“Good idea,” Baer agreed with a nod. His expression turned intense again, his hands balled into fists at his side as he repeated to himself, “Be the predator. Be the predator.”
Snorting, Clay tried to reach out to the vines like he did the night before, but nothing stirred. Frustration nipped at him, and he clenched his teeth.
Flo and Jo had helped them yesterday, and without them now, he wasn’t sure what he could accomplish. The magic in his chest twisted and clawed at its cage, trying to flow out, but something was stopping it. Trying to force it didn’t seem to work, and he felt silly when he realized his hands were out. He dropped them and focused harder on the vines.
“Why isn’t this working?” Baer grumbled as he pushed to his feet.
“I don’t know. Why couldn’t they give us an instruction manual instead of this new-age, hippie bullshit of imagine and let it flow?”
But it obviously started working for Baer, because he disappeared and in his place stood a stunning mountain lion. Clay flinched hard. His brain was telling him that it was still Baer, but all the instincts that kept him alive were screaming Run! His breaths came in broken pants, and it was getting harder to just remain in one place.
The creature was stunning. Velvety brown fur covered his sleek, muscular form, and his ears flicked, taking in the various sounds of animals around him.
“Baer? You in there?”
The mountain lion prowled over to Clay. As he walked behind him, he rubbed against Clay’s shoulders and side, letting out a deep, rumbling purr. The sound rattled Clay’s chest and knocked loose a nervous but relieved laugh.
Baer made a second pass, and then stopped, his eyes trained on the woods around them. He let out a blood-curdling screeching noise and bounded off through the trees. Clay watched, admiring the powerful musculature of the big cat.
Now more determined than ever, he went back to staring at the vines. He felt the tree’s exhaustion from dealing with the invasive plant and wanted to free it of the tangles. Reaching out with his powers, he let himself sort of commune with the tree until he felt he was a part of it. The life inside the tree surged and flowed around him. He could feel the hard bark surrounding it and holy shit, he could feel the breeze hitting the leaves above.
But the vine was slowly strangling the tree.
Hell, he wanted to remove the vines from every tree in the damn forest.
His focus shifted, and he could touch the life pulsing through the vine. While there was a lack of symbiosis between the two species, each was doing what it could to survive. He could remove all the vines, but those plants would only return and wind around everything again.
Still, this particular oak could use his help. Concentrating on the same feeling he’d had the day before, he let the magic flow out of his chest and through his arms to his fingertips. Slowly, the vine slithered along the bark. He made it dance in the air and flow to the ground.
The tree’s relief was instantaneous.
Clay wanted to do more. Something bigger.
He kneeled on the ground and buried his fingers in the grass, into the dirt. Worms and insects crawled through the earth and he marveled at all the life. He tried to make the ground move like he had at the flea market but couldn’t seem to figure out how. Frustration ate at him, and sweat beaded on his forehead and over his lip.
Somewhere out in the trees, Baer screeched again, and a mouse scampered into the clearing—probably running from the cougar.
Would Baer kill and eat creatures in that form? How much of his personality stayed behind in his animal forms?
Clay turned his attention to the earth. He dug his fingers deeper into the dirt and pushed out the magic. The ground around his hand trembled, and a sense of euphoria filled him.
Oh, my God! The life in the very ground itself was immense, but there was that same sense of interconnectedness. He was a part of the earth, and it was a part of him. He had been born of this earth and when he died, he’d become a part of it again. Was already a part of it. Life flowed and continued and lived on.
In everything.
And he had the power to control it. To move it. To make it thrive or halt its growth.
Overwhelmed, he pulled his hands free and sat back. Breathing hard, he looked around, completely in awe of the insights pounding through his mind and in the pulses of life in the very grass underneath his palms.
“You look like you saw a ghost,” Baer said as he stepped through the trees and dropped on the ground next to Clay.