by Jeff Hale
She was already crawling under the covers, holding her hand out to me. “Let’s.”
FOURTEEN
KATELYN
I woke sometime later to the sound of a key turning in the front door lock, my first thought being that Kris had forgotten something, but then a different female voice sang out.
“Here kitty, kitty, here Angel, momma Nina’s here to check on you.”
Crap.
I had forgotten to call Nina and let her know we were back. I glanced toward the window, saw the bright light of stars even through the city lights, put a hand out to Darien as he started to bolt out of the bed.
“It’s just Nina,” I whispered. “She was keeping an eye on the cat while we were gone.”
There was a sharp shriek from the living room, followed by the sound of flesh connecting with flesh then, “Alex? Is that you? Motherfucker! What the hell are you doing here?”
Darien and I were tripping over each other now to get out the door, me grabbing my robe and him dragging on jeans. As we stumbled into the living room, we saw Nina holding a hand out to help Alex up off the floor. He was wearing nothing but tight boxers. She was wearing nothing but a pair of extremely short cut offs and a tiny black bikini top and sandals. I wasn’t sure which of them was more covered.
“Oh!” she exclaimed when she saw us, pretending to dust Alex off. “You found him!”
Her eyes traveled up and down Darien where he stood beside me. His jeans were low on his hips, still unbuttoned. She gave Alex the same scrutiny, then licked her lips.
“Kitty Kat, I am going to have to talk you into sharing the wealth. It’s hardly fair you get these two all to yourself.” Her grin was lascivious. Angel came running out of Alex’s room and leapt up to perch on Nina’s shoulder, rubbing against the side of her head. “Ow, Angel, we’ve talked about this, I am not a tree.” She gently removed the cat and set her back on the floor.
“Bloody hell, Nina, you didn’t have to kick me.” Alex rubbed at his stomach, but I knew he was playing it up. Nina might have a black belt, and she might have caught him unexpected, but she was still human, for the moment anyway.
She sauntered over to him and draped her arms around his neck, pressing up against him. “I can make it up to you if you want.” Her voice was almost a purr.
Alex’s eyes flew to mine and he looked a little embarrassed, but he carefully pulled her arms down. “Now, Nina, we’ve had this discussion before. There’s a chance that sex with a shifter could start the change, remember? Talk to me again once you’ve decided one way or the other.” He laughed, but he looked at me again as his hands lingered on her arms.
She ran a hand across the front of his boxers, giggling when she got a very normal reaction out of him. “Oh, I will.” She turned her back to him, letting him escape back into the bedroom. “Where’s Kris?”
I wandered into the kitchen, Nina and Darien following me. “She and Matt moved in together.”
“Matt?” Nina leaned on the counter, still staring at Darien. I could tell that her blatant looks were making him uncomfortable. “The vampire?”
“Yeah,” I said, opening the refrigerator and looking through it. Kris had cleaned it out before she left for Oregon, but what little was left was still starting to spoil. I sighed and shut the door, hitting up a box of Twinkies in the cupboard. Twinkies never went bad. I offered the box to Darien and took a bite out of the one in my hand.
Nina gave a little shudder at the thought of vampires then shrugged. “Everybody to their own, I guess. Hey, you have some Twinkie guts on your lip, Kat, I can get that for you.” She pushed up off the counter so that she was inches from me, leaning forward as though she were going to kiss me.
A hand came in between us, holding her back, and she pouted up at Darien. “Back off, Nina,” he said, a hint of anger in his voice.
She shifted from foot to foot, lowering her head but looking up at the both of us and smiling almost demurely. “We can all three play together if you want, hmm?”
I wasn’t quite sure what had gotten into her. Sure, she was normally a bit of a slut, although I loved her anyway, and I wasn’t sure if she knew the definition of the word faithful, but she normally wasn’t this pushy, at least not with me.
