Changeling (36 page)

My hands. Not Noah’s hands, but my very own. I flexed the fingers, cracked the knuckles. From the scar on my pinkie courtesy of a jagged can of instant soup, to the mole on the underside of my right wrist. My hair was long and dirty. I touched my face—high cheekbones and flat chin. I was on the outside. Me again, but not really.

Energy crackled all around, snapping and popping like an effervescent froth. Intangible, but malleable. Invisible, but every color of the rainbow. In the floor beneath me, in the clothes surrounding me, and the objects towering over me. Kinetic energy everywhere.

Do you always feel this?
I asked.

His answer came from deep within, distant and soft:
Always. Use the power, Dahlia.

I will.

The energy shifted, swirling coldly just out of sight. I ducked and rolled, and another gunshot shattered a hole into the wooden support beam instead of my head. Outside of the cleared arena, the warehouse presented a treacherous landscape. Spikes of metal and charred wood, overturned shelving units, brick fragments and piles of unidentifiable junk. Sharp corners and edges, snatching and tearing at cloth and flesh.

I ducked behind a cluster of metal pilings. Heard scuffing, a click, and then several tinkling sounds. She was reloading. I crouched low and peeked beneath. Spotted a black shoe and a handful of empty shells. A golden glow encompassed each of them, a tiny promise of movement. I focused on the shell nearest the shoe. It shimmied, then darted sideways. I slammed it into her ankle, piercing flesh and bone and tearing through the other side.

Queen howled and fell. She dropped the gun. It skittered away. I caught onto it and gave it a hard mental shove, pushing it until it disappeared beneath the rubble.

Score one for the good guys.

“You’ll pay for that!” Queen screeched.

“Like I haven’t heard that before,” I retorted.

She was up and running before my voice stopped echoing. I crawled out of my hiding place and found room to stand up. Just in time to see a pillar of fire burst from the
ground a dozen feet ahead, somewhere near the perimeter of the arena, and arch skyward. On a collision course with Jimmy.

My protective instinct combined with Noah’s, producing a rage unlike anything I’d ever felt. I reached out with two great powers, pulling at the fire with invisible fingers. Mere inches from Jimmy’s unconscious form, the fire changed course. It pinged sideways, hitting an invisible barrier.

Queen shrieked. The fire fought me, trying desperately to change its course back toward its intended target. I pulled harder. The plume of fire zoomed toward me like dragon’s breath.

Dahlia?

Trust me, Noah.

My powers absorbed the fire into our shared body, tucking it away and storing it. It energized me like a narcotic. Made the world a little brighter, the sky bluer. Odors sharper. Instinct continued bending the arch of the fire, pulling its searing heat away from Jimmy’s reddening face. Down, down, toward the ground.

All at once, it ceased, cutting the tether to my energy source. The absorbed heat thrummed through my body. Our body. The kinetic energy around us sparkled, made more clear by the infusion.

We could beat her.

The ground trembled. Earthquake? No, too concentrated. The cement floor beneath my feet crackled, broke. I stared at it, understanding too late.

Dahlia, let me—

He took control. The floor exploded upward in a deadly shower of stone and dirt, the sheer force of it throwing us into the air. I expected pain, the sensation of rending flesh and breaking bone, but felt only the vaguest impression of flying; being tossed and sailing ass over teakettle, unhurt by the exploding floor.

A pocket of kinetic energy enveloped us, protecting us from the explosion. I understood it as we hit and bounced, coming to a soft stop a few feet from the smoking crater. The bubble disappeared, but the memory of it remained.

Nice one, Noah.

Energized and angry, I concentrated those emotions into a single burst of power. It shot forward, sending a pile of debris the size of a sports car careening forward across the floor at thirty miles an hour. It squealed like fingernails down a chalkboard, and it set my teeth on edge. I kept pushing.

Queen screamed (a sound I was starting to love), and was cut off with a thud.

“No!” Deuce this time, the cavernous space making it impossible to source the shout. At least I’d been on target with Queen.

We need to get Jimmy and Aaron down. They’re sitting ducks.

“Agreed,” I said.

Our fastest path was across the open arena, which left us exposed. The time I’d waste picking a path through the scattered debris was worth risking exposure. I ran faster than I’d ever run in my life, sneakers slipping a bit on the messy floor.
Chunks of rock peppered the ground every other step, trying to connect and failing.

