IMMINENCE (The Shape Shifter series) Read online

  IMMINENCE

  by

  Jennifer Loiske

  Copyright © Jennifer Loiske 2011

  All rights reserved

  www.jenniferloiske.com

  No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without written permission from the author.

  All characters and events in this publication are either purely fictitious or used fictitiously and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead is purely coincidental.

  Any Gaelic language used in this book may have many different versions or meanings depending on the area from where it originated or where it is used. Therefore any mistakes in the grammar are the authors.

  Cover design by Eveliina Tommola 2011

  Copyright © Eveliina Tommola, Viima Graphics

  All rights reserved

  Translated from Finnish to English by Aino Artell

  To Kimmo, Iida and Anna,

  thank you for believing in me

  and

  to Aino Artell,

  who saved me when I needed it the most

  PROLOGUE

  What is eternity? What does it really mean? For me, it meant lies, hiding and betrayal. I had betrayed my own kind and fled. I had chosen a life with a mortal and pretended that I was one, too. But I was not, and it was time for me to admit it.

  I lie beside my husband in the night, but I‘m not asleep. All my senses are tuned to hear the sounds around us, to smell unfamiliar scents. I lie completely still. What would he do, if he knew who I was? Would he run or would he stay? I hear our sweet daughters snuffle in their sleep. Would they be afraid of their mother, if they knew the truth? A duvet rustles. Marie’s hand hits the floor and she mumbles something incomprehensible in her sleep. Clarissa coughs. I want to go to them, and press their slim bodies against mine. Hold them tight and keep them safe. Safe from me and the one that has come to hunt me. Instead I press myself closer to David and he wraps his arms around me.

  I feel the burning heat of his skin. Though our room is warm I shiver with chills, so I crawl closer. I sense something terrible will happen soon, but when I try to grasp that thought it vanishes at once into the darkness. I feel the excitement and thrill in my bones. I can almost recognize the hunter, but still can’t. The thought of him feels so familiar but still my mind refuses to cooperate with me. I reach out to feel the minds of our dogs, but I can’t find them. It’s as if a dark wall had materialized between my mind and the rest of the world, and I can’t find the smallest crack in it to send my thoughts through. I’m shivering with cold.

  I can’t understand how I let things get to this point. Did I really think I could pretend all my life; to hide from them and to pretend I’m like everyone else, to flee forever? I have endangered everything that is important to me. I have been truly selfish and stupid. Didn't I know this day would come? Eventually, it had to. How reckless and stupid of me to put my family in this kind of danger. Could I be strong enough to fight against my own existence? To choose my mortal family over my immortal one? I hold David really tight. How could he not notice what a war raged inside me? Could he really not feel the danger around us? I could hear their quiet whispers in the dark, sense the smell of them. How they tempted me to go with them, not understanding that I could not. I could not leave my family unprotected. He would never allow them to live, no matter what promises he made. I could never trust him again. I trusted him once and look where it got me. I am a refugee, an outcast from my own, but by my own choice. I could never have chosen the life he offered me. I was not a killer.

  Now they are here and all I can do is lie utterly still. Protect my family with the skills I possess. Skills, I never got chance to hone properly, for I was too young when I escaped. I sense them moving in the vicinity, probing people’s minds, looking for information about me. When daylight fades into night and darkness descends upon our valley, they arrive like rats.

  They infiltrate people’s homes, looking for signs of me. Anything that might connect them with me and lead them to me. All my friends, my loved ones, are in danger. I curl up against David’s chest, burrowing deeper into his arms. I press my face on his skin and let my senses fill up with his scent. I fill my lungs with his male scent and try to calm down. If they can erect a wall between my thoughts and all other consciousnesses, so can I.

  I force myself to be calm. I count the seconds in my mind. A sense of danger surrounds our home. I dig my fingernails into the palms of my hands. I feel panic threatening to overwhelm me. They are very near already. Like mist, their tentacles penetrate our surroundings and feel out anything and anyone they chance to touch. Only a few more seconds and they will reach me. I breathe in and out slowly. I know I can do this. I stare at the ceiling and try to think of a place as far from our valley as possible. With my mind, I create an illusion. I let my visions entangle into an impossible snarl no one can unravel. Truth entwines with imagination. I focus my thoughts on anything that will lead them away from here. I must not give them the tiniest clue of my whereabouts. It’s almost quiet. I think I can hear my own heartbeat. A thin film of cold sweat covers my forehead. Concentrate, I repeat to myself. I can feel the strange consciousness becoming confused and turning to follow my thoughts. I dimly sense it turn slowly to follow my imagined route. Now I can’t lose my train of thought for a second. I feel David’s hand slide down to stroke my buttocks as he moves closer to me. I cannot allow him to distract me, so I pull away slightly. Grunting, he rolls away and sleeps on.

