Changeling Dawn

by Dani Harper

  Thinking about her brother’s love life brought hers to the forefront. How could she be so glad to see Josh and feel so awkward around him at the same time? There was no question that she wanted him, wanted to leap into his arms and stay there. But now things were even more complicated. Before, it had given her pause that he was human. Now, he’d been bitten and he’d have to choose. Thankfully, Birkie and Stanton had said they’d handle it—Kenzie didn’t want to be the one to tell Josh what was about to happen to him. She was afraid she’d consciously or unconsciously try to influence his decision. She already felt guilty for wanting him to be like her, but it would be the perfect answer to everything for them. And she wanted so much to share the world of the wolf, the exhilaration and the joy of it, with this man whom her own inner wolf had claimed as a mate.

  It was obvious, too, that her brothers were going to accept him. Culley and Devlin were already treating him like one of the family. And she’d witnessed James clasping Josh’s shoulder, quietly saying “Good job, bro,” before heading off to some other task. Those few words represented immense approval coming from her taciturn brother.

  She glanced around until she spotted Josh sitting with his back against a bunkhouse and grinning at her. He patted the grass beside him hopefully. Oh good grief. How could she resist an invitation like that? Just as she was about to sit down with him, however, a small hand slipped into hers.

  “Kenzie?” Anya had Birkie in tow as well.

  “Yes, honey?”

  “Did anybody find my mom?”

  Omigod. Kenzie exchanged a stricken look with her friend. Birkie gave her a slight nod, which confirmed what she already knew. It was time to tell Anya now and it was very clear that it was her job to do it. But what on earth was she going to say?

  Josh moved first, gathering Anya in to his lap, and Kenzie sat beside him. Birkie stood a little ways off, and Kenzie was reminded of her own mother long ago, having to break the news to her that her uncle and aunt and cousins were gone. She took a deep breath, held Anya’s hand and stroked her hair. And in simple and plain words, she told the child that her mom had died. That the bad men were to blame and especially that it wasn’t the little girl’s fault. She threw an arm around Anya and together she and Josh rocked her as she cried her heart out. There were tears in both of their eyes too.

  Finally, the tears slowed a little, and Anya looked up at them. “Where is she?” she hiccupped. “I want to see her. I want to see my mom.”

  Oh honey, not that. Don’t ask for that. Kenzie wracked her brain to think of something, anything, to tell the child. Because what was left of Anya’s mother was in no condition for viewing.

  “I can help,” said Birkie. She knelt beside them. “Anya, sugar, I want you to lay your head on Josh and close your eyes.”

  “I’m not tired! I want to see my mom.”

  “I know, and I’m not asking you to go to sleep. I just want you to think about your mom for a moment. Think about being at home with your mom, doing something nice together. Can you do that?”

  “Like when she reads me a story?”

  “Just like that.”

  “ ’Kay,” Anya sniffed loudly and scrunched up her eyes. “But just for a minute.”

  Birkie stroked Anya’s silky blond hair and whispered something. It was so low and soft that even Kenzie had to strain to hear the words and even then they seemed to be in a language she didn’t know. Anya’s face slowly relaxed and the hiccups eased away. Soon she was breathing evenly and deeply.

  “You made her go to sleep?” whispered Josh.

  “Not exactly.” Birkie spoke normally, as if Anya could no longer hear her. “I can’t bring her mom back to life or prevent the pain and grief that Anya will have to go through, but I can give her a little closure so she can heal.”

  “How?” asked Josh, frowning. “You’re not fiddling around with her memories, are you?”

  Kenzie opened her mouth to protest, but Birkie patted her arm. “No, Josh, I’m not fiddling with a single thing in that child’s wonderful mind. All I’ve done is open a door for her. And I promise you that whatever she finds there will be just as real as you and me.”

  “The little dragon ran and ran and ran, and as he ran, his wings opened up. Suddenly he was lifted right up into the air! The wind blew him all the way home to his cave in the mountains, where his mother was waiting for him with supper. ”

  Anya had heard that story many times but this time something was different. She lifted her head from her pillow to look. “Mommy?”

