20 Shades of Shifters: A Paranormal Romance Collection

by Demelza Carlton

  She leapt straight toward me. Instead of ducking to one side, I flapped as hard as I could, gaining altitude; her limbs extended just as I had expected, but I snapped out my foot, kicking furiously at the whip, knocking it away. A bolt of power slammed into my knee, but I sucked up the pain and ignored it. I was fine. I could still fly.

  Juliet landed into a crouch. I heard, rather than saw, another of the nephilim leap up toward me and I spun around, kicking that one too, this time right square in the face. She fell back, landing heavily on top of one of their SUVs, crushing the roof in like a tin can.

  Howling, Juliet came after me again, lashing my chest with the tip of her electric lance. Gabe didn’t even shoot her; he had seen how useless it was.

  We’d fucked up. We’d fucked up bad.

  Five on Two

  Pinchot State Forest

  New York State

  There were too many nephilim and they were too resistant to my claws and Gabe’s holy bullets. Or whatever the hell it was that his gun actually fired. We had no time for this. I needed the only thing that we had seen could actually hurt them—the blade disguised as a lens cap.

  I took out my phone and, with a swipe, turned on the light.

  “What are you doing?” asked Gabe, curious, keeping his eyes on the circling nephilim below us, like sharks just waiting for an opening. For one of us to make a mistake, let down our guard so we could get the shit kicked out of us. That damn whip hurt.

  “Nothing,” I said, subtly showing him the phone in one hand and nothing in the other. “Just looking.”

  His eyes widened in alarm. “What the hell—”

  Gabe’s protest was cut short by a leaping nephilim. He swung around, putting his fist into its plastic face, shattering it like a glass bowl; the creature slumped down to Earth, twitching spasmodically as it ‘died’, but I knew better than to believe that. I’d smashed the hell out of Juliet’s head before, and even cut off her arm. That thing’s wounds would be healed sooner rather than later.

  But as I looked, I saw the faintest glint of a glossy surface. A perfectly round disk. The lens cap! Just beside the front right tyre of Laila’s Honda.

  The revelation almost proved deadly for me as Juliet seized upon my distraction, jumping into the air and snapping her whip at me, lashing it around my legs and dragging me down. Another flash of lighting blasted into me, and I wished I’d worn gumboots.

  I folded my wings and fell willingly, plummeting out of the dark night sky and crashing heavily on the hard gravel of the road. I squirmed and kicked, trying to free my legs, but the whip seemed almost animated, writhing around against me, fighting my efforts to free myself.

  I was so close to the Honda. I scooted back, reaching out for the lens cap, stretching my arm out as far as it could go.

  Juliet yanked me back, delivering another painful shock through my system. “Not so fast,” she hissed and began reeling me in like a fish, putting hand over hand on the whip, each pull dragging me roughly across the coarse ground, tearing up my pants and scraping up my backside.

  The pain wasn’t much and I was tough enough to survive a bit of gravel rash, but the location of the injury made me see red. That fucking bitch was messing with the bestest, most perfect backside all the realms had ever seen, and I would rather be hung, drawn and quartered than let it come to harm. Gabe and two other nephilim wrestled on the ground, punching and kicking at each other. I had to fight too.

  Dammit. Dammit! I dug my heels into the ground, pulling back on the whip, fighting Juliet to a standstill. She pulled. I pulled. We rocked back and forth. With a roar, I yanked the whip out of Juliet’s hands, the weapon falling to the ground with a white flash.

  For a brief second, Juliet and I stared at each other. She went for the whip, extending her arm out like a spring. I turned and ran back to the lens cap, snatching it up.

  Juliet snapped her whip at my wrist. I cut the tip off, my blade effortlessly severing the tip. A shock ran through the metal hilt, causing my wings to jerk and twitch, trails of smoke rising from my body.

  Ow.

  Snarling angrily, I ran towards Juliet, but one of the other nephilim stepped in front of me, shielding her with her body. Which was totally fine with me; I plunged the knife right into the creature’s head, right between her eyes, the weapon sinking into the hilt.

