by K. R. Willis
I braced for the pain I knew would come, but after a few seconds of still not feeling anything, I realized something had changed. The amulet I wore around my neck—and never took off—burned gently against my chest. With me expecting the burning from the hot water, I hadn’t realized what it was doing until now. I risked a glance down and noticed it glowed, a faint white light under my shirt.
“Thank you,” I whispered to the young witch who had given it to me, thinking at the time it was just a pretty trinket.
Khalid leaned closer. “What was that?” He grabbed me by my soaked nightshirt and hauled me even with his face. The nightshirt was white with classic cars and trucks on the front, so I prayed it would keep him from seeing the glowing crystal. If he figured it out and pulled it off, that would be the end. The numbness crawled all the way up to my waist, my panic rising with it. What the hell was I supposed to do?
Got anything? I asked Rya. Anything at all? She’d been around for a long time, seen many things when she belonged to Raging Buffalo. Perhaps she could think of something.
Most of my defenses are as a puma, or healing, she snarled. I don’t know what to do. She sounded forlorn, and a little lost. Her job was to protect me, but neither of us knew how to combat telekinesis belonging to one helluva powerful vampire.
“What’s this?” Khalid suddenly asked. He reached for the amulet glowing beneath my shirt.
Shit.
Terror struck me like a living thing. I couldn’t let him take the amulet. Not only would it allow the hot water to scald me alive, but it would allow whatever I felt it was keeping at bay, in. I fought like a wild woman. Hitting, slapping, grabbing for his eyes. All my blows seemed to land rather harmlessly, though he did look surprised for a second when I clawed a nasty scratch across his arm. He smiled at me then, blood seeping from the cut, and lifted the amulet out from under my shirt, away from my skin.
The loss of contact seemed to dull its protective power, and the scalding heat of the water registered for the first time. Rya and I both screamed again as the pain I’d been expecting earlier finally came. I’m not sure what happened next.
One second Rya and I were both drowning in pain, the next I felt her pulsing through me as though we were one being rather than two separate entities. I felt her soul as though it was mine; our hearts beat as one. My nerve endings came alive; the sensation of fur rippling along my skin made me shiver. Khalid smiled as he watched me writhe in agony. Just as he was about to rip the chain from around my neck, I swiped at him with my right hand, my nails connecting with tender flesh. He dropped me—and, more importantly, the amulet. It landed in the dip between my breasts, the soaked shirt drooping enough that half of it touched my shirt, the other half skin. As soon as it made contact with my skin again, the scalding sensation disappeared.
Khalid staggered back. When he pulled his hand away from his face, it was covered in blood. I gasped. Four wide gashes marred his otherwise pristine face. Muscles and bone showed through the gaping cuts.
I gazed down at my hands, and saw that they were no longer hands, but Rya-sized paws. Shocked at what I’d done, it took me a second to realize my legs were no longer frozen, and that I was standing. I’d surprised him enough he’d lost his concentration.
Rya realized it the instant I did. She ripped herself from my side without warning, no longer held by his mind. She landed on him with a massive leap, taking him completely by surprise. They crashed into the counter as Rya latched onto his neck, the way she would a large prey animal.
The surprise disappeared from Khalid’s face, and anger quickly replaced it. He grabbed her by the scruff of the neck and pulled, but she dug her claws in, sinking them into his flesh all the way to the pads of her toes. She held on tight. He roared his outrage, and she growled back.
Khalid wrapped his other hand around her neck, no doubt intending to strangle her, but she jerked her paws backward, opening up bone-deep gashes everywhere she’d dug them in. He rolled across the floor in an effort to dislodge her, but instead of throwing her off, it put them in a position where she was able to latch her massive jaw around his throat. Like a bulldog, she clamped down and didn’t let go.
It was over after that. Khalid collapsed to the floor with Rya on top of him, a huge, gaping hole where his neck used to be.
