The Bend-Bite-Shift Box Set Read online

  Once Doc was completely done treating Belle, the little girl was handed back over to Trudy, her caretaker, and they were gone.

  “She gave me the strangest feeling,” Jill mused, eying the hallway down which the pair had disappeared. “Sort of warm and tingly inside.”

  “Yes, I imagine she would,” Doc said as if there were some hidden meaning to his simple statement.

  “Oh, look! She forgot something.” Jill picked up a tiny little stuffed puppy dog the girl had likely been clutching in her hand, “I’ll catch them before they pull out.”

  Jill ran out of the room and down the hall toward the exit. It was a long hallway, with only one egress so she should have been able to catch them since the little girl was small enough her legs wouldn’t carry her fast. But still, when Jill reached the doors she looked outside and saw nothing.

  She stood perplexed for many moments, examining the darkness with a strange expression. When she turned she saw Doc standing in the hallway, holding a towel loosely in one hand. “They left fast.”

  She seemed to accept this explanation and walked passed Doc toward her room. He breathed a sigh of relief that she wouldn’t ask any questions. When he did sigh, he happened to inhale her scent. The smell of her, the essence of her, smothered all of his other senses and he felt his need for her course through his veins like a drug.

  “Doc…” she began and turned on her heel to look at him again. “There was no car. I didn’t hear a vehicle.”

  He couldn’t speak, just wrung his hands in the towel as if wiping them, but they were already bone-dry. He knew she was likely reading his nervousness.

  “It’s so quiet out here, I’d hear someone ride up on a bicycle, Doc. But I didn’t hear anything. Are they still here? Did you give them a room or something?” She looked around his body as if searching for where they might be stashed.

  “There are things that you won’t understand, Jill. Things about that girl and the woman who brought her here that will… well, they’ll throw you for a real loop. It’s better if you don’t ask questions.”

  She nodded and resumed walking toward her room, but he could see the tension in her shoulders. Doc licked his lips, then ran his tongue across his teeth, willing himself to keep control. Thank goodness she would only be here a few more days. He wasn’t sure how much longer he could maintain his distance. The pull he felt to take her was agonizing.

  Once inside her room Jill slammed the door and plopped down on the bed. She hated when circumstances made her feel like the dumb blonde. There was something strange going on and she knew it. What was this secret Doc was keeping, and for what reason did he think she wouldn’t understand? She was sure he thought she was just a ditz.

  Still, she knew that Trudy and Belle hadn’t arrived here in a car. She might not have heard a vehicle pull up while sleeping, but she’d darn sure have heard it when they were leaving. She heard everything; the walls of the hospital seemed remarkably thin and for her first night here she’d been unable to get to sleep for some time because she could hear every critter moving around outside.

  “They must live nearby,” Jill spoke aloud to herself. After a moment she nodded, warming up to that argument. “That must be it, they just walked over.”

  No. during the day she’d taken several long walks and inspected the area all around the place. There were no homes nearby and there was no way Trudy had trudged far in the heels she was wearing. They couldn’t have come on foot.

  “Where the hell did they come from and where did they go?” she whined to herself, falling back against the bed.

  Her thoughts turned cartwheels inside her mind. Very strange things were going on in this place. Even Robbie had said things that hinted to some hidden secrets. She was a very curious person by nature, but she especially didn’t like being kept out of the loop when matters were directly connected to her.

  She had willingly taken this job or whatever it was. Doc had willingly brought her to this place. She had a right to know what was going on. Sleep would elude her until she could come up with some answers.

  But before she went chasing demons she wanted to be sure she wasn’t just being unsophisticated. Or worse yet, that she wasn’t being stupid. One-by-one she considered all of the bizarre happenings she’d witnessed since arriving at the hospital several days before. She determined to put her mind to solving the enigma.

