Behind the Eight Ball

by M. A. Church

  “Was?” Lawson asked softly.

  “Yeah.” I set the glass down and met Lawson’s eyes. “She, ah, died thirty years ago.”

  “How old are you?”

  “Hmm? Oh. I’m one hundred fifty. Shifters age slower than humans. Don’t the Vetala?”

  “They do. I was just wondering.”

  “Oh.” I looked away from Lawson as the memories got more demanding. “So it’s not a big deal to you, I take it? The age thing. I mean, you’re used to paranormals, right?”

  “The age thing doesn’t bother me.” Lawson stood. He walked over to the couch and sat next to me. Resting his hand on my knee, Lawson waited for me to look at him. “How did Lynette die?”

  “She’d fallen in love with this human. Bruce wasn’t her mate, but she claimed she loved him. But because he wasn’t her mate, she couldn’t change him. You, ah, know about the recessive gene thing, right?”

  “Um….”

  “See, there’s this recessive gene some humans have. That gene is how we can tell if a human is our mate or not. Like for instance, you smell like the ocean to me: sharp, clean, and salty. It’s the best thing I’ve ever smelled.” I covered Lawson’s hand with my own. “You didn’t just smell good, you smelled like mine.”

  “Yeah, Janelle told me.” Lawson threaded our fingers together. “You smell like coconut.”

  “Really? Cool.” Relief that Lawson was sitting so close and willing to touch flowed through me. “So anyhow, this recessive gene mutates during the blood transfer between humans and shifters. This allows humans to develop shifter abilities like rapid healing and lifespan expansion. The human is no longer human then, so no seeing human doctors and stuff. They can’t shift, though.”

  “I see.”

  “Lynette couldn’t mate with him and extend his lifespan because he didn’t have the gene, so his scent didn’t call to her. They’d been together about three years. That last year things started going bad. She’d call me and… cry.”

  Lawson squeezed my fingers. “That must’ve been hard.”

  “It was, but she refused to leave him. Believe me, I begged her to. She’d left the clowder and moved in with him a year after they started dating. I didn’t want her to go, but… well, he was human and didn’t want to live around us.”

  “How odd. I’ve never had a problem living around the Vetala.”

  “Well, to be honest, we probably didn’t make him feel welcome.” I squirmed on the couch. “Our clowder didn’t use to be very welcoming to humans. But Kirk, Dolf’s other mate, is changing that.”

  “Really?”

  “Um, yeah. Kirk can be very outspoken. And strong-willed. And an ass if he needs to be. He’s definitely shaken things up and, well, it was time. Our clowder needed a wake-up call. Nothing has been the same since he showed up.”

  “Change can be painful. Kirk sounds like a very interesting person, but I’m more interested in hearing about Lynette.”

  I snorted. “He is. Anyhow, Lynette called there at the end to let me know she was pregnant. She was freaked, and so was Bruce.”

  “I didn’t know a paranormal could get pregnant by a human.”

  “It’s rare. It’s very, very rare. If it does happen, the pregnancy usually terminates. But if the baby manages to go full term, it usually dies within the first year. Even with those odds, a few do manage to live. The baby is a kind of hybrid.”

  “Wow. But isn’t that kind of what mates are?”

  “Mates can’t shift, Lawson. These hybrids can. That makes them very, very different. They have shifter abilities, but they’re, like… diluted. They don’t live as long, nor are they as strong as us.”

  “I see. Have you ever met one?”

  “Nope. There were rumors of a guy up north somewhere. I have no idea if the rumor was true or not.” I shook my hair back. “We’re getting off-topic. That last year they were together, Bruce was drinking, staying out all hours, and apparently he hit her a few times.”

  “Oh dear.”

  “Yeah.” I took another sip of tea. “Well. Since we heal fast, bruises never last long. I showed up one afternoon while he was supposed to be at work. She’d quit her job.”

  “Classic signs.”