The floor erupted directly in front of me like a land mine and showered me with more stone and dirt. I zagged to the left. The heavy, choking odor of damp earth filled my lungs. Another explosion, almost under my right foot, knocked me sideways. I landed on my shoulder and gasped at the instant pain.

The floor trembled. I scrambled, rolled, and barely missed losing half of my face in the third blast. Another tuck and leap, and I came up on my feet, moving with someone else’s skill—Noah’s training at Weatherfield. I unleashed a blast of telekinetic energy. It sailed across the arena like a comet.

Deuce stood near the center of the open space, next to the ball of junk I’d pushed out and above Queen’s crumpled body. The comet hit Deuce square in the chest and smashed her backward onto her ass. She landed with a pained screech.

I dove behind a nest of twisted shelving and picked my way toward the base of Jimmy’s support beam. I concentrated on the knots in the rope. Noah’s power let me loosen them enough for Jimmy’s weight to pull him down the pike. His eyelids fluttered.

“Jimmy,” I said. “Jimmy, wake up.”

He did, seeing me for only an instant before he looked over my shoulder. His eyes widened. Something buzzed past my head and slammed into Jimmy’s chest. Blood splattered on my face, into my eyes. The jagged edges of a walnut-sized rock poked from the frayed edges of his shirt. He gasped.

Deep inside of me, Noah roared.

The ropes ripped from the pole. Jimmy fell. I barely caught him before he hit the ground. He gasped, hands flailing. I caught them and squeezed. The wound wasn’t bleeding. The rock had embedded so hard and fast, it plugged the hole it made. But he could still be bleeding internally.

Noah clawed his way up, fighting to take over. I gave him a mental shake and pushed him away hard.

You can’t help him, Noah, stop it!

He stilled. His rage continued—pure, energizing fuel. Jimmy blinked, trying to focus. His jaw trembled.

I touched his cheek. “Hang on, Jimmy,” I said.

He nodded, and a single word rang through my head:
Aaron.
Even Jimmy was prodding me away, to do what we’d come here to do: rescue their big brother.

“I’ll be back in a minute, you just hold on.” I let go, and the pang of regret from Noah nearly buckled my knees. I stumbled, hating to leave Jimmy behind, but we had no choice. Queen and Deuce weren’t down yet.

Further proof came as a hail of sand and stone battered the rubble to my left, and tiny particles peppered my arms and legs. Mosquito bites hurt more, but the grit dug in and held. I climbed over a stack of wooden pallets that had made it through the fire. They stood unburned, stable. At the top, I surveyed the warehouse.

A brown-haired head poked out from behind the center debris. It ducked back before I could see which sister was watching me.

Dal, concentrate on the energy inside of that pile. Make it explode.

Worth a shot. I drew on Noah’s experience and felt the telekinetic energy inside the wreckage. Felt it swirl and glow, churning into a bubble. It grew. An arm of fire erupted behind the pile and shot toward me like a rocket. I ignored it too long. It struck the pallets beneath my feet and ignited them instantly. I pushed. Their cover exploded in a shower of sparks and metal and screams.

Flames leapt at our ankles, catching the fabric and scorching skin. I refocused and pulled the fire inward to the center of my power. It went out fast. Either I was getting better at this, or Queen was getting weaker. Both were comforting thoughts.

On the arena floor, two bodies lay among the smoldering rubble. The odor of scorched metal tingled my nose. Tears sprang into my eyes, stinging them. Across the open space, a new figure limped out of the shadows.

King!

He stared at the fallen bodies. Looked up. I waved, and he started running.

Down I climbed, back to the warehouse floor. I picked my way across to Aaron’s pillar. Just as I had done with Jimmy, I loosened the binding ropes enough to allow him to slip down. Arms around his waist, I managed to lower him to the ground.

Aaron Scott looked like death warmed over. Skin stretched too tight across his cheekbones and forehead, thin
and delicate. A fading bruise colored his jaw, stark against the pallor of his skin. Multiple splits marked his chapped lips. Dried blood dotted his dirty T-shirt.

His breathing was labored, shallow.

Noah’s fury compounded. Like before, he tried to push to the surface and take control. I held tight and kept him back. His anger could be an asset, but it could also get us killed.

