Power: Arca Book 3

by Karen Diem

  I hope that means he’s changing his clothes and not going back to sleep. She double-checked the cooler and stole a nibble from the carrot sticks she had packed for their lunch.

  Fifteen minutes later, Andy emerged dressed in what she assumed were hiking clothes. “Okay, do your worst.”

  Zita smiled evilly.

  He blanched. “You do know I didn’t mean that literally, right?”

  ***

  Even if the dry air sucked all the moisture away before she could feel it, Zita sweated on top of a large boulder, her own scent mingling with the local sage and dust. The Arizona sky stretched overhead, clear and blue and filled with the distant sounds of quail and other birds calling each other and taunting the coyotes. While her preference would have been to climb in a greener, more humid area, her companion had a definite fondness for the desert. The gritty sandstone dug into her forearms as she brought her legs out perpendicular to her body and considered Andy, who struggled to his next handhold on a similar rock nearby. She kept her motions slow and uniform, both to combat her own impatience and to increase the challenge of the moves.

  Silently, she acknowledged he wasn’t the only one who had needed an outing. Going to Brazil had been a fun change, but most of it had been at either a sluggish walk to accommodate the others or riding in the back of a cramped Jeep.

  “I think I’m getting the hang of mountain climbing,” he said. “Do you have to do upside-down yoga stuff while I’m doing this?”

  “You’re doing good for your first time, mano, and yes, I do. I wouldn’t want to miss an opportunity to combine disciplines,” Zita said. With effort, she refrained from correcting him; since he was only climbing a thirty-foot rock, not an actual mountain, the technical term was bouldering. Under normal circumstances, she would have restricted a total bumbly beginner like him to smaller rocks, but he couldn’t hurt himself or anything other than a spindly patch of teddy bear cholla that sprouted out of a sparse mat of desert weeds. They were far enough up that even if he fell and rolled a few feet, he would not break one of the rarer, massive, and slow-growing organ pipe cacti.

  “Agh!” Andy shrieked, pulling away from the boulder. His arms waved, frenzied, and a small brown form flew by, just inches from Zita’s face. Twisting his body, he fell off, landing hard on his back next to the spiny cholla.

  She grimaced but held her position without a quiver. “Cálmate,” Zita said. “Remember to keep your focus, or you’ll fall. It might not hurt you, but it could announce your position or injure something below you.”

  He dragged air noisily into his lungs and sat up, his hands on his thighs. “I was doing so well until a scorpion crawled onto my hand.”

  She nodded. “They do live here.” Her tone was philosophical as she stretched her legs skyward over her head. “Did you realize you almost hit me with it?”

  Andy’s shoulders slumped. “What? Again? I’m so sorry. Did it sting you?”

  “No hay bronca, it missed. Next time, watch where you’re flinging irritable wildlife. Some of us are squishier than others, you know.” She moved her legs into a scissor-like position.

  He made no attempt to get up, continuing to sit and stare at the dust-covered toes of his boots. “I forgot it couldn’t hurt me.”

  “Try to remember, since out here you don’t got to work hard to pretend to be normal. Most people would get all upset about a scorpion if they weren’t climbers. If you’re used to it, you learn to deal, preferably by watching where you put your hands. Have a drink of water, and we’ll give it another go. You’ll get it up this time, I bet.” Realizing what she’d said, she smothered a snicker in case he thought she laughed at him.

  Flushing red beneath his bronze skin, Andy wiped his forehead. “Maybe this was a bad idea.” He leaned forward, putting his head in his hands and hiding his face from her.

  In the distance, thunder grumbled.

  Zita snorted. “Seriously? You relaxed long enough to forget about that bug up your ass.”

  “Smooth, Z. All that time with Wyn has really improved your diplomacy skills.” Even though he mumbled, she could still make out the words.

