Witches, Drifters, and Shifters, Oh My

*California*
*Parker*
He sat at the bar going over applications for a replacement for his drug-dealing ex-bartender. He had good feelings about the application on the top of his pile. A female, age thirty, with a military background so she could handle herself if things got rowdy. They did from time to time during the bar’s monthly poker night, which Rayne had set up so that half of all winnings went to the local women’s shelter. She amazed him more and more as she matured. She was so young when they met, but she was battle weary from the life she told him about over the years they had known each other.
He looked over the application one more time, then picked up the others to take them back to his office. He would look through them again if his first pick didn’t pan out. After placing the files on his desk, he made his way back out to the bar. He had a phone call to make. He picked up his cellphone, dialed her number, then waited patiently for someone to answer. On the fourth ring of the dial, the bell above the bar door signaled two things.
One, he had forgotten to lock the door during non-business hours, which would frustrate Rayne to no end if she knew
Two, there was a woman in the bar's doorway. Her face was one he had recently been studying in her file.
He hung the phone up as she walked further into the bar, “Well this is interesting.”
She stood in the entryway for a moment as she looked around the interior of the bar. She was dressed in black from head to toe, black skinny jeans, a black t-shirt, with a black baseball cap over her shockingly white hair that was braided over one shoulder. Her heart-shaped face was alluring, bare of any makeup, but it was her eyes that surprised him. In her photo from his file, they were brown contacts he knew now. Plain brown to hide the unnatural shade of purple.
She walked to him, not saying a single word, just her head tilted to the side as she studied him. He was doing the same as she was, looking her over, trying to get a sense of what she was. She was not human, her eyes gave that away. He could sense an aura of power around her. Her eyes made him wary, as even in the supernatural world, he had seen no one with eyes that color. He had seen blue, greens, golds, and reds of almost all shades imaginable. Even shades that were mystifying in their intensity, like the almost electric blue of a shifter born with elemental powers.
When he recovered his tongue, he reached out his hand to greet her, “Hello, I am Parker, half owner of Shadows Retreat.”
“Hello. You already know my name, so it would be redundant to introduce myself.” Her voice was rich, velvety, and held a thick southern accent. She ignored his outstretched hand.
“That is a point. May I ask how you knew that I was going to call you? How you knew to show up at the bar today?” He dropped his hand, laying it on top of the bar counter.
She threw her head back and laughed. It was a deep throaty sound that normally sends shivers down most men’s spines. “I am ...... unique,” was all she said.
“Well...” He ran his tongue over his front teeth in thought. She would keep the customers on their toes for sure. Her employment file was full of minor jobs intermingled with her military deployments, but he liked what little background she provided. So, he made a decision that he hoped he wouldn’t regret, “Show me what you can do with alcohol, then we can go from there.”
They spent the next hour going over all the mixed drinks that the bar offered, between the two of them they came up with a few more, and she adding a new spin on some existing ones. Parker made notes of what they came up with for new and old to give to Rayne. He wanted her approval before he added to the drink menu.
“Alright, I think you surpassed my expectations for a bartender, added in your military background, I think you will do nicely. Would you like the job?”
“I had it the minute I walked through the door, though I appreciate you going through the motions to make it an actual interview.”
Her cockiness made him laugh. She was correct about his decision to hire her the minute she walked in. He felt he had to go through the process, anyway. “So, that is a yes.”
She nodded her head, went around to the front of the bar to leave, but stopped to look at him with a sad look on her face. She shook her head, then headed for the door. “Is tonight a good night to start?”
“Yes, be here at nine tonight, we open at ten at night and close at five in the morning. We cater only to....”
“The supernatural, I know, that is the only reason that I applied for this job.” She nodded her head at him, then left the bar.
Parker was left staring at the door as it closed behind her. That was the most interesting interview he had ever been a part of. He could tell right now that she would do well at the bar, that Rayne would enjoy getting to know her just as much as he would. Witches were not always fun creatures, but he was very positive that this one would be very entertaining to have around.

