Shadow Bloodlines (Shadow Bloodlines #1) (16 page)

On the other side of the cabin door, a metal box was fastened with brackets against the ship’s deck. My dad dug inside the box that resembled a tackle box, but bigger. “Here.” He handed me a bar of soap, then pulled out a bucket on a rope.

Giving Jacqueline the bucket, he closed the box.

“What do we do with this?” She frowned at the yellowed rope in her hands.

“Right.” He took the end of the rope and fastened it around the sail. “Now that you won’t lose my shower overboard, you do this.” Using the metal bucket, he hauled it over the side, then brought up ocean water. “Rinse. Use the soap, and don’t pitch it over the side either it’s my last bar, then rinse.”

“That’s not a shower.” Jacqui crossed her arms.

“Out here it is. We can’t risk going onto land, so this is the best I got. Unless you want to bathe in the sink, but that’s seawater too.”

“This is fine,” I assured him and dragged the bucket closer to me. Once again, we didn’t have clothes with us. I’d wash first, then help Jacqui since the bucket was heavy when it was full. We’d have to re-dress in the clothes we were wearing.

My dad went inside the cabin and closed the door to give us some privacy. As soon as the door was closed, she and I busted out laughing. It was either laugh or get mad and cry.

“And I though the showers in the girls’ locker rooms were bad.” She shook her head, then took off her shorts. “At least there you didn’t have to draw up your own water. Won’t this seawater dry out my skin?” We kept our panties and bras on.

I splashed her a handful from the bucket of water and she yelped, then chased me around the boat after dipping one of her socks in the water. We fell in a heap beside each other at the head of the boat. Our legs pretzeled together as we lay on our backs. Jacqui shifted until her leg was no longer twisted under mine. The crescent moon hung in the sky so low and bright like I could touch it. And the stars… there were thousands of them.

“So, did your dad tell you about navigating with the stars like my dad rambled about earlier?”

“No.” When she shook her head, her blonde hair tickled my arm. “Maybe it relates to pirates or ships or something.”

I elbowed her and she huffed.

“Well, at least he’s trying.” She pushed up on her elbows to look at me.

“Who?”

“Your dad. When we came here, he could have thrown us out.” She waved a hand and then flopped back down to stare at the stars with me. “He could have run and left us here. When that thing came, we wouldn’t have known what to do.”

I still felt like my dad was keeping something from me. Something important. He still hadn’t told me exactly why he’d left mom and me, or why he never came back or even tried to contact me. “He’s helped us, yes. Though I feel like time is running out. I know we’ve been here less than a day, but…”

“It’s impossible to cram a lifetime of knowledge into half a day.” Jacqui rose. “Come on, let’s ‘
shower’
so we can get some sleep. I’m sure your father will start your training after breakfast tomorrow. God, I hope he has something to eat besides chili or fish.”

I laughed. We helped each other get clean and rinsed off. Redressed, we scurried inside the cabin, and my dad had already laid out blankets across his bed for us. Pillows lined the table’s bench for his bed. Amar was still asleep with the pillow behind his head and a thin beige blanket draped over him. Had he moved at all?

Jacqueline and I said goodnight to my dad and crawled into bed. She stole most of the covers. Eventually, I fell asleep.

***

The next morning, seagulls squawking and the smell of eggs cooking woke me. Still, I let the boat’s gentle rocking cradle me.

“Breakfast.” I nudged my friend, who just moaned and rolled over.

Her blonde hair stuck out around her head like a porcupine. She’d wake up in a bit.

“Morning.” My dad glanced at me. “Hope you don’t mind omelets.”

“As long as I’m not doing the cooking, I’ll eat whatever you make.” I stretched and rubbed my legs as I kicked off the tangled sheets on the bed. Then I clambered out of the bed with its high wooden sides that faced the opening. Guess they had those so you weren’t tossed out of bed as easily during a storm, and the side Jacqui was still sleeping against was the wall with the only port window. I shuffled around the edge of the bed to the table, sitting down on the bench. My dad’s pillows and blankets from the night before were in a pile between his bed and the table. I wrapped my arms around my legs. It was cold. I should have brought one of the blankets from the bed with me.