He fought her weakly, his brain still trying to send messages to his arms, his eyes wide and startled. They morphed full black, his fangs descending, as though he might try to sink them into Rya and drain her blood for the strength to heal, but that only lasted an instant before he went completely still. I looked away, and stared down at my own hands. They were mine again, no longer puma paws.
What the hell just happened? I asked Rya as I climbed out of the shower, and stumbled toward my bedroom, dragging a towel off the wall hook on my way past so I could dry myself off.
I’m not sure, she said, sounding uneasy. One minute, I was myself, the next I felt like I was a part of you. It was difficult to tell where I began and you ended.
Yeah, me too. Everything seemed hazy, like I was in a daze. The room spun for a moment. The wall supported me as I made my way over to the bed. I stripped off my soaking wet night clothes, toweled off, threw on a pair of pajamas I found in the floor nearby, then climbed under the covers. The soft cotton fabric felt like sandpaper as it slid over the spots that had gotten burned when Khalid pulled the amulet away from my skin. My teeth began chattering, and I shook like a junkie who needed a fix.
Shock. The word came to me out of nowhere. I was going into shock.
“Rya, I need my phone. Quick.” She padded into the room, snatched my phone off the nightstand, then the mattress shifted when she leapt on top of it. A second later, my phone dropped from her mouth onto the covers, followed by drops of blood. Ignoring the blood, I pulled up Sam’s number, and sent him a text.
Khalid followed home. Dead. Help. ASAP.
The phone fell from my fingers as the shivering intensified. I snuggled deeper into the covers, gritting my teeth against the pain that kicked in full force as the adrenaline fled my system. Rya lay down next to me, her fur-covered body pushed up against mine as far as she could get it in an attempt to warm me.
I will stand guard until Sam gets here.
I wrapped my arms around her, and welcomed the darkness.
∞∞∞
“Keira? Keira, can you hear me?”
My eyelids dragged open, heavy and barely willing to move. A weightless cloud carried me aloft, and I wanted desperately to let it. Sam leaned closer to me, and I struggled to focus on his stubbled features. It looked like he hadn’t shaved in a couple days. His brows furrowed together as he stared at me.
“What happened?” I asked, not remembering for a moment where I was, or why I was floating.
“You don’t remember? Khalid, the burns?”
The mention of Khalid’s name brought everything back full force, and I tried to sit up, but Sam gently pushed me back down on the bed.
“It’s fine,” he said. “He’s dead, and you’re healing, slowly. Rya’s helping, and everything probably feels fuzzy because of the painkillers I gave you for the burns. Second degree, so not as bad as they could have been, and only on your lower legs.” He felt my forehead with the back of his hand, then let it drop to my wrist where he felt for my pulse.
“I think we can do away with this now.” He pulled a pillow out from under my feet, set them down gently on the mattress, and tucked them back under the covers. He adjusted the thick blanket he’d added on top of my coverlet, and tucked it in around me. “You need to rest. I’ll stay and watch over you while Rya finishes healing the burns, then you can explain to me why there’s an ancient vampire lying in your bathroom with his throat missing.”
I wanted to respond, but the floating cloud and heavy weight tugging on my eyelids carried me away again.
When my eyes opened some time later, sunlight streamed in through the cracks in the blinds on the windows. The skin on my legs fel
t tight when I rolled over onto my back, but nothing hurt, other than the headache that slowly formed behind my temples. Most likely from the painkillers.
Rya?
Everything is fine. I’ve healed the worst of it, but there may be some lingering soreness or tightness. That will pass.
Thanks, Rya.
You’re welcome. I must rest now. Try not to get into any more trouble for a while. All this excitement is draining.
Ha, tell me about it. I felt her settle down in my mind. The image of her resting her head on her paws made me smile, but then the smile faded as I thought about how once again, she’d exerted herself to help me.
I blew out a deep breath, thankful to be waking up at all after facing down Khalid, but dreading what killing him would mean. The Council would be pissed when they found out. Groaning, I pushed myself into a sitting position. The bedroom tilted half a degree, then righted itself, letting me know I could probably stand without finding myself face to face with the carpet again.