“Nina, you haven’t already gone out and got yourself Blooded have you?” I asked, concerned. Not so much if she wanted to make that choice to become a full shifter—she was a wilder like I had been and it would take very little to change her—but that other than myself, Darien, or Alex, the only other shifters were all part of Henry’s pack. Henry was one sadistic and dangerous son of a bitch and I wanted Nina nowhere near him if I could help it. “And if you did, please tell me it was either Takeo or Sayuri who did it.” That made me think of something else and I turned to Darien. “Do you need to let Henry know you’re in town?”
He shook his head. “No, there’s nothing he can do about it now. If it was anyone else’s territory I still would out of politeness sake, but I find no such inclination towards Henry.”
Darien would probably just as soon see Henry dead; the werebear Alpha of the Vegas pack had tried to kill me after all, just for amusement’s sake.
“I haven’t, Kat, not yet,” Nina finally said. “But I’m thinking about it.” She resumed her position leaning on the counter.
“And Nina?” I raised my eyebrows at her.
“Hmm?”
“I know you were doing me a favor keeping an eye on Angel, but next time, please don’t bring your boytoys here, okay?” I had smelled Nina in my bedroom earlier, if only lightly, and a couple different scents that I didn’t recognize at all; another reason I had changed the sheets. “Or your girltoys for that matter.”
She didn’t even bother to try and lie her way out of it. “How in hell did you know?”
I tapped my nose. “Supersniffer, remember?”
“Yeah, sorry. I’m not gonna make any excuses to you, you know how I am, and for some reason it’s gotten even worse here lately, almost like I can’t even control myself.”
“I see that.” I did; she was looking at Darien like he was a piece of prime steak at the moment.
Alex emerged from Kris’s—his—room, fully dressed in jeans and knit shirt, as though that would deter Nina. Darien threw him the remaining Twinkie. We’d have to go grocery shopping tonight; a few Twinkies and the half package of sliced cheese I’d seen in the fridge weren’t going to tide three shifters over for very long.
“Well, I’m gonna run along since you guys are back. Dave gets kind of twitchy when I’m out too long.” She headed out of the kitchen, stopping when she got to Alex, and before he had a chance to move, she caught him in a kiss.
I felt the tiniest flare of lust off of her and Alex dropped the Twinkie on the floor, his arms going around her as she melded her body to his. She kissed him for a good minute before pulling away, leaving him breathless, then sashayed out the front door, throwing a, “See ya!” over her shoulder as she left.
“And I wonder why her boyfriend gets ‘twitchy’,” Darien commented dryly. “Pick your Twinkie up off the floor and go take a cold shower, Alex, I think you need it.”
“Yeah, I reckon you might be right,” Alex replied, shaking his head as though to clear cobwebs, then heading for the bathroom.
We got the grocery shopping done after Alex got out of the shower, then came home and ordered pizza and watched television for the rest of the evening. We were all still tired from the last couple weeks and didn’t have the desire to go out on the town. I still had to be up for school the next day as well.
Morning came and I wanted to do nothing more than stay snuggled next to Darien. For a moment or two I seriously considered staying home and trying out the nifty new viewing glasses my parents had given me, but I preferred actually being in class so I finally conceded to responsibility. I got up and got ready as quietly as I could; there was no need to deprive Darien and Alex of sleep just because I had to get up. I gave Kris a quick call to find
out if she needed a ride, but it turned out that Matt had bought her a car, a little yellow Dodge Neon.
I only had two classes today, Cryptozoology and Psychology. Kris and I coordinated over cellphone and I waited for her in the parking lot so we could walk to the Crypto class together. She was wearing her favorite Metallica t-shirt and worn blue jeans, while I was in black jeans and a low cut blue shirt. The building we were headed to was a newer one, built for Aetheric Education, and was named the Lucien Building. I was pretty sure I knew who it was named for, and someday I would have to ask him. We were a bit early, but when we got to the room, Celeste was already there, up front and talking with someone I didn’t recognize, but who gave the air of being an instructor.
“So who is that?” Kris asked me as we sat down in our usual seats.
