It felt eerie, but Rebekah’s mother assured me that she didn’t mind me sorting through some of Rebekah’s old furniture and taking what I needed. With Rebekah’s prodding, I grabbed a polished wooden coffee table, her old bed, her old television, and the cream colored plaid couch that she used to have.
To be on the safe side, Umara had rigged my new apartment with Shaman traps—two lasers at the doorway, two pointing at the front widows, and three aimed at the sliding glass door in the back. Unfortunately, however, she’d also done something utterly unforgivable. She’d sent Carter home with me. Yup. That slob of an ex-roommate was now once again my roommate, and I was sure he had no intention of paying rent or cleaning and tidying up his area or buying any toiletries. The good news was, I hadn’t seen him ever since I’d moved in three days ago.
So there I was in the living room watching ESPN doing “Decantercises”—as Rebekah liked to call them—in front of her old 32-inch. What are Decantercises? Not nearly as ridiculous as she made them sound. It was like stretching, except for Decanters.
I decanted to a bear to a wolf to a cobra to a panther to an eagle to a—
The door to my apartment swung open, and in walked my other roommate, Stephanie, who scared a bating screech out of me as I turned my eagle head to her. She cursed and threw up her groceries. Celery and squash and potatoes tumbled out of her bags, along with a half-gallon of milk that busted against the linoleum.
“What in the name of the Asgardian gods are you doing?” Stephanie said, one hand on the counter, the other one pressed against her chest. “You almost gave me a heart attack.”
“Squawk squawwwk, squ—” I realized I hadn’t decanted out of eagle form, so I quickly spilled into my own form, using the Semblance to give me navy plaid shorts and a gray v-neck t-shirt. “I told you that I have to stretch in the mornings. You can’t just walk in here whenever you feel like it.”
“That’s what your bedroom’s for, you loon.” She tucked a lock of hair behind her ear, and once she got her breath, she scooped up the vegetables, putting them on the counter, and started cleaning up the milk with some paper towels.
Kneeling down and holding her hand over her chest to keep her loose-fitting white shirt from opening at the collar, she said. “You shapeshifters are different from us Druids. You have to warn me when you’re gonna’ be changing forms and whatever.”
“For the last time, I’m not a shapeshifter.” I felt like I had said this to her at least a thousand times in just the three days that we’d gotten to know each other. “I don’t shift shapes. I’m a Decanter. We—”
“I know, I know. You absorb a form and pour into another. You told me already.” She tossed the saturated paper towels into the metal wastebasket beside the counter. “Gods, it’s the same thing.”
“It’s not the same. What you do is totally different from what I do. You shift from a bear to a dog to a snake. Not me.” I was on the opposite side of the counter now. “We spill from one form to the next. You know, there’s a reason you don’t have to change forms everyday and I do.”
“Oh yeah?” She tied her hair back in a knot, similar to the knot on her hip from her white shirt, just above the thigh-high jean shorts that showed all of her tattoos. “Then tell me, ‘Decanter,’ why do you stand in front of the TV each and every morning roaring and squawking and hissing and cawing?”
Arguing about it somehow felt better than having to explain it to her, and the idea that she now seemed genuinely interested was not expected at all. “Well, it’s like stretching. It keeps my thoughts fresh, kinda’ like a reminder on how to become another form.”
“So, like, if you don’t use it, you lose it kinda’ thing?”
I shook my head. “Not necessarily. But sort of. Decants are like puzzles.” I demonstrated with my hands, like I was solving a Rubik’s cube. “The less I decant a form, the more difficult it is to recall how to piece that form together. Wouldn’t want to forget how to assemble a tiger’s teeth or a bear’s muscles. Otherwise, it makes them useless.”
Stephanie frowned thoughtfully, twirling one of the potatoes around on the counter. “Are there any forms you try to forget?”
“Try to forget, no. Need to forget, yes.”
“What’s the difference?”
“The Wraith form is the worst,” I said.
“How so?”
