I sucked in air between my teeth. “So, she's not a mermaid.”
Chloe stopped in front of me and grinned as she whispered, “She's not a mermaid. Not a selkie. And not a melusine, though she would have loved to have been one of those, half serpent and still half human. She longed to keep some of her humanity in her changed form.” Chloe shook her head, snakes twirling dizzily. “My sister, the monster.” She let out a bitter laugh. “And to think, everyone says Charlize is the worst.”
I tilted my head and bit my tongue.
“Now, give it to me,” she hissed. “Give me the journal.” She grabbed for the pockets of my cardigan.
Her fingers grazed my forearms, stinging my skin. I looked down in horror as patches of my flesh turned as gray and stony as Fuzzy the Unlucky Hornet. Terror crept up my spine, and then calm. I pushed out, and my stony flesh sizzled as it turned back to flesh.
“Back off,” I growled.
Chloe kept grabbing for my pocket, so I hit her with a taste of blue lightning. Just a small fireball. It was my fire, my power, and I had more control over it now.
She lurched backward, windmilling clumsily. The blast had been more than just a taste, after all.
I jumped off the washing machine and caught her before she fell.
She went limp in my arms. She began sobbing, burying her face in my chest. “I didn't mean to hurt her,” she cried. “I didn't know the fertility treatments would make her suicidal.”
“They didn't,” I said.
She sniffed and looked up at me. “You mean, you didn't find her suicide note?”
“Just her journal,” I said.
“That's all?”
Now it was my turn to laugh ruefully. “That's all? Let me tell you, it was no picnic to retrieve.”
She pulled away from me, wiped her face with the sleeve of her shirt, and gestured for me to explain.
And I did. I told her how I'd been feeling a pull toward the ocean, ever since visiting Chessa's home. Every time I talked about her, walked in her footsteps, we'd grown closer. I'd gotten a small taste of her powers during my first swim in the ocean, but then I hadn't been able to access her powers to shift again.
“It must have been because her body was growing progressively weaker,” I said. “Her mortal body kept deteriorating.”
“She's gotten so frail,” Chloe whispered.
“But she's a fighter,” I said. “And so am I. That's why I learned how to scuba dive. I didn't know what she had planned for me, but I wanted to respond to her calls for me to dive, without the inconvenience of drowning.”
Chloe wrinkled her nose. “Charlize and I both hate swimming. We tried, but we could never keep up with her.” She wiped her cheeks dry. “Why did she want you to go diving?”
“To retrieve her journal,” I said. “Did you know she went down to the bottom of the ocean, to where it was quiet, to think and write about her thoughts?”
“How? Wouldn't the paper fall apart?”
“She had a waterproof journal. The kind scuba divers use. I got the idea when I saw the memo pad in her bathtub, and I connected it to something my diving instructor used.”
“How did you find it?” She cast a suspicious look at the square lump in my cardigan pocket. “You don't have anything,” she hissed. “You're bluffing.”
“Am I? It's true that the ocean floor is a very large place,” I said. “Even after I knew she'd been keeping a journal down there, I still didn't know where. After I left the cottage this morning, I had a diving buddy go out to the ocean with me, and I let my intuition guide me. After three hours and no journal, I figured out how to use my witch powers. I cast a spell on the local diving reference guides, and one of them unfolded to photos of an underwater cave. When viewed from an angle, the opening of the cave looks like a woman's face.”
Chloe gave me a skeptical look. I reached into my sweater pocket and pulled out the item I'd been hiding—the diving book. I showed Chloe the photo of the cave.
She nodded, and her snakes calmed down. “That's not much of a face.”
“But it matches my vision,” I said, and I described to her the imagery I'd seen during my commune with Chessa at her bedside. “At the time, I figured the statue was a metaphor for Chet's fiancée being larger than life, a monolith.” I snorted. “But then I saw this picture, and I knew. I dove down, dug around in the sand, and there was the journal.” I looked her straight in the eyes. “I have the journal, and it's currently in a safe place.”
