Coyote's Howl (Cape High Series Book 17), page 6
“What do we tell him?” Pan asks.
“Do you have enough blood to give her a sample?” Nico asks.
“I do.”
“Then we tell him nothing. We keep him calm and focused on finding his mom. We’ll deal with the powers problem.”
“I’m not sure I agree with this decision,” Pan says.
“How about this; we find Coyote—Century was already going looking for him, and we find out about the natural way, first, THEN we bring in Star Born to fix it.”
“We’ll discuss it after we find out everything we can,” Pan says. He looks at Taurus. “Are we agreed?”
Taurus hesitates for a moment longer. “I’m trying to imagine not being able to shift,” he says quietly. “It’s a terrible thing.”
“Yes,” Pan says. He stops, jerking a bit and looking at the door. “She moves very quietly for her type,” he says.
“Sandra,” Nico says. “You’re already busted, you might as well come in.” The door swings open and the rock mimic girl steps in.
“Is Lance going to lose his abilities?” she asks.
“We’re going to make sure he doesn’t.”
“Then… can I go with him to find his mom?”
Nico goes still, a hint of surprise on his face. “Why do you want to do that?” he asks.
“Because there’s a chance that hairy guy will come after him again.”
“We can’t let you two run off alone, especially because of that. I’ll go—” he stops as the wall flashes and lights up with a call. “Skye,” he says. “This isn’t exactly the time—”
“I’m bored,” Skye says. “I want to come up for New Year’s Eve! We can wear silly hats and I can kiss people at midnight! I’ll be there in five seconds, okay? Get some of that bubbly stuff to drink!”
“It’s not New Year’s Eve, yet, Skye,” Nico says, but she hangs up on him before he can finish. He stops, shrugging before looking at Sandra with a thoughtful expression. “Well, that solves that,” he says.
“What solves what?” she asks.
“You’ve got both your finder and your backup all in one… would calling my adopted sister ‘batty’ be an insult?” he asks the others.
“I would call it an understatement,” Pan offers.
“I don’t know, she’s kind of cute, really,” Taurus decides. “We went bowling with her once. She bowls like an old lady.”
“With the two hands?” Pan asks, interestedly.
“Every time.”
“But she didn’t break anything that way, did she?” Nico says.
“She was too busy admiring her extremely ugly shoes,” Taurus says. They all look over with interest as Sandra lets out a tiny snort of laughter. “She guttered almost every time,” he goes on, watching Sandra to see if she reacts. There’s the tiniest of smiles on her rocky face that she quickly hides.
“I’ll have to go, next time,” Nico says. “And she’s here.”
“How is she here this quickly?” Pan asks.
“Teleportation booth; I made a prototype and gave it to her to protect.”
“You gave an S-class villain a teleportation booth?” Taurus asks, looking stunned. “Couldn’t she teleport right into banks and—” he stops as everyone in the room just looks at him, dryly. “Oh. Right, forget that I asked that.”
“Is Lance up to going anywhere, though?” Nico asks Pan quietly as they head out of the science building.
“I don’t know,” Pan admits, “but is there anything the healers can do?”
“No,” Nico says. “Well… Bobby might be able to, but if this is natural, it’s just going to start happening all over again.”
“We could just keep him—”
“He’s already trying to get out of the apartments,” Nico says. “He’s even stolen my teleportation watch.”
“Really, Nico, do you leave that out deliberately?” Pan asks.
“If they’re going to run off on random trips, don’t you think I should know exactly where they go?” he says. “I wired that one with a homing device, set up to convey the coordinates to the one in my com-bracelet. I can follow them within a second or two, depending on where I am at the time.”
“Have you told the kids that?” Taurus asks.
“Of course I haven’t,” Nico says with a little grin.
“You just told me,” Sandra says.
“Oh, right. Don’t tell Lance.”
“I don’t know if I should be offended or not,” she says after a long moment of thought. She jerks as he drops a hand on her shoulder.
“Would you rather not know?” he asks.
“No.”
