20 Shades of Shifters: A Paranormal Romance Collection

by Demelza Carlton

  His phone rang, and he picked it up.

  “Ms. Black to see you, sir.”

  That was quick. He wished he could put the meeting off until he’d gotten confirmation as to whether his granddaughter was alive or dead. But he could hardly tell the woman to go away and come back tomorrow. Somehow, he didn’t think that would go down well.

  “Send her in.”

  A few seconds later, the door opened and there she was. A shiver prickled over his skin. She was young—early twenties at a guess—and beautiful, but there was something not quite right about Cassia Black. Tall, slender but curved, and dressed casually in tight jeans and a short, black leather jacket, she shouldn’t have been quite so…intimidating. Her long red-gold hair was pulled away from her face in a ponytail at the nape of her neck. Her eyes were dark, almost black, her lips red. She swayed as she walked—the term sex on legs came to mind, but no way was he going there, even if she had indicated any interest in that direction. And despite his age, many women still were interested—there was nothing so alluring to a certain type of woman than power.

  She came to a halt in front of him. “You have them?” she asked.

  “Not quite.” Her eyes narrowed, cold and almost inhuman. Jesus, he was being fanciful.

  “Tell me.”

  “I have the boy.”

  “I don’t care about the boy. What about the woman?”

  “My men tell me she fled into the forest and was attacked by wolves.” Was he really saying this crap?

  Her nostrils flared. “Wolves? Really? You have got to be fucking kidding me.”

  He wished he was. “I suspect they might have been mistaken. They probably heard a couple of dogs and got freaked out. They’re city boys. But don’t worry. I’ve issued a warrant for her arrest. We’ll have her by morning.”

  “You’d better. Though I suspect you’ll find she’s no longer where you expect her to be. Call me when you hear anything. And don’t let me down on this, or you won’t like the results.”

  She turned and walked out of the room. He didn’t breathe again until the door shut behind her.

  Chapter 6

  As arranged, a helicopter met him on the outskirts of town and flew Finn directly to Washington, DC, landing on the roof of the Stormlord Securities building.

  As he jumped down onto the rooftop, he had a sudden urge for the fresh air of the mountains. Even up here, high above the city streets, the air was heavy with fumes, clogging his nostrils and coating his tongue. He took the elevator down one floor to his office. The company’s main offices were in London, and his brothers were based there, but Finn spent most of his time in the States. He didn’t dwell too much about the whys, because the main one was so he could be close in case Rachel needed him. And look how well that had turned out.

  He wasn’t expecting company, so when he opened the door to his office, he stopped abruptly. Torr stood framed against the floor-to-ceiling windows, staring down at the city below. He turned slowly as Finn entered the room, his eyes narrowed.

  His black hair was pulled into a ponytail, revealing the sharp angles of his face and the scar that ran down from his eyebrow to his upper lip, livid against his pale skin—a sure sign he was pissed.

  Finn glanced around, knowing that wherever Torr was, Bella wouldn’t be far behind. And, yes, there she was, seated on the long leather sofa, legs curled under her. She gave Finn a worried smile.

  “What the hell’s going on?” Torr growled.

  Finn strolled into the room and tried to keep his expression blank. “I wasn’t expecting you. Not that it isn’t a pleasure to see you both. But what are you doing here?”

  Torr’s nostrils flared. Whatever his reason, he wasn’t happy about it. He strode toward the desk, picked up a piece of paper, and held it out to Finn. He stepped closer and took it with a sense of foreboding. When he looked down, his world stopped. It was a photograph of Rachel. Her dark hair covered by a white lace cap, her green eyes so familiar.

  He stared at it for long moments while his mind whirled. He wasn’t prepared. He’d always known that at some point he would have to talk to Torr about this, because there was one very big favor he had to ask of the Destroyer. He’d just believed he had more time. And he hadn’t wanted Torr’s condemnation. Or his pity.

  “Are you going to tell me what the fuck is going on?” Torr said.

