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

  Cade and Dean seemed to generally care about his well-being. They might be her guards, but, besides being kidnapping bastards, they were okay guys.

  “Hey there,” said the man. Judging from the amount of leg hanging off the recliner, he was well over six feet tall. His build was a bit more slender than Lucian and her guards, but she could see how muscular he was even through his gray shirt.

  But his muscles were hardly what drew the eye at the moment. She was more worried about him bleeding to death from the gaping wounds in his gut and neck than his physique. “Do we need to get you to a hospital?”

  “I need your help.” Was it her imagination, or was his voice getting fainter? Dean better get back soon.

  She looked to the door Dean had disappeared behind. Comforted for once by her guard’s proximity, she approached the injured man. As she got closer, the amount of blood covering his shirt and still dripping onto the floor shocked her. He could barely breathe, let alone hurt someone.

  “Shouldn’t we be putting pressure on that?” She wished she’d paid better attention in health class. To be fair, this was hardly the subject that would’ve been covered.

  His fingers twitched and it took her a few moments to realize he was signaling her to bend over him. She leaned in a few inches, but tough luck if he wanted her any closer. “I want to help you. Just tell me what to do.”

  He turned his golden eyes on her face and stared intently. “You’re not afraid of me.”

  Not sure whether that was a good thing or not, Ella simply replied, “I’m not afraid of you.”

  And with a speed she didn’t think possible for anyone at full health, let alone injured, he grabbed her shoulders and bit into her neck.

  The pain was intense and almost debilitating. She wanted to scream but couldn’t manage to do more than croak out a pathetic-sounding moan. She pounded at his face and tried to pull free. Her struggles made the pain a thousand times worse, shooting through her like railroad spikes.

  He pulled away from her, staring down with a confused expression. Ella pulled out of his grip, and the sudden freedom had her tumbling onto the hardwood floor. The fall jarred her entire body, and the agony in her neck got worse.

  She held her hand up to the wound. Thick streams of blood covered her hand in seconds. At the sight, her mind went blank. That wasn’t a normal amount of blood. She needed to get to a hospital.

  His brows furrowed. “I told you not to be afraid!”

  Ella tried to scoot away, but the ground became increasingly slippery. She only then noticed the man’s teeth. Were those fangs?

  Crap. Vampire. She was bitten by a vampire. No. No. No. No. No.

  Dean. He could get her to a doctor. They could be there in seconds. She tried to speak, but nothing came out. The man suddenly looked over her shoulder, and his eyes widened in terror.

  A roar came from behind her. The type of sound one expected to hear when in the middle of a distant jungle. Not in a house.

  The vampire tried to back away, but there was no escape.

  The thing that made the noise slammed into the man, throwing him against the bookshelves, breaking every single wooden plank.

  “Oh shit,” said Dean from the doorway.

  The thing was straight from Ella’s nightmares. He was almost seven feet tall, with grotesque charcoal skin. Its lips were a dark gray, which only highlighted the bright white and humongous fangs long enough to hang over the bottom lip.

  The nose and ears were pushed against the face, giving a more skeletal appearance to the head. The rest of the body was muscled to the extreme. They would’ve been bulging, but the loose skin still had slack.

  He pulled back a clawed hand and pummeled the vampire. The sounds of bones snapping and a strange gushing noise filled the room, interspersed with the angry growls of the beast.

  Arms wrapped around her and she screamed, too enthralled in the vicious scene to realize Dean was right next to her.

  At her shout, the beast looked right at her.

  His black eyes locked in on her and in a second he was at her side.

  Ella blinked. Did he just teleport?

  The beast pushed at Dean, both palms flat on his chest, and the force was enough to send Dean crashing through the wall. Drywall and chunks of wood littered the room.

  With Dean’s support gone, Ella caught herself with her free hand, but her arm shook with the effort of holding herself up. Her vision got blurry as the beast wrapped his massive arm around her waist.

