The Shifters

by Alexandra Sokoloff

  He paused outside just for a fraction of a second, allowing his senses to strain toward whatever was inside.

  There was only a hollow stillness.

  He kicked open the door.

  Chapter 10

  The contrast between the dark, dank interior of the house and the glare of the midday sun outside was momentarily blinding. Realizing his vision was useless, Ryder shifted into his subtle body again and scanned the energy of the house.

  There was no more vibrating. He was standing in what was essentially a cave: musty, moldy, water damaged, probably crawling with vermin. His instinct was to get the hell out of there, but there was a presence that drew him, not alive, but…

  He strode to the windows and pulled down the thick, frayed curtains, so the sun spilled in.

  Ryder twisted back around to stare down at the floor, at the crumpled body of a large young man, his body wrenched back into a hideous arc, the same grotesque misshapenness of the tourist’s body last night.

  With one notable difference. Claws extended from the clenched fingers of this corpse’s fur-covered hands.

  Ryder had just enough time to think werewolf before he was hit hard from behind, tackled by a force strong enough to knock him halfway across the room, into a vile and moldering couch against the wall.

  Ryder gasped through the pain and shoved backward, hurling his attacker off him and whipping around with a low growl, braced to fight, to kill….

  Behind him, staggering to his feet, was a tall, strong young man of around thirty, with the ragged scruff-around-the-edges look of a were.

  Already rage was changing man to wolf, the hair longer and shaggier than normal, facial features coarsening as nose and jaw assumed snoutlike length, savage teeth emerging…. And huge. An Alpha, Ryder thought with dismay.

  Recovering itself, the were half turned, crouched on its haunches to spring.

  Instinctively, Ryder threw up his hands and shift ed…into a woman. Not just a woman, but the first woman he could think of—in fact, the only woman he’d been able to think of since he’d met her: Caitlin MacDonald. Ryder called out, as close to Caitlin’s voice as he could mimic, “Wait!”

  The were dropped back onto its haunches in an almost comic double-take of shock and recognition.

  Ryder had been counting on the element of surprise buying him some time, but something else had happened here. It seemed that the were knew Caitlin.

  Already the fangs and snout were retracting, the young man’s features returning to a more human cast. The strapping young alpha before him actually seemed sheepish now, shuffling in shame.

  Ryder couldn’t help but realize that as long as the were thought he was Caitlin, he might get some interesting information out of him. “What the hell?” he demanded in a fair approximation of Caitlin’s voice. “What are you doing here?”

  The young man before Ryder was now almost completely back to human, and clearly chagrined.

  “Caitlin, I—I’m sorry. Louis disappeared yester day. Patty Lee is just about out of her mind. I followed his scent, and…”

  The were suddenly turned back to the body on the floor and dropped into a crouch by the corpse’s side. There was obvious agony in his posture, and Ryder felt a pang of sympathy for him. “I’m so sorry,” he said, as he knew she would. His mind was racing. If this alpha were had been following the dead man, then the dead man was probably a were from the same pack.

  The alpha was checking the body, and Ryder could tell he was confused by the absence of wounds. Ryder himself was bothered, but for a different reason. It was deeply disturbing to think a walk-in would possess—or even trying to possess—a were, yet the painful contortions of the body pointed to exactly that.

  The young were abruptly stood, pacing in a circle that was more animal than human. “What are you doing here? I haven’t even spoken to Shauna.”

  Ryder recognized the name as the third of the Keeper sisters. He realized that he would probably be discovered as an impostor at any minute.

  The door slammed open behind them, and a very agile, very pissed-off young woman stormed into the house, followed by several bulky men.

  The woman was strong and moved with animal fluidity. Even before she spoke, Ryder was certain he was looking at another were—several of them, in fact. Great, a whole pack.

  The female barely glanced at Ryder-as-Caitlin; her focus was on the body on the floor. She leaped for ward, faltered, looked up at the first were, then back to the body. “Oh, Louis…” she growled.

