Amelia Atwater-Rhodes - Token of Darkness

“I feel better about this already,” Brent said dryly.

“Remind me what I’m supposed to be doing again?” Cooper asked. “You know I’ve only ever done this body-swap thing accidentally, right?”

“Yes?” Delilah said slowly, and looked at Brent. “I know with my kind of power, a lot of it is just thinking through what I want to happen, and kind of willing it.”

“‘Focused attention’ is what Ryan calls it,” Brent said. Despite the barbs Delilah and Brent kept throwing at each other, it was obvious they worked well together when they had to. Cooper could see for the first time how they might once have been involved.

“Think about … okay, here, Coop,” Delilah said. “Think about what it feels like when you tackle someone twice as big as you are. You’ve certainly done that before, successfully. Only you’re doing it in your head instead of with your body.”

“Touch can help focus, too,” Brent offered. “At least, that’s the way your ability seemed to be triggered in the past.”

Cooper put a hand on Brent’s arm … or Margaret’s arm, more accurately, even though Samantha was the one they were giving it to.

Thinking too hard about those details was too much for him, so he just set his hand on the slender arm and shut his eyes. Much as he hadn’t enjoyed it, he tried to remember what it had felt like when Brent had hijacked his so-called power to try to stop Samantha earlier. Then he tried to recall how he pushed Brent when they first met in the library.

He had been panicked at the time, overwhelmed by those dark memories of the accident that he had tried so hard to keep from surfacing. … Memories which, strangely, he had started to be more at peace with since facing them.

Focus, Cooper. The worst you can do is make an ass out of yourself, and it would hardly be the first time you had done that.

He realized he had tightened his grip when Brent let out a small pained sound.

“Sorry,” he said, but it was too late. A single, horrid moment came to mind: a car grill meeting a human body. Human flesh on hot pavement, Cooper recalled vividly, despite his best efforts not to, smells like barbecue.

He heard Samantha let out a sob, and realized that Brent’s telepathy must have passed the image on to her.

He pushed.

Samantha shouted, “Wait!”

He could feel something tearing and struggling. Something cold and dark seemed to lash back at him. Cooper’s head reeled and he fell to his knees, retching, beside the bed. Delilah had caught Brent’s body, and Cooper heard him moan, then whisper, “Thank God.”

From the hospital bed came a choked sob.

Holding on to the rail of the bed, Cooper struggled to his feet. He knew instantly that Brent was no longer behind Margaret’s brown eyes. Even with her dark brown hair, this was unmistakably Samantha.

“It’ll be okay,” Cooper told her. “We’ll take care of you, and—”

“I remember,” she whispered. Then her eyes widened. “Oh, my God, I … I remember it all. What I used to be. What happened.” She began narrating the tale with the same horrified expression, as she nervously twisted her short hair between shaking fingertips. I was a creature of raindrops and mist and power. I was selfless, in that I had never had a “self” to ascribe to myself—no name, no sense of the boundaries of “me” versus the rest of the world, no sense of the passage of time or my passage through it . I was disturbed by the weeping of a human. Her tears pierced me, though I did not understand why she cried. I did not understand family, much less the loss of such a thing . I did understand fire, which was the creature that had left her in such a situation, devoid of kin and torn by this pain . This girl, however, did not just cry. She did not just beckon. She shouted, screamed, and commanded. She used her sorcerer’s power, and cast out a net with the intention of snaring another human soul. She did not know the one she called to could not hear her . I did hear, and though the sorcerer’s words meant nothing to me, I could not resist her summons. I might have simply lingered nearby, but I pitied her, and so I accepted the name she called. I think I wanted to speak to her and comfort her . I was not the only one who responded to her desperate summons. She had not kept enough power to protect herself when the scavengers came . She screamed, and the sound hurt me. I had allowed her to name me, and so had become aware of “I” and then for the first time I understood pain . I couldn’t let the shadows have her. I fought them, and I yelled at her to go, to run into the forest where I could keep her safe in the mists . She ran, but she didn’t stop. Panicked, she passed beyond the refuge I had offered her, and leaped into danger . As the first vehicle struck her, the shadows converged. I struggled with them, pulling power from anywhere I could—but so did they. Around us mortals suffered, and every collision of metal and flesh shot through me like the pain was my own .

“I didn’t really understand that the body mattered,” Samantha said, her gaze focused on a distant memory, her voice hollow. “Margaret’s body held on to enough power that even when it should have been torn apart it kept going … trying to flee. It crept back into the woods to die, like an animal does, and I tried to pick up the pieces she left behind. Bits of who she was. Bits the shadows didn’t get. But I couldn’t hold on to it all. I never had memories before. I was overwhelmed. Someone else helped me fight the shadows away, and I held on to him as tightly as I could.

“And then you woke up,” she said, looking at Cooper, “and I was Samantha, and that was all.” She shivered, and then said, “Ow.”

“You might have been immortal, but Margaret’s body is still weak,” Delilah said. “Your power will probably help it heal and get stronger faster, but for now maybe you should rest a little while?”

“Margaret remembers being hurt,” Samantha said. “She broke her ankle when she slipped on a frozen step once. And she sprained her wrist playing … oh my God.”

“What?” Cooper asked, concerned.

When she looked at him next, her wide-eyed expression was the same one the Samantha he had come to know often used.

“I have friends,” she said. “Or, I mean, Margaret does, but she’s me now so I do. I have—oh.” The sudden elation turned to sorrow, and Cooper didn’t need her to say anything more to know she had just remembered that her family was gone.

“Maybe we should leave her alone a while,” Delilah suggested. “It might take her some time to work through all of Margaret’s memories. She’s used to being something without history or emotion or sensation, and now—”

“And now she’s human,” Cooper interrupted. “You can leave if you want. But if you don’t mind, I’ll stay with her.”

“Yes, please,” Samantha said softly. Cooper took her hand, for real this time.

“C’mon, Delilah,” Brent said. “I can give you a ride back.”

After a moment of hesitation, she replied, “Thanks.”

They left together with an uneasy silence hanging between them, which Cooper heard Brent break as they stepped into the hall. “You did good work back there.”

“You’d better believe it.” Delilah tossed her hair with a laugh. “Though … you did, too.”

They passed out of earshot, and Cooper’s attention returned to Samantha.

A nurse came in to check on them once, and Ryan came in to let Samantha know that the le Coire family were legal guardians for Margaret and that any necessary medical bills or other expenses would be taken care of, but Samantha just nodded silently to the nurse, and said a quiet thank-you to Ryan.

She spent the rest of the day talking, laughing, and crying. As the evening passed, she seemed to solidify into the girl he had come to know over the summer—just, with a memory of who “she” was.