by Jeff Hale
The hide-a-bed wiggled soon after and the door opened and closed again. Despite his misgivings of her feelings about him sleeping in her room, it looked like Darien had given in to his desire to protect Katelyn. I stretched, having the whole bed to myself. A flash of pink and green hair and a bewitching smile went through my mind and I suddenly felt very much alone.
FIFTEEN
Katelyn
I woke feeling like I had the worst hangover in my life. I was tired, I was sore, I was physically weak… and I was starving. I rolled out of bed, steadying myself after a wave of dizziness, made a beeline for the bathroom, took an amazingly short shower, put on clean clothes, then tried not to run for the kitchen. I was spoon deep in my second bowl of Cocoa Pebbles, blinking at the microwave clock which read eleven forty three a.m., when Darien walked into the kitchen.
Why hadn’t I sensed him? I could only assume that the appalling ache in my head blurred my radar, or maybe because he was already here, it just didn’t register. He smiled at me, then set about making sandwiches, moving about the kitchen as though he knew where everything was. I tried to be civil, though I was still mad at him and felt very self-conscious with the ease at which he seemed to be in my home.
“What day is it?” For all I knew it was just the next morning, but I’d assumed before and had rude surprises.
“Monday. You slept the last two days.” He continued preparing sandwiches, ham and roast beef, and my mouth started to water as the smell came to me.
“Yay for missing school.” I picked the bowl up and slurped the chocolatey milk from it. “Not that this isn’t my last week anyway. Graduation is on Friday.”
I looked at the plate he set in front of me, four sandwiches, and plucked one off the top of the stack. He rummaged in the fridge and came back with two cans of Pepsi, which he set in front of me as well. Was he trying to win me over with consideration?
“So why are you here?” I asked, swallowing a bite of sandwich and then wolfing the rest down. The question came out a bit terse and unfriendly, but I was curious.
He flinched at little, leaning against the counter, and I had a sudden memory of him kissing me in this room. I fought down the feelings it brought with it.
“Your mom asked us to stay, to make sure you were safe, after what happened.”
I opened a can of soda, downed half of it. “So when did Matt get here? Or has he been here all along as well?”
He frowned, shrugging slightly. “I honestly don’t know. He didn’t come up with me and Alex. Best I can tell is he got wind that a vampire from Tillamook was following you back, so he followed the vampire.”
“Just the one vampire then?” I shuddered, remembering the feel of the vampire’s fangs in my skin, the certain knowledge that I was going to die.
“As far as we can tell, yes. And that vampire won’t bother you anymore.” Darien smiled again, although there was a bit of cruelty with it. “Matt hunted it down, killed it.”
My hand went to my neck, felt the fine scar that was there. I had checked it first thing after I had gotten out of the shower. It was hard to see, but it was there.
“Good.” I looked down at the plate, saw that there was only one sandwich left. I didn’t remember eating the other two, but I must have. “Maybe I can relax again.”
“We’re still not sure you’re safe. I don’t want you going anywhere without at least one of us with you.”
I bristled at his words. “Preferably you?”
He sighed, his eyes dropping. “It would make me feel better, yes.” He raised his eyes back to mine. “Look, I know I was an ass—”
“I think that might be an understatement.”
“I’m sorry, Kat. But you know how I feel about you.” The look he gave me now was almost pleading and I felt my heart twinge.
“Darien, look, I’m really attracted to you, there’s no denying that, and I’m honestly not sure there’s anything you could do that would make that go away.” I saw his eyes brighten at my words and I held up a hand. “But I am just not ready to make the same commitment to you that you’ve already chosen to make to me, okay? I want a normal life, with normal relationships, at least for awhile. Let me get my feet under me.”
“But you aren’t normal, Kat, and I really don’t think normal guys are your style.”
What did he mean by that? I had two perfectly normal boys that I liked, that had been interested in me. Granted, one was still in Vegas and had a tendency to flake out on dates, but the other was right here in town and seemed to….
Shit.
“You wouldn’t by any chance happen to know how Cody’s doing?” I asked Darien, figuring he probably didn’t know, or wouldn’t care. He surprised me.
“Kris said they sent him home from the hospital yesterday. Mild concussion, couple of cracked ribs. She figured you’d be concerned.” He tilted his head and gave me a contemplative look. “So just how much do you like this boy, Cody?”
Should I tell him the truth? That Cody didn’t hold a candle to him? No, that wouldn’t get me the time I wanted, the space I needed.
“I like him well enough, I’ve had a crush on him for years. We’re just dating at the moment though, so don’t get all possessive. He’s human, so you can’t touch him.” I let the comment plus the look in my eyes tell him that I knew what he had done to Alex. “Just give me some space, Darien, okay? For a while? That’s all I’m asking.”
And he did. He left shortly after, headed back to the motel, where I assumed Alex and Matt already were. I finished eating half the contents of the house—at least it seemed to me like I had—found the note from my mother that she had gone down to the winery to see how things were running, then laid down and took a nap. I was woken by Kris poking me. She always seemed to be poking me.