  “Right here, honey.”

  And she was—sitting on the bed beside her, with Anya’s favorite pink blanket and a storybook just like always. Anya hurled herself at her mom and wound her arms around her neck, burying her face in her mother’s long blond hair. “The bad men took you, they took you away and I couldn’t find you and then they took me too, and Josh and Kenzie helped me but I still couldn’t find you and I looked and looked.” She burst into tears and her mother hugged her tight, rocking her back and forth until the sobs subsided.

  “You were gone for so long.” Anya sniffed and rubbed her face on the shoulder of her mom’s sweater, taking in the welcome, familiar scent.

  “I know I was. I’m sorry.”

  “I did what you said to do. I ran away and I stayed a wolf for a long, long time.”

  “Yes, you did. You did exactly what I told you, baby, and I’m so proud of you. I know it was hard.”

  Anya looked into her mother’s face. “But the bad men got me anyway. I did what I was told—why didn’t it work?”

  “Sometimes, even if we’re very, very good, bad things can still happen. That’s just life sometimes. The important thing is that you know it wasn’t your fault. It wasn’t your fault at all, Anya. You did everything just right. And you’re going to be just fine.”

  Something was different. Anya could feel it but she didn’t understand what it was. She looked around. “When did we go home? I was with Kenzie and Josh. I helped them when one of the bad men was trying to hurt them and take me away.”

  Her mother nodded. “You were very clever and very brave, honey. And you have to be very brave now, too. We’re not home, sweetheart, not really. We’re just visiting while you’re asleep.”

  “I’m not asleep, I’m awake!”

  “This is a dream, honey.”

  Suddenly Anya remembered everything Kenzie had said to her, and her lower lip began to quiver. “They said you were dead, but you’re not. I can see you! You can’t go away again—I don’t want you to!”

  “People who love you are never far away, baby.” She held Anya tight and rocked her again. “Let’s just cuddle for a while. You like Kenzie, don’t you?”

  “Yeah.” Anya hiccupped as the tears spilled down her cheeks again. “But she’s not you.”

  “No. But she loves you.”

  “But I love you. I missed you!” Anya sat up and knotted her hands in her mother’s sweater. “I don’t want Kenzie, I want you!”

  Her mother smoothed Anya’s hair away from her face, which was sticky with tears. “I love you too, honey, with all my heart. And I would stay right here with you if I could, but I can’t. That’s why I need you to be with Kenzie.” She cupped Anya’s face in her hands and touched her forehead to hers. “It’s okay for you to be sad or mad or upset about it. But there’ll be good things to look forward to. You’ll be part of a pack—remember we used to talk about how nice that would be? Kenzie’s pack has kids that are almost as old as you are. You could play together. I know you’ll have sad days but you’ll have happy times too. I promise you, honey, it’ll get better.”

  “No, it won’t. It’ll never, ever be better if you go away,” declared Anya.

  “Kenzie rescued you, didn’t she? She must love you very much to go to that scary building to get you back.”

  “Yeah, but she got caught and I had to help. I opened the lock all by myself.”

  “That’s my clever girl. Maybe Kenzie
needs you around to help her?”

  Anya thought that was probably true but she wasn’t going to say so. “You’re still gonna leave me, aren’t you?”

  “Not forever. Sometimes we’ll visit when you’re dreaming, just like we are right now.”

  “Really? You’ll come back?”

  “Yes, I will. Not every day but sometimes. Just like this. And next time, you can read me a story, okay?”

  “ ’Kay. Can I pick?”

  “You bet.” Her mother gathered her close. “Just rest now, baby.”

  Anya laid her face on her mother’s shoulder and let herself be rocked for a long, long time.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Kenzie helped Birkie to her feet and hugged her. “Thank you for whatever you did for Anya.”

  “You did the tough part, sugar. I got the easy job.”

