The Shifter and the Witch

Lucy

“Hey!” I yell at Malek for the second time.

Maybe the asshole doesn’t realize it, but I’m yelling at him.

I shoot him with my powers again, but the dude barely pauses in draining the life and powers out of the witch under him.

Shit.

That punch of energy should have knocked him off the woman.

I blast my powers at the demon again. This second punch of energy gets his attention and earns me a glare.

Hello, asshole.

Make that, ugly asshole. Malek is a Jogon demon. Jogons can alter their looks and make themselves look human, but when things get violent, their true demon selves are revealed.

A Jogon’s natural form is not cute. Malek’s skin is pasty pale and crawling with spidery black veins. His eyes are black where a human’s would be white, and his irises are cloudy and grey. His teeth look like they should be in a shark’s mouth, and his hands are tipped with heavy-duty black claws.

Even though I’ve got his attention now, he keeps his claws around the witch’s throat.

I’m about to hit him with my powers a third time when Deklan shifts and charges forward, launching himself at Malek. The demon has no choice now but to release his hold on his victim’s neck and defend himself. He pushes up off her, squats over her legs, and braces for impact. Deklan slams into him, and the two crash into the wall.

Teeth snap. Claws swipe. Snarls and growls punctuate the air.

Get him, wolfy!

While the boys have it out, I turn my attention to the witch laying on the floor. The young woman isn’t moving, and I have a bad feeling she’s dead. I rush over to her and drag her over to the opposite side of the bed as Deklan and Malek out of harm’s way. Pressing my fingers to the side of her neck, I hunt for a pulse. As I suspected, there’s no life-affirming thump.

“What the hell is going on?” a female voice calls, startling me.

My head snaps up at the question shouted from the hallway.

It feels wrong to leave the woman Malek killed, but she’s already gone. There’s nothing I can do for her. Her loved ones will take care of her when they discover what’s happened. What I need to do right now is keep my wits about me and take care of Malek’s friend while wolfy takes care of Malek.

I peer over the corner of the bed at the woman that appears in the doorway. Her attention is drawn to Malek and Deklan’s fight on the other side of the room. But even just seeing her profile, there’s something familiar about her face. As I stare at her, it occurs to me why she appears familiar.

It’s a real Holy Shit OMG moment.

My breath catches. The hairs on the back of my arms stand up. My mind stutters with shock.

What the hell?

I can’t be seeing who I think I’m seeing. My eyes have to be glitching. The woman standing a few feet away can’t be my sister. Hannah is dead. Whoever this is must just look a lot like Hannah.

Don’t they say everyone has a doppelganger?

I trail my gaze over the woman’s long brown hair and her familiar facial features.

Nope. I’m not buying that she’s a doppelganger. I know those eyes. That mouth. I know it’s Hannah.

There’s a scar marring the right side of her neck, a horizontal slash a few inches long. That slash is the only thing not familiar to me. Hannah didn’t have that when we were kids.

I blink. And blink again. Maybe if I blink enough times, what I’m seeing will seem real.

How is this possible? All these years, I thought Hannah was dead. I must be dreaming. My sister couldn’t have just walked back into my world very much alive.

“Hannah?”

Hannah’s attention turns to me. The malice in her gaze clashes with the confusion I know must be filling mine.

It’s been fifteen years since I’ve seen her. My sister has changed, sure, but I recognize the child I knew in the woman before me.

My sister’s alive! Hannah’s alive!

My brain flounders, computing this discovery with great difficulty. My body feels like a foreign object—heavy and strange to manipulate. A loud rushing noise sounds in my ears. Questions accompany that rushing noise.

How can this be? Where has Hannah been all this time? What the hell is going on?

“Hannah,” I repeat. I raise a hand to my chest as if that’s going to keep my thundering heart from beating its way out of my body.

“Who the hell are you?” Hannah snarls at me.

I slowly get to my feet in a world that has suddenly turned upside down.

“It’s me. Lucy. Your sister,” I reply.

