Possession (Shifters Forever More Book 3)
Possession
SHIFTERS FOREVER WORLDS
Elle Thorne
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Copyright © 2017 by Elle Thorne
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Contents
Possession
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Excerpt: Illusion
Chapter 1
Afterword
The Shifters Forever Worlds
Thank You!!!
About Elle
Elle’s Newsletter
Possession
A skilljacker on the lam runs into a beautiful, haunted seer. On any other day, this could have been a match made in heaven, but not when he steals her skills.
And definitely not when she takes his bear.
Can a common goal help bring this duo together, or will this match tear apart the fated mates?
Chapter One
Slate Youngblood had two questions. First, how did the ones hunting him learn that his brother, Dunnigan, was a deathbender? And second, did Griz Del Cruz and his Bear Canyon Valley group tell anyone—specifically, Victor Saizon from Razorpeak—that Slate was a skilljacker?
Damn them. He slammed his fist into his palm. He was far enough they couldn’t hear him. They. The ones pursuing him. But still—he cursed himself for the fist-in-palm thing and making a sound—he risked being heard, even if only by slapping his fist into his hand. Shifters had extraordinary hearing. He should know, he was a shifter himself, after all. A bear shifter, to be exact. And to be more precise, he was a skilljacker. In colloquial terms, one who stole supernatural skills from others. Though, stole was a word Slate wasn’t fond of. He preferred to refer to it as appropriating.
But now—thanks to opening his big mouth about the damned situation he was in had forced him to do—others knew he wasn’t just another bear shifter. He’d been compelled to reveal things about himself he didn’t want to share. Now, they knew of his specific skillset. And they were in pursuit. Granted, they weren’t hunting him for the sake of hunting him alone. They also wanted him to lead them to his brother. Dunnigan. They wanted Dunn because, as interesting as a skilljacker such as he might be, a deathbender like Dunn would be infinitely more valuable.
And Slate had blabbed to Griz and his group about Dunn’s specific specialty. Deathbending. Of course, he’d had to. He needed to trust someone to help them. That someone was Larsen del Cruz—also known as Griz. Griz had an exceptional reputation as a trustworthy individual. Plus, Dunn trusted Griz, so who else could Slate turn to?
Who’d have thought Victor Saizon would have shown up and ruined everything? The bastard had interrupted the tête-à-tête between Griz, Krisztián, Ciara, and Slate at the picnic table outside Mae Forester’s Bed & Breakfast and had sent Slate running for the hills. Or in this case, the mountains, as Bear Canyon Valley was surrounded by the Bear Canyon Mountain range.
Slate had doubled back, losing all of those tracking him—Saizon, as well as Griz and his group. He’d had to lose Griz because the guy might share something with Saizon. And Slate couldn’t afford for Saizon to capture him because he didn’t trust him or anyone else at Razorpeak. Bunch of damn paranormal bureaucrats who wanted to control everything in the paranormal world. Who sent spies to infiltrate and wreak havoc. Not to mention, all the rumors. Oh, yes, rumors that some of the Razorpeak types were involved with a clandestine lab called Crossroads. A place where horrendous, inhumane research and experiments were performed on unwilling paranormals.
He would have bet money that was why they wanted his brother. A gift like Dunnigan’s…
What about your gift? a voice whispered in his head. Funny, the voice sounded a lot like Dunn’s. So much so, a surge of pain coursed through at the thought something could be very wrong with his brother. Sure, Dunn could bend death, but that didn’t mean he was immune to the vagaries of death, did it? Slate wasn’t sure how deathbending worked. Nor was he sure how Dunn could be killed. He was certain his brother could take death away from others, but he couldn’t imagine Dunn could take death from himself. What if they killed him? What if they’d shot him and now—
He pushed that thought away. He needed to stay in the present.
High up in the mountains of Bear Canyon Valley, he peeked between the trees. Smoke rose from the chimney on Mae’s B&B. Griz should be there. Or at least, back in the valley. Where else would he have gone after Slate managed to lose them?
And speaking of, where would Saizon have gone? Because Slate was damned sure Victor Saizon was not the giving up type.
Time to push another thought away, specifically, any thought involving Saizon. He needed to concentrate on searching for Dunn. Should he go back to Griz? Look how it ended the last time he went there. He—
Slate froze. What was that sound? He slid against the tree, thankful it was old and wide and would completely conceal him.
Snap!
Someone stepped on a twig.
Crackling and shuffling followed that sound.
Someone walking through the forest.
He centered his shifter senses, focusing on sounds and smells. He couldn’t use his sight. That would mean peeking, which would risk discovery.
