Summer Shifter Days

by V. Vaughn

  Ash took the hair and wound it around his index finger. He hummed a song that sounded suspiciously like The Police’s “Every Breath You Take.” Then he nodded, “She’s in her dorm, in The Keep. In her room, I think.” He frowned. “Dude, the song got all discordant. She seems really sad. Like apocalyptically sad.”

  The wolf howled louder. Mal could barely hear what Nico was saying.

  “ . . . is impenetrable. You can’t get in. Guys try all the time, but the security is top notch. Like, there are government buildings that are easier to sneak into. It’s a matter of pride. My mom actually helped design some of the defenses for The Keep. It has a hundred years of surveillance spells and detection devices layered on top of each other. No man has ever snuck in. Not ever.”

  “There’s got to be a way.” An idea was forming, but Mal could only see the outline of it. What was he thinking? Something that Nico said reverberated, but it was drowned out by the wolf’s howling, the Taylor Swift earworm, and the sudden crushing fear that Cassie was in trouble.

  “You could find a way to get her out of there,” Ash suggested. “You tried calling her?”

  “I never even got her number. I checked the student directory, but like a lot of the upperclass students she’s unlisted.”

  “Too bad, man. I was thinking you could invite her to the Perfect Day show tonight. I know you’ve been dying to go. It’s literally the only thing that will convince Nico to take a break from development.” Ash slapped Nico on the back.

  “That’s tonight?” Mal said. “Shit. When are you leaving?” The show. It’d been motivating him this whole time, and he’d forgotten about it in the wake of his not-quite-breakup with Cassie.

  Nico pointed at a clock on the wall. Written under it in marker it said, “Bus leaves in twenty minutes.” As Mal watched, the twenty erased itself and reformed into nineteen. “If you’re here in nineteen minutes, you can ride with us,” Nico said. “You can even stick your head out the window.”

  The idea crystallized and before he could think it through, he said, “The security on Cassie’s dorm stops all men from entering, right?”

  “That’s what I just said,” Nico scoffed.

  “You also can’t alter your sex temporarily,” Ash offered. “In case that’s where you were going. I mean, you could do it permanently. There’s a few trans-women who live in The Keep, but temporary spells get sniffed out.”

  “Okay, well, I’m going to try a thing. I’m not going to tell you what, because you’ll try and talk me out of it. And in case anything goes disastrously wrong, you need to be able to tell the dean truthfully you didn’t know what I was planning.” Mal pulled out his phone and opened the Contacts app. He sent both his roommates the number of his Alpha back home. “If you don’t hear from me in three days, call this guy. Tell him I’m missing and do whatever he tells you, okay?”

  “Is this your dad?” Nico asked, already googling the number for information.

  “I can’t tell you who it is. He’s not my dad though. He’ll be able to help if anything goes one hundred percent bananas.”

  Ash snapped off a crisp yet ironic salute. “The goddess has you in her grasp tonight, Mal. I can sense it.”

  Nico waved. “Bus leaves in eighteen minutes. We can’t be late.”

  Mal nodded at his friends and wondered if he’d ever see them again. He paused, trying to fix the sight of them in their bighearted, dirty-shirted, unshaven glory in his mind. Then he slipped away, running down the hall, leaping down the stairs, and sprinting down the street towards The Keep.

  He veered off the sidewalk just before the stately dorm came into view, ducking behind a thick bush dripping with white flowers that he remembered all of a sudden was called a cream bush. Hidden by its flowers he stripped off his shirt and shoes, his pants and socks and briefs. He balled them up and stuffed them behind the bush. Should he have left a note? In case things went wrong and Nico and Ash didn’t get the message home in time? It was too late to worry. He needed to see Cassie, to make sure she was okay, because his wolf kept howling in a way that made it seem like she really wasn’t.

  Was she doing something reckless? He’d heard stories about witches experimenting with memory charms after a breakup—not that they’d been dating, so they couldn’t be breaking up—and erasing too deep. Or maybe she was trying to talk with her grandmama again, but this time without Mal there to ground her? She knew a thousand times more about everything than he did, which meant she knew ten thousand ways to fuck up and get hurt.

