Owl

by M. Raiya

  I bowed my head a moment, banishing panic and trying to force myself into hunting mode. It eluded me, but I still knew what I had to do next. To trace Vin I needed something of his that had a connection to me too. I could try with most anything in his room, but one object stood out as an obvious first choice. This wasn’t a time to fool around. I needed to go straight for the best. The class ring he’d given me.

  And that meant shifting.

  I turned to Coleen, whose eyes were burning up my face. “I’ve got to get out of here.” I knew in another minute, all of us connected to Vin were going to be taken to a private office and questioned by police. “Please, please trust me,” I said.

  “You’ve got to tell the police.”

  I shook my head. “No, please don’t. That’ll just ruin the lives of a lot of innocent people. I have to deal with this. But I’ll tell you what I know.” Every word hurt. “Maylee is part of my clan, Andrew’s girlfriend. She was the great horned owl. She’s working with my grandfather to bring me in.”

  For a moment I felt overwhelmed by the horror of what I’d caused to happen to Vin, but the pain in Coleen’s eyes helped me slip into predator mode. Guilt later. Action now. “Turn off the lock on this,” I said, handing her phone back to her. “I’ll call Jack when I know more.”

  “Gabriel—” She fumbled with her phone, fingers shaking. Then she handed it back to me, and I put it in my pocket. Without another word, I melted into the crowd, silent and stealthy as an owl.

  QUICKLY, I made my way to the main doors of the gym. Right outside was a concession area, as well as a set of restrooms. Already police were guarding the outside doors and blocking the hallway, but they were still letting people in and out of the restrooms without question. I slipped into the men’s room. I was hoping for an outside window. No luck. I went into one of the two stalls and shut the door.

  For a moment, I stood still. Okay. Inner strength, self-reliance, and ingenuity. Add bravado to the list. Without letting myself think, I shifted form.

  Panic, terror, yellow eyes, vulnerable, vulnerable, vulnerable….

  No. If she was with Vin, she wasn’t here. I wasn’t going to be attacked.

  I pushed the panic down and opened my wings, tested them. My back muscles hurt, but they were working. I flew up onto the back of the tank. It was slippery and I couldn’t get a purchase. My back hurt more as the muscles worked, but not an undue amount. I could fly. That was all that mattered.

  I flew up to the top of the stall door. There were two men at the urinals. They didn’t look up. A moment later, the main door opened, and a dark-haired guy in a blue robe walked in. I felt a pang of loss, and in that that moment, I flew.

  I cleared the doorway just before the door closed. I don’t know if the guy saw me or not, but the people in the lobby did. Two people shrieked and dropped to the floor, covering their heads. Already keyed up, other people did the same thing. Farther away more people started screaming. Great, I thought, I’ve started a panic.

  There was nothing I could do about that.

  I swooped toward the set of glass doors.

  “Holy shit!” one of the police officers guarding them cried. I never slowed. An instant before I would have smashed into the glass, he flung the door open. I flew through, and he slammed the door behind me.

  That, I thought, is how you get out of a secured building.

  I pulsed my wings hard, going high and fast over the parking lot and to the woods. I didn’t stop. I knew the way very well. Keeping just above the treetops, I pushed myself, feeling my muscles protesting but holding. I kept myself right at that point, knowing an injury now could cost everything.

  The air was thick and heavy with humidity. The storm my grandfather had warned me of coming from the west. Over the lake, the sky was darkening. Wind gusts buffeted me, but I was well used to dealing with storms after three years of having to hunt despite the weather. If my grandfather had thought the weather would deter me, he was very wrong.

  I forced panic to the edges of my mind and tried to think about what Maylee might be doing to Vin. Or had already done. I dodged a crow that spotted me. Fortunately it didn’t like the rising wind and cut back down into the woods.

  Why?

