“Oh. He said something about a lion, but I was only half awake. Why did the lion guy take Syl?”
“He works for Anders,” Syl said. “His name’s Parker Mason.”
Oh, hell. Having my suspicions confirmed opened a pit of anxiety in my stomach. “How do you know him?”
“I’d seen him around a few times—before you came to the city. He used to hire out to anyone who needed muscle, but then he got a gig with Anders.”
“I never saw him.”
“I think he travelled a bit. Anders has his fingers in pies all over the country. And you weren’t with us that long before …” She trailed off. Before the fire.
“Why does Steele care that this Mason guy tried to abduct Syl?” Holly asked. “Shapers don’t usually bother themselves with what the shifters get up to.”
“I think they’re working together,” Syl said, and there was real fear in her eyes. “I was at Steele’s house when Mason grabbed me.”
I wasn’t so sure. It was me Anders really wanted. Taking Syl was just the bait to lure me. Steele could have taken me any time tonight if he’d wanted to, but instead he’d helped get Syl back.
“That’s bad,” Holly said.
You could say that again. Even if he wasn’t in league with Anders, Steele was a powerful shaper. Just because he hadn’t incinerated me the minute he found me snooping in his study, it didn’t mean I could trust him. I wasn’t sticking around to have that conversation with him tomorrow. I couldn’t take the risk. Our lives were on the line.
“We’ll have to run,” Syl said.
Holly didn’t argue, though her eyes were bright with tears. I felt a little teary myself. I’d miss her and Joe, their pretend fights and their easy acceptance. Even Joe’s stupid jokes about Lucas. It didn’t matter to them that I wasn’t a wolf. They’d been prepared to welcome me into their lives. And now I’d have to leave them and Alberto and Tegan behind, and start again somewhere else.
“Do you need money?” Holly asked.
“No.” As if I could take her money, with a baby coming and no job. But it was like her to offer. “We’ll be fine.”
There was one thing I had to do before we left, though. I had to say goodbye to Alberto.
11
*I’m coming with you,* Syl said, sticking to my heels like a shadow as I hurried down the stairs. She hadn’t stayed long in her human form once Holly had left.
“I won’t be long. You could stay here and start packing.”
*It’s all your stuff anyway. Pack your own shit. I’m not hanging around here on my own, wondering if some other old friend is going to turn up and smash me over the head.*
“Is that what he did?” She’d never actually told me how he’d managed to capture her. Now I felt guilty that I hadn’t checked her over a little more carefully—though, in my defence, shifters were fast healers.
The cold night air hit me in the face as we left the building and jogged across the street to the pub. The place was deserted: no cars parked outside, no drinkers loitering on the pavement. It was way past closing time.
*No.* Syl’s mental voice sounded bitter. *Bastard shot me with a tranquiliser dart.*
I frowned down at her as I rattled the door of the pub. Locked. Your garden-variety thug didn’t normally come equipped with tranq guns. That sounded horribly prepared. It was looking more and more likely that Steele had tipped off Anders to our presence. Possibly unintentionally.
I couldn’t quite understand why Steele was off chasing the lion shifter now if they were on the same side, but I was prepared to believe anything of shapers. Most likely, it was just a falling out among thieves. At least it gave us a chance to skip town before Steele came knocking in the morning.
Regardless, it was clear our friend Mason hadn’t come to Berkley’s Bay because he’d heard it was a great place to kick back and take the sea air. Syl had been right. I should never have taken that damn altarpiece.
I hammered on the door. Alberto was probably still in there, and he wouldn’t be asleep at this time. I guess he could be out, doing whatever vampires do in the dark hours before dawn. I’d never enquired as to Alberto’s sustenance, but there’d been no suspicious disappearances since I’d come to town, so I figured he managed without causing too much damage. I didn’t believe those rumours of the captive blood donors in the cellar. That just didn’t jibe with the person I knew. The townspeople seemed to like him well enough, which also made it seem unlikely that he was a murderous, bloodsucking demon. But then, some people would do anything for free beer.
The door creaked open and Alberto’s pale face appeared in the gloom between the outer and inner doors.
“I assume you’re not here for a drink, because I closed hours ago.” He gestured impatiently as I hesitated on the doorstep. “Come in, come in, you’re letting out all the warm air.”
I followed him in. He was cute like that, pretending that warm air meant anything to him. He had such a knack of blending in that I often forgot he was a vampire at all. Until he did something like attacking Mason the other night. Those swirling shadows had sure been something else. It made me wonder whether some of the more outlandish claims about him were true after all. If he could suck all the light from the room like that, what else could he do? Maybe he really could turn into smoke and disappear through a keyhole, or call nightmare creatures out of the ground.
He waited until I’d closed the outer door behind me before opening the inner door, even though there was no damaging UV radiation outside at this time of night. But he was very strict about his door protocol, and even his drunkest customers soon learned the rules.
Inside, the lights were dimmer than usual, with most turned off apart from the ones over the massive wooden bar. I was used to seeing the place full of people. It seemed less cosy without the roar of conversation and laughter filling it. The shadows pressed in, seeping out of the corners and creeping into the rest of the room.
