More Than Skin Deep (Shifter Shield Book 3)

by Margo Bond Collins

  I’d need to shift sometime soon—otherwise, I would lose control over it entirely at some point. That would be bad for a number of reasons.

  Not least of all because shifting in the middle of a counseling session would be likely to cause a client no end of trauma.

  The thought made me snicker, and the return of my sense of humor let me know that I was completely human again—or at least, as completely human as I ever got.

  * * *

  Kade had given me a key to his place, but our relationship was still new enough that I wasn’t entirely comfortable using it. Therefore, I rang the doorbell even as I opened the door, as I always did.

  Kade stuck his head out from the kitchen and waved me toward him, then pointed at the phone in his hand as he continued speaking into it.

  I nodded and moved toward the coffee machine, where Kade had a pot of decaf going.

  I dropped my purse onto the kitchen table, poured myself a cup of coffee, then settled in to read texts on my own phone and listen in, in case it was Council business. I knew he’d take the call to another room if it were private.

  “Back up,” he was saying. “How did he get hooked up with her?” Pause. “I get that, but how does a hyena shifter end up paired up with a Hunter?” If I’d had a mammal predator’s ears, they would have pricked up at the question. As it was, I simply found myself pulling more air molecules into my mouth and over my half-shifted Jacobson’s organ.

  I didn’t get any extra information that way—it was a response born out of instinct. Instead, I focused on concentrating on my human hearing.

  “We are absolutely certain they are together still?” Kade read as surprised, not as worried. I allowed two tiny pits to form on my face, using them as a viper does to gauge body heat.

  No change there, either.

  “Okay, one more time. Why do we think they are headed to this part of Texas?” He listened carefully, making a few encouraging noises as he listened. “No,” he said, clearly agreeing with someone. “That’s the last kind of trouble we need. I’ll put the word out among my staff. Thanks for letting me know.” As he hung up, I let my half shifted features fall back into their normal human state.

  “Who was that?” I asked.

  “Janice,” Kade answered shortly.

  The current leader of the Shifter Council. That she was the one calling about Jeremiah and Shadow meant that the issue had already escalated as high as possible on a local level. I needed to tell Janice and Kade about the guests at my house.

  And that put me right back in my quandary.

  Counselors are ruled by a code of professional ethics that includes a strict client confidentiality. If someone comes to me and even thinks that he or she is speaking to me as a counselor, I am required by law to keep that confidential.

  I had always interpreted that particular part of the code more strictly than many of my colleagues. As a snake-shifter I had spent all of my life—at least as much of it as I remembered—fighting to keep my human side of ascendant. Shifters had banded together to eliminate the lamia because my people were both powerful and ruthless.

  I was different because I grew up with human foster parents, and because I fought to keep my empathy for others alive. For me, that included interpreting various sets of rules fairly strictly. As a child, I’d had my parents to help me determine what constituted appropriate behavior. Their love and care had helped me internalize almost all of those in ways that I hoped to be able to help I would soon be caring for.

  As an adult, I often relied on rules and regulations, studying them until I had a clear sense of what was expected and why.

  Dilemmas like this one shook me less now than they had only a few years ago, but it didn’t make dealing with them any easier.

  I had a hyena-shifter and a Hunter holed up in my apartment. I’d promised not to tell anyone where they were. Kade expected a hyena-shifter and a Hunter to show up and cause problems sometime soon.

  Two different sets of moral imperatives were about to come crashing headlong into one another in my world—the one that said I had to keep the clients’ confidentiality, and the one that said I shouldn’t lie to my boyfriend.

  It was a lot like an unpleasant word problem in math.

  No matter what, my life was about to get complicated.

  Better get all the information I could.

  I took a swig of my coffee.

  “What’s a hunter?”

  Kade dropped his phone onto the table and stared at me blankly, as if I had asked something exceptionally stupid.

  “I mean, I know what a hunter is—I did grow up in Texas, after all. But you said it like it meant something else. Like a Hunter.” I tried to give the word the same inflection I’d heard in his voice while he talked on his cell.

  My boyfriend shook his head and blinked at me. “No, you’re right. Janice didn’t mean some local deer hunter.”

  Despite the fact that he’d just gotten home from his shift at the hospital and almost certainly wanted to take a shower and tumble into bed for some much-needed sleep, Kade dropped into a dining-room chair and rubbed his hands across his eyes. “Hunters are …” His voice trailed off for a few seconds. “I thought they were fictional, to be honest. They’re some ancient cult, or order, or something. Monster hunters.”

  “And the monsters they hunt are …?” I let my question dangle as I stood up to pour myself another cup of coffee.

  “Us. Shifters.”

  “All of us? Not only lamias?” Not, in other words, only the snake-shifters like me.

  Kade nodded. “Any kind of shifter is fair game, apparently.”

  So for once, I wouldn’t have been the only one in danger—if, of course, Shadow meant any of us harm.

  I didn’t want to say it made for a nice change. But if anyone had asked…

  “And one of them is coming here? Who’s he planning to hunt?” I pulled out a chair across from Kade, slid into it, and leaned my elbows on the table.

