Shadow’s Edge np-1

by J. T. Geissinger

  Shadow’s Edge

  ( Night Prowler - 1 )

  J. T. Geissinger

  Leander McLoughlin is leader of the Ikati, an ancient tribe of beautiful, savage shape-shifters who live hidden in the forests of England. Their survival is rooted in secrecy, a secrecy threatened by the very existence of one raised outside the tribe. Charged with capturing her before she can expose their secret, Leander tracks the unsuspecting outsider to Southern California. The great warrior is prepared for a fight ? but not for the effect the courageous young beauty has on his heart. Jenna Moore spent her childhood in hiding, on the run from an unseen enemy. Now her mother is dead and her father has vanished without a trace, leaving Jenna alone to contend with sudden strange, superhuman abilities. When handsome, enigmatic Leander McLoughlin appears, promising answers to all of her questions, she knows she shouldn't trust him. But their connection is as undeniable as the dangerous destiny drawing her home?

  Shadow's Edge

  Night Prowler - 1

  by

  J T Geissinger

  To Jay, my knight in shining denim; thank you.

  To my parents, Jean and Jim, for surviving

  the surly teenage years; I owe you big time.

  And to all those who dare to love...this one’s for you.

  When love beckons to you follow him,

  Though his ways are hard and steep.

  And when his wings enfold you yield to him,

  Though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you.

  And when he speaks to you believe in him,

  Though his voice may shatter your dreams as the north wind lays waste the garden.

  KHALIL GIBRAN

  PROLOGUE

  Excerpted from the Illustrated London News, October 27, 1888

  EGYPTIAN FARMER UNEARTHS ANCIENT CAT TOMBS

  According to Sir T.M. Addison Pike, famed Egyptologist and Orientalist, the recent discovery of a massive grave outside Beni Hasan containing more than 300,000 mummified cat remains is of special import and sheds new light on heretofore unconfirmed reports of the unusual esteem in which cats were held by the denizens of ancient Egypt.

  A cemetery site located near the Nile River, Beni Hasan was primarily used during the Middle Kingdom, which spanned the 21st to the 17th centuries BCE. The colossal necropolis where the mummified felines were found is believed to be constructed by Hatshepsut and dedicated to the local goddess Pakhet, a lioness war deity.

  Hatshepsut, translated as Foremost of the Noble Ladies, reigned longer than any other woman of an indigenous dynasty and is considered one of the most powerful and prosperous pharaohs of ancient Egypt. Female rule in Egypt was quite common; another example of a woman who ascended the throne was Cleopatra, the last – and perhaps most notorious – pharaoh of ancient Egypt.

  Upon interview of the farmer who discovered the tombs, a colorful local legend emerged. It tells of the Ikati – Zulu for “cat warrior” – creatures sublimely beautiful and equally deadly, betimes human in shape but able to take the form of vapor or panther at will.

  Apparently, the ancient Egyptians believed these fabled creatures were gods, originating from the darkest heart of the African rainforest, where the Congo disappears into clinging mists and savage wilderness beyond where any man dares to tread. Legend has it that the Ikati first civilized the area now known as Egypt, and they built the great pyramids at Giza as well as the Sphinx as an homage to their kind. They were even said to have mated with human women during religious rituals, siring some of the most famous of the Egyptian pharaohs, including the beautiful and cunning Cleopatra herself.

  According to said local farmer, only the fall of Egypt to the Roman Empire halted the inevitable proliferation of these dread creatures throughout the globe. Once discovered by the emperor Caesar Augustus, they were declared witches and hunted to near extinction. The few survivors that were left were said to have fled their native shores, ostensibly to take up residence in some other, unknown part of the world...

  Sommerley House

  Hampshire, England

  June 19, 1994

  My love,

  By the time you receive this, I will be dead. Forgive me.

  I have brokered a compromise to save what is most precious to me, a bargain I purchase with my own blood. I agreed to this in order to spare you a lifetime of running, of peering into the shadows as we have been these ten long years, trying to escape the hungry death that pursues us.

