“I don’t know,” he says softly and his eyes cut through me. “But I’d never be willing to risk your life on anything. You’re all I’ve got, Phoenix.”
A pang goes through my chest and I shake my head. “That’s not true and you know it. You’ve got plenty of friends. You’re popular, Hawk. People like you.”
“And, what? You think that diminishes your own value in my life?” He rolls his eyes and gives a single sad laugh. “Phoenix, no one’s ever been there for me the way you have. You’re my sister, and I know you’d do anything for me. You’re the only person I really trust.”
“But the werewolf disease—” I argue.
“I’ve dealt with it for fourteen years and I’ll keep dealing with it. A cure can wait. For now.”
“But that’s—it’s not—argh!” I throw up my hands and pace away grasping at my hair. I stop in the doorway to our shared room and heave a sigh. “I hate waiting. It makes me feel useless. And I hate hiding when I feel like there’s something I could be doing right now to help. To help you, to help everyone in town, to help the world. What right do I have to be sitting on this?”
“Phoenix, you almost burned yourself out just calming a bunch of werewolves.” He walks around to stand directly behind me. “What makes you think you’re ready to cure even one werewolf? The amount of blood they would need from you . . . the magic in you needs to incubate longer, you know? You’ll get there eventually, but right now—”
“I’m useless.”
“Hey,” he says sharply and grabs my shoulder to spin me around. He sticks his pointer finger in my face. “I did not say that, so stop thinking that. And, as much as I hate to admit it, Jefferson’s right. We don’t know why the director wants to see you. It might not even be about this. It’ll be fine. I’m sure it will.”
“You didn’t think that about thirty seconds ago.”
A ghost of a smile flickers across his face. “Do you need a hug?”
I glower at him. “No.”
“Too late. Come here, Fifi.” He wraps me up in a bear hug before I can stop him and squeezes so hard that it’s difficult to breathe. I start to push him away but he just clings on more tightly. So, instead I allow myself to be rocked side to side like a baby.
“Deep breaths, little sister,” he says in a mock soothing voice.
“I’m your twin, you idiot,” I wheeze out. “I’m not younger than you.”
“Shhhhh. I’m pretty sure I was born first. Deep breaths.”
He starts mimicking the breathing pattern people say to use for women in labor in movies. I can’t help it. Laughter fights its way up until I’m giggling. Eventually I pull up my arms and hug him back. I close my eyes and we sway like morons together. There are a thousand things I want to say but I don’t speak a word. I still haven’t told him what happens every time I fire a gun. I don’t want him to think I regret shooting Dasc in order to save his life. I want to tell him that I fear what’s in my blood will never be enough, and if they have to bleed me dry just to get enough for one cure, I’ll do it to save my brother.
“Feel better?” Hawk finally says and draws back to put both his hands on my shoulders. “That’s my hugging limit for the month, so—”
I punch him lightly in the arm and he exaggerates grasping his arm in pain. After I reassure him with a nod, we split apart and get ready for bed. I climb into the top bunk once I’m in pajamas and he rolls into the bottom one. It doesn’t take long for his snores to fill in the empty silence.
Unfortunately for me, sleep doesn’t come so easily and I lie in bed staring up at the dusty ceiling. I’m too anxious and my brain is running through a hundred different scenarios for how tomorrow might go. There isn’t much I haven’t done with my brother and forcing him out of the equation makes me nervous.
Night ticks by and I close my eyes, drifting asleep eventually. My dreams put me back in that clearing surrounded by werewolves, my mother’s gun in my hand, and Dasc shifting into the monster he truly is. Even in my dreams, ferocious anger courses through me along with twisting tendrils of fear. My finger curls around the trigger and the second I fire I jerk awake. I suck down air and exhale slowly to calm my racing heart. I fumble for my phone next to my pillow to check the time. It’s 2:00 a.m. I throw an arm over my eyes and try to ease back into sleep but after fifteen minutes of no progress, I slip my hand under my pillow, draw out my mother’s gun, then leap to the floor and land lightly on the balls of my feet. Hawk doesn’t stir in his sleep, mouth open wide and drool pooling on his pillow. I grab my mother’s leather bomber jacket where it hangs on the bedpost, throw it on, tug on some boots, and walk through the chilly winter night to the barn.
