Shifters in the Shadows: Seventeen Paranormal Romances of Sexy Shifters, Dangerous Vamps, & Things That Go Bump in the Night

by J. K Harper

  “No, they aren’t.”

  Shock

  Pyotr

  “What are you saying?”

  “You have to find them and mate them before you turn to dust.”

  I sputtered for a second.

  “Hold on. You’re telling me that my fated mates are my childhood best friends…and I have to find them and mate them in the next few days?”

  “Yup.”

  I didn’t want to say that she was insane or unhinged, even though I was thinking it.

  “I’m not insane,” she said, cool as a cucumber. “It’s your destiny.”

  Right now, I was thinking that she was one egg shy of a dozen, but I didn’t want to set her off.

  Instead, I got to my feet.

  “Thank you for your time.”

  “It’s your destiny…and you’ll see it tonight.”

  I wasn’t going to be seeing anything, thank you very much, but I bowed slightly to the witch-fairy and left her house.

  I let out a sigh of relief as I walked towards my car. I started my car, asked my GPS where the nearest decent hotel was, and then backed out and got on the road again. Oh well, that chore was over. I would drive to a hotel with good blackout curtains. Tomorrow night, when I woke up again, I could do research on the sunniest place on Earth. Obviously, it would be somewhere near or on the Equator. Maybe Ecuador?

  I was driving towards the hotel when I saw glowing eyes in the darkness.

  “Fuck!” I shouted as I swerved to miss the dog. If I’d only been paying attention rather than trying to figure out my plans, I wouldn’t have needed to swerve.

  The dog, instead of cowering away or yelping, went over to my car as if he were curious.

  Even with four paws on the ground, he was massive. I realized my mistake when he was right outside my window.

  He wasn’t a dog at all.

  I had less to fear than a human would when it came to wolves, but that didn’t mean that I wouldn’t regret hurting one at night. If I’d only paid attention, I would’ve been in a better position.

  “You okay, boy?”

  The dog’s eyes glowed in the darkness.

  Slowly, the dog’s eyes stayed exactly the same, except the rest of him morphed into a human.

  “Pyotr? What are you doing here?”

  “Viktor?” His voice was deeper, but he said my name exactly the same way as he used to…more than three hundred years ago.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “I asked first.”

  “Get in the car,” I urged. I had no idea what kind of neighborhood we were in, but I didn’t find it prudent to lurk around unknown areas at night. I wasn’t the scariest monster out there. Not by a long shot.

  Viktor, totally unconcerned with his nudity, loped around the car before opening the door and getting settled in the passenger seat.

  I winced, thinking about his butt on my pristine leather, but I’d get the car detailed later. I paid triple to a car detailing facility that accommodating my strange requests to always drop off and pick up my car after sunset.

  Now I had a shifter in my passenger seat. Was the seer right? Was this the beginning of meeting my destiny?

  Soon, we were pulling into the parking lot of the hotel. I checked the time.

  Dawn was in 20 minutes.

  “Stay in the car. I’ll be right back out to give you a key.”

  “No problem,” Viktor said, still completely unconcerned with his nudity. Of the three of us, he had always been the most relaxed. I was the planner, the general. Nastia was our peacemaker. She could talk a leprechaun out of his gold, and he’d thank her for the privilege.

  I had just enough time to get a room, get in there for a robe, get downstairs with it and a key for Viktor, and hustle him upstairs to the room.

  If only I didn’t have to walk at human pace! But the hotel was sure to have cameras everywhere. I didn’t want to be caught.

  Viktor put on the robe when I gave it to him. It occurred to me that I should be more frightened to let him into my room when I was vulnerable and literally sleeping like the dead — but if he’d come to kill me, he was welcome to do it.

  I was dying in a few days anyway.

  Wrench

  Viktor

  When dawn came, I didn’t have to instantly fall asleep like Pyotr. I wandered around the room, a little restless.

  It was clear that Pyotr had changed…being knocked out when the sun came up was a clear indication that he was a vampire now.

  I drank a little water from the tap before getting into one of the beds. I could sleep whenever.

  Now that I was finally on the right track, I could rest a little easier.

  * * *

  I could hear Pyotr moving around the room.

  I sat up.

  “Good night, Pyotr.”

  “What are you doing here?” he asked without preamble. “I haven’t seen you in forever…and suddenly you show up in my life on the night when I’m supposed to hunt for you. What’s going on?”

  I shrugged. “Dunno.”

  “I was coming from the seer’s home when I met you.”

  “I was heading for the seer, actually.”

  “Did you have an appointment?”

  “No.”

  “So she had no idea that you were coming?”

  “Yup.”

  “I find that hard to believe. It feels like some sort of setup. What’s your game, dog?”

  I rubbed my eyes and yawned. His sudden hostility wasn’t anything too scary for me. I thought that in a fair fight, I could probably take the bloodsucker.

  “Listen, Pyotr, she gave me this really vague prophecy when I was reborn. I needed to ask her for clarification.”

  “What was it?”

  “I’m supposed to be part of a power trio, whatever that means.”

