20 Shades of Shifters_A Paranormal Romance Collection

by Demelza Carlton

  Thankfully, her daughter had the good sense not to return to the bedroom she'd shared with Osiris. The police had come and gone, collecting what little evidence they could find. The perpetrator had made as much of a mess of the room as the fiend did of Isis. Yellow crime scene tape had been placed over the door, an unnecessary reminder to the manor occupants of what had occurred in the room.

  Thanks to Merit and Hathor, the bedroom no longer looked like violence and smelled of blood. Instead of hiring a cleaning company to cleanse the befouled room, they’d done it themselves. Like Nut, they felt useless with no clue how to help and reach Isis.

  Isis spent most days locked in a guest room, barely venturing out for meals, which she ate in silence no matter who else was in the dining room. When questioned by detectives assigned to the case, she returned their sympathetic gazes and professionalism with stony silence. Isis had spoken to no one about the details of her attack, not even Nephthys.

  Nut opened the balcony doors, letting in the warm May breeze. She heard flapping wings above and soft feet patrolling the grounds below. Bek and Lateef were in the air, the Tyets on the ground, as vigilant as ever. The entire manor was on high alert, which meant, of course, no villain would dare appear. Without Isis’s help, none of them knew what kind of threat to prepare for. So they watched and waited and fought the urge to place unfounded blame on any clan, all of which had offered what Nut interpreted as genuine condolences and concern.

  Grabbing a key from her dresser drawer, Nut slipped into a white robe and exited her bedroom. In no time at all, she stood in front of the guest room Isis had chosen. Out of courtesy but knowing she wouldn't answer, Nut knocked on the door. Once, twice, three times.

  Using the key, Nut let herself into Isis's bedroom. Since the attack, Isis had taken to locking her bedroom door, even when she wasn't asleep. She had also taken to sleeping with a knife under her pillow, Nut learning this the hard way when she used her key to let herself in one night after hearing Isis scream from yet another nightmare. She'd gone to her. In her wild, blind state, Isis had struck out with the butcher knife, nearly cutting Nut's throat.

  Thankfully, Isis hadn't been fully awake to know what she'd almost done, and Nut had seen no reason to inform her.

  With caution, she entered the room, her eyes adjusting to the low light beside Isis's bed. There her daughter sat, awake and propped against the headboard, knife in hand.

  Nut didn’t like the way Isis played with the knife. She wanted to reach for it, but Isis held the sharp blade close to her wrist. Not for the first time, Nut cursed their reduced strength while in human form. They were stronger than any natural human but not nearly as powerful as other preternaturals, like demons, when not in their birth form.

  She supposed this was the gods’ way of reminding dragons that while they were mighty, they were not omnipotent.

  "Why are you up so late?" She took two steps toward her daughter.

  Isis didn't answer, just continued to stare down at the blade, gliding it across her skin. Not cutting, not yet.

  "Talk to me, my sweet girl. Do you think you can do that? Will you look at me so we can talk?"

  No answer.

  More gliding. A thin yet long cut across her wrist.

  Nut moved closer. Isis didn't seem to notice, her eyes fixated on the blood beginning to flow from her wrist and onto the crumpled bed sheet.

  Nut said the first thing that came to her mind. "Osiris loved you as much as he loved life. He would want you to live."

  Isis's head jerked up, eyes focused on Nut. Goddesses, where had her sweet, loving hatchling gone? The eyes that bored into hers held the tortured pain of a reanimated soul forced to live among the living, with them but not of them.

  "I should’ve died." The knife bit deeper. More blood. No tears. "I should’ve perished with my family."

  Neither the words nor the voice belonged to her daughter. This was a different Isis, a dragon tossed into the pit of Hell and forced to claw her way out.

  "The pain you're feeling will pass. I know it doesn't seem that way now, but it will. It takes time."

  "It hurts too much. So damn much that it chokes, leaving me breathless but cruelly alive. I don't want to wait for it to go away. I just want to go away."

  Nut’s eyes fell to the knife, expecting Isis to slice an artery and put an end to her pain. But she didn’t move, not even her haunted eyes. No iris, just a weighty pool of crimson.

