SwitchBack: A Paranormal Werewolf Romance (Knightsbridge Canyon Series Book 1) (12 page)

Shane grabbed his jacket and caught up with me and tried to hold my hand, but the minute we touched, it was like a combustion wave of heat flowed through my body.

“Damn, Ashlee. You’re hot!”

I scoffed, “Yeah, I bet you say that to all the girls.”

“No, I really mean it, Ashlee. You’re burning up, like you got a fever. Are you sure you’re all right?”

“I’m fine,” I laughed, and I was. In fact, I felt great. Sure, I maybe felt a bit warm and I decided that if I took my shirt off, I was still covered in my royal blue sports bra. I tied my shirt around my waist and kept walking.

Shane jogged up behind me as I finished pulling my hair up and off my neck. It was then that I put on some speed.

“Race you to the promontory!” I shouted, and then took off running flat out.

Now normally I am a distance runner, but at the time I had no idea what it was: the bubbly, the night, a hot handsome guy chasing after me. Before I knew it I’d rounded the bend at the place they called Lover’s Leap overlooking the Canyon. Story has it, many people have jumped to their deaths from these rocks over the years, pining for loves they couldn’t have.

Only now I was the one out on the tip of the jutting rock past the sign that warned me not to.

“Um, Ashlee, what are you doing?” Shane called from behind the wooden barrier.

“Don’t tell me you’re afraid of heights,” I teased, but when I looked into his eyes, I knew he was. “You are afraid of heights! Oh, that’s so…
cute
.” Actually I wanted to say “chickenshit,” but decided not to spoil things by being the bitch that I sometimes am. I walked back toward him smiling. “Now, catch me!”

I don’t know why I was being a show off, but I decided to do a gymnast’s dismount off the rock like it was a balance beam. And I gotta hand it to him, he did try to catch me, but it was more like cushioning my fall with his body.

The air rushed out of him as I landed in his arms, taking him to the ground and straddling his solar plexus. He moaned and wheezed, trying to get the oxygen back into his lungs.

When he did, I kissed him.

I didn’t plan it. It just happened. I’d meant for tonight to be a simple let-down, a consolation date to offset the wounding of my sister’s callous disregard for real people’s feelings, but it was turning into a bit more than I expected.

His arms wrapped around me as he gave himself over to the lusts of every teenage boy. Though I normally would have taken it a lot slower and been more hesitant, I wasn’t a virgin back then, but almost. I’d only ever been with Will, a couple of times.

I felt like my whole body had turned to heat.

We made out like a couple of bandits, him kissing me and our tongues twining and before I knew it, I was nibbling on his ear, lathering my tongue and teeth upon his earlobe – until I heard a screaming sound, felt a ripping, and smelled the metallic tang of blood in the air.

It was then that I realized that the screams were my own.

Waves of excruciating pain washed through me as my stomach clenched around itself and my body curled up in a fetal position. Shane slid back and away from me and held his head, a look of abject horror on his face as blood poured from where I’d bitten off a chunk of ear.

The pain inside me subsided for a moment. I caught my breath and had the wherewithal to say “9-1-1” through gritted teeth before my body betrayed me again. I would have wondered what was happening if it didn’t hurt so bad as I felt my spine snap and my ribs rearrange themselves. I heard in the background a very frightened Shane punching numbers on his phone.

“No. No. No. NO. NO,” he cried. “Just hold on, Ashlee, I can’t get a signal,” I heard him say, and his voice got farther away.

Now, I don’t know what it is, but hearing his feet pounding down the trail seemed like the last straw that broke the camel’s back and with a primal scream, my body vomited itself into a new configuration. My face broke out into a long muzzle with extremely sharp teeth, a nose for blood, and a hunger for chasing down prey.

I bounded after him on four legs.

On four legs? A miniscule part of me wondered about that, but for the moment, the chase was all I knew.

“But, you don’t understand, Jeanetta! Shane is in trouble and Ashlee is in danger.” Amber banged on the aluminum door of the Macdonald family home, my dad and brother Adam in tow.

