by Cheree Alsop
When Ceren finally broke the silence, she spoke with a tone I couldn’t read.
“I don’t know where to begin. Should I be horrified that you grew up in some lair raised by a master who made you fight each other? Should I cheer for the boy who stood up to his bullies and won in a sort of losing way? Or do I question my sanity in believing any of the story at all?” She shot me a searching look. “Take your pick.”
She walked through a tree, or rather, the tree passed through her. I had noticed that she usually avoided such things as if she was still human. She walked around bushes or used stones to cross the small streams as I did even though her feet didn’t touch the ground. I figured such habits died hard. It told of her shock even more than her tone when she didn’t even try to walk around the oak or the following clump of aspens.
I chose to answer the last question one first. “Why would I make something like that up?”
She studied the ground at her feet for a few steps before looking up to say, “I would guess to cover up something more horrific, but I can’t imagine anything more terrible than what you told me, so I have to believe you, I guess.”
I fought back a smile at her bothered tone. “One thing you’ll learn about werewolves is that we don’t lie.”
She tipped her head to one side and asked, “Why not?”
“Because lies have a smell,” I replied.
Her forehead furrowed. “They do?”
I nodded. “They smell like a wet cat.”
That brought a small laugh from her. “They do?”
“Yes, which is why werewolves don’t lie. We would smell it and know, so there’s no reason to lie,” I told her.
A small smile crossed her lips. “Is that why dogs don’t like cats?”
I nodded again. “Because cats are liars.”
Her mouth fell open. “They are not!”
“Are too,” I replied. “They’re all like, love me, pet me, feed me, then scratch you and ignore you and only give you attention when they want something.”
“That’s honesty, if anything,” Ceren shot back. “They just don’t hide their feelings behind slobbery kisses and wagging tails even if they were scolded a second before.”
I had to laugh at her analogy. “For the record, werewolves don’t give slobbery kisses, and nobody scolds a wolf if they’re smart.”
“Noted,” she replied with a grin. “I’ll remember to wait until you’re human to scold you.”
“Good idea,” I agreed.
We walked along in amiable silence until she said, “Listen to me. I’m talking to a werewolf about when he’s a human instead of a wolf. Is this life even real?”
I glanced at her out of the corner of my eye. By her tone, I guessed the question was rhetorical. The loss in her voice and the confusion on her face gripped my heart in a tight, painful fist.
Against my better judgement, I said, “Ceren, I’ll figure out what’s keeping you here. I find a way to get you out of this…,” I made an uncertain gesture before I settled on, “This limbo you’re in.”
The smile she gave me was tentative but sincere when she replied, “Thank you, Zev. I really appreciate it.”
The rays of the sun had reached the Willards’ house by the time I opened the front door. Virgo was sprawled on the couch with his eyes closed. His face was nearly as white as the bandages that had been wrapped around his upper arm where the jakhin had torn it open.
James looked up from the nearby chair he had fallen asleep on. He pushed unsteadily to his feet.
“Thank goodness. I was about to go find you myself,” the human said with a relieved smile.
“Why?” I asked.
“Because, well,” he looked at Virgo who hadn’t stirred at my entrance and then back at me. “I guess because I forget you’re a werewolf who can take care of yourself.” He shrugged. “I’m used to worrying when my friends are in trouble.”
“It’s pointless to worry when worry doesn’t help anything,” I pointed out.
He grinned. “That’s a very werewolf thing to say. If you want to be more human, you’re going to have to worry more. It’s just the way humans work regardless of if it helps or not.”
I shook my head and turned my attention to Virgo. “How’s he doing?”
“Not good,” James replied. Solemnity chased away his smile. “Mom and Alia patched him up, but he keeps having nightmares. From what I’ve been able to research, that’s a common side effect of being wounded by a jakhin.”
“There’s a common side effect?” I said. “How often does this happen?”