  * * *

  It was a few moments later that she tracked Doc down, finding him in the room that he considered to be his study, the walls stacked floor to ceiling with books. He was stretched back in a chair, his long, lean legs up on a stool and a large medical volume perched on his lap. He raised his eyes when he heard her enter but he didn’t say anything.

  “The other night something weird happened when you looked at me. I felt all strange, like I had tunnel-vision or something. She told you to hypnotize Belle, but you couldn’t because she couldn’t look at you. I guess what I’m saying is... I guess you’re some sort of,” she took a breath to slow herself as her words had begun to run over each other in her impatience. “you’re like a magician or something, right?”

  Doc opened his mouth to speak but she interrupted him.

  “But hell, that still doesn’t explain where they went and how they just disappeared, does it?”

  Closing the book slowly, Doc rested the volume on the table beside him and then rose from his seat. He looked deep into her eyes with his crystalline, piercing gaze. He saw her waiver as if she wanted to look away, but she didn’t. She held his gaze and there was a certain strength evident in her expression. He wasn’t using his powers on her, but she couldn’t know that and had every right to be afraid.

  Still, she clearly wasn’t and the admiration he felt for her at that moment made his decision for him.

  “I’m not a magician, Jill,” he grunted nervously, shifting his weight back and forth on his feet. “If only it were that simple. I’m of the darkness, Jill. I’m a vampire.”

  He certainly didn’t expect her to laugh. She didn’t just laugh, but punched him playfully in the shoulder and shook her head while she guffawed. Doc took her hands in his and leaned down so that their eyes were meeting again. He hoped she would see that he was being serious and continued on with his confessions.

  “And the reason Trudy and Belle seemed to disappear is because they used magic to get here. Trudy’s a witch. Belle will be too one day.”

  Jill’s expression turned severe in an instance. She wasn’t laughing anymore.

  The Present – A Forced Silence

  Eden sat silently on the couch in his own study while Devan sorted through files and papers. Jill had a set of tools laid out on either side of her and her face was tightened into a frown as she considered the locked cabinet before her. Despite persistently demanding that Eden produce the key for the cabinet, he’d obstinately refused. Instead he continuously demanded that the women allow him to leave. It appeared Devan’s powers had successfully prevented his earlier escape, though the man refused to admit that she’d used magic to do so.

  The file cabinet was very secure, but Jill was determined. She worked, fiddled, hammered and wedged the lock with a screwdriver. When the lock finally popped off she exclaimed excitedly and looked over at Eden with a haughty smile.

  “You have no right!” Eden protested, leaping from his seat and toward Jill. She looked at him with a disdain, then laughed when Devan flicked her hand toward him and forced him back into his seat by an invisible power. Jill stuck her tongue out at him before returning her attention to the file cabinet.

  Devan reached a hand inside to grab a folder when a commotion began in the hallway. “Sounds like Kent and the gang are here.” She muttered absently, not taking her eyes from the contents of the cabinet.

  “Devan!”

  “In here, Kent.”

  Langston entered first, raising an eyebrow when he saw Eden Stowe struggling to get up from his seat, but clearly “tied down” by Devan’s magical restraints.


  Jill winked at him when he smiled in her direction. “Hey, Andre.”

  “Little one, it seems you’ve discovered a good deal here,” he spoke as his eyes rested on the necklace around Jill’s neck.

  “You see it too?” Devan asked the big man.

  He nodded and Jill silently queried them both with alternating looks of dismay. Realizing they were both staring at her neck, she clutched at the beads, “What’s wrong?”

  “They flicker. They didn’t do that when I first saw them, but when you touched the beads they started twinkling like stars. I thought I might be imagining it, but if Langston sees it too, then I guess not. It’s like they wanted to belong to you. ”

  “Really?” Jill breathed, looking down but seeing only a string of very beautiful but ordinary stones. “Why can’t I see it?”

