The Shifters (6 page)

C
aitlin grabbed Ryder's arm with a ferocity that she could tell startled him. “Then what
was
he? I want to know
now,
” she demanded—then stopped dead as he put his fingers on her mouth and she felt a tingle in her lips, again that raw, aching electricity.

“Shh,” he said against her face. “We need to get out of here first. That vampire friend of yours will be here any second.”

“He's not my—”

Before she could finish, he was taking her arm and moving her back into the narrow alley between the shops, away from the gathering crowd of police.

The iron gate to the courtyard was padlocked,
but Ryder did something with some kind of tool he pulled from an inside pocket of his leather coat, and the lock clicked open. Once they were through, he reached back through the bars and snapped the lock shut before taking her arm again to move into the darkness of the inner courtyard. This time Caitlin pulled her arm away and grabbed for the tool in his hand.

 

He let her take it, amused, and watched her as she examined it greedily. He could still feel the softness of her lips on his fingertips and entertained the thought of kissing that mouth, of forcing those lush lips open and plunging his tongue into her, hearing her moan and soften under him as he pulled her hips against his….

She looked up from the device, frowning. It was a skeleton key, nothing more than that. “Is it en chanted?”

“Just a little.”

Her eyes narrowed, and he could tell she wanted it. He pressed his advantage. “You can have it—if we can talk.”

She clenched her jaw, but he could tell he had her. “If you talk first,” she agreed sullenly.

“Deal,” he said.

The key got them through two more back doors and a front gate, and then they were on St. Philip Street.

Ryder turned to Caitlin and presented her with the key with a mock bow. She narrowed her eyes again and then snatched it from his hand. To his delight, she pulled a little bag from her cleavage, which he recognized as a gris-gris pouch, a voodoo charm bag, and dropped the key in, before returning the bag to the enticing cleft between her breasts.
First the key and then me,
he thought, and felt himself stir in anticipation.

She suddenly blushed as if she'd read his thoughts. Before she could turn away, he grabbed her hand and felt her pull back from him—but just a little. “Now we talk, that's the deal. How about Maguire's?” he said, hoping the tavern was still there.

She looked startled. “It hasn't been Maguire's for almost a hundred years. It's called the Mississippi River Bottom, now….” She frowned. “How did you know…?” Then she stopped, and after a moment she nodded warily.

The tavern had two entrances—one on the street and one off the side courtyard. Ryder moved through the side gates to the courtyard automatically; that had been the main door when last he'd visited the place.

He looked around curiously. There were neon bar signs hung on the brick, but the building was still the same, and the old twisted tree still grew out of an ancient brick planter, though bigger now than ever.

“Hasn't changed,” he said aloud, approvingly.

“Since when?” she asked, watching him warily.

“Eighteen…” He paused. “Eighteen eighty-four, it was.”

 

Caitlin looked at him, jolted. Shapeshifters weren't immortal, like vampires, but every time they passed through the astral it arrested the aging process, so a shifter who was able to shift often, providing he was able to stay out of other kinds of trouble, could live a long, long life.

If
Mallory was telling the truth—always a big “if” when you were dealing with a shifter—he was very good and had been around for a very long time.
It must be lonely,
she found herself thinking.

He was still lost in reverie. “This used to be a brothel, you know. Sweet little thing named Marie hanged herself from that tree when her sailor man came back in a coffin.”

Another jolt. Caitlin knew that story—it was a staple of the local ghost tours. But Ryder actually sounded as if he'd known her….

“Some guides say you can still feel the energy from—” she started.

But she never got to finish, because he turned to her and said, “Let's find out,” just before he pulled her toward him and kissed her.

