The Calling

by Kelley Armstrong

  A yelp from Hayley cut him short. I wheeled to see the pilot shoving her aside as he started for us.

  Hayley screamed, then said, "He burned me! Oh my God."

  I could actually smell burned fabric, and there was a brown patch on her shirt. As the pilot lurched forward, I swore his eyes glowed.

  "Hey!" Daniel said. "Hold on!"

  The pilot yanked Sam out of the seat and slid in.

  "Just put her down here," Daniel said. "We lost--"

  The pilot pulled up on the control stick and the helicopter started to climb. Too fast though, lurching sideways. The helicopter spun. A treetop passed the windshield. Nicole shrieked.

  The helicopter dropped. The pilot swore and reached for something--

  The tail hit the tree. Metal crunched as everyone went flying.

  "Seat belts!" Daniel shouted as the helicopter lurched.

  I heard Corey yell, "Holy hell!" and looked back to see a hole in the tail end of the helicopter.

  Daniel yanked me onto his lap, and managed to get the belt over both of us.

  "Kenjii!"

  She stumbled to me and I grabbed her with both arms, wrapping them around her as tight as I could.

  I heard Nicole yell, "Dad!"

  And then we hit.

  THREE

  THE HELICOPTER LANDED NOSE down and tilted onto its side. My head cracked against Daniel's and I must have lost consciousness for a moment, because next thing I knew, water was flooding in.

  The helicopter creaked as it teetered, and I knew we must be perched on an underwater ledge ... over what could be a very deep body of water.

  I twisted to tell Daniel, but he was already pushing me toward the other side, saying, "I know." Then, "Everyone! Get over there!"

  I glanced back to see Nicole and Sam sitting there, just staring. Corey bent over Hayley, then picked her up. She lay like a rag doll in his arms.

  "She's okay," he said. "Just unconscious."

  "Dad!" Nicole shrieked.

  I turned toward the front seat. The pilot was dead. He'd gone out the windshield, and was now draped over the crumpled front of the helicopter. Tendrils of blood snaked through the water all around him.

  Mayor Tillson still wore his seat belt, but he was wedged in, the crushed dashboard pinning his big chest. Blood dribbled from his mouth.

  I pressed my fingers to his neck. No pulse.

  "He's--" I began.

  "No, he's not!" Nicole shoved me so hard the helicopter rocked.

  "Let's get him out of there." Daniel looked for Corey, who was still holding Hayley. "Sam? Give me a hand? Nic and Maya, stay over by the door with Kenjii and keep that side weighed down."

  Sam and Daniel grabbed the mayor under his armpits and pulled, but he wasn't budging, and with every wrench, the helicopter rocked. Daniel bent to peer under the crushed cockpit, and Sam checked her uncle for a pulse. When Daniel came back up, shaking his head, she shook hers, too, biting her lip and blinking hard.

  Daniel turned to Nicole. "He's gone, Nic. There's nothing--"

  "No, he's not!" she shouted. "You're only saying that because Maya did. You always listen to her."

  Everyone stopped and stared. Sweet, quiet Nicole stood there, her face twisted with rage, hair coming loose from her ponytail, spiking around her face, her mascara running.

  I moved up to Daniel and Sam and whispered, "She's in shock. Let me see if I can get his legs free."

  "There's no use," Sam said. "He's--"

  My look shushed her. I squeezed in as far as I could to get a better look, but the slightest movement made the helicopter rock.

  "You need to get off," Daniel said as he crouched beside me.

  "Of course she does," Nicole said. "You're always worried about Maya. Why? She doesn't deserve--"

  Sam spun on her. "Shut the hell up!"

  Daniel and I stared at both of them. It was Corey who murmured, "Nic didn't mean it, guys. She just lost her dad."

  "And I just lost my uncle," Sam said.

  "Take Nicole out," Daniel said. "Please. Before--"

  The helicopter groaned again and began to tilt.

  "Off!" Daniel shouted. "Everyone off!"

  He grabbed the door handle. Sam and I helped, all three of us yanking until it finally opened. Water poured in, but it only came up to midcalf. Land was a few meters away.