  “Dead,” the first were said flatly.

  “How?” the female snarled, and Ryder could see her face start to change, her nose darkening and elongating, the muscles of her bare arms rippling.

  “I picked up his scent on Claiborne and followed it here. The Keeper was here first.” He nodded toward Ryder. “Louis was already dead.”

  The female whipped around to stare at Ryder. Her nostrils flared, as if she were smelling some strong scent. Busted, Ryder thought.

  “Keeper my ass—that’s a man.”

  All the weres turned on him as one now, a bristling, changing pack.

  Ryder braced himself. “I didn’t kill your friend. But I can explain what did—” he started before the pack lunged.

  Ryder quickly shifted. Holding his Caitlin form would only weaken him in a fight in which he was already at a huge disadvantage, if not mortal peril. The supernatural strength and animal viciousness of weres was something he’d experienced before. The pack before him was perfectly capable of ripping him to shreds. As he dropped back into his own body, he spun with a ninja kick and felt his boot connect with the snout of one of the young males. The were’s body went flying back. But the others were already on Ryder, snarling and foaming in a killing frenzy, teeth ripping through clothes and skin.

  Ryder felt himself falling to the floor from the combined animal weight of them, and the thought of Caitlin flashed through his mind. Then he hit the ground hard, feeling teeth in his arms and thighs….

  A commanding male voice rang through the dim house. “Hold off.”

  To Ryder’s vast surprise and relief, the weres fell back, drawing away from him. And though he was bleeding from several deep gouges in his arms and legs, he was no longer being chewed.

  The weres moved aside for whoever had entered the house. Ryder gritted his teeth against the searing pain in his arms and lifted himself to get a glimpse of his savior.

  He found himself looking at a dignified older man with silver hair, wearing an expensively tailored suit. He had discerning powder-blue eyes and the command of a professional, but the broad chest and broader shoulders gave him away as another were, though at the moment perfectly in command of his human form.

  The older man’s eyes went from Ryder to the contorted corpse on the floor.

  The first young male were growled, “I found the shapeshifter with Louis’s body. He hasn’t been dead more than fifteen minutes.”

  The older man’s eyes rested coldly on Ryder’s face, and Ryder’s heart contracted. This isn’t looking good.

  “And the shapeshifter was in the form of that Keeper, Caitlin MacDonald,” the female added ominously.

  The older were’s face went very still, and Ryder saw a ripple of coarseness, an anger that presaged the change.

  “I don’t know you, shifter,” the older were said softly. “What were you doing, taking on Caitlin’s form? If you’ve hurt her…” The menace was clear in his voice.

  “No,” Ryder said quickly. “I know the Keeper. We’re working together. There’s been a string of murders and your friend—” he glanced at the corpse on the filthy floor beside him “—is likely the latest of them.”

  At the word “murders,” the weres shifted on their feet, muttering.

  “Why should we believe him?” the female demanded.

  “Call the vampire. DeFarge,” Ryder said, hating to have to evoke Jagger’s name for help, but it was slighly better than being torn apart by wolves. “He’
s investigating.”

  The older were looked him over without smiling. “All right, shifter,” he said finally. “We shall see.”

  Chapter 11

  It was dusk.

  Caitlin was disoriented to realize that she’d slept the whole day. Just like a vampire, she thought, a bit unnerved at the thought.

  On the other hand, it meant she could cook up a hell of a sleeping draught.

  And she hadn’t dreamed, thank God; that had provided at least some respite from her intrusively sexual thoughts of the shapeshifter.

  Don’t go down that road, she warned herself, and stalked to the closet.

  She stared into her wardrobe and pushed clothes aside until she found what she was looking for: a lace-up dress of shell-pink that incorporated a corsetlike bodice of intricate hooks and eyes and ribbons. Both innocent and fetishistically sexy, it was something she knew Danny would like and Case would be hard-put to resist. She didn’t feel one second of guilt.