  At another growl from above, she pushed herself up into a full headstand and checked that direction. Monsoon season ended in September. This is October in Arizona. One cloud struggled to form in the sky overhead, managing a few strips of sullen gray against the greater blue. That’s odd, though no weirder than the month and a half-long rain in Anne Arundel County where Andy lives and has been pouting for… Wait, I may not know much mythology, but… I shouldn’t say anything until I’m sure. Despite her decision, her traitorous mouth ran ahead of her. “Dude, it’s you! It tries to rain when you’re cranky. It’s just having more trouble here because there’s not much water.”

  Frowning, he looked up at her. “What?”

  Enthused by her idea, she lowered her legs and stood upright. She bounced and waved toward the clouds. “You turn into a giant, magic, lightning chicken and it rains whenever you’re upset and not controlling your power. You should reconsider calling yourself Thunderbird.”

  His hand sliced through the air. “I will not call myself that. It’s disrespectful. Would you call yourself Jesus Christ, our Lord and Redeemer?”

  “If my parents named me Jesús, yes, but not that whole chunk. That’d be sacrilegious. Oye, I see what you’re saying. Aren’t you Catholic? You came to Mass with me last week and took Communion and all.” Zita frowned.

  He shrugged. “I’m mostly Catholic, but it’s just wrong.”

  Zita contemplated that. “So, is Thunderbird like the native Jesus Christ then?”

  Andy exhaled. “Depends on the tribe, but generally not. Usually, Thunderbird is a powerful spirit, a protector, and rain-bringer. My mom’s people have legends of a tribe able to turn into thunderbirds, but they were people with gifts from the spirits.”

  “So, if you turn into something very similar to one of these big guardian birds, even if you’re not calling yourself that, why are you afraid of your other form?” Zita stretched, lifting her arms above her head and bending backward.

  “Shut up and climb down.”

  She eyed him and smirked. “I’m already on top of the world. Oye, you could combine Thunderbird with another name. You could be the Thunderbirdseed Pervert!”

  “I refuse to call myself by any version of that and have no idea why you think it’s so funny.” Andy folded his arms across his chest.

  “Suit yourself, Wingspan,” she said.

  He winced.

  Zita brought her arms down and stood, tapping her hip. “Honestly, I think you’re smarter in your bird form.”

  “What?” He was so surprised his head shot up, his voice cracked, and their eyes met.

  Zita held up a finger for silence. “When you’ve been the bird in the past, have you ever hurt anyone?”

  “Well…” He cleared his throat.

  She didn’t wait. “No, you haven’t. When I’ve been with you, your bird hasn’t even done any property damage, unless he was saving people in an area too small for it, like when you kept Wyn from dying at the hospital or your mom on the street in Vegas.”

  “It shredded that pod!” He mimed tearing something apart.

  She clucked her tongue at him. “Evil robot pods don’t count, especially when they’re attacking people, and your bird shape figured it out before I did. Faster than Wyn did too, which is impressive because that woman is scary bright. Did you have to fight yourself to keep from hunting in any of the places we’ve been, like Manaus or Boa Vista? Or stop yourself from eating the mercenaries?”

  “The bird might’ve just been full from the brontosaur.” Andy folded his arms over his chest.

  Zita rolled her eyes. “Hombre, I’ve been a bird. You burn through calories like nobody’s business, so if bird-you wanted to eat more, he could’ve. Bird-you figured out dinosaurs were animals and ate rather than subtract from our supplies. Since Wyn had the bulk of our food in the purse we couldn�
��t access, eating it ensured we’d have more for everyone else. So. Bird-you is smarter and not the mindless beast you keep treating him as.” Swift and sure, she climbed down her own rock, being careful to avoid insects on the way.

  His hands clenched into fists. “What if it’s about how I have no control over my own body as a bird? You can’t know what that’s like! When it went to Vegas…”

  “Are you forgetting you’re not the only one who had cancer? I even got tied down when I was on the drug that gave me seizures.” Her voice might’ve been sharper than she intended, but even now her muscles tightened at the memory. She forced herself to relax.

  His face went red, and he was quiet when he replied. “It’s not the same.”

