by LeAnn Mason
“What? What’s going on Red?”
“I’m not quite sure. I mean I haven’t spent time with a deceased person, but aren’t they supposed to become, I don’t know, colder as time goes on?” Allya asked nebulously of the group gathered around our fallen friend. Wiping at the still free-falling tears with her empty hand, it was almost as if she clung to some ill-conceived hope.
Her bright eyes returned to scan Bianca’s placid face as if hoping our friend was only sleeping. Her beauty no less pronounced in death, she did almost look as if only in the deepest of restorative slumbers.
If only she were still whole, that pool of dark liquid still within her veins and not spilled on the leaf litter below.
But no.
“Bodies generally begin to lose temperature the moment the heart stops pumping blood, but it takes an hour to an hour and a half for a noticeable dip to take place. About one and a half degrees per hour. It’s called algor mortis, or the “death chill. What?” Mae had given a much more clinical answer than anyone expected, and she blushed at the attention her words had garnered, her fingers fishing underneath the dark-rimmed glasses she wore to wipe away the tears that she too streamed.
Rory’s shallow grin showed just how completely infatuated he’d become with the little human encyclopedia. Enough that even now, amid this dire situation, he still smiled. I wanted to punch the smirk from his too-handsome face.
“Why am I not one bit surprised that you would know something so morbid? You even sound fascinated, but maybe it’s not the time?” Allya scoffed with a small shake of her head before her attention reverted to Bianca’s algor mortis form.
I still couldn’t bring myself to get closer, to touch her, knowing it was because of me that she was lost. That I had been the one to extinguish her flame from this world, from her friends. From her family.
“I don’t know what’s normal for supernaturals, but I assume the same general rule applies even if slightly different in the specifics.” Seeing that Mae was winding up to start anew, Allya tried again, that tinge of hope still coloring her tone. “Her aura, it hasn’t faded, and I swear she’s getting warmer even as we speak.”
I wanted to rage that she was clinging to false hope, that our girl was gone. That it had been me who had taken her from them, from the world. Maybe then, she would attack me. It was no less than I deserved. In fact, I’d be turning myself in shortly. With Rory here, he would know the truth already, but I’d need to tell the Elders. And await my fate.
“What do you mean about her aura?” Rory asked curiously, sounding almost detached. He was the newest member of this gathered group of supernaturals and maybe hadn’t gotten the whole story about her yet. Maybe Mae didn’t want to share things she wasn’t sure her friend would want known. But the guy needed to show some compassion, he sounded way too… indifferent, and the urge to see how my bear would fare against his lion rushed to the fore.
“I’m a born Shaman.” After a moment of thought, Allya added, “and a Witch. Now add Shifter to the mix. Basically, I’m a mutt, but my Shaman ability is seeing people’s auras.” She shrugged off the admission, but I saw the tightness in her shoulders. She still struggled to come to terms with all that she’d become. The girl had been tried by fire and come out as steel, but every once in a while, she showed what she perceived as a brittle edge.
“Maybe we can chat about everyone’s natures some other time. Now we need to decide how we’re moving forward. Who we’re going to tell, and what we’re going to say. I mean, Nick killed Bianca.”
And there it was. Leave it to Mae to circle back to practicality. Good girl. Jason’s “he didn’t mean to” was a weak defense, one that wouldn’t –shouldn’t– fly. She was right; I’d done the crime. Now I needed to atone.
“The point is,” Allya jumped in, giddy, before Mae could formulate a plan too completely. “B’s body temperature appears to be… rising.”
CHAPTER 11
I was paralyzed. That was the only explanation I had for my current condition, my complete lack of mobility, except… wouldn’t that mean I shouldn’t feel anything? The pain igniting my body so completely from the tips of my toes to the top of my head felt like I was being electrocuted. Not quickly, like being struck by lightning or a static shock, but more like what I figured swimming in a pool full of water that had a live wire slipped under the surface would be like. It didn’t end, and it didn’t lessen.
