Strange Supes

by Gray Holborn

  “Ah, the lion tamer is awake, is she?” He went around the room handing everyone a bottle and a package of chemicals that masqueraded as food. “You gave us a bit of a scare there, Desi-girl.”

  El’s head spun to meet me and verify with her own eyes that I was indeed awake. She let out a shaky sigh. “You’re awake!” El wiped her cheeks. “I’ve never seen so much blood. Your dress, it was completely drenched.”

  “Seriously, Odie. It’s a miracle the cuts were so superficial, you truly lucked out. Some of that blood had to have belonged to Rennix.” Luis’s eyes poured over my face, taking in every inch with an expression of pure relief.

  “What?” I croaked, rubbing my hand along my side where Rennix’s claws had ripped into my body. My fingers stilled. I could feel the ridges of the cut through the bandages, but it was shallow and would heal quickly. I rolled my left shoulder, finding that though it was sore and stiff, it wasn’t as damaged as I thought it’d be after falling into that heavy chest. My glance drifted to Soren, his eyes dropping as soon as he caught my silent question. He’d seen the blood in that room. That was more than just a superficial scratch. “I guess I wasn’t hurt as badly as I thought?”

  El cleared her throat and looked at Soren out of the corner of her eye, one brow arched in curiosity. “Yeah, maybe.” She paused a beat, focusing her attention back on me. “Well, I guess we should just be happy that Michael showed up when he did, though I still don’t trust the prick. And I still don’t understand exactly how he’s mixed up in all of this.”

  “Yeah, how convenient,” Luis mumbled under his breath. “Couldn’t have shown up well before she entered into a cage match with a lion.”

  Michael. I scanned the room, trying to see if I’d missed him in my preliminary tally.

  No, he wasn’t there. I didn’t know why I was surprised. It wasn’t like he could just stick around and join the party like he was one of us. Saving my neck didn’t make up for basically being the cause of the wild goose chase to begin with. “Where is Michael?”

  “We’re not really sure.” El looked down at me and I could see the conflicted emotions playing out across her features. “He transported you and Soren here, and then he showed up in our hotel room to tell us where you were and what happened.” She paused, glancing over at Luis with a giant grin. “But not before Luis punched him in the jaw.”

  “I guess now I understand why you never let me meet any of the guys you date before.” Luis moved to playfully nudge me in the shoulder but, after glancing down at the bandages, stopped before making contact.

  “Well, what do we do with—” my fingers felt around my collarbone but I only found one pendant tied around my neck. “Where is it?”

  El’s dainty hand pressed gently on my arm. “It’s here, I have it, Dess. After Michael made sure we all got here, he took the necklace. We all freaked out at first, thinking he’d just come to steal it and nothing else. But I guess he took it to Raifus, because when he brought it back half an hour later, it had this energy to it.”

  I studied the three stones that seemed so large on El’s small frame. “It works?”

  She nodded. “As long as I wear it, I can shift, but no one else can access their abilities. We had a bit of fun getting Jax to try seducing Luis, but it didn’t work. Same when he tried feeding off a couple of nurses. We still need to test distance and everything, it’s not totally clear how far away you have to be from the neutralizer to access your powers, but it’s a start.”

  My eyes traced her small frame as I tried searching out her now-familiar golden aura. It was gone. I smiled, happy that at least something went right during the shitshow that was Rennix’s party. “And Michael just left?”

  “We weren’t in the room when he brought it back. There was like a two minute window between when the doctor came in to check on you and when we came back into the room.” Luis squeezed my free hand gently. “The necklace was clasped in your hands and the room was empty.”

  “So what do we do now?” Jax looked up at me, his face was tense with concentration. I could tell he was trying to get his ability to work. “Have to say, glad this thing works, but this is so weird. I’m going to have to get a date the normal way if I keep hanging around you, El.” He winked at her, a sly grin taking over his face. “It’s okay, I could use a challenge anyway.”

  “I guess now that we know Michael is working with Raifus and neither one of them seems to mean us harm, we can just go back to normal. The only reason Michael was able to find us in the first place was through the necklace and ring set.” My fingers danced over the black pendant hanging loose against my chest. Strange how insanely powerful it had felt when it led me to the neutralizer. “Besides, Raifus can track and if he really wanted to find El, he would.”

  “Yeah,” Jax added, “especially since Raifus was the one who helped hide her in the first place.”

  “So we go home?” I tried not to get up too quickly, but the idea of sleeping in my own bed, seeing Sam everyday, and even waiting tables at The Tavern had me nostalgic and excited. “Can we leave now? I don’t need to stay here do I?”

  Jax looked over to Soren, waiting for him to answer. It seemed we all looked to him as the leader of the group. Probably because he was so bossy. Definitely not because of his winning personality.

  His dark eyes glanced in my direction briefly, before he stared down at his hands clasped in his lap. He hadn’t uttered a word since I’d opened my eyes. “You guys should all go back to Seattle. Get back into your regular schedule. Dex, Sage, and I will head back to the Veil, see what news we can find regarding the resistance.” He looked over to Jax. “You’ll stay here. Be my eyes and ears. You can fight hand-to-hand combat, so if someone tries to grab either of them, you can defend even without your ability.”