  Pyotr’s fangs sprang out.

  “That seer,” he spat, “she’s manipulating us and I don’t know why.”

  “Why can’t you just go with the flow? The three of us are meant to be together.”

  “Do you even know who the third person is supposed to be?”

  “No,” I said.

  “How do you even know that I’m meant to be part of your so-called power trio?”

  “Instinct.”

  He snorted. “I’m not an animal. I don’t operate on instinct. You’re going to have to do better than that.”

  “When I saw you again, everything clicked into place. I can’t be clearer than that, because that’s what it felt like.”

  Pyotr’s face softened. “I felt it too…but I don’t swing that way.”

  “Neither do I,” I reassured Pyotr. “But I think that you’re supposed to be the other male in my power trio.”

  “How much do you know about power trios?”

  “Not a lot,” I said cheerfully. “But I get the feeling that you do.”

  “I served one.”

  I raised my eyebrows at him.

  “Excuse me?” He didn’t seem like a servant to me.

  “My Maker was a third of a power trio. Immortals are made even stronger by being together. One of each species. One vampire, one witch, and one shifter.”

  I looked at him and then down at my own hand.

  “So we’re the vampire and shifter…where’s our witch?”

  “The better question is who she is. You aren’t going to believe me when I tell you.”

  “Who is it?”

  “Nastia. Do you remember her?”

  I thought back to the time when the three of us were together.

  “Tiny girl. Very pretty. Very curly hair. But she’s human and long dead.”

  “Nope.” Viktor had a slight grin on his lips.

  “You’re telling me that Nastia is alive? She’s our witch?”

  “According to the seer, yes.”

  “Well, let’s go find her.”

  “It’s not that simple.” Viktor’s eyes were dark.

  “What’s stand
ing in our way?”

  “In a way, Nastia did die. I can hack into basically anything connected to any network connected to the Internet, and she’s disappeared off of the face of the Earth since age 13. There’s no obituary, so she didn’t die.”

  “And if she’s a witch, she’s basically immortal.”

  “Right. So that means that she probably changed her name.”

  “That puts a wrench in the works.”

  “Right.”

  “I’m starving.” On cue, my stomach growled.

  “Go hunt.”

  “Human food is good enough for me. I guess it’s a little harder for you, bloodsucker.”

  “I’m fine,” he sniffed. “Any kind of blood is fine. I can go into a grocery store for an adequate amount of blood. If I went around drinking humans, somebody would notice.”

  “Good to know. Both of us are fine eating human food.”

  “Drinking, but sure,” he corrected me.

  “So what’s the plan? How are we going to find out her new name?”

  “I have a contact that might be able to help us.”

  “Yeah? Who?”

  “Someone who goes by the handle MIRA.”

  “Mirror?”

  “MIRA, dolt.”

  “I’ve had enough of seers, honestly. The one who prophesied what my future would hold gives me the creeps. And I don’t understand it, because she’s a pretty harmless woman.” I ran my hand through my hair, making it all stick up.

  “Yeah, I don’t understand it, either, but I feel the same way about the seer.”

  “So how are we going to find MIRA?”

  “Do you have a cell phone?” Pyotr looked around the room, as if an electronic device would materialize.

  I looked down and sighed. “Werewolf, remember? I didn’t have even have clothes. Why would I have a cell phone?”

  “Just checking. MIRA is a little paranoid.”

  “A little paranoid.”

  “Pretty paranoid,” Pyotr admitted. “He thinks that Big Brother is always watching.”

  “That’s a bit much, right? Does he wear a foil hat?”

  “Uh, no. He pretty much is Big Brother. He can hack literally anything on a computer. He says that we wouldn’t believe the quantity of data that the government collects in America.”

  I winced. “Okay, then.”

  Finding Nastia

  Viktor

  Pyotr took us straight out of the hotel. Apparently, the hotel that we were staying at let you check out through an app.

  “Buckle up. Also, feel free to fall asleep in the car. That way you won’t mind being blindfolded.”

  “Paranoid motherfucker, isn’t he?”

  In response, Pyotr just took a black bag out of the glove compartment.

  “Sorry, I’m not into that kind of thing.”

  “Har-har. Put it on.” He didn’t seem like the bag was negotiable.

  When I put it over my head, it was lights out.

  I didn’t mind, though. I could sleep forever. Shifter bodies took a lot of energy to operate on a normal basis.

  * * *

  I woke up when the car came to a stop.

  “Are we here?”

  “Yeah. Take off the mask.”

  When I took it off, I saw that we were in front of a one-story ranch-style house.

  “This is not where I thought that the best hacker in the world lived.”

  “He says that he’s not the best hacker in the world, just the best one in the United States.”

  “Okay then.” I had no idea. I was too old to be good at newfangled technology.

  I got out of the car, tossing the mask on the passenger seat. I cast a doubtful look at the house.

  “Dude, are you sure that we’re in the right place?”

  He didn’t even respond. He just knocked on the door and said, “Pyotr here.”

  He eyeballed some sort of camera that did a retina scan or something.

  Then the camera turned to me. I heard a click of something opening.