Virgo’s lips moved soundlessly and he shifted his head from side to side as if he was trying to avoid something. James adjusted the rag that had been placed on the warlock’s forehead. By the smell, it had been dipped in a potent poultice.
“Not often enough for anyone to say how to get rid of them,” the human answered. “We’ve rubbed his feet with lavender and treated the lacerations with it was well, but it doesn’t have the same power as it does in killing them. Mom says he just needs time, but I hate to see him like this.”
I looked at James more closely. Dark circles showed under the human’s eyes and his cheeks were hollowed. “You’ve been up with him all this time?”
He lifted a shoulder. “I told you I worry. But….” His words died away.
“But it doesn’t help,” I finished.
He nodded with a helpless shrug.
My heart went out to him. “Get some sleep. I’ll stay up.”
He held up a hand. “You just got back. I can’t ask you to stay up with him. You’re the one who needs sleep after the night you’ve had.”
I shook my head. “I won’t be able to sleep because of the night I’ve had. Besides, I’ve got class soon. When Mrs. Willard gets up, I’ll leave Virgo in your mother’s capable hands. Until then, there’s no use for both of us to be awake.”
He eyed me uncertainly, but it was clear the thought of sleep was a welcome one. “Are you sure?”
“Yes,” I replied firmly. “Get some rest. You guys made all the difference out there. You deserve to sleep.”
A yawn caught James mid-protest. His jaw cracked with the intensity of it. “Fine,” he gave in when he could speak again. “But come get me if he gets worse.”
“I will,” I promised.
I watched him open the door to the basement and wander down the stairs. He had given Virgo’s sister Jemmy his room when their mother was slain by the dark coven, and Mrs. Willard had turned the basement into a sleeping lair of sorts for Virgo, James, and I. James had romantic feelings for Jemmy, and when she left to go to her aunt’s, I think he took it harder than he let on. He had refused to take up his room again without her there. The thought of the new blow up mattresses below was a welcoming one. I hoped James slept well enough for the both of us.
When the sounds of his footsteps faded to silence, I took the chair he had been sitting on. Regardless of what I had told James, I felt entirely exhausted by the night’s events. Reliving memories of the Lair while walking with Ceren hadn’t helped. My burns throbbed at the mere mention of the Room of Retribution. I could have done without bringing such things up again.
The voice in the back of my mind whispered that I could have just said no. I argued back that I had been trying to take her mind off of her current situation. The fact that she had vanished just before we reached the Willards’ house filled me with relief. I didn’t know how to explain her presence to the family if they could see her; the last thing I needed was for them to think I was bringing more strays to their doorstep.
With nothing else to keep my attention, I turned my gaze to the sunrise outside the window. The pine trees beyond the road glowed with yellow and golden hues. A howl in the distance told me that Striker and Frost were on their way back from a victorious hunt. I was proud of them. Supplementing Mrs. Willards’ cooking with kills of our own was one way I had suggested to make up for Mrs. Stein’s absence. Though the witch had b
een an interesting cook to put it gently, I missed her zucchini lasagna more than the dish deserved. The thought of her pleased expression when the werewolves devoured anything she brought made my eyes burn.
I rubbed my face hard and sat up. It wouldn’t do to dwell on things I couldn’t change. That was another human trait I refused to inherit.
“Zev, she’s killing you. She’s killing you, Zev.”
I pushed up from the chair.
“Virgo, you’re having a nightmare.”
“No,” the warlock said without opening his eyes. “Zev, you’ve got to run!”
He thrashed on the couch so hard he would have fallen to the floor if I hadn’t stopped him with a hand on his chest. I pushed him back onto the cushions carefully so as not to damage his arm further.
“Everything’s fine, Virgo. Find a better dream,” I told him.
Sweat beaded around the rag on the warlock’s forehead. “No,” he mumbled. His eyebrows pulled together even though he didn’t open his eyes. “She’s too dangerous. She’s killing you!”
“Nobody’s killing me,” I replied.
