Not a total lie but also not the entire truth.
“Come in,” she said, seeing Alina leaning against the car with her arms crossed over her chest. A few guys lingered on the sidewalk, staring at her as they went by. One nearly walked into a pole just from the sight of her. I could see from Luella’s expression that even she was a bit stunned by Alina’s beauty. When I stepped inside and Luella had a second to look at me close up, a similar expression crossed her face.
“What happened to you?” she asked. “You look different.”
“Different how?”
“I don’t know. Stronger. And sexy.” She flashed me a grin.
I looked her up and down, taking her in and smelling her flesh. I blinked a few times, trying to distract myself from the killer instincts that were starting to seep into me already. The sound of her heart beating through her chest tore into my eardrums. Blood was pumping away inside of her. And she smelled divine. Like a fresh steak had been placed in front of me with no one to tell me no.
I shook my head. ‘Alina didn’t tell me about this part.’
“Look who it is,” Jake said from the top of the narrow staircase. His hair was ruffled and he was still in a t-shirt and his boxer shorts.
“Long night?” I asked.
“Some of us have to still pay rent here. So yes, I bartended all night.” He tapped his fingers on the side rail and narrowed his eyes at me.
“Look,” I said. “I’m sorry. I just made some decisions too fast and I realized that I didn’t want to miss out on the chance to go to university. So I applied to a different one and was accepted into their fast track program.”
“What?” Luella exclaimed. “Don’t tell me you’re quitting on us! We just got you back.”
Jake slowly came down the stairs and stopped just before reaching the final few steps. That was when he saw me close up. And when I knew things would change indefinitely if I tried to stay. Jake looked at me with stunned eyes. Almost like he was seeing me for the first time. He liked what he saw. And he wanted it. He wanted me.
He walked up to me slowly as if he didn’t want to scare me away. But he was also embarrassed. His senses were attracted to me and not sure why. But I knew why. My scent was drawing him in for the kill. It could probably draw in Luella too if I let it. It was the same effect Devon had on me. The nervous knots, the heat rising inside of me, and the hint of embarrassment that a guy so stunning would have the slightest interest in me.
As Jake took in the sight of me all I could focus on was his neck. The flesh just above his shoulders was so tender. The meat covering his chest would be easy to tear into. All it would take was to shift into a lycan. I would be stronger, faster, and neither of them could get away.
‘This was a bad idea. I should have just let them think I dropped off the face of the planet.’
I was deadly. In a way I never imagined before. I had to get out of there as fast as I could.
The door bumped into me from behind and I went flying right into Jamie’s arms. I tried pushing away from him but he held onto me for a few seconds longer than necessary.
‘Yep. You still know how to make things awkward.’
Only this time it wasn’t because he was being clumsy or just a bit silly like the normal Jamie I knew. The aura around me was different. He was drawn to me. He was prey. And so was Luella. I was the spider. And they were getting caught in my web without even realizing it.
I pushed a little harder away from Jamie and sent him back toward the wall.
“You just get back and that’s how you treat a friend?” Oliver was behind me bringing in groceries through the front door.
“Ollie,” I said his name, realizing the entire band was right there. It was now or never. “Look, I came back to tell you all rather than calling because I wanted you to know that…well…”
“The suspense is epic, Riley,” Luella sassed me with her arms crossed over her chest.
“I decided to attend a university of my choosing. Like I said, they put me on a fast track program and I was accepted. So I’ll be leaving soon. But I’ll be back one day.”
“So we’re back to where we were a week ago. Brilliant,” Oliver complained with a grunt as he pushed by me and went into the kitchen, slamming the groceries onto the insanely small countertop.
“Why are you doing this?” Luella asked me. There was something sincere in her voice. Like she genuinely wanted me around. Only I couldn’t tell if it was because she truly valued me as a friend all this time or if my scent was drawing her in a little closer.
“I have to do this. For myself. If you have to replace me, so be it. I’ll understand.”
“You’ll understand?” Oliver shouted from the kitchen, swooping his long hair out of his face as he leaned against the counter with a stone cold glare. That was when he saw me. He took in the sight of me in a way I had never seen him do before unless his attention was focused on Luella. He started at my feet and his eyes gradually made their way up to my chest and then my face. He was checking me out. And Luella noticed too.
“I don’t think the two of you leering at her is helping matters,” she said in my defense. “In fact, it’s probably going to help drive her away.”
“Riley,” Jamie started. “You know we can only accomplish our sound with you here. You helped write half the songs and your vocals aren’t something we can just find by holding auditions. We need you.” He inched closer to me. Too close. I could feel the heat of his breath and hear the steady pounding of his heart. His pupils were dilating.
Oliver came up closer as well, letting his eyes wander over the few bits of skin I had showing.
Luella flashed him a glare, not liking what he was doing at all. Maybe she was leading him on all this time and attempting to get him to try harder. Now I was in the way.
“We’ll wait until you’ve finished uni then,” Jamie said, trying to pull me in for a hug. I could sense before he even touched me that he was just trying to get closer. He wanted to feel my body against his.
