20 Shades of Shifters: A Paranormal Romance Collection

by Demelza Carlton

  “And Fallon is a vampire?”

  “I am,” Fallon said.

  “So shouldn’t we…be trying to stake you, or something? No offence.”

  “That,” Aunt Sophie said from the doorway, “is where things get a little complicated.”

  Briony jerked around. Aunt Sophie had Jill with her. It could have been worse. Almost any of the other members of the society, for a start. Briony decided to make some introductions quickly.

  “Aunt Sophie, you have met Maisy, and this is Steve, her boyfriend. They kind of… showed up.”

  “Ah,” her great aunt said, “yes, that can be awkward. And they want to join the society?”

  Briony nodded.

  “Yes,” Aunt Sophie said, “people sometimes do. Maisy, Steve? I think it is probably time that you went home, dears. We’ll talk more tomorrow.”

  The pair looked at one another and then hurried from the Edge Inn. Aunt Sophie turned her attention to Fallon.

  “I see you are back, young… man.”

  “Yes, Mrs. Edge.”

  George moved closer to Aunt Sophie, whispering to her. “And George here tells me that you saved both him and my niece.”

  “Yes, ma'am.”

  “Well then. I suppose that earns you something. You are welcome here, until you do something to make yourself unwelcome. Run along now too though. You probably won’t want to be here once my colleagues show up.”

  Fallon hurried from the room without so much as a backward glance. Briony found herself faintly disappointed by that. Could he really leave that quickly, without even saying goodbye to her? Briony supposed that it probably had something to do with the fact that various vampire hunters were going to start showing up again soon, but even so, would a quick “bye, Briony” be too much to ask? Was Fallon still convinced that he could not be around her? Or maybe he blamed her for costing him his place in the vampire world. Briony had heard the threat to him as well as anyone.

  For a while though, Briony had to forget about it as the various members of the preservation society wandered back in, coming back in the pairs they had left in, looking tired, bedraggled, and serious.

  One by one, they recounted what they had found in the woods. Almost none of the others had run into anything but shadows and distant noises. The vampires had been there, but they had been playing games. Taunting the hunters and moving on. Or, to look at it another way, distracting them enough that they could attack Briony and George without opposition. The only other pair that had come under any kind of attack had been the one consisting of Jill and Aunt Sophie, and they had dealt with a trio of vampires easily enough, killing one before driving the others away.

  It left Briony wondering why those two pairs had been the ones targeted. Presumably, the vampires could have attacked any of the others, but they chose not to. Something was definitely going on. The trouble was, she did not know what. Nor, from the looks of it, did anyone else. It wasn’t a comfortable thought.

  Eventually, the others left, getting rides with one another or driving off alone into the dark, leaving Briony alone with Aunt Sophie.

  “I think what we both need,” her great aunt declared, “is a late supper. Cheese on toast, I think.”

  She hurried off to the kitchen to make it, and at that moment, someone knocked on the door. Briony, remembering the first time she had gone to the door at night, wasn’t exactly eager to go, but she had her cross, and the sword, and Aunt Sophie was busy. With an almost infinite degree of caution, Briony went to the door and pulled it open.

  Fallon stood there, a bunch of flowers held out to her. They were an odd mixture, not roses or anything else Briony might have thought of as normal for a bouquet, but stranger flowers, night flowers. They weren’t exactly pretty, but somehow, they were right.

  “Fallon? What are you doing back here?”

  He kissed her without a word, and it was a good kiss. It was sweet, delicate, almost… apologetic. Somehow, Briony knew that this was his way of saying sorry for everything that had happened. His way of telling her how much he still wanted her. When Fallon finally pulled back, sprinting off into the night again, Briony turned to see Aunt Sophie watching her.

  “Complicated indeed.”

  That was more or less what Briony was thinking. Particularly since, now that the kiss was done, she found herself thinking of Kevin, and the way he had kissed her. At the time though, she hadn’t thought of him at all.

