The House (14 page)

“I can’t relax
... I can’t do it. It’s not there!” He shouted the words and I
managed to keep my face calm, just. We’d been outside nearly half
an hour and made absolutely no progress and I could feel him
slipping away. If he couldn’t do the basics I’d never be able to
teach him anything and he’d get fed up and keep fighting himself.
You can’t teach someone to access something they can’t feel. It’s
like trying to teach someone to wiggle their ears; the muscles are
there, they just can’t feel them.

“Stop fighting yourself ... you’re safe here ... it’s alright
to be yourself. But if you can’t find your power I can’t teach you
anything. This isn’t science, it’s not something that you can
measure and count, it just
is
. Magic, power, whatever you call
it, it all adds up to the same thing. It comes from in here.” I
pressed my palm to my heart. “As well as here.” I pointed at my
head. “You need both. You need passion and reason; you have to be
wild and restrained. You can’t learn it out of a book, you have to
feel it.” I thought the speech was good but he looked back at me
with such blank eyes that I nearly gave up.

“Tell me what
it feels like then!” His voice was strained from the effort he’d
been putting in.

“I can’t. I
can’t describe it to you, it just is. I’ve had power all my life;
it’s a part of me. I can feel it in my blood; I can feel it flowing
out over my skin.” I didn’t realise that I’d gotten closer to him
until I felt his hand graze my arm. That small touch sent shivers
down my arm and I felt my power well up inside me. Something about
Eddie just seemed to call my power. It gave me an idea.

“Stay very
still,” I whispered. I don’t know why. It felt like to speak too
loudly would be to lose my idea. He froze as I laid my palm against
his cheek. I pulled my own power around me like a cloak and felt it
run over my skin like water. I let it flow smoothly across my hand
and over Eddie; I pushed it over him, into him and I felt something
respond. It was like he’d separated himself from his other form and
his magic so completely that the two could not exist within him at
the same time. More like a multiple personality than anything else.
I never wanted to see someone with a true multiple personality
disorder change - the idea was beyond scary.

Looking into his eyes I saw only him, only one form. I looked
with both of my forms. They were one inside me but I just happened
to
embody
one at
any moment in time. “Both forms are you,” I found myself whispering
in his ear. The power streamed out of me faster and faster like a
building spell. “They can exist at the same time, they aren’t
separate.”

“But the lion
feels so strongly, so violently. I can’t let it out ... I can’t.”
His voice was quiet and reserved, barely audible at all.

“The lion is
you. Your two forms don’t have different thoughts. You’ve separated
yourself, split yourself so fiercely that you’ve assigned parts of
yourself to one form and parts to the other.” I pushed my power
further into Eddie, scraping the two parts of him up and trying to
force them together. It felt like trying to push my hands together
until they melded, like it was impossible. Of course, what I was
trying to make my magic do was impossible so I was flying blind
anyway.

“Are you inside my head?” Eddie asked. There was anger
simmering just under the surface of his voice, like a shadow.
Technically I
was
inside his head, as he put it, but I really didn’t think that
he needed to hear it. I could see every thought as it flitted
through his mind but I couldn’t make sense of them and I forgot
them as soon as I’d seen them. I was coaxing his power out but I
was bringing with it all the feelings and emotions he associated
with his other form.

“Relax.” I
wasn’t whispering anymore; I was wary. I could feel the hate and
anger that he’d locked away and it scared me. His hatred of his
power was a colossal thing; it enveloped him and I saw his eyes
shimmer and change. I could see his other form underneath the human
exterior like the images were superimposed over each other. I
didn’t want to know what would happen if he shifted. He had split
himself in two and apparently every basic instinct, every dark
impulse, had been associated with his other form. If he shifted he
was very likely to become someone else; he would become the very
worst of himself and I wouldn’t be able to help him then. I may not
even be able to help myself.

