The Soul's Mark: CHANGED (4 page)

The late afternoon sunshine was hot, and the cement glittered under its brilliance. 
It already felt like summer in mid-May.  They veered left, heading towards home, taking their time.  It had been a long day.  One of the longest, and the secluded tree-lined street was kind of … peaceful.

Eric
slung his arm over her shoulder, pulling her closer.  “We’ve got to find another way of doing this, Meg,” he said.  “Seriously, feeling that pain in you.  It’s too much.  I can’t think when it’s happening.”

She gave him one of those crappy meaningful looks
, and wrapped her arm around his waist, snuggling into his side.  “What we’ve got to do is talk to Mitch.  Find out how he handled it.”

“Yeah, I guess,” he said
, except that was the last thing that he wanted to do.  He didn’t want to admit he’d actually killed two of his own while using Megan’s magic.  And well, with all the crap Mitchell was going through, dealing with being a human and trying to keep Millie’s magic under control, Eric was sure this was not going to be a fun conversation with his father.  He cut her a sideways look and tried to smile in agreement.

“C
ome on, don’t give me that look,” she said, nudging him a little with her shoulder.  “They need to know how bad it is.”

Eric sighed, and said, “I know.” 
They turned onto their driveway, and the daunting castle-style house, surrounded by weeping willows, came into view.  The tops of the turrets winked and sparkled under the afternoon sun.  Eric could hear Mitchell hacking up a lung, as he started across the grass, towards the terrace and French doors that lead straight into his room.

“You haven’t failed, Eric,” Megan murmured, hugging him closer to her side.
  “You’re younger than them.  It’s not like you can fight them without the magic.”

Maybe she was right, but Eric didn’t want to admit it.  He sure felt like he
’d failed.  In the last week, he’d killed two vampires.  Sure, it was to protect the soulmates; the girls would have died if he hadn’t killed the vamps, but in a mindless, sick kind of way, part of him felt as if the pain they inflicted was … okay.  It was their right, and if they had wanted to kill their human soulmates, it was their choice to make.  And again, he found himself wondering if there was more to his not changing Megan than just that they had been
preoccupied
.

Amelia slipped out the French doors in the kitchen, and headed for her Jeep.  She needed a quiet place where she wouldn’t be overheard.  The last thing she wanted was to get anyone’s hopes up, or even worse, let anyone know just how freaked out she really was.  Mitchell wasn’t supposed to be weak.  She wasn’t supposed to be the strong one.  And he really did smell like death.

It was hot.  Amelia could actually feel the heat
radiating off of the stone cladding on the terrace and seeping through the soles of her flip-flops.  The sun beat down relentlessly, as she made her way across the carport.  It was already too hot, and it was only halfway through May.

How did
things get so screwed up?  She guessed it was karma.  Amelia figured with all the crap she’d done in her past lives she probably deserved this.  But really, hadn’t they all suffered enough?  Hadn’t Mitchell suffered enough because of her stupidity?

Amelia gently lifted the door handle o
n the Jeep, and pulled the door open, holding her breath and praying that the hinges wouldn’t creak.  They didn’t.  She slid in, closing the door just as carefully, and peered through the windshield, watching to make sure no one had heard her leave.

When she was certain no one was coming to give her crap for being out of the house, she tapped the screen
on her phone and scrolled through her address book.  When she found the number she was looking for, Amelia hesitated, her finger hovering over it.  She didn’t know if he would help her, or if he’d even talk to her for that matter.  She was probably the last person he wanted to speak to, but she really didn’t know who else to call.

She sucked in a deep breath, hesitated for another second, and then tapped the number, and lifted the phone to her ear.

He answered on the first ring.  “You’ve got Cole.”  His voice was deep and a bit gravelly, just as she remembered it.  The only difference was the slight laughter in his timbre.  He sounded … happy, something she had never heard in him before.

She
faltered for a second and pulled in a deep breath before she blurted, “Cole, its Amelia.  I need your help.”