An involuntary shudder ran through my body at the sensation of claws tearing into my side and blood running to the floor. The sound of the jakhin’s claws on the walls of the college had sounded so real it set my teeth on edge. I told myself it was another nightmare and shoved the memory away.
“I’m just fine, Virgo. You need to rest,” I told him.
“You need to rest,” he replied in his sleep-slurred voice. “You need to fight for her life.” He twitched and his voice rose an octave. “Zev, run faster!”
I shook him gently out of fear that he would wake up the rest of the house. “Virgo, wake up.”
“You need to find out where she went,” he said. “You were supposed to save her.”
Something about the way his voice had changed from panic to sorrow held me. “To save who?” I asked even though I didn’t want to.
“My mother,” Virgo replied, his eyes closed tightly. “You were supposed to save my mother.”
Tears dripped involuntarily down my cheeks. I wiped them away with an angry brush of my hand. I was a werewolf. I didn’t cry. “Your mother asked me to protect you,” I told him. “She didn’t say what she was going to do.” My throat tightened when I said, “I had no idea.”
“She should be here instead of me,” he replied with anguish in his voice.
I dropped to my knees next to the couch. Unsure what else to do, I said, “She did what she had to so she could protect you.”
He shook his head. “I should have protected her.” He threw his arms up as if he was fighting someone. “I should have killed him.”
I put a hand on his shoulder to hold him down. He struggled with surprising strength.
“Virgo, you’re having a nightmare,” I told him. “You need to let it go.”
“But I’m supposed to be the strongest one,” he argued. “I’m supposed to save us all!”
I thought of our conversation back at the witches’ house when they saved Isley’s life.
“Maybe someday, but not yet,” I replied. “It’s not your time.”
Virgo’s movements slowed. He stopped fighting me. I hesitated, then lifted my hand from his shoulder.
“Not yet,” he whispered.
“Not yet,” I replied.
He gave a small nod and settled deeper into the cushions. Within seconds, his racing heartbeat had calmed into the gentle cadence of sleep. I let out a breath of relief, but something caught my eye mid-sigh. I spun with my hands up, ready to protect Virgo against whoever attacked.
Chapter Six
“I’m starting to believe you were raised in a fighting lair,” Ceren said. She lifted a hand at my frustrated glare and said, “In my defense, it’s a bit hard to walk noisily into a room as a ghost. I let you know if I figure that one out.”
I released my breath in a rush and turned to sit with my back against Virgo’s couch. The sound of his rhythmic heartbeat let me know that at least I hadn’t awoken him.
“You have a heart,” Ceren said after a few minutes of silence in which I had looked everywhere but at her.
I had no idea how long she had been there. Her words told me it had been long enough.
“I’m alive. Of course I have a heart,” I replied shortly before thinking about how my words might hurt her.
Instead of taking offense, she gave a little sigh which probably meant so much to a human but was merely confusing to a werewolf, and she replied, “No, silly. You care about him and what happens to him.”
I had never been called silly in my entire life, and now I had been called it twice by the same girl. It didn’t matter that she was a ghost. The label still rankled the pride I, as a werewolf, had seldom had rankled. I wasn’t sure how to take it.
“What does caring have to do with anything?” I asked in a defensive tone I couldn’t take back.
She crossed her arms and looked down at me as if I was a petulant child. “You should care. That’s what makes us human.”
I shot back with the obvious, “I’m not human.”
I thought she would argue about how everyone has feelings and rights. It was the sort of thing Mrs. Willard and Mrs. Stein would say and that I had heard them tell the other werewolves at least a few times.
Instead, the ghost girl’s expression fell and she turned away from me. When she spoke, I could hear the strain of controlling her emotions. Awareness that I registered her feelings without seeing her face was subdued by her words.
“I keep hoping all of this will turn out to be a dream. You turning into a wolf, me a ghost. And then there’s those witches, not to mention the monster. All of this doesn’t make sense, so I tell myself I’m just surviving it until I wake up.” She sniffed, then said, “But I’m not going to wake up, am I?”
