Page 25 of Ghost
The paranormal was real. Demons were real… What Damen had been trying to tell me earlier…
Shifters were real too, apparently. But these didn’t look like wolves. More like mutated dogs, perhaps. I couldn’t place them, at the moment.
I probably should have been more surprised. But, instead, I only felt a hollow victory. My intuition had been right, and those police officers hadn’t been normal at all.
My mind was a whirlwind of questions.
Questions such as, what caused a shifter’s change? Perhaps there was a rapid change in the sequence of their DNA. Or was there something else involved? Did a transformed shifter lose all sense of humanity? If someone died in their animal form, would their ghost remain as an animal? If two shifters procreated while transformed, what would their resulting children look like? How in the name of Charles Robert Darwin did any of this work?
The important questions.
Although, it was a terrible time for my scientific mind to come out to play. I probably should have been more concerned that they appeared to be rabid. Perhaps I was in shock.
A snarl echoed through the room, causing Damen’s attention to tear from the fighting animals. The policemen who had previously been laughing, had stopped. They now eyed us speculatively. Still standing between us and our escape.
“Don’t even think about it.” Damen’s voice was venomous. He had taken a protective position over me, which was reassuring. But the sudden anger in his form was frightening to witness.
Even so, the two men didn’t seem to be scared at all.
“Move out of the way.” The first man cracked his neck, stepping forward on clumsy legs. “Leave the girl. You can’t bring her here and not let us taste. We haven’t had such a tempting morsel in ages.”
“Under no circumstances will that be happening, I would die first.” Damen radiated fury, and his frame coiled with tension over me.
He was preparing for an attack. The thought that Damen was considering fighting these creatures filled me with dread.
An attack came. But not from where I expected.
A beast broke away from Kasai, lunging toward us. But Damen was already on his feet before the creature reached us.
He was more light-footed than I expected, and something flashed in his hands. But everything that followed was too quick to process. There was a movement—a slice through the air, perhaps—and one of the creatures had been thrown backwards.
The officer who liked my perfume fell to the ground with a smirk. He shivered, and after a rapid succession of contortions, a beast stood in his place.
A strange mixture of intrigue and numbness had washed over me. Plus, there was the nausea. Some people might think it would be romantic to watch a shifter transformation. That it might be a beautiful sight.
Those people would be wrong.
I never wanted to witness such a disgusting display again.
Damen’s swearing captured my attention, and a second later he was thrown against the opposite wall. It was the trail of blood that was left behind as he slid to the ground that snapped my befuddled mind back to reality.
Especially when the newly transformed shifter began to stalk toward my dazed friend.
No one, not even a magical shifter of unknown breed, was allowed to hurt my friend. And it was two against one, which was not fair at all. I had to do something.
Sure, I would probably die. Especially considering they appeared to have a thing for short girls. But it would be worth it—I would die protecting a friend. That had to count for something.
Staggering to my feet, I grabbed the first loose item around me. The only thing I was certain about, was that I had to rescue Damen.
“Hey!” I tossedWar and Peaceat the head of the newly shifter. “Don’t forget about me, you ugly thing. You don’t want to eat Damen, he’d taste fried right now anyway.” Being possessed by a demon would do that to a person’s insides, I was sure. In either case, I probably tasted better anyway.
Not that I particularly wanted them to find out from personal experience.
The creature was spotted, and slightly smaller than the others. Something about its appearance pulled at the back of my mind. Then, suddenly, it clicked.
I had seen them in textbooks, of course. And in person the one time that Finn took me to the zoo. But it was still strange, because seeing a hyena shifter in the United States was not something I’d have thought possible.
Chapter Ten