  "What of the Clan of Philae? Of me?" Guilt and love were all Nut had as bargaining tools. Isis was a fighter and survivor, she wouldn't lose her daughter to heartache.

  Nephthys and Isis, when Geb died, were her anchors to this world. She’d carved out a place for her family among humans because they needed the strength of Queen Nut more than they did the tears of a grieving sky dragon. Her sun dragon was too mired in sorrow to see how much she was needed, how her death would create in her family and friends the same misery she sought to escape.

  "What of Nephthys?”

  Isis blinked.

  “She’s your twin. When you hurt, so does she.”

  The moon dragon, along with Set, had taken on the co-CEO roles of their siblings at Dragon Investment Group. Nephthys had thrown everything into the position, working herself to exhaustion. Like Isis, she hardly ate or slept. When she returned to the manor, it was to find her twin’s door locked and Isis unresponsive to her soft knocks.

  As their mother, Nut thought she grasped the depth of their connection and need for the other. She now knew she didn’t. The past six weeks, in different ways, Nut had lost both of her daughters.

  She refused to allow the disintegration of her hatchlings to continue. Nut wanted them back, although she feared the Isis they knew and loved had died that awful night.

  “Your twin needs you. Misses you.”

  "I…I…"

  "If you do this, the murderers of your family wins. Don't let them win, sun dragon." She reached for Isis and caressed cheeks no longer chubby from pregnancy. "Don't let them win. Make. Them. Pay."

  For long minutes, Isis stared at her, face and eyes unreadable. Nut squelched the shiver that came with gazing deeply into eyes that were, at once, cold and fiery.

  Isis nodded. Then she smiled, not prettily or sweetly. The only thing Nut could liken it to was the look that came over demons when they had prey cornered and afraid, knowing death was but a bloody bite away.

  Tears filled red eyes. "I missed their funerals."

  Makara had waited as long as she could, but the service had to proceed. Isis’s doctor hadn’t known when or if she would awaken from her coma. So they'd had the funeral for Osiris and their baby without Isis. The thought burned as much now as it had then.

  "I haven’t paid my respects, since I’ve been home. I couldn't bring myself to do it.”

  They’d buried father beside his child.

  “Boy or girl?”

  Isis and Osiris hadn’t wanted to know the gender of their hatchling, despite the tendency of humans to know in advance. They may all be modern dragons with knowledge of technology, but, in many ways, they shunned the new in favor of the old.

  Isis hadn’t asked any details about her baby, and Nut supplied her with only what she thought Isis could handle, which wasn’t much. Hesitant to say anything that would have Isis considering slitting her wrist again, Nut paused.

  Isis still held the blade, although she no longer pressed it to her skin but to the sheets beside her.

  “A girl.”

  A brisk nod and quiver of the chin followed Nut’s response.

  “A girl,” Isis repeated in a strained voice that sounded neither broken nor whole. “A daughter.” The knife slipped from her grip when Isis lifted her arms and hugged herself. “Osiris wanted a girl.”

  Nut knew. Hell, everyone knew how much the rock dragon hoped his child would be a girl. He’d even gone so far as to paint the nursery pink-and-yellow, ignoring everyone, including Isis, who questioned his actions. Osiris would�
�ve made a wonderful father, as Geb would have if either dragon were given the opportunity.

  “Will you go with me? Will you stand by my side when I say goodbye to my mate and daughter? Will you lie to me, just once, and tell me everything will be fine?"

  Not for the first time since this ordeal, Nut cried. For her daughter. For her son-in-law. For her grandchild.

  "We never agreed on a name,” Isis whispered. “A baby should have a name, Mother, whether dead or alive. Our daughter needs a name.”

  “Okay, yes. What would you like to name your hatchling?”

  Before she’d posed the question, she knew Isis had already decided on a name. She’d just needed someone to be with her when she uttered it aloud for the first time.

  “Asim Nephthys Ombos.”

  Asim meant protector, and that was exactly what Isis's hatchling had done. She’d protected her mother by taking the bullets intended to kill the Dragon Queen. No wonder Isis had contemplated suicide.