 “What the hell kind of stunt do you think you’re pulling, little missy?” Jeanetta Macdonald pushed Amber back as her boyfriend lurked in the background. She wore what we often call a wife-beater underneath her uniform kaki shirt and she still had her polyester ranger’s pants on and her black polished shoes.

Amber wasn’t the type to be hysterical, but she sure was doing a bang-up job this evening.

“Just tell me where she is. Tell me where Shane is. I know he was planning something outrageous, but you’ve got to believe me. Something is wrong! Something bad is going to happen!”

“Oh my God! Listen to yourself!” Jeanetta screeched, her nose reddening with anger. “First you go out with my brother twice, and then you don’t even have the courtesy of extending him the Third Date Termination Clause.”

“What’s the Third Date Termination Clause?” my dad asked.

“I’ll explain later,” Adam told him.

“And then you pawn your sister off onto him like sloppy seconds and now you want to interrupt his date because you had a bad dream?” Jeanetta ranted. “You are in serious need of professional help.”

“Good one, Jen,” Sean the loser boyfriend murmured from the background.

“Miss Macdonald,” my Dad reasoned. “If you could just tell us where they are…”

“Ranger Macdonald,” my brother interjected. “Jeanetta.” His voice softened, slipping past her defenses. “I’d really appreciate it if you could help me make sure that Ashlee is safe. I know she can be a pain in the ass, but…she’s still my sister.”

Adam doesn’t assert himself very often, but when he wants to, he can really command attention and response. Jeanetta looked at him like an aberration, then her brow furrowed as if she seemed confused, which was when she shifted to acquiescence and let out a huge sigh.

My brother has this weird effect on people. It’s almost like he can convince you of anything. One Halloween, when we were ten, and he was like, thirteen, as we were dividing up the stash, he convinced me that I loved tootsie rolls. By the time the night was through, he had all the chocolate, and I had…tootsie rolls. It’s a great story, but I rarely eat tootsie rolls anymore.

“Fine. They’re up at the overlook. But you better just do a drive-by. I was gonna run up there in a couple of hours myself. Make sure the kids aren’t trashing the place. So, why don’t you just give me a call so I don’t have to waste a trip,” she called as my family rushed back to the car.

“Crazy townies,” Jeanetta muttered as she watched us hurry away and then shut the door.

I felt cool hands on the back of my neck and a whisper of night breezes down my naked skin as I vomited up copious amounts of blood. Bits of flesh surrounded me, and a haze of insects sucked the moisture out of the air as it evaporated from my skin.

My poor dear,
I heard. My mother’s voice echoed in my head as soft hands petted the pelt of my hair. My throat felt raw from the acid bile, my head in shock, my heart in anguish.

“I think I killed something,” I croaked.

I know dear.
My mother’s arms held me and rocked away my horror till I fell asleep.

My family found me naked and sound asleep in a pool of Shane’s blood. And though I know what must have happened, because I’ve turned every full moon since that time, the sheriff’s office, unequipped to deal with the supernatural, named it a tragedy of nature and they even brought back the carcass of a mountain lion to prove it.

Jeanetta Macdonald said she forgave me for “dragging my brother out there.” After all, the investigation showed she had allowed Shane to use the camping trailer parked on public land in violation of policy. She tried to claim it was for her own use and that her brother had brought me up there without telling her, but the remains of the feast made it pretty clear what was going on, and with Amber’s testimony about what Shane had claimed, Jeanetta was forced to accept at least some responsibility. I heard later she got a bad performance report and was denied a promotion she wanted.

 You know what was weird? It seemed like she was more upset over the mountain lion than about her brother.

And now you know what really happened.

“Letter, not emails. And not all the time,” I protested. “It was every year on the anniversary of his death, and those were direct threats, like, ‘You’re dead, bitch, for what you did to Shane.’ These are more like warnings. And it stopped when I left Knightsbridge for good.” Or I thought it had.

“Ashlee, I wish you would have told me, told Amber, told
someone
,” Elle said.

“I was in the file. I wasn’t hiding anything. Besides, I’d hoped never to have to think about it again.”

“Sounds like someone isn’t happy you’re back,” Hernandez said. “Any idea who that might be?”

