A Shift in Tides [PAPERBACK]

Was there anything better than taking a nap while soaking in the afternoon sunlight? Winters on the Washington coast were rather dreary, and it felt like it’d been weeks since the sun had shone here, but while it was cold outside, our apartment was nice and toasty. I’d decided that I’d more than earned some naptime after finishing a gig this morning.

I stretched, arching my back and letting my claws shoot out of my paws. My golden-brown feline coat practically shimmered beneath the rays of sunlight beaming through the floor-to-ceiling windows. I was absolutely stunning in my feline form, if I did say so myself.

Apparently, Elisa wasn’t impressed by my gorgeousness because she had not only decided to interrupt my nap but had been pestering me to shift back to my less amazing, but still very nice, human form for the past ten minutes so we could talk.

Technically, I was telepathic, so I could speak to her in this form, but I was weak in that department, and Elisa was too. It also required more work than I was willing to put in at the moment.

Because again . . . naptime.

“You’re being ridiculous!” Elisa growled. I raised my head, tilting it slightly to the side as I peered at her. It took a lot to annoy the well-composed young vampire, but apparently, I was doing it. Go me.

She narrowed her dark blue eyes and pulled something out of her back pocket before placing it onto the floor directly in front of me. I hissed and batted the cell phone away.

“It’s the twenty-first century, Nemain.” She planted her hands on her hips. “You spend enough time in the human realm that you need a phone.”

I stared at her before slowly blinking and then laying my head back down onto the floor. Maybe she’d go away if I ignored her.

“I know it won’t work outside of the human realm, and you’d probably break it or destroy it anyway,” Elisa said, and I heard her move to crouch directly in front of me. My tail twitched several times in annoyance. So much for the hope she’d go away. “But while you’re here, you can use it. Even if you just leave it in the apartment and check for messages.”

That’s what the mirror’s for. I shoved the thought out, letting my annoyance drip through as well. Cell phones are for humans.

“So is sushi!” she snapped. “And you love that! Plus, those dojos you’ve been visiting lately are also human.”
Food and violence, I countered. That’s different. Besides, most of those dojos aren’t run by humans.
“You’re setting a bad example for Finn.”

I let out a frustrated growl and moved to a more upright position like a sphinx. The concentration required for me to use telepathy had chased away all lingering sleepiness, and now I was fully awake. Goodbye, wonderful nap.

Elisa reached out to where the phone rested and placed it back in front of me. Once again, I batted it away, and an enraged hiss poured out of the vampire girl as she glared at me before reaching out and booping me on the nose.

“You’re almost four hundred years old!” She booped me again as I stared at her in stunned silence, unable to move at the pure audacity of her actions. “Act like it!”
Elisa smirked at my shocked expression, but her eyes widened when I twisted to my feet and the muscles around my hindquarters tensed.

Vampires are fast. Shifters are faster.

I pounced, pinning Elisa to the floor as she shrieked while trying to get away, and the offensive piece of human technology went flying further across the hardwood floor. Hopefully it slammed into something and shattered.

HOW DARE YOU BOOP ME!

Elisa fought in vain to get away, but even with her impressive strength, I weighed nearly five hundred pounds in this form, so she stood no chance. Chuffs of amusement rumbled up my throat as I set about punishing her for daring to not only interrupt my nap but freaking smacking me on the nose.

When Bryn walked in five minutes later, I still had Elisa pinned to the ground and was licking her face while she squirmed and screamed about cat drool.

“So,” the auburn-haired valkyrie drawled, “I see the conversation about getting Nemain to use the cell phone is going well.”

“Help me!” Elisa yelled as she desperately tried to move her face away from my tongue.

“You did this to yourself, babe.” Bryn shrugged and plopped down on the couch, adjusting her wings until she found a comfy position. Then she propped her feet up on the coffee table and proceeded to watch us like we were her favorite show. “Besides, this is good practice for how to deal with an enraged shifter.”

“You’ll pay for this treachery!” Elisa vowed as she glared at her girlfriend. I took advantage of her distraction and swiped my tongue over her cheek all the way up to her hairline, making sure to get a little extra drool there. “UGGGHHHH!” Elisa wailed as Bryn cackled from the couch.