  Now I knew for sure that I didn’t trust my grandfather. His growing strictness with the clan had just gone to a whole new level. He wanted me dead so badly that he was using Maylee and Vin to make sure of it. My grandfather liked power. Loved power. I suspected now that he wanted to keep it at all costs. My father had been a threat, so he’d arranged the accident. But no, that made no sense. My father did not have magic. He would not have been able to rule. My mother had not had it either, but she had passed it to me. I could understand that my grandfather wanted me out of the way so I couldn’t challenge him. But why my father? Because my grandfather had feared my father would defend me? But I hadn’t even been born yet. I knew my mother had said that my grandfather hadn’t really liked my father at first, but my grandfather had always been polite, if not overly caring, toward my father all the years I’d been growing up. What was I missing?

  Where did my mother fit into this? My grandfather had adored her, he’d always made sure she had everything, always included her in everything he did. Was my mother in on this?

  I couldn’t believe it. Refused to believe it. She had always lived as though my father and I meant more to her than anything else.

  I could ask her for help. The hell with being banished. My clan needed to know what was going on, even though they were too far away and probably powerless to aid me. I would call her as soon as I learned where Vin was.

  How did Maylee fit in? Just a vengeful pawn? Or more? I had no idea.

  My swamp opened below me. I circled my tree once, carefully listening, watching the hole for any sign of movement. All was quiet. If the great horned owl—Maylee—was in there, her heart wasn’t beating.

  The hole faced out of the wind. I lit carefully on the edge and looked down. The leaves looked freshly scuffed up. Someone had been here since I’d buried the ring in them.

  Oh fuck.

  I dropped down and dug through the leaves desperately, but it was gone. Gone. I’d been so stupid. I’d never had anything valuable in my hole before, and I’d just assumed that my smell would be enough to keep any marauding squirrels or jays away. But I’d been gone for so long that curious neighbors might have figured I’d died or moved away and my hole was up for grabs.

  Or Maylee had it.

  Quickly I scrambled back out, looking around in paranoia, but nothing moved. I flew down low over the murky ground searching for any glint of sliver in the rich green swamp growth. Unfortunately it was very wet under my tree, so if something had tossed the ring out, it would have sunk into the duckweed. I didn’t see anything on the mossy, half-submerged tree trunks. I flew in circles, eyes on the ground, ears trained for the sound of swooping above me.

  Nothing.

  Shit. Vin was going to kill me for losing the one thing he’d ever given me.

  Far easier to think about that than the more serious implication of what the ring’s loss could mean. I couldn’t waste any more time. Rising, I few up and over the pines toward his house. I was going to have to try something else.

  The sky over the lake had darkened while I’d been in the swamp. Gulls were riding the air currents, soaring, diving, and playing above the white-capped waves. The house looked just the way we’d left it. The kayak was on the shore. Fortunately Vin’s bedroom window was open. I blasted through the new screen with a little more finesse than I had the first time and managed not to brain myself on the far wall.

  I landed on the back of his chair and looked around. What object linked us? There wasn’t really one. The laptop? No, that was linked to the whole world. The pencil I’d poked the keys with? It wasn’t in sight. He might have it with him.

  Thunder rumbled.

  Our earrings.

  Quickly I shifted and sat down cross-legged on the floor
in the middle of his room. With a deep breath, I reached up and put my fingers around my earrings. Then I focused on my memory of Vin’s blue ones glinting in his ears. I’d picked them out for him. He’d picked out mine for me. They’d tasted our blood; they were part of our bodies. We’d done it to seal our love.

  I closed my eyes and visualized his. I concentrated, feeling mine bite into my fingers.

  Where are you?

  Nothing.

  It would be hard even with a good solid link like his ring would have been. It was almost impossible without holding something that had been his. He’d only touched my earrings a few times. But they were something unique to us. And, I realized, the women in the mall. For a second their faces solidified before me. They were both at work again, one ringing up a sale, the other putting out new earrings on display.

  I pushed them aside and focused my memory of Vin sitting on the chair.

  Dammit, Vin! I could feel the anguish in my soul reaching out to him. I love you!

