by P J Gordon
“Hey, Mikey.”
“Where are you? Josh was sound asleep when I got here. I was about to call you.”
“Mikey, tell me about the video from Manda.” Richard jumped right into the reason for his call.
“Aah,” Mikey said warily. “Lizzy called me and told me what you guys were doing. She wanted my assurance that she wouldn’t be infringing on any copyrights by showing it. She wasn’t taking Josh’s word. I’m sorry Richard. Things were just coming together with Chelsea when it arrived and I didn’t want to jeopardize that. You were hanging on by a thread at that point.” He sounded uncomfortable.
“I understand all of that,” Richard said carefully, “but do we have all the rights to it? Do we have the sign-offs of her collaborator, as well?”
Mikey was confused. “What collaborator?”
“The one who finished it up after she died.”
“Oh! You had me worried for a minute there. I was wondering who was going to be suing us. No, she finished it before she died. There was just some sort of glitch with some of the rights that they weren’t able to resolve until afterward. The lawyer had the completed video along with the papers, signed by her, releasing all of the rights to you. He mailed copies of them. I have them here.”
“Then tell me how a picture that was taken less than an hour before she died ended up in that video?” Richard demanded in a tight voice.
Mikey was silent for a long moment and then he replied slowly, almost cautiously, “I don’t know.”
“Mikey, what’s going on?”
Mikey’s response was definitely hesitant now. “I honestly don’t know Richard. I wouldn’t lie to you about this.”
“You know something Mikey! What happened that day? If you don’t know I’d we willing to bet Kastl does. Where is he?” Richard demanded hotly.
“Well, that’s a problem,” Mikey explained warily. “We don’t know where he is. Nobody I know has seen or heard from him since that day. And if anyone else knows they aren’t talking. He just vanished. All of the team communication has come from higher up. I don’t think he wants to face anyone after letting Tina get to Manda. I think he took it pretty hard.”
“So how do we find him?” Richard growled through gritted teeth. He didn’t blame Kastl, but neither could he spare any sympathy for him.
“Calm down. Let me make some calls and see what I can learn. In the meantime, come back here. We’ll figure this out.”
Richard snapped his phone shut without responding. Something was going on and he was afraid to hope what it might be. “Damn it!” he muttered. He stood motionless in the shadows trying to decide what to do next. His anger and frustration increased when he couldn’t think of anything. He heard a sharp crack and felt a pain in his hand. He looked down and realized he’d been gripping his phone so tightly that he’d crushed it—the shards of glass that remained of the display screen had sliced into his palm. With a snarl of frustration and disgust he hurled it across the parking lot. He transformed his injured hand so quickly it was a blur, then flexed it and slammed it into the side of the trailer, leaving a large dent. He growled at the damage.
“No need to get so upset,” a voice behind him said dryly. “I’m not that hard to find.”
Richard turned to glare at Kastl. The agent stood bare in the shadow of the trailer. Richard could just detect the fading scent of the owl he had been.
“What the hell is going on?” Richard demanded tensely. “What are you hiding, Kastl?”
“Good to see you too, Richard,” was Kastl’s level reply. “Let’s talk.”
Richard took a deep breath and tried to calm down. He needed answers. If Kastl wanted to talk then perhaps he was going to get some.
“What happened to Manda?” Richard asked evenly if still tensely. “Did she…” He couldn’t finish the question, afraid to know the answer, afraid it wouldn’t be the right one, afraid he had let hope outpace reason.
Kastl answered the unasked question quietly. “She’s alive.”
With those two words the light of a thousand suns exploded behind Richard’s eyes. He took one staggering step backward and then half collapsed and half lowered himself to the ground. Pressing his hands to his temples, he leaned back against the tires of the trailer for support. He had refused to acknowledge any hope of this, and now, hearing the words spoken aloud altered his world completely and fundamentally. Manda was alive!
“How? What happened? How is she?” he managed to croak. There didn’t seem to be enough air.
“Like I said, we need to talk,” Kastl replied ominously. Cold dread constricted around Richard’s heart, making it even harder to breathe.
