Before my question was answered, Nate walked over and removed the machete from the lady's stomach. He quickly made short work of removing her head and kicked it out of the way.
"Do you want the honors of torching her?" he asked me. That didn't answer my question, but I thought it was fair to burn her after she'd drawn blood.
"Sure," I said, standing up and throwing a couple fireballs at her two parts. While we watched her burn I said, "I'm still waiting for an answer. What's going on?"
"That thing was a skin-walker. Nasty little things," Nate replied, spitting on the ground like he ate something distasteful.
"Can you give me some more details on what that means?" I asked. I didn't understand why we had to run into every creature known to man during our trip.
"Sure, little sis." Rick came over to put his arm around me as we watched our little bonfire. "That thing uses magic to borrow the form and memories from another person. The good news for us is that in order to keep the other shape they have to leave their victim alive."
"And just how long has it been known that she wasn't our daughter?" I questioned the two of them. I knew I was the last one to know.
"Well, Rick knew immediately that it wasn't Elizabeth. I'm pretty sure the berserkers probably did too. Liam would've been used to Elizabeth's energy signature and there's no way Kyle would have thought she was still a bird. She can take the shape, but she wouldn't have been able to replicate the phoenix part of our daughter," Nate explained.
"Why in the world didn't someone say something to me? Or say something in general. Shouldn't you guys have attacked immediately? When did you two know?" I asked.
"Rick and I didn't have a chance to talk that first night, we could've tried to send private messages, but I wasn't sure what exactly she could do. The following morning I knew it wasn't her. He later confirmed it for me.
"Before you ask, I knew because she ate the biscuits and gravy. Our real daughter hasn't eaten meat from animals with hooves for years. I'm sure the skin-walker knew that, but probably didn't think anyone would pick up on it," Nate said. "Vinnie also knew something was up. I'm still not sure how, but I think it's something with one of his systems that he's been tweaking to be able to tell when uniques are around. He told me he wouldn't do you much good without being able to analyze threats."
"Okay, the question of why I wasn't told is still on the table," I said. They hadn't answered why they didn't attack immediately, but I was having trouble following exactly what they were saying.
"That's simple, baby girl. We all know you're a horrible actor. Even the guys who just met you know that, and since it was determined between meaningful looks that we were going to let things run their course, we couldn't tell you a thing."
"I'm an undercover FBI agent, which kind of means I have to be a great actor," I countered.
After Rick picked himself off the ground from laughing, Nate very gently said, "I love you, sweetheart, but you're a horrible actor. If you recall, your first case you ended up telling the suspect we were on to him, and the second one you ended up getting sick of the suspects and pretty much told them to go screw themselves. In this case, our daughter's life was on the line, so we had to make sure that thing wasn't alerted that we were on to her."
"Okay, I see your point, but I'm getting better at my social skills. By the time we go on our next mission, I'm sure I'll be top of the line," I replied. "So how do we go about getting the real Elizabeth back?"
"Vinnie probably already has her. He's been following the skin-walker around and learned yesterday where she was keeping Elizabeth," Rick said, wiping tears from his eyes. I kicked him in the shin just for fun. It had virtually no effect on him, but it made me feel better.
"Can we head back?" I asked. "I'd love to meet my real daughter. I hope she's a lot friendlier than that thing. Now that I think about it, when it first arrived it tried to act overly friendly, but then pretty much tried to ignore us except for at meal time."
"I imagine she was limiting her time with us, so she wouldn't make a mistake and blow her cover. I don't think we can do anything more here, and our snowmobiles aren't very far away. Go ahead and jump on yours and follow us," Nate said after giving me a quick kiss.
By mine, I assumed he meant the one the skin-walker was on, since mine had a mechanical malfunction. He hadn't mentioned anything about the cut I'd received, so I hoped he'd missed that part of my showdown.
The trip back only took twenty-five minutes, thankfully. By the end of it, I was feeling a little bit woozy. I had a feeling my adrenaline was keeping the cut from hurting too bad. When I got off the snowmobile, I was lightheaded. Obviously I wasn't one of those uniques who was a quick healer.
"I really hate to ask this, but would one of you mind carrying me back to the house?" I asked. "I'm not feeling so hot."
Nate rushed over and grabbed me just before I hit the ground. I remembered him picking me up, but not much after that.
When I came to, I was on one of the patient beds Elizabeth had set up. I closed my eyes again, not wanting to keep them open.
"What happened?" I asked, hoping someone was in the room. Knowing my fianc?, I doubted he'd left me alone.
"The knife hit your spleen and it ruptured," Nate answered. "It's already grown back, so there's nothing to worry about."
"How long have I been out?" I asked, while I pondered how cool it was to grow back organs.
"Only about eighteen hours. Elizabeth wanted to wake you up a while ago, but I told her to let you rest. The knife also had some kind of poison on it. We don't think it caused any issues, though. Maybe it made you a little sleepy, but we can't prove whether it was that or just your body healing itself," he replied.