“So, you know about the eggs,” Chloe said.
I nodded. “She felt terrible about your fertility problems. She blamed herself, thinking it was something she must have done to you during your development in the womb. That her powers took away from yours.”
“What? But that's crazy. It wasn't her fault. It was just nature, just bad luck.”
“However it happened, she wanted to donate her eggs to you, because that's the kind of sister she was. She loved you so much, she was willing to give you a piece of herself.” I paused to let it sink in. “And when we get her back again, I think she will agree that this whole thing was worth it. Especially when she holds Jordan Junior.”
Chloe clenched her jaw. “That's never going to happen.”
“Don't be so sure of that,” I said. “We can get her back. But we need Charlize to help.”
Chloe's hands fluttered up to her mouth. “I'll have to tell Charlize everything. Tell her what I did, and how I kept Chessa's gift a secret.” She sniffed and looked down. She'd only kept the egg donation a secret because of her guilt; she was certain she'd driven her sister to suicide, and couldn't bear to tell the rest of her family.
“You're not to blame,” I said.
Chloe sniffed. “She really did have a difficult time with the hormone treatments and the mood swings.”
“Yeah,” I said, nodding. “I know. I kinda read her diary, remember?”
She sniffed again, and I sensed she was about to crumble. We didn't have time for crumbling. Chessa was getting weaker by the minute. I hadn't gotten a memory or message from her all day, not since her appearance in the mirror.
I took Chloe by the hands and squeezed them, despite the stinging of her powers. “Chloe, you've got to stay strong, for your sister. What we are about to do is dangerous.”
She lifted her chin bravely. “Dangerous?”
“I know who's trying to kill your sister,” I said. “It's time for us to fight back.”
Chapter 31
It was midnight, approximately, when I heard him enter the room. I didn't dare look up from where I sat, next to Chessa's hospital bed, and check the clock on the wall.
I heard his soft-soled shoes lightly scuffing the floor as he walked over to the bed. In a sudden flash of movement, he whipped back the curtain and exposed the two of us women.
Beautiful, radiant Chessa lay motionless in her bed. Her skin glowed, still coursing with life, even after everything that had been done to her. Despite the horror.
Then there was me, seated next to her. I wore Charlize's DWM access cards on a lanyard around my neck, along with a plastic bag holding a rather disgusting object. I shifted my body and watched the doctor's eyes as they went to my plastic bag, and the bloody eyeball it held. His nostrils flared. He'd seen what I wanted him to see, thought what I wanted him to think.
I was seated next to Chessa's bed, but I wasn't wearing a goofy costume this time. I'd come dressed in leather. Black leather. And lots of it.
I slowly raised my head and squared my shoulders to face him. I didn't stand. Not yet.
His gaze went to my head, to the wire-and-sea-glass coronet I wore.
The crown was hurting me. It had been fashioned hastily, and had rough points digging in at my temples hard enough to make me bleed, but I used the pain to stay focused. Over on Chessa's head was a matching crown. We were a matched set. Linked. Two souls for the price of one.
Dr. Bhamidipati, also known as Dr. Bob, took a leisurely stroll around the
foot of Chessa's bed. He hadn't spoken yet.
“Hello, Dr. Bob,” I said, cold as Arctic ice.
“And a very good evening to you, Ms. Riddle,” he said with his friendly lilting accent. “I see that you are attempting some type of witch magic to help our sleepy girl.” He looked at the video monitor showing the patient's vital signs. “Fair enough. I suppose whatever you are doing shouldn't do any harm.” He reached up to tap a button on the controls for her IV drip.
“Wait a moment.” I used my magic to push the wheeled machine holding the controls out of his reach. “Chessa is communicating with me right now, and she has a question for you, Dr. Bob.”
He turned slowly and locked his eyes on mine. “Oh, I doubt that very much.”
“She wants to know who you're building the army for.” I faked a confused look. “What army?”
His hands fluttered up before he shoved them into the pockets of his white coat. “She must be speaking about our training program. You see, it's my job to help all of our DWM agents be the very best they can be.”
