Moonstone Shifter (Demon Lord Book 8) Read online

  MOONSTONE SHIFTER

  (Part Two of the Las Vegas Adventure)

  Morgan Blayde

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  To those who helped along the way: Sally Ann Barnes, Jess Cox, Denny Grayson, Caroline Williams, Chris Crowe, Steve and Judy Prey, Jane O’Riva, Leo Little, Amy Rogers, Chris Smith, Chris Riley, Jim Czajkowski, Tod Todd, and Jean Colegrove.

  OFFICIAL WEBSITE:

  WWW.MORGAN-BLAYDE.COM

  © Copyright July 2017

  ONE

  “Nothing’s a failure that you

  can keep to yourself.”

  —Caine Deathwalker

  Atop a distant range of twilight-blue mountains, the sky blushed around a setting sun. In another piece of Arizonan sky, a pale blue moon took on more definition, its shadows suggesting a female profile: Diana, goddess of the hunt, perhaps.

  Closer at hand, I saw little more than endless stretches of brush, thistle, sage, and yucca plants. Young coyotes yipped in the wilds beyond the back-property line. Molly and her son Dirk had tried to build here. The foundation of their prospective structure had been broken, the building supplies stolen. Even the plastic, twenty-one-hundred-gallon water tank had been taken. There was a missing shed and a gas generator that had also walked off.

  The police had no leads.

  Molly had gone crying to her daughter over the phone.

  Her daughter Cleo had come crying to me. In that she was one of the were-kitties I occasionally orgy with, I’d let my arm get twisted. I mean, how do you say no to a hot naked college girl in gold-rimmed glasses whose head is bobbing on your cock?

  Not easy at all.

  I’d paid some locals to excavate likely spots, to see what might be buried around here, if anything. Some of the local Indians—and their lawyers—called this unincorporated area holy ground. Not anymore. More like desecrated earth. Blood had been spilled here, though not recently. The skull pulled from the foundation trench had a hole in it, the kind made by a rifle bullet. There were more skulls, more bones in what would likely prove to be a mass grave. There was also an empty strongbox. This could have been a falling out of some old outlaw gang, or the work of Indian raiders.

  One of history’s mysteries.

  Restless spirits of the Old West might explain the shadows always seen at the edge of sight, but not the damage and thefts. I smelled the kind of spirit you gulp from a shot glass. Someone had been through here with an open bottle of whiskey not long ago. He might not be alive anymore—there were oversized paw prints in the dusty soil. Cat prints. Not those of small, feral mousers. Big prints. Puma? Cougar? Lynx? Hell, if I knew, but their scent was strong.

  Shapeshifters in the area. I wonder what the coyotes think of that. And where are the men who’ve been staying in the rented RV. Some guards they are. I definitely didn’t get my money’s worth.

  The whiskey drinker could have been one of my guards, but that still left several people unaccounted for.

  Another question, why didn’t Cleo mentioned shifters? She’d have known about them, coming from here originally.

  I sighed. It didn’t look like I’d resolve this mess any time soon. And it needed to be soon. With the Villager situation resolved, the Old Man was getting on with his wedding. I needed to get back in a few days. The casinos of Las Vegas were my natural environment, not Hellhole, Arizona, population seven hundred.

  To get the hell out, I needed some kind of break in the case. The kind of break you get when some noisy person is trying to sneak up behind you with a shovel to bash your head in. I heard him and smelled him. Turning to catch the wooden shaft, gripping the handle tightly, I reduced it to kindling. The shovel’s head flew into the dirt. I grabbed a scruffy tweaker by the throat and lifted him off the ground with one hand.

  He twisted, struggling, then gave up. “Okay, you got me. But the ridge-runners will get you, sooner or later. Why shouldn’t I make a few bucks off what’s here?”

  In the back shadows of my mind, golden eyes opened, burning with anger. Scaled coils rubbed as my inner dragon awoke and unwound himself.

  I answered for both of us. “Because nothing here is yours.”

  I threw him fifteen feet from me and watched him hit, roll, and come to a limp stop.

