Falling for Shifters: A Limited Edition Autumn Shifters Collection

by Lacey Carter Andersen

  One was Gracie, who was dead.

  The other… Well, short of the world ending, I wasn’t going to contact her. Not if I didn’t want to end up just like Gracie.

  My hand clenched in the memory, feeling that ache in my chest at the loss of my cousin. I worried my bottom lip, trying to dampen that feeling.

  Don’t ruin tonight with tears.

  “Let’s go,” Drake said, taking my hand to jog across the street. The pedestrian crossing flashed white just as we stepped off the curb, making me wonder if Drake did indeed use some magic to get us back to the apartment faster.

  I decided not to complain. I nestled into his warmth, ready to get the rest of the night going. I needed this so badly.

  “It’s quiet tonight,” I murmured, looking around us as we turned down another street. Other than the couple that watched us strangely, there weren’t very any people out, due to the chill in the night air. Januaries in San Francisco were some of the coldest months in the year, which wasn’t saying much for a city that never sees snow.

  But it was cold enough for it to keep the crowds away, so Drake and I were alone underneath the flickering street light.

  “Remind me to never wear these shoes again,” I muttered, nearly twisting an ankle as the red-bottomed soles of my shoes hit some gravel and I nearly face-planted.

  “You wouldn’t listen to me anyway,” Drake said with a snicker, and I couldn’t help but smirk at him.

  He knew me too well.

  The shoes were gorgeous, but so damn impractical, especially for walking home at night. I may be a demon hunter, but shit, a girl needs to look her best when she goes out with one of her boyfriends. And I knew I looked good, too. Drake couldn’t keep his hands off me, as evidenced by his hand over my ass all night.

  Not that I’m complaining. Especially as I gave him a come-hither look.

  “You,” he whispered, pulling me to him, “are a sin.”

  I raised my eyebrow. “And?”

  He kissed my lips in answer. I guess that was good enough for me.

  Then I felt it. A rumbling in the darkness around us. The hair on the back on my neck stood straight up in response. As I looked up into Drake’s eyes, his mouth turned down at the corners.

  He noticed it, too. What’s more, there was fear in his eyes, which, when a powerful fairy prince was afraid, you knew the shit was about to hit the fan. He moved, just slightly, enough to put himself between the threat and me.

  He knew that being too protective made me grumpy—I was a demon hunter after all—so for him to automatically do this...

  Panic rose in my throat. “Drake…”

  He didn’t get to answer, because claws reached out from the darkness and tore me away from him. Instincts took over, and I brought up my leg and slammed my red-bottomed stiletto into the face of my assailant. All those years in ballet paid off, because I was damn flexible, and I heard the satisfying crunch of my foot into their nose.

  They underestimated Cassidy Irons.

  My attacker immediately let me go with a roar, and I landed on both feet. I pulled out my duo of knives from my garter. Ugh, why did they decide to attack us now, of all nights? I had dressed for a sexy night out, not for a fight among some sort of stupid supernatural creature. I wasn’t armed for this kind of shit.

  At least now, I felt pissed.

  I whirled on my feet, flashing my blades against the throat of my attacker, feeling the warm blood splatter against my face. Yeah, this dress was now officially ruined.

  At least I got a better look at whoever thought they could start some shit.

  It was a wolf. A big, furry werewolf to be exact, his eyes going wild as he collapsed to the concrete.

  Chapter Two

  Cassidy

  Werewolves weren’t my usual go-to for hunting—that title belonged to my cousin Blaize—but I could still kick their asses when I needed to.

  “Who’s the big bad wolf now, bitch?” I sneered.

  Then I turned to look at Drake, to see him smile and laugh that his girlfriend could kick ass, but he wasn’t there. I let out a wisp of breath, trying to wrack my brain what happened.

  But the only thing that made sense was that there were more werewolves. And Drake was either fighting them or…

  Or they had stolen him.