“Every time I switch to that form, I lose a part of me. I guess I never realized how disjointed Wraiths were, but they lose their identities by jumping from body to body. Maybe it’s worse for me. Past events and places I’ve been, they tend to get foggier the more I use the Wraith form, so I try not to even practice decanting to a Wraith. But it’s a catch 22. If I don’t practice, I’ll forget how to do it. But if I do practice, then I’ll end up losing who I am.”
“Sounds tough,” she said—her way of being sympathetic. “So, like, what happens if a Decanter decants a Decanter?” She laughed at that.
“If I had a nickel every time someone asked me that. Chicken and the egg thing, you know.”
“What do you say when they ask?”
“Oddly,” I frowned, “I’ve never tried, so I’m not exactly sure. I guess theoretically I could learn every form that Decanter had, but I doubt it. Who knows?”
“Are there any forms that you refuse to forget?”
The question lingered between us, not because it was a difficult question. No, the answer was simple. To her, she was probably just making conversation, but to me, there was so much more to it than that. The one form I practiced everyday, several times a day without fail was the Summoner form.
I had to. It was the only way I could be guaranteed to stay connected with Rebekah, because if I lost the Summoner form, then there would be no way I could communicate with her again, and the thought of that…well, I just wasn’t sure I could take it.
And what made me a little uneasy was that the more I decanted to the Wraith form, the more distant other forms became to me, including the Summoner form. It was like the Wraith form was so dominant that it was forcing the other forms out of me.
I couldn’t let Stephanie’s question teeter towards awkward though, so I had to give her an answer, but telling her—no confessing to her—that the Summoner form was the one form I refused to give up, it just felt wrong admitting it. Maybe because I knew Stephanie had feelings for me and I didn’t want to hurt her. Or…and here’s where things got interesting…maybe because I had feelings for Stephanie, and I didn’t want her to think I was somehow hanging onto Rebekah.
What is wrong with you, Lyle! It was my own voice shouting in my head. My best friend had been killed just a few months ago, and here I was fighting urges to want to be with this Druid. But wasn’t that what Rebekah wanted? For me to move on?
Still, I wasn’t going to let the conversation get weird, so I said, “The bear form seems to be the most useful. It’s durable, strong, and has the least amount of disadvantages should I decant and leave some part of the form out of the decant.”
“Seems like a lot of work,” Stephanie said, tossing the potato up a few times.
“What are you smiling so hard for?” I asked.
“Well, if you must know.” She gave me a flirtatious head tilt. “Every morning I have to do at least two things. I throw on my clothes, and I paint my face.” She puckered her lips, showing off her peach lip-gloss that sparkled under the kitchen lights.
“And…?”
“With my clothes, I just toss them on. No real time put into it. With my makeup though, it has to be juuusstt right. Changing forms as a Druid is a lot like changing clothes. And—”
“Yeah, I get it. Ha ha,” I mocked, narrowing my eyes. “And changing forms as a Decanter is a lot like putting on makeup. Give me a break. It’s not like I picked Decanter out of a hat.”
“Yeah, yeah.” She rolled her eyes and set the potato in a metal basket on the counter. “So, we’ve kinda’ had this place to ourselves the past couple of days, huh?”
> Uh-oh, where is she going with this? “Right...”
“I know you guys have been roomies before. What’s Carter like? Is he really nice and neat or is he super anal about the clothes in his closet being all the same color or is like super creepy?”
“Take out the neat and tidy and nice and anal, and that about sums him up.”
Her face soured. “Oh. So then like super creepy.”
“Yeah.” I said it with a smug confidence. “He walks in that door, and the place is a wreck in literally ten minutes. Maybe less. He comes in, doesn’t say a word, goes to his room, and shuts the door. I don’t hear from him for like a few hours. After that, he comes in the living room while I’m watching TV, stands in front of it and watches The Simpsons or Downton Abbey for like a day straight! Standing up!”
“What, really?” She popped a few grapes in her mouth. “Downton Abbey? That show is for like people in their forties or something. I can’t understand a word they’re saying, speaking with all those accents. I turn the channel as soon as the theme song comes on.”