  One second, she was trying to breathe through all the dust; the next, she was outside.

  They weren’t in the distant woods of Maine, though. There were people. And lights right in front of her. They were outside some big building and the beast was quickly walking her inside.

  She tried to focus on the words written on the walls as he moved past them, but her eyes wouldn’t obey. People stared at them. That didn’t seem right. Shouldn’t they be running away?

  Ella looked back to her beast, but he wasn’t a beast at all. Lucian was carrying her through the bright white room. “I need a doctor,” he shouted. The noise reverberated through her head.

  Why did her head hurt so much? Her neck. She moved her hand away to find it caked with fresh blood.

  Lucian pushed her hand back over the wound. “Keep applying pressure for me, okay?” His tone was so gentle, she almost didn’t believe it was Lucian.

  She really didn’t have a choice, because he held his hand over hers on the wound. Was he holding her with just one arm? Not that she should be surprised by his strength.

  Two green men approached, one pushing a stretcher. No. Not green men. They were wearing something green.

  They asked Lucian questions, but Ella couldn’t seem to understand the words. Lucian said something about an animal attack and then he gently placed her on the stretcher.

  Her body was confronted with overwhelming cold as he released his grip on her. “C-cold,” she mumbled.

  Lucian leaned in close. “You’ll be warm in no time. I promise.” He bent forward and kissed her on the forehead just as the stretcher started to be pushed down the hallway.

  That was wrong. He shouldn’t be kissing her. He was a beast. Beasts don’t kiss.

  Lucian sat on the floor, concentrating intently on the feel of the cold tile beneath him and the drywall behind him. Every breath and every heartbeat pushed a new wave of agony through his system.

  It was now well past midnight and he’d never fought the change for this long. He didn’t know he could.

  Funny what the right motivation could do for a guy.

  His eyes darted down the hallway toward the supply closet. He could sneak in and shift. Get a few minutes of relief before Ella woke up.

  Except he had no idea when Ella would wake. It could be minutes. It could be hours.

  The blood loss had been severe, but she’d been treated quickly. If he didn’t have the ability to teleport, she’d be dead.

  The thought sent rage coursing through his veins. The change beat down on him. All his cells cried out for it.

  Fuck! This never should’ve happened! What the fuck was Dean thinking? Leaving her alone with an injured vampire. They were almost lucky Ella had been so seriously injured. If he felt he had any time to spare, he would’ve killed them both. No hesitation. No questions.

  Dmitri would probably take weeks to recover from the beating, and Lucian still hadn’t decided whether he would kill the vampire.

  He should’ve been there. He promised her she’d be safe. It wasn’t even an enemy who attacked. It was an ally. A friend.

  He’d scared her half to death, assaulted her father, kept her shut away from everyone she’d ever known all for the sake of keeping her safe and protected. Some protection...

  Footsteps sounded down the hall, and before he looked, Lucian knew who approached.

  His upper lip curled in a snarl, and his claws and fangs dropped as he stood. Roman Entin held his hands up, signaling he meant
peace, but Lucian didn’t feel particularly peaceful.

  “Leave me,” he spat out, his vision sharpening, telling him his eyes had turned obsidian.

  “I just want to talk,” said the vampire. Roman was dressed in his usual dark designer suit. His short black hair was slicked back, emphasizing his sharp cheekbones and clean-shaven jaw. A real American Psycho type.

  “I don’t want to talk to you.” His head twitched and his hands shook with the effort to hold back any more of the change.

  Roman’s eyes turned the same black as Lucian’s. One of the similarities between the species. He might hold his hands in surrender, but creatures like the two of them were never truly defenseless.

  “My son is in very serious condition. He should pull through, but I wanted to make sure you wouldn’t try to finish what you started.”

  Lucian’s entire body twitched. “I started nothing!”

  A nurse walked from around the corner, giving Lucian and Roman an accusing look.

  “Can we go in her room?” asked Roman in a suitably quiet tone.

