by Aila Cline
I smashed my lips together, the breath coming quickly through my nose as I realized he ran a fingernail up and down one of my stitches. He seemed as if he were toying with the idea of ripping it out. He tugged slightly at it. I gritted my teeth and growled at him.
“You might as well calm down, Emily,” he whispered as if he were consoling me. “If you Change with your injuries, your death is assured. You are quite fortunate that the moon will not wax full for another two weeks.” He stroked my hair with this other hand as tenderly as any lover. “Tell me.”
“I…don’t…know,” I choked out, hoping the pain in my voice would convince him of my truthfulness.
Another tug at the stich, harder this time. I swear I felt the threat sliding out of the wound, but refused to look down to check for blood.
“Tut, tut, Emily. I can tell that speaking of Micah will get us nowhere. Very well. You are selfish person. Let us talk of what will interest you then: your own safety.”
I felt blood trickling down my ribs. His finger massaged it into circles. Tears sprung to my eyes from the pain and from what felt like betrayal. Luka, my warm, sweet, wonderful Luka. How could he do this to me?
He still whispered. “Emily, I have a son. Alexander. I would die for him, like I would have died for Shasta, like I would die for you.”
I snarled at this. “So you would hold him down and hurt him?”
His eyes portrayed sudden innocence. “Do you think you would listen any other way?” His hand now stroked the bloody mess he had made of my ribcage, sending small vibrations mingled with tendrils of pain through me.
Before I could answer, his hot breath poured over me again, words tumbling over each other in desperation, making his accent thicker. I breathed in the words:
“Do not hate me. I love you as much as I ever have. I can feel how much you are enjoying this, the pain and the pleasure. Like I said earlier, you are a Lycanti through and through, but now you are listening. I need to know that you are loyal to me. That you are loyal to my family. I cannot take you to my father if you have any other motives in mind. I need you to swear it on the blood of everything that matters to you. The dead body of Will, your living son, your own esteem. Tell me, Emily. Tell me you are loyal. Jurar. I need your juromento to believe.”
Now we were nose to nose. His eyes devoured me and I felt bare to the soul in front of him. This man had saved me multiple times. I owed my life to him, and the things I had planned would only hurt him. I cared nothing for his family, but regardless, I wanted to please him, to make him happy. His desperation infected me. I wanted to taste him, to have him run his hands over the rest of me, testing my bruises and brandishing his power over me.
I leaned up until my lips brushed his as I spoke. “Luka, I would never…”
Just then the door opened, and Luka’s father Ranier strode through, playing witness to his son’s hands up the fabric of my loose shirt, our faces flushed and close as if we were making out, and a look of guilt on both our faces which could have matched that of the earth mother who kills her children.
Luka slowly and as respectfully as possible disengaged himself from me. “Father,” he said uniformly.
Ranier just nodded in reply. I tried to keep my face as still as possible. This is the same man whose daughter died because of me last year. She made crude jokes about me, threatened me, and finally Will ripped her apart.
“It is good to see you, my son,” Ranier finally said. He did not appear nervous at all, nor did he react in any visible way to seeing us together in what appeared to be an intimate act. “We need to talk.”
Luka looked at me. “Alright, Father. Emily, do you need anything while we’re out?”
“Not you and I,” Ranier said before I could answer. “Emily and I. We will speak. You will leave.”
Luka’s could not hide his shock, but he swallowed this piece of news with stoicism. “Yes, Father. I will wait outside.”
I could not hide my shock either. Luka did not turn to look at me as he left the room, but Ranier’s eyes never left my face. They were Luka’s eyes, but cold, hard crystal instead of warm luminescence.
The door shut quietly. Without a hint of sarcasm, malice, or anything bordering on anger, the leader of the Brazilian clans caught my full attention immediately.
“So tell me, Emily of the Lycanti: What reason do I have not to splay your organs from this bed to that window? It had better be good, young lady, for I do not suffer fools, and you have played one for far too long.”
