Beauty and the Shapeshifter (Evil Rising Book 5) Read online

  Ella just stared blankly for a moment before what he said truly sunk in. “Rock what?”

  “Rock. Fucker.” He made sure to carefully enunciate each word, even though he knew she heard each one perfectly the first time. “As in, so dumb, you’d fuck a rock. Probably end up with a bruised dick. Maybe broken. To be honest, I’m not really sure what would happen.”

  A series of increasingly disturbing images crossed through Ella’s mind. Before thinking better of it, she asked, “Is there a hole in the rock?”

  The man threw his head back and a deep, throaty laughter filled the room. “Oh, shit. I never even thought about that!”

  “Well, thanks to you, I have. And I can never unthink it.” The corners of her mouth started to curl into a smile, but she stopped herself.

  She stared down at the aged wood floors and made her way around the man.

  “I’m Dean,” he said as she walked past.

  She ignored him and entered the kitchen, stomach growling. Of course she was hungry. Leave it to her to think of food even at a time like this. She should be curled up into a little ball in her room, freaking out—not thinking about breakfast.

  As hungry as she was, a frozen burrito didn’t sound appealing at the moment. There had to be something else to eat. She heard Dean behind her but didn’t look. Let him stand awkwardly. See if she cared.

  The pantry had a couple of promising items like cereal and granola bars, but mostly it was chips and junk food. Not that most cereals were that healthy anyway.

  She eyed the box that probably had more sugar per serving than a slice of cake. What the heck? If there was ever an excuse to binge, it was being kidnapped.

  Could this be considered kidnapping? She’d offered to go with him, but she was under duress. Was there legal precedent for this? Not that it mattered. It wasn’t as though she could press charges.

  She grabbed the box and made her way to the fridge, hoping for some fresh milk. Bingo!

  She turned to search for a bowl and Dean was already fishing one out from the cabinets. She walked past his outstretched hand and grabbed her own bowl. He looked down at the empty dish and shrugged, setting it back on the counter as Ella sat at the small table.

  “So what are we doing today?” he asked in that same cheery voice.

  “Taking me home?”

  Dean shook his head. “Come on. You don’t want to leave. You just got here. It’s like a paid vacation.”

  Ella angrily poured her cereal, never before realizing it was possible to angrily pour cereal. She slammed the box on the table. “I’m not getting paid. In fact, I’m probably going to lose my job. So, thanks for the reminder.” She poured the milk, and Dean carefully grabbed the carton from her before she could slam it down too.

  “I wouldn’t worry about money. Lucian will take care of you.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Great. I can be his little pet he can dress up however he likes. I had plans, you know. I was going to be getting a house and a dog and finally live on my own. Now I have babysitters who may or may not be human.”

  “Not human,” clarified Dean.

  “We’ll see.” She’d gone over the events of last night a thousand times in her head and hadn’t been able to come up with one rational explanation for the things she’d seen Lucian do. That didn’t mean she was willing to believe he was some sort of monster. Metaphorical monster, sure. That she could believe.

  “What kind of dog?” asked Dean, pulling her from her thoughts.

  “Hmm? Oh, nothing special. Just a mutt.”

  “I’ve met lots of mutts. Usually they’re pretty special.” Dean grabbed a breakfast pastry from the pantry and sat across from her. He chowed down without bothering to heat it.

  “You like dogs?” If they truly were inhuman, wouldn’t dogs sense it or something?

  “Who doesn’t?”

  Ella shook her head at the question. “Lots of people don’t like dogs.”

  He just shrugged. “Whatever you say. So, a small dog? One you can ride to the store? You have to have some idea in your head.”

  “Well, I volunteer at the shelter. There’s this guy that’s been there for seven months and he’s the friendliest dog. He’s got this bright red coat and the ears that start to stand up, but flip over at the last minute and squinty eyes that make him look like he’s stoned all the time.” Ella frowned and looked at her cereal. She’d probably said too much. He was trying to bond with her. Become her friend.