“Then there you are. Now come on, we need to stop him before he tries tunneling out.” They step out of the security field and find themselves face to face with Skye.
“SANDRA!” she screams happily, throwing herself at the teen. “You came out! You’re going to celebrate New Years with me, right?” she asks excitedly.
“No.”
“You’re supposed to say ‘Yes, Skye, I can’t wait to party with you,’” Skye stage whispers.
“No,” Sandra repeats, “I’m not.”
“You’ve entered the rebellious stage!” Skye cries dramatically. “But regardless of how rebellious you act, I will still love you! I will tarry night and day to—”
“Skye,” Nico says.
“I’m in the middle of a dramatic speech right now, so if you could give me five more minutes—” Skye says to him.
“We need you to go on a mission,” Pan says. Skye stops.
“A super villain mission?” she asks eagerly. “That’s awesome! Especially since I have NO IDEA how to ‘tarry,’ does it involve knitting or something?”
“I almost forgot,” Sandra says, completely ignoring Skye, now. She touches her watch, flipping on her illusion again. Skye stares at her for a long moment.
“That is… so boring.”
“It is, isn’t it?” Nico agrees. “But she doesn’t stand out, which will make it much easier to make a dramatic entrance.”
“I LIKE how I look!” Sandra says. “Or you could make the illusion prettier.”
“That would be even more boring,” Skye declares.
“Well, no, it’d be more dramatic when she changes,” Nico says, only to stop in front of the apartment’s security field. “Lance, you have permission to come out, now.”
The teen walks out of the security field a second later, looking guilty.
***
I have to get to my grandfather. I need to find out how to stop this ‘transition’ thing, or beat it, or whatever, before the Hall gets to him and locks him up for aiding and abetting an escaped convict! I managed to sneak upstairs, earlier, and thought it was fate when I saw the teleportation watch just lying on the table. I would teleport to my grandfather’s, force him to tell me what to do, and teleport back before Nico was back from school—
It doesn’t work inside the apartments. There’s a warning and everything that popped up on the screen when I tried. So I decided I needed to get out of the apartments and THEN do what I planned. Unfortunately, I wasn’t cleared to leave. So here I am, stepping out of the apartment building’s security field, trying to hide the watch behind my back discreetly. I forget about it entirely as I see Sandra flipping on her illusion watch. “What’s going on?” I ask.
“We’re going on a super villain mission!” Skye says excitedly.
“Actually,” Nico says. “I’m sending the three of you to find Lance’s mother.”
“Rocco isn’t coming?” I ask, startled.
“Skye showed up just as Sandra volunteered to go with you,” Nico says. “She’s not on official escaped convict hunting duty, so this way Rocco can go back to his official work—his vacation is almost over. Knowing the Hall leaders, they won’t wait until it’s official.”
“But we can’t fly,” I say, motioning to myself and Sandra. “Well, I mean, I can, but not all the way to the South Branch—”
“Then it’s a good thing you already picked up the teleportation watch, now isn’t it?” Nico says blandly. I jerk, my eyes widening as I realize he knows. Of course he knows, I realize a second later. He can probably pick up on technology like I can smells! Maybe even better, if he made it! “Skye, can you tell coordinates from your search?”
“I would need a map,” she says. “It’s not as if I memorized the coordinates of the planet, you know? Well… okay, I did for a little bit, but it got REALLY boring.”
“You have a hologram map in your com-bracelet, Lance. Sandra, hand me your watch,” Nico says, holding out a hand. Sandra hesitates, holding the watch closer to her body in a protective motion before reluctantly holding out her wrist. Nico takes the watch off and takes a com-bracelet out of his pocket. It looks like a gemstone studded bangle watch. “Here,” he says, holding it out to her. “The illusion is the same, but now it has all of the working cape capabilities.”
“Have you been carrying that around?” Sandra asks, slipping it on.
“Of course I have. The Liberty boys were going to drag you out of your room sooner or later. Zoe made it.”
“She did?” Sandra asks, looking at him with a hint of shyness.