  No one responded and she just affectionately fondled the beads as if they were diamonds. When Kent shuffled in, muttering under his breath. Jill waited for his gaze to meet hers then she rolled her eyes at him. He sneered in return. The two of them got along better than they had when they first met, but she enjoyed continuing the charade of animosity. She felt certain that he too found it to be just a game.

  Unfolding her legs, she stepped away from the file cabinet and reached her arms above her head in a long stretch. Devan’s attention was focused on the manila folders before her, pulling some of them out and setting them aside absently.

  “Well, well, well, who’d have thought?” an unfamiliar voice spoke and when Jill looked up she saw a tall, slender man step confidently into the room. His hair was pitch black as were his eyes and when he looked at her, a shiver passed through her body. She recognized him for a dhampir. They were natural vampire hunters and killers. “Not only a vampire but a very lovely one,” his voice oozed.

  “Nicky,” a female said in a warning tone. It was another second before the woman entered the room. She was tall with straight light brown hair and her movements were smooth and fluid as if she was swimming through air. She cut her eyes at the dark haired man and although he smirked, she could see a message pass between them.

  “This is Devan’s friend Jill Prescott,” Kent said, motioning with his hand. “Jill, Nicky Craig and Gerry Penn.”

  Jill knew they were the missing part of Kent’s original team of associates. They were all members of an otherworldly watch-group called the Company. Nicky rescued Gerry from the Org just a few weeks ago. When the Company cut off their group's communication lines, Kent and Langston had lost touch with Nicky until Devan used her magic to locate him in New Orleans.

  Devan raised her gold-brown eyes to Nicky first, tilting her head to the side as she stared at him, then she turned her gaze to Gerry and nodded, “Good to finally meet you, Gerry.”

  Until just a few days ago Gerry had been in a coma. You couldn't tell at all because she looked the picture of health now: tall, sleek and confident. Jill knew had been advised by Langston that she was a shapeshifting witch and wondered whether her current look was natural or contrived. Gerry slipped toward Devan with a frosty expression, then the corner of her mouth turned up ever so slightly as she reached a hand toward Devan.

  “I understand I owe you a debt of gratitude,” she spoke in a voice that hummed in monotones.

  Devan’s stony expression broke and she laughed aloud. “I don’t know about that. But if you insist, I might come up with something you can do to repay that debt.”

  Nicky snorted and Devan just smiled wider.

  “Do we have what we need there?” Kent asked, approaching Devan and kissing her nose affectionately before taking the top file from her hand and perusing it.

  “What the hell do you people think you are doing? This is my house and I want you all out of here!”

  Langston seated himself beside the fussy Eden Stowe, placing his hands onto his knees and holding his torso up as he looked toward Jill, “He’s quite uncooperative, is he not?”

  Jill threw her head back and laughed. “Yeah, but we thought you might be able to help with that, big guy. Dev asked what I thought we should do with him and well–” she hesitated, lost in a memory.

  Jill knew Eden would never recall the incident. It had been years ago and he ascribed little importance to such things and especially to the children. Now she approached him with bile in her expression and placed her hand under his chin, digging her fingers into his cheeks before he snatched away from her. “I bet you don’t remember the little boy do you, Eden? The one who cried hysterically when you brought him to us, that gash in his head.” She glanced back at the other occupants of the room before returning her eyes to him. “Eden here ordered me to shut him up before he’d let Charlie see to his injuries. He didn’t care about him at all, just himself.”

  Eden appeared confused a moment, then his eyes widened and a clear look of recognition flashed in his expression. “You’re that little chit who went to live with Doc,” he nodded, proud of his recollection. “And he fell for you. Always locked up inside that hospital like a coward–”

  Jill’s palm made contact with his cheek in a loud smack. Eden cringed in pain and terror, skulking deep into the cushions of the couch to keep away from her.

  “Jill…” Devan began, but her friend raised a hand behind her to stop anything the other woman might have said.

  It could have appeared to the others in the room that Jill had lost control. It was true that her insides were seething with rage, but she was carefully holding her anger in check. If not for that restraint she might have snapped Eden’s neck with a single blow.

