From the Shadows (A Shadow Chronicles Novel) (12 page)

As angry as he had been at Lochlan when we first arrived, I knew it must’ve been hard for Race to practically beg him to divulge what he knew about shapeshifters. I looked at Lochlan and begged myself, pleading with my eyes for him to not be an ass just this once. Loch returned my gaze for just a moment before he looked back at Race.

“Come. Let us sit like civilized men, and I’ll tell you what I know.”

With that he turned and took the few steps toward the small table against the wall,
lowering himself into one of the two chairs and waiting patiently for Race to follow. Race moved quickly to the unoccupied chair across from Lochlan, pulling me with him and settling me on his leg, his arms around my waist. Our uninvited guest raised an eyebrow at me, a smirk playing at the edges of his mouth and a twinkle in his eye. I returned his expression measure for measure, daring him to say something.

In truth, because I did consider Lochlan my friend, I really wanted him to be happy for me. I hoped that Mark and Saphrona and Mom would be happy that I had met my
lifemate, and that Dad would be happy I’d met someone who made me happy (my dad was unaware of the supernatural aspects of life, and we aimed to keep it that way for his own good).

Sighing, Lochlan sobered. “Actually, Juliette, its well you’re here, as this tidbit concerns you and your kin as well.”

I frowned. “You mean werekind? What does your having met a chimaera three hundred years ago have to do with us?” I asked.

“Because according to my lovely acquaintance, all werekind are carriers of the shapeshifter gene,” he replied plainly. “Apparentl
y it’s a truth that was once common knowledge, but like so many things, over time that knowledge was lost due to there being fewer and fewer born—so few recorded births as to make your lover’s kind non-existent.”

“So how did this woman know that all werekind are carriers?” Race asked.

“Pure scientific research,” Lochlan answered. “She’d grown up in a werekind family, surrounded by men and women who could turn into wolves, if memory serves—”

I couldn’t help but snort. “
It figures that the last chimaera would be wolf-born. No wonder they all think they’re better than the rest of us.”

Lo
chlan nodded. “Aye, the wolves are a high-minded lot. But as I was saying, Marian told me that once she realized she was different than her lupine brethren, she became determined to learn all she could about what she was and how come so few were born. She researched werekind history as far back as she could trace it and talked to hundreds of werekind of different breeds throughout her life, and her conclusion—which I concur with based on my own research into the subject—is that the reason there are so few chimaera born is because your man’s kind are a genetic anomaly. They weren’t meant to happen, but they did.

“Based on
our combined research, there’s really no way to predict when or in whom the gene will activate,” he went on. “It just happens. Perhaps the magic what created your kind decides to throw it in as a heads-up.”

“Did
this Marian person become the Beast Master?” I asked.

“Beast Master?” Race queried.
“Like that old Marc Singer movie?”

I looked at him. “Werekind history calls the chimaera Beast Master because he or she
—or they—has the power to not only unite the Families, but allow us to find our lifemates among each other. Just like you’re the first true shapeshifter born in about three hundred years, you and I are the first bonded shifter pair in all that time. For the last three centuries, we’ve been bonding exclusively with humans.”

“Marian died precisely three hundred twenty-nine years ago
, and she was one hundred years of age at the time,” Lochlan said with a nod. “I’d been a vampire only five years.”

I looked back at him. “How old were you when you were turned?” I asked, having been curious as to Lochlan’s true age for some time.
I knew only that he’d been turned about a hundred years before Saphrona was born.

“I was born in the year of our Lord sixteen hundred and forty-five.
Diarmid Mackenna turned me in sixteen seventy-five,” Lochlan replied.

Quickly doing the calculations in my head, I couldn’t help but be surprised. “You’re three hundred sixty-four years old?”

“That surprises you?”

I narrowed my eyes at him peevishly. “I’m not an idiot, Vampire Ken. I know you bloodsuckers can potentially live forever. I knew you were older than Saphrona, I just never really thought about how old you really were. Vamps really are ageless
—if I didn’t know better, I’d have pegged you for about twenty-eight.”

Lochlan smiled. “Thank you for making me two years younger than I was when I acquired my agelessness. Me
da
’s over seven and a half centuries himself.”

I didn’t care how old
Diarmid was, and clearly Race didn’t either. “What else did Marian tell you?” he asked, steering the conversation back on track.

“’
Twasn’t really much, I’m afraid,” Lochlan told him. “She told me about werekind being carriers of the chimaera gene and how she believed it activated at random every few hundred years, and confirmed Juliette’s historical recollection that during the lifespan of the chimaera, werekind will find mates among each other. She also told me something else I suspect you’re already aware of.”

As I looked down at Race he grimaced slightly. “Damn. I was hoping there was more.”

“My apologies, friend, if I implied there was a wealth of knowledge to share with you.”

“What’s this other thing you’re talking about?” I asked, looking between them.

Race gave my waist a gentle squeeze. “A form of imprinting actually, for lack of a better term. See, I can’t just become any animal at random—believe me, I’ve tried. First thing I ever turned into was an exact duplicate of Patches, our cat.”

I frowned again. “I
don’t get it. What do you mean you became Patches?”

Race cleared his throat
. “Unlike werekind—which I suspect now are born with their animal form encoded in their DNA because they only become the one thing—I have to have actually seen a living animal with my own eyes in order to become that animal,” he explained. “Can’t have just seen a picture or watched an image on a screen. I tried it when I first started shifting—I tried turning into every animal I’d ever seen in a book or on one of those nature shows. When I realized I was only becoming the animals I’d seen live, I realized that I have to be looking right at it, in the flesh, at which time it leaves a sort of imprint on my brain. After that, I can become that animal anytime I want to.”

