Filed To Story: Secret Shifters Next Door Series PDF Free
Before I could go deeper into those thoughts, a bang sounded at the door. Freezing with the coffee pot in my hand, I stared at the door, scared of who might be out there. Another three loud bangs rang out. It wasn’t the gentle
tap-tap-tap of a friendly neighbor dropping off a Bundt cake. This was loud, aggressive pounding. Tate was still upstairs finishing his shower, but he had super-duper shifter hearing or whatever. He surely had heard the knocking. He’d be down in a few seconds. It would be safe to at least check the camera, see who was out there.
Putting the coffee pot aside, I stepped over the control panel and punched the icon for the doorbell camera. My jaw dropped, and fear flooded my body. Miles was outside. It was Miles, but
not quite the down-to-earth and immaculately dressed man I’d come to think of as a friend. Instead, Miles was barely holding himself up against the wall beside the door. His hair was hanging limp against his face, smeared with blood. Not only his face, but both of his hands were bright red with blood, as though they’d both been dipped in a tub of red paint. His right hand held him up, while the other was pressed to his side, where more blood was oozing out, dripping onto my welcome mat.
I was screaming Tate’s name even as I was disarming the security system. I could hear his feet slamming against the floor. I got the door unlocked and swung it open. Miles looked even worse in person than on the camera. He looked at me through a haze of pain and exhaustion. I grabbed his arm and helped him into the house. He collapsed to one knee inside the foyer as Tate leaped the twelve steps from the upper floor. Like a gymnast, he landed almost silently on his feet, wearing nothing but a pair of basketball shorts. His hair was still wet, and his body gleamed with water. Tate’s eyes went wide with panic when he saw Miles.
“No.” Tate gasped as he fell down on his knees next to his friend.
Miles was already sinking lower to the floor, grunting in pain and rolling onto his back on the tile. Tate took one of Miles’s bloody hands and clenched it in his. I’d taken several steps back, not sure what to do. All I was able to manage was to look on in horror, unable to take my eyes away from the blood spreading out beneath him.
“Harley?” Tate bellowed. “My phone.”
The strength of his voice snapped me out of my daze, and I ran to the kitchen counter where he’d left it before going to take his shower. I walked toward him with it, but he shook his head.
“You do it. My contacts, there’s one labeled
Doc. Dial it, give him the address. Now.”
Quickly scrolling through his contacts, I found the one he said and dialed. It rang twice before a voice answered.
“Yes, Tate?”
A stream of words vomited out of my mouth. I hadn’t realized how freaked out I was until I started talking. The man on the other end of the line said, “Whoa, whoa, who the hell is this? Where’s Tate? What’s going on?”
Taking a breath, I composed myself and said, “Tate is here, but Miles is hurt. He’s hurt badly. There’s blood everywhere.”
Tate was trying to keep pressure on the wound at Miles’s side, but he turned and yelled, “Tell him it’s silver. Silver.”
“He says to tell you that it’s silver,” I said, not sure what that meant. Silver bullets? Was that really a thing? Like in the really-real world?
The voice on the line murmured, “Shit, I got it. Where are you? Lilly Valley?”
I rattled off the address. He hung up. I called Steff and Blayne without being told, knowing they’d want to know as soon as possible. Then I put the phone down and grabbed kitchen towels to help put pressure on the wound.
I applied pressure, and blood immediately soaked through the towel. This was not good. It was a lot of blood. Who knew what a shifter could survive, but he needed help as soon as possible. The fact that Tate had a secret doctor on speed dial told me that they must not use regular hospitals. Maybe there was something about their physiology that would tip off humans? But wasn’t that better than death?
Miles was gasping for air, like he’d run a marathon. He put a hand on Tate’s shoulder and murmured, “Tate, man, I don’t wanna die.”
Tate looked at him, his eyes full of rage. “You aren’t gonna die. You’re too fucking stubborn to die, dammit. Now shut up.”
Miles laughed weakly, then went serious. Tears spilled over his cheeks, mixing with the smears of blood. “I’m… I’m really scared, brother.”
I felt like I was intruding on something intimate, so I kept my head down. My own eyes were burning, tears threatening. Everything was moving incredibly fast, and I was helpless.
Tate’s voice grew calm. “I know, Miles. I know. Doc will be here soon.”
Five minutes later, I heard the thump as a car door slammed, and a man burst through my front door. He moved so fast that I barely saw his face. He and Tate lifted Miles and ran him upstairs to my bedroom, slamming the door behind them. I stood in my kitchen, staring at the blood on my hands for several long seconds before I ran to the sink and vomited. After I cleaned my face, I rinsed the sink out and spent a full three minutes washing my hands, trying to get the blood out from under my nails.
I’d just turned off the water when Blayne and Steff ran inside. Both of them slid to a stop and gaped at the puddle of blood on the floor. Their faces went ghostly white. Steff looked at me, and for a second, he didn’t look like the big badass who had intimidated Luis in the grocery store parking lot. He looked like a little boy, desperate to hear that the worst hadn’t happened.
I gestured weakly toward the stairs. “They’re in my room. He’s… he’s still alive… I think.”
Before they could move, the most bloodcurdling scream erupted from the top of the stairs. It was like nothing I’d ever heard in my life. If someone died and went to hell to be eternally tormented, that was the sound I could imagine them making. Gooseflesh erupted across my arms and back. Without another word, the two men pounded up the stairs and disappeared. Again, I was left alone. I thanked God the girls were at school.
I grabbed a roll of paper towels and attempted to clean the blood off the floor. I was half way through an entire roll when another scream echoed from upstairs. I tensed. The scream was inhuman, excruciating, and soul-rending. Then, almost seamlessly, it changed from the scream of a man to the howl of a wolf. The baby was kicking like crazy, no doubt he could hear the sound as well.
Just as quickly as it came, the sound cut off. It didn’t slowly fade out, it stopped completely, leaving me in silence. Dread filled me. I sat there, my hands once again bloody, the mess on the floor only half cleaned, and stared at the dark hallway at the top of the stairs.
When no one came out, I busied myself with cleaning. It seemed so silly and unimportant. A man I knew and was becoming friends with was upstairs in my bedroom. He was bleeding out and possibly dying. Cleaning was trivial, but I had to keep my mind off whatever was happening up there.
Once the main puddle of blood was cleaned up, everything else was easy. Five minutes later, the tile floor in front of the door looked like nothing had happened. There was some staining in the grout, but I would worry about that later. I was washing my hands again when the bedroom door opened. I dried my hands and walked to the foot of the stairs, dreading the worst.
Tate was walking down the stairs, slow and almost shambling. He looked like he was in a daze, and his eyes gazed out, unfocused and almost dead. His hands were covered in blood. The way he looked gave me the impression that things had gone badly. I put a hand to my mouth and breathed in a gasp.
Tate’s eyes moved to me, and he saw the look on my face and shook his head slightly. “He’s asleep. He’s not dead.”