  Corey went first, carrying Hayley. Sam, Nicole, and I followed. The helicopter jerked. I lost my footing and plunged backward into the icy water that filled the cockpit. Daniel grabbed my arm and Kenjii swam to me, taking my shirt in her teeth and hauling me until Sam could pull me out, Daniel right behind us.

  The helicopter gave one final wail, metal scraping on rock, then rolled off the ridge into the deep water.

  "Kenjii!" I shouted.

  Sam and Corey had to hold me back as I fought and screamed for my dog. Daniel jumped in. He'd barely gone under when Kenjii surfaced. I ripped free from the others and waded to the edge as Daniel climbed back onto the ledge. Kenjii's nails kept slipping on the underwater rocks, but with me pulling on her collar and Daniel pushing from behind, we managed to heave her up.

  We waded through the knee-deep water toward the tiny island. As soon as I was on land, I let myself collapse and would have stayed there if Daniel hadn't caught me under the arms and propelled me to higher ground. I was about to drop on the grassy bank when Corey shouted, "It's Hayley! She's not breathing!"

  I stumbled to where he crouched beside her.

  "I was sure she was breathing before," he said. "I should have let you check. Damn it."

  Hayley lay on her back in the long grass. Her skin was tinged blue.

  Daniel steered Corey away as I ripped open Hayley's shirt and started chest compressions. He sat Corey down and told him to stay there, then returned, and took over the compressions while I breathed into her ice-cold lips.

  On my third breath, I felt her chest move. On the fourth, she coughed. We got her sitting up and breathing.

  "Wh-what happened?" she said, looking around. "Where's the helicopter?"

  I told her. She just sat there, nodding, like it wasn't sinking in, but when I asked if she understood, she snapped that she wasn't stupid, and I backed off.

  I kept backing off until I found a flat place to sit. Daniel slid in behind, arms around me, letting me lean back against him. Kenjii came over and put her head on my lap and I cried then. Just cried.

  When I could finally speak, I twisted to face Daniel and said, "It's my fault Rafe's dead."

  "No, it isn't," he said fiercely. "I'm the one who knocked out the pilot."

  "How? You never touched him?"

  "I--I don't know. I startled him or something."

  I shook my head. "You didn't. I don't know what happened, but it wasn't your fault. I'm not talking about the crash anyway. I mean that if it wasn't for me, Rafe wouldn't have fallen."

  "No, Maya. He let go. I saw it. He made a choice and there was nothing you could do about that."

  "I--"

  "He did the right thing. If he'd held on, you'd have fallen, and maybe me, too. I know it doesn't make this any easier, but he did the right thing."

  "That's not what I mean. He should never have been on that helicopter. If I'd let them wake him up, he'd have insisted on staying to find Annie."

  Daniel shook his head. "They'd have put him on that helicopter whether he wanted to go or not."

  "But he'd have been awake. He wouldn't have fallen--"

  "If he resisted getting on, they'd have sedated him, just like they did with the mayor. You know he'd have resisted. Nothing would have changed."

  When I tried to look away, he caught my chin and turned me to face him.

  "Nothing," he said.

  My eyes filled with tears again. "It doesn't seem real. The fire. The people in the forest. The helicopter crash. Mayor Tillson. Rafe." I looked up at him again. "It can't be real. I'm asleep. It's a nightmare. Tell me it is."

  He hugged me so tight my ribs
protested. "I wish I could."

  His voice cracked and I hugged him back, as hard as I could.

  Someone cleared his throat behind us. It was Corey. He crouched and said, in a low voice, "I know this is a bad time, guys. I'm really sorry. But the girls--They're freaked out and they need someone to tell them what to do and ... that's not me. They want one of you two. Daniel, I'll stay here with Maya if you can talk to them."

  I wiped my sleeve over my eyes. "No. Sitting here isn't going to help." It just gave me a deep, dark pit to lose myself in when I really couldn't afford to be lost.

  We both got up and followed Corey.

  Nicole and Hayley were huddled in the long grass, staring out at the island to the west. Vancouver Island. Our island. Shrouded in fog.

  The girls were shivering. Even Sam, leaning against a tree, twisting the bar in her ear, was trembling, though she kept giving herself an abrupt shake, as if annoyed by her weakness.

  I had to give myself a shake, too--a mental one--as I took stock of our surroundings.

