Of Death and Dragons (To Tame a Shifter World)

1. A Haunting

ONE

a haunting

I want to start off by saying . . . I don’t think, under any circumstances, I’m supposed to be here. I unfortunately don’t have a choice in where here is . . .

Or who I am, for that matter.

But I can’t take my eyes off of them either. There are just the three of us in this room that’s too large and grand for me to even understand what this place is. I pause to try to remember what happened before this, but there’s nothing. Nothing. I close my eyes hard before taking it all in again to find something that may trigger any inkling of a memory.

Smooth ebony bricks are polished to perfection, circling us, around and around, on all sides of the cylinder-like bedroom. One bed juts out from the far wall while I sit criss cross applesauce on the opposing bed. My brows pinch together just as another blow lands with a hard whomp.

Lucky me, I’m seated at a front row viewing of two men completely on the verge of murdering each other.

“Um, hello?” With an exaggerated wave of my hand, I test the awkward greeting on a steady tone, but I’m fully ignored.

“I didn’t antagonize the headmaster!” the leaner boy grinds out, but it’s hard to understand his words when his head is being crushed so tightly by a thick bicep, strangling the breath and words from his throat before they ever come out. Red-stained spit slips from his lips, and he spews it to the glossy floor. Another solid landing of an angry fist into the guy’s stomach has me wincing and wondering why the hell they’re having the quietest fistfight known to man.

I dissect the moment even more, cutting every detail down to try to understand. He mentioned a headmaster but both of them seem much older than school boys. Possibly early twenties even. This room does seem a bit like a college dorm room, so perhaps I’m a student here.

It is very apparent, though, that they can’t see me. I peer around in my haze of confusion. The tall climbing walls cast shadows across the cruel angle of their sharp cheekbones. The darkness of the room hangs heavily over the space. Ragged breaths and fraying masculine rage fill the room, leaving little space for my sudden self-awakening despite the sprawling living quarters.

The boy with the upper hand clenches tighter for a moment, his muscle bulging in his arm beneath a wrinkled and skewed white button-down. He stares intensely at the other boy’s reddening face that appears so similar to his own. Both have the palest shade of evil in their stormy eyes. Both have messy, dark hair that’s clearly been attacked by more blows than I’ve quietly sat here to witness. They’re so darkly alluring. Strikingly similar in a haunting way aside from a scar that strikes through the middle of the left eye of the man whose lashes blink hazy and slowly like he might pass out. Aside from that, they’re the same.

They might even be . . . twins.

Time strangles on without a word as a choking, desperate gasp sputters from the boy whose knuckles are dead white around his brother’s tense arm. He claws at the flesh of the flexing forearm. As the seconds pass, so does his will for life, it seems.

It’s a strange intimacy to witness something so dark and depraved as murder. I oddly feel numbness where I’d think a sick twisting of my stomach should be. I should stop them. I should say . . . something.

But I remain transfixed where I sit.

Perhaps I’m just as vile as they are.

The boy’s hands fall away, his fingers twitching like he’s still clinging to the idea of wanting to live, but he just doesn’t have the energy.

With eyes wide open, I don’t make a single move.

Then he lets him go. The boy falls to his hands and knees, his breaths scraping on the air he greedily pulls in. A sigh of relief slips through me as well. The almost murderer strides through the room without another word, leaving me and his possible brother to our own confusing thoughts. The door opens then closes behind him with a slam.

As he pushes himself to his unsteady feet, silence settles in, and my mind is reeling from too many unanswered questions.

Who am I?

Where am I?

And why did I choose this weird awakening right in the midst of this mess?

“Fucking prat,” the abandoned man says on a flat tone before using the edge of the bed to help himself stand. He takes another jagged breath before flopping down on the bed across from mine. The springs whine beneath his weight, and thick dark lashes close over his eyes. Peace drifts over the silence. A black metal staircase lines the walls, and it twirls around the room, higher and higher. It’s almost a never-ending spiral before stopping at a narrow balcony door. The ceiling arches up into a steeple that’s adorned with stark black beams that catch the eye and lead my gaze along the ebony bones of the room. They run up together until stopping at the center of a sleek octagonal window that highlights the moody midday sky. The circular room revels in the meager crack of light it feeds us. It casts across me without warmth. Clouds hang overhead like watchful eyes.

This room feels foreign. Empty despite the two of us.

I look over at the mystery man on the bed to consider if I might know him now that his head isn’t in danger of being ripped from his shoulders. Blood dries along his sharp, dark eyebrow and lower lip. His cheekbones could cut glass. He’s pretty in the way that all deadly and dangerous things are. An alluring beauty that masks a predator underneath.

But the moment I peer away from his mesmerizing features, I realize I’m getting to know these men on a more intimate level than I ever signed up for because there he is, all seven— no —eight inches of himself in his right hand. His head tips back to reveal the strong length of his neck, his throat bobbing almost in time with the slow stroke of his palm.

My features drop instantly, and I close my eyes slowly before rejecting the sight of this incredibly awkward situation.

“Nope. That’s as much as I need to see today.” I stagger toward the door, and the moment my hand meets the silver metal knob, I fall right through it.