If anything, I was pretty sure the intensity, the heat, the seizing of my muscles was getting more intense. I could hear the group of people surrounding where I lay felled in the forest, though it sounded more like the buzzing of flies than actual voices. It was hard to focus when my body felt like it was burning from the inside out, but I assumed Jason was the go-to. From there, I could guess at least one or two of the others.
Someone grabbed my hand, the pressure noticeable by the increase in burning as if the contact was firing up whatever was going on. I wanted to scream. Maybe that would help mentally relieve some of the pain, be cathartic or something, but no. My body still refused to do what my mind begged.
The hotter the fire burned, the more I screamed, or wanted to, but the sound only bounced around inside my skull, adding to my insanity. The voices continued to beat a dull drum on my senses, but it wasn’t until the pressure suddenly jerked from my hand, the abandoned limb falling heavily –painfully– to the ground that I registered a change. The pain hadn’t faded one bit, but now another sense became apparent: scent.
I’d have gagged if able –which, of course, I wasn’t– as the stench of burning fabric, meat, and hair, grew potent enough to rise to the level of notice even through the stupid amount of pain I felt. It morphed again, the seizing nerves turning into an intense but soothing warmth.
Heat had always held comfort for me until now. It had been a sensation I associated with my magic. Tendrils of heat so pronounced I’d never felt the like licked to wrap around my body, still completely catatonic, consuming me. Burning away all of me to make something new.
As the pain receded, one thing became clear. I was getting stronger. My limbs tingling with renewed vitality, muscles twitching, I again became aware of things outside of my own self. Like the fact that it was silent. The voices had stopped, no shuffling in the forest—like… none. Reactively, I tried to pull myself up… and it worked. I actually moved.
“Holy crap!”
“What the?”
Several gasps rang out around me, freezing my limbs reactively. My eyes flew open as did my mouth as I jerked to sit. I immediately regretted both at the feeling of some sort of thick debris particles falling into every orifice. I felt myself gagging at the burning sensation that matched the smoky scent choking my airways as what appeared to be soot fell to clog… everything.
“Move! She needs to breathe! Get that crap off o’ her, Now!”
I knew that voice, though I’d never heard Allya in quite that high of an octave before, but I couldn’t dwell on it much as I coughed and spluttered in an attempt to clear my passageways.
I need air!
Panic tried to pull me into its clutches once again, a hearty thump on my back and swipes across my face adding to the confused hysteria. My hands followed suit to brush across my face.
“Bianca! Bianca, can you hear me? Calm down. We need to clear the ash from your face,” Allya’s harried voice attempted to soothe, grabbing hold of my flailing arms and holding them firmly but not enough to be painful or truly restraining.
The explanation, and knowing I was surrounded by friends and not enemies, helped de-escalate my fight or flight instincts. Holding still, I held my breath while several hands swiped at my body. Each touch lit my nerve endings. Feeling every millimeter of skin and its accompanying weight, the fingers brushing to lighten my limbs… it was as if I had never experienced any of it before.
Crunching leaves met my ears as bursts of light began exploding behind my eyelids, my oxygen reserves at an end, my body beginning to scream
for air.
“Just a sec,” Allya breathed just before a cold, wet wad of… something contacted my face, wiping away some of what I assumed had somehow been all over me. “Okay.”
Her permission broke the dam of my restraint and had me dragging in heavy breaths like a person starved, which, I guessed, was technically what had happened. I’d been starving for oxygen. My body went into overdrive to compensate, causing me to double over coughing. The reassuring hand I’d felt before migrated to my back, moving in soothing circles as I reoriented myself.
Except my skin still prickled like I was plugged into a low-voltage light socket, and the circles began to sting. Definitely less painful than before but still uncomfortable, making me shrug off the hand at my back. “Sorry,” I croaked. My voice raspy, throat feeling like I’d screamed myself raw. Hand coming to feel the flesh, I pressed against my throat as if there would be a wound I could stanch.
“Bianca, geez, are you– how are you okay?”
