Authors: Karin Shah
Chapter 16
Ethan fought to stay conscious. Trying to strike out at the noxious apparition had taken almost everything he had, but he didn’t want to leave Devon unprotected. Again.
Finding out his brothers thought he was alive and wanted to kill him was painful enough. Entering the dark house and discovering Devon fighting for her life sent a shockwave of terror rolling through his heart and knotted his empty stomach.
Damn it. I never should have left
.
As he took stock of his limited reserves he realized the pain that had riddled his chest in the car was gone.
He grunted. He was probably just too exhausted to feel it, though the ever-present hunger and thirst still ate at his throat and gut.
Devon wandered out of the bathroom, rumpling her coppery hair with her delicate hand. The heavy necklace of bruises around her tender throat made him want to punch something, preferably the bastard—thing, whatever it was—that had attacked her.
The memory raised a growl and he remembered something strange, well, stranger. Something like a lion’s roar had filled the room as he’d tried to assault the apparition, but it hadn’t come from the malicious spirit. It’d seemed to come from
him
.
He glanced down at his torso and arms. In the seconds between Devon’s release and the depletion of his energy, he’d seen his hands, and they hadn’t looked human. They’d been as dark green as a forest at sunset, scaled like a lizard, and terminated in black, piercing claws.
He sighed, letting his head loll back and stared at the lumpy ceiling. Apparently, whatever psychosis that had dogged him in life had followed him into death.
A weak laugh burst from his throat.
Great. Not just a ghost, an insane ghost
.
Devon stood in the middle of her bedroom for a moment, hugging herself. She looked so lost and vulnerable, something shattered inside him.
God, he wanted to go to her, to comfort her, to be her shoulder to cry on. He didn’t think he’d ever wanted anything so much.
She closed her eyes for a second, then as if some decision had been made, strode to the closet and hauled out a soft-sided suitcase, threw it open on the bed, and began grabbing handfuls of hangers from the rod.
She was leaving.
He groaned, of course, she was leaving. An evil force had attacked her in her own home. Had almost killed her. Only a crazy person would stay.
A crazy person like him.
When he’d realized his brothers wanted to kill him, he’d decided to come back to this house, but that was because returning seemed like the right thing to do. Not because Devon was here.
The decision to leave in the first place had been sound. Devon had made her feelings clear. She’d told him to move on when they’d met in the dream the first time. She’d given Kyle and Ethan his meager things, even if his brothers hadn’t taken them.
He paced the length of the room, Honey shadowing his movements. Devon might be leaving, but he belonged here. She belonged somewhere safe. He stopped short. There was the snag.
The apparition had followed Devon from the other house. What was to stop it from following her again? He had to find some way to keep it here or destroy it. Fuck. If he couldn’t, he’d have to go with her. The weak part of him purred at the thought, but he couldn’t listen.
Going with her would be disastrous for him. As much as he hungered for this connection, he had to break it. Having her so close, but being unable to touch her, to hold her, to have a real relationship with her would drive him insane.
Shit
. Make that more insane.
Devon went into the bathroom. He could hear glass bottles clinking. She came out, arms full, and dumped the contents on the bed before going into the kitchen, returning with a plastic bag. She tossed her toiletries inside and put the tied bag in her suitcase. The rasp of the zipper seemed loud even over the sound of the still pounding rain.
She expelled a shuddering breath and leaned forward, propping her hands on the tough nylon of the suitcase. “Now, I just have to think of someplace to go.”
He walked to her side and put his hand on the nape of her neck, wishing he could feel the red-gold strands.
She stiffened. Before he could remove his hand, she said, “Ethan?”
Devon took a deep breath. Why she thought Ethan had returned, she couldn’t say, but she did. His presence felt concrete to her in that moment, as if a live person stood behind her. She could even sense a fragrance, some blend of wood and citrus that somehow seemed familiar.
She grinned, delighted by his return. The fear and sadness that’d possessed her in his absence, lifted.
Including the strange mixed-up entity, this house was getting pretty crowded. She laughed. ‘How many ghosts . . .’— she’d been about to say— ‘does it take to change a light bulb,’ but the words died on her tongue.
The universe had rules. Every spirit had a reason to haunt a location. In Ethan’s case, he’d been murdered here. The demonic had its own rules, and had clearly pursued her here to achieve it, but the demonic did have a motive.
Still, there was no explanation for a third entity.