  “No, it’s not the same as bird-you deciding to save your family and thousands of others instead of going where your human shape wanted one single time. You’re lucky. Your other shape can sense when your family is in danger from a distance and protect them even better than your regular one. That’s not bad, that’s chingado awesome. If I had that kind of power, Sobek would never have gotten his claws into Quentin. So, suck it up and deal, mano.” She offered him a hand up.

  He took it, swinging to his feet, and brushed off some dust.

  Enough seriousness. Zita laughed. “You got a big ball of cholla stuck to your butt. This last time, you got fifteen feet up, so next time you’ve got a good chance of succeeding. Then the real fun begins!” She flexed her fingers.

  With a groan, he attempted to bat away the cactus spines, finally just plucking them out and tossing them back into the cholla patch. “Oh, no. What are you planning?”

  “Lunch?” She grinned at him.

  He relaxed.

  “After you have some water and give it one more try. Then we’ll eat, and I’ll up the ante a little, so you can do it again,” she said, crossing to the big, battered orange cooler that sat in the shade of the rock. She opened it, pulled out a sweating canteen, and tossed it at him.

  Andy fumbled with it but caught it. “A warning would be nice next time,” he said. His tone lacked any real censure. He took a long swig.

  Following a drink from her own bottle, Zita dusted off her hands, preparing to climb again. “I used some of that pot roast your family left for you and made us juicy sandwiches, so maybe that’ll motivate you. If your parents came home and found out you’d been subsisting on beef jerky and cheese curls, it would break their hearts. Your stepmom must’ve cooked forever to stock that fridge.”

  “Fortunately, you rescued them from that fate by coming over to help empty it.” After chugging most of his bottle, Andy capped it, set it in the shade, and went back to his rock.

  She grinned as he started up again. “I’m a giver, what can I say?”

  As they climbed, Zita enjoyed the warmth pooling in her muscles and the challenge, choosing to go up a different side of her boulder. She reached the top first and had just contorted into a yoga pose when he spoke.

  Andy clung to the stone, twenty feet up. “I don’t know if I can get to the top of this thing. Why am I here? Why am I even trying?”

  Somehow, she doubted he meant climbing. I thought he didn’t want to talk? Zita settled on telling him, “Have faith in yourself, mano, because I do. You can do this. You could be way cooler than you are.”

  “Wow. Did you just try to bolster my self-confidence by simultaneously insulting and complimenting me?” Andy stared at her.

  Her mouth opened and closed as she tried to defend herself, but she changed the topic. “I’m pretty certain you’ll master shifting with regular clothes before me.”

  He blinked at her. “What?”

  She shrugged and let her body flow back to a normal standing position. “The little rubber band that keeps your braid in sometimes stays in your hair after you change shape. Once or twice, your boxers were still on after a shapeshift when you weren’t wearing the special sportswear. My underwear and braids don’t do that.”

  He touched his braid, running his fingers down the length of it, and tossed it over his shoulder. “I never realized.” His back arched too far, she noticed with disapproval, and he wasn’t paying attention to his handholds. One foot inched sideways, losing traction, and the other had only a partial toehold.

  “Yeah. That’s because you don’t shift enough. I’m a terrible person to give advice, but I’m a decent wingwoman and an excellent coach. I notice all the important stuff, like how you’re mucking up your position right now. Stop leaning back. Fix your feet,” Zita said.

  “What?” He overbalanced and fell off his rock into the same patch of cholla.

  Zita dropped from her boulder, landing in a crouch to bleed off energy from the landing.

  He groaned. “I hate my life and my stupid abilities.”

  She snickered. “Dude. You’re not really upset about having powers, especially the whole part where you didn’t break your back and suffer from the cactus. Sure, the job and girl thing, they suck, but that’ll get better.”

  From his cradle in the cholla patch, Andy’s face darkened. “Aren’t I? And what do you know?”

  Zita tilted her head. “I’ve hardly enough job to feed my active metabolism, am stuck mooching off my friend for a place to stay, and don’t have a boyfriend either. Plus, I’ve got powers of my own.”

  “So?” He sat up, picking off cactus bits with an annoyed expression.