Heat flooded through her instantly, from her lips to the very core of her; she felt she'd just burst into
flame. She opened her mouth—to protest or sigh, she didn't know which—and his tongue was inside her mouth, tasting, teasing, entwining with hers, and then plunging, sliding so deep that she lost her balance. He caught her, lifted her up and set her on the low wall around the tree, bending her backward so he could crush her mouth under his. Her back was against the trunk, and he was stepping between her legs, pulling her hips forward against his, as he kissed her, deep and slow and hot, cupping her breasts in his hands. Her nipples strained through her dress against his palms, and now he moaned, and lifted his head to kiss down her neck, biting, sucking, until she lost her breath and turned to jelly inside. Her legs were wrapped around his thighs, and the huge bulge of his arousal was rubbing against her. She heard herself making sounds she'd never made before as he kissed her cleavage, tongued her nipples through the thin cotton fabric, and she could feel him throbbing against her cleft, half inside her even through their clothes.

Someone spoke harshly somewhere near them, a deep, male voice, and Caitlin felt Ryder's warmth move slightly back from her, leaving her dazed and wanting.

She heard her own name, and she looked past Ryder into the dark of the courtyard, too dazed to recognize him at first…and then her heart plummeted.

Jagger.

Caitlin felt a sharp jolt of dismay. She was beyond flustered.
What had he seen?
They'd been practically doing it against the tree. She slipped from the wall, but her legs were so shaky that they barely held her up; her mouth felt bruised, and inside, she was still throbbing.

Beside her, Ryder seemed completely unperturbed, even relaxed. “I believe it's the Vampire DeFarge.”

Jagger took a sharp step forward and pulled Caitlin to his side. “Are you all right?” he demanded. Caitlin nodded, mortified, and saw his concern for her replaced by anger. “Do you realize you just left a crime scene?”

“You know very well if we'd stayed it would have been more trouble for you in the long run,” Ryder said calmly.

Through her embarrassment, Caitlin was becoming aware that the two of them were talking like old—well, not friends, but old enemies, anyway.

“I was watching out for her,” Ryder was saying.

“That's what you call watching out for her?” Jagger said murderously, glancing at the tree.

“That's the pot calling the kettle black, isn't it? I hardly have to tell you about the allure of a Keeper,” Ryder shot back.

Caitlin could feel Jagger's anger flare, and her own
pulse spiked in alarm as she realized the men were a breath away from fighting. “Jagger.
Jagger,
” she repeated sharply. “He knows about the dead man. He's a shapesh—”

“I know who he is.” Jagger bit off the words, his eyes never leaving Ryder's face. “As I recall, you were run out of town on a rail.”

Ryder half smiled, and despite herself Caitlin was fascinated, feeling something ancient and powerful at work. These…beings, who were to all outward appearance men in their prime, had been alive long before even her parents had been born.

“A complete misunderstanding on the part of the girl's family,” Ryder answered Jagger.

Caitlin felt herself freezing up at his words.
That's right,
she told herself, pushing her feelings down hard.
Always remember he's a shifter. That's his nature. Using people and leaving them. Stay away.

“You come back into town and people start dropping dead. That kind of coincidence doesn't sit well with me,” the detective said icily.

“No coincidence at all,” Ryder retorted. “We have a mutual problem, and I'm on the job.” Jagger eyed him suspiciously, but Caitlin sensed a hesitation. Apparently Ryder did, too. “We might get farther by pooling information,” he suggested. “Our friend on the other block wasn't the first death, was he? And
the deaths are presenting as overdoses, right? You're probably thinking a bad batch of meth.”

Now it was Caitlin's turn to eye Ryder suspiciously. That was exactly what Jagger had said to her. It set off alarm bells.

“It's not meth,” Ryder said.

“What, then?” Jagger said, the words clipped.

“I want to see the bodies,” Ryder said.

 

Even as they were walking through the doors of the morgue, Caitlin had no clear idea of how they'd ended up there. Saying “yes” to Ryder was the last thing she had expected Jagger to do; she could barely wrap her mind around it.

The medical examiner's office was in the Central Business District, a five-story brick building.

The halls were eerie at night, shining linoleum reflecting the blue light from the streetlights outside the windows. The vampire, the shapeshifter and the Keeper walked together through the watery light.