  Then I heard low, throaty growls, three of them, none human. I turned and saw three members of a pride. A blend of human and cat. Two shifter males had ashen fur. The female had a blue-smoke coat, a ghost cat with sapphire-flame eyes. Around her neck, hung a gold necklace supporting a pale-blue moonstone.

  The shifters crouched low, ready to attack—but didn’t. They’d seen my toss. They knew I wasn’t human. They ran.

  Fuck, don’t make me chase you!

  I concentrated and my back tore open, my coat and shirt shredding. Blood ran down my exposed back as I fanned dragon wings. In the past, I’d need precious minutes for even such a partial change. That was before Selene—my Red Lady—made an impromptu improvement to my genetic code. Now, I only needed time for the complete change to dragon because so much extra mass was involved.

  Still mostly human, I flapped furiously and leaped into the air to go after the were-cats. The ground blurred under me. They were fast as well and clearly used to the terrain. They made use of ridges, washes, and clumps of vegetation to change direction, staying together without word or signal. But with the extra height I climbed to, and my sharp dragon-vision, I kept up.

  A wash led them to a dirt road. They stopped there, turning to face me.

  Decided to fight, huh? Like you’ve got a chance against a demon lord. My hands splayed open, muscles jumping, nails turning black and long. I’ll put dragon claws up against cat claws any day.

  I swooped down.

  The female lifted both hands palm-out, a ward-off gesture. She spoke something that might have been a foreign language—or an arcane spell. Glowing like moonlight, a seven-foot ring appeared in the air between us. Inside it was a six-pointed star, the Seal of Solomon. At the center of the star were spiral lines I recognized as the Wheel of Eternity.

  Magic user and a shifter. Marvelous.

  I back-winged to stop from hitting her conjuring.

  Her hands made a pushing gesture at the wheel. The whole pattern moved, leaping at me. It hit like a brick wall, smashing me back, cold fire that faded out as I fell to the ground. I picked myself up, but by then, they were gone.

  “Yeah,” I yelled, “you better run!”

  I returned to the six-acre lot and flapped around above it, looking for my missing people. I found their bones just beyond the back-property line, shattered white shards mixed with the less tastier parts of people. Blood drenched the ground. Tattered clothing was strewn everywhere. The meat of the bodies was gone. The larger leg and arm bones were cracked open, the marrow sucked out. Screaming faces were frozen in death, the tops of the skulls broken off, the cavities vacant of brains. The monster had dined rather messily.

  I dropped to the earth and walked the scene. And found the bottle of whiskey I’d smelled earlier. It had fallen and broken on a rock, seeping into the dry ground. I sighed over the spill.

  What a waste.

  The loose, powdery soil held plenty of recent tracks. They weren’t were-cat. The pride I’d seen probably hadn’t done this. I knelt for a better look. The beast responsible was larger than an elephant. It had three backward facing claws on its forefeet, and three forward facing claws on its hind feet which—like an anteater—forced it to walk on the outer edges of its feet. While it usually went on four feet, it could rear up, comfortable on hind feet as well. The ground showed signs of a stubby tail, an impression like a big blunt log resting on the trail when it went upright.r />
  Weird.

  I focused on my dragon claws, taking time to force them back to human form. I then pulled out my phone and took pictures for future reference. Following the trail of the monster, I returned to the dirt road, to a fifteen by fifteen foot chasm. Beyond the pit, cutting into the next lot, the wash I’d followed continued at a more normal depth of only three feet. The dirt road was impassable due to the missing chunk. Beyond the dip, the road continued. The far part of the road was pristine, no tracks at all, monster or vehicle.

  I concluded that the monster had ambled down into the chasm, climbed up, and had followed the wash onto another lot of undeveloped property. I went onto that property and searched the creature’s trail, losing it on an outcrop of rock. On the far side of the outcrop, I found only human prints, and those of an off-road jeep. The jeep crossed the rough country, heading for the nearby town in a roundabout way. Once it hit the main streets, I knew I’d lose it.