  She offered him a hand up. “According to you, I break the laws of physics all the time. Do a lot of trespassing too, but that’s beside the point. Or not. Maybe it illustrates my point.”

  Andy waved her away and got to his feet. “Is this going somewhere?”

  She nodded. “The problem isn’t your power or what to do with it—for all your whining, you’ve still had my back and done your best to help people no matter what laws we break, physics or otherwise. Your issue is you enjoy your power, even though you don’t have total control over it, and you feel guilty that you’re not doing enough for others with it.”

  “What?”

  “You’re so busy beating yourself up over what could happen that you’re not seeing what does happen. You’re missing all the good.” Zita strolled over to the cooler and extracted wipes. “And that you’ve got cactus on your butt again.”

  Andy swiped at himself enough to get off the prickly plant and crossed his arms over his chest. “Good? Like when I almost killed you with a dinosaur? Or a few minutes ago when I threw a scorpion at you?”

  She cleaned her hands, fastidiously getting out the gunk beneath her fingernails. “Details, mano. Those were accidents and show you need to keep practicing, so it doesn’t happen again. I’ll remind you that you don’t break things often anymore. In fact, you’ve bitched about Cupcake walking on your face and licking your eyelids in the morning when he wants to eat, but the cat doesn’t have a scratch, bruise, or—” She shot him a sly look.—“unpampered spot on him.”

  “I wouldn’t hurt… Fine. Point made.”

  Zita touched his arm. “You can do it. We practiced, and you’ve had my back before. You’ll have it again.”

  “I almost killed you,” he said, his eyes on the ground.

  “Past is done. When you get your head out of your culo and believe in yourself, you’ll chingado fly.” Zita pulled out another handful of wipes and offered them to Andy. “So, you going to clean your hands before you eat or be gross?”

  “Are those baby wipes? Somehow that seems appropriate.” Andy snatched the material from her and scrubbed the brown dust off, dropping the filthy cloths into the trash bag. “Practice isn’t the answer to everything, Z. You almost died, and I won’t risk you or anyone else again.”

  Her hands flew to her hips. “You really think that’s your decision to make? Or that you could stop me? You should ask Miguel how his attempts to run my life are working for him before you try the same thing.” She snickered and strolled to the cooler, where she pulled out the sandwiches. “I’ll probably be illegally climbing a building at
night somewhere when you do. Maybe the Bassiter one since neither you nor Wyn wants to climb it with me. Here, catch.”

  Grabbing the food, Andy tilted his head down to meet her gaze for a moment before he looked away, but a corner of his mouth twisted. “Point made. I won’t try to make your decisions for you, and you won’t try to make mine for me. I won’t use my powers anymore, and you can’t stop me.” He took a big bite and glared at her while he chewed.

  “Nope,” she agreed and continued chowing on her own sandwich.

  Andy blinked at her and swallowed. “You’re not fighting me on that?”

  “No. An aerialist who doesn’t want to be in the air shouldn’t be, and this is like that. You should consider something though.” Zita waggled her sandwich at him.

  “What’s that?” Suspicion clouded his face.

  She made him wait until she had eaten another mouthful. “The way things are going, people will get into trouble, and I’ll go help them. Since I promised to do so, I’ll probably call you, because you won’t turn them down. Or me. Then you’ll have to use your powers without the habitual control you need, and someone might get hurt.”

  His head turned away, and he muttered a curse under his breath.

  Placidly, she pressed her point. “You haven’t injured anyone in your other form—which you just told me is a protective symbol in your mom’s and stepdad’s peoples, not a raging monster—and you’re making great progress on controlling your strength. I won’t make you practice, but I won’t hesitate to call out where you can improve either.”

  “As if you could make me.”

  Refusing to accept the bait, Zita shrugged. “No, I can’t, and I’m okay with that. You figure out yourself. If it helps, talk to Jerome or someone else with super strength and see if they got tips for you. I’m working on figuring out why Zeus wanted us busy until tomorrow. Why steal all that weird stuff and free a hundred killers, none of whom have been seen since then? Which reminds me, Wyn said they added a giant lab-grown diamond to the list of missing items.”