Heart of the Demon (26 page)

H
ard muscles rippled beneath skin and fur. Sharp teeth reformed themselves. Bones crunched, shifted, and realigned. Glossy
brown fur receded, leaving behind only silken, tanned skin as wolf became human.

Became woman.

Hugging her knees to her chest, Victoria Joseph took several shuddering breaths and fought her way back from the mind of the
wolf. Perspiration dotted her skin. Her body ached, muscles flexed and quivered, recovering from the shock and pain of transformation.
As the last of the wolf retreated inside, giving her one final slash of pain through her midsection, a soft moan escaped her.
She took another deep breath, the humidity of the August morning traveling deep into her lungs. The rain overnight had cleared
out, but not before it had tamped down the pollen and dust that ordinarily floated in the air. It was monsoon season in the
Sonoran Desert. Even with the rise in humidity, unbearable with the hundred-degree temperatures, she loved this time of year.
Monsoon storms were wild, swift, and deadly, yet they spoke to her soul.

She skirted a large saguaro and, with arms that still trembled, shoved aside a large rock to retrieve the plastic bag she’d
stashed there earlier. She pulled out a bottle of water and took a long drink, then another and another until she’d downed
it all. She’d learned a long time ago to rehydrate as soon as possible after a shift. Otherwise she’d be in real danger of
passing out from the strain of the metamorphosis.

Dropping the bottle back into the bag, Tori drew out clean clothing and shoes. Once dressed, she tucked her cell phone into
the front pocket of her jeans and plaited her long hair in a French braid. She hiked the mile back through the desert to the
trailhead where she’d left her car. Whenever she went wolf, she wanted to get out where she’d have some degree of solitude,
and the McDowell Sonoran Preserve afforded that, especially at night.

As she steered the Mini Cooper into her driveway, the sun began to rise over the eastern mountains, sending alternating shafts
of light and shadow across the valley floor. She shut off the engine and sat there a moment, enjoying the stillness of the
dawn, and wondered if her brother was awake yet. Randall had shown up four days prior without warning. The last time she’d
seen him had been just before they were stripped of their bodies and put in a holding cell for decades. Their souls had then
been sent through a rift between dimensions as punishment for a horrific crime committed by their cousin. As incorporeal entities
they’d been drawn to Earth, to the bounty of human bodies available for the taking, for instinctively they’d known if they
didn’t take a host they’d die. She’d ended up in London in the body of a woman making her living on the streets of the East
End. Through the years, she’d managed to get away from that kind of lifestyle, and the new Victoria Joseph had made her way
to the United States at the turn of the twentieth century.

Rand, she’d found out just recently, had gone into a man in a small village outside of Manchester. It might as well have been
the other side of the world. In 1866, it had been impossible to even begin to try to find him. She’d been alone, a stranger
in a borrowed body, overcoming the guilt at displacing the rightful owner while trying to find her way in a primitive world.
Staying alive was about all she could do for a long time.

She and her brother hadn’t seen each other in nearly a hundred and fifty years until he’d shown up on her doorstep, a familiar
spirit in a stranger’s body. She’d known him instantly. He was the same sweet brother she remembered, yet he was different
in some ways. More withdrawn and evasive with a chaser of surly. But even with the newfound secrecy, she would take what she
could get. He was family. She was willing to overlook a few eccentricities and irritating behaviors to have him with her again.

Tori just wished she knew what to do to make him more at ease. He’d had some predisposition toward obsessive-compulsive behavior
before the Influx of 1866, but those tendencies seemed to be exacerbated here. Perhaps the human he’d ended up inhabiting,
Randall Langston, had also had such predilections.

With a sigh she got out of the car and let herself into her small two-bedroom rental. Smells of lavender and vanilla assailed
her from the various bowls of potpourri she had scattered around the house. Her job as werewolf liaison to the Council of
Preternaturals was more often than not dark and full of violence, and as a werewolf she was predisposed to be more aggressive
in nature than an ordinary human woman. So when she came home she wanted calm and tranquility. She needed it in order to slough
off the stress of the day.

