The Shifters (5 page)

“Do you know a shifter named Ryder Mallory?” Caitlin asked suddenly, and Ryder was jarred out of his thoughts. Did she sense him?

He moved casually down the bar to get out of her range, crouched as if to reach under the sink.

 

Case stared at Caitlin, lifted an eyebrow. “Can't say that I do.” He reached in front of her for her drink, lifted and drained it.

Lying,
Caitlin thought.
Not even bothering to cover.

He smiled at her, as if reading her thoughts. “Can't keep track of everyone,
cher
.”

“Well, if anything comes to you, you'll tell me, I'm sure,” she said.

“I'd rather come to
you, cher.
In you, with you, in every which way,” Case said softly, and leaned over to lift a strand of hair from her cheek, curling it around his finger, tugging her forward….

 

Behind the bar, Ryder abruptly stood, anger flaring, and in that moment Case turned sharply and stared toward him. Ryder adjusted his body, struggled to hold the cloak of illusion in place…and once again he was just a college kid, merely spacing out in Case's direction.

After a long moment Case turned back to Caitlin, but Ryder could see that the younger shapeshifter was jumpy now, and figured he'd better get while the getting was good. He couldn't afford to be caught, at least until he knew more. He picked up a case of Turbodog and headed for the kitchen door.

 

Caitlin didn't know what had just gone on, but Case was suddenly edgy and hyper.

“Got to get back,” he said, jerking his head in the general direction of the stage. “My public awaits.”

“I want to talk to Danny,” she said abruptly.

She saw Case stiffen subtly, but he covered it well, smiled at her. “Why would that be, Keeper?”

There was no point in lying to him; he always knew. “I want a sitting. To see what he's seen out there.” She knew Case would know she didn't mean on the streets but in the astral.

Case shook his head mockingly. “Danny's not home tonight.”

Meaning Danny was high, as if she didn't know. Her anger burned. “How do you live with yourself?” she asked, not bothering to hide her contempt.

“Same way Danny does,
cher
. One hit at a time.”

Too angry to speak, she turned and stalked for the door.

His voice came from the dark behind her, mocking. “Rough night out there. Don't forget your glamour.”

She faced him stoically. He was right, of course.

He stared across the dark courtyard, into her eyes. “And don't forget—I taught you that, little sister.”

“Yes,” she heard herself saying bitterly. “You taught me a lot.”

She turned again and was gone.

 

Inside the club, she leaned against the wall in the narrow hallway and breathed deeply until she could focus enough to pull the glamour back on.

The music was blasting, but strangely, the rhythm
made the glamour easier to conjure. When she straightened away from the wall, the drunk bridesmaids who tumbled by her en route to the bathroom didn't even give her a glance.

Caitlin weaved her way across the crowded floor. On stage, Danny was at the piano, hair shimmering like dark water over his shoulders, beautiful and empty-eyed. Caitlin turned away, disturbed…and caught a glimpse of Case standing on the dance floor in front of the stage. He suddenly crouched down, dropping out of sight. Caitlin stopped, craning to see what was going on. He was on his haunches talking very seriously to a blonde little girl of maybe five, sporting a rakish, sequined hat. As the little girl watched, enthralled, Case twirled a drumstick between his fingers and then extended the drumstick toward her.

She took it and without hesitation twirled the stick in imitation. As Case laughed, his whole face transformed.

Caitlin blinked back tears and fled the club.

O
nce out in the kaleidoscopic cacophony of the street, Caitlin realized she was so shaky she could barely hold the glamour in place. She always felt that way, seeing Case. And Danny, too. Her feelings for them were so complex…. Longing, despair, anger, protectiveness…

And failure. As shifters, they were her charges, and not only had she been manipulated and controlled by the very people she was supposed to have charge of, she hadn't helped them. Not a bit.

She took long breaths, forcing the spell to stabilize.

Part of the trouble was that she had known Case
forever, it seemed, since she was just a teenager. As the middle MacDonald child, she'd had a rebellious streak. Fiona was
so
good,
so
perfect, and Shauna so outgoing and loved, and their parents had been such pillars of the community,
all
the communities. Caitlin never felt she could live up to any of them. So she found relief by sneaking out of the house, out of the compound, up to big bad Bourbon Street, to listen to music, drink the Hurricanes that older guys would buy her….

