“Aram, calm down. You’re frightening the humans.”
“Calm? You ask me to be calm when I have just heard that! That you were so desperate for a bed partner you returned to the half-breed. Did he bed you?” I didn’t answer him, he didn’t deserve an answer. He grabbed me by my shoulder shaking me harshly.
“Tell me? If he did, his life is forfeit. You were drunk, you smell as if you still are, you are not in your right mind.” I shoved him away from me.
“What the hell are you so angry for? What is it to you?”
“Because I do not share my beloved,” he said grabbing my arm possessively.
I couldn’t stop my arm before it came up and slapped him right across the face. His head turned to the side and I could see an imprint of my hand on his cheek. He blinked a little startled. I was too but I kept on track with my anger.
“Your beloved? Not twenty-four hours ago you turfed me out, dropping me on my butt might I add, in the street. You turned me away when I needed someone. If that’s your bloody idea of love and caring you need some serious re-schooling.”
“So you went to him?”
“No, he came to help me when I was too drunk to be rational. He was worried about me, unlike you!”
“You did not ask me for help? You attempted to seduce my brother and then an underling.”
“What did you want, a big flashing neon sign listing my problems? I thought vampires were masters of the subtle and reading between the lines. Or did you just not think to worry about me?”
“You think that I don’t worry about you?” he said looking sad and offended. “That I do not know that something I have probably done has led to this.”
I blinked at him very tempted to slap him again but I settled for poking him in the chest.
“Do you really think I am this torn up just because of you? Why do you seem to think I am so selfless that my world must revolve around what you do or do not do? Do you not think that maybe, just maybe, I had a problem that was to do with me? Just me and the depth of my own soul that I was struggling with?”
“Pet...”
“Get out!”
“Andra?”
“I mean it, I really mean it. Get out!”
“What are you saying?”
“I...” I was very close to tears. “I revoke your invitation.”
Warm wind whistled past me, Aram was taken away with it out of the balcony door that with a flick of my hand shut and bolted behind him. I sat on the cool floor of my room and cried till my eyes ran dry. I didn’t have time for this; I had Incarra and Anton sitting in my living room no doubt awaiting a plausible explanation. I was abruptly tired of lying to them and decided that the vampire was technically already out of the bag. I needed a drink. So when I opened my bedroom door I was horrified to find Incarra pouring the contents of several liquor bottles down the sink.
“Hey, hey,” I yelled at her. She ignored me and kept pouring till the last drop was gone from all the bottles she’d wrangled from around my living room. I sat down on the floor and sighed. Incarra came to sit down on the couch. We sat there in an awkward silence. Anton broke it with a quibbling voice.
“What’s wrong with your boyfriend’s teeth?”
“They’re prosthetics,” said Incarra. I rubbed my hand over my face.
“They’re really not,” I said sheepishly.
“But that would mean...”
“That Aram is a vampire, yeah it would. Look,” I said to their disbelieving faces, “I’ve got a lot to tell you, please just listen, okay.” I started my story watching their faces every moment as I spoke. The shock, the disbelief, the annoyance and the doubt.
“You can do magic? Real magic?” said Incarra looking much as I had feared she would if I ever confessed my life to her. I was so sick of lying but telling the truth did not feel as good as I would have hoped. “And we’re in another reality.”
“Surprise,” I said throwing my arms into the air. Incarra crossed hers over her chest and gave me a level look.
“Prove it.”
I looked under the couch. Lying on its side where I had knocked it was a half full vodka bottle. I’d just opened a new one because I had been too lazy to reach under and pull it out. I held out my hand and called it to me, it shot to my hand much to Incarra and Anton’s mutual surprise. I uncapped it and took a long swallow. I looked at the clock on the wall above the cooker.
“Damn it, I gotta go, I have a meeting.” I stumbled to my feet brushing off the dress I had put on to be presentable. They stared at me as I put my coat on heading for the door. I spun on my heel and turned back to them.
“Okay, I can’t actually let you leave the apartment, it’s dangerous out there. So stay put.”
“Cassandra, you can’t just…” started to whine Incarra but I was out the door before she could stop me. I locked the door and pressed my hand over the lock, sealing it so that even if they found my spare key they couldn’t use it to get out. It was for their own good. I had to believe that as I took the elevator down.
Chapter Nine
The Worcester werewolf community is like a town within a city. The high brick walls sectioned off their little world from those that would not understand them. It had everything inside the gates that they needed. A supermarket, beauty salon, a bar, even a dentist’s office. If they never wanted to venture out into the larger world, they never had to. The wrought iron gates were large and luminous in the moonlight and whoever was on gate duty was hiding somewhere in the shadows. I wrapped my hands around the bars and rattled them to get attention. The large man that melted out of the darkness I’d seen before, he was tall and bald, hairless muscular arms in a tight white vest and rugged blue washed Levi’s. I wondered how he erupted in fur under the full moon when he had no hair now. I giggled thinking he might look like one of those Sphynx cats, hairless and wrinkled.
“What do you want?”
“Here to see Urquhart, I should be expected.” He reached over flicking on a small light that momentarily blinded me and checked a chart that was hanging next to the gate. He ran his finger down the page and huffed putting it back on its hook.
