“What if Jay’s in trouble? If Laylea gets worse, Bailey can call Armando.”
“And what?” Sher stood. “Have Armando make a house call and see our son, the Cookie Monster?”
“No mom, Jay needs you. You have to go.”
“Oh yes, Grover? And if Laylea gets worse?” she asked.
Bailey sighed. He blinked and shifted the pigment bend of his follicles. “I’ll take her to the clinic.”
“YOU COULD CHANGE ALL ALONG?”
Laylea cried out. Sher had never sounded so angry. The phone rang.
“That is the most irresponsible, unconscionable behavior. Your magic is a gift. A gift.” She turned on her husband. “Answer the phone. Bailey I let you avoid training because I trusted that you were mature enough to handle the morals of power.”
“Hello?” Clark plugged his free ear again to hear over Sher’s tirade.
“YOU! You, of all people, to scare me into thinking you would be stuck blue forever because I let you slide. You wipe that smile off your face.”
Clark blindly reached a hand out to silence her. “Sher. Mr. Bevery, he’s right here. He’s not with Thomas.”
Laylea’s stomach churned and she struggled to sit up, not wanting to throw up on her brother. The burn started in her left foot again and shot through her hips to the right. She growled, chewing at her left leg and then spinning to bite at her right.
“Look at me, Bailey,” Sher continued, yelling in a whisper. “I would never expect that kind of nonsense from you.
“Oh my god, no. No, he didn’t. Sir, I am so sorry but you can’t blame Bailey for—hello?”
Laylea whimpered. She snarled at her stomach.
Sher increased her volume when she heard the click of Clark hanging up. “Never from you. YOU who KNOW what can come of abusing your powers.”
“Sher. Stop.”
“He plays with magic like it’s a game. Like it’s a game, Clark. He’s as bad as I was.”
“Sher!” Clark grabbed his wife’s arms a little too hard.
“Clark.” Sher put her hands on his chest and made him relax his grip. “What’s wrong?”
The dad turned to Bailey. He fell to a seat on the edge of the coffee table, staring at his hands for a script. “It’s Thomas.”
“What?” Sher recoiled from the heat in Bailey’s hands.
“Bailey there was an accident.” Clark choked on the words. “There was an accident and Thomas—”
“Shut up.”
“Bailey.” Clark laid a hand on Bailey’s knee.
The boy swatted it away. “Shut up.”
Laylea wailed, her head back, muzzle pointed at her brother’s chin as she fought against the unseen force that was tearing her apart.
“Bailey.” Sher found her voice.
Clark said the words. “Thomas died.”
His mother reached out to lay a hand on his shoulder. Despite her pain, Laylea climbed up Bailey’s chest to comfort him. He lashed out at both of them.
“No!”
He slapped away his mother’s hand and shoved Laylea from his lap. The little dog fell backwards. A spasm sent her tumbling to the carpet between the couch and the table. Her yelping cut off when she hit the ground.
“Where is he, Dad?” Bailey pushed Sher out of his way. He tore his sweater from the back of the couch. “Where is he?”
“Laylea?” Clark croaked.
“Dad! I can save him!” Bailey screamed from the dining room. He had a hand up, ready to punch his way through the kitchen door.
Sher’s voice filled with panic, “Lee?”
But Laylea ignored them. Her brother was in pain and about to do something stupid. She mustered everything she’d learned from years of watching at her human family talk and screamed, “Bailey!”
Laylea lay sprawled on the floor of the family room, naked limbs crowded between the furniture. She pushed herself up on her new thin human arms, a four-foot long little girl’s body in place of the twelve pound puppy she’d been. Dirty blond hair hung raggedly in her flat-muzzled face. She shook it out of her eyes as she’d seen Sher do thousands of times. There was no pain anywhere. She looked in awe at the room around her. Colors had changed. She saw the vivid ugliness of the orange couch against the brown shag rug that Bailey had always complained about. Her fingers clutched at the long threads she’d chased as a puppy and she saw her thumbs.
“Laylea?”