Caitlin was uncomfortably aware of Ryder's body beside hers; the hall wasn't narrow, but he was walking so close beside her that their arms and thighs were constantly brushing.
Getting in my space,
she thought resentfully.
Imprinting.

The truth was, her body was still buzzing from their…“kiss” didn't even begin to cover it. She could feel him electrically beside her, and she could smell him in her hair, smell the leather of his jacket on her
skin. He looked at her through the reflected blue light, and she turned to fire in the darkness, remembering his mouth hot and demanding on hers, his hands slipping over her breasts….

Jagger stopped in front of a door and unlocked it, pushing it open for Caitlin to step through. The room on the other side was chilly and uncomfortable—grim, dark, with two walls of lockers.
Meat lockers,
Caitlin thought morbidly, which, in the end, was exactly what they were.

Jagger flipped on the lights, a stark, too-white glow of fluorescence, checked a slip of paper in his hand and walked to a locker midway down the wall. He opened it and slid out the drawer. Caitlin and Ryder moved closer, and the three of them looked down at the stiff, gray-fleshed corpse.

“Victim number four. Stephen Boylan, a tourist from Biloxi. Car salesman. In town with his wife, celebrating their sixth anniversary. Dropped dead on Bourbon, October 20. Coroner ruled meth amphet amine overdose.”

Ryder bent over the body, all focus now. “No meth here. Normal, healthy-looking teeth, hair, skin. No scabs or sores. No malnutrition.” He took the corpse's head in both hands and examined it, as well. “No irritation of nasal tissues.”

“Those are indicators of long-term use. You
wouldn't necessarily see that in a first-time user,” Jagger said tightly.

Ryder looked across the corpse at Jagger. “What about previous victims? Any of those indicators?”

“No,” Jagger answered.

“And the chemicals in the tox screens are close but just don't add up, right?” Ryder said, his eyes steady on Jagger's face.

“No,” Jagger said slowly. “They don't add up.”

“What are the chances that…four?—now five?—tourists in a row decide to try crank for the first time and all end up OD'ing? Within two weeks?”

“Not good,” Jagger agreed—not happily, Caitlin thought.

“And what did the coroner say about the levels of adrenaline?”

Caitlin saw Jagger stiffen.

“Wildly high,” the detective admitted, his reluctance obvious. “He thought it was an anomaly.”

“An anomaly that just happens to present in every single one of the victims?” Ryder asked.

Jagger was silent, and Caitlin could tell Ryder's words grated on him.

Ryder glanced at Caitlin, then back to Jagger. “We saw that last one die,” he said softly. “It looked like his heart was about to explode out of his chest.”

Now Jagger looked to Caitlin—for confirmation, she realized. She nodded silently.

Ryder nodded, too. “And that, right there, is your main clue. That adrenaline overdose is what happens when a walk-in leaves a body.”

“A
walk-in,” Jagger said sharply.

At the same time Caitlin demanded, “What's a walk-in?”

“Other cultures have other names for them. Devas. Dervishes. Shadow people.
Qlippoth
.” Ryder's voice echoed in the chilled room. “They're disembodied beings, a formless archetypal energy that can take over human or animal bodies. It's an amorphous energy that craves human form, but once it's actually in a body, all it does is indulge its senses and wreak havoc, burning out the body so quickly that the human host dies of stroke or heart attack, just as in a massive drug overdose.”

Caitlin's earlier distraction had disappeared; she was completely focused on the eeriness of what she was hearing and the gravity of the situation.

Ryder looked to Jagger. For a moment all jockeying for position was gone, and the shifter spoke colleague to colleague. “For some reason these particular entities cause a biochemical change in the human host that presents with symptoms of a meth overdose: massive adrenaline jolt, heart failure—but without quite the same resultant chemical residue. This is what you have to know. Drug and alcohol use make it easy for walk-ins to take over. They can most easily get into a human being when that person is weak or in an altered state of some sort: drunk, high, suicidal—or in the middle of sex.”

