Protecting Felicia his sole desire. His fiancé he was unable to save.
They were on the bridge outside of San Francisco. The car about to slam into to water and her seatbelt gave. She slipped onto the windshield and it started to crack.
The leader of the biker gang strained in Ridge’s grasp, his boots flailing against the stone.
‘Mister,’ Ridge heard, the biker’s voice muffled.
“Mister!” He turned and saw the waitress Candy. She tugged his forearm that was anchored across biker’s throat.
Ridge backed away, fists clenched, ready for anything. His eyes wild, Ridge exhaled slowly, the anger surging through him, subsiding slowly.
Orion collapsed. “What the hell? He rasped. “Got the grip of fricking steel.” He stood shakily and went at Ridge. “Like one of them. Killed my brother and now you’re sniffin’ ‘round that bear witch.” He stumbled and whirled. “I’m gonna get her and then I’m coming for you.”
“Get out of here,” Candy pointed to the street as the tall biker scowled at Ridge and got on his bike. Balancing his Harley he worked the kickstand. “Come moonrise,” he smirked, driving toward the hills.
Slowly, Ridge came around; he wasn’t on a precipice crumbling above an icy riverbed. Felicia’s car wasn’t trapped in the snow and he wasn’t face to face with death as a stranger broke through her passenger window to reach her.
He looked at Candy and ran a hand through his hair. “I’ll pay for any damages,” he said ruefully.
“There aren’t any—mostly,” he watched the waitress smile. “Boss isn’t around to help assess any of it anyway. Are you okay?”
Ridge noticed more than a few guest gawking from the outside patio and inside the restaurant. “Yeah.” He said a walk was what he needed.
“Just a sec,” Ridge stood, blindsided by the violent reaction when Candy came back with a bag of ice. “Here,” she slipped the plastic into his large hand and moved it to his forehead. Ridge looked at the melted snow then at the waitress. “A compress will do more than the slush,” he noticed her gauging his balance.
He’d taken better from toddlers scrambling for their presents at San Fran’s annual Toys for Tots. “I’m fine.” She didn’t budge; so he figured she might believe him more if he cracked a smile. “Was I that intense?”
She smiled too, and it lifted his spirits. “How’d you learn to move like that?”
“Instincts,” Ridge hedged, glancing from the eatery to the road running south. He inhaled the salty air.
“The shore is just under a mile,” said Candy.
Ridge handed her the bag. “I owe you.”
“Come back sometime for a coffee.” They exchanged a quiet glance and Ridge touched the bump on his temple. This was the second time he’d gotten clipped before the holiday. “I’m supposed to meet somebody.”
He watched her smile flip upside-down. “Oh.”
“My brother, Griff.”
“Mr. Matheison?” Candy brightened.
“You know him?”
“Sure. He drops in for lattes every now and again. Haven’t seen him in a while.”
They both heard a patron ask for her. “Duty calls.” Candy hurried inside and Ridge started for the old Marsden place to see Griff. Who probably was the one person who could shed some light on what was happening around Smugglers’ Cove.
Trekking up a winding side road, Ridge listened to the roar of the ocean and dialed Griff. “Hello, Griff?”
‘The voice box of the number you are calling is full. Please try again later.’
He slipped the phone into his jeans hip pocket, picking up his pace. Where are you, man? It’s almost Christmas, buddy.
Climbing a slope, he found an ice-blackened road leading by the Marsden’s place. Thanking the heavens there hadn’t been another snow, Ridge crossed a frozen brook, and found a sprawling homestead with a three-story house that could have doubled for a manse.
“Show and tell, bro.”
Ridge rapped on the double pinewood doors.
Chapter Nine
Shielded from the cold in a nook under a snowy knoll, Griff woke. Naked as the day he was born. He kneeled on a bed of pine needles.
Wisps of memory darted through his mind. He slumped to the ground, pain pounding in his head. He remembered having one too many glasses of vodka. Or was it wine? Or both at the winery.”
He had been renovating it. Though most of his time he had been working on the main house. The property needed more than the standard refinishing.
Griff had been working in one of the many shafts that tunnels under the mansion. He’d been expecting Ridge, getting the casks of wine to the main cellar below the main house. Supervising a skeleton crew around these parts was as challenging as trying to get the land specs from the outdated Assessor’s office; if he could have called it that.
Hell, he had a major rehab. Ridge was the only one he would bring in with the expertise to make sure the work was done right.
Welcome him he would, with opened arms—if he could figure out how he’d wound up in the woods instead of his three-story master bedroom. It had all the creature comforts of an antique style chamber, and he’d custom built it as an extension to the 19th-century villa. Or was it a manse?
Hell if he knew.