Bailey stood in the doorway. His sweater fell from his hand and he dropped to his knees. Laylea tried to leap to him but her legs didn’t work the same.
Bailey dove forward and caught her before her face hit the ground. “Laylea?”
She nodded and touched her right hand to his arm.
“Did you know?”
She switched hands.
Bailey’s eyes darted between his sweater and his new human sister. “I have to go,” he moaned. “I can save Thomas.”
She barked twice and remembered her voice. “Stay.”
He whispered, “Did I do this?”
Laylea tilted her head.
“You can’t save Thomas, Bailey.” Clark tore his eyes from Laylea. “He’s gone.”
“He was coming to see me.”
Clark stood. He circled the table to crouch beside his kids. “It’s not your fault.”
Sher hadn’t moved since she’d seen Laylea transform into a girl. Her voice cracked as she said, “The Consortium is here.”
Bailey grabbed his sweater. He wrapped it around his shivering sister. “You can’t blame everything on the Consortium. I did this. He was coming to see me.”
Clark started, “No—”
Sher raced to raise the window shades even as she pointed at the lights flashing from mirror to mirror overhead. Outside, two black SUVs pulled past the street sign. She screamed, “The Consortium is here. RUN!”
Even as they argued with her, Clark and Bailey found their feet taking them to their stashed run bags. Sher ran back to catch Laylea when Bailey let her go.
The girl turned her deep brown eyes up to her mother’s false light ones and Sher’s breath caught. She combed a stray lock of hair out her eyes. “Hi.”
Laylea smiled and shivered.
“We’ve got to get you some clothes. There’s nothing stashed at the cabin for a little girl.”
Clark threw Bailey’s PJ bottoms and Fozzie bear t-shirt into the room. He dropped his and Sher’s go bags by the dining room arch.
“Scissors?” Sher called to him. She grabbed the bottoms.
“Mom.”
Sher looked up from slipping Laylea’s legs into the pants.
“Don’ run.”
She looked away again. “We have to run to keep you both safe.”
“Stop em.”
Clark handed his wife the kitchen scissors. He continued to the map he’d left on the coffee table. “Bailey leaves for college in five months.”
“Six months.” Sher cut the bottoms to fit Laylea.
“Mom.” Laylea put a hand on her mother’s chest. “Where?”
Bailey slowed when he hit the archway. He had his and Laylea’s go back slung across his chest. “Your bags are in the truck. I put your tinkering case in too.”
“Stop them.” Laylea enunciated more clearly on her second try.
“We can’t, Lee.” Sher tore at the second pant leg.
Clark looked towards the front window. “We could try.”
Laylea patted a fist against her mother’s breastbone. “Safe. Where.”
“I don’t understand, Lee.”
Bailey pulled his sister to her feet. He swung her into his arms. “Your excuses, Mom. You had to keep me safe.”
“And we didn’t know where Trask was.” Clark stuffed the folded map into his pocket. “But we do now.”
“Do now,” Laylea repeated.
“But now we have Laylea to—” Sher stopped herself.
Clark put a hand on Bailey’s arm to keep him quiet. Sher gathered the cut off ends
of Bailey’s old pajama bottoms. She set them and the scissors on the coffee table.
Sher stood. She looked at her husband. “He’ll be careful if he has Laylea counting on him.”
Clark nodded.
She put a hand on her son’s cheek and gazed into her new daughter’s brown eyes. “You’ll take care of each other.”
Laylea barked once. Bailey nodded.
“Alright. I’m done with hiding. Let’s end this.”
“This won’t end here.” Clark stopped Sher before she could storm from the room. “The Consortium isn’t out there. Just Trask.”
Sher faced the trio. “So let’s find out where she’s working and blow up her new lab.”
“We need a plan.” Clark glanced out the front window. “We’ve got a minute before they’ll be able to see the house.”
Sher fingered her watch. “Bailey, get my case.”
Bailey turned for the hall. The blast of an air horn echoed through the quiet neighborhood. Bailey nearly lost his hold on Laylea as she popped back into a dog.
