Beast in Me (The Divination Falls Trilogy) (3 page)

Chapter Four

‘Rise and shine, cupcake.’

It was an unfamiliar voice, an unfamiliar everything. Cameron flailed an arm and connected with something –
someone –
solid. That someone made a snarling sound. When he finally got his eyes open he saw Luke patting the lion on the shoulder.

‘There, there, big scary cat. He didn’t mean it.’

Luke winked at Cameron but it did little to untangle the great ball of anxiety that had taken up residence in his gut.

‘What Tryg means to say is the good father has made breakfast and we’d like to talk to you.’

‘We?’ Cameron saw the lion staring at his lap and smirking. It took him less than a second to realise he was sporting serious morning wood and shove his pillow over his crotch.

Luke nudged the lion. ‘Ruuuuuude,’ he whispered.

‘Sorry.’ The big man shook his head and it was very easy for Cam to imagine a giant golden mane around that hard and handsome face. He was very much his spirit animal on the inside and the outside too. That was what Enisi – grandmother – had told him shifters were. Men and women who were directly in touch with their spirit animals and could become one with them by transforming. Tryg reminded Cameron of her tales of shifters. The men with beautiful arctic eyes who could turn to Brother Wolf in a blink.

Lavender eyes, even.

The men with intense, lean faces and vibrant, bright eyes who could spot animals on the hunt from very far away – farther away than most men could manage – who could shift into Brother Hawk. The women who always knew that danger was coming and where best to find safety, often the first to perk up their ears and the first to gather things to hide, who shifted into Sensitive Rabbit.

He remembered it all and he also remembered his father saying what utter bullshit it was. As useful as the Christians’ tale of nailing a man to a cross. A hateful man, his father. There was room for no one or any beliefs in his tiny, hard heart.

‘Hey, earth to electric man. You in there?’

Cameron shook his head once, hard, and tried on a smile. It felt stiff and false but he needed it to be there. ‘I’m fine. I’ll get dressed and be up in a minute.’

‘Better hurry, Father Finn made enough food to feed an army but with this one –’ Luke nudged Tryg again and smiled ‘– and the other shifters in the house, that food for an army disappears like a magic trick.’

That actually made Cameron laugh and the darkness in his chest lifted a little. ‘I’ll hurry.’

Luke led the lion off and Cameron watched them go. He was a bit scared of Tryg, but he envied him what he had with Luke. They seemed very much in love. What a gift.

‘Just in time! I made you a plate so you’d get fed, but I must admit –’ Father Finn patted his belly ‘– the jackal in me wanted to eat it.’

Cameron laughed and took a seat at a large, farmhouse style table. It seated at least 20 but there were only eight settings. The good father’s plate sat demolished with a steaming cup of coffee still by it. Sheriff Slaughter was seated next to the fair and dainty Eliot, shovelling scrambled eggs into his mouth like the end of the world approached. Tryg was stealing bacon off Luke’s plate and Luke was pretending to be mortified. And at the end of the table sat the man from the other guest room. The custodian.

The wolf …

The thought flashed through his mind and he shook it off as he watched the broad man keep his head down and eat. Dark hair fell over his eyes and it was hard for Cameron to get a clear image of his face as he devoured two pieces of toast in the blink of an eye. When the man sipped his coffee, he finally looked up, pinning the startled Cameron with a violet gaze.

His eyes were so blue they nearly appeared purple. And in the shocking illumination of lightning they would appear – violet.

‘Hi there,’ the man said.

‘Hi.’ The word slid out of Cameron like an exhausted sigh. He couldn’t quite tell how he felt. Attracted or terrified. Aroused or anxiety riddled. The answer was yes. He felt all of those things and more.

Father Finn gently pushed him back in his chair and poured him a mug of coffee. ‘Eat,’ he said. ‘You don’t look like you slept very well.’

The dreams came back to him then. Seeing the wolf, covering himself, trying to fall asleep and finally falling ass backwards into slumber due to sheer exhaustion and then dreams. Dreams of the man’s broad hand on him. Dreams of a hot mouth on him. Explicit dreams of a wolf pushing him abruptly to the ground, covering him and snarling, then a swift and blissful shift into a burly body hovering over him and a hard cock filling him and …

Cameron covered his mouth lest the moan that lingered in his throat burst free. He was glad he was sitting and he was
very
glad his lap was under the table. At the opposite end of the table, the large man with the purple eyes grinned at him and laughed silently.

Finn cleared his throat and patted Cam’s shoulder. ‘Eat,’ he said again.

Cameron ate, though it all tasted the same. Like paper. His head was spinning and sexual frustration he’d not even noticed for years, had been completely oblivious to, was eating at him like termites eating a dry rotting house. He couldn’t shake it. He had a brief and disturbing vision of himself crawling the length of the worn wood table and planting himself in the lap of the wolf.