  Darkness. I saw darkness. I felt cold. I felt fear. Alone. Trapped.

  I tightened my hold on the tenuous contact, trying to push through the darkness. But all I could sense was blackness and absolute powerful terror. It wasn’t my link at fault—he was in darkness and was so afraid he didn’t sense me brushing his mind.

  I forced calm through myself. Later I could react. I opened myself even more. What was he hearing? Feeling physically?

  Cold. Very cold. Pain in his arms, his chest. From holding his breath. Couldn’t breathe! Couldn’t breathe! And then, air. But just for a moment.

  Cold and wet and dark… water. Couldn’t breathe!

  Water. He was in the water somewhere.

  Rock. I felt hard rock against his back. A burning in his wrists and ankles. Rope chaffing, pulling his arms and legs, pulling, struggling….

  He was tied up in the dark to a rock and waves were breaking over his head.

  I had it.

  The Turtle. Or rather the cave underneath the Turtle.

  Chapter Fifteen

  AS I bolted down the stairs, I pulled Coleen’s phone out of my pocket. There were about six calls from Jack. I hit the Return Call button, and he answered in a second.

  “Vin’s in a cave in the cliff about a quarter of a mile east of your house,” I shouted above a crash of thunder. “The ledge above it looks like the head of a turtle. He’s alone, tied up, and the waves are breaking over his head. I’m getting ready to fly to him, towing the kayak. Send a boat for help.”

  I heard Jack shout, “All right!” as I disconnected. In the kitchen I grabbed a sharp knife with a three-inch blade out of a drawer. Then I tore open another kitchen drawer where I’d seen a coil of nylon cord used to bundle newspapers together for recycling. I yanked off about ten feet of it and cut.

  As I ran outside, I pulled out the phone again, punched in my mother’s number, and hit Call. Three years, after going to London, would she still have the same number?

  “Hello? Hi? Who is this?”

  I could barely hear her over the wind, but her voice was the same as I remembered, warm and gentle and loving as the arms that had held me and the wings that had taught me to fly. But tense, very tense. Fleetingly I wondered if she knew what was going down.

  “Mom, it’s Gabriel,” I shouted. I kept going without giving her a chance to answer. “Grandfather and Maylee have my boyfriend tied up in an underwater cave, and I’ve got to get to him before he drowns. They’re using him as bait. I think they want to kill me. I think he might have wanted to kill father. Please send everyone you can to help us!” I shouted Vin’s address at her. “The cave is about a quarter of a mile east of the house under a rock that looks like a turtle’s head.”

  The waves drowned out any reply she might have made. I disconnected and put the phone into my pocket. Rain began pelting down.

  I flipped the kayak over, shoved the paddle under the bungee cord webbing that crisscrossed the stern, slid the life jacket in there too, and quickly knotted the end of my cord through the handle at the end of the bow. As I straightened and started to shove the kayak into the water, I realized the waves were twice as high as they’d been when I’d flown in, and the wind was so strong I could feel it pushing at me even in human form. The sky had turned an awful, sickish green color, and as I looked west, a bolt of lightning as thick as a tree trunk arched from cloud to ground on the other side of the lake.

  Oh holy fuck, I thought. I laid the knife down on the sand and shifted. Thunder sent a solid boom across the water, as heavy as a door closing, and it echoed off the cliffs all around, as though to drive home its note of warning. If there was ever a time not to head onto the water, this was it. I doubted Jack would be able to get anybody to venture out to help until this was over. I was on my own.

  The waves had pushed the kayak back onto the beach. I picked up the end of the cord with my right foot and grasped it in my talons, as though it were a thin branch. I didn’t dare wrap it around my leg just in case something happened and I got dragged down. Then I grabbed the knife with my other foot and launched. The gulls had gone to safety. I was alone with the wind.

  It buffeted me in horrible gusts. The kayak was a dead anchor behind me. Grimly I flew on. But when I got around the point of land, and the full force of the wind hit me, the light kayak was literally blowing into the air off the tops of the waves. It was pulling me backward. I struggled on.