“How is she?” he whispered again. The image of her as he’d last seen her flashed through his mind. It was a picture that had haunted his nightmares ever since—her face and her torso slashed open and bleeding, her arms clutched over her abdomen hiding the worst of the damage done by Tina’s raking claws. He shuddered and squeezed his eyes shut. How could she have survived that? How could she have recovered? What lasting agony had she endured? She’s alive. At least she’s alive. Focus on that.
“Physically, she’s perfect,” Kastl replied carefully.
That startled Richard and his eyes snapped open. How could she have recovered from wounds like that without some permanent damage? How…
“Her injuries were severe,” Kastl continued, “but nothing that the marvels of modern medicine and the magic of ancient blood couldn’t fix.”
And then Richard understood, and his anger flared, a white hot inferno.
“You changed her,” he accused, his voice dangerous. “You knew she didn’t want it, you wouldn’t let me do it, you aren’t allowed to do it, and you did it anyway.” He was instantly on his hands and knees, tensed in a predatory crouch. “She didn’t want that!” As desperately as he wanted her alive and well, he loved her too much to wish her a life she despised—condemned to live as an unnatural monster in her own estimation. For Kastl to force himself on her in that way was worse than rape!
Kastl was unaffected by the overt threat of Richard’s stance. “First of all, surely you know she didn’t mean it when she said you were a monster. She was protecting you and Josh, trying to prevent you from revealing our secret in front of the whole world—one reason I wouldn’t have let you change her. Revealing that is far too dangerous. Secondly, although I did change her, she’s not a shapeshifter. That’s what we need to talk about.”
Richard, taken aback, relaxed his aggressive posture slightly and exhaled.
“How is that possible?” he asked warily. “You aren’t making any sense.”
“Sit back down and I’ll explain. You look terrible.”
“I wish people would stop telling me that,” Richard snapped irritably, but he settled himself back to the pavement.
Kastl looked down at his own unclothed state and then at the rough pavement. “Would you mind lending me your jacket? The ground’s a little chilly.”
Richard shrugged out of his leather jacket and handed it to Kastl, who placed it onto the asphalt and lowered himself onto it.
“Thanks,” he grunted and then sighed. “Okay, here’s the story. First of all, you’re right—Uncle Sam is pretty adamant that I not go around creating semi-immortal, super-human beings, so no, I didn’t change Manda. Though honestly, if I hadn’t had any other option I would have done it anyway. I did have another option though. We’ve done some research and discovered that by chemically altering the therianthropic factor in our blood we can use it to heal someone without changing that person. Well, I suppose that’s not strictly true,” he back-peddled. “Technically, the person is temporarily a shapeshifter, but the shift is limited to that person’s own form and then can’t be repeated. Not a very useful sort of arrangement except that the one transformation is helpful if all you need is to heal someone quickly and completely. It has a very limited application, since it can only be used once on any person. And there are other...limitation
s as well. For example, the altered blood doesn’t stay viable for very long. It’s a matter of minutes. So it’s not something that can be synthesized and saved for later. You have to have a shapeshifter on hand to do it. It worked for Manda though. She was healed completely. No lasting injury. Unless you consider carrying a little bit of me around inside her for the rest of her life an injury.” Kastl frowned almost imperceptibly, then took a deep breath and waited for Richard’s reaction.
“If she recovered so quickly, why would she let me think she was dead?” Richard asked in a barely audible whisper. “Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t she tell me?”
Sensing the plea in the questions, Kastl reassured Richard. “She wanted to tell you. She’s literally made herself sick about deceiving everyone, you most of all. But I wouldn’t let her. I told you I would protect her, whatever it took. If that meant putting you through hell Richard—if that meant putting everyone else through hell—I was willing to do it. I’m sorry. It was the only way I knew to keep her safe. She’d seen Tina and could identify her, and even without that, Chelsea wanted more than anything to see her dead. If those two had known she was alive they wouldn’t have stopped until they succeeded in killing her. Plus, Manda needed to be out of the picture so that Chelsea would approach you. The only way I could ever really keep Manda safe was to eliminate Chelsea and Tina for good. And the only way to eliminate them was to flush them out. Sorry, Richard, but you were the only bait I had.”
