Shifting Selves (27 page)

He dropped to all four legs and began a lumbering run directly toward me. In my peripheral vision, I could see Will shaking off the smaller animals still pestering him. It didn’t matter. I was less than ten feet from Mac. Will would never reach me before Mac did.

I had mere seconds to make a decision. I consulted my magic, looking for my water, but where I expected to find fear of the enormous creature rushing toward me, I found anger instead. This wasn’t some accident. This had been done to him, cruelly forced on him by that smirking bitch still sitting on the floor, convinced she’d bested us all.

I had access to fire, but that could never be an option. It was Mac, and there was no way on this earth or any other I would set him on fire.

I took the anger and forced it deep inside, refusing to even acknowledge its existence. It wasn’t there. I was calm, so calm. I was a leaf on the fucking wind. For just one moment, I believed that, and in that moment I grabbed every bit of water I could find in the air and flung it directly at Mac, forcing it far enough into his nose and lungs that he’d be forced to stop for a single second. I only needed to buy myself that tiny fraction of time, just long enough for Will to reach us and subdue him.

It worked. It worked perfectly. He stopped mere feet from me, his face damn near comical in its confusion. He coughed several times, clearing the water from his lungs.

And then it all went wrong.

It happened so quickly, and yet I knew that years in the future I’d be able to describe that moment with perfect recall. Mac shook off the water and moved toward me, just a single step. He was close enough that I could see the individual hairs, the way his fur shimmered with so many different shades of brown. Some were darker now, coated with water that continued to drip from his face and chest.

There was noise, so much noise, then the room dropped into absolute silence.

I felt the heavy exhalation of air through Mac’s nostrils, warm on my skin. And then, with no warning, he crumpled to the ground, a single whimper escaping his throat.

It made no sense. I stared at the darkening fur of his chest. I held a small globe of water in one hand, but I hadn’t thrown it. There was no reason for Mac to be growing wetter. Then the water dripped, slowly dripped onto the floor, and I saw that it was red.

There was no thought. There was no planning, no consideration, no doubt. There was only the largest fireball I could conjure in a single heartbeat. I turned on my heel and threw it unerringly toward Carmichael, still standing in the doorway with a gun in his hand.

It flew toward him, too fast for him to grasp the threat and move in time. It was only Sera, standing just behind him, that saved his life. She grabbed the fire and pulled it to her without hesitation, extinguishing it.

Carmichael and Johnson stared at me as if I was a stranger, which I supposed I was. It was almost funny, the blank stares they both turned on me, and I stifled a giggle that sought to escape. Distantly, I knew such a reaction was inappropriate considering the situation, and not one others should witness. They might think I was having problems with my sanity. They’d probably be right.

Simon was the last one through the door, and his sharp eyes instantly took in the scene. He’d shifted with Mac many times, and he immediately recognized his friend, fallen on the floor. He ran to him and knelt at his side, determining the extent of the injury as best he could.

I felt a twinge, a vague sense I should be doing the same thing, that I was needed elsewhere, but such an act would require calm. I never wanted to be calm again.

Instead, I turned to Carmichael, who stared alternately between me and his gun, wearing that same stupefied expression that had covered his face the day I told him elementals existed. He looked like a target.

“I said to only shoot the bad bear!” The words came out in a harsh scream that belied the ridiculous statement. The anger made sense, much more sense than the laughter. I’d felt such pure clarity once before, while I watched my own house burn, and I welcomed its return.

“He was about to attack you!” Carmichael insisted.

“That’s the bad bear,” I shouted, pointing. “Shoot her!”

I turned back to the others, all of whom were staring at me in various degrees of shock. Even Eleanor appeared a bit uncertain. She hadn’t counted on this. I grinned and sent a fireball directly to her. “Still feeling pleased with yourself, Ellie?”

Sera ran toward us and grabbed that fire too. I glared at her, then doubled up my attack, trying to produce more fire than she could control. She was always one step ahead, my half-blooded fire no match for her stronger blood.

“Aidan.” I stopped, feigning a vast patience I did not feel. “We’ve got this. Mac needs you.”

