Shades of a Shifter Read online

  Shades of a Shifter

  (Alpha Assassins Guild: Part 1)

  By Juniper Leigh

  Copyright 2015 Enamored Ink

  Smashwords Edition

  Table of Contents

  The Beginning

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Generally speaking, people are boring. Perhaps not internally, not in their quiet, private moments where they admit to the darkest desires of their secret hearts. But in their day-to-day living, they can be relied upon to be tedious automatons, falling into routines that lead them down the same streets, into the same coffee shops, to the same elevators and into the same offices, day after grueling, monotonous day.

  That, of course, is what makes my job possible.

  I become a part of their routine, a silent, unseen part, and I familiarize myself with their movements so that I can anticipate where they will be, and when, down to the minute. Oh, sure, there are the occasional moments of spontaneity: a road closed due to construction, necessitating a detour; forgetting the milk — again — at the grocery store, because you use half-and-half, only your wife uses skim; having to stay late at the office to accommodate a conference call on the other side of the world. But you’d be surprised how infrequently things like these arise, how they tend to cluster together, whether by capricious chance or your own self-fulfilling prophecy. Most days are just like the ones that came before. And me? I watch.

  I watch so that when you leave the office just a bit later than everyone else, I am there to cut the power to the elevators; I watch so that when you are forced to take the stairs from the thirty-second floor, I am waiting for you between the twelfth and the fourteenth. I watch, so that I know your building well enough to know where there are security cameras, and where there are none. And as we pass one another on the staircase, I know you so well that I can predict you will turn slightly toward me to give me a wide berth and mutter, “Excuse me,” with your head bent, focusing on the concrete beneath your feet. And that is all the time I will need to reach out with my dagger and slit your throat.

  I may as well be a shadow, a spectre even, for all of the evidence I leave behind. My training has made me meticulous to a fault, and my ego isn’t so inflated that I have ever become cocky or overconfident in my abilities. I am simply a woman who knows how to make herself seen, or unseen, as suits her purpose.

  I don’t revel in what I do; it is a serious business, the snuffing out of human life. Nor do I carry a burden of guilt so heavy that it makes me unequal to the task. Perhaps this makes me a sort of monster — I just call it “getting through the day.”

  ***

  Chapter 1

  Viola St. James was exhausted when she pushed through the heavy wooden door of her loft apartment. No, exhausted wasn’t exactly the right word: weary, perhaps; fatigued; done in. She dropped her house keys into a dish by the door, then headed into the kitchen, whereupon she let her blade pitch into a pot full of water on the stove. She turned on the burner beneath it and set it to boiling. Next, she made her way into the bathroom, where she plucked the wool knit cap from her head, allowing curls, black as pitch, to spill out over her shoulders. She tossed the cap into a plastic bag, then tugged at the zipper of her light fleece jacket and, shrugging out of it, stuck that in the bag as well. She kicked off a pair of Converse sneakers, noting with some irritation a bit of blood spatter, and shoved those into the bag along with everything else. Finally she shimmied out of her dark wash jeans, plucked the socks from her feet, and balled them up to join their compatriots in plastic. The tank top, bra, and underwear she allowed to puddle at her feet on the floor, along with three days’ worth of other such items.

  She turned on the shower, running it hot until the small room filled with steam and she could no longer examine her reflection in the mirror. Viola always forced herself to face herself after a kill, to make sure that she could still stand up straight under the weight of it. Locking her gaze on her own limpid blue eyes, she stared at herself until the mirror went misty with steam.

  Stepping into the shower, she drew in a sharp breath of air as the scalding hot water hit her body. But she stayed underneath it all the same, the slightly pleasant sting of burning focusing her attention fully on the mild discomfort of her body, so that whatever greater questions of morality and ontology could be pushed into the back of her mind. It wasn’t as though she had chosen this life; no, this was a life that had been chosen for her.

