The Shifters

“Cait would never go off on her own like that, not before we even had a meeting about it,” Fiona protested.

Ryder smiled thinly. “Are we talking about the same Caitlin? It seems to me that’s exactly what she would do.”

Fiona opened her mouth to protest, and for a moment Ryder got the idea that the Irish temper really did run in the family. And then she closed her mouth and studied him. “You’re an interesting man, Ryder Mallory,” she said.

“Your sister would say I’m not a man at all,” he said, without cracking a smile.

“My sister has a lot to learn about men,” Fiona said dryly. Again that speculative look. “And you might be the man to teach her. But if you hurt her, you’ll be answering to me, shapeshifter.”

There was primal power in her words, and Ryder felt it to his core. He met her eyes. “Understood, Keeper.”

They regarded each other silently, then Ryder said, “Now, where do I find these shifter friends of hers?”

“You mean we,” Fiona said, her eyes blue fire.

“I mean me,” Ryder said.

Chapter 13

In the dark cave of the séance room, Caitlin stared at Case from her chair in the candlelit pentacle, alarmed by the crack pipe in his hand. “No,” she said automatically.

“It’s how it’s done,” Case said jauntily. “How else do you think you’re going to get into the astral, little sister?”

Caitlin knew that using drugs of any kind was acutely dangerous in a summoning or a séance. Though no doubt it opened doors, it also weakened spiritual boundaries, and opened the participants up to any number of negative forces and entities.

“Negative entities are exactly what we’re after, cher,” Case said, reading her mind in that infuriating way he had. “We’re not going to summon them with warm milk and sugar cookies.”

Caitlin could see the logic in that, but she still felt a strong pull of warning. Case obviously considered the matter closed; he took a square of foil and a small vial from his inside jacket pocket and shook a white rock out into the foil, preparing the pipe.

Caitlin turned to Danny, hoping for backup. Instead, he reached for the crack pipe without looking at her; his eyes already had that glazed anticipation that she so hated to see, the greediness of the addiction, like an animal inside him. Case flicked his lighter and bent to light the pipe, the bow formal, a ritual in itself.

The smoke from the pipe was billowy, white, enticing. Danny sucked at it and immediately dropped his head back onto the chair, sinking into a dreamy trance. Case reached across the pentagram and took the pipe from him. He turned to Caitlin.

“Well, Keeper? Coming with us or not?”

She stared at the pipe, roiling with emotion. Part of her felt reckless, out for revenge—and desperate to prove herself. Another part was screaming a warning.

“I’ll make it easy for you, cher,” Case offered, and stood, holding the pipe. He took two steps to stand in front of Caitlin’s chair, and, looking down at her, he fired his lighter, touched the flame to the bowl. White smoke curled sensuously from the pipe. Case inhaled the smoke…and then suddenly bent over Caitlin as if to kiss her. She realized he meant to blow smoke into her mouth, blow the drug into her lungs.

And then suddenly Danny’s eyes flew open and his body jerked up straight.

“Someone here. Someone else…” he croaked. His eyes were black pools, pupils dilated to the edge of the iris.

Case spun, searching the shadows. “Where?”

Caitlin’s heart was pounding, every sense on alert. Is this part of the séance? Or a real intruder? She could see nothing human in the wildly wavering candlelight.

Case spun, and Caitlin could see the gleam of met al in his hand. A knife. “Show yourself,” he hissed into the dark.

Caitlin called on her own senses. She suddenly felt someone, too. There were only the three of them in the room, so the intruder must be spirit. She felt tremendous power and anger. But there was also some thing about the feeling she had that wasn’t threatening. Something familiar. She suddenly spoke aloud, repeating Case’s command. “Show yourself.” And something inside her made her add, without realizing she was going to, “I know you, shifter.”

She saw a spider glowing on the wall, and then the glow grew larger and materialized…into a man.

Ryder.

Before she could even register his form, Case was leaping toward him with the knife. Caitlin shouted, “No!” and lunged between them. She felt a sting and wetness, and an arm seizing her, pulling her back, and somehow it was now Ryder between her and Case, and his face was a mask of fury, and she thought through dizziness that he was about to kill Case. Then the fury dissolved into alarm, and suddenly she was being scooped up, as Ryder took her out of the circle and set her down on the couch. Caitlin realized blood was pouring down her arm; she’d been cut.

