Carter seemed to settle down with a grunt, thumbing his nose. “I can’t say either way. Rebekah’s gone; that’s all I know. And last I heard, that Druid had somethin’ to do with it.” His eyes locked onto Stephanie, like a wolf eyeing its prey.
Everything in me prayed that Stephanie would not listen to her instincts and take off running. Running evoked something in Carter, and if she tried to get away…I just didn’t want to see anything bad happen to her.
That was one thing that was unique about vampires. They were dead, and so they didn’t have souls, which was why Rebekah had no indication that he was in the room. In fact, Rebekah hadn’t known that Carter had shown up at the warehouse to save her, though he’d arrived too late. Rebekah had already been reduced to just a soul, and because of that, she had no idea when Carter was around.
Rebekah sounded distressed.
Carter was on his feet, and the way it happened made me shudder. Though the couch dipped in from his weight, he sprang up as if he were about to make a move, but he didn’t. Menacingly, he strode over to Stephanie, the floorboards squeaking underneath him.
“Carter…” Umara warned, arms still folded. He didn’t so much as look at her.
“Rebekah’s gone cuz’ of you and that Leprechaun,” Carter said to Stephanie, half-frowning. “I don’t rightly see why you get to live, and she don’t.”
Stephanie looked mortified, both because of Carter and because she hadn’t known about Rebekah.
“Carter,” I said, reaching out to him, “Stephanie had no idea about—”
Carter swatted my arm away nearly breaking the bone. I bit back the pain, not wanting to amplify his predatory senses by feigning weakness, though I couldn’t help but grit my teeth with a groan.
“Carter,” Umara said sternly. “There’s something Lyle needs to tell you.”
“Guess I’ll hear it when I’m done wit’ this ole Druid here.” He didn’t so much as cut away from Stephanie.
“Carter, please…” Stephanie’s voice quivered as she cowered back. All I could hope for was that she didn’t try to change forms and barrel down the hallway.
She didn’t, and after what happened next, something in me wished she would have. Carter, with dangerous speed, rushed towards her, wrenching her arms in both hands, compacting her body like a bailer. Bones cracked, and Stephanie cried out. Several of her ribs shifted out of place.
That was all I could take. As quickly as I could, I decanted into bear form. Fur sprouted out of my pores like weeds, and my snout twisted and snapped, protruding out. My clothes ripped and dropped to the floor in shreds as my spine extended.
“Lyle, no!” Umara shouted, reaching out for me.
An unseen arrow thrummed from somewhere up above, tearing through my shoulder and pinning me to the floor. My body shriveled back to human form, and I lay there, naked, a quarrel through my collar. In gasps, I peered up at Stephanie who was now screaming in Carter’s hold, but there was nothing I could do to stop him from being who he was.
“Carter,” I managed to say, doing my best to keep his fangs from sinking into Stephanie. “It wasn’t her. It was all Marcus. Not her. Rebekah can prove it to you. It’s like Umara said—that I have something to tell you.” I swallowed hard, cringing from the pain of the quarrel.
“Carter, you have to let Stephanie go so she can heal,” Umara said, coming for him.
I motioned to the shredded shorts on the floor, covering up my privates. “Carter,” I said again. “Rebekah’s soul…it’s in my obelisk.”
Something about that drained a bit of the hunger out of him. “How do I know you ain’t lyin’ just to keep this here Druid from goin’ down my gullet?”
I didn’t have an answer for that, and since Carter wasn’t a summoner, there was no way he could hear Rebekah speaking from the stone. “I…I don’t…”
“Wait,” Umara said. “There may be a way. But, Carter, you have to let Stephanie down.” Umara was dangerously close to Carter, and I was concerned that he might just turn on her too.
He eyed Umara intently, then turned to Stephanie whose broken body moaned in his grasp. Then, he grunted and dropped Stephanie on the floor, making her cry out in pain. “If you ain’t tellin’ the truth…” Carter warned, turning to each of us, and somehow I knew exactly what that meant.
Please, Umara, you better have an answer for this.
Already, Stephanie’s tattoos were lighting up with bright blue, but the blue was slowly fading, meaning that she’d run out of healing powers and needed to recharge.
“Help…her,” I groaned.
Umara’s lips tightened, and another side of her came out that I hadn’t seen before. “Get away from her!” she shouted, her arm arrowing out at Carter. “Get back!”
Carter snarled at her, but she didn’t back down. I watched the whole thing through my fading eyes, mesmerized. For the first time, Carter actually backed down from someone. It wasn’t dramatic, but he did take one step back, which Umara must have deemed enough, because immediately, she got to work, fumbling through the drawer of her desk.
Stephanie wheezed a few breaths, her eyes widening as she peered at me from across the way. She tried to speak as her breathing escalated, but only a few moans escaped along with a lone tear that streaked down her cheek.
“Stephanie…hang on,” I said, not sure if I was being much help in my current condition.
She took several more gasps for breaths, and then suddenly, she stopped. Her breathing halted altogether.
“Stephanie?” I picked my head up off the floor, feeling the sting of the quarrel race through my body. “Stephanie?” I called again. Still no answer. “Umara, do something! Stephanie!” I shouted her name again, this time ignoring the pain. “Get her some soil or some leaves, something.”