  “Yeah, she didn’t see it that way, but the fact was she didn’t have her own money anymore. All her friends had drifted off too.” With my free hand, I picked up my tea and sipped. My throat was suddenly dry. I quickly put it back when I saw my hand shake. “Her jaw was bruised. She’d scrambled eggs for breakfast, and he’d wanted fried.”

  “Jesus.” Lawson scowled. “What an asshole. She should’ve hit him upside the head with the freaking skillet.”

  “Yeah. Point is I saw the bruises. I left before he came home that day so he wouldn’t have another reason to get mad at her. I tried to talk her into leaving, but she wouldn’t.”

  “You couldn’t make her.”

  “They lived out in the middle of nowhere, so they didn’t have neighbors,” I said. “No one to hear the screams.”

  “No one to help either,” Lawson added.

  “Exactly. Well, he finally went too far. She found out she was pregnant, and he was flipping out about having some ‘thing’ as a child. At least that’s what she said he said. She called, wanting out.”

  “Kind of late to freak out after the fact.”

  “True, but they didn’t think this was really possible.” I pulled my hand away from Lawson and rubbed both over my face. Gods, I dreaded this. “She planned to walk away, just leave with nothing more than the clothes on her back. He’d taken her keys and wouldn’t let her drive.”

  “That’s what they do.” Lawson stroked my hair. “They isolate their victims.”

  “He sure did. She was all alone up there, and he’d started beating her pretty severely.” I gulped, staring off into space, voice dropping. “She didn’t want her phone bill to show a lot of calls to me so we picked a date and a time for her to leave. I’d get there early one morning after he left for work, help her pack, and then get her out of there. Should have been simple. Instead I walked into a nightmare.”

  Lawson didn’t speak.

  “When I got there I noticed his truck in the drive and the front door was partially open. That was the first sign things had gone tits up. I parked and got out. I probably didn’t take five steps before I smelled blood, I didn’t stop to think. I just ran inside….”

  Lawson let his hand drop from my hair and squeezed my knee.

  “Do you have any idea how well blood shows up on white tile floors? No? Well, it does. Horribly so. I walked down the hallway that led to the kitchen, following the bloody handprints on the wall. It was the longest walk of my life.”

  “I can’t even…. Lord.”

  “Some part of me must have known what I was going to find. I never once called out as I walked toward the kitchen. I found her there on the floor. It takes a lot to kill a shifter, did you know that?”

  “I do, yes,” Lawson said. “You guys are pretty strong and heal fast.”

  “But we can’t heal from a gunshot wound.”

  Chapter Nine

  Lawson

  I FOUGHT to keep the horror off my face. I’d never seen a gunshot victim, but I could imagine the amount of blood Heller must have waded through.

  “Yeah. The truly horrifying thing was she’d shifted. I’m guessing her wounds were bad enough she had to shift to heal. But shifting meant she spontaneously aborted the baby.”

  “Oh dear God.”

  “Yeah, what a choice—her life or the life of a child that probably wasn’t going to survive anyhow. I’m not sure if he shot her while she was human and she shifted to heal, or if she shifted then he shot her. In the end, it didn’t matter. I found a cat in the kitchen, not a human body. She was dead, there was blood everywhere, and I found his ass in the living room… still alive.”

  “Oh Jesus,” I whispered, a chill racing up my spine. I wanted to pull Heller off the couch and onto my lap, but
I didn’t.

  “Before she shifted she must have stabbed him with a butcher knife in the upper part of his chest. It was still sticking out of him. At least she’d gotten the fucker a few times before burying the knife in his chest—he was bleeding from the gut too. He was losing a lot of blood, but he probably could have lived if he’d received medical treatment.”

  I shuddered. Heller told the story by rote, lost in his own head as he relived the memories. A human had killed Heller’s sister, his pregnant sister—a pregnancy that sounded like it was doomed from the get-go on top of everything else. Then there was the abuse. Fuck, this wasn’t going to end well, I just knew.

  “I’m a beta. I can kill to protect my Alpha or his mate. I will give my life to protect Dolf or his mates too. I… I never thought I could kill to meet my own needs.”

