Dying to Live: The Shifter City Complete Series

by Liam Kingsley

  For a long time, there was nothing but his scent to track him by. Regis Thyme was surrounded on all sides by empty prairie and ghost towns. It didn’t use to be that way, but the humans had decided long ago that living beside werewolves was simply unacceptable. They avoided this area now, as did the shifters, who had been convinced through media and rumor that Regis Thyme was a prison of some sort. Soon, though, Killian began to see evidence of Pan’s wild condition. The first thing he noticed was a deer carcass, stripped down to the bone. The second was a blue sedan, dented on one side with its nose buried in a telephone pole. There was no human inside or nearby, but Pan’s scent was all over it. Killian hoped for both their sakes that Pan hadn’t taken off with the driver.

  Concern pushed Killian to move faster, faster than he ever thought possible. He whipped through the countryside, cataloging Pan’s destruction as he went. Pan didn’t seem to have any concept of danger, and had cut directly through towns full of people. Killian, upset and worried, followed at first; but soon the humans began to chase him, firing weapons and throwing bricks, and he had to veer off into the wilderness once more. He kept to Pan’s scent between towns, then skirted those towns until he found the scent again. The moon rose and he ran until dawn, cursing Pan’s unstoppable energy, wishing he could predict where he was going. But there didn’t seem to be any pattern at all, save for a vague easterly direction. Pan didn’t exactly seem sane at the moment.

  By noon the following day, Killian had nothing left to give. He stumbled into an empty, dilapidated barn, crawled under a pile of straw, and fell deep into a sleep filled with dreams of Pan.

  “You know you don’t need to save my life anymore.”

  “I know.”

  “You know your livelihood is on the line.”

  “I know that, too.”

  “So why are you touching me like that?”

  “Because I can’t help but want you, and we’re out here alone in the dark.” Killian’s gesture took in the galaxy swirling around them.

  Pan grinned. “I don’t think your job is in jeopardy, no matter who or where you love. I think we…our people…I think we’re better than that.”

  “Then kiss me.”

  Pan shook his head, and Killian’s brow furrowed in confusion.

  “Why not?”

  “Because,” Pan sighed. “Because you can’t keep this a secret. You can try, but everyone will know. Everyone’s watching us, Killian. No, not now, stop looking around. We’re on everybody’s radar because of this thing. They’ll all know.”

  “Anything could happen,” Killian said, his voice echoing through dream chambers. “Everything’s falling apart, and it’s all out of our control. I might never get to teach again. This change alone might be enough for the parents…all of the parents… to chase me out of the classroom. If they don’t, the humans might. Nothing is certain right now, and nothing I do is going to change what happens next. Sometimes you just have to go with your gut and hope for the best.”

  “And what’s your gut telling you?” Pan asked, touching his face.

  “It’s telling me to touch you.”

  “Then touch me.”

  Killian pulled Pan into him, breathing his scent as he brushed his mouth against Pan’s lips. Quivering electricity sparked in the air between them as a fierce wind whipped up, rustling the stars and blowing in a thick bank of purple clouds which wrapped around them, over and under. Thunder rolled as Killian tongue parted Pan’s lips, delving into the salty-sweet cavern within. He intended to take it slowly, but his passion grew like the storm building above them, and within moments they were naked in each other’s arms. Skin to skin they slid over each other, tasting, nibbling stoking each other with furious need. Pan was achingly hard and he lifted his hips to grind against Killian’s taught belly, begging to be taken. Killian dipped two fingers into Pan’s mouth, rolling them until they were slick with saliva, then moved down Pan’s lithe body to press his fingers into him. Pan moaned and opened to him.

  Pan curled his body around to take Killian’s throbbing cock into his hot, wet mouth. A shock of pleasure ripped through Killian’s senses as a lightning bolt flashed overhead, splitting the sky. Rain began to pour over them, unseasonably warm, soaking them in moments. Their skin, hot with lust and change, made the drops evaporate in a sizzle on impact. Pan’s gorgeous eyes gazed up at him as his perfect mouth brought him closer to climax. In a moment of unbridled, uncontrollable passion, Killian pushed Pan onto his back and plunged into him, slick with rain and spit. Pan cried out his name and tangled his fingers in his sopping wet hair as Killian thrust into him again and again. A warmth grew in the center of his cock, making it swell and lock inside of Pan. They’d reached the point of no return, but no one was thinking of stopping.