He chuckled. “Your mom never liked cooking either.” His eyes misted when he glanced at me, then he returned to the pan. “After we eat, I’ll take you out to the water and start teaching you what I know. I realize now that your mom and I did you a disservice by not telling you about your shifter abilities.” Placing an omelet on a plate then handing it to me, he poured out more raw egg into the pan and added cheese and chopped up veggies to it.

Where did he get this stuff? Delivery? At first, I scrunched my nose up at the mushrooms, bell peppers, and spinach, but my stomach didn’t care and gave a loud rumble. I took a bite and everything filled my mouth into cheesy deliciousness.

“This is so good,” I mumbled between bites. “I thought you said you didn’t have any cheese or food?”

“I took the ferry early this morning to Sunset Pier and bought groceries. It’s close enough to the dock that I could dive into the water if the Blood Spirits showed up.” He nodded to a bag next to the bed. “And I got some clothes for you all to change into.”

“No credit card, right?” I hoped he hadn’t done anything to get us caught. We didn’t need Ms. Moor finding us, though maybe it didn’t matter since that Blood Spirit thing had.

“Nope. I keep cash and gift cards around.” He dished out another omelet and set it on the table beside me. “Morning.”

I turned and Amar stood there staring at me. His dark hair still had fragments of black tar in it and his grey eyes pierced into me. With a nod at me, he sat on the floor with his back against the door and devoured the egg. Was he mad?

When he finished, Amar took my empty plate and his and washed them.

“Your wings!” I hadn’t noticed until now. There were gone. My gaze jerked to the floor where he had laid, and only a few feathers stuck in tar there.

“I was able to shift completely this morning back into my human form.”

He looked different without the black shiny wings. Before, it had been hard to look at just him, rather than the wings. Now his handsome face and chiseled muscles filled me with lust. Even his back and ass were sculpted and visible. Like an immortal god visiting his subjects. I wanted to run my fingers over his body and trace where his wings had been. It didn’t help that his shirt was in tatters from last night, revealing his bronze skin.

After he finished the dishes, Amar leaned against the counter while Jacqui ate her omelet from the bed and my dad drank his coffee beside me on the bench.

“Don’t ever pull a stunt like you did last night without training.” The muscle in Amar’s jaw twitched. “You could have gotten killed, or worse.”

So that’s was why Amar was acting cold. Jacqui flipped the TV on to the same channel as last night. It must be ocean week or something. A show talked about crabs scuttling across a beach.

“Speaking of training,” I turned on the bench, straddling it so I was across from my dad and could see him without looking at him from the corner of my eye. “Can you teach me how to do that jump thing again? The one I did with Amar to get to the truck.”

“I can’t teach you that,” he looked at me as if truly puzzled.

But I had seen him leap effortlessly from rooftop to rooftop. I knew that couldn’t have been his octopus talent because I’d never seen one jump. It must have been from his whydah bird thing. Too bad there wasn’t a PBS special on that.

The lady on the TV had moved from the crabs and was rambling about sea turtles. I didn’t care about turtles. I wanted my dad to teach me all his shifting talents. Obviously, I’d gotten both my parental and spirit ones from him. I wondered if that was unusual. Amar had said the spirit shifter totem was different for everyone.

When my dad still didn’t answer, I said, “Like you did on the roofs.”

“But that’s from my other animal, the whydah… I can’t fly as it does, but I can kind of glide a bit, like a flying squirrel.”

I waved a hand. “I want to be able to do it again. It was a powerful jump and I propelled myself and Amar a few inches to safety. I may need to use it again.”

“You don’t understand.” He clasped his hand in mine. “Your other totem animal is not a whydah. It’s a vixen… like your mother.”