  Viola had never known her parents, didn’t have so much as an old photograph to hold on to, or to show her little sister, Verity, who was one year her junior. She didn’t even know their names, as both hers and her sister’s birth certificates had been lost. Viola and Verity probably weren’t even the names they’d been given at birth; St. James certainly wasn’t. In fact, that was the name of the Catholic Academy where they’d grown up, alongside hundreds of other orphans. They’d adopted it as their legal surname when they were eighteen, a sort of homage to the nuns and caretakers that had raised them. A strict upbringing, but they never wanted for food or education, and some of the nuns and teachers actually showed them a great deal of affection. It was no Dickensian nightmare: the school and dormitories were warm and clean, if a little sparse. There was plenty of time for play, plenty of long-lasting friendships formed, plenty of love, all things considered. As far as childhoods go, theirs certainly hadn’t been the worst.

  However, as soon as the two girls had been unleashed upon the adult world, things began to turn on their heads. Their good fortune had faded, and they found themselves ill-equipped to manage the realities of a world outside the confines of convent walls. Verity, always on the fragile side, was struck down with a chronic blood-borne illness that her doctors couldn’t identify which had her in and out of hospitals on a monthly basis. She couldn’t hold down a job, so it fell to Viola to ensure that her sister received the care she needed. Viola didn’t mind: she was strong, brassy, and confident, and she liked being in the world amongst people, learning about them, talking to them. She was not a solitary creature by nature, so having to go out into the throngs was exciting to her, where it was a daunting prospect to Verity.

  The St. James Academy had set the girls up with a little studio apartment to share, and had placed Viola in a cafe where she waited tables and brewed pots of strong espresso day in and day out. Verity they’d placed in a library, a job that suited her fine, but it wasn’t long before an attack had sent her to the hospital for a month-long stay. When she was well enough to return to work, her job had been given to another Academy girl, and Verity took to taking long naps through the afternoon, a book resting open on her chest. They were eighteen and seventeen respectively, with no experience in the real world, living on one part-time cafe job. Some might have called what happened next “good fortune.” Viola wasn’t entirely sure.

  She often thought about that day, the first time she’d ever heard the words Somnus Sacrae, the day she’d been conscripted into their safekeeping. She often wondered if joining them had been a choice, or an inevitability. Either way, the results were the same: she belonged to them.

  Stepping out of the shower, Verity plucked an abandoned towel from off the white-tiled floor and wrapped it around her head in a turban. She found a second towel slung unceremoniously over the rack and ran it up and down the gentle contours of her lithe limbs, pale and unblemished and white as moth wings.

  Pressing the towel to her face, she made her way into the central living space that was her bedroom, living room, dining room, and office, and froze in her tracks when she heard the floorboards squeak beneath someone else’s feet.

  “Hello, Vi,” came a familiar voice, in which you c
ould practically hear the rakish grin. “You’re looking well.”

  “Christ, Rowan,” she said, tossing the towel over the back of her sofa, “don’t you knock?” She made no move to hide herself from him — what was the point? He knew her better than anyone else on the planet, with the possible exception of her sister. And although she had never taken him into her bed, she felt as at ease with him as she might with a long-term lover. Safer, even, due to the fact that he had never had the chance to use her and leave her.

  “Knock?” he echoed, moving deeper into the room with catlike grace, even as he blinked owlishly. “I had keys made to this apartment two days before you signed the lease.”

  Viola scoffed and went to the far corner of the room, where a folded partition hid her bed and dresser from view. She rifled through the drawers and tugged on a pair of pink striped panties and a plain white bra. Next, a white tank top, and finally a pair of old sweat pants. She wasn’t going to stand on ceremony with Rowan Weaver. Even if he was wearing a finely tailored pinstriped suit.

  “What’ve you got for me today?” she asked, tugging the towel from her head and rubbing her curls dry as she came out from behind the partition.

  “I’m making tea,” he said, already rummaging through her things.