  Lucian’s instincts screamed at him to keep the vampire away from Ella, especially when she was so vulnerable, but the logical side of him knew Roman was no threat.

  Roman was here on an apology mission, and the myotis were inherently stronger than vampires.

  Lucian moved out of the way and followed Roman inside. The nurses had ordered Lucian to stay out, but Roman would have no trouble using his vampire mind control on anyone who decided to yell at them. No one would even know they were there.

  As soon as they were enclosed in the privacy of the room, Lucian allowed the change to take over. The relief was instantaneous.

  “Are you less homicidal now?” asked Roman.

  The heart monitor beeped and Lucian made his way over to Ella’s motionless form. She was still pale but already looked much better. A large white bandage covered the side of her neck. The bleeding stopped relatively quickly, because they got to the hospital so soon after the bite.

  Lucian was aware of what happened without anyone having to tell him. Dmitri tried to feed on her, thinking she was nothing but a beautiful human.

  But his Ella was so much more.

  Dmitri thought he had her under control, but she fought him. In the fight, Dmitri’s teeth did much more damage than he ever intended.

  Knowing the severity of the wounds was an accident didn’t make Lucian feel better. “Less homicidal doesn’t mean much considering how pissed off I was.”

  Roman moved to Ella’s side. “How is she?”

  “Ask her yourself.” Lucian pointed to her sleeping form. “Oh, wait. You can’t. She has eight stitches in her neck, almost died, and had to be teleported to the fucking hospital. Even then, she nearly didn’t make it.”

  A muscle ticked in Roman’s jaw. “You know there were extenuating circumstances.”

  “How about you bring your sexy little siren wife in here and give me five minutes alone with her. You know, since there are extenuating circumstances.”

  “Point taken,” growled Roman. “He’s my son. I raised him well. He respects humanity. If he thought she would fight or fear him, he never would’ve touched your woman. I think you know we both need each other too much to allow this to break our arrangement.”

  “Why don’t we wait to hear what she wants? I’ll tell you what. If she asks me not to kill your son, I’ll consider it.”

  The air shifted in the room, and Lucian was immediately back in his human form. The heart rate monitor didn’t make any extra beeping noises, but Roman and Lucian didn’t need the assistance of human technology. They were both predators.

  Ella was awake.

  Ella cracked open an eye as the man Lucian called Roman left her hospital room.

  She’d never woken up in a hospital before. She had to admit it was a disconcerting experience. The bed was strange, the lighting was industrialized, and the smell was so...off.

  How had she gotten to the room? She remembered Lucian carrying her into the hospital, but everything after that was black.

  “Was he a vampire too?” she croaked out.

  She mentally frowned. Of all the questions to ask, that was the most important?

  “Yes.”

  Apparently Lucian wasn’t in a talkative mood.

  “So this was all some sort of misunderstanding then?”

  “That’s an understatement,” grumbled Lucian as he paced to the other side of her room.

  “You’re upset.” Shouldn’t she be the one angry and storming around the room? Assuming her legs would even hold her at this point.

  He stopped his pacing in the far corner of the room. “It’s been a long night.”

  She snorted. “Tell me about it.”

  His brows knotted together. “How are you feeling? You still look pale.”

  “Easy there on the compliments. Girl could get an inflated ego around you.”

  “Do you want me to honestly tell you how I see you?”

  His voice was so stark. So intense.

  Ella took a deep gulp. The pain of the small action snapped some sense into her. “Probably best if you don’t.” For a moment, neither spoke. She was so rarely alone with him. When he’d first taken her, she was much too afraid to say anything to him. Then he would only be around when Cade or Dean was there. She didn’t really know how to act around him.

  He’d saved her life. He’d risked her life. He promised he would keep her safe, yet here she was in the ICU, hooked up to all kinds of tubes and needles.

  He stood as far away from her as the room would allow. His entire body was tense and his face was drawn in what looked like a mixture of exhaustion and frustration.