  Kneeling naked behind the cream bush, with The Keep in sight, Mal hoped that no one from the administration was watching him at that moment. He was about to break every single rule the school had regarding Afflicted conduct on campus.

  Mal breathed deeply. He closed his eyes. The concentration enchantment had fragmented. Ash’s Taylor Swift spell wasn’t playing nice with it, instead chipping away at the spell. His wolf was worried and furious and confused. It couldn’t read his mind, it didn’t know what he was planning.

  For the first time ever, he let the wolf loose. Instead of pushing it away, deeper into himself, he seized it and pulled it forward, up into the light of the world. All of the times he’d shifted, it’d been a half-measure, like most werewolves. He’d taken on a form between man and beast with sharpened senses, savage instincts, but the mind of a man inside holding it all together.

  This time was different. This time he was going to go all the way. He was going to submerge his mind within the wolf’s and slip into The Keep undetected. At least, that was the plan. He’d never done it before—anything could happen. The wolf could run the other way. It could lock him away and spend the rest of its days wandering the Canadian wilderness. He’d been warned to never fully shift. Only the strongest of alphas, they said, could tap fully into the beast within.

  He was going to prove them wrong.

  Or die trying.

  Black fur rippled across his skin. His bones popped and stretched and realigned themselves. Across the street, the side door of The Keep was propped open. It was a warm night. The old campus buildings were always too hot on nights like this.

  The color leached out of the world while the scents grew shockingly vibrant.

  Mal felt himself falling away, like he was drifting in slow motion to the bottom of a well, watching the world from a great distance. The wolf was in control now. Could it be trusted? What would it do left to its own devices?

  Flashes of what the wolf sensed flitted down to Mal. A door. A surprised student. Stairs. Scents of laundry and perfume, of a thousand kinds of food. So many scents that it seemed impossible the wolf could navigate them. So much was encoded in every one that it was like watching a dozen movies at once. There were scents that scared the wolf and elicited a rumbling growl and scents that made him sleepy. Scents that made him miss the woods and scents that intrigued him with their alien notes.

  But under it all, not far away, was the scent of moonlight.

  The wolf followed it.

  The scent wasn’t fresh, but it didn’t matter. Nothing else mattered.

  Underneath the scent and on top of it and woven all around, a sound came to Mal. It echoed down through the wolf ears. It was familiar, the sound was. Someone sang and the song was Mal’s. He didn’t write it, but the notes of the music were in his blood and as the woman sang he found himself rising within the wolf, desperate to hear more of the song.

  The wolf was padding down a hallway, darting from shadow to shadow, drawing upon some arcane talents to hide from human eyes. The hallway was rich with Cassie’s scent. The song was louder now and live. It wasn’t recorded music, but a woman lifting her voice to the sky and announcing the pain of life to all who could hear.

  Cassie’s door was open. Light blazed from within.

  It was her, she was singing. She was singing his favorite song, from his favorite band and it drew him like a loadstone. Mal felt himself rising within the wolf, but the wolf pushed back, not wanting to let g
o of its first taste of freedom.

  Cassie had her eyes closed. Flame danced on her arms. She sang and the wolf sat, watching her in rapturous silence. A window hung in the air before her, suspended by magic. On the other side were bright lights and too many people. The wolf didn’t like the look of it.

  The song ended and Cassie took a trembling breath before opening her eyes. When she saw the wolf, she screamed and set it on fire.

  11

  One minute she’d been singing along with the music, and the next there was a black wolf staring at her with hungry eyes. Had she summoned it? Created it whole cloth? Before she could even think, she lashed out with the fire that had been her constant companion all day.

  The little blue dancing fire people leapt from her fingers like darts, pelting the wolf. If it was a conjuring, it would vanish. If it was a real wolf, she’d have other problems. But the big black wolf shrank from the flames. It turned to run away, but instead smashed straight into her bedroom door, slamming it shut from the inside.