  “Rowan,” she said, dropping the towel to the floor and leaving it where it landed, “come on. I’m tired.”

  “Then I’ll make it chamomile.” He set the pot on the stove and she watched him as he moved, all muscle and sinew. He was tall, probably about six four, and lean, boasting skin with the warm glow of someone who could afford to spend a lot of time in the sun. His hair was black like hers, but his eyes were a pale peridot that was almost yellow in certain lights. Viola had never seen eyes like them before, or since. She’d been utterly disarmed by those eyes the first time they’d locked themselves on her; thought maybe she could even love those eyes. But no — Rowan had other things in mind for her, much more interesting than love.

  “Are you coming from somewhere?” she asked, dropping down onto the sofa and leaning back against its plush velveteen cushions. “You look all fancy.”

  “My father’s office,” he said by way of explanation. She wouldn’t press: they didn’t talk about his father. All she knew about him was that he was in charge, and Rowan did precisely whatever he was instructed to do.

  “Ah.” He glanced up as he set the teakettle on the stove and took the liberty of turning off the pot with the blade in it, which had long since come to a rapid boil.

  “Your knife is done,” he said with a smirk. He tugged his tie loose as he moved around the room, collecting some of the many items she’d let fall: the towels, shoes, a few bags, wrappers for Nutri-Grain bars. He muttered something about I don’t know how you live like this, but she just rolled her eyes.

  “Not all of us grew up with maids, Rowan,” she quipped.

  “That’s no excuse to live in a pigsty — when was the last time you changed the sheets on your bed?”

  “Yesterday,” she said, turning to face him. “I’m messy, not dirty. There is an important difference.”

  “Yes,” he agreed, “there is.” He kicked off his shoes, shrugged out of his jacket (which he draped neatly over the partition) and flopped down onto the bed. With great effort, she rose from the sofa and sat down on the edge of the bed beside him. He curled his fingers around her wrist and tugged her toward him, and she went, resting her head in the crook of his arm. He smelled like sage, cologne, and cigarette smoke. It was intoxicating.

  “How’s Verity?” she murmured, peering up at him and admiring his aquiline profile. “Did you check on her today?”

  “Mmhm,” he confirmed. “This morning. You know I’ve always kept my promise to visit her on… the days you can’t make it.” Kill days, he meant. She never went to see her sister on kill days. “She…” He turned to look at her, shifting slightly so that he could brush a few errant black curls away from her eyes. “She’s much the same, Vi.”

  Viola nodded, expecting as much. “Okay,” she breathed. “Did you stay? Read to her a bit? She really loves those books like, you know… Jane Austen or the Brontë sisters. She just eats that shit up. So, I had been reading Jane Eyre to her for like the millionth time, and the book should’ve been right there on the bedside table…”

  Rowan nodded, and leaned in to press a kiss to Viola’s forehead. “We are just getting to Jane and Rochester’s wedding,” he confirmed in quiet, gentle tones.

  “Man, I love that bit,” Viola murmured, growing quiet in her contemplation.

  “She’ll be okay, you know,” he said at length. “Eventually. She always recovers from these attacks. Every time, she does. You know that.”

  Viola gave a slow nod of her head and sat up on the mattress next to him. “Yeah,” she whispered. “But she’s gone for longer and longer, every time. The sickness wracks her for… six weeks at a time now. Six weeks, Rowan. So she gets four good weeks for every six in the hospital, and they’re no closer to figuring out what the hell is doing this to her.”

  “So,” he said, also sitting up, “we’ll keep throwing money at it until they do figure it out.”

  “I don’t want to do this forever,” she snapped, without meaning to. His expression was placid, understanding even. “I can’t do this forever. I feel like one of these days, I’m just going to snap.”

  “You won’t,” Rowan said in low, sonorous tones as he rose to his feet, uncurling slowly to his full height. “You think you will, but you won’t. Although you are my favorite, Vi, I’m the handler for a dozen Somnus Sacrae agents, and I know what ‘about to snap’ looks like. You might be experiencing a higher level of postmortem guilt, but you can take it.”

