“He sicced his panther on you?” My astonishment caused my voice to come out a high-pitched squeak.
She gazed up at me as if contemplating a painful truth and shook her head. “I don’t think so.” She lowered her voice to a soft, barely-audible whisper. This confidential secret was meant solely for me. “I think he was the panther.”
The image of the eagle transforming into a woman flashed before my eyes. There had to be a connection. It was too much of a coincidence. “What happened next?” I croaked.
“Daddy came outside with his gun. He saw the cat but not me. He shot at it and I ran and hid. I dropped my baby doll in the backyard,” she sobbed.
I cupped Ella’s face in my hands and wiped her tears away with my thumbs. “Shh, shh, shh. That man won’t bother you again. I promise. I’ll make sure he can never hurt you or threaten you again.” I had no idea how I intended to keep that promise, but I felt compelled to say it. “And we’ll find your dolly.”
I held up my little finger to pinkie swear on it. As she linked her finger with mine, I opened the link between us. I needed to know she was okay. Her knot of fear loosened then fell away. For a split second I got the crazy notion that I had altered her emotions somehow. Huh.
Ella cocked her head to the side and peered up at me. “It’s you, isn’t it?”
“What’s me?”
“You’re the one he was looking for.”
A simple sentence spoken from the innocent mind of a child, yet all the weird stuff compiling around me added a weight of believability to it. “I … I think I might be.”
She graced me with an angelic grin. “You’ll stop him, Celeste. I know you will.” At least one of us had faith in me.
My time with Ella came to an abrupt end when the front door of the house flew open and a frantic looking woman in her bathrobe raced out. “Ray! Ray! Ella’s not in her room! And I found this in the backyard!” She raised a baby doll up for her husband to see.
“My Cindy doll!” Ella chirped.
The woman’s head swiveled to Ella and me. Relief cast her eyes to the heavens and her hands to cover her heart. “Oh, thank you, God!” She rushed to Ella’s side where she scooped her daughter up and showered her with kisses. “Don’t you ever scare me like that again!”
“I’m sorry, Momma.” Ella hugged her mother, and Cindy, tightly.
Ray, Alec, and the police officers joined us on the porch. Making sure little Ella was safe trumped everything else.
Ella’s mother turned to me. “Thank you for finding her. Where was she?”
“She was here on the porch; she didn’t get far.”
“You must be new to town. I don’t think we’ve met.”
Ella twirled Cindy’s hair around her finger. “That’s Celeste, Momma. She’s gonna catch the panther.”
Funny how seven different adults could all give me the same patronizing look.
“Are you an avid large game hunter, Celeste?” Ray smirked. Alec and the officers snickered behind their hands. Heat rose to my cheeks.
Ella’s mother elbowed her husband, “Be nice. She probably said that to calm your child down, you big jerk.”
Ray bowed his head at his wife’s comment. “You’re right.” He extended his hand to me. “I’m sorry, Celeste. Thank you for your help.”
“It was no problem. She’s a great kid.”
He turned to the officers. “If we’re done here, my wife and I need to put our little peanut to bed.”
With one last wave to Ella, we said our goodbyes. Back in the car Alec was in overdrive. “I can’t thank you enough for bringing me here! This is really going to help my story. I may have to keep you around. You’re great for my career!”
Aren’t those just the romantic words every girl longs to hear.
I ignored his comment. “Did any of the other witnesses mention seeing a man with the panther?”
“Ray didn’t see anyone with the panther.” His excitement deflated at my abrupt tone.
“No, but his daughter did.”
Alec shook his head as if my poor, simple mind saddened him. “Celeste, there were people everywhere. She probably just told you that to get attention. Ray said when he was outside with the panther, his family was safely inside.”
I gritted my teeth and tried not to slug him. “He didn’t know she was out there. But she was. And she saw the panther, too. Only she said there was a man with him. Did anyone else mention that?”