  Cassie gathered her power, preparing for a larger blast, when the wolf shimmered. And in the space of a breath the animal was gone and Malcolm was there, in her bedroom, kneeling on the carpet.

  “You unbelievable ass!” Cassie yelled. “You scared the pants off me.” Her heart hammered in her chest. He’d scared her, but her heart was beating faster now, after he’d shifted. Her room felt too small all of a sudden. Like she needed more space between her and Mal, or less space. How dare he sneak into her room? And why wasn’t he coming closer?

  The scent of his shifting filled her small room. It was pleasant, not at all like the books described. The research said shift-scent was pungent and repulsive. It was the scent of raw magic and a byproduct of the transformation to man or beast. But to Cassie it smelled like cinnamon and cloves, almost sweet and unbearably complex. She wanted to bottle it and show it to the makers of body spray and tell them, “This. This is what a man should smell like.”

  Mal rose to his feet and took three halting steps toward her. “Are you okay?” he asked. There was genuine concern in his eyes.

  “I’m fine,” Cassie snapped. “I mean—no, not at all. It’s been a very trying day.”

  Mal looked confused. “I was worried—we were worried. My wolf, it was howling for you. I thought you were in trouble.” He narrowed his eyes, as if he was asking her again if she was okay. Then he saw the portal hanging in the air, and as he turned to look through it, Cassie took a moment to regard him.

  Mal was naked.

  Very naked.

  She’d only seen his naked body in pieces before. A shirtless afternoon in the quad. A glimpse of his washboard abs and those delicious deep V lines on his hips. She’d seen his defined calves, too, when he’d worn some ripped-up shorts to one of their study sessions. But to see it all together—to see him in his altogether—it took her breath away.

  He walked around the portal, examining it from every side. And Cassie kept examining him from every side. He wasn’t the first naked boy she’d seen in person, but he was certainly the first naked man. His ass was muscled and magnificent and his cock—she had little to compare it to by way of personal experience, but it looked pretty to her, and big, and inviting. It sprouted from a dark thatch of hair in a way that should have been ridiculous, but instead it made her belly tighten and her fingers tremble. How would it feel to hold such a thing? To have that inside her? It looked far too big for actual sex. Were all shifters similarly endowed, or was Mal special in this capacity?

  Through the portal, music drifted into the room.

  “That’s the Perfect Day show,” Mal said in wonder. “How are you doing this?” He walked around the portal to stand on the far side of it. It was a perfect circle, four feet in diameter, so she could only see his head and shoulders above it. Already she missed the view.

  “This is my project.” Her voice was quiet with pride. “Most scrying windows are small and difficult to maintain without elaborate apparatus. But mine is stable. I opened this an hour ago and it’ll last all night if I let it. You can open this anywhere and watch anything. But really, that’s only the secondary use.”

  “I don’t see any devices,” Mal said.

  “It’s inside the portal. If I turned it off, you would see a platinum disc about the size of a bicycle wheel.”

  “It’s incredible.”

  “Are you hurt?” Cassie asked. There was too much distance between them. She wanted to put her hands on him, to find any excuse to touch him.

  He shook his head and grinned at her. “You scared the hell out of my wolf with that fire. I’ll be fine though. I heal fast.”

  “Let me see,” she said. Mal walked toward her and almost clipped the portal with his hand. “Be careful. You shouldn’t touch it.”

  “What would happen?”

  “Where did I burn you?”

  Mal watched her with an intensity she’d never seen before. “Here,” he said, pointing to a pink spot on his shoulder.

  Cassie caught his gaze and put her hands on either side of the burn. She leaned in and brushed her lips against the mark gently.

  The world froze around them. There was no sound but for the beating of her heart. Malcolm’s eyes were huge and contained depths she could happily spend a lifetime exploring. Her mouth tingled where she’d kissed his skin. She licked her lips and found the lingering taste there intoxicating.