  But he wasn’t a friend. He was her guard.

  She pushed the bowl away and stood. “I’m going back upstairs.”

  “It’s boring up there. I’m here to show you a good time! You like video games?”

  Ella narrowed her eyes. “Do I look like the video game type?”

  “I don’t judge based on appearance. And, as a matter of fact, that look you’re giving me screams ‘first-person shooter.’”

  Ella continued staring, letting her eyes tell him exactly how ridiculous the idea was.

  “You can pretend you’re shooting Lucian.” He grinned.

  Of all the things Lucian expected to hear as he walked down the stairs, it wasn’t the sound of Ella screaming at the television.

  “That was a clean shot! How is he not dead?” She threw the Xbox controller on the couch cushion between her and Dean, watching helplessly as her animated character fell to the ground. Large bloody holes tore up the soldier’s head.

  Dean laughed at her predicament. “You’ll get the hang of it.”

  “No, I got it. Point and shoot. That’s exactly what I did, and the little aim-y thing told me I was shooting him in the head, but guess what? I’m the one dead!”

  Lucian stared between the two of them, trying to figure out what the hell he was looking at.

  “Morning, sunshine.” Dean reloaded the level.

  Ella stiffened as she realized Dean wasn’t speaking to her, but pointedly ignored him.

  Even though he knew her fear was justified, he couldn’t resist the urge to mess with her a bit. “You don’t seem like the video game type.”

  She kept her gaze firmly locked on the TV. “Some people don’t judge others based on looks alone.”

  “Or else you’d have people thinking you were Miss America all the time, right?”

  Ella’s shoulders tensed even more and Dean’s eyes bulged. “Oh my God! You’re a beauty queen!”

  Lucian threw his head back and laughed. “Seriously?”

  She rolled her eyes. “I was a pageant girl. I don’t know why you’re both laughing. There’s nothing funny about it.”

  Dean looked back to Lucian. “Remind me to Google this later.”

  “Go for it. All you’ll get is a few pictures of me looking great in some ball gowns.”

  “No bikini?” asked Lucian. That earned him a look of disgust from Ella.

  “Don’t you dare Google me just so you can see me in a swimsuit.”

  He held his hands up in surrender. “If you insist.”

  She sighed and turned away from him again.

  This really would be an uphill battle, but he wasn’t making things any easier by baiting her. “Ella, I need to see you over here.”

  Her back went back to ramrod straight position at the sudden order. After a slight hesitation, she stood and faced him. He knew she’d be afraid of him, but it was frustrating to see her so jumpy at the slightest word.

  And she probably wouldn’t be any happier with him after what he was about to do.

  He strode to his study, leaving her to follow him.

  She stood at the threshold to the room for a moment before she entered.

  “I’m not going to bite.”

  “Right. Because you’ve given me no reason at all to fear you,” she said in a sardonic tone.

  Instead of pointlessly defending himself, he held his hand out to a chair next to him. “Sit.”

  She plopped herself down, looking more like a surly teen than the beauty queen she apparently was. Even
surly, she was a knockout. Her hair was tangled and her eyes showed just how little sleep she’d gotten, but when she looked up at him with those big, brown eyes, he had to remind himself how to breathe.

  And now he was going to make her hate him even more. “Are you afraid of needles?”

  She scooted away from him on the chair. “I’m afraid of you and I’m not a big fan of needles. I sure as heck don’t want those two things mixing.”

  He tried to put on a comforting expression, but had a feeling it wasn’t working. “I’ve done this plenty of times before. I just need to get some blood from you to have analyzed. It should only take a minute.”

  “A minute of you stabbing me with a needle,” she clarified.

  “This was the deal. I’m not going to need too much, but I do need to find out what makes you different.”

  “If I only need to do a couple tests for you every once in a while, why can’t I just stay home?”

  Lucian reached into his drawer for the supplies Dean had brought with him the previous night. “I need to keep you safe.”

