“I can see our hosts coming up the path on the other side of the barn,” he said. “Should be here in a few minutes—sooner once Saphrona’s sixth sense tells her we’re here.”
“Sixth sense?” Race queried as we both stood.
“Saphrona—and theoretically all other vampire hybrids—have the ability to sense when other supernaturals are near,” I explained. “I don’t know that she ever mentioned her range to me, but she did say that she thought Mark was human based on what he smelled like, until she was about thirty feet away. But then it may well have been his nature that confused her.”
“Aye,” Lochlan agreed. “With others, like your kind or vampires, she’s apt to sense us a hundred feet or more away. As a matter of fact, from what I can see from here, she and Mark have just increased their mounts to a gallop. I think she’s just realized that she has visitors.”
Race and I walked over and stood next to Lochlan at the fender of his car, and looking through the open ends of the barn, I could indeed see at a distance two figures on horseback speeding toward us. My nervousness returned with a vengeance and Race must have noticed, as he reached over and put an arm around my shoulders and planted a quick kiss on my temple. I took another breath meant to calm me as the figures came into focus the closer to us they got. Saphrona’s face was alight with joy, her blonde hair flying out behind her as her horse, Hadhafang most likely, carried her along. My brother’s expression was determined, which meant he probably hadn’t yet decided how to react.
Knowing him, he wouldn’t decide whether to rail at me or just wrap his arms around me until he set foot on the ground in front of us.
Perhaps due to her preternatural origins, when the two had crossed through the barn to our end, Saphrona was off of Hadhafang and throwing her arms around me before Mark even had one foot out of a stirrup. I was wrenched away from Race and enveloped in her arms in the blink of an eye, so quickly it took a moment for me to register the action. After the briefest hesitation I hugged her back, all the while watching my brother slowly descend from Herugrim, his eyes darting from me to Race and back again, a frown marring his brow.
“Oh, Juliette, I’m so glad you decided to come home!” my future sister-in-law exclaimed softly in my ear. Standing back, she added, “It’s so good to see you.”
I chanced a smile. “It’s good to see you too,” I said, and I meant it. Saphrona Caldwell was one of the most beautiful women I’d ever met, being a very petite 5 feet 1 inch tall (a full foot shorter than my brother), athletically slim yet still curvy in the right places, with platinum blonde hair and eyes of bright blue. Her nose was pert and her lips just plump enough, and when she smiled she was stunning. Were I batting for the other team, she’d make my mouth water.
Saphrona moved back to make room for Mark, whom she smiled at tentatively, as though she were also not entirely certain how he was going to react. My brother stepped up to me and after flashing yet another questioning glance up at Race, studied me, and then did as his lover had done—threw his arms around me and welcomed me home.
“Baby sis, I missed you,” my brother said in a choked whisper.
Tears stung my eyes as I returned his tight embrace. Baby sis, he’d called me. The nickname he always addressed me by when he was or had been worried. Usually it was ‘Jules’ or ‘little sister’. “Missed you too, big brother,” I replied softly. “I’m sorry I worried you.”
Mark loosed his vise-like embrace, drawing his hands to my shoulders as he looked into my eyes. “You know what? Don’t even worry about that—doesn’t matter anymore, you’re home now. That’s what counts. Mom, by the way, will be relieved. You should call her soon.”
I sighed. “I know. And I will, I promise.”
Releasing me at last, he stood back and eyed Race warily. “Not to be rude or anything, but who the hell are you?” he asked.
I turned to Race in time to watch a shit-eating grin cross his face. “You haven’t changed a bit,” he noted with a chuckle.
Mark’s frown deepened. “Do we know each other?”
“Let’s see if this refreshes your memory, pal: On your Mark, get set—”
My brother’s eyes widened to the size of dinner plates. “Holy shit—Speed Racer?! No fuckin’ way, man!”
The two old friends embraced each other in a back-clapping bear hug, laughing over their old joke and the surprise of meeting one another again. I caught Saphrona’s questioning raised eyebrows and grinned.
“This is Race Covington, an old friend of Mark’s,” I said.
She eyed Race with avid curiosity. “He mentioned him once—something about falling out of the tree in his back yard and breaking an arm.”
I nodded. “One and the same.”
She turned to me. “You never mentioned he was some kind of shapeshifter.”
Mark froze in his welcome of Race and leaned back. “What the hell?”
Race nodded. “Yeah… It’s why Mom and I left town so suddenly. You probably remember that my dad left her before she even knew I was coming, or shortly after she found out. Some shit like that. So she never knew about shifters and vampires and all that nonsense. When I first started shifting, she got scared and did the only thing she could think of—packed us up and ran. Thought keeping one step ahead of—whoever—would keep me safe.”
Mark turned to me. “Mom’s a shifter—she didn’t know?”
I shook my head. “As I explained to Race, werekind children smell as human as human children until they’ve changed the first time. Only then do their hormones make them smell different, and as you know, he and his mom left like, a week after he turned fourteen.”
Race nodded. “The day after I phased for the first time, into Patches.”
“What? Patches, your cat?” Mark queried. “I didn’t think shifters could copy other animals.”