Richard eye’s burned with suppressed emotion. “Do you understand what I’ve been through? Do you know what it felt like thinking I’d lost her? That it was my fault?” Richard’s voice was bleak. “Explain to me why that was necessary? Why you felt it necessary to torture me like that?”
Kastl shook his head. “I do understand how you’ve felt—better than you know—but come on! Think about the last months. Think about how you felt. How you reacted. Could you have anticipated the strength of that reaction? Could you have faked that? You’re not that good an actor. You never would have fooled Chelsea and it would eventually have cost Manda her life. Would you have been willing to take that risk? I wasn’t.”
Richard swallowed the angry retort that was on his tongue and considered this. “No. You’re right. You did the right thing,” he finally conceded. “I’m sorry. But where is she, Kastl? I need to see her.” The prospect made his heart pound.
“She’s not far. But I need to ask you a question first. I know how much you love the freedom of being a shapeshifter. You need it like you need air. So what would happen if Manda wouldn’t change for you? She loves you and wants to be with you,” Kastl added hastily, seeing the doubt darken Richards face, “but what if she will always just be human? What would you do?”
“Is that what this is about?” Richard asked with a sad smile. “She loves me but she really doesn’t want to be one of us?” If that was what she wanted Richard didn’t care. He loved her as she was. She would never have to change for him. He wasn’t expecting Kastl’s answer.
“No, what I’m saying is that she loves you and I’m certain she wants to spend the rest of her life with you, but she may not be able to be like us.”
Richard pushed his hands back through his hair and leaned against the tire again. The unexpected kept knocking him off balance and just when he thought we was starting to regain his equilibrium, Kastl would send him reeling again.
“What does that mean?” he asked slowly. He wanted to see Manda so badly it was like a fever burning through his veins, but he knew Kastl wouldn’t be pushed. There would be no forcing anything from him that he wasn’t ready to give.
“One of the possible side effects of the therianthropic treatment is that not only is the recipient not transformed into a shapeshifter, but they cannot ever be changed. The treatment acts like an inoculant against the factor. On a cellular level her body behaves as a therianthrope, but without the ability to shift. Do you see what I mean? It’s like she’s already been changed, though without any of the outward manifestations, so she can’t be changed again. That’s the theory anyway. I’ve tested her blood and it’s not affected by mine at all. It’s never been fully tested in the long term though. There is the possibility that the effect might only be temporary, but that’s a slim chance. So, what would you do if she can’t be changed?”
Richard met Kastl’s questioning gaze and held it. “I would do exactly what I was planning on doing when I thought she was gone. I would grow old and eventually die. If I can do that with her by my side I won’t regret anything.” Seeing a flicker of doubt cross Kastl’s face he continued. “Kastl, until this morning at the airport with Chelsea, I hadn’t transformed fully since the day Manda was attacked. And I wasn’t planning on ever doing it again. So, get to the point. Why are you asking me this?”
Kastl considered Richard for a long moment and then answered truthfully. “Because if you weren’t willing to make that sacrifice, if you were just going to leave her when you found out, I wasn’t going to let you see her. She’d be better off never seeing you at all than watching you leave her all over again.”
“All over again?” Richard was confused. He hadn’t left her. He had always loved her. She’d known he was alive. Surely she’d been anticipating the end of the whole nightmare, when they could be together again. She’d at least had that one consolation that he had not.
Seeing Richard’s lack of comprehension, Kastl sighed. “She’s been reading your press, Richard. Yours and Chelsea’s. And she’s believed it all. And she was at your concert tonight. I don’t know who you were showering with roses, but she thinks it was Chelsea.”
“What?” Richard snarled in outrage. “Chelsea and me? Why didn’t you tell her the truth? How could you let her think that?”
“Would you rather I told her that you were sharing your every waking moment with a psychotic killer?” Kastl snapped back. “Oh, she really would have felt better then! She never would have slept.”
“And the reason you haven’t told her now that Chelsea is gone?” Richard demanded.
“Well, that goes back to my question before, doesn’t it? If you weren’t going to stay with her I wouldn’t tell her. If she thought you’d moved on she’d have an easier time letting go.”