“Alright,” he said and he opened a small insert in the gate designed for pedestrian traffic. I stepped through and his nose scrunched up as I passed him. “Been out on the town have we?” I rolled my head to him.
“Like I’d waste this dress,” I said opening my coat and flashing him my ensemble. He smirked. The little black dress was indeed little. It hugged my thighs and only shared a passing acquaintance with the top of my boots. I flipped back around knotting the sash of my coat and marched myself towards where Simian lived. He had a large brown brick town house in a row of similar houses away from what I considered the main street where all the shops and offices were. I walked up to the door and took the brass knocker in my hand banging it down hard. The curtains twitched in the living room and I smiled through the little gap that appeared. Simian opened the front door letting me inside. He had his head turned to the living room telling Sophie, who was sitting curled on the couch with a book, that it was just me. Zoe ran at me screaming, as she often did. Zoe was Urquhart’s daughter, she was now four years old and I was her godmother. I squatted to pick her up and swung her around and around. She hugged my face and then leaned back from me pulling a face.
“Daddy, Cassie smells like grandpa at Christmas.”
I put her down on the floor. She was so adorable, with her slightly curled blond hair and pajamas that had little booties attached to the bottom and kittens chasing yarn balls on the soft white material. Simian placed his hand on my shoulder and took a deep sniff. I really wished people would stop doing that. He bent down to his daughter.
“Okay sweetie, I told you that you could stay up till Cassie came over now, say good night and mommy will tuck you in.” Sophie appeared behind her husband minus her book and Zoe reached up taking her hand, she went with her up the stairs waving to me as she did. Simian turned me around holding b
oth my shoulders tightly.
“Breathe on me.”
“Bite me.”
“I’m serious,” he said and I felt his fingers digging into the flesh of my shoulders through my clothes. I breathed on him and his nose wrinkled. “You’re drunk.”
“It seems to be a popular consensus,” I said pulling back from him and slipping out of my coat. I lay it over the banister doing a small spin. “But at least I am appropriately dressed.”
“How long have you been drinking?”
“Hmmm, for about twenty-four hours now.”
“This is not good,” he said shaking his head. I smiled at him and he just shook his head some more. “You cannot go to meet them like this especially not smelling like that.” He walked to the telephone picking it up and I shrugged stepping into the living room. I flopped onto the couch and moved Sophie’s book out from under me, she was reading New Moon by Stephanie Meyer. I wondered if she was making werewolf comparisons. I could hear Simian on the phone and Sophie came back into the room smiling at me.
“Can I get you something to drink, Cassandra?”
“Scotch.”
Simian slammed down the phone and came into the living room. He grabbed me by the elbow and made me get to my feet.
“No scotch. Come with me,” he said dragging me towards the stairs. Sophie looked at him, he shook his head a little and she went out of sight. I pulled at his grip.
“Simian, what are you doing? Let me go.”
“What is wrong with you? You smell like a wino, what happened? Explain yourself.”
“I can’t explain myself, because I am not myself you see,” I chuckled quoting C.S.Lewis’s, Alice.
“This is not the time for levity.”
I slammed my mouth tight shut as he dragged me into the upstairs bathroom. It was white tiled and gleaming. He opened the shower stall and let me go so he could roll up his shirt sleeves. I glared at him.
“Take off your dress.”
I cocked an eyebrow at him and took a step back. He pushed me down so that I fell onto the closed top of the toilet, then ripped my boots off my feet before pulling me back onto them. I smacked him hard with my fist and he winced.
“Take off your dress.”
“No. What the hell, Simian?”
He growled, thrust me fully clothed into the shower cubicle and turned ice cold water on over me. I screamed. The ice water slapped all over my skin, forcing me to my knees, it felt like drowning in a frozen over lake. His hand turned the knob to the hot water, at first it was a relief then it was scorching and I screamed again. Then came the cold again and slowly the pleasurable hazy edge of alcohol pulled away from my memory. I grabbed my head. The shock of the cold and hot water to my system sent my stomach roiling and I shoved Simian away managing to stumble to the toilet in time to throw up in the porcelain bowl. My throat was raw as I leaned my face against the cool plastic of the seat rolling my eyes up to Simian.
“You and I are no longer friends,” I groaned. He crossed his arms over his chest.
“I will throw you back into that shower if I have to. I’ve dealt with enough newly turned wolves to know when someone has been pity drinking.”
I closed my eyes, the smell rising up from beneath me making my stomach churn in an unpleasant way. I felt tears hot on my face, running down my cheeks and splashing in the water below. I was dripping wet and I could remember all the pain and all the hurt, it felt like being stabbed in the heart.
“Cassandra,” said Simian squatting down next to me, “talk to me. I’ve never seen you this torn up.” Part of me, the part of me that knew my little pity bender has been wrong had been waiting for this, wanting this, for someone to call me on the carpet.
“I’m cold,” I said shivering on the tiles. He stood grabbing a towel from off the back of the door and dropped it over me. I pulled the fluffy peach thing around me. It smelt like washing powder and shampoo, a very comforting scent.
