Resurrect: (Lycan Academy of Shapeshifting: Operation Shift Book 1)

  Resurrect

  Lycan Academy of Shapeshifting: Operation Shift, Book 1

  Shawn Knightley

  Copyright © 2019 by Shawn Knightley

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

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  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  About the Author

  Also by Shawn Knightley

  1

  Very few people in this world appreciate what it takes to apply red lipstick to perfection. The right shade, the right brush, and of course the right gloss. When my dad first saw me wear it he asked me if I was going for a red carpet glamor look. Hardly. He realized how foolish that sounded after I strapped on my knee-high leather boots along with my torn up black t-shirt, distressed jeans, and a tight black leather jacket. Then he called me a common street whore only to discover that his distaste made me want to wear that look every single day. That’s my dad for you. Always making sure I know my shortcomings before I walk out the front door.

  I ignored the sound of his voice in the back of my head as I sat on the train headed for London. It rocked gently from side to side as I tried to steady the lipstick brush in my hand, making sure the lines of my lip color were just right. Then I held out my arm with my compact mirror in my hand to get a glance at the final look. A little toss to my messy array of black curls and I was done. The final look had been achieved. I wished my dad could see the result just so I could witness the embarrassment on his face. It was hardly the posh look he wanted me to go for when headed out for former registration at King’s College. But it was me. And he knew I would never go for anything normal looking.

  Even so, I was a complete contradiction. My clothes were business casual while my makeup and hair said rock star. Which was the duality I was going for. Just to let those stuck up ivory tower professors and over-achieving students know that I truly wasn’t one of them. And it didn’t matter how much my dad wanted me to be the spitting image of him, I would resist with everything I had.

  My cell phone buzzed inside the small purse sitting by my side. I put the compact mirror back in its proper pocket and grabbed the phone.

  ‘Predictable, isn’t he?’

  Naturally, it was my dad, calling to make sure I caught the train on the way to London to commit myself to years of torment. I finally relented last year and did as he pleased by applying to a university. Not that I cared or ever really thought I would end up going. I just wanted to get him off my back for a while. Then the day actually came when I had to register and pick out a dorm room. Then another awful day when he started telling me which classes I was going to take. It was made abundantly clear that my music wasn’t a valid career option.

  “Music is a hobby,” he said to me. “Not a career. Unless you want to end up addicted to some degenerate drug and only coming home to beg for a bed so you can pry into my wallet at night to steal drug money. I won’t have that kind of future for my daughter.”

  Yeah, right. More like he didn’t want that kind of future for my brother. I was his fall back plan.

  That didn’t stop me from packing the most valuable items I owned. My electric guitar was sitting beside me in its case. I saved everything I made two summers in a row to afford it. Then I taught myself how to play over the course of three years by watching YouTube tutorials. There were many things my dad would commit money to. Music lessons weren’t one of them.

  The second was the bracelet around my wrist. It had leather wrapping and a copper plate with my name on it written in elegant cursive. It was a gift from my mother a year before she died. I rarely ever took it off unless I had to.

  I stared out the window at the countryside going by. My dad could afford an expensive flat in London. He had one in Notting Hill to prove it. He could probably afford four or five of them, to be honest. But he didn’t like the atmosphere in London and only stayed there for work when he absolutely had to. Too many people. Too much dirt and grime. On top of being too loud. He considered himself too refined for the likes of that. So he bought a gigantic cottage that was too large to deserve the label in Derbyshire near Bakewell.

  I liked the countryside. It was peaceful. And I often shared my dad’s distaste for the city. But that didn’t stop me from wanting to experience it.

  The scenery outside kept my attention until I felt a strange sort of tickle crawling over my arm under the soft white material of my dress shirt. It wasn’t long before it traveled down the length of my leg in my formal black pencil skirt and tights. I was covered in goosebumps within a matter of seconds.

  When I finally peered to the side I saw a man staring at me. His gaze was intense and focused. I turned away to look back out the window, figuring he must have been staring at the scenery as well. But once we pulled into a station along the way and his eyes didn’t falter, I knew he was staring at me. Not that I minded. He was gorgeous, to put it mildly. I played with a curl in my hair and twirled it between my fingers, trying to act as though I hadn’t really noticed him staring. Then I nervously bit on my lip only to realize I was going to ruin my perfectly applied red lipstick. I quickly stopped biting my lip and unconsciously let my eyes flash back over to him.

  He had a perfect complexion. Eyes bluer than any ocean I had ever seen. Dark brown hair that was tousled about in a chaotic mess that could only be achieved by actually trying for it, along with shaved sides that made him look more sophisticated than he was probably going for.

  I could feel myself blushing when he cocked his head a little and maintained eye contact with me.