Silence reigned for a split second before they heard the crazed barking of an old dog defending his home.
“Woodford!”
Clark and Bailey beat Sher to the door but none of them got there quickly enough.
The shot rang out even louder than the airhorn.
Chapter Forty-Three
Bailey hit the door so hard Laylea thought they’d go right through. He got his hands sorted out from the clothes dangling off her paws and cracked the door before Clark could wrap him in a python grip.
“No! They’d shoot you too.”
“I sent him out there.” Laylea felt Bailey’s tears raining on her head.
Clark growled from the effort of holding his son back. “It’s where he spends most of his time, Bailey.”
They heard car doors slamming and voices carried through the crack. A man with a smooth, deep, British accent said, “Look, Trask, we’ve found some volunteers.”
Clark started at the sound of the voice. He almost lost the fight with his grief-blinded son. Laylea’s ears ratcheted to the sound. She knew that sickly sweet smell. Her body convulsed in Bailey’s arms. He fell to the ground in his effort to not drop her and found himself on the doormat with his arms around the blond girl version of his sister.
She croaked, “Walter!”
A scream from outside ended all debate. Little Ella. Bailey dragged Laylea to the side as Clark leaped over them and out the door.
Two black SUVs blocked the entrance to the cul-de-sac. An impeccably dressed woman walked towards the Hillens' home accompanied by a familiar man. Walter led a small dog on a tight choke chain. These three were followed by a small blond woman in a pantsuit with one inch heels, an older, heavily tanned white guy dressed in the kind of blue coveralls you might see in orange at a prison, and an Asian man wearing the slate and green uniform of a Conditioned Force soldier. This last man had slung the unconscious Ella over one shoulder, Davis over the other.
Walter called out, “Good morning Hillens.”
Clark scanned the neighborhood. Parker stood by the trampled rose bushes, brandishing a crimson air horn branded with the cream colored letters OU. The tiny OLR held him back with one hand. The Ricks’ cat napped on the roof of their porch. Vasavi and Jon came out of the rental cottage as he looked that way. The pregnant wife had one hand on her belly, her cell in the other. She looked at it and shook her head at her husband. He took it from her and hit buttons with no more success. The Consortium team had apparently blocked service. Derrick and the Ricks must not be home or were wisely hiding inside.
“Nice to see you again, Clark,” Walter continued. “I hope spring cleaning went well this year.”
Bailey crawled across the porch to where Woodford’s bloody body lay sprawled down the steps. The dog cried in little yelps as Bailey lifted him to his lap. Laylea echoed him from inside.
“I’d like you to meet my friends.” He gestured to the older man. “This is Felix. The man with your neighbors is 511. And your wife has already met Dr. Jones. Where is your wife?”
Clark barely heard the man. Most of his attention was focused on ignoring the copper smell and constriction in his heart. He concentrated instead on the battle line forming in the street.
“251, 397b, come join us.” Walter turned his back to wave at the SUVs.
A darkly tattooed arm holding a gun extended from the rear window of the closer vehicle. The weak smell of burnt powder dissipated further as the man climbed out, followed by a thin Swedish-looking woman in matching CF togs.
“King? Don’t be shy.” The far vehicle disgorged the largest human Clark had ever seen. This SUV rebounded on its shocks when the enormous Polynesian stepped off the running board. He ambled into the street in a slouch rivaling Bela’s hump. His knuckles actually scraped the ground.
Clark had only a moment to wonder what sort of experiments they’d been trying on this guy before Sher stepped onto the porch behind him and the heat signature around the woman leading the menagerie expanded.
Sher continued down the porch steps, trailing Woodford’s blood in her path
Walter continued his cocktail party banter. “Trask, may I introduce Theta’s wife, Dr. Hillen?”
Sher laughed.
Trask growled, “Don’t try anything, Coogan. I’ll kill the girl.”
Trask made a motion at the Asian CF. He tilted his shoulders so Davis fell to the ground and swung Parker’s little girl around to put his knife against her throat.