  Wanting more information, I backtracked the creature from its feeding point to see where it came from. It had cut across two lots from a dirt and gravel road. One end of the road would take me to Highway 68 and the closest town. The other direction would take longer, reaching Highway 93 in the middle of nowhere. The monster’s tracks ended at the shoulder where a Jeep had parked, likely the same one from the outcropping.

  It looked to me like the jeep had dropped off someone who’d become a monster—had run amok—and then the jeep had gone around to a rendezvous point to pick up the monster once again, after he’d returned to human form. That meant I was looking for a shifter of some kind, one not restricted by laws of mass conservation. Chances were good that this monster changed by magic, not the way most shifters did through metamorphosis. I also had the feeling that if I actually ran it to ground, I had better already be in full dragon form or it might beat the crap out of me.

  Well, it’s not like I don’t thrive on a challenge.

  I flew back to the property where I’d left my midnight-blue Mustang, the one with pale blue electrical jags painted on the hood and sides. It had been damaged by my half-brother’s magical chalk attack, and the AI still had a few glitches to be worked out, but I’d had a witches’ coven spell away the chalk so at it ran good and could at least be locked up again.

  I considered my objectives from here: I’d learned what I could and needed to hook up with Cleo in Las Vegas. She’d been holding out on me. I needed to know why, and what else she could tell me. I let my wings wither and sough off. From the spare clothes in the trunk, I replaced my missing shirt, then got in the car and sent it rolling for Highway 68. Northwest of here, I’d cross the Arizona-Nevada border, hitting Henderson, then Las Vegas. I didn’t need GPS for this, knowing the route by having taken it several times, back and forth. I turned on the headlights as the evening deepened, letting the Mustang eat up the miles, the radio playing loudly.

  My phone played an Asia ringtone: Heat of the Moment. I groaned, knowing Imari was trying to get ahold of me. By now, the First Sword of our demon clan would know I’d run off without security guards. Lowering the radio’s volume, I answered, prepared to hear a lot of crap. “Caine here.”

  “You went off alone again.”

  “Yeah, I know. Anything else you wanted?”

  “Caine…”

  “Yes?”

  “Please don’t make me have to threaten you. I don’t like to do that because you scare me, but I will, because that’s my job, running security.” There was a long silence. “Can’t you just find a tiny bit of compassion in your shrunken, shriveled soul to make my job a tiny bit easier? If the Grinch could discover the true joy of Christmas and have his heart grow three times bigger, surely there’s hope for you.”

  “The Grinch is a pussy. Besides, what’s the problem? It’s not like you don’t always know where I am. You have my phone bugged.”

  “You should at least keep Colt with you. If I know you’ve got that much firepower handy, I won’t worry.”

  “So, you’re saying I should make sure my nine-year old son from the future is as equally endangered as I am, just so you can sleep at night?”

  “Gee, it sounds bad when you put it that way, but yes, that’s what I’m saying.”

  “Okay, I can do that, as a personal favor, just because I like you.”

  “I’m not sleeping with you, Caine.”

  Not yet. But there’s hope. Colt has already lived nine years of the future, and he knows things.

  I sighed over the phone, but a smile stretched my lips as I imagined Imari’s obsidian, naked flesh, covered in a light shimmer of orange fire, on her back, her legs in the air, open, her hot, steaming core vulnerable, waiting to be invaded, conquered… My pants grew tight in front.

  I said, “You think you know me so well.”

  Imari said, “It’s not like you make a secret of your vices.”

  “Speaking of my vices, I need you to do me a favor. Round up the were-kitties—especially Cleo—and have them standing by there at the hotel. I’m pulling them in on this job in Arizona.”

  “Fine, that’s more security for you anyway. What is this job? Is the Clan being paid for this?”

  I remembered the blowjob Cleo had given me: A decent down payment. “I’m being paid for this. It’s for Cleo, family related. She’s an ally of the Clan and has fought for us on past occasions. She will do so again.”

  “Just asking. Actually, I like Cleo and the other girls. If we can help them, we should.”