*Rayne*
Rayne sat in a deck chair on the porch overlooking the ocean. It troubled her mind, all the memories that Bridgette’s visit brought to the front of her mind. She has spent the last five years putting the past as far behind her as she could, but as someone once told her, the past always comes back. Usually when she least expected it, and almost always when she doesn’t want it to. There wasn’t much in her past that she couldn’t live with being brought back, with only two major exceptions.
Once she left Jade Moon territory, she came to realize something about Wilson. That the anger he had about her dreams was fear of her remembering something that he would do anything to keep hidden. What did he not want her to remember? She tried to have Lynn search her memories, but there was a deep blank spot of that night. Lynn said it was a strong protective spell, one that she did not have the magic strength to break.
What was he hiding about the night her parents died?
Her parents’ death. There was always something that her subconscious tried to get her to remember about that night, usually in the form of dreams, or a small sense of déjà vu here and there. Yet in the waking hours of the day, it slipped away, leaving her feeling just lost as she had the night they died. For the first three years after their death, she had terrible nightmares, ones she could never remember when she woke. The longer she had them, the angrier Wilson became, though he didn’t start hitting her until after that night he went too far.
Before she could stop it, the memory of that night came flooding back......

*Rayne Age Thirteen*
*Warning Graphic Scene*
Rayne woke screaming for the third night in a row. The dreams were coming more and more often once she gained her wolf, Ruby. Her memories were trying to surface from the night her parents died. She wanted to remember so badly, yet she was afraid of what she would remember. Did she see them die? That was something she was sure she would remember unless their death was so horrifying that she just blanked it from her mind.
The door to her room was thrown open as Wilson stormed in with that same look of anger he always seemed to get when she had her nightmares. Why was he so angry that she was dreaming of her parents? Sometimes she thought he was angry that she couldn’t forget them so he could forget them too. Her father was his Beta, his friend, so she always thought his death hit Wilson hard.
"What did I tell you about those dreams?" He growled at her as he walked to her bedside"
Rayne instinctively pushed herself against the wall next to her bed, back to the wall with her knees drawn up to her chest. His anger always frightened her, made her chest tighten, and her stomach hurt. Tonight, was different from all the other nights before. Tonight, he was drunk, so drunk that she could smell the alcohol as soon as he burst into her room.
"Answer me!" He yelled, sending a spray of spit out of his mouth as he did.
She cringed but decided if she just answered him, apologized for waking him, then maybe he would leave her be. “You told me to stop or there would be consequences. I am sorry Wilson, I am not doing it on purpose, sir.”
“They need to stop! You need to grow up. Tonight, you will face the consequences of your childishness.” Wilson leaned down, grabbed her by the arms, yanking her out of the bed. “You will no longer be sleeping on the same floor as my family, the attic will be your new home.”
The attic was on the fourth floor of the mansion, with two little rooms and a bathroom. It was originally for the nanny of founding pack Alpha. No one had used those rooms since before Wison took over, though Bridgette and Alec occasionally played up there when Wilson was out of town. He dragged her out of the bedroom, out into the hallway, then up the narrow stairs at the end of the hall. She struggled as he dragged her up the stairs. She screamed despite knowing that no one on the third floor could come to her aid.
Once at the top of the stairs he kicked the door open, pulled her inside to stand in front of him, then he closed the door behind him. As soon as the door closed a sense of dread settled in her stomach. The look on his face was scaring her. His eyes were glassy, but still, rage-filled as he advanced on her. Rayne yelped in fear, tried to back away from him, only to fall on her butt. She looked up at him wordlessly, shaking her head as he came closer to her.
When Wilson was practically on her, he slapped her hard across the face making her eyes water at the sudden assault. He pushed her down onto her back...... tearing at her clothes. The pain she experienced as he took her innocence in a drunken haze was that last thing she remembered before she blacked out.

