Infiltrate Read online

  Cali Mann

  Infiltrate

  First published by Thornfire Publishing Co. 2020

  Copyright © 2020 by Cali Mann

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise without written permission from the publisher. It is illegal to copy this book, post it to a website, or distribute it by any other means without permission.

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

  First edition

  Cover art by Luminescence Cover Design

  Editing by SB Editing

  This book was professionally typeset on Reedsy

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  Contents

  1. Sasha

  2. Sasha

  3. Sasha

  4. Sasha

  5. Sasha

  6. Sasha

  7. Sasha

  8. Sasha

  9. Sasha

  10. Sasha

  11. Drew

  12. Sasha

  13. Sasha

  14. Lucan

  15. Sasha

  16. Sasha

  17. Drew

  18. Sasha

  19. Sasha

  20. Drew

  21. Sasha

  22. Lucan

  23. Sasha

  24. Drew

  25. Sasha

  26. Lucan

  27. Sasha

  28. Drew

  29. Sasha

  30. Lucan

  31. Sasha

  32. Sasha

  33. Sasha

  34. Drew

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  ALSO BY CALI MANN

  1

  Sasha

  “Alex, you can’t be out here,” I said, gathering my younger brother’s things from the balcony, my eyes darting toward the darkening street. I could just make out the sound of her heels on the sidewalk and the high-pitched laugh she used with men.

  His artist pencils—the ones I’d scrimped and saved to buy—were strewn across the glass tabletop. My brother leaned back in the patio chair, lifting the two front legs. One thin hand gripped his sketchbook, and the other tapped a pencil against his lip. “Aww, Sasha, the light is so perfect.”

  I eyed the sun sinking behind the mountains, stretching pink and purple fingers across the sky. It was pretty, but we didn’t have time for it. I flung a rectangular eraser at his pale blond head. “She’s bringing someone home. You know the rules.”

  “Shit,” he muttered, leaping from his metal bistro chair and letting it slam against the patio floor. The sound echoed through the apartments surrounding us.

  We both froze, gazing toward the sidewalk. Under a streetlamp, a man in a suit lingered, his hand on our mother’s arm. He glanced up toward us, and Alex and I ducked behind the fake potted plants.

  I peered down through the bars of the railing, but I couldn’t tell if he had seen us. Mother would be pissed if he had. Her gentlemen didn’t like to think about their whore having kids, she’d told us. I pressed my lips together and shoved Alex’s pencils in his backpack. Turning, I grabbed his sleeve and yanked him after me into the apartment. We needed to be back in our room, before the key turned in the lock.

  As I’d gotten older, I’d realized the secrecy was just as much for our protection as it was for hers. One of her men had stopped me in the corridor on his way to the bathroom. Pressing me against the wall, he’d squeezed my tit and whispered drunkenly in my ear all the things he meant to do to her when he came back to bed. It had made me shudder.

  Not that I was an innocent. After all, at eighteen, I’d already learned from the best how to use my body to wrap any male around my finger. I could blink my blue eyes and make even the cranky old teachers at school jump.

  But Alex was only twelve. He didn’t need to know what kinky shit our mom was up to.

  We slipped into our room, closing the door almost silently behind us. I say, ‘our room’, but mostly, I let Alex have it. He’d hung his drawings on every available space. He loved sketching dorky anime characters, with narrow bodies and big heads. They fought with long swords or posed aggressively against landscapes of rolling hills. In fact, he’d already opened his backpack and pulled out his work from earlier.

  “Why don’t you ever draw any girls?” I asked, ruffling his hair. We’d gotten our blond locks and blue eyes from our mother. I didn’t even know what our father looked like.

  He shrugged and bent over his sketchpad, finishing his drawing. A tall tree swayed against the sky, laced with ribbons of color.

  “That’s different,” I said. “I like it.”

  Alex grunted.