“No, that won’t work,” Umara said, hurrying over to Stephanie with a syringe.
“She’s a Druid. What do you mean it won’t work?” I said.
“It won’t work,” Umara snapped, eyeing me sharply. “She used all of her Empyrean to try and repair the broken bones.”
“What’s in the syringe?” I asked.
“Strychnine. Now will you close your mouth and let me work?”
“Strychnine? Are you insane!” My voice was two octaves higher. “That’s snake poison!”
No longer answering me, Umara plucked the tip of the needle, then jammed it into Stephanie’s neck, pressing the fluid into her body until the syringe was empty. Nothing happened.
“C’mon,” Umara said, smacking Stephanie’s cheek. “Wake up!”
Still nothing.
I looked from Stephanie to Umara. “What’s wrong? What’s going on? Why’s it not working?”
“Get. Up.” Umara said.
Nothing.
Carter sniffed, then wiped his nose with the back of his hand. Without waiting a moment more, he reared his foot back and kicked Stephanie across her face, making her neck crack.
I nearly leapt off the floor, I was so furious, but the quarrel kept me pinned to the ground. Ignoring my privates, I clenched my shoulder, crying out in pain. “What’s your problem!” I shouted at Carter. “Have you lost your mind!” I couldn’t believe myself, but I didn’t care. What could he do that he already hadn’t done, that he already wasn’t going to do? He’d said that if we couldn’t get him to talk to Rebekah, then he would come after all of us, or at least that was what he’d implied.
“You get away from her, and you get away from her now!” I demanded, cringing at the pain in my arm.
Suddenly, slowly, blue lines began to trace the lattice of tattoos that laced throughout Stephanie’s body. It was gradual at first, a flicker here and a flicker there. But then, her body came alive! Lights whirled thr
ough tribal tattoos, twirling about her wrists and ankles and up her thigh, disappearing underneath her clothes. Her ribs reset, and then she began breathing again. It soon erupted into coughing, so much so that she was holding her stomach until she came to.
Umara sat back on her haunches with a sigh of relief, and the tension in my body released as I lay my head back on the floor, staring up at the ceiling. The sound of grinding across the wooden floor made me turn my attention to Umara who was now pushing a five-foot tall rubber tree plant next to Stephanie and placing Stephanie’s hand into the soil.
The blue lights intensified, and the rubber tree withered. Fat leaves, that were once green, were now dead brown, flittering to the floor, shriveled. Branches wilted then died out until the entire plant was nothing more than a dried out twig jammed in a too-big white pot.
Stephanie sat up with her legs crossed under her, holding her head.
“Stephanie,” Umara said, kneeling down beside her. “Do you have enough strength to heal Lyle?”
“What about Rebekah?” Carter sneered.
Umara glared at him, not saying a word, and somehow, that was enough to keep Carter quiet.
“I can try,” Stephanie said, untangling her legs from under her and crawling over to me.
I became grossly aware of my nakedness, so I cupped my privates while Stephanie put a hand on my forehead. Umara snatched the quarrel out of my shoulder, and my back arched up in silent agony, which was soon muffled by the healing flow of Stephanie’s power as it washed through me, sealing the wound, though not completely. Now, instead of the hole in my shoulder being thick like a quarrel had run me through, it was thin, as if I’d been pricked with a pin. Then I remembered how Stephanie never healed a person fully to help keep their bodies from decomposing.
“Swallow this,” Umara said, digging in one of the lower pockets of her vest and revealing a small round piece of metal that looked like a watch battery. When she saw my hesitation, she rolled her eyes. “It’s a Semblance.”
“A Semblance?” I squinted at her.
“Just swallow it,” she said.
Knowing that Umara had no reason to try and hurt me, I cautiously took the piece of metal from her, and threw it back, downing it in one difficult, face-twisting gulp. Okay, maybe two or three gulps. The metal caught in my throat, so it was a little harder to get down than I thought, until after a time I finally managed to swallow it, giving Umara a thumbs-up.
“What did I just almost choke on?” I asked. “What is a Semblance?”
“Well,” Umara smiled warmly, “you can quit covering your parts up now. A Semblance lets you appear clothed to those around you. I made it for Decanters like you.”
“Will it work with Druids?” I asked.
Umara frowned, standing. “I don’t see why not. I think I may have another one around here somewhere.” She hurried over to the drawer where the syringe had been, tumbled up a few items, then said, “Aha! Here we are.”
Stephanie swallowed her Semblance with more ease than I did, then she looked up at Umara who stood over her. “Will it…you know?”
“Come out when you eliminate?” Umara asked, finishing Stephanie’s question. “No. It’ll remain in your stomach, since it’s impervious to stomach acid. If your body tries to remove it, the Semblance is designed to resist. I call it the salmon effect, since the Semblance swims upstream.” She chuckled at that.
“How do I know what I’m wearing?” I asked, then I looked down at myself, and it appeared that I wore a yellow t-shirt with yellow shorts.
“It’s whatever you think of,” Umara said. “Though it does take some time to get used to. But you’re smart. You’ll get the hang of it.”