Sounds. One person, moving cautiously through the underbrush, between trees, approaching.
Smell. Nothing. No scent. Impossible. He inhaled again. Still no scent. Okay, perhaps not impossible, but that would mean the individual was using hunter’s block to disguise his presence.
Back to sounds, then. Back to putting his mental energy into assessing through sound.
The individual was guarded, moving slowly across the forest floor, but not mindful of making any noise, as his shifter hearing could clearly pick up the footfalls. A smaller individual, not as large as he. And not as large as Saizon or Griz. So not them. Then who? One of their associates?
Suddenly, the movements stopped. The forest fell silent.
Slate held his breath. Did this mean the newcomer had discovered his presence? Picked up his scent?
Dammit. Maybe the hunter’s block he’d put on earlier had dissipated. He’d be a walking billboard, advertising his presence to any shifter—or animal, for that matter.
He breathed out slowly, a steady, measured release of the air making his lungs burn.
He braced himself, dropping his center, holding his core steady, tightening his leg muscles, prepared to leap.
A
shadow crossed before him.
Almost time.
A second later, a silhouette appeared, cast by whoever approached.
Slate clenched his hands into fists. Body taut. Ready to go.
Chapter Two
Svetlana—Lana—Campione shuffled through the forest north of the bed & breakfast in Bear Canyon Valley. She’d have gone running if it wouldn’t have caught Mae’s and Allegra’s attention. Then they’d have been all over her, asking her what was wrong, checking on her, pampering her. Smothering her.
No. She couldn’t have that. She couldn’t have them asking what was up. Lana stopped her pacing and grabbed her head with both palms. The visions wouldn’t go away. It was as if the visions were on steroids. They kept on coming. Over and over. Tears of frustration burned her eyes. She scrubbed them away and took two more steps forward.
Where the hell was she going? Anywhere. Away. Somewhere. She remembered a clearing a distance from the B&B. She’d gone there before, and it sounded like a great idea right now. She swiped the last vestiges of tears away and made her way toward the clearing. This was the way, wasn’t it? She walked carefully, quietly, with great stealth. There were bears—of the non-shifter variety—in the woods. And Krisztián and Ciara had told her about a monster bear. It would most assuredly behoove her to be silent in her approach, in case the gargantuan ursine beast happened to be nearby.
A wave of dizziness made her world spin.
Oh, no. Not again!
The haziness heralding the beginnings of a vision struck her.
She swayed and stumbled toward a tree stump—the closest spot to sit while the visions assailed her once more.
Clutching her head in her hands, she dropped onto the hardwood seat, breathing deeply. The vision flitted in and out of her mind’s eye.
A man. The same man who’d sat at the picnic table with Griz. She stood by the kitchen window, watching Griz, Krisztián, and Ciara all talking with the man.
Later, Griz had told her his name. Slate Youngblood.
Slate. In her vision, she saw him. His eyes were the color of flint. A beautiful dark grey with allusions of stormy blue. Intense eyes that carried a hint of danger.
His brows perched low over those eyes as he frowned at her in the vision.
No, why would he frown at her? They’d never even met. The vision flashed to black, then white, then rearranged itself like pixels in an over-pixelated photo. He came into view again.
He was on his back. His body was bloody.
Wait. No. It wasn’t him.
It was him, but not. He looked different. His face. It was similar, but not exactly. He lay still in the vision. Completely unmoving.
But this couldn’t be him, could it? Was he dead? Would he appear different if he were dead?
Lana shook her head. The damned visions kept pushing at the forefront of her mind. She shook her head again. The vision changed. It turned into a chase scene—like something from a movie.
Just as every scene did these days, this one involved Slate Youngblood.
He raced through the woods, hiding from a bunch of men that were chasing him.
Wait, no. That wasn’t Slate.
Or was it? His doppelganger, again, perhaps? Either way, whether it was Slate or his lookalike, he was fleeing the men chasing him and…
Wait, what was that? A woman ran behind him. Long blond hair. The woman turned around—
Lana gasped.
That woman. It was herself. Right? Was it? Wait. Why had she been interjected into this scene? She scrubbed at her face, rubbed her already-closed eyes, and tried to push the vision away. It faded, similar to a light on a stage production, growing smaller and smaller.
She sucked in a deep breath then let it out slowly. She opened her eyes. What the hell had she been thinking, closing them when there might be bears around?
She pushed off the stump and rose to her feet only to be struck by another round of dizziness.
“Damn it,” she murmured. “Can’t a girl get a break?”
Back to the stump she returned, dropping her rear onto the hard surface, head in hands all over again, while a new vision came into view.