  I open my mind to the surrounding darkness and reach out carefully to feel if the threat is still around. I think of our lane and the trees shading it, the damp patches of moss and the rocky ridges. I inspect the darkness underneath the branches of the trees and around their trunks. The animals hiding in the shadows are afraid to move. They can also sense that something bad is moving around our house. It wants to crawl in and fill our home with darkness. It wants to wrap its terrible fingers around my family and destroy it, to shred and maul until the pulse of life leaves them forever. It circles around me; inquisitive, seductive, alluring. It wants to caress my face, my body, to own me. I can feel how confused it is. It is a cluster of many minds, but when I try to see how many, I´m faced with a very carefully built resistance and I´m afraid to use my power to dissemble it. I sense them arguing. The strongest of them wants to stay with me, the others are unsure whether to follow my thoughts or not. Eventually even the strongest one gives in. I lie absolutely still, concentrating on the illusion I created and waiting for morning to break. The hunt has begun.

  CHAPTER 1

  I’m sitting at the kitchen table, wrapped in my old worn-out dressing gown. The cup of calming chamomile tea in front of me is already my fifth. I lift the cup, absent-minded, and drink some tea. It tastes awful. Cold and diluted. Now, in the morning, the anxiety and fears of the past night feel ridiculous. I’ve already almost persuaded myself that it was all a fragment of my imagination. Flow and Bruun, our shepherd dogs, are happily running around our yard. They are following some scent from last night. At times they lose the trail and chase each other, barking wildly. I touch their minds softly but there is no trace to be found of the previous night’s threat. I can hear our daughters making noise upstairs. David has left for work sometime during the early morning hours.

  The sounds are getting closer and when I lift my head I see Clarissa attempting to sneak quietly down the stairs. The attempt is rather unsuccessful, as our sixteen-year-old firstborn doesn’t yet seem to be able to control her young woman’s body and her quiet sneaking sounds more like a small herd of elephants charging down the stairs. I look at her, mesmerized. After all these years,
I still can’t comprehend that David and I have created such a perfect creature. Clarissa has inherited her body shape from David, who is tall and slim. A stream of honey-blond hair flows down her shoulders and back. Bright green eyes peer sleepily at me from beneath long dark lashes and a trendily cut fringe is stubbornly attempting to stray from its style, even though Clarissa wastes at least half an hour every morning doing her hair. Her skin is flawless and the classic beauty of her narrow face is only marred by a lush, pursed mouth that tells the whole world how unhappy she is to yet again have to wake up this early. Her long, lean arms are dragging a heavy school bag and her legs that seem to go on forever are stuffed into tight, dark blue jeans. She flops down beside me and lets out a heavy sigh. Then she fixes a pleading gaze at me and smiles.

  “Mom, can you make me some breakfast?”

  I get up and place some orange juice, bread, butter and cheese onto the table. She looks at them in confusion and mumbles to herself. At one stern glance from me, she falls silent and starts buttering her bread. She sighs theatrically and gives me some suffering glances under her lashes. As lovely as Clarissa is, she can sometimes be very lazy. She is lucky to possess the skill to make others serve her without them even realizing it.

  “It must have been very cold last night,” she says, her mouth full of bread.

  “Were you cold?” I ask, concerned. She looks straight into my eyes and shakes her head.

  “It might have been just a nightmare,” she mutters.

  “What kind of a nightmare?”

  “Very strange. It was cold. Really, really cold and it felt like some kind of evil was trying to invade our home,” Clarissa throws me a quick glance and I nod encouragingly. She smiles an uncertain smile and continues.

  “I was trying to force myself to wake up, but it was impossible. My throat felt strangled and even though I tried to scream, there was no sound. It was horrible. I never fully grasped the dream and although I tried to remember it this morning, I couldn't recall it. An awful, irrational feeling of fear was the only thing left from the dream. Just like in some horror movie,” Clarissa shudders, as if to shake a shiver of chill off her skin, and resumes eating. I rise abruptly and turn to stare out of the window. I have to invent something for my hands to do, so I start hastily twining Clarissa’s hair into a French plait.

  “Mom, don´t stress. Honestly!” Clarissa casually brushes my hand away and attempts to laugh.

  Her laugh is forced and we both know that the nightmare was something more than just a dream. Clarissa just doesn’t realize how horrible the reality can be compared to a nightmare.

  I look at her fearfully. It was real after all. I must be very careful or I could lose everything that is important to me and they will find me. I had created this hideaway carefully. Chosen a place where everyone knew each other to a degree but no one was overly interested in anyone else’s business. A small village, near the sea, where distances between houses were quite long, so long that people wouldn't bother to visit each other too often. Especially if you never asked them to come.

  Our house had been built apart from the others, in a valley where no other houses stood within our view but where help would still be within a running distance if needed. Fields and forests surround the house. To the southern border of our plot is the sea and the beach runs along 600 meters. Our property had been fenced in with steel mesh to prevent anyone from reaching us unnoticed, and our house had been equipped with security cameras and alarms. Some would've said that it looked more like an army base than a home, and David had thought me paranoid but considering his frequent absences due to his work, he had given in. I had even chosen my career so that I could stay home and develop my natural skills with animals without raising any eyebrows. I’m good at my job, but not too good. I´m an active dog trainer but everyone knows that work isn’t the most important thing in my life. Work is just a pastime for me; a pleasant hobby that prevents David and our friends from wondering how I manage to pass the days. Sometimes I had wondered why David did not bother asking me about my work. Perhaps he subconsciously understood that by not asking too many questions, he would avoid getting answers that he was really not ready to hear.

