Caught Between Shifters

by Juniper Hart

  "Oh, is that right?" There was a menacing tone to the blue-eyed stranger’s voice as his shoulders squared. Lucy thought he had been at his full height, yet as he rolled his shoulders back and straightened up, Lucy realized that he grew an extra few inches. "You sure you want to do this?" he asked the question as though the answer was of little consequence to him.

  "Oh, hell yeah," the bald man laughed. "No witnesses? I couldn't have asked for a better gift than to get my hands on you."

  "I could say the same," answered the stranger.

  Though she could not see his face, Lucy could hear the smirk in the stranger’s voice, and her heart swooned at the mere thought of seeing it. Her fear was suddenly gone, and she felt nothing but warm excitement as she wondered what he was about to do. Part of her hoped he would pull out a badge and a gun, but he didn't quite look like a cop. There was something much more sinister about him, but she couldn't quite put her finger on it.

  The bald man laughed and tried to articulate a comeback, but his words were cut off by a deep, dark gurgling sound. Lucy barely managed to take in the scene in front of her, as her mind couldn’t keep up with the events taking place.

  The stranger moved forward so fast that Lucy’s eyes completely missed his movements. A rush of air against her face was the only indication he had moved from in front of her. Lucy hardly blinked before finding the bald man suspended in mid-air. She held back a gasp when she saw a railing that penetrated through his neck, the railing that had been discarded at the edge of the alleyway for so long Lucy had forgotten it even existed. Now it was the only thing holding the man up as his body shuddered, and the knife dropped from his hand with a loud clinking sound.

  Lucy retched and vomited onto the cobblestones as another man screamed, "Holy fu—”

  His words were cut off just as his friend's had been, though he began to scream as the sound of cracking bone sent him to his knees. The frightened third man, who looked like he had been ready to bolt as soon as the stranger arrived, dropped like a sack of potatoes to the ground beside him, his head spun at an unfortunate angle. His eyes were already fading as he hit the ground, and Lucy knew deep down that he was dead.

  The stranger now stood in front of the big talker who'd tried to make Joe sound like the big bad wolf. "Any last words?" he asked in a chilling tone, and Lucy was again reminded of a territorial lion.

  "I...I...please...don't...." the man began to stammer.

  "Oh, I hate beggars,” the stranger hissed as he punched a hole right through the man's chest. Lucy screamed as she saw the heart still pulsing between the man's fingers. He released his fist, and the vital organ dropped to the ground as he placed his other hand on the man's shoulder and ripped his arm free of his ribcage.

  Unexpectedly, Lucy was pressed up against the alleyway wall again. Her screams were cut off by a bloody hand over her mouth. A metallic taste soaked her taste buds before she could clamp her lips shut.

  "I'm not going to hurt you," the man whispered into her ear, his voice was calm, quiet, and even a little tender. "If I remove my hand, can you promise you won't scream again?" He asked looking down at her with piercing blue eyes.

  Lucy held her breath as she slowly nodded, and when his hand released its hold over her mouth, she spat blood all over the cobblestones. The stranger stepped backward, his eyes remained on her face, and the hard line of his jaw returned.

  Chapter Four

  Erik

  The fear in her eyes was enough to make his cold, dead heart twitch with a sensation he hadn't felt in so long he barely recognized it. She stared at him as though she wanted to run, yet she was trapped in the eyes of a predator. A look he had seen all too often, a look he'd seen on each of the three men's faces as he'd ripped their lives away. He felt no guilt or no remorse. He didn’t feel anything. Those men were the reason he hunted in dive bars. They were the dregs of society, the ones nobody would miss, the ones who tasted awful, yet sustained him and his lowkey living.

  Now he was faced with a tough decision. The beauty before him was now a witness. He’d protected her before on other nights she’d left the bar too late. However, she’d never even realized that she was being followed on those nights. She certainly didn’t see the bloody remains of her predators. Now, everything changed. She had seen too much. So why couldn't he just rip her throat out and be done with it?

