From the Shadows (A Shadow Chronicles Novel) (10 page)

Race looked down at the glass in his hands
for a moment, then cleared his throat and said, “Mark… I’m kinda thinking ‘wow’ about him not only living forever, but the fact that he’s already died at least once and come back from that. It’s freaky. He’s like a vampire without the teeth and the bloodlust.”

“He doesn’t have their strength or speed, either,” I added.

“Okay, but still. It’s a little freaky, but not like I’d disown the guy or anything. Probably wouldn’t disown him even if he was a bloodsucking leech.”

His tone had grown bitter, and it was an attitude with which I could sympathize. “I’m not particularly fond of vampires either, the reason for which you’re well aware,” I said. “The only full vamp I can really tolerate is Lochlan
—I admit that I like to exchange sarcasm with him. I’ve met Saphrona’s dad and I have to say that Diarmid’s about as much of a prick as she made him out to be. I mean, the guy’s a world-class snob who fucked and fed on his flight attendant when we went on that trip to Ireland and he didn’t even stick around to make sure she was okay. Lochlan had to take care of her, make sure she’d recover from the blood loss and all that.”

“Model citizen, that one,” Race commented drily.

It was my turn to look upon him with a frown. “I’m curious about something… All this time you’re the only shapeshifter you’ve ever known, but yet you know about vampires. How did you find out about them?”

His neck flushed and he tilted the orange juice back, downing half the glass. “I, uh… I me
t this girl once. She smelled…well, weird is the only way I can describe it. I was about nineteen or so at the time. It was a college party I was crashing with some friends of mine, and I walked by her and she had this sweet-yet-gag-inducing smell. I thought at first it was her perfume. She smelled me too, and for a moment I swear it looked like she was about to throw down with me. Then she just smiled and sashayed over and…”

He stopped and looked away from me.
An idea of what had followed came to me and I raised an eyebrow. “And what, Race? If you slept with her that night, so what? So you shagged some she-vamp, big deal. Who you were having sex with before I came along is none of my business, as long as you were safe about it. Just keep your eyes and your lips and your hands on me from now on, mister.”

Race’s head snapped around and he grabbed my hand. “Jules, I’m not even interested in other women. Not now that I have you. Not now that I know we were always meant to be together.”

I grinned to show him I’d been kidding, as I knew that our bond alone would hardly allow him to think of other women. “Good. But if that bloodsucking bitch ever comes around tries that shit on you again, I’m gonna rip her fangs out and shove ‘em down her throat.”

Race laughed at that. “Now that’s something I would pay to see.”

I playfully swatted his arm but sobered quickly, as there was something else on my mind I wanted to point out. “Race, between fourteen and nineteen, I could imagine you not meeting any werekind or another shapeshifter, especially since you said you and your mom moved around a lot.”

He frowned over the rim of his glass. “Right,” he said, drawing the word out. “So what?”

“So you’ve known about vampires for more than a decade now,” I said. “And vampires have known about us about as long as we’ve known about them. How come none of the vamps you’ve met in all that time ever told you about werekind?”

“Now that you mention it,” my companion told me, “they probably never said anything because they wanted to keep me to themselves. Hell, it’s probably why they keep shuffling me around
—to keep me away from the werekind-populated areas.”

“I don’t understand,” I said, frowning
myself. “Why would they be shuffling you around?”

Race looked away from me again, which concerned me
—it was the third time he had avoided my gaze during our conversation, and that told me he was hiding something. His keeping secrets when I had shared everything, had bared my soul and forced myself to confront the pain of my attack, it really bothered me a lot. But I would give him the benefit of the doubt—I had to, he was my mate.

I just hoped that he came out with whatever he clearly didn’t want to tell me before it ate him up ins
ide any more than it already was.

“Look, Jules,” he said at last, forcing his eyes back toward me. “You’ve probably
already guessed by now that I’ve been working for the vampires in this city. I’ve been doing odd jobs for various bloodsuckers ever since meeting that she-vamp; basically I’m the daytime guy. And a lot of the shit they’ve had me do… Well let’s just say not all of it was legal. And I ain’t proud of that. I know I should tell you everything, every sordid detail—especially after what you’ve shared with me—but I don’t want to lower your opinion of me or make you wish you’d bonded to someone else.”

I shook my head. “Race, like I told you about your relationship with that she-vamp: no matter what you’ve done in the past, that’s where
it is—in the past. Obviously you’re still the same person, but maybe our meeting and initiating our bond is an opportunity for you,” I told him.

“What kind of opportunity would that be?”

“An opportunity to start over.”

He looked at me for a long moment, saying nothing, so I went on. “I won’t say that I’m not disappointed you feel you can’t tell me about your life. I want to know everything, the good and the bad, because it will help me to know and understand the man that you’ve become.” I paused for breath and sighed. “I just hope that one day you’re comfortable sharing those things with me, no matter how bad you think they are.”

“I’ve been trying to break things off,” he said, bitterness once again creeping into his voice. “Been sick of doing their daytime wet work for a while now. That’s kinda what you ran into yesterday
—I’ve been out of contact with the local coven ever since my car got fucked up on the last job. Merrick was probably sent to track me down and remind me who pays my bills.”

At this point I really didn’t know what else to think or say beyond wanting him to tell me what was going on, so I settled for the old standby platitude: “I’m sure you’ll think of something.”

Race looked doubtful for a moment and then he smiled at me. At the same time the conversation was effectively ended when the timer for the oven went off. He jumped up to pull the dish out of the oven, then grabbed two clean plates out of the dish drainer and served up two generous portions. After he returned to the table, the only sounds for some time were those of our forks tapping the plates. I also praised his mother’s recipe, at which time he told me tater tots could be substituted for the hash browns in a pinch, and it could go from a breakfast dish to a lunch or dinner dish simply by substituting poultry, pork, or hamburger for the sausage. I told him I would have to remember that.