This was the chance I had waited for, to set my revenge on Josh into action, but my throat froze. In my head, over and over again, all I could hear was Luka’s plea: Tell me you are loyal. Jurar. I need your juromento to believe.
Words spilled out of my mouth before I could control them.
Shasta
“Jesus! Rai, she said my name!”
Slipping from the shadows, Rachel barely made any noise. “Odd.”
“Uh, yeah, slightly.”
“Don’t wake it up. Just eat.”
“But Rachel. She knows me. Maybe we should take it back to the house. Delilah might know her. I certainly don’t recognize her.”
I could tell immediately that Rachel didn’t like the idea. She’s always so rational about things like that. Where to go next, the schedule by which to do it, how we’ll interact with the people around us by seeming as normal as possible, etiquette on bringing a dying werewolf home—you know, the basic courtesies and habits of life. The worst part about all this is that Rachel, out of all of us, denies herself of blood the longest, so it’s hard to gainsay her about anything. She is the most human of all of us, and probably the strongest, too.
A half grin played on her face as she spoke. “If you feed it, it will just keep coming back, and then we’ll have to buy it a collar and maybe get it a chew toy. A nice, plump 14-year-old boy would probably work.”
I swallowed laugher to argue a more practical side. “But Rachel, think: We could keep her. Feed from her. Lock her up and never go hungry again. Or maybe she belongs to someone.”
Rachel looked at me strangely. Something happens when we go without it, that beautiful liquid salty ruby. We become slaves to our hunger, eager to attack anything. Feeding on humans or animals just makes us hungrier though. Nothing satisfies except the Lycanthrope blood, and in this state, only the mention of my name from a stranger could have stopped me.
“We’re not animals,” she stated firmly. “We will not subject it to that. You know what would happen if we took it back.”
Endless attrition, that’s what. The others would feed off her for days, probably torturing her. Vampire venom is a nice spell to be under, and the blood loss makes people euphoric, but the girl would have to be chained up, even if she looked in a pitiful state right now. In fact, the girl in question still lay on the forest floor, matted in her own blood in human form. Poor thing was delusional when we found her, talking to herself and snarling, but she sure didn’t seem like she even knew we were there.
I knew what she meant. We feed on Lycanti, who murder humans for sport. Therefore, we were the good guys. We had all been taught this since becoming the Children of Dacre. It’s like we’re superheroes or something. It’s kind of cool. “OK, Rai, but next week when I’m wasting away, I want you to remember my brilliant idea.”
She snorted at the idea, still serious in her demeanor with that underlay of sarcasm. “You’re not taking anything to go. Eat it and let’s go.”
“Bah. OK, fine.”
And that’s when it happened. I leaned over her to cool the burning in my throat, and suddenly she said it again.
“Shasta?”
I jumped back as if she were the one who had bitten me.
“Gah, Rachel, I can’t eat something that knows my name!”
Rachel rolled her eyes. “Leave it then. We’ll hunt tomorrow night.”
I looked at her. The male leader of her pack had shot her. Stupid, heathen Lycanti. My bite marks were
still all over her. Had she not been weak from blood loss, she may have fought off that bastard. It was my fault she was laying like this in the damp leaves.
“I can’t leave her.”
Rachel gazed at me in that deep, knowing way she has. It can mean everything, or it can mean nothing. That’s Rachel for you. “Fine. I’m not helping you carry it though. Wake it up. It’s a long walk back to the house.”
When she awoke, it was in the company of three vampires: me, Rachel, and our house mate Delilah. She didn’t scream or even flinch. She did stare with those big sparkly green eyes though, which is pretty rude if you ask me, no matter how pretty your eyes are.
Rachel took the initiative as soon as her eyes opened. “How do you feel?”
She answered a little groggily. “Like a freight train hit me, then backed up over me to finish the job.”
No one laughed at her joke, but it made me want to smile a little. Vampires, for some reason, tend to be a serious lot. Maybe it’s the being dead part. It’s pretty hard to not take that seriously.