Because the man was the wolf. He had no doubt about that now. So why had he been peeking in Cameron’s window. What did he want? Was he angry that Cam had played unintentional voyeur?

The thought was cut off by Slaughter giving a tremendous burp and apologising when Eliot gasped. ‘Sorry. Sorry! I am an animal, after all.’

‘So we see,’ she teased.

‘Now then, Cameron. We’re here to talk to you about why you’re here.’

‘I don’t even know why I’m here.’

Slaughter waited patiently as the priest refilled his coffee cup.

‘Much obliged,’ Slaughter said before taking a huge gulp of the steaming coffee that probably would have burned a human’s mouth so it bled. ‘About that,’ the sheriff said, pinning Cam with a dark brown, friendly gaze.

‘What?’

‘We think we might know.’

Chapter Five

Cameron choked on his bite of sausage. ‘Really? Well then, please tell me.’

The conversation was good at helping him keep his eyes off Trace the wolf. Cam was positive – his gut told him so – that the man was a shifter … His shifter. He was in a town that catered to and protected shifters, after all. His eyes roamed to Eliot and she smiled. Luke smiled too. Not just shifters, he reminded himself. All magicals, as one of them had said. Which included him, right? Being lightning’s bitch qualified him, didn’t it?

‘We’re not absolutely sure,’ Eliot said, stirring her coffee with what looked like a cinnamon stick. She caught him looking. ‘Want one?’

‘What? No. I’ve just never seen someone do that.’

‘Then you’ve never been around Eliot,’ Slaughter chuckled. ‘She goes through a whole tree’s worth of cinnamon sticks in a year.’

‘I used to smoke,’ she said. ‘And then having them on me became a habit.’

‘A crutch,’ Slaughter teased.

‘Tomato, toe-mah-toe,’ Eliot said. ‘Now back to you.’

‘Yes, God, thank you. I feel a bit crazy being prodded here for no apparent reason. I mean, are your crops failing? River bed dry? Wild fires in need of a good deluge?’

‘No, no, and no. But not too long ago –’ her eyes settled on Tryg and Luke ‘– some bad people came here. Two of them were shifters and we didn’t run them off. My instincts said we should and I should have listened to my damn instincts.’

‘Humans are the only animals that talk themselves out of instinctual urges,’ Slaughter said, eating a slice of fresh tomato in a single bite.

‘You didn’t run them out either!’

‘Hey, I was listening to the town seer,’ Slaughter said, but he caught her around the neck with his giant arm and tugged her in. ‘But you’re right. Anyway, we did not run them off and big shit went down.’

‘What kind of big shit?’ Cameron ate another bite of fluffy eggs. They were really good. Problem was he just wasn’t hungry.

He looked up to find Trace watching him intently, sipping his coffee. His eyes dark and unreadable and seeming to penetrate Cam’s skin to examine his soul.

‘Big shit with tentacles and suckers and cracks in stone – and reality.’

‘Oh,’ Cameron said, his mouth going dry. ‘That kind of big shit.’

‘The biggest of all big shit.’ Tryg chuckled. The lion ran a hand over his face and blew out a breath. ‘And that, boys and girls, is how Rabbit and I got here.’

The lion called his lover Rabbit. Cameron had to smile.

Luke smiled back at him and said, ‘Thanks to Eliot –’

‘Thanks to
every one of us
,’ Eliot corrected.

‘We got it to go back to the nightmare world that birthed it and sealed the crack.’

‘Where? The crack, I mean?’ Things with tentacles and other worlds were an entirely new problem to Cameron.

‘The bar where I work now.’ The lion laughed. ‘The Den.’

‘Wow. Well, I guess it’s a good conversation piece,’ Cam said.

‘It looks like it never happened,’ Tryg said, shrugging.

‘But it did.’ Eliot sucked the end of the cinnamon stick and Cam watched the sheriff hug her a bit tighter before letting her go.

And the bear is in love with the psychic. I am trapped in Strange Town.

‘I take it that wasn’t the end of it?’ He pushed his plate away and Father Finn cleared it.

‘No. Some folks have seen … What’s a good way to put it?’ Finn asked Eliot.

‘Bleed-throughs. Moments where the veil is thin and whatever it was is trying to get back. At least that’s our theory. And I have to admit, I’ve had more than one bad dream.’

‘Me too,’ Luke piped in. ‘And I’m not Eliot but I do have a bit of the gift.’

‘Who are you kidding? You get stronger every day,’ Tryg said, rubbing his face again. Cameron had another flash of seeing him for the first time, flickering between man and beast as he took his lover. The thought of their coupling had his eyes straying back to the wolf who was
still
staring at him. Cam had never felt more naked. Which made him think of Trace naked, sprawled on his custodial bed and –

‘Hellooooooo?’ Tryg said.