  Eden’s gaze darted back and forth from her left eye to her right one, searching for her intentions. Before long his face went slack and his eyes glazed over. Jill worked the reverie on him, hypnotizing him into silence in just the same way she’d done with that little boy all those years ago.

  Turning back to Langston with a shaky breath, she spoke again. “We’d like you to shut him up, Andre. Permanently. Do you have a spell for that?”

  It was an easy punishment. Jill wanted to kill him, to do it slowly and to make it hurt, but that was what the dark thing that still breathed inside of her wanted. The ugly part of her that she had to keep under wraps because if Devan ever saw it–Jill wasn’t sure she could ever face her best friend again if that thing came to the surface. She wasn’t sure she could face herself if that ever happened, but the evil inside sometimes grew stronger and threatened to overtake her.

  “Can you do that, Langston?” Devan asked when she noticed the large man’s hesitation. He sat up taller and nodded once.

  “I believe there is very likely a spell for that. We will see what we can do.”

  Silence filled the room and Devan handed her stack of files to Kent. One by one they all left the room, leaving Eden Stowe stony and silent, still tethered into place by his invisible bindings.

  The Past – A New Proposition

  Jill’s eyes were wide and she moved her head far back and then down very slowly in an exaggerated nod. “So you’re a vampire. That explains a lot actually,” she told him, then turned and walked to the nearest chair where she plopped down with a thump.

  “Such as?” Doc asked, eying her carefully, as if he expected her to fall into a fit of theatrics at any moment.

  Such as the fact that you never leave the house in the day light, are always awake at night… oh and there’s that weird thing about you never eating a meal with me, she thought to herself. To him she spoke with eyes narrowed, “Such as the fact that you’re always looking at me like you want to devour me.”

  He dropped his jaw slightly. “I do no such thing…”

  “Oh, so you don’t want me then? I thought you admitted just the other night that you did.”

  Doc realized she was teasing him and for a moment was irritated by it. “You’re taking this much better than I expected,” he admitted wryly. “And perhaps entirely too lightly.”

  Jill shrugged, beaming a smile. “I’m sorta relieved.”
r />   “Relieved? Why would you be relieved?”

  She flung her hand at him. “Pfft! Yes, relieved. Didn’t you ever want to believe there was something more… something magical, something greater than your simple mind could understand? Something great? Besides, mom tried to practice Wicca for a while. It was just a phase for her, but I always thought there might be something to it.”

  Doc shook his head, then busied himself replacing the volume he’d been reading to its appropriate shelf. “Your mind isn’t simple, Jill. And being a vampire isn’t ‘great.’”

  The bitterness in his voice was enough to tamp her enthusiasm. She chose not to press but to allow him to speak at his own rate instead. He paced the room, his body tense and stiff. Her eyes traveled back and forth keeping pace with his steps. There was such an intensity about him, as if he carried a huge weight on him all the time.

  “It isn’t as if I chose this life. I just managed to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

  It wasn’t easy for her to keep quiet. She was a talker and had a million questions, but she could see he needed to tell this story at his own tempo.

  “When a vampire chooses to sire another he does it with the utmost deliberation. As I understand it, Lucas had done just that but yet a tiny mistake was still made. The transposition of a single number and here I am… a most unlikely vampire.”

  “Lucas is your sire?” she murmured, wrinkling her lip up in confusion.

  Doc nodded, glaring off into empty space, “His intended changeling lived in an apartment down the hall from me, a young man with a very hefty trust fund that he was willing to share with the Org in return for the change. For some people, becoming a creature of the darkness is worth all they have to offer. I was just a doctor, nothing else. It was more than disappointing to Lucas. My new life or unlife was nearly over before it began. He was furious.”

  Brushing her hands through her blonde locks, Jill frowned as she tried to absorb what he was telling her. “So, what’s the Org?”