Magical Menages 1: Shifters' Captive (14 page)

“I’m telling you you’re my half-sister, that we share the same father. My blood recognized yours from the moment we met in our dreams.”

“Really? Because I didn’t get that psychic message. All this is news to me. How did you know my name, by the way? You didn’t get that from a dream.”

“No, but when I’m not up here on the mountain, I live among the wolves in town. I listen. I know what the pack discusses even if I’m not a part of their council. I heard they were going to find you and, once I’d felt you, I stopped fearing your arrival. I understood then that you weren’t going to be the end of me. Instead you were the missing element I’d been waiting for—a blood relative. A bastard shifter like me.”

Sherrie shook her head in denial. The tea sloshed over the rim of the cup and onto her hand, but she scarcely felt the slight burn. A chain reaction of thoughts snapped through her mind like a string of firecrackers. As a little girl, she’d fantasized her father as a movie star, a superhero or a king. When she’d been angry at her mother, she’d even imagined she’d been stolen from his kingdom by this evil hag intent on ruining her life. But never had she imagined he’d possessed magic powers that might have transmitted to her and never had she imagined her father was half wolf.

Janus might be crazy and evil, but it didn’t mean he was lying. Was it possible he was her half-brother, and that her father had been an even more powerful and mysterious figure than she’d dreamed of as a child?

“How do you know this? What kind of proof do you have?”

“I just know. Like I said, I recognized you when I met you in my dreams. Blood recognizes blood.

Any shifter can tell you that. And there’s enough wolf in me to know my own kin when I meet her.” Sherrie feigned nonchalance. “What is this supposed to mean to me? Do you want a hug? Or do you think we’re going to team up—brother and sister superheroes like Dash and Violet?” At his blank look, she supplied the reference. “
The Incredibles
. It’s a movie. Ever heard of it?” She glanced around the rocky walls of the cavern. “No, probably not, because you’ve been camping out up here like Grizzly Adams.”

She couldn’t help her snide comments. It was how she always reacted when she was afraid or nervous. But she reminded herself she was supposed to be trying to build a connection to Janus, so she tried to add something more placating.

“I think your plan is ingenious, but I don’t quite understand the practical uses. What do you expect to do with all the power you’ve gained? Do you have a way to store it? What kinds of abilities has it given you? And how did you discover you could siphon energy anyway?” Janus smiled, a baring of his teeth that showed no mirth or warmth. “I can’t share
all
my secrets with you, little sis. Not until I know you believe in me and support me completely. You see, I think if we combine our essences together it will increase our power beyond imagining.” She shivered inside at the idea of “combining essences”, wondering if he planned to “combine” in the same way she had with the two shifters.

“What’ll we do with this power?” she asked. “How does it translate into a mansion on the hill and a Rolls in the driveway?”

Janus had drained his cup of tea and now he turned the cup in slow circles in his hand. “They say money is power, well, power can be converted into money. After a few flashy demonstrations of the hell we can rain down on them, we’ll make demands of the shifters. Demands that involve an offshore bank account and a wire transfer.”

“And after you’ve gotten the money, you’ll leave them in peace and go away?” Sherrie set her still full cup on the ground by her camp chair.

“No. I’ll stay right here and enjoy the fruits of my labors. Not one of them would ever suspect me, since they think I’m worthless. They’ve never even noticed me living among them.”

“How would you explain your sudden good fortune?”

“Investments, an invention, it doesn’t matter.” He waved an impatient hand, and she realized he hadn’t examined his plan too closely. “The point is I’ll be master over them, pulling their strings like a puppeteer, and they’ll never know it.”

Sherrie wanted to add, “Isn’t the point to earn their recognition at last?” but she forced herself to keep her mouth shut. No need in pointing out the big holes in logic in his evil master plan.

“You can live with me. We’ll both have a family at last. Isn’t that what you’ve always wanted?” He set his cup aside, reached out and rested his hand on her knee, squeezing lightly. “Family?” He was right about that. Sherrie’d always longed for more than the patchwork life of aborted relationships and sudden moves that had been her pattern. But being family with this guy wasn’t what she’d had in mind.

“Now, it’s my turn to ask you a question.” Janus released her leg and rested his elbows on his knees.