  I wasn’t particularly prone to shyness. Spending the majority of my childhood around French and Italian men as my mum moved me and my brother around taught me very quickly that if I wanted something from a man, all I had to do was ask.

  I veered my eyes away from him, trying to play hard to get. Or to leave a bit of mystery. Only to have my eyes lock back onto his in a matter of seconds. It was almost as if he was drawing me in closer to him without me even having to move a single muscle.

  Soon we were pulling into Waterloo train station. I felt the train stop. Once I stood to pick up my rolling suitcase and guitar I half expected him to walk over to me and offer to take one of my bags. I would have let him. But when I turned around he was nowhere to be seen. The doors to the train weren’t even open yet. I looked back across the cabin to see that he hadn’t moved farther back. And the back door between cabins wasn’t open either. It was as if I imagined the entire flirtation. Or even more mortifying, an entire human being.

  ‘Okay. That’s not creepy.’

  I strapped my guitar over my side and walked out of the train, being careful when I stepped off in the ridiculously high heels my dad picked ou
t for me. Well, not him exactly. They were definitely picked out by his personal shopper. My dad was far too elitist to actually go into a store and do his own shopping. That was for the hired help.

  Part of me always wondered if that was one of the many reasons why my mum left him. His strange combination of elitism and a love for the countryside. He always had to have a home near the forest. As if there was a sort of protection he was seeking from it. As I walked along the platform with the mess of steam and crowds of people nearly knocking one another over in their attempt to get where they were going, I felt it again. The prickle that went all the way up my spine, down my arms, and across my legs. I stopped dead in my tracks. Goosebumps covered the back of my sweating neck. Then I slowly turned to see the man who was watching me a short distance away. He stood there admiring me for a few seconds before he stepped in my direction. His eyes were fixated on me.

  ‘Alright, this just went from flirty to insanely creepy.’

  I turned away and hurried down the platform, not stopping until I reached the escalator going down to the underground tube station. I found the line I was supposed to take and rushed down the tunnels, not daring to look behind me. I knew he was there. He was following me. And I wasn’t about to stick around to find out if it was because he had lust or murder on his mind.

  To my relief, the tube showed up seconds before I reached it. I got on and buried myself to the back behind the cluster of warm bodies trying to squeeze inside like a bunch of sardines.

  When I finally sat down and settled my luggage and my guitar in my hands I searched for him. I doubted that I lost him. But regardless, he must have taken the hint because he was nowhere to be seen.

  “Shit,” I muttered, feeling my cell phone buzz in my purse again. I fished for it and pulled it out to see it was my dad again. To my great fortune, the call was lost as soon as the tube started moving through the tunnels.

  When it finally stopped and I had to change lines, I saw a text message waiting for me.

  It read: “Lennard said you didn’t show up. Where are you?”

  “Double shit.”

  I was supposed to meet my dad’s personal driver for when he was in London outside the station. I got so caught up in trying to get away from that creepy and disturbingly hot guy that I completely forgot. But then again, taking fancy cars around London was his thing. I always took the underground on the rare occasion that I got to come down to the city.

  Not that it all came down to appearances. My dad had perfectly good reasons for wanting me to use his personal driver and a fancy vehicle around the city. He didn’t want me ending up like my twin brother, Dirk. It was around this time last year that the authorities showed up at my father’s expensive five bedroom cottage and knocked on the large wooden door. I remembered walking down the staircase to see the flashing of blue lights outside on the gravel driveway. There were three police officers there talking softly to my dad. I tried hearing what they were saying from the stairs. As it turned out, I didn’t need to. I knew my brother was gone the second my dad turned around to see me standing there. My brother’s death was written all over his face. He stood there as I held tight onto the banister and fell down to the steps, trying to contain the sobs tumbling out of my mouth.

  I found out later that my brother had wandered somewhere shouldn’t have. Or so they said. A bad neighborhood. The best I could figure was that someone tried getting his attention and couldn’t. They got angry and attacked him. Little did they know that my brother was deaf.

  Two days later I received two art show tickets in the mail that my brother ordered for the next time I came down to London to see him. Along with a note saying, “see you soon.” He dragged me to every art show he could find. The part of him that aspired to be a painter one day couldn’t help but share his passion with me. Even though it wasn’t a suitable profession according to my father’s standards.

  My brother’s corpse arrived from the mortuary that same day, ready to be embalmed and buried for the funeral. And the copper bracelet that matched mine only with his name on it was gone. It wasn’t the reunion either of us wanted or expected.

  Even now it didn’t feel real. Some deep part of him still felt as though he was around. Watching me. Maybe in a spiritual sense.