“I’m here to say goodbye.” Although if he did happen to offer a drink, I wouldn’t say no. It had been that kind of day.
One finely arched eyebrow arched even higher. Alberto looked like a caricature of a vampire, with his dark hair swept back from his forehead, his fine features, his rather autocratic nose and sensual lips. When he pulled that quizzical expression, he brought to mind every corny actor who’d ever played Dracula. I sometimes wondered if his maker had chosen him simply because he looked like a man born to be a vampire.
“You’re leaving town? Why?”
Syl stalked past and leapt up onto the bar, where she perched like a sphinx surveying her domain.
“Something bad has happened.”
He glanced at the cat, her tail idly twitching behind her. “I gathered that, if it managed to goose Sylvie right out of her cat skin. But what, exactly?”
The tail stilled. I could feel Syl’s shock through our link. I stared at him, not knowing what to say. And then I remembered the stories about what happened to people who got caught in a vampire’s hypnotic gaze, and dropped my eyes, just to be safe.
He tapped the bar impatiently with one long elegant finger. “Come now, ladies, let’s not pretend. I’ve known ever since you showed up on my doorstep that Sylvie is a shifter. I saw no reason to pry into her reasons for forgoing her human shape, so I didn’t.”
Syl hissed at him.
*Really, Syl?* I shot at her. *You really think it’s a good idea to take on a vampire? What are you going to do, give him cat scratch fever?*
Fortunately, Alberto wasn’t offended by her attitude. “Your secret is safe with me, little one.” He considered her a moment, head tipped on one side. “Although I suspect your secret is out now, yes? Something feels different about you. Why did you take human form after all this time?”
“Someone forced her to,” I said.
“Who would do a thing like that?” Alberto slid onto the barstool next to me, as if he was ready to hear all my secrets.
Sadly for him, I wasn’t read
y to tell them. “We have enemies.”
“A pretty girl like you?” He all but fluttered his eyelashes at me. They were thick and dark, too. Any girl would kill for eyelashes like that.
“Even pretty girls can make enemies,” I said primly.
He sighed, and dialled back the charm. “I wish you’d tell me who you really are. You can trust me.”
“There’s no secret about who I am.” Just what. “I’m Lexi Jardine.”
“Just an ordinary girl with powerful enemies?”
I wished I could tell him everything. He’d been nothing but a friend to me since we’d arrived, giving me a job at the bookstore, and what I was sure was reduced rent on the little apartment above it. He was like a kindly uncle, always watching out for me.
“I don’t want to go into details,” I said. “Trusting people hasn’t worked out well for me in the past.”
His eyes glittered strangely in the dim room. “You know I could kill you both without even exerting myself.”
“I suppose you could.” I kept my voice calm with an effort. Could he hear my heartbeat speed up?
He smiled, letting his fangs peep out. In three months this was only the second time I’d seen them.
*Oh, crap,* said Syl.
“Not that I would, of course.” The fangs disappeared again and I allowed myself one deep, relieved breath. “A publican doesn’t keep his customers long if people start disappearing from his establishment. I’m merely pointing out that if I’d wanted you dead, you would be. Perhaps a modicum of trust is in order?”
He got up and went behind the bar. I watched him get out two glasses and pour us both a shot of whisky. I felt a little more comfortable with the bar between us.
Did I trust him? More than I trusted most people, I guess.
“That’s no way to live, you know.” It was as if he could read my thoughts. “You have to trust someone, or you end up like a wild animal, cringing from every hand that reaches out to it.” He eyed Syl, whose delicate pink tongue had darted out to lick up a couple of drops of amber fluid that had spilled onto the bar. “Or like a shifter who’s too afraid to leave the shelter of her animal form.”
I took a gulp of my drink, feeling the alcohol burn its way down my throat. I set it down with a clink, leaving a small ring on the gleaming wood surface of the bar, and came to a decision.
“A man called Erik Anders wanted me to find something for him. He’s a shaper.”
“The new councillor.”
“Yes.” I took another quick sip and set the glass down again, watching the interlocking wet circles formed on the dark wood. Circles within circles. “The thing he wanted belonged to another, more powerful shaper.”
“Why did he ask you to find this item for him?” The vampire took a sip of his own drink, watching me over the rim of his glass. “Was it anything to do with how you found those boys the other night?”
The man was sharp. Did I have any secrets from him?
“I’m good at finding things,” I said.
“So?” he prompted when I stopped there. “Why not just do it?”
“Even if I didn’t get killed in the process, I doubted he would let me live afterwards. He wouldn’t want to risk anyone discovering his part in the theft.”
“Hmm. And I assume he’s now succeeded in tracking you down?”
“That lion shifter you ran out of here was one of his men.” I drained the glass. “Hence the need to say goodbye.”
“You’re running again? Why not do what he wants and get it over with? You’re not without friends here, you know. He might find it a little harder than he imagines to do away with you.”
He looked so fierce as he said this, I felt a rush of warmth that had nothing to do with the alcohol. It was good to feel that someone had my back. But I couldn’t be responsible for dragging my friends into danger with me. Even Alberto, powerful as he was, was vulnerable to a fireshaper’s flames. Joe and Holly stood no chance. I couldn’t live with myself if anything happened to them because of me.