“No!” Bailey leapt over Woodford to the bottom of the steps. Before he could reach the street two darts from the Swede’s stun gun stabbed his neck and he fell to the grass. Convulsions danced his body to the curb. Clark didn’t move.
Trask laughed. “Nice father. I see our training has held.”
“Where is Laylea, Dr. Hillen?” Walter asked as if her son weren’t flailing on the ground. “We just want Laylea and Theta. No need to get yourself in the middle of this.”
“Walter,” Trask fixed her bangs. “Plans have changed.”
“Oh?”
Sher opened her mouth to take a breath.
Trask put a lot of twos together and came to the reasonable conclusion that she shouldn’t let her lead researcher speak. She screamed, “Collect them all.”
Many things happened as Sher filled her lungs.
Dr. Jones fired a stun gun at Clark.
251, the tattooed warrior dashed for the house and the little blond girl hiding just inside the doorway.
Felix loped at Vasavi and Jon on all fours while Jon stepped in front of his wife with only a cell phone for defense.
King pounded his chest. He screamed a war cry and focused his gaze on Parker Rucker.
The Swede aimed a knife at Vasavi’s belly.
The Asian CF wasted a moment smiling at Sher before he sliced Ella’s throat. He didn’t see Davis prepping to kick.
Trask herself ran at Kathrine Coogan with a stunner in her hand.
Sher yelled, “SHOE!”
Parker, the OLR, and the renting couple all dropped to the ground to tie their shoes. Vasavi wasn’t even wearing shoes. Clark pulled the inkless ballpoint pen from his pocket. And as Sher pulled off her watch and threw it into the air over the eight visitors, he flipped off both caps. He held it to his lips and sent two tiny silver spheres hurtling at the sparkly watch face.
Just before they impacted, Bailey rebounded from the ground. He hit the CF racing for his sister straight into Jones’ stun gun darts and threw him back into the street. He spun and sent a fireball at the Asian’s face.
Nine pairs of eyes followed Sher’s sparkly watch as it spun across the sky. Even flying through the air himself, Tatts traced its path. When Clark’s pellets hit the face, a bright flash of light blinded them all. Tatts hit the ground as a single high-pitched tone died slowly into silence.
Under this pitch, Sher intoned, “Still.”
And the strangers were still.
Bailey leaped over the unmoving cat-man Felix to reach the renter. He pulled the knife from her chest and ordered the body to heal itself. Jon cried out as the wound closed. He cried out again to find a puddle of water at his feet.
Bailey felt the contraction in Vasavi’s belly before she noticed it. “Mom!”
Sher walked past Trask and Walter, past Dr. Jones who’d tried to condition her when they first met at the clinic. She stepped over the Asian and around the human gorilla to the Rucker’s yard. Parker held Ella tightly in his arms while Davis leaned on his brother. Important bits of his leg had broken off or bent. Sher laid her hand on the shiner swelling his eye shut.
“I am so proud of you, Davis Rucker. You are fearless.” She licked her thumb and wiped the spot of blood away from where the skin had been split before she healed it. She turned to the OLR. “You still park on Denny?”
Parker began, “How do you—”
But his grandmother cut him off. “I do.”
“Get away.” She held Ella’s neck in both hands even as she turned so the renters could hear. “Let’s get Vasavi to the hospital. She’s gone into labor in the middle of the street.”
Jon and Vasavi began chatting excitedly as Bailey practically carried her towards the Ruckers.
And another shot rang through the air.
A cement splinter struck Sher’s leg. She turned. The dark skinned, dark haired, dark eyed CF covered in tribal tatts who had shot her dog stumbled towards her. His right arm raised, jerking and stiff until the gun pointed at her face. Sher took a few steps towards him, away from the Ruckers, until the little lines around his mouth and eyes tightened. One of his eyes burned into her. The other stayed still, staring up. He tried to speak but failed to even part his lips. He tried again. Sher saw his anger growing and the increasing tension in his barely controlled right pointer finger on the trigger.
WereHuman - The Witch's Daughter: Consortium Battle book 1 (Wyrdos) Page 30