Shift Into Me (Werewolf Shifter Romance) (The Alpha's Kiss) (12 page)

Damon steadied himself and swallowed his nausea. “Hunter,” he said, ignoring the old man, though not consciously.

“Yeah, what can I do for you? Need some water?”

“No,” Damon said. “Take my bike. You can ride, right?”

“Yeah, of course,” Hunter said. “And...?”

Once again, Damon began to rock back and forth, his eyes wandering as he did. “And find Lily. I’m... I don’t know, but I think she might...” He fell silent, shaking, trembling.

Something had him. He felt it squeezing his mind, pulling him back into the void from where he’d just escaped. Something dug in, grabbed him, and held on tight.

Hunter was up and almost to the door a half-second later. “Take care of him,” he said, turning back to the old shaman.

As the door slammed shut behind him, the cow head on the front of it bounced off the wood, somehow detached from the nail that held it on the door, and fell to the ground. Hunter kicked the bike into gear.

If Hunter would have looked back, he would have seen ghostly eyes open in the cow’s skull.

He would have heard the ancient head cough.

And then he would have heard Danness’s laugh.

She had Damon, and she wasn’t letting go.

––––––––

“W
hat you do you mean he started muttering and talking to spirits?”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Damon fell on the ground, started gibbering and groaning, and then talked to ghosts?

Hunter tossed me a helmet and motioned for me to get on the bike behind him. “Just like I said. He’s at the Skarachee meeting house. There was a meeting about a new murder, and then out of nowhere, Damon was clutching his head. He fell on the ground, and suddenly voices were talking through him. Even freaked out the shaman.”

“Shit,” I swore under my breath. “I don’t... I wish we could get ahold of Poko somehow. He’d know what to do. I found some really, really strange things at the courthouse. Old murders, a whole bunch that went unsolved. Seems like the same stuff that’s happening now.”

“He said something about demons. Or a demon. Or... I’m not gonna lie,” Hunter said. “It was some of the weirdest shit I’ve ever heard.”

“Try to remember,” I said. “What else did he say? There’s got to be something to this.”

Hunter kicked the throttle. “A warlock? And some kind of enslaved demon? I have no idea, but the last thing he said was for me to come find you. Thank God you’d already got back to the house.”

I nodded, chewing my lip. Demon? In the most twisted way possible, that all made sense. I still had no idea why my head had turned into a fuzzball, or why I could hear whispers through plate glass, but it explained why that creepy woman with Carrell was able to just disappear into thin air, and why she could waltz straight into a place that everyone else needed doors unlocked to access.

“I think I saw them,” I said almost as a side note, as we started down the road.

Going through town, we had to go slowly enough that we could kind of talk by yelling at each other.

“You what?”

“Carrel—”

“The guy who works in the basement of the police department?” Hunter sounded surprised that I mentioned him. “Damon asked about him the other day when we... er... anyway, he was asking about him.”

We pulled up to a stoplight. “Sweats a lot, wrings his hands, licks his lips. Anyway, today I noticed he was bringing me the wrong documents.” I could feel my voice getting higher and faster, like it always did when I was excited. “Like, I’d ask him for some stuff and he pretended like he was bringing it, but it was all wrong.”

Hunter opened his mouth, but I kept right on going. “At one point, a woman walked in. Like, without being checked in, or having to show her ID or be buzzed through the locked doors or anything. Real tall, black hair and heels. She just walked in and went to his office.”

“Did they...?”

“No, jackass,” I said, and punched him in the ribs. “They went in there and started talking. For some reason I could hear them through the glass.”

That got a weird look in the rearview mirror from Hunter, but I just kept on talking. “Anyway, she said she had Damon, or she marked him or something, it didn’t make much sense.”

His jaw dropped. “This explains... well, a lot more than I wish it did.”

“What are you talking about?”

“When Damon fell into his trance, he was jabbering about spirits and all that, but then he started going on about a demon and a warlock, right?”

My stomach fell into my heels. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I mean, when it was all in my own head, it was one thing, but when it became a real, external
thing
, I started doubting my own sanity.

