The Shifters

St. Pierre took a long moment to look around the room before speaking again. “I give you Jagger DeFarge.”

The vampire rose from his table and walked up to the podium that had materialized just to the left of the head table.

“My Brother and Sister Others,” Jagger began formally, the same address that St. Pierre had used. “We are facing a great danger to our city. I hope that, as in previous times of attack, of threats to our balance, our way of life, we will put our differences aside and band together to repel this enemy.”

Ryder had to admit that DeFarge cut a striking figure—and managed a stirring speech.

Perhaps there’s something to this Council, after all, he mused. A community of Others. Who’d have thought?

Outside the banquet hall, Caitlin found refuge in the bathroom—a sumptuous affair that continued the Victorian theme. There were roses everywhere, in the wallpaper, carved into the light fixtures, tastefully arranged in crystal vases on the sinks and makeup table, in the paintings on the walls. The whole powder room radiated the fragrance of rose oil. It combined with her already overstimulated state to create…an even more overstimulated state.

Get a grip, she chided herself, staring into the golden rose-rimmed mirror. The modern words clashed absurdly with the period elegance of her dress and hair.

You have work to do. You can’t go off the deep end about a man who will be gone with the wind—literally—tomorrow.

When she had pulled herself together enough to think about venturing back to the meeting, she breathed in and pulled the bathroom door open.

In the dark hall in front of her, a pale face moved abruptly forward, and she gasped, drawing back….

Armand St. Pierre stepped forward from the shadows.

“My dear, I’m so sorry to have frightened you,”

Caitlin relaxed, recognizing the shapeshifter. Then she immediately thought she must have missed something crucial, if the Council Chair was coming to get her. She began to apologize.

“I’m so sorry, I was just headed back—”

The elegant shapeshifter lifted a hand. “Not at all. The…” He paused, and there was something both delicate and loaded in the way he spoke the next words. “The bounty hunter will soon be speaking, and I was hoping to have the opportunity to talk with you alone first.”

“Of course,” she answered automatically, but with a sinking feeling. Does he know Ryder? Is something wrong? Is everything about to crumble?

“I am most appreciative,” St. Pierre said graciously, and extended an arm, touching her back to lead her down the hall away from the dining room.

He unlocked a carved walnut door at the end of the corridor and ushered Caitlin into what could only have been his personal business office. There was a combination of elegance and authority about it—fine furnishings and antique office paraphernalia that belonged in a museum, but which were clearly not for show, seeing daily use in the running of the restaurant and business.

As soon as he closed the door behind them, Caitlin turned to him, too anxious to hold back the question.

“Do you know Ryder, then?”

St. Pierre laughed softly and extended a gracious hand toward the sitting area. “My dear, you and your sisters never cease to amaze me. The city has been in the most competent and lovely of hands ever since your ascension.”

Caitlin had always been uncomfortable with the formality of St. Pierre’s language, but she knew it was not an affectation; the shapeshifter was several centuries old.

Then something suddenly changed in his manner, and the flowery words were gone, as if he’d read her mind. “We won’t mince words, however. You are correct. I do know the bounty hunter—from long ago—and I have grave doubts as to the veracity of the story he’s bringing us.”

Caitlin’s heart sank…but in a way she had known, had always known. Ryder. I knew I couldn’t trust him. It’s all been a lie.

St. Pierre’s eyes were keen on her face, absorbing her reaction. She knew he was reading what she was feeling.

“My dear, the last thing I would ever want is to see you or one of your sisters hurt. We had enough of a scare—just months ago, wasn’t it? A near-lethal threat to both your sister and you?” He shook his head. “And I was every bit as shocked as you were that one of our own was the cemetery killer. I’m afraid that the more devious of my—our—kind can do untold damage. And I’m even more afraid that’s precisely the case here.”

Caitlin felt the pressure of growing horror and dismay. It was all her fault. She had so wanted to believe in Ryder…and in her fog of distraction, she had brought an insidious evil into the community.

“What…what do you know?” she asked, shakily.

“I know we must be rid of the bounty hunter tonight.”

Her heart cried out that it could not be true. Trust your heart, Ryder’s voice whispered to her. And in that moment Caitlin quieted her screaming thoughts, her roiling doubts, and listened, really listened, to the shapeshifter leaning toward her earnestly.

“He is a threat not only to our communities but, I am afraid, especially to you, and to your sisters….”