  They wrestled in the sky, rolling over and over, vying for position. Killian’s back slammed into the clouds and Pan straddled him, sliding up and down over his raging, throbbing erection, stroking his own. Killian let his hands wander from Pan’s throat to his shoulders and over his belly, finally sliding down to grip his cock and stroke it in time with Pan’s eager, bucking hips. Pan whimpered and kissed him hard, then Killian was in control once more. He rolled, locking Pan’s ankles behind his head as he thrust deeper into him, hitting just the right spot. Pan’s breath quickened and his eyes darkened, spinning like a tempest over waves as Killian rocked him nearer and nearer to ecstasy. He began to pulse and throb around Killian’s cock, forcing him to quicken his pace. His cries were stolen from his throat by the fierce wind, his body writhed an erotic dance with Killian’s, and his fists tightened around the very fabric of space and time. He ripped it as he came, pulsing and screaming Killian’s name.

  “Say it again,” Killian begged, his voice sounding hoarse and alien in his own ears.

  “Killian,” Pan said. “Fuck me harder, Killian.”

  With a savage growl and singular intent, Killian rode to his peak, emptying into Pan as pleasure coursed through his body, flooding his mind with a honey-scented static buzz. Thunder rolled overhead with his last little thrusts, signaling the end of two storms at once. Catching his breath and waiting for the knot to subside, Killian stroked the rain out of Pan’s glorious face.

  “You’re amazing,” he said sincerely.

  Pan smiled up at him. “You’re in danger.”

  “What?”

  “You’d better wake up. They won’t let you live.”

  Killian awoke with a gasp to the smell of gasoline. A square can crashed through the wall beside him, spilling its contents over the straw, soaking it in gasoline. Men shouted at one another, and more cans crashed into the old barn.

  “You sure it’s in there?”

  “You feel like checking?”

  “Nah, I’m good.”

  “Trust me, it’s in there. Just about took my leg off. Back up, this is gonna be hot.”

  Killian moved then, running through the barn away from the voices. His sensitive ears picked up the flick of a lighter, and he ducked his head to ram the ramshackle wall with his massive shoulders, bursting through mere seconds before the barn exploded in a ball of flame. With singed fur and no sense of direction, Killian raced into a line of trees and fell into a stream. He let the water push him along for several minutes, sweeping him away from the billowing black smoke which would have been his own personal crematorium if he’d slept for even a minute longer. When the smoke was well out of sight, Killian pulled himself up onto the riverbank and shook the water out of his thick, black coat. Thanking the scientists at Regis Thyme for their way with fabrics, he shifted to beast form and from beast form to human. He was missing shoes, and his shirt had disappeared at some point, but his pants were intact.

  “Alright, Pan,” he muttered to himself. “Which way did you go?”

  He clambered up out of the river and found himself at the edge of a town. If Pan had been through here today, someone would have seen him. If he hadn’t, well…Killian was going to need some serious back
up.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Red. Black. Red. Pulsing flashes startled Pan from the cool black of unconsciousness, sending fire through his nerves with each one. He groaned and rolled his head, expecting to find his pillow there. What he found instead was ice-cold water which rushed into his nose, mouth, and ears, suffocating and deafening him. The shock yanked him from his sleep and he gasped, sitting bolt upright on his haunches. Haunches? He looked down at himself but couldn’t register what he was seeing, then peered at his reflection in the trickling creek before him. A wolf with a pure white coat stared back at him, meeting his ocean-colored eyes. The pulses started again, flashes of incredible pain radiating from his temples. Whimpering, he lay his head on the ground and pressed his massive paws to it as if he needed to hold it together lest it flew apart.

