by J. C. Diem
I drained my coffee and Connor finished off his tea, then we washed our cups before heading upstairs. The medic was waiting for us in the study. Wayne was tall, lean and old enough to have gray flecks in his dark hair. His expression was serious and my stomach clenched with dread. He smiled reassuringly before I could jump to the conclusion that Barbara had taken a turn for the worse. “My patient is awake and she wants to meet you two,” he told us.
“How is she?” I asked.
“She’s weak, but she’s improving rapidly. The girl is a fighter.” His tone was approving and his steps were quick as he escorted us down the hall to a room we hadn’t seen yet. He pushed the door open and I was surprised to see a hospital bed and enough equipment for a small surgery inside.
Barbara’s face lit up when she saw us. “Are you the two hunters who saved me?” she asked in a shaky voice.
“We sure are,” I said and moved over to the bed. She reached out and I took her hand. She didn’t seem to notice that mine was cooler than it should have been. Connor came to stand beside me and smiled down at her. She burst into tears and I patted her hand awkwardly.
“I just wanted to thank you both,” she stammered between sobs. “It was so dark in that place where I fell. I felt something furry grab hold of me before it knocked me out. I thought I was going to die.” She tugged her hand free and put both hands over her face. Connor nudged me out of the way and sat on the edge of the bed. He pulled her into his arms and she sobbed onto his shoulder.
Spying a box of tissues, I pulled a few free and tucked them into her hands. I rarely cried, but when I did, I was always a mess. The teen was no different. Her nose was running and her eyes were red and swollen by the time she’d cried herself out. She delicately blew her nose, then reached for more tissues. “Does my Mom know where I am?” she asked.
Connor shook his head. “She thinks you’re still with Ian and Mary.”
“Thank God,” the teen said in heartfelt relief. “If she found out who their Dad really is, she’d ban me from seeing them ever again.”
“You still want to hang out with them after what happened to you?” I asked in surprise.
Her swollen eyes turned fierce and she nodded. “This has made me even more determined to be a hunter. I never want to be that helpless again.” She stared at us both with hero worship shining in her eyes. “I want to be just like you two when I grow up.”
Sometimes, I didn’t feel particularly grown up at all. I was probably only four or five years older than her, but I didn’t point that out. “Next time, take a flashlight with you and always carry at least one knife,” I suggested.
“Get your friends’ father to teach you how to hunt,” Connor said. “No more sneaking off to tackle ghosts without an adult present.”
She hung her head and nodded. “We’ve learned our lesson,” she agreed. I was pretty sure she wasn’t going to make the mistake of being so badly unprepared again. She’d survived her ordeal and would be stronger for it. She reminded me a little of myself when I’d been her age.
Chapter Sixteen
We stayed with Barbara until her eyelids began to droop from exhaustion. She would have to stay here until she was strong enough to be moved. Stephanie would then arrange for the teen to be taken to her friends’ house.
I’d lost track of time while studying in the Archives. It was dinner time and the heavenly smell of roast pork wafted to us when we stepped into the hall. My mouth was watering even before we entered the dining room. There was only Stephanie, Connor and me sitting at the table. Wayne and the other man who had helped him carry Barbara inside must have already eaten.
Roast potatoes and other vegetables accompanied the pork. I took a generous helping of everything, then had to force myself to eat like a normal person instead of shoveling it into my mouth like a starving animal. Stephanie was far more refined than anyone I’d ever eaten with before. Delicately dabbing her mouth with a napkin after each bite, she even made Connor look like a barbarian.
Catching Connor’s eye, he smirked at me as if knowing how much restraint I was exercising. Even when pacing myself, I polished off my entire meal before the Archivist had eaten half of hers. To prove I had no manners at all, I took a second helping. It wasn’t often that I had a chance to eat like this. Fast food was usually my meals of choice. I’d never really learned how to cook and I didn’t have the inclination to learn now.