“I want one!” Skye says, jumping on Sandra’s back to admire the new com-bracelet. “It’s so pretty!”
Sandra taps on the screen, turning the illusion back on. “Are we ready to go, then?” she asks, looking at me.
“Skye, find Lance’s mother, would you?” Nico says. “I’m leaving this up to you, little sister. I know you can do it.”
“Got it!” Skye says, dropping off of Sandra’s back. She looks at me for a long moment, her expression serious. With a slight frown, she walks around me, taking my hand and lifting my arm for a moment before putting it back down. “His powers are going haywire,” she says to Nico.
“We’ve noticed,” Nico says.
“Well… it’ll make it harder finding the same power type, but I’ll do my best!” she says.
“Did you really have to lift my arm to know that?” I ask as she strikes a pose. She’s about to start on her finding dance, but I have to know.
“Nope!” she says, giving me a blinding smile. “But I COULD.” She starts dancing like crazy, Voguing for a bit before doing a full out Macarena—at least I think that’s what it’s called. The dance was popular WAY before I was born, and I have no idea why. That’s got to be the stupidest dance ever. Wait—if she’s what, twenty-five or twenty-six, wasn’t she just a baby when it came out? So how—
No, I’m just going to stop there. This is Skye.
“Found one!” she says, stopping mid-dance. “Bring up the map!”
I tap on my com-bracelet and a map comes up. She waves a hand, zoning in on a small area and tapping it. “Take us there,” she tells me.
“Yeah, okay,” I say, tapping the coordinates into my watch.
“Bye, Nico!” Skye says, grabbing onto me. “Sandy, you have to touch us, okay?”
I hit the “go” button as soon as Sandra touches me, and we’re gone.
***
“Okay,” Skye says as we find ourselves in the middle of the woods. “This was the strongest one like you—”
“That’s not—” I stop myself, realizing in shock that she’s brought us to where I most want to be--she’s done in five seconds what I wasn’t certain I could do at all! But if she finds out what’s going on, will she make me go back to the school?
“If this one doesn’t work out, we’ll have to go on to the next one,” she admits. “But at least we’ve got a starting point!” She turns, striding through the woods with her arms swinging happily. “I can’t wait to meet your mommy!” she says over her shoulder. “Is she a Native American? Well, DUH, of course she is! That was a stupid question, so forget I asked it. Hey, do you think she could adopt Ariel? We need her to be adopted so she can keep her super name!”
“She’s… um, probably a little younger than Ariel is, though,” I have to say. There’s utterly no chance in Hell that Coyote would adopt her, even if he is old enough to claim her. “Besides, the Coyote doesn’t have a tribe.”
“What?” she asks. “Why not?”
“Well, I guess you could say that he’s had MANY tribes, in a way,” I say. “See, the Coyote was born into one tribe, but he wound up moving around from one to another, because—well… because it’s difficult being a super among norms, I guess. He would stay with one tribe long enough to get a wife and have a kid, and then would move on after a while. The kid would grow up in that tribe until his powers came, and the Coyote would come back and take him to train to become the next Coyote. That’s why there are so many different takes on Coyote—each tribe met a different one.”
“Did your mom tell you that story?” Sandra asks.
“Yeah,” I say. “The story of the first Coyote was my favorite bedtime story. He scared the crap out of his bullies the first time he changed.”
“Sounds like a fun story,” she says, smiling slightly. “Can we hear it sometime?”
“Yeah,” I say as the familiar looking house looms in the distance. “I’ll tell you all, someday.” It wasn’t just a dream, I think as I see the two rocking chairs. I came here in my dreams just last night. I strain my ears, motioning for silence. When I still can’t hear anything, I risk shifting into a cat. Cats have amazingly good hearing.
For a moment I swear there’s no one inside, and then I hear the tiniest of thumps. He’s here. I can smell his pipe from here—I think he’s smoking it right now. It’s one thing to see him and talk to him in a dream, it’s another thing completely to see him in person, knowing what he did.
