late for class."
Cain stooped to pick up Beth's books for her. He kept close to the two girls as they walked away from Michael. They were going to be late for class. How often do you interact with
him? he asked. He sent the question through the Soulmate link. Apparently he had learned that his dragonvoice was a little loud.
"Every day," she whispered back.
He paused. The link still vibrated with anger. Him I would have no trouble eating.
Beth smiled. "Neither would I."
Apparently they could agree on something after all.
School was going to be torture, and Kaneonuskatew was looking forward to it. School had just ended and already he was looking forward to the next day so he could see Bethany
again. He sat in the empty science classroom, watching students mingling in the schoolyard laid out beneath him. With some difficulty he was able to pick out Kotori and Bethany.
They were walking towards a car where a redheaded vampire stood waiting for them.
"How can you stand the stench of living among this filth in this façade?" Fala asked, walking into the room. She shut the door with her hip, slamming it. With a dramatic sigh she
draped herself over his shoulder. "Did you see the slop they were serving in the cafeteria? What happened to real food? I'm hungry, Cain."
"Uhhuh." He watched her car pull away and he wondered who the redhead had been."
"We," she purred, leaning her head down to lick his ear enticingly, "should go out hunting tonight. We should hunt humans."
Immediately he thought of Michael. He would have no qualm about that, but he didn't know where the lamia was. Kaneonuskatew didn't want to kill someone innocent. He turned
back to Fala, pulling her down into his lap. She hadn't gotten a new shape. Her normal human form was suitable, and she enjoyed flaunting it off. Cain had to admit she was
beautiful, but he was holding her intimately only to work on spinning his web.
"We will hunt together tonight, but we will hunt for animals. You and I. Soon, we will hunt for humans, once we are prepared for their response. For now, we will stick to animals."
"It will be a sneak attack! We'll strike quickly; give them something to fear!"
"No. First we should gain more allies. You wish to return to your real body, don't you, my Queen?" She nodded, her dark eyes shinning when she heard 'my Queen'. "Then we will fly
tonight. We will fly over the reserves. We will slowly tell our people that their gods have returned. We must watch and learn when we know who to attack. Only then we will make
our move."
"Are you sure you're going to be okay?" Kotori asked.
"It's like I told you and Nick today. I can't start regaining my life if Daybreak is coddling me. I don't want to forget what happened to me because I want to learn from it, but I do
want to be able to relax enough that I can go to sleep at night without feeling ill. I can't be normal if Daybreak is going to be babysitting me."
There was a moment of silence the other end of the line. When Kotori spoke again Beth could tell she was smiling. "If you do get lonely, you could call up Ryan Cain and ask him to
come over and spent the night with you."
"Kotori!"
"I think he likes you," she chuckled. "Did you see him when Michael came around? He looked ready to tear him limb from limb. I tell you, Beth, if there's a furious shedragon out
after your blood, then that's a man you want on your side."
She rolled her eyes. "Yes," she agreed. If only that were as easy as Kotori thought!
"He's cute too. I don't want you to think I've gone all boycrazy suddenly, Beth. I just want you to see an ally when it comes around. Do you think he's a Daybr…. Hi, Mom!" Her
voice dropped. "My parents just got home. I'll see you tomorrow at school, okay?"
"Yeah. 'Night, Kotori." Both girls hung up the phone. Beth reclined back on her bed, staring at the open science textbook. She pulled it close to do homework when she heard
something tapping on the window. A greathorned owl sat on the window sill, tapping on the pane of glass with his beak. It was Beth's curiosity which made her open the window more than anything.
The owl fluffed his feathers proudly and stepped back. A flower lay on the windowsill for her. Beth stared at him. It felt strange to think that this owl was her Soulmate. He tilted his
head at her and awkwardly bowed, pushing the flower towards her. She picked it up. It was Indian Paintbrush. Sitting atop a long, thin stalk was a small, redorange flower. Beth
loved it. They looked so pretty in pictures, dots of colors. They were always so bright and cheerful. The curiosity was that they grew in Ontario. He'd traveled halfway across
Canada to get her a single flower.
If he was toying with her, Beth knew she was losing. She had to keep telling herself that wouldn't be nice to her if she wasn't her Soulmate—but he'd been nice to Kotori in the
hallway, and courteously to Miss Stein, who was both human and white. He'd consoled a lamia Japanese girl in science class when she had started crying over her dissection,
sobbing about an educational system which callously disregarded the rules of her Buddhist religion in the name of Academia. He'd become her science partner and had cut the frog
for her, saving her from becoming involved in the messy business. He wasn't just being nice to her because she was his Soulmate. He was being nice to her because he was nice
and she'd barely given him the time of day.
"Okay," she sighed. "I'll teach you math. Do you have some time now? I can start now." He nodded and spread his wings, silently gliding into the bedroom and landing on the back
of the chair sitting at her desk. "Stay in that shape. My Mom'll kill me if she knew I had a boy in my bedroom."
She took a seat at the desk, opening up her math textbook. He leaned over and preened her hair for her with his beak, making her smile. She tilted her head, leaning into it. It felt
nice. Quietly, so that she wouldn't wake her mother, she began to teach him.
