Seduced by Lies Vol. 1 Page 3

  I pushed open the door and walked down the hallway where three men stood, a senior graduating this year, and Curtis and his boyfriend Paul, two recent graduates who had stayed on to help and continue with their own paranormal training. Harry, the senior, sneered at Curtis. "Get a room, fag."

  "Don't you kiss your girlfriend in the hallways?" Curtis asked.

  "My girlfriend," Harry said. "But none of you are girls."

  "No." Curtis held Paul's hand. "And is there anything wrong with that?"

  Harry scowled at them. "It's fucking weird."

  Curtis gestured around him, his hand moving so fast it blurred. "Aren't we all weird?"

  Harry crossed his arms over his chest.

  Curtis kept his voice level, disarming. "Can't we all do things that people would consider weird, unnatural even? I have super speed. You can heat up whatever you touch. Is there anything wrong with that?"

  Harry grabbed Curtis by the collar. "There's nothing wrong with me."

  Paul raised a fist.

  "No," Curtis said. "Leave him be. There's nothing wrong with you, Harry. There's nothing wrong with any of us."

  Harry let Curtis go and walked away. "Just leave me alone, fags."

  "Are you okay?" I asked, getting to them too late to help.

  Curtis straightened his shirt and smiled. "Of course."

  Paul didn't look as calm, his handsome face hard with anger. "You should have let me punch him."

  "No." Curtis shook his head. "I'm no better than Harry. I've been a bully before, making someone feel bad for being different."

  My eyes widened in surprise. "You? Why?"

  Curtis shrugged. "I was scared of who I was, of being different, so I took it out on others. I don't think that deserves to be punished."

  I checked my watched. Class would be ending soon. "I'll have to tell Father Patrick about this. He can't treat you this way." I laid a hand on his arm. "But I'm proud of you for handling it the way you did. I'm glad you and Paul chose to stay after graduation. These kids need more people like you."

  "Thank you." Curtis picked up his backpack. "Are we still going tonight?"

  "Yes." I said. "I'll meet you out front after classes."

  Paul turned to him, still frowning. "But, we still have to decide—"

  "Do what you must," Curtis said, not unkindly. "I know what I want, Paul. I love you." He kissed Paul and walked down the hall with me.

  "Is everything okay between you two?" I asked him.

  "Yes, thanks." He sighed. "Paul just… Paul needs to decide if he's ready."

  "Ready?"

  "To let the world know about us."

  CHAPTER THREE

  DRAKE DAVIS

  SOME KNOWLEDGE, SOME truths, were best left hidden. Which is why our school had a general library for any student or staff who wanted to read or study, and a private library that only a few of us had access to.

  We even had a secret entrance, right out of a movie. One of the books on the top shelf in the general library wasn’t really a book. If you pulled it, that bookshelf swung out, revealing a secret room where the rarest books were kept—books that held dangerous knowledge.

  That’s where I was when Father Patrick found me. I had books spread before me and a notebook filled with quotes, page numbers and references. The books in this room weren’t allowed to be checked out. If you wanted to study them, you had to suffer the cramped space with no windows. Just walls of old, musty books.

  An oak table sat in the middle of the room with four chairs. To the right, in front of the section on ancient magicks and rituals, sat a love seat that had seen better days, and on the opposite side of the room an overstuffed chair squatted like an unwelcome relative who refused to leave.

  Father Patrick pulled up a chair across the table from me and sat down, his emotions pouring into me—worry, fear, anxiety. “Drake, I’ve been looking for you everywhere.” He looked at the books I’d been studying and frowned, his energy shifting to, not anger, but something close. Frustration maybe. I was still learning to master my new gifts as an empath and seer and still adjusting to the loss of my other gifts of mind control and super strength. “Still trying to find out information about your father?” Father Patrick asked.

  I sighed, unwilling to get into yet another argument with the old priest about this subject. “Beleth can’t be just a genetic experiment. He unlocked powers in me I never knew I had. It doesn’t make sense." I'd googled Beleth and got a bunch of crap on demons, and that didn't make sense either. "And now, with what I’ve seen, I know there’s more in the world than just humans modified with paranormal powers. There are witches and druid shifters and probably a lot more I haven’t even heard of. So, what is he? What is Beleth, and what am I? A demon?"