  God, I was right. Hearing Heller say it surprised me, but then again, it didn’t. Heller’s hatred of humans had to have a damn good reason, and this was it. Murder was a serious motivating factor for loathing a species, as far as I was concerned.

  “You don’t have to finish this. I get it.”

  Heller suddenly looked at me. “But I do. I sat there and let him bleed out while he begged me to help him, begged to live. I knew he was hurting, and I was glad. The more he begged, the more I laughed at him. If I saw some of the cuts on him were bleeding less, I made sure to reopen the wounds. I might not have been the one to deliver the killing blow, but I sure helped death along. Do you understand what I’m telling you?”

  “I do.”

  “Do you? I didn’t snap or lose my mind. I knew what I was doing the entire time. I might have been able to save him, and I didn’t. I didn’t want to.”

  “I do understand. Did you know the Vetala would’ve said you earned that right? And I agree with them.”

  “When he tried to crawl away from me, I dragged him back to the middle of the living area, back to the pool of blood he was lying in. He deserved to die wallowing in his own blood. She had. Do you know why he killed her?” Heller asked, almost as if I hadn’t spoken. “Because she was going to leave him—she let it slip she wanted out. That’s it. That’s why he killed her, the fucker.”

  “He was an abusive, jealous nutcase. Obsession has no basis in fact. That’s why there’s such a thing as restraining orders. You can’t apply logic to folks like that because their twisted thinking isn’t based on logic. It doesn’t make me think less of you. The guy got what he deserved.”

  “Maybe.” Heller closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and then opened them. “And maybe not, but you have the right to know what I am.”

  I cupped Heller’s face. “I already know who you are and what you are.”

  “I’m a murderer,” Heller whispered.

  “According to human law, maybe. While I may be human, I’ve lived with paranormals for ten years. The Vetala can be pretty… deadly. My way of thinking is more in line with the supernatural. I don’t know about your species, but according to the Vetala, a family member of a murdered mate can claim the right to demand payment. It often comes in the form of the killer’s life. Do you see? That’s what you did.”

  “But—”

  “Nope, no buts. He had to know what he was getting into by being with a paranormal. Your rules are not like human rules or laws. He was a controlling asshole, and yeah, those aren’t just restricted to the human race. He took her life, and you took his. I’m good with that.”

  Heller shook his head, shock written on his face. “You surprise me.”

  “Is that a bad thing?”

  “Oh no.” Heller grinned slightly. “That’s very good.” Then the grin slid away. “I thought you’d judge me.”

  “I’m not into judging folks. Had too much of that done to me throughout the years.” I shrugged. “So what happened after Bruce died?”

  “Well, the only body there was his. I mean, who’s going to pay attention to a dead cat, but I couldn’t take that chance. Also her blood was everywhere, and there was no way I could clean it up. The last thing any of us need is for a medical examiner getting ahold of a paranormal blood sample.”

  “Yeah, that could cause all kinds of problems.”

  “That’s putting it mildly.” Heller shuddered. “I wrapped her body in a towel and put her in the trunk. After it was all over and done with, I took the car to a junkyard a fellow shifter owned and told him to make it disappear.”

  “Don’t blame you.”

  “Yeah, after Bruce died, I set the house on fire in the hopes the humans wouldn’t be able to get a clear picture of what happened there that night, or get samples of her blood. I hoped the fire would erase any signs of me too.”

  “God.”

  “So long story short is I drove for another hour to make sure I was in a totally unpopulated area, then I parked and carried her even farther into the woods. I buried her using nothing but my claws to dig the hole. I made it so she just… disappeared.”

  “Oh, Heller. You didn’t tell anyone in your clowder?”

  “No. Dolf and his parents had left to attend a mating at another clowder. The cops contacted me not long after to tell me she was missing, Bruce was dead, and their house had burned to the ground. They told me the autopsy showed he’d been stabbed and wanted to talk to my sister. I went in and answered their questions several times. I told them I had no idea where she was. They classified her as a ‘person of interest.’”

  “I see. So nothing happened?”