“Out of morbid curiosity, Mr. Covington, whenever did you have chance to see a black bear?” Lochlan queried, voicing the question that had just popped in my own head to ask.

“I worked at a zoo for a while in my early twenties,” Race replied. “Got all kinds of imprints there.”

“Out of my own morbid curiosity,
Lochlan,” I began, another question coming to me, “how did you know that bear shifters are called werebruins?”

Lochlan chuckled. “I told you I’ve a fascination with werekind. After my brief association with Marian I endeavored to learn as much as I could about your species. Thus, in the course of my research, I chanced to make the acquaintance of a
werebruin fellow, who quickly made it clear that I was
not
to call him a werebear if I valued my eternal life.”

I giggled. “Yeah, they really hate that,” I said. “Sounds too ‘sissy’ or some such nonsense.”

Realizing then that I needed to use the facilities, I patted Race’s leg and stood. “I’m going to use the bathroom—think you boys can behave unsupervised for a few minutes?”

“Juliette, my sweet, if your lover and I were going to have at one another, I don’t think we’d be sitting here having this pleasant conversation,” Lochlan said, his usually cheeky tone back again.

“Speaking of, why are you even here? And I don’t mean in Cleveland, I already know the answer to that. I mean what the hell are you doing in my room? You haven’t been rummaging through my underwear drawer, have you?” I chided him.

Lochlan laughed.  “Oh, my dear friend, how I have missed you,” he said. “Draw it open and have a whiff if you like, but you’ll find I’ve not touched your sadly unseen undergarments.”

“Better not have,” Race muttered.

“So what are you doing here?” I pressed.

“Waiting for you,” he replied. “After I called you at the coffee shop yesterday morn, I came here to wait for you to get off work. When you didn’t show, I grew concerned and convinced the manager to let me in so I could look for clues as to where you might have gone. Had you not come in when you did, I would have gone out to begin a search.”

Whatever anger I may have had for his being in my room uninvited melted away at the look in Lochlan’s eyes. Sometimes it was so easy to forget that he genuinely cared about me, and I felt more than a little constriction in my chest as I returned his gaze.

“Thank you,” I said. “I appreciate that you were willing to scour the city for me.”

Lochlan seemed a bit surprised that I didn’t argue the point, then he just relaxed and nodded. I walked to the door a few steps behind him and went inside the bathroom, and though I had never been one to eavesdrop, I couldn’t help but exercise my enhanced hearing to listen in on what, if anything, the men were saying on the other side of the wall.

“So…” Race began slowly. “You’re Lochlan.”

I imagined Lochlan nodded again as he replied, “Aye, last I checked my identification.”

“You really tore those fucking leeches’ heads off, the ones that hurt Juliette?”

“Aye,” Loch replied, his tone darker. “That I did.”

Race, or so I assumed, cleared his throat. “Thank you,” he said. I detected emotion in those two words, p
robably just a hint of what he’d felt the night before when I’d told him my story.

“Thanks are not necessary, chimaera. Those bastards got what they deserved. No woman should be brutalized in that way, and had I the ability to prevent what happened to Juliette, I’d have done it.”

“You were there for her when I wasn’t, when I didn’t even know it was my place,” Race told him. “So I have to thank you for that.”

“If it pleases you.”

I quickly finished on the toilet and flushed it, then moved to the sink to wash my hands. I knew I should stop, but I couldn’t help lingering to listen in some more.

“You knew Juliette and her brother before?” Lochlan asked.

“Yeah, when we were kids,” Race replied. “I grew up right down the street from their house. Mark was my best friend up until I was fourteen. After I started phasing though, my mother moved us around a lot. She didn’t know there were others who could have helped us, and she was afraid she would lose me. I haven’t seen either of them in sixteen years.”

Lochlan chuckled. “And now here you are, bonding with a girl you’ve not seen since she was what, nine?”

“Yeah, it’s a little strange. But I don’t care. Mark and Juliette were like family to me, being I was an only child. I’m more than happy to be a part of a family again.”

“Don’t push her, mate. Obviously you know that our Juliette’s been hurt more than she should ever have known, and it may be a while yet before she’s well enough for…bonding,” Lochlan said then, and I had to put my hand to my mouth to keep from laughing. Was he
seriously warning Race about trying to have sex with me?

“Not that our
‘bonding’ is any of your business, buddy,” Race returned, a note of warning in his voice. “But Juliette and I have already had this discussion. I told her I would not push her for anything she wasn’t ready for, and she said she’ll let me know what she is and is not ready for.”

Lochlan laughed again. “She hasn’t told you, then.”

“Told me what?” Race demanded.

That was my cue. If anyone was going to talk about sex
—particularly if it involved me—and the bonding rituals of werekind, it was damn well
not
going to be Lochlan Mackenna. Shutting off the water, I grabbed for the hand towel with one hand and wrenched the bathroom door open with the other.

Lochlan looked over his shoulder at me and smirked. I hadn’t been in the bathroom inordinately long, but he probably suspected I’d been listening. I narrowed my eyes at him as I dried my hands with the towel.

“Jules, what’s he talking about?” Race asked me. “What haven’t you told me?”

I looked over at him, and suddenly was annoyed that he was daring to question me about
something I hadn’t yet told him when he was still holding back himself.

Fisting my hands on my hips, I took a calming breath and said, “If you’re talking about what I think you are, it’s not something I am purposely keeping from you, unlike someone else I could mention who
is
purposely concealing something from me. It just so happens that it’s not something that one just throws into a conversation. It has to be discussed with maturity and delicacy, and frankly I was not sure how to broach the subject.”