“Shifters gone bad or gone crazy—that doesn’t end well for anyone involved. Poison is the main cause of shifters going berserk. Also, coyotes can lose their minds if betrayed by someone close to them. Grief can give any animal shifter a shove into insanity.”
All right, he did remember that part, since after he’d been initiated, he’d worried that he would go so off the rails from missing Maya and his friends, it would cause him to accidentally hurt somebody. He hadn’t.
You’re welcome, the bear said.
Thanks, bear.
Aiden took a long sip of beer before continuing. “Shifters initiating regulars into shifters to be used for their own purposes doesn’t work unless the initiated one wants to be a part of the initiator’s plans. We only get one or two chances to initiate someone, and then we’re responsible for the ones we initiate.”
Grant tried not to dwell on the fact that Greg had used a gift on him that shifters considered precious and limited.
“Then there are the Equalizers and the crazy spin-off groups and extremists. Those assholes want to do everything from stopping a shifter’s ability to heal to studying shifters in a lab like rats. There’s more than one group out there who would prefer to kill off all the stranger creatures in existence.”
Grant knew the basics of what Aiden was telling him, though he hadn’t thought much about it other than as a general reminder to himself to be careful about not exposing his shifter nature to just anybody. Keeping the secret of their nature was important, but it went so much deeper. He got that now. It was obvious from the barely controlled anger in Aiden’s tone that the term “studying shifters in a lab like rats” wasn’t an exaggeration. Aiden must have seen some of the hell he’d described. Grant had the strangest desire to tell him he understood the dark and to try to pull Aiden out of the shadows. Grant raked his hand through his hair. Surely it was just the beers and the miles of open air under the night sky playing with his imagination.
“I’ll report the situation with that reporter and your girl’s douchebag ex to Shifters United, so one of the threat managers can look into it. Hopefully the reporter and the ex don’t know anything more than they’ve revealed already. But if that’s not the case, things will have to be taken care of.”
Aiden probably didn’t mean that Baron and Hunter would get a polite warning to shut up and mind their business. “I’ll volunteer for that job,” Grant said with a growl. Was it wrong that he wanted to murder another person so badly?
“I take it your new woman is not temporary?”
“Not if I have anything to say about it.”
Aiden just nodded, as though he knew there were no guarantees.
Aiden spoke about some of the bizarre and different creatures Mother Nature had made, and all the while a group of younger bear shifters performed a crazy mix of break dancing and Parkour across the picnic tables and through the shelter ledges. Falling and getting back up, over and over.
“You know I specialized in the Shifter Enforcement Army, in the Search and Destroy unit, hunting down and eliminating shifters who’d gone bad or crazy? Aiden also served time in the SEA. He specialized in eliminating the radicals who went after shifters, so basically, he was a sniper, and also more,” Greg began.
“And we’re now part of Shifters United, which is something like a shifter government but much less bureaucratic and archaic,” Aiden continued. “You mentioned Voleur de Vie? They’re rare, but we’ve dealt with them as allies on a few occasions. Soul stealers, many in the stranger community refer to them. They aren’t cold, dead bloodsucking vampires, but something else entirely.”
The brothers filled him in that though soul stealers went by many names, none really described them to perfection. Voleur de Vie could make a regular or a shifter sick or crazy or both with just their touch, if they so chose. Though an animal shifter could usually change form to alleviate any damage, regulars, weather shifters, and psy weren’t so lucky. The soul stealers could cause sickness or insanity slowly over a period of time, or they could do it fast and hard. They weren’t zombies, but they could create a village full of diseased lunatics with so little brainpower left they walked the village looking depleted, lost, and psychotic.
A bite from an animal shifter could rob soul stealers of their abilities, for a while anyway. Aiden insisted that the soul stealers he had worked with in the past were decent; still, Grant decided to hold off on hanging out with anything that could turn him into a disease-infested, raving nutbag. Jesus, there was a lot of freaky shit out there.