Too polite to voice her thoughts on how much food I’d consumed, Stephanie made light conversation that was centered around hunting. It was a topic we were all familiar with and one we could talk about without too many awkward pauses.
When we’d finally finished, we cleared the table and carried everything to the kitchen. Stephanie made coffee while Connor prepared a pot of tea. “What can you tell me about the creatures that attacked Barbara?” Stephanie asked when we took a seat at the smaller kitchen table.
“See for yourself,” Connor invited and handed over his phone.
She examined the photos of the rat-like monsters and frowned. “I’ve never seen these before,” she murmured. She sent the photo to herself, then handed his phone back to him. “I’ll have to contact the other Archivists and see if they have any records of anything like this on file.”
“We think they used magic to trap their victims in their cave,” I told her, then explained how the floor had dropped out from beneath us before somehow becoming whole again.
“That is disturbing,” she mused. “Beasts can’t usually use magic. Not unless they have at least a human level of intelligence.”
“They weren’t that smart,” Connor said. “They looked vaguely humanoid, but they were still animals.”
“They had a litter of eight babies,” I added. “Just think of the damage they could have caused if we hadn’t wiped them out while they were still infants.” A glum silence fell as we contemplated the horrors of the rat-creatures digging out more caves and laying traps for the unknowing population of the town.
Discouraged that my research on vampires hadn’t unearthed a solution to my problem, I turned in early. I slept like the dead, or perhaps the undead would be more accurate. Stephanie was bustling about in the kitchen when I strode in the next morning. “You’re just in time,” she said with a smile. “I was about to make porridge.”
“Yum,” I said, mustering up false enthusiasm. “Can I do anything to help?”
“You can make coffee,” she replied. She was wearing another bland outfit that did nothing for her. It was sad to see an attractive woman hiding herself behind a wall of boring navy.
I got the coffee machine going and waited for it to brew while Stephanie made enough porridge for us both. Conner was conspicuously absent, but I didn’t ask where he was. I wasn’t his mother, his girlfriend or even his friend. His whereabouts was none of my business.
Pouring us both coffee, I added cream and sugar to mine and sat down at the table. Stephanie finished making the porridge and set a bowl of it in front of me. She’d poured honey over the top, which actually made the horrible glop palatable. “This isn’t bad,” I said after tasting it.
“I always add honey,” she confided. “Otherwise, it tastes pretty plain.”
“You’ll get no disagreement from me.”
After breakfast, she escorted me down to the basement again. “What do you want to research today?” she asked.
“Shapeshifters,” I replied.
Her slim brows rose. “Which type?”
“There’s more than one?”
“There’s true shapeshifters, who can take on any form, then there are werebeasts, who only change into their animal forms during the full moon.”
The strange dream I’d had about Connor had been playing on my mind. I couldn’t recall if it had been a full moon in the dream or not. I was pretty sure it hadn’t been. “Both types, I guess,” I replied.
“There’s a lot of lore about them,” she warned me as she led me to a different set of stacks from yesterday. �
��These books should tell you everything you need to know.” She pulled a dozen or so books off the shelves and plonked them down on a table.
Taking a seat, I began to read. I took a break after a couple of hours to make coffee. Stephanie was sequestered in her office, sitting at her desk. She was reading something on her computer and didn’t notice me as I walked in. She jumped when I knocked on the door. “I thought you could use this,” I said as I carried the coffee over to her.
I caught a glimpse of the file she was reading before she closed it down, but didn’t see what it was about. “Thanks. That was very thoughtful of you.”
Waving her thanks away, I looked around the small room. It was bland and utilitarian, just like her clothing. There weren’t even any inspirational posters of kittens or eagles soaring through the air to cheer her up. “This seems a little…” I trailed off before I insulted her by accident.
“Boring?” she finished for me with a rueful smile. “I’m just one of several Archivists who works here. We rotate around the various Archives and never really get to put our stamp on the offices.”