“Well, yeah,” he snorted. “You remember the little boy that said the panther was ‘peeking’ in his window?” He air quoted the word.
“Yeah?” My stomach churned. Another child was involved.
“He said that as the panther looked at him, it changed. It became a man. Like I said, he obviously had an active imagination and was using it to get attention. That’s all Ella was doing, too. It worked on you because you’re a kind-hearted, trusting person.”
I wasn’t even pretending to listen anymore. Two children had been targeted by this man-beast. If I was the one he was looking for, why was he harassing kids? My list of questions continued to grow, and I had nothing in the way of answers. I peered out at the mountain range veiled by the darkness of night. I had an idea where I needed to go. But first, I had to round up Gabe and Kendall. Somehow this involved them, too.
CHAPTER 10
No sooner had I stepped into the house then Grams cornered me in the foyer. “Celeste! There you are! You got a sec?”
Not really Grandmother, you see I’m currently investigating shapeshifting people. “Sure, what’s up?” I put on a smile and hid any exasperation that tried to sneak into my voice.
A worried frown creased her face. “It’s about your brother.”
“Gabe?”
“Do you have another brother I don’t know about?”
“No, of course not. What about him?”
Her eyebrows raised in disbelief. “What about him? You haven’t noticed?”
Was his anger evident to everyone else, too? Maybe other people didn’t need to be clairvoyant to see all the festering feelings he had bottled up. “You mean his mood? Yeah, I’ve tried to talk to him, but you know how he is…”
“No. His mood has been fine.” She swatted my words away like flies. “It’s his recent…growth.”
“What?” Gabe reached his full height of six foot two when he was seventeen. Twenty seemed late for a growth spurt.
Grams’ eyes widened and made her fake lashes tickle her forehead. “Celeste, how could you not have noticed? He’s huge! I’m worried that he might be using…steroids.” Unable to speak the last word out loud, she mouthed it to me.
I shook my head. “No. No way. He would never do something that stupid.”
“But to bulk up that much in such a short amount of time? I don’t know what else it could be. If that is what’s going on, we need to get him some help. Slap him upside the head first, but then get him some help.”
Now that she mentioned it, I remembered Alec making a comment about Gabe’s size, too. And “roid rage” would explain the constant anger I felt from him. My field trip was going to have to wait fifteen minutes. I had to get to the bottom of this first and put Grams’ mind at ease.
“I’ll go talk to him and see if I can find anything out.”
She smiled at me and gently touched the side of my face with her palm. “Thank you, honey. You’re such a good girl. More so when you’re not in a tree scaring the neighbors.” With that she walked out the door I had just come in. “I’m off to bingo. Night!”
I vigorously rubbed my hands over my face. As if I didn’t have enough on my plate, now I had to figure out if my idiot brother was on drugs. With a sigh, I trudged up the stairs.
I tried to come up with a plan of action. I had to be cool and casual. Lay some ground work, let him get comfortable and then maybe he would open up. Softly, I rapped on his door.
“Yeah!” He called out.
I pushed the door open and peeked inside. Litt
le disclaimer here—I saw my brother almost every day of my life. However I very rarely paid attention to what he looked like. He’s just Gabe. Right then, for the first time in I don’t know how long, I really saw my brother.
“Holy crap, Gabe! You’re friggin’ huge!” My “play it cool” maneuver was off to a bang-up start.
“Thanks.” He didn’t tear his eyes off the television as he asked, “That all?”
Lounged on his black and tan striped comforter, he wore a raggedy, white t-shirt and a pair of navy blue, nylon-mesh shorts I had seen him in a thousand times. Only now they barely fit him. The shirt was stretched to its maximum capacity. His new bulging muscles strained against the thin material. If he sneezed, the shirt would be ripped to shreds. The muscles and veins in his legs protruded like the professional body builders in magazines. I could see the cause for concern now. This kind of change didn’t happen naturally in a matter of days.
“No, I … how did this happen?”
