although I could hear movement on the other side, and without thinking, I opened the door.