  “It’s a she, not a he. And she’s not coming to hunt anyone, as far as we know. She’s on her way to Texas with one of the hyena-shifters who went to Georgia to meet with the werewolves about a territory concession. They’re driving in from Savannah, probably arriving this afternoon or this evening.” Kade squeezed his eyes shut and gave his head a little shake, as if trying to dislodge some internal image.

  Probably the idea of a hunter traveling with a shifter. He caught my eye, then said, “I know what you’re thinking. It would never happen. Hunters and shifters? No way.”

  “You mean, like lamias and mongoose-shifters?” Joy tinted the smile threading through my words. “No. That could never happen.”

  Kade ran his fingers through his short-cropped hair and around to the back of his neck. Interlacing his fingers, he leaned his head back far enough to look up at the ceiling for a few seconds.

  I guess on some level, I had decided that until I had more information, it was more important to maintain confidentiality for the pair at my place than it was to tell Kade the truth.

  I hoped it didn’t catch up with me anytime soon.

  He turned to me, a puzzled expression on his face. “There is something odd going on here.”

  “Like what?” I did my best to keep my anxiety out of my voice, but I wasn’t certain I be able to do it. Kade was particularly good at reading other shifters, and even better at reading me.

  Luckily—or maybe unluckily, depending on how I looked at it—he was too distracted by the mystery at hand to take special note of how I was acting.

  “Keeya, the hyena matriarch, is furious, claiming that a Hunter kidnapped one of her Shields. Hunters don’t take prisoners. They destroy shifters.”

  “Why hadn’t I heard about Hunters until recently? What are they? Why do they put everyone in such a tizzy?”

  He cut his golden-tinged eyes my direction and tilted his head. “You know the story of Little Red Riding Hood?”

>   “Of course.”

  “Well, there are a couple of versions of it—none of them entirely correct from our perspective, of course.”

  “Werewolves and a little girl?” I asked.

  “More or less. The little girl was bait—a trainee from a Hunter family. They enlist them early. The ones who survive go on to become pretty adept at what they do.”

  “And what they do is kill werewolves?”

  “What they do is kill anything they consider unnatural. That’s pretty much all shifters, not just werewolves.”

  “So the little girl was bait for a werewolf, who was then killed by the…” I close my eyes to try to remember the rest of the fairytale. “The Huntsman in the woods, right?”

  Kade opened his hands wide, as if handing me something. “And there you have your Hunter. The hero of the story for humans, the villain for shifters.”

  An image of Shadow’s face flashed across my mind. With that giant axe, she could definitely be an image of terror—especially to many of the shifter children I knew. I needed to find out more about what had changed her mind about shifters—especially shifters who weren’t Jeremiah.

  But not right now.

  “Anyway,” Kade said, running a hand over his short-cropped dark hair, “the matriarch of the hyena clan has requested a meeting with some of the Council members.” He looked as if you were about to say something else, but whatever it was, he kept it to himself.

  “What do you think she’s going to ask?”

  “It could be anything from a search party to a killing raid to a official request for unspecified aid.”

  “Should I go?” I asked.

  Kade look startled. “Oh. I don’t think so. We may call you in if she requests help from the Shields, but I can’t imagine you need to be there for any other reason.”

  “You are headed out now, aren’t you?”

  He sighed. “Yeah. Can we hold off talking about Serena until I get back?”

  “We can, but I don’t think it’s going to be necessary, really—as long as you promise to keep being the supportive whatever you are.” I grinned at him, even as I poked at him a little.

  He laughed aloud and pulled me in for a quick kiss. “I promise I will support whatever you decide to do with these children,” he said. Then he dropped another kiss on my forehead and turned me loose. “Just let me know what you need from me. Remember, I come from a huge family—I’m not at all worried about you taking this on.” He grabbed his keys and wallet from a stand beside the back door, then paused and shot me a level look. “As long as you’re absolutely certain that it’s what you want to do, I’m on board.”

  That he was out the door, leaving me in the kitchen to worry about what I was going to say to my houseguests when I got back home.

  Chapter 5

  As it turned out, I didn’t have to open up the conversation at all. Shadow was waiting inside the door, ready to pounce when I came in. “What have you learned?” she demanded.

  “Things might be getting a little complicated,” I said.

  She jerked away from me and turned, pacing back and forth in my small apartment living room. “It was complicated before,” she said. “What’s changed?”

  From his spot reclining on my sofa, Jeremiah watched Shadow carefully, his eyes tracking her every movement.

  “She’s apparently been informed that her hyena Shield was kidnapped by a Hunter.”

  I waited for the explosion that I assumed would come after that statement. However, Shadow took the energy that was fueling her pacing, and coiled it back in on herself. She became utterly still.

  “So the wolves are turning all of the shifters against us.” Her eyes narrowed into a squint and her mouth tightened.

  “We knew this would be difficult,” Jeremiah said. “There is nothing she can do, or that the werewolves can do, that makes our path any more difficult than it would be for any shifter and Hunter to follow.”

  His words weren’t directed at me, but the sound of Jeremiah’s voice was soothing.