  They will sheath their claws and let you go, of that I am certain. But one day they will come for our daughter.

  Until she is old enough to stand against them, teach her to run. Teach her to hide. Tell her everything about me and my kind, or tell her nothing at all. I leave it to you, my darling wife.

  I find myself utterly wretched in my final hours, lost without you. My surrender to you was total, and for that I cannot feel regret, regardless of the price I am made to pay. True love can be a blessing or a curse, and for us I fear it has been both.

  But it is the only real thing of value I have known in my life. The one thing I know will last forever.

  I do not believe there is an afterlife for creatures such as I, but pray with all my heart I am wrong, so I may hold you once again. Heaven or hell, it matters little. As long as we are together. Until then I remain—

  Eternally yours,

  Rylan

  1

  Had she known today would be the last day of her carefully controlled, predictable life, Jenna might not have devoted quite so much time to her mundane routine of errands, shopping, and cleaning her apartment, which hardly seemed worthy endeavors in light of what was about to happen. But as these pivotal days are wont to do, this one began with no hint of what was to come.

  It was Sunday, it was July, and it was hot. Blazing hot, the kind of heat rarely seen in Southern California, the kind that shortened tempers and wilted flowerbeds and sent the already overtaxed electrical utility into spasms that created rolling blackouts across much of her tiny beach community. Even the bikini-clad rollerbladers and the oiled weight lifters and the legions of tourists with cameras and plaid shorts that normally populated the beachfront boardwalk in front of her apartment had fled, leaving only groups of wheeling, sharp-eyed seagulls to patrol the bleached sky above.

  Because Jenna was immune to temperature extremes—she’d lived everywhere from Africa to Alaska without the slightest discomfort—she was the only one in the grocery store that didn’t appear to have just emerged from a sauna. Everyone around her was sweating, shuffling, drooping like so many unwatered houseplants, but even in a fitted wool dress, with the substantial weight of hair so long it fell nearly to her waist in thick, honeyed waves, she remained cool and comfortable, as if encased in a preserving layer of ice.

  The butcher, however, did not appear to be encased in ice.

  “What’ll it be, miss?” Beneath his white paper hat, his eyes were half-lidded, his cheeks were flushed red. His breathing was labored and sweat beaded his brow and upper lip. He seemed on the verge of some kind of cardiac event.

  “The rib eye,” she said, pointing through the glass case.

  “Filet’s on sale,” he said, listless. “Wouldn’t you rather have a nice filet?”

  Yes, she would. But she couldn’t afford it.

  “Thanks, but the rib eye’s fine.” Along with the salad fixings and bottle of cabernet already in her basket, it would make a nice dinner. She normally ate her meals at work—standing up—but tonight she was off and treating herself.

  Moving as if underwater, the butcher wrapped the steak in waxed paper and handed it back over the counter. “Don’t overcook it; it just needs four minutes on each side.”

  She wasn’t going to cook it
at all, but didn’t think he needed that particular bit of information. “Great. Thanks again.”

  He gave her a wink and a lazy smile that bordered on bedroom.

  And that’s when it happened.

  At first, it was only a slight hot sting, an odd, tangible shock that seemed to come from nowhere—yet everywhere—around her. The concussion of heat twitched her hand so sharply she nearly dropped her handbag. Startled, she glanced at her hand and watched as a rash of goose bumps covered her arm. Then the strange, heated shock rose, vibrating, pressing in toward her core. It was so molten, so intense, she felt as if she might actually be burned by it.

  Carefully, moving only her eyes, she glanced around.

  Nothing.

  Please tell me the butcher isn’t giving me hot flashes, she thought, glancing back at him, giving him a closer look. He was still sweating, still smiling, at least twenty years older than she. His thick forearms rested on top of the meat case like two slabs of hairy, tattooed rejects from the refrigerated display below.

  No. Definitely not the butcher.