Griff got to his bare feet, squeezing the soft needles of the hollowed stone. Where the hell was he? He stopped, taking another look at his toes. Sparse strands of tawny hair spread near the nails.
He’d never seen any there before. Stretching, his rolled his tongue over his bottom lip.
Ouch.
Touching his tongue, Griff tasted blood. He worked his jaw. His teeth felt longer.
Emotions of being chased and attacking racked his brain.
He’d been running. Ripping through the forest.
That didn’t seem possible—he dragged his gaze from his legs to his middle— but he was stark naked. All 6 feet and 7 inches of him.
Note to self. Scale back on the spirits, especially the wine.
Griff made his way from the knoll, his memory clearing, though he didn’t remember much of anything after sharing a few glasses of Chardonnay with his personal assistant. First, he’d get back to the house, clean himself up, then go about following up on the progression of the renovation with her.
He paused and sniffed the air. It was crisp but had the tinge of animal, something like ‘wolf’.
Wolf? He’d heard rumors there were some around, but he’d never seen any. But why did it seem important?
Probably more tales the locals spread to keep holiday traveler visits down to a minimum. Even to the point of alleging there had been animal attacks.
Right. Griff chuckled as he shook his head. He tooled through the woods, observing he was considerably hairier around the cock and balls—and his legs. They were as downy as his forearms now. He was probably imagining things. That had to be it.
*****
Jo tossed her purse onto the dais inside the main house of the villa. Searching the third, second and first floors, top to bottom.
“Griff?”
Nobody around.
She’d had the wolf pack follow him. Blue had reported that his transformation had peaked.
Jo slumped against the entrance to the largest tunnel where everything had begun.
How could she have let things go so far?
She’d agreed to work for Griff so she could keep an eye on the vermin that reportedly had come back to The Cove. First, the wolven, she’d agreed to help. Then she’d seen the were shifter.
Blue had been the first of the wolven to reach maturity. She could now change from human and animal and back again at will. But the were shifter—she believed she had eradicated them by the turn of the last century.
Seeing the broken fetters she used to try and restrain Griff, she paused, feeling the weight of responsibility closing around her heart.
The second man she’d trapped in the tunnels, she’d bound out of necessity.
He was the sheriff around here, but he had uncovered her secret and the reason she had come back to the coastal town. Jo couldn’t let him expose her. Not that he would be able to once he’d transformed. She’d had to hold him captive. There wasn’t another choice. He’d been bitten and not only by the wolven. No, he was taken by those more sinister and deadly than any bear or bearen or wolf or wolven she had encountered.
Sheriff McAvoy had been turned by the were-shifters. A species of wolf and bear, not fully human, and creatures of pure evil. They feasted on the souls of any that were not their kind.
She’d met one in 1808 for the very first time when a medicine man cast out its spirit and he didn’t die. ‘The Spirit of Coyote’, the Indian had said. A name Jo would learn later was nicknamed as, The Trickster.
A moniker for those who were more dangerous than the walking dead. She’d met one last night and again at the restaurant near the B&B. And he had threatened her, twice now. She didn’t even know how or when he had come to The Cove. Her bear instincts could only detect a shifter who was a ‘were’ around the new or waning moon.
Still, he couldn’t touch her until the curse of the were-shifters was at its peak. And it happened only when the moon had waxed—after moonrise.
Enough time perhaps, for her to find a mate so she could create an army of bearen—bear shifters, who could wipe out the vicious heathens forever. She’d tried once or twice across the centuries. However, none could survive being blood born.
Those who were fully human or beast were blood pure and could be reasoned with, for the most part.
Jo had learned she could negotiate with the townspeople of The Cove and the wolven, in exchange for her protection. Then she finally could make amends for the terror she had caused the city during her first century living as a bear shifter.
She had killed to survive, but only those who were murders or thieves—it wasn’t an excuse. Jo discovered she could subsist on berries and smaller animals, not that she was fully human or bear. She’d done the best she knew how to do. One day, she hoped she could live a life that made her feel proud. Until then, as long as she remained near town, its denizens would have a sentinel who would try to keep them from harm.
Or so she had thought.
****
The lights running along the wiring beneath the ground level flickered. A series of knocks thumped from the ground level and Jo hurried back to the main house.
Reaching the front, she stopped at a full-length mirror in the entryway, smoothing her hands over her dark hair and her dress. “Griff—?”
“No.”
She stood staring at the man she had met at the restaurant. He looked more handsome than she remembered, though she had seen him a short while before.
Jo gazed at the stretch of icy road behind him. “Did you hike up here? Without a car?”
