Shifters: A Samantha Reece Mystery Book 1

by Jaime Johnesee

  Even though making fun of the dark in my life was my normal defense mechanism.

  “Sure thing. When I was sixteen I got arrested stealing women’s underwear from a store. I was going to give them as a gift to my girlfriend, honest. A classmate who didn’t like me very much saw me get arrested and they spread the story all around school that I liked to wear women’s panties. My girlfriend broke up with me and I didn’t date again until college.”

  “That’s definitely embarrassing.” I gave him a weak smile.

  “I’m sorry, but I don’t have any really bad stories like yours to share, except for how I became a shifter.” He took a deep breath and closed his eyes.

  I could tell this story was a difficult one for him to relate. It seemed to be as troubling and painful for him as mine was for me. I stayed silent, scooted over, and put my hand over one of his. He opened his eyes and gave me a sad smile.

  “If you don’t want to tell the story, you don’t have to. It’s not easy telling folks your most painful moments and I understand if you don’t want to.”

  “No, I think you need to hear this. I was on a date in college and the girl I was with raped me. I know there is this stupid stigma that guys can’t get raped, but I was. As much as I liked the girl, I was a virgin and was truly wanting to wait for the right one, especially with what happened with my high school girlfriend. I know it’s ridiculously cheesy and this is embarrassing as hell for me to admit. I’m fairly certain there are some assholes who think my guy card should be revoked because of this.”

  “Well, those people are just that, assholes.”

  He took a shaky breath. “Anyway, she raped me and then she partially changed while she was raping me … and she leaned her jaguar head down and bit my shoulder. It was like an awful nightmare, or a horror movie; she didn’t bother to change back, just kept raping me with that cat head and said, “Now you’re just like me.” Then she finished, got off me, dressed, and left. I never saw her again and I never wanted to. I went to the hospital and a doctor there pulled me aside and explained what’d happened. He told me about shifters and that I was now one of them. I was given numbers for support groups and super-friendly counselors to speak with. It didn’t help. That’s why I was planning on supporting you through the change. I never meant to disappear on you. I am so sorry I bit you. I really never meant to turn you and run. If my dad hadn’t died I swear things would have been different, Sam.”

  I could see he was being honest with me.

  As hard as it was for him, he was looking me right in the eyes and the sincerity there was unmistakable.

  “I’m sorry I accused you of fang-raping me.” I hadn’t known what he had gone through at the time and now I understood why his reaction to my accusation had been so immediate and visceral.

  I also understood how he thought his turning me was gentle, because, compared to his own turning, it was.

  “It’s okay. I understand how you see it that way. I was wrong in changing you without consent and I am so sorry I did that to you.”

  “I wish you hadn’t, but, all in all, it did help me. I was in a bad place when you turned me. I don’t think I can ever say I appreciate what you did, but it gave me a new perspective on life.”

  “I’m sorry if I was arrogant or cocky before. To tell you the truth, I felt I had to put on airs to impress you. I really had no clue what you would think of me and I was hoping the whole Mr. Mystery act would intrigue you.” He looked embarrassed and his ears reddened as he met my eyes.

  “I’m sorry if I was a bitch before. I didn’t know what you had been through and just thought you were an arrogant asshole that imposed your own will on me.”

  “I suppose that’s exactly what I was and for that I really am truly sorry.”

  “So am I. Shall we start over as friends?”

  “Friends.” Ben smiled and held up the carton of egg rolls and asked, “Would you like another?”

  “No, thanks. I’m full. For the next hour, anyway,” I joked.

  My cellphone rang and I moved into the hallway as I answered it. I was only half hoping it was Gerry calling to tell me babysitting duty was off.

  “Sam Reece.”

  “Hey, Sam, it’s James.”

  “How’s it going, coffee man?”

  “Pretty slow. We’re still digging through the sludge from the motel. I’m calling because Gerry asked me to get in touch with you. He said that in regards to babysitting duty you were to keep your ass right where it is. He told me to let you know he’ll be sending someone to spell you in a few hours.”

