Mythe: A Fairy Tale (69 page)

He made apologies for Josh and himself as he moved through the group, looking for Lizzy. He finally found her in a quiet corner, grouped around a plastic table with three women Richard probably should have known but couldn’t put names to. He thought one might have been a cellist. Or maybe a violinist? Lizzy had her laptop open on the table and all four women were watching Manda’s video again.

“I would have thought you’d have had enough of that tonight to last you a lifetime,” he teased, standing just behind her and watching over her shoulder.

She turned toward him with an embarrassed smile. “No, it’s very good,” she disagreed. “Great show tonight, boss.”

“Oh, so know I’m ‘boss.’ Earlier you make me beg and now I’m ‘boss.’” Richard pretended outrage. “Seriously though, I wanted to thank you. You are a rockstar, Lizzy. I will never, ever be able to thank you enough for pulling this off.” He smiled his appreciation.

“Well, it was a team effort. I just threatened everyone with all manner of ugly and painful death if they dared to disappoint you,” Lizzy replied with a bloodthirsty smile, but she slid her arm around his waist and gave him one small, quick hug.

Richard chuckled. “Yeah, about that,” he drew Lizzy off from the group still clustered around the computer. “These guys deserve a better thank you than this. Take everyone out and have some fun. Not
too
much fun. Charge it to your expense card and I’ll pick it up. Tell everyone thank you for us, okay? And I would
really
appreciate it if you could try and make sure everyone gets home safely. Oh, and please, no police involvement! You know the drill.”

Lizzy laughed. “I’ll do my best. You’re not coming then?”

“No. I don’t think I’m feeling quite up to that yet,” Richard answered.

Lizzy nodded understandingly. “Go crash then. You look terrible.”

“Thanks,” he retorted dryly.

Richard glanced back toward the table where the video had restarted. He watched for a few moments, unwilling to look away.

“Who produced the video? Was it Amanda?” Lizzy asked him gently. Richard hadn’t been aware that Lizzy even knew who Manda was, but he supposed it was no surprise. Even if she didn’t pay attention to media gossip, word spread quickly in such a small group. They all would have noticed his dark moods, and the reason for them hadn’t exactly been a secret. It had been plastered across the headlines for weeks.

“Is it that obvious?” Richard sighed.

“Well, actually...yes.” Her face was compassionate. “Is that who you were looking at in the last picture?”

“What?” Richard asked, startled.

“The last picture. You look like you’re staring at the most precious and beautiful thing in the world. It’s definitely the look of a man in love. We were all just eating our hearts out, wishing someone would look at us that way.”

It clicked into place then, the thing that had been bothering Richard about that last picture. It was so unlikely that he’d failed to see the obvious. He
had
been looking at Manda. He was wearing a team jersey in the picture—a team jersey he didn’t have anymore—a team jersey he’d gotten when he sang the national anthem at the baseball stadium. Manda had been snapping pictures of him as they watched the game. The picture had to have been taken less than an hour before she
was killed. There was no way that picture could be in the video if she’d already completed it before she died. The video would have to have been completed before the baseball game, before the picture was taken. What did that mean? Maybe she’d created most of it but someone else finished it up after she was killed. But hadn’t Mikey talked to her lawyer? Hadn’t she already completed it and transferred the rights into Richard’s name before she died?

“Richard? Richard? What’s the matter? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.” Lizzy put her hand on his arm. When Richard just shook his head, running frantically through the possible implications in his mind, she looked around nervously. “Has anyone seen Josh?”

Richard patted her hand reassuringly and shook his head again. “No, I’m fine. I just have to make a phone call. Excuse me please.” He was already pulling his phone from his pocket as he strode purposefully toward the nearest door.