“Aiden and I still get pulled into missions sometimes,” Greg said, his tone solemn.
Aiden and Greg not only knew about the crazy shit that went on unbeknownst to most, but they had obviously suffered like hell to keep shifters safe. Feeling humble and sorry and about a hundred other things, Grant stayed silent. Greg and Aiden had started their own search and rescue business in Bears’ Creek, helping shifters and humans alike who were lost or in need of help. After truly listening to the brothers speak about their pasts, he really got why they wanted to help people when they could. They were tired of having to end lives.
“Sometimes things overlap with Shifters United and the search and rescue unit, and we end up traveling to missions elsewhere. I don’t mind the rescue missions though. Finding someone alive, being able to help instead of having to kill because there’s no other humane choice—yeah, I’ll take a rescue anytime.” The sincerity on Greg’s face reminded Grant so much of his friend Joe—just the straight-up truth, no bending words to alter perception.
“Not all of them were so far gone they couldn’t be saved, if we just knew how to help them, how to keep it from getting worse.” Greg shook his head. Aiden put his hand on his brother’s shoulder.
“We still don’t have a lot of options. The drug epinephrine, the stuff they use for people with severe allergies, can, for whatever reason, help at the beginning if a shifter has been poisoned. It doesn’t even matter the poison—if we can get the epinephrine into the shifter quickly, there’s a chance. Not much chance of saving a shifter who has lost their mind, though,” Aiden said quietly. His words were calm, but the sadness bled through.
“There’s got to be a better way.” Greg shook his head, and the moonlight illuminated the grief and shadows that marred his face.
Grant just nodded and offered a grunt of support. In that unguarded moment, his heart hurt for Greg and he felt—felt—the grief, the caring, the love of a brother, but just the same, he felt that it was not his own, but coming from somewhere else. From Aiden.
How in the fuck? Grant gasped for breath and stood.
The strength of the bond between a shifter and their initiated is strong. You’ve blocked it out long enough. Also, It’s even stronger between mates, the bear informed him. And then Grant realized something and turned to Greg.
“So all this time, you felt my grief and my anger. My…hatred for you?”
“Aiden and I both did. I claimed you as family. If I could have taken some of your grief, I would have, to help you endure it, but that’s not the way things work.”
Grant’s shield of anger shattered, and in its place, something else tried to form, and it fucking hurt. Now he needed to take away some of Greg’s pain. “I don’t hate you for initiating me. I get why you did it. I mean, I really get it now.”
He turned away. Grant had meant what he said, but that was enough of that shit for one night. He walked off toward a tree, stripped naked, and lay down to sleep in bear form against a tree. He would not have to communicate in bear form. When his body started to feel weightless, caught somewhere in between the present and sleep, the damn bear’s voice rang loud and clear in the silence of his mind.
Greg and Aiden are your brothers now. You weren’t alone then, and you’re not alone now.
Goddammit! Do not start that shit again, bear.
“He is claimed as family,” Greg had said that after he had bitten Grant and started the initiation process.
>
“So be it,” Aiden had agreed.
But why Grant? They hadn’t known him. Grant hadn’t asked for a brother. He hadn’t asked to be part of a bear family. He had asked to die.
And yet they love you. The bear’s tone was gentle. And so does Shay. Great. The bear was gonna be all philosophical and mushy now.
What, you gonna sing me Adele songs now, bear? When the bear started in with a screechy, high-pitched warble, Grant cut him off.
Go to sleep, stupid bear.
Love you. The bear laughed, sounding like an eight-year-old taunting a sibling.
Fuck off, bear.
Chapter Thirteen
Early mornings, before saner people got out of bed, were the times when Shayla came up with her best ideas. At five thirty a.m., she dressed in a fluorescent-pink running shirt and shorts, then pulled on her well-worn running shoes. She grabbed a water bottle and put on a headlamp to guide her down her street in the last of the darkness. Not many people came down her long, winding road since she lived in an older neighborhood that was just beginning to see some revitalization and repopulation. Definitely not the traffic she’d dealt with near her old place in Towson, Maryland.