Cam jumped. ‘What? Sorry! I didn’t sleep well last night.’

The wolf smirked and then stood, pushing back his chair to clear his breakfast dishes. Cameron tore his eyes away from the man’s body. It was all lean muscle and coiled power.

‘Thanks for breakfast, Padre,’ he said to Finn. ‘I’m going to go down and fix that gate by the back lot.’

‘You don’t want to stay for the –’

Trace cut the father off. ‘You don’t need me. Just let me know later if there’s any way I can help.’

Something flickered over the priest’s face but he quickly schooled his features. ‘Thank you, Trace.’

The wolf tipped an imaginary hat and off he went, work boots beating out a dull rhythm on the stone floors. Cameron had to rip his gaze away and face the table of expectant people again.

‘What do you want me to do?’ he asked. His voice sounded defeated even to his own ears. Made sense, because he
felt
defeated. Defeated and confused and helpless.

The sudden, overwhelming attraction to a man he could never have wasn’t helping matters.

‘We think you were sent here for a reason. We just don’t know what yet,’ Eliot continued.

‘Duh.’ The word slipped out on a sigh before he could stop it. He bit his tongue, feeling like an ass, until Father Finn started to laugh. And then the rest of them joined in.

‘But we think that could be why,’ she finished. ‘The bleed-throughs.’

The laughter rolled on and it sounded like a bunch of lunatics howling at the moon once they all got going, but Cameron supposed they all needed that. The release of a good, long laugh. Even if they did sound as mad as the hatter.

He’d finished his coffee and they’d all made a show of politely leaving him alone to do so. When he stood, all heads turned his way and Cameron nearly flinched. They had apparently hung their hope on him. Thinking for some bizarre reason that he – the boy who rode lightning, as one Huichol chief in Mexico had called him – could help them with some monstrous tentacled beastie from a different dimension. Cam thought they’d have better luck with those brothers on TV who dealt in the weird, or the girl from the show that had been on when he was younger – Muffy or Buffy or something.

He was not their man.

And yet, their eager faces told him that they figured he was. They wanted him to be their great electrified hope and he almost laughed out loud.

‘So what did you have in mind?’ he said, clearing his throat.

‘What?’ Sheriff asked, pouring the dregs of the coffee pot into his mug.

Cam knew the sheriff knew exactly what he meant, but he was playing at appearing laid back. He pushed his chair in. ‘What did you have in mind as far as helping me figure this out? I can’t tell if I can help until I can gauge what’s going on. So, I know I’m the new guy and I know that you all figure I’ve had half my brain cells fried off by lightning but –’

‘Not true,’ Eliot said. ‘I know how it works and that’s not the case at all. We just need … help.’ She looked both embarrassed and nervous.

Cameron put his head down, feeling like a dick. ‘I get it. You just have to understand –’ He laughed and almost let the laughter overtake him. It would be supremely nice, he thought, to just laugh until he cried and then to let himself cry until he slept.

Cameron was tired.

‘Go on,’ she said. Eliot poured a tall glass of water and came to stand by him. She handed it over and surprised the fuck out of him by rubbing his back the way his mother had once upon a time. Most were hesitant to touch Cameron once they knew about the lightning.

He felt a small jolt of residual energy arc from him to her, and though she reacted with a small jerk of her fingertips, she didn’t take her hand away and she kept rubbing. Cameron could have kissed her. The water was the freshest he’d ever tasted. Not a lick of metal or fluoride or anything.

‘We get it from the spring that eventually feeds into the falls,’ Father Finn said, catching his appreciative smile. ‘Best water in the world.’ He laughed softly. ‘Of course, I could be just a wee bit prejudiced.’

‘No. It really is the best,’ Cam said, finishing his glass.

‘You were saying?’ Eliot prompted gently.

‘I just don’t know how you think I can help,’ he said. ‘If I thought I could … I would.’

‘We think you can,’ she said. ‘
I think
you can.’

‘And I do too,’ Luke added. His voice was soft but his gaze was intense.

‘If the two super psychic types think that, you’re pretty much fucked,’ the lion said.

It was so unexpected it made Cameron laugh. ‘I can try.’

‘Good,’ Eliot said with a nod. ‘And if I’m wrong – if Luke’s wrong – no harm, no foul. There’s no harm in trying.’

‘We want to take you to the places the bleed-throughs have happened,’ Sheriff Slaughter said. ‘How’s an hour or two? You can absorb the craziness that is our fair town, get yourself together, wander around a bit, and then Eliot and I will go ahead and lead you around town.’

Cameron almost said no. He was nervous beyond belief that he would fail these people. It made no sense at all seeing as how he’d just stumbled – literally – into Divination Falls. And yet, he wanted to help, to fit in, so badly he could taste it. A place to belong: just the thought tasted as delicious and clear as the spring water Father Finn was so proud of.