  Aw, he included me in Jax’s protection detail.

  Ew, actually, scratch that. I did not want to have those gooey damsel-in-distress feelings. That wasn’t me. “Hey, I’m pretty decent at that stuff now too, you know. I mean hell, I did fight a giant freaking lion earlier and live to tell the tale.”

  Soren’s lips twitched into that almost-grin of his that had my stomach flipping in uncomfortable, traitorous ways. “Well, this way Jax can keep training you.” He paused, his face darkening as he stood and began pacing around the room. “Raifus will come calling eventually. You entered into a binding contract with him, Black. You’re in his debt until that debt is paid. I don’t think he wants to hurt you or Ellie, but we have no idea what his intentions are or how you play into them. You’re safe for now, but don’t get complacent or comfortable.”

  His words sent a chill down my spine. I’d forgotten about my promise to Raifus. Now that we knew that he was more or less behind Michael’s undercover operation in the first place, he seemed much more nefarious. Which was saying something, because the guy was already an incredibly intimidating wild card.

  “Right,” I muttered.

  “Well I don’t trust this Raifus guy or Michael, but there’s nothing we can do at the moment. We’ll deal with trouble as it comes,” Luis said, standing up. “The doctor said that your injuries were minor and there’s no sign of a concussion. She said you could stay here overnight if you wanted, but that we had the option to take you home.” My facial expression told him all he needed to know. “Right. I’ll go handle the discharge paperwork. We didn’t use your real name, so it’s kind of pointless, but I’ll see if there’s anything you need or that we need to do before you leave.”

  Jax jumped up from the seat he’d stolen from Soren. “I’ll get the car. We were parked illegally and I had to move it kind of far to avoid getting the mom-van towed.”

  “And I’ll grab you something to wear since you can’t roadtrip in a hospital gown and that damn lion ruined your beautiful dress.” El’s grimace pulled a laugh from my lips. “I’m going to kill Rennix when I meet him. That was designer.” She followed Luis and Jax out of the room. Leave it to El to combine her fierce supernatura
l strength with her love of fashion. And sprinkle them both with a psychopathic edge.

  My gaze trailed around the room and suddenly caught on Soren when I realized we were alone.

  He huffed out an angry breath and resumed his pacing. He’d been hopping in and out of the chair so much that I felt like I’d been watching a tennis match since I woke up. “You shouldn’t have gone up there without me. What were you thinking, Black? That wasn’t the plan.” His words were short, but they were filled with a tense guilt.

  I shrugged. Because, really, what else was there to do. At the time, I thought it was the best option. “Did you learn anything from the bartender or that girl we saw with Michael?”

  “Only that Michael’s mystery girl is named Serena. She was curiously evasive of my conversation. The bartender gossiped a lot, but not about anything helpful to us.”

  “Soren, you saw the fight right? With Rennix?” My hand danced along the edge of the bandage under my shirt and I carefully peeled it back to examine the damage without revealing too much of my body to Soren.

  “Of course I saw the fight.” Long fingers swept through his hair and he flexed what looked like every muscle in his body.

  I looked at the cut and it was practically already scabbed over. No stitches, just a series of shallow, dark lines from my ribs to my belly button. I rolled my shoulder again, barely feeling any pain. “Then you saw all of that blood. What the hell happened? I collapsed when I was with Michael. There was so much blood. This—” I gestured down to the cuts. “Well, this just looks like I got into a nasty fight with a house cat a few weeks ago.”

  “Let it alone, Black.”

  “Yeah, because that totally fits in with my personality. Soren, do you know what happened?” I pushed the bandage back down, tracing the tape softly with my finger until it stayed put.

  “Odessa—” My head snapped up when he used my first name. Soren never used my first name. “Please just leave it.”

  I shook my head. I was in the dark about too many things. If this was a mystery that could be solved, I wanted an answer. “No. What the hell happened between the desert and this hospital bed?”

  Soren was silent for a few moments, his glare etching into the wall like it held the answers to the world’s biggest mystery. Finally he turned back to me and said, “okay.”

  “Okay?” That was a lot easier than I thought it’d be. Soren always made me fight him on everything. I sat back against the pillows, ready for his explanation. Maybe the damsel-in-distress thing had its perks.

  Instead of words, he slowly lifted up his shirt.

  My cheeks flushed, and I tried to stare up at his face. “What the hell are you do—” my words stuttered and died off as soon as my eyes travelled south of his neck. He had four matching claw marks from his ribs to his belly button, though they were slightly deeper than mine. “What? Why do you—how do—” I looked up at him, not quite sure what I was seeing or why his torso mirrored mine.

  Pushing his shirt back down, he sat at the corner of my bed, carefully keeping a few inches of space between us. His long fingers scraped against the back of his neck and he swore softly before turning to me. “Look, you can’t repeat what I’m about to tell you to anyone. Jax and Ellie are the only ones who know that I can use energy to heal...that I’m a panther-shifter but also a medica-feeder.” He paused, studying the question written across my face. “It’s a type of feeder, but extremely rare. I don’t even know if there’s another in existence. I’m assuming I inherited the ability from my mother.”