As usual, the lights are on inside. I stop to listen and hear what sounds faintly like muted voices before I move lightly up the flight of stairs and pause at the landing. Jefferson is asleep in his chair at his computer so I move around to see what’s on his monitors without disturbing him. A video fills up most of the center screen. It’s surveillance video from an interrogation room. A man in an IMS uniform sits across a white table from a man I recognize instantly, and one I wish I’d never had the misfortune of knowing.
Dasc sits calmly with his hands clasped before him, his black hair ruffled like it had been when he taught history at Moose Lake High School. Instead of his usual button down shirt and jeans, he wears white penitent cell garb.
“We’ll continue to hold you, you know,” the agent says through the speakers set on low volume. “Unless you give us something useful, you’ll continue to sit in the penitent cells every day. It’ll drive you mad.”
“Insanity is relative. It depends on who has who locked in what cage,” Dasc counters.
“Clever. You come up with that line yourself?”
Dasc leans forward on the edge of his seat, closing the distance between him and the agent across the table. “Ray Bradbury. You should read more.”
I reach carefully over Jefferson and turn the speakers off. I don’t want to hear this. I don’t want to see Dasc sitting comfortably and healthy after recovering from being shot. He seems fine and cocky in his intellect like before. I still can’t sleep at night because of the shooting. Neither should he. The date stamp on the video shows it’s a few days old. Technically Jefferson shouldn’t even have access to this. Director Knox has really tightened the net on the case. Need to know basis sort of deal. We don’t need to know anymore but Jefferson has a friend at headquarters that gives him older footage. Jefferson’s been watching the videos over and over again, tormenting himself, hoping to find answers where there are none.
He doesn’t wake when I pull a blanket off the cot he still keeps in the loft and throw it over his shoulders. Then I tip toe back over to the cot and hold my mother’s pearl-handled .45 in my hands. I stare at it a moment, remembering the harsh recoil from each shot I fired, before resting it on the table and pulling out Jefferson’s gun cleaning kit. I carefully take the gun apart piece by piece and start cleaning them each separately the way I was taught by Jefferson.
Time passes slowly and I try to let my thoughts taper out into oblivion. The task at hand helps. I check the clock on the wall now and then. Jefferson finally stirs around 3:00 a.m. and runs a hand down his face when he wakes up. When he notices the blanket around his shoulders he searches the room until his eyes find me.
“Can’t sleep?” he asks groggily.
“No, I’m sleepwalking,” I reply. “Can’t you tell?”
He shakes his head but doesn’t give me his usually gruff response about me being a smart alec. Instead he gets up, cracks his back, and shuffles over to sit on the edge of the table across from me, pushing aside some of the gun parts to make room for himself.
“Cleaning that gun a thousand times isn’t going to make the memory any cleaner, you know,” he says gently. Right now I think I’d actually prefer him being gruff.
I exhale sharply and put the slide I’m holding back on the table. With my hands free I don’t have anything to control my
nervous energy, so I interlace my fingers and set my chin on top of them. There’s a sensation in my chest that I can’t quite put my finger on.
What Jefferson doesn’t understand is that I’m not trying to cleanse the memory. I’m trying to be ready because I always have to be ready. If I’m not, then I’m vulnerable. It’s almost become a nervous twitch to make sure I have a weapon on me at all times. I’m pretty sure he still doesn’t know I’ve been carrying my mother’s gun around with me everywhere I go, even though it’s illegal—I’m underage and don’t have a permit. But I don’t tell him that.
“I don’t understand,” I say. “When it first happened, I was shocked, but then I was relieved. I was happy to be alive and my brother to be okay. But now—I don’t know. I just feel off, like I’m never going to function normally again.”
“You’ve had time to overthink it.”
“Jefferson, how can I be an agent if I can’t get my feet back under me?”
He puts a hand on my forearm. “It’s not a bad thing to regret having to shoot someone. I’d be more worried if you didn’t.”