  "It's a beautiful name. Osiris would approve. I’ll have it inscribed on the baby's headstone.”

  Without another word, Isis scooted down the bed and under the covers.

  She would get nothing more from Isis tonight. Progress, slow as it was, Nut would take it. They still needed to talk about her attacker and what she planned to do about Osiris’s remains in the canopic jars.

  Leaning over Isis, Nut contemplated taking the knife. With a sigh, she left the damn blade where it was. If it made Isis feel safe, who was she to take it away from her?

  Nut kissed Isis’s forehead. “I love you.”

  “I know. I love you and my sister. What’s left of me would drift away into oblivion, if not for the two of you. It’s difficult to feel anything other than anger and grief, but you both fill my heart.”

  Silence lapsed between them, not because Isis had fallen asleep. Her eyes were open, looking at the wall across the room but seeing only the goddesses knew what.

  When Nut reached the bedroom door, she glanced over her shoulder at Isis. Her daughter tucked the knife under her pillow and yanked her blanket over her head.

  Nut closed the door a second after Isis began to cry.

  Chapter 5

  Isis sat on the cold floor of the wine cellar, cross-legged. Five limestone canopic jars were in front of her. Each contained a portion of her deceased mate’s organs. Lungs. Stomach. Liver. Intestines. Heart.

  The jars were sealed with a lid in the shape of a different dragon’s head. Trembling, Isis picked up the jar with Osiris’s heart. Her thumb traced the image of a time dragon on the lid, distinct with its three heads, was a powerful symbol of the past, present, and future. Time dragons were extinct. From the childhood stories her nanny told Isis and Nephthys, the last time dragon set out for the southern territories of the preternatural realm in search of the origin of time. No one saw him again.

  Nut, however, had a different story of Zaman, the last time dragon. According to her mother, the time dragon lost his mind to time magic and killed his mate and three hatchlings before he was stopped. Geb, having witnessed the time dragon’s slow mental deterioration, offered mercy instead of the death penalty such a crime would warrant. Between his guilt and grief over the death of his family, the time dragon, lost to dementia no dragon magic could cure, left Nebty one day, and never returned.

  She clutched the jar to her chest, Osiris’s heart to hers. Isis swallowed the urge to cry again. She felt dehydrated from the sheer volume of tears she’d shed over the past six weeks. Her head pounded, eyes were red and swollen, and she’d lost too much weight.

  The part of Isis that still wanted to follow Osiris and Asim into the hereafter had her picking at her meals instead of eating them and holding a gun to her head and pulling the trigger.

  The first night home from the hospital, when the household was asleep, Isis had ambled from the guest room and to her bedchamber. The room had smelled of bleach and other cleansers. Where once a four-poster bed was, in the center of the room, a king-size white canopy bed claimed the space.

  Isis knew whoever had removed her marital bed had done so out of love and care for Isis’s fragile state of mind, but she felt gutted by the sight. The absence of the bed she shared with her mate, on which they’d conceived their child, only served to remind Isis of all that she’d lost and would never have again.

  She’d hunted for the gun box Osiris had kept in the bottom drawer of his armoire, relieved to find the black aluminum storage case where her mate had left it. When Isis had held the silver handgun to her temple, finger on the trigger, a sense of relief had washed over her. If she died, she could no longer feel. If she didn’t feel, she could no longer hurt.

  She didn’t want to continue hurting, which Isis knew she would for as long as she lived. Until the death of her mate and daughter, Isis would’ve never thought herself capable of suicidal thoughts. It wasn’t a pleasant realization to learn about oneself. To stand at a cliff’s edge, toes dangling over the side and mind so far gone that you’ve already plummeted to the bottom and welcomed death.

  Even now, surrounded by bits and pieces of her Osiris, death still seemed preferable to living without him. Yet she’d survived, for whatever that was worth. Perhaps Isis should feel lucky or even grateful, and maybe one day she would. Right now, however, she needed to connect with Osiris’s soul.