It took a moment for the words to penetrate. Mac was fine. No, Mac was full of drugs. And then I remembered, the one thing I should never have forgotten. Mac was lying on the ground, his breathing rapid and uneven, while I stood above him, toying with the people who’d done this to him. The rage dissipated instantly, replaced by shame and grief and desperation.

I dropped to my knees, speaking nonsense words I barely heard to a bear who didn’t understand me. I begged him to stay with me. I swore we’d get help. I told him I hadn’t meant to forget about him, any more than he’d meant to forget me. His eyes flickered open, long enough to focus on me. I saw no recognition in their depths, only pain.

Around me, I heard order slowly being reestablished. The animals were separated from each other, and Sera set large rings of fire around each one, just enough to trap them until we could either shift them back or at least drug them into unconsciousness again. I heard her voice, a one-sided conversation, and through my fog I heard the words password and server. Vivian was on the job. We’d have control over the drug implants within the hour. Eleanor had no power, not any longer. We’d won.

It didn’t feel like a victory. Mac was fading before my eyes, his breathing growing shallower by the minute. I heard myself sobbing, but my body was numb, unable to feel itself fall apart. Simon kept pressure on the wound, his neat hands lost amidst the bloodstained fur.

“Is it his heart?” I asked. I’d studied basic human anatomy, but never thought I’d need to know the structure of a bear’s internal organs. It couldn’t be that different, right? The wound was directly in the center of the chest, a bit to the right of where a human heart would be.

He shook his head. “Just to the side.” Mac sighed, a long exhalation, and several seconds passed before he breathed in again. “But it hit something, Aidan. A lung, maybe, or an artery.” He sounded uncertain, speaking words whose meaning he barely knew. Simon was, after all, a theatre major. Science and medicine were hardly his forte.

“I can’t do anything,” he said, confirming my thoughts. “We need to get him to a hospital.”

Sera joined us when she got off the phone. One look told her we didn’t have much time. “We won’t make it.” I felt my own internal organs rearranging, my heart falling heavily toward my stomach. My body was turning to stone. “You’ll have to do it, Ade.”

I stared at her, knowing she was suggesting utter insanity. “I’ve never done anything like this. Not on humans, and definitely not on bears. I have no idea what I’m doing. I’ll kill him.”

Sera was quiet, waiting for me to admit what we both knew. If I didn’t help him, he was dead regardless.

“Your mother could do it. Why can’t you?” Simon’s eyes never left Mac’s face.

“She’s full-blooded. And old. And well-trained. And not, you know, prone to loss of control at key moments.” They were all good reasons I wouldn’t be successful, and they weren’t even the full story. Even calm, I could feel the fire dancing within me. No matter how I might wish to pretend, I wasn’t pure water, and my body was done pretending it was. If the fire interfered at any point in the process, if it interrupted the water magic, Mac would die at my hands.

Even as I protested, I knew those reasons didn’t matter. It was Mac’s only chance, and I would take it.

“If I kill him...” I began. I didn’t know how to finish that sentence. Don’t let me go insane? Don’t despise me? Don’t keep me from joining him?

“No way.” Sera answered just the second question, a tiny, forced smile making its way to her face. “We’ll blame Carmichael.”

My eyes went to the agent, hovering nervously in the concerned circle that had formed around Mac’s prone body. He looked horrified, and I didn’t care. “Get him out of here.” Steel hardened my voice.

No one moved. “You heard her,” Sera insisted, eyes black and flat.

Johnson lightly grabbed Carmichael’s upper arm, moving him toward the door. I didn’t watch them leave, but before they made it more than a foot, Simon stopped them. “I strongly recommend you submit no reports to your superiors until Sera or Aidan have approved them.” He let his claws elongate, the threat obvious. A moment later, he relaxed, and I knew they had silently acquiesced.

Mac’s eyes fluttered open, moving over each face now gathered around him. Miriam was supervising the children, making sure no one caught fire from their cages, but everyone else was there. His eyes roamed over Will, Carmen, Simon, and Sera, and the expression did not vary from face to face. Everyone was unfamiliar. I received the same questioning look as everyone else, and it broke my heart into tiny pieces. He’d said he would always know me, and it seemed I’d believed him.

But after he looked at everyone else, his eyes returned to me and stayed there, and I knew I would do whatever it took to keep him alive.