“Unfortunately, he has friends of his own,” I said. “Jake Steele turning up here at precisely this time seems an awfully big coincidence. He says he’s on council business, but he knows Anders—and the lion shifter, though he pretended he didn’t. I’m afraid he’s mixed up in it, too.”
“I doubt that. There’s no love lost between Steele and Anders. And he’s telling the truth about the council business.” He leaned over the bar and lowered his voice, though we were the only ones here. “Have you ever heard of shadow shapers?”
“No.”
Shapers only came in five flavours: earth, air, fire, water and metal. Most could manipulate more than one element, though there would be one that was their prime or dominant element. Some rare individuals could work with as many as four elements, but I’d never heard of anyone being able to work with shadows. What did that even mean?
“They’re shadows of the First Shapers, though I suppose you could say that all shapers are shadows of the First Shapers, since it was from them that shaping ability came originally.”
“The First Shapers are just a myth, though.” No one really knew where shapers had come from; they’d always been there. Just as some people had blue eyes, some had shaping abilities. People with blue eyes normally didn’t try to enslave the ones who didn’t, of course, which had been the problem with the shapers for all of recorded history.
Which was why we now had human cities and shaper cities. Separation seemed the best answer—at least, it had been working for the last hundred years or so. More or less.
The vampire shook his head in disbelief. “What do they teach you in those human cities?”
I’d never told him I’d come from Newport, the biggest human-controlled city in New Holland. Apparently that didn’t matter: he’d figured it out for himself.
“My dear, the First Shapers are as real as you and I.”
I eyed him suspiciously, not sure if he was pulling my leg. “The First Shapers—the gods—are real?” All the shapers kept shrines to their chosen gods. Statues to one god or another were all over shaper territory. Even tiny Berkley’s Bay had a statue of Poseidon keeping watch over the waterfront. But no one other than the shapers paid more than lip service to them. Maybe once belief in them had been widespread, but in these modern times belief in a bunch of quarrelsome deities seemed oddly quaint. “They’ve been awfully quiet for the last millennia or two, in that case.”
“I see you’re not a believer. Well, the shapers of the Ruby Council certainly are, and if someone were stealing your gods’ magic and creating a new kind of shaper with it—one with the same kind of powers as the gods, though in a lesser form—you might be as troubled as they are.”
This was all too much to take in at this hour of the morning, on top of the evening I’d just had. Not only was he saying that the gods were real, but that someone was killing them. How did you kill a god? Wasn’t the whole point of godhood that you were immortal? “Steele is hunting stolen magic? Or these shadow shapers? What does that have to do with me?”
“Nothing. That’s the point. He has far too much on his plate right now to be concerned with a runaway thief and a cat shifter. He came to consult me about some curious messages he has been receiving.”
“Why? Did he think they were from you?” Not that I really cared. I was more interested in the messages Steele had been exchanging with Anders, and what they had said about a certain missing altarpiece. All this business about gods and magic and mysterious shadows was way above my pay grade, if it was even true. I mean, I trusted Alberto, but this was a lot to swallow. Sure, the shapers believed it, but that didn’t mean I had to.
“He suspects they may be from a mutual friend of ours who disappeared in rather suspicious circumstances.”
“Well, as long as he’s not here to disappear me.”
“I really don’t think so. He could even be an ally for you against Anders. Don’t be so quick to run away, Lexi. If they’ve found
you once they can do it again, and next time you may not have friends around who can help you.”
*Friends?* Syl snorted. *Didn’t he just finish telling us we should trust him because he hasn’t killed us yet? What sort of friend says something like that?*
She sounded disgruntled.
*I thought you liked Alberto?*
*I like my blood where it is, thanks very much. Are you done with the goodbyes yet? Let’s hit the road before Steele comes back and stirs up more trouble.*
She was right. This goodbye had turned into a much longer conversation than I’d planned. I got up to leave.
“Thank you for everything.” Now it came to the actual goodbye, I felt awkward. You can’t exactly hug a vampire, can you? That would bring your neck way closer to those fangs than any sensible person would risk.
“You know where I am if you need me,” he said.
I nodded, then left him there in the darkened pub, swirling a melting ice cube around in the bottom of his glass while the shadows gathered around him. Outside in the cold night air again, we hurried across the road. The street door at the bottom of the stairs opened at a touch.
*I thought you locked this?* Syl asked.
“So did I.”
An anxious feeling clenched in my stomach as I took the stairs to the landing, a feeling that yawned into a pit of horror at the sight of Joe and Holly’s front door standing wide open.
“Holly?”
I hesitated in the doorway. No one answered, so I took a few steps inside. The presents from the baby shower were piled up on the dining table in a festive heap of pink and blue wrappings. A couple lay on the floor, as if they’d been swept aside in a struggle, their ribbons knocked askew. A bunch of helium balloons floated above them, pretty in soft pastel shades.
“Holly? Are you here?”
No one in the bedrooms, or the bathroom. The apartment was no bigger than ours; there was nowhere to hide.
Stolen Magic (Shadows of the Immortals Book 1) Page 11