The wolf inside of him spoke softly, though it was images more than words. I am a part of you now. Together we are strong. Alone, we are weak.
The wolf was right, and though a part of him wanted to silence the rage, he knew he had to figure this out on his own. Even if it did take years.
Stepping back, he shook his head. “No, I have to find the balance. Thank you, Milly.” He turned his back to her and let the shift begin to take him.
“I’m sorry you feel that way, Liam,” she said softly, the scent of ozone snapping through the air. “Truly, I am sorry.”
With the suddenness that only nature can provide, lightning cracked through the air, slamming into O’Shea’s body, stopping his shift. Light and dark danced in his vision, eyes of green coming into sharp focus as Milly bent over him.
The cold metal torc slid around his neck, tightening like the collar it was.
“Come now,” Milly said softly, drawing him to his feet, his mind screaming that he couldn’t go with her, that she was one of the ones, obvious now, that would hurt Rylee. But his body wouldn’t respond, bound tight by the spelled torc hanging so innocently around his neck.
With a smile that turned down at the edges, liquid brimming in her eyes, Milly brushed back a lock of his hair. “You have much to learn, Liam. So much to learn.”
*-*-*-*
We were somewhere over the Atlantic when Agent Valley finally deemed me worth coming to speak to rather than just shouting at me from across the plane. Apparently, he was still stinging from our encounter at my house. Too damn bad. I wasn’t here to pander to his emotional issues. Bad enough that I struggled to deal with my own and Alex’s.
Standing next to me, he held out a yellow manila envelope. “Here are some of the pictures of the children who’ve been taken. Now that you’re on the case, you can start Tracking them.” He flopped the envelope into my lap and walked back to his seat. Yup, definitely still pissy.
Sliding the pictures out, I cradled them in my lap. Each one had a name printed neatly on the back. I looked for Sophia’s, as she was the first to go missing, and according to Valley, wouldn’t stand a chance of being alive.
I reached out for her, to Track her, and encountered a big fat nothing. My muscles clenched and Alex turned to me as my heart rate spiked. No, this couldn’t be happening, not now, not again.
Only one other child had ever proved impossible for me to Track. My sister, Berget. When she went missing, my Tracker abilities came on line, only I didn’t know that until later. Every attempt I’d ever made to Track her once I knew what I was doing, to bring her body home so that she could be at peace finally, had ended in exactly this same feeling. Nothing.
Even if the child was dead, I should still be able to find them; I could still Track them. But this emptiness, this impossible feeling that they never even existed? Shit on a stick, I was in trouble. Trembling, I pulled another picture out, Benjamin, and Tracked his threads, looking where they should have been.
And got the same damn result. Nothing, a big fat emptiness in my head where the traces of his life should have been.
Shit, shit, shit.
I went through the whole pile of pictures and couldn’t get a bead on a single one of the kids. What the hell was I going to do if I couldn’t Track? Tucking the pictures back into the envelope, I stood and headed to the bathroom.
Locking the door behind me, I leaned on the sink, attempted to slow my breathing and heart down. This wasn’t possible. I’d never had this problem before except with Berget. But she was an anomaly. Even Giselle, when she’d still been lucid, had thought that Berget was a one-off, a single case that I would likely never have to deal with again. And now I had twenty-plus kids falling into the same category as Berget. What the fuck was I going to do?
The mirror reflected my eyes back to me, wide and sketchy, the tri-coloured rings swirling with gold, green, and dark brown. My skin was pale and I leaned forward, not wanting to see the evidence of my imminent failure. The minute we landed, I’d be screwed. How did I tell them that I couldn’t sense the kids? What would I do with my life if I couldn’t Track?
I splashed water over my face and put a cold, wet paper towel over the back of my neck. A soft knock on the door barely made me twitch.
“Ma’am,” the flight attendant said, her voice sharp like she was hoping something was wrong with me. “Are you alright in there?”
“I’m fine. Bugger off,” I barked. I heard Alex repeat the ‘bugger off’ and the flight attendant gasped; then it went quiet outside the door.
I tried again to Track the kids, going through their names one by one, hoping by all that was holy in this world that it was a glitch, some sort of freaky accident that was done and gone