  Father Patrick turned away, ignoring my question. When I thought our conversation was over, he chuckled. "My father was a technician, you know, for a time. Whenever our cat chewed through a wire, he'd always fix it himself, and I watched. I loved watching my dad work. Eventually, he got a job as a policeman, long hours, barely home. I couldn't watch my dad work anymore. He couldn't fix our wires anymore. Didn't have the time." He smiled, like remembering an old joke. "One day, the cat chewed through the TV cord again. 'I can fix it, Mom,' I said. 'Don't worry about it,' she said, 'I'll call a technician.' But, we didn't need a technician. I'd seen my dad fix wires a hundred times. Cut away the damaged area. Remove the insulation. Connect the wires by twisting. While my mom took a bath, I spliced the wires together. They were hard to reach behind the TV, so I pulled them closer, and a numbness bit my arm. I jumped back, clutching my shocked hand. 'Are you okay?' yelled my mother, who had just come down stairs. She hugged me as I cried. 'I just wanted to fix it like Papa,' I said. 'You? What do you know of fixing wires?' she asked. 'I've seen Papa do it a hundred times,' I said through tears. 'So?' she said. 'You don't know enough.' She unplugged the broken wire. 'If this had a higher voltage, you could have died.' I cried harder at that, and my mother took me to bed. And that day I learned that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing."

  "Because if you knew nothing about splicing wires, you'd never have tried," I said.

  He flexed his hand open and closed. "Incomplete knowledge brings harm."

  "So give me more knowledge," I said. "If I know more about what I am, then maybe it could help me control my powers."

  Father Patrick sighed. "What I know is very little, and it wouldn't help."

  I glared at him, sterner than I could ever remember. "Let me decide that."

  Father Patrick wasn’t normally one to keep things from people, particularly when it affected them personally, despite his secretiveness, but this was one topic he refused to budge on. “My boy, I have known you most of your life. I’ve watched you become the man you are today, watched you battle your demons and come out stronger. I’ve seen the kind of father you are, the kind of husband you are, and I couldn’t be more proud. Please trust me on this. There’s more to Beleth than you know, and you’re better off not knowing. Until he decides to tell you the whole truth.”

  "If he decides."

  "And if he doesn't, so be it. In this, he knows better than me."

  I opened my mouth to argue, to point out that I was an adult and had a right to make my own decisions, to learn what I wanted, but he held up his hand, his eyes sagging and tired. “Please, can we table this for another time. I came here to talk to you about a pressing matter.”

  He told me about the message from the Vatican, and the threat to our school. My heart sank. “So we could lose the school? Just like that?”

  Father Patrick shrugged. “It all depends on the Church, but yes.”

  "I thought you owned this property. This doesn't make any sense."

  "I do, in a manner of speaking," he said. "But, it's complicated. The short story is, they can and will take this away from us if they choose to."

  I closed the book in front of me and crossed my arms, leaning back in my chair. “We could relocate to
the property Sam bought in Hawaii.” She’d come into quite an inheritance when she discovered her father had been the man in charge of the Rent-A-Kid school. When he died, all the wealth he’d built up went to her.

  “It wouldn’t be big enough for us now, not with the growth we’ve experienced,” he said.

  “What about the O’Conners? I could talk to Derek. They have a lot of properties and money.” Derek’s family owned Rose Botanicals and had more money than God, if the news could be believed. I never asked Derek outright how much he was worth—guys just didn’t talk about that kind of stuff—but I knew it was a lot.

  “There’s more,” Father Patrick said. “It’s not just the school. I’m still a priest, still under the control of the Vatican. They could reassign me.”

  That stopped me short. “Reassign you? They don’t own you. We can’t lose you. You run this place.”