I didn’t know what to say. Nothing I had learned in the Lair had ever prepared me for discussing reality with a ghost. I wished there had been a class on that. The sarcastic voice in the back of my mind noted that it should have been called, ‘Coping with Moping: Accepting your Life after Death’. I’m sure Professor Shipley would have killed the class, figuratively.
Instead of voicing my thoughts that I attributed to my lack of sleep and stress from the night’s battle with the jakhin, I said as gently as I could, “I don’t think so.”
She nodded and furtively wiped at a tear that trickled down her cheek before she said, “I don’t think so, either.”
I sorted through my thoughts for a moment before I told her, “I’m not good at this stuff.”
“What stuff?”
I gestured toward Virgo and said, “Caring,” without looking at her.
“Oh,” she replied quietly.
I leaned my face in one of my hands and spoke in a muffled voice, “We weren’t allowed to. The way I grew up, if you cared, it got either you or the other one punished or killed. Caring was dangerous because it meant that you weren’t single-minded in your defense of the Lair. To be distracted by emotions was too human for us.” I grimaced against my palm. “We were more valuable as monsters.”
Ceren’s voice was closer when she replied, “I don’t see you as a monster, Zev.”
I winced inwardly. That wasn’t what I was getting at. I would rather her think of me as a monster. It was easier that way when I messed up and did something my training told me to. As strange as it was to admit about a ghost, I didn’t want to disappoint her the way I felt I did everyone else.
“But that’s what I am,” I said so softly I wasn’t sure if she could hear.
There were no footsteps to tell me where she was, yet I couldn’t bring myself to look up and find her. I was afraid of what my face would give away. I hadn’t learned well enough how to hide expressions that were easy for others to read. I felt too vulnerable, too open, and to meet her gaze might break me in a way that couldn’t be fixed.
I hoped she had finally realized that what I said was true, and t
hat she had left me to be the monster I knew I was inside. It was better for everyone that way.
Instead, her voice eased through the stillness that surrounded me like a pebble thrown into a stagnant pond. When she spoke, it stirred up the dark things I had hoped to keep hidden from the world.
“Zev, I think you’re better than you know.”
I clenched my hands into fists so tight my fingernails bit into my palms. I gritted my teeth and said through them, “I’ve done bad things.”
“You were raised in a bad place, and so in a bad place, those were normal things.”
I shook my head without looking up. “You can’t justify them like that. The conscience still knows.”
The seconds drew out like hours until she asked, “And if you hadn’t done them?”
“I would have been killed,” I replied shortly.
“So there really was—”
I cut her off. “Who am I to choose my life before the lives of others? Whatever it is that I’m trying to do here can’t make amends for that.” I turned my head and found that she had crouched to my eye level and was a few feet from me. “There is no way to justify it.”
Her lips barely moved when she asked, “What did you do?”
It was the ultimate question, the one that defined my pathetic attempt to live as a human, to put my past behind me. It was the one thing I couldn’t escape. “I led men and women to their deaths at the hands of my Master.”
The statement was so sharp it left the coppery taste of blood in my mouth. I couldn’t take it back or twist it to make it softer. It hung in the air between us, a wavy line of reality at the point where my eyes met her searching brown gaze. I could see it for the dark, ugly thing it was, a viper who had already sunk in its poison and left its victim to die with the knowledge that there was no going back.
“So you’re a monster,” she said.
The bite was missing from her statement. No accusation shadowed her eyes or tightened her brow. It was merely that, a statement.
“And I’m a ghost only a monster can see. I’m a monster’s monster.”
It was there in her words, the question of why I was the one who could see her after all I had done. What did that truly make her if I was the only one who could help? Perhaps it wasn’t help I could give; maybe her lot in life was to torment me to the painful and drawn-out death I deserved.
