"You're on autodial." As if in reaction to my words, Chase's phone rang from his hip pocket, my finger having hit the proper buttons without even looking. I really wasn't incompetent with human ways...just not very practiced at them. "And I promise to call you, Mom, if I need you."
I read the good humor in Chase's face just as easily as he'd read the annoyance in mine. "Sorry," he said softly, clapping one hand on my shoulder. "I didn't mean to hover. It's just the rules about outing ourselves to humans are so strict...."
"Yeah, I know."
I did know. And as Chase so ably read in my stiffened shoulders, I was scared shitless of this building full of unwitting humans. What if I messed up and let myself shift into my more proper form in a moment of weakness? What if I got angry and scared the living daylights out of a hundred two-leggers with a single look?
No what-ifs. I've been learning to act human for eight years. If I pay close attention, I can pass for forty-eight hours.
"Day after tomorrow at five pm?" Chase asked at last, ceding the point.
"Five pm," I confirmed.
Then I hopped out of the car and strode into the sea of swirling humanity.
* * *
SNIFFING MY WAY through the hotel lobby that first evening, I hunted Victor. We'd set up a meet in the bar for seven pm, but it appeared half of the conference attendees had done the same. Still, I was confident my lupine nose would pick my cyber buddy out of the crowd of geeks despite never having smelled him before. He'd reek of potato chips and old sweat and would also be easy to discern based on his stained t-shirt and rumpled jeans. Or so I assumed from the conversations we'd held online over the last twelve months.
Unfortunately everyone resembled the picture I'd built up in my imagination of the introverted brainiac. In fact, it wasn't until I forced my eyes to focus on the name tags that I found my friend.
"Victor" read the sticker carefully aligned on my friend's jacket pocket, and the word felt more like a description than a name. Because my cyber buddy had clearly decided to lead with his best foot forward, having arrived in a stylish suit that put my own attempt at respectability to shame.
Meanwhile, I could see from the gazes of the attendees around him that Victor had already made half a dozen friends this evening. He seemed to be the human equivalent of an alpha werewolf, drawing in weaker humans with a magnetic personality that made it easy for bystanders to overlook his flaws.
And here I thought I only had to compete with a computer geek tomorrow morning. Instead, Victor turned out to be that epitome of human perfection that I'd long ago stopped even bothering to envy, let alone emulate. Suddenly, my chances of getting the First Ohio gig looked like the white flag of a doe tail as the alarmed animal bounded away into a laurel thicket. Barely glimpsed and soon gone.
The truth was that I'd spent the better part of a decade learning to pass for human, and I was now moderately proficient at the task...on a good day. But non-shifters still tended to consider even my most valiant efforts menacing and odd despite the careful veil I layered between my wolf and the human world. No way could I pretend to be the golden boy that Victor so effortlessly portrayed. No way would my computer skills be sufficient to nab the coveted job when my cyber buddy's charisma was around to blow the bank manager out of the water.
Still, Victor was pack—in my eyes at least. So I shrugged off concern for the future and stepped forward to introduce myself.
"You're late," my friend greeted me as I tapped him on the shoulder, but his eyes shone with enthusiasm. I hadn't been wrong about that part, at least—my cyber buddy was lonely in the human world and glad of my companionship despite his ability to attract mere mortals with his charisma's enticing spark. "Here," he continued, sliding a glass down the bar, "I ordered you a drink."
I cocked my head as I accepted the vessel and the vacant seat, assessing the amber liquid in the tall glass in front of me. Yet another human rite of passage that I hadn't the foggiest clue how to participate in.
Shifters tended to have plenty to deal with in our teens and early twenties between managing new physical forms and carving out an adult place in the pack. So we seldom drank or experimented with drugs. As a result, I couldn't guess what Victor's offered glass contained.
Still, it was clear the beverage was a human test of strength much like a shifter eye-lock. So I quirked one eyebrow playfully and downed the vessel's contents in one long gulp.
