Shifting Selves (26 page)

“Why children? Why Celeste? Or why the drugs? You’re going to have to be more specific than that, Aidan.”

For once, I had the basic sense to keep my mouth shut. Eleanor was proud. I thought the beast inside might be proud, too. She wanted someone to know how she’d outsmarted everyone. My silence might just give her enough rope with which to hang herself.

“It actually didn’t start with me. Growl at me all you want, Will, but it was your wife who put this in motion. Celeste loves James, but he wasn’t ever going to be a doctor or lawyer when he fought the need to shift every time he smelled blood or got angry. He’d be trapped here, in this small town, for the rest of his life—just like the rest of us. We all know there’s no escape. She wanted human children. Brandon will get to do whatever he wants in life. She wanted the same for her other son. James is supposed to go to college next year. She wanted him to go far away, and to go as a human, though she knew it wasn’t possible.”

“But you’d talked to Brian.” The words brought a heavy weight to my chest. Even dead, I wasn’t free of my former friend’s crimes and betrayals.

“It’s amazing what truths come out over a bottle of vodka, especially when you think you have common goals. He wasn’t much a fan of shifters.” No, he hadn’t been. He’d made my father look like a paragon of tolerance when he spoke of them.

“So he gave you the serum, and I’m guessing you wore a red wig to every meeting, making it just a little harder for anyone to connect you to the drugs. But I still don’t get why you did this. If you were just trying to help Celeste, why the other children? Why all the side effects?”

She studied me for a second, considering what to tell me. In the end, she seemed to decide it didn’t matter what I knew. “Why would I go to all this trouble for one boy? I told Brian I’d use it to rid the world of shifters. He was an arrogant man, and he never believed anyone could outsmart him. He didn’t give me shifter deaths. He gave me control over every shifter in Tahoe. That is why I did this.”

Without another word, she shoved the contents of the plunger deep into Mac’s neck.

CHAPTER 23

The response was instantaneous. Without the threat of the needle holding him back, Will leapt forward, knocking Eleanor to the ground. She landed flat on her back, her head cracking against the hard linoleum floor. He held one threatening paw above her face, claws extended and razor sharp.

I heard someone screaming and distantly knew it was me, begging him to spare her at least long enough to learn about the antidote. Despite his rage, I didn’t need to remind him. Even as Will menaced Eleanor, his son was never far from his mind. Once she was immobile, he was content to hold her hostage, willing to wait for a more appropriate time to disembowel his sister-in-law.

Miriam observed the sudden rush of movement and considered her best move. Finally, she walked up to Eleanor, currently plotting her next action with a pissed off bear pinning her to the floor. From a crouched position, the otter shifter drew back her arm and delivered a right hook worthy of an Olympic boxer. Eleanor’s head rocked backwards, and she groaned. Miriam had, quite truly, wiped the smug expression off her face.

With Will looming above her, Carmen watching carefully from the side, and Miriam bouncing on her toes, looking for any excuse to show off her left hook, Eleanor was, quite simply, screwed.

I crouched beside her snarling face, much closer than was altogether sensible, but I wanted to enjoy gaining the upper hand. “Need some help?” I asked.

While I was too busy gloating to be of any use, Carmen was thinking ahead. She shifted back to her human form and started sorting through the supplies at the bedside, finding several plastic tubes she began braiding with neat, efficient movements.

“It makes them harder to break,” she said, in response to my questioning look. “You know bears are strong, right?” She tied Eleanor’s left wrist to a leg of Mac’s hospital bed, then repeated the motion on the other side. Will slowly backed away, dark eyes watching for the smallest unauthorized movement.

Carmen nudged her roughly in the ribs. “Talk.”

Eleanor should have looked at least a little nervous. She was restrained and surrounded by a bunch of people who could, individually, send her to the hospital. Collectively, they could rip her into tiny pieces and spread them throughout the greater Tahoe basin. She had no advantage I could see. And yet, she was smiling.

Nerves crept along my spine, calling to my magic. Be ready, they whispered. She isn’t done with you yet.

“Sure. I’ll talk.” Eleanor turned to me. “I told you I was a permanent student, remember? It’s a funny thing. You spend enough time in school and people stop caring what degrees you’re even bothering to get. They stop asking, particularly if they think you’re just wasting your life and the family money. For the record, Will, the last one was a PhD in pharmacology & toxicology from UC Davis.”

My breath caught, the nerves intensifying. I wasn’t going to like what she said next. “You know Brian stumbled across a mix of drugs that controls the magic. It’s a basic opiate/tranquilizer combo, with a couple of inhibitors that affect the central nervous system. Basically, it tires you out and makes sure your thoughts don’t ever reach the magic. Simple stuff that wears off fast, and I’m a little embarrassed I didn’t think of it first. But I did put my stamp on his creation, once he gave it to me. A few tweaks here and there, mix it with the right technology, and you’ve got a slow release system.”