  Complicated. That was one way of putting it.

  Chapter 19

  Fallon was back at school the next day, as though nothing had happened. As far as the school was concerned, he had simply been ill for a few days and had to catch up on the work he had missed. Beyond that, hardly anyone remarked on his absence and return.

  Mostly, that was because they were all too busy talking about what had happened to Tracey. The official story was that she had been walking in the woods, had tripped over, and had hit her head. If there were strange marks on her body, well… she had been walking through an area with a lot of thorn bushes. Of course she was going to have acquired one or two scratches and wounds as she fell.

  Briony was hardly able to believe how easily people swallowed such a flimsy explanation. It said nothing about what Tracey was doing out there, and if people really couldn’t tell the difference between fang marks and thorn scratches, they couldn’t have been looking very hard at all. It seemed almost like an insult to the other girl that people couldn’t know the truth about her death.

  They couldn’t though, and that was that. Even though Claire was distraught at the loss of her best friend, crying in the hallway and hardly looking at anyone through lunch, even though a few people raised the thought that Tracey must have been up to no good to be out in the woods on her own, there simply wasn’t any way that they would believe what had really happened.

  It had to be enough that Briony knew the truth. Or rather, that Briony, Fallon, Maisy and Steve knew the truth. Briony had expected the latter two to be quiet today, as the implications of everything that had happened sank in. Instead, they seemed eager, asking Briony questions about the preservation society until she pointed out that it was really Aunt Sophie they should be asking, and that in any case, the middle of a busy school probably wasn’t the best place to be talking about it.

  Fallon was quieter, but his presence was a comfort. Just having him near made Briony feel safe, even if Fallon was now as much under threat from the vampires as she was. In class, she would seek him out, letting her hand slide into his when no one was looking, sitting close enough to feel him pressed against her when they were.

  It drew stares from the people who had taunted her over what they thought had happened at the dance. No one commented, though. Today was about Tracey, and even the likes of Pepper knew that. Briony actually saw her trying to comfort Claire at one point. Briony took her own turn a little later, towards the end of lunch, when Claire was alone except for Ross. Claire looked up as Briony approached.

  “Oh, Briony, did you hear about Tracey?”

  “I heard,” Briony said. A small wave of guilt pressed at her, but she ignored it. She wasn’t the one who had hurt Tracey. She had just been the one to kill a couple of the vampires responsible. “I’m sorry. I know this must be hard.”

  “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do now. I mean, she was always the brains. I… I’m just the stupid one.”

  “You’re not stupid,” Briony assured her, patting Claire’s arm.

  “Was it like this when your family…” Claire clearly couldn’t bring herself to say the word.

  “When they died,” Briony said. She nodded.

  “Only worse, probably,” Claire guessed. “I’m being silly, aren’t I? Crying like this when you’ve been so brave?” More tears started to fall.

  “She was your friend,” Briony said, not knowing what else to do. “You’re entitled to be upset. If you need anything let me know, ok?”

  Briony hurried out of there as quickly as s
he could. She felt sorry for Claire, she really did, but the last thing she needed was someone bringing back memories of her own losses. Especially with those losses being so recent. She sought out Fallon instead, eventually finding him in the school library, hunched over a book. It was the first time she had seen him quite that studious. Briony tiptoed forward as quietly as she could.

  “Vampires have very good hearing, you know,” Fallon said, without looking up. Briony sighed and settled into the chair next to him.

  “I just saw Claire.”

  “It is harder for the people left behind, isn’t it? And for you, being reminded, I’d guess.” Fallon seemed to get these things at once. Briony liked that about him. Of course, he had his own losses.

  “Yes,” Briony admitted. “And it’s hard having to lie to her.”

  “It’s better than the truth.”

  “True. Still trying to catch up on your work?”

  “A bit,” Fallon said, looking up from his books. “I will be done soon though. Are you working at the diner today?”

  Briony shook her head. “George decided that I deserved the night off. Jill’s covering my shift.”