  “Oh, joy.” Be warned, I come equipped with sarcasm and I’m not afraid to use it.

  “That bad?”

  “It’s fairly uncomfortable.”

  “Sorry to hear that. I had to look after a dental hygienist that saw a mob hit once. All she wanted to talk about was plaque and tartar and how bad coffee is for your teeth.”

  “Yikes, that’s like the ninth ring of hell for you, isn’t it?”

  “If not, it was closer than I ever wanted to get.” James laughed.

  “Well, if there’s nothing else, I’m going to get back to my charge.”

  “Just that you should be careful. Grisly is a scary one.”

  “Thanks, James. Hey, thank Gerry for me, too, will ya?”

  “Sure thing. Double the usual snark?”

  “Sounds about right, thanks bud.”

  “Night.” James hung up.

  I sat with the phone in my hand for a moment wishing that the conversation had gone another way entirely. I really could have used a pass on babysitting duty. I liked Ben, but I still didn’t want to sit in his apartment any longer than I had to.

  Now that my general disdain for him had waned, in light of our honest clearing of the air, I was finding myself more drawn to him than I had been when I first entered his apartment, and that just didn’t feel like a good thing.

  I made some calls, and dropped some threads on my message boards about sire bonds earlier, but nobody had gotten back to me. While Ben watched some cheesy B movie, I took advantage of his Wi-Fi to look up more about them. I found a forum on a shifters board and dug in. The original poster asked if anyone had heard about sire bonds affecting the way people felt about their makers. There was the usual crap from trolls and assholes, but one fellow had posted something interesting.

  I never believed in sire bonds until I decided to sire a friend who’d been begging me for months. I bit him and, inexplicably, both he and I shared a greater sense of intimacy and comfort than had been there previously. We’ve been dating two years now and I have to say if not for the sire bond I don’t think I would have looked at him twice. He is a super nice guy but he definitely wasn’t my taste. After I turned him, however, he became far more attractive to me and I became more attractive to him. Do they exist? I now believe they do.

  Signed,

  Wolfesbane

  If this person was to be believed, the sire bond increased the attraction on both sides. I never considered that perhaps Ben was feeling it, too. I kept reading, hoping someone would link to some other article on sire bonds or shifter imprinting.

  I found nothing.

  I Googled shifter imprinting and came up with some crazy site with info about the Gutenberg press. I wasn’t interested in moveable type and went back to looking up shifter sire bonds hoping that adding the word shifter in there would pull up more reliable sources.

  I was wrong.

  After spending hours combing through the most ridiculous crap the Internet had to give, not to mention meeting with guys named Krunkmaster in little known back chatrooms, I decided to call it quits. Maybe I’d hear back from one of my wolf sources about it later. I looked up from my phone and met Ben’s eyes. He reddened and looked away. I wondered how long he had been staring at me.

  My jaguar was excited he had noticed us; I metaphysically swatted her nose and told her to stop going gaga over this guy. She scoffed and twitched her tail in a way tha
t screamed for me to shut up.

  Rude.

  At least I learned he wasn’t quite the asshole I’d thought he was. It was going to take some time to trust him, but I’m starting to believe it is a possibility for the future. Here’s hoping he truly wasn’t as big a dick as I’d originally thought.

  I get where he is coming from a bit better now, but it still sucks he bit me without consent. Then again, he was in a fevered state, had to be in order to have been infectious at the time. Then again I understand how difficult it is to think clearly when the virus is in full swing.

  As I said earlier, I’d had many an unfortunate furry-tongued morning after a bunny feast that spoke to how difficult it was controlling the shift when the virus was in bloom.

  It’s fairly safe to say that I could see how my reaching out to his cat form could be misread by a fevered brain. I still thought it sucked, but it was far better than his indoctrination into the shifter world.