The apartment door opened again, and I raised my head to glance at who was coming in. Magos. My shoulders slumped. He would definitely ruin my fun.
Magos paused, taking in the scene before he slowly closed the door behind him. He was dressed in a well-tailored suit of daemon make. The fit downplayed the broadness of his shoulders and chest, and the dark blue complemented his rich, dark brown skin. His braids were long enough to reach his shoulders now, and he was wearing them loose today instead of pulled back.

“Really, Nemain?” He gave me a disapproving look. “You are almost four hundred years old.”

Elisa snickered beneath me, and I smacked her lightly with my paw, keeping the claws contained so I didn’t scratch her.

“The cell phone is a good idea.” He moved to the kitchen and pulled some mugs out. “Shift back. We have a few things to discuss. I’ll make you some coffee.”

After giving Elisa one last sloppy kiss, I padded across the living room and down the hallway to my bedroom. Magic rushed through me as I called on the shift, and bones crunched while fur receded until I was back in my human form. It didn’t hurt but was mildly uncomfortable and left my skin feeling tingly.

I yanked open drawers as I tried to find some clean clothing. It’d been at least a few weeks since I’d done laundry, and I was running low on everything and was apparently completely out of underwear. An annoyed sigh slipped out of me. Gods, I hated doing laundry. 
Finally accepting commando as my only option, I tugged on a pair of stretchy, soft, black pants and a dark grey muscle shirt that read, “Shifters Do It Better.” It’d been a gift from Misha, who had also gotten one for Mikhail that read, “Vampires Do It Better.” Unlike Elisa, who tried to keep the peace, Misha and Damon were absolutely instigators.

When I returned to the main living area, Elisa stalked towards me and shoved the cell phone into my hand. With one last parting glare, she spun on her heel and walked out, mumbling something about showering for the next hour.

Bryn laughed under her breath as she slid onto the barstool next to me. We looked at Magos expectantly, and he shook his head, a small grin playing across his lips before sliding two mugs in our direction.

“See, things would have gone better for Elisa if she had offered me coffee before launching into her argument.” I took a sip and savored the sweet foam layer before the hot liquid broke through. My version of coffee was basically fifty percent sweetened cream with the coffee layer on the bottom. It was absolutely delicious, and Magos always made it perfectly.

I glanced over at Bryn’s mug and let out an exaggerated gasp. “Black coffee?! You monster!”

“Too much sugar is bad for you,” she lectured.

“You’re a valkyrie.” I pointed at my chest. “I’m a shifter. Sugar intake is one of the few things we don’t have to worry about.”

She grunted in response but didn’t argue. I rolled my eyes. I supposed it was only a matter of time before she picked up Sigrun’s habit of grunting as a form of communication.

“How did the job go?” Magos asked from where he was leaning back against the kitchen counter.

“Fine.” I shrugged. “The dragons seem to be settling in well there, but Pele isn’t comfortable with establishing a permanent gateway until we’re sure there are no devourers left. The ones that took over that realm are crafty sons of bitches and can camouflage extremely well, so it’s hard to know what their remaining numbers are.”

“Hmm,” Magos hummed as he took another sip of coffee. “We might have to find a way to draw them out.”
I wrinkled my nose before drinking more of my sugary, caffeinated deliciousness. It’d taken some trial and error, but we’d finally found an uninhabited realm that worked well for the dragons and had helped them move there six months ago. It probably had a name once, but the previous inhabitants had been wiped out by devourers.

The dragons named it Acleonia and had been setting about clearing out the remaining devourer population that had dwindled without a reliable food source.
Ideally, we would have been able to tackle the devourer problem first, but we’d been pressed for time. Hundreds of dragons had come with us when we’d fled their home realm, and we’d had to temporarily house them in the forest outside of Emerald Bay. Over ten thousand had remained in the original dragon realm and fortified themselves in the remaining cities as the devious and powerful devourers of that realm, known as the trakdi, laid a siege against them.

Moving them from one realm full of devourers to another slightly less full of devourers hadn’t been anybody’s first plan. But beggars couldn’t be choosers, and while the devourers in the new realm were crafty and vicious, they weren’t nearly as lethal as the trakdi of the dragon’s home realm.

It helped that the dragons were more than happy to hunt them down. Like me, they were predators and enjoyed the hunt. The problem was they also had other things that required their attention. They were busy building new cities to provide housing for everyone plus figuring out food to support their large population.
Pele was helping to orchestrate everything and, as a sign of good faith from the Daemon Assembly, had arranged for food, clothing, and anything else the dragons needed to get on their feet in a new realm. The bad history between the dragons and daemons was still there, but at least both sides were working well together and healing from their traumatic past.