“How dare you insult Mom, and me! We’re not shrews.” My hands fisted in my lap, my gaze locked onto my father.

He ran a hand down his beard, the bench under us squeaking as he moved. “No. I mean she was cunning and believed she could keep you safe and escape if the enemy came to our door.”

“And you believed her?” I jerked away when he reached for my hand on the table. “How could you? She was human! What could she possibly do to protect herself against beings like us?” My fury made me shake, and I scrambled up from the bench. I didn’t need him or his teaching. “It’s your fault she’s dead. If you had stayed with us o-or taken me with you, then she’d still be alive.”

“You don’t understand, Bethany…” His voice, pleading and desperate, made me even angrier instead of placating me.

He had known! Being a shifter, and probably being taught and warned from birth, unlike me, he had known the dangers and abandoned us. I was right to think of him as a monster and a jerk.

Stomping toward the door, I shoved against Amar who blocked my path. “Move!”

“Hear him out.” At my glower, he continued. “You don’t have to like it, but I won’t have you unprepared. We’ve been lucky so far; I doubt we’ll be next time.”

Silence clung in the air like a thick fog. Over my shoulder, Jacqui gave me a half smile.

Amar lifted his gaze. “You say Bethany’s totem is a vixen?”

Crossing my arms, I stomped away, and then flopped down on the bed next to Jacqui. I didn’t want to be around either my dad or Amar right now. Evidently I’d been wrong in the definition of vixen before and it wasn’t an insult, it was a shifter’s animal, but I still didn’t know what it was.

“Not quite.” My dad nodded and pushed his empty coffee cup across the table.

Jacqui straightened and her legs dangled over the bed. “You figured out Beth’s spirit totem?”

“It’s what helped you make that leap into the truck and, with the eerie scream, merged along with the confusion that octopi have in their ink, made the Spirits of Blood revolt away from you and Amar.” He looked past Jacqui to me, but I turned away, staring at the sink with chips in the plaster.

“A Vixen is a fox, right?” Jacqui asked.

“A powerful spirit totem.” Amar took a step away from the door.

My dad shook his head again. “But the vixen is not Beth’s spirit totem.”

“But you just said…” I rubbed my temples, glancing up at him.

“No, the Vixen or female fox is
one
of your shifter animals, but it’s not your spirit totem.” His eyes twinkled in the corners. Almost like he was proud or something.

“Wait, she has three?” Jacqui asked.

Amar had told me when we met that only the ancient shifters had three animals: a spirit totem and one from each paren—

“Your mother’s.” Dad leaned back against the wall and stretched his legs under the table as he sat on the bench. “You inherited an animal from each of us. But we don’t know your spirit totem—unless you have an idea?” His eyebrows rose.

I shook my head. Both in answer to his question and to sort the jumbled questions and unbelief racing through me.

“Holy Shit!” Jacqui stood up and spun around to face me. “She has three? Beth who didn’t know anything about being a shifter has
three
of them?” She grasped my hands and hauled me into a hug. “You know, this is so rare! Not even my dad knows someone with three.”

My mom? “She was a shifter too? A fox?” Maybe that’s why her hair was always a vibrant silky rust color. Not orange, but… like a red fox.

“Yes. Both her spirit totem and shifter animal were foxes. I should’ve guessed yours would be a fox too with your hair color.” He folded his hands and leaned forward on the table, a smile spreading across his mouth. “That’s why she thought she could keep you safe. She was too cunning to get caught… but now…”

My knees wobbled, and I skidded down the cabinet between the bed and the sink onto the floor. Mom might still be alive.

She was a shifter too? The numerous phone calls and text messages, was that her?

My family… my life was so screwed up. Bile rose in the back of my throat. I had forced all my rage and bitterness onto my absentee father when my mother and he had both lied to me.

“I-I don’t believe you,” I whispered. Maybe he was the one lying and trying to taint her memory. Giving me a reason to have them on equal ground.

