Current

by Rian Harper

  I could hear the crackle of lightning coming from behind me. Everett had his back to mine and Emma’s, keeping an eye on where Declan and Keenan had been.

  “A little help back here! I can’t seem to hit them.” Everett shouted to anyone who could give him assistance.

  I kept my eyes trained on Cade as I thought about the problem that lie before us. Emma would not be much help to Everett one-handed, and if she broke our touch, I would be powerless while facing Cade. Jasmine was resting on her knees now, clearly in pain from what little power she collected and discharged only moments before. It seemed like the shifters had the upper hand. There was only one thing I could do.

  I gently took Emma’s hand into mine and pulled it away from the back of my neck. “Help Everett with those two.” Hurt and betrayal filled her eyes as she began to protest. I pressed my lips against hers before she could get a word out. An electric sensation traveled down my spine, but I knew it wasn’t from the powers flowing through me. This sensation was emotional. “I’ll be fine.”

  “Guys!” Everett’s volume startled us out of the moment. Emma’s power drained from my body as she reluctantly turned and broke our contact.

  It was now my goal to get to Jasmine and heal her. Cade stood to the side, waiting for me to make a move toward her. I took a step forward, wondering what would happen. Our eyes locked and he growled a deep warning at me as he moved closer to where Jasmine was kneeling in the grass. I decided to move in an arch away from Everett and Emma, to try and get to Jasmine at a different angle. Cade matched my movements as I side-stepped in a circle.

  I crouched down slightly with my arms held out, as if I were ready to catch something being thrown at me. “You remember what happens when I touch one of you?” Cade stopped when he came directly in the path between Jasmine and me, his tail flicking back and forth in anticipation. “You better hope you kill me instantly.”

  I started running toward Cade, which caught him by surprise. He hesitated slightly before charging toward me in return. My heels dug into the soft ground helping to propel me forward into the claws and teeth of a sadistic killer. All my senses heightened as I watched Cade leap toward me in what seemed like slow motion. His mouth was open, fully exposing his long, sharp teeth. His claws were extended, waiting to rip into my skin as soon as they made contact. The roar emanating from him echoed in my ears, drowning out the sound of my heart beating ninety miles an hour.

  Cade hit me like a freight train at full speed. His muscular feline body easily forced all the air from my lungs on contact. I could hear my spine crack as my back crashed into the ground. A crushing pressure surrounded my throat, making my gasps for air impossible. I was stuck in a rigid state with my mind trying to process everything that was happening to my body. Cade’s black fur was blocking out most of the light blue morning sky. White spots started popping up, obscuring my vision, until they turned a blood red color, leaving me gazing up at the sky through a hazy crimson screen.

  Somehow my mind started making sense of what was happening. Cade had his jaws around my throat, and he was squeezing the life right out of me. The blood vessels in my eyes must have burst from the immense pressure he was delivering to my head, which was what made my vision change. Suddenly I felt it. The power fluctuating in my cells. I could feel Cade’s bite get tighter as my body started to morph. My vision cleared slowly as I drew off of his superior healing factor to heal what damage he had inflicted. I let out a low growl as I managed to get my paws underneath him so that I could kick him off of me.

  I kicked and scratched with my hind legs, trying to get the rival beast from on top of me. Unable to move him, I finally found his face with my front claws and raked them across his eye, forcing him to break his grip. I slowly rose up and sniffed the air, catching the scent of many things. Several human smells filled my nostrils, as well as those of other cats, and a few woodland animals I couldn’t immediately identify.

  To my right was a smaller human female. I could smell blood coming from her. Over to my left, there were two more humans who seemed to be locked into a conflict with two other cats. Straight ahead was my nemesis. He shook his head and pawed at the eye I had just left a gash in. Blood trickled down the side of his face from the fresh wound. He met my gaze and let out a roar. He was angry. The roar was a challenge. I accepted his challenge when I roared back at him.