She knew from growing up in the area, that this piece of property had been a farmer’s field for centuries before the house had been built. The farmer’s family had long since died out, and there’d never been any stories, scary or otherwise, associated with the land.
So what did that mean?
The demonic could be playing tricks. From what she’d learned on the Internet, it was standard operating procedure for a demon to lie, but this entity, though odd-looking, hadn’t felt evil. Far from it. It had felt as if the being was trying to save her from the inhuman spirit.
Devon’s mind tossed through possibilities like a thief searching for money in an underwear drawer. At last, she turned and faced the place behind her where his presence felt the strongest. “Ethan, was that creature I saw, the one who tried to fight the demonic, was that you?”
There was no answer, but Devon sensed she’d hit upon the truth.
A flare of understanding zipped through her. The source of the aura of deadly power cloaking his brothers was suddenly clear. It would be a leap for anyone else, but she lived with the supernatural every day. They must be shape-shifters of some sort.
Devon knew there were real witches. She’d met a few in Manhattan, and she knew there were vampires, though she’d never seen one. At least she didn’t think she had. In a dark nightclub in the east village, who could tell?
She sucked in a hasty breath. “I’ve got to talk to your brothers,” she said, then dashed for the kitchen, Honey trotting at her heels.
Chapter 17
Call his brothers? Ethan jogged after Devon. The demon
might
be a threat, but he knew his brothers
were
. Their casual mention of killing him, their own brother, had chilled his blood. He didn’t want the pair anywhere near his—
His? He drew up short. Now
he
was getting possessive. He shook his head, as if he could undo the thought. Regardless of his earlier primitive feelings, she wasn’t his anything.
He clenched his jaw. He didn’t want his brothers anywhere near Devon. That’s all.
At the table, Devon rummaged through her big leather purse, muttering under her breath, the tiny pink tip of her tongue protruding from the right side of her lips as she concentrated.
The sight jolted him in a way that wasn’t natural in a dead man, and he turned away.
God, give me strength!
All he had to do was make sure she was safe and get her away from him. The sooner the better.
“Ah hah!” Devon brandished a white business card in the air, the same one his brother had handed her before he’d left. The glossy edges were already a bit dog-eared from being stuffed in her oversized bag.
She snatched the purse off the scuffed counter. He had to stop her from calling that number, but how? He barely had any energy after attempting to manifest to fight the malevolent presence.
He fumbled through the things he’d heard ghosts could manipulate. He’d caught part of an old “Ghost Hunters” once when he’d fallen asleep watching the Syfy channel. When he’d woken up the investigators had been explaining about drained batteries in equipment. The man had said that some paranormal investigators speculated that spirits used the energy to manifest.
Could he drain the battery?
If he could, he’d better do it quick.
He thrust his hand toward the receiver, but she was already pressing it to her ear. As always, his hand slashed through the phone and came away empty.
He tried again, but even focusing on just one part of his body had no effect. He was too weak from fighting the apparition.
He put a hand over his eyes as he heard one of his brothers on the line. “Hello?”
Jake punched his finger at the disconnect button on his phone with enough force to rock the hotel bed he was sitting on. He closed his eyes for a moment, rubbing the soft fabric of his T-shirt over the hollow in his chest before turning to Ky. “You heard all that?”
His oldest brother dipped his head and sighed, running a hand from his nape to his forehead, ruffling his spiky hair to attention. He was standing at the window and the sun bouncing off the lake outside painted his features in shifting patterns of light. “You ready?”
Jake growled, the horror of what he might be forced to do roused the beast inside him. The lion clawed at his restraints. He balanced on the precipice of the turn, sucking air through his teeth. He stood, feet planted wide, hands curled into fists. “Why do you keep asking me that? Of course, I’m not ready to kill my own brother.”
Ky’s eyes flashed a brilliant green beneath brows as dark and weighty as thunderclouds. If his jaw were any tighter the muscle would snap. “You think I am?” His voice could have shredded flesh with its rough friction. Anything might tip his brother into changing forms.
The knowledge made Jake bite back the heated words on his tongue. Ky couldn’t afford to change in anger. He surfed too close to losing his humanity altogether. Furthermore, none of this was Ky’s fault. If Ethan was too far gone to save, they had no choice. The crushing weight in his chest made him long for the simplicity of his lion form. For a moment, the animal roared inside him and he had to bring his mate’s sweet face to mind to restrain the urge to shift.
When his emotions were under control, he wrapped an arm around Ky’s broad back and squeezed his big brother’s rigid shoulder, hoping the touch would act both as an apology and to ground his brother in his human form. No way was he losing Ky, now.