  Nephthys and the Tyets had stored pieces of Osiris’s rock dragon organs, thinking them the critical components she needed to use her untapped powers. They weren’t. She required his entire body, which was buried at the edge of the estate by the forest that buttressed Philae Manor.

  She needed to retrieve his body but hesitated. She had no desire to add to Makara’s pain by digging up the remains of her son. Still, if Isis didn’t cast the spell before the next full moon, she wouldn’t have another opportunity to speak to his soul and learn who murdered him.

  Gathering the canopic jars, Isis left the wine cellar and began the trek from the manor and to Osiris’s grave. Cut grass tickled bare feet and the cool July night had Isis regretting having left the house with nothing on but a short nightgown and knee-length robe.

  When she reached the clearing, Isis’s steps slowed and faltered. Fresh, smoothed earth marked the spot of Osiris’s grave. Tears formed at the sight of his headstone, engraved with his name, dragon type, clan name, as well as the date of his birth and death.

  In front of the gray-and-white marble headstone, she dropped to her knees, her hand going up and rubbing over grooved letters: Beloved son, brother, and mate. Be at Peace.

  Isis cried, Osiris’s death even more real as she fixated on the word mate. Fifteen feet to her right was a smaller headstone, which Isis refused to look at. She couldn’t. Goddesses, Isis barely had the strength to pay respects to her husband. If she also visited her daughter’s gravesite, Nephthys, who watched her from the copse of trees just beyond the graves, might as well dig a third grave and toss Isis in after she drowned in a lake of her tears.

  Without saying a word, Isis pushed to her feet, walked to her twin, and embraced Nephthys. She felt like safety and smelled of alcohol. Isis squeezed her tighter, arms around her neck and face buried in her sister’s braids.

  Nephthys began to cry, and Isis stroked her hair. In many ways, the moon dragon was her much younger sister. Isis would take care of Nephthys when Nut worked late, which was a lot when they were girls. Nephthys rarely listened to their nanny, choosing to treat Isis as if she were the adult in charge, despite their identical age.

  “I’m sorry.”

  The apology came out as sniffles. Nephthys didn’t ask for what Isis was apologizing. As twins and friends, they rarely had to explain much to each other. Isis, in her grief, had shut everyone out, including her twin. Unintentional as it had been, she’d hurt the moon dragon, which, in turn, pained Isis.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “You’re in mourning. You have every right to your solitude. I’m a grown dragon. It’s my turn to be the strong one.�
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  Isis was apologetic for far more than her sister knew. She hadn’t once considered Nut and Nephthys when she’d contemplated putting a bullet through her brain, which made her feel horrible.

  “You’ve always been strong. But we’re stronger together.” Isis leaned back so she could see her sister’s face. Like hers, it was wet from tears. “Thank you for finding all of him.”

  No one had wanted to tell Isis what had happened to Osiris, least of all Nephthys. When she’d demanded details, Nut and Aset were the ones to provide them. After they’d finished, she’d rushed to the bathroom and had thrown up the little food in her stomach. Dry heaves followed, which had Isis sinking to the floor and wondering why the goddesses had forsaken her.

  “How much have you had to drink?”

  “Not enough if you plan on digging up Osiris.”

  “I can manage.”

  Nephthys pushed passed Isis. “That’s a damn lie.” She stumbled before righting herself and continuing to Osiris’s grave. “I thought you needed his organs.”

  “I need all of him.” Isis pointed to the canopic jars she’d placed on the grass, letting her sister know she’d brought them with her. “I’ve never done this before. I’m not even sure if it’ll work.”

  “You’re life, and I’m death.” Nephthys slumped to the ground, her black business dress and high heels not meant for Nephthys’s unladylike actions. “If I’d known you were going to do this tonight, I would’ve brought us both something strong to drink. We’re going to need it.” She kicked off her heels and tossed them over her shoulder. “We need to talk.”

  Isis watched Nephthys from the opposite side of Osiris’s grave. “I know. Go to the manor, Nep. I need to do this on my own.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I have to.”

  “I’m too drunk to go back and forth with you on this. Just tell me why you’re out here at midnight and by yourself. You didn’t even put any real clothes on, which isn’t like you.”