  It was taking too long.

  If Vin drowned before I got there, the kayak wasn’t going to do him any good. I should have just left it on the beach. It was going to smash into a thousand pieces on the rocks.

  I was going to smash into a thousand pieces if Vin died.

  I refused to think that he might already be dead.

  I let go of the kayak and didn’t even watch it blow away. Our beautiful blue kayak of the perfect day and the dream house on the headland.

  I kept the knife tight.

  Without the kayak, I made headway. I doubted a shifter who hadn’t been living in the wild could have done it. It took all the skill I had. The muscles in my back began to burn. If something ripped, I would fall and drown. But I flew on, soaked and heavy. I remembered the Turtle only being a five-minute paddle away, if that, but it felt like it took me forever until the blunt, jutting head of rock came into sight, dim and indistinct. It was so dark now that I couldn’t even see the cave until a bolt of lightning lit up everything with a lurid pink glow. The thunder seemed to smash the clouds with a hammer and sent out such a cascade of water that I had trouble telling what was lake and what was coming out of the sky.

  The cave opening was roughly round and maybe twice as big as a human head, though there might be more opening under water. The incoming waves filled it, but it opened in the backwash. Anything inside there would be beaten against the back wall over and over, unless it was tied in place….

  Sick with fear at what I was about to find, I flew closer, scanning the area as best I could through the torrential downpour. All I could see were cedar trees sweeping back and forth violently in the wind from their fragile footholds in crevasses in the bare rock. I needed a place to take Vin once I got him out, or he’d be bashed to death out here. Finally, I saw a wide rock that came up out of the water at a slope. The top was above the crashing waves. Okay, somehow I’d get him there. I ignored the roughly twenty feet we’d have to swim from the mouth of the cave.

  I hovered just outside, knowing I had to time this perfectly, and wishing I knew what I was flying into. My eyes weren’t going to adjust instantly to the darkness, but I was counting on my sensitive hearing to give me an immediate sense of space. I prayed it opened into a larger place. If Maylee had tied Vin up in there, it had to be bigger than it looked. It just had to be.

  A big wave rushed in. I got ready for the backwash. The instant there was enough clearance for me, I arrowed in.

  All I could hear was rushing water. I could see nothing. My wings brushed walls on both sides. I could sens
e rock just above me. A surge of pure, terrified claustrophobia clutched me so hard I almost fainted. I hovered as another wave surged in. I was above it, but I was too wet to hover for long. I needed a place to land.

  A bolt of lightning suddenly lit everything so brightly that pain shot into my dilated eyes. But with it came the answers I needed.

  Yes, the cave was larger than the opening. I was surrounded by water-smoothed rock walls that curved in a perfect dome down to the water. The top of the dome was maybe three feet above the water, but even the inrushing wave did not fill it completely.

  I looked down.

  Vin was beneath me. He was tied on his back to a huge underwater boulder with a flat surface. Four ropes bound him to rusty metal rings driven into the rock. The wave covered his face as I watched in horror, and then washed out. I saw his hair streaming over his shoulders. He raised his head, gasped in a breath of air, and everything was black again.

  I needed to use major power, and I couldn’t do that while I was hovering. I didn’t think Vin knew I was here, and I couldn’t risk shifting and landing on top of him while he was underwater for fear he’d panic and inhale. I also couldn’t shift while I was holding the knife, or I wouldn’t have it to use in human form. I hadn’t seen anywhere solid to put it.

  Vin was going to have to hold it.

  I hooted.

  He shrieked and writhed on the rock, and just then another waved covered his face. I flapped helplessly. As it rushed out, I hooted again, softly. Another lightning flash showed him wide-eyed, looking up at me, sucking in air.

  “Is it you?” he cried.

  I nodded and then showed him the knife. All went dark before I could tell if he’d even seen it. I splashed down into the water and pressed the handle of the knife into the palm of his left hand. Even through his panic, I felt him close his fingers around it.