  My father’s need to have his appearance reflect his bank account was annoying but it also came with privileges that I knew I was better off taking, no matter how much I resented it. Maybe I should have let Lennard pick me up and take me to King’s College. My dad already lost one child to the city but that didn’t stop him from sending me away “for my education.”

  Yeah, right again. For his reputation. If his son couldn’t live up to his impossibly high standards then he was going to see to it that I did. Getting me through school and away from my dream of being a rock star was his first step.

  I got off the tube and continued to search for the man who watched me on the train. To my relief, I didn’t see him.

  I got out of the underground and walked the few blocks toward King’s College. Otherwise known as my prison for the next few years.

  Want to know just how far my dad’s taste goes? He didn’t want me going to Oxford or Cambridge. Too many ‘common’ people can get in now according to him. King’s College London was upscale enough to be classy but not a cliche. At least in his mind. They were all the same to me. More of a status symbol than anything else.

  My cell phone buzzed again once I got out of the station and started walking under the overcast sky outside. I was already sweating from carrying too much stuff so I didn’t mind the break. My dad’s idea of proper attire was ruined by mountains of sweat dripping down my body before I even reached the registration office.

  I smiled when I saw the caller wasn’t my dad this time around. It was Jamie. My bandmate. Well, my former bandmate. I was forced to leave those days behind when I told him I got into a good university. Jamie still wouldn’t let me live it down.

  “Hello?” I said into the phone in a high pitched voice, as if I was irritated to hear from him.

  “You were supposed to send me a picture.”

  “You have such a dirty mind, Jamie.”

  I heard him chuckle on the other end of the line as I leaned up against a nearby brick wall and let down my guitar for a few seconds. My shoulder eased in relief.

  “I have to see you all made up to look like some sort of businesswoman.”

  “What? So you can spread it all over Facebook?”

  “Are you coming tonight?” he asked, avoiding my question.

  I sighed. I knew he was going to ask. But that didn’t stop me from feeling a spike of guilt when he did.

  “I don’t know. It depends on how long getting arranged takes.”

  “Oh, come on, Riley! You promised.”

  “I never said I promised. I said I would try.”

  “How long are you going to let that man rule your life?” He said rather accusingly.

  “As long as I can’t afford to pay my own rent.”

  “We have a couch for you here in Camden. You don’t need that man. He’s toxic for Christ’s sake.”

  “That’s my dad you’re talking about.”

  “You know I’m right. And besides, I’m just going on what you’ve told us. There isn’t a single time we’ve rehearsed that you haven’t griped about him. He sounds like a complete dick to me.”

  “Well, I didn’t ask you.”

  He snorted. “Right. Defend the man who tries to control every part of your life and attack your friend who loves you.”

  “Oh, you love me now, do you?”

  “We could use you tonight, Riley.”

  I huffed and smacked my heel into the wall behind me, leaning against it in frustration. “I told you. I have to go to registration. If I can get away with making it another night this week I will.”

  My bandmates complained for weeks when I told them I would have to cut back on the time I spent rehearsing. Then they became downright aggravati
ng once they started actually booking gigs in London. I cried all night when they moved away from Devonshire and went to Camden without me. I told them I would try to follow them only for my dad to find out what I was planning and putting a stop to it before my music career even got started. Which was his intention, I have no doubt.

  “We don’t want to replace you, Riley. But we will have to if you don’t start committing more.”

  I watched the array of blue and gray clouds shift through the sky, appearing about a gloomy as I felt inside.

  “Don’t do that. Just let me get sorted and I will try to make it tonight.”

  Jamie hesitated before speaking, wondering if he could get away with guilt tripping me a little bit more.

  “Riley, don’t let that man control you. You’re twenty years old, for god’s sake. And you’ve already been on your own without him.”

  “That was different. Dirk was around. We watched over each other.”

  “Well, you have the three of us to watch over you now. We’ll look out for each other. We always have. I have a friend who will let us bartend for his pub a few nights a week and Luella says one of the waitresses at the cafe where she works just left. You could work there and we’ll rehearse late at night. We can make it work.”

  I tightened my grip over the retractable handle, feeling my knuckles go white as I grit my teeth in frustration.

  “I’ll call you once registration is over.”

  “Wait, Riley-”

  I hung up the phone before he could send another guilt trip my way. It wasn’t like I wanted to do everything my dad desired. I hated it. I would stay up at night wondering how to get away from him. Giving in to his desires for me to go to university seemed like a good enough plan. At least I would be in a different part of the country. Until he started telling me exactly which classes I would need to take and what sort of career I would have after I graduated. Being a member of Parliament had its advantages. He saw me going in a path similar to his own. Making headway in politics or at least interning at one of the offices.