“She’s hurt!” Ryder raged at Case, pulling off his jacket and pressing it hard against Caitlin’s arm, with his other arm wrapped around her back, holding her up against him. She could feel his heart beating wildly, charged with adrenaline.

Behind him, she could see Case pacing sullenly. “And whose fault is that? You’re the intruder here, bounty hunter. Nothing would have happened if you hadn’t interfered.”

“Don’t fight,” Caitlin said, feeling light-headed, about to pass out. “Just shut up.”

“What are you doing here with these clowns?” Ryder demanded.

“Hey,” Case growled.

“What is that? Crack?” Ryder continued inexorably, as if Case wasn’t there. “Do you know what happens when you enter the astral in an altered state?”

“Entering the astral is alteration,” Danny said from the circle.

Ryder turned to look at him, without letting up the pressure on Caitlin’s arm.

“You put her in danger,” he said, his face like stone.

“It’s always dangerous,” Danny said. “Cait knows.” He looked unblinkingly at Ryder, his eyes dilated with the drug. “If you want to do the seeing, we should do it now. There’s been blood spilled in the circle. It will strengthen the calling.”

“He’s right,” said Caitlin and Case simultaneously.

“No seance when you’re high,” Ryder said.

Danny smiled strangely. “I’m never not high.” The smile disappeared. “Don’t tell me how to do the work. She came for me. If you could do it, you would have done it.”

Caitlin pulled away from Ryder’s arm, lifted his hand so she could look at the cut. “I’m fine. Barely bleeding. Ryder…” She looked at him beseechingly. “It’s our best chance….”

“I don’t like it,” he growled softly.

“I know,” she said, and deliberately let herself lean into him so that her breath brushed his ear. “But it really is our best chance. Please.”

She felt his breath and his pulse quicken. He pulled back with an effort and looked at her. “I don’t like it,” he repeated, but she knew she had won.

They reassembled in the circle, four of them now.

Ryder seemed huge across from the other two, a hulking, disapproving presence.

“Keep your place, bounty hunter,” Case said.

“Don’t test me,” Ryder shot back.

Danny’s voice silenced them both. “Goddess Moon, Divine Nyx, we step into your darkness. Take me, Sister Moon. Papa Legba, let me pass. Mistress Hecate, walk with me through the crossroads….”

Caitlin found herself holding her breath, unable to move. The air in the room was shifting, rearranging; there was a cold front, and then a breath of wind, like a door literally opening in the middle of their circle. Danny straightened, his spine lengthening as if he were rising from his chair…and then his body dropped limply back against the seat, as if he’d passed out, but it felt as if something was gone from him.

Beside her, at the next point of the star, Ryder looked as riveted as she felt.

Then Danny suddenly sat up again, but abruptly, not a human movement, but the jerky motion of a marionette.

“Who seeks counsel?” The croaking voice that came from his mouth was not Danny, was not anyone Caitlin had ever heard before. She felt a chill in the darkness.

“I see you there, children, standing beyond this portal,” the voice continued, rasping, sly. “You seek me and have no questions? Or perhaps you seek to entrap?”

Ryder suddenly sprang up with an incoherent growl, knocking his chair over with the violence of the movement, and Caitlin gasped to see his face: it was a mask of rage, and his whole body was taut with fury. He started toward Danny, and Caitlin was suddenly certain he was going to attack him, kill him.

“What the hell?” Case said, alarmed.

“Ryder, no!” Caitlin cried out.

At the sound of her voice, Ryder halted. She could see him struggling to get hold of himself. And then he planted his feet and held his arms out. “Phasmatis obscurum, ego redimio vos ut is vas. Subsisto insquequo ego impero vos progredior!”

Caitlin recognized the Latin; it was a binding spell, to keep a spirit in a body.

Danny writhed in his chair as if some great serpent had invaded his body. Caitlin gasped out. It was the same uncontainable movement she had seen in the tourist before he died.

“No!” she cried out in sudden fear. “Get it out of him!”

“Wait…one…minute,” Ryder gasped. His body strained, struggling against nothingness, and it seemed as if he was somehow holding the spirit bodily, though in fact he held nothing.

“Ask, then,” Case said, in the dark. Caitlin could feel his agitation. “Be quick about it.”

“Where are you?” Ryder demanded of Danny.

“I have many hosts.” The thing spoke from inside Danny’s body, a voice that snarled and purred at the same time, an alien sound. Danny’s features were distorted, reptilian, his body lashing like a cat’s tail.