Nick’s broken voice succeeded in yanking my eyelids open, though the bright light of the midday sun forced them to close again almost immediately. “Why do I feel so… raw?” Exposed. Everywhere. Peeling open my eyes again, slowly, with my head tipped down, I saw a thick layer of grayish substance coating me. Like, everywhere. Hands, arms, chest… and lower, all completely covered in the sooty-smelling particles.
“Sweetie, you died,” Allya said from her spot on my left. Disbelieving gasps and appalled sounds sprang up all around me, the competing sounds overwhelming to my sensitive ears. “What, I should sugar coat it?” A chorus of “yeah” answered her question. “Whatever, it happened, but now, somehow, she’s back. That’s what counts!”
“What? Did I hear you right? Dead? No. Not possible.” I shook my head, but it hurt, so I stopped, choosing instead to slowly dip it to meet my hands. I couldn’t have died… right?
“I haven’t gotten to deaths of supernatural species, apart from Vampires anyway, in my reading yet but… maybe it’s a fire Mage thing?” Mae suggested weakly.
“No. Nope, not a Mage thing. Why would the fire part matter?” I looked again at my skin. Bringing my arm down to examine, I dragged a finger lengthwise through the thick coating. Rubbing my thumb and middle fingers together, I examined what looked and smelled to be ash particles. The results of a physical fire eating through a burnable material. “What happened?”
My mind tripped, refusing to light on the thoughts niggling like earworms. The pile of ash that coated me so completely, like a second skin, didn’t extend any further than a few feet radius of where I still sat, stunned from my… injury.
The trees rustled, brisk air blowing through their bare branches, but no discoloration, no charring of their trunks. The dead grass sparsely clumped along the forest floor, and the millions of leaves covering most of the expanse lay rustling and bare but healthy and whole.
No sign of a vicious fire having raged through its depths, burning hot enough to disintegrate any matter in its path. Said path seemed to only encompass a circle, of which I was the epicenter. Like an atomic bomb.
“Did I explode?” It was like a bomb had gone off but had been contained with a spell, or a ward. Some kind of magic, anyway. I chose to believe I’d been the victim of some sort of wicked hocus pocus than I had spontaneously combusted.
Ignorance is bliss, right?
“Girl, it was more of an insanely hot, slowly smoldering bonfire than a full-on explosive detonation. Ow.” Allya rubbed at her ribs where Mae had elbowed her, returning the feisty human’s hazel glare with nearly glowing amber eyes.
Forcing my mind away from what I didn’t want to believe, I finally remembered one very important thing. “Where is Nick? Is he okay? Something was wrong with him, or his bear. I don’t know.” One heck of a headache was brewing, and my current trains of thought only exacerbated the tension, squeezing my head like a vise. I’d swear my pulse thrummed at the base of my skull, and I cradled my forehead to block everything out.
Useless, of course.
“He, uh…huh. He was here…” Mae stuttered, twisting to look around Rory’s hulking body. The large lion Shifter had been glued to her side since I’d been able to process my surroundings, her hand clutched in his large paw.
“Mazel Tov, by the way.” I waved at their joining to illustrate my meaning. “Happy you guys figured it out. Sorry you had a crap night, Mae.”
“Me? B, I’m pretty sure your morning was worse than my ni–” It was Mae’s turn to squeak as Allya took a page from her book and returned the previously thrown elbow. “Right. I mean, yeah. Thankfully, I had people looking out for me; otherwise, the hypothermia probably would have won,” she choked out a nervous chuckle, wiping at tears that squeezed from her large, glasses-covered eyes.
“I’m glad you’re okay, and the prince here” –I jerked my chin at Rory without looking away from my friend and ignoring the burning in my throat that speaking ignited– “decided to fight for you. You have to fight for what, and who, you want.”
“She makes me much better,” Rory rumbled with an adoring smile tilting his full lips as he reached forward to push Mae’s large dark-framed eyeglasses higher on the bridge of her pert nose before wiping at the water tracking down her cheeks.
