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“Probably about as much as the ongoing chatter Baer’s got hitting his brain each day.”
Lucien looked over at him and Baer smiled. “I don’t get human chatter. I can pick up on what animals are thinking. Can even command them, though it takes a lot of energy and concentration.”
“And the rats at the cemetery?”
Baer shook his head. “Not mine. I couldn’t reach them at all.”
“I wonder if some of it had to do with the fact that you were taken by surprise,” Clay offered. He sat up and crossed his legs in front of him, resting his forearms on his knees. “If we run across her again, you’ll be expecting an attack from the animals. You might be able to get in their minds the next time.”
“I’ll try,” Baer said, though he wasn’t feeling very hopeful.
“Lucien has seen enough of my powers,” Grey said. “Baer, show him what you can do.”
“Yeah, something really big or really small,” Lucien requested.
Baer walked into the middle of the field. He rolled his shoulders, trying to loosen up the muscles in his body a little as he sifted through countless images of animals in his brain until he finally settled on one. An animal everyone seemed to request but he hadn’t actually tried yet.
Closing his eyes, he shut out all the noise around him and tapped the power resting in his chest, just waiting to be called. As the energy filled him, he directed it into the animal in his head. His body stretched in impossible ways and his heart rate sped up, but just as the panic started to rise, he pushed it away. He’d shifted dozens of times now, tried so many different animals. There was no reason to panic. He would always be able to find his way back to his human form. No matter what body he was in, he was still Baer.
Sounds of shock and awe reached his ears. Baer opened his eyes to find that he was now staring down on the tall Fire Weaver. Even Clay had gotten to his feet and was slowly approaching with a look of wonder on his face. Baer looked around his new body as best as he could, taking in the long gray legs under him. A fly buzzed near his ear and he flapped it. Ha! He flapped both of his ears.
Gazing down again, he saw his trunk.
It worked!
He was a giant African elephant.
He tossed his head from side to side, getting his trunk swinging like a pendulum before he could locate the right muscles to get the thing to move on its own. It was like having a third arm.
“All right! Next time we run into the pestilents, I’m riding Baer into battle!” Lucien declared.
Balling up the end of his trunk, Baer lightly bopped Lucien on the top of the head. He wasn’t sure how he felt about becoming transportation, but it might be cool if Lucien was shooting spouts of fire off him as he charged into the fray.
Extending his trunk into the air, Baer let out a loud trumpeting cry that seemed to shake the air. At least his companions found it loud, as they covered their ears.
He couldn’t help it. Baer turned and ran around the small clearing as fast as he could. Definitely not as fast as the cougar or tiger he’d tried in the past, but this felt faster than the bear he’d once become. The sounds of his friends complaining about the trembling of the ground as he passed them made him take a second round just for the hell of it.
Okay, elephants were fun, but he knew better than to try to sit on Grey again. He would seriously hurt the annoying Soul Weaver.
Concentrating, Baer changed the image in his head to something much smaller. As he shifted, he threw out his arms, letting the wind lift under his newly formed wings. He glided a few yards, then landed on the ground with a couple of steadying hops. He looked at his friends, who kindly applauded. The magpie was relatively easy as birds went. He’d grown up watching the birds with the black-and-white feathers through all of his childhood. They were incredibly smart birds and weren’t exactly at the bottom of the food chain, which was always nice.
He crouched for a second and launched himself into the air. He flapped hard, gaining more and more altitude until he could no longer hear the conversation of his friends. There was only the wind rustling through his feathers and the call of other birds.
Circling the field once, Baer turned back, sinking lower until he could easily shift into human form. His feet touched the ground and he sucked in a deep breath. Thoughts flitted too quickly through his brain, and he managed a few wobbly steps over to the shadows before dropping to the ground. He was getting better about shifting from one animal to the next without stopping at human in between, but everything got cluttered in his brain for a few minutes when he did reach human again. It was like his human brain was struggling to reacclimate itself to this body.
