Shifting Selves (25 page)

She knew the one thing that could cost me my life, and she was about to back me on a blind assault on our resident mad scientist’s laboratory. She damned sure better be.

We moved quietly toward the building. I let Miriam take point, figuring her keen senses would be more attuned to possible threats. While she was more capable than me when it came to the five senses, I was amused to see she didn’t move easily through the trees the way Simon would have. She avoided stepping on dry branches or anything else that might give us away, but by shifter standards, she was damn near clumsy.

About a hundred feet away, we paused. Miriam sniffed the wind, then nodded, satisfied. “They’re still in there.” She spoke quietly, the barest whisper. We were downwind from the building, disguising our own approach, but caution was still necessary. “Now what?”

It was a good question. We’d made faster time than I’d expected. Sera and the agents were making their way from the other end of the lake, and it could be more than an hour before they arrived. But Will wasn’t far, and he ought to get there soon. I itched to simply attack, to burn the building and the woman inside, but that wasn’t an option. I was allowed to risk my sanity, but not shifter lives.

“We wait,” I finally said, trying to infuse the words with a certainty I didn’t feel.

Minutes crept by, long seconds during which I imagined all the things that might be happening a hundred feet from my current spot. She could be working on Mac at this moment. While we waited, he might be forgetting I ever existed.

“Down girl,” muttered Miriam. “I don’t know much about what you are, but that can’t be good.”

I followed her gaze to my fingers, where tiny sparks flew impotently into the wind, seeking something to burn. “No, it’s really not.” I closed my eyes and pictured Lake Tahoe in winter, a still, cold source of energy and peace. I felt myself calm, and when I looked again, my fingers weren’t doing their best impersonation of Roman candles. Vivian would be so proud of me.

The fire was too close to the surface. Even now, I could feel it snaking through my body, probing and testing, looking for weak spots. We had to hope our incursion into the building went quickly and smoothly, because at the moment I felt like a lit match, and any conflict or danger would be the kerosene that destroyed my control.

Miriam and I waited several long minutes in silence, studying the building, hoping for any new information. Nothing moved.

We had no warning anyone was near until Will simply stepped from the trees behind us. No large man should ever be able to move as quietly as he did, but he seemed to control the ground and trees, and they obeyed his command to remain silent. Carmen stalked behind him, eyes alert. They only briefly acknowledged me, too intent on scanning the area for any potential threats. I was glad to see Josiah wasn’t with them. That would have been one complication too many.

“You found her, little water,” Will said, moving toward me and giving me a half hug with his right arm. It only lasted a moment, but I took that second to lean into him, to find comfort in his warmth and strength.

I thought Will might need comfort of his own. Strain showed across his face, and I suspected that, much like me, tomorrow he’d be dealing with a hefty emotional fallout. For now, though, he seemed willing to pretend the woman inside the building was a stranger. That was a delusion I was happy to share with him.

I introduced the various shifters. “You’ve helped more than you signed up for, Miriam. I won’t hold it against you if you want to leave now that the cavalry’s arrived.” A bear, a mountain lion, and a dual magic elemental. Yeah, I thought we could handle this, particularly with Sera and the agents bound to arrive soon after.

Miriam didn’t care. “You’re telling me I got to be your guide, but I’m supposed to miss the fun part? Screw that. Just point me toward someone I can beat up.”

Carmen looked at Miriam with undeniable respect.

“Word is the back window is our best bet, if we’re feeling limber.” I sized up Will. “Though I’m not sure that’ll work for you. If Carmen and I can slip inside, maybe one of us can open the locked door.”

Will was already stripping, and I averted my eyes in an effort to not see the uncle of my intended future boyfriend buck naked. There was a slight ripple in the air, and a moment later a large black bear watched me carefully, waiting for his chance to act.

“You ready to prove elementals aren’t completely useless, Aidan?” Carmen asked, then shifted herself. I’d never seen a mountain lion up close, and she was stunning. Far smaller than the bears, and yet I wouldn’t have bet against her in a fight. It wasn’t just the claws and teeth, either. There was a hunger in her eyes, a readiness in her coiled muscles, that spoke to the purest predatory impulse. When Simon was a cat, he might occasionally hunt a bird or bug, but he could easily be distracted by a warm heater vent or tuna sandwich. I doubted Carmen’s focus ever wavered from her prey.