My blank face didn’t offer the response she was looking for. Her words were full of scorn, but she continued her explanations. “You lot spend so much time obsessed with your magic that you forget science is just as powerful. A tranquilizer got them here, then an experimental amnesia drug made sure they had no memory of their time with me, at least for a while. That one’s not mine, I’m sorry to say. They’ve been working on that for years at Harvard, and I just borrowed it. With James, I only wanted him to forget a couple days, not his entire family. I confess, with Pamela, I was curious what a larger dose would do.”

Carmen didn’t say a word, but I watched her claws slowly extend, and her slitted eyes narrowed on Eleanor’s jugular. Will placed a paw on her upper arm. For restraint or comfort, I didn’t know.

“Oh, calm down, Carmen. It should eventually wear off. I mean, it is still experimental, so I can’t make any guarantees, but she’ll probably remember you, some day.”

My eyes went straight to Mac, wondering how large a dose he’d received. He was asleep, his body processing whatever mix she’d just given him. “Everyone in here’s been given a nice, hefty dose. That’s the thing with scientists. They always want to push just a little bit more, don’t they?”

“Just the mad ones,” I said. She looked amused. I might have complimented her, for all I knew. “And then you gave them Brian’s adapted cocktail.”

“Oh, no.” She shook her head, happily continuing her story. We weren’t intimidating her into telling the truth. She wanted us to know. Josiah was right—she’d always planned on this moment. She might have wished to tell us on her terms, rather than while tied to the legs of a hospital bed, but she was adaptable.

“Then I implanted the drug. Doesn’t a verb make such a difference? If I just gave it to them, it would wear off in the time it took to work its way through the body. Even slow release wouldn’t last more than 24 hours. But a single, tiny drop, released once a day, and my patients won’t be able to shift for the next five years.”

More than enough time to turn them completely into beasts.

Her eyes flicked over my shoulder. I followed her glance and saw a large digital wall clock. Any minute now, our backup should arrive.

Unfortunately, I doubted that’s why she wanted to know the time.

“What have you done?” I backed away from her. I didn’t know what I was protecting myself from, but I was certain I needed distance from something.

“It would have been irresponsible of me to implant a magic suppression without also implanting its antidote, wouldn’t it? Microchip controlled, of course. Those things are so handy. You can even set a timer on them, did you know?”

Behind me, I heard a snarl. It was loud and unmistakable. Only one animal made that sound—a brave, vicious animal. “Wolverine,” said Carmen, and the word sounded like a curse. Wolverines were considerably smaller than mountain lions and bears, but their ferocity was legendary. They were basically the honey badger of the mountains.

“Well, I know I’m staying in human form,” said Miriam. I thought that was a damned good decision.

All around us, teenagers and children were returning to their animal form, gratefully shifting after days or weeks of being denied what their bodies craved. I saw a coyote, a badger, a bobcat, and a beaver, all slipping easily from their beds. A moment later, they were shrieking, forced to turn back into humans. It hadn’t been long enough, the shift. They needed more. Around the lab, I watched young shifters fall to the ground, scared and dejected, many of them sobbing in desperation. It was heart-wrenching.

“Don’t you see?” Eleanor asked. “I had more than enough time to program their implants when I heard that window break. They’ll shift when I decide, and only then. And if you don’t allow me access to my equipment—all carefully password protected, of course—your children will be lost to you.”

“Why?” I repeated my question from earlier, not sure I was any closer to understanding. “Why is it so important to control shifters?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” She glanced at Will and Carmen. They both stood several feet back from Eleanor, but despite the pure hate that sharpened their features and set their eyes blazing, they could do nothing. They could not harm this woman so long as she held their children’s future in her psychotic hands. They wouldn’t stop trying to find a cure, but in the meantime, some of the most powerful shifters in the area were under her command.

She spoke as though her reasoning was self-evident. All I saw was a power-mad woman. However, I also knew that those who craved power for its own sake were the most inclined to abuse it, so it seemed a safe bet she wasn’t going to use her newfound power to implement a shifter family game night.

She snorted. “You really have no idea, do you? Even you, surrounded by Josiah and your mother and raised by the old ones? You know exactly what they say about us. How they hate us. How they deny we exist. How, no matter where I went in the world, they were there first, claiming what should belong to us.” Her voice evolved into a snarl, the beast adding its voice to her words. “We were born from the same magic as you. We are not lesser. We are more. We are human and animal and magic. We are life, and you do not get to look down your nose at us. You do not,” she repeated, the words bitten off one at a time.