She seemed a little pale today, dark circles under her eyes. I was going to give her grey hair at this rate if she kept having to worry about me. Mom had gotten home at some point too, happy to see me awake, although she wondered what locust had gotten loose in the kitchen. I had forgotten to tell her about the whole metabolism-eating-when-injured thing. I explained it to her, and Kris and I went with her to the grocery store to stock up.
Much later we returned home, with Chinese take-out as well, and Kris and I settled back down into the family room to watch TV and eat like we tended to. I settled into the sectional with my fried rice and almond chicken, my nose picking up both Darien and Alex’s scent from the piece of furniture, even over the food. For some reason, it made the couch just that much more comfortable to me.
We had it on a national news channel, as had been our wont lately, to see if anything new and scary had happened around the world. It was halfway through a report that a life size Christ on the cross in the Vatican had suddenly started seeping blood from the wound locations, this being only one of thousands of iconic statues and crucifixion scenes that had begun bleeding. Statues of the Virgin Mary all over the world were weeping crimson tears, as though they cried for some coming disaster.
It was followed by another report, along with footage that just about made me drop my chopsticks. I hadn’t realized that angels were so delicately beautiful, real ones anyway. It was a brief clip, from a tragic funeral of a two year old boy. The ethereal creature, like so much light and tiny stars, incorporeal wings beating gently in the air, hovered over the tiny coffin, its face beautiful in its sadness.
“And if you thought that was strange enough,” the newscaster went on, the camera switching to a view of his face, “here’s another story, from northern Washington State, where the paparazzi found out they aren’t safe anywhere.”
The man’s face faded from view, to be replaced by camera footage of a large humanoid creature that almost made me think of a cross between a gorilla and Chewbacca. Someone was using a hand held camera to film the Bigfoot as it pulled berries off of a wild bush.
Suddenly, the Bigfoot looked up and spied the person with the camera, but instead of bolting off into the tre
es and underbrush, it let out a howl and charged the cameraperson. There was a thud as the Bigfoot connected with the person, the camera fell to the ground, and you could hear the person screaming for help.
The camera was still running, trained on the forest floor, but feet, human feet, ran by the camera, followed by huge, flattened, hairy feet. You could still hear yelling in the distance, but the hairy feet came back to the camera, then a large humanoid hand picked it up, shook it, and you could see forest fly by as the camera was thrown a distance before hitting something and the film cut out.
Kris pointed at me with an egg roll. “I still say the world is coming to an end. Look at all this crazy stuff! You can’t turn on the TV at all anymore without some story going by from somewhere around the world about some weird shit happening. You mark my words, the world’s gonna go boom and we’re all gonna die.” Once again, she said it jokingly, but with a good dose of seriousness.
I got up to pop a DVD in, wanting to think of nicer things. “As long as I get to have sex before it happens.” I fluttered my eyes at her and did my best helpless damsel imitation. “I sure’n don’t want to die a virgin, mister!”
“Well, at least you have options if you just want to get it done and over with.” Kris gave me a naughty look. “I doubt either Darien or Cody would say no if you suggested things. As for me, mine’s been gone for awhile now, so I’m not too worried.” She laughed. She’d always had an easier time getting boyfriends than I had, although she hadn’t had one in quite some time now.
I returned her wicked smile. “Well, maybe I’ll just have a little talk with Cody tomorrow at school.”
She rolled her eyes at me and we went back to our take out and movie.
____________________
Wednesday, the last day of school for the seniors, was only a half day, with third period being the last class. I went to slide into my seat, but Cody stopped me, instead pulling me down so I sat on his lap in his own seat.
He winced a little, and I remembered Darien saying that Cody had received a couple of cracked ribs from his trip into the wall. He planted a kiss on my lips, and it dawned on me that Cody was under the impression that we were boyfriend and girlfriend. I didn’t say anything to him against it, since I wasn’t sure I didn’t like the idea, and did my best to ignore the cold stare I felt from Melanie at my back.
“You okay?” he asked me, holding my face between his hands, his eyes darting up and down me as he checked me out. “That drunk didn’t hurt you, did he?”
The general story had been that some drunk had knocked Cody out and tried to attack me, and that I had escaped out the exit, run for my life, then called 911 and had gone home traumatized.
“No, I’m fine.” My hand went to rub at my neck, at the scar I knew was there, but that Cody probably wouldn’t even be able to see unless he was looking for it. “You got hurt more than I did. I’m sorry I didn’t visit you in the hospital, but my mom kinda freaked out and wouldn’t let me go anywhere.”
“So why weren’t you at school yesterday?” He let me up as more students filed into the room, followed by the teacher, Ms. Featherstone.
I slid into my seat and looked sideways at him. “Still wasn’t feeling all that great, tired.”
“Well, Friday is graduation. Wanna go out afterwards?” He gave me a hopeful look.
“Sure.”
We settled down for class, listening to Ms. Featherstone lecture. We were maybe a third of the way through class when I was distracted by what sounded in my head like a huge sonic boom. The lights flickered in the room, the air shimmering with something I couldn’t identify, and I could feel a stillness. I felt, different somehow, like I could see and touch things that I hadn’t been able to before. The shimmer in the air thickened and rolled, moving through me and taking my breath away, before disappearing entirely. But the oddness, the sensation that something had drastically changed, was still there. And then I saw something that made me gasp in surprise.