  “How did you get this?” Finn asked. Did Torr know?

  “The local police have issued a warrant for the arrest of Rachel Miller. Her picture has been circulated and presumably sent to a local station. Of course it was picked up by our system. And guess what? It’s a match for your wife. But I’m guessing you know that already. Don’t you?”

  Finn’s mind whirled. The police had a warrant for Rachel? The senator must have been behind that. He had to warn her. Stop them. What was the quickest way? Maybe he—

  “Don’t panic.” Torr interrupted his panicked thoughts. “We’ve already stopped it. At least for the moment.”

  He blew out his breath, then crossed the room. He poured himself a scotch, swallowed it in one go, and poured another. Taking it to the window, he stared down at the streets far below. Finally, when he could put it off no longer, he turned back. Torr was leaning against the big desk, arms folded across his chest.

  “How much do you know?” Finn asked.

  “That you’ve been aware of her existence for twenty years. It was easy once we had a name. There’s a file on her in the company records. No picture, of course.” He studied Finn, eyes narrowed. “I can understand why you never went to her at first. She was a child. But she hasn’t been a child for a long time.”

  “She’s only twenty-four.”

  Torr ignored the interruption. “And why did you never tell us? We would have helped guard her, kept her safe until you felt the time was right. I know you’re scared, but we’ve proved it can be done. You can give her eternal life. Be together forever.”

  Finn took a deep breath. “I didn’t tell you, because the time was never going to be right.”

  “What?”

  “I had no intention of ever meeting her. No intention of ever setting the Covenant in motion.”

  “You must, or you lose her forever. The thousand years is nearly up. There will be no more chances.”

  How did he explain that there never had been a chance? He looked at the picture still clutched in his hand. “You don’t understand.”

  “I understand it’s a risk. But worth taking.”

  The disasters of the day rose up inside him. Finn gritted his teeth and hurled his glass. It smashed against the wall opposite. “There is no risk. No chance. She’ll never say, ‘I love you.’ Not to me.”

  He crossed to the sofa and sank down, stretched out his long legs. Bella twisted in her seat, so she faced him, reached out and took his hand. As always, peace flowed from her, a sense of goodness, that maybe the world wasn’t a fucked-up mess and there was hope. It was a lie.

  He rested his head back, stared at the ceiling—so he wouldn’t have to see their expressions—and started talking. “It was different for you, for all of the brothers. You had years with your wives before we made the decision to steal the Elixir. Your love was familiar, strong, unshakable. There was never any doubt, in any of your minds, that you would love for eternity.”

  There had been seven of them, seven angels. He’d thought of them as brothers. Then their leader, Torr, had fallen in love with a human woman and settled on Earth. The others had swiftly followed. Except Finn. He watched on, despairing of finding love. Until Damaris had stepped into his life.

  “Damaris loved you,” Bella said.

  He exhaled. “She never in all our time together said the words.” Shock flashed across Bella’s face, and he continued. “I knew she cared for me. I had no doubts that the words would come. But she was wary. She had her son to think of, and she loved him so much. More than me.”

  “Not more, just differently. He was a child. He needed her.
”

  “I knew that, and I was happy to wait. One day she would have felt safe to give their lives totally into my keeping, and I would have loved him like my own. But I needed time, and time ran out.”

  The decision to steal the Elixir had been in the back of all their minds. Niggling away as their wives grew older and they stayed the same. Then Fabia, Killian’s wife, had taken sick, and when it became clear she would die without intervention, they had brought their plan forward. Broken the laws of Heaven and stolen the Elixir of Life.

  “But she proved her love when she took the Elixir,” Bella said. “She promised you eternity. That was hard for all of us. I was so in love with Torr, but I still remember the fear. Eternity. And we all knew it was wrong. That our very souls would be forfeit. That we would live to see our families die. Never enter Heaven. She must have loved you so much to give up all that.”

  He swallowed, forced the words out. “I never told her.”

  Silence.