Beth was certain that something was wrong with Cain the following day. He didn't seem like himself. In class, when the teacher announced a hold on the agenda for a lecture about
Native Americans during the Great Depression to satisfy Cain's answer, he didn't nearly look as pleased as he should have. He still looked interested, but underneath it there was
this kind of hopelessness, like it didn't matter anymore. Science class was just as bad.
At lunch Beth spotted Fala. The dragon had amassed a following of males and they argued over who got to sit beside her at the cafeteria tables. Beth also noticed that she didn't eat
anything. When Cain walked by, Fala tried to get him to join. He walked over to them, leaned down, and they had a muted conversation. She was smiling through the whole thing;
in the end, Cain looked furious. He shook his head no and walked back out of the cafeteria.
Fala hadn't seen Beth yet. She excused herself and hurried after Cain, escaping the female dragon's notice. She didn't see Cain in the hallway. She knew she could follow the
connection between them to find him, but she still didn't like touching it. She didn't want to get drawn any closer to Cain than she had to. Beth chided herself. Then why are you
going to go and talk to him?
Because, she answered herself back. He's nice and I want to know what's wrong with him. I can't accept him as my enemy. Not yet.
She followed his scent instead. It led outside. He was sitting in the back yard of the school, on a small incline lined with bleachers, leading down to the football team. A grade
eleven class was busy playing rugby in the crisp weather. They were too busy playing to even notice that there was someone sitting on the bleachers.
He wasn't watching them, though. He had a history book spread on his lap and he was staring at it. Bethany slowly climbed the bleachers
and sat next to him. She leaned over to
see what he was looking at. The black and white photograph was familiar. It was Auswitch. She didn't ask about the picture right away. "What's the matter with Fala?"
"Read a newspaper lately, Beth? A body was found this morning. They rushed to get the story out on the front page cover." He breathed in deeply and sighed. "Fala has been killing
humans already. The first time was a group of campers she discovered. That was when we were still in the mountains. Last night is was a man who accosted her on the street; she
lured him down an alleyway and then ate him. He was a Native, Beth. He was one of the very people I was called back to protect and I failed him. I'm already failing at protecting
people."
"She killed while you were over at my house…" He nodded. Beth's hands tightened on her knees. "Cain… you can't protect everybody. You know that, don't you?"
"I know that, but that doesn't make me any less responsible for the lives I fail to save. It also makes me worried. How can I stop Fala if she's doing this? Human flesh… it makes us
stronger, Bethany. I dare say that had I not one more horn than she has, she'd be stronger than me now. As it is, right now we're probably equally matched. A week or so, she'll
easily overpower me were we to fight."
Beth was silent at first. "Are you going to fight?" she asked slowly.
"I don't know." He leaned back in the bleachers, leaning his head against the wood of the seat above him. "We're partners, but I want to control her. I can't stop her from killing
humans if she's stronger than I am. I can't become stronger than she is without killing humans as well. It's an em… em… a draw. I need… I need to kill, Bethany. I need to kill
humans if I'm to direct this rebellion the way I see fit, where we could all live in harmony the way we once did. But I have my own oaths. I will not harm anyone innocent. I kill and
consume only when they breach our laws."
She didn't say anything. She knew where he had to go to feed. Jail. Beth shoved those thoughts deep. Cain might be blocked from reading her thoughts from telepathy, but there
was no block on the Soulmate link. She blinked innocently, playing dumb and sensitive. "You shouldn't be telling me this. Daybreak could use it for its advantage, knowing that
you're weaker than Fala is. I told them that she's the bigger threat, but if they knew that they could take you down first, they may just do so even though you're not the biggest
threat to them."
"Yes," he slowly agreed. "I shouldn't tell you this…"
Immediately she felt bad. There she was being callous again, thinking only of her feelings and not of his. He needed a friend right now, but she couldn't give him one, not when
dealing with the matter of Fala. She inched closer to him. "You can tell me all about the book in your lap though. Why have you been staring at it for so long? It's… It's not Fala
that's been making you seem so upset today, is it?"
"No. It isn't. When I left your place last night, I went back home and did my homework. The introduction wasn't enough. I read the entire chapter." His lips sank into a tight line. He
looked tired. For the first time she noticed that there were bags under his eyes. That was probably why his emotions were so close to the surface. He was too tired to keep them in
check. "How could people do that to others, to their kin? Gas chambers, shootings, rapes, murders… I thought our world was bad. In our world, dragon killed dragon on a regular
basis. My hands are stained with the children of Fala's people, or with the northern dragons, or the dragons that lived to the south of us in the land now called the United States. But
there was never such treachery. We showed mercy as well. This… this was not done out of territory or protection the way our wars were. This was done out of hate. I… I cannot
understand such a hate. How? Why? Bethany, what happened to these people that made them hate so much?"
"I… I don't know, Cain," she answered slowly. "I really don't know. If you are interested though, I can give you books to read. Maybe you can find the answer there. I'd suggest the
Diary of Anne Frank and Mein Kampf. Get both sides of the story, you know?"