Ms. Featherstone looked different. And when I say she looked different, I meant different.
Her skin had taken on a silver grey tint and now seemed to be covered in tiny things that looked something between scales and feathers, and a pair of small wings, more silver than grey, and covered with the same scaly feathers, had sprouted from her shoulder blades. She still looked human otherwise, her face still looked the same, but now she projected a kind of mystical beauty that had all the boys in the class staring at her in fascination.
She snapped the textbook shut that she was holding and carefully set it on the desk, running her hands across her skirt and straightening the dainty glasses that sat on the bridge of her nose. A knowing sigh seemed to escape from her as her eyes roamed the room.
“Let me guess,” she said, one corner of her mouth turning up in a hesitant smile, “I have wings coming out of my back?”
We all nodded in stunned unison. Well, most of the class was stunned; I was surprised, but, hell, I was going to turn into a shifter soon so I couldn’t exactly be shocked silly by the fact that my third period History teacher was a magical creature of some sort.
“I was afraid the signs were pointing to this happening.” She gave us her biggest smile, the one that said ‘I’m friendly and won’t eat you’ and I could feel a wave of calm and reassurance emanate from her. “Alright, no one panic, just stay seated. The school is probably one of the safest places you can be at the moment…”
She stopped as we heard several bloodcurdling screams from outside the classroom, followed by yelling from the hallways, and sirens sounding in the distance. Some of us started to stand but she held out her hands, motioning for us to sit back down.
“I’m hoping you will all trust me, despite the change in my appearance. So please, let me try to explain a little bit of what has happened,” she began, smiling at us again. “All those things that you thought were stories, fairytales, myths, legends… they all exist. There is a thing we call the Barrier, that keeps this world separate from a dimension full of raw, wild magic and chaos, and things that can only exist with that magic, what we call the Aether. Those of us who can exist without it have been in hiding from humans for centuries, although obviously the occasional story gets leaked out.
“I’m afraid that Barrier has just fallen, unleashing the Aether into our world… and with it, more than likely many unimaginable things, as well as making it harder for some of us to hide what we are. Your world has changed today, irrevocably, for better or worse.” She scanned the class again as we sat in rapt attention to her words, her eyes passing me, then coming back to me. She winked at me, and I realized that she could tell what I was, or at least that I wasn’t human. There was more shouting from the hallways, and the sirens in the distance grew in number.
“Here, let’s turn on the television and see what’s happening on the news.” She pulled the TV on its stand toward the front of the room and turned the power on, flipping through the stations until she hit one that had our local news on it. “If you have any questions for me, I’ll do my best to answer them, but for now I think I’ll just keep you all here until some of the chaos has died down.”
We spent the next couple hours watching the news as it switched between different feeds, obviously having every truck, van and car available to them out in the field. There were reports of unicorns showing up in the middle of Howard Amon Park, a small dragon that had popped into being in the middle of I-82 and caused a ten car pile-up before it had flown off to settle on the top of the Blue Bridge, causing even more accidents on the bridge from people gawking at it.
More people, much like Ms. Featherstone, had suddenly changed in appearance, size, shape, growing wings and horns and other things. Several suicides were reported, along with some lunatic in the Mall with a gun trying to shoot people, claiming it was the end of days.
Some of the less populated business sections of town were already reporting riots and attempted looting. For a short while, Ms. Featherstone switched the channe
l to an international news channel and we found that it was much the same around the world, although much, much worse in the larger cities.
The sirens never quit during the hours we spent waiting for the world to finish going mad; if anything they got more frequent and louder. Cody had scooted his desk into the aisle, so that it was right up against mine and he could put an arm around my shoulders. The class, for the most part, had stayed calm, with some muttering and confusion. I wasn’t sure if the teacher had a way of soothing us, or that our fascination with her, and her explanation of what had happened, had made us accept things more at face value.
Ms. Featherstone fielded quite a few questions while we watched havoc play out on the TV. She was asked what kind of fantasy creatures really existed, and she told us that most of them did, anything that humans had legends about, and then some. Someone asked if vampires and werewolves existed as well, and with the briefest look in my direction she said yes, they did.
Another student asked if this meant that people could use magic, like Gandalf from Lord of the Rings, and we were told that people always could, but that it had been well hidden. Someone finally got up enough courage to ask her what she was. She smiled at the question, then informed the class that fae existed as well.
The news finally reported that the initial chaos was starting to dwindle, although an area wide curfew of ten p.m. had been put into place for anyone who wasn’t working during those hours. There was also a warning that traveling through the Snoqualmie area might be extra dangerous, as a very large dragon had been seen flying there.
The military all across the country was being brought in to the worst places to help maintain law and order. There was a report from the White House that the fae courts had approached the leaders of the world to help make the transition easier, while at the same time, other factions amongst the fae had begun a march across the country, wreaking mayhem, with the intent to wage war on our governing bodies.