  I took off at a run, kicking off the stupid, stupid shoes as I did so, pumping my legs as fast as I could, frantically looking at every shadow and everything that moved in the night.

  “Drake!” I screamed. “Drake, where are you?”

  Something slammed into me from the side, and I lost contact with the ground, flying into the nearest wall. I slid to the ground and tried to rattle some oxygen into my paper-thin lungs. The air had been knocked right out of me, and based on how my ribs hurts, something else had been knocked loose, too.

  My knives were somewhere. If only I could get my double vision lined up together, then I’d kill whoever did this.

  My hands scrabbled along the concrete. Where are they? Where are they?

  My fingers wrapped around one, and I brought it up in an arc to stab into the mouth of another werewolf as he tried to bite me. The blade slid all the way home into his brain, gushing blood around my fingers and thick, frothy saliva spluttered in my face.

  That helped bring my double vision back together, at least. I found my other knife and stabbed it into another werewolf’s chest before throwing one into the eye of another.

  Just how many werewolves are attacking us?

  Too many apparently, because I screamed as I felt jaws tear into my shoulder from behind me, digging into muscle, bone, and tendons. I hoped I tasted bad for him, but he shook his big head, and I felt more of me tear within his teeth.

  I spun with my other hand and jabbed the knife into the werewolf’s jugular. He gurgled a few times before his teeth slackened enough to let go, but I kicked him away, retrieving my knife from his neck.

  “Drake!” I screamed again, trying to do something— anything —to get him to answer me. “Drake!”

  I grimaced as the pain from my shoulder hit me again, and a claw came out of the darkness and swiped across my cheek. Stars danced across my eyes as I struggled to keep on my feet. Something wet and sticky slid down my cheek, and I hated to think that I would probably have a very visible scar after this.

  I flipped the knife in my hands, brandishing it in front of me.

  The werewolves didn’t relent though. I saw their eyes glowing in the darkness in front of me, their huge bodies obscured by shadows. At least a dozen of them, although I didn’t exactly have time to count.

  “Where’s Drake? What did you do with him?”

  I slashed my blade in front of me, and a few took a step or two back. But it wasn’t enough to stop all of them from advancing.

  “Stay back, you fuckers!”

  Of course, they were just like dogs; they didn’t fucking listen, and I was running out of options. I gritted my teeth, ready to move, when sirens wailing in the distance caught all of us off guard.

  Maybe someone heard me screaming and called the cops. Maybe. Or maybe it had to do with some other crime—we were in a big city after all—but the sirens kept getting closer, meaning the cops would be near us soon.

  One of the wolves in front of me flicked his ears at the sound, whipped his head around and snarled at his pack. A few yipped back in answer, but the first wolf snarled again before bounding off into the darkness.

  The other followed suit, melting into the shadows. Some grabbed their fallen comrades and dragged them away. I watched warily as they moved in case any of them got any bright ideas.

  I staggered against a brick wall just as the red and blue lights of a police car passed the street by. So, they weren’t on their way to help me.

  Just as well. The fuckers were gone.

  I knew without looking at a mirror that I was in bad shape. Not only that, I’d been bitten by a werewolf, and I hated what I had to do in order to stop the lycanthrop
y from taking me over.

  “Fuck.”

  They had Drake. Why, I had no idea. Maybe it was some sort of fairy/werewolf drama, which I wouldn’t put it past him to be a part of. But with Orin and Avery gone, I was on my own.

  Not entirely.

  “Fuck,” I muttered again, pulling out my phone. I didn’t look at my shoulder or touch my cheek—I could only handle one shitty thing at a time, and this phone call was the first thing I was taking care of.

  I scrolled down to the one name I recognized. The one person I knew who could kick werewolf ass better than I could.

  If Drake hadn’t been kidnapped, I might not have called, just dealt with the wolves on my own. But with his life on the line, I couldn’t risk it. Wouldn’t risk it.

  Even still, I had to grit my teeth as I hit “SEND.”