My legs held when I stood; a rush of exhilaration ran through me that I could feel my feet again. I hoped like hell I never faced another being that possessed telekinesis again. The thought of Loukas coming back momentarily ruined my mood, but I pushed it to the side. He hadn’t returned yet, and if the spirits were on our side, he never would escape the Evil One’s lair.
Following my nose, I found my way into the kitchen where Sam stood preparing what looked like meatloaf. He glanced at me over his shoulder, then went back to chopping the onions I knew he would fold into the beef and pork mixture that sat in a glass mixing bowl a foot away. He looked so domestic standing in my kitchen, towel draped over his shoulder, hair pulled back into a ponytail so it wouldn’t get into the food, that I forgot for a moment how much of a badass he was in a fight.
“Are you hungry?” he asked. He scooped up the onions with the side of his knife and placed them in the mixture, then set to work mixing everything together with his hands. He’d already put the rest of the ingredients in the bowl, so it wouldn’t be long before he formed it into a log on the cookie sheet I found patiently waiting on the stove, already lined with parchment paper. I headed for the fridge to fetch the bacon.
Now that he’d mentioned it, and the smells of food being prepared permeated my home, my stomach growled like a starved lion. “Famished, actually.” I handed him the bacon and watched as he brought the whole thing together and popped it in the oven. He set the owl timer I had sitting on a small shelf, and then motioned for me to head to the dining table. We each took a seat. Time for my explanation.
It took about fifteen minutes, but I fessed up to everything. The amulet getting warm, the strange feeling I had when I thought about taking it off, the nightmares. Then I told him about our meeting with the Council, and what I’d had to tell them in order to acquire the Aqua Vitae, and ended with Khalid in my bathroom, and the weird thing that had happened with Rya.
Sam didn’t say anything through the whole account. He just listened. When I was done, I sat back in the chair, happy to have all the secrets I’d been keeping from him out in the open, but nervous what he would say.
After several minutes, he said, “Most of the stuff that is happening to you has never happened to anyone that I am aware of, so the majority of this is just speculation. If I had to guess, the amulet getting warm is probably a warning of some kind, but I have no idea what. I’m just thankful it did what it did in the shower or you would have ended up in the burn unit for sure. The nightmares are something only you can work through. They are tied to your subconscious, and the trauma you experienced when you went through the real-life version. If you can’t get through them on your own, ask your father to help you.”
I hadn’t thought about that, so I nodded, happy he’d mentioned it.
“As for what you had to tell the Council about Spirit Warriors, only time will tell what comes of it. I doubt I would have made the same choice, but each warrior has to choose their own path. It’s part of what makes you who you are.” He excused himself for a moment and went to check on the meatloaf.
The fact that he wouldn’t have made the choice to tell the Council about our Spirit Warriors weighed heavy on my heart, but it was done now, and I’d do it again if given the choice. I waited quietly for him to sit back down. As soon as he did he continued.
“That last part about you and Rya concerns me. I have heard of that happening before, a long time ago.” Shivers ran down my spine. “You obviously know the story of how the first Spirit Warrior came to be, so I won’t rehash those events, but most people haven’t heard the tale of what happened to that warrior afterward.
“He and his wolf spent over forty years together. It was rumored they became so in tuned with one another the warrior could use his wolf’s senses as his own. He embraced this, and used it on a regular basis to hunt and fight, perfecting the technique and working to utilize more and more of his wolf’s natural abilities.
“Until one day, he absorbed so much of his wolf, and embraced his wolf so entirely, they became one being. There was no longer a man and a wolf. They became something else altogether. They didn’t qualify as a shapeshifter either, for the warrior could no longer shift back to himself. He became lost inside his wolf’s body, their souls locked in an epic battle for dominance. The warrior went mad,” he said as the timer went off. He put on an oven mitt and pulled the meatloaf from the oven, then shoved the door shut with his hip and set the pan on top to cool.