Case had saved her from a bad situation one night, when a drunker than usual frat boy thought that buying Caitlin a drink meant anything went, including date rape. Of course, that turned out to be the proverbial “out of the frying pan, into the fire” scenario in the end, but at first Case had been so charming, as rebellious as Caitlin herself, but also a naturally talented shifter as well as singer, and very willing to teach her. She had spent many hours after-hours in clubs, listening to Case and Danny jamming with their band of the moment, and learning the shortcuts of shapeshifting.

Then came the War, and her parents' deaths had devastated Caitlin and her sisters. Caitlin, in particular, had been consumed by guilt. She'd taken her parents for granted, had gone behind their backs, and now she could never make up for any of it. In her zeal to reform she had become completely devoted to her
sisters, obedient to Fiona and fiercely protective of Shauna.

Caitlin had kept her distance from Case as well as she could, as the three MacDonald sisters had thrown themselves into the grueling task of building the trust and connection with the communities of Others that their parents had had.

But in recent years she had been increasingly disturbed by rumors of his drug use—Danny's, too. Rumors that they had fallen prey to the drugs and disillusion that claimed so many shifters. Caitlin had tried to intervene, in her official capacity as a Keeper. But old feelings proved overwhelming. She'd slipped and reconnected with Case, wanting to believe his stories of being clean, of reforming…only to be horrified to discover the extent of his new addictions. She had pressured and badgered and ranted, and then sunk into despair, all the time hiding it from her sisters, until, ironically, it was Case who dumped her, unable to take her condemnation.

That had been just before a series of nightgown-clad blondes started turning up in New Orleans cemeteries, bodies drained of blood.

If Caitlin's brain hadn't been so scrambled, she surely would have seen the killer for what it really was. Instead, because of her confusion, her inattention, both she and Fiona had almost been killed….

And Caitlin had been living with that guilt, ever since.

But I'm going to do it right, this time,
she vowed.

She straightened, squaring her shoulders, and moved down the crowded street, slipping like water around the drunken revelers—frat boys, businessmen, pimps.

The noise of the street was overwhelming, distracting, and she turned down a side street, heading for quieter Rue Royal so she could hear herself think. She was past the Rainbow line, St. Ann Street, where hetero clubs turned gay and the side streets turned seedier, but she had on the glamour and Royal was just one long block down.

Even so, she instinctively walked a little more quickly as she brooded over the clearest clue she had gotten from Case: these were
tourists
dropping dead, not junkies.
Tourists doing meth?
No wonder Jagger was perturbed. And despite his nonchalance, she could tell even Case thought it was strange.

Caitlin was so deep in thought that she didn't notice the footsteps until they were right up on her—heavy, pounding, manic—and before she could even turn, a heavy, live, stinking weight had tackled her, hurling her to the ground.

She hit the pavement so hard that her breath was knocked out of her and she heard as well as felt her head crack against the curb, and the pain
was blinding; through the haze, she knew for the first time what it was like to see stars. Through her confusion she thought,
How can he see me? Who is this?

Despite overwhelming pain, Caitlin heaved herself up and called on a weakening spell, something quick and forceful to stun her attacker.

She gathered energy in her mind and
shoved
….

The assailant—she had just enough time to register a Bourbon-Faced T-shirt and a man's face so distorted with rage it barely looked human—growled like a bear and tackled her again.

Not human,
Caitlin realized.
He's Other.
And then she hit the sidewalk again, was crushed into the cobblestones.

Whoever was on top of her was so heavy she couldn't move, couldn't breathe, and the smell was strange. Under the familiar sick-sweetness of too many Hurricanes was not the reek of human sweat, but something like ammonia, and then there were hands around her neck, squeezing, squeezing, and through the pain and descending blackness she realized she was being killed….

Panicked thoughts flooded her brain. She would never see her sisters again, never meet the love of her life….

So this is how it ends….

And then suddenly she felt the pressure lift and gulped in air….

 

Ryder seized the man in the Bourbon Street T-shirt in a full-out fury and hauled him off Caitlin. The attacker snarled and spun on Ryder, hulking and wired with superhuman strength. He was dressed like a tourist, but the face was a mask of inhuman rage, and beneath the innocuous jeans and T-shirt he was completely out of control, like someone on PCP and steroids at the same time, some drug-crazed, murderous, rapacious zombie.