  Blue-green flames leapt from the wound, black blood spraying onto the ground. The nephilim stared at me. Its eyes ignited, melting into flaming pits on its face. Its whole body disintegrated into ash, crumbling into a pile that the wind scattered away.

  Gabe managed to overpower one of the creatures he was wrestling with, grabbing her head and twisting it right off its shoulders in a spray of dark gore. He put his pistol to the other one’s eye socket and blasted it into stillness. He wiped away blood from his mouth, slowly struggling up to his feet.

  Now there was only Juliet, Gabe, and I. And she was looking a lot less cocky than she had been.

  “Ready to talk terms?” I asked, grinning just a little bit. “Looks like we have you outnumbered.”

  Juliet snapped her whip, flashing her teeth. “No.”

  “Okay,” I said, reversing my grip on the blade. “Time to die.”

  Juliet smiled.

  She actually smiled. Not in the happy, relieved way, but in the malevolent, victorious way. And I sensed something was very wrong.

  The Turn of the Tide

  Pinchot State Forest

  New York State

  Juliet began to grow.

  Ten feet tall. Twenty. Thirty. Up and up and up she went, expanding outward in every direction, her muscles bulging and stretching. I’d seen this before and it was not good; back then Gabe’s pistol could hurt it, and my claws could tear big chunks out of her flesh. Would such a thing still be possible?

  I casually walked over to the two nephilim Gabe had dispatched and, with two quick thrusts of my dagger, made sure they weren’t going to get up again. With the grim task complete, I smiled to Gabe. “Ready for mega-Juliet, round two?”

  He didn’t look so confident. “The holy discharges don’t seem to affect her when she’s regular human sized. I doubt they’ll do very much to her at all when she’s larger.”

  “Hehe,” I said, giving him a playful shove on the shoulder. “Holy discharge. Apparently she likes it when you shoot that into her b—”

  “Into her butt, yes.” He groaned. “Honestly, at this point, I almost feel like she should just crush me and put me out of my misery.”

  Juliet continued to enlarge. I didn’t know how big she got but it must have been over fifty feet. Her gigantic feet spread apart to better spread her newly acquired mass.

  “Hey, don’t wish too hard for that,” I said, pointing at her with the lens cap blade which, I had to admit, looked very silly. “But hey. Try shoot her.”

  He levelled his weapon at her chest and squeezed the trigger. White-gold rounds splashed off her chest, ricocheting off into the night sky like reverse falling stars.

  Not even dented. Gabe, slowly and deliberately, slid the pistol behind his back and away. “We should probably let you lead the charge on this one,” he said, brushing the dirt off his shirt with a disdainful look. “Dammit,” he muttered. “I think one of them bit me.”

  “Kinky fuckers, aren’t they?” I said, staring up at Juliet.

  “It’s time you stopped talking,” said Juliet, stomping toward me, kicking over a tall tree. It fell near one of her SUVs, the branches whipping across the bonnet, the trunk almost crushing the engine.

  I held the dagger in a reverse grip, settling into a fighting pose, my wings close and tucked up behind me. Damn. We had to get close enough to stab her, but her feet were moving so quickly, her hands so heavy…if we messed up, we would be crushed.

  Juliet picked up the fallen tree, holding it comfortably in one hand like a baseball bat. She swung it down at me, a heavy, clumsy swing that I stepped out of the way of, hopping into the air.

 
With surprising swiftness she swung the tree trunk across and up, whipping me with the branches all along it, the trunk itself slamming into my ankles, sending me spinning and crashing to the ground. I kept a tight hold of the lens cap as I went sprawling.

  “Grace!” Gabe ran over to me, feet kicking up loose gravel as he slid in beside me. “You okay?”

  “I’m fine,” I said, spitting out a mouthful of dirt and grabbing hold of his shoulder, pulling myself up again.

  There was a brief moment where, just for a split second, I lost focus. I forgot we were in a pitched battle. Gabe was smiling, relieved, and I was stinging from all the tree branches, but okay.

  Juliet slammed her foot down on Gabe. There was a sickening wet crunch.

  Then silence.