  “Well, can we maybe do something? You know, together?”

  Briony cocked her head to one side. She had not expected Fallon ever to be that tongue-tied. It was kind of sweet. “You mean like a date?”

  Fallon nodded. “Exactly like that. Very nearly, anyway.”

  “You have something in mind, don’t you?”

  “Let me drive you back from school and you’ll find out.”

  Briony nodded. It was fine by her. Aunt Sophie had the car today anyway, because she needed to run errands. “I’ll see you after school.”

  It proved to be a long wait. Time seemed to drag out deliberately until the bell, and even then, Briony thought that she might not be able to fight her way through the crush of leaving students. Finally though, she made it to the parking lot, where Fallon collected her in a roughed up SUV.

  “It’s hard to think of a vampire having a car,” Briony said, as she got in.

  “I nearly didn’t,” Fallon said, “except that this was going cheap. You know how vampires in the movies always have tons of cash for their castles and the rest of it? Not so true in real life…unless they’ve lived long enough to accumulate wealth and invest wisely.”

  Briony smiled at that. Would she have felt the same way about Fallon if he had been some super rich foreign count, born a hundred years before? It was impossible to know, though she suspected that the idea of going out with someone that much older than her, however young they looked, would have been a bit… creepy.

  Fallon drove along happily, one of the local radio stations blasting out of the speakers as they headed back in the direction of the Edge Inn, and then beyond it, along the edge of the woods. He refused to say where they were going, except to say that Briony would see. Finally, he brought the SUV to a halt at the roadside.

  “Come on,” he said. “It’s only a little way from here.”

  Briony followed eagerly. Fallon led the way down a little path to a spot where the trees cleared, and paused. It was perfect. A small stream bubbled through a meadow, and flowers surrounded it. Rocks in the stream made for a small weir, so that the water bubbled and frothed. The trees didn’t resume at the far side, so that there was a clear view out over most of Wicked.

  “I came here a few times with my brother to fish,” Fallon explained. “I haven’t been back since… that night, but I thought you would like it.”

  “It’s beautiful,” Briony said, and it was. She reached out to slip an arm around Fallon, and he held her, resting his chin on top of her head, gazing out with her over the pristine landscape. She snuggled up to him, feeling safe in his strong arms.

  A landscape through which a familiar figure was approaching.

  Briony tensed at the sight of Kevin. She had not seen him since she had kissed Fallon. She hadn’t had a chance to talk to him. How angry would he be, seeing them here like this? She turned to Fallon to try and explain things, and saw that his expression was one of barely restrained fury. Did he already know?

  “Fallon? What is it?”

  “Kevin. My… brother.”

  The shock of that hit Briony, and not just at the thought that she had kissed both brothers without ever knowing who they were. There was also plenty of surprise at the way Fallon was reacting to the news that his brother was alive. Shouldn’t he be happy?

  Apparently not, judging by the way he stormed towards Kevin. The other young man didn’t look any happier either.

  “You’re alive?” Fallon demanded. “I thought you were dead!”

  Kevin paused a few strides away, nostrils flaring. “And you are dead, I see.”

  Briony hung back, not wanting to get in the way, even though there was a part of her that felt she should be trying to make this right.

  “You didn’t even look for me, did you?” Fallon demanded.

  “Did you look for me?” Kevin shot back. “I wouldn’t have been hard to find.”

  “I looked all over town!”

  “When you weren’t busy playing at being human.”

  Ah, Briony thought, that was it. Kevin was a hunter, after all. He wouldn’t like the idea of a vampire for a brother. But if even Aunt Sophie could come around to the idea of Fallon, then he surely could. Fallon’s expression twitched into a sneer.

  “Not human? You think I can’t smell what you are?”

  “Then there’s no point in hiding it, is there?”