“You’re thinking of werekind, actually,” I said. “I know it’s a little confusing given how I keep referring to most two-natured beings as shapeshifters, but if you’ll remember, I told you that all single-form shifters are technically were-animals, precisely because we have just one form.”
“So what is he? I’m definitely getting the scent of animal and human, but I can’t get a fix on which animal,” Saphrona put in.
“Apparently I’m a chimaera,” Race replied. “Jules told me I’m quite possibly the only living ‘true’ shapeshifter, because I can take on the form of any animal I’ve seen in the flesh. I probably copied Patches that first time because he was there and I was looking right at him.”
Saphrona smiled. “Fascinating.”
Mark shook his head, then clapped Race on the shoulder again with one hand. “Dude, you and I have so much catching up to do. I can’t believe you’re really here—having you home is almost as good as having my sister home. How did you guys meet up anyway?”
Race and I, in turns, explained his run-in with Merrick in the alley in Cleveland and how I had (“Yes, recklessly, given I didn’t know who he was at the time.”) accompanied him home in my animal form. We explained how after I had appropriated his clothes later that night, I was about to leave when he caught me, and how when looking into each other’s eyes in our human forms, we bonded.
Mark looked between us, clearly shocked by this news. “Are you guys shitting me? This guy you haven’t seen in sixteen fuckin’ years is the guy of many talents you once called friend that the dragon lady told you about?”
Before either of us could reply, a thought apparently occurred to him, and after looking between us again, he turned to Race and said, “You break my sister’s heart, I’ll break your fuckin’ neck.”
Race didn’t flinch, and his expression was solemn as he replied, “Mark, I have no doubt you would. But you don’t have to worry, brother—maybe it’s this bond between us, or maybe it’s that I’ve been missing her for the last sixteen years, but I can assure you that Jules, and her heart, are safe with me.”
I couldn’t help walking over to wrap my arms around
him at those sweet words, causing Mark to shake his head at us. “Just so we’re clear,” he said with a grin.
Then, all of a sudden, Mark looked over at Lochlan, and I could almost see the wheels of his mind turning as he realized just who it was that had brought Race and I home. He charged toward him.
“You lied to me! Just how long have you known where she was?!” he demanded.
Lochlan slowly raised an eyebrow, looking down at the hands now fisted in his shirt and then back up at the man who owned them. “I’ll thank ye kindly to remove yer hands, mate,” he said slowly. After a moment Mark complied, and Lochlan made a show of straightening his shirt before he spoke again.
“First things first: yer me brother now, and I love ye as though we shared blood. But just so we’re clear, brother or no, mate, lay yer hands on me again and you’ll wish ye hadn’t.
“Secondly, I didnae lie to ye. While I have been searching her whereabouts, I only learned of Juliette being in Cleveland last evening. I went north straight away in the hope of convincing her to come home with me. Had she declined to do so, I’d have then informed my sister and yourself of where she had run off to.”
Maybe it was my lingering paranoia, but something about the way Lochlan spoke had me suspecting that he wasn’t being entirely truthful. After all, he’d called me at Cool Beans yesterday morning, so he had to have known where I was for at least a couple of days. Hell, for all I knew, he’d waited less than one before beguiling some sop at the bus station into telling him which city my bus was headed for.
Mark’s shallow breathing slowly settled, and he looked up at Lochlan with an apologetic expression. “I’m sorry. It’s just…you know how worried we’ve been about her.”
“Aye,” Lochlan said. “I’ve been just as worried as the lot of you.”
Saphrona stepped up to Mark and laid a hand on his back. He seemed to instantly settle even further, and I watched him look down on her with a smile. “I’m sure that if he’d known sooner, he would have told us,” she said.
Mark took a breath and held it a moment, saying as he released it, “I know. I just…”
He turned to me then. “You really scared the hell out of us, kid. I wish… I wish you’d at least have told me where you were going, even if you didn’t want to tell Mom. I thought you trusted me.”
“Mark, I do trust you,” I said, stepping up to him. “But it’s like I told you on the phone yesterday—I needed to deal with what happened in my own way, and leaving town for a while was simply a part of that. Admittedly it didn’t help all that much, and God knows I have more shit to deal with still, but at the same time I know it was the right thing to do. After all, leaving led me to Race, and I needed to be in Cleveland to reunite with him and bond with him.”
My brother nodded. “Okay, I get it. Your leaving ended up being part of this destiny crap that goes with being supernatural. I get it.”
He sighed again and looked back at Lochlan. “I am sorry, man.”
Lochlan nodded. “Forgiven. But my warning still stands: Don’t ever raise a hand to me unless you’re ready to go a few rounds.”
Mark grinned. “I might actually have to take you up on that one of these days. I could use a good workout.”
“Even though you’d be risking getting your ass kicked—no, killed—by a vampire?” Race asked with surprise.
“I’m trained to be one of the USMC’s deadliest,” Mark replied confidently. “While he surpasses me in speed and strength, I have no doubt I surpass him in cunning and guile.”
Lochlan grinned. “Oh, I’d still kill you, but yes—I’ve no doubt you’d make me work for it.”