There was no more reason to delay, and we moved rapidly toward the building. The window was high above me, but Will nudged me gently with his head, boosting me enough to reach it. Unfortunately, I lacked the arm strength required to pull myself up, and after dangling helplessly for a moment, was forced to drop down.

“Plan B, then,” I muttered, resolutely not meeting anyone’s eyes.

I stepped around the side of the building, finding one of the slightly larger windows Mary had mentioned. The window wasn’t intended to be opened, and there was no locking mechanism. Fortunately, a large rock can unlock plenty of things, and after heaving it against the window a couple of times, the glass cracked. We were in.

Stealth was overrated, anyway.

I was inside a second later, my eyes adjusting to the gloom. Carmen and Miriam followed, but it was still too small an opening for the bear. Will left to wait by the locked door.

We’d landed in an empty room. Celeste had rented the whole building for secrecy, but she hadn’t needed the entire space.

The room led to a hallway that opened in three separate directions. “Stick together or split up?” asked Miriam.

I grimaced. “This isn’t a horror movie. We stay together.” Carmen growled, though I had no idea if that meant she agreed.

If I’d been alone, I’d have needed to open one door after another and peer into every dark room, terrified each time that something would leap out at me. Fortunately, I wasn’t alone.

“What are your noses telling you?”

I hadn’t finished the sentence before Carmen padded down the hallway to our right, nails muffled against the thin carpet. She walked with certainty, tail low. We followed her through the dark building, only stopping long enough to unlock the door and let in an immense bear.

Carmen led us directly to a closed door under which a thin band of light emerged. She nodded at me, impatient. My nose might be useless, but at least I had opposable thumbs. I wrapped my hand around the doorknob and twisted, surprised to find it unlocked. Celeste knew we were here and wasn’t attempting to keep us out. That should have been our first warning.

We entered the room, blinking rapidly, willing our eyes to adjust to the sudden brightness.

Once we could see again, our eyes fixed on a single, terrifying tableau.

We froze, processing two things at once. First, I saw Mac stretched out on a narrow hospital bed, a long needle held casually to his throat. Second, it wasn’t Celeste holding that needle.

“How nice,” Eleanor smiled. “We get to chat.”

I stared at her. We all did. We needed the time to process the new situation, to weigh the new threat. Will growled, loudly, and I thought he had fewer reservations about mauling his sister-in-law than he did about harming his own wife. Carmen crouched low, ears back and fangs exposed, and a slow hiss built in her throat.

Part of my brain, a cold, detached section that barely felt like it belonged to me, worked quickly, piecing these new bits of information together. Diane told Dana. Dana told Celeste. Celeste told Eleanor. We’d been so close, but we’d missed one key fact, one all important detail.

Celeste was a mother bear, and every bit as protective as any mama bear in the wild. She’d been in agony watching her son suffer. Some things, I thought, could not be faked. She’d never intended to hurt her own son. Either something had gone wrong, or someone else had caused that pain. Maybe both.

Of course, the other part of my brain saw Mac dormant and helpless beneath her needle and wanted to start setting things on fire.

As ever, I fought it back, but it was slow to retreat. It knew this was just a temporary solution, and I’d be calling it back soon enough. If Eleanor hurt Mac, she would need to burn.

I stretched my water magic toward the syringe, seeking to control the liquid inside. My efforts were futile. The syringe was air tight, my magic was unable to push past the pipette blocking the needle.

But first, I needed to at least attempt a solution that didn’t open the door to further insanity. Miriam and I were the only ones still in human form, and she was mainly along for the opportunity to smack someone. It looked like the burden of diplomacy fell on me. As with so many things lately, that could have been planned better.

“What do you want?” I bit out the words, making no attempt to hide my hatred.

“I want you to go away and pretend you never saw me, at least for a couple more weeks, but we rarely get what we want in life.” Her voice was even and reasonable.