“Okay. How about this?” My yellow shirt wavered into dark blue, and my yellow shorts became tan cargo pants with a pair of black boots on my feet. “Not bad.”
“You can also do what Stephanie is doing,” Umara said, “which is nothing, since she already has clothes on. I will warn you though, it takes some getting used to, since you won’t have things tucked away like before.”
“How did you know to use Strychnine on Stephanie?” I asked.
“Because she’d used all of her Empyrean,” Umara answered. “Introducing the Strychnine would give her something natural to drain, just as if she were draining the earth, except, being that Strychnine is poisonous, her body would automatically start healing on its own. It’s a trick of sorts. It gives her the power to heal, but it also forces her body to heal all at once.” She tapped her chin, troubled. “Though, it wouldn’t work for a more critical wound. I assumed that one of her lungs had collapsed, and thank the heavens I was right. Otherwise, Stephanie might have been gone for good.”
I just wore a look of distaste, which was followed by a head gesture to Carter to let Umara know that she needed to make good on her promise for him to talk to Rebekah, or else he might not continue to be so patient.
“Oh, right.” Umara dashed out of the room and down the hallway, returning shortly carrying a handheld steel canister with a flashing pink light on either end.
Carter’s brow dipped in. “What the pink hell is that?” He even held up an arm to guard his body from whatever it was that Umara was going to do to him.
“It’s a Faux Soul,” Umara said.
“What the Fu—”
“Carter, just listen to her,” I said, looking back at him as I picked myself up off the floor, helping Stephanie up. “You said that you want to talk to Rebekah. Umara’s trying to make that happen.”
“A Faux Soul,” Umara explained, turning the canister over in her hands a few times, “is something I use to use to track down vampires. Since they don’t have souls, they’re harder to track by normal devices. But this Faux Soul implants a fake soul into you, which will give you an aura so that Rebekah can sense you. With another fix, I can get you on the Summoner wavelength, and you’ll be able to communicate with her.”
“You said you use ‘dem thangs to track vampires?” Carter said. “Means you gone be able to track me then, huh?”
“Me and only me,” Umara assured him. “No one else has this technology, and if they did, it’s not designed like mine, so they won’t be able to track you anyway.”
“What if I don’t want it in me after ‘bout a day’er so?” Carter asked, fixing his hooded sweatshirt at the bottom hem. “Then what?”
“Then we take it out,” Umara assured him. “The Faux Soul is nothing but an implantation that gives off the same signal strength as a normal soul. I’ve never tried tuning it to the Summoner wavelength before, but I don’t see why it wouldn’t work. That way Rebekah should be able to talk to you.”
“And you can take it out at any time?” Carter asked.
“You can take it out at anytime,” she said. “It’ll be right here.” She pointed along the length of her collarbone. “Your regenerative abilities will seal it in place, and you won’t even know it’s there.”
“I’ll know,” Carter grunted.
“Do you want to talk to Rebekah, or not?” Umara asked resolutely.
Carter eyed me then gave a curt nod to Umara.
She approached him, aimed the device right at his collar after pulling his shirt out of the way, flicked a tiny switch. Carter winced, but that was about it.
“Not so bad,” he said, nodding. “Don’t feel no different.”
“You won’t,” Umara said. “If you did, then hunting your kind would be a lot tougher, since you’d know it was inside of you.”
“If you gotta’ catch’em before you hunt’em, then what good is a device like this’n?” He scratched his neck where she’d inserted the implant.
“Oh,” Umara said smugly, “this is if we want to track you down in hordes. Mark one, and he leads us to the hiding places, like roaches. You’re different from the rest of them, in that you’re a loner.” Umara gave him a quick smile. “I like that about you.”
Carter scratched his stomach. “You ain’t comin’ onto me is ya’?
”
Umara frowned. “Hardly.”
“Heh, heh. Now what I gotta’ do to talk to the little lady?”
“Of course.” Umara opened one of the curios in the hallway and brought back a tiny pin, though she explained that it wasn’t a pin, and inserted it into the back of Carter’s neck. “It’s a transmitter that allows for communication on the Summoner’s wavelength—talking to the dead essentially. Since you obviously decanted a Summoner, Lyle, you don’t need one. But for you, Stephanie,” she looked Stephanie up and down, “I wouldn’t recommend it for you. Hearing from the dead can be rather…overwhelming. You don’t just hear one voice. You hear them all.”
“If Carter’s dead, then why can’t he communicate on the Summoner’s wavelength without the pin you just put in his neck?” I asked.
“Because,” Umara said, “Carter’s not completely dead. I mean, look at him. He’s walking, he’s talking. So there is some life in him. And just that little bit of life interrupts the signal. The transmitter is foolproof.”
Carter scratched the back of his head where Umara had inserted the transmitter. “Well,” he said, “guess it wouldn’t hurt to try this thang out.” He cleared his throat, then spoke out loud. “Rebekah?”
Rebekah chuckled.
Carter smiled wide.
Carter was quiet, stuffed his hands in the pockets of his hoody.
Elemental Damage: Confessions of a Summoner Book 2 Page 5