  Josh still sat with his back against the bunkhouse and his powerful arms curled protectively around the little girl. She was snoring ever so slightly and her tear-streaked face appeared peaceful at last. “I don’t know what she’s dreaming about but I can feel that it’s good,” said Josh. “Thanks. Anya’s a really great kid, you know.”

  “She’s that and more.” Birkie surveyed Anya’s serene features with satisfaction and murmured softly, “She’s an amazing child. And she’ll be an amazing woman... .” Her voice trailed away and she seemed lost in thought for a long moment.

  “Are you all right?” Kenzie studied her face in consternation, but Birkie shook herself and waved her off.

  “Never better, dear. I have some other things to attend to now. My goodness, this is the slowest escape I’ve ever seen.”

  As she left, Kenzie smiled down at Josh as Anya slumbered on. “Birkie has a point, you know. We’re not exactly running for our lives.”

  He snorted. “We’re just lucky we don’t have to, not yet at least. The IBC staff can’t call for help from this remote location thanks to whatever Devlin did, so we’ve been able to take our time so far. Still, we want to be gone by daybreak. After the fireworks of course.”

  “Of course.” A rumble of thunder made her jump. Culley, Devlin, and Birkie were grouped together near the helicopter pad. A large white chopper gleamed in the waning moonlight like a newly stranded whale still wet from the ocean, but the trio wasn’t paying any attention to it. They were watching the main building, and as Kenzie turned to look too, she saw the stars over it disappearing one by one as if being switched off. A massive cloud, dark and ominous, appeared to boil up from behind the building, eerily rising higher and higher until the building was dwarfed. The moon illuminated the roiling cloud as it gathered strength, and the top of it flattened out into a looming anvil shape. Flickers of greenish light shone briefly here and there in the monstrous column. Kenzie rubbed her arms, aware of the buildup of static energy in the earth, the air. It was exactly what every Changeling drew on in order to shift their shape, but this—this was on a colossal scale.

  Kenzie’s Changeling hearing picked up Birkie’s voice: “I think now would be a good time, don’t you?”

  “You bet,” said Culley. A sudden explosion had Kenzie throwing herself over Anya. The glass blew out of the building, and flames and smoke erupted from the windows. There was nervous laughter from the crowd behind her and she knew she hadn’t been the only one taken by surprise. Although they were all a safe distance away, it was unnerving just the same.

  Unnerving didn’t begin to cover what happened next. Kenzie knew her friend had a lot of powerful abilities, but had very seldom seen them demonstrated. Birkie took great pleasure in doing ordinary things. She went to work at Connor’s clinic every day and ably dealt with paperwork that would choke an elephant and customers that would frighten a Marine. She grew and nurtured her plants from seed, shopped and cooked like everyone else, watched movies, and ordered pizza for fun.

  Yet the immense storm that had gathered directly over the IBC main building was there at Birkie Peterson’s bidding.

  Kenzie flinched as the first lightning bolt struck the building, and thunder pealed almost simultaneously. She held her hands over her ears and felt the vibrations roll through the earth beneath her, through her. Lightning flashed again and again, and the thunder became continuous. She wasn’t afraid of storms—in fact she’d always found them to be exhilarating—but this monster was overwhelming. She turned her face away from the blinding spectacle to check Anya again, certain that the little girl would be terrified. To her surprise, the child slept on. Her head was still on Josh’s chest and he had a protective hand over her ear, but she appeared peaceful.

  “She’s okay,” said Josh, shouting to be heard over the thunder. He held out his arm on the other side, and Kenzie didn’t think twice about diving under his shoulder. The deafening thunder drove away any further thought.

  Eventually the lightning slowed, then ceased, and the cloud itself began to slowly disperse. Whether the storm had lasted a few minutes or a few hours, Kenzie couldn’t tell. All she knew was that her ears were ringing from the thunder and even her body felt jarred from its loud assault. Yet Anya slept on as if nothing had happened and Kenzie reached over to brush her hair away from her face. “How on earth did she manage to sleep through it?” she asked.