  She glanced around again and caught the eye of a tall, silver-haired gentleman standing beside his nattering wife in front of the nearby wine display. He was staring at her in the way she was accustomed to being stared at by men, but no, it wasn’t him either.

  Who—or what—was it?

  And then a terrifying memory surfaced, one that made the goose bumps on her arms spread up to her neck.

  If they ever find you...run.

  They were her mother’s words, a litany repeated daily until she died. An unexplained litany and one that left her with a permanent case of paranoia and a suspicion of strang-ers so profound she was never truly able to make friends.

  She reminded herself that her mother had said a lot of strange things she didn’t understand—and she drank a lot. “You’re just hungry,” she muttered to herself, earning a lifted eyebrow from the sweaty butcher. “You’re hungry and probably overtired, and it’s about a thousand degrees in here. Get a grip.”

  She headed to the front of the store and entered the express checkout line, behind a man so fat she didn’t think he would be able to squeeze through the aisle without ravaging the magazine and candy display racks on either side. She unloaded her cart onto the crawling conveyor belt, then turned and opened the large refrigerated case of drinks that stood between her aisle and the next checkout lane. She chose a soda because there wasn’t any milk—whole milk—her second favorite food to steak.

  And when she closed the door and turned back, suddenly the very air itself seemed different. Charged somehow, with a heaviness that ate straight down through her bones.

  For the second time, a sudden jolt of static electricity spiked the hair on her arms and the back of her neck, sending a shock of awareness through her core as if she’d been lanced with a spear of fire. She gasped and stiffened, earning a lethargic stare from the giant man in line in front of her. An eerie recognition pulsed over her skin.

  I see you, the pulse whispered inside her. I know what you are.

  She shuddered. Her fingers spasmed so tightly around the plastic soda bottle it split and crumpled in her fist. A fine spray of Pepsi shot out, fizzing out in a cold burst over her wrist and fingers, coating the nearby rack of magazines and gum.

  “You OK?” the boyishly handsome cashier said, glancing at the ruined plastic bottle in her hand. He frowned, casting a shadow over his clear blue eyes. “That’s quite the grip you’ve got.”

  “I’m sure it just had a crack,” she said through stiff lips. “Dropped during shipping, something like that.”

  All the blood had drained from her face. The giant man was gazing at her steadily now, inspecting her pale face and shaking hands from beneath two unruly eyebrows that perched like hairy caterpillars on his forehead. The soda dripped into a fizzing pool on the beige linoleum floor.

  The cashier pressed a button and spoke into a mike that squealed with feedback over the PA system. “Clean up on checkout five.”

  She inched forward, stepping carefully in her white strappy sandals around the dark, spreading mess of soda, which looked eerily like a pool of blood coagulating at her feet. The feeling of imminent danger was so acute that she had to fight the pressing urge to run.

  So because the giant man had turned his back again and the cashier was now distracted with counting out change, because none of the other shoppers in line behind her could know what she was doing, she closed her eyes and opened her senses, pushing her awareness out like an ever-widening bubble in swift, concentric rings to encompass everything around her.

  The low drone of air-conditioning whispering through steel vents high overhead. The faint squeak of shoe soles against linoleum; the even fainter creak of leather. The muffled chink of coins jiggling in a pants pocket somewhere near the back of the store. An argument in the deli section—you never let me have what I want, not even at the fucking grocery store—hissed low through clenched teeth. Someone’s gaze on the backs of her bare legs, heated and heavy. But not dangerous. Nothing dangerous, not yet.

  She pulled in a slow, deep breath through her nose, letting in the overwhelming sensory world she’d learned so long ago to shut out.

  And there—there it was.

  Animal. Hungry animal. A predator—and a large one at that.

  Her eyes flew open. Her heart began to hammer. Every nerve in her body screamed Danger! Disappear! Run!

  But she couldn’t run. She was frozen. Hands shaking, heart pounding, every muscle fixed.

  “Let’s get you another soda,” the cashier said, smiling warmly at her.