“How did you get free when you were trapped in the ravine? You were out of my range so I couldn’t see how you did it.”

Thank God for small favors. Inside, she grimaced at the idea of this creepy little pervert—her brother?—watching the three of them. If he wasn’t already thinking of combining essences with her in that way, she certainly didn’t want to put the idea into his head.

“I don’t know,” Sherrie answered. “It was as if something inside me unlocked, and suddenly I could just do it, suck up their energies like from a straw in a juice box. The rock wall burst apart and we were free.”

He frowned and nodded. “You’ve never been able to do anything like this before, right?”

“No. I was shocked. Trust me.” That much was true. “Were you watching us climb the mountain? Is that how you knew right when to send the avalanche? How did you know you wouldn’t accidentally kill me? That wouldn’t have been very brotherly of you.”

“I wouldn’t say watching, but I’ve been aware of you, which is how I knew the panther went ahead of you so I could intercept him. I’ve been practicing with my newfound powers until I have quite a bit of control over them. Watch.” He sounded so like a kid clamoring for Mommy to watch him dive off the diving board that Sherrie nearly laughed.

Picking up the teacup, he tossed it into the air then raised his hand with his palm open. The cup froze in mid-fall to hang suspended between them. Janus swept his hand and the cup flew across the cave and shattered against the rock wall.

“You see?”

When her thumping heart had stopped choking her, Sherrie flattered him. “Very impressive! What do you have in mind to show the shifters the extent of your power?”
Besides holding their loved ones captive
in comas.

“That depends on you. If you’ll join your strength with mine, I bet we could produce an earthquake.

Tell them the exact time to expect it so they know it’s not a fluke. When we’ve gotten their attention, we’ll deliver our demands.”

“I can see you’ve really thought this through. May I have a little time to do the same? It’s a lot to take in all at once—a shifter for a father, a brother I never knew I had, power beyond my wildest dreams. This has been a very long couple of days.”

Cautiously, Sherrie rose from the camp chair. Was it possible she could take her leave like a guest who’d come to call on her own volition? Was he confident enough to let her walk away?

Janus rose too. “You don’t know how to find your way back down the mountain. Besides, I have a little test for you to perform. A loyalty test, if you will. Come with me.” He beckoned her to follow and led her to one of the two openings in the back of the cave. He leaned to pick up an industrial-sized battery powered lantern from the floor near the tunnel. An image of herself bashing him over the head with a rock danced in Sherrie’s mind, but the time wasn’t right to make a move.

Not yet.

Janus led her into absolute blackness which seemed to suck the light from the lantern in his hand. It was like being wrapped in cotton, the sound diminished and all Sherrie’s senses dulled.

“I have one of your companions imprisoned here. You demonstrate to me how you took his essence, and I’ll trust you’re really on my side.”

“I don’t know what I did,” she protested. “It just sorta happened!”

“Then you’re going to have to figure out how like I did. It’s not easy to keep the lines open between myself and a dozen different shifters, but I’ve got it down to an art now.” He laughed. “It’s kind of like having intravenous tubes from several sources all feeding me what I need, what I’ve come to crave.”
A soul-sucking vampire. So glad I found you, bro. Now what am I going to do to stop you?

Her pulse, which had slowed during their cozy chat over tea, was racing again. He was taking her to John, but how was she going to set him free? She’d have to use her wits, which appeared to have fled her at the moment. She couldn’t even think straight, she was so afraid.

Suddenly, Janus stopped and held out an arm to hold her back. Sherrie gasped as she realized if she’d taken another few steps forward she would’ve fallen into a gaping hole in the ground. The chasm yawned like an open manhole in the street, only somewhat wider in circumference.

“He’s down there. Unharmed for now. But he can’t be allowed to live. He’s seen my face.” Janus turned toward her.

In the harsh light of the lantern casting its eerie shadows, his average features turned into a Halloween mask. “You’ve got to drain him dry.”

John raised his pounding head from the ground to focus on beams of light floating above the black pit in which he was imprisoned. Approaching footsteps resounded in the rocky cavern and the steady murmur of a male voice echoed off the walls—Janus. The man John knew as Evan Blake.