“How can this be real?” I asked. My voice trembled so badly I was almost embarrassed for myself. I was supposed to be strong, I was supposed to help Damon, not be a scared little girl.

“Is he okay?” I said quickly, to change the subject.

The light turned green, we started rolling. “Yeah,” Hunter said. “I think so. He was still babbling a little bit, but his eyes weren’t rolled back in his head or anything.”

“Is there any way you can hurry? I’m getting a really bad feeling about this.” I grabbed Hunter’s shoulder and squeezed.

He twisted the throttle, and Damon’s bike roared. The throbbing engine pulsing between my thighs, the hot sun on my back, and the momentary flashbacks to Carrell and the mystery woman called Danness had me almost swooning.

“Hold on tight,” Hunter said. “I can get us there in about two minutes. Do you mind some bumps?”

Before I could answer, he turned off the road.

“Why do you wolves always stay in places that are away from major thoroughfares? Are streets bad for you or something? Thanks,” I said. “I’m fine with bumps. I just need to get to Damon.”

Hunter snorted a laugh.

I hugged him as tight as I could. The fang Damon gave me way back when was sandwiched between my chest and Hunter’s back. Somehow, just the feeling of it right there above my heart gave me a center, an anchor to hold.

*

“T
hat’s... not good,” I said as we pulled up to a dilapidated Elk’s Lodge building and heard a roar. “This isn’t what I think it is, right?”

Hunter’s response was a worried expression and he grabbed my hand. “He was half unconscious when I left. I really hope he hasn’t been tranquilized.”

“Maybe that’s what he needs.” I followed him, stepping over a cow skull and inside the building.

“Damon!” I shouted and ran to him when I saw the rage on his face.

Damon was half transformed, his muscles bulged, his skin and wiry fur the color of quicksilver. And he was
pissed
.

“Get away!” he roared and snorted, snapping at the air. “They were trying to tie me down!”

“Damon, calm down,” I said. I stuck my hand out front of me and walked toward him, only realizing about five feet away that I was approaching him like I would a dog I wasn’t sure about touching. “Everything is fine. These people are trying to help you. I think someone is in your head.”

Yeah, that doesn’t sound stupid. Get up in an angry werewolf’s face and tell him he’s possessed. What’s the worst that could happen?

For a second, I thought he was going to let me touch him, but as soon as I laid my fingers on his burning hot forearm, Damon recoiled like an injured animal. All over the floor around his feet were shredded up books, fliers from about four different fraternal organizations, and a pile of spaghetti supper raffle tickets.

I shook myself. Physically cornered as Damon was, I felt exactly the same way. Behind me were a pack of werewolves who first of all didn’t trust their Alpha, and second of all, had him raving and roaring at them.

And I was right in the middle of it all.

“Ah, good.” A familiar face appeared beside me. “I was hoping you’d be here.”

Damon fell quiet for a moment, scratching at his face but otherwise subdued. I looked at him one last time, and tried to use my will to force him back to reality, back to me, back to being the Damon I loved. But willpower wasn’t going to do anything at all this time though, even if I was able to hear through plate glass windows.

Hunter spoke beside me, but it felt like his voice was distant. “Lily, meet the local shaman, Wilton. Lily, you okay?”

I snapped out of my pity trance. Damon let out another roar and lashed out at someone who drew near. The tall, thin, stooped old man put a trembling hand on my shoulder and immediately squeezed. “I know him,” I said in a hollow voice.

The old man grabbed my shoulder just like had before. “You know what is in you now?”

“Me?” I said, surprised. “Nothing, I don’t think. At least—”

He shot his tongue out, pulling part of his drooping mustache inside his mouth and chewed. That was the first time I noticed that all through his thick, silver-shocked beard, the old man had metal baubles, little trinkets, even what looked like a feather, braided.

“He’s the one who found the first couple of bodies last week, and then he found another last night,” Hunter said.

“I like your beard,” I heard myself say. “So you’re a shaman? We met before. At the ice cream parlor, right?”

“
The
shaman,” Wilton corrected me in a breathy, strangely reverent voice and ignored my question. “But that doesn’t matter. This is... you are... truly strange.”

He ran his hands over my face.