Once breakfast was over, we finally readied to head back to the alley where we’d met. As we were about to walk out the door, Race looked down and noticed for the first time that I didn’t have any shoes on. Not wanting me to walk around barefoot, he jogged back into his room and returned with a pair of slippers.

“Not fashionable or anything, but…”

I chuckled as I took the sippers and put them on my feet. “I’m wearing a
sweatsuit that is too big for me—whether or not the too-big slippers match or are fashionable are the least of my concerns.”

Race laughed. “Fair enough.”

After shutting the door behind us and locking it, Race reached for my hand. I looked up at him and smiled, giving his hand a light squeeze. We made our way down from the landing and headed out of the complex, hailing a cab out on the main road. I told the driver to take us to the Motel 6 on Engle Road and he looked at me funny in the rearview, but apparently chose professionalism over curiosity (or confusion) and merely shook his head as he pulled away from the curb.

We endured the ride in contemplative silence, each of us lost in our own thoughts. It seemed the first moment I’d really had to process the last 12 hours or so, and I felt both trepidation and wonder. Had Alana O’Mara known that I wou
ld be meeting my mate in just three weeks—had she said “within a year’s time” to be purposely vague? Would having known I’d be running into my destined mate in so little time been a good thing or a bad thing? My guess was somewhere in between. I knew me, and I would have been crazy excited and a jangled mess of nerves all at once, checking out every guy I passed wondering if he was The One. So maybe it had been for the best to not know.

Now that he was in my life, I was still crazy excited and a jangled mess of nerves. Despite my ordeal and the subsequent dislike of men in general, I was
actually eager to get to know Race all over again. I was looking forward to building a life with him, of gaining his trust so that he would open up to me, and trusting him with all my hurts and secrets as well. I was hoping to talk to him some more about all the different animal forms he could shift into and what it was like for him to be able to move in so many different ways, to see through so many different eyes. I could only become a Siberian Husky, of course, but I’d be more than happy to share with him what it was like for me. After I’d gotten used to the fact that I was not a normal girl, I grew to like being able to turn into animal. Becoming a dog was a great way to relieve stress for me because I could run faster, and I could curse up a blue streak without people knowing what I was saying (as all they’d hear was barking, growling, and snarling).

I still had so much more to tell him about werekind history too, and what it told us about chimaera. How according to legend, the chimaer
a was the Beast Master, or leader of werekind. There hadn’t been a Beast Master in going on three centuries, perhaps a little longer, and that had led all the breeds to take to looking out for their own, whereas before there had been much more interbreed cooperation. Some of the old stories even said that there had been interbreed imprinting, a concept none of my kind could even fathom today.

There was also the fact that I hadn’t quite explained everything about imprinting. I recalled that I had referred to initiating the bond between us, which Race and I had done by looking into one another’s eyes in human form, and that I had more than once spoken of completing the bond. But I hadn’t told him how the latter was done. With vampires, at least according to Saphrona, mates completed their bond
and fused their life forces when they experienced a moment of pure dual intimacy, when they were connected on both a physical level (such as when making love) and an emotional/spiritual level at the same time. With my kind such certainly strengthened the bond between a couple, but completing it was a little more complicated than that. Physical and emotional intimacy in human form only applied to the human half of our nature, and the animal half also demanded it’s due. There was a ceremony—a very old and sacred one—that had to be performed to combine the life energies of a werekind pair.

I was already nervous about having to explain the details to Race. Something told me he wouldn’t be entirely comfortable with a certain aspect of the ceremony, and truth be told, I wasn’t either.

I was drawn out of my reverie then by the sound of Race’s voice. He had just told the driver to pull over, and I looked out the window, thinking we had already arrived at the hotel. Instead I noticed that we were across the street from the alley where we’d met the day before. Gratitude that he had thought of it washed over me and I turned to smile at him. Race smiled back as the cab came to a stop and he moved to get out. I joined him on the sidewalk and waited while he paid the fare, then we joined hands again and waited for a break in traffic so we could cross the street.

Once there was
a lull, we darted across the street and into the alley. I immediately zeroed in on the spot where I’d left my things and saw the leg of my trousers and one of my shoes peeking out from under a garbage bag that appeared to have fallen out of the dumpster. I jogged over and hefted the bag out of the way, grabbed up my pants and fished in the pockets. I shouted with glee to find that miraculously, everything was right as I had left them, including the fifty dollars cash I had in my wallet. Though the shirt and pants were smudged with dirt and what looked like oil of some kind, they were fine and so were my shoes— my panties and bra were goners though, as they had torn when I changed.

“Thank God,” I said with a glance at the heavens, before bending and retrieving the rest of my things
, tossing the ruined undergarments aside.

“Good news?” Race asked.

I nodded as I straightened with the bundle in my arms, which I was definitely washing before I wore them again. “Yup, everything is still here. I can hardly believe it. And boy am I glad, ‘cause I would hate to have to explain to my manager at work why I need a new uniform.”

“You’ve been here what, two weeks? And you’ve already got a job?” my mate queried as we headed out of the alley.

“I’m as surprised as you are, to be honest,” I replied. “I work at Cool Beans and Bakery as a beanerista—that’s the name they call the girls who work the coffee counter exclusively. The ones who work the bakery side exclusively are bakeristas, although all registers sell all our items.”

“Oh, I love that place!” Race exclaimed as I directed him toward the Motel 6. “They’re like Starbucks and
Panera Bread and Carlo’s Bake Shop all in one.”