The Silver Moon Elm (28 page)

“Fair enough.” He sat up. “I’m feeling much better now. Goodwin, come back, boy! I promise not to crush you…”

There’s something close
.

Hearing the echoing voice in her head, Jennifer turned to Evangelina. “Just because Seraphina isn’t around anymore doesn’t mean you can intrude on our minds.”

Tough. My help, my terms
.

“Fine. We don’t want your help anymore. Go back to Seraphina and explain to her why you were such a stubborn ass. I’m sure she won’t be too busy fighting off the last outpost of our civilization to forgive you.”

From the depths of shadow came a growl of frustration, and then her sister’s grating voice. “We can’t stay here long. There are minds and memories in this forest. They are too mixed and too far away to read well, and I can’t guarantee all are friendly.”

“Fair enough.” Xavier regained his hind legs. “If we can do better than dead snakes, we could look for a bite to eat in this house, and then get moving.”

Jennifer shrugged. “Go ahead and look around. I’ve already eaten at this joint. It sucks.”

CHAPTER 15
Saturday Afternoon

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They stayed a short time at the cabin, but the constant mumblings from Evangelina that there was “something out there” provoked Jennifer to the point where she finally snapped.

“Maybe you’re sensing that moment in time when you slipped into a cabin just like this one and killed our grandfather,” she suggested.

Her sister began sulking and to get her moving again Xavier suggested that they didn’t have infinite amounts of time to get everything done. By noon, they were up and flying. Jennifer was painfully aware that of the three, she was the only one capable of disguising herself in any kind of camouflage. But as they went farther south, the cloud cover increased and gave them a higher altitude where they could stay hidden.

The cold wind whipping against Jennifer’s closed eyelids reminded her of the previous Saturday, and a ride with four friends she had taken in a Mustang convertible. She opened her eyes and took in the clouds below, and the tiny yellow sun that tried to warm them from a November distance.

Up here, they can’t reach us. Nothing has changed.

It was Evangelina who first gave the signal that Pinegrove was near. She sensed Jennifer’s lingering memory on the edge of town Tuesday morning, of Skip Wilson and a place gone horribly wrong.

“Just how far does that little mind radar of yours work, anyway?” Jennifer asked as they began their descent.

“Depends” came the grudging reply. “If the person is close to me, I can trace them from far away. There are exceptions…like you.”

Once again, the specter rose of that night at Grandpa Crawford’s cabin where each of them had surprised the other.

“I wonder why that is.”

Evangelina shrugged, then turned over to dump the air from her wings. “Some minds are harder for me to read. Beaststalkers like your mother. Others are simply stronger and harder to read. Yours, for example, is stronger than most.”

“Really?” It was the first compliment Jennifer had received from her sister. “You really think so?”

A burst of resigned exasperation leaked through Evangelina’s telepathy before she answered. “Bear in mind, I still kicked your ass that night.”

“You so completely did not.”

They broke through the cloud cover and were surprised to find billions of heavy snowflakes dropping alongside them. Through the curtain of weather, they could make out the landscape of Pinegrove. From the thin sheen of white on the ground, it looked as though the storm had just beaten them here.

“A little bit of good luck, then!” Xavier called out over the brisk winds. “I don’t think they’ll be able to see our approach in this weather.”

The high school was easy to spot. They made for it, getting low as quickly as they could and keeping the strange observatory as far away as possible. Jennifer didn’t sense anything creepy about it. Perhaps the eyes within were sleeping or focused elsewhere.

“Which entrance to get to the storage rooms?” Xavier asked.

“Any should be fine,” Jennifer replied. She rebuked herself silently for not thinking ahead enough to plan a specific route, but then again, she wasn’t exactly sure where the storage area was, anyway…

Basement level. Thirty yards from the west entrance and stairs. Your chemistry teacher is on the grounds, and she is easy to read
.

Her sister was surprisingly tender with her telepathy, and Jennifer sent back a grateful thought as she repeated the instruction aloud to Xavier.

The school doors were locked, but Evangelina tore them down. Their sleek, monstrous shapes slipped down the stairwell and into the dark basement hallway.