Tori drew in a breath and held it a moment, letting the tranquil setting of her home seep into her spirit. Neutral beige and
cream furniture was piled with blue and green pillows, and the same color scheme played out on the walls. The wooden wind
chimes on the back patio clinked, the sound coming to her as clearly as if she were standing beside them.

She didn’t need to use her keen werewolf hearing to pick up the snores coming from Rand’s bedroom. He rarely arose much before
noon, preferring to stay up until the wee hours of morning and run as a wolf as much as possible.

She tried to get over his choosing to run alone instead of with her. After all, he’d been on his own just like she had, and
he was much more of a loner than she’d ever been. But it bothered her. Why had he gone to the trouble of locating her if he
didn’t want to spend any time with her? It was as natural for werewolves to run as a pack, even a small pack of two, as it
was to breathe.

Tori moved quietly through the house, not wanting to wake him. She undressed in her bedroom, putting her cell phone on the
nightstand. After she took a quick shower, she slipped into a robe and padded barefoot into the kitchen. She was starving,
which wasn’t unusual after a shift. She pulled some raw hamburger meat out of the fridge and gulped down a couple of handfuls—just
enough to satisfy her inner wolf. She’d long ago gotten over the gross factor of eating raw meat.

That first time, she’d been half asleep and had come wide awake when she realized she was chowing down on raw liver. She’d
soon discovered that the longer she denied the wolf its meal, the more violent it became when it finally got out. As long
as she fed it regularly, she could shift without worrying that she’d kill someone.

She dumped some granola into a bowl and added a few diced strawberries. She poured herself a cup of coffee and went into her
bedroom, closing the door with a soft
snick
behind her. She placed the cup and bowl on the end table and went over to her bookshelf. Reaching for a well-worn paperback,
she pulled it off the shelf and went back to her queen-sized bed. She perched on the edge and opened the book in the middle,
staring down at the pages before her.

She spooned cereal into her mouth and slipped a finger into the book to retrieve the small black device nestled into the area
she’d cut out. The size of a cell phone, it was about half an inch thick with a couple of small knobs and two retractable
antennae at one end. Tobias Caine, former vampire liaison to the preternatural council and now a member of the same, had given
it to her two weeks ago. Apparently, he and his wife, Nix, had acquired it months ago but held onto it in secret, waiting
for a safe moment to hand it off to her.

As Tobias had put it, he’d chosen Tori because she had two things he needed: a background in radio communications and the
ability to keep her mouth shut. Discretion was most important until they figured out the gadget’s purpose. She’d been honored
that he trusted her with such a task.

He’d also given her the schematics, though they weren’t very useful in getting the thing to work. Oh, she’d managed to turn
it on, but within minutes a voice had spoken in the standard language of the other dimension, asking for a password. She’d
quickly turned the device off. Now, as she studied the thing, turning it over and over in her hands, she tried to figure out
how to activate it without having someone on the other side know. The schematics didn’t seem to indicate that, at least not
that she could tell. Perhaps it wasn’t possible.

She wouldn’t know until she tried. As far as she knew, only three other people knew she was in possession of this little doohickey—Tobias,
his wife, Nix, and Dante MacMillan, a human detective who’d been right in the middle of the action when the device had come
to light. Her resources were limited.

Tori finished her cereal and set the bowl back down on the nightstand. Grabbing her coffee, she took a sip and carried the
cup as she went to her dresser. She opened her lingerie drawer and lifted her panties out of the way so she could pick up
the folded schematics. She shoved the drawer closed with her hip. Going back to the bed, she spread out the plans and stared
down at them while she sipped her coffee.

There were drawings of gears and lines and sections for a first amplifier and a second amplifier, R-F output, a resonator,
and at least two doublers. Mostly though, it was a lot of letters and numbers that must have meant something to the person
who’d drawn them up, but she couldn’t decipher it. Not yet, anyway.

