by Renee Carr
I glanced around the house, turning around and yanking the electric cord out of the plug, stopping the coffee maker. I had a feeling that was happening to my grandmother, but I didn’t want to admit it to myself. The secrets in our lives were so deep and complicated, we all learned very early to keep those types of things quiet.
“I’ll be there in five minutes,” I told her. “Don’t do anything. I’ll help you get ready when I get there if you need to. I don’t want you falling again.”
“I left the door unlocked last night, in case I needed to call you this morning. Just come on in,” my grandmother said, making it seem all that more terrifying.
I hung up the phone and hurried back into the living room, bending down on one knee next to the couch. I put my hands on Brighton and shook him slightly. He groaned and turned toward me on the couch, opening his eyes. As soon as he saw the worry on my face, he sat up, looking around the room. “What’s wrong? What’s going on?”
I put my hand to his chest and shook my head. “There’s no one here. My grandmother called and I need to go pick her up and take her to the hospital. She said she isn’t feeling well and she hasn’t been since last night.”
Brighton nodded, standing up and wobbling back and forth just a bit before catching his balance. He hadn’t fully woken up, but he was ready to go, whatever I needed. “I’ll go with you. If you need to get her out of the house, and she can’t do it herself, you’re going to need help. You can sit with her in the back of the car as I drive. I know the way to the hospital, it’s really easy.”
I blinked at him for a moment, feeling an intense amount of appreciation for him, knowing full well that if anything were to happen to my grandmother, I shouldn’t be alone. I got up and walked over, grabbing his boots and tossing them to him. He pulled them on and stood up, straightening out the wrinkles in his shirt before pulling on a sweatshirt jacket. We hurried out the door into his car, and he sped down the street just a block to my grandmother’s old Victorian. As soon as he had parked, I jumped out and was running up to my grandmother’s house. Brighton was close behind me, hurrying through the door and shutting it behind him.
When we got to the top of the stairs, Brighton stopped, knowing I had to go into her bedroom. “If you need help, just call me in there. Don’t let her be bashful.”
I scoffed, putting my hand on the door handle. “I’m pretty sure that there is no situation where my grandmother would ever be bashful.”
I steadied myself as I cracked open the door, wanting to make sure that I was prepared for whatever was going on. “Grandma? I’m going to come in now.”
Walking into the room, I saw my grandmother sitting up on the bed, dressed in blue slacks, a white button-up shirt, and a sweater jacket. It looked like she had even straightened her hair a little bit from the edge of her bed, looking across at the mirror on her wall. “I did my best to look pretty, you know, because there’s so many young doctors at the hospital, but I didn’t want to stand up and fall down.”
I gathered my grandmother’s bag and shook my head at her. “You shouldn’t have worried about that. They see people come in there