“Is Ms. Sloane in this part of the school?” Jennifer whispered to Evangelina.

“No. Somewhere on the east side, with others.”

“Near the gymnasium.” The big soccer game against Eveningstar was tonight. Jennifer briefly wondered whether they should have waited a day, or at least until evening—but then the thought of Seraphina holding off whatever hellish arachnid navy was emerging reminded her that the wait was not worth the risk. “Okay, so that looks like the storage area over there.”

They could easily see the locked door in the dark, and pushing through it was not a problem. However, a quick glance into the room told them that dragon shapes would be more hindrance than help.

“Xavier, keep watch. Evangelina and I will shift and go in.”

The storage room had all sorts of supplies for all sorts of classes: paints and brushes, small animals in formaldehyde jars, old maps and Latin textbooks, and finally in the far corner, a huge fenced-in storage locker with jars upon labeled jars of chemicals and other poisonous substances, as well as a large steel refrigerator.

“Jackpot,” Jennifer muttered as she kicked this door open herself. “All right, we’re looking for the botulin toxin. I don’t know if—”

“In here.” Evangelina flipped back her dark hair and strode confidently to the refrigerator. “I can smell it.”

They looked up and down and found a shelf of plastic containers marked Clostridium botulinum: Keep 2–4°C and small glass vials marked Botulinum A: Keep 2–8°C.

“Which do we take? How much do we need? How’re we going to keep it cool enough?”

Evangelina shrugged. “No idea.”

Jennifer chewed her tongue and scanned the locker. “All right. Over there.” She pointed and then picked up a small plastic cooler, which had a bit of dust in it but nothing else. “Let’s take one of the plastic containers and a few of the vials. If it’s not enough, one of us will have to come back and get more, that’s all.”

“That’s all?” Evangelina’s smirk was not totally unkind as she located ice from the freezer compartment and filled the cooler. “You have an awful lot of faith in yourself, sister.”

“I have faith in you. You’d be the one coming back. You’re the strongest. Okay, let’s get the poison in there. Make sure there’s ice all around it.”

The older girl’s mouth twisted. “Hmmm. You were right about where the poison was. If you’re right about the observatory—”

“Can you feel anything from over there? They’re pretty close.”

Evangelina shook her head. “That building felt closed. Nothing in, nothing out.”

“Can you feel Skip?” As soon as the question was out, Jennifer thought better of it. “Never mind. I don’t care. He can go—”

“He’s been in the school recently. But that could mean anything.”

“Ladies!” Xavier’s voice came from the doorway. He was trying to squeeze in. “We have company.”

At least three of them, Jennifer guessed from the footsteps and voices echoing down the stairwell on the opposite end of the hallway from where they had entered. She closed the cooler, wondering if they should engage the newcomers or just run for it. Do they even know we’re here?

They did not, it was immediately clear. The voices were giggling and whispering and shrieking, like teenagers trying to scurry away from some authority figure and do something ill-advised out of sight.

“Did Coach see us leave the locker room?” one of them asked, and Jennifer’s teeth clenched hard. It was Amy. And if Amy was one of them…

Bobbie’s voice was breathless but still firm. “No way. Stop freaking out, Amy, we’re on the other end of the school! So how much you got?”

“A vial for each of us. But we gotta hurry. Game starts in twenty minutes!”

Feeling a cloud over her head darker than anything Evangelina could muster, Jennifer turned to the other two and forced her voice down to a whisper. “I’m not running from these people again.”

Evangelina only had to connect for a brief moment before Jennifer felt her sister’s caution turn to fury. “These are the bullies who threatened your life. They are predators.”

Like she used to be, Jennifer thought. And still is. She felt a simultaneous desire for penance and vengeance—the chance to do right by doing wrong—rise in her sister’s mind.

“We don’t have time for this!” Xavier urged them both. “They’re still far down the hall. If Evangelina and I move now, Jennifer can use her camouflage to cover our—”

“I am not,” Jennifer repeated, “running from these people again. Xavier, take the cooler. Evangelina—”

But her sister was already out the door, morphed, and racing down the hall toward the other girls.

“Jennifer!” Xavier pleaded as she pushed the cooler into his wings. “You could raise an alarm!”