“The tattoo joins the two of you together, but keeps her separate,” he added. “If you had looked, Rya’s tattoo would have been missing from your side during your temporary meld with her in the shower.”
“How do they know he went mad?” I asked as I retrieved two plates from the cabinet and set them on the counter. Then I placed a knife and fork on each plate.
Sam turned to face me. “Because the wolf started behaving like a rabid animal,” he said, sadness in his voice. “The elders made the hard decision to put him, them, down, before they killed anyone. My great-grandfather was one of the elders. As he told it in passing down the story to my grandfather, then father, it was one of the hardest decisions they ever had to make, and one they didn’t take lightly.”
With that sad note hanging in the air between us, we set to work filling our plates, and then took our seats at the table. We ate in silence. I struggled to absorb all the information he’d just given me, and I worried what it all meant.
Would Rya and I really lose ourselves if we bonded too closely? I already felt like I’d known her my whole life and couldn’t imagine what I’d do without her, but the thought of becoming lost inside her puma body held no attraction for me. She was perfect as she was, and I intended to keep her, and myself, as we were.
I do not wish to lose who I am either, Rya added. The good thing is that we were under extreme duress when it happened. We didn’t choose it like the warrior did with his wolf. We’ll just have to be careful in the future, now that we know what can happen.
Yeah. Extremely careful. I finished my meatloaf and wiped my mouth with a paper towel. “That was delicious,” I praised Sam. He’d always been a good cook, but had become even more of one since moving out on his own after high school.
“Thanks.” He smiled. When he stood to rinse the dishes and put everything away, I joined him. “I opened your windows in the bathroom to let the sunlight in,” he said suddenly as he scrubbed our plates with a scrub brush. He paused for a moment and looked at me. “Khalid is no more. I swept up the ashes, and bleached the blood.” He turned back to his scrubbing, silent.
The fact that Khalid had been returned to dust didn’t surprise me. In fact, killing a vampire was preferable to killing almost any other supernatural creature because they turned to ash when touched by sunlight. What better and easier way to dispose of a body, or hide evidence? Of course, I would have to tell Leo what happened. I trusted him enough now to know he wouldn’t condemn me, and hopefully he would be able to help me figu
re out how to keep the Council from finding out.
Sam and I made quick work of rinsing the rest of the dishes and putting away the leftovers. Before I knew it, he was on his way out the door. As soon as the door clicked shut behind him, I grabbed my phone. Since the sun hadn’t quite set yet, the chance of Leo being up was slim, but I dialed his number anyway. When it kicked over to voicemail, I left him a message to call me as soon as he rose for the evening.
I figured I had a couple of hours before Leo called, so I dressed, tugged my hair into a ponytail, and headed for Sally’s to check on George. Leo said we should have a pretty good idea by tonight if he would pull through or not. With the way my day had gone, I needed some good news.
Sally opened the door. Her hair jutted out in several directions and she looked worn out, the dark circles under her eyes a dead give-away.
“How is he?” I asked. She led the way down the short hallway to her guest room.
“He’s a fighter,” she said over her shoulder.
Sally pushed open the door, then moved to the side so I could enter first. The sight that greeted me this time was drastically different from the last. The ashy-blue color of his skin had receded, allowing his tanned tone to come back through, and the sunken-in spots had begun to fill back out. He didn’t quite look like himself pre-poisoning, but it was definitely an improvement. A fighter indeed.
“His color is much better,” Sally said, echoing my own thoughts. “But he’s not out of the woods yet. He hasn’t regained consciousness.” She approached the bed, picking up a washrag along the way she had draped over the back of a chair. She dipped it into a bucket of what I assumed was cool water, and used it to wipe the sweat off George’s forehead. “It’s as though he’s fighting off a doozy of a fever. I swear he’s sweated out a gallon of fluids, not to mention the tremors that have racked his body since we gave him that stuff.” She rinsed the rag and placed it on his forehead.