  We charged towards each other at full speed. Grass and dirt kicked up all around us when we collided, trying to get the best of the other. I could hear his heart beat quicken. He was nervous. After a few swipes of our paws at each other, a sound rang in my ears, startling me. Blinding pain that was originating from one of my back legs ripped through my body. My body immediately shifted back to human when the pain wracked me, and I fell to the ground, clutching my right hip. I’d been shot.

  Warm stickiness seeped from the wound as I pressed my hand harder into where the pain was coming from. I grit my teeth and squeezed my eyes shut, trying to stamp down the urge to scream as loud as I could. When I opened my eyes, I saw Cade standing over me, his whiskers on one side stained from the blood still dripping from his eye. He quickly pushed me onto my back with his paw, making sure not to stay in contact with my skin for too long a time so that I couldn’t draw off of his ability.

  My bare back hit the cold, dew-covered blades of grass, which sent shocks of chill up and down my body. The t-shirt I was wearing completely ripped off the last time I shifted, leaving my torso totally exposed to the cool air. Cade stared down at me as I squirmed from the immense pain that gripped me. I could see the thoughts behind his eyes as he tried to conjure the best way to dispatch me for good. He couldn’t keep in contact with me for too long a time, or I would just shift again and heal. I could almost see the lightbulb flicker on above his head as he decided how he would do it. A quick slash of his claws across my neck. He raised his paw to deliver the fatal blow when suddenly he disappeared from in front of me.

  I felt something fall on top of me. It was Jasmine. She had pushed Cade away from me before collapsing onto my chest. I focused on her power now as it started flowing through me. A small piece of metal started pushing against my fingers that were laying on my hip, trying to keep the blood from gushing. As the gunshot wound started to close, it was expelling the bullet out of my body. When I knew it was out completely, I let it fall to the ground. I took in deep breaths as the pain subsided.

  “Are you okay?” I inquired through labored breathing.

  Jasmine picked her head up. “I am now.” She stood and helped me to my feet.

  As I scanned the meadow before us, I noticed that Cade was just then picking himself off the ground after he had been hit by Jasmine’s shockwave. Emma and Everett were a little beyond the spot Cade had landed still going back and forth, trying to connect their bolts of electricity with Keenan and Declan.

  “Keep your hand on me.” I instructed Jasmine as we started walking toward where Emma and Everett were.

  Cade still hadn’t quite gathered himself together by the time we reached his location, which made it easy for me to send him flying away from us with a pulse I had been building up. He launched through the air until he hit the ground fifty yards away. The impact forced his body to shift back to his human form. One down, two to go.

  When Jasmine and I reached Emma and Everett, I latched onto Emma’s upper arm and constructed a force field around the four of us as soon as I could feel both powers laced together. Declan and Keenan paced back and forth, panting from the rigorous evasive maneuvering they had been doing. I looked back to where Cade landed and saw him sit straight up. He stood on shaky legs and stumbled over to where we were.

  “Looks like we are at a standstill again.” He laughed as he wrapped his arm around his abdomen, clearly still in some pain from his impact. “Let’s find out if that thing is bulletproof, huh?”

  My eyes widened as he raised his arm in the air, like he had earlier, signaling the mysterious gunman in the woods to fire at us. The for
ce field had held up fine until now, but a bullet was a different story. I had no idea what was going to happen next. The gunshot rang out through the meadow, this time sounding louder than before, as if it were coming from a different gun. A larger one. The force field fluctuated when the bullet struck behind us, but fortunately stayed intact.

  “Lucky you.” I could hear the bones in his hand break as he reared his arm back, then brought his balled-up fist into contact with the force field. He stared into my eyes unflinchingly, evidently not bothered by the state of his shattered hand.

  “What are you going to do now, Nate? There’s nowhere to go. Nowhere to hide. Are you just going to stay in this bubble until you starve to death?”

  I didn’t answer. I just stared ahead into his emerald eyes. He quickly lost his temper and started wailing on the protective energy standing between us.