  One instant, Kevin was standing there. The next, there was the largest wolf Briony had seen. No wonder he hadn’t been fazed by the sight of werewolves. And she had thought he hunted these things. At least, Briony hoped as the wolf let out a deep growl, she hoped that was all the hunting he did.

  The worst part was that Fallon was falling into a fighting stance. Briony grabbed him by the shoulder.

  “Fallon, what are you doing? He’s your brother.”

  “He’s a werewolf!” Fallon snapped back. His fangs were fully extended, his eyes red. He looked, if anything, even worse than he had on the night of the homecoming dance. “He has to die.”

  “Why?” Briony demanded. She didn’t quite step in front of Fallon. “Why does he have to die just because he isn’t human anymore?”

  “Not because of what he isn’t. Because of what he is. Vampires and werewolves have hated each other forever.”

  Briony was going to ask why, but she didn’t need to. She could imagine it for herself. Two predators, both hunting the same prey. Of course they would hate each other. It would be simple instinct. And little things like mere family ties wouldn’t get in the way.

  “Go!” Fallon ordered Briony, pushing her back. “Run! Once this begins, who knows if we will be able to stop?”

  With that, he flung himself forward. The wolf that had been Kevin did the same. The two of them clashed together in a howling, snarling, biting whirl of flesh, each doing his level best to kill the other. All Briony could do was stare at it, trying helplessly to think of something she could do to stop the slaughter.

  Briony took a deep breath, looking for a break in the violence. There was only one thing to do, even if it was stupid. The moment that there seemed to be space to do so, she threw herself forward, getting between Fallon and Kevin. For a moment, just for a moment, she suspected that she might have misjudged it. Fallon’s eyes were a deep crimson as he started to swing a punch towards his brother. Kevin snapped and snarled. Briony forced herself not to move.

  With a jerk, Fallon forced the strike aside before it could touch her. He tried to step to the side, around Briony. She stepped with him. Kevin tried to wheel around to the other side, but Briony stayed between them, keeping there in a careful dance of protection. Though who was going to protect her was anyone’s guess.

  “Stop this!” Briony ordered. The boys ignored her, continuing to circle and snarl. “You don’t really want to kill each other.”
/>   “Oh, we do,” Fallon said, “we definitely do. More than anything. It’s instinct.”

  “Then fight the urge.” Briony knew that she did not have long. Eventually, one of them would attack despite her presence, and then… well, they would probably all die. “Fight it, both of you.”

  “We can’t!” Fallon looked anguished. “This is a part of what we are, Briony.”

  “Like trying to bite me was?”

  “Yes!”

  “But you fought that, Fallon. You didn’t give in. You just have to be strong.”

  “This is stronger.”

  The wolf gave a snarl then. Briony guessed that Kevin agreed.

  “Then I suppose Aunt Sophie is right. I can’t trust you. If you cannot fight your instincts in this, then how will you fight them around me? There isn’t any hope for us.” She looked around to Kevin. “For any of us.”

  “This is what we have to do,” Fallon insisted. “This is what we are. We cannot stop that, Briony. Please, just get out of the way before you get hurt.”

  “Before you hurt me, you mean. This is a choice, Fallon, your choice.”

  “Don’t you see? There is no choice.”

  Briony shook her head. She didn’t believe that. She wouldn’t believe that. The moment she believed, it meant that Fallon and Kevin were nothing more than monsters, and that meant…

  “You really believe that people are no more than that?” Briony demanded, pulling her cross pendant from around her neck and brandishing it. Fallon took a step back. “Well, I am supposed to be a hunter. I am supposed to kill vampires, Fallon. And werewolves. If none of us truly has a choice, then should I just give in to what I am supposed to be too? Should I kill the pair of you?”

  Fallon didn’t seem to have an answer to that. Nor, it seemed, did Kevin, who had changed back and stood glaring at his brother.

  “I could move you out of the way,” he said. “I’m not a vampire, I’m not afraid of crosses.”

  “This is silver,” Briony pointed out. She activated the catch to let the blade spring free. “And so is this.”