That was the first I’d heard that they didn’t just stay in one place. “Why do you move around?” I queried, perching on the edge of the desk and holding my mug to warm my hands.
“Sometimes, our expertise is required in different areas,” she replied evasively.
“What’s your area of expertise?”
Her expression darkened and her hand went to her neck. “Vampires. I had a personal encounter with one a decade ago. That was how I found out about this world.” She waved a hand at the tomes in the other room.
“You’re lucky you survived,” I said, now understanding why she wore high-necked shirts. The collars would cover her scars.
“Hunters tracked the nest to my town,” Stephanie said. “They wiped out the leeches, including the one who was snacking on me. I was a librarian and it just seemed natural to become an Archivist. I’ve read every single book, journal and scribbled note that I could find that feature vampires, trying to learn as much as I can about them.”
This was my golden opportunity to find out more about the type of creature I’d sort of become. “Connor said no one knows how vampires came to be, or if vampirism is curable.”
“He would know,” she said and I arched a brow. “I mean, he seems like the sort of man who reads a lot,” she added hastily. “He’s right, anyway. In all of the books I’ve read, their origins have always been a mystery. As far as I can tell, no one has ever managed to cure vampirism, although they’ve tried.”
That had probably involved experimenting on the bloodsuckers. It was hard to feel sorry for them after being attacked myself three times. In fact, I hoped they’d been tortured horribly before the hunters who’d experimented on them had staked them through the heart. Realizing Stephanie probably had work to do, I stood. “I’d better leave you to it,” I said and returned to the desk and the pile of books that were still waiting to be read.
Chapter Seventeen
I read, or at least flicked through, every book Stephanie had given me about shapeshifters. It was fascinating to learn more about them. It also made me realize how little I still knew about monsters.
True shapeshifters apparently weren’t evil at all. They were long-lived, tended to stay in small communities and didn’t mingle with humans much. There used to be hundreds of clans of shifters spread throughout Europe, but their numbers had dwindled dramatically. Each clan had a specific animal that they transformed into. With practice, it eventually became almost instantaneous and easy to assume their alter ego. While they could take on any shape, it took a lot of effort and energy to change into other forms.
Werebeasts were an entirely different species and could only become one type of animal. Even when they weren’t in their bestial forms, they tended to be more aggressive than humans. During the three nights and days of the full moon, they became whatever animal that slumbered inside them. Smart ones locked themselves up. Stupid ones fed on humans and were usually killed by hunters.
Closing the last book, I rubbed my tired eyes. Checking my watch, I saw it was nearly dinner time again. I stretched the crick out of my back from hunching over and dutifully placed the books back on the shelves.
Footsteps warned me that I had company long before Stephanie arrived. “Are you finished?” she asked.
“Yeah. I think I’ve learned everything I can. Thanks for letting me stay here for a couple of days. I should probably be heading off after dinner.”
“A bad storm is coming this way,” she warned me as we headed for the elevator. “You’d better stay the night, just in case.”
My restlessness was back, but one more night couldn’t hurt. “Okay. I’ll leave first thing in the morning then.” I had no idea where I was going to go yet. Hunters were everywhere and it was doubtful I would be able to avoid them forever. Changing my identity was the only way I’d be able to stay under the radar. That meant I’d have to alter how I looked as well. My long brown hair would have to go. I felt a pang just at the thought of cutting it off and changing the color.
Stephanie noticed my pensive frown. “Is something wrong?”
We reached the upper level and the door slid open. “Nope. I’m fine.” That was a big fat lie. The people who had sheltered me and had taught me how to survive would become my enemies if they discovered my secret. While I resembled a cold-blooded monster, I didn’t want to hurt anyone.
Conner was busy making us dinner when we entered the kitchen. I wasn’t sure if I was more surprised that he was still here, or that he was skillfully kneading dough. “I hope you like pizza,” he said to us both.
“Who doesn’t like pizza?” Stephanie said rhetorically.