*Present Day*
*Mysterious stranger*
He watched as Rayne pulled herself out of that memory, gasping for air. She stood swiftly, ran to the porch railing and dry heaved until she was struggling to breathe. She slid to the porch floor, sat there staring at the ocean in an almost catatonic condition, unaware that she was being watched from down the beach. She did not see the hooded figure approach slowly as she crumpled to the porch floor.
She didn’t feel arms lifting her gently from the floor to carry her delicately into the house. He laid on the couch, pulling a light blanket over her as he sang softly, chasing the past nightmares away. She wasn’t aware that she closed her eyes, drifting off to sleep, letting to the calming effect that the song had to tumble her right into sleep.
The stranger stopped singing as he looked down at her as she slept. He looked around her small living room, noting the warm and inviting atmosphere that she had created. From the images he glimpsed from her mind, she deserved all the peace that she could create around herself. He felt anger, sorrow, and most of all a protectiveness for this woman whom he had never met before today. Who was she? Was she someone that he knew from his past? A past he had no memory of at all.
He had woken up one night, covered in dried blood. No memories at all of who he was, where he was, and whose blood he was covering his body. There was a scar going down his face from his temple to his chin on his left side, it was thick and it felt freshly healed, if that was even possible. Though he had learned as time went on that he was capable of quite a lot of odd things. He embraced the life of a drifter, moving from town to town as he made his to an unknown destination. His voice often earning him enough money to eat, sometimes even sleep in a bed, but he tried to stay on the outer edge of society as much as he could.
He turned toward the driveway as he heard tires spin in the gravel as a motorcycle pulled into the driveway. He looked back at the woman’s sleeping form before he quickly ducked out the door to the porch, slipping out of sight before the newcomer could see him. He would stick close to this house, to this woman, to see if maybe she was the key to his memories. She was the first person who he had encountered over the past fourteen years to trigger any kind of emotion from him. Her childlike face from her memories triggered something in the back of his battered mind, but like the fleeting wind over his face, the memory vanished.

*Parker*
He parked the motorcycle next to the house, walked up to the back door, then paused as he caught the scent of another werewolf, a male, near the side of the house. It was an unfamiliar scent, so instead of going inside to check on Rayne, he shifted into a bird to fly up over the house towards the side porch to see around the outside of the house. As he cleared the roof of the house, he saw a streak of grey cloth rush into the bushes along the edge of the small wooded area at the front of the house. He flew towards the woods to follow the male, only to lose him shortly after. Rayne distracted his mind from being alone in the house.
Parker flew up to the top of the trees to scan the area around the house, then he flew the short distance back to the house. His priority now was to make sure that Rayne was alright. He landed on the porch, then shifted back to his human form. As he looked into the house, he saw that Rayne was on the couch that faced the porch. She was asleep with a blanket over her. She looked peaceful. He hoped that it would stay that way, but he had a gut feeling that this was the calm before the storm.
Something was coming their way. Something that neither of them would be ready for. Something that Lynn warned him about as he was paying for their uneaten breakfast this morning. She had a premonition last night but wanted to do a spell to clear the images that came to her. She said that by Rayne’s reaction to Bridgette; she had confirmation of the warning she received. What it would mean was something that would become clear in time.
Parker knew that he would do anything to protect Rayne, he loved her even though he knew she had a mate, even though he knew that somewhere out there he had one too. He always knew that one day he would have to let her go, but until that day he would love and cherish her as she deserved. Even if they were not always lovers, they were at the core of their relationship friends. He would remain that as long as they both lived.
He walked to the couch, wrapped her in the blanket, then picked her up to carry her to her room. She didn’t stir, so deep was her sleep, that he ambled as silently as he could down the hall to the bedrooms. He laid her gently on the bed, then leaving her long enough for him to get dressed in loose-fitting sweatpants. He came back to her room, slid onto the bed beside her, wrapped her in his arms as he let sleep wash over him. They had hours before they would need to be awake again. The bar didn’t open until eleven in the evening. So, he would hold her while they slept, let her know with his body that she was safe.
To let her know that she was not alone.

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*Hello Readers*
*This chapter introduced two new characters, both mysterious and nameless. *
*I will reveal more as this story unfolds, please stay with me to learn their stories as well*
*What do you think of the stranger who found Rayne after her flashback? Who do you think he is? *
*Also, I am sorry if her flashback was too much for some. I was torn on writing it at all*
*Please stay tuned for the next chapter*
*North Rose*