  As I heard the phone ring, a swell of emotions overtook me, feelings that I hadn’t sat down and sorted through just yet. A tear slid down my cheek, mixing with the blood as I nearly hiccupped.

  As per usual with Blaize, it went to voicemail, and I nearly shrieked in anger. Still, I held back the rising panic as I said into the phone, “Blaize, it’s Cassidy. I need you to come out here. Now.” After a moment, I added, “Please.” I sounded a little more scared than I liked.

  The thing is, I was terrified.

  She’d follow through. Hopefully, unless she was too chicken shit to face me, which I wouldn’t put past her, considering that I hadn’t heard from her since Gracie’s death.

  Don’t think about that now.

  I glanced down at my ruined shoulder and immediately regretted it. Until I heard back from Blaize, I was going to have to treat my wounds.

  “How fucking brilliant,” I muttered.

  Chapter Three

  Blaize

  Leave it to Cass to finally call me when I’m in the middle of beheading some troglodyte I picked up in a bar.

  Not a troglodyte like a creepy guy, or even a caveman in the original sense of the word, but a type of troll that mostly lives in caves and sometimes wanders into towns for a drink or two and a bite to eat—usually taken right out of the locals. Troglodytes are a type of monster, one of the many that can almost blend in with humanity, and I’d been tracking him for almost a week while he’d been stalking the tourists in Carlsbad, New Mexico.

  The local cops had found two of his victims and were worried they might have a serial killer on their hands. I guess they did, technically, but I was about to make sure they wouldn’t have to worry about him again.

  With the help of my relatively new traveling companion, a werewolf who wouldn’t—or maybe, I was beginning to suspect, couldn’t—shift into his human form, I had managed to knock the troll face-down in the dirt. Wolf stood on its back and growled every time it tried to get back up.

  I raised the machete I’d grabbed out of the back of my van high into the air and had just started the downstroke when Cassidy’s ring-tone sang out—“California Gurls” by Katy Perry. God, I hated that song. That was part of why I’d assigned it to Cass.

  But right now, all it did was mess up my killing blow so the short sword I was using lodged in the troll’s neck. Beheading is a hell of a lot harder than TV shows make it look. The tune, cheerfully annoying, continued playing.

  “Hang on, dammit.” I needed to install one of those voice-activated control thingies so I could tell some female-voiced computer what to do. But I hadn’t bothered yet.

  There were a lot of things I’d left undone since my cousin Gracie had died.

  Like actually talking to Cassidy, our other cousin.

  I tugged at the sword. As soon as I could get it loose, the troll was dead—but that fact hadn’t entirely caught up with its brain yet, so it continued to struggle. From his position on its back, Wolf hopped once, a stiff-legged, hard thump designed to make the troll be still. Then he glared up at me with the lupine equivalent of a scowl.

  With a jerk, I dislodged the blade and brought it back down again. As the troglodyte’s head rolled away, blackish-red blood spurted out from its neck, drenching my jeans.

  “Oh, that’s nasty,” I complained, shaking off one gore-spattered hand. Wolf shook his shaggy head and huffed in amusement as he flowed down off the monster’s back. Digging in my back pocket, I finally pulled out the phone and flicked one thumb across the screen to answer it—just as it quit ringing. I blew out a breath through gritted teeth, determined to keep my cool. Still, though—that was just like Cass, to give up on calling me just as I answered.

  I refused to admit to myself just how glad I was to have voicemail answer for me.

  Until I listened to the message, anyway.

  Wolf sat at my feet, ears pricked. He could probably hear every word, but I didn’t acknowledge that.

  “Blaize, it’s Cassidy.” Her voice was higher pitched than usual. She sounded almost frantic—and also peremptory. “I need you to come out here. Now.”

  Classic Cass, making demands without any explanation.

  But after a short silence, her message continued. “Please.”

  My stomach clenched. That wasn’t typical. Cass didn’t beg.