  I dropped onto my bed, grabbing my earbuds and tossing Alex his. We both had off-brand mp3 players, so we wouldn’t have to listen to whatever else happened in the apartment tonight. It was better that way.

  I tried not to think about the stranger Mom had brought home. Had he seen us on the balcony? The stranger’s head had risen so suddenly at the crash of the chair as if he could hear it down in the street. Mom, I expected to notice. Her air shifter hearing was keen. But she didn’t usually bring home other shifters. Humans didn’t notice anything, but if she had brought a shifter home, he might sniff out that she had kids. From there it was a slippery slope to one of them discovering that I was a spirit shifter and should have been killed at birth. I swallowed.

  But I hadn’t been. I don’t know why Mom had saved me. Perhaps she’d had some since lost maternal instinct, or maybe she’d been afraid to know. She’d never taken us to the Oracle, who checked for spirit shifters among the newborns. I grimaced. Or maybe she’d just forgotten. Who knew?

  But in saving me, she’d saved Alex, too. I was grateful for that at least. At six years old, I’d fed my newborn brother his bottles and changed his diapers. Most of his life, he’d lived on the food I brought home for him. Mom barely remembered to feed herself most days, let alone us. To tell the truth, I didn’t know how I’d survived.

  I glanced over at Alex, his head bent intently over his sketchbook and his music so loud I could see the twitch in his shoulders every time the guitarist hit a high note. I’d do anything to protect him. I just hoped I wouldn’t have to.

  Mother would distract the man tonight, and hopefully, by morning, he’d forget all about the two figures on the balcony.

  I lay down on my pillow, letting the familiar rock music carry me away. I didn’t have time to worry. Tomorrow there’d be school and then my late shift at the pet store. I’d come home smelling of wet dog and biscuits, but I couldn’t help but be grateful for the time away from here. And Alex would stay at the library until I got off, drowning himself in anime books and superheroes. Safe.

  I’d stave off the madness for another day and another until my brother was grown and could fend for himself. That had been my nightly prayer for as long as I could remember. I didn’t know who I was praying to—God or mother nature or the universe—but I gave it my all and hoped it was enough.

  * * *

  As we walked to the bus stop the next morning, I waved to the wrinkled old woman crossing the street with her walker. A paisley shawl was wrapped around her shoulders, despite the warm weather.

  “Hi, Mrs. Everett,” I called. Our desert city stayed warm into September because we were so close to the sun. Alex and I both stuck to jeans and short-sleeve shirts until the weather cooled.

  Alex ambled along behind me. He’d shot up this last year but was still a few inches shorter than my five foot five. He gave our old babysitter a half-hearted wave as well.
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  Mrs. Everett nodded back as if she’d heard us and wasn’t almost completely deaf. She must have been insanely old because not only was she a shifter and we lived a long time, but she showed signs of almost-human frailty—struggling to walk without help and losing her hearing.

  An earth shifter who lived in one of the basement apartments in our complex, Mrs. Everett had been an occasional babysitter for us when we were small. Mom used to drop us with her when she remembered that we were kids and shouldn’t stay by ourselves—when she remembered we were there at all.

  Mrs. Everett was my back-up plan for Alex. She was old and deaf, but he could stay with her until he was of age if I went mad—when I went mad.

  The only reason we’d even learned about shifter culture at all was because of Mrs. Everett and the stories she told us. She’d thought it shameful for our mother to raise us with no understanding of our race and history. She’d explained the five different types of shifters and their forms: earth shifters who turned into predators, fire shifters who took the form of rock creatures, water shifters who became sea animals or merfolk, air shifters who turned vampire at puberty but could also turn into birds, and spirit shifters who could take any form but were unbalanced. She hadn’t wanted to talk about the last kind much. Only that ‘the Oracle saved us from spirit shifters by identifying them as babies and eliminating them,’ as she’d said.

  When the vampirism aspect of Alex’s air shifter nature showed early, Mrs. Everett had assured me that it was normal. She’d helped me find a place to get blood bags for Alex, too.