  I wasn’t sure what to do about what he’d told me. I get that he meant to stick around and help me transition and I understand that he was called away for a good reason. What I don’t get is why he waited so long to get in touch with me and why he was doing it now.

  There was a paranoid part of my brain wondering if maybe there was more to his coming back than he let on. Perhaps there was something about the Grisly Adams case that led him here. Call me paranoid, but I found it too coincidental that he showed up amid the first serial murder case involving lycans in Birmingham’s history and just happened to be a witness.

  I looked over at him; Grisly’s scent was undeniably different from Ben’s, but could he have something more to do with the case than he was saying?

  Nah, I may have disliked the guy to start with, but even then he didn’t feel evil, just douchey. While it may be odd both in timing and that he wound up a witness, it didn’t feel right that he was involved.

  It was more than a sire bond, or my jaguar, telling me that. It was my instincts. I’d always been able to trust and depend on those instincts from the time I was a child and I trusted them now.

  Chapter 14

  “SO, WHAT ELSE DO YOU WANT TO WATCH?” He called up the guide on his satellite TV and slowly began scrolling through.

  “I have some questions, about being a jaguar.” I wasn’t sure when the right time to ask would be, but I figured since I had a captive audience, now was the time to get out every thought and question that had boiled within my brain for the last few years.

  “Okay. Fire away, I’ll try to answer all of them. Some I may not know the answer to myself. I wasn’t really indoctrinated into this life that well, either.” His posture straightened and he crossed his arms over his chest.

  Apparently, he wasn’t over his own terrifying transformation from human to shifter. I probably wouldn’t have been over it myself. I felt just the bite alone was similar to being raped; I felt awful for him having to experience both horrifically forceful acts at once. “Do we all possess a sixth sense for danger?”

  “We have heightened senses, yes. I don’t know what you mean by a sixth sense for danger, though.”

  “I mean being able to tell someone is bad news just because of gut instinct. Not to mention knowing something bad is going to happen before it does. It’s infuriating because it is just a vague sense of discomfort. Nothing specific, just that something is wrong.”

  “I can’t say I’ve ever heard of that. I wish I had that sense. I know some wolves with some psychic abilities, but they are mainly visions, nothing like you are describing.”

  “Is it difficult for you to sleep after a shift, too?”

  “Sometimes. It really depends on the shift and how much energy I expend. Shifting more than twice a day can actually cause me to sleep more deeply than any other time.”

  “What about hunting? Is there a way to control those urges?”

  “With some meditation techniques you can learn to be in full control of your cat and your shifts. I can teach them to you if you want.”

  “Later? Right now I have so many more questions that have been troubling me since I was changed.”

  “Okay. You keep asking, I’ll keep answering.” He leaned back on the couch, looking tired, but happy.

  “What was your first shift like?”

  “I’d rather not talk about that right now,” he whispered, looking pained.

  “Fair enough. How high can you jump?”

  “I can’t say I’ve ever measured it, but I’d guess probably ten feet.” The pain was gradually eclipsed by a small smile.

  “Have you been able to keep control of your shifts since that first one?”

  “For the most part. There have been some times when the fever burned so hot that I woke up with pieces of raccoon stuck on me.”

  “I’m a bunny eater myself.”

  “Imagine saying that to anyone else,” he quickly added, “other than a shifter.”

  “They’d probably think me nuts.”

  “Or at least someone who likes to eat small defenseless little poop machines.”

  “Poop machines. Ha! That’s a good one.”

  “But you have to admit it’s accurate.”

  “Extremely.” A knock on the door interrupted our Q and A session.

  I stood, walked over to the door, and looked out the peephole.

  I was expecting it to be my relief, but I couldn’t see anyone. I jumped when a loud thud reverberated through the door and my arm that was up against it. One large brown eye appeared in the peephole before it drew back, allowing me to see who it belonged to.