He didn't look at Caitlin as he said the last, but she could feel his words sizzle through her body.

“So that makes pretty much everyone on Bourbon Street a target,” Jagger was saying.

“Give the man—excuse me—give the vampire an ice-cold goblet of blood,” Ryder said. Jagger gave him a lethal look but didn't rise to the bait as Ryder continued. “Bourbon Street is as enticing to a walk-in as it is to a pickpocket or any other predator. Easy prey. And the…excesses of the arena make it easy for them not to be noticed by anyone around them. Weirdness abounds.”

Jagger's ascetic face was deep in thought. “What
are they doing here? Why New Orleans, suddenly?”

“They're riding the trade winds,” Ryder answered. “There's a whole group of them that are linked up together by now. I've been tracking them from Africa. They blew through the Bahamas, caused some pretty bad damage over late summer and early fall. Do some research into drug-related deaths and you'll see—same pattern, spread out over various islands and jurisdictions.”

Caitlin could tell from his expression that Jagger would be following up on that immediately.

Ryder continued. “These are not normally the most conscious of beings, but there's one in their midst which seems to have taken control of the herd. The others have for—whatever reason—coalesced around that one entity.” Caitlin was watching his face intently and saw that he darkened as he spoke. There was something more personal there than he was admitting to; she could feel it in the weight of his voice as well as see it in his expression. Ryder glanced at her briefly, as if feeling her scrutiny, then looked back to Jagger. “They're following this one, and I think ‘it' is specifically targeting New Orleans because the feeding is so good. As you said, if you're looking for drunk, stoned or humping, Bourbon Street is the place to be. Especially on—” Caitlin felt a chill. “Halloween,” she murmured,
finishing his sentence. Halloween in New Orleans was by no means the month-long party that Mardi Gras was, but as revels tended to do, it brought out all of NOLA's bacchanalian fervor.

“Three days away,” she said, feeling ill.

“And every drunk, stoned tourist in town is up on Bourbon Street for the night,” Jagger concluded grimly. The three of them went silent, looking down at the corpse in front of them.

“We have to move fast,” Ryder summed up.

“What is this ‘we,' Kemosabe?” Jagger asked him, his tone just this side of scathing.

Caitlin was jolted back to the present, surprised at his sudden vehemence.

“What the hell do you care what happens to this city?” Jagger went on.

Ryder's face closed like a shutter. “That's none of your business, vampire.”

“It is if we're going to work together, shifter,” Jagger replied, equally cold.

“I have a job to do,” Ryder said evenly. “This city is where it led me. I have no attachment here one way or the other.”

Caitlin felt as if she'd been stabbed in the heart at his words, and the feeling was frightening.
I can't trust him. He doesn't care. It's all a job for him.
She scrambled for detachment, to make herself cold.
We
haven't done anything but kiss. Why should I feel torn apart?

“And who hired you for this ‘job'?” Jagger demanded.

Ryder didn't budge. “That's my business.”

“Then we're done here, aren't we?” Jagger said. The two of them faced off, stony and implacable.

Oh, good grief,
Caitlin thought.
This is why nothing ever gets done in the world. Men.

Even if neither of the men she was now looking at was a man at all, technically speaking.

Jagger turned on his heel to go, a move of dismissal. But Ryder had one more trick up his sleeve.

“You're not quite done, vampire.”

There was such power in his voice that Jagger turned back. Ryder waited an infuriatingly long moment before he continued.

“I think that entity went after Cait specifically.”

There was instant, electric tension in the chilled room, a palpable blend of Jagger's disbelief and Caitlin's sudden jolt of fear.

“There was only one
entity
going after Cait, as far as I could see,” Jagger responded, his voice dripping sarcasm.

Despite her apprehension, Caitlin felt outrage at the men talking about her as if she weren't even there. But before she could protest, Ryder was snapping back at Jagger.