I turned my head to the side, all the better to show him the stream of blood running from the crown's pointed metal tip, down my cheek. I pushed the blood from my vein, and feathered it wider, like a warrior making herself bloody to show her opponent she fears no pain.
“Let's talk about the other army,” I said. “The one you're breeding with the use of Chessa's eggs. It wasn't enough for you to take the extras from her donation to her sister, was it? No, you wanted them all.” My blood pooled under my chin and fell to the floor with a smack. “You're a monster.”
“Eggs?” He let out a high-pitched, crazy laugh. “My goodness gracious, Ms. Riddle. You witches and your paranoia. Your type never got over those witch hunts, did you?”
“This isn't about me.”
He bared his teeth like a cornered dog. “Ms. Riddle, my dear woman, if you've been suffering from unwanted thoughts, we do have some types of medication here at the DWM specifically for our agents. Technically, we're not permitted to prescribe them to civilians, but for someone such as yourself, I could make an exception.”
“You're a monster, and you're greedy,” I said. “You realized something once you got the extra eggs from her sister's round of in vitro. The pregnancy took. And you told Chessa the extras would be destroyed, but you kept them. And when you thought about what you could have, if you got more of her precious gift, you took control. You attacked her and left her bleeding on that cold shoreline. Isn't that right?”
“This is preposterous,” he said. “I saved her.”
“That's what you wanted everyone to think. When they found her limp body on the shore, they brought her right to you. And you were so brave, weren't you? You worked for hours to stitch her up and keep her heart beating, but not out of the goodness of your heart. No. You wanted her body, here with you, completely under your control.”
He cleared his throat. “Ms. Riddle, I'm very sorry, but I must ask you to leave this ward. I'm afraid you are delusional.” He licked his thin lips. “In fact, I'm afraid that given your heightened state of paranoia, you may be a danger to yourself.”
I stood from the chair and raised my voice. “Doctor, you kept her here, in a chemically induced coma, and you kept dosing her with hormones so you could dig into her, again and again, removing her fertile eggs, again and again. That's why Chet noticed she looked tanned. It was the cocktail of drugs and vitamins you were feeding her, all so you could steal her most precious gift.” I lifted both of my hands, palms out. “Tell me who the army was for, right now, or I'll blast you so hard, there'll be nothing left of you but a smoky stain on that back wall.”
“You wouldn't,” he said. “You don't have control over your powers.”
“Don't I?” I pulled my left hand into a fist, summoned my blue fire, and sent a warning flare out. The fireball hit the doctor squarely in the chest.
I beamed, victorious. “Now tell me who the army is for. Where are the eggs now?”
“Let me show you.” He reached around inside his lab coat, to the small of his back, and produced a gun. It wasn't a wacky DWM prototype, either. It was a solid-looking black handgun, the kind a police officer carries. As he brought the handgun around to bear on me, electricity shot through my arms with ease.
I gave him another blast of blue lightning, this time with both hands.
He didn't even flinch.
What was happening? I'd seen the blue fireballs leave my hands and strike him. I hadn't missed.
Dr. Bob chuckled. “Ah, the pyrotechnics of your attack powers are much more beautiful when they aren't frying my internal organs.”
“These are defensive powers, not attack powers,” I growled. “And why aren't you on your knees?”
He shrugged and waved the gun casually. “Ever since that day in the forest, when you tried to electrocute me to death, I've been preparing myself.”
“You attacked me? Why?”
“This town didn't need another one of your kind. You witches are always meddling, getting into places you don't belong.”
“Too bad, because now this town is stuck with me,” I said, and I fired a blue ball of pain directly at his chest.
He winced, but he didn't go down. “It's no use, Ms. Riddle. I've been inoculating myself against such attacks.”
“You're bluffing,” I said.
