20 Shades of Shifters: A Paranormal Romance Collection

by Demelza Carlton

  “And this is Briony,” Maisy said.

  “Hi.” Steve gave her a thoughtful look. “Hey, weren’t you sitting with the popular girls at the football game?”

  “I think I only get to hang out with them part-time,” Briony replied, and Maisy nodded solemnly.

  “They can be really stuck up, sometimes. I don’t suppose you like sci-fi, do you?”

  She and Steve started to chat about a television show Briony had never heard of. It had too many vampires in it for her taste, given what things were like around Wicked, but she did her best to keep up anyway. The other two kept going without any of the awkward comments that would have shown up around Pepper, and the only slight pause came when they asked her about some math problem that had shown up in a test last week that Briony hadn’t been there for. Briony smiled. It seemed that in the absence of the popular crowd, she had been made an honorary geek.

  It wasn’t nearly as bad as she might have thought, and Briony actually felt a little guilty that at her old school, she probably wouldn’t have spent much time talking to girls like Maisy. Now that she was here, Briony resolved never to be that stuck up again. After all, if hanging out with people outside the popular crowd was the kind of thing Pepper Freeman would never do in a million years, it couldn’t be all that bad.

  And then, it got a whole lot better.

  Briony didn’t see Fallon come into the cafeteria, because she was sitting with her back to the door. In fact, she only noticed him when Maisy looked up and said.

  “Hey, who’s the cute guy?”

  “That would be me, wouldn’t it?” Steve countered.

  “In your dreams, maybe.”

  It was good-natured enough, and by that point, Briony wasn’t really listening anyway, because she had turned to look. Fallon looked, if anything, even better by daylight than he had last night. Of course, today he didn’t have a pack of wolves milling around him, though some of the cheerleaders were doing a pretty good impression of it. Even Pepper got up from her perch at the center of the room and made a beeline for him.

  “We were just wondering if you would like to come and sit with us,” she said. “It can be hard, making friends when you’re new.”

  “Yes,” Fallon agreed, “it can. Thanks for the offer, but I already have a spot.” Pepper’s eyes widened as he turned and walked over to where Briony sat. Though not as much as Briony’s did. “Do you mind if I sit here, Briony?”

  “No… sure… I mean…”

  “She means sit down,” Maisy translated. She smirked in the manner of someone who was filing away for future reference exactly how red Briony had started to go. “I’m Maisy, and this is my boyfriend Steve.”

  She extended a hand and Fallon took it. “Hello, Maisy. Hello Steve.”

  Briony was grateful for the pause in which to get her thoughts together. Fallon went to school here? Well, of course he did. Where else was there another high school nearby? It was just… well, the other night, he’d seemed a little older than her, not to mention a lot more confident. Briony had a hard time imagining someone like him going to school anywhere. She risked a glance back at Pepper. The cheerleader was looking at Briony in a way that made her glad that looks couldn’t kill. Around her, most of the more popular crowd were looking puzzled. Why wouldn’t the gorgeous new boy want to sit with them? Only Claire smiled, giving Briony a very discrete thumbs up.

  Finally, Briony returned her attention to Fallon. “I didn’t realize that you went to school here.”

  “Until today, I didn’t. I’m even newer here than you are. Maybe we could take turns showing each other around?”

  “You’d only get each other lost,” Maisy said.

  Fallon shrugged. “Getting lost in a school isn’t such a big deal. That forest of yours, on the other hand…”

  Briony winced at the casual hint towards what had happened the previous night. “Strange,” she said to cover it, “I thought you looked too old to be in high school.”

  “I’m eighteen,” Fallon said, apparently willing to ignore her discomfort. “It just that, if I ever want to get into college, I’m going to have to make up a few classes. Maybe you’ll see me in some of them.”

  Briony caught the hopeful note in it. “Um… maybe.”