  “It was a small town, and their resources were nil. Plus they couldn’t find her. Kind of hard to ask questions when you can’t find the person. They did some serious hinting as to what they thought happened, but without anyone to ask and no witness… they finally let the case go.”

  “And you told no one here.”

  “I killed a human. We do try to stay on the good side of human laws. I wasn’t sure how Dolf or my Alpha would react. So I never told anyone. If people asked about her, I made out as if she were living happily ever after but didn’t want to interact with the clowder. I’m not close to a lot of people, so no one delved further.”

  “So you grieved alone.”

  “I….” Heller’s breath hitched. “Well, yeah.”

  I laid my head on Heller’s shoulder. “I’m sorry.”

  “For what?”

  “I’m sorry you had to go through that alone.” I had a feeling Heller often pushed people away. I made up my mind that was going to end right there. This close to Heller, I could feel my mate shivering. Just how much had Heller isolated himself through the years?

  “I….” Suddenly Heller lurched forward, his arms going around me as he buried his face against my neck.

  I wrapped my arms around Heller and pulled him closer, stunned at the wetness I felt on my neck. Never would I have believed Heller would drop his shields to such an extent. Gently I patted Heller on the back as I rocked him. Hardly a sound came from Heller except for an occasional sob or hitching of breath.

  I turned my head and spoke softly into Heller’s hair. “Easy. I’ve got you. It’s okay. I’m so sorry, Heller. So, so sorry you went through that by yourself.”

  “I’m so tired of being alone,” Heller whispered, voice broken. “So very tired of being on the outside looking in. Please….”

  I tightened my arms around him. Could Heller be asking for what I thought? “What, Heller? Please what? What do you want?”

  “You,” Heller murmured. “I want you. Please tell me you don’t hate me for what I did. Or how I acted in the beginning. Please give me a chance… please don’t leave me.”

  Squeezing my eyes closed, I fought not to let the tears escape, my heart threatening to break at the anguish I heard in Heller’s voice.

  I quickly opened them. “I’m not leaving. Hear me? I’m not going anywhere. I don’t hate you. I couldn’t. You’re my mate, and I’m not ever going to leave you.”

  Heller leaned back. “I’m so, so sorry.”

  I gently wiped the te
ars off Heller’s cheeks. “Let’s clear the air, shall we? You acted like an ass, yes. But now I know why. You hurt me, but I’m over it. I forgive you.”

  “You do? But, but—”

  “I do. Now I want you to let that go. It’s been dealt with, and it’s over. We’re not going to keep hashing this out. No more tears, or guilt, or whatever else is going on in that head of yours.”

  “Just like that?”

  “Just like that. You got on your knees for me, remember? So yes, it’s done. Okay?”

  “Yeah, okay.” A small grin lit Heller’s face as he tilted his head and kissed my fingers. “Thank you.”

  My breath caught as passion ripped through me. Heller’s lips were so soft, and they felt so good against my fingers. My heart rate spiked. I wanted… I wanted to taste that insanely sexy mouth of Heller’s. I tapped one finger against Heller’s lips.

  Heller’s eyes widened, and he opened his mouth slightly. I ran my finger across Heller’s lips and then I slipped a finger inside, into heat and wetness. My cock twitched, jerked, and filled much too fast for comfort.

  “Suck,” I demanded.

  Heller obeyed, closing his mouth and using his tongue to caress my finger. Heller flicked his tongue, doing things that were probably illegal in some states. A small, needy purr escaped Heller as he worked my digit.

  Holy hell, where did he learn that? My dick pressed against my zipper, aching. “That’s a talented tongue you got there. Can’t wait to feel it on my cock.”

  Heller’s eyes were hooded. He reached up, wrapped his hand around my wrist, then opened his mouth and showed just how agile his tongue really was.

  “Fuck,” I moaned. “I swear, if you don’t want my dick there, stop. I can’t take much more.”

  Heller let my wet finger slip out. “If we… I’m not sure I can just play around with you. If we make love, there’s a good chance I’m going to bite you and start the mating process. If you’re not ready for that, then we’d better not do anything.”