  He’d been watching her for more than a year. Erik was drawn to her innocence. She was harassed nightly at her job by drunk men, but she was a fighter. She did what she needed to do to survive to make ends meet. Lucy was kind, and as far as Erik could tell, very lonely. Nobody was on her side to help her, which is why he came to the bar night after night. Even though he could never be with her, he felt the need to protect her.

  "Go," he muttered, taking a step back. The sickly sweet scent of the blood that oozed from a thin slice in her throat was enough to bring his fangs forth for the second time that night. He sensed the veins pumping throughout her body and imagined just how sweet she tasted. "Go!" he yelled louder, adding a menacing snarl in the hopes it would make her move.

  He was barely able to control himself as she took a step towards him. He turned his face away from her as he felt the urge to latch on to her throat and drain every ounce of blood from her body.

  "Thank you," said the woman. It was the last thing he expected.

  Erik had been alive for 331 years and had seen so many humans come and go that he never expected any of them could surprise him. Yet, here she was thanking him. She’d just watched him rip three men apart, but she didn’t run for the hills when he’d allowed her to leave. She thanked him for being a murderer. She thanked him for being a monster.

  "Don't thank me," he said with a straight face. "Run! Run and don’t turn around until you get through your front door!" he snapped, forcing the glamour onto her, no longer able to wait for her free will to kick in.

  He watched her spring into action as the glamour forced her muscles to react. There was a shocked glimmer in her eyes as though she couldn’t understand what was going on. She raced off down the street and didn’t look back, as he’d instructed her.

  Erik breathed in deeply, in the hopes of catching one last trace of her fresh, sweet scent. What hit his nostrils made the already cold blood in his veins turn to ice. It was a scent he had not smelled for more than a century, though he knew exactly what it belonged to. Something cold, dark and dangerous was just around the corner. Erik knew that Lucy would never be safe again. And it was all because of him.

  Chapter Five

  Lucy

  The burning sensation between her shoulder blades was enough to tell her that she was being followed, yet again, but she couldn’t find the willpower to glance over her shoulder. Instead, she found herself charging home, never once taking her eyes off the street ahead. Her heart hammered in her chest and her mind spun as she tried to comprehend everything she had just witnessed.

  The rage in the stranger’s eyes seemed almost unhuman. The way he appeared and disappeared in seconds, and the way he’d punched a hole right through a man’s chest to hold his heart in his hands, couldn’t be possible. She’d heard the term ‘to hold someone’s heart in the palm of your hand,’ yet she had never imagined it to be literal.

  Everything she knew about the world suddenly seemed wrong. It all felt wrong. Her whole life, she’d grown up listening to fairy tales, watching movies filled with monsters and creatures that went bump in the night, though she never believed she’d actually get to meet one. Now she didn’t even know what that creature had been.

  Her mind raced through what he could possibly have been, but she couldn’t pinpoint it. She didn’t remember seeing sharp claws, long protruding fangs, or anything else out of the ordinary about his looks. The only thing she could remember were those piercing blue eyes and his colossal strength.

  It wasn’t until she slammed her apartment door shut that her feet finally slowed, and she dropped back against the hard wood, panting from
her strenuous exertion. She hadn’t run like that, in well, ever, and she wasn’t one-hundred percent sure that her quick escape had to do with her own natural instincts to survive. Something about her running abilities was not quite right. It felt as if she hadn’t been in complete control of herself. All she remembered were the last words the stranger had said to her, and suddenly she found herself looking back over her shoulder, as though the reflex to do so had been delayed by something more powerful.

  “It can’t be,” she told herself, shaking her head though she wasn’t at all sure. She thought of the folklore everybody hears about where creatures can take control of human minds or manipulate them into doing something they wouldn’t normally do. “No! It’s not true!” she couldn’t allow herself to believe it. But that couldn’t be real, could it? She could think of no other explanation for what she had just witnessed in the alleyway.