Jake hid a swallow and faked a half-assed smile. “Come on. Let’s go find out if we have to play Cain to his Abel.”
Ethan stalked the five paces between the kitchen and the foyer, a move he’d made so many times since Devon had called his brothers, if he’d had substance he would have worn a rut in the faded linoleum the size of the Grand Canyon. Only a few more minutes now. Then he would go and set his trap.
Devon mirrored his movements, unseeing, agitation written in her tight erratic movements and the wringing of her delicate hands, her footsteps and ragged breathing the only sound in the compact house. Honey had long since given up shadowing either of them and plopped in front of the round table, nose buried between her white paws, her dark-rimmed gaze focused on Devon.
Ethan stopped and took a deep breath. Damn, this was tougher than before an operation. But then, when he’d been a SEAL, he’d only had himself and his teammates to worry about. He checked the clock on the ancient microwave on the right side of the sink. Time to go.
He moved through the steel security door and walked down the front stoop without making a sound. The rain had stopped and the autumn sun heated the weeds and wild flowers growing with wild abandon at the edge of the road, filling the air with drifts of sweet and pungent scents.
A bird piped a single repetitive note in a nearby oak as he waded through the tall grass beside the narrow, county road.
He’d rip out his brothers’ hearts before he’d allowed them to threaten Devon’s safety, and he knew just the place to intercept them.
Chapter 18
The steering wheel dug into Ky’s palms and he loosened his white-knuckled hold on the vinyl wrapped circle.
Get a grip, Ky.
All his
life, he’d dreamed of reuniting with his brothers, but his rosy vision of resurrecting his family was quickly spinning into a hellish nightmare. Thank God Jake had already found his mate when Ky’d tracked him down. The first time they’d met hadn’t run smooth. He rubbed his throat at the memory. But this thing with Ethan . . .
Finding his brother and being forced to destroy him was an ordeal he’d prayed he’d never have to face. The dragon scratched a razor-sharp talon against his containment.
I don’t feel as deeply as a human. Let me blunt your pain.
He concealed a flinch.
God, it would be so easy, so freeing to give in
.
What if the others were too far gone as well? What if instead of the family reunions he’d hoped for, he’d be compelled to put them down, one by one? Flexing his cramped hands on the wheel, he shuddered.
If that was the case, he might as well give up control to his feral sides now and let John kill him.
“Hey! Watch out!”
Jake’s shout jerked Ky’s attention back to his driving. In front of them, a massive branch from a big-ass tree barricaded the road. He slammed on the brakes. The car tires barked as the anti-lock brakes kicked in and momentum threw them forward. Only Ky’s supernatural reflexes kept his head from the windshield and the bumper from the barrier in front of them.
“God damnit!
“Maybe I
should
have driven.” Jake’s voice sounded dry enough to shrivel leaves.
Before Ky could answer, the driver’s door popped open. Ky couldn’t see what had opened the door, but he could smell something. A mixture of human, lion, and dragon that was heartbreakingly familiar. Adrenaline spurred his heart rate into overdrive. “Ethan’s here.” He glanced at his baby brother. Jake’s eyes glowed, showing shared unease. “This is a trap.”
Something huge appeared. Ky only had a second to absorb the hideous mixture of man, lion, and dragon beside the SUV. A scaled arm launched toward him, clawed talons piercing muscle and sinew as it yanked him out of the vehicle with enough power to rock the Navigator.
His dragon side almost broke free, but Ky shoved it back, sweating from the effort. The thing that had wrenched him from the vehicle dropped him.
Ky gazed up for a moment at the monster he recognized was his second youngest brother.
A man he knew only from pictures, but who’d been a decorated Navy SEAL, a good friend to his crew, an abandoned kid like him. Yes, their parents had died, but tell that to a lonely kid. Grief at the loss of his brother swamped him, overpowering his rage, and he snatched at the strength to stay in human form.
He stood, bracing himself for whatever was about to come.
Jake had exited the car and approached Ethan from behind, his face bleak.
Ky met his youngest brother’s eyes and knew his face looked the same.
Ethan glanced over his shoulder. He pivoted slowly, obviously trying to keep them both in his sights.
They began moving as well, keeping Ethan in the center of a circle.
Ky lifted his chin.
We’ll have to attack at once. You heard his friend. If we take him on one on one, he might get away.
Jake’s brow furrowed.