  He needed to get out of this form. The sun was beating down on him, cooking him within his own fur, and he wasn’t sweating. With excruciating concentration, he crept toward the creek, feeling the loose dirt and broken twigs roll and scrape against his belly. Inch by inch he wriggled, until finally his paws touched the crystal-clear water. He slid into the creek recklessly, and found it shallow and quick. He scrunched down, wriggling his paws into the silt to keep from being swept away, and began to drink deeply. The cold water soothed his aching head with every gulp, and soon he was able to look around and identify what he saw.

  The small creek he was in fed into a larger creek, which disappeared over a hill. In the distance, he heard the sound of rushing water. He turned in a circle to find the horizon, and there, hazy and ghostlike through the thick, humid air, rose a towering skyline. He thought he was imagining it at first, but the small red lights atop each tower lent a feel of reality to the scene. The silhouette seemed vaguely familiar, though he couldn’t place it. He’d seen hundreds of similar skylines when he’d traveled over half the country to reach Regis Thyme, and that had been thirteen years ago. Much could have changed since then. Still, a skyline meant people, and maps. If he could make it there without running into trouble, he could figure out where he was, and find a way to go home.

  First, he thought to himself, I need to figure out how to get out of this form. He scrambled onto the bank and concentrated, reaching back through his experience to the first year after the first change. They had spent hours every day learning to control the beast through meditation, until the skills had become integrated into their subconscious minds. Trying to remember how to do it was like trying to remember how to walk, chew, or speak; it was a skill which had been filed away under the unreachable automatic centers of his brain. Meditation was always the first step. Anyone walking by for the next few hours would have thought him a statue; this great canine beast, overlooking the river with his belly flat to the ground and his nose kissing the sky, peaceful and still as he rummaged through his mind palace, seeking the trigger to turn him human. Like a beast or princess from a fairy tale, he waited for his salvation as the autumn breeze rustled his snowy fur, kissing and decorating him with bright fallen leaves. It wouldn’t be long before the trees which towered above him scratched the sky with their naked, bony arms; for now, they were eager to cover him in a blanket of red and gold, shaking their clothes off in the wind.

  The voice of Sven, Omega Thyme and meditation instructor, echoed clearly in Pan’s mind. Feel your fingers soften and grow thin. Feel your nose narrow and shorten, separating from your mouth. You are human. Chant as you follow the change over your body. I am human. Human palms. I am human. Human wrists. I am human….

  He couldn’t speak it, so he thought it. Again and again, as he returned to his first instruction in managing his affliction. I am human, I am human. The words rang false in his own head as the breeze whipped into a quick wind, fluttering the thick fur over his canid body. He narrowed in on the words, ignoring the outside stimuli. I am human. I am human. He pictured his body softening and changing, rearranging itself into a human structure. The lack of bodily response was distracting and frustrating, no matter how he tried to ignore it. After several hours with no progress, Pan opened his eyes with a heavy sigh.

  “You have to shift back to beast form first,” a voice behind him said. “Can’t go right from wolf to human, it don’t work that way.”

  Pan whipped his head around and jumped to his feet, snarling defensively at the stranger. He was tall, with dark skin and darker hair, and he leaned lazily against the trunk of a tree. He chuckled at Pan’s reaction and pulled a pack of cigarettes from the worn flannel pocket of his plaid shirt.

  “You had an Alpha teaching you how to control this thing, didn’t you? Alphas don’t know shit. That’s lesson number one. Lesson two is baby steps for baby makers. Alphas, betas, whatever, they can go from wolf to human and back again no problem. Baby makers have to go in order. You can sit there contemplating your navel for the rest of time and never get anywhere. Go ahead, try it. Beast form.”

  He made Pan uneasy, but Pan was out of his own ideas. He focused his mind on the beast form, which was uncomfortable for him; he had never deliberately shifted out of his human form, and hadn’t tried visualizing his beast form except when he was attempting to dissolve it. Reversing that imagery didn’t work, so he stumbled through a visualization like a baby taking its first steps. Ever so slowly, his paws extended into long fingers tipped with vicious claws. He focused on them alone, trusting the rest of his body to follow. His claws retracted and softened, leaving human fingernails glistening within the furry fingers. The fur went next, dissolving into scales, which softened in turn into pale peach-colored skin. He sighed with relief and stood, feeling the crisp cool of autumn caress his naked skin. Looking down, he noticed with a thrill of relief that his body was smooth once more, singular in color and free of black webbing.