Hannah looks at me like I’m crazy. Maybe I am crazy. I’m looking at my long-dead sister. Maybe I’m hallucinating.

“I don’t have a sister,” she scoffs.

She dismisses me like I’m nothing and shifts her attention to Malek and Deklan.

I stand there in a daze, my eyes glued to her, and do nothing as she throws her powers at Deklan with a swift hand motion. He comes flying over the bed and slams into the wall behind me. That kicks me out of my stunned daze.

“Deklan!” I cry and hurry over to him.

He shifts to human as I crouch beside him. I check him over cursorily, then help him prop himself up against the wall.

His lip is bleeding, his cheek’s swelling, and his torso has several slashes where Malek clawed him. He looks at me briefly before looking behind me at Hannah and Malek. They’re standing side by side, glaring over at me and Deklan.

Deklan grabs my hand. “Get us out of here,” he demands.

Getting out of there sounds like a good idea. Deklan’s banged up, and I’m stupid with shock, but I don’t want to leave Hannah.

“Lucy. Get us out of here,” Deklan insists when I don’t teleport us.

I still don’t move. I just stare at my sister, wondering what the hell happened to her, why she doesn’t remember me, and why she’s with Malek.

As I watch, she raises a hand, and a ball of energy comes to life over her palm. It kills me to leave, but I don’t have my faculties together, and I don’t want to fight Hannah.

“Lucy,” Deklan calls again.

I squeeze his hand and teleport us back to his house. Seconds later, we appear in his living room on the floor behind his sofa. Once we’re safe at his place, he gets to his feet. Once he’s up, I can see his wounds are already starting to heal. I can also see his junk.

“I’ll be right back,” he tells me, and he heads upstairs to get dressed.

I nod mutely.

Left alone, I struggle to digest what I just learned.

Hannah is alive.

It’s unbelievable. It’s a miracle. All I should be feeling right now is joy, but I’m not. I’m feeling confused. And agitated.

If Hannah wasn’t killed that night our mom was killed, what the hell happened to her? I assumed the Zolark killed her. It was a safe assumption, sure, but apparently it was wrong.

The confusion and agitation I’m feeling get a new buddy. Anger. Anger at myself. I should have made sure Hannah was right behind me when I ran from the house that night. And when I never found her, I should have made sure she was dead. How? I have no idea. But I should have made sure.

Still stupid with shock, I march into the kitchen, snatch up my crystal, and start scrying for her. I assume she and Malek left their victim’s house. They already got what they went for.

As I start scrying, I hear Deklan coming down the stairs.

“Lucy,” he calls.

I don’t bother answering him.

“Lucy,” he calls again. A few moments later he enters the kitchen.

He comes over and joins me at the table.

“What are you doing?” he asks.

I don’t reply.

Wolfy has eyes. He can see what I’m doing.

He doesn’t say anything else. He just stands at my side, quietly watching for several minutes.

“All those years. All that time." I shake my head. “I could have been looking for her.”

I want to scream. I want to cry. I want to break something. I want to break all the things. But that won’t help anything. So, I grit my teeth and keep scrying.

“Lucy,” Deklan murmurs after several minutes.

I ignore him. His hand lands on my arm and gently urges it down. Sighing, I glance over at him. He’s thrown on jeans and a T-shirt. His cheek and lip already look improved. The gouges on his torso are probably well on their way to being scratches.

He doesn’t say anything. He just stares down at me for a moment, his expression solemn. The sympathy and worry I see in his eyes piss me off. I don’t deserve sympathy. I let my sister be taken. I left her at the mercy of demons all this time. If I could kick my own ass, that’s what I’d be doing right now.

“Why didn’t I look for her?” I ask. “Why didn’t I sense she was alive?”

Deklan remains quiet in the face of my anger. His eyes brighten a little as slivers of silver swirl into the blue.

I turn away from him and his stupid, sexy eyes.

“I should have looked for her,” I seethe. "I should have sensed she was alive."