I backed up into the wall in the narrow hallway, not letting him get too close as the hue of the room turned a deep shade of crimson red.
“Jeez, Riley,” he said. “A bit on edge, are we?”
Luella cocked her head. “Riley, what the hell is wrong with your eyes?”
I blinked a few times, realizing what was happening. The instincts inside of me were stirring, urging me forward, and wanting me to bring Jamie in closer for the kill. I didn’t want his affection. And I certainly didn’t want his touch. I wanted to shift and tear into his throat, then feel the final beat of his heart as it stopped pumping away inside of him. Just before I plunged my teeth deep into his chest and feasted on his flesh.
“I have to go,” I muttered, pushing away from them and reaching for the door.
“That’s it then?” Luella hollered at me. “You’re leaving us again with barely an explanation.” Luella grabbed me by the shoulder and pulled me backward. She might have just been trying to get my attention but it was the wrong move to make. I was jittery, my magic was stirring inside me, and most of all I was hungry. The smell of her flesh was divine.
I swooped my arm around and shoved it right into her chest, throwing her back into the staircase with her arms and legs flailing as she went.
She crashed into the steps and collapsed. She wasn’t moving. I knocked her unconscious. Her chest moved up and down and I let out a breath. She was alive.
Jamie and Oliver looked at me with shock on their faces. Then pure disgust. The white hallway was saturated in red. I knew what they were seeing. The Riley they thought they knew was gone. She had been replaced by someone else. Someone aggressive and dangerous.
I threw the door open and ran down the steps.
Alina was already halfway up, coming to investigate the loud noise.
“We have to leave,” I said to her as I rushed down the stairs.
“What happened?”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I ask
ed.
“Tell you what?”
“What it would be like around humans after becoming a lycan?”
“That’s all a part of Lycan Interventional Training,” she answered. “Which you haven’t completed yet. Why do you think students are given an escort when they have a day with their loved ones?”
“Well, escort me to my father’s house next,” I demanded. “At least I won’t be too upset if I accidentally harm him.”
We both hurried into the car and sped away, burning some rubber from the tires as we went. I looked in the rearview mirror to see Jamie running onto the street and watching us as we drove away. My old life was behind me. I made sure of that with one good clean swoop of my arm into Luella’s chest.
‘Why did I do that? I’d never hurt Luella! Or any of them. They’re my friends!’
Not anymore. I was the danger now. And the only way to protect them was to stay the hell away.
I turned away from Alina to look out the passenger window. I refused to let her see me being weak. Especially when a single hot teardrop fell from my eye and rolled down my cheek. I rubbed it off and refused to let any more fall. My anger had to be directed somewhere else. On Devon, the man who did this to me. And to my brother, who I had to find before it was too late.
4
The three and a half hour car drive to my father’s house was one of the longest I had ever known in my entire life. I kept replaying the memory in my mind. The way Luella flew through the air and slammed into the staircase behind Jamie. How she collapsed and didn’t move. Had I really hurt her? Was she hospitalized right now? Did I break any bones? The thought made me cringe.
‘This was a bad idea. I shouldn’t have been let out. No wonder the vixra created the lycan realm. We can’t be trusted around humans.’
I took a few deep breaths and prepared myself. I knew if I ended up seeing my father that the rage inside of me would only start to swell. I might hurt him even worse. After all, I might never have been at the pub that night if I hadn’t felt the need to run from the decisions he made for me.
“How are you doing over there?” Alina asked as we took the exit toward my father’s property.
“I’ve been better.”
“We have classes on managing the aggression. You’ll get the hang of it over time.”
“Before or after I hurt everyone I care about?”
“Keep it brief. Get in, say goodbye, and get out.”
I let those words repeat in my mind over and over again before we reached the large house my father loved and I grew to hate. The house that was nothing more than a status symbol to him.
I saw Alina’s eyes grow wide when I directed her and we pulled up to the house. “This is where you live?” she asked.
“No. This is where my father lived. I moved out before all this happened.”
“Still…”
“Still what?”
“Must have been nice.”
I grunted. “Nice in aesthetics. Miserable in company.”
She smiled as though she understood.
“Wait,” I said just before we reached the gravel entryway to the front door. “Don’t pull up just yet. Go down the lane toward that clearing.”
“Why?”
“I want to see my brother first. You know, pay my respects.”
Lothar had me tell him everything. Alina and Jake didn’t know the details of what Devon said to me. I could get away with her not knowing my intentions for the time being. She seemed to accept my answer and drove through the neat array of perfectly lined trees on the road until we reached the nearby cemetery where the Blackburn family tomb resided.
I got out of the car and she did her usual lean against the driver’s door.
“I’ll be right here if you need me,” she said.
“I should be fine. My brother is long gone.”
Or so everyone had tried to have me believe. If there was even the slightest chance that Devon was telling the truth, I needed to find out.
I closed the car door and opened the stone gate leading into the cemetery. Then I walked along the path toward the large door to the Blackburn family tomb. I had never been inside. My father along with a few friends laid my brother’s casket to rest. I was forced to stay out. The day of the funeral was the worst of my life. The only other day that came close was the day my mother died. I never got the chance to give her a proper burial. Dad flew into France and whisked my brother and me away the second word of her death reached his ears, which was far faster than either of us expected.