  She was unable to answer or even move her arm to hand him the ruined bottle. She lifted her gaze to his face and he did an immediate double take.

  “Wow! Your eyes are amazing! I’ve never seen that shade of green. Or...yellow? It’s so unusual. They’re beautiful.”

  “Contacts,” she lied, one of many little white lies she told about herself to mask the truth.

  The blaze of fear and fever hit her again, electric and stabbing, like a knife in the gut. She had to grit her teeth against a sudden, wrenching light-headedness. The cashier saw something on her face that made him blink, his brows drawn together. She dropped the ruined plastic bottle on the conveyor belt, stammering excuses.

  “I think—I don’t really need another soda. In fact, I’m going to leave everything. I’m sorry. I’m not feeling well. I...I have to go.”

  “You’re sure? It won’t be any trouble, it’ll just take a sec. I’ll get one from the fridge at the customer service desk, it’s right over there—”

  But Jenna had already turned away. She began to push past the giant man, but he was wedged so securely between the counter and the large refrigerated case of drinks there was no way to get past him, and there were ten people in line behind her, pressing close. She was trapped.

  So because she was panicked and had no other option, she did something she never allowed herself to do and used her strength.

  All of it. In front of everyone.

  The collective gasps of twelve people were drowned out beneath the piercing metallic shriek of the refrigerated case as it was dragged across the linoleum, its round feet cutting deep into the steel and cement floor beneath. There was twenty feet of gouged floor between the aisle where she’d been standing and freedom, and it took only a few seconds and a very slight push. She didn’t look back as the refrigerated case came to rest against the customer service counter with a muffled boom, scattering a stack of coupon flyers into the air like confetti.

  She began to run.

  She almost made it to the sliding glass doors at the front of the store when she felt the jolt of electricity again. It was a concussion that pierced down into her muscles, into the very marrow of her bones. A rising thick pulse of intuition flooded through her veins and she felt something vast and intangible rushing at her, heated and dark and inevitable as death. She stumbled into a dust-covered display of Duraflame
logs stacked in a wire rack and sent row upon row of plastic-wrapped logs bouncing to the floor.

  And then, shaking and gasping for breath, gazing out the sliding glass doors into the shimmering heat of the parking lot, Jenna saw them.

  Tall and graceful, lithe like dancers, sleek and silent and dark.

  They stood on the far side of the parking lot in the long shadows of a tall hedge of shaped ficus trees, staring right back at her from beautiful faces with detached expressions and very sharp eyes. All three were dressed in black clothing, obviously expensive, fitted and formal and distinctly out of place in the bludgeoning summer heat. There was nothing but grace and loveliness about them, nothing to suggest danger, but her skin crawled with bone-deep fear.

  Because even from here she saw it. For all their elegance, there was something very wrong.

  It could be seen in the planes and angles of their faces, in the slanted set of their eyes, in the cold red curve of their unsmiling lips. Their posture, the lines of their bodies, even their faces were perfect but—odd. Carved and otherworldly, almost elfin. They were beautiful in the way that certain predatory animals are beautiful.

  And just as devoid of humanity behind the eyes.

  One stood apart, slightly ahead of the others. Like his companions he had ebony hair, honey-bronze skin, feral, flashing eyes. But he was larger, broad-shouldered and substantial, forbidding even with all that perfect symmetry of bone structure, that jawline that seemed sharpened on a diamond cutter’s lathe. Something about the mouth: sensual but hard, so hard it seemed he hadn’t smiled in years. Or ever.

  Their eyes met, and it gave her a jolt like lightning to her toes.

  Who, she thought, and then, what? Her mind struggled to keep up with the adrenaline that flooded her veins. Her limbs lifted into sudden power and buoyancy, her nerves screamed RUN!, but she could only stare at him across the distance of the parking lot, into eyes beast-bright and wondering, luteous green. He stared right back at her with a gaze so intense and burning she thought he might ignite her with it.