  “Come on you coward! Let’s finish this! Is that all you can do?! Hide behind a shield?!” He pounded his fists down again and again yelling as loud as he could.

  Finally, I had had enough. Cade was right, it was time to put our conflict to an end. “You haven’t even begun to see what I can do.”

  My words struck him hard. He stopped his fit of anger and backed away toward Declan and Keenan as I made the shape around us smaller. I instructed Everett to grab my arm so that I could have as much power to draw from as was possible. The shimmering shape continued to shrink in towards us as I pumped energy from Everett, Emma, and Jasmine, collecting everything I could into my core. The small rocks on the ground started to vibrate from the power I was building. Long arcs of electricity leapt from my body in all directions as a white light began to envelope me.

  “Nate! Stop!” I heard one of my compatriots’ voices, though which one it was I wasn’t sure.

  I closed my eyes and concentrated as the pressure built within me, layer on top of layer, to a far greater degree than I had felt before. There were noises coming from all around. There was screaming, shouting, rumbling, and crackling; a cacophony of chaos that filled my ears. When I felt like I couldn’t contain the power that I was holding within any longer, I let out a guttural scream and released it in all directions.

  I opened my eyes in enough time to see an enormous explosion of power rippling through the meadow. The shifters were running towards the trees, trying to escape its grasp, but were unsuccessful. Cade quickly shifted into a cat before it made contact with his body, sending him flying between trees through the forest, out of sight. Declan too suffered the same fate as the electric shockwave reached him. As it connected with Keenan, it thrust him into a large boulder. I heard a loud crack when he slammed into the huge rock. His body shifted back to human and fell limp to the ground.

  The bands of electricity that spread across the meadow singed every blade of grass, turning them dark brown. The blast was so far-reaching that it even split in two a few of the trees at the beginning of the wooded areas on either side of the clearing. I stood in awe of the destruction that followed the release of power that I’d built up. I looked down at my feet where Everett, Emma, and Jasmine were lying, passed out from the blast. I reached down to check each of their breathing, which was faint but even.

  As soon as I stood back up, I heard another gunshot ring out as a bullet ripped through my left shoulder sending me tumbling backwards. When I landed flat on my back, the air left my lungs. My ears were still ringing with the sound of the shot that pierced through me. I couldn’t tell how much time went by before I saw his face appear above mine.

  “This wasn’t how this was supposed to go.” The sun glinted off of his black-framed glasses as he bent down over me, straddling my torso.

  I choked out his name as soon as I could form it on my tongue, still bewildered from the sight of him. “Clark.”

  He was wearing what looked like a tactical outfit, all black with straps and zippers positioned everywhere. I could see a handgun strapped to his hip, along with an array of knives and bullets tucked here and there.

  “I saw you die.” My voice was hoarse as I spoke.

  “No, you saw what we wanted you to see. A lot of blood. You assumed from there.” His English accent seemed harsher than the first time I met him.

  It dawned on me. He was the reason Cade and the others found us so quickly. It was because he was keeping in contact with Jasmine, and she told him where we were. I tried to lift my good arm so that I could punch Clark in the face, but he quickly reacted and pinned it back to the ground.

  “He wanted to kill you himself, but you turned out to be much more of a handful than we originally thought.” Clark unzipped a pocket on his chest and pulled out a syringe filled with an amber-colored liquid.

  I tried to knock it out of his hand and sit up, but he overtook me again easily. He stepped on my forearms with his shoes, then dug his knees into each of my shoulders, making me wail from the pain as he pressed all of his weight into the fresh bullet wound.

  “Wait until I tell Jasmine.” I seemed to be able to get the words out.

  “Oh, she’ll never know. By the time she wakes up, you’ll be dead.” He uncapped the needle that was fastened onto the syringe. “Goodbye Nate. You’ve made this assignment the most interesting we’ve ever had.”