Get away? He was a SEAL. Hell, he might kill us.
Well, he’s never fought another chimera before.
Neither have I. You?
Ky stretched his neck.
A vampire, some werewolfs.
Jake surveyed the road.
We’d better hurry up. Someone could drive up any second.
Ky felt a muscle flex in his cheek. He didn’t want to do this at all, but then a massive scaled arm launched toward him, the blow from Ethan’s fist slammed Ky’s head to the side.
The pain ripped a hole in his containment of his dragon and his gums bulged full of fangs, still he stuffed his dragon back. He settled for an “Ow.” And rubbed his aching jaw.
Though they’d agreed to attack together, the sight of Ky being struck seemed to freeze Jake in place, as if he were waiting to see if he was going to have to explain away a big-ass, black dragon.
Ethan’s still-human eyes held a hint of surprise. Maybe he’d expected to drop him with that punch. But his pause didn’t last long. With a roar, he struck again.
This time, Ky was ready, countering with a jab and an uppercut, but Ethan seemed to brush the punches aside, turning Ky’s momentum against him, landing a flurry of impacts on Ky’s stomach and head.
Jake dove in. The heavy thud of powerful muscles exploding into flesh filled the air, but still Ethan didn’t stop, moving like a wraith between them, taking far fewer hits than he dealt out.
Hurting from multiple kicks and blows, Ky reeled, fighting a war on three fronts as his dragon trumpeted for freedom and his lion clawed for escape. He strained with every ounce of strength he could to keep them back.
In full control of his other sides, Jake engaged Ethan with a barrage of swift moves, pummeling the air with a variety of strikes and kicks, often leaving the ground altogether.
Ethan met him hit for hit.
Fuck.
Ky bent over, wrestling to stay human. But his brothers’ skill and ferocity shoved back his frustration and sorrow for a second.
Under other circumstances, I’d pay to watch this shit.
He shook his head and jumped back into the scrum, just as Ethan snuck a powerful sidekick under Jake’s guard and sent him flying backward.
Ky slammed a crescent kick into Ethan’s chin, but his brother spun under the kick and nailed him with an elbow in the temple. A split second of black exploded behind Ky’s eyes and the next thing he knew his brother had him by the throat.
God damnit.
Ky scraped the last of his control into remembering he’d agreed to turn lion if he lost control.
Ethan growled at the man with glowing golden eyes struggling in his talons.
The look on his brothers’ faces when he’d manifested would have been gratifying if his heart weren’t breaking beneath the almost alien fury spurring him.
A glimmer of respect had filled him as they fought. Except for sparring, none of his skirmishes ever lasted more than a few seconds. No one had ever even come close to matching him in a fight.
Even though they’d planned to kill him, part of him ached at the idea of hurting them, but the other inside him burned to destroy anything that threatened Devon.
The thought of her crushed the ember of grief holding him back, and he flung—God!—his oldest brother into the thicket of weedy bushes beside the road and vaulted, blood rushing through his ears, after him, taking the fight into the woods.
A cry of triumph escaped him. Damn, he felt strong. He’d just heaved a man who must weigh over two hundred pounds like a schoolyard bully tossing a scrawny kid. The part of him in the grip of mindless fury reveled in his alien strength. A strange rumble built in his throat.
The brush scraped his oddly toughened skin, but that wasn’t what stopped him short. Nor was it the crackle of broken twigs and branches or the realization that rather than passing through the obstacle, the bushes were solid and resistant. He didn’t have time for those thoughts.
A massive golden-maned African lion stood in front of him.
Shock and fear crawled up his spine and spiked the hair on the back of his neck.
A soft roar from behind him made him swivel to confront the new threat, his heartbeat on overdrive. Another lion almost as big as the first padded up behind him.
Holy shit.
Something
in his chest dropped, as if he’d taken a sudden fall from altitude and were pulling Gs. The primitive side of his brain whispered,
Run!
But the thinking side said,
Wait a minute.
Six months earlier he would have looked around for his brothers, or assumed he was caught in the throes of a nightmare, but the Ethan of today knew the world was far, far stranger than he’d ever supposed.
He immediately recognized the truth. His brothers
were
the lions.
He eyed each lion, waiting for one of them to make a move, his brain churning through the events of the last few minutes like the propeller on a motorboat.
He was solid. They thought he was alive. Whatever the cause of his disembodied state for so long, maybe they were right.
The thought took a moment to take hold, then expanded to shake him to the core. They were right. He was alive.