  She let out a snort of laughter. “Right. The only one I’m really in danger from is you.”

  Lucian tightened his lips. “We have enemies. If they know we might be able to bear children again, they will try to kill you.”

  She raised a brow. “Really? Are these enemies monsters too? Or just plain old humans?”

  “You aren’t going to like the answer.”

  “I haven’t liked any so far.”

  “At the moment, the greatest threat is the vampires.”

  Silence hung thick in the air between them as she shook her head and looked away from him. “You’re so full of crap,” she muttered.

  “Believe what you want. Give me your arm.”

  Her eyes shot him daggers as she set her arm, palm up, on the wooden desk on her right. He tied the tourniquet around her bicep and turned for the rest of the kit.

  “So what did you do to piss off the vampires?”

  “Well, it’s not all vampires. Just some of them.” He pulled out the needle and Ella shuddered. Shit. She really was afraid of needles. He couldn’t make it painless, but he could talk her through it.

  “When the Earth was created, it was intended to be a magic-less realm. It was going great, but every once in a while some creature, or monster as you’d call it, would sneak in. The ‘powers that be’ would allow the occasional intruder, but the biggest threat was when a faction of the vampires forced their way in.”

  He pushed the needle into a vein with the last word. Ella hissed at the sting but stayed extra still. “Who are ‘the powers that be’?”

  “Angels. Silent beings of great power that watch over Earth. Very few have ever seen them, but one of the most powerful vampires just married a half angel, so we have learned a little more about their race.”

  Ella frowned. “Wait—a half angel married a vampire?”

  Lucian mentally grinned. He’d gotten her distracted, and the blood draw would be over in a few seconds. “It’s a long story. Anyway, the angels stopped the vampire invasion and agreed to let them stay, but they erased all memories of the vampires’ original homeland.

  “Well, now the vampire realm has opened another door to Earth and they are starting to invade. We are helping the original vampires who crossed over. It is the new ones who would wish us harm.” He pulled the needle out and held gauze over the crook of her elbow.

  She stared intently at the spot where his fingers touched her sensitive skin. He couldn’t tell whether he was hurting her or not. She was so warm, the simple touch seemed to heat his entire body.

  “Why would the vampires want your help?” she asked quietly.

  “We’re stronger than them, which is saying a lot. We can go anywhere in the world in the blink of an eye. And, when we want to, we can appear very intimidating.”

  A corner of her mouth lifted. “I believe that.”

  Lucian decided not to elaborate on just how correct she was. She had no idea how scary he could look if he really wanted to. He handed her a bandage. “Put this on and you can go back to playing your games with Dean.”

  She took the bandage and opened it. “No fun designs or neon colors? Shocking. And I wasn’t ‘playing games.’ I was practicing for when I shoot you.”

  “Well, you’re practicing wrong. Guns are not very effective when it comes to killing a myotis.”

  “Myotis? That’s what you are called? Isn’t that a type of bat?”

  He should’ve known she’d catch that, considering what her father did for a living. “The original legends about my kind claimed we turned into large bats. The name has evolved over the centuries, but this is what we’ve settled on for now.”

  He stood up at the same time she did, and for a second they almost touched. Her head barely came up to his chin, and he couldn’t stop himself from leaning in and inhaling her scent.

  Nothing special. No perfumes or fancy creams. Yet he still couldn’t get enough.

  She tensed at his proximity, and he moved away before she realized he was sniffing her. He figured she could only handle so much weirdness at a time.

  “We’re good, right?” she asked, eyes firmly on the ground.

  “You’re done. I’m sending this in today and later in the week, we’ll probably go to a medical center in the city and have some more tests done.”

  “Can’t wait,” she muttered as she walked by him.

  He stood alone in his study, only the lingering scent of Ella to keep him company. Soon the banging of machine guns sounded from the entertainment area.

  He looked down at the blood in his hand. “This had better work,” he growled.