  When she was showered, perfumed and laced into the dress—no small task without someone else to do the lacing—she sat down at her reading table in the alcove of the living room and unwrapped the silk from the set of cards she kept at home just for herself.

  She sat unmoving in her wicker chair with its high curved back and carved swan design, and let her breathing slow and her thoughts focus, then slip away to blankness.

  Then she opened her eyes, shuffled and cut the cards, and dealt one.

  The Lovers.

  She stared down at it in dismay, then swept it up, shuffled, and dealt again.

  The Lovers.

  She suppressed a wave of fury at Ryder Mallory, then gathered the deck to shuffle again, and this time she held the cards in both hands, concentrating on a single question: “Where will I find Case and Danny?”

  She drew a card and turned it over…and this time she smiled.

  The Moon.

  Meaning, obviously, the Full Moon Saloon.

  Caitlin walked into the packed bar with its patently obvious theme. There were moons everywhere: the lighting fixtures, the neon bar signs, shining discs on the window shades, glowing cutouts in the candleholders on the table. For a moment it struck her uneasily that the Moon card was also a clear sign of deception, deceit and danger….

  But of course she knew that about the situation anyway, didn’t she? No news there.

  She dismissed the thought and scanned the crowd. She saw Case almost instantly; the long bar was located in a raised area of the room, with wide stairs leading up to the higher level, and Case was parked on a bar stool toward the left side.

  Caitlin started across the crowded floor and was gratified to turn several male heads as she made her way, not so much needing the attention for herself but because it made Case instantly notice her.

  He leaned in toward the musician type hunched on the bar stool beside him and said something—the guy grabbed his drink and stood, moved away.

  As Case looked down at her, she felt her face flush, remembering the night before.

  Except that wasn’t him, remember? She forced the thought of Ryder and his shapeshifting trick away, climbed the stairs and slid onto the stool beside Case.

  “My lucky night,” he said, with that twisted grin.

  The bartender immediately stepped up, and she told him, “Jack and Coke.”

  Case quirked an eyebrow, and she lifted her hands. “Not playing tonight?” she asked, just to have something to say.

  “I’m always playing, cher.”

  “True,” she said, and felt a wave of impatience. Why does this always have to be so hard? Why can’t he just tell me where Danny is, instead of these constant games?

  The bartender set her drink in front of her, and she slid it over to Case.

  “Thanks for the donation. Still looking for Danny, are we?” he said, reading her. “That hurts my feelings.”

  “What feelings?” she snapped, before realizing that it was probably not the best way to get him to cooperate.

  But, ever unpredictable, he grinned at her.

  “Good point.” He picked up the drink she’d bought him and took a large swallow.

  She sighed. “Come on, Case, I don’t want to play. What do I have to do?”

  He leaned back on his stool. “Depends. What is it you need to know so bad?”

  Caitlin was about to say that she’d told him last night, but stopped herself just in time. Good thing you didn’t say anything just now, because he would have been all over that for sure.

  “Those tourists aren’t dropping dead from meth. There’s a band of rogue entities in town—they’re called walk-ins. They’re made up of disembodied energy that craves human form, but once one’s actually in a body, all it does is indulge its senses and wreak havoc, and burn out the body so quickly that the human host dies of stroke or heart attack.”

  “Party entities,” Case murmured. “My kind of Other.” His sharp features were thoughtful in the flickering light from the candle on the bar. “What does Danny have to do with any of this?”

  Caitlin was encouraged that at least he hadn’t turned her down flat. Yet.

  “These things are completely formless. They spend all their time in the astral. And you know no one’s better than Danny at reading the astral.”

  Case was silent, sipping his drink. Caitlin forced herself to be still, to wait for whatever he would say.

  Finally he spoke. “How did you come to know all this?”

  Caitlin had a weird wave of déjà vu—it was the same question Ryder had asked as Case the night before, almost as if he’d seen this conversation in the future.