“Yes. Mine’s still in the local shop,” Ridge was about to admit he hadn’t expected to see her again so soon. “Did you say ‘Griff’?” The woman in red eyed him from head to toe with a smile and he hardened instantly.
It wouldn’t be long now before they were together.
“Yes, he’s my boss,” Jo offered.
“That’s great, because I’m his brother.”
Chapter Ten
Jo mouthed his words, wondering how she missed his resemblance to Griffin.
The other Matheison was a giant of a man, as well.
Jo had asked if he played anything except basketball the first day she’d interviewed for him. He’d laughed and told her everyone called him “Griff” and said she had the job.
She’d started to explain she was interested in leasing the old mill next to the house. Griff told her he was an investor and renovating a family heirloom of sorts.
After a tour of the grounds, Jo realized the ranch style villa was perfect for her needs. Far enough from the town to afford privacy and high enough that she could see the cliff side that sloped to the shore.
Where the scent of any animals or beasts was carried by the ocean and could warn her of most dangers. Her heightened sense of smell could distinguish a rabbit from a ravenous bear or shifter with a thought.
Would that she could do the same with the man in front of her.
A crisp weekend brunch with him and she had forgotten how it felt to be around someone who seemed interested in her and not her bear nature. It’d been difficult thinking about anything except the dark-haired man looking like a Spartan in stonewashed jeans and flannel. She usually never got involved with a man except for necessity, and she may have flirted with Griff, but that was a far as it went.
Not that they’d had the chance to get to know one another better with all the stone cutting and surveying after she’d learned she’d be handling most of the hired help.
Then Griffin had done the unthinkable and now she had another shifter possibly to worry about—after he had told her that she’d never have a worry whenever she was with him.
She didn’t fear anything. Except for relationships.
She had the advantage being a bearen. Nobody could harm her unless she let them. Her kind could show off quite a temper. Like Griff had after she had bound him in the same holding place as McAvoy. Jo had to put them together so she could try to save them.
McAvoy didn’t make it.
No ordinary human could survive the blood of a bear shifter who was blood pure. She’d have never scratched either of them. The sheriff had cornered her and Griffin had walked in on them. Jo changed into her bear form and made short work of the enforcer, but she’d also nicked him.
He didn’t manifest any of the usual signs of being bitten by a wolf or a wolven. No lightening or darkening in his skin tone or his hair color. His smell was human and without a trace of a dog or a half-ling.
Until McAvoy had started to transform. Not into a bear or a werewolf, but something infinitely more horrific, and deathly.
A pang of cold had spiked down her spine.
Griff had broken free before she could use her one gift to try and help him or McAvoy.
She’d pretended to taunt them, just long enough, so she could distract them from the shock of seeing her turn into a bear. She was prepared to lick the places where there had been wounds. Her saliva produced a healing salve that also protected and guarded the wolven if they reached their ‘were’ maturity.
It was something she’d wanted to give to Griff’s brother for helping her. The moment she looked across the bar and saw he had been attacked.
Jo couldn’t have risked revealing herself to the bikers. She’d left, planning to deal with them soon. Bumping into the stranger a second time only had made her more curious about him.
Blue and the wolf family had kept track of Griff. They would have found him instantly if he had gotten into any greater danger. Though his transformation to bear shifter she still might be able to halt—when they found him, and she hoped it would be soon. As for Gold, she’d done the one humane thing for him she could.
Still, none of those things explained his sibling who gazed at her, raptly enjoying the view.
Chapter Eleven
Stepping to the side, Jo held open the door. The cold had made her nipples peak, and the man grinning at them must have been close to being an icicle. If not as hard as one, she thought, observing the tent in his Button-Flys. “Won’t you please come in?”
“Thanks.” Ridge stood beside her by a hearth, his large hands wrapped around himself as Jo knelt to add kindling to the fire in the room.
When they’d sat together at the restaurant, she didn’t have time to learn more about him. Seeing him looming over her, she walked into the spacious living room so they could talk. More at eye level, hopefully.
She peeked at him from over her shoulder. “Does the smile come with a name?”
“Ridge. Matheison. Here, let me help.” Jo watched him move to the hearth to stir the embers. Startled that she hadn’t put together he and Griffin were related faster. She hadn’t realized how handsome he
was—and sexy.
Watching him handle the fire she rose and offered to make them coffee.
“Got anything stronger?”
“I think I can find you something.” She searched the kitchen cabinets for liquor.
This isn’t a date. Snap to, she told herself.
Though, she could argue she’d never had a date. She’d been turned into a bear shifter from a human since she was 10 and nearly two hundred years ago. In human years she’d be just 27. Or was it younger? Her kind aged a fraction of the rate of those who were ‘normal’.
Shifters in the Shadows Page 5