He spoke with utmost sincerity. But through his words Caitlin caught a sibilance that was familiar—and deadly. She kept her face still, with a fixed look of concern, as she looked behind St. Pierre, letting her eyes go unfocused so she could read the auric circumference around him.

And she caught a glimpse of a darkness so malevolent she had to keep herself from gasping out loud.

Commanding every muscle, every nerve, to be still, she said softly, “I’ve thought so all along. What can we do?”

“He’ll have to die,” St. Pierre said nonchalantly. “And now so will you, my dear.”

His tone never changed, and it took a fraction of a second for Caitlin to register what he had just said.

Before her eyes, St. Pierre shifted from elegant host to something inconceivable…with fur, fangs, the malevolent eyes of a cat/predator…but there was something not at all catlike there, as well. There was no grace or symmetry; the creature that morphed before her was alien, ragged, demonic, repellent, a bestial horror. The body of a serpent and the paws of a cat, the talons of a falcon, the glittering eyes of a snake and the jaws of a lion…

And the voice that emanated from its mouth was grating, and horrifically familiar—the voice of the walk-in that had spoken through Danny the night before.

“Die, Keeper…”

The thing coiled itself like some lethal cobra, settling on taloned haunches…and sprang….

Chapter 18

In the banquet hall, vampire Mateas Grenard had the floor, and was speaking skeptically and somewhat pompously. “So far these ‘walk-ins’ have only possessed tourists, though, have they not? Humans? So what affair is it of ours? We don’t interfere with human concerns.”

Jagger kept his voice gracious—Ryder noted Jagger’s Council manners were a bearing totally unlike his cop persona. “The fact that the entities are killing tourists is a threat to our Communities because tourist deaths in New Orleans mean big media attention. Do the Communities want to risk having the national media camping out in the Quarter?”

“And it’s not just humans who have been killed. A were died yesterday morning, with the same symptoms as the human victims,” the alpha were Danyon Stone said.

Grenard turned to Jagger with raised eyebrows. “You didn’t mention that.”

“That death is still under investigation.”

Ryder watched from the head table as the werewolves’ tempers flared. Already there were signs of imminent transmutation; he could see it in the features of the weres in front of him, thickening, coarsening, darkening with fur under the surface of the skin, fingernails sharpening.

This is going to get ugly, he realized. But it wasn’t his Council, nor was it necessarily his problem. In fact, the heightened emotions playing out in front of him might reveal something useful, might draw something out. He could feel Fiona tensing beside him, and Shauna was already on her feet, moving toward the fray.

Ryder heard someone mutter, “A shapeshifter did it,” and now he tensed. Not because he was afraid for himself, but because he knew full well how quickly different species of Others could turn on each other, and they had no time for infighting.

“Yes, what about the shapeshifter?” the female alpha were, Kara Matiste, growled. “That one—” she turned and pointed to Ryder “—shows up, and a were ends up dead, not to mention humans are drop ping left and right. The timing is too obvious to be coincidental.”

Ryder rose to speak, but Jagger shot him a warning look and held up his hands to calm the crowd. “Mallory is a bounty hunter, following the horde of entities. He arrived after the first tourist deaths.”

“How do you know that?” Kara demanded. “How do you know he wasn’t here and just in hiding? Can he prove it?”

“And why should we trust a vampire, anyway?” someone else muttered, but loudly enough to be heard.

The twitchy bayou boy, Marks, hissed disapproval at the insult, and now the vampires were standing, rallying.

Ryder suddenly felt a surge of adrenaline totally unrelated to the fight going on before him, a rush of sympathetic…terror was the only word. And not his own.

Caitlin’s.

He stood, knocking back his chair, and surveyed the crowd in the banquet hall. No sign of her, and she had been gone a long time. Too long. He took in a quick panorama of startled faces, concerned ones, angry ones, accompanied by a rise of muttered questions and epithets at his sudden disruption of the already disrupted proceedings. Fiona, Shauna and Jagger had all turned to him with questioning eyes….

He ignored everyone and broke into a run toward the doors.

Inside Armand’s office, Caitlin’s frozen muscles unlocked and she bolted—not backward, but darting straight past the creature, the only way she could get to the door.

Already in midspring, the beast before her was too clumsy to recalibrate and landed heavily on gargoyle paws, colliding with the couch. Caitlin heard crashing, splintering, a roar of rage, as she scrabbled for the doorknob—and had a heart-stopping moment of finding it locked.