“Am I?” He aimed the gun directly at my center of mass. “Ms. Riddle, you could try hitting me with your most powerful blast, but I must warn you, the safety's off, and my finger's on the trigger.” He sneered. Something was different about his mouth. The scar I'd seen on his upper lip had healed completely. He continued speaking with a mocking tone, as though lecturing a child. “You do understand how the human body responds to an electrical shock, don't you?”
“Your hands would contract, and you'd pull your trigger as soon as I hit you. If I don't dodge out of the way in time, I'll be shot.” I tilted my head back and stared at him through narrowed eyes. “But I do heal quickly, and after learning about what you did to Chessa, I'd gladly take a bullet if it means stopping you.”
He twitched the gun, switching it to point at Chessa instead of me. “She heals quickly, too, but she won't come back from a bullet to the brain.”
I sucked in air between my teeth. “Leave her out of this.”
“In a minute,” he said. “First, remove those two crowns and stop whatever it is you're doing. I don't like how she's filling your head with all these crazy delusions.”
“Too late,” I said. “The transfer is complete. She's waking up now.”
“She is?” He looked frightened. And if he knew what kind of monster she was, he was right to be terrified.
“Look at her hand,” I said.
Without shifting his aim of the gun away from her temple, he turned his head slowly.
There, on top of the green sheet, Chessa's fingers were moving. The fingers moved independently, jerkily, and then they moved with each other. She made a fist, then rolled it open.
Dr. Bob had been prepared for my blue lightning, but he'd forgotten about my levitation powers. Making a sleeping woman's hand move was easy for me.
While he was distracted, I jerked the gun in his hand straight up.
He had a strong grip on it, and he didn't let go. He cried out as he pulled the trigger.
With a deafening blast, the gun fired. I heard the zinging, and the impacts, as the bullet ricocheted in the concrete-walled underground room. One of the flat-screens on the walls exploded. Glass struck me from behind in a hailstorm.
I continued trying to wrestle the gun from the doctor's hand, this time prying at his individual fingers, but he pulled the trigger and shot it again.
After the second boom, my ears recovered quickly from the ringing. In the quiet, I heard someone groaning in pain. It wasn't the doctor. He stood before me, unharmed, both hands high over his head as he wrestled with me for control of the gun.
Then the moaning stopped. Th
ere was silence.
I screamed out, “Chet!”
Something banged on the door. It was locked. A bullet hole marred the center of the panel.
The doctor turned toward the door, releasing his gun suddenly. I was pulling it with such force that it flew over Chessa's body and struck me in the shoulder, sending me reeling.
As I struggled to catch my balance, the door to the ward blasted open in a hailstorm of splinters. Shadowy figures moved into the room, closing in on the doctor. But he'd seen them, and now that his gun was gone, he was changing tactics.
He was changing. Into a bird. Giant. Glossy sharp beak. Flashing talons. It was the creature who'd attacked me in the woods. The one who'd attacked Chessa.
The bird leapt into the air, its enormous wings creating a windstorm inside the room. He smacked noisily against the ceiling, but he remained airborne, and coming at me.
I had a gun now, so I used it. I pulled the trigger and willed the bullet's path to be straight and true. I fired twice at the attacking bird.
He kept coming, his sharp talons clawing away the sheet covering Chessa as he descended on me.
I aimed for a third shot, when a streak of darkness shot over my shoulder, straight at the bird.
It was a wolf. Chet. His sharp teeth snapping at the great bird.
Two monsters tangled, fur and feathers, teeth and talons, their struggles drawing blood from each other, as well as from the bare, unprotected legs of the sleeping woman they fought on top of.
I used what magical strength I had to push the snarling mass, the pair of them, off the bed, away from Chessa.
Out of sight, on the other side of the bed, there was growling, and then a snap. Bones breaking.
I didn't dare look.
And then I did.
Knox and Rob, still in human form, surrounded the two shifters, weapons raised. Blood was seeping from a wound on Rob's shoulder. Knox looked up at me, and in his eyes, I caught a glimpse of a rage so terrible, I stiffened and dropped the gun. It struck my ankle and clattered to the floor.
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