The Calling

TWENTY-TWO

MY DREAMS STARTED INNOCENTLY enough. I was at home, undressing for the night, then I collapsed into bed. I didn’t stay there for long. The next thing I knew, I was in a medieval torture chamber, roped to the rack, being stretched until I screamed with… I wasn’t sure how to describe it. Not pain. It was like stretching for a run, only it felt wrong, like I was overdoing it, my brain screeching for me to stop before I tore something, only I couldn’t stop, because I wasn’t in control. The ropes pulled tighter and tighter, until I was covered in sweat, gasping for breath.

I didn’t know what my tormenters wanted from me, but apparently “screaming like a girl” wasn’t it, because they ramped it up to a form of torture seen only in sci-fi movies—injecting bugs under my skin. I didn’t actually feel the injections. But I felt the bugs. They crawled all over my body and burrowed into my flesh. That led to more screaming.

I lay there feeling my body being stretched beyond its limits, watching it writhe and contort as bugs skittered beneath my skin. And then, with no warning, the ropes were cut and the beetles vanished, and I was left panting with exertion and exhaustion, eyes squeezed shut until I dared to open them and—

I was lying on the ground. I caught a glimpse of one of Kenjii’s paws and I remembered where I was. I blinked and yawned. Out of the corner of my eye I saw another of Kenjii’s paws jerk, and I glanced over to realize it wasn’t hers. It was the huge tawny paw of a cougar.

I leaped to my feet. Or I tried to, rolling awkwardly. I managed to get half up, then reached out to push to my feet and—

I screamed. Only it was no girlie scream this time—it was a snarling yelp. I looked down again at my hands, stretched out before me. Not hands. Paws. Cougar paws.

I gulped air. Even that didn’t feel right and when I closed my mouth, a fang caught my lip.

I’d changed into a cougar. Transformed in my sleep.

As I swung my head, I caught sight of Kenjii. She was still fast asleep. I stared at her. If Kenjii wasn’t leaping up with a cougar standing two meters away, then there couldn’t be a cougar standing two meters away.

I was dreaming.

Oh.

I told myself I should be relieved, that I wasn’t ready to deal with the shape-shifting, that I needed more information first, I needed to be prepared. Yet there was part of me that didn’t want to be prepared. Didn’t want to be so damned organized and informed all the time. The part that longed to just leap and experience.

Yet the transformation couldn’t be that easy, could it? For the body to turn from human to animal must involve pain. Vast amounts of real pain, not just discomfort. That was only logical.

Damn logic. Why couldn’t I have a little magic in my life, instead?

I sighed. It came out as a feline chuff, jowls quivering.

Oh, get over it already. You want magic, Maya? How about the ability to heal animals? The power to become one—painful or not.

That was magic.

I stretched, catlike, hindquarters up, front paws out. I stayed back from Kenjii, though. Part of me still hoped I wasn’t dreaming, that she was just soundly asleep from her long day of adventure. After everything I’d been through, I was entitled to enjoy my fantasy while it lasted.

As I stretched, I flexed my paws and my claws shot out like switchblades. I relaxed and they retracted. In and out, in and out.

I took a closer look at my paws. They were as big as splayed human hands, oversize for climbing. If I looked closely at my flanks, I could see very faint spots, all but disappeared.

I pushed onto all fours and took a few steps. It wasn’t as awkward as I’d feared. I knew how animals moved, and when I put that image into my brain, it was like an instruction set. My muscles obeyed and I walked. Forward. Back—

I tripped and landed on my rump. Okay, that explained why animals usually turn around instead of switching into reverse. Backing up on two legs is a lot easier than on four.

So what else was different? Everything I saw, for starters. The world came in shades of gray, like a high-quality black-and-white movie. My night vision seemed sharper, as did my hearing. The dark clearing where we’d fallen asleep looked twilit, and I could pick up the scuffle of a distant animal.

The most noticeable difference was the overwhelming number of smells. Musk and rot and a sharp, clean scent that I somehow recognized as water. I swallowed. Water.

I followed the scent until I found a stream, barely a trickle. I sat on my haunches and reached out a paw, ready to scoop some up to drink before realizing that really wasn’t going to work.

I bent, stuck out my tongue, and licked the water. I knew I was supposed to lap, not lick, but that’s not easy when you aren’t accustomed to it. After slopping around and soaking my face, I managed to get a few mouthfuls.