Ryder seized the tourist by the scruff of his “Bourbon-Faced” T-shirt and slammed him against the side of the voodoo shop beside them. The tourist's head hit the wall with a sickening thud. But the man merely roared and barreled forward again. Ryder side stepped, grabbed the man's arm and used his own momentum against him to snap the bone.

 

On the pavement behind them, Caitlin flinched as she heard the crack of her attacker's arm breaking. The limb dropped against his side at an unnatural angle, but even with blood streaming from his head and the useless, dangling arm, he seemed to be feeling no pain at all. He roared again and scuttled off, listing to one side.

Ryder sprinted back to where Caitlin was crumpled on the street, stooped and picked her up in his arms as if she weighed nothing, and strode across the sidewalk to set her carefully up against the wall of the
nearest shop. He knelt in front of her and took her face in his hands, looked into her eyes. She could feel the heat of him, the adrenaline of the fight—and more—a molten anger, which she realized, startled, was rage that she'd been attacked. “Are you hurt?” he demanded.

She swallowed, overwhelmed.

“Caitlin,” he said roughly. “Do you know who I am?”

“Who?” she answered weakly. It was a joke, but he seemed to take it seriously.

“Do you know where you are?” he asked more urgently.

“St. Ann Street,” she answered meekly.

“What day is it?”

“Thursday. I'm fine,” she protested and started to struggle to her feet. Ryder took her firmly by the waist and sat her down again, and she gasped, not from pain, but from the electrically sexual feeling of his hands on her. Heat suddenly pulsed through her entire body.

It's adrenaline, that's all. You just almost died, of course you've got a rush,
she told herself.

He took her face in his hands and leaned over her, and she went light-headed, sure he was going to kiss her. But he only turned her head gently to one side, then the other, examining her throat. She felt limp in
his hands, overwhelmed with the chemistry of their contact.

Suddenly he was still, no longer examining her but just looking into her eyes. His were green as the sea.

“Keeper,” he said, and his voice was hoarse. His eyes looked into her, through her, and this time his thumbs brushed her lips, sending another electric current through her…. She could feel the rise and fall of his chest, and she knew that whatever she was feeling, he was feeling it, too….

Abruptly he pulled back, looked down the street. “I don't have much time. That guy will be dead in minutes. I have to get to him first.” He gripped her arms once again. “I'll be back for you.”

Before she could speak, he was on his feet and sprinting down the street in the direction the tourist had gone.

Caitlin slammed her palms on the sidewalk and pushed herself up. “The hell with that,” she muttered aloud.

She staggered, dizzy, and had to hold herself up on the wall…then tore off down the street after him.

The next block was empty and dark. Down the street Caitlin could see Ryder barreling after the tourist, who was moving fast but stumbling like a drunk zombie.

Ryder put on a burst of speed, long, hard-muscled
legs pumping, but before he could tackle the tourist, the man did a sudden spin—and then his body jackknifed backward, his spine arching until his head nearly touched his ass. Caitlin stopped in her tracks with a gasp of horror. Then the tourist jerked again, his chest bulging as if his heart was about to break free.

He was making choking noises, foaming at the mouth, as his body bowed backward and forward in horrific contortions.

Either this is a massive heart attack or an alien is about to burst out through his ribs
, Caitlin thought wildly.

And then there was the sound of a siren approaching, followed by feet pounding, and she was seized around the waist as Ryder grabbed her and hauled her back into a storefront, holding her against his side.

A patrol car skidded around the corner, past the doorway where they were hiding. Uniformed cops were jumping out even before the vehicle came to a complete stop.

The cops ran for the tourist, who did one final, impossible jackknife and collapsed in the middle of the street.

The cops surrounded him with weapons drawn.

“Hands behind your head!” one shouted. The tourist didn't move.

“Put your hands behind your head!” the officer repeated grimly.

The body lay still. The uniforms advanced cautiously, weapons at the ready.

At Ryder's side, Caitlin strained to see around the corner of the doorway. In death, a shapeshifter's body returned to its original form, and she wanted to see what that original form was.

The tourist's head had dropped to the side, and his face was angled straight toward the doorway where she and Ryder stood. The streetlamps provided a perfectly lit view. Cait held her breath, waiting for the change….

The tourist's eyes were wide and staring. Definitely dead.

But his features remained the same, as did the proportions of his body. Caitlin shook her head, not understanding. “But…”

Ryder said quietly beside her, “He wasn't a shapeshifter.”