“I know right! I can’t take it.” I was almost laughing now, slapping the counter to make my point. “And get this. So the guy supposedly has like supersonic hearing, but then he comes in here and blasts the TV so loud that the speakers are doing that vibrating rattle sound. Bwommm, bwomm. It’s ridiculous.”
“Why don’t you just turn it down? Simple enough right?” She popped in another grape.
I snorted. “Yeah, okay. I’ll let you do that. I’d probably have better luck sticking my hand in a meat grinder.”
“I can tell you right now,” Stephanie said emphatically, “he won’t pull that stuff with me. I won’t have it.”
I furled my brow hard at her. “Go right ahead. I think I like living. The guy is a selfish loser, who only seems to—”
The front door swung open.
My heart thumped in my chest, and I could feel a dozen forms pleading inside of me to be decanted. Stephanie’s mouth hung open, an unchewed grape lingering just at the side of her tongue. Carter was home.
The “V” on his V for Vendetta hoody was now a strange looking “N” where the left side of the “V” was streaked red with what I was absolutely certainly was a bloody handprint. His hair was sweaty and twisted in every way but straight, and his skin looked to be pale purple with a few blue varicose veins trailing out from his collar and just below his scruffy chin.
His lips were tacky red like he’d tried to put on lipstick in an ice storm, and when he said, “Mornin’,” and his mouth opened, there were still a few strands of flesh hanging between his fangs.
The linoleum suffered red footprints, mingled with brown mud that scuffed off on the cream carpet. His keys hit the counter and slid off to the floor, leaving a trail of red in their wake, and before he shut the door to his room, he kicked off his shoes in the living room so that Stephanie and I could enjoy the sweet smelling funk of sneakers and feet.
“You think he heard us?” Stephanie mouthed, thumbing furiously at his room.
My eyes were wide and I was sucking in a tight breath between my teeth.
She put her hand on her forehead. “We’re dead. We’re dead we’re dead we’re dead.”
I cut my hand across my throat several times to get her to cool it, and changed the topic immediately. “So…heard anything from Zakhar over the past few days?”
“Zakhar…umm…not really?” Her face scrunched as she was trying to move away from the Carter topic. She slid the grapes into the fruit drawer of the fridge, and I saw that her hand trembled a bit before she tucked it into her tight pockets. “What about you?” She nervously scratched the side of her head.
“No, not me either. I’m beginning to get a bit concerned.”
“Anything in particular?”
The conversation was starting to flatten out to more natural tones and concern, especially when I said, “Because he showed up and burned down my apartment, and then the guy just disappears. How can he go from urgent to nonexistent in a matter of days?”
My first thought was that Carter had gotten to him, but I highly doubted that. True, Carter had ravaged Marcus, but Marcus was a Leprechaun, not a Shaman. And where Leprechauns used mostly illusions and tricks, Shamans used elemental Empyrean—the kind that put vampires in fits.
“Maybe it’s like you said,” Stephanie pointed out. “Maybe Zakhar wanted to create a big mess and then back away so we’d even out and do exactly what he expects us to.”
“Maybe,” I said, folding my arms. “But I’m not willing to wait around and find out. He already tried to kill me once. Next time, I might not be so lucky.”
“What did you have in mind?” Stephanie asked.
“He’s after me, right?”
Stephanie nodded, not sure where I was going with that.
“And he can’t do harm to you, or else it’ll backfire.” I leaned forward. “I’m thinking that I’ll do exactly what he expects me to do. I’ll draw him out in the open, and then we’ll take him down.”
Stephanie eyed me, then said, “Are you serious? That’s the dumbest thing I’ve heard all day. He nearly killed you the first time. What good is it going to do just to stand out in the open and let him take some free shots at you?”
“Think about it,” I said keenly. “For three days he hasn’t come after us. Three days.” I held up three fingers. “That means that either he’s backed down, or he has no idea where to find me. You said it yourself, without his ankh he can’t make all connections, only ones that he investigates. So did he know that I was going to get a new apartment when mine burned down? Probably. But if he hasn’t spoken with the property manager, then he would haven’t the foresight to know which apartment I’d be moved to.”