I noticed then the small Bluetooth device nestled in Rory’s left ear. “You on a covert mission and need to stay in communication with your subordinates?” I jerked my chin at him again, this time indicating the earpiece, forcing a small, rough laugh. I needed to break the somber mood. Get things moving forward, worry later about all I couldn’t think about now. Pushing toward my feet, the cold air blew some of the caked ash from my coated body… along with my borrowed cape.
My turn to blush and squeak, I scrambled to cover my clothing-less body with little luck. I wasn’t naked-naked because of the filth hiding my skin from view but… nope. Not happening. But being surrounded mainly by Shifters, they didn’t think about my prudishness in that regard.
“Yeah, yeah. Weird I know. Don’t want to be walking around my peeps with my goodies hanging out, what can I say.”
Fake it till you make it, right?
“Too bad Nick ran off. He’d love this show,” Allya snickered, this time earning her an ash-coated hand covering her mouth, courtesy of Jason.
“Don’t mind her; her filter’s broken,” the wily wolf apologized about his girlfriend with a roll of his lovely hazel peepers and a crooked smile. Jason’s striking features coupled with the playful bad boy persona was like the mother of all magnets for girls, and Allya had been the one to capture him. If she hadn’t earned a badass rep in such a short amount of time, the girl would be fending off catty attacks like no one’s business.
Rory, on the other hand…
The overly-large cross between model and bodybuilder was too broody and volatile to attract universal attention. Power seekers had been after him because of his position within the Shifter community though. Being the Prince Regent held allure for many. But the studious and sweet human had snagged his affections whole-heartedly. His adoration shone through his eyes, lightening the burden he had always seemed to carry.
With a grunt, Rory shrugged out of his maroon long-sleeved knit shirt. Standing several feet away, he thrust the material at me with an outstretched arm the size of my thigh. Mae’s approval lit her cherubic upturned face, and she drew her hand down the bicep she stood curled around, eyes soft behind her glasses as she looked up at her lion.
“Ugh, all this gooey couples sentiment is flinging in my direction, and here, I die for mine,” I grumbled before pressing my over-active lips together in a hard line and pulling the shirt over my head. It was huge, falling nearly to my knees and well past my hands. There was way too much I didn’t want to think about in that sentence, so I busied myself by rolling up the sleeves enough that my fingertips were at least visible. At the top of that “don’t wanna think about list” was that Nick wasn’t here. He’d left.
“Now the question is: Who do
we tell about this?”
Leave it to Prince Rory to send me crashing to Earth in a fiery ball of downer. Clenching my fists, fingers wrapping around the bulky, rolled mass of shirt within their grasp, I knew my answer.
“No one.”
CHAPTER 12
“W hat do you mean no one?”
“What?”
Apparently, my friends were appalled that I wouldn’t want to tell the whole of Grimm Hollow that I had allegedly died and come back to life through fire. That sounded like a recipe for ridicule and side-eyes. I already got plenty of those before this rebirth. Also…
“There’s no reason. All it will do is implicate Nick, and I don’t want that. It was an accident. I’m fine, no harm done… permanently,” I amended when I took in the dead-eyed stares surrounding me. I was much more affected than I let on, but again, Nick didn’t deserve punishment or worse for what had happened.
“Besides, the Shifter ruler is here and knows what’s up. If anyone else was privy, who knows what would happen to Nick.” I shuddered to think. “Speaking of, where do you think he went?” A creeping suspicion was niggling at me once again. “He wouldn’t turn himself in, would he?” My question was directed at Jason, figuring that he’d know the motivations of his best friend better than almost anyone.
Seeing the pinched concern deepen on Jason’s pretty face, I knew I’d hit the mark. “You need to go to him, convince him not to do anything stupid. Tell him I’m fine. He saw that with his own eyes, right? I mean, he was there, right? I swear I heard him,” I’d trailed off, mumbling more to myself than anything by the end, but I cast an entreating look in the Shifter’s direction.
“Damn it, yeah, he totally would. He’s been a little off ever since we got him back from Winchester’s human jail. He won’t talk about it though, just plasters that grin on and pretends nothing’s different.”