  “Here,” the man said, tossing him a pair of loose, ragged grey shorts. “Ain’t much, but it’ll cover your nuts.”

  Now that Pan could see clearly, the man before him was really more of a boy. Though he was tall and muscular, his face had the irregular proportions and softened lines of youth. Pan felt momentarily embarrassed, but put the shorts on quickly.

  “Should always carry some clothes with you,” the boy said sternly. “Where’s your pack?”

  “Left them at home.”

  “Yeah? Where’s home?”

  Pan studied the boy’s face carefully. There were layers to his questions, and Pan didn’t want to answer until he knew what those layers were.

  “Don’t know,” he said finally. “Where am I?”

  “You don’t know where home is?” He squinted at Pan for a long time, then his eyes widened with realization. “You escaped! How?”

  “Escaped from where?”

  “You were taken by the hunters, weren’t you? I knew they were up to something. Wolf rehab facilities my ass, they’re studying shifters, aren’t they?”

  “I…can’t remember,” Pan said vaguely. He wanted to learn more before he gave anything up.

  “Understandable, man, understandable. I hear they do all kinds of messed up shit to your brain. Don’t worry about it. We’ll take care of you.”

  “We?”

  “My pack. We’re camped out across the river for now, trying to decide where to go next. We were just living in the city, but…that’s not going to work anymore.”

  “Why not?”

  “Humans are on high alert. Some fuckwit killed his teacher, so now they’re shooting us on sight. Can’t catch a break with this shifter shit, man.”

  “Why not just stay human when you’re in the city?”

  The stranger cocked his head at Pan and squinted. “New to this whole shifter thing, aren’t you?”

  Pan shrugged, and didn’t answer.

  “You have to shift,” the man said. “Can’t get around it. Best you can hope for is a little control, but if you don’t make it happen, it’ll happen anyway. Like wet dreams. You can let it out yourself or it can come out at night, but one way or another, it’s getting out of your syst
em.”

  “Oh,” Pan said worriedly.

  “I’m Ru,” the man said, extending his hand. “Ru DelFino.”

  “Pan Jefferson.”

  Ru burst out laughing and shook his hand. “I mean if you don’t want to tell me….”

  “No, really,” Pan insisted. “That’s my name.”

  “You like to fly?”

  “I hate flying.”

  Ru laughed harder, and Pan grew increasingly confused.

  “Alright, Neverland Starship who can’t fly. Let me take you to my leader.”

  Finally catching on to Ru’s humor, Pan rolled his eyes and groaned. “You aren’t actually going to introduce me as Neverland Starship, are you?”

  “Why not? Pink Clearwater and Chains MacGuffin won’t find it strange at all!” Ru turned on his heel and waved at Pan to follow. For the next ten minutes, Pan tried to figure out what their names actually were. He wasn’t entirely certain that he could handle meeting someone named “Chains MacGuffin” if that was what they really called themselves. He hoped it was a Ru-ism. He followed Ru across a beaver dam and into a hollow surrounded by trees. Four other shifters were in the hollow, stringing blankets up between the trees, making a sort of roof. Three of them looked as young as Ru, or even younger. Only one of them appeared to be a fully grown adult.

  “Pink! Chains! Bender! Ghost!” Ru called. Pan watched nervously as the four shifters turned from their work and walked over. Their names were giving Pan every reason to turn and run. He relaxed as they stepped out of the shadows, looking thin, tired, and utterly normal.

  “Group, this is Neverland Starship. Neverland, this is Pink,” he gestured at a tall, broad-shouldered man with a medium-length blonde beard and sharp green eyes. “Chains,” who was a petite teen girl who wore her streaky blonde and brown hair in box braids. Her face was a soft brown and was covered with freckles, and her eyes were a brilliant green. “Bender” was a string bean of a twenty-something with a shock of orange hair and a face like a puppy. “Ghost”, the last of them, was also the youngest. Pan guessed him to be no older than fourteen, with olive skin and swirling chocolate and gold eyes. Each of them rolled their eyes or glared at Ru as he introduced them, but waited for him to finish.