Her eyes, however, were anything but reasonable. They were bright and frantic, scanning the entire room. She knew there were more of us. Sera, Simon, Josiah, she’d met them all, and she had no way of knowing they weren’t with us. I didn’t wear a watch, but I knew it would be at least another half hour till they appeared.

Fortunately, if there was one thing I did really well, it was stall and babble and distract. With luck, I could convince her to use the full thirty minutes to share her diabolical plan.

Then Sera could set her on fire for me.

Behind me, I heard a desperate, pained growl. Will stared, not at his nephew, but at a woman stretched out on another bed. Celeste. She was on one of several beds, with the others occupied by children and teenagers, all sound asleep. They lined the walls of this room, white beds against white walls. The dull fluorescents and worn linoleum floor stopped the room from looking pure and clean. It might be sterile, but it felt dirty and ugly.

Eleanor followed his gaze. “Oh, calm down, Will. I’d never hurt my sister. She’s on tranquilizers, just enough to sleep for a bit.”

She didn’t specify whether those tranquilizers were self-administered or if Eleanor had helped her sister to dreamland.

“Why is she here?” I asked, trying to put the final pieces of this puzzle together.

“She came with me willingly, you know.” The words were defensive, but I heard truth in her words. She hadn’t abducted her own sister. Celeste had known where her sister was, and what she’d been doing—and we knew she’d fed her information from Dana. She was still far from innocent, regardless of whether she’d intended for James to be hurt.

Though she spoke easily, even conversationally, Eleanor never moved, and the needle did not waver from Mac’s neck. “Celeste can be naive, and she hadn’t expected things to turn out the way they did. She told me things were out of control. I told her the only thing out of control was her Xanax addiction and, well, you know how sisters fight.” She shrugged, unconcerned.

“What ‘things,’ exactly?”

She stared at me with the absolute focus of the beast that lurked within her. At that moment, I knew with utter certainty that everything else—the occasional appearance of weakness, the bright, mad eyes, the graduate student full of hard-won wisdom—were just acts, reflections of humanity she’d picked up over the years. The truth of who she was lay in the predator’s gaze now fixed on me, the gaze that weighed every strength and weakness I might possess and judged my threat potential accordingly.

She wasn’t ready to dismiss me yet, and I’d never be so foolish as to dismiss her. We were at a standoff.

“Don’t play stupid, Aidan. You’re many things, but that isn’t one of them. The car crash, for instance. Celeste thought it was unnecessary. Your mother. Her son’s poor mental state.”

The reminder was too much for Will. He stood on his hind legs, bellowing his anger, then dropped and took several steps forward. Eleanor pricked Mac’s neck with the needle, her thumb on the plunger.

“No!” I shouted, not even certain who I yelled at. “Stop, please.” Will snarled, but he remained in place, and Eleanor slowly removed her thumb, though she kept the needle in his neck. Mac’s eyes were fluttering, the noise and the pain drawing him to wakefulness. I was both thrilled to see signs of life and terrified he’d do something really stupid in an attempt to help.

“See, I said you were smart. Without even being told what’s in this syringe, you knew you didn’t want me to inject it. You’re right, of course. If I give him this, Mac won’t remember much of anything.”

She cast her eyes toward Will, still staring at Eleanor with her death in his eyes. She was unconcerned. Her absolute confidence set off all my warning bells. The threat to Mac was the only card she had to play, and she couldn’t keep an unpressed needle in his neck indefinitely.

As much as I might wish otherwise, I didn’t think Eleanor was stupid, either. We’d guessed earlier that she had a plan. Control the children, control the families. We still didn’t know the whole story.

Keep her talking. Keep her talking till Simon could drop down on her ugly, deceptive mug and claw her to bits. Keep her talking till Sera could show up and incinerate her. It was damn hard to press a needle while on fire, I was sure. And if Sera never made it, I could do it in her place. It might be signing my death warrant to do it in front of so many people, but I only had to look at Mac and the beds of the other shifter children to know the risk was worth it.

Yeah, I had a plan, too.

“Why?” I asked. Nice and open-ended, letting her share whatever she felt was important. Whatever might inspire her to keep talking.