  They chatted some more, and it earned Fallon some points that he talked to Maisy and Steve just as much as to her. He wasn’t the kind of guy who would ignore the unpopular kids, then. He even seemed to get a few more of the other two’s sci-fi references than Briony did, making a couple of comments about shows that seemed to be sufficiently obscure to impress them.

  Eventually though, Maisy made an excuse to leave. Something about having to get to the next class a little early because she wanted to talk to the teacher. At least, Briony assumed it was an excuse. If it wasn’t, then the part where she elbowed Steve in the ribs and repeated it loudly and slowly so that he would get the message and go with her was a bit excessive.

  “It seems that your friends want to give us some space,” Fallon observed. “I think Maisy wants to play match maker.”

  “Well don’t get any ideas,” Briony said, though she found herself hoping that he’d had at least a few.

  “Really?” Fallon raised an eyebrow. “Well, I suppose it would be a bit much to ask for the most beautiful girl in the school to throw herself at me. Tell me, not that I’m complaining, but why aren’t you hanging out with all the rest of the pretty crowd?”

  He nodded towards where Pepper and the others still sat. She wasn’t actively glaring at Briony any more, but she did glance across from time to time. The looks now were more puzzled than anything. Briony could guess what she was thinking. If she had always been able to get attention from any boy she wanted, why was this one ignoring her?

  “It’s not really my scene. Some of them are all right. It’s just…”

  “Yes, I saw the way the silly rich one looked at you.”

  “Then you probably saw the way she looked at you too. Tell me, Fallon, why aren’t you over there with them? I’m sure Pepper would just love to be friends with you.”

  “She’s not really my type.”

  “Oh, I doubt that,” Briony said. “Girls like her are everyone’s type.”

  “In her world, maybe. It’s just as well I don’t fit in there, then.”

  That comment raised a warning bell in Briony’s head. Around here, not fitting in could mean a lot of things, and what kind of young man could fight off werewolves?

  “What were you doing out in the woods last night, Fallon?”

  “That’s a bit out of nowhere, isn’t it?”

  “So were you coming to save me,” Briony shot back. “Not that I don’t appreciate it, but it is a bit of a coincidence, isn’t it?”

  “Not really,” Fallon said. He brushed back a strand of hair. “The woods around here are supposed to be really good for nature walks, so I thought I might try it. I just ended up getting a bit closer to nature than I really wanted with those wolves. What were they, anyway?”

  “You mean you don’t know?” Briony couldn’t believe that. Fallon hadn’t panicked, the other night, at the sight of werewolves. He hadn’t asked questions afterwards. Surely, he wouldn’t have been so calm if he hadn’t known. So he was lying to her. But why? Briony doubted that he could be some kind of werewolf himself, not after fighting them. But he had seemed sick in the car, and the silver in her cross had been in his proximity.

  Fallon sighed, and it was a beautiful sigh, the kind of thing a romantic poet might have managed on realizing that the world contained darker things than flowers and gentle pleasure.

  “Briony, look at me.”

  Briony did it without thinking. It wasn’t exactly a hardship. Fallon was amazingly, almost excessively, good-looking with his full lips, wide cheekbones… Briony could have studied the details of his face for hours. His lips, his cheekbones, his eyes…

  There was something strange about those eyes. They were too pale, so that the irises beca
me almost an extension of the orb. Briony struggled to remember where she had seen eyes like that before. It was something to do with the people who had come to the house, wasn’t it? As she stared into Fallon’s eyes, struggling to remember, Briony found herself looking deeper into them, and deeper, and…

  “Briony,” Fallon said, his tone soft.

  “Yes?”

  “I think it will be better if you forget that you need to know what I am. Better for both of us. Can you do that, Briony?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. I think what you need right now is a friend, so I want you to trust me, Briony. Wake up now.”

  Briony shook her head, trying to clear it. “What were you saying?”

  “Oh,” Fallon said, “nothing important.”

  Briony doubted that anything he said could be that unimportant, but she decided to leave it. After all, she trusted him.

  “Shouldn’t we be getting to class?”