  “What were you tonight?” she blurted out. She regretted it instantly. She didn’t want to know. It was one thing to see him appear out of thin air. Seeing him as a literal monster was too much.

  His azure eyes pierced her from across the room. “The same thing I always am. Myotis.”

  “So, is that your true face? You’re just pretending to be handsome all the time?” A corner of his mouth twitched up and a blush crept up her cheeks at the slip. “Like you didn’t already know,” she muttered.

  “I’m not pretending anything. Both faces are part of me. During the day, I appear human. During the night, a monster. I didn’t want you to have to see that side.”

  “That explains the curfew.” She eyed all six and a half feet of him. “But I’ve seen you at night before. Right now, you look pretty human.”

  “I’m in a lot of pain right now. It takes effort to maintain this form.”

  “So Dean and Cade look the same as you?”

  “Give or take a few details. Hair is a bit different. Even in myotis form, Dean’s skin is darker and he’s bald.”

  “What about the eyes? Yours were black. Like, no whites at all. Just black.”

  “All of us have black eyes when we turn. Vampire eyes turn black when they are about to feed or mate. Werewolves’ glow a golden color. Demon eyes burn red. Some powerful sorceresses will have glowing blue eyes.”

  Ella held up a hand. “Whoa. Hold up there. Are you kidding me?”

  “It’s a big world out there. There are creatures beyond your wildest imagination.”

  “You are beyond my wildest imagination,” she muttered.

  He’d mentioned the other species before. He’d told her about the vampire war and about angels, but she’d brushed it aside. Stories from a disturbed mind.

  She couldn’t brush this aside anymore. There really were shape shifters and vampires. Angels and demons. Witches and sorceresses.

  And where did she fit in in all this? She couldn’t move things with her mind. She wasn’t super strong, and she couldn’t change forms. And judging from the pain in her neck, she still healed just as slow as she normally did.

  But she wasn’t human.

  Ella winced and studied the IV bag dropping liquid into her arm. “Is there painkiller in that?”
/>   “Go back to sleep. I’ll make sure you’re suitably drugged up.” He strode to the door but stopped just as he touched the knob. “And thanks for not screaming bloody murder when you woke up.”

  Ella shrugged her good shoulder. “It wouldn’t make a difference. You’d still drag me back with you.”

  Ella stared out at the sea of pines, following the slow descent of a falling brown needle with her eyes. The sun was starting to hang low in the sky, but she didn’t want to go back in. It wasn’t as if she needed to be hidden at night anymore. She already knew the big secret.

  She was as free as she could be in her prison.

  It was all too much for her to take. She couldn’t handle another day of trying not to smile at Cade’s jokes and going into high alert whenever Lucian walked into the room.

  Every time she started to feel remotely comfortable, she would be jerked back into reality and see something that would remind her she that if she tried to leave, her throat would get ripped out by a vampire.

  The hospital only kept her for the one night. The wound in her neck was severe enough to cause pain pretty much any time she twitched, but it was healing quickly. In a few days she could probably start hiking again, but she couldn’t muster any enthusiasm.

  It was all an illusion. She might be allowed to go outside, but only under guard. Those guards might pretend to be her friends and they might be able to make her laugh as though nothing was wrong, but they weren’t friends.

  She was the only one in this godforsaken house who was on her side. She just had to remember that.

  Sticks crunched behind her and she turned to see Cade walk to the front of the house. A few seconds later, Lucian’s black pickup drove into view.

  Ella gulped and looked back down to the forest floor. What was he doing driving? Couldn’t he just pop up wherever he wanted?

  The last thing she wanted was another uncomfortable silence between Lucian and her.

  Cade and Dean had no problem treating her like a normal person. Lucian just seemed to stare at her as though she were some strange alien. To be fair, they still hadn’t figured out what she was. Obviously she didn’t change forms whenever the sun set, but the evidence kept mounting that she wasn’t completely human.