Carly thought the cub with most potential was the little polar bear Olaf. He’d chosen watercolors, and had at first painted his entire sheet of watercolor paper black. Once that dried, he scraped away the dried paint with a palette knife to reveal patterns of the white paper underneath, like a negative. The lines resembled large bears, but they were incomplete, featureless. Olaf contemplated them with the dark-eyed seriousness with which Carly had seen him observe the rest of the world.
“That’s very nice, Olaf,” she said after Armand had bustled out of the room, going for more supplies. “Unique. Can you tell me about it?”
Olaf kept studying the painting-drawing, palette knife in hand. “My parents,” he said.
Who were dead, Ronan’s mate, Elizabeth, had told Carly. Ronan had discovered Olaf, an orphaned Shifter cub no one knew what to do with, and had taken him in.
Poor kid. Carly opened her mouth to praise his painting again when she smelled smoke.
Cherie smelled it too. She raised her head, her nose wrinkling, her sudden fear showing Carly how young she still was by Shifter standards. Cherie was looking around for an adult Shifter, someone to keep her safe.
Carly saw the ceiling above Cherie give. She grabbed the girl and yanked her out of the way just as a fireball came down and flames exploded through the room.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
The room in which Armand taught was in the middle of the two-story building, and had no windows. The explosion shattered the lights, turning the bright space to night, lit by roiling gas-fed flames. Cubs screamed, easels clattered to the floor, and little pots of turpentine popped under the heat, feeding the fire.
Out! They had to get out.
Confusion and noise took over. Carly inhaled smoke and heat, and she gasped for breath, coughing. Dimly she remembered that when people died in a fire, it was often from smoke inhalation, long before the flames reached them.
But she couldn’t see to find the doors, couldn’t remember where the doors were. If the building had emergency systems, like lit-up exit signs or sprinklers, she saw no sign of them.
They were trapped.
Carly heard the high-pitched keening of Jordan, calling desperately for his daddy, Cherie’s sobs of terror, and cries and calls from the other kids. Nothing at all from Olaf.
Stop. Wait. Carly closed her eyes, blotting out the horror. She needed to remember what the room had looked like moments before the explosion. Where everyone was. Who’d been there, who hadn’t.
Armand had stepped out to fetch more supplies. Spike and Ellison, who’d accompanied the children, had been wandering in and out of the building. Carly knew enough about Shifters by now to know that they were watching out for danger. But the danger had been inside the room, in the ceiling above it, not outside.
Spike and Ellison, and Armand, would see the flames or the smoke. They’d come and call for help. Meanwhile, Carly had to find the door and get the cubs out.
Oblong room, doors at either end. She and Olaf had been in the center of it, Carly facing the east door, Olaf staring at his picture. Carly had leapt to jerk Cherie out of the way of the falling ceiling, but had Olaf moved in time?
“Olaf!”
Olaf still made no noise, and bile rose in Carly’s throat. She couldn’t breathe, she had to get out, to save the cub inside her.
Her fire-safety training, which Armand made all his employees take, cut through her fear. Smoke rose. “Down! Everybody down! Crawl toward the walls, find the doors!”
Carly’s voice, ringing with authority, cut through the screaming. The cubs, used to obeying the alpha Shifters, dropped to the floor, their yelling dying to whimpering.
Carly got to her hands and knees and started across the room, groping for any of the cubs along the way. After a few moments, she found her hands full of soft but wiry fur, then the white face of a small polar bear looked out of the hell at her.
“Olaf.” Carly exhaled in relief, then regretted breathing out. Breathing in hurt. “Find the door, Olaf. Or at least the wall. Can you do that?”
Olaf turned around and started walking but stopped abruptly when Carly let go of him, and waited. Carly caught on after a second—Olaf wanted to lead her to safety.
Carly held on to his fur again and let him pull her along, she half crawling alongside him. She passed another cub on the way and scooped him up, setting him on Olaf’s strong back.
Olaf made it to the wall, then put his shoulder to it and slid along the wall until he found the door. Lungs nearly bursting, Carly pushed at the door, but it wouldn’t move. Jammed? Or locked?
“Cherie!”
Cherie could turn into a grizzly bear. If the door was stuck, even a half-grown grizzly would be of more use than a human, a polar bear cub, and another child paralyzed with fear.
“Cherie, we need you!”
Cherie didn’t answer. Olaf made a little growl in his throat, then he scampered back into the fire. Carly shouted after him, but in a few seconds, Olaf returned, his mouth around Cherie’s hand.
Carly rose, seized Cherie by the arms, and pulled her down to the floor with the rest of them. She put her hands on Cherie’s shoulders and looked into her face. “Cherie, you need to shift. I need someone strong to push open the door.”
“The door won’t open?” Cherie’s eyes were unfocused, the girl clearly terrified.
“Please.” Carly shook her. “I need you to be a bear right now. Shift!”
Cherie stared at Carly a moment longer in incomprehension, then she nodded. Shaking fingers fumbled at her blouse, and Carly had to help her pull it off. By the time Cherie had shed enough clothes, the young woman’s instincts took over, and she began to change.
It was painful for her, Carly saw, Cherie letting out noises of anguish as her face elongated into the bear’s, her hands and feet curving to accommodate grizzly claws.
Carly scrambled back as Cherie grew and changed until a grizzly, easily as large as a wild one, stood next to them. Cherie rose on her hind legs, growling, and pounded on the door with her massive paws. The door at last broke under her onslaught, spilling her, Carly, and the cubs out into the corridor.
But instead of the refuge Carly pictured, she saw more fire. Flames licked down the walls, the way out of the building blocked.
“Damn it!”
At least there was more air out here. For now.
The studio lay on the second floor, but there were other rooms up here, rooms with windows. If Carly could gather the cubs into one of them, she could open a window where the fire department might reach them and get them down. Even better if she could find a fire escape.