Second Skin (Skinned)

by Graves, Judith

  I held up one of the cases, blinking at Kate deliberately. “What?” she asked. “I watch movies when it’s slow. Or when

  I’m cleaning.” She glanced at the others. Their faces slipped into shock as they, too, began to put it together. “The voices in the background are soothing.”

  I nodded. “You watched this tonight, right? Maybe the scene with the sand people? The little dudes in robes? With the red eyes?”

  Kate’s face was blank. She shook her head. “It can’t be…”

  “They did have hairy feet. Just like hobbits,” Brit said. “If you’re right, Eryn, what does that mean? Kate’s creating film creature mash-ups? That come to life?”

  Brit had summed it up pretty nicely. “Looks like,” I said on a shrug.

  We all stared at Kate. She squirmed under our pointed looks and rubbed at her eyes like a tired child.

  “I think I know what’s going on,” she said finally. I raised an eyebrow.

  “I fell asleep on the couch tonight after the girls left. I haven’t been sleeping well, and I’m not used to functioning without my full eight hours. It’s just these horrible dreams. I dread going to sleep. I’m exhausted. Spells have been….difficult.” She fingered the metal ring pierced through her eyebrow, keeping her eyes downcast as if she were ashamed she’d been struggling with her magic. “I thought a few minutes of shut-eye would do the trick. I had the movie playing as I dozed off.” She bit her lip. “I’ve heard of this sort of thing happening, but never thought they could manifest in physical form.”

  “Never thought what could?” I crossed my arms, adding a little foot tapping action. “No judgment here, Kate, but could you get to the point a wee bit faster? Just spill,” I said.

  “Ever heard of a night mare?” She took a breath, waving a hand before any of us could respond. “Not as in bad dreams, although that’s a factor. I mean the demon, the night mare?”

  “You mean a horse demon that comes out at night?” Brit hazarded a guess.

  Kate sighed. “They’re not really horses. Night mares are nasty demons. They’re grotesque little monsters that sit on your chest while you dream.”

  “I get it, like they’re riding you, hence the horse analogy.” Brit’s eyes brightened. “Word origins really are fascinating.”

  “And a bit pervy,” Matt said with a smirk. “Riding you? That could be taken so many ways.”

  Brit slapped his arm. Matt grimaced and rubbed the spot, before tugging her to his side. I glanced up to find Alec’s eyes on me. I couldn’t take the heat in his stare and lowered my lashes. His lips thinned before he turned away.

  “I don’t know, Kate,” Alec said. “You’re saying some dream creature dipped into your subconscious and attacked you while you were awake? Then why could we see them? They were real. Did you see the damage to my truck? And not just from your little friends.” He shot a look at Matt who had the grace to look shamefaced.

  “Sorry about the axe,” Matt said. He held up his hands in surrender. “Give me two days.” Matt’s healing abilities extended to automotive repair. He’d brought that truck back to life once already in the few short weeks I’d been with the crew. “Just two, and I’ll have her fit as your precious Métis fiddle.”

  Alec flushed at the mention of a fiddle, and the thought of him playing one distracted me from Kate’s situation for a moment. The Métis were known for their particular brand of fiddle music, foot stomping jigs, and haunting reels. The image of big, hulking Alec playing the delicate wooden instrument while wearing the traditional Métis red sash wrapped around his waist was… shocking.

  “That was when we were kids. I haven’t picked up a bow in years. Now can we hear Kate out?” Alec said. He rolled his shoulders, flashing me a quick glance, and then turned to our possibly bewitched witch. “I think Kate’s story is a bit more important, don’t you?”

  Brit nodded. “Un-huh, but as head of the talent show committee”—her eyes flashed with suppressed laughter—“I’ll be talking to you later.”

  The look Alec leveled at Matt would have flayed a lesser guy alive.

  “This is a powerful demon,” Kate said over their razzing, the warning in her tone bringing us back to situation at hand. “It’s unusual for a night mare to engage another paranorm. Humans are their main source of sustenance. They don’t stick with any one victim for long, since that would drain them of their life-source before it had a chance to rebuild. Their goal is to have an ongoing supply, not to kill. This just doesn’t make sense…”

  When her voice trailed off, I tilted my head, examining her face, the pull of her skin on the piercings through her bottom lip. Kate was holding back. “But…” I prompted. “There’s always a but.”