He dialed Mikey’s number as he hurried through the service areas of the arena. He glanced around until he found an open loading door. The semi-trailers used to haul the tour equipment were lined up outside in the darkness. He wanted to be alone for this call. He heard the ringing in the earpiece as the call went through. The trailer in the adjacent door was still open. Lights illuminated its interior and he could hear voices approaching. They were still loading that one. The farthest trailer was locked up. It was distant from the light of the doorway and its far side was hidden in deep shadows. Swiftly but silently he dropped off of the loading dock and dashed for those shadows.

On the fourth ring Mikey picked up. “Richard?”

“Hey, Mikey.”

“Where are you? Josh was sound asleep when I got here. I was about to call you.”

“Mikey, tell me about the video from Manda.” Richard jumped right into the reason for his call.

“Aah,” Mikey said warily. “Lizzy called me and told me what you guys were doing. She wanted my assurance that she wouldn’t be infringing on any copyrights by showing it. She wasn’t taking Josh’s word. I’m sorry Richard. Things were just coming together with Chelsea when it arrived and I didn’t want to jeopardize that. You were hanging on by a thread at that point.” He sounded uncomfortable.

“I understand all of that,” Richard said carefully, “but
do
we have all the rights to it? Do we have the sign-offs of her collaborator, as well?”

Mikey was confused. “What collaborator?”

“The one who finished it up after she died.”

“Oh! You had me worried for a minute there. I was wondering who was going to be suing us. No, she finished it before she died. There was just some sort of glitch with some of the rights that they weren’t able to resolve until afterward. The lawyer had the completed video along with the papers, signed by her, releasing all of the rights to you. He mailed copies of them. I have them here.”

“Then tell me how a picture that was taken less than an hour before she died ended up in that video?” Richard demanded in a tight voice.

Mikey was silent for a long moment and then he replied slowly, almost cautiously, “I don’t know.”

“Mikey, what’s going on?”

Mikey’s response was definitely hesitant now. “I honestly don’t
know
Richard. I wouldn’t lie to you about this.”

“You know something Mikey! What happened that day? If you don’t know I’d we willing to bet Kastl does. Where is he?” Richard demanded hotly.

“Well, that’s a problem,” Mikey explained warily. “We don’t
know
where he is. Nobody I know has seen or heard from him since that day. And if anyone else knows they aren’t talking. He just vanished. All of the team communication has come from higher up. I don’t think he wants to face anyone after letting Tina get to Manda. I think he took it pretty hard.”

“So how do we find him?” Richard growled through gritted teeth. He didn’t blame Kastl, but neither could he spare any sympathy for him.

“Calm down. Let me make some calls and see what I can learn. In the meantime, come back here. We’ll figure this out.”

Richard snapped his phone shut without responding. Something was going on and he was afraid to hope what it might be. “Damn it!” he muttered. He stood motionless in the shadows trying to decide what to do next. His anger and frustration increased when he couldn’t think of anything. He heard a sharp crack and felt a pain in his hand. He looked down and realized he’d been gripping his phone so tightly that he’d crushed it—the shards of glass that remained of the display screen had sliced into his palm. With a snarl of frustration and disgust he hurled it across the parking lot. He transformed his injured hand so quickly it was a blur, then flexed it and slammed it into the side of the trailer, leaving a large dent. He growled at the damage.

“No need to get so upset,” a voice behind him said dryly. “I’m not
that
hard to find.”

Richard turned to glare at Kastl. The agent stood bare in the shadow of the trailer. Richard could just detect the fading scent of the owl he had been.

“What the hell is going on?” Richard demanded tensely. “What are you hiding, Kastl?”

“Good to see you too, Richard,” was Kastl’s level reply. “Let’s talk.”

Richard took a deep breath and tried to calm down. He needed answers. If Kastl wanted to talk then perhaps he was going to get some.

“What happened to Manda?” Richard asked evenly if still tensely. “Did she…” He couldn’t finish the question, afraid to know the answer, afraid it wouldn’t be the right one, afraid he had let hope outpace reason.

Kastl answered the unasked question quietly. “She’s alive.”