  I wiped the blood off the short sword, sheathed it at my hip, and rolled the troll’s body toward the cave he’d been preparing to take me to. I had originally planned to bury it far away, where the locals would never find it. Now I just had to hope that the troglodyte den was remote enough to hide his remains.

  “Come on, Wolf,” I said. “We need to get this done. We’re going to San Francisco.”

  Chapter Four

  Cassidy

  Blaize still hadn’t called me back.

  I cursed under my breath as I dragged myself out of the bathtub, the pink water having gone cold hours before. Uncle Ronnie had told us—drilled it into our heads—that if we were ever bitten by a werewolf that we had to soak the wound before applying colloidal silver to it to kill the lycanthropic infection.

  Granted, he never did say what to do if your whole body was broken and bleeding from werewolf bites and scratches.

  I probably needed to get a damn rabies shot. Who knew where those werewolves had been.

  A low whine escaped my throat as I reached back into the tub and unplugged it. The pink water swirled around the drain. It had been a long time since I was this injured.

  I rolled my shoulder and grimaced. I opened the medicine cabinet and pulled out my bottle of colloidal silver. I looked at it and laughed grimly to myself.

  This was nowhere near enough silver for my wounds. Apparently, I wasn’t prepared for a werewolf attack. At least one of that scale.

  I pulled out my phone and logged into my online shopping app. One of the perks about living in the big city was one-hour delivery of most items, including colloidal silver. The minimum order was $35. Buying five bottles easily covered that, and I marked the time when I should expect the delivery. Shortly after midnight. Just as well.

  Honestly, I should have thought about ordering the silver before I went for a soak in the bath, but I wasn’t thinking straight when I stumbled into my apartment.

  “Lesson learned,” I muttered, snapping some rubber gloves on—I didn’t want to spread lycanthropy anywhere on my body it hadn’t already reached. I unscrewed the one bottle of silver I had and began pouring it into my wounds.

  Tears stung my eyes as I clamped my jaw shut to keep from screaming.

  “Goddammit, goddammit, goddammit!” I growled, rocking myself.

  A few minutes later, I tried slipping into my bathrobe. I popped a few painkillers in my mouth and turned on the TV, doing anything I could do to take my mind off the ache spreading in my body.

  Twenty minutes until the rest of the silver arrived. A whole fucking mine of it.

  And then— hopefully —Blaize would call me back.

  I texted both Orin and Avery, although I doubted they’d get the messages until they came back to the human realm. Once they entered the fairy mounds—the passages from our world to their
s—they couldn't use our technology or get reception. We all knew that was a risk whenever they returned home.

  It just so happened that two of my boyfriends were gone when one was kidnapped. You would have thought the werewolves had planned it.

  As much as I didn’t want to admit it, I needed my cousin if I had any chance of finding Drake. The longer I waited, the less of a chance I’d find him in one piece.

  My phone beeped with an incoming text, and I scrambled to check it, to see if it was Orin or Avery.

  To my surprise, it was Blaize with a simple message: Will be there in about 17 hours.

  She always did have a penchant for hanging out in places far from civilization. I closed my eyes and hugged my phone to my chest, ignoring the pain in my shoulder.

  “Thank you,” I whispered to the air, and I hadn’t realized until then how much I’d been hoping she would come through. She was going to help me. Werewolves were her thing—she’d be able to save Drake, no problem.

  A smirk played about my lips as I thought on that. As miserable as I was right now, Blaize would be hurting, too. She was deathly allergic to silver, just like I was allergic to iron.

  This would be funny if Drake’s life wasn’t on the line. Just like old times.

  “C’mon,” I whispered, glancing out the window to the moon. “Please get here quickly, Blaize.”

  After Gracie’s death, I hated having Drake’s life in her hands.

  Chapter Five

  Blaize

  Grief makes me ugly.

  It was the only thing I could think. I’d been sitting in my van in a parking garage in downtown San Francisco, staring into my rearview mirror and trying to work up the nerve to call Cass, let her know I’d made it.