  Kate lifted her head. “But if the night mare has gone power hungry, if its goal has changed, then with a source of energy such as mine, it would be easy for it to manifest in solid form. To manipulate my subconscious and project corporeal entities.”

  At our exchange of doubtful glances, Kate continued, but much louder, as if volume would make us take her words seriously. “It feeds on high emotion, fear is the most base. If it brings our fears to life, it then has an endless supply. No need to wait for its victim to sleep. Everything—fears, fantasies, whatever your subconscious dreams up—would be fair game.”

  “That doesn’t sound so bad,” I said. “Fantasies are good, right? Sexy?”

  Matt snorted behind his hand. “No comment.”

  Brit elbowed him in the ribs. “We all know about your supermodels obsession, so get over it.”

  “Think about the population in Redgrave, Eryn,” Alec said, nodding. “What do werewolves, or dark sprites, witches, wolven”—he paused, his face hardening, his gaze cut to me— “even vampires fantasize about?”

  Oh, I know the answer to that one.

  A husky voice whispered in my mind. A cool rush feathered against the back of my neck on the exposed flesh between my pigtails. The warm caress of a seductive kiss. My entire body tingled.

  Wade.

  For a second my eyes fluttered shut. I fought for control, grabbing the back of a wood chair for support.

  Damn, not now.

  Alec cleared his throat. His dark eyes watched me from across the room.

  A flush worked its way up my face.

  I struggled to focus as Kate picked up the conversation. “They play with our minds, feed off dreams, discover our secret fantasies, our fears, and torment us with them asleep and awake.”

  Sounded a lot like someone I knew. Wade? I sent out a call, but the feel of him, the sense of his presence had lessened. I shook my head, clearing out the smell of mint, and focused on Kate, aware Alec was watching me closely.

  “In a town like Redgrave,” she said, “where not all the dreamers are merely human, the demons gain enough power to assume solid form. To project our suppressed emotions. This could be serious.” “How serious are we talking?” I asked, feeling back in the game. Wade really had to stop dropping in and messing with my

  head.

  She shrugged. “How bad are your nightmares?” A flash of me, gorging on a human.

  The tang of blood in my mouth.

  The words from that song we’d heard grinding out of that car earlier seemed suddenly too coincidental. Maybe something had been sending a message.

  Maybe we were off to Neverland. I swallowed. Hard.

  Oh, we were in for a world of hurt.

  Iron never rests

  I woke to the sound of rasping breath. Close. Above me. I feigned sleep, struggling to keep my breathing slow and relaxed. My skin crawled with the fetid weight of a ghoulish gaze that traveled along my shoulders bare but for the thin straps of my cami. Puffs of sour gas filled my nostrils.

  Unrelenting pressure on my chest crushed the air from my lungs. I sucked in a slip of air. Needed more. I dragged in another ragged breath, but my ribs refused to expand. I began to cough.

  My eyes flew open.

  Decomposed flesh. Hollow, w
orm-filled sockets. Snapping teeth.

  I squeezed my eyes shut.

  “You’re not real. You’re not real,” I said to myself and to the demon perched on my ribcage. I arched my back off the mattress, only to have my body slammed down into place. I attempted to twist, punch, push, or shove it off, but my limbs refused to cooperate. My struggles manifested as little more than a restless shift of my shoulders. The demon’s punishing weight paralyzed me.

  I opened my mouth to scream, but only a sigh left my lips. I’d never been more desperate to move any part of my body. A finger. A toe. If this was what my wolf felt like, buried deep under my skin, I’d never hold her back again. To do so offered a slow, agonizing suffocation of the soul. Panic carved a hole in my stomach.

  And still I couldn’t move.

  Bile rose in my throat as the stench of a thousand rotting corpses blasted my cheek. The demon breathed hot on my cheek. A slithering sound, like death licking its lips in anticipation, and then a guttural laugh, malevolent and deadly. Followed by the pat of a cold, dead hand on my cheek before the pressure eased, and disappeared.