  Mal stood very still, but he was breathing fast, too.

  “Where else?” Cassie asked.

  “Here,” Mal said, pointing to another pink burn mark. This one was lower down, on his hip, in one of those amazing Vs of muscle.

  Cassie sank to her knees. His scent was doing something to her. It was calming her and exciting her at the same time. She’d never felt anything like it. She ran her hands down his chest, enjoying the hard warmth of his lean body, until she’d framed his burn mark again. If she moved her hand over even a little, she’d be grabbing his manhood. It was tempting, but first she looked up and caught his gaze again, returning it with a fevered intensity. He was asking her a question, and the answer was yes. Yes, of course. Yes, please. Yes, forever, starting right now.

  She brushed her lips against his burn and he hissed.

  Out of the corner of her eye, she saw his cock jump and swell. It was hardening, lengthening. She’d seen this on the internet, of course, but never in person. Her contract with Nox had been exhaustively detailed when it came to describing the virginity requirements expected of her.

  It was a good thing she’d torn the contract up.

  Cassie’s heart was exploding. Mal’s body was giving off heat like a furnace. Perfect Day was playing an angsty love song in the distance while a crowd sang along.

  Mal reached out and touched her cheek, stroking it with two fingers.

  “You look different,” he said.

  “I took my glamours off. This is the real me. No illusions.”

  “You’re beautiful.” His voice was almost a growl, but not the scary kind. No, it was the kind that sent shivers of excitement racing down her spine.

  Cassie inched her hand over. Her fingers brushed the coarse hair surrounding the base of his cock.

  Mal held his breath and watched her. His eyes danced with golden fire.

  And then an alarm split the air.

  Red and blue lights flashed around them, popping like flashbulbs.

  A heavy stomping sound echoed up the hallway. “Intruder!” a voice yelled. “There is a man in The Keep!”

  Cassie leapt to her feet while Mal leaned down to help her up. Their heads cracked together with a dull thud.

  “You have to get out of here,” she hissed. “Can you shift again?”

  Mal shook his head. “I can’t. The wolf is still freaked out from the fire.”

  The stomping feet grew closer. The walls shook with the impact. Cassie had no idea what was coming, or what it would do to Mal once it found him.

  There was only one option.
/>   “Do you trust me?” she asked, holding her hand out for Mal.

  He took it. “Of course.”

  “Then jump,” she said, and leapt into the circular portal.

  The world bent around them, twisting and extending. They were falling across space, across thirty miles of Canada, across Penrose itself. And it only took three breaths. Stars flashed above and below them. Through the retreating portal, Cassie saw some hulking thing smash into her dorm room on the hunt for Mal. She flicked out with her wand and gave the command word that closed the portal. And then they were somewhere very hot, very loud, and very dark.

  They were in a bar, a club. The noise of Perfect Day buffeted her. The crowd was all around—they’d landed in the middle of it. It was too much, too near. She wasn’t dressed for it, in her pajamas, without all of the glamours and protections she usually wore in public. She had nothing at all but her wand in one hand and Mal in the other.

  He pulled her close, into a hug, and she realized she was shaking uncontrollably. Her spell had worked. Her project was a success. She was elated and terrified all at once. But as Mal held her, she felt her fears melt away. She pressed her face against the hollow of his throat and inhaled the scent of him, letting it fill her up.

  The club was dark but for the blazing lights aimed at the stage. Even so, people could see that Mal was naked. Though he didn’t seem to notice.

  “You want to stay and watch them?” Cassie asked him. He was smiling at her and holding her close still, like he didn’t ever want to let go. His hands on her back were large and strong.

  “Watch who?”

  Cassie rolled her eyes. “Your favorite band? You haven’t shut up about them all this time. Now here we are and you’re ignoring them.”

  Mal smiled. “I found something better.”

  Cassie, greatly daring, slapped his butt. It was firm and taut and she loved the way he jumped when she did it. “If you don’t want to get thrown out, we need to find you some clothes.”