“Joke about it if you like,” Ryder said, and his tone could have frozen water. “But once inside a body, walk-ins generally only care about their own pleasure, and the only things they notice are what's right in front of them. They resort to violence only if someone or something is standing in their way. But that possessed tourist was stalking Cait—he followed her from Bourbon.”

Jagger was motionless, processing. Caitlin's stomach was roiling, remembering the force of the tourist's body barreling into her, knocking her down, the hands around her neck, choking the life from her….

Ryder's eyes were boring into Jagger's.

“So consider. If these entities want full reign of the city, and if they, or at least their leader, are aware of the Keepers, who do you think they're going to want to neutralize first?”

Even through her own emotional reaction, Caitlin admired how Ryder seemed to have read Jagger, whose Achilles' heel was Fiona. If there was anything that would keep Jagger engaged…

But in her own head, Caitlin was a million miles away already. Let the men fight it out on their own. She knew exactly what she needed to do next.

I have to talk to Danny. If we're dealing with discarnate entities, I need someone who can look
into the astral and see what's really going on. If anyone can find these things…

She felt someone watching her, and looked up sharply to see Ryder looking at her, as if he could hear her thoughts. And for the first time she realized there was a good possibility that he
could
read her thoughts, or something like it. Not all shifters were psychic, but the more developed their other skills, the more likely they were to pick up on information while passing through the astral.

How psychic is he? Like Danny? If he were half, or even a quarter, as adept, he could be dangerous to her….

“All right,” Jagger said, drawing Caitlin's attention back to the moment. “All right. What would you suggest we do next?”

Caitlin could tell how much it cost him to ask the question, and she had to admire his willingness to ask.

“If we can get hold of one of the walk-ins while it's in a body, before the host dies, I may be able to bind it and force it to talk. We need to track down the lead entity.”

Caitlin could see Jagger's mind working. “That means patrolling Bourbon,” he said, and reached into a suit coat pocket. “I need to make a phone call,” he said, and Caitlin could tell by the quiet anxiety in his voice that he was thinking of Fiona. Even as he
speed dialed, he was stepping outside the room for privacy.

The instant the door closed, Ryder turned on Caitlin. “What were you thinking, just then?”

“Just when?” she asked innocently, and thought in triumph,
So he
can't
read my thoughts, not precisely.

“You know very well what I'm talking about,” he said roughly, and in two steps he was towering over her, taking her by the wrists. “What are you holding back?”

She tried to jerk away from him, but he simply pulled her against him, holding her wrists behind her back, his arms encircling her waist, immobilizing her.

“This isn't a game we're playing here,” he said.

“I'm not playing,” she snapped at him, and tried to push him away.

“Neither am I,” he said, as he continued to hold her against him, legs against legs, hips against hips.

She could feel the live heat of him, warming her body to the core, and his sheer raw power. There was no question that she would not go free until he decided to let her go, and as he stared down at her, Caitlin felt herself turning to liquid, knowing he was going to kiss her again.

Instead he released her and moved a step away—just as Jagger pushed back in through the door. He
stopped in the doorway, looking at the two of them, the distance between them obviously not fooling him for an instant.

“Your sisters are fine,” he told Caitlin in a clipped voice. “I'm taking you home now.”

Caitlin was about to protest that she wasn't a baby, and how dare he, then realized that would only make her sound like the baby she claimed not to be, and be sides, her alternative was staying with Ryder, and she didn't want to talk to him, much less…everything else that could and obviously
would
happen if they were alone together.

“Good,” she said, and shot Ryder a superior look.

Jagger held the door for her, and she marched out of it. Ryder followed. In the dark hall outside, Jagger locked the door behind them, then turned to Ryder.

“I suggest we meet for breakfast, and you can fill all the Keepers in on what you know.”

“I'd be delighted to meet the family,” Ryder said with a straight face, but his eyes slid to Caitlin.

She felt herself tremble again, and instantly was furious with herself for even responding.

A shifter. The last person—make that nonperson—you can trust. Get a grip.

She stuck close to Jagger all the way out of the building.