When I had enough, I twisted to go and felt a weird ping on my cheek. It was like I’d brushed against something, but a more intense sensation. And my face was inches from the ferns bending over the stream. I tried again. Another ping, and I realized what it was. Whiskers. They were warning me I was close to hitting something. Like the backup sensors on my grandmother’s car.

As I turned around, I felt another brushing sensation, this one not nearly as intense but even odder. My tail. It was off to the side and I couldn’t really get a good look at it. So how could I move—?

My tail swung. Okay, that was easy. I took a closer look. It was thick and over half the length of my body. When I thought of moving it, it moved. Very convenient.

I crept forward, sniffing and listening and, occasionally, tasting. When I caught the faint smell of raw meat, my stomach rumbled. That part, I ignored. Definitely not something I cared to explore, and the mingled musk of a weasel or marten told me I’d be stealing dinner from someone else if I did.

The next scent on the breeze was also from a living being. And this one brought me to a skidding stop, paws outstretched. I lifted my head, nose twitching as I found the smell again, to be sure I wasn’t mistaken.

Human.

Daniel and the others? My heart beat faster, tail swinging. Another sniff. No, these were scents I didn’t recognize. Not consciously, at least. But as I stood there, nose raised to the wind, images flashed in my mind and told me I did know these people—I just hadn’t realized I’d stored the scents.

Moreno. Antone. The woman. And the faint smell of a campfire.

As I sniffed the air, I started to seriously consider the possibility this was real. I’d dreamed of undressing. I must have done that, in my sleep, like I’d walked in my sleep two nights ago. As for the transformation, I’d seen Annie do it and it had seemed relatively painless. And why hadn’t Kenjii woken? Because I’d moved away from her before I shape-shifted. She was too tired to hear me get up and I probably smelled the same as I always did. No cause for alarm.

This was real. I’d shape-shifted. I was a cougar. And Antone, Moreno, and the woman were close by.

Was Sam right, after all? Had they tagged Kenjii and were closing in? Time to check this out, while I still wore my handy disguise.

By the time I got to the camp, I knew they weren’t tracking my dog. If they had been, they wouldn’t be staying so far away. I’d traveled at least a couple of kilometers to find them.

When I finally made it, I found two canvas tents and a pickup. From the looks of the small fire, they’d only recently pitched camp for the night.

Moreno, Antone, and the woman sat around the blaze. Moreno and the woman were drinking beer. Antone had a bottle of water beside him, and was crouched by the fire, poking a stick in. I caught the smell of roasting sausage. He pulled it out and put it into bun, then set the stick aside.

“Not going to make ours?” Moreno said.

“I’m sure you can manage.”

“I burn everything. My people didn’t cook over fire.”

“All people cooked over fire at some point,” Antone said.

“You know what I mean. Your family.”

“My family lived in a suburb of Phoenix. I learned campfire cooking in Scouts, like most boys in America.”

“Touchy, touchy,” Moreno said. “I was just—”

“Being an ass?” the woman said.

Moreno muttered something, crushed his beer can, and threw it into the forest. The woman leaned over, took the stick, and started preparing a sausage. Antone walked into the forest, retrieved the can, and tossed it into the trash.

“Earth Mother be angry,” Antone said as he came back to the fire. “Send big thundercloud.”

Moreno made a face at him. As Antone sat again, I thought of what he’d said earlier, about losing my twin brother and me. Hunting for us. Finding me. Being strung along by promises from the St. Clouds.

Did I understand how he felt? I guess so. But I was only his child in blood. I’d been raised by others, and to think he could just take me away from them—then or now—was all kinds of wrong.

It didn’t matter if he’d been given a raw deal. It didn’t matter that as I watched him I saw hints of someone I might have liked. He was trying to take me captive and separate me from my family while endangering my friends along the way. He was the enemy. He had to be.

When Moreno went for a second beer, Antone said, “Enough. I don’t mind you guys having one drink, but there’s a reason I’m drinking water. We need to be alert here.”

“Against what?” Moreno said. “Killer bunnies?”

“Don’t dignify that with a response, Cal,” the woman said.

A cough sounded from one of the tents, and they all glanced over.

“Penny, go see if she wants another sausage,” Antone said. “I’d like to see her eating more.”

“I have a Snickers bar in my bag,” the woman—Penny—said. “I’ll take her that. Kids always like candy.”

“Not sure that applies to teenage girls, but you can give it a shot.”

Teenage girls? Hayley? I inhaled. This close to the fire, though, all I could smell was smoke. I strained to see inside the tent as Penny pulled back the flap, but she didn’t open it far enough.