The man. Slate Youngblood again. Or his doppelganger, once more. This time, the woman following him had dark hair. Auburn? It was hard to tell; they were sprinting through a forest.
The same forest? A different one? Lana wasn’t sure.
Muted sunlight spilled through branches above. Everything was so dark. Twilight?
Suddenly, the ground around them exploded. Tiny explosions, like—
Oh, shit! They were being shot at.
Bark flew off trees where the bullets struck. Chunks of soil flew into the air by the fleeing couple’s feet.
As always, the vision had no sound. She couldn’t hear the shots being fired, nor what the man was yelling as he grabbed the woman’s hand.
The woman stumbled. Red bloomed on the back of her shirt. The man’s mouth was open in a shout as she lurched forward into his arms. His face was a picture of horror, dismay, shock—heartbreak.
Lana gasped.
The vision vanished. She stared at a forest. An empty forest with dappled sunshine peeking in between the evergreen branches.
Her breath came in pants, sharp lungsful of air burst in and out. Had that been a vision from the past or the future? Who was that woman? And why the hell had Lana herself been in one of those scenes? Why was she pictured in Slate Youngblood’s life? Clearly, it wasn’t his past. She’d have remembered if she’d ever known him. If she’d ever been running in the woods with him. But how could that be her future? The only thing she knew about him was he was this hunky guy, built—goodness, but he was built—and gorgeous. And fleeing from Griz and Victor Saizon.
“Is that going to be what happens to me? Why would I be running? Is Saizon who he was evading in the vision?” She pursed her lips. “Okay, officially, I’ve gone crazy. I’m sitting here asking myself questions, all alone, in the middle of the woods.”
Yeah, but at least she wasn’t at the B&B under Mae’s and Allegra’s scrutiny, where they would be certain to ask what was wrong with her.
She rose to her feet again, holding her breath, hoping she’d get a few minutes’ break from the vision. Just long enough to find the brook and follow it to the clearing. A peaceful oasis ensconced in the midst of the woods where she could meditate. Maybe get centered. Perhaps, if she were lucky, she’d be able to meditate the visions away.
Damned visions. She’d always had them, but, lately, they’d been aggravated and much more frequent. Ever since…since that witch circle Mairi and Declan had led. Oh, Lana hadn’t been involved in it. No, she hadn’t been party to that. But she’d been in the forest, watching from behind a thicket of bushes. She’d seen what happened. How they’d caused Ciara to shift and she’d run off. And how Krisztián had followed her into the forest. They’d been gone for days. Days and days. Then one day, they’d returned.
And now they were a happy couple.
But that day, the witch circle day, had been the start of the plethora of visions. Vision after vision after vision, making her crazy. And always about Slate Youngblood. The mysterious, dark, dangerous stranger who was beat up—courtesy of Krisztián, she’d heard—sitting at a table with Griz, Ciara,6 and Krisztián, asking for their help.
Griz hadn’t told her what help Slate Youngblood needed specifically, though she’d heard murmurs about a missing brother and new paranormal types. Was she curious? Sure, but as a newcomer to Bear Canyon Valley, she was careful not to step on toes by asking questions. Not that Mae and the others hadn’t been welcoming. They absolutely had. Still, Lana didn’t want to impose. So, she minded her business, made suggestions where she could—like reaching out to the druids, which resulted in Mairi’s arrival. But mostly, Lana kept out of the way.
Slate Youngblood. A man she hadn’t even seen up close, yet he haunted her visions. And for the first time ever, she’d been in one of her visions. She’d n
ever been featured in her own visions. She simply did not ever see herself, be it in the past or future events. Something very strange was happening here.
Lana strode toward the brook, glancing left and right to be sure her guard was up because of bears. And mountain lions, coyotes, wolves. She could only imagine what types of predators the forest might house.
“And I’m out here wandering around…” She cast her gaze about. The forest seemed harmless. Birds sang, squirrels chittered and skittered up trees, a rabbit leaped out of sight behind a bush. Harmless. Right?
Except for the visions. Men chasing others. Shooting that dark-haired woman.
“That doesn’t mean it happened in this forest. Could have been anywhere.” Right. Anything to convince herself the chase didn’t happen here. And especially that she wasn’t in the scene.
Pulling her hoodie up to ward off the chill, she tucked her braid in. She adjusted the strap of the small pack containing a couple of waters then took careful steps over the pine needle-strewn forest floor, heading toward the path she’d used a few times before. Allegra had shown her the path. And the brook, as well as the clearing. Allegra didn’t go there to meditate. She went there to shift into her dragon to give her inner beast its head. But the moment Lana saw the clearing, she’d decreed it perfect for meditation. A great spot to get away and center herself.