However, until the devourer problem was solved, only temporary gateways could be used to get to the realm, which meant either myself or Badb had to open and close them. Pele had enlisted my help in hunting down the devourers, at least in the immediate areas where the dragons were constructing their cities. Being part-devourer myself, I was able to sense their presence and locate them far easier than the dragons, who had to rely on sight and smell.

My stomach rumbled loudly, causing Magos and Bryn to glance at me before looking at each other. Some sort of nonverbal communication happened between them before Bryn got up and started pulling stuff from the fridge. Magos took a seat on the stool she’d just vacated, and I slid him a glance out of the corner of my eye.

“Did you guys just do some sort of psychic rock, paper, scissors for who had to make lunch?” I pursed my lips. “Why wasn’t I involved in that?”

“Because we’ve all agreed that you’re banned from cooking,” Bryn said smoothly.

“Oh?” I leaned back and crossed my arms. “And when was this decided?”

“When you almost set the kitchen on fire while boiling water for pasta,” Magos replied as he fought to keep a smile off his face.

I thought about it. It had taken days for the smell of smoke to get out of the apartment, and if they all wanted to cook for me, who was I to say no?

“Okay, fair enough.” I went back to sipping my coffee while Bryn threw together some tuna melts. 

We ate our late lunch, Bryn joining us once she’d finished making her sandwich, and relished the peace and quiet of the apartment.

I’d never admit it out loud, but I did actually enjoy the chaos the vampire brats had brought into our lives. I wasn’t exactly a nurturing parental type, but Elisa played the role of elder sister well and kept everyone in line. Misha and Damon were both nineteen now and took care of themselves. Between all of us, we shared the responsibility of watching over Isabeau and Finn.
Still, it was nice to get moments of companionable silence, especially when those moments came with a delicious sandwich.

“Where’s Mikhail?” Magos asked, peering around me down the hallway to where my bedroom was. “I figured he was resting, but it’s not like him not to come out for food.”

I shoved the remaining quarter of the tuna sandwich into my mouth. Oh noes. Mouth is full. Can’t answer.
Magos’ bright, copper-colored eyes focused on me, brimming with suspicion. “I know he left with you this morning for that job. Where is my nephew, Nemain?”
I blinked innocently at him as Bryn laughed softly under her breath. When Magos continued to stare at me, I sighed and hopped off the stool. Then I walked over to the center of the living room, between where we’d grouped together a bunch of couches and the sparring mat, and raised my hand before tugging it down again.

My fingers twitched at my side, but I held them there. I was getting better about opening gateways without directing the magic with my hand. The speed at which I could open them was increasing too, but it was easy for me to slip into old habits, especially when Badb wasn’t around to scold me.

Six feet in front of me, the air shimmered before snapping open and revealing a heavily forested area with a crystal clear lake glimmering in the background. I’d dipped my toe into it earlier this morning, and it was way too cold, even for me.

Magos moved to stand behind me, and we waited . . . and waited . . . 

“Are you sure he’s there?” he asked when Mikhail failed to appear.

“Yes.” I shifted from foot to foot. My awareness of Mikhail’s existence had only become more intense the past few months. It’d started when my magic had begun to wind itself around him more and more, almost like it was flirting. It drove me nuts, but sometimes I was just too tired to pull it back, and it never harmed him, to my dismay.

On top of that, Mikhail had been feeding from me regularly. As a vampire, he needed blood on a regular basis. I told him he could drink mine because it would make him stronger and he needed to build up a tolerance to the side effects anyway, in case we were ever in a situation where he absolutely had to drink from me. Shifter blood was like an aphrodisiac to vampires, which Mikhail had learned the hard way the first time he’d drunk from me and we’d ended up making out against a tree.

But the other reason I allowed him to drink from me was I had been finding myself feeling more and more territorial over him, which wasn’t like me. Logically, I knew that while vampires enjoyed sex while feeding, they could easily separate the two. But the idea of Mikhail feeding from anyone else, especially if it were a regular thing with someone else, sent a surge of jealousy and irrational possessiveness through me.
I was pretty sure he suspected this and was trying to get me to admit it, but so far, I had successfully danced around the issue.