  Chapter 8

  This was the kind of class you didn’t get at school, taking place in the backyard of Aunt Sophie’s inn, with just Briony, her great aunt, and George from the diner in attendance. George had brought a big bag with him, and he opened it to reveal contents that gleamed silver in the evening sun.

  “After what happened the other night,” George said, “Sophie has decided that maybe it’s time for you to learn to protect yourself.”

  “Preferably without clanking while she moves, George. Did you have to bring everything?”

  The diner owner shrugged. “There are a lot of weapons for Briony to learn about.”

  That, it seemed, was true. George spread them out on the back porch like an exhibit from a museum. Monster killing through the ages, possibly. There were stakes and silver-bladed knives, silver wire garrotes and sharpened crosses. There were even swords, short stabbing things that Aunt Sophie said were based on an ancient Celtic design. Their edges gleamed with the familiar silver shine. A couple of elegant, deadly looking crossbows rounded out the collection.

  “Crossbows?” Briony said. “Wouldn’t guns be better?”

  “Shotguns with silver shot can work,” George said, “but mostly only on werewolves. A wooden quarrel, on the other hand, is essentially a flying stake.”

  That made a kind of sense, so Briony went along with it while George and Aunt Sophie discussed the weapons’ merits in a matter of fact way.

  “Knives and stakes are easy to conceal,” Aunt Sophie said, “but hard to explain if you’re found with them. I don’t fancy my niece going to jail.”

  George nodded. “You certainly won’t be able to carry them around somewhere like your school for instance. There, your cross will have to be enough, though frankly I doubt anyone will attack you on the grounds anyway.”

  “You can’t be too careful,” Aunt Sophie shot back. She looked at Briony. “Never assume that you’re safe. I don’t mean that you should become paranoid, but always be prepared. Danger can be anywhere.”

  Briony nodded. She had learned that the hard way the other night.

  “What are the swords and crossbows for then?” She asked. “You couldn’t conceal them, except in maybe a bag, and then you wouldn’t be able to get to them in time.”

  “They are for when we go hunting for the creatures,” George explained. “At times like that, you don’t have to worry too much about whether people spot the weapons.”

  “For now though,” Aunt Sophie put in, “I would like you to concentrate on the easier to hide options, Briony. We can move onto other things once you have learned enough to defend yourself.”

  Her great aunt showed Briony some of the best ways to hide weaponry, and how to get to it again in a hurry. Aunt Sophie made a knife appear and disappear with such speed that it was like a conjuring trick, and before long, Briony found that she could at least get to her cross without any trouble. Once she could do that, George suggested that they should move on to some combat techniques.

  The first stage of that seemed to be taping layers of padding to Briony, and then encasing her head in something close to a crash helmet. Apparently, they weren’t planning on holding back. George tossed her a simple stick, taking one for himself and starting to circle around Briony. Over the next five minutes, he threw some simple attacks at her, and Briony found herself beginning to enjoy the process of learning to deal with them.

  It was at that point that George sped things up a little.

  Briony fought and dodged, swerved and parried. For the moment, at least, it was all she could do to manage that, her own stick engaged in a frantic blur of defense that never quite seemed to be fast enough to stop everything. Only the fact that she currently had more padding strapped to her than the average football player kept Briony from being black and blue.

  “Oh come on!” Briony complained as George moved in close, lifted her up, and lowered her not entirely gently to the dirt. “How am I meant to deal with this, Aunt Sophie? George is bigger than me, stronger than me…”

  “Let’s not forget the unarmed combat training from the army,” George added with a smile, “I was special forces, after all.”

  Aunt Sophie shrugged. “Then you’ll just have to dodge that much better, won’t you? Let’s try again.”

  That wasn’t really the answer Briony had been hoping for. In fact, almost nothing about the “training” had been what she had expected. Briony had seen people doing martial arts before, and had half-anticipated standing there practicing movements for hours, or learning clever locks and tricks that would let her fling people around with ease. It didn’t seem to be happening so far.

