Gifted To The Bear: A Paranormal Shapeshifter Romance (The Gifted Series Book 1) (12 page)

CHAPTER TEN

With my jaw dropping, I just stared at Jim for a long moment, horribly confused as to whether I wanted to say one more word or not. On one hand, his threat of putting me in handcuffs had made me bizarrely but pleasantly breathless, and I wondered if he might take me back inside my cabin to put the cuffs on me. Then I wondered if he might try to kiss me before hauling me off to practice, Then I wondered if that might even lead to a further delay in us getting to practice, a delay that I had a feeling might be exquisitely enjoyable. But on the other hand, Jim’s threat had angered me to the point that my fists had balled, seemingly of their own accord.

However, before I could make a decision to say another word, or not, Jim’s serious expression changed into one a little softer, and his dark green eyes developed a little twinkle.

“I’m kidding. Obviously. I’m not going to put you in cuffs and throw you over my shoulder. I just wanted to lighten the mood a bit. I also wanted to see if you still have that little fighting spark I’ve seen in you a few times, and yes... yes, you do.”

For some reason, I felt profoundly disappointed.

“I’m not going to put you in cuffs, Avery.”

I didn’t say anything. And maybe Jim could see some hint of disappointment in my eyes, because suddenly, his expression changed to one a bit more serious again.

“Unless sometime you might want me to put you in cuffs. For whatever reason.”

A dull, gnawing ache somewhere low in my stomach told me that maybe I did have a reason to want him to put me in cuffs sometime. But while I struggled with deciding whether or not I wanted to tell him this, Jen came literally skipping down the lane with Annie and Aaron, waving at Jim and me.

“Come on, guys! Last one to training is an ugly, wrinkled bear claw!”

Sufficiently jarred out of my reverie about handcuffs, and Jim, and me, I turned from Jim and began heading down the porch steps. “I’ll go to training. But if you dare try to take my hand on the way, I’ll levitate you into the treetops so fast you won’t even have time to shift.”

“Oh, so you
are
ready to practice your power.”

He’d already cleared the steps and had caught up to me, and I glanced over at him.

“Please kindly go to hell. I’ve had it with you and all your... all your teasing.”

Especially his teasing to put me in handcuffs when he had no real intention of doing so.

Jim and I walked up the dirt lane between the cabins in silence, some distance behind Annie, Aaron, and Jen, who was now being given a piggyback ride by Aaron. Jim didn’t try to take my hand. It would have been pretty impossible anyway, because I had my arms folded tightly across my chest.

Annie had told me that there were two large clearings to the north of the cabins. The first was the smaller of the two, and was just commonly called the training field. The one further north was a massive clearing, maybe the size of two football fields, as Annie had said, and it was that clearing where the shifters who guarded the land to the east and west drove the Angels so that all the Timberliners could fight them in one spot. I intended to never set foot in this particular clearing.

Once we’d passed all the cabins, the dirt lane became a little narrower and continued on directly north, now through densely-forested woodland, and Jim and I remained walking along silently. Soon, sounds of conversation from somewhere fairly far behind us told me that we had at least a few people following us, maybe even looking at us and wondering why we weren’t holding hands like we’d been the night of the party at the bar. I didn’t care. If anyone directly asked me why we weren’t holding hands, I was just going to tell them the truth, which was that I was upset with Jim because he obviously had some sort of round-the-clock sheriff complex that made him think he could force people to do things, like attend training, which, apparently he could, I realized, since I was now walking up the trail to do just that. However, I told myself, I’d been the one who’d ultimately made the choice for myself. Jim may have been adept at using strong-arm tactics, but I was still determined to make my own decisions and control my own life.

After we’d walked a short distance, I spoke to him, but while continuing to keep my gaze on the path ahead. “I’m attending training, just because I didn’t want to have to explain to Jen my reasons for
not
wanting to attend, but let me make clear that I’m not practicing my levitation power.”

Jim hesitated a moment before responding. “That’s fine for your first practice, anyway. Right now, I just want you to continue to get woven into the fabric of the community here. I think that the more you do, the more you’ll feel inclined to practice your power, and some day, when you’re fully woven into the fabric of your new community, and have maybe even grown to love it, that might make you feel inclined to fight.”

“Nope.”

“Because, see, Avery that’s
why
people here fight. It’s not because we all think we’re the bravest and the strongest people that ever lived; we fight because we love. We love our community, and our state, and our country, and each other, and we want everyone to be safe from the Angels.”

“Well, that’s nice, but there’s no reason that could ever get me to fight. Not love, and not anything. I’ll express my love for my country and the community by staying out of everyone’s way so that no one ever gets hurt because of me, and so that no one is ever looking to me for help, but I can’t give it, and so then something really bad happens to them.”

“Boy, you’ve really convinced yourself that that’s what would happen, haven’t you?”

“That
is
what would happen, Jim. I had an experience very early in my life that taught me just exactly how much of strength and bravery I’m capable of, or, more precisely, how much strength and bravery I’m
not
capable of.”

“And I wish to God you’d just talk about that experience sometime. I wish you’d talk to
me
about it. Or if not me, I wish you’d talk with Annie or Jen. Just someone. Because I think you
need
to talk about—”

“Well, I’m not going to. I hardly even like to think about it, and for many years, I more or less haven’t. I’ve been able to just put it away in some corner of my mind, and that’s where I always intended to keep it, until this whole Gifted thing made other people, like you and the government agents, bring it up.”

Jim gently took my arm, trying to slow me down, because I’d startled walking at a pretty brisk pace. “Avery, please just stop for a second.”