I don’t know if I’d call what I’m feeling is regret. It’s an intense feeling that springs out of my chest and sets my heart hammering when I’m put on edge, but it’s not regret. Maybe that’s what scares me so much. I’d shoot Dasc all over again if I had to and wouldn’t even blink. So, what does that make me?
“But you’re the one always saying you’d kill Dasc if you had the chance,” I say.
“And I never said that was a good thing, did I?” His eyes are drawn, wrinkles are etched in his face, and he looks like he’s aged a hundred years just by saying that single sentence. “We’re supposed to be protectors, Phoenix. Sometimes that means being a shield. Sometimes that means being a sword. You have to embrace both. Things will get easier with time.”
I worry my lower lip and say what’s been eating away at me for the last three months.
“And if they don’t?”
He sighs and pats my knee twice before rising to his feet. “Get some sleep.”
I nod, pretending I’ll follow his advice, but the second the barn door shuts on his way out, I pick up the slide again and continue to clean it. Another fifteen minutes pass and the gun is immaculate. After putting the pieces back together, I rise and move to my computer terminal. In all the terrifying expectations of what will happen in Underground I forgot to put together my report for the incident with the selkies in Duluth. The barn fills with the sound of my numb fingers typing away. As soon as my report is done, I check through the other reports under the same case file number to see what the Duluth Field Office has submitted to take my mind off things.
Charlie’s report is very sterile and analytic, hardly giving any room for possible suspicions or speculation of what might have happened in the alleyway behind the Blue Comet. Melody’s report is somewhat more enlightening and she gives weight to Ashley’s story of events. At the end she gives recommendations to headquarters regarding Ashley. I give a sigh of relief when I see she’s only recommending a single session with a counselor to stress the danger of exposure to the general public as a werewolf. Well, that’s something.
“Hey.”
I jump and my heart tries to leap out of my chest. Hawk stands at the top of the stairs in his plaid pajamas, a thermos and two cups in his hands. His hair is standing up in all directions like he’s been struck by lightning and his eyes are half-lidded. He looks about as tired as I feel.
“Sweet piping Pan, Hawk!” I press a hand to my heart, my blood pounding in my ears. “You nearly gave me a heart attack.”
“Oops.” He trudges over, plops down in Jefferson’s spot, then sluggishly opens the thermos to pour two cups of steaming coffee. He passes one over while rubbing his eyes and then leans far back in the swivel chair, propping his feet up on the desk. He holds his drink with both hands and blinks so slowly I’m not sure he’s going to be able to stay awake another thirty seconds.
“Thanks,” I mumble. “You didn’t need to come out here, though.”
He flops a hand at me. “No, no. I’m good.” His mouth stretches for a huge yawn before he sips at his coffee and watches me with bleary eyes. “You never told me what happened in Duluth. You’ve got a nice shiner, by the way. Did you fight a fish on the lake or something?”
I can always tell how tired Hawk is by his level of wit. He’s definitely out of it.
“Funny you should say that,” I say. “It was a selkie. So, close enough.”
He frowns and holds up a finger. “Wait, seals aren’t fish. Are they? Pixies, I need a nap.”
I roll my eyes. “Go back to bed, birdie.”
“I am a bird of prey, thank you very much. Not a birdie.”
“Whatever.”
“Hey, no, really.” He rubs the sleep from his eyes, takes his feet off the desk, and hunches forward in his seat. “What happened? I want to know if I need to hunt someone down for beating up my twin.”
“No hunting anyone down,” I say, then rattle off meeting Melody and Charlie, how Ashley was, the possibility of a vampire loose in Duluth, meeting the selkies, and getting into a fight with Nessa.
When I finish, Hawk pours himself another cup. “So, what I’m taking away from all this, is that you really don’t like Charlie. At all.”
“What? No, the take away is that there is a vampire out there, but a certain moron doesn’t even want to consider the possibility—”
“Yup. Definitely that you don’t like Charlie. I should meet him.”
“Why, exactly, would you want to meet him?” I ask.
“So I can say ‘My name is Hawk Mason. You insulted my sister. Prepare to die.’”