I wet a white dishcloth and put some soap on it so that I could wipe up the blood-streaked countertop. “He’s looking for us. I know it. And right now, I haven’t done anything but stay in this apartment, so he has no way of knowing what I’m going to do next.”
A smile made its way to her lips.
“See what I mean?” I said. “He’s probably checked every place that I usually go. The Roasted Bean. The Pale Ale. The bank. Bike riding. But I haven’t done any of that. And I just know he’s fuming.” I chuckled at the thought. “So to draw him out, all I have to do is show up at one of the places that I frequent, and I can guarantee you that he’ll be there.”
“Okay, then what?” Stephanie shrugged. “You get him out in the open and then you’re dead. Same situation, right?”
“Not exactly. Umara set up the lasers here at my apartment. Maybe she could do the exact same thing at the snare point.”
Stephanie’s mouth twisted, and she rolled her eyes. “Really, Lyle? Snare point? That’s what we’re calling it now?”
“Well if you have something more…I don’t know…more interesting, then by all means.” I threw my hands up and walked off, but turned back shaking a finger at her. “You have to admit that it’s a good plan. All we have to do is get the message to Umara on where to set up the snares.”
“And how do you expect to do that?” Stephanie’s eyes went wide when she saw where I was headed, and now she was cutting her hand across her throat to get me to stop.
It was too late though. I was already knocking on Carter’s bedroom door.
CHAPTER
NINE
Bejesus. Heebie-Jeebies. Crap. And a host of other expressions were all the things that were scared out of me when I knocked on Carter’s door. Why? It wasn’t how he opened it or the look he gave me when it opened. It was…just…well…how it all happened.
When I knocked, the door must not have been latched shut, and so it swung open right after my first firm tap. And you’ll never guess what I saw, so I’ll just tell you. And believe me, if you were in my shoes, you might have leapt through the roof. I know I did. I’m ashamed to say it, but…well, I hopped like ten feet in the a
ir and decanted to an eagle, screeching like mad, feathers and feet flailing like a crazy bird, until I finally spilled back into my regular self.
“Carter?” I said. “You’ve…been standing there at your door the…entire time?” My eyebrow raised, and I tried my hardest…my absolute hardest not to retch as he took a chunk out of some random hand. It was as if he’d snatched Thing straight off the dinner table of the Addams family and mauled two hunks out of it. Never mind the constant dribble of blood that soaked into the cream carpet at his bare taloned toes.
“Didn’t look like y’all wanted no comp’ny in the kitchen.”
Stephanie tried to sound sweet. “Carter, that’s not true. You’re always welcome around us. Mi casa es su casa. Or, well nuestra casa es su casa rather, right? Because of ‘we’?”
I just turned sharply at her and gave her the most “don’t you ever invite this lunatic around us” eyes I could muster.
Carter took another bone-crunching bite, then gave a dramatic swallow, choking a little. A few pieces of…yeah…flesh got on my shirt. But here’s the thing. It wasn’t even on my shirt. It was my skin! Because of the Semblance, remember!
My stomach turned upside down and inside out, but I pretended it didn’t bother me, which is something I shouldn’t have done, because Carter said, “You…uh…got a lil…” He scooped up the flesh with a fingernail and slipped it in his mouth.
That was about all I could take. My face must have been Frankenstein-green, and Stephanie must have realized it, because she came up to me and patted me on the back, almost shoving me out of the way so that she was standing in front of him instead of me.
“We need a favor from you,” Stephanie said, somehow managing to keep her voice steady in front of man’s only true predator.
“Let me get done with m’dinner first.” He took another bite, and I swear I tasted bile, but I bit it back. “But I know what you want.” He chewed voraciously mid-speech. “You want me to talk to the fairy and get’er to set up some Shaman snares. Snare point’s a good term for it, by the way.” He nudged me on the shoulder with a bloody knuckle.
Elemental Damage: Confessions of a Summoner Book 2 Page 7