  I bolted upright and stared across my empty bedroom. My wolven night vision kicked in, and I searched the darkness for the creature that had attacked me. Dark and sinister shapes crouching around the room turned out to be nothing more than shadows cast by dirty clothes piled on the floor. It was gone. I was alone. I sucked in gulps of air, my bruised ribcage protesting even as my lungs demanded more.

  I reached under my pillow and withdrew my athame. Shoving my tangled bangs out of my eyes, I scanned my bedroom again, searching for the demon. Nada. Not a thing out of place. My door and the window remained closed, curtains unmoving. The demon had vanished.

  But it had been here, demonstrating how easily it could get to me.

  Daisies smiled up at me from my bedsheets, their good cheer mocking the horror slowly draining from my veins. I hated them at the best of times. My Aunt Sammi had trouble restricting her kindergarten teacher’s eye for cutesy décor to the classroom. I shoved the sheets aside.

  The unfamiliar slide of thread along my wrist drew my attention. I held out my arm, examining Kate’s supposed iron- clad protection charm. A bracelet made from a cord of black embroidery floss strung with juniper beads impaled with slivers from an iron coffin nail. Although the spell may have kept the demon from my dreams, it certainly hadn’t stopped it from paying a house call.

  And last night Kate had been so certain she could thwart the demon with a few witchy tourniquets.

  We should have known it wouldn’t be that easy.

  Back at Conundrum I’d been so willing to believe Kate had the answers. I’d even helped prepare for the spell. Before we’d gotten started, I’d clunked into the metal ladder Kate’s boyfriend, Whip, had set up right inside the door. When I stepped back, rubbing my throbbing knee, strong hands settled at my waist. Their heat penetrated my hoodie.

  “Steady,” Alec’s voice rumbled in my ear.

  Both knees weakened. I straightened and pulled away before my traitorous body could press against Alec’s broad chest.

  I ducked under the ladder.

  “Seven years bad luck,” he murmured from behind me. “I hope chickening out was worth it.”

  I bared my teeth from the opposite side of the ladder while he lingered in the doorway studying me with those dark eyes.

  Brit shifted to make room for me against the wall. She slanted a look my way and then at Alec standing stiff in the doorway. “Hey, are you guys fighting?”

  “Shhh, Kate’s about to start the spell,” I said.

  Kate made her way cautiously up the ladder Whip was holding.

  “You sure she’s up for this?” Brit said out the side of her mouth.

  “She is if she wants any of us to sleep tonight,” Kate said. She could be wolven, her hearing was so keen. I ducked my head, hiding my grin at the thought of a wolven-witch blend. Not likely. Wolven and witches shared a long history of mutual hatred that dated back centuries, when witches used wolven for all sorts of nasty deeds and bound us to them as their familiars—a pretty way of saying we were their slaves. Such servitude was now forbidden in the paranorm world. A familiar-to-witch partnership was rare and had to be consensual.

  If I was an anomaly—a human-wolven hybrid—a witch- wolven would be outright blasphemy—on both sides. That Kate and I got along spoke volumes about the wackiness that was Redgrave. Enemy of my enemy and all that.

  “We have to protect this place,” Kate said. “It holds the source of my power. If the night mare blasts inside, it’ll steal my power, absorb it, and I’ll be useless to you guys in your battle against it.” She placed a small bundle of dried herbs on the doorjamb, explaining the ingredients as she gathered them. Gray spider flower and St. John’s wort, to relieve terror and provide protection. She fixed the bundle into place with an iron coffin nail and the blunt end of a butter knife. Apparently Kate wasn’t above grave robbing for nails and graveyard dust, but didn’t believe in the usefulness of a hammer. She passed Whip the knife and proceeded to bang on the wall above the doorframe with her fist, causing my heart to jump.

  Magic always made me nervous. You never knew the exact outcome. Kate was the first to admit magic was fallible, subject to many influences, no matter how strong the will of the spellcaster. Her simple spell to wipe some of Paige’s more paranormal memories had resulted in odd personality changes. Not that I minded. Paige was far more bearable now. Still, would this spell have side effects? We weren’t all as fortunate as Wade, who was immune to certain spells thanks to his witchy inheritance.