  “Do most supes with dual lineages inherit both of their parents’ abilities?”

  “No. That too is extremely rare, impossible usually. They usually just inherit the dominant ability.”

  “So you can heal others by mirroring their injury or illness?”

  He shook his head, standing up again. I watched as he paced back and forth a few times. Soren was always wound tightly, but seeing him so anxious and lost in this room had me on edge. He was usually the image of control. “It’s a complicated sort of healing. It’s a type of energy-feeding and, like all feeding, it works through give and take. If I feed off of someone else to heal myself, they experience part of the illness or injury I had, but to a lesser extent. It’s a useful strategy in battle if I’m sure the opponent is going to die and not reveal my secret, but it’s a selfish gift to have. Because medica-feeders can only heal themselves. At least I’ve only ever been able to heal myself, and I’m the only medica-feeder I’ve heard of outside of urban legends.”

  “But you healed me?” I looked down at my body as the evidence stared back at us “Almost completely.”

  He nodded, solemn. “I don’t know how.” His eyes met mine, worry filling their depths. “And I need you to not tell anyone that I did, not even Jax and Ellie. I need to figure out why and how it happened first.”

  I thought back to our meeting with Raifus, how quickly I shook off the injuries of fighting the supes. “That day, with the air-manipulator and the two feeders—” I looked up at him, questioning.

  “Yes, then too,” he sat in Ellie’s vacated chair by my side. “You won’t tell them?”

  I wasn’t comfortable with keeping anything from Ellie. Not with everything we’d been through. Or Jax. As insufferable as the guy was, he’d become a close friend. But Soren did sort of save my life, and he didn’t have to tell me the truth about his ability. I couldn’t exactly throw his honesty back in his face. I looked up at him, my stomach dancing as my eyes met his, my very blood thrumming with the presence of him. “Okay, I won’t tell them. But figure it out soon, because I don’t like lying to them.”

  “I’ll do my best, Black.” He smirked then, but his almost smile fell quickly into seriousness. “For what it’s worth, I’m glad the healing worked, even if I don’t know why it did. I’m glad you’re okay. I don’t know what I would’ve done if—”

  His eyes shifted down as his words drifted away and I recalled the misery in his face when he couldn’t reach me in the room, his fury as he watched me get attacked while he could do nothing but look on and paw uselessly at the wall like a declawed house-cat. The hospital room filled with that moment, that pain of uselessness and fear.

  I smiled at him and threw my pillow softly at his face to bring us back to the present. “You’re just happy because now we have matching friendship scars. Don’t think I didn’t notice how jealous you were of mine and Ellie’s jewelry set.” I winked at him with a smile, unable to hold back my teasing.

  He rolled his eyes, stood up, and turned towards the door muttering something about friendship scars and ridiculous girls and checking on the car situation.

  “Don’t be bashful, Soren. It’s okay to admit we’re friends now,” I called after him, in better spirits than I’d been in weeks. “I’ll come up with a really cool handshake.”

  The door to the room closed with a soft thud, but I could’ve sworn I heard the hallway fill with a soft, deep, trailing laugh.

  Acknowledgements

  This book started as an experiment and as a way to deal with stress, and it wouldn’t have gone beyond that if my mom wasn’t there as a constant cheerleader in my corner. Thanks for always pushing me outside of my comfort zone and for encouraging me in anything and everything I set my sights on.

  To my family and friends—especially my brother (for real, I’m insanely lucky I got you as a sibling, even if you hate reading), aunt, and main squeeze—thank you for your constant love and support and for putting up with me even when I’m impossible.

  A HUGE thank you to all of my wonderful beta readers, particularly Allie, Camilla, E.A. Lake, P, and Rachel. This book wouldn’t be complete without your help and guidance. And an extra-special thanks to P for keeping me sane while listening to my daily rants about anything and everything—I almost feel bad that your favorite ship will never be realized.

  It’s an odd thing to thank a dog. But I’m going to anyway, because mine is the greatest and one of my very best f
riends. Riggs, thanks for keeping me company on late nights while I stressed and floundered. Your wagging tail never ceases to bring a smile to my face.

  Finally, if you’re reading this—thank you. It’s a scary and crazy and wonderful thing to write words and have people read them. I hope you enjoyed the experience.

  About the Author

  Gray Holborn is a student and teacher by day and a writer by night. She spends all of her time drinking way too much coffee, Netflixing, reading, and holding conversations with her dog while walking through the city. She also enjoys...you know what, writing things in third person is weird. If you want to contact me and chat about books, writing, or anything else please visit my blog, Twitter, or send me an email and I’ll chat your ear off.

  If you enjoyed this book (or if you didn’t) please consider leaving an honest review and/or spreading the word. For all authors, and especially self-published and indie authors, reviews are super important. Not only do they provide more visibility for the book, but they also provide feedback for new authors who are eager to improve their craft.

  ✽✽✽

  Stay tuned for Odessa’s next adventure!