“No?” His light eyes held frustration. He rose from the table, then rummaged around in a box under the bed. “Then explain these.” He dumped out the box and dozens of letters, pictures, and small diaries tumbled across the bed. “They are your mothers. She sent them over the years. And if you care to read them, you’ll see that I answered her back, before you accuse me of something I didn’t do again.”

His booted feet echoed as they marched the few feet to the door, then left.

I stared at the pile on the bed. My mother was a shifter… a fox?

Amar paced the small cabin between the door and the bed, his brow furrowed.

Jacqui looked up at him. “What’s up, birdboy?”

“Will you stop calling him that?” I pushed her shoulder.

She held up her hands. “Sorry, habit. So your mom’s a shifter?” She let out a whistle. “And I thought I had it bad with my parents not telling me about the condo they bought last year.”

Giving her a tight smile, I rose from the bed and went over to Amar. I placed a hand on his arm to still his movement. “What is it?”

“If your mother was a fox shifter, then how was she killed so easily?”

“What do you mean?” I crossed my arms over my stomach. Was it my imagination or did the boat feel like it was trying to spin?

“Foxes are hard to hunt. They evade captors with agility, cunning, and a burst of explosive speed.” His voice took on an air of excitement. “They can even keep up a fast pace called the fox trot for hours.” He ran a hand through his dark hair. “Unless she succumbed to a trap, I don’t see how even the Blood Spirits would have captured and killed her.”

“B-but what if Ms. Moor sent t-that thing? The blob of gooey pitch? It would’ve gotten her and…” And reanimated her body and voice to lure me back home. That’s what I’d thought had happened when I spoke with her before. Wait, I had told her I was meeting dad and she was fine with it, no lecture or anything. Did she change gears knowing I’d be safer with him than with her? Was Ms. Moor or someone else listening in our conversation and that’s why she sounded so weird?

Amar shook his head. “No, as a double fox shifter, she would have the missile-jump down, like being able to suddenly launch into the air like you displayed to get us into the truck. Only hers would propel her further. Her voice, like yours, would have been shrill… which some say sounds like a woman screaming.”

“And probably in the middle of the night, that would give me chills even knowing it’s a fox.” Then Jacqueline snapped her fingers. “Of course. All the ancient Celtic tales about a banshee. No doubt that eerie scream of the fox is what triggered the belief in that.” She smiled at me, then went back to sorting through the letters and diaries my dad had spilled onto the bed.

I needed to go over those too, but right now I had to figure out about my mom. Was there a chance I was wrong and she might be alive? “What other abilities do foxes have?”

“Amazing hearing. She would be able to hear a faint sound from over a hundred feet away.” Then he looked at me and merriment filled his eyes. “The grey fox is the only dog or wolf type creature that is able to climb trees because of their semi-retractable claws. In my day, they could be found using an abandoned hawk’s nest as a temporary den.”

I felt my cheeks heat. One of his shifters was a hawk, now I found out one of mine was a fox. One giving shelter to the other… even if it was by happenchance.

“Not to mention the grace and beauty of a fox.” His smile and words caused my heart to speed up. “In the sunlight, you even have traces of red in your hair. And the amber ring around your pupils should have given me a clue.”

In order to see the distinct shades, people had to look closely into my eyes. My hand flitted to my hair; he thought I had red highlights in my brown hair?

“Give me a break.” Jacqueline huffed and leaned against the cabin wall. Her legs were stretched out on the bed and her arms crossed over her chest while letters littered the crumbled blanket around her.

I stuck my tongue out at her then, dashing over to her, shuffled the papers on the bed, picking up a diary. For the first time in days, I had hope that maybe my mom was alive. Amar, as though grateful to have his wings fully concealed, went up to the deck. No longer did he have to hide in the shadows from the world. He looked so different without his black feathers. More human… more approachable. And just as gorgeous.