  Hell, I could sit and listen to him read the phone book, and I suspected I would feel calmer.

  Somehow that wasn’t what I had expected from a hyena shifter, given the unnerving sound of a full hyena’s laugh.

  Shadow was nodding. “Okay, so what do we need to do?” She took all her contained energy and moved over to sit next to Jeremiah. She pulled her hair over one shoulder and began plaiting it into a long, blonde braid.

  “I think we should wait until tomorrow, after she’s had time to put whatever she’s going to do into motion, and then we should reach out to her.”

  Why wait until after?” I asked the hyena shifter.

  “Keeya will not want to be embarrassed by having her meeting interrupted. She’s a kind leader, but she’s a very proud woman. If we wait until the morning, we should be able to speak to her when she is alone. That will give her time to determine how she wants to present this to the Council.”

  I nodded, though my inclination would be to get it over with as soon as possible.

  “Sounds good,” I said. This meant that the hyena and Hunter problem would be off my desk by the time I picked up Serena. I was all for that.

  I considered leaving a message for Kade to call me back when he got home. However, I couldn’t decide whether it would be better to confess everything now, or wait until I had more information about what the matriarch was planning to do.

  In the end, I opted to wait. It might’ve been cowardice on my part, but I preferred to think of it as continuing my counselor confidentiality for as long as necessary.

  I would get Jeremiah and Shadow’s permission to tell Kade everything, I promised myself. But not until after they had planned out their next move.

  * * *

  I created an email account and logged Jeremiah into it the next morning.

  “Use this to send me a message when you get everything sorted out. No one should be able to trace it,” I said. “I’ve taken this afternoon off from work, and I am picking up Serena, my…” I paused over what to call her, then decided to keep it simple. “My foster child, at 3:30. I should be available any time from noon to three if you want backup or moral support for whatever you end up doing.”

  Jeremiah nodded. “Thank you. You’ve done so much for us already that I don’t know how we can ever repay you.”

  “Pay it forward,” I said with a smile.

  As I left the apartment, I finally allowed myself to show how relieved I was that the hyena and the Hunter were no longer going to be my problem. I still wasn’t certain I’d made the right move by allowing them to stay with me, and I was certain Kade would have some choice words about it when he learned the whole story. But in my defense, I hadn’t known anything about the hunters before one showed up on my doorstep. So I hadn’t realized the potential danger I was putting myself in as a shifter. Yet, it seemed to be working out okay in the end.

  On the drive to work, I routed my phone through my car stereo and called my father.

  “Hey, Dad. I have a favor to ask. It’s kind of a big one, and it’s kind of immediate.”

  “What do you need?” he asked. I pictured his sun-weathered face, eyes lined from squinting against the West Texas desert sky during his many outings as a herpetology professor.

  “Serena’s doctor thinks that she’ll do better learning to shift between human and reptile if she spend some quality time with me. I’d like to bring her out to the ranch this weekend if I can.”

  “Of course,” Dad said. “You know you’re always welcome, sweetie. And I look forward to spending more time with her.”

  “Maybe we can even get her to shift so mom might want to spend more time with her, too,” I said, laughing. Mom wasn’t anti-serpent, by any means—I don’t think any mother ever loved a child more than she loved me. But I also knew that she was much more likely to bond to Serena’s human infant form than Serena as a juvenile serpent. Dad had
already fallen in love with her, from visiting her at the hospital, so that was no problem. In any case, I knew it wouldn’t take long for those two to become doting grandparents to however many infant lamias I brought home.

  The ranch was a perfect place for me to spin this weekend. Kade was on duty in the ER, so he wouldn’t be around, anyway. And I was ready to get out of my own apartment and let the Jeremiah and Shadow situation resolved itself without me around.

  Finally, it had been some amount of time since I had shifted into my most common snake form, and spent time with Suzy, the enormous python I particularly liked to snuggle up with when I went out to the ranch.

  I wondered how Suzy would feel about being a grandmother figure to Serena, too.

  For the first time, I was more excited than anxious about bringing Serena and the other infant lamias into my life.

  * * *

  Gloria hadn’t been thrilled at my request for time off to “work with my foster-daughter’s doctor to develop her treatment plan,” but there really hadn’t been much she could do about it—not only did I have some time off built up, but the CAP-C had a generous parental leave policy that applied to adopted and foster children, too. It would’ve been hypocritical for them not to, of course, since their entire reason for existing was the well-being of children.

  And although I knew Gloria wanted to look out for me, I was irritated at her response to my decision to take in and work with these infants.

  At any rate, though, there was no way for her to stop me, and after a morning meeting with the teenager who swore she had never been diagnosed as paranoid—a session in which we did not get very far, since she still insisted everyone she knew was out to get her—I left for the rest of the day during my lunch break.

  When I got back to my apartment, Jeremiah and Shadow were waiting eagerly.

  “So what did the matriarch say?” I asked, since I could tell they were both eager to let me know.

  “Keeya is planning to have us meet her on Monday morning,” Jeremiah said. “We will call her early that day and ask her where to meet.”