  Satisfied the charm wouldn’t dislodge when the door opened or closed, Kate held her hands out over the swath of herbs and chanted under her breath. Magic stirred the air. Whorls of energy rose beneath us, drifted up the ladder, and radiated from Kate’s hands in a silver glow.

  In seconds the glow embedded itself deep in the bundle of herbs and flared to life. Silver sparks shimmered along the entire outline of the doorframe, and then spread to the crown molding and the baseboards, traveling the walls like a lit fuse on a stick of dynamite. An electrical charge similar to the hum of cicadas echoed through the entire two-story structure as the ward sought each line of the old Victorian house and settled in.

  To my sensitive nose, each and every person, brand of magic, or power had its own odor. Once I’d had a whiff, I could identify the source of residual magic or track someone—or something— by scent alone. A nifty trick inherited from my wolven mother. It did have its side effects though. Large masses of people enclosed in tight space wreaked havoc on my senses. Kate’s magic was the ginger and other exotic spices that swirled in the air. Which was why the faint hint of mint cutting so clearly through the chai and nutmeg, strengthening the ward, demanded my attention.

  Wade’s magic was laced with ice and mint. I’d recognize it anywhere. He was the source of the irresistible aroma weaving through Kate’s magic. Almost as if she had found a way to access Wade’s talent for creating strong protection wards.

  Was that even possible?

  The scent of him was driving me mad, clouding my mind. I really shouldn’t be longing for a guy so close to the dark side. He was shadowed.

  A tiny thrum of Kate’s power lingered. I tasted the magic in the air. It pulsated on the tip of my tongue. I met Kate’s eyes, uncomfortable with the knowing in her expression. We held the stare for a moment before the pulsation of magic evaporated entirely.

  The spell was complete.

  Kate broke the hush that had settled over us while she’d been spellcasting. “It’s not just my power I’ve secured. I have other sacred, ancient objects housed within these walls. If the night mare were to get those as well…”

  “Let me guess,” Matt said on a flippant grin. “The world as we know it will cease to exist.”

  Kate met his gaze, her eyes narrowed. “Pretty much.” Matt’s smile died. He swallowed hard.

  But Kate wasn’t finished. “Each
of you is a potential target now that the demon has seen you through his minions’ eyes,” she said. “You’ll need some extra protection. I’ve prepared a few charm bracelets.”

  Not what I was expecting.

  “Why don’t we use dreamcatchers?” Brit asked Matt, voicing my exact thought.

  Alec stiffened at my side.

  Matt grimaced. “Every First Nations dude should have one over his bed, right?” He teased Brit gently. “Thirty years ago, sure,” he said. “But now they’re gimmicky. More commercial than Valentine’s Day.”

  “These bracelets are portable,” Kate said. “The night mare won’t limit its attacks to bedrooms, waiting for victims to fall asleep. It’s strong enough to go wherever it wants, whenever it wants.” She stared at me intently. “We’ve been waiting for the bounty hunters to appear, Eryn. Perhaps this is how it begins. My sources confirmed interest from a variety of mercenaries. Challenging your support system, threatening your friends—they might do this to wear you down.”

  Ugh. I’d tried not to think too much about Logan’s little information leak. That he’d discovered the Hunter Council had put a price on my head, warning me that paranorm bounty hunters just might descend on Redgrave.

  Alec straightened. “We’ve got Eryn’s back. Anything that comes after her has to go through us first.”

  Kate’s eyes softened. “Exactly. And that’s why all of us must be vigilant.” She gave me an encouraging smile. “I know you’ve been in a holding pattern, Eryn, wanting to make sure you protect your parents if they are still alive and in hiding, and yet you’re torn because Logan won’t wait forever.” She reached out, resting her hand softly on my shoulder.

  I stiffened slightly at her touch.

  “At some point you’re going to have to seek out your father’s work, dig into your past, and I know that’s a scary prospect for you. But I think your hand is about to be forced.” Kate stepped back and glanced to Alec.

  I followed her eyes to find his hard stare on me.