  He shook his head. “They own me as much as the military owns a soldier. Plus, relocating these kids after everything they’ve been through would be too much for them. They need stability, a place to call home. I think our best bet is to work with the person they’re sending and see if we can avoid any major upheavals. I’ve already talked with Bernard about it, and he’s in agreement.”

  Professor George Bernard Shaw was my best friend Brad’s journalism instructor and had come close to exposing Rent-A-Kid years ago, before they shot him and destroyed the evidence he’d collected. He’d been instrumental in helping us free Sam’s friends and shut down the whole organization at last, and now he helped run this school.

  I needed to call Brad and see how he was doing. He’d been traveling the country doing follow-up stories on paranormals for his ever-growing blog.

  “Okay,” I nodded. “We’ll just have to make it work when this guy gets here. Though, I’m not sure how the Catholic Church is going to view our way of life.”

  Father Patrick chuckled. “Neither am I, my boy. Neither am I.”

  Leaving the books on the table, we stood and left the library so I could find Sam and tell her about this. In the hall Curtis ran up to us, his face beaming with joy that I could feel vibrating from him in waves. “Father Patrick, I’m glad I found you. I have a favor to ask.”

  An image of the future filled my mind, and I smiled, knowing what he was about to say and happy for him.

  “Paul said yes. We’re getting married, and I was wondering if you’d do the ceremony?”

  Any other priest would have balked at the thought of marrying two gay men, but I didn’t feel any doubt from Father Patrick as he patted Curtis on the shoulder and smiled. It was one of the reasons we loved him, and one of the reasons I feared this new intrusion from the Church. “Of course, my boy. I’d be delighted. I’m so glad Paul was able to sort through his own fears to make this decision.”

  Despite everything happening that could screw things up for everyone I loved, I recognized that we had to seize the little moments of happiness when we could.

  Life was too short not to.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  DEREK O'CONNER

  WITH THE INSTINCTS of a predator, I hunted. But I wasn’t hunting to kill. I was hunting for a killer. In wolf form, the world buzzed with senses no human could experience, let alone understand and sift out. Decaying leaves from a recent summer rain. The scuttle of insects taking refuge under rocks. Trees, the trunks a musty, rich scent, the leaves sharper, more pungent.

  And blood.

  So much blood.

  The victim hadn’t died peacefully, or neatly. They’d already removed the body, but finding the exact spot where Curtis’s cousin had died wasn’t hard. Even if there hadn’t been a dark stain seeping into the earth.

  I sniffed the area, expecting an animal scent, but all I smelled was human. The body hadn’t been here long enough for scavengers, but I should have been able to smell the wolf that attacked him.

  And yet, nothing.

  I sifted through the subtle smells. The victim—fear, blood, sweat. Cops had been coming and going, dozens of smells, distinct but all human. No wolf, which didn’t make any sense at all, given the wounds and crime reports.

  Jared had been attacked while fixing his mountain bike, but he hadn't been riding a trail, he'd been cutting his own through the foliage. Following his scent, I found wolf tracks, big wolf tracks, but still no smell of wolf, not even from the tracks. Which was, of course, impossible. A wolf couldn’t mask its scent from another wolf.

  I followed the tracks through the woods, and they changed, grew further apart like…

  Like the wolf walked on two legs.

  Impossible.

  I reached a river and lost the track. Whatever left these prints must have crossed the river, but I didn’t see anything more on either side.

  My ears perked up as voices alerted me to the presence of the police at the crime scene. They would be looking for a wolf.

  A wolf just like me.

  I ran, darting behind trees and keeping my distance from the hunting party, until I found my clothes stashed in a hollowed out tree. Pine needles poked at my bare feet and hands as I shifted back to human, my body stretching and bending itself until I was myself again.

  I dressed quickly, slipping on my shoes as one of the officers spotted me from a distance and shouted at me to stop.

  I ran, faster than most humans, but not as fast as a wolf, and looked down at my footprints, wolf to human. Using a branch, I covered my tracks until I reached my car, and drove back home in silence, my heart pounding hard in my chest.

  What kind of beast were we dealing with? A new kind of shifter? But what kind of shifter left no scent?