Just the same, she still strapped a knife to her waistband whenever she went for a run by herself. Safety and all. Really, though, the weirdest thing she’d ever seen on her neighborhood runs was a pack of wild turkeys screeching at one another as they crossed the road. The raccoons eating from garbage cans were so freaking precious, but she didn’t dare step too close to the furry little trash eaters.
After a few miles of her pounding the pavement, her running music playlist started to bore the hell out of her, so she turned the music app off. The silence wasn’t really silence. Birds chirping, frogs, random cars on different roads—all those sounds played in the background to remind her she wasn’t alone but still in her little slice of time and space. As she approached the halfway point of her run, her body wanted to slack off and give up, so she forced her mind away from the burning of her muscles and the tightness in her lungs. Of course Brass Cat and how to keep it up and running was the first place her mind went.
The day before, she’d refused to think about the mess Hunter and Baron had caused, because she needed to stop obsessing over what she couldn’t change. She’d already taken drastic measures to secure her website. Brass Cat stored customer credit-card information on a different server that had never been breached. At least she had that to be thankful for. She should let Hunter’s hacking and reputation smearing incident pass and the police do their job, but Shayla’s gut said she should go on the offensive. Grant had not been enthusiastic about that concept when she’d mentioned putting together a revenge plan. She had assured him the wishes for payback against Hunter was just her anger talking and that of course she’d leave handling Hunter to the experts. Because that was what she should do, right?
Shayla’s blood, sweat, and tears had gone into getting Brass Cat up and running successfully. She’d bargained, traded deals, made promises—which she’d kept—and scraped together the amount of money necessary to make it through the first hard year. Because of everything she’d put into Brass Cat, and some luck and love from the universe, her business had climbed out of the red and into the black, until she wasn’t only squeaking by after employees’ salaries and other expenses were met: she was prospering. Oh, not prospering like a millionaire. Not yet. But there was growth and possibilities, and the more she thought about Hunter sitting out there somewhere, plotting her ruin, she knew she needed to shut him down. Not just stop him from trying to find new ways to hack or have him endure an investigation that might never produce charges that would stick. Originally she’d wanted to hit his website and his business back with some cyber-voodoo shit that she paid someone else to do and force him to lose his credibility. Now she wanted to do more. She needed to shut him down for good.
So she wouldn’t go publicly accusing him of being a dickhead hacker or make public-service announcements about the importance of helping people with traumatic brain injuries to cope with difficulties during which she wouldn’t flash a picture of Hunter on-screen and tell her audience that sometimes people needed more help than their families and friends could provide. Also, she wouldn’t sneak into Hunter’s house and murder him in his sleep. All of those strategies would be ineffective in the long run, except killing Hunter. That would be totally effective, but a little wrong. Plus the fact that she didn’t know enough about cleaning up evidence. Jail would suck.
With each footfall on the quiet asphalt, Shayla was more certain that it was time to meet with Hunter. A face-to-face meeting had to be the first step. She had a way with people, and this was in large part because she could read body language, which helped her ask just the right questions and press the right buttons to learn more. In business, this skill enabled her to figure out what clients needed and wanted, even when the clients themselves weren’t always sure. In her personal life, she could tell when a friend was hurting or figure out what an attitude meant without having to ask a ton of personal questions.
The darker side of her talent gave her the ability to take the information gathering in the other direction, in an unnatural way. She had done this sometimes as a kid, when she’d wanted something from someone or gotten mad at her sister. The end result had been that she’d gotten what she wanted while making someone else feel horrible and vulnerable. Using that unkind talent always made her feel like a terrible person, but at the same time, she’d wanted to see how far she could take it, because the limit kept moving up. That is, until one time when things had gotten out of control and she’d made a girl start a habit of cutting herself.