  Caitlin answered the same way she’d answered Ryder. “There’s a shapeshifter in town who says he’s been hired to track them.”

  Case’s eyes narrowed in the dark. “So that’s Mallory’s excuse for being in town,” Case muttered, and Caitlin felt an electric thrill.

  So he does know Ryder, and he knows he’s here.

  “That’s no one you should be trusting, cher,” Case added, and it was all Caitlin could do not to roll her eyes.

  How many people do I need to hear that from?

  “I don’t,” she said, vehemently enough that Case flinched slightly. “But something’s going on, for sure. That’s why I want to talk to Danny.”

  Case regarded her with shifter eyes, then drained his drink and stood. “All right, then. Let’s go.” Dazed that it was going to be this easy, but not about to argue, Caitlin slipped off her stool and followed.

  It was a beautiful night for a walk, the almost-full moon—there was the moon again—stark and white in the sky, and the air was warm, with only the slightest whisper of wind. They walked, of course; there was really nothing in the Quarter that it wasn’t easier to walk to than drive. Case didn’t tell her where they were going and Caitlin knew better than to ask; he’d only taunt her and not tell her anyway.

  They headed straight down Chartres— “Charters,” as the locals pronounced it—past shopkeepers lounging on the stoops of their stores, Case smoking and nodding to just about everyone. It was home for him, for her, and when he threw his cigarette away and reached to take her hand, she let him. And why not? She felt comfortable with him, nothing like the confusion she felt with Ryder, who was only in town for a job, after all—he hadn’t been in NOLA for…what? A hundred years, give or take? If she was doomed to be with a shapeshifter, at least she could find one who was actually in town more than once every hundred years, couldn’t she?

  Case glanced at her, as if suspicious that she was being so compliant. “What is this really about? What are you up to, cher?”

  She sighed. “We’re alike, Case. You’ve said it before. We understand each other. Maybe there’s nothing so wrong with that.”

  He nodded thoughtfully and tightened his grip on her hand.

  They turned down the next street—Dumaine—and Caitlin thought, I should have known. Dumaine was the most overtly magical street in the Quarter, at least if you
were going by square shop footage. There were voodoo shops and witch shops and vampire/ghost/cemetery tour shops, and even one that veered toward the Satanic.

  Case stopped in front of one of the witchcraft shops, The Occultist, and opened the door for her with mock-gallantry. Caitlin shook her head at his sudden chivalry and stepped past him into the shop. She’d been there before, of course. It catered a little too much to the dark side for her own taste, starting with the blatant pentagram and messages painted on the sidewalk outside, but it was popular with the teenagers and pagans.

  The outer shop was small, holding mostly books and wands and jewelry; it did its real business in the back rooms, where readings and séances could be had for the right price.

  Case put a hand on her back and walked her through the shelves, past a few tattooed patrons in black clothes and dyed black hair, past the counter where he nodded to the pierced and studded black-clad clerk falling asleep on his stool at the register, and lifted the back black velvet curtain to allow Caitlin into the back of the shop.

  She felt a shiver as she stepped into the narrow, candlelit hall, a frisson of unease and anticipation. There were several shadowy doors leading off it; she could hear several people chanting behind the first. She had a weird sense of being in an old-time brothel, only a psychic one. Step right up and pay for your plea sure. And in New Orleans, who was to say that this hadn’t been a real brothel at some point? Sex and the supernatural so often crossed; it often felt like the same energy was at the heart of both.

  Case had moved down the hall and opened the last door, and now he was standing there waiting for her. Caitlin moved toward him, stepped past him into the room.

  The long, rectangular room was black—painted-black ceiling, black floors and black candles in standing candelabra provided the only light. As Caitlin’s eyes adjusted to the dancing flames, she saw that the room was dominated by an oval table in the center of the floor, on which were placed a bell, book and candle, ancient accoutrements of the séance.