  She crossed her arms beneath her breasts and stared at him appraisingly with eyes narrowed against the truth of his words. He was right: she could take it. Although she felt wracked with guilt for all the death her hands had wrought, the fact was that she could barely remember them all — there were no ghosts that haunted her, no nightmares. This was a job. Like serving coffee. God, she thought, what the fuck is wrong with me?

  “It’s okay,” Rowan continued, almost reading her thoughts. “It doesn’t make you a monster.”

  “Yes, it does,” she insisted, splaying her hands out to the side. “That is exactly what it makes me.”

  “It just makes you a valuable asset,” he continued. He approached her slowly, encircling her shoulders with his two strong hands. “Maybe if you’d had more opportunity, maybe if you were college-educated, maybe if you had grown up in the suburbs instead of in an urban orphanage, or if you weren’t saddled with the task of caring for a sibling with a debilitating illness… or maybe if you weren’t so bloody good at what you do, then things would be different. But circumstance has made you what you are, and it is no sin to take advantage of that.”

  “I don’t think I agree with that,” Viola said, pulling away from his touch. He sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose as though he had a headache.

  “Well, believe what you like,” he said, resigned. “In the meantime, I have a new assignment for you.”

  “But don’t you grapple with the morality of it all?” she asked, refusing to let the matter go. “Doesn’t it keep you up at night?”

  “No,” he said levelly. “But that’s because I see the kills for what they are: collateral damage.”

  She blinked, canting her head gently to one side. “What do you mean…?” The teakettle began to whistle and Rowan brushed past Viola to turn off the burner. He fetched two mugs from the cabinets, two chamomile tea bags and some honey, and poured the steaming water into the mugs.

  “Anyway,” he went on, pressing one of the mugs into Viola’s hands. “New assignment.”

  “All right,” she said, dunking her tea bag into the water. “Who is it this time?”

  Rowan glanced around the cluttered space and moved toward the small cafe table she had under the kitchen window. He gathered up stacks of old
newspapers and deposited them in the trash can with an irritated grunt. “Honestly, Viola…”

  “Shut up.”

  And he set his mug of tea down before fishing his iPhone from his pocket and unlocking it. He was pressing a few buttons, scrolling through some files, as she took a seat across from him. After a moment, he placed the device on the tabletop between them: on the screen was a man, broad, tall — though perhaps not as tall as Rowan — boasting considerable scruff. He was wearing a suit, his thick, mahogany hair slicked back, black-rimmed glasses resting on his nose. He was on the move, a phone pressed to his ear, and he was surrounded by people with briefcases and clipboards. She recognized him — where had she seen that face before?

  “Is that…?” She pinched her fingers on the screen so that the image grew smaller. It was from a news article. The headline read: Billionaire Philanthropist Acquires 51 percent of AquaFord.

  “Graham McCallum.” Of course. One of the biggest names in ecofriendly technology. He was the Steve Jobs of wind turbines, the Bill Gates of solar panels. The man was practically made of money, printed on biodegradable paper with environmentally friendly ink.

  Viola blinked and furrowed her brow. “Are you insane?” she asked, incredulous. “I can’t kill this man, and moreover, why would I want to? He’s kind of amazing.”

  Rowan exhaled sharply and rolled his eyes, plucking the phone up from off the tabletop and sticking it back into his pocket. “If you can believe everything you read in the paper.”

  “So, you want me to kill a beloved environmental activist, philanthropist, and respected businessman? No fucking way, Rowan. There is no way to keep that quiet enough to be safe.”

  “But,” he said, sidling around the table to stand behind her, “if anyone can do it, you can.”

  She shook her head, back and forth, curls bouncing. “No, Rowan,” she said, turning to angle her blue eyes up at him. “I can’t do this one. I won’t. It’s just too risky.”