“Er, thanks?” I shot a glance at Hunter, who shrugged slightly. “I’ve been called a lot of things, but never had anyone call me strange since the blue grew out of my hair.”

Damon scratched against the wall, drawing my attention for a moment. I hushed him, trying to soothe his rage with my calmest voice. For a moment, at least, his demeanor changed, like he was actually seeing me through the clouds of whatever was in his head.

“Good, yes, keep doing that,” Wilton said. “You can make him think things. You’re the only one who can quiet our Alpha.”

“I... what?”

He giggled in a way I imagined was reserved for witch doctors in movies. “You’re in his mind. When he calmed, it was you making him do so. All my poultices and incantations did nothing to calm Damon’s ferocity, but somehow, you did it with a single thought. What is in this mind?”

Wilton put both of his hands on my head, massaging my forehead with his thumbs like he was searching for a lump on my skull. From my temples to the bridge of my nose, he prodded me with deep, almost uncomfortable circles that seemed to push into my brain.

“I... I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said. My voice shook as it came out of my opened lips. “I’m just a normal girl; he’s the one who is special.” I tilted my head toward Damon. “He’s the Alpha, I’m just his mate.”

A smile crept across the old man’s face, his thin lips pulled tight over skeletal cheeks. “Not in this world, you’re not.”

“What do you mean? I
am
just a normal girl.” I was almost getting defensive about my plainness.

When next I opened my mouth, I stopped immediately and let my jaws just hang open. My vision started shimmering right in front of my face, like heat off a road.

The closest thing to what I saw was the way Damon’s skin kind of wobbled and waved when he healed. That was what passed in front of my eyes. Green haze slid across the world. For a second, I thought I was going to pass out.

“Normal?” he said again. “Then why do you have the witch vision? Your eyes have begun to glow. So has your mind, yes?”

In stunned disbelief, I looked at my transparent reflection in the one that marked the lodge wall. Just like Wilton said, my eyes were unearthly, almost neon. For a moment I stared at myself, not quite sure what to think, what to believe. Then Damon groaned.

“Go into his mind,” Wilton said. “Calm our Alpha.”

“I,” I swallowed hard and trailed off.

Something that felt like electric surges crept down my arms and back up my neck. “I don’t know how, I don’t even know what’s happening to me.”

“Soon you will,” he said. “But you must calm him before he destroys himself.”

On cue, Damon stood back up. His eyes were full of hate, full of rage.

“But how do I do it?” I was shaking so hard that when I looked down at my hands, my fingers looked like they were vibrating. “I don’t know what’s happening, I don’t know, I’ve never felt like this before, I don’t...”

“You’ve had the visions? The dreams? Where you travel?”

My mind shot back five days to what I thought was a dream. When my mind took a trip into the stratosphere. Then I thought back to the first time Damon came to me in a dream that seemed like forever ago. “You mean, those weren’t... dreams?”

Wilton simply smiled. “You only need to believe. You
are
special, Lily. I can feel your power throbbing through the bounds of your aura.”

That was certainly a strange way to put things, but I understood what he meant.

Believing. That’s what it’s all about, isn’t it? Damon and I believing in each other and me... believe in myself.

Damon lashed out again, thrashing his twisted claws against the wall. His eyes fell on me and I saw exactly what the shaman was talking about. Somehow, I felt that there were two beings inside him. He was fighting, but he was losing.

I pulled away from the old man’s massaging hands, and looked at Damon. There was no fear in his eyes, not like I’d seen before. He was wild, out of control. Somewhere deep in that skull of his, I heard laughter, I was sure of it.

“Who is in there?” I said as I drew close. He snarled, he lashed out, and razor-sharp claws came within inches of my throat. “Damon?”

He let out a low, rumbling growl. I kept going forward anyway. I knew he wouldn’t hurt me. He’d never let whatever was controlling him hurt me.

“Back!” he shouted. “Stay back... I...”

As soon as my hands were on his face, he fell silent.

My eyes rolled back in my head, and a split-second later, my consciousness exploded, burst out of my skull, and drove straight inside his mind.

“What do you see?” Wilton was shouting, or at least I thought he was. “Tell me what you see so you don’t fall into him and lose yourself!”