There was a large lock on the stone door. Over a week ago this would have been a deterrent. Now it was only a slight inconvenience.
I backed up from the door and then slammed into it with my shoulder. I wasn’t the same slender girl anymore. I was stronger. I could force a door open. I heard the stone creak and start to crack. I gave it another large shove and it busted open. Dirt started falling from the top and I had to wait a few seconds as the air cleared up. Then I walked inside to see nothing but total darkness.
‘Breathe,’ I told myself. ‘Just breathe.’
I was no longer a stranger to death. I saw the wooden cart taking away the corpses of initiates that failed the trials. I could handle a few skeletons and a decomposing body. I had no other choice.
I stood there in the dark and closed my eyes. I didn’t have a flashlight or my cell phone to light the way. But none of that mattered anymore. I was a lycan. I could see better in the dark than the day. All I had to do was let my eyes adjust and in a matter of seconds, the darkness was my new light. I could walk right in and see everything before me.
I wandered through the narrow path between the stone walls, seeing plaques made of marble and other older materials lining the sides. The Blackburn family had lived in Derbyshire for hundreds of years. There were bodies dating back to the 17th century. I had to go rather deep into the tomb before I saw the engraved slab that I wanted.
DIRK BLACKBURN
November 7, 1999 - April 18, 2018.
BELOVED SON & FRIEND
I fully expected to see the slab with my brother’s name on it. I even expected to feel a twinge of pain. But maybe I was confusing expectation with preparation. Was I really ready to break into my brother’s casket?
‘If it’s not him inside of there then I don’t have to feel the least bit guilty. If it is, well, I can deal with that later.’
I plunged my fist into the marble slab. Once, twice, and three times until it was totally destroyed and laying at my feet in dozens of broken pieces. Then I started digging away. I came up against something hard with a metal handle. It was the back end of my brother’s casket.
I held on tight to the handle and pulled with all my strength. It was heavier than I expected. And I definitely wasn’t ready for it to come out as easily as it did. Before I knew it half the casket was flying out and it tumbled to the ground, leaving the top half dropping to the stone floor with a loud crash and the other stuck inside the narrow hole. It took some effort but I managed to finally get the entire thing out. I had to wait a few times for my hands to heal from the cuts and bruises from having to make the hole bigger by ripping it apart with my bare hands.
I gently let down the other end of the casket and took the opening side into my hand.
Was I ready for this? Desecrating a grave was a crime. But then again, so was faking his death if my brother was alive. If Rodrick or anyone else was coming after him, I had to know. And I had to find him first.
Whoever was inside, I could smell the rot of his body. The stench was almost more than I could bear. I coughed and squeezed my nostrils tight as I tried my best to ignore the smell. I slowly opened the casket to see my brother’s decaying face inside. His eyes were sunken, his skin was gray, his mouth was wide open, his hair was grown out, and most of all, he was completely disgusting. This wasn’t the way I wanted to remember my brother. If it was him.
I opened up the other end of the casket and started digging around.
I searched through the expensive suit my dad had him dressed in and started removing it, piece by piece. Not easy considering his rotting body was stiff and harder than a rock. I started by unbuttoning the front of his jacket, then the shirt.
‘Everyone said it was a stabbing. I should be able to see the wounds.’
Only when I finally got through his clothes and examined his left side I didn’t see just a stab wound. I looked closer to see a piece of metal. It was long and thin. The handle had been broken off to hide the evidence of it even being there. When I looked closer, I saw a silver blade from a broken dagger lodged deep inside the body.
‘You’ve gotta be kidding me!’
It was gross, it was wrong, and it was probably the most effort I had to use for the last few days. But I stuck my fingers inside the decaying flesh before me until I could grip the metal piece of the dagger and pull it out. Not easy given the handle was gone and the edge was still as sharp as the day it was probably shoved inside.
I yanked it out only to see my palm sliced wide open. I held my hand and watched as the wound slowly closed up. It didn’t matter that my body could heal so fast. I still felt the pain. The hot searing cut sewed back together. And once it was healed, I peered at the body below me. The corpse didn’t move. Nothing changed. My heart started to sink. Maybe it was my brother after all. And I had dishonored his grave.
Then the unthinkable happened. The bones inside started to shift and become bigger. I could hear them start to snap. The man inside had broader shoulders than my brother. And a larger bald head. The body shifted right before my eyes into someone else I didn’t recognize. An elderly man with wrinkles and a square jaw.
I got up and watched as his form changed and ripped through the suit that was at least three sizes too small for him.
The man inside the coffin was a master shifter. He transformed into my brother’s likeness. Then he was stabbed with silver to freeze him in Dirk’s form as he died.
Devon wasn’t lying. My brother was alive. The body before me wasn’t his. Now the question remained. Was this my brother’s doing? Did he fake his death? And if so, why? What was he afraid of? Who was he hiding from?
Restrike: (Lycan Academy of Shapeshifting: Operation Shift, Book 2) Page 4