With those two words the light of a thousand suns exploded behind Richard’s eyes. He took one staggering step backward and then half collapsed and half lowered himself to the ground. Pressing his hands to his temples, he leaned back against the tires of the trailer for support. He had refused to acknowledge any hope of this, and now, hearing the words spoken aloud altered his world completely and fundamentally. Manda was alive!

“How? What happened? How is she?” he managed to croak. There didn’t seem to be enough air.

“Like I said, we need to talk,” Kastl replied ominously. Cold dread constricted around Richard’s heart, making it even harder to breathe.

“How is she?” he whispered again. The image of her as he’d last seen her flashed through his mind. It was a picture that had haunted his nightmares ever since—her face and her torso slashed open and bleeding, her arms clutched over her abdomen hiding the worst of the damage done by Tina’s raking claws. He shuddered and squeezed his eyes shut. How could she have survived that? How could she have recovered? What lasting agony had she endured?
She’s alive. At least she’s alive. Focus on that.

“Physically, she’s perfect,” Kastl replied carefully.

That startled Richard and his eyes snapped open. How could she have recovered from wounds like that without some permanent damage? How…

“Her injuries were severe,” Kastl continued, “but nothing that the marvels of modern medicine and the magic of ancient blood couldn’t fix.”

And then Richard understood, and his anger flared, a white hot inferno.

“You changed her,” he accused, his voice dangerous. “You knew she didn’t want it, you wouldn’t let me do it, you aren’t
allowed
to do it, and you did it anyway.” He was instantly on his hands and knees, tensed in a predatory crouch. “She didn’t want that!” As desperately as he wanted her alive and well, he loved her too much to wish her a life she despised—condemned to live as an unnatural monster in her own estimation. For Kastl to force himself on her in that way was worse than rape!

Kastl was unaffected by the overt threat of Richard’s stance. “First of all, surely you know she didn’t mean it when she said you were a monster. She was protecting you and Josh, trying to prevent you from revealing our secret in front of the whole world—one reason
I
wouldn’t have let you change her. Revealing that is far too dangerous. Secondly, although I
did
change her, she’s not a shapeshifter. That’s what we need to talk about.”

Richard, taken aback, relaxed his aggressive posture slightly and exhaled.

“How is that possible?” he asked warily. “You aren’t making any sense.”

“Sit back down and I’ll explain. You look terrible.”

“I wish people would stop telling me that,” Richard snapped irritably, but he settled himself back to the pavement.

Kastl looked down at his own unclothed state and then at the rough pavement. “Would you mind lending me your jacket? The ground’s a little chilly.”

Richard shrugged out of his leather jacket and handed it to Kastl, who placed it onto the asphalt and lowered himself onto it.

“Thanks,” he grunted and then sighed. “Okay, here’s the story. First of all, you’re right—Uncle Sam is pretty adamant that I not go around creating semi-immortal, super-human beings, so no, I didn’t change Manda. Though honestly, if I hadn’t had any other option I would have done it anyway. I did have another option though. We’ve done some research and discovered that by chemically altering the therianthropic factor in our blood we can use it to heal someone without changing that person. Well, I suppose that’s not strictly true,” he back-peddled. “Technically, the person
is
temporarily a shapeshifter, but the shift is limited to that person’s own form and then can’t be repeated. Not a very useful sort of arrangement except that the one transformation
is
helpful if all you need is to heal someone quickly and completely. It has a very limited application, since it can only be used once on any person. And there are other...limitations as well. For example, the altered blood doesn’t stay viable for very long. It’s a matter of minutes. So it’s not something that can be synthesized and saved for later. You have to have a shapeshifter on hand to do it. It worked for Manda though. She was healed completely. No lasting injury. Unless you consider carrying a little bit of me around inside her for the rest of her life an injury.” Kastl frowned almost imperceptibly, then took a deep breath and waited for Richard’s reaction.