CHAPTER 27
Caleb had seen me naked.
Of all the crazy stuff that had happened, that was the thought that kept beating through my brain as I limped across the desert with him and Amaris. It shouldn’t have been that big of a deal. Shifters found themselves naked all the time after they shed their animal form. But I’d never been kissed before I met him, never even considered showing any part of my body to a boy. I’d been in the brace for years, armored against all contact, safe and alone. Now that armor was gone, and I’d bared everything. I got hot all over as I thought about it. Part of me wanted to ask him what he was thinking. Part of me wanted to run away so I’d never have to look him in the eye again. And a very small part of me, a new part, wanted to tell him it was his turn next.
We were all a mess. I stumbled forward in bare feet, wearing nothing but Caleb’s coat. Caleb drooped with exhaustion. Amaris, walking on the other side of Caleb, was bruised and scraped after falling from a moving plane and being held hostage by her father and brother. On top of that she’d been forced to reject the people who’d raised her and thrown her lot in with a group she’d always heard were minions of Satan. Caleb’s near possession by a powerful, demonic force from shadow probably hadn’t been very reassuring. I was proud of her for fighting back and jumping out of that plane, but I wasn’t sure she’d give a damn for praise out of a shifter’s mouth. Every now and then she cast a fearful little glance at me, as if expecting me to pounce.
Ahead, the flames roared around the buildings and reached for the sky. The entire Tribunal compound was burning to the ground. Its leaders had fled; its files and equipment were ash. Maybe, just maybe, we’d put a stop to their work in this part of the world. At least for a little while.
Caleb held my hand as we walked, our shoulders touching. I tripped, trying to avoid a cactus, and Caleb caught me. “Here, put my shoes on,” he said, slipping off one of his boots.
Amaris looked down at my battered and bleeding feet. “Do you have some clothes in the car? I can run ahead and get them.” Her voice wasn’t as melodious as Caleb’s, but I could hear the resemblance now that I knew they were related.
“That’d be great, thanks.” I tried to smile up at her.
She managed a weak smile back and jogged on ahead. Caleb helped me find a more comfortable spot to sit, which ended up being half on his lap, leaning back against him, his arms wrapped around me, my head on his shoulder. I closed my eyes as I realized that everything was all right now.
“What did it mean?” I asked. “That demon thing. It said it watched you. . . .”
Caleb’s arms tightened around me. “I was ten years old, shopping with my mother in this department store in Sweden, when I saw that stuffed elephant. I knew it was something powerful, something dangerous, but I had no idea it was watching me.”
“Let me guess,” I said. “You stole it.”
He let out a rueful laugh. “Yep. I stole it, and I hid it from my mother, because I knew she’d make me give it back, or destroy it. But I thought we might need it one day. We were always on the run from the Tribunal, you know. I wasn’t sure exactly what would happen if I called forth that particular shadow. But I figured it was better than getting killed by Ximon and his crew.” I felt him shake his head. “Now I’m not sure which is worse.”
“Please don’t ever do anything like that again,” I said. “I thought I’d lost you.”
His mouth was against my hair. “You meant what you said, didn’t you?”
I pulled away enough to be able to look him in the eye. His face was creased with concern. “Of course I did. You saw me out there, you saw . . .”
“Everything.” A roguish smile curled his lips. “My dream came true. I thought I was gone forever. But I fought the devil himself on the chance I might get to see all of you again.”
I flushed and buried my face in his shoulder again, jitters running up and down my ribs. “Then how could you think I didn’t mean it?”
“Well, you’re kind of noble and stubbornly heroic, and you ran all the way out there to save us. You’re not the type to give up, on anyone. So there was a chance you said it not because you actually meant it, but because you knew I’d rip the veil between the worlds with my bare hands to get back to you once I heard that.”
“I meant it,” I said. “I love you.” It was easy to say now, with my clothes on, his arms around me, his breath on my ear.
He reached up to tilt my head back and kissed me, like a man lost in the desert drinking from a well.
“Maybe she doesn’t need shoes.” November’s voice cut through the roar in my ears. “Maybe she’ll float home on pink clouds pushed by the breath of angels.”
Caleb and I began to laugh and turned to see November walking up next to Amaris. Amaris looked a little lost, but she put my spare set of shoes and other clothing down by my feet as November tossed a large bottle of water at Caleb.
London, Siku, and Arnaldo, all in human form and clad in their spare clothes, walked up behind them, silhouetted in the sunset-like red haze of the Tribunal fire.
Caleb took a long swig of water from the bottle and helped me to my feet as I slipped on my sneakers. “I take it you all have met my sister, Amaris,” he said, and walked over to her as she stood a little apart from the others, arms crossed over her chest.
“She shoved Ximon out of the way and jumped from a moving plane to get away from them,” I said. “Pretty badass, actually.”
“But you let them get away,” said Siku, his expression not changing.
“I—” Caleb started to speak.
“I stopped Caleb from using the nuclear option,” I said, wanting to take the blame for that, because it was my fault. I wasn’t sorry about it though. “Not one of our lives is worth theirs.”
“And we did basically take out their whole western American operation,” said Arnaldo.
“I think maybe we did okay.” London was smiling.
“You surprised everyone,” said Amaris, startling us. “The shifters have never banded together to fight like this. My father was . . . impressed.”
“He’ll be even more impressed when we find him and kill him,” said Siku. “No offense.”
Amaris bit her lip and shook her head, rubbing her scraped hands together. Caleb looked down at them and the bloody rips in the elbows of her gown. “Can you heal yourself, you think?”
“Maybe,” she said. “After I eat and rest a bit. I haven’t been able to—not since you used the lightning on Father.”
