I could still feel all of them. I tore my shirt buttons open down to my sternum and pressed my palm to my breastbone, touching each of the crescent scars they’d given me the night before, hoping it would help.
There was Tate, his jaw clamped onto one of the creature’s heads, shaking back and forth in a ferocious, deadly bite. And there was Eddie, rearing up on hind legs, swiping huge claws at another head that snapped at him from above. Dad splashed in the water with what appeared to be a third head, in the process of shredding it to pieces.
Chayton. Where was Chayton?
“Honey, it’s time to fight!” Mom yelled over the noises. She flung both hands out, sending purple fire at the beast’s body.
“I have to find Chayton!” I yelled back, my belly in turmoil and my heart beating too fast. I could sense him, but what I sensed was alarmingly faint and growing fainter and was somewhere in the direction of the Sound. No…it was somewhere under the Sound.
I tossed my punty aside and ran for the water, heedless of the enormous heads whipping around above me. One dove down, snapping at my head, and I flung a hand at it in frustration. Heat exploded from my palm, and the head burst into flames, a cacophonous screech filling the air, but I didn’t have time to celebrate my triumph over my power.
I dove beneath the water, desperately swimming in the direction of one of the men I loved.
31
April
The water above me muffled the sounds of the fight but only served to amplify the beating of my heart. I wished like hell that I had a telepathic link to my ursa mates like I did with the dragons. All I had was a soul-deep bond that was more like a sense of utter rightness when I reached for it. I followed that bond down into the depths of Puget Sound, past the enormous armored belly of the beast to a tail that was as thick as a redwood and just as long as the trees were tall.
Finally, I glimpsed a more human shape of a shoulder and arm, then hands that frantically shoved and beat on the immense tail. He was trapped beneath it, pinned against a rock. I swam down as fast as I could and grabbed his hand. He gave me a frantic, panicked look, and his eyes widened. He shook his head, his hair flowing around him like a black halo. A slow stream of bubbles drifted up from the corners of his mouth. He pointed up toward the surface, baring his teeth at me.
The hell I was going to swim back up and leave him! I shook my head and grabbed his hand again, pulling. He let me pull, his body flexing as he struggled to push himself free, but it did no good. I let out a frustrated yell into the water that came out as a series of big bubbles. How long had I been down here? How long had he? I didn’t feel the kind of burning pressure in my lungs I’d have expected after holding my breath for too long, so I kept trying.
I moved behind him, braced my feet on the rock he was pinned against, and shoved. But my feet slipped, and I only succeeded in pushing myself away without dislodging him at all. When I swam back, he gave me a pleading look and pointed at me, then toward the surface again.
This time, I nodded. I’d get air, then come back, and I hoped to hell he’d last long enough. I swam as fast as I could to the surface, broke through with a gasp, inhaled, then dove beneath again.
On the way down, I saw where he was trapped from a new angle, and the shape and texture of the rock sparked a memory that made me realize what a fool I was. The current was slowly eroding that stone into sand, which wasn’t all that far removed from the materials that I dumped into the crucible of my furnace on a regular basis.
Chayton had gone limp, his arms floating up away from his body. My adrenaline spiked, and I swam around to grab him and shake him. He didn’t respond, so I gripped him by the cheeks, pressed my mouth to his, and blew as hard as I could, forcing air into his mouth and willing him to live. He didn’t regain consciousness, but I sensed