She placed her empty cup on the table and folded the paper up again. Sitting on the edge of the bed, she slid the schematics
under her pillow for the time being and stared down at the device. The idea that this little thing could open up a mini rift
amazed and frightened her. What was the purpose? Oh, she knew enough to figure that right now it was used to communicate from
one dimension to the other. But there had to be more to it than that. What nefarious plans were being hatched, and by whom?
Tobias hadn’t told her from whom he’d gotten the device, just that the person had been mad with ambition.

Tori picked up the black apparatus and brought it closer to peer at the small knobs. She couldn’t discern any labels or hash
marks on the casing, nothing to indicate what function each knob had. She needed to get a magnifying glass to tell for sure.

The more she studied this thing, the more intrigued she became. It really was an ingenious contraption created by an imaginative
and clever inventor. What had been his intention behind building it? Had he meant to make mischief? Or had his plans been
more altruistic than that?

A quick rap on her bedroom door was followed by the door swinging open. Rand poked his head around the edge. “Good morning.
You went out early. Or is it that you came in late?” His head tipped to one side as if he were considering a complicated brain
teaser. “Oh well, no matter. What’s that?” he asked, his gaze on the device in her hand. He came into the room wearing jeans,
his chest and feet bare.

“Rand!” Tori closed her fist around the object in question and fought the urge to hide it behind her back. She wanted to deflect
him from the device, not call attention to it, and putting her hand behind her back would make him all the more curious.

Lifting a hand, he lazily scratched his chest. His mouth opened wide in a huge yawn.

“You can’t just barge in here. You need to wait for me to tell you to come in.” She scowled at him. “What if I’d been getting
dressed?”

“Then I’d have seen bits of you I don’t necessarily want to see,” he said. Tori had lost her East End accent long ago, but
even after all these decades, Rand’s tones still held the flavor of his British human host. He stuck his fingers into the
front pockets of his jeans and hunched his shoulders. “I daresay I’d have recovered from the shock eventually.” He glanced
at her hand. “So, what
is
that?”

Though she was certain she could trust her brother, she was duty-bound not to divulge the secret. She liked Tobias. More than
that, she admired him. She wouldn’t betray his trust in her. As nonchalantly as she could, she replied, “It’s just an MP3
player a friend asked me to try to fix for him.”

Rand raised his brows, skepticism shadowing his eyes. “And why would he think you could fix it?”

“I was a radio communications technician back in the day. I’ve kept up with all the new gadgets as a hobby,” was all she offered.
She didn’t want to talk to him about serving as a communications officer in the American Army during World War II. If he was
as pacifistic as he’d been before their Influx, he wouldn’t approve. She was sure he’d felt right at home during the sixties.
Hell, he probably started the whole “Make Love Not War” movement. He would overlook the nobility of the cause, and right now
she didn’t want to get into an argument with him. Not when they’d just found each other again.

It was time for a change of subject. “So, what do you think of Arizona?” She kept her eyes on him and her hand wrapped around
the device. It wouldn’t do for him to get too close a look or he’d see it wasn’t an MP3 player. She kept her voice cheery,
hoping to distract him. “I mean, I know you’ve been here only a few days, but how do you like it so far?”

Her brother looked like he wanted to pursue the other topic, but for now he let it drop, for which she was grateful. While
ordinarily she had no problems discussing her job or, in this case, a special assignment, this situation was different. He
was her brother, and she didn’t like being deceitful with him. She wanted him to feel like he could trust her because maybe,
just maybe, he’d be more inclined to stay. But if he thought she was being disingenuous with him, it could be all the encouragement
he needed to leave.

“I don’t know,” Rand said. His shoulders hunched further. “I like it well enough, I suppose. I don’t believe I’ll be staying
here for the long term, though.” He grimaced. “It’s hotter than hell, for one thing. I mean, who the hell lives where it’s
a hundred and ten degrees, for crying out loud?”

“Right now it’s hot, yeah. But it’s perfect in the winter months.” Tori bit back her disappointment. Rand didn’t have to stay
in Scottsdale with her, but she’d like him to be close. “And of course I want you to stay here, but wherever you end up, we
have to stay in touch.”