The Conduit (Gryphon Series) (10 page)

“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.”

Really? Sweaty, twitchy Keith?
“Okay, you kissed. Then what?”

“He was the first to notice. He looked down and screamed. I didn’t understand why. He pushed me away from and fell. At first I thought we had somehow moved to the edge of the porch, and he’d stumbled off the edge. But then I looked down. I was floating.” Her questioning eyes probed mine
, looking for a logical explanation to this impossible scenario. “How is that possible, Celeste?”

“I don’t know
, Keni. I honestly don’t.”

“It only lasted for a second
…then I came crashing down. Keith was petrified. He ran inside and locked the door behind him. He looked at me through the glass like…like I was a…”

“Freak?” Gabe’s harsh interjection startled me. Not just because I hadn’t heard him enter the room, but also because of the sharp way he spit the word out. Hostility brewed just below the surface, barely
contained.

Kendall either missed the tone or ignored it. “Yeah, like a freak. I feel so bad for him. He was terrified. I don’t know…what happened? How…how did I…?”

I hugged my baby sister tightly. If I hadn’t been so slow to put the pieces together, Kendall wouldn’t have had to endure this. This was my fault. “I’m so sorry,” I muttered.

“You should be sorry
,” Gabe hissed, his voice pure venom.

I made no attempt to hide my exasperation as I shot back, “What is your problem, Gabe? Do you have something you wanna say?”

“You bet I do. Why don’t you tell Kendall the truth? Or are you completely incapable of that anymore?”

“What exactly is it that you think I’m withholding?”

“That you know exactly what’s going on,” he snarled through gritted teeth. My heart momentarily forgot to beat. He knew. I didn’t know how much. But judging by the way he was pacing, it was enough to make him fume. “I just figured it out. That’s why you’ve been acting so weird lately. But instead of cluing us in on what was going on, you left us out to dry. Oh, but not before you took a minute to accuse me of doing drugs. Plenty of time for that fun little conversation.” His body language dared me to challenge him.

My mouth fell open to say…what? I couldn’t deny it
. He was right. I hadn’t even thought that his recent growth could be mystical, but it had to be. My chin fell to my chest. “I don’t know much yet.”

Kendall’s head whipped back and forth between Gabe and me. “What are you guys talking about?”

“Kendall and I have turned into freaks. What about you? Are you a member of the freak brigade?”

“Wait! You can do weird stuff, too?” Kendall perked up at the idea t
hat she wasn’t the “lone freak.”

“Yes. Try to keep up
!” Gabe snapped.

I grabbed my sister’s hand to comfort her, and then fixed my gaze on my pushy brother. “I can feel people’s emotions, and I think I may be able to alter what they’re feeling.”

A smug smirk spread across Gabe’s face. “Doesn’t that put a fun twist on this story. You could even feel the confusion and stress we were going through as we…” he struggled to find the right word “…changed. Still, you said nothing.”

I jumped up off the floor, stood on my tiptoes, and went nose to nose with my monstrous brother. “What did you want me to say, Gabe? That night I came home from the woods covered in blood, should I’ve told you that the real reason I fell was that I saw a feathered woman in the clearing? And that she told me stuff was going to start happening to all three of us. What do you think you would’ve said if I had done that?”

“You still could’ve given us warning…”

“What would you have said?”

His mouth snapped shut. The fire in his eyes simmered down to embers. “I would’ve told you that you were crazy.”

“Exactly. Truth be told, I thought I was. So I didn’t feel inclined to announce it to the world. And just so you know, I just put all the pieces together tonight.”

Gabe rubbed the back of his neck. Even a casual motion like that caused his giant pecks to dance. “I was just looking for someone to blame. Sorry. But, you can change how people feel? Really? That’s kinda cool.”

“
Hold on a second
!” Keni scrambled off the floor. “Feathered woman? Feeling people’s emotions? What the heck is going on?”

Gabe’s head jerked in Keni’s direction. “Can’t you use your voodoo to calm her down or something?”

“I’m not real sure how I did it the first time.” I shrugged.

“I don’t need to be calmed down!” Kendall stomped her foot. “What I need is for you two to tell me what is happening and why I am suddenly able to float!”

I didn’t know how to explain it, especially when I really didn’t understand myself. To the best of my ability, I started at the beginning and laid out the whole story of my experiences over the last week. I ended by declaring that to find answers we needed to find the bird-woman.

Gabe peeked into my backpack, inventorying what I’d packed. “It took you this long to figure all that out? Little slow on the uptake?”

“Definitely, yes.”

“That’s sad
,” he taunted. “So, we need to go back to that spot in the mountains and look for her. When do we go?”

“Tonight. After Grams crashes for the night. We’ll head up to the
clearing. Hopefully, she’ll be there.”

With resolute nods
, we all agreed.

“Wait, I have a question.” Kendall plopped down on her bed and grabbed her big stuffed zebra, Mr. Hoofington
, that she’d had since she was four.

“Just one?”

“To start with.” She looked up at Gabe as he zipped my backpack. “You didn’t say what you could do.”

“In addition to this…” He made a flippant gesture at his new
, alarming frame. “I’m wicked strong.”

“Cool.” She picked a fuzzy o
ff Mr. Hoofington and cocked her head to the side. “Wait. In addition to what?”