“There won’t be an alarm.” Jennifer followed her sister.

Bobbie and the others were so consumed with their quest to get high that they did not see the attack coming. Evangelina rolled down the hallway like a blackout, snuffing the exit signs and nighttime lights one by one. By the time any of them realized anything was wrong, it was too late.

Jennifer shifted into dragon shape so she could see a bit better. Even then, there was little detail available. Someone screamed—Abigail or Anne—and then she heard a shout of anger from Bobbie. Amy’s brunette locks emerged from Evangelina’s darker shadow briefly, but then a tattered wing with a stark claw yanked her back in.

After a few moments, Bobbie broke free of Evangelina’s trap and found the time to morph into a spectacular black widow specimen, dominating the hallway at seven feet tall and ten feet long. Anne’s unconscious shape stumbled into view and careened to the floor, and Abigail screamed again from somewhere unseen, but Amy managed finally to scramble into the open and under the protective new shape of her friend.

“Who the hell are you?” Bobbie demanded.

“We’re the visiting soccer team!” Jennifer answered, and before anyone could figure out where she was, she took wing just behind Evangelina, plunged through her sister’s dark aura, and burst out again right in front of Bobbie, turning to swing her tail. “Penalty kick!”

The black widow took both prongs right on the side of the head, stumbling under an explosion of sparks. Evangelina advanced and grabbed Amy by the neck. The girl sputtered as her body was lifted off the floor and slammed up against the wall.

You thought it was funny to attack my sister. You saw the blonde bitch make her bleed, and you joined right in
.

“I’m…sorry…” Amy gasped.

You are young. Stupid. Tasty
.

Another creature emerged just under Evangelina’s body. It was Abigail, gathering herself to try to help. The girl’s scorpion shape was strong but elegant, with an olive segmented body, lean crimson head, and swift orange appendages with brown markings. Her black tail struck blindly at where Evangelina’s head likely was, and apparently scored a hit.

Ow
.

Evangelina threw Amy back down the hallway, where the girl’s limp form came to a halt near a horrified Xavier. Then she sized up Abigail’s scorpion form, swung her tail around like a scythe, and broke off one of the girl’s snapping pincer claws.

While Abigail screamed, Evangelina raised a foreleg and brought the pincer end down, stabbing the scorpion in the back and pinning her to the hallway floor.

“Evangelina!” Xavier dropped the cooler and raced toward the fray. “Stop! You’ll kill her! Jennifer!”

The monster turned to Jennifer, who had Bobbie’s dizzy head pinned to the wall with a strong hind leg.

Don’t pretend that would bother you, sister
.

Jennifer didn’t know how to answer; she could only watch Abigail’s crippled shape stagger back and forth across the locker-room entryway. Did scorpions regenerate limbs? Would others around here know a sorcery that could help her? Would—

A sudden blow across her jaw interrupted her thoughts and broke her grip on Bobbie. The spider brought another limb up and struck Jennifer in the midsection, knocking Jennifer back and giving her opponent the chance to scramble up the nearby stairs. She was fast, Jennifer calculated through her pain, faster than any of the three of them.

But not faster than fire.

It only took one ball of flame to knock the spider down. The projectile from Jennifer’s jaws hit its target squarely in the bulbous thorax, and the carapace began to combust immediately. Bobbie screamed as she lost her balance and tumbled back down the stairs.

Jennifer kicked the burning monster in the abdomen, then pushed her up against the wall and pinned her there.
Just like she pinned me
.

“You wanted me to turn into a dragon,” she spat at Bobbie. “Here. I. Am.”

The spider tried to regain its balance, but Jennifer kept her foot planted firmly on her back. She gave a short whistle—just enough to reignite the fire that had been consuming the girl’s body.

“Jennifer!” Xavier’s shock echoed down the hall. “No!”

Bobbie tried to shift back into the form of a girl, but she kept burning, her chest heaving in pain.

Jennifer gave Xavier a hard stare, but then smothered the fire with her wings. “Stop screaming, you insufferable baby. Get up.” She turned to Xavier. “We’re going to have to put them all in the storage locker, so they can’t get out and alert anyone else.”