  The next round of sparring lasted perhaps ten seconds, before George simply crashed forward, using his greater height and bulk to knock Briony sprawling. She managed to tuck and roll, because there were some things you got good at as a former cheerleader, but even as she got up, Briony found herself knocked down again. This time she decided to stay in the dirt.

  “Had enough already?” Aunt Sophie asked lightly.

  Briony managed to struggle up to a sitting position. “I can’t see any way to win. I’m just getting knocked around here.”

  “I’d prefer to think of it as getting in valuable practice when it comes to falling.” Aunt Sophie paused, and shook her head. “You think that this isn’t fair then, having to fight someone bigger and stronger?”

  Briony knew better than to say that. “I know vampires are going to be stronger, Aunt Sophie,” she said instead. “I just don’t know what to do about it.”

  Her great aunt helped Briony to her feet. “So you think that the stronger person always has to win? Well, let’s find you a fairer opponent then, shall we? I’m just an old woman, you should be able to overpower me easily enough. Now, want to play?”

  Aunt Sophie moved over to the collection of weapons, picking up the swords. She tossed one to Briony, who caught it and experimented with different grips while George strolled back to the porch, leaning against the wall.

  “This one is quite a simple game,” Aunt Sophie said. “For now, I am the vampire, and all you have to do is kill me. Or touch me above the heart, or throat at least. I’ll give actually being impaled or decapitated a miss, if you don’t mind.”

  She stood there. Just stood there. Briony adopted what she hoped was a suitable fighting stance, edging forwards. Aunt Sophie spread her hands, giving Briony a little smile.

  “What are you waiting for, dear?”

  Something about that smile infuriated Briony. She lunged, aiming straight for the heart. Aunt Sophie barely had to move to slap the sword aside with her own, and her foot took Briony’s legs from under her. In a second, she was kneeling by Briony, the blade at her throat.

  “If you make it obvious that you’re about to fight, then you will lose. The trick is to strike with surprise,” Aunt Sophie paused just long enough to trap Briony’s arm as she tried to bring the sword up. “Real surprise. Nice attempt, Briony. Let’s try again.”

  The next attempt saw Aunt Sophie sta
bbing out, parrying Briony’s blade and thrusting in one motion, placing the point just above her heart.

  “Find a way to go on the attack straight away. Vampires do not tire. You cannot wear them down. Every second that the fight goes on is one where they might hurt you more.”

  On and on the lesson went, with Aunt Sophie finding new ways to defeat Briony each time. Every time, she would offer Briony some piece of advice, whether it was something simple like “pay attention to what your opponent is doing,” or something specific like “avoid the whole rush of the attack, not just one movement.”

  Aunt Sophie didn’t seem to tire, though Briony was rapidly becoming exhausted. Where George had been all speed and aggression, Briony’s great aunt barely seemed to move. Whether it was with the swords, with knives, or simply with her hands, she always seemed to do the bare minimum needed to deal with whatever Briony was doing while at the same time delivering attacks that would have seriously hurt or killed even most supernatural attackers.

  Even when Briony got lucky towards the end of the session, and succeeded in grabbing Aunt Sophie as she tripped her, it didn’t make any difference. Her great aunt turned as she fell, scrambled into a better spot, and in seconds had Briony’s arm twisted painfully behind her back.

  About the only upside to it all was that Aunt Sophie seemed quite pleased with Briony’s progress, or at least with her willingness to keep going while being steadily beaten up by elderly relatives. When Aunt Sophie finally called a halt to it all, she patted Briony on the shoulder, told her that it was a good start, and then said that she would go fix some dinner if Briony helped George put the weapons away.

  Briony nodded gratefully, then set about the work of collecting up knives, swords, and the occasional silver throwing star. Had they used those? Briony couldn’t remember. She was too exhausted from the drubbing her great aunt had given her.

  “How did she do all that,” Briony asked George.

  The diner owner shrugged. “Sophie has been doing this a long time, remember. I suppose, if you spend your life fighting creatures that want to kill you, then you only survive if you get very, very good at it.”