  At least he’d taken after our mother that way.

  At least he wasn’t like me.

  One night when Mom had seemed relatively sober and rational, I asked her what kind of shifter our dad had been. I’d been curious if I’d taken after him since I wasn’t air like her and Alex. The dreams had only just begun then. I didn’t know what they meant yet.

  “Your father?” she’d roared.

  I’d been wrong about her state of mind, but I persisted. “Yes, I was just wondering . . . well . . . if I took after him?”

  “I hope not, baby girl,” she’d muttered, pouring herself a wine glass of blood. She’d swirled it, staring into the depths. “That’s all I need: for one of you to turn out to be a mad spirit shifter like your father.”

  I’d gotten angry at her then because that was the blood I’d gotten for Alex, and she didn’t have any right to it. Mom usually got hers straight from the tap. And in the ensuing argument I’d forgotten to get any more details.

  Later, I’d asked Mrs. Everett about spirit shifters and she’d regaled me with stories of crazed creatures who murdered whole towns and had no recollection of what they’d done. I’d never regretted asking about anything more in my life.

  The bus hissed to a stop in front of us, pulling me from my thoughts. We climbed aboard and settled in one of the empty seats in the middle. Alex and I attended public school, and the middle school was attached to the high school. The district cut costs by busing us in together, despite the dangers of mixing such wide age ranges. I appreciated being able to look after Alex a little longer, even though this was my last year.

  “Hey, pencil head,” one of the larger high school boys said, leaning over the seat back and sneering at Alex. The guy was on the football team, and he had more than fifty pounds on my brother.

  “Fuck off,” I muttered. Alex tensed beside me, his fingers curling and uncurling on the edge of his backpack.

  “Only if you want to help, Sasha,” he said, waggling his eyebrows.

  His friends laughed.

  “What do ya say?” he asked. “A little quickie before school?”

  I flipped him the bird.

  Alex surged to his feet, trembling. “Leave my sister alone.”

  The guy got in Alex’s face. “What are you going to do about it?”

  “Nothing,” I muttered, pulling Alex back down to his seat. My brother was pale and shaking, and when he glanced at me, a redness showed in his eyes. A sliver of a fang peeked between his teeth. Aww, hell.

  I jumped to my feet and yanked the football player to me, pressing my body against his and wrapping my hand around his tiny dick. I kissed him, shoving my tongue in first. He grabbed my tit through my shirt and ground himself against me. His friends whooped.

  Bless teenage hormones because no one was looking at the vibrating form of my brother leaning against the window.

  2

  Sasha

  School was its usual disaster, and I was tired as shit by the time we headed home. Of course, that was when Alex decided to get into it.

  “You didn’t have to do that,” he muttered, hiking his backpack onto his shoulder.

  “Do what?” I asked. I rubbed my eyes. The late afternoon sun beat down on us, and a headache throbbed behind my forehead.

  “Um . . . make out with that idiot,” Alex said, kicking a rock over the broken sidewalk. Along the edge, hardy weeds bloomed, determined to make the most of themselves.

  I swung around, planting myself in front of him. “And what the hell was I supposed to do, huh?” I pushed my finger into his chest. “Let you expose us?”

  He shook his head. “I wouldn’t.”

  “Your fangs were fucking showing,” I growled.

  Alex shrugged.

  I huffed and turned back toward our building. Alex was getting older, and he had less control. Mrs. Everett had warned us this would happen as he hit puberty. He needed to be left the fuck alone, but there wasn’t much chance of me getting the bullies to back off. My brother looked like a waif of a boy, slim and pale, and that was exactly the sort those assholes liked to pick on the most. I sighed. I needed to get him somewhere else, away from these stupid humans.