  A large grizzly bear stood on two legs just outside the door. I caught his familiar scent and my heart beat faster. He roared and jumped at the door. I jumped back and grabbed my sidearm, grateful when the hinges and door held tight.

  “Ben! Is there another way out of here?” I retreated to the living room.

  “Yeah, why?” A loud booming thud and a splintering noise came from the door far in front of me.

  “Let’s go! Now!” I scooped my keys and purse up from the table.

  Ben led us through his bedroom and out to a balcony that overlooked a small pond. Luckily a large maple stood beside the pond. Unluckily, there was no time to shift and leap down gracefully as we heard the front door splinter further. The bear was in the house. We scrambled down the maple, Ben first, me holding the gun on the balcony door until Ben was out of the way.

  “Fucking should have known Grisly was a grizzly, stupid me. Stupid, stupid me,” I babbled to myself as I climbed/jumped down out of the tree.

  We ran for the parking lot and I yelled out, “The 71 Challenger!” hoping against hope Ben would be able to tell which car it was. You’d be surprised how many guys couldn’t pick out a pony car from a muscle car.

  I was relieved when he made a beeline for my baby. I opened the door and dove in, unlocking Ben’s side as I pulled the door closed behind me. I started the engine and was ready to throw it into reverse as the grizzly began running at my car, full tilt.

  Panting in fear, Ben climbed in and closed the door on his side. I shoved my purse at him and waited until Grisly got closer. Once I had a good look at him in shifter form, not to mention a really good scent off him, I peeled out and drove off.

  There was no way he could shift and get in a car in time to follow us, but that fact didn’t make me slow down. I got out of there as fast as my Hemi would take us. I took a curve going sixty and my beautiful baby clung tight to the road and gave me no fuss. Ben, however, clung tight to the oh, shit handle and made me smile.

  “Get my cell out of my purse, please?” I asked Ben.

  I was embarrassed I hadn’t put it in my pocket after talking to James, mostly because my purse is a mess. It’s full of used tissues, gum wrappers, and fast food receipts. Normally, I wouldn’t want anyone going through that mess, but this was not your normal situation.

  “Who should I call?” he asked, holding up my phone triumphantly, a large pile of wadded up Kleenexe
s on his lap.

  “Go into my contacts and call Gerald Jackson … and put it on speaker, please.”

  He did as I asked and handed the phone to me. I waited as the phone rang once, twice, and finally Gerry picked up.

  “Gerry Jacks—”

  “Gerry, it’s Sam. Our serial killer came after Ben Fitzpatrick. I’m moving him now. Oh, and Grisly is a fucking grizzly bear shifter.”

  “You serious?”

  “As a heart attack. I saw it outside my house earlier and he just tried bursting through Fitzpatrick’s door. I caught his scent. It was the same as the crime scene. He’s one big mean bastard.”

  “Looks like you were right on the nose about him being a shifter and that causing him to hate weres.”

  “I wish I wasn’t. We nearly lost our lives here, Gerry.”

  “You bringing the witness into the office?”

  “Yes. I think that’s the safest spot for him now.”

  “Agreed.”

  “I’d prefer not to be cooped up in the FBI building, but I guess it’s better than being bear food,” Ben said from the passenger seat.

  “See you in twenty,” I said to my boss. He grunted and hung up the phone. I handed my cell back to Ben.

  “Do you really think this is a good idea?” he asked, looking uncomfortable.

  “You didn’t seem to have any problem going into my office earlier.”

  “Yeah, that was before I ran out of your office elevator gagging and in tears. It tends to make the sort of impression that is hard to come back from, and not the sort folks in a federal building easily look past.”

  “Not to worry, they’ll just assume you were disgusted by the body you found.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Trust me, you don’t have anything to worry about.” Except for Quinn and Chad grilling him, but, other than that, he had nothing at all to fear.

  “I’ll trust you. It’s not easy for me, but I know if we are going to have any sort of friendship at all there has to be trust there.”