Wrenching my arm from his grasp, I found I couldn’t even look at him. “Let’s just get to the field. I’ve already said more than I wanted to this morning, and I’m done talking right now.”

I really was.

To my surprise, Jim didn’t say anything else, just walked along with me silently for maybe a quarter-mile, until we reached the clearing.

When we arrived, it looked like most Timberliners were already there. Spread out on the field, most shifters were already in shifted form, and most Gifteds were already “warming up” their gifts, levitating one another into the air, or shooting beams of light from their palms to trees surrounding the clearing. The day was already fairly warm, for the first day of April, anyway, and bright sunshine shone down on the whole scene.

Without a word to me, Jim shifted into bear form and ambled over to a few of his men, and I took a seat on the south side of the field, next to a large water cooler, several empty gallons, and a few packages of paper cups. Feeling kind of conspicuous to be the only person sitting, and to be sitting right on the grass, cross-legged, like I was a kid at an elementary school soccer game or something, I was relieved when Annie, Aaron, and Jen soon showed up, and Jen bounced over and took a seat beside me.

“Are you taking a rest already or something?”

I said no, that I was just going to watch during this training session.

Jen frowned. “Don’t you
want
to practice?”

“Not really.”

“Well, why not? Are you feeling shy about your power or something? And what’s your power, by the way? I’m a zapper. That’s what we call everyone who can shoot electricity beams from their hands, and that’s how the Angels mostly fight, too. I’m only allowed to do it on the practice field, and only very carefully, and away from everyone else, because Annie always keeps thinking I’m gonna accidentally hurt people. But, anyway... What’s
your
power?”

I explained to Jen that my power was levitating, but that I wasn’t very experienced at doing it, and I didn’t want to try to get better. “I think I’ll probably be better at just keeping you company here on the sidelines.”

“Well, okay. It
will
be cool to have you as a buddy here. Sometimes Jim makes me join in with practice, but most of the time I just do whatever I want, and I keep everyone hydrated by giving them drinks whenever they get thirsty. See, Jim really hasn’t even asked me to join in with practice in a few months, because one day, I got a little too wild with my zapping, and I accidentally zapped Aaron, and I said I was sorry so many different times, over and over, but Annie was so mad that she kept on complaining to Jim for a million days, and she kept on saying all this different junk about me, like that I was gonna hurt somebody really bad someday, and then Jim pretty much stopped having me join in training since then. He says me keeping everyone hydrated is just a different way I can help be a part of stuff, though. Which...” Jen paused, removed a small bright pink backpack she was wearing, and unzipped it. “I almost forgot to do the first part of my hydrating job.”

She pulled a large plastic bag out, lifted the lid of the water cooler, and began dumping the powdery contents of the bag in it. Pale green in color, the powder looked like it was some kind of a drink mix.

Once she’d emptied out the bag, Jen put the lid back on the cooler, tipped it from side to side a few dozen times to swish the liquid around, and then sat back down beside me. “Hey, Avery, I just put drugs in the water tank thing. Do you think that was good or bad that I did that?”

I smiled. “Well, I don’t think
real
drugs would be good, but—”

“Gotcha. April Fool’s. It was really just powdered sport drink mix that I put in the water, because people like it better than just plain water sometimes. But since it’s April Fool’s, after people have taken a drink, let’s try to convince people that they’ve just done drugs.”

I agreed to go along with the prank, although I was going to be sure to give people a few clear winks while Jen was executing it.

She took a small blanket out of her backpack for us to sit on, and soon the training session really got underway. Apparently, several Gifteds were designated to be the “Angels,” and they proceeded to “zap” at the bears and other Gifteds, although “zapping” them by shooting their silvery streams of electricity way above their targets’ heads. Their targets, bears and Gifteds alike, then reacted how I guessed they probably would during a fight. The bears charged the “Angels,” growling, though running right by them when they got close, instead of ripping them limb-from-limb like I imagined they probably did to the real Angels. Meanwhile, during these charges, the “Angels” continued to shoot their silvery beams of light, and other Gifteds shot streams of their own light, trying to deflect the “enemy” streams in mid-air. A few Gifteds levitated some of the “Angels,” then set them down right in the path of the bears.

The whole thing was like a well-choreographed football play. As the training session continued, I saw that there was more than one play, and more strategy involved than I’d even first thought. Periodically, Jim would issue a short roar, some seeming signal for everyone to break, and then he’d roar again, in either short bursts or long ones, seeming to be communicating different signals for different “plays.” Then, the “team” would execute these “plays,” quickly moving into their various positions.

I recognized Jim not only because he was the biggest bear, but also because he was the clear leader of the group. It wasn’t clear just because of his signal-roaring, though. Fast, deliberate, and powerful, he moved in a way that just exuded authority and confidence, just like he did while in human form. There was a certain glint of intensity in his dark eyes, too, a glint that would have told even a stranger that these were
his
people out on the field, he was their leader, and he’d do anything to protect them.

After a while of us watching, Jen yawned in an exaggerated way, as if wanting to make it known that she’d seen it all before.

Then, after pushing a few packages of paper cups out of the way, she stretched out on her back beside me, hands behind her head. “It’s cloud-watching time. I like to see if I can spot some interesting ones.”

Being that there were only a few thin, white wisps in the clear blue sky, I wasn’t sure if she
would
be able to spot any interesting ones, but I didn’t say anything. I went back to watching the mock-battle, and she gazed up at the sky. A few minutes went by before she craned her neck to look at me.

“Hey, Avery? Do you know the only way Angels can be killed? They can only be killed by shifters, and they can only be killed by the shifters taking their heads off by biting their necks. I’ve seen it before, and it’s... well, it’s a little bit gross.”