“Let me sort through these with you.” I picked up another handful and moved on the bed until I was next her with my back leaning against the opposite wall. A patch of sunlight poured through the porthole above us.

“Thanks. I was worried I’d have to get a mop bucket and dry up the drool between you two.” She rolled her eyes and made a gagging face.

“Are you jealous?” I was not drooling. Maybe crushing, but that’s completely different.

“Me?” She folded the paper and put it in the read pile.

I raised my eyebrow at her.

“Ok. Fine. Yes, I’m just…”

How could she be jealous? I was joking when I asked. She was the pretty one with gorgeous blonde hair and tons of boyfriends for years. And she was the one who not only was raised by both parents but knew about her shifter abilities. “Why?”

Did she like Amar? Maybe all this bickering between them since they met was a ruse.

“Cause you’ve got three shifters.” She waved a hand. “Do you have any idea how special… how rare that is? Any animal that has ever been alive, including a dinosaur, could be your spirit totem and, having three, you might have the ability to shift completely into that animal form. I haven’t heard of it in our history for hundreds of years.”

“Depends on the animal.” I nearly signed in relief that she didn’t like Amar. Having to choose between your best friend and a gorgeous guy… well, I’d just have to let him go.

Then her words hit me. “Our history?” Great, so now there was a complete history of shifters besides the Ancient Egyptian that Amar told me about. Of course, there was. And neither she nor Amar had told me this. It’s like they were in a secret club and reluctant to share information with the new kid. “I didn’t ask for this. For any of it. But I’m doing the best I can.” Sighing under my breath in frustration, I stalked up the few stairs and to the edge of the boat.

“Problems?” Amar stood by my elbow.

I gasped at his nearness. How did he get that close to me without me hearing? So much for my fox hearing abilities. Or maybe I had to focus it like I did with the octopus arms? I closed my eyes and breathed in; imagining a fox cocking its head at a sound.

Amar breathed in and out, but in-between sound beat his heart. Concentrating, I searched for other sounds. The waves lapped at the boat. A crab skittered across the anchor’s chain and my dad’s watch ticked as he let out the sails to take us inland. Holy cow! I was hearing things no human could. Wait, like I did when one of Ms. Moor’s goons swept out of the room with his cell phone. He said, “We got one.”

Inhaling, Amar’s scent of musk, powered granite, and cinnamon, swirled through me. Dad scrambled below deck. I leaned against the railing, watching the turquoise waters with Amar. Boats lined the distant shores and buildings rose among pine, palm, banana and what my dad had called Brittle Thatch Palms when I had asked him earlier.

A group of seagulls called overhead and Amar wrapped his arms around me when I shivered from the wind.

“There’s a chance my mom could still be alive.” It was the first time I’d voiced my hopes and it made them seem more real. Concrete. “I still can’t believe she’s a fox shifter and I never knew.” I liked his arms around me and his body next to mine. It made me shiver again, but not from a chill. “If I’m a fox shifter too, wouldn’t have I been able to tell… somehow?”

“Not necessarily.” He turned his head toward me and my hair snagged on his dark stubble. I wondered if his whiskers would tickle if I kissed him.

“Your octopus appears to be more dominant than the fox. I knew a fox spirit shifter—my sister.”

I turned to see his face and he kept his arms around me, but lowered them to my waist. “You have a sister?” Ever since I’d met him, I’d thought of him as a lone soldier. I hadn’t even pictured him with parents, but somehow made or carved like the granite gargoyle his entire life.

“Had. She was captured, tortured and killed before I could rescue her.” The sadness in his voice made my heart clench. “You would have liked her. Her curious nature got her into trouble, but she was brave and kind.”

“I’m sorry for your loss. She sounds like she was amazing.”

He swallowed hard and nodded.

Don’t kiss him… don’t kiss him
. But I couldn’t resist. His grey eyes darkened and there was a sad smile on his lips. Those full lips that lured me in. I brushed my mouth across his and excitement coursed through me as his hands tightened, bringing my body flush with his.