"Not bad," I said aloud, even as I felt the burn of something powerful racing down my gullet. So, not just a beer then. Still, the sensation felt good, dulling my senses enough that the rush of sounds, scents, and sights around me weren't quite so overwhelming.
Every nearby eye was trained on my face, waiting for further reaction. So I gestured at the other human males whose body language suggested they were somehow allied with Victor. "Are you going to introduce me to your p...I mean, your friends?"
And I appeared to have passed the test. Because hands reached around Victor's to grasp mine and a medley of voices offered up their names.
Pack or not, it felt good to be accepted into Victor's world for one night at least.
Chapter 4
I WOKE WITH a pounding headache and blurry vision, feeling worse than the last time I'd gone in for the kill on a six-point buck and been pummeled by his antlers. Whoa. Despite my silent admonition, the room refused to stop spinning until I closed my eyes and squeezed some sense back into my brain. Perhaps matching Victor drink for drink the night before hadn't been such a bright idea after all.
Luckily, my lupine nature made it relatively easy to compartmentalize what had initially felt like unbearable agony. Stumbling across the room, I turned on the sink full blast and soaked my head beneath the cold water until I felt capable of opening my eyes. Then my gaze settled on the glowing numbers on the alarm clock.
Shit. I was late for my breakfast meeting with First Ohio's manager. Not a good start.
Pulling on pants—now wrinkled—and buttoning up the shirt Chase's mother Tia had so lovingly ironed the day before, I felt more like a child than I had in a long time. In fact, ever since tracking down the Chief's younger daughter, I'd been off my game. The woman's brown eyes and sweet scent kept drifting across my thoughts at the oddest moments...like right now, when I should have been focusing on how to apologize for tardiness without entirely shooting myself in the foot.
An intriguing pack princess was so much more interesting than a male human I'd never met, though. So as I headed downstairs on autopilot, I allowed her name to roll off my tongue slowly, like a seductively rich morsel of chocolate melting in my mouth. "Terra," I murmured to myself.
Before leaving the pack, I'd caught Tia in a talkative mood and the older woman had been quite willing to tell the story of the Chief's tomboy daughter and her great escape from the Wilder clan two years prior. Unfortunately for my mental health, the tale had only made the pack princess more enticing in my eyes...and that much more dangerous to the good of my pack. Because we were on precarious enough footing already. We didn't need to get involved in Chief Wilder's family any more than necessary to resolve my debt.
Dangerous. I sucked in another deep breath through open mouth, almost expecting the woman's aroma to fill the air. But all I smelled was stale human sweat, old cat hairs, and a hint of gasoline as the elevator doors sprang open before me. At least my human feet had been moving forward while my brain was lost in the forest with Terra.
Focus, I reminded myself one last time as my eyes locked on the dapper, gray-haired gentleman seated at the bar. This would be Bob Pendleton, the man who I hoped to wow with my knowledge of Java and ASP. Unwillingly, my imaginary pack princess turned and waved farewell before evaporating into mist.
And as my senses sharpened, I saw that danger had snuck into even this human meeting. Because even though I was supposed to interview alone, there on the stool next to my potential boss sat Victor.
With almost lupine awareness of his surroundings, the back-stabber
met my eyes while I was still twenty feet away. His name tag, now absent, rose in my vision to replace the more scintillating image of Chief Wilder's younger daughter. Victor. That's precisely what my cyber buddy planned to be.
In fact, the smirk on his face proved that my hangover was just the first foray in his march toward victory.
* * *
"IT’S NO PROBLEM, young man. Take a seat."
Mr. Pendleton accepted my apology with restraint, but I could tell he'd already moved my name over from the "potential" column to the one headed "probably a waste of time." Still, the human was polite enough to carry through with my interview, even though I was running a full fifteen minutes behind schedule.