I pressed my lips to his forehead and spoke quiet words just for him, using the name he’d whispered in my ear the night we kissed. “Go to sleep, Connor. Close your eyes and let me fix you.” I sent a desperate plea to the fire to remain quiescent, and then I reached my magic deep inside Mac’s body just as he breathed his final breath. At the moment my magic grasped his life source, it was extinguished, and he died.

CHAPTER 24

I heard sobbing, but this time it wasn’t me. It was Will, his deep voice accompanied by Celeste’s gentle cries. During all the chaos, I hadn’t noticed her waking up. She stood apart from our group, knowing she wouldn’t be welcome, but she still wept as her nephew died before her.

I stared at her, at her pathetic snivels. “Don’t you dare. You don’t get to grieve. You started this. You do not get to cry for this man.” She blanched under my stare, and I knew my eyes were gunmetal grey daggers. Her fear wasn’t enough, and I felt little satisfaction. I wanted to hurt her. I wanted to hurt Eleanor, still tied to the bed, truly beaten this time.

The fire leapt at the chance.

It wasn’t alone this time. For the first time ever, the fire didn’t extinguish the water through the force of my anger. I’d worked too hard to secure my water side, to keep Mac safe no matter what treacherous emotions flowed through me, and this time it refused to be consumed by the fire. Instead, the fire swirled around my water half. The two magics joined together, and at last I understood what it was to be a dual magic. I wasn’t one or the other, some fractured and broken elemental.

I was both, and this time, when the fire sang to me, madness did not beckon. I felt complete, and a pure, certain knowledge filled me. It was familiar and sure, a knowledge that had lived within me my entire life, so much that I wondered how I’d never heard it before. It spoke to me of absolute truths, of the purest magic of life and creation that existed at the dawn of time, and I knew exactly what I needed to do.

I’d helped my mother with enough healing to know the basics. You fed the magic in slowly, letting it attach to the body’s water supply. You asked the water to find the impurities and invaders, to tell you of any irregularities it encountered, and you attempted to separate them from the body. You could use the water to move blood through the body, to inflate the lungs and urge the heart to beat. It was slow, detail-oriented work, and a single mistake would cost a life. It would require the utmost concentration and patience to bring Mac back from death.

I had the concentration but not the patience. Mac wasn’t breathing, and I had no time to spare. I grabbed the fire, so active and demanding, and let it propel the magic through my body, through my fingers, and into Mac’s pores. It reached deep within his body, into the bear that lay dead before me. It was indiscriminate, and it looked for any place to land.

What I sent into his body wasn’t water magic, and it wasn’t fire magic. It was the core of both, the pure magic of creation the first elementals were born from, the heart of the magic that lived within each of us. It was the magic of life. And the full-blooded ones, like me, we had a whole lot of it. It was the magical core that kept us alive through disastrous car crashes, that kept us from aging through the years, that kept us connected to the earth and water, the glaciers and volcanoes, the beaches and deserts. It was our very essence, and with the fire magic as propellant, I sent it rushing to Mac’s bullet wound. Long-lived might not be the same as immortal, but this time it would be. I’d make sure of it.

It only took seconds. His body expelled the bullet and the flesh knit together, the wound closing instantly. I felt the internal organs repairing themselves, and with one insistent beat, his heart exploded back to life, eagerly pushing the blood throughout his body, carrying the magic to every inch of his body, repairing every damaged cell.

It wasn’t enough. He was alive, but he wasn’t yet Mac. I sent the magic exploring, consciously looking for the implants. They were hidden above the massive muscles of his forelegs, and the magic wrapped around them and filled them anew, devouring the unwanted drug. It turned out anti-magic medicine had its limits, and being confronted by the purest magic in the world was one of them. As I watched, Mac’s fur slowly receded, his teeth shrank, his muscles reformed, and the man returned, his breathing weak but steady.

There was more to be done. The magic was eager to finish the job, but my absolute certainty in my task was wavering. I had no idea what such power would do when it touched his neural pathways, and though I desperately wanted Mac’s memory to return, the risk was too great. He was alive. That had to be enough.

Reluctantly, I withdrew the magic, but it resisted, my own magic treating me like a stranger.