“Get out of my
head!” he shouted and he pulled away. The pain as I felt his anger
spill out was physical it was so strong. I felt his strength with
the anger and I knew I’d been right; he was powerful. So powerful
it brought mine on stronger, harder, faster. Power screamed over my
skin and I couldn’t tell if it was his or mine but it hurt. It was
hot like I’d never known before, like putting my hand, my whole
body, into boiling oil. It must have been like that for Alex when I
ran my power over him and I didn’t know how he could have stood it
for so long.

I could see
the pain that lashed through my own body mirrored on Eddie’s face.
Neither of us knew how to make it stop. That’s all I wanted; I
would have given almost anything right then to make it stop. I
could feel my heart hammering in my chest. It felt like it would
beat hard enough to break free of me completely. I was pressed up
against Eddie and I could feel his heart against mine like they
were pushing each other onwards, faster and faster.

I heard
someone screaming. The sound cut through everything; the sound
shouldn’t have come from a human throat. It was primal: raw pain
and power woven into the sustained note and I was part of it. My
screams and Eddie’s extended far beyond what we should have been
able to produce from one lungful of air.

There were
other voices - voices brought by the screaming. I couldn’t tell if
they were inside my head or real ... they seemed to be a mixture of
both. I heard my mother’s screams as the flames claimed her body. I
heard Stripes shouting. I heard a strange woman shouting. Images
flooded my brain: my parents tucking me into bed; my grandfather
seeing me off to senior school for the first time; a woman smiling
gently from the other side of a bed; my first lover frowning as I
walked out; Hercules standing next to us trying to pull us apart; a
family dinner; my mother in her lion form; the look of horror on a
man’s face; Talon.

The flood of
sounds, images and emotions stopped as I recognised him. As I
understood. As Eddie’s two forms finally gave up the fight to stay
apart and the power exploded. I couldn’t see or hear or feel
anything yet. It was like my brain overloaded with sights, sounds
and sensations.

“Trix ...
Trix! Beatrice!” I opened my eyes to find Stripes and Hercules
standing over me. James was kneeling next to me, facing away
towards Eddie.

“What
happened?” I groaned. God, I hurt.

“You were
screaming but we couldn’t get to you, then you both passed out
cold.” Stripes shook visibly.

“You sent out
enough power to give every non-human within five miles a high.”
Hercules smiled; he did look drugged. His eyes were wide, pupils
dilated, and they had bled to wolf eyes. He was amazing with those
eyes; they looked like golden honey and it felt like you could fall
into them. As I thought it I realised that maybe I wasn’t thinking
too clearly. The magic must have affected me as well. Hercules said
it was a high, and it might have been if it didn’t feel like
someone had tried to rip me apart.

“Eddie?” I
whispered because I wasn’t up to anything more. James moved out of
the way so that I could see Eddie lying on the ground less than a
foot from me. His head was all wrong - not human and not lion. His
hair had grown and receded again, leaving fur in its place. His
body was straining in his clothes like it was too big and there
were dangerous claws where his nails should be. He turned to face
me full on and smiled widely. It wasn’t just the bystanders that
had gotten a high; his mouth was full of teeth that were too long
and far too sharp.

“Are you
okay?” he asked. His voice was husky and I didn’t think it was
because he had a sore throat. He had the distinctive lisp of a
shifter with teeth in a mouth that can’t hold them.

“I think so,”
I replied. I felt my face pull up into a smile without my telling
it to. Oh yeah, definitely not just the bystanders that got high
off the power rush. My body felt suddenly light and I couldn’t
quite control my limbs properly. My thoughts were slow and languid;
I was having trouble remembering anything important and I didn’t
seem to care. “You?”

“I’ve never
felt better,” he smiled. His teeth returned to normal and his hair
was gradually growing again. The process was one of the strangest
things I’d ever seen with his fur not fully receded as his hair
grew. I don’t think he even realised that he’d changed and he was
changing back unconsciously. I knew that if I could get him to
understand what he’d done then he’d be able to do it again, but if
he buried his second form again I’d never be able to bring it
back.