"Victor here was telling me his ideas on improving our customer login," the bank manager told me now, his eyes brightening as they ran over my newly minted frenemy. Yep, my cyber buddy had already roped the older male in. And no wonder since Victor appeared even more put together than he had the previous evening, his hair perfectly combed and his teeth sparkling with the intensity of a dental commercial.
I forced myself not to lift a hand to my own head. No, I didn't need the confirmation of touch to know that messy, wet strands were dripping sink water down the back of my neck. Humans care so much more about appearances than wolves do. I'd forgotten...or allowed myself to forget.
It was all I could do not to turn tail and run. Mr. Pendleton had clearly already decided against me and Victor was driving stakes of pain into my heart with his lack of fair play. I'd expected more from a pack mate.
But I needed this job too much to relinquish even the tiniest possibility of success. So I gave myself a one-second pep talk instead.
I'm an alpha werewolf, I reminded myself. Simply pretend the pair of humans are visiting pack leaders who need to be put in their places. Easy peasy.
Following my own advice, I raised my chin and slowly widened my lips into a grin. My older brother had generally turned red and retreated in the face of such a gesture, so I wasn't surprised to see Victor immediately deflate into his seat, the human's body suddenly angling toward the door.
Unfortunately, Mr. Pendleton's response was less expected. The older male took in my expression with a wrinkled brow and I got the distinct impression he thought he was sitting next to a serial killer.
Drat. Not quite what I was going for.
But there was no way out but forward. So I softened my gaze and launched into the spiel I'd practiced. This much, at least, I was prepared for, and Mr. Pendleton and Victor nodded along as I stated the problem. That was the easy part—we all three knew that First Ohio's website was one hot mess. The challenge was convincing the bank's manager that I was the right one to turn that mess around.
Luckily, even though my human persona could use work, I'd definitely done my homework. In fact, I'd spent every waking hour over the last few days poking around the edges of the problem, and in the process I'd come up with several potential avenues of exploration.
Which, by the annoyed expression flitting across Victor's face, was vastly more preparation than my competitor had put into this morning's meeting.
The trouble was, I could tell that Mr. Pendleton was a man who made knee-jerk decisions based on first impressions. And my first impression had been crap.
So when my spiel wound down, I was disappointed but unsurprised to find the manager putting a fatherly hand on my shoulder. "It sounds like you're going to turn into a top-notch programmer one day," he said, letting me down gently. "But I'm afraid Victor here has already turned my head."
Mr. Pendleton chuckled, inviting me to laugh with him at his choice of words, which made him sound like an innocent girl swayed by a man's handsome face. Would Terra be swayed? I couldn't help wondering. And is my face handsome enough to sway her?
I shook my head to remove the uninvited thought, the effort also going a long way toward helping me hold onto my humanity. Because the prey was still in sight, and I wasn't willing to laugh off my rejection if it meant letting the job slip through my fingers.
"Is there anything I can do to change your mind?" I asked. Then, pulling out all the stops: "I know I'm the best man for the job. In fact, I can hack into the site by the end of the conference and prove that there's a weakness present that Victor can't resolve."
I had no clue if my assertion was true, but I also wasn't exactly bluffing. Once on the track of something I really wanted, I'd never been thrown off course before. So I was confident that I could indeed figure out how to invade the banking portal within the next twenty-four hours if that's what it took to prevent this job from evaporating in a puff of smoke.
"You can't hack into First Ohio by tomorrow afternoon," my back-stabbing friend said, speaking directly to me for the first time all morning. I was gratified to see that the human's smirk was fading into annoyance as he realized Mr. Pendleton was actually considering my offer.
After a quick flicker of assessment in Victor's direction, though, my gaze remained trained on the older gentleman. His open body language made his thoughts as easy to read as if he were speaking aloud. The late one might be crazy, but a challenge is good for employee motivation, he pondered. Why not let the boys have their fun and give them an inducement to make my job their top priority?
What he said, of course, was entirely different. Typical human.
"Well, that does seem fair," Mr. Pendleton conceded. "A contest of skill. Sounds like fun."