Saphrona stepped in between her brother and mine. “Whoa, boys, stop right there. There will be no killing of anyone, got it? Not even taking into consideration what Mark’s death would do to me, if you ever laid a hand on him, Lochlan, I’d kill you myself.”
He turned an innocent gaze her direction. “But sister, you just said there would be no killing of anyone—you’d really go back on your word?”
The punch that sent him stumbling and laughing into the hood of his car went by almost faster than I could follow. Lochlan continued to laugh as he rubbed a no doubt sore shoulder.
“Oh, shut the hell up, Loch Ness,” Saphrona muttered, turning and marching up to her horse and grabbing hold of the reins. She turned back to the four of us primly and said, “I’m going to see Hadhafang back out to pasture. After that, why don’t you all come inside for a drink? You’ve had a long drive, and as Mark said, there’s a lot of catching up to do.”
Mark, looking only mildly chagrined, flashed a grin at the rest of us and followed to take care of his own mount. Lochlan, Race and I merely shook our heads and laughed.
***
After Saphrona got everyone something to drink, we all settled in the living room. Mark, naturally, asked Race to tell him where he’d been for the past 16 years, what he’d been up to all that time. He wanted to know when and how he’d learned about vampires and shapeshifters. With a glance at me, Race gave him much the same story I’d gotten just that morning, how his mother, being rather freaked out that her son could turn into animals and having no knowledge of the supernatural world that existed right under her nose, had packed up her only child and ran. She’d feared persecution by the government, and separation from Race. Their moving around so much had kept the two pretty isolated, and it was pure chance that they hadn’t encountered any other werekind or vampires for the next five years.
Then Race recounted his first meeting with a vampire, that female he’d encountered at a college party. Leaving out the gory details—thank goodness—he admitted to having a relationship with her that lasted a few months, during which she introduced him to other vampires. And that, he said, was how his being passed from one vampire “master” to another got started. He was, as he had told me, their daywalker. The guy doing the gopher work, the “whatever the fuck they told me to do” work because they were all nocturnivores, as he called them. Again he refrained from sharing details—certainly didn’t go as in depth as he had with me—but he also admitted to Mark that not everything he had done for his vampire employers was legal. It was not something he was proud to own up to, to have to live with, so he’d broken away from that life and was looking to start over. Our meeting, he said, had shown him that making that decision was the right thing to do—not just for the sake of his conscience, but possibly his life.
It was only natural for Mark to ask about his lack of stories containing werekind, and Race explained that after meeting me and learning after so many years that he was not alone in the world of the two-natured, he was beginning to think that his former employers, all five of them, had purposely kept him in the dark.
“Probably thought not telling me I wasn’t the only one of my kind would keep me on a short leash,” he muttered darkly, taking a sip of his beer.
“Bringing her pets to heel—no insult intended—is certainly Vienna Silk’s style, that’s for sure,” Lochlan added. “Especially when they are male. I daresay that woman takes the term ‘control freak’ to a whole new level.”
Race snorted. “You’re preaching to the choir on that one, bloodsucker.”
Mark shook his head as though trying to absorb all that he had learned. He then looked between Race and I, seated next to each other on the couch, and said, “So you two are really…together now? I thought you said that shifters, werekind—whatever—didn’t mate with other shifters.”
I glanced at Race, who took my hand and brought it to his lips and kissed the back of it, then looked at my brother with a sigh. “For many years we haven’t been,” I began. “Another part of our meeting is that apparently the Fates are ready for that to change again…if we decide to play along.”
Frowning, Mark asked, “What the hell does that mean?”
“You might remember me mentioning a historical figure in our world called the Beast Master.” Mark nodded. “Well, the Beast Master is someone who h
as the ability to not only mediate peace between all the Families, in essence becoming their leader, but also enable shifters to bond with each other. In order to do that, he or she must be bonded with their own destined mate.”
“So now all the unbonded shifters will bond with other shifters?” Mark pressed.
I shook my head. “Not necessarily. The histories that Mom and our pack have shared say we’ve always imprinted on humans, but during the lifetime of the Beast Master, our kind also bonds with each other. The latter won’t be possible, though, unless and until Race and I complete the bonding.”
“You mean it’s not completed yet?” Saphrona asked. “I mean, you guys are… well, you’ve…haven’t you?”
I felt a flush creeping up my neck, and noticed Mark fidgeting in his seat. He was just as uncomfortable hearing about my sex life as I was hearing about his. “Um…we have, but there’s a little more to it when it comes to shifter bonds. There’s a very private ritual that is traditionally performed to cement the bond, for lack of a better term. Race and I haven’t decided whether or not we’re going to do it.”
“From what Juliette’s told me about it, it’s a really, really big deal,” Race put in. “There’s a lot of responsibility we both have to be willing to take on, a lot of pressure involved, and quite frankly neither of us is sure we’re ready for it.”
He glanced at me then and offered me a smile. “I’m sure we’ll talk about it more over the next few days though, see what we want to do about it.”
“It’s actually very responsible of both of you to give it due thought, instead of just blindly following tradition,” Saphrona mused somewhat sourly.
From the Shadows (A Shadow Chronicles Novel) Page 14
