Shifted by Lily Cahill Read Free Book Online Page A

it.”
    There was no judgment in Rick’s tone, but Charlie felt it anyway. “I started back as soon as I could. I got … caught up.”
    Rick chuckled. “One of those books you like so much?”
    “No,” Charlie said curtly. Rick had always ribbed him about being a college boy, but since Charlie had lost his baseball scholarship after the car accident the comments no longer seemed as funny. “Was someone hurt?”
    “That’s what we’re on our way to find out,” Rick said. “Gail Goodman came rushing into the town meeting and said Bill was trapped.”
    Charlie sucked in a breath. He didn’t know the Goodmans well, but the idea of anyone being trapped in a car made his heart stutter. “I saw the doctor. He’s on his way. He’s ….”
    To Charlie’s dismay, his voice shook. His anxiety and relief were so mixed up inside him he could barely draw breath. 
    Rick laid a hand on his shoulder. “We’ll get him out in no time. All right?”
    The idea that he might cry in front of the manliest man he knew had Charlie straightening in his seat. “Yeah. Yeah. Okay.”
    Rick eyed him for a moment, then squeezed his shoulder before letting go. “Your father and mother went back to your house to get some supplies. You think you could go pick them up?”
    “But ….” Charlie glanced back in the direction of the rockslide.
    “Ain’t nothing you can do that the doctor isn’t already doing,” Rick said, and his voice held gentle sympathy.
    “I can help,” Charlie said, hating the stubborn petulance in his words. 
    Rick looked down at Charlie’s ruined leg. It was just a flick of his eyes, but Charlie saw it. Shame washed over him. Who was he kidding? He couldn’t wield a shovel or a pick, he couldn’t load up a cart full of stones and toss them into the ravine below. Bill Goodman might live or die, and there was nothing he could do to change that. All that was left was the filthy, grueling work of clearing away the rocks. The men in town would come together to see to it, the same way they came together when someone needed a new roof or needed help raising a barn. 
    It wasn’t glamorous, and the work was brutal. Charlie would have given anything to be working alongside the rest of the men. 
    “All right,” he grumbled, turning away from Rick. “I’ll go pick up my parents.”
    “Good man,” Rick said, clapping him on the shoulder. “Well, I better get out there. See you in a bit.”
    “Yeah,” Charlie said shortly, using the pole built into his clutch to shove his truck into gear.
     
    He maneuvered his truck around Rick’s and started back toward town. The seemingly-endless line of headlights glared in his eyes as he drove the opposite direction of everyone else. 
    Christ, he was pathetic.
    Charlie watched car after car of able-bodied, physically capable people pass him as a black mood settled around him like a cloak. No one needed him out at the rockslide. He would only be in the way. What use was he as a man if he couldn’t even help his fellow townspeople in a time of disaster? 
    His cane was laying innocently on the seat next to him, glinting as headlights rolled by. He wanted to smash it, crush it, throw it in a fire. Logically he knew it was just a piece of metal and wood, designed to help and support him. But that didn’t stop the raging tide of fury rising inside him—knowing that without that cane, he would never walk again. 
    Except as a mountain lion. 
    The yearning to transform rushed through him. He never felt weak and inadequate as a mountain lion. He never felt resentful of his lot, or ashamed of his short-comings. 
    It made it so much harder to return to life as a useless, crippled man.
    Maybe if he told people what he could do … but no. He had seen the way people with power were treated. Some people thought they were sick or damaged. Some people thought they were dangerous. But no one seemed to think that the outbreak of superpowers amongst the citizens of Independence