He’d known Blake his entire life, had gone to school with the quiet boy and exchanged absent-minded hellos with the equally quiet adult. The grandson of Steve and Amanda Blake, both now deceased, Evan was a teller at the local branch where John did his banking.

Evan was a half-shifter without the ability to tap his animal side, if he even had one. He lived with the pack in Browning, but only on the periphery of the group. John had occasionally thought it must be lonely for Evan, being an outsider. Once or twice over the years, he’d made an effort to invite the guy to a poker party or on a fishing trip, but Blake had never accepted his offers. Now it appeared Evan had latent powers none of them had ever guessed he possessed, and the pack was going to pay for real or imagined slights.

John held his breath and listened as a feminine voice answered Blake. It was Sherrie. The echoes made it difficult to hear the words, but it sounded like she was telling him she couldn’t do something he wanted her to do. John’s pulse pounded in his ears and the urgent need to protect Sherrie superseded all other thoughts. He was frantic and frustrated by his inability to do anything to help her as the argument escalated.

“I don’t believe you.” Blake’s voice suddenly came from above and light shone down into John’s eyes, blinding him after the hours in darkness. “I think you do know how to tap him, and if you’re really sincere about teaming with me, you need to prove it.” Without warning, something—a body—blocked the light and fell into the pit. Sherrie tumbled toward John in a crazy, impossible slow motion. Blake must be controlling her fall with his powers. She floated like an oversized feather, arms and legs knocking against the narrow, rocky walls. John barely had time to put his arms up to catch her before she landed on him heavily, knocking them both to the ground.

Far above, Blake leaned over the opening to the shaft and called down, “I’ll give you a few hours to think about it. It’s not a hard choice. I’m offering you everything. All you have to do is accept my offer and give me a token of good faith.”

John gripped Sherrie’s body tightly as the light disappeared and their captor’s footsteps retreated. He breathed in the scent of her hair, felt her warmth in his arms and her weight pinning him to the ground.

“Are you all right?”

“No. Are you?”

John sat up, releasing her so she could catch her breath. He heard her turn toward him although he couldn’t see her shape in the total darkness even with his keen vision.

“Did he hurt you?” Her fingers touched his face, felt it as a blind person would, then her hands trailed down his neck and over his chest and arms.

“I’m okay, although my fall was considerably harder than yours.” John touched the wound on his head where it had smashed against the rocks. The blood flow had stopped, and a scab was forming. He took Sherrie’s hand and held it. “What does he want from you?”

“He claims I’m his long-lost half-sister and that we share the same shifter father—someone from your town apparently—and that together we have the power to control the shifters and make ourselves rich. I guess his happily-ever-after includes us living in a castle on a hill like an incestuous fairytale couple.” John smiled, glad to hear Sherrie hadn’t lost her snide sense of humor.

“To prove my loyalty I’m supposed to take your power and share it with him. I told him I don’t know how, but he doesn’t believe me seeing as we blasted a hole through rock to get out of the ravine.” Suddenly she let go of his hand and plunged against his body, wrapping her arms around him and pressing her face into his chest. “I’m scared. He plans to kill you one way or another because you’ve seen his face. Who is this guy? Do you know him?”

John quickly told her what he knew about Evan, which wasn’t much. “The guy’s an enigma. I never would’ve guessed he was filled with so much bottled-up rage. He just seemed like a nice, quiet guy.”

“That’s what they always say about serial killers.”

He stroked her hair and kissed the top of her head, grateful they were together even under the circumstances. “You tried to come after me. That’s how he caught you.”

“Well, it seemed pretty stupid to climb all the way to the top of the mountain and not meet the man we’d come to see. Now I know more than I did before. For example, it’s not easy for him to keep control over each of the shifters he’s draining. From the way he talks he’s more interested in making shifters suffer than he is in getting rich, but he has plans for that too. Some half-assed plan about making an earthquake to demonstrate his ability, then demanding money on threat of a worse tragedy. Guy’s clearly been watching too many comic book movies without noticing the bad guy always gets beaten.” John rubbed his hand up and down her back. She shifted on his lap and, despite everything, his cock hardened. The erotic connection between them was irresistible. “Maybe we should give the man what he wants.”