Page 89 of Changeling
Without any seeming effort, Tina shot her hands out at Sasha’s chest, causing the redhead to fly backwards and land hard and painful on his wings several yards away. Cam launched himself after her, grabbing her shoulders and raising her into the air as high as he could fly. But Tina was vicious. She turned her head to get at one of his arms and bit down hard. Cam dropped her with a growl.
Jim’s arm shot out and he steadied the girl with his TK. Slowly, he lowered her to the ground, but as soon as she touched down it was as if she tossed his powers aside. She dove for him, seeing him as the largest threat, and wrapped her hands around his throat.
Sasha rushed over to pull the girl off of him but her grip was steadfast. Cam landed back down behind them, favoring his arm. Nathan could see that the bite had taken out a good chunk of flesh. He didn’t know what he could do to help, even as he watched Jim bring his hands to Tina’s wrists and start to burn her with the same bright electric light he had once used on the Dryads.
The dark fae threw back her head to scream as her grip loosened, but Sasha brought a claw to her mouth to silence herand pulled her the rest of the way off of Jim. Again, Jim pointed an arm at her, and this time his TK seemed more capable of holding her still. Sasha still kept a firm hold on her physically, and as he took a moment to calm down, he looked across the stage at Nathan.
Then Nathan saw Sasha’s eyes widen.
Nathan whipped around. Leven was standing there with Jennifer, obviously having been trying to keep the girl from wandering backstage again since his hand was tight on her arm. Both of the teenagers’ eyes were wide with fear.
“Nathan!” Sasha yelled, and Nathan immediately turned back. Tina had broken free of Sasha’s hold and the steadying power of Jim’s TK. She was sprinting across the stage towardshim.
No, Nathan thought, not him. She was going for Jennifer and Leven.
“Hurry!” Nathan said, rushing to them and pushing them back towards the front of the stage.
“But…but is that really…” Leven stuttered
“Just trust us. Trust me. And get back out there.” Nathan pushed at them again, both of them looking terrified, but still they listened.
There was barely enough time for Nathan to turn around before Tina would be upon him. He moved to just in front of the runic trap and braced himself. The trap hadn’t held her before, but maybe the combination with Jim’s powers would be enough.
Without hesitation Tina plowed into him, knocking both of them back inside the trap. That would have been great except that Nathan would disconnect the lines with his body if he crawled across them to get out. Being trapped inside with her was not a pleasant option.
Nathan retrieved his ankle blade and, using all of his remaining strength while still holding her barely at bay, stabbed it into her shoulder.
Tina howled louder than before and released him, lifting up just enough for Nathan to scramble away. When he looked back, the area around where his ankle blade was protruding had turned black.
Only one of his feet was still inside the trap when Tina rounded on him again and caught it. She could still get out. With Nathan’s foot across the trap, the markings were invalid until he moved it, and she wasn’t letting go.
“Such…fighters, you are,” Tina hissed. “You want this girl so badly?Have her. I can still finish this.” Then Tina’s mouth opened wide and something like dark mist poured out of her and sped faster than any feet could catch around the other side of the curtain toward the practicing children and their director.
Nathan stared in shock and confusion as Tina’s body went limp. He didn’t understand what had just happened, but he knew that the mist was more important than the girl. He easily pulled his foot free from Tina’s body and ran for the curtain. By the time he had a clear view of the stage, however, he couldn’t see anything. It looked as if they were just practicing, as if nothing had been disturbed. The other side of the curtain was dimmed to most of the backstage sound, so no one even seemed alerted.
The mist was gone.
Chapter 35
Tinawasn’tdarkfae;something had been inside her. Nathan hadn’t even known that was possible, but it explained better why there had always been different people to find the bodies. Whatever this thing was, it had been jumping from person to person.
They had no choice but to disrupt practice after that, bringing a very weak Tina around to the front for someone to call an ambulance. Leven seemed overjoyed to find that Tina was okay, though she flinched away from everyone who came near her. She was near hysterical, so the story was that she had hit her head and needed observation. The wounds Nathan had made with his ankle blade had disappeared
Nathan knew the mist had gone into someone else. That was the only explanation that made sense, but there was no way to know who without letting all of the students and Mrs. Larson know what was really going on.
“What kind of dark fae possesses someone?” Cam asked as they waited off on the sidelines while the paramedics hauled Tina away. “And Jim…I know you’ve been having trouble sensing this thing, but you’re supposed to be able to control fae, right? It was like you didn’t have any effect on her at all.”
“I know,” Jim admitted, “and I think I know why. This thing has to be another sidhe, but what if the thinning Veil has nothing to do with it this time? What if it didn’t get here on its own? What if someone summoned it, but since Pittsburg isn’t a Power Point, the spell was incomplete. That’s why it’s only a phantom. Maybe possessing someone is why I couldn’t sense it, because the humanity gets in the way, so normal tricks against dark fae don’t work, not even my powers.”
“Why’s it so hard to senseeach otheraround it, then?” Cam asked.
Jim looked at Sasha, hoping the incubus had a theory on that, but Sasha merely shrugged. “I don’t know,” Jim said, “it could be as simple as a general radius being given off that dulls any sense of fae, since a fae and human in the same body is so unheard of. Whatever the reason, it isn’t making this any easier.”
“Iron still hurt her. At least that’s something,” Nathan said. “And I do think getting her in the trap after she’d been weakened would have worked.”
“But if that’s all true…then this is so much worse than we thought.” Sasha sighed deeply, running a hand back through his red hair. “It’s been feeding off the kids here for weeks. Draining energy each time it jumps to a new person, then killing its previous host once it’s moved on. No wonder the next victim is always so terrified leading up to their death—that same monster was once inside them. Jennifer killed Andy before the fae left her for Tina; that’s why Jennifer was next. It’s gathering power, probably to make itself whole somehow.”
“And we don’t know who it’s in now,” Nathan spat, looking at the gathered students and Mrs. Larson, knowing it could be any one of them. “But I don’t get how jumping bodies gathers enough power to become flesh and blood. How would that work?”