His pulse hammered in his veins. His burning throat almost managed a swallow. The repercussions of that realization flashed into his mind. He could eat. God, he was ravenous. Dive again. He could touch, hold, kiss, Devon.
The lions both took a step forward, their padded feet silent on the leaf-littered forest floor, their amber gazes never wavering from his face. The biggest one, Kyle, peeled back his black lips and revealed gleaming, giant-assed canines, a low roar rolling like morning fog through the western New York woods.
If he lived.
Another moment stretched like a high-tension wire between them.
Ethan steeled himself to fight the unequal contest. Men he had no fear of, but lions?
He looked down at himself and a shockwave rippled through him. He was solid, but his body didn’t look normal, didn’t look human, but rather some bizarre blend of man, lizard, and lion.
From the distance he’d thrown his heavy-ass brother, it seemed this strange amalgamation was stronger than a man, but the lions still had the advantage of exceptional agility, powerful muscles, and enormous fangs.
He stared at the wicked talons on his misshapen hands. His brothers were shapeshifters. And so was he.
A lump more like a medieval mace shredded his throat as he swallowed and ripped at his chest as it went down. Was he somehow defective?
Was that why they wanted to kill him? Why they hated him? Was it some sort of shapeshifter imperative to cull the flawed ones?
All thought disintegrated as the lions flanking him crouched to pounce, individual muscles bunching beneath thick, tawny pelts.
Deep, wild barking turned every head toward the road.
The saplings and the tall, spiky weeds screening it rustled, cracked, and shook.
Ethan tensed.
Suddenly Honey burst through the thicket into the small clearing Ky stood in. She yipped and froze, stiff-legged, at the sight of the big cats, her hackles raised to make herself look larger.
“Honey!” Devon shoved her way through the leafy barrier, making small exclamations of pain as the brush fought back against her penetration.
Horror jolted through Ethan. This couldn’t be happening.
Devon hesitated with a gasp as her gaze swept over Ethan and his brothers. Her eyes widened, and he could see her throat jump as she processed the deadly crossfire she’d stumbled into.
The brother in front of him twitched his tail, and afraid the cat might lunge at Devon before he could stop him, Ethan latched onto one idea.
Level the playing field
. Praying it was even possible, he formed the image of a lion in his mind, golden eyes, thick mane, fur the color of dead grass.
A flash stunned his eyes, the ground tilted, and he found himself looking at the world from a lower, wider perspective. Color was skewed. His hearing had become more acute and information flowed to him from sources he had no correlation for in human form; the wiry whiskers on his cheeks and forehead. Hunger still gnawed his belly and thirst burned his throat, one hundred times worse now that he was in physical form, still it didn’t diminish the over-powering joy of finally understanding what he was. But, he didn’t have the luxury of sorting through what he had learned. His mate was in danger.
He lifted a plate-sized paw and roared with triumph.
The other lions roared back in challenge. The sound rumbling though the trees like far-off thunder.
The lion in Ethan burned to attack, to defend his mate. He lowered his blocky head, mouth open to draw air into his lungs, preparing to rip into the closest brother.
“Ethan?” Devon’s voice shook.
He turned his head to look at her. Her face shone bone-white in the trickle of light filtering through the forest canopy.
Some part of Ethan regained control. No way could he risk a fight so close to Devon. He had to lead them away.
With one last echoing roar, he turned tail and ran.
Devon didn’t know what she’d thought she might find in the woods when Honey had taken off running, but it hadn’t been this. Watching the tawny blur that was Ethan,
Ethan,
disappear through the trees, all she could do was stand there and re-play the moment she’d burst through the foliage to find the bizarre amalgam Ethan had been facing off against the two big cats.
At first all she could focus on were the cats. Lions on T.V. inspired awe with their beauty and majesty. Confronting two massive lions scant feet away in the western New York woods evoked a visceral cocktail of urges. On one hand adrenaline poured into her veins, jarring her heart rate to light speed, and loosening her muscles to flee or fight. On the other hand, the hairs on the back of her neck popped up, every drop of moisture in her mouth evaporated, and she thought she might throw up.
Then her attention had zeroed in on the creature trapped between the lions and reason had seized command of her body away from the limbic system.
She’d recognized the blend of man and animal from his appearance in her bedroom. Ethan.
Some of her fear had ebbed. Given the evidence of the car and her earlier suspicions, these weren’t true lions at all. Ethan and his brothers were shapeshifters just as she’d thought.