“How close do you have to be to a person to sense their abilities?” Harley asked. “I mean, can you get a read on everyone in this pub?”
She nodded, letting out a long sigh. “Yes. I know it sounds crazy, but while all of you see a room full of people with blond or brown hair, blue eyes or hazel, leather jackets or wool, I see abilities.”
Brielle gestured toward the people at the bar sitting with their backs to them. “That guy is good at darts, that one sings in the shower, the woman to their left can write with both hands at once, and the petite girl next to her can drink a gallon of milk and eat a loaf of bread in under a minute. And that guy all by himself down at the very end of the bar? He can breathe underwater.”
As she expected, everyone stared at her until Hudson shook his head in shock.
“That is frigging amazing,” he said.
She nibbled on her pizza. “It’s exhausting is what it is. It’s always there, and if I don’t force myself to shut it all out, I’ll be picking up on the abilities of every person within a thousand miles. Farther, sometimes.” She glanced at Caleb. “That’s how I tracked down supernaturals for Yegor, by the way.”
He tilted his head sideways, regarding her with a curious expression. “That’s how you were suddenly able to speak that obscure Indonesian language after you touched that man’s hand in the restaurant, isn’t it? And after you touched Forrest when we first entered the tunnels in Siberia, you could suddenly fight hand-to-hand and fire those automatic weapons, right?”
Brielle nodded. She’d thought he might have noticed her touching that one goon in the restaurant but figured Caleb had been too distracted to notice her brush his teammate’s hand with hers down in the tunnels in Surinda. It had been rather chaotic.
“Wait a minute,” Hudson said. “You’re telling me that you can mimic the abilities of anyone you touch, human or not?”
That comment earned him low growls and a snarl from Caleb, Harley, and Sawyer.
“Just because we’re werewolves, that doesn’t mean we aren’t human, you jackass,” Harley said angrily.
Hudson dropped the crust of the piece of pizza he’d been working on and held up his hands in surrender, looking around the table. “Point taken. Poor choice of words. Hearing Brielle can borrow talents from anyone she touched caught me a little off guard. For some reason, I assumed Hudson it was limited to other supernaturals. You have to admit, it’s kind of mind-blowing to think she can pick up things like languages or how to fire a weapon.”
“Or run like an Olympic sprinter, do martial arts like a black belt, shoot sniper rifles like a combat veteran, cook a five-course meal like a Parisian chef, or eat more hot dogs than a competitive eater,” Brielle added, just to make sure they got the full picture. “Not that I’d ever want to do that last one. I don’t even like hot dogs.”
Caleb looked like he was about to take exception to that comment, but Hudson interrupted before he could say anything. “I realize now why this wasn’t something you wanted everyone to know about. With this ability, there’s literally no limit to what you can do. Hell, you could take over the world if you wanted to.”
Brielle couldn’t help but laugh harder than she’d laughed in a long time. “You can have the world. I only want my brother back and a normal life. Besides, it turns out there are limitations when it comes to borrowing gifts that would interfere with me taking over the world.”
“Such as?” Caleb prompted, biting off half the slice of pizza in his hand in one go.
“Well, for one thing, I’m forced to take the good with the bad when I’m borrowing someone’s abilities. So if they can fight really well but can’t run any faster than an angry tortoise, then I’m stuck being a slow-moving fighter.”
Hudson frowned like he was actually disappointed by this facet of her gift. “That sucks.”
“Tell me about it,” she said. “I can also only borrow a specific person’s abilities once, and then it’s out of reach forever. I’m also limited on how long I get to keep that skill. The stronger the ability, the shorter the duration I get to use it. So while I was able to speak that Indonesian language in Zagreb for almost four hours, I could only mimic Forrest’s fighting style for about an hour, maybe a bit longer if I pushed it. And Misty’s abilities to slip inside a computer?” She shrugged. “I doubt I could have held on to that gift for more than thirty or forty minutes. The one-time use and the short time span I have to work with kind of limits my chances of taking over the world.”
Around the table, Caleb and his teammates seemed to consider everything she’d said as they went back to eating. Brielle finished the slice on her plate, then reached for another, stunned to see that they’d almost polished off all five pizzas. Well, Caleb, Harley, and Sawyer had done most of the damage, but she and Hudson had helped.
“I have another question about your gift,” Harley said, picking up her glass of wine.
Brielle was okay with that. She’d already told them so much that it didn’t make sense to hold anything back now. In for a penny and all that.
“You talked about there being a time limit for how long you can use another person’s gift,” Harley said curiously. “Does that mean you can’t use someone else’s abilities until the first one is gone?”
“I can jump from person to person if I want, but that’s exhausting,” Brielle said. “When I broke Julian out of that prison in Turkey, I had to borrow from about a dozen people, one after the other. I was so weak by the time we got free that I nearly passed out. If I’d pushed any harder, I likely would have killed myself.”
Out of the corner of her eye, Brielle saw Caleb tense all over again. His eyes even flared with that blue glow for a second. She would have asked what that was about, but then the waitress came by with the check, telling them the takeout pizzas were ready whenever they were.
Harley, Sawyer, and Craig seemed more than ready to get back to the safe house, and considering it was almost midnight at the end of one hell of a long day, Brielle couldn’t blame them. But with the nap she’d had on the plane, she wasn’t ready to call it a night quite yet.
“I think I’m going to walk around and see some more of the city,” she announced as they walked out of the pub. “I’ve never been to Odessa before and figure I might as well see some of the sights while we’re here.”
“I’ll go with you,” Caleb said, handing the pizza boxes he’d been carrying to Hudson. “Nobody should be out wandering the city alone, especially at night,” he added when Brielle turned and raised a brow in his direction.
She decided not to berate him too much, since she would prefer to have some company if she was going to walk around a city she wasn’t familiar with at this time of night. Harley warned them not to stay out too late since they had no idea when they’d need to leave for wherever the chase for the nukes led them next.
“And call if you get yourselves in trouble,” Sawyer said as the three of them started walking away. “Or even if you get a sense you’re being followed or anything like that.”