I slid backward until it seemed safe to turn around. Then I circled the camp. I eyed a massive tree with branches stretching close to the tents. My claws extended and retracted, as if urging me to climb it. Tempting… The tents were in the middle of a large clearing, meaning there was no way I could get close from ground level. I saw a flap tied open on the tent roof. A vent that I could probably see down through.

Up it was then.

I’ll say this much for cat form. It made shimmying up a long evergreen trunk so much easier. I’d seen Marv—our local cougar—do it by taking a run at the tree and landing ten feet up it, but I wasn’t quite ready for such athletics yet. So I started at the bottom, reached up, and unsheathed my claws. Four massive paws equipped with climbing spikes.

I was up the tree in no time. Getting out on the branch was a little tougher. I had to creep along while using my tail for balance. It was the tail part that threw me. I was sure I’d get the hang of it, but for now, I was just glad I had sixteen claws digging into the tree to keep me from sliding off every time I wobbled.

Halfway along the branch I smelled who was in that tent. And when I did, a tiny growl rumbled up.

Nicole.

Penny emerged. “No to the sausage and no to the candy bar. I’d say she’s understandably upset, but it seems more like a hissy fit. She didn’t want to come back out here. She was quite comfy in Vancouver, with her soft bed, hot baths, and room service.”

“All the more incentive for her to lure her friends out so she can get back there,” Antone said. “Hayley obviously wasn’t going to do it.”

They talked for another minute, enough for me to confirm what had happened. Kenjii had escaped and Hayley hadn’t done her job, so they’d swapped her out for Nicole.

As I thought of Nicole, my ears flattened and my chest vibrated with another growl. I swallowed it. Was Nicole really responsible for Serena’s death? What if Sam was mistaken? Wasn’t that exactly the sort of thinking I’d berated myself for earlier—jumping to conclusions?

I continued creeping along the branch until I could look down through the mesh skylight and see her, sitting on a sleeping bag. She wasn’t bound—there was no way out except past her captors. A lantern provided illumination and a pile of magazines provided entertainment. She was reading one, leafing through the glossy pages.

I told myself that was her way of dealing with stress, but still…? Reading fashion tips? If it was me, I’d be plotting my escape, no matter how unlikely it seemed, just to feel that I was taking control of my fate.

I shimmied a little closer and the branch creaked. Nicole looked up. She saw me, and her mouth opened to let out a shriek. I froze. I was stuck out on a branch, with no easy way to back up and escape. She didn’t scream, though. For a minute, we just stared at each other. Then she lifted the lantern and squinted, her gaze sliding along my side.

“Maya,” she whispered.

I followed her gaze to my flank. There was my birthmark, black fur forming a paw print.

“It is you, isn’t it?” She stood. “They told me what you are.”

She smiled up at me and I saw the same old Nicole, sweet and shy, yet all I could think was, You killed Serena. I looked into her eyes and it wiped away that last piece of doubt.

“You came to rescue me,” she said, keeping her voice so low I could barely hear it.

When I just stared at her, she said it again.

“You are here to rescue me, right?”

I thought about how easy it would be to drop from my perch, slash through that tent, and take her down. I imagined my fangs clamped around her throat, and felt a kernel of horror in my gut, but it was only a kernel.

“Stop that,” she hissed, yanking her gaze away. “Go get the others. You outnumber these guys. Together you can save me.”

I didn’t move.

She looked at me again, and the sweet and shy Nicole disappeared. Her eyes blazed.

“The others aren’t here, are they?” she said. “You have no intention of rescuing me. Why would you? I’m competition for your precious Daniel. You don’t want him, but you don’t want anyone else to have him either. You’re a selfish bitch, Maya Delaney. A slut, too, fooling around with every guy in sight, right under his nose.”

As Nicole raged, the hair on my neck prickled, because in her eyes, I saw madness. Obsession and madness.

“Everything comes so easy for you, doesn’t it, Maya? School, boys, friends, sports. Even your precious animals. You can’t just take care of them like any normal person. You have to be some kind of animal whisperer. Magical healer. So damned special. Like Serena, captain of the swim team and the best singer on the freaking island, and how much does she practice? Sings in the shower. Paddles around the lake. Do you know how hard I work? It’s never enough. You two get the trophies and the solos and the As and the boys.”

You’re crazy, I thought. Did they do this to you with their experiments? Or is this just you?

I started inching back.

“You’re just going to leave me here?” she said. “Well, you know what, Maya? I could use a little company.”

She screamed, a long drawn-out shriek of feigned terror.