  Before I could think about what that meant, he jabbed the needle into the side of my neck and pushed the contents of the syringe into my blood stream. I arched my back and flailed, trying to shake Clark off of me. I struggled for a few seconds until my muscles just didn’t have enough strength left in them. The last thing I remember seeing was Clark rising off of me before tucking the syringe back in his pocket and walking out of view.

  The poison was taking effect. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t speak. All I could do was writhe silently in agony as I lie there dying. The fire was engulfing me. As the minutes passed, the flames inched closer to my heart, weakening every beat. My lungs felt like they were full of air, but I couldn’t exhale. All I could see now was a red haze. I wanted so badly to picture Emma’s face one last time, but I couldn’t. Nothing but pain of death occupied my thoughts. The last thing I remember before slipping into the blackness of death was the sound of my final heartbeat as it pounded in my ears. Then…silence.

  The Awakening

  -As Witnessed by Everett

  Pain. That's all there was. Pain. Nate had really done a number on all of us when he let loose that shockwave mixed with mine and Emma's current. He was drawing off all three of us at once. I didn’t know what to expect in the aftermath, but this sure wasn’t it. I opened my eyes to see the midday sun shining down on me. It took me a few minutes to pick myself off the ground, and when I finally did, I couldn't believe my eyes. Not only did Nate knock us all out, but he lay waste to the whole meadow. It was nearly unrecognizable. I'd never felt that much power surge out of me. It was greatly beyond anything that I ever could have summoned myself. Toward the pinnacle of Nate's draw, I felt like I was going to tear in half, almost as if he were ripping the power out of me instead of just building on what was already there.

  I bent down and checked on Emma first. She was breathing slowly, like she was in a deep sleep. Jasmine looked to be in the same condition. I then turned my attention toward Nate, and my heart skipped a beat. He wasn't breathing. I shook his shoulders vigorously and called his name to try and rouse him. No luck. I checked for a pulse; first the carotid, then the radial. Nothing. He felt cold to the touch. I had no idea how long I had been out or how long Nate had been the way I found him, but survival mode kicked in and I started chest compressions. I had to fight back tears as I heard his ribs crack one after the other. I kept going, hoping he would take a breath. Two minutes passed, and I went in for mouth-to-mouth. With no breath sounds and still no pulse, I went back to compressions. One, two, three, four, five...I counted along out loud. It dawned on me that I was a walking defibrillator. Maybe I could shock his heart, and he would come back. I put my left hand on his chest, and my right hand on his side, then delivered a charge. His body arc
hed from the jolt, then sank back down, still lifeless.

  I couldn't stop. I started my circuit over again. Compressions, breathing, shock, over and over. I couldn't accept that he was gone. I wasn't going to. Nate had become like a brother to me. My best friend. It had been just Emma and I for so long that I had forgotten what true friendship felt like until Nate came along. I was determined to save him.

  I had no idea how long I had been performing CPR when Emma finally woke up. When she was oriented enough to know what was happening, tears started rolling down her cheeks. I hated to ask her, but it had to be done. The more compressions I did, the more tired I became. She had to take over so I could rest. She came to his side and knelt down, never taking her eyes from his face. When she started compressions, her sobbing became uncontrollable. She couldn't handle both at the same time. She stopped and buried her face in her hands. As tired as I was, I had to start back where I left off.

  "Emma, you have to pull yourself together and help me. I know it's hard to see him like this, but we have to try and save his life. I can't keep doing this by myself." I gasped the words through my labored breathing. Emma didn't respond. She just kept crying.

  "Emma!" I yelled so loudly at her, I startled her, and she looked at me enveloped in a sadness I never wish to see again.

  "At least shock him so I can rest." I implored her. I showed her where to place her hands, and sat down for a few seconds while she tried to give out some of her current. It was barely enough power to make Nate tremble, much less enough to do any good for reviving a still heart.

  "Emma!" I yelled at her again, making her jump once more.

  "I can't do it." She said defeated.

  "Do it!" I screamed as a tear escaped down my cheek.