  “You do remember you’re supposed to be a demon, right? Fair play, love, and the power of friendship only save your ass in Japanese animes.”

  “Blame Lauphram. He’s instilled his code of honor in the demon clan he founded.”

  I saw a gas station coming up along with the Highway 93 entrance. I decided to pull in, gas-up, and buy an energy drink.

  I said, “I guess I shouldn’t complain. It makes it easier to take advantage of my own people that way.”

  “Caine!”

  “Did I say that out loud?”

  “You should be ashamed of yourself.”

  “Yeah, right, but I’m not. I’m a demon lord. I’m going to act like it. That’s who I am, what I do. Your job is to pick up the pieces, and stomp on my enemies. And to watch my kid. How is Colt doing, anyway?”

  There was a sinister chuckle over the phone. Then she spoke to someone in the room with her. A moment later, her voice came clearly over the phone. “Ask him yourself.”

  There was a flash of coppery light from the seat next to me. A nine-year old boy faded in out of that light. He wore a smaller version of my face, one a lot more innocent. His eyes were copper stars, shining with the power of a demigod. He had dark, almost black hair, with midnight red highlights. It poked out from under the raised hood of his hoodie. The hoodie itself was black with a white skull down the front. The kid was a fan of Marvel comics, especially The Punisher.

  He smiled at me. “Hi, Dad! What’s up?”

  “I found a giant monster that needs killing, and a magic-welding pride of cat people whose fates have yet to be determined.”

  “What kind of monster?” he asked.

  “Three claws on each foot. It eats people.”

  “Think my demon sword can handle it?”

  “Depends on how it’s used. Or whether or not the monster steps on you first. We need to do some research and pick up our own little troop of cat girls. I’ve no problem with throwing myself headlong into battle, but I like to take time and stack the deck first. Winning should always be made to look easy; it keeps down the number of challengers that want to take what you stole first.”

  Colt nodded. “Good to know. Are we stopping here?”

  “Yeah.” I pulled into the gas station, up to a pump. A sign advertised a sandwich shop inside the convenience store.

  “I want a meatball sub, with extra parmesan cheese on it. Toasted. And a Red Bull,” Colt said.

  “Milk, no energy drink. You’ll stunt your growth like I did
.”

  “So, if I drink a lot of milk, one day I’ll get taller than you?”

  “Probably.” If it’s in your genes.

  “Your bones will also be stronger. One day, I’m going to conquer the universe. Your job will be to hang onto it once I give it to you. Eating right, getting enough sleep, doing everything I tell you is all part of preparing yourself to be the next demon lord, and heir to the Dragon World throne. Plus, you’ll be inheriting Dragon’s Eye, my kingdom in Fairy.”

  “Cool!”

  We left the Mustang, regrouping at the gas tank where I dug out a credit card and activated the pump. I put the nozzle in the gas tank and waited as it filled. I said, “Another plus is your mother will be happy I’m being a good father.”

  She won’t chain me to her bed and beat me senseless with my own cock. Selene, my Red Lady, a dragon turned goddess, with a flair for genetic manipulation—is always scary as hell.

  Colt slanted me a calculating look. “So, depending on what I tell her, your life is in my hands.”

  “Blackmail works both ways, kid. Aren’t there things you’d rather not have your Mom know about? I can think of a few. If you don’t keep my secrets, why should I keep yours?”

  “You’ve got a point.”

  A sporty sedan pulled up on the opposite side of the pump: a 2000 LeSabre with a gold paint job. A guy drove it. Another guy sat next to him. The back door opened and a hot chick climbed out. Despite nightfall, she wore sunglasses. And no longer had cat ears on top of her head. This was the shifter I’d recently battled. I knew her cat scent. And she had the same moonstone necklace on, over a tight, red dress. In human form, she’d lost her fangs, and her hair was kinky, pale blue like an anime girl loose in the real world, or a fey.

  Heading for the store, she walked past the pump, but then her nostrils flared. Pausing, she stiffened in surprise. Her face turned toward me, then her eyes centered on Colt.

  He smiled at her and waved.