Shayla hadn’t done this by physical force but had dug so deeply into the girl’s insecurities, knowing what to say to hurt the most. She’d heard the girl had needed therapy. Or maybe the girl had needed therapy all along and Shayla’s manipulation had sped things up. Either way, her proficiency with the darker side of her skills scared her. She’d decided long ago never to use them out of fear that she might lose her own humanity and end up a sociopath taking whatever she wanted and leaving a trail of broken, suicidal tragedies in her path. For Hunter and Baron, Shayla decided to make an exception. Just a small exception. She wouldn’t go over the top or anything. Unless she had to. The two had brought it upon themselves when they’d messed with her business.
The stopwatch function on her watch showed she’d finished her eight-mile run faster than she’d ever run that distance before. Shayla cooled down with a short walk around the yard and some stretches. Stray Kitty watched her from her perch on the rails of the front porch.
Stray Kitty looked rather regal now that she’d let Grant cut some mats out of her fur and brush her. The sight of Grant gently holding an enormous cat, sweet-talking the hairy beast into eating treats while he trimmed and brushed her snarled, tangled fur, had made Shayla weak at the knees. His sweetness and his patience would make him a good dad. Not that she wanted kids tomorrow or anything, but someday, and she knew damn well she wanted them with Grant. Only Grant.
Something furry on her front doorstep caught her gaze a split second before she stepped on it. She squealed and hopped back, only to realize the furry thing wouldn’t be coming after her. The dead chipmunk on the doormat was probably Stray Kitty’s thank-you gift for Grant freeing her from her hot, matted-up fur, since he’d spent the night. How long did she need to leave the nasty dead thing there to make sure Stray Kitty’s feelings weren’t hurt?
After a shower, a morning quickie with Grant that made her hungry for more, and a rehearsal in her head of what she would say to Hunter to give him just the right amount of hope that she might be caving, she arrived at work and headed to her office. She had a new cell phone number now, and she didn’t want it showing up on Hunter’s caller ID. She had his number though, so she used the company’s land line to call him.
“Hunter?”
“Shayla. We have some things to talk about.”
<
br /> “We do. Let’s meet up.” She made herself sound as small and defeated as possible. He ate it up, and the meeting was on.
* * * *
Shayla made the long, boring drive to Richmond by herself to meet Hunter at the Carillon Tower, some landmark at an outdoor amphitheater called Dogwood Dell. She’d chosen that location because it was outside in a busy city—lots of witnesses if he tried to hurt her. If she tried to hurt him, nobody would ever see it. She hoped it wouldn’t come to her having to use her unnatural talents on Hunter. Much. God, she really wanted to ram her knee into his balls.
Thank goodness for GPS telling her where to go and the radio to keep her company on the three-hour drive, because she hadn’t wanted Grant or anybody else coming on this trip with her. She’d never breathed a word about her messed-up talents to anyone except her sister and had avoided using the abilities because she worried she’d do something horrible. The downside of avoiding her gift-curse was that she was rusty and feared it might have gotten stronger as she’d gotten older. She would force herself not to go too far, but she needed as few distractions as possible.
Since she was running ahead of schedule, she decided to stop off somewhere for lunch. Her navigation system found her a diner with good reviews in Amelia County, so she followed the tinny cyber voice’s directions and pulled into the diner’s parking lot ten minutes later. The cute brick building with flowers and ornamental trees didn’t appear to be a truck stop meant for sleazy travelers to pick up two-dollar hookers, so she stretched out her cramped muscles and headed inside. A waitress in a green-and-white-checkered uniform gave her a cheerful greeting.
“It’ll be a few minutes before a table’s ready. Is that okay?”
Shayla checked her watch. Yeah, she had a little time. And if she was a few minutes late, Hunter could just sit his sorry ass down and wait for her. “That’s fine.”
Stranger Creatures 2: Bear's Edge Page 13