"I see my patient is up," I heard Elizabeth say. I opened my eyes because she sounded exactly like the other woman, and I wanted to see if I could tell any differences. "How are you feeling, Mom?"
"If you're really my daughter, I'll say I'm feeling pretty good." I didn't see anything that appeared that much different from the other person. It was still eyes that looked like mine staring back at me.
"I can turn into a phoenix if you want me to prove it," she said.
"No, that's fine. If your dad believes you're you, then that's good enough for me."
"But who's to say Dad is really Dad?" she asked. I supposed she thought I'd freak out, but there was an easy way to test that.
"That's easy to answer," I replied. Having been told I was all healed, I threw the blanket off and made my way off the bed, over to Nate. I was happy to see I was wearing clothing, even if it was only a long t-shirt. I'd have to ask later who dressed me. I grabbed Nate's hand and felt the soulmate shiver that let me know it was him. "Test accomplished."
"And that's a good test to keep in mind," he said. "No one will be able to duplicate what you feel when we touch."
"So where is everyone else?" I asked. It was awfully quiet in the house.
"The opening ceremony for the games starts in about ten minutes, so they went to check it out," Nate replied. "They knew it was just a matter of you waking up from your nap, so they didn't feel too bad about taking off to have fun."
"Well, what are we doing sitting around here? I'll get changed and we can go watch them too." I headed out of the room and up the stairs to get dressed. I threw on the first things I found, not caring that the shirt was actually one of Nate's. Grabbing my boots, I trekked right back down the stairs.
"Don't you look cute in my shirt," Nate taunted.
"There's no time for that discussion. We don't want to miss the ceremony," I said, grabbing him and heading for the door. "Hurry up, Elizabeth," I yelled, assuming she'd catch up.
Not knowing where to go, I followed a glow of light I could see over the buildings. It led to a gathered crowd. It was only a couple hundred people, and they were lighting some torches. It was a little clich? in my book.
"It's still pretty dark out," I said to Nate. "Do you want to light up the sky for them?"
"I t
hink they'd enjoy that."
I quickly said the anti-burning clothes spell, since I wasn't sure it was permanent, and we ducked behind the nearest building to change, where we didn't think anyone would see us. When we donned our phoenix forms, we both launched ourselves high into the sky above the crowd. We gracefully performed a dance, leaving trails of light through the sky with our tails.
After a while we tired and floated back down to earth. Being unconscious for so long, it wasn't the brightest thing I'd ever done, but it was one of the most fun.
"That was beautiful," Frannie said, running over to us. We changed back into humans and were both sweating up a storm.
"I can't believe I forgot what it felt like to be up there," I said as I caught my breath.
"There's the grand marshal of our games this year," Liam announced, making his way with Kyle through the crowd.
"Who, me?" I asked.
"That would be you. We can't really start these games without our queen," Kyle replied.
"Do I have to do anything special?" I inquired. I was ready for another nap.
"Not really. Just call the start of the games," Liam informed me.
"Okay. Let the games begin," I said in my loudest voice. The people all cheered and headed off in one direction.
"Where is everyone going?" I asked.
"To get breakfast. Vinnie, Miranda and Joseph have been busy preparing it all morning. How they talked Joseph into helping, I'll never know," Kyle explained.
"He has a thing for the fox," Liam answered. "I think when he saw her close to dying, he developed a little crush on her. He has a thing for people who need a strong man in their life. That's the real reason why after he got over the initial draw to you, he didn't want to pursue a relationship, Avery. He realized what a fierce woman you are and backed off immediately."
"That was smart of him. I'm kind of hungry, why don't we make our way over to the food," I said.
We waited in line and eventually got fed. Nate and Rick were too busy playing with the skin-walker to make it to any of the tryouts, so they ended up hanging out with me. The different events throughout the day were fun to watch. Liam won the archery event, barely beating his brother. Miranda, the little speedster, ended up winning the female speed skating event.
I didn't know any of the contestants in the snowboarding event, but it was still fun to watch. Towards the end of the day, they finally got to the hockey game. All the guys I knew were on the same team, so I didn't feel bad cheering for one side over the other.
The uniques played a very brutal game of hockey. I should've taped it to show anyone who complained about the violence in the human version of the game. The guys didn't believe in a referee and it was almost like they thought the team with the most hits was who won the game. It was too bad the Elizabeth I went out with the day before wasn't the real one, because I was pretty sure she could've used all those extra bandages we were supposed to be going to get.
When things were finally called to an end, the team with my friends on it was the one to score the lone goal, making them the winners. I cheered with the rest of the crowd as they were presented with some kind of trophy. The people started breaking up and heading home. With the games over, that meant come morning I got to head to my home back in New York.
I remembered that I hadn't had a chance to make up my list of demands for the berserkers. I grabbed Nate and Rick and told them we had something that had to get done before the night was through. We made it back to Elizabeth's in record time. I got out a pen and paper and started writing, while taking any extra suggestions the guys had.
CHAPTER 29
A little more now you see me, now you don't