  Shrugging out of her jacket, she reached into the pocket, only to realize that the phone she was looking for was not there. Her heart sunk as she remembered how she’d been forced to empty her pockets onto the floor. A smile spread across her face as she remembered how she’d planted her knee in the face of the man who’d bent down to pick it up.

  Lucy crossed her small apartment to the bathroom and stopped in front of the mirror to take in the sight before her. Her blonde hair was lank, plastered to her head with a layer of sweat, possibly from her run or maybe from the nauseous feeling that wasn’t going away. Her green eyes were dulled from lack of sleep, and dark bags hung beneath them. Brownish red smears covered the lower half of her face, and she couldn’t figure out what she was seeing in the mirror. The realization quickly came to her; the stranger’s bloodied hand had covered her mouth.

  Lucy quickly turned on the faucet, scrubbed soap over her face, and rinsed with the hottest water she could tolerate. The metallic scent of blood still lingered in her nostrils long after she’d washed away its remnants. The water scalded her hands and face, though she didn’t care. After scrubbing and rinsing several more times, she still didn’t feel clean.

  Part of her knew that feeling clean after what she’d witnessed was impossible. She’d never feel the same again.

  Drenched in sweat and covered with dirt, Lucy stripped from her clothes and threw them in the garbage. She turned on the shower and stepped into the downpour of hot water. It could have been hours or just a few minutes. She’d lost track of time. Trying to block out everything that just happened, Lucy tried to focus on the warm beads of water trickling down her body, washing away the grunge. Tilting her head back, she closed her eyes and allowed the water to wash over her face.

  Chapter Six

  Erik

  Erik's heart sank down into his boots. He'd found him. Not only that, but he'd found him with a woman—a woman whose life he'd just saved. A woman who he’d grown to care about while watching her from afar.

  Erik wanted to race after her, grab hold of her and force her back into the shadows, when a loud buzzing sound filled his overly sensitive ears. Wincing at the harsh noise, he glanced down the alleyway to see the screen of a cell phone lighting up from where it had fallen onto the cobbles.

  Zipping over, he crouched to pick up the device and pressed the lock button to silence it. He thought back and remembered how the woman had dropped it from her pocket when the men had first attacked her—the men who were now spread all around him. The scent of blood coming from his victims was overwhelming. Fangs pierced his gums.

  He shoved the phone into his pocket before dropping to his knees, beside his nearest victim. Picking up the man, Erik pulled the body onto his lap and wrapped his mouth around his neck. As soon as his fangs pierced the skin, the blood started to flow into his mouth. It was already growing cold, the taste of death already lacing his tongue, yet he forced the blood down, attempting not to gag. He needed his strength if he was going to face the source of the scent that still lingered in his nostrils like a bad omen.

  First, he needed to cover his tracks. That meant getting rid of the bodies of the three men he'd just killed. As soon as he'd drained all three, he piled them into the huge double dumpster further down the alleyway. Each one was heavier than the last, though he had no trouble hiking them over his shoulder and dropping them in.

  Once the three were piled on top of each other, face down in the garbage, he reached into his jeans’ pocket and pulled out his Zippo lighter. Flicking it open, he sparked the flame and threw it into the dumpster. The top man's flannel shirt caught instantly and the smell of burning flesh soon filled the air all around him.

  Straightening his jacket, he stepped out of the alleyway, wiping the back of his hand over his mouth to remove any traces of blood from his feed. Then he lifted his nose to the air and inhaled deeply in an attempt to pick up the fresh scent of the woman he'd already saved once that night. He had a feeling that before the sun rose, he was going to have to do it again.

  Her phone buzzed in his pocket, and he ignored it again as he began to race in the direction her scent led, all too aware that it was laced with that of another, someone who wanted to cause him pain. Taking the life of an innocent because of him would be enough pain, but she would not be the first, and certainly not the last.

  Chapter Seven

  Lucy

  Those brilliant blue eyes stared at her from the shadows. Though she could not see him, she could see his eyes glowing. Knowing it was him, the monster who had killed three people to save her from a fate worse than death, she felt oddly happy to see him.