“Lucy,” he says, his voice soft as he comes up behind me. “You were just a kid. You didn’t have the resources to look for her.”

As true as that is, I don’t care.

He steps closer, and I feel the heat of him at my back. I want to growl at him to go away and give me some space, but I just grit my teeth.

“You thought she’d been killed,” he continues, and I shake my head.

Yeah, well, clearly, I’d thought wrong, hadn’t I?

The weight of Deklan’s hands settles on my shoulders. I shrug them off, turn, and face him.

“I have to go get her.”

He frowns at my words. I can see in his eyes that he wants to say something that he knows I’m not going to like. His voice is full of apology when he speaks.

“Lucy,” he says. “You can’t go get Hannah,” he says quietly, slowly, as if he’s talking to a child.

My anger amps up. I’m not a damn child.

“Hannah’s with Malek,” he says. He grimaces as if it hurts him to say what he’s saying. “She may not be dead, Lucy, but the sister you knew and loved... he pauses before finishing gently, “she’s gone.”

I narrow my eyes on him. Hannah’s alive. It’s a freaking miracle. She may be buddies with the bad guys at the moment, but she’s alive. And as long as she’s alive, I have a chance of saving her. Deklan can take his opinion and eat shit.

As pissed as I am right now, a part of me is still shocked when I swing a hand up to slap him. Wolfy’s reflexes are good, though. He catches my wrist easily in his large hand. As if acting on its own, my other hand comes up. Deklan catches that one too.

Grr.

Our gazes clash, and the energy between us sizzles. Our little stalemate of sorts leads to a new tension slowly creeping into the moment. Our emotions are running so high that it doesn’t take much for desire to hijack the moment.

Deklan steps into my body, crowding me. His gaze is bright as he forces me back. Those large hands of his clamp tighter around my wrists. He keeps right on advancing until I have nowhere else to go and I’m trapped between his chest and the wall, my arms pinned on either side of my head.

I open my mouth, suck in a good breath so I can blast him, and completely lose my train of thought when he quickly swoops in and claims my mouth with a hard kiss. Pumped full of anger and unable to let him have it verbally, I quickly adapt to his weapon of choice.

Our tongues spar. A couple of worthy adversaries.

We’ve barely started kissing when he pulls back. He releases my wrists and presses his palms flat against the wall.

I narrow my eyes on him.

He better not walk away from me like he did earlier. That’d be a good way to get a knee to his junk.

His eyes are almost full silver now, with just a hint of blue. He stares at me for a moment, as if searching for something, then his mouth crashes down on mine again. I take the aggressive onslaught that is his kiss and unleash my own assault.

Desire drives every thought out of my head. And I'm grateful for that. I really don’t want to think anymore. I can’t handle it.

As hot as our kiss is, eventually it ends and post-kiss, thoughts start to piece together again. Everything I was feeling moments ago crashes down on me once more.

Shit, shit, shit.

“Lucy, ” Deklan murmurs. “I’m sorry for what I said. About Hannah."

I look down at my feet and then back up at him. My cheeks prickle with heat. I should be apologizing to him. I can’t believe I tried to slap him.

“I’m sorry that I tried to slap you,” I say sheepishly.

He smiles softly. “It’s okay,” he murmurs.

It’s not, but I appreciate him saying that.

“I hope you’re not sorry about...” he murmurs and leaves the words ‘what just happened’ unsaid.

I probably should be sorry. I didn’t mean for that kiss to happen. But I’m not really sorry. A little embarrassed, maybe, but not sorry.

“No, not sorry,” I murmur, and the small smile on his face grows.

He steps into me, and his hands settle on my waist.

“If you’re going after your sister, I’ll help,” he says.

I nod, accepting his help.

He pulls me even closer, his arms going around me even as mine snake around his back. I settle my cheek on his chest and let out a tired sigh. It feels nice being in his arms, surrounded by his warmth and strength. I’ll worry about how nice it feels later. Right now, I’m just going to take the comfort offered.

I need it.

Tonight was a weird night.