Between my magic being weird and the regular blood drinking, I could feel Mikhail. His physical presence. His mood. His hunger. I’d never experienced this with anyone before, and it scared the shit out of me.
Things between Mikhail and me had gone from zero to a hundred, and some days, we dealt with that really well . . . and some days, we didn’t.

I loved Mikhail, and he loved me. We both chose this, but that didn’t mean we didn’t still drive each other crazy and that I didn’t leave him behind in a realm when he pissed me off while screaming, “Find your own fucking ride home, you bloodsucking asshole!”
Because I was a godsdamn adult.

Bryn walked up to stand at my other side, sipping a fresh cup of black coffee like the psychopath she was.
“Do we need to send a rescue party or something?” She took a few steps forward until she was leaning through the gateway and looking around. “Isn’t this part of Acleonia still crawling with— FUCK!”

Magos and I leapt back when Bryn’s golden wings snapped open in alarm as she stumbled back, spilling coffee everywhere and almost tripping over the giant monster head that was rolling through the living room. The sleek scales were deep brown, and the bottom half of the short, powerful beak was missing.

Mist swirled in the air before darting through the gateway and solidifying into a very pissed off vampire. I smirked as I closed the gateway and watched Mikhail snatch the head off the floor by the large ridges that ran down the back, causing more blood and fleshy bits to drip onto the floor. Magos had a pained expression on his face as he looked at the ever-expanding mess, but instead of chiding Mikhail about it, he just grabbed Bryn by the arm and pulled her back.

“Tell me something, shifter . . .” Mikhail said in a low, threatening voice as he stalked closer to me. It probably said a lot about me that instead of being scared or intimidated, I felt a thrill run up my spine. “When you decided to run off and leave me behind, did you know there was a second one of these things?”

He shook the head at me, and my lips curled as specks of blood landed on my cheek. I wiped them off and grinned wickedly. “Yes.”

Mikhail stepped closer, his twilight eyes practically glowing. Okay, maybe it had been a bit of a dickish move to leave his ass behind in that realm . . . especially when I’d known there was a devourer sneaking up behind him. But in my defense, he had been really annoying me and was more than capable of dealing with one measly devourer on his own.

“That’s what I thought,” he said calmly, some of the anger bleeding out of his face. Alarm slammed into me, and I tried to leap backwards and create more space between us, but I was too slow. Mikhail dropped into a low kick and knocked my feet out from under me. He tried to slam the decapitated head down onto my chest, but I slapped it out of his hands as he straddled my hips.

Bryn’s startled, “Oof!” told me where the head had landed.

“What’s the matter, vampire?” I snarled. “Are you getting slow in your old age? One devourer too much for you?”

“We were in the middle of a conversation!” He punched me hard in my solar plexus, and I gasped. Despite struggling to breathe, I shoved my hips up and twisted. Mikhail tried to jump to his feet, but I reached out and yanked on his right ankle, causing him to crash to the floor.

“Come on, Bryn,” Magos said tiredly. “There’s no point in talking to them until they get this out of their system.”

“Oh, this won’t take long,” I growled as I flipped over to sit on Mikhail before hammering a fist into his chest. The bastard vanished in a puff of mist, and my hand slammed into the hardwood floor. “Damn it! Quit doing that!”

“I’m not cleaning this mess up,” Magos declared before ushering Bryn out the door and closing it behind them.
My leg snapped out, and I caught Mikhail in the stomach as he materialized in front of me. He snatched my foot and twisted, but I went with it, pushing myself off the ground and kicking out with my free foot as I rotated in the air.

“Fuck!” he swore as my kick connected with his head and we both fell to the floor. I spun to land on the balls of my feet, my fingertips pressing into the floor as I flipped my long braid back over my shoulder. Unlike me, Mikhail had landed on his ass. “Have I ever told you how annoying your feline reflexes are?”

“You might have mentioned it once or twice.” I cocked my head to the side. “Although, you’ve also mentioned how much you appreciate my flexibility, which also comes from my shifter side. You can’t have one without the other, love.”

We both rose to our feet. Mikhail wiped away the blood leaking from his busted lip as heat flared in his eyes. “You’ve cost me a lot of blood today. I think I’m going to need a top up before the party tonight.”

I gave him a feral grin. “Come and get it.”