  “And guest.”

  The door unlocked. A robotic voice said, “Welcome.”

  I walked into the house and realized that the windows must have blackout curtains, because inside there were bright fluorescent lights. It was almost daytime in here.

  “Pyotr! What an unexpected delight. Come in, come in.”

  I was expecting the kind of overweight 40-year-old that you found living in his mother’s basement.

  Instead, I saw a child.

  “How old are you?” I blurted.

  He pushed his glasses up his nose. “I’m turning 19 next month,” he said defensively.

  “Are you fucking joking?” I hissed at Pyotr.

  “He’s the best,” Pyotr said.

  I eyed the kid. “I have shoes older than you.” And that was saying a lot, since shifters shredded a lot of their clothing, including their footwear.

  “Gross.” The kid didn’t seem impressed.

  I looked back at Pyotr. Was this some sort of crazy joke? But he seemed to be serious. Both of us were over 300 years old…I supposed that if he trusted an infant to hack for him, I might as well go along for the ride.

  “Right then, sorry. I believe that you’re the best.”

  “Good, because I am. Now take a seat. Pyotr texted me the details. You’re looking for a witch named Nastia.”

  “He’s human!” It was against the rules to reveal magic to normal humans.

  “No, I’m not. I’m a demi-god. Well, a demi-demi-demi-demi-demi-god. I might have lost track of how many generations were in there, but I’m a descendant of Lugh.”

  “You’re Irish?” I supposed it would explain his pale skin.

  “Part Irish,” he sighed, as if I were really dumb. “I’m American, which means I’m a little bit of everything.”

  “Right.” It was weird for a small child to be talking to me like this. I guessed that in some societies, a teenager might be considered an adult, but it was hard to take him seriously when he was so incredibly young.

  “Sit while I do my magic.”

  I watched his twelve screens as he worked. He was able to maneuver around the multiple processes that he had running.

  After two minutes, I was sorry that I had ever questioned Pyotr. The kid was good, really good. It was as if I was watching six minds at work, which might have been a manifestation of his powers. He had a funny glowing keyboard that seemed to be customized and he sat on a recumbent bike desk as he worked.

  I just kept watching. It was like a montage in a movie, but on fast forward. He slowly pedaled while his fingers played the keyboard like a virtuoso would play a piano.

  “Gotcha,” he said smugly.

  Pictures of a grown-up Nastia were on the screen.

  “Wow,” I said before I could help myself.

  “She’s very beautiful,” Pyotr agreed.

  “She’s so beautiful that it’s practically an insult to call her just beautiful,” I argued. “She’s stunning.”

  “Whatever,” the kid said, unimpressed. “I’m printing out two copies of all the information I can pull on her. Thank you, LexyNexy.”

  He didn’t have the standard sort of computer that you’d expect in a home, and he had an industrial printer somehow, which spat out a huge stack of pages.

  “Good man,” Pyotr said. “I’ll transfer your payment now.”

  He pulled out his phone. He was transferring money in some bank account.

  “If you’re so good that you can find Nastia, why don’t you just shovel money into your own account?” I asked.

  The kid squinted at me.

  “It’s unethical, that’s why. I know that you think I can do just about everything with a computer. And I can. But thieves always get caught. Besides, I have everything that I could ever want.” He waved his hand at his setup. There were wires and things that I didn’t understand there. “I just do jobs now and then to keep my hand in.”

  “Okay.” I decided to sh
ut up.

  “It’s done.”

  “Goodbye now.”

  The king had dismissed us. We left his home.

  Plans

  Viktor

  “That kid is so…”

  “Powerful?”

  “Yeah.”

  “He’s so sharp he could almost cut himself. He’s been careful to take an amount that’s unnoticeable. Lots of small transactions, nothing to draw the eye of the government. He has accounts all over the world and different homes, but the one he has here is the one that he’s the most attached to. It’s his childhood home.”

  “Where are his parents?”

  “They died on his eighteenth birthday. All of a sudden, he had the net worth of two mid-career lawyers and an abundance of free time.”

  “What about college?”

  “Are you joking? He finished undergrad when he was 12. He’s one of the youngest PhD holders in the United States, but he has no real interest in researching for the rest of his life. He says that academia is a snake pit.”

  After spending time with him, I was willing to believe that the prodigy in that house had raced through formal schooling.

  “You have all the info on Nastia?”

  “Yeah.”

  He carefully separated the papers at the halfway mark.

  “Here’s your copy.”

  We walked into the car. I started flipping through the pages, wishing that he’d given us binders or something.

  “So she barely leaves the house?”

  “No driver’s license, so no.” Pyotr was looking through his stack.

  “And the only time that she leaves is for her weekly massage. Such a princess.”

  “More like Rapunzel.”

  “Whatever. So we’re going to have to meet her at her weekly massage at…Haute Stone. Cute. Her appointments are always after hours. Convenient, since you’re a creature of the night.”

  “We’re going to need some supplies.”

  “Supplies? What for?”

  “Has it occurred to you that seeing two people that she thinks are dead would be a shock? What are the chances that she would come with us?”