I’d asked it to do something unknown, maybe even unnatural, and it wouldn’t return smoothly. It fought me at first, wanting to linger in the new warm body it had just discovered. At last, with great effort, one thread at a time slid back to me, back to my core, and it recognized its home. It called to the rest, and it all returned with increasing eagerness, fire and water, the very magic of life filling me up again, defining me.

It was more than I’d ever done, and I felt an exhaustion that ran bone deep, my mind and the magic and my human body all depleted. I began to convulse from the effort, and without considering the medical wisdom of my action, I looked for the safest place in the room. It was right below me, and I lowered my shaking body onto Mac’s chest. There was a haven in his warmth and solidity, and I drew it to me, letting it repair my pain and invisible wounds as I’d done for him.

I lay for a long time, feeling the shaking slowly stop. I could hear the others moving, speaking softly and beginning the horrible process of dismantling the lab. A blanket settled over me and Mac, and I felt myself begin to drift, the warmth and absolute fatigue conspiring to draw me toward unconsciousness.

In that last moment before sleep claimed me, I felt Mac’s arm wind around my waist, and he pulled me closer.

He slept for days. At the end of the first day, I worried. By the third, I panicked. With Will’s help, we returned him to his trailer. Someone was with him at all times. Every night I crawled in next to him, hoping my presence would remind him there was something worth coming back for.

I only left the cabin once, to visit my mother. Eleanor hadn’t been able to insert an implant in her arm, so once the drug wore off, she awoke and we learned the full story. My mother had been working on James, trying to discover what was interfering with the magic, and she found the blockage to his memories instead. Unfortunately, Eleanor had been in the room with her at the time, and she was disinclined to allow my mother to unblock him. One long syringe with a crippling dose of the anti-magic cocktail found its way to her neck, and she’d passed out.

“We are magic,” she told me from Will’s guest bed. She was awake, but to say she was recovered would be optimistic. “We are never meant to exist without it. It would be like asking a human to exist without several vital organs. I shut down completely. There was nothing you could do until the drug wore off.”

“But you’re okay now?”

She grimaced, just a tiny bit, then allowed her face to smooth into its usual elegant mask. “I’ll be fine, darling.”

My mother, the martyr. “Come on. Let’s go.”

With Will’s help, I got her to the car. I headed straight for Tahoe City, at the top of the lake, and let her lean on me as we made our way to the water. It was slowly getting more crowded. Though the lake was still cold, summer was nearly upon us, and it looked like several people were determined to get a jump on the worst of the vacation crowds. They thought nothing of the two blond women that looked like sisters standing knee deep in the water, one supporting the other.

She closed her eyes and fed hungrily on the lake’s energy. “Ah, that is nice,” she said. “Not quite the Pacific, but nice nonetheless.”

I resisted the urge to defend Lake Tahoe. I might have grown up surrounded by the same ocean she loved, but this was my water now. My home was the lake and the river, not the island where I’d been raised.

“Better?” I asked instead. I knew she was. After a few minutes, she didn’t need to lean on me any more.

She nodded. We stood in silence for a long time. “You have no plans to return with me, do you?”

“You know I don’t.”

“Will told me I needed to let my cub go, let her form her own sleuth. I believe that’s what he said.” She spoke carefully, the idea unfamiliar.

I smiled. “That’s what a group of bears are called. Hey, have you heard about Wikipedia yet?”

She nodded absently. There really wasn’t anyone who shared my enthusiasm for that site. “I did the only thing I could think to do to protect you. I believed it was the right choice until I heard you say otherwise. I thought that, so long as you remained a pure water and remained on the island, I’d saved you. Of course, look at poor Celeste. She did the opposite. She attempted to set her son free of his magical heritage, to give him the world, and she destroyed one life after another. Perhaps there is no correct answer.”

I swished my foot through the water. “You did what you thought was right. It wasn’t right—let’s be clear about that—but I know you were trying.”

It wasn’t complete forgiveness, but it was a start.

She paused, uncertain how to approach the next topic. “I was told you used fire, Aidan.”

“It wasn’t planned.”

“I’m sure not. How do you feel now? Mentally?”