  My Squish

  Pinchot State Forest

  New York State

  For a singular, horrific moment I could do nothing but just stand there like a dumb idiot, watching Juliet’s colossal foot grind into the ground.

  “Gabe!” The word came out as a strangled gasp, barely audible. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t breathe. Could just stare, mindlessly, at Juliet’s foot.

  And then the anger took over. With a primal roar I let my blade lead the way, digging the weapon up to the hilt into Juliet’s ankle, tearing it free with a vicious yank.

  No black blood. No blue-green flames.

  “Fool,” said Juliet, lifting her foot up to crush me with it, too. Despite the danger I risked a look down at Gabe. He was lying face down, his wings broken and crumpled, and he wasn’t moving.

  The sight put anger back into my veins. I extended my wings, leaping up toward Juliet’s foot before she could bring it down, slamming the dagger into the sole, dragging it across her flesh, slicing open a massive wound in the thing that had crushed Gabe.

  She slammed me down onto the ground, snapping some of the bones in my ribs like kindling, but I barely felt a thing. My rage was total. I used the impact to force my hand into her massive foot, the blade leading the way, screaming in fury as it burrowed into her.

  The bitch had beaten Gabe. Killed Gabe. She had hunted me and hurt me and made me afraid and angry and I would be stuck in Heaven for ten thousand years before I let her kill me too. I tore my hand free and stabbed again and again and again and again and again, the weapon slicing off her whole foot. She tried to shake me off, but I held on, screaming and stabbing and cutting and hacking and slicing.

  Finally, she stumbled and fell over, crashing heavily to the ground. I scrambled over her body, crawling over her, using the blade and my claws like ice picks, digging them in deep and dragging myself up on her.

  Juliet slammed her fist down on my back. The bones in my wings crumpled, breaking in a half dozen places, but I kept climbing until my blade rested over her sternum.

  She tried to bash me away, but I leapt off her body, up into the air, and then plummeted down, slamming my dagger in past the flesh of her chest, into her body, in deep like a falling star into the desert. Right to her heart. To her core.

  For a moment there was nothing. I could not even pull the dagger out of I wanted to. Juliet looked at me. I looked at her. She started to laugh, a low rumbling noise like distant thunder,

  Then the smoke came. At first just a few wisps, almost indistinguishable from the trickle of black blood that leaked from such a deep wound. Then it grew, more and more, until the black smokes came in puffs and bursts, as though some explosive power within her was giving out.

  Juliet screamed in pain, a ghostly, reverberating wail that was absolute music to my ears. I twisted the knife savagely, summoning more smoke. Her whole body lit up from within, glowing green and blue, flashing and pulsing as though her whole body had been stuffed with Christmas lights.

  And then, with a giant burst of dust that exploded into every direction, Juliet died in a massive explosion that must have been seen for miles.

  The blast blew me back against a fallen tree, battering me against the thick, unyielding trunk, snapping my other wing and grounding me. That one I definitely felt. Spots swam in front of my vision and blood trickled out of my mouth, suggesting that those busted ribs had done a little more damage than I’d initially suspected.

  But I couldn’t think about that. About anything other than Gabe. Barely able to walk, I staggered drunkenly to my feet and stumbled, almost helplessly, through the thick fields of blackened ash that had washed over everything. The remains of Juliet’s body swirled all around me. I couldn’t see Gabe. I didn’t know where his body was.

  I dropped the dagger. In a panic I began feeling around in the dust, brushing it aside with my hands, searching. Searching. “Gabe!” I shouted, my voice barely anything more than a strangled cry. “Come on, Gabe! Gabe! Tell me where you are, come on, I’m here. It’s Grace. It’s Grace and I’m coming to get you. I’m here. I just need to know where you are, Gabe. I just—I just need to know where you are!”

  A stupid idea came to me. I could blow the dust away with my wings! A searing pain that shot through my back the moment I moved them, however, dissuaded me from that notion immediately.

  Then, with a surprised start, I realised that I was standing on his hand.

  “Gabe!” I grabbed his wrist with both hands, dragging him out of the reeking, sulphurous ash, pulling him up so that he could breathe. “Hah!”

