A Shift in the Water Read Online Free PDF Page A

his body to a crisp before we left. The rest never made it out of the building. I brought the whole thing down on top of their burned bodies. That was fun. It was the first significant earthquake recorded in Bellingham in thirty years. Amazing how it didn’t damage much else in town.”
    Cade’s world crumbled and burned, mirroring Jeremy’s description of the apartment. He howled in pain. He bounded across the scorching ground, throwing his body against the fence. He had to reach Jeremy, had to tear him limb from limb. His pack. His pack was dead. He hit the ground with another howl as the blisters on his paws broke open. But he didn’t give up. Again and again he hit the fence, desperate. He didn’t care if he died trying to reach Jeremy and Katerina, as long as he took them down with him.
    Eventually, his body gave out. Katerina blasted him with the hose, driving him back to the concrete. When he collapsed—burned, bruised, and spent—he whimpered until he passed out. 

    After a month, the wolf forgot his own name. He knew he had one, knew he was a man—a werewolf—but he couldn’t shift back. He couldn’t even remember why, he only knew he couldn’t. He kept trying, but the burning pain always stopped him. Days blurred together. Weeks, even months passed. The man would have gone insane trapped as he was, but the wolf was a creature of instinct. He wanted to survive, to escape, and to kill. Those simple thoughts kept him going.
    The woman he hated—the dark-haired evil one—came out every few days and threw him a piece of half-rotted steak over the fence. His human mind tried to refuse the disgusting offering, needing the release of death, but the wolf wanted to live and so he ate the rancid meat. He grew weaker. The wolf spent the endless solitary days pacing the rectangular pad of concrete that protected him from the scorching earth. His body wasted away, but still he paced. It was all he could do.

    September
    Mara stretched out in the transfusion center’s hard reclining chair and gazed at the autmn leaves outside the window. Four and a half months after her first transfusion, she knew the routine well. Dressed in shorts and a tank top, she grimaced as the needle slid into her vein. It was a fat, thick needle and she hated it. She’d sit there for an hour, try to smile, and wait for the life-sustaining blood to replenish her weakened body. Before each transfusion, she’d donate a pint of her own blood for study. This served two purposes. It kept her blood volume relatively steady and allowed the University of Washington Medical Center staff to study her in the hopes that they could find a cure. Or at least a cause. In the first month, she’d needed one transfusion. The third month, two. Now she was up to a transfusion every ten or twelve days. She had an appointment with Doctor Pendergast immediately after this treatment and she was nervous.
    Jen sat by her side. Jen knew Mara better than anyone. Sisters from the first year of college, they’d bonded over all-nighters and a shared love of red vines and cappuccino. Life had dampened their bond after college, keeping them both too busy to spend as much time together as they would’ve liked, but Mara’s illness had reconnected them. It had been Jen who’d gotten the call the first day Mara’s illness had left her unable to get out of bed, Jen who’d driven her to almost all of her transfusion appointments, and Jen who was on her DNR order.
    Jen, Adam, Lisa, and Mara’s aunt Lillian took turns being with her for most of her doctor’s appointments. Mara appreciated the support, but sometimes she wanted her friends to treat her normally again, not like an invalid. She hadn’t been out barhopping in months. Mara didn’t have enough energy for it most of the time, but the few days after her transfusions she could manage a night out. Her friends refused her pleas, insisting on bringing DVDs over to her house or throwing small dinner parties where