He was nodding, taking her words into consideration. He slowly smiled at her. "Thank you for being concerned for my welfare." He reached out. She flinched away when his hand
came near her hands, but he didn't touch her skin. That was never his goal. He placed his hand on her kneecap. The touch was warm and friendly.
Bethany suddenly felt like crying. It was actually physically painful to be so close to him and not to touch him, to see inside that mind. She was reminded of how terribly lonely her mind was. She was glad to see that he wasn't taken aback by her flinch.
"You're a good person, Bethany."
She smiled back at him.
"I'm worried about Fala," Emile said, walking into the bedroom to lay down next to her Soulmate on the bed. Everything went slightly fuzzy and warm when she pressed her naked
body against his. "She's going to become uncontrollable. Mac… the way that everything was done… the way that everything's happened… I'm starting to question that we're still
right."
He wrapped his arm around her, kissing her sunny hair. "I am too, Sweetheart. I am too."
"It's not just you or I. I know Zhi Niao is and so's Gawain. I think we need to talk with Kaneonuskatew. I think we need to know what he thinks. He's a member of this team now. If
we can take Fala down, I think we should before she's too strong for us all to handle. We let a monster loose into this world Mackenzie, and we have to put her back. She kills
indiscriminately. This isn't what we wanted. If we are still going to bring back the dragons, we need to learn more about it. We need to wake up Cain's people, we need…"
The rest of her words were lost as she slowly began sobbing. Her shoulders shook and she buried her face into the pillow beside her. Mackenzie sat up in bed, shaken by the sound
of her crying. "Babe… Sweetheart…" He could feel what was wrong through the Soulmate connection. He could feel her fear. It was palpable. "Hey, babe, I'm afraid too. It's okay to
be afraid. I'm scared shitless of Fala. There's something off about that chick…"
She shook her head. Her blond curls bounced to and fro. "It's not that… it's not just that, Mackenzie…"
She collapsed back into scared tears. He could do little to console her. Mackenzie's long fingers brushed her hair, knowing how much she liked it. "You're afraid that Fala is going to
turn on us. That she's going to kill us. That… that she'd going to kill you for being half human, like Beth." Her hair bounced even more furiously as she nodded yes, terrified. Mackenzie slowly reclined back on the bed, holding her tightly. "That's why you called in sick today at work… so we could stay at home and make love… you wanted to do it while
you could." Again, her golden hair bounced, forming almost a glowing halo around her head in the dim lights of the room.
His arms tightened around her. "I'll talk to Cain," he promised her. "I won't let that happen."
"Nick can't come to pick us up," Kotori said, walking out of the school with Beth. She was smiling; her day at school had been wonderful, while Bethany's had left her with a
headache. "Meeting. Want to walk? It's a beautiful fall day and I'd love the exercise before all the raining season begins."
Beth smiled at the offer, but looked up at the sky dubiously. There were already rain clouds over head, making everything seem greytinged. It looked as if the raining season was
going to start at any minute. "I guess so, Kotori. So, how was first period today?"
The other girl arched an eyebrow. Their fellow students ran around them, laughing, some of them throwing footballs, the girls throwing sultry looks hoping to have more attention
paid to them than to the
football… "It wasn't bad. A little boring, but you know me. I can't stand Shakespeare. I think though that after hanging out with Nicolas a little bit more that
I could stand it in certain circumstances… like if it was Nick dressed in drag on stage quoting Juliet in a false soprano."
Both girls giggled at the idea. Kotori shrugged her knapsack over her shoulder. The sounds of the school were fading behind them as they walked steadily away from it. "I don't
know," she sighed. "I think this whole love thing changes people and I'm starting to get a little bit worried. I don't want to be the kind of girl who writes our names in binders and
circles it with hearts and flowers and stuff."
"Don't worry. I won't let it get that far. I'll knock some common sense back into you if it does."
"Thanks," Kotori smiled. It suddenly fell short and she stopped, looking around at their surroundings. Her eyes scanned the area around them: the school connected on to a park. With the dark clouds overhead, the school yard was deserted. No sane parent wanted to take their kid to the park when it looked as if it might start to thunderstorm at any moment.
Thunder had never mattered much to either girl. When they had been younger they had liked to strip down to shorts and tank tops and dance around in the rain, seeing who could
splash muddy water the furthest. They would play until their noses ran and their fingers were frozen, and then cuddle inside under a blanket, drinking hot chocolate with marshmallows. What concerned Kotori was that her senses had picked up on something that Beth's had missed. Beth fell silent when she saw that Kotori was in hunting mode, her
slanted eyes narrowed as she searched with her mind more than her sight. Beth turned in the opposite direction, keeping Kotori's back covered.
"What do you smell?" she muttered.
"Vamps."
Beth bristled in anger. It didn't take three guesses to guess who it was going to be. She reached back to grab Kotori's hand. They were on the sidewalk of the park, but the school
ground was separated by the park ground by a small, thin, and dense line of trees. If they got dragged in between those coniferous pines, then no one would be able to see them.
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