“The moment she saved Misty and the rest of us down in those tunnels,” Caleb snarled, and Brielle was shocked to see his eyes glowing ever so slightly blue. “So you need to back off. Now.”
Brielle reached out to gently place her hand on Caleb’s arm where it rested on the table between them. “Calm down,” she said, glancing around the pub to make sure no one had picked up on the sudden tension at their table. “I don’t mind that Hudson asked. For better or worse, I knew everything would come out the second I decided to use my ability to help Misty. I might as well tell you now, since there’s no reason to keep trying to hide it.”
Caleb gazed at her for a moment, then looked at Hudson, blue flaring brightly in his eyes for a split second before they returned to their normal color. “If you spread a word of what she tells you to anyone, I will frigging end you. Got it?”
Brielle squeezed Caleb’s forearm, giving him a smile when he glanced at her. “Caleb, it’s okay. I’m good.”
She held his gaze until the tension in his body relaxed a bit. Not completely, of course, because she got the impression he was never completely chill. She’d realized that within minutes of first meeting him weeks ago. He’d always be a live wire, a dangerous man poised to cause damage.
When Brielle was sure Caleb was as in control as he was likely ever going to be, she turned and looked at Hudson to see him sitting there waiting as patiently as Harley and Sawyer for her answer.
“Technically, I don’t have the same ability as Misty,” she said. “Or any special abilities at all.”
“I think Misty would beg to differ,” Sawyer said with a smile after taking a long sip of his beer. “She’d be dead right now if it weren’t for you. Hell, so would the rest of us.”
Brielle picked up the slice of cheese pizza from her plate and took a bite, chewing slowly. It was loaded with mozzarella, and the tomato sauce had a touch of sweetness to it, just the way she liked it. “I didn’t mean it that way. I meant that I don’t have any special abilities of my own. I could only help Misty because my gift let me borrow her abilities. That’s how my thing works. I can sense the abilities that a person possesses, and once I touch them, I absorb their knowledge and skills, and for a period of time, I can do what they do.”
Beside her, Caleb seemed as surprised by that as everyone else.
“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.”