King pushed his way through the debris, knocking it aside like it was cotton batting. He came to a sudden halt and fell to his knees next to us. An eyeless face fixed first on Aaron, and then on me.

“Where’s Noah?” he asked.

“Here,” I said, pointing to my chest. I half-expected to see the bullet wound still on my body, but it wasn’t. I was in full uniform, which surprised me. It shouldn’t have; I was just an image now, a glamour of my old self. But who still saw me as a Ranger—me or Noah? No time to ponder that right now. “Short story, no time. Are they dead?”

“Dunno,” King said. “Are you dead?”

“I’m not sure. Maybe.” Couldn’t think about that now. “We need to get Jimmy and get out of here.”

King nodded, seeming to understand that the time for questions was much later. He reached for Aaron with shaking hands, seeming nervous now that he was finally presented with the thing he’d been waiting on for so long. It was time to take that final leap into the last body he would ever possess. Into a life he’d chosen to embrace.

I looked at the burn marks on Aaron’s bare arms, the dark circles under his eyes. The hell he’d put himself
through, and the hell Queen had put him through. Dr. Kinsey believed this was the right thing to do. Noah believed it. Noah
chose
it, and his brothers had agreed. I realized then, even without Noah’s underlying emotion, that I believed it, too. It wasn’t our job to judge Aaron’s life, and perhaps we would see our own judgment for it one day, but I would fight for what I thought was right. Giving the Changelings a chance at a life was right.

Morally ambiguous? Absolutely. It’s why so many shades of gray exist in the world.

King grabbed Aaron’s shoulders. Both men shimmered and unfocused into a haze of color that meshed into a single blur. The air sang and hummed with power, with life anew. The colors reformed on the ground as one person. Heat rose in Aaron’s cheeks. The dark lines disappeared. His skin no longer seemed so breakable. All visible hints of abuse were gone, save the shirt stains. His chest rose and fell evenly, without struggle.

Aaron’s eyes flew open, as green as his siblings’. They locked onto mine, swimming with doubt and confusion. He licked his dry lips and tried to speak.

“Can you sit up?” I asked.

He nodded, tried, then flopped back to the floor. I took his hand and tugged, and got him halfway vertical.

“Queen,” he said, voice dry and raspy. “She set explosives. I remember her talking. Gotta get out of here.”

Getting out of there was at the top of my priority list as soon as we had everyone. “Do you know where Teresa is?”

“I don’t . . .” He squinted, thinking. Searching through
memories that still hadn’t fully integrated into those of King and the three (at least) other people he’d possessed lately. “No, I don’t know. I’ve been unconscious for a while. Where’s Jimmy?”

“Back there.”

We cut a fast retreat path. Aaron moved with the grace and agility of a gymnast, very at home in his new body. My arms burned, irritated by the sand firmly shoved beneath the skin. The center of the warehouse remained quiet. Noah shuddered. Homicidal or not, Queen and Deuce were still his kin. In a very strange, body-share kind of way, they were mine, too.

Jimmy had tried to crawl away and now lay on his right side, cheek flat on the cement. The rock had shifted and blood pooled on the ground beneath his left hand. Aaron rolled him onto his back. He saw the wound, and a strangled cry caught in his throat. Jimmy grunted, his eyelids slitting open.

“Hey, big brother,” he whispered.

“Hey, Jimbo,” Aaron said. “We gotta go, pal, no time to lie around.”

Jimmy smiled, displaying red-tinged teeth. “I was supposed to rescue you, you know. Not the other way around.”

Something inside Noah broke and sent waves of grief careening through both of us. We hadn’t fought this hard and come so far only to lose one of his brothers. I knelt next to Aaron, sought his hand, and squeezed tight.

“You did rescue me, pal,” Aaron said.

I slipped back, allowing Noah to rise to the surface. My
hold on his body fell away, and I retreated into the shadows of his mind. Our appearance must have changed as well, because Jimmy blinked sleepily at us. He recognized his other big brother.

“Trance,” Jimmy said, voice barely audible. “Van outside. Didn’t need her in here.”

The news came with only a small measure of relief. It was beaten back by sorrow. Noah nodded our understanding.

Peace flittered across Jimmy’s face. Soft words of comfort whispered through our heads, spoken in Jimmy’s gentle voice. Three hearts beat as one and, for one brief moment, the Scott brothers were together again.