“Is it your mother?” Sandra asks. “Is she here?”
I’m extremely thankful I’m in cat form, because I would hate to have to lie to her. Instead of saying anything, I race towards the house as quickly as I can, hoping that they won’t follow. I’m not that lucky. They’re right on my heels as I race up the steps. The door swings open and a massive Kodiak bear roars at us, stopping me in my tracks. The only time I’ve seen a bear this big was the polar bear at the zoo—and with a thick wall between me and him, it wasn’t nearly as terrifying. I shift, staying on my hands and knees in front of him. “Coyote—” I start out.
He shifts into his human form. “You’re not welcome here, boy,” he says.
“I need to know!” I say.
“Does he know where your mother is?” Skye asks.
“I don’t know—but he does know how to save my powers!” I say urgently. “Tell me, Coyote! I don’t want to be a normal shifter. I don’t think I could handle only having one form!”
“You need to prove yourself worthy to be a Coyote,” he says, looking down at me in more than just the physical way. “It might not be possible for you.”
“Because of my blood?”
“You are not of the people,” he says.
“My mother was,” I say. “And she told me that the Coyote went from tribe to tribe—we are not full-blooded anything! We aren’t Sioux, we aren’t Cherokee, we’re both none and all! YOU were the one that told her that! We were always outsiders. We’re SUPERS,” I say.
He stares at me for a long moment, and I can actually feel him searching my thoughts. “When you have lost everything, every animal form, every power, what sort of man will you be?” he asks, looking me in the eye. “That is what you must face. Find out for yourself who you are, boy. If you become the Coyote, well, then that is what the Creator has chosen. If you do not…”
“I’ll be just another shifter,” I say. “Like Badmoon. You think it’s because he’s mixed, don’t you.”
“It is possible that is why. You will be the one that proves or disproves my father’s theory,” he says. “Now leave. You do not need to be here.”
“Where’s my mother?” I ask.
“I haven’t seen her in ten years,” he says.
“You won’t see me again,” I say. “But I still should tell you—if you keep hiding him, the Hall will be coming for you.”
“That is none of your business,” he says quietly.
“It will wind up with you stuck in the Cape Cells right next to him,” I say coldly. I turn and walk away before he can say anything more. I don’t want to hear his excuses. I feel sick and angry. He’s harboring a man that would have killed me—but that probably doesn’t matter to him, does it? He never accepted me as family. If he’s so against me having Caucasian blood, why does he hide his brother, who’s just as mixed as I am?
“I hate him,” I say when I reach Sandra and Skye.
“Want me to beat him up?” Skye asks, looking over my shoulder with a scary little smile on her face. “I could take him.” It startles a laugh out of me.
“No, he’s just a bitter old man,” I say. “Find the next one, please?”
“Okay,” she says, tugging on my sleeve to tap on my com-bracelet and bring up my map. “We’re going… here!”
I tap in the coordinates, my mind repeating Coyote’s words. “When you have lost everything, every animal form, every power, what sort of man will you be?”
I… honestly don’t know the answer to that question.
***
Badmoon slides through the trees, staring at the spot where the brat had just been. His brother had just told the boy everything, Badmoon thinks darkly. About him, about the transition—the boy could easily be the next Coyote. He hates that. That pathetic little mutt could take what was rightfully HIS title. He is the oldest son! He is the one that should be carrying the name “Coyote!” But all he has is the single form. A wolf is better than a coyote, he tells himself firmly. A wolf is larger, more powerful. If they had only the one form, he would consider himself superior in all ways—but that isn’t what the Coyote is.
He snarls, his hands clenching, his teeth elongating slightly before reining it in. Yes, he has always hated his little brother for taking the title, but that’s different. His brother is of proper birth—a proper Coyote. This boy is just like Badmoon; a mutt. Had the kid been born when Badmoon had been, he’d hear the same nasty, derogatory terms that Badmoon had grown up with. He’d get the same nasty, hateful looks that Badmoon had whenever he went into town. If someone like that gains the power of Coyote—