And even though I could tell that Victor considered it anything but fun, I accepted the foothold needed to push my way back through the door that had appeared to be closing in my face.
Time to figure out how to hack into a secure banking portal.
Chapter 5
I SHIFTED INTO lupine form behind a dumpster and was careful to hold my tail dog-erect rather than wolf-low as I ran toward the park. The outing was a risk, and not just because I didn't have any time to spare on wolf body. The trouble was, I hadn't planned to change my skin and hadn't brought along my trick collar. Without Chase's number engraved into the tag, I'd be faced with a conundrum if I ended up behind bars at the local pound. Still, I badly needed to clear my head, and four feet was the fastest way to achieve my goal.
As I loped along, I remembered Chase's confusion when he first slipped into fur a decade earlier. At the time, my milk brother had explained that the yellow, blue, and gray lupine world had appeared grotesque to someone raised with human vision. His paws had covered his ears as those sensitive organs reported more information than the teenager knew how to handle, and he'd spent weeks tripping over his four furry feet.
To me, though, the current absence of reds and greens rested my eyes and focused my gaze. Similarly, the extra scents available to my lupine nostrils relaxed the hairs on the back of my neck, which seemed perpetually erect in human form as I tried and failed to track potential dangers by smell.
Then, as I entered the trees and broke into an all-out run, I experienced my favorite part of wolf brain. The intensity of a full gallop, nothing mattering except the leaves flattening beneath my feet and the breeze whirring past my face. This was pure bliss.
Unfortunately, the run wasn't helping me hack into First Ohio.
I slowed, tongue lolling out of my mouth to expend a bit of pent-up heat as I forced my mind back into the human world of employment. I hated to admit it, but Chase had been right. If he and Wade were present the previous evening, my milk brother would never have allowed me to drink myself into stupidity. And Chase would have remembered to set the alarm, giving me plenty of time to pull myself together into a human-friendly interview package. He'd likely have sat across the room, too, and listened in on my conversation with the bank manager, shooting glances in our direction as necessary to keep me on the right track.
So why had I been so adamant that this would be a solo hunt? The answer was obvious—I'd been hiding my debt from the entire pack, not wanting the other shifters to devolve into the worry that came so naturally to their human brains. Meanwhil
e, if I was being entirely honest, I'd also admit that I'd kept hush due to shame at letting that wily old wolf pull the wool over my eyes.
Sure, I'd made it clear that the Chief would take his pound of flesh from me alone rather than extracting his due from my pack mates. But Chase and company depended on me in a way that was unaffected by my relative incompetence as an alpha. So my clan would feel nearly as threatened at the sword dangling over my neck as if the danger had been their own.
Unfortunately, my current failure as a human being made it clear that it was past time to worry about my fellow shifters' tender feelings. If I wanted to protect the pack, then I needed to let the pack protect me first.
So I circled back around to my clothing. And as soon as my pads stretched into thumbs, I hit the first number on my speed dial. Because if I was going to make this crazy deadline that I'd set for myself, then I needed the full support of Chase and Wade at my back.
* * *
"DINNER HAS ARRIVED."
I could feel the air currents that my pack mates kicked up as they came through the door courtesy of my key card. But I didn't look up. It was 3 am and I'd gotten bloody nowhere with the website so far. Time was slipping away, so food would have to wait.
The worst part? I could feel the hole in the site's defenses with my lupine brain. But as soon as I channeled my human self to turn gut feeling into fingers on the keyboard, the wisp of understanding fled.
Access denied, the computer responded to my latest query. Unconsciously, I growled out my frustration. This wasn't working.
Then pepperoni and grease-covered cheese materialized in front of my nose. My stomach growled and I leaned forward to take a bite, only deigning to look up into my milk brother's eyes after I'd swallowed the much-needed sustenance.
Paranormal After Dark: 20 Paranormal Tales of Demons, Shifters, Werewolves, Vampires, Fae, Witches, Magics, Ghosts and More Page 199