“Not a clue. Maybe she’s filling in for Mr. Parson?” I suggested. Our instructor, Mr. Parson, was a short little toad of a man, who despite his lack of looks, had a funny personality. This woman was drop dead gorgeous, with an almost girl next door air. She had shoulder length, straight blonde hair and ice-blue eyes behind very feminine glasses. She wore a charcoal grey pencil skirt that stopped right below her knees and a deep-blue blouse whose buttons were threatening to give up the fight across her ample chest.
“Jeez, I wonder where the school got her from?” Kris was staring at her. “She’s kinda hot. Teachers aren’t supposed to be hot.”
I just laughed, digging through my pack for my text, a notebook and a pen as more students began filtering into the room. Celeste was laughing at something the new instructor was saying, causing the woman to laugh herself and further endangering the buttons on her blouse. After a couple more minutes, the tiny blonde made her way up the aisle between the rows of seats, then towards us. She squeezed by me, then sat down just as the instructor cleared her throat to get the attention of the room.
“Good morning, class! I know you were expecting Mr. Parson, but he will no longer be teaching the Cryptozoology 101 class,” the instructor began, smiling brightly. “Mr. Parsons was offered a job at the Museum of Natural History and it was just something no one could let him pass up. He extends his apologies to you all and wishes you well. My name is Bianca Haid, and I will be your new Cryptozoology 101 instructor. Please just call me Bianca. Even though I have been granted a doctorate, the title sounds too stuffy. My true calling is this,” and her hands became wreathed in cheery snapping flames, “and previous to coming here, I was in the employ of MAGE since before many of you were born. As such, the University hopes that I might be able to pass on some of my unique knowledge in this field.”
There were gasps or other noises of astonishment and surprise from most of the students in the room, including Celeste, while Kris and I sat quietly. Celeste noticed my lack of awed response and nudged me in the ribs.
“I know ya’ll told me ya were a shifter, Kat, but have ya evah seen someone do this up close before?” she asked quietly.
I nodded at her. “My ex-boyfriend. He could do stuff like that,” I whispered.
“Really?” Her eyes were wide.
“Yeah.”
“Now. I know we’re in the middle of the semester, and Mr. Parsons was just finishing up…” Bianca Haid glanced down at a pile of papers on the edge of the desk and then frowned. “Seriously? Bigfoot? Is that even in the text?” She leaned to snag the text off the desk and began to flip through it. “Do you all have your texts out?”
I already had my text on my desk, flipped open to the last chapter we had been studying. The book was organized well, and bound like a regular college text, but at the bottom of each page was the word ‘copy’, and each page had faint watermark of the MAGE logo. Mr. Parsons had explained that the book was comprised entirely of printed and copied files directly from MAGE’s libraries.
“Well, I’ll be damned, there is a chapter on Bigfoot,” Ms. Haid commented, tapping the text. “That part must have come from the Seattle Branch. Anyway,” and she looked back up at us, “I’m going to move us on to the second half of the text. The first half dealt with base supernatural fauna, this second part deals with the more complicated supernatural fauna: those that otherwise look human.” Her eyes swept the room, making contact with each and every one of us and I could have sworn she half-winked at me before going on down the row. “For all you know, some of them, other than myself, might be in this room right now, might even be sitting right next to you, and you’d never even know it.”
This last comment caused a lot of uncomfortable shifting in seats around the room as students turned and twisted to eyeball their fellow classmates. All it got was a stunted giggle from both Kris and Celeste.
“Calm down, class. Even if you have an AE sitting right beside you, they aren’t going to bite.” Ms. Haid chuckled. “That’s why the registration program through MAGE is in place, so those of you who are merely human can feel safe and secure with us AEs right by your side.”
She had been half-sitting, half-leaning against the front edge of her desk, and now she stood and walked from one side of the room to the other, her heels clicking on the tile. She stopped back on our side of her desk.
“Rather than starting out small, I decided we’d start out big. I’ve been given special permission by a close friend of mine, someone I used to work with, to reveal information to this class that most of the world has no knowledge of. He figures that maybe if we can educate people about magic, then maybe there won’t be as much panic when it all comes to the fore.”