“I’m no
t coming back there, Millie,” he said without even a moment’s hesitation.  His voice iced over instantly, and took on a sharp edge.  Amelia could almost picture the frown that she was sure was marring his chubby face.

Right then, she almost hung up.  She wanted to apologize for bother
ing him, and just hang up, but instead she sighed and pushed on.  “That’s not what I meant.  I’d never ask you to come back.  I just thought …” She really didn’t know what she thought.  Maybe she had hoped that he wouldn’t sound so bitter, but then she couldn’t really blame him.  Because of her, he had lost his father, and came close to dying himself.  He may have thanked her for taking away the hunter gene, but they were far from friends.  “I need that spell that Josh used on me after Tristan broke like half the bones in my body.”

Cole chuckled
then, but it held little humor.  It was a bit cruel and a lot forced, as if it was a conscious effort to push out the laugh.  “Who’d you break?”

Amelia started to sweat—a little.  She wanted to believe it was from the sweltering heat of the car, but it wasn’t. 
“So not funny, Cole,” she said, forcing her tone to sound light.  “I didn’t break anyone.  It’s Mitch …” her voice hitched on a prickly lump that suddenly formed in her throat, and she had to clear it three times before she could finish.  “He’s sick.”

Cole didn’t say anything for a long moment, and if it w
asn’t for his faint but steady breathing, Amelia would have been sure he had hung up.  Even with her enhanced hearing, she barely caught the sound of his breath pushing against the speaker.  “What kind of sick?” he finally asked.

“I thought it was a cold.  I thought … I thought
…” Amelia sucked in a burning breath.  Her chest hurt.  It was as if it was caving in, her ribs snapping and piercing her heart.  She had fought too hard, and for far too long to lose Mitchell now.  She had just gotten him back.  She knew, just knew, she wouldn’t live through losing him.  Not again.  Even knowing that he’d come back again, now that he was human, didn’t help at all.  “God, Cole, I can’t lose him again.  I just can’t.  Please.  I need that spell.”

“I shoul
d let the bastard die,” he said.  There was no emotion in his voice, as if Mitchell’s life meant nothing one way or the other, and Amelia’s heart sank to her toes.  Hearing anger or resentment would have been better.  But nothing … nothing meant he didn’t care at all, and that scared the crap out of her.  But then he sighed loudly and said, “I need to look it up.  I’ve only ever used it once with Megs after Josh broke her wrist.”

“Thanks, Cole,” she whispered, choking down the tears that had begun
to bead up on her lashes.

“Yeah, sure
,” he said with a frosty edge.  “I’ll find it and text it to you.  But after this, I’m done.  We’re even.  Don’t call me again.  I need to move on.”  And then, just like that, he hung up.  No goodbye, not even a see you around.  He just hung up.

Amelia stared at the phone in her hand as the screen blinked to black. 
She let out her pent-up breath in a burst and leaned back, resting her head on the headrest.  She swatted at the sweat that was beginning to drip down her forehead.  She tried not to worry about the fact that Cole might not actually send her the spell, and she tried not to think about the sour stench that hung on Mitchell’s skin, or what she would do if Cole didn’t give her what she needed to fix him.  But no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t banish the thoughts from her brain.

Her gut was telling her that Cole was lying.  He knew the spell. 
She’d watched him use it on Megan without even thinking about it.  She racked her brain, trying to piece together what she had heard of the spell when Cole and Josh had used it, but came up with nothing.  The words had been mumbled, just soft murmurs.  She remembered the heat of the magic, and feeling her bones piece back together.  And she also remembered being charmed into a delusional, giddy state for most of it.

“Dammit!”
  She’d been so sure about this.  Sure that Cole would give it to her.  Certain that she could pull it off, once she had it.  She only needed a few more weeks.  Five or six at the most before she could change Mitchell back.