She stopped, fighting for control. I saw her own claws extend and recede. She was unwilling to give the beast free rein, not while there was still work to do.

When she spoke again, her voice was calm, almost conversational. “Do you know there are at least five times as many shifters as elementals? Unlike you, our blood does not weaken through our matings with humans. We are strong. And yet, we let you make all the calls. What the humans know or don’t know. You think we wanted a bunch of FBI agents sniffing around? But you lot get involved, and then I get to worry every day that I’m going to end up being experimented on in some government lab.”

She seemed completely unaware of the irony. Or that it was a shifter who’d involved the FBI. I suspected such pesky facts wouldn’t make a dent in her version of reality.

“So, what, you think if you control the shifter families, they’ll take power from the elementals?”

“I think if I control the shifters, they’ll do whatever I want, and I want the elementals dead.” She smiled at the thought. “I’m sure most shifters wouldn’t need much encouragement. We’ve been wanting an excuse to give you what you deserve for years. You are not better than us. You are not superior. Tahoe belongs to us, and family is all, Aidan. It is the strongest power in this world. We will do anything to protect our own.”

“The way you protected James?” Perhaps I shouldn’t bait her, but she’d just detailed her role as the architect of an elemental-free utopia. It was safe to say she started it.

She snarled. I could call her a crazy bitch all I wanted, but the minute I questioned her family loyalty, I’d crossed a line. “They are safe. They’re all safe. I was going to announce myself in another week, anyway, and the children all would have made it that long. So long as their families don’t fight me, the children will be able to shift as normal.”

She still spoke in present tense, certain that despite being found out, she retained the upper hand. In many ways, it really was a diabolical plan, impressive in its scope and its high ranking on the evil mastermind scale.

Of course, I had an ace up my sleeve, one Eleanor had never met. I had Vivian. Eleanor might as well have a password of “12345” for all the good it was about to do her. Ten minutes on Eleanor’s computer, and we’d control the implants.

Once we controlled the implants, we’d control Eleanor.

Unfortunately, that was still in the future, and Eleanor was in the mood to demonstrate how much power she still possessed. She looked over my shoulder again, eyes on the clock, and the beast grinned.

“How do you think a bunch of predators with no memory of their family, friends, or even being human might behave?” She looked at each of us, dangerously pleased with herself. “Let’s find out.”

Again, the shifts began, and the room rang with the howls and cries of frightened animals. This time, however, she allowed them to stay in their animal forms. Confused, scared, and desperate, the animals scanned the room, their fight or flight impulses reaching a decision. One by one, I saw them decide we were the threats, and those that didn’t turn on each other turned on us, stalking slowly toward our group.

Above me, Mac rose, an enormous, growling bear. Madness was in his eyes.

The slow tension that had filled the room since we entered exploded into manic action as one animal after another began its attack.

Miriam dove for the beaver, struggling to subdue the panicked creature. Beavers might normally be peaceful creatures, but after several days of being Eleanor’s personal lab rat, all bets were off. Miriam was cursing and muttering to herself, but the frustration was due to her unwillingness to hurt the small animal whose sharp teeth kept snapping dangerously close to her skin.

Elsewhere, Carmen reverted to her cat form and bounded after the bobcat. It only took a short chase before her muzzle was wrapped firmly around the neck of the small bobcat, who hissed and spat impotently while she carried him about the room.

Will was having far less luck restoring order. He’d found himself backed into a corner by both the wolverine and the coyote, who seemed to be overlooking their natural impulses to attack each other in the face of far more impressive prey. A quick swipe of his paw would have been enough to eliminate the threat but, like Miriam, he was too aware he was battling confused, innocent children.

All this happened in a matter of seconds, the same time it took for Mac to rip through the restraints tying him to the table and move unsteadily to the ground. The entire time, he emitted noises from deep in his throat. I couldn’t even call them growls. They were suppressed screams, steeped in desperation and uncertainty. He rose on his hind legs, seven feet of well-muscled rage and confusion.

He bellowed, and all movement around me ceased instantly. The beaver stopped fighting, the bobcat stopped squirming, and even the wolverine paused in its attempt to sink teeth into Will’s forearm.

Mac hadn’t even been here twenty-four hours. He couldn’t be as deranged as those that had been here for days. I told myself that, even as I met dark eyes that held no knowledge of his surroundings, of me, or of himself.

The beast I’d glimpsed in his eyes several times, that hint of the animal that shared flesh with the man I knew, that was what stood before me now, unhindered by the human impulses and emotions and logic that normally restrained it.

This was the pure beast, an animal large enough to decimate any threats and, stripped of his memory, Mac saw nothing but threats surrounding him.