  With the fog rolling in, I couldn't tell how big our island was. But it had looked small from the air. The ground was rocky, with patches of long grass and scrubby trees.

  The sky was overcast, so dark I thought night was coming until I checked my watch and realized it wasn't even six.

  Mom had been in Victoria when the forest fire broke out. Was Dad with her now? Were they waiting for our helicopter to land? Planning what we'd have for dinner to take my mind off the forest fire?

  Had Dad's helicopter gone to Victoria? Was it only our helicopter that had been diverted or...?

  "Maya?" Daniel said.

  Don't think about that. Can't think about that. We needed to get some place warm and dry before dark.

  I whispered that to Daniel. He gestured for me to walk with him.

  "We're going to scout the island," he told the others.

  No one offered to come along. No one said a word. They just nodded, their gazes as empty as I felt.

  "We need to tell them everything," Daniel whispered as we walked away. "Otherwise, they'll want to wait for rescue. Which we know we can't do."

  "Because we don't know who'll come for us. Real rescuers or fake ones."

  He nodded.

  "I'll..." I struggled to get my brain in gear, but I felt like I was still out in the water, fighting to keep my head above the surface and wishing I could just sink into peaceful oblivion. I blinked hard. "Sorry. I'll talk to them."

  "No, I will. You just need to back me up. Can you do that?"

  I nodded.

  Tell them what was going on. God, that sounded so easy. But where to start?

  It began less than a week ago. No, that's not true. It began a year ago. When Serena died. My best friend. Daniel's girlfriend.

  Serena had drowned. It shouldn't have happened, not to the captain of the school swim team, swimming in a calm lake.

  Then Mina Lee came to town. She called herself a reporter, but everyone figured she was a corporate spy. We live in Salmon Creek, a town of two hundred people that was built and owned by the St. Cloud Corporation, so they could conduct drug research. Mina came to Salmon Creek pretending to be writing an article on the local teens--what it was like growing up in a tiny corporate town. She'd really wanted to talk to us--and she was especially curious about Serena's death, and Daniel and I began to think that she suspected the medical research was responsible.

  A few days later we'd found Mina Lee's body in a cougar cache. Had she been killed by the big cats? Or died of misadventure in the woods? Or had she been murdered and dumped?

  We broke into her cabin and found files on all the teens in our class. Only two were missing. Mine and Sam's. Sam had stolen hers. When confronted she said it was because she didn't want others knowing her parents had been murdered. But we'd started wondering if there was more to it, if she might have had something to do with those murders, something to do with Serena's death, too.

  Then there was the note Daniel had found in Mina's cabin. Four strange words in it, including benandanti. Italian witch-hunters. We knew the word because of Mina. She'd left him a note to call her, on a library book page about benandanti.

  I'd recognized other words on that list. Yee naaldlooshii. Skin-walker. A few days before, I'd been called that by an old woman who'd said that's what my paw-print birthmark meant. That I was a skin-walker. A shape-shifting witch. Crazy, huh? Except... I was. So were Rafe and Annie, who'd come to Salmon Creek looking for the girl who'd been another subject in an experiment to resurrect the latent skin-walker genes. That girl, apparently, was me.

  So all that happens, and I'm trying to figure out how to tell Daniel I'm a skin-walker when the forest fire struck. Daniel, Rafe, and I got caught in it. We'd seen a fire-and-rescue truck, and Daniel got a bad feeling--he gets them; I've learned to trust them. Turned out it wasn't fire and rescue. Who was it? I don't know, but they'd been after us, and one man knew my name and had my eyes, and I was pretty sure I knew what that meant, but I refused to process it. Too much else waiting in the queue.

  So how much should we tell the others? I trusted Daniel would know. Normally, we'd hash it out together. But today, I needed him to take charge and he did that.

  As we walked, Daniel and I scouted the island to be sure there wasn't any shelter. In order to get off it, we'd need to swim, which carried the risk of hypothermia. Not something we cared to do if there was an alternative. There wasn't. The island didn't have so much as a rock pile big enough to hide behind.

  So we returned and Daniel explained to the others what had happened in the woods as we'd been fleeing the fire.