  CHAPTER FIVE

  ROSE O'CONNER

  THE BARLEY'S LIVED near the forest where Jared had been killed. Curtis and I pulled up to their house, a small one-story with peeling paint and rotting wood. One shutter hung off its hinges, looking like it was about to fall off as a giant black spider scurried across it.

  The sun beat down on us, a trickle of sweat tickling the back of my neck, as we waited on the porch for someone to answer the door. I turned to Curtis, whose body was tense. “You okay? We can leave if you want.”

  He shook his head. “I need to do this. Thank you for coming.”

  The door opened, and a stooped old woman with white hair, tinted blue, shuffled into view. “May I help you?”

  “Mrs. Barley, it’s me, Curtis.”

  He was more formal than I expected, but I held my tongue. Curtis had told me that Jared’s grandparents had raised him after his own parents had died in a car accident.

  Mrs. Barley’s milky blue eyes widened, the wrinkles lining her face crinkling into deep wedges as she gave a grimace that looked like an attempt at a smile. “Curtis, hello. It’s been too long.” She opened the screen door. “Come in, please.”

  Curtis stepped aside to let me walk in first. “This is my friend, Rose. Rose, this is Jared’s grandmother, Mrs. Barley.”

  I smiled and held out my hand. “Nice to meet you.”

  Her hand felt like a bird’s, so tiny and fragile.

  The house smelled old and musty. It was clean enough, though quite run down. She gestured to the couch, a pale peach floral pattern so faded it looked stained. We sat as she called her husband down and disappeared into the kitchen.

  Family photos and needlepoint pieces cluttered every surface and wall in the living room. I recognized Jared’s face from the news, and saw his progression from childhood to manhood spread out on the mantel over the fireplace.

  Mrs. Barley returned a few minutes later with a tray of tea and cookies. “Here you are. Please help yourself.”

  I wasn’t hungry, and the cookies didn’t look particularly fresh, but I took the tea to be polite. “Thank you.”

  Curtis took a cup as well, as an older man stomped down the hall.

  Mrs. Barley’s hand shook, and her smile didn’t reach her eyes when she looked at her husband. "You remember, Curtis, dear?"

  Mr. Barley grunt
ed. "I remember he went to that school.” He faced Curtis, his eyes hard and voice gruff. “They let you out whenever you feel like it, boy?"

  My new power opened up, and I could see into his heart, into the hearts of everyone in the room. His had darkness seeping out of it, anger and hate and pain boiling inside of him.

  Mrs. Barley, whose heart was kind, but weak, held out her hand. "George, please—"

  Curtis interrupted just as I was about to say something to put this old bastard in his place. "It's okay." He faced Mr. Barley. "The school is voluntary."

  The old man’s lips curled around his teeth in a sneer. "They should change that."

  Tension filled the room, and I released a strand of my power to calm everyone, despite my own anger and raised pulse.

  Mrs. Barley handed her husband a cup of tea. "George, he's here to talk about Jared." At the mention of his name, tears fell from her eyes and her breathing hitched on her sobs. I could see the grief pouring out of her, nearly suffocating Curtis.

  He put his cup down and looked at Jared’s grandparents. “Do you know anything beyond what they’re reporting in the news? What happened to him?”

  The tears continued to fall as Mrs. Barley spoke. “The police said it was an animal attack. A wolf, it looked like.”

  George laughed a humorless laugh. “That’s a crock of horse shit, Delores.” He pointed to Curtis. “We all know it was one of your kind. Don’t pretend it’s not.”

  Our kind? Who the hell did this guy think he was? I was about to argue with him, but Curtis put a hand on mine. We stared at each other, and even though I couldn’t read minds like Sam, I knew he wanted me to back off, to not start a confrontation. I took a breath and relaxed my body, channeling my power to calm myself this time. I was here for him, not my own agenda. I needed to let him set the tone of this meeting.

  Still, George pissed me off. It was because of people like him that we all had to live in fear and secrecy. He was the reason our kids were in danger from the world, and I hated it.