  As he stepped out of the shadows at the edge of the room, her heart thundered rapidly in her chest. He walked towards her at an agonizingly slow pace.

  He was much slower than he had been in the alleyway, yet he moved with the smooth stealth of a feline. His eyes anchored her from movement as she reclined on the soft mountain of pillows that covered the bed. Red silk sheets caressed her bare skin and were the only thing that covered her modesty. The man stepped up to the foot of the bed.

  When he reached forward and tightened a handful of sheets into his fist, she knew exactly what he was going to do, but she didn’t scream. Instead, she bit her lip, her hunger for him palpable as she watched his eyes drink in her smooth pale skin and luscious curves, the curves she had once tried to hide with baggy clothes and oversized sweatshirts. Now she felt like a goddess as his eyes worshipped every inch of her body. He looked her up and down, from head to toe, before slipping into the bed.

  His bare body slid its way up hers before his lips came down to possess her lips. She breathed a sigh as his tongue brushed her mouth, and she opened her lips to allow her own to meet his. His kiss was cold and took her breath away, like the first winds of winter that tingled one’s nose and refreshed the senses. It was a kiss of such passion and danger that it sent Lucy’s head spinning as he forced her back into the pillows. Their chests connected, and she felt her heart race as his body pinned her to the mattress. His muscular body felt rock hard beneath her hands as she brought them up to run over his taught, muscular body.

  A low rumble erupted from his throat, much like the sound she had heard back in the alleyway. This time, it didn’t scare her, but had the opposite effect. It made her want to hear it again. With that thought, she dug her fingernails into his flesh and dragged them back down his ribs. He deep, rumbling sound again, and her entire body shivered with delight.

  He pulled his face back from hers, and their gaze met. The hunger present in his eyes was filled with raw passion and desire. It startled her, and her body froze. He grinned. Something gleamed behind his lips, but Lucy didn’t have time to react before her lunged forward. A sharp pain burned in her neck and she screamed. The paralyzing sensation was gone, and suddenly she wriggled beneath him, pounding her fists against his chest helplessly as he held her against the mattress.

  Lucy bolted upright in bed. Her heart thundered so rapidly against her ribcage that she felt like it was going to rip free of her chest. She panted for breath as her hand flew to her
throat. There was nothing but the rough texture of scabs that began to form where her attacker had held the knife to her throat earlier that night.

  As her eyes blinked and adjusted to the darkness of the room, she was almost sure she could see a figure standing at the bottom of the bed. Hurriedly, she leaned over and flicked on the lamp that was set on the bedside table. As soon as light illuminated the room, she turned her attention to the foot of the bed again. To her relief, nothing was there.

  Inhaling deeply, she steadied her breath in the hopes that her heart would follow suit. Reaching up, she wiped her forehead with the palm of her hand, only for it to come away dripping with sweat.

  “God damn it,” she snapped at herself, as she pushed back the covers and clambered out of the bed. Am I ill or something? It was the only explanation she had for the events that just took place.

  “Maybe I never woke up this morning?” she said out loud as she headed for the bathroom. Maybe I’m really lying in bed hallucinating everything that happened? Maybe it’s a dream? Yet, when she pinched her arm in the hopes she would wake, nothing happened but a stinging pain in her skin.

  With a sigh, she turned on the faucet and waited for the water to run cold before splashing it all over her face. It did little to cool her feverish skin, but it helped to wash away some of the sweat.

  Too agitated to climb back into bed, she turned off the tap, slipped on a robe, and walked back through the bedroom to the window that led out onto the metal fire exit steps. A sudden sensation overwhelmed her as she drew closer to the glass. It was a sensation she frequently felt, but had become stronger since leaving the bar. It was the familiar burning of being watched, yet she had no idea where it was coming from. No one was close by. She lived on the fifth floor, on her own. Nobody else even had a key to her apartment.