  It really was one of the strangest weeks of Ella’s life. It was a whirlwind of fear mixed with the nervous energy of doing something new. Cade and Dean made it their life’s mission to show her a good time, no matter how much she was determined to hate them.

  And, God help her, it was starting to work. They would do anything and everything she asked as long as it fit within Lucian’s rules. Any movie she asked for, they would teleport to the store and buy. Not only that, they’d watch it with her. She watched The Notebook three times in a row just to see if they would cut her off. By the third viewing, they were quoting the lines, usually with crazy accents, and cheering every time Rachel McAdams took her clothes off, but they didn’t complain.

  They brought her books and clothes and anything else she wanted. In the evenings, she would be ushered back to her room and warned to stay inside or else.

  They never specified what the “or else” was, but their tones made it sound so serious.

  Which was strange, because nothing Cade and Dean ever said was serious. They were always smiling and joking. As if the three of them were friends on vacation.

  But then Ella would remember. They weren’t friends or old acquaintances. They’d kept her father there against his will, and now she was unable to leave. To clear her head, Ella would go for long hikes—with one of the guys right behind her, of course. At least they would hang back and give her the illusion of privacy for her to sort out her clustered thoughts.

  Had Ray officially hired his niece to replace her? Was Dad okay? He hadn’t seemed too injured when the police found him, but anytime someone lost consciousness it could be a sign of a serious problem. Besides, he wasn’t a young man anymore. Whenever she asked Cade or Dean about her father, they told her to talk to Lucian. Fat chance.

  Lucian was usually around somewhere, but he rarely spoke to her. He would say “hello” in the halls, but she would look anywhere but at him and he wouldn’t say any more.

  So when he tracked her down in the middle of one of her hikes, she knew something was up. “What do you want?”

  Lucian raised a brow at her hostile tone. “How can you possibly be so grumpy on such a beautiful day?”

  She set her hands on her hips. “Don’t be dense. Say what you came to say.”

  “Your blood tests came b
ack. Feel like a field trip?”

  She shifted on her feet. “What did they say?”

  “The doctor’s exact words were ‘interesting.’ He wouldn’t tell me much more than that. Wants to see you in person. Are you up for it?”

  Ella moved past Lucian, making sure to keep a few yards between them at all times. “I love how you phrase it like a question when we both know I have no choice.”

  “There’s always a choice,” he said quietly from behind her.

  “When you’re backed into a corner, there’s only one direction to go,” she muttered, refusing to say anything else.

  As they walked into the hospital lobby an hour later, all heads turned. Ella hung back, letting Cade and Lucian lead the way and take all the glory. They were the ones attracting all the attention anyway.

  She was pretty enough, but it took a lot of time and effort to get back into show-stopping condition. Lucian and Cade were just that way naturally: the perfect cross between a male model and NFL linebacker.

  Without stopping at any check-in desks, Lucian turned down one of the hospital corridors. After a few twists and turns, he let her into a normal-looking checkup room. Lucian turned to Cade. “Keep an eye out in the hall. Let me know if you hear anything.”

  Cade nodded and left.

  Ella looked around the room for something to distract her, trying her best to keep her gaze from the oversized male next to her. She had nothing to say to Lucian, and she couldn’t imagine she’d want to hear anything he had to say. She’d been able to live in the same house as him for a week and he’d barely acknowledged her presence. What was a few more minutes of awkward silence?

  She picked up a pamphlet about diabetes and flipped through the pages.

  Ella didn’t think it possible, but Lucian actually looked uncomfortable. Did he feel as on edge around her as she felt with him?

  “Stay here. I’m going to find the doctor.” He abruptly left the room.

  Stay here. As if she had a choice.

  She flipped through the rest of the pamphlet, learning more than she ever wanted to know about insulin injections and blood sugar levels.

  She wanted to check her watch or a phone for the time, but Lucian didn’t allow her either of those items, so she was out of luck. A few more moments passed, and there wasn’t a word in the exam room she hadn’t read, more due to the lack of literature than the time passing.