  He’d been staring at the ceiling. Now he took a deep breath and faced his leader. Torr stared down at him, eyes narrowed as understanding dawned on his face. “Explain.”

  Finn shrugged; there wasn’t a lot to explain. “I thought about it over and over after we’d made the theft. I went to tell her, ask her, and always something stopped me. She loved her son. She cared for me, but enough to watch her son grow old and die before her eyes while she stayed young? And she was so devout. I was expecting her to give up God for me. I knew she would eventually come to love me, and I loved her so much that I couldn’t bear to lose her, and I couldn’t put it off. We knew it was only a matter of time before the theft was discovered. It was then or never.” He got to his feet, suddenly restless, remembering that afternoon nearly two thousand years ago so clearly. She’d been happy, loving. She’d kissed him, and he’d waited for the words, for her to tell him she loved him. If she had just said the words, he would have spilled out everything, begged her to stay with him. But she hadn’t, and in the end, he’d handed her the goblet, told her it was a special wine flavored with sunshine, and watched as she drank, the movement of her throat as she swallowed, her tongue red from the elixir as she swiped over her lower lip for the last drop.

  He shook his head, coming back to the present. “I told her it was special wine. I lied. And I stood and watched as she drank, as she unknowingly broke the laws of Heaven.”

  Torr turned away, his shoulders tense.

  Finn couldn’t bear to see the condemnation on Bella’s face, so he didn’t look in her direction. But she rested a hand on his thigh and squeezed.

  “She loved you, Finn. She might not have said the words, but she did. She was my half-sister; I knew her thoughts.”

  He’d almost forgotten that, but Soraya and Damaris had been half-sisters. Soraya had been an empath and a healer to her people. Damaris had an echo of those powers. Had been able to understand emotions and tell good from evil.

  “She was scared,” Bella continued. “Her husband had not been a good man, and she was wary of letting another man close. So she poured all her love into her son. But when she met you, she knew she had to try and open her heart or she would regret it forever. It took courage—she’d been hurt badly, both physically and mentally, but she did it for you.”

  He remembered how careful he’d been with her the first time they made love, as though she might run if he moved too quickly or too fiercely. And he’d wanted to be fierce. Instead, he’d taken her slowly and sweetly, and afterward, she’d looked at him with wonder.

  Damaris had never spoken of her first marriage. It had been arranged by her father. Her husband had been a man from another village, and she had gone to live among his people. That was why he’d not met her earlier. She’d returned after her husband died. There had been many men who’d asked for her hand. She was a beautiful woman who had proved herself fertile. But she had turned them all away. Except him. She’d let him in and no doubt regretted it in the last moments of her life.

  “She died and so did her son.” He could still remember the rage and despair, and absolute powerlessness that had risen inside him as they tore him away from her. The last vision of her clutching her son as they dragged her to her death. Her screams mingled with the little boy’s cries would stay in his mind forever. “If she ever remembers, she’ll hate me. I betrayed her.”

  “Yes, you fucking did.” Torr came back, stood over him. “How could you?” The words came out as a growl.

  Finn pushed himself to his feet and took a step toward his leader. Unafraid. Maybe if he pissed off Torr enough he would kill him now.

  But that wouldn’t help Rachel. She would still die in five days’ time. The fight went out of him at that thought. “Tell me you would have done differently.”

  “I—”

  “Look at Bella, and tell me you wouldn’t have done the same to keep her.”

  Torr ran a hand through his hair, pulling it loose so it lay disheveled around his shoulders. In that moment, he looked every inch the Destroyer. Then he turned his gaze to his wife, and some of the tension left his taut figure.

  “Maybe.” He shook his head. “We didn’t know. You never told us.”

  “I was ashamed. And I knew what I had to do.”

  “And what was that?”

  “I would never find her. I would let her live her lives in peace. And when the thousand years was over she would be released from the cycle of birth and death and her soul would be free.”