Ms. Haid settled herself back against the edge of her desk, crossing her legs at the ankles and her hands on her lap. “I’m sure you all have heard about MAGE, have heard about sorcerers, even if maybe today was the first time you actually saw one? Raise your hand if you haven’t seen anything about us on television or read about us in the paper.”
Not a single hand went up. I wasn’t surprised.
Ms. Haid nodded, then went on to lecture about sorcerers and what they were capable of, how each had an affinity for one of the four Prime elements; Earth, Air, Water, and Fire. She said that sorcerers also had access, to some degree, to what they called Beta elements, which were the ones that lay in between each Prime; Plants, Lightning, Ice, and Magma, but only the ones that lay on either side of their affinity Prime, and never as strong as the Prime.
They started off weak in their powers at the beginning, she told us, but after a lot of training, a lot of grueling study, they grew stronger. There were very few at the top levels of sorcery, it took decades and sometime centuries to even try to attain that level of power, and she disclosed that she herself was not even a master in her Prime element, which she confirmed was Fire.
“So, now that I’ve covered sorcerers, which are also dealt with in Chapters Fifteen and Sixteen of the text—you might want to read those by the way, there will be a quiz on Monday—I’ll get to the highlight of today’s lecture.” Ms. Haid paused for several seconds, her smile serene. “Sentinels. You might want to pay attention, since there is no mention of them in the text.
“Sentinels, for the most part, are the same as sorcerers,” she continued on amid hushed whispers. “They have an affinity for a Prime element and they have access to the Betas of that Prime, however they can specialize and master the Betas if they so choose. I know, I know, you’re all wondering what the big deal is. If they are pretty much the same, why the fuss.” She leaned forward, crossed her arms on her chest so tightly that I was afraid that one button was going to pop off and put someone’s eye out in the front row.
“It’s called power, folks. Remember how I said there were very, very few sorcerers who had mastered their element? Sentinels start out stronger than master sorcerers and only grow from there. I might not be a master yet, but I’m getting close, and the friend who gave me permission to tell you all this? He’s just starting out as a Sentinel and he makes me look like a green apprentice. His affinity is Fire, like mine, so it’s easy to make a comparison and come up short on my end.” Ms
. Haid gave us a wry smile.
I had suspected from the moment she mentioned Sentinels that her ‘friend’ in question might be Aerick, but the moment she mentioned a Fire affinity I was certain. I sighed sadly, realizing that at some point he had been in contact with this woman, and maybe she was part of the reason he never came back to me.
The rest of the lecture was spent discussing the relative power levels of Sentinels versus sorcerers, as well as a deeper look into the Prime and Beta elements. It was near the end of class when something finally clicked in my brain that I had been trying to ignore.
Ms. Haid had been talking about affinities for elements as one of the key factors of sorcerers. I knew enough about shifters to know that my little tricks with air and electricity were not anything I had gained from becoming a werecat. Based upon what Ms. Haid had told us, lightning, or electricity, was a Beta element between Air and Fire. Air. Had I somehow stumbled upon some minor sorcerer powers?
I debated about staying after class and asking her, but I wasn’t sure if I could trust her. I’d keep an eye on her over the rest of the semester, and maybe if she seemed like she could keep my secret, I’d bring it up later on. I just hoped if I put my trust in her, she wouldn’t let me down.
When I got home later, there was a shiny new Mustang painted a deep, blood-red parked in the second space allotted to my apartment. I went inside, dropped my backpack onto the couch, and just stared at Darien and Alex. They were both at my dining room table with laptops out, doing whatever it was that they did for work.
“Hey, either of you know whose pretty new car that is out there in my other spot?” I asked, shaking my head as I went into the kitchen to raid the refrigerator for a Pepsi.
“The Mustang?” Alex looked up briefly from the laptop.
“That’s the one,” I confirmed.
“That would be Darien’s new ride,” Alex said. He sounded slightly amused
“What about the bike?”