True to form, his sarcasm kicked in. “What can I say? I drank my milk and it did my body good. Now, go away.” He turned the volume up on the TV to let me know we were done. I was nowhere near ready to give up.
I stomped over to the TV, clicked it off, and spun to face my brother with my hands firmly on my hips. “Are you on steroids?”
“What? No!” His face reddened as he scowled at my accusation. “How could you think that?”
“This,” I gestured at his new mammoth frame “—is not natural! So, if it’s not drugs, then you tell me what’s going on. Tell me how you managed to look like a runner-up in a Tough Man contest in such a short amount of time.”
He sprang off the bed and stalked over. His hot breath assaulted my face as he snorted down at me. I’m used to feeling small next to people; however, his increased muscle mass made me feel downright puny. He could snap me like a twig if he wanted to. With that in mind, I realized angering the heaving beast might not be the best idea. Self-preservation made me take a tentative step back. He matched my step and leaned down, his face only inches from mine. Every muscle in his body tensed. His hands balled into fists. His nostrils flared. I stared him down. Roid rage or not, I wasn’t going to let him bully me.
Through his locked jaw he snarled, “I. Don’t. Know. Maybe it’s something in the Tennessee water. Or maybe I’m becoming the friggin’ Hulk. I have no idea! But I am not on drugs. And the fact that you would even accuse me of that…”
“Look at the way you’re acting,” I said in a purposely calm voice. “Tell me this doesn’t seem like stereotypical ‘roid rage.’”
“This isn’t ‘roid rage.’ This is annoying sister rage.”
“What about your anger, like, twenty-four/seven? That my fault, too?”
He squinted at me in confusion but didn’t deny it. “What makes you think I’m angry?”
I decided now wasn’t the best time to mention my little talent. “Because I know you.”
He gave a bitter laugh. “You know me, huh? Yet, you don’t know that after everything that I’ve been through, I wouldn’t touch drugs? And you can’t think of any other reason in the world why I might be upset?”
“What do you mean?”
He leaned back and mulled over his words before he spat them out. “Like life has been so great I should be turning cartwheels?”
“What exactly is so terrible, Gabe? Moving here?”
“No.”
“Then what? Are you ticked at Mom for sending us here?”
“No!” He turned on his heel and stalked to the window. With his arms folded tightly across his massive chest, he glared out into the darkness. “Mom’s doing all that she can for what’s left of our family.”
A familiar cloak of sadness swept over me. I slumped down on my brother’s bed, my hands folded in my lap. “Is this about Dad?”
Silence was my confirmation.
“How long have you felt this way?”
“Gee, Celeste, I don’t know. How long has Dad been dead?”
“You’ve gotta let it go, Gabe. It was an accident. A terrible accident. We all miss him, but he’d want us to move on. To find a way to be happy again.”
“See, that’s where you’re wrong.” He pressed his forehead against the window pane.
“What? Of course Dad would want us to be happy.”
“No, that it was an accident.”
I choked on a shocked, humorless laugh. “He was hit by a car during a routine rescue. How can that be perceived as anything other than an accident?”
His anger reignited. He spun on me. “Because he didn’t have to be there! He knew he had a family at home that needed him, but he didn’t even stop to consider us before he strolled out into the street to save a guy that he didn’t even know!”
I softened my voice to mask my brewing anger. “It was his job, Gabe. He was an EMT. What was he supposed to do? Let the guy die?”
“If he had, he’d still be alive. And I needed him here because I wasn’t ready. I wasn’t ready for any of this!” Gabe waved his arms in the air in a broad gesture.
“Any of what?”
“To be the man of the family! As soon as that title was given to me, look what I did. Look at how I screwed it up. I’m a failure because I wasn’t ready. If Dad had just walked away…” Gabe’s rant trailed off. He stared at the wall instead of me. His chestnut eyes glossed over with tears he was too proud to shed. I wanted to comfort him but didn’t dare touch him. I knew he’d bristle at any act that threatened to expose his vulnerability in any way.