Richard flinched and slowly stood. “Have I passed your test yet Kastl? Can I please see her now?” he asked impatiently. “Please.”
“Yeah. You passed. Let’s go.” Kastl stood up.
“She hasn’t been sleeping well?” Richard asked quickly as the other man rose to his feet.
A frown darkened Kastl’s features. “She hasn’t slept in days,” he admitted bitterly. “She has nightmares...and I can’t protect her from her dreams.” He turned away from Richard.
“Kastl,” Richard called him back. “You love her, don’t you?”
Kastl smiled slightly. “How could I not?”
“And how does Manda feel?” Richard needed to know—was afraid to know.
“No. She loves you Richard. I don’t think she could ever be happy without you.” He paused. “I would have done my best though.” He turned once again and walked away a few steps.
“Alec,” Richard said more softly. Kastl stopped but didn’t turn around and Richard continued in a voice that was little more than a whisper. “You kept your promise. I had no right to ask it, but you kept her safe when I couldn’t. Thank you.”
Kastl nodded. “We’ll be flying tonight. I’ve left some clothes on her balcony for us. I’ll wait for you.” He launched into the air, transforming into a gray owl in mid-leap and soaring higher to wait for Richard.
Slipping into the blackest shadows, Richard quickly removed his clothes and rolled them up inside the jacket he’d retrieved from the ground, tucking his wallet into the middle of the bundle. He spotted a nearby drainpipe that was a suitable hiding place and stuffed the bundle inside. He heard Kastl’s wings above and launched himself into the air as well, flashing into the pale form of a barn owl. He soared after Kastl, with e
very stroke of his wings taking him closer to Manda.
Together they glided through the night with the lights of Denver spread out below them. They traced the course of the moon-silvered river as it ribboned its way through the city. This had always been what Richard loved most about his gift—the freedom of flying with nothing but the wind touching him—and this could very well be the last time he would ever experience it. The thought was easy and weightless, with no regret attached to it. If he couldn’t have this, if he could only have Manda and nothing else, he would still have more than most men could even dream. Anticipation licked through his veins like fire. Very soon he would see her.
Kastl dipped one wing and swooped down silently to a hotel balcony that faced west over the river. French doors were open into the room. As he glided over the rail he transformed in mid-flight and dropped lightly onto the heavily shadowed balcony in human form. Richard followed suit, bare feet dropping silently onto the tiled floor.
Kastl retrieved a pile of clothes from behind a chair in the corner and tossed a pair of khaki pants and a button-up shirt to Richard. As they dressed, Kastl spoke quietly, in a whisper so low even Richard’s enhanced hearing could just make it out.
“Two things. First of all, Manda doesn’t know she may be immune to a complete change. If you weren’t going to be around it didn’t seem relevant, and she already had enough to worry about without worrying about how you’d react to that. Secondly, she doesn’t like to be alone anymore—not really alone, especially at night. Like I said, she has nightmares. She doesn’t always want company, but she panics sometimes and she needs someone to be close by. She’s gotten better, but I think it’s going to be a while before she’s over it completely.” Kastl’s voice was almost tender as he explained the second point.
Richard nodded his understanding. His independent little Manda was shaken and he hadn’t been there to comfort her. Kastl had. He felt a stab of jealousy but quickly crushed it. At least she’d had someone to take care of her...someone who cared about her.
When they were both clothed, Kastl signaled with a finger to his lips for Richard to be quiet and then cocked his head to one side, listening through the French doors. Richard glided up beside him on silent feet and listened as well. The sound of quiet, almost imperceptible weeping made his heart clench and his throat constrict. He reflexively took a step forward, but Kastl stopped him with an arm across his chest. He shook his head and, motioning Richard both to follow and again to be quiet, he stepped onto the plush carpet of the hotel sitting room and walked toward the bedroom door. He walked heavily, obviously trying to make his presence known. He could, when necessary, be even more silent than Richard was being. Richard could hear Manda crying softly in the bedroom. He was close enough now to make out her scent clearly. He inhaled, savoring the clean sweetness of it.