“Surprisingly good.” I almost stopped there. I didn’t want to worry her with the small changes I’d felt since the lab, but keeping them to myself would be the same thing I’d accused her of doing—protecting a loved one from the truth. “Though I feel different. Sharper, somehow. Like I just got a new pair of glasses, and the blurred edges of the world are now clear and defined. I don’t feel insane, though I’m not sure any insane person would feel that way. I’m mostly worried that this morning, for almost five seconds, I considered going for a jog.”

She forced a laugh, though I didn’t see the humor. That brief thought had horrified me.

“No desire to kill anyone yet?”

“Not so far, though I probably shouldn’t be left alone in a room with Eleanor or Celeste anytime soon.”

“The shifters will take care of their own. Will is a loyal man, and he hates to deprive his sons of their mother, no matter how misguided she was. If you remain in Mac’s life, you will cross paths with Celeste.”

“I’ll be ready.” I paused for a long time, trying to think of the best way to phrase an idea I doubted my mother wanted to hear. “In a strange way, I understand why Eleanor acted the way she did. Not the way she went about it, or the high levels of crazy she devoted to her master plan, but her reasons for hating us... she wasn’t wrong. Elementals can’t keep treating shifters the way we do and just expect them to take it.”

She stared off into the distance, and I thought her mind was already back on the island, with its full-blooded waters who’d been determinedly set in their ways since the Renaissance. “Perhaps,” she said vaguely. “I’m certain, however, that we at least won’t need to worry about Eleanor attacking us—or anyone else—again. The shifters will see to that.”

I nodded, unable to conjure any tears for a woman who’d had no qualms about hurting children and sought the death of all local elementals, myself and Sera included. I might understand the anger that motivated her, but I could still hate her for the way that anger had manifested.

Once, I despised death as a solution, but I was less certain these days. I knew I would never mourn the loss of Eleanor, no more than I mourned Brian. Sometimes, the world was just better off without certain people. Maybe it was my fire side hardening me, tempering me into a lean, mean, elemental machine. Or maybe I would hurt anyone who came after my family. Not the one I’d been born to, but the one I chose. It was growing every day.

And once again, I chose to include my mother in it. “If anything changes, if I feel myself becoming violent, I’ll call you. I’ve told Sera to call you, if she notices anything. I won’t disappear again. I promise.”

She wasn’t a demonstrative woman, but she wrapped her arms around me in a quick, fierce hug. “Good. However, I fear you’ll be visiting the island sooner than expected.”

That didn’t sound promising.

“The council would like to see you. They’re convening on the island next week.” No, that wasn’t promising at all.

“They don’t know?” I asked, feeling the panic rise. Sure, I was often a neurotic, babbling mess, but I really liked being alive. I had no desire for the council to alter that state.

“No, they don’t,” she said firmly. “They’re more concerned about the way you shared our existence with two FBI agents and then followed up by tilting Lake Tahoe about twenty degrees toward Emerald Bay.”

“Oh. That.” With everything that had happened, that day had somehow slipped my mind.

“Yes, that. I expect they will vote to ostracize you from the elemental world.”

I considered that for a moment, thinking about what I could lose. The home I’d grown up on. My nutty aunts. I faced the possibility of centuries of solitude, cut off from many of my own people. But I also thought of what they couldn’t take. Sera and Mac. Simon and Vivian. My mother. No matter what the council said, they weren’t going anywhere, and they were my true people.

“You know, I’m okay with that.” I felt a grin split my face, the same energy that was healing my mother filling me up, bringing a peace and joy I hadn’t known in weeks. “I’m really okay with that.”

After I returned her to Will’s, I had one more stop to make. I phoned the cabin quickly, to make sure there’d been no change with Mac, and told them I’d return in a couple of hours. Then I climbed into my beat-up old Chevy and made my way toward a certain Reno suburb. There was a long overdue apology I needed to make.

When I pulled up outside Diane’s house, I didn’t feel apprehensive, despite our previously antagonistic relationship. An hour of country music, the kind that insisted you sing along, had me smiling, and if that wasn’t enough, there was the certainty I was doing the right thing. I’d harassed this woman time after time, and while she’d played a small role in the abductions, it had been entirely unintentional. She was innocent, and she deserved to hear me acknowledge that.

My good feeling lasted only until I saw the black sedan, a familiar lackey waiting patiently in the driver’s seat.