“Jeanetta Macdonald blamed me for Shane’s death, but you guys didn’t find anything,” I said. By “you guys,” I meant the cops in general, of course. Neither Elle nor Hernandez had been with Knightsbridge PD back then.

“What about other friends of Shane’s? Some ex-girlfriend or something?” Elle asked. “Or other family?”

“As far as I know Jeanetta and Shane’s parents are dead. They have cousins, in Utah or something, but aren’t close.”

“We’re not going to get very far on a cold case like this by questioning the victim,” Hernandez broke in, shooting Elle a look. “We need to review all the files and assign an investigator.”

Elle glared at Hernandez but the chief spread his hands. “It’s a dead coyote and a threatening note. I can’t justify some kind of all-out effort unless something happens. Especially not just because it’s your family.”

Elle relented. “Yeah, I get it. Put someone good on it, though, and start with some decent forensics. I’ll back you up at budget time.”

Hernandez sighed and nodded. “I’ll do what I can.”

“Come on, Ash,” Elle said. “Let’s go home.”

“I need to go back by Will’s. He can bring me home afterward.”

Elle pointed her finger at my nose. “Straight there, straight back, and keep your eyes open, the both of you. If you see anything funny, call me right away.”

“Oh come on, Elle. Nothing’s going to happen in broad daylight.”

“How do you know?” And she was right, I didn’t. Except, bad things happened at night. That’s what I’d always believed, and ever since that night, I am living proof.

As Elle was licensed to carry concealed weapons, and was clearly on my side, at least for Amber’s sake, I wasn’t going to argue with her.

On the other hand, Amber wasn’t happy, because Elle had invited Will to stay with me, but it eventually saved her from feeling like she had to be hospitable all the time. It probably helped our sisterly relationship in the end, especially since Will turned out to be a better domestic than I was, and kept the house spotless. How humiliating!

Elle ordered spotlights on motion detectors to be installed around the property and my sister seemed to settle into a new rhythm. This was just one of the reasons I imagined my twin loved Elle so much - she was a bastion of safety and security. She radiated alpha during these moments and, knowing my own limits, both of us siblings accepted beta female roles. I think this is where I first began to consider just what it meant to be a pack. Though they weren’t lycanthropes, this felt like a home now, as if Amber’s attitude had now changed. It seemed I was back inside something, instead of outside, for the first time in years.

Will accepted his beta male role with equanimity, which was funny as there was no alpha male, unless you counted Spanky the Schnauzer, who was about as un-alpha as dogs came. I guess Elle got to play both roles.

Detective Bromley came by and interviewed us all again, and said it would be a couple of weeks before anything came back from the lab. He was a big, florid man who sweated too much and exercised too little, but Elle said he was competent enough. Not much evidence to go on, though, so I didn’t get my hopes up. He did say he was interviewing everyone, including my chief suspect, Jeanetta Macdonald, but he wasn’t about to disclose any details, not even to Elle apparently.

“Cool!” J.R. said. “Can I come?”

We all laughed, a bit raggedly I’ll admit.

“What?” he asked us, with the most innocent lack of guile on his face.

“Maybe another time, sweetie,” my sister said. “I think your Aunt Ash and Uncle Will want to be alone.”

“Wait. What?” my nephew said. “When did Will become my uncle?”

“Yes, Amber,” Elle teased. “Just when did that happen?”

“Just thinking ahead,” she singsonged. “Don’t blame me for stating the obvious.”

Will grinned and looked at me, but I pouted, not exactly certain why except to reflexively oppose my twin. “The obvious is rushing things, sis. I only just got back into town and you’re trying to marry me off to my high school sweetheart?”

“Is that what I am?” Will leaned forward intently.

“And what’s wrong with that?” Amber chimed in.

“Maybe you soured me on marriage.”

“Ouch,” Amber said, and I saw my barb had scored. Perhaps too deep.

“Sorry, low blow,” I said. “I know it wasn’t your fault.”

Her look tried to wither me where I sat. “Been there, done that,” she said coldly, and in that moment seemed older than I was, which was actually our usual relationship.