  Josh shrugged. “I don’t know what Birkie did, but I’m glad she did it. A storm that size would have been terrifying for a little kid.”

  “It was almost too much for me.”

  The storm had definitely been too much for the building. Kenzie realized with a start that part of the vibrations she’d felt hadn’t been thunder at all but the collapsing of the walls and roof. Nothing was left standing but heaps of fine rubble, punctuated by strange blazes of blue-white flame crowned with daffodil yellow. The effect would’ve almost been pretty if it hadn’t been so alien. “I thought fire was supposed to be orange.”

  “Depends on the temperature. Concrete doesn’t burn but it’ll crack if you get it hot enough.”

  “It’s not cracked; it looks like the stuff you dump out of the bottom of a toaster.”

  “And if the heat was intense enough to do that, everything else is ash.”

  Kenzie closed her eyes for a moment. Josh and Nikki had taken Anya outside with the others, while the Macleods had lingered in the building to perform one last task. Five Changeling bodies were carefully laid out in one of the larger rooms. Culley and Devlin had surprised Kenzie by singing over them, and even James had joined in. Birkie had scattered fireweed flowers and birch leaves over each of them and said what sounded like a blessing. Kenzie hoped they were at peace now, especially Anya’s mother.

  As for Nate and Gessler, their bodies had been placed in a room as far from the others as possible. It wasn’t right for their ashes to touch those of the Changelings who had died from their actions. Birkie hadn’t visited that room, and no one sang for them. It was sad, thought Kenzie, but it was just.

  Culley approached, with two laptops tucked under one arm. “I’m taking these with us.” He patted the black one. “In this one, I’ve got a good overview of what the scientists here have been working on. This one”—he tapped the silver one—“is my ticket to linking up to IBC’s satellite. Between the two of them, we’ve got a helluva lot of email addresses, so we know who’s been getting all this information. We may need to know that in the future. And of course, I’ll be sending them all a little present which I hope will wipe out whatever data about Changelings they’ve got stored on their own computers.”

  “That’s damn good news,” said Josh and touched his brow in salute. “Wish you could do the same with the staff’s memories of us.”

  “Some of us don’t have to worry about that.” Culley pulled a little leather pouch from beneath his shirt. “Thanks to Birkie’s mojo.”

  Josh looked at Kenzie, obviously hoping for a translation.

  “Don’t ask me how it works,” she said. “I only know that if you’re wearing one of these little bags, strangers can’t remember your face. Our pac
k has used them before.”

  He looked at the smoldering rubble that had once been a very large building, then put his hand over the pouch that hung around his neck. “Birkie and my Gramma Kishegwet would have a lot to talk about,” he said quietly.

  Guillermo and Shaggy Sam walked by, supporting Beau between them. Rico hadn’t yet Changed, and trailed the group on four feet—but at least he was walking. Everyone was on their feet now and organizing to leave.

  “I guess it’s time to move out.” Kenzie leaned over to pick up the sleeping Anya, but Culley was quicker. He scooped the child up over his shoulder, winked, and walked away with her.

  Josh put out a hand and let Kenzie help him to his feet. “It’s been a great party but we want to be gone before the sun comes up and somebody reports a forest fire from all the smoke. And IBC might send someone from the outside once they figure out that communication’s been disrupted.”

  “It’s going to be awfully crowded in the trucks,” said Kenzie. “Too bad we couldn’t have kept the Humvee for a while longer.”

  “Stanton’s going to take my truck back, and your brothers are taking their own of course. Can’t leave the vehicles here after going to all the trouble of eliminating evidence. There’ll be two IBC trucks and the ATVs for the staff to make their way elsewhere—they’ll be free to go as soon as we leave.

  “But there’s a perfectly good chopper right over there just begging to be borrowed. In fact, I have a flight leaving right now for Telegraph Creek.”

  “You’re leaving?”

  “Just for a short while. I want to visit my gramma and my sister, all the rest of my relatives. You should come; you’d like them. And besides, wouldn’t you rather fly than bounce over that damn goat path again?”