Now it was Gabe’s turn to look puzzled. “What do you mean ‘what’? This!” He extended his arms and pointed blatantly at himself.

Kendall sucked in a shocked breath. I bit down on my lip to stifle a laugh. “Holy crap, Gabe!” She exclaimed. “You’re huge!”

“You both suck
,” he grumbled.

CHAPTER 12

Extended cab or not, all three of us crammed into the front seat of my truck. Uncertainty made togetherness mandatory. As we piled out into the deserted parking lot, I eyed the entrance to the path. It seemed more menacing at night. Billowing trees arched up over the entrance with a few ragged branches jutting down. It looked like a fanged mouth, like the hungry jaws of the mountain were eagerly awaiting the opportunity to swallow us whole. I wiped my suddenly sweaty palms on my blue jeans and moved a little closer to my brother and sister.

Gabe grabbed the backpack and pulled out both flashlights. He tossed one to Keni and the other to me. Of course I missed and mine went skittering to the ground. Keni clicked hers on to help me find mine, while Gabe tried to wrestle his gargantuan arms into the normal-sized backpack. Light retrieved, I watched the comic relief my brother was unknowingly providing a little longer than I should have before I had mercy and held out my hand for the bag.

He threw it to me and huffed. “Stupid, tiny bag.”

Together we faced the mountain.

Keni shifted antsily on the ba
lls of her feet. “I’m like, pee-my-pants scared right now.”

“Aw, come on, Keni!” Gabe grinned as he draped his bulky arm around our little si
ster’s shoulders. “It’s a pitch-black mountain range, filled with savage, wild animals. One of which could be a man-eating panther. What’s to be afraid of?”

Keni’s eyes popped. Even in the moonlight
, her complexion paled noticeably with dread.

I kept my voice as calm and soothing as possible. “Kendall, he’s kidding.”

Gabe released Keni and shoved her playfully toward me. “No, I’m not.”

“Shut up
,” I hissed at him. I caught my sister’s face in my hands and made her look me in the eye. “We’ll be fine. And if we do run into any animals, Gabe is with us. So we have nothing to worry about.”

Gabe’s expanded his chest in full meathead bravado. “That’s right
ladies, the G-Man will protect you.”

“Actually, I meant that any carnivorous animals would much rather eat you, in all your meatiness, than us.” Gabe scowled. But I got a giggle out of Kendall.

She filled her lungs with a deep inhale and nodded. “All right. Let’s go.”

Gabe led the way with his wide gait and determined strides. I turned my head to hide my nervous gulp from my sister, then I followed him. Keni brought up the rear, sticking so close to me that she stepped on my heels repeatedly.

The foliage on the path hung thick and heavy and prevented the moonlight from poking through. Darkness enveloped us. I could only see as far as my flashlight beam allowed. Yet Gabe stayed out in front, sans flashlight.

“Hey, Gabe. Why don’t you let someone with a flashlight lead?”
Or better yet, take the flashlight and let me stay safely in the middle of the pack.

“That’s al
l right. I don’t need it. I can see fine.”

I raised an eyebrow at that. Improved night vision too? And the freak traits just keep on comin’.

The nighttime hoots, calls, and screeches of the nocturnal forest animals were creeping me out enough that I was relieved when Keni piped up…at first. “Hey, Cee, with that ability of yours, can you read my mind?”

“No, it doesn’t work that way.”

“Quick! What color am I thinking of?”

“I have no idea; I’m not a mind reader. I’m empathic, not psychic.”

“Do you, like, know what the winning lottery numbers are going to be?”

“Nope.”

“Can you tell me if I’ll get the role of Maggie the Cat?”

“I don’t know the future, Keni. Sorry.”

“Could you do something that would, like, completely alter what’s going to happen in the future?”

I stopped and spun on her. “What? That doesn’t even make sense! Anyone could do that. It’s just about emotions, that’s all.”

With one hand on her hip and her interest in this matter obviously waning, she asked, “So, what am I feeling right now?”

I didn’t even open the channel
but went for the obvious. “Nervous and scared.”

“Well, duh
,” she tsked. “Your ability’s dumb. I can float.”

I didn’t mind the nighttime forest noises as much after that. Twenty minutes later
, we arrived in the clearing. We were welcomed by the moonlight that glistened off the brook.

“You two have a seat over there.” Gabe nodded in the direction of the fallen tree. “I’m gonna make a fire.”

Keni and I watched him get a small campfire going. We gathered around it to fight off the night chill and watch for the bird-woman (I really hoped she had a name so I could stop calling her that).

“Hey, Gabe,” Keni mused as she twirled an oak lea
f between her fingers, “how’d you find out that you were super strong and not just big and lumpy?”

Gabe laughed and stretched his long legs out in front of him. With his back against the downed tree, he laced his fingers behind his head. “It was last week. I was on the bench press, lifting with the team during practice. No matter how much weight I slid on the bar it felt like nothing. I stacked more and more on until I ran out of weights. Still it didn’t even challenge me. That’s right about the time the steroid rumors started.”

“Naturally,” I commented.

“It got weirder from there.” Gabe gazed into the fire, a smile tugging at his lips. “The guys on the team wanted to
know how far back I could push the tackling dummy by myself with four guys standing on it.”