  Now, thinking back, I feel I should perhaps have settled into some international metropolis where it’s possible to lose yourself in masses of people and live your life nearly invisible for years. I considered that once, but I don't really like big cities, and after I met David, that was not an alternative anymore since he hated those noisy places even more than I. Now I know I have been selfish and all too careless. Now that I look back at my life, I notice the many little clues I have left behind along the journey. One who knows me and knows who I really am would be able to find me by following those clues. Had I unconsciously left those signs behind me? Do I actually want to be found? I’m startled by Clarissa winding her arms around me.

  “Mother, what´s wrong with you? I've been talking to you for at least ten minutes and yet you haven’t listened to me at all.”

  “I must be a little tired. Shouldn't you be heading to school already?”

  Clarissa throws me a long, questioning look and I feel the fear trying to rise to the surface again. Have I said something? Could she know? I shake my head and try to calm my unsettled thoughts.

  “That´s what I've been trying to tell you this whole time. I´ll walk to the crossroads today and Stella’s mom will drive us to school,” Clarissa says impatiently, as if I were a three-year-old child.

  “Flow and Bruun can come with you. They´ll return home anyway when you are at the main road,” I say in a placating tone and attempt to smile bravely.

  Even though I´m very frightened, I feel my fighting spirit rising. Nothing shall destroy my family and I will do whatever I can to defend it.

  I send an invitation to the dogs in my mind and they run to the gate to wait for Clarissa. I give them a stern mental lecture on how they should behave on their accompanying walk. If threatened, they must immediately message me and stay close to Clarissa. No games of finding trails or chasing birds. Flow is especially impossible with birds. She enjoys nothing so much as chasing birds and sometimes, when I watch her stalking games in the yard, disbelief fills my mind. Even though this beautiful shepherd dog is related to the wolf, I feel betrayed. Flow had been chosen to protect my family because I am able to communicate with her so easily, and I know she would give her life for the sake of any member of my family. Both her parents were pedigreed White Shepherds, but one of her dam’s distant ancestors was a hybrid. Half wolf, half dog. I know that Flow is at heart more dog than wolf and even though she is very dear to me, right now I need a stronger and tougher protector for my child.

  Bruun, on the other hand, is a hybrid, even though he looks more like a dog. Bruun is a good guardian, but unpredictable. Were Flow in danger, I wouldn't be able to trust Bruun to save my child first before going to Flow’s rescue. Me, the alpha of the pack, he would naturally rank first priority, but the other members of my family are still not full members of our pack in his eyes. David has washed his hands of our dogs and pays no attention to their similarities with the wild wolf. Otherwise he would surely have noticed the slightly too big and sharp teeth of our pets. He would have noticed how large our dogs look beside other dogs and how alert they are all the time. Our sinewy dogs look like they are lying in wait for prey, even though in reality they are merely much more aware of their surroundings than ordinary pet dogs.

  Clarissa mutters something about overprotective moms but relents without much argument. I know she likes the dogs accompanying her to the crossroads. The walk is nearly three kilometers long and especially in wintertime it’s miserable to head down the dark road when one would much rather have preferred to stay in bed under the duvets. Clarissa also thinks it very cool that the dogs wait for her after school. As if some mystical power had made them sit quietly on the roadside and Clarissa’s appearance would wake them from their spell. Sometimes Clarissa wonders how they always know wh
en she is on her way home.

  The door bangs closed and silence wraps around me. I mentally search the surroundings of our house but can’t recognize any signs of the nocturnal danger. Were it not for Clarissa, I would probably shrug the nightmare off and forget it, but as things stand I must take precautions to protect my family. I just don’t know where to start and what to do. I know that something is stalking my family, but nothing else. Even though I have a pretty strong idea of who or what is behind this, I can´t believe it to be true. I have no way of telling David or the girls about this. I have no one I can talk this through with. Longing fills me and my throat constricts at the thought of my parents and my siblings. I have not thought of them for years. I had just escaped and even the thought of being in contact with them had been impossible. And yet I miss them this morning more than ever. They would know precisely what I should do.

  I glance at the clock and drag myself upstairs. I knock at Marie’s door without getting an answer. I push the door open carefully and sit on the edge of our youngest daughter’s bed. How beautiful she is. I carefully sweep a few tendrils of hair away from her face with my finger and let my hand stay on her silky soft hair.

  A mass of curly hair is spread in a tangle around her shoulders. Her eyes, fringed by long, dark lashes, are firmly closed and her deep red lips are slightly open. Marie’s skin is very pale and often when I’ve had the chance to observe her unnoticed, I’ve been reminded of the story of Snow White. Marie, however, is a far cry from Snow White. She is very beautiful but highly temperamental. It feels like Marie is always ready for a fight. If one needs to decide something quickly with Marie, one needs to be clever. As a matter of principle Marie is always of a different opinion than others and she wants to know all possible sides of an argument. Sometimes it is extremely annoying.