“You need to get out of those wet things. I’ll get Sophie to put them in the drier.” He gave me some privacy in which I slipped out of my wet things wrapping the towel around myself, knotting it at my breast. I flushed away what had been the contents of my stomach and washed my mouth out with some Listerine I found in the bathroom cabinet. I pushed the lid down on the toilet again and sat on it. Simian brought me a cup of tea and sat next to me on the edge of the bathtub. I took it from him sipping the warm liquid tentatively. I felt altogether-for lack of a better or more accurate term-more human after that.
“Thanks,” I said out of courtesy. I wasn’t sure I really meant it. He’d thrown me fully dressed into a cold shower after all. I wrapped my hands tightly around the warm mug drawing the heat into my skin. He put his hand on my shoulder and refused to let me shrug it off.
“Cassandra, please talk to me. I like to think that we’re family or as close as we can be to one. I can see you need to talk and I’ll listen.” I stared at the tea, the warm golden brown color of it as if answers would bob to the surface and I could drink them down. My stomach twisted and the pain of not having eaten more than snack food for the last few hours made my eyes prickle with tears. I took a deep breath. I’d made a lot of mistakes in a short amount of time and I’d have to back pedal to fix them all. Simian rubbed soothing circles on my back and I burst into tears. His sympathy was something I had been looking for but convinced myself I wasn’t going to get. As he let me cry against him I found myself wishing it had been Aram there, he who had recognized how much pain I was really in and stepped in. I wanted the arms around me to belong to the man I loved and some part of me had to admit that I did in fact love Aram or I had started to. It took a little while to get the tears under control enough to speak.
“How do you deal with not being human anymore?”
“Cassandra, I’m still as human as I’ve ever been.” He started to contradict me and then something on his face showed that a thought was clicking into to place. “Oh.”
I nodded my head slowly.
“Start at the beginning.”
I sniffed drawing in my breath and started with what I had overheard at Virginia’s, the call and visit to the doctor. I told him about Magnus, about Nancy and about Aram, then my stunning decent into alcohol and the huge mistake of letting Wraith cast his spell over me. The relief I felt sharing the burden made my shoulders feel lighter, however it did nothing to fix the sick feeling in my stomach. Simian listened to me without saying a single word. We ended up sitting against the bath tub, side by side with his arm around my shoulders as I let every emotion I’d stuffed down for the last couple of days boil over. Then we were silent for a while and the first thing Simian said to me made me laugh.
“Pretty girl like you shouldn’t date a deader. If you need a man I know some very good ones right here. Vampires are dangerous.”
“Whereas comparatively werewolves are just big fluffy puppy dogs who’ll only lick your face and fetch your slippers.” He smirked.
A knock came on the door and Sophie peered around the frame. I smiled at her weakly and she came in carrying my clothes. I held out my arms taking them from her.
“Nice and dry,” she said and leaned over patting me on the head softly. I turned to look at Simian who pulled his wife down to him and gave her a kiss, smacking her on the butt as she left. I rolled my eyes.
“I need to get dressed if we’re still going to do this meeting,” I said finding my feet and steadying myself against the sink. Simian stood and gave a sharp nod.
“Are you going to be able to do this?”
“Yeah, I can deal with my own problems better by focusing on someone else’s and you were right when you said I could use the pay check.” He walked to the door stopping his hand on the handle.
“After this it might be beneficial for you to confront Ms.. Too-good with your questions.”
“I know,” I said smiling at his reflection in the mirror above the sink. “But one of the twelve steps at a time, okay Simian.” He smirked a
gain and closed the door behind him.
I dressed quickly and Sophie let me borrow some of her makeup which was more muted and understated than I would have liked personally but I worked with what there was on hand. I was presentable again just an hour after being thrown into the cold shower. Simian gave his wife another loving peck and he held the door as we both stepped outside.
“So tell me about these people we’re going to meet?”
“They are the three candidates to be our new king.”
“King?”
Simian walked at a brisk pace by my side and I watched his face, it was deeply serious.
“A couple of weeks ago, our current king passed away long before his time forcing us to vote three new candidates to take his place.”
“So you vote them in? Like a presidential election?” I asked and looked towards the large building we were approaching. It was like a town hall only the face of it looked like a medieval battlement. The windows were tall thin slits in the wall that sent pin pricks of light dancing out across the street. The building looked like it had been carved by hand from a single giant rock to create a distinct fortress that would have been perfect for any werewolf king.
“No. Once the candidates have been selected one is chosen by an ancient means.”
“Oh no, that’s not cryptic.”
Simian chuckled and took hold of my hand, his was big and warm dwarfing my own. He used it to lead me up the crooked steps to the doors that would lead us inside. They were made of black wood with white ash to create the glow of a moon behind large carvings of huge beast-like wolves on either side of it. As Simian pulled one door open, the moon was calved in twain and one wolf separated from the other, it was almost sad. I had imagined them a male and female, lovers baying under the same light, howling because they were destined to always be separated-except for the fact that I had never met or heard of a female werewolf. Female shifters were abound though-they turned into smaller creatures, nothing to rival the fierceness and size of a true pure werewolf.
Inhuman Heritage Page 8