The Lycanti girl didn’t mind the awkward silence though. “You’re vampires, aren’t you?”
Delilah practically hissed at her. “Undead, you idiot. The Children of Dacre.”
The Lycanti glared at her coldly. “What is it with you people and fancy labels? Werewolves who hate to be called werewolves. Vampires who hate to be called vampires. I don’t get it.”
I still didn’t say anything. She didn’t look at me with any level of familiarity, so I didn’t feel inclined to pretend that we were friends or acquaintances or even meal buddies.
Rachel, as always, answered calmly. “Humans are basically apes that walk upright. Did you ever in your life want to be called an ape?”
The girl’s green eyes widened. “But there’s nothing wrong with—“
“The terms are derogatory,” Rachel cut in. “Society has made them superficial. We are not superficial, so we disown their titles of us.”
“A little bit of Dracula pride, you know,” I finally said.
The girl just looked at me like I had a few bolts loose. I don’t, I really don’t. I just wish people didn’t take all of this name crap so seriously. One of the newest Children had his head bitten off—literally—by a few older Children a few weeks ago for referring to them as the V-word. I try to keep all my body parts attached at all times.
Our guest continued to look straight at me. “Do you know a woman named Shasta?”
“We don’t give out rosters,” Rachel answered immediately, saving me from any information I didn’t want to reveal. “It’s not like we routinely have werewolves over dinner—at least, not at home any way.”
I waited for the Lycanti’s violent reaction to the term ‘werewolf,’ but there was none. Obviously she really didn’t see the difference in any of the names. I kind of liked her already.
The girl made to stand, but Rachel pushed her back down. “You’ve lost a lot of blood. I wouldn’t stand up if I were you.”
“Good plan,” she agreed. “Look, I’m not trying to be rude, but there’s a few people I really need to kill, so I can’t stay long.” She paused a moment. “Especially not for dinner.”
Rachel smiled at this, but didn’t address the issue. “Why are you looking for Shasta?”
The girl swallowed and breathed deeply for a solid minute before answering. Delilah and I looked nervously back and forth to each other, but Rachel just held her with that steady Rachel stare.
“My name is Emily. It’s all pretty complicated, so do you have a while?”
“All night,” Rachel answered simply. “And all morning if necessary. We don’t actually blow up or anything if the sun touches us. Anne Rice got it wrong.”
The Lycanti girl asked her next question with all due seriousness. “You don’t sparkle, do you?”
Delilah laughed. I hadn’t heard her laugh in ages, but it is always a magical sound, full of the life we once had. “Hell no, girl. I have to have the sun and margaritas in my life—in any life I live. Sparkling in the sun with my natural beauty? That’s just too much for normal people to handle. Though if you happen to have a sexy male werewolf in your pocket who looks like Taylor Lautner, please feel free to make him available at any time! I’m pretty sure I have a few dollar bills around here somewhere.” She waggled her eyebrows at us, and the tension was gone. I am pretty sure I laughed for like five minutes. Of course, we had to spend at least an hour talking Team Edward or Team Jacob and giving specific counterarguments as to why or why not Bella should date one or the other.
We weren’t monsters of different families anymore. Instead, we were four young women making fun of popular culture. Enlightened individuals, of course. Finally, in the early hours of the morning with me pretending to scratch my face when I was, in fact, yawning, all of the good-natured giggliness had been expelled from our systems.
Rachel grinned. “So, Emily of the Lycanti. Tell us a story.”
And as if the long night had never touched her, that girl talked and talked. She didn’t know any of our names, but she told us her entire life story. I never realized that a person could talk so much. It’s like she had no filter. Anyone could hear her story and judge her however they wanted. I tried not to. I knew what those iridescent blue eyes could do to a woman’s senses.