  We trudged up the cement stairs into the apartments. I ran my hand along the plain gray siding, feeling the almost invisible ridges and splits. Though the apartments looked clean and well-kept from the outside, we’d lived here long enough to know where the cracks were. Kind of like our lives. The light above our door flickered as we reached it.

  I slid the key in the lock and pushed open the door. Alex and I halted in the entryway, listening to the raised voices.

  “You didn’t tell me you had fucking kids!” a man’s voice shouted.

  “Wasn’t any of your business,” Mom yelled back.

  Pressing a finger to my lips, I jerked my head to the door. My brother nodded. Alex and I left, closing the door silently behind us.

  “He saw us,” Alex said.

  “Yeah,” I answered, keeping my voice cool and carefree. I shoved my fingers in my pocket and pulled out a few dollar bills. “Let’s go grab some food.”

  Alex grinned. “’Kay.”

  Leave it to food to distract the kid. I smiled back, but my stomach twisted. Mom was going to be furious that we’d been found out. Was it the same guy from last night? The one who’d glimpsed us on the balcony? It must have been.

  We crossed the street and headed toward the fast food place on the next block. The city was quiet, just a few people out walking their dogs and the trees swaying in the slight breeze. I preferred it like this. Peaceful.

  The food joint was almost deserted, just some old guy at one table and a couple of women with kids at another. I ordered us burgers and fries, and by the time I got to the booth, Alex had his sketchbook out and was doodling a character.

  I sat down across from him and leaned my elbows on the table, rubbing my temples.

  “It’s our fault?” Alex asked, not looking up from his drawing.

  I sighed. “I expect so. ”

  The bored worker called out our number, and I fetched the food. The smell of greasy potato and meat filled my nose, and my stomach rumbled. I didn’t think I’d eaten at all today. Alex put his sketchbook away carefully. He never let a single drop of grease fall on it. If only he were that careful with the rest of his life.

  I peered over Alex’s shoulder and caught the old guy looking our way. Nosey
bastard. I scowled at him, and he dropped his eyes to the tray before him. On a second glance, he wasn’t that old. Gray hairs were sprinkled through his brown curls, and only a few wrinkles showed on his otherwise smooth face.

  “Thanks, Sis,” Alex muttered, shoving the burger into his mouth and washing it down with a soda.

  “Sure,” I said, frowning with worry. He needed more. For a kid his size, he was too thin. I wished I had more to offer him than some fast food once in a while. Damn our selfish mother. Blinking, I looked over at his sketches. “We should get you into art school.”

  He scoffed. “With what money?”

  “There have to be scholarships or something,” I mused. The old guy caught my eye again. What the hell did he want? I frowned, and he cast his gaze aside.

  Alex shrugged. “I guess. But I’m not leaving you alone.”

  I chuckled “I’m not alone. Mom and I will be great buds while you’re gone.”

  He snorted. “You’d kill each other in a week.”

  “Sure. You save us from ourselves.” The guy was watching us again. That’s it. I stood.

  Alex frowned. “What’s up?”

  “Don’t worry about it,” I said and strolled over to the old guy’s table. His eyes were on me the whole time, so I put a little extra sashay in my walk, but his gaze didn’t wander from my face. I narrowed my eyes. What game was he playing?

  Planting my palms on his table, I leaned forward, letting my shirt gape. I always left an extra button undone, so my cleavage showed nicely. Never knew when I was going to have to play the slut card.

  He watched my eyes. Didn’t even look down.

  “What do you want?” I asked, unable to help the venom that crept into my voice. If he hadn’t been looking at me, he was looking at Alex, and I wouldn’t tolerate that.

  “Nothing,” he said, gesturing to the empty wrappers on his tray. “Just having my dinner.”

  He’d eaten four hamburgers. A huge appetite for a skinny guy like him. “My brother’s not for sale.”

  I had to give him credit. The guy blinked at me as if he had no idea what I was talking about. Then his eyes widened, and he growled. A low-in-the-throat, deep growl like a wolf about to pounce.