Amelia’s heart
started to race painfully fast.  She squeezed her eyes shut, as she forced in breath after breath of the sweltering, and horribly stale air in the car. 
Don’t freak out,
she told herself sternly. 
Mitchell’s not going to die.  You will fix him.
 
You survived living with vampires for nine months, you cleaned up the vampire hunter mess, and you can damn well fix your soulmate.  You are a powerful witch.  Your mother is Mother Nature, and you can tap into that magic!

Amelia’s eyes snapped open.  Her magic swirled in her belly, and a small smile stretched on her lips.  How hard was it to create a spell anyway?  She had before
, and for the most part, the spells had kind of worked, well, sort of.  Okay, not entirely, but in all fairness, she had never really meant to try and kill Mitchell with her magic and she still had no clue how she had locked herself in her room, but maybe this time it would be different?  She had managed to alter the bond between Erin and Tristan, and that was a success. 
Yes
, she could figure this out, probably, maybe … well, either way she was at least going to try.

Amelia whipped open the car door and cringed when it squeaked. 
She slid out and eased it shut, hoping no one heard it, before racing back into the house.  She fiddled in the kitchen distractedly, packing up the cooled soup into containers and cleaning up the mess she had left.  Her mind raced with possible spells.  She wondered if she should try healing the infection, or would it be better to try and remove it from his body all together?

She remembered Josh saying something about using magic to alleviate some of the pain from all her broken bones and she tried to
recall if the healing process was painful as well.  As she did, she could almost feel the needle poke sting of her bones mending back together.

By the time she was done scrubbing down the kitchen, Amelia had decided that trying to heal the infection instead of removing it was probably the best way to go.  She was pretty sure she could handle masking the pain for Mitchell.  Over the last eight days
, she’d mastered using her magic to soothe his achy muscles.  She also knew that ninety percent of using magic was based on intent, so she figured that if she wanted to heal him enough, her magic would do the rest of the work.

Amelia
wandered down the hallways, her flip-flops smacking against the rich hardwood floors as she made her way back to Mitchell.  She wondered if he’d let her try to fix him if she admitted that she really had no clue what she was doing. 
Probably,
she thought.  She was pretty sure he’d let her do just about anything now without much more protest than a scowl or disappointed glare.

“Where have you been, love?” Mitchell asked, as she slipped back into the room.
  She’d expected to see him still huddled in conversation with Luke and Lola, but instead she found Eric and Megan.  They stood beside the bed, and for a moment, Amelia was overly glad to see them. 
Finally, someone was taking the time to see him
, she thought, but then she noticed their worried expressions and their stiff looking postures, and the glad feeling fizzled away.

“I was hungry,” she said
, closing the door behind her.  She glanced up, giving him what she hoped was a believable smile, but she didn’t think it worked.  It felt stiff and awkward, and she quickly shifted her gaze to Eric and Megan and said, “What are you guys doing in here?  He needs to sleep.”

Mitchell chuckled, drawing her focus back to him
, and he raised an eyebrow.  “I don’t need the bond to see that you’re lying to me, Amelia.  You’ve always been terrible at it.”

“You hold
your breath every time you try,” Megan said with a huge grin.

“And your heartbeat jumps,
” Eric added with a wink.

Amelia groaned long and loud and shot them all dirty looks. 
“I wanted to make a phone call,” she said, glaring at them. She put her hands on her hips and narrowed her eyes further.  “What are you guys doing in here?”

The
three of them exchanged a long look and Amelia gritted her teeth.  She knew that look far too well and it made her blood boil.  It was the
How much should we tell her
look.  When no one spoke up, dread washed over her and she asked, “What’s wrong?”

Megan chewed on her bottom lip, and Mitchell averted his gaze.  The only person who would look at her was Eric, and by the look he was giving her, she didn’t know if
he was amused or completely confused.  But the one thing she was sure of was that none of them were about to answer her question.  “Are you freakin’ kidding me?” she asked, stunned.  “You’re not going to tell me what’s going on?”