Parts of it hurt. It hurt so bad that I wanted to run away and not hear the rest of it. But like an addict, I hung on for mention of Luka. I would have suffering Dying again if I could just see Luka one last time. After all, you never forget the man who loved you. It’s also pretty damn hard to forgive the man who killed you.
At the very end of it, the emerald-eyed Emily sat up in her bed, back ramrod straight as if she were Queen of England. All of us were flabbergasted by her story. Some of it didn’t seem believable, but then again, when you’re a vampire, lots of things become believable. I think though, she finally surprised Rachel at the end of her story.
“And that’s why I need your help,” Emily told Rachel. “I need an army. A vampire army. And I need it quick.”
Rachel stood there in silence for a moment, weighing her options. Yes, Rachel is definitely the level-headed one out of us. My mind was fluttering like a butterfly on acid after that story. Delilah had let out a skeptical but reverent “damn” to punctuate it. Rachel, however, had merely nodded and accepted all of it as the daily travails of a Lycanti who happened to be in our house after calling me by name.
“Can you help me?” Emily asked.
Rachel’s silence did not stretch on for much longer. Delilah and I had no right to answer Emily. Only Rachel could decide for this house. That privilege is always reserved for the Eldest Blood.
“Yes,” Rachel finally said. “But there will be a price. A price measured in blood.”
Emily did not look shaken by Rachel’s dramatic declaration.
She merely answered, “I understand. But first, I need to find Shasta.”
Rachel’s eyes cut to me as she smiled wide, her fang teeth showing. We all fed well that night.
Emily
“That wasn’t what it looked like,” I stammered. “We were just talking.”
Ranier just smiled wanly. I suddenly realized my mouth was excruciatingly dry. My lips felt cracked. My hair hadn’t been brushed in days. I knew that Ranier, with his cold eyes, took in every single detail and laid it against his previous opinions of me. Or perhaps I was imagining the frigidity. He had been quite open and warm during my first visit, lightly teasing me and making me feel welcome while being surrounded by Lycanthrope at Maria’s wedding two years ago. His accent, though thicker than his son’s, held none of the exotic sexiness of Luka’s. They both had the broad shoulders and the height of the healthy Lycanthrope male, but Ranier carried it with the confidence born of his leadership. His similarities to Luka, as well as their striking differences, only served to remind me how far away from home I was at that moment.
“Emily,” he said earnestly, eyes aglow. “This
is of the greatest importance. You have come into my household protected by my son, my heir. Yet I have other loyalties to the Lycanthrope. The northern Clan already sent warning of your treacherous attack on Maria.”
I began to protest, but he waved it away.
“I have known Maria for longer than you have been alive. I know how provocative she can be. I daresay that your impertinence did not do much to improve her temper.”
He waited for me to respond, standing there in a business suit which seemed conspicuous against my scenic view of palm trees. His crossed arms and expectant expression did nothing for my courage. I wanted to rage and cry against the injustices Maria had done to me, but he had already clearly stated his allegiances. Now he would attempt to see which side I was on and how becoming a Lycanti had changed my personality.
I smoothed down the blanket over my lap, trying to look composed. “Luka is my protector while I am here.”
As patiently as ever, Ranier said, “Leave my son out of your mechanisms for now. He has nothing to do with what is happening between you and Maria.”
“Well,” I said hesitantly, choosing my words carefully. “Actually he does. Maria has his son locked away somewhere with a Lycanthrope family.”
The patriarch’s face registered confusion for a brief instant. “Alexander? You must be mistaken, child. His mother brought him safely to us weeks ago.”
I took a deep breath. “Not Alexander. Micah. My son. My son by Luka.”
His face turned to stone. I could tell that he was processing information very quickly, rejecting the idea out of hand, but then reconsidering what he had walked in on moments before. He seemed to carefully taste the words in his mouth before he said them. “You want your child.”
I fought to remain calm. The thought of seeing Micah again had set my heart to battering its cage. “Yes. Of course I do.”
Still the words simmered before coming. “You…are expecting me to get him for you.”