I twisted my hands in my lap as I sought out the right words. “If he had walked away, he wouldn’t have been able to live with himself. That’s just who he was.”
“Because we weren’t enough for him.” Gabe rubbed his hand over his head and donned his best “unaffected-by-life” facial expression. His go-to façade to cover his pain. “He had to be the hero and get his name in the papers.”
That was it. That was my limit. I felt bad for the pity party my brother was enduring, but I wasn’t going to let him rewrite history and paint our Dad as the villain. I stomped across the room toward my gigantic brother. At the sound of my heavy footfalls, he pivoted toward me. The sting of my unexpected slap snapped his head to the side and reddened his cheek.
Tears rimmed my eyes, and I was fairly certain I was snotting on myself, but I was too angry to care. “The only paper he got his name in was his obituary. He was doing his job. What happened was a freak accident. He wasn’t thinking about leaving us behind. He was thinking about the man lying on that street and how much his family probably needed him.” I turned to leave the room and then paused at the doorway. “So you made a mistake, Gabe. No one holds it against you. We don’t think you’re a failure. But we will if you don’t grow a pair, get over it, and move on. Then maybe someday you’ll be half the man Dad was, and you’ll understand what it means to put other people first. Oh, and if you are doing steroids, knock it off. You’re scaring Grams.”
With that I slammed the door.
CHAPTER 11
After that little episode, Gabe’s invitation to join me in the mountains had been revoked. And if he wasn’t going, I saw no point in dragging Kendall along. I shoved supplies—a couple flashlights, bottled water, bug spray, matches, and a sweatshirt—into a backpack for a solo excursion. The feathered woman had answers. I was going to find her and learn how to stop the man-panther. Manther?
Heaven help me!
That’s the only way to describe the emotion that jolted through me. My hands white-knuckle-gripped my backpack, and I doubled over as a swirling, tumultuous mess of emotions slammed into me. The heavy heart of deep seeded humiliation. The outstretched compassion of sympathy. Gnawing isolation. Gut wrenching pain. One by one they came at me with a speed and strength that took my breath away.
I didn’t have to reach out for these. They pounded into me like waves against a rocky shore line. I couldn’t stop them. Couldn’t hold them back. But I knew who they were comi
ng from. She was coming this way. Something had happened to Kendall. My trip into the mountains was coming too late.
I dashed across the room intending to track her down. It wasn’t difficult. I swung open the bedroom door, and there she stood. I couldn’t hold back a gasp at her ghostly, haunted appearance. Her normal peaches and cream complexion had turned stark white, her trembling lips a pale shade of blue. She stared past me with glassy, unseeing eyes.
Despite the door already being open, she extended her hand and turned a knob that only existed in her mind. She shuffled into the room, completely unaware of my presence. She bypassed both beds and the chair at our desk. Instead, she zombie-walked to the farthest corner of the room. With her back pressed up against our lilac-colored wall, she slid down and landed on the floor with a heavy thump.
“Kendall?”
“I—I—I—” Her mouth opened and shut, but she couldn’t make it any further than that.
I squatted down next to her and stroked her soft hair. “You what?”
Slowly, her head turned toward me, her eyes wide and unblinking. “I flew.”
As I had never heard a declaration like that before, all I could think to say was, “Huh?”
She shifted her gaze back to the wall. “Nothing beneath me but air.”
The bird-woman’s warning echoed in my mind. “The changes will start now, Celeste. Not just for you, but for Gabe and Kendall as well.”
I shifted and sat on the floor next to my traumatized sister. With one arm around her slender shoulders, I drew her to me. When her head settled on my shoulder, I asked, “How did it happen?”
“Keith kissed me. My first kiss…”
“Your first kiss?” I interrupted. “Guys follow you around like puppy dogs.”
“Just friends,” she explained vacantly. “Keith’s special.”
The Conduit (The Gryphon Series Book 1) Page 6