Air filters around me as well as into me, and yet my blonde hair barely shifts along my features. It’s the strangest feeling. I free-fall so easily and yet land so firmly on the other side. My palms hit the wooden floorboards just before my face does. I flinch hard, but nothing more happens. Pain . . . it doesn’t exist.

No fear, guilt, or pain. I’m not an expert on the human condition, but that can’t be good, right?

I sit for a moment waiting for a panic attack that never comes before lifting my hand to my face, the skin there seeming so thin, I can see through it. Two students in black fitted jackets and black slacks walk my way, neither of them looking down at the mess of a girl sitting on her ass in front of them.

And then . . . a sharp intake of air hits my lungs as the one on the right walks through my chest. His legs swoosh my insides around like I’m nothing more than a puddle in his way. My entire being is suddenly abuzz with energy, none of it feeling as it should.

I think I’m going to be sick.

What—what happened to me? Did I die? And then, the saddest thought of all . . . why don’t I remember the life I had before?

It probably wasn’t worth remembering, a nagging voice at the back of my mind sneers.

Wow. I don’t remember who I was, but clearly, my self-esteem could use some work. Perhaps I was someone worth remembering. Perhaps I even . . .

A girl comes running down the hall, and I barely roll out of the way of her storming boots as she turns quickly down the corridor. I hit a row of black metal lockers before falling to my back, and I lie there for a long moment, staring up at the arched brickwork above. I don’t think I'm cut out for this afterlife.

Dozens of students pass by on hurried steps. No one looks my way. Not a single one of them. I reach for the last girl who passes by. It’s my final attempt to force someone to acknowledge my possible existence, but my fingers slide right through her leg. Her slender shoulders tremble just slightly but she keeps on going without a single pause.

The hall quiets once they’ve left me.

From the corner of my gaze, a dead spider lies legs up next to me, mocking my patheticness. I eye the little, dusty corpse. For several quiet passing seconds, I consider staying here. Just lying here with my little deceased friend for the rest of my days, however long that may be. I, too, will become dusty, forgotten décor.

I’ve got to get my afterlife together. I can’t just sit on the floor and mope about what I may or may not have been.

But what do you do when you literally don’t have a life?

An echoing bell rings suddenly, its tone scraping violently through the air. A shiver crawls beneath my skin at the feel of it reverberating through me. I hear every swing of the metal bell, despite not seeing it at all. The carrying sound dances through the halls, and door after door closes quickly in the wake of the ominous sound.

Class has begun, I guess.

With a useless sigh, I sit up. The hall is nearly empty now. It’s then that I see his shadow receding down the end of the long dark corridor. I push myself up off the ground in an instant. I don’t know why I follow the man from the bedroom—dorm room—but if I don’t have a life, I may as well haunt someone who does, right? That’s what I’m made for, after all: Haunting . Sounds nice enough. I can do that. It’s just something to keep myself busy while I figure the rest out . . .

He makes a sharp right past a statue that looms against the brick wall. It’s a winged creature with a snarling mouth and eyes like dark holes in his creepy little head. I make my way quickly toward it. Death Rider Academy is inscribed in swirling, deeply etched letters at the base of its taloned feet. I keep my attention on the thing for so long that as I turn the corner, I nearly run into—through—the man.

His stony blue eyes shift around the darkness, seemingly looking for something or someone.

“Can you see me?” I ask. My palm rushes back and forth between us as I bring my face closer to his.

Sharp angles shadow his features. His lean frame towers over me, but there’s a strength in his stance, his arms filling out the white button-down that hints at the bulk he’s hiding underneath.

The pink of his tongue slips out to swipe over a dusting of dried blood on his bottom lip.

“Can you hear me?”

Dark eyebrows lower over those intense eyes, his gaze still scanning the shadows around me. Then it occurs to me.

I settle my hand over his chest. The drum of his heart is a faint feeling against my incorporeal palm. I like it though. I like the feel of his heat seeping into my skin, somewhat becoming my own. Then, ever so slowly, I let my fingers sink through his warm body.

The sensation of thick energy swirls through my fingers.

His shiver is a visible, disgusted reaction as he takes a quick step back like I’m the nastiest thing that’s ever laid hands on his gorgeous body.

And then he looks right at me.

“You can feel me.” My lips twist into a smile like the good little haunting that I am. Oh, I’m getting the hang of this.

The hard angle of his jaw jumps beneath the skin. He takes a slow breath as strange shimmering black scales clatter across his flesh, racing up his neck and across his cheek before slipping beneath his inky black hair. They disappear as quickly as they came. He takes another steadying breath. And when he looks at me once more, those pretty steely eyes are ablaze with a silver ring around a catlike pupil that’s glaring down on me.

I take a careful step back.

“I know you’re there,” he growls out, his strange, beastly eyes zeroing in on me now but still not quite seeing me. “I’ve met your kind before. And I’m not the toy you want to fuck with.” He swallows hard before grinding out, “Pick someone else to haunt.”

And then he turns on the heel of his boot and storms off into the darkness of the corridor.

My lips part, and that smile still clings there because . . . he can feel me!

And I’ll be damned if I let the only person in this academy who can almost see me slip through my ghostly fingers now!