“Psychological block,” said November. “You’ll get over it. Dez did, didn’t you, Dez?”
“I guess so,” I said.
Arnaldo wiped his hand on his pants and stepped forward, extending it toward Amaris. “I’m Arnaldo,” he said. “Nice to meet you.”
“The, um . . .” She gave his hand a quick, limp shake. “The eagle, right?”
“Right.” He grinned at her, then stepped back.
She swallowed and stood up straighter as the others moved toward her slowly, shaking hands with an odd formality. I ended it by walking over and giving her a hug. She didn’t react at first, taken aback. Then she put her arms around my shoulders and gave me a tentative squeeze.
“Welcome to the insanity,” I said.
“Let’s get to Barstow,” said November. “I’m starving!” She turned and jogged back toward the van. As we followed her, Caleb slipped one arm around Amaris’s shoulders and the other wrapped snug about my waist.
We heaped into the van, Caleb driving, me riding shotgun with my black file folder on my lap. I’d taken off the Shadow Blade and put it in the back. Thirty seconds after I took it off, it turned into my brace again. Maybe my feeling earlier was correct—as long as I wore the Blade, it stayed a blade. But once I let it go, the brace returned. It looked strange now, small and not embarrassing at all.
Amaris huddled in the back of the van with the others. Behind us, the flames were dying down, but two fire engines passed us, lights flashing, as we headed into town.
Phone service came back in Barstow, and after the shifter kids called their angry but relieved parents, I used November’s phone to e-mail my mom.
“All safe,” I wrote, typing as fast as I could as we circled the drive-thru again. “Tribunal facility taken offline, so I think we can go home. At least for now. Should be back at Bishop Hospital to see Morfael in a few hours. Tell me where to find you when you can. Miss you. Love you.” With the tension draining from me, I felt a stab of loneliness at the thought of my parents. How far had they fled? Now that Caleb was safe, the thing I wanted most was to see my mother.
Caleb parked, and we passed the food back to everyone. The van quieted with the sounds of chewing and slurping.
“You were still wearing the Shadow Blade when you shifted to human form,” Caleb said, dipping a bundle of fries in ketchup. “Yes, indeed. I noticed
everything
.” He waggled his eyebrows at me, and I blushed. “But I didn’t see it on you in tiger form.”
“Yeah, I know. Weird,” I said. “I figured it fell off me when I became a tiger, but there it was when I turned human again.”
“It’s accommodating your shadow form,” he said. “As if it was made for you.”
“Maybe it was,” I said. “It just feels . . . right when I hold it. And the back brace was made especially for me after they found the curve in my spine.”
“So somehow the brace was made for you and tied to a knife that was made for you too?” he said. “Something else we need to ask Morfael about.”
“Check it out.” Arnaldo had made his way up from the back of the van to kneel between us. He held out a tranquilizer gun taken from the Tribunal. Its stock was warped as if from a fire, with black streaks snaking up the barrel.
“Did you take that out of the fire?” I said.
“No. I picked it up on my way out of the lab because I noticed these.” He ran a finger along the dark lines. “It’s the one you used, Dez. It still works, but barely.”
I took it from him, recognizing it now. “Just like the silver gun that broke down after I used it during the raid on the school.”
“Looks like you have a destructive effect on any sort of metal mechanism,” he said. “It’s like the shadow is seeping out of you and distorting them.”
“Why me?” I said. “Why doesn’t this happen to you or the others?”
“Maybe it’s the Blade affecting other things you hold?” said Caleb.
“The silver gun got warped before she ever had the Blade. There’s got to be another explanation.” Arnaldo shrugged and went to the back of the van.
I leafed through the file and its detailed listing of my daily activities, starting with the first time I climbed the lightning tree. “There’s nothing in here about who my parents are, or where. All that’s in Ximon’s head, I guess.”
I looked out the window as the cactus and sand, clear under the moon, sped past. “I feel like you and I are always driving into or out of a battle zone,” I said.
He nodded. “We’d better get used to it.”
Everyone but Amaris got out of the van in the hospital parking lot in Bishop. She had fallen asleep. A faint snoring sound came from her mouth. Caleb stared down at her, lips twitching.
“Sleep tight,” said November as she shut the back doors to the van as quietly as she could.
“She snores,” said Siku, looking at me. “You better get earplugs. That kind of thing runs in the family.”
I opened my mouth, glancing at Caleb, whose eyes got wide in disbelief. Had Siku made a joke? I was too dumbfounded to reply.
We found Morfael wide awake and waiting for us, his eyes alight with the old fire in spite of the tubes in his arm and the thick bandages around his body. Raynard snorted awake from his chair as we poured into the room, surrounding the bed.
“One at a time,” Morfael said, as we all began babbling at him about what had happened at the compound. “Raynard, would you shut the door, please?”
Raynard shut the door to make sure no one overheard, and we took turns telling the story of the Raid on the Tribunal. Or the Rescue of Siku, as November called it. I noticed she was standing awfully close to him.
Morfael listened carefully but without expression. “You seem to have learned a lot in my school without my having to teach it to you.”
We grinned at each other. That was about as close to a compliment as you could get from Morfael.
“Fat lot of good it does,” said November. “My dad’s going to kill me when I get home.”
“I guess we all should make plans to go home,” said Arnaldo. “No way our parents will let us stay at the school now that the Tribunal knows where it is.”
“But what about the rest of the school year?” London pushed her hair behind her ear and looked a little defensive as we all stared at her in surprise. “Hey, it’s better than home. Plus there’s six months left before we graduate.”
“A new location will be established soon,” said Morfael. “Perhaps Caleb and his sister can help us.”
Caleb stood up straighter, a smile breaking over his face. “We’d be happy to.”