I reached out
my hand and found that I was on my hands and knees. I was moving
too fast for my slow brain to keep up. Eddie held my hand and
pulled me closer so that I fell, half playfully, to the floor. I
managed to turn over and landed on my back with my head only a few
centimetres from Eddie’s. We were both laughing like lunatics. I
reached up and ran my fingers through his hair, petting him and
stroking his fur.

“Both forms
are you.” I ran my hand down his arm and found his claws sharp and
smooth. “There is nothing wrong with either of them.”

He looked down
at himself and saw his claws; the terror was perfectly evident. An
old fear driving back the languid heat of the power rush. I could
smell the adrenalin flooding his system. He smelt like fear and
fear means food. There are some things that seem to come from our
other forms: if someone feared us then they could be prey; if
someone feared us then we had won. It’s something that is true of
both animals and humans - if someone feared us then we had no
reason to fear them. Unfortunately, as people often do, the fear
gets twisted. What we fear most is often ourselves.

“There is
nothing to fear within you,” I said. My own high was falling prey
to the deep sadness creeping out of my core. He thought he was a
monster; he had no idea. I grabbed his face and he looked in that
moment like a frightened child in my hands. I pulled him closer as
I sat up until he was cradled against my body with his head on my
shoulder.

I felt
Stripes, Hercules and James around me. Between us, we rocked and
shushed Eddie as tears spilled silently down his cheeks. There was
nothing that we could do; all of us were majorly screwed up because
that’s the only reason to go to The House. We just weren’t equipped
to deal with that kind of emotional distress. It was Marie’s job;
she was the one with the degree in psychology. She was our rock,
our mother, our support. We wouldn’t be able to truly help Eddie
until she got back but we could patch up the wounds.

“Eddie,” I
spoke quietly as his ear was right next to my lips. “Eddie, you’re
alright ... you’re alright ... we’re here. You’re not a monster,
not by any stretch of the imagination. Hey, look at me.” He managed
to pull himself up so that his face was in front of mine. I smiled
in what I hoped was a comforting way. “We would never hurt you,
Marie would skin us alive.” He actually looked like he might smile
at that. We all hugged him to us tighter; I could feel everyone’s
limbs around me even if I couldn’t tell whose were whose.

“We’re all
messed up here,” Stripes put in. “None of us was doing well when we
got here but we sort ourselves out and we support each other.
Nobody’s perfect and you are a shifter; you’ll be a shifter for the
next hundred and fifty years at the least. You have to accept what
you are even if you don’t like it.” She sounded like a comforting
mother in a way that I’d never manage. I wondered why Marie always
insisted I help the new people. I wondered why the job hadn’t
fallen to Stripes. Maybe Marie just wanted me to feel needed.

“Nothing
you’ve done will be held against you,” James said.

“This place is
a fresh start, we all know that,” Hercules added.

I pulled him
closer to me so that he had to put his head back on my shoulder; I
just couldn’t look into those eyes anymore. “I know monsters and
you don’t even come close.” I didn’t know what to say and I wasn’t
prepared for this. I needed Marie.

I was
terrified of saying the wrong thing. Eddie was so guarded that I
had a feeling if I messed it up we wouldn’t get any second chances
with him. I would not be responsible for pushing him over the edge.
When shifters start to go mad they don’t get help, they get an
execution. I pulled back from those thoughts before they could show
on my face. We would save Eddie from himself. I just had to keep
telling myself that.

“You don’t
know what I’ve done,” he started but I cut across him.

“You’re Talon’s child and he has a certain reputation but he
never does anything
that
bad. He doesn’t like human law but he abides by
it just like he abides by our laws. But there’s one thing I don’t
understand. Talon is careful, almost obsessively so. Yet you don’t
know anything about our world: you have no control; you’re
dangerous.”

“Yes, I’m
dangerous,” he replied and I silently cursed myself. Trust him to
only hear that part.

“Trix is
right. Talon is wild sometimes but he’s never been a loose cannon,”
James said. “You should know more than you do ...” They had taken
my statement that he was Talon’s child as fact; it was nice to be
appreciated occasionally. That, or they had long ago accepted that
I was weird and just went with it.