  “And you would be back in the Abyss, on your knees to Lilith. You’ll be married to one of her daughters, under her control, doing her evil bidding, an army of wolves at her command. Do you really want that?”

  “Never.”

  That day, when they had been torn from the women they loved and hurled into the Abyss, Lilith had been waiting for them. The Queen of the Abyss, she’d offered them sanctuary and powers in return for their allegiance. She’d shown them how to focus the dark power, how to use it for destruction and chaos.

  All they’d desired at that point had been revenge. The darkness had awoken in them that day, and they had become the Storm Lords, and Torrin, their leader, the Destroyer and consort to the queen. In those first years, they had bathed in the fresh blood of humans, fed on their warm flesh, slaughtered without conscience, their whole existence passing in a red haze of fury.

  Eventually, those who had betrayed them were long dead, and Finn’s rage had cooled. But nothing replaced it, and he had moved through his life without feeling, as though in a void.

  Until the angels came to them.

  By then, the Storm Lords were too powerful to defeat by force. Instead, the angels had told them the truth, hoping to break their allegiance to Lilith.

  While their wives had died, because they had taken the Elixir of Life, their souls were tied to the Earth, caught in an endless cycle of death and rebirth. For a thousand years, Damaris had lived, breathed, and known nothing of him.

  Lilith had been incandescent with fury, but she couldn’t hold them completely. Finally, they had come to an arrangement and drawn up the Covenant in blood, which would bind both sides. They would have one thousand years to seek their wives, but if they failed to find them in that time, they must return to Lilith. Torr would again be at her side, and Finn and his brothers would marry Lilith’s daughters. Finn shuddered at the thought.

  But it wasn’t so easy. Lilith had made another stipulation. If eternal love truly existed, then their wives would know them, love them. They would have five days after meeting them again for their wives to come to them of their own free will and declare their love. If that happened, their wives would be granted eternal life and would be with them forever. But in that time, they were not allowed to tell them the truth or reveal what and who they were. If they spoke of this, their wives would be lost to them. This time forever.

  Finn had known from the beginning that there was no hope. But he would never do evil again, and certainly not at Lilith’s bidding. And he would neve
r marry another. While they were immortal, there was one way to end their existence. The sword of an angel.

  He caught Torr’s gaze and stared.

  “Jesus,” Torr growled. “You want me to kill you?”

  “I won’t go back to Lilith.”

  In that moment, Torr’s humanity vanished, and he stood before them in his real guise, a demon of the Abyss—The Destroyer. Black wings curved at his shoulders, his yellow eyes glowed almost feral. The grip of a huge sword showed at his shoulder, and he drew it in one swift move. He took a single step toward Finn, pressed the blade of the sword to his throat. A flash of pain seared his skin, and the sharp, metallic scent of blood tinged the air.

  “You want me to end it all?”

  Finn forced himself to stand still, not to back away. “Actually, yes, but perhaps not quite yet.”

  The sword didn’t waver. Finn could feel the slow trickle of blood down his throat and held his breath.

  Finally, Torr lowered the weapon. He stepped back, and the demon was gone. He crossed the room, poured them all a scotch. Finn took his drink and stayed silent, knowing his friend needed time to come to terms with what he had asked. He sank back on the sofa. A sense of release filled him. He’d dreaded asking this of Torr; now it was done. One thing he could tick off the list.

  “Tell me about my sister,” Bella said from beside him. “Torr says you’ve been watching her for years.”

  “Since she was four. And she’s the same. Fierce and wild and beautiful.”

  “Is she happy?”

  “She seems content. I was worried. Especially after Torr found you. You’d had such a hard life. I wanted to save Rachel from that if I could do nothing else. But while she lives what most would consider a strange life—in a strict religious sect run by her grandfather—she seems happy. Many women would hate it, but she spends much of her time in the forests and mountains.”

  “She always loved nature.”

  “I know.”

  Torr came back, took a chair across from them, and studied him. “Let me get this right. You’ve found your wife, but have no intention of introducing yourself.”