Feeling useless, I sat at the table and watched Connor. He used a rolling pin to flatten the dough and manipulate it into a large circle. He’d already prepared the topping and spread tomato paste, cheese, assorted meat and vegetables on the dough. It went into the oven and he set the timer. “You have plenty of time to take a shower before it will be ready,” he said. He’d already showered and I caught the hint of soap and shampoo wafting from him. He’d shaved as well and his jaw was nice and smooth. I had the insane urge to rub my face against his, but forced it away before I could give into the impulse.
Stephanie and I headed upstairs and I grabbed a change of clothes from my room. I could hear the Archivist singing offkey in the shower down the hall as I stepped into the other bathroom. Washing my hair, I lamented again that I’d have to take a pair of scissors to it. Standing in front of the mirror when I dried myself off, I tried to imagine myself with short, blonde hair, but couldn’t quite picture it.
Running into Stephanie in the hall when I stepped out of the bathroom, I voiced a question. “How is Barbara doing?”
“She’s much better and will be going to her friends’ house tomorrow,” she replied. Dressed in jeans, a t-shirt and sweater, she seemed far more casual and less stuffy. Unfortunately, her sweater was dull gray. Her polo shirt also had a high collar that hid her scars.
“I’ll visit her after dinner,” I said, then entered my room and dumped my clothes on the bed. I felt a bit bad that I hadn’t popped in to see the teen all day. Research had kept me too busy to think about anything else.
We trekked downstairs together to see everyone had gathered at the dining table. I was introduced to Jimmy, Wayne’s assistant. He was in his twenties, was African-American and cute.
Connor had found garlic bread in the freezer and had warmed it in the oven. Wayne and Jimmy were almost salivating when the pizza was placed on the table. Hands darted out, nabbing slices until the entire meal had been claimed. I’d only grabbed two slices of pizza and two pieces of garlic bread, although I could have eaten more.
Connor looked self-satisfied that his food was going over so well. He wasn’t just gorgeous, he was a great cook as well. It was no wonder he was insufferably smug.
“Arienna will be leaving in the m
orning,” Stephanie announced after delicately wiping her mouth with her napkin for the hundredth time as she ate her meal.
“Where are you headed?” Wayne asked.
“I haven’t decided yet,” I said truthfully.
“I’m heading out in the morning as well,” Connor said almost too casually. “Since you don’t have a destination in mind, maybe you can give me a lift.”
His request was too reasonable to deny, especially since we had company. “Sure,” I said, inwardly cursing him. I’d planned to slink away and begin my new life of solitude, but now it would have to be delayed.
A crack of thunder shook the building and a scream came from the far end of the house. Connor and I leaped to our feet and raced down the hall. I burst through the door to the medical room to see Barbara cowering in fear. “It’s okay,” I said as the lights flickered. “It’s just a storm.”
Rain began to drum on the roof and the teen relaxed slightly. “I was asleep and a loud noise woke me,” she said sheepishly. “I shouldn’t have screamed like a baby.”
“Your fear is nothing to be ashamed of,” Connor told her.
The medic appeared and pushed between us to reach his patient. “I’m okay, Wayne,” Barbara told him when he checked her vitals. “I just got a fright from the thunder.” As if to back her up, another crack sounded and the rain became torrential. The lights flickered again, then went out, plunging the room into utter darkness. Barbara moaned in fear and the medic murmured to her reassuringly.
“Does this place have a generator?” Connor asked.
“Yes,” Wayne replied. “Jimmy is probably on his way to the shed to get it started.”
My eyes had adjusted to the lightless room and I could see far better than any human should have been able to. Barbara’s eyes were open wide and her pupils were huge. Wayne’s were the same. His head turned from side to side uneasily, unconsciously searching for danger. Connor merely stood with his arms crossed, watching them both and ignoring me. My brows furrowed, but the lights came back on before I could explore that last thought.