  My elation faded almost immediately. He was badly injured, bright red blood spilling out onto the ashes, forming a sickly coppery congealed mess that stuck to everything. Groaning in pain, I dragged him out of the ashes and out onto the hard gravel of the road, down beside Laila’s car.

  And I hoped this wasn’t where he was going to die.

  Pain and Darkness

  Pinchot State Forest

  New York State

  “Gabe,” I pleaded. “Come on. Come back to me, come back to me.” Fearful of what I might find, I turned him over onto his back so I could get a good look at his condition.

  His arms were dislocated. They flopped around on his body like limp noodles. His ribcage had taken one hell of a beating, just like mine had, but it…looked intact. Broken ribs, sure, we both likely had that, but I couldn’t see anything life threatening.

  He was breathing. His heart was beating, strong and firm. His wings, just like mine, were broken, but overall he was tough. I had to give him that.

  Then, with obvious reluctance and pain, his eyes fluttered open.

  I laughed, cackling insanely with relief, and I lay my head down on his chest.

  “Ow, ow, ow,” said Gabe, and I immediately reconsidered.

  “Sorry.” I settled instead for gently patting one of the areas of his body that wasn’t obviously hurt and bleeding, his hip. It took me a little bit to find it, though, which was a worry. “You’re hurt pretty bad,” I said, completely genuinely. Angels and demons didn’t really heal the same way humans did. We could slowly patch ourselves up, but our power came from our planes of existence. I would probably be okay, probably, but Gabe…

  “I’m fine,” he wheezed, giving a wet cough, his throat full of blood.

  He wasn’t fine. And it couldn’t be something that lasted.

  “Okay,” I said, steeling myself. “You gotta send me back to Heaven,” I said. “You gotta get me there so I can send for help.”

  “Banished,” he whispered. “They…don’t care.”

  “They care. It’s like you said, you know, you’re still an angel. You’re still one of them. They’ll let me visit again, just for a tiny bit, if it’ll save you.”

  The look on his face, regretful and hesitant, told me his answer more than anything else I could have done.

  We could fix this. We had fought five nephilim and come out on top, including Juliet as a massive giant. This wasn’t even a problem…not a problem. “Tell me how to fix you,” I said, grinding my teeth together. “Tell me what I can do. There must be something.”

  Gabe said nothing, laying his head back on the road and looking up at the night
sky. “It’s a lovely night,” he said, softly.

  “No, it’s not. It’s a shit night and if you die here, you stupid dumb feather-brained piece of garbage, I will seriously claw my way into Heaven, through its walls and guards and everything, and I will drag your sorry arse out of there and get you—” my voice cracked. “And get you brought back to life. Somehow.”

  “Not possible,” he said, voice barely a whisper.

  I needed something. Something…

  Maybe it wasn’t necessary to go to Heaven to get help. The celestials were watching what I was doing with great interest—that much they had told me. Watching me. Probably watching right now, possibly?

  “Hey!” I shouted to the sky. “I know you’re up there! I know you can see me!” Tears ran down my face, hissing faintly as they evaporated, acidic and corrosive demon tears. “You can’t let him die like this, fighting to protect someone else! You goody-goody fucking two-shoes love that garbage, don’t you?” I waved my arms around like a lunatic. “Come on! Put up or shut up, you winged arseholes! I’m calling you out right here!”

  Silence. The wind whispered gently through the trees, rustling the leaves, and the SUV engines ticked over quietly. No answers. No voices from above.

  Then it would have to be from somewhere else.

  “Lucifer!” I shouted, my eyes downcast. “I’ve reconsidered. I will be your hand, Dark Prince. I will do it!”

  From behind a tree—as though he had been hiding there the whole time—the almost skeletal form of Lucifer slid into view, gliding as though the soles of his feet were covered in ice. “It’s rude to shout,” he said, his voice calm but full of dark promise. “I saw you found my gift.”

  As much as I wanted to save Gabe and focus my attention on that, I couldn’t help but acknowledge this. “I did. Thank you. Without it, we would both be dead.”