I almost choke on my coffee and crack a laugh. I guess Hawk has finally woken up. He grins and empties the rest of the thermos into my cup.
“Hey, you think Jefferson has ever watched The Princess Bride?” Hawk asks. “We should watch that together. Good bonding time.”
“I doubt he’s seen it, but he might have read the book,” I say. Then Hawk and I say in unison in our best gruff Jefferson impersonation, “Don’t you kids read?”
Hawk caps the thermos and his smile fades away. “Hey, Phoenix?”
“Yeah?”
“Everything’s going to be okay. You know that, right?”
I glance at the clock. It’s 4:30 a.m. I’ll need to leave in a half-hour if I want to make it on time to Underground. I heave a sigh. “Yeah. Yeah, okay.”
“Come on.” He gets to his feet and gestures with both hands for me to get up as well. “Time to put on real clothes and pretend to be adults.”
I hold out my hands and he tugs me up with an exaggerated grunt. After I grab my mother’s pristine gun, we head out of the barn and into the cabin. There’s no light underneath Jefferson’s door and I hope he’s actually getting some sleep, unlike the rest of us. Hawk offers to cook breakfast while I change and make myself presentable to the outside world.
I stand in front of the mirror in the bathroom for a long time just staring at my reflection, wondering and dreading what’s to come. My skin’s gotten a touch of a tan from being outside so much lately, but today the face looking back at me is pale, making all my little freckles stand out on my nose and cheeks. Shadows hang under my eyes as a testament to months of sleepless nights, and the one black eye, curtesy of Nessa the selkie, has become darkly prominent. There’s hardly anything left of that giddy teenager, who dance-battled elves and pulled pranks, in those cold green eyes glaring back at me. I run a hand down the mirror and turn away from the person I’m having trouble recognizing.
By the time Hawk’s fried up a pan of scrambled eggs and slathered butter on toast, Jefferson is awake again and we eat together—almost like a family—in the tiny kitchen. We don’t say a word but our eyes flicker to the clock on the wall every few seconds like time is going to run away from us and we’ll never be able to catch it again. I suddenly remember it’s Monday. Hawk will be in school today. He�
�ll have to make an excuse for me again. We begged Jefferson to pull us out for “homeschooling” but he still thinks it’s a good idea for us to mingle with the werewolves, earn their trust, and keep them in close proximity to my bubble of anti-werewolf crazy. It makes our other work harder but at least school will be officially over in the spring. No more high school. That cheery thought gets me to my feet.
“I should get going,” I say. “I don’t want to be late.”
Jefferson nods and sets his coffee cup down. “You know the way?”
“Yup.” I grab my jacket and sling it on. “I’ll see you later.”
“Call when you can.”
We all smile, casual and forcibly relaxed. Hawk pats me on the back and gives me a low five. I wave goodbye and then I’m out the door. I clamber into the SUV and prepare myself for the long drive to Minneapolis in the dark of an early winter morning. The radio picks up a familiar oldies station and I crank it up to drown out everything else. The headlights dance across the blanket of snow and I’m off.
The next two hours pass with me clenching the steering wheel, tapping my fingers nervously, biting my lip, and barely paying attention to the minimal traffic around me. Once I reach the fringes of Minneapolis the interstate expands lane by lane and the traffic starts to swell. I haven’t been back since I first left for the solitary outskirts of Moose Lake. The city feels so familiar and yet so different. It had been my home for so long. It’s strange coming back now.
Before I know it, I’m pulling into the power park. I show my junior agent I.D. at the gate and am let through. I park at the end of a row of similar black SUVs and enter the cement bunker nearly hidden in the trees on the edge of the lot. Just like the director said, Agent Snow is waiting inside, leaning against the controls for the lift currently topside and loudly chewing a piece of gum. His hair has receded more since the last time I saw him when he drove me and Hawk to Moose Lake. He’s relaxed and that makes me relax a little.
“Agent Snow,” I say and step onto the lift beside him.
He presses the button on the control lever and the lift starts to sink down into the cement chute. He stands with his hands in his pockets and gives me a small smile.
The Bite of Winter (International Monster Slayers Book 2) Page 6