  "It sounded like these people deliberately set the blaze," he said as he finished. "Maya and I thought they were trying to clear Salmon Creek to get into the lab and steal the drug research. But if the pilot drugged the mayor, then that doesn't make sense. We were already leaving town."

  "How do you know he was knocked out?" Sam asked.

  "I saw the pilot grab the mayor's arm," Daniel said. "Right before we got on the helicopter. Mr. Tillson rubbed the place, like it hurt. Then Maya found the injection spot."

  "So they wanted Mr. Tillson?" Hayley asked.

  Daniel shook his head. "We think whoever set the fire either bought off the pilot or planted one of their own guys. I heard Mr. Tillson say that the first helicopter had already landed in Victoria. That means whoever is behind this wanted ours. In the evacuation plans, we're all supposed to be on that helicopter. Not Mr. Tillson specifically, though. Just an adult to chaperone us."

  "So in sedating him, they were getting rid of our chaperone," I said. "They wanted one of us."

  I thought of the list Daniel had found, with the word skin-walker on it, and I thought of the man in the woods, who'd called me by name. So I seemed to be the one they wanted. But when I glanced up, Sam looked like a cartoon character with a "Who me?" bubble over her head.

  "It doesn't matter who or what was the target," I said. "We need to figure out what we're going to do now."

  "Why do we need to do anything?" Hayley said. "They'll come looking for us."

  "Um, yeah," Sam said. "That's Maya's point. The people who tried to kidnap us will come looking for us to finish the job."

  "You don't know that."

  "Sam's right," Daniel said. "The first people who come for us will likely be the kidnappers. It'd be safer to get to a phone and call our parents."

  Everyone looked around. The mainland was a dark blob on the eastern horizon. To the west was Vancouver Island. About a kilometer of water separated the two.

  "Umm..." Corey began. "Not to question your judgment, buddy, but that's a bit of a swim. The water's damned cold. I bashed my knee good in the crash, and I'm not the only one who's hurting. I get what you're saying, but the pilot's radio seemed to be out, so they won't know where we are. If we light a fire, someone out boating might see us."

  "That's a good idea," Sam said. "Or it would be. If we had matches to light a f
ire. Or if anyone was actually out boating."

  "Why don't we just find a place to hide?" Hayley said. "That way, when someone does come, we can see if it's a real rescue or not."

  "How the hell are you going to tell the difference?" Sam said. "Ask them? And no one's going to find the crash site. You know why? There is no crash site."

  She pointed out over the empty water. When the helicopter had dropped over the ledge, it had disappeared. Only a few small pieces of debris floated, already being dispersed by the tide.

  "And we don't know that the radio equipment wasn't working," Daniel said. "Whoever wanted that helicopter may know exactly where it went down."

  That didn't keep Corey and Hayley from arguing that we should stay put, and Nicole from quietly agreeing. Which only pissed off Sam all the more. To us, the danger was obvious. We should be in the water already, swimming for Vancouver Island. To the others, it was too much to believe, too much to take in. Easier to think this was all a tragic mistake and that a rescue team would find us at any moment.

  Eventually, Daniel and I managed to persuade them that no one was going to come for us. There was no shelter on this island, and there could be cottages just past the shoreline on the mainland.

  Finally, they all agreed to swim for it.

  FOUR

  SWIMMING FOR THE SHORE was not a simple matter. Daniel and I were soaked, but the others were dry from the knees up, and in October, they'd need that dry clothing. The problem was how to get it across.

  There weren't any backpacks in the debris floating from the wreck, but Daniel rescued a piece of plastic. The others stripped to their undergarments, wrapped up their clothing as best they could, and put it in the plastic. Daniel made sure Corey put his headache medication in, too. Corey got migraines. Bad ones. Unfortunately, all he had on him was a couple of tablets he carried loose in his pocket.

  By the time we got to the water's edge, we were all shivering so hard I could hear teeth chattering.

  A layer of marine fog covered the surface. As I stood there with my toes in the icy water, tendrils of fog slipped around my ankles and I remembered a line about fog coming in on little cat's feet.

  Cats. Cougars. Skin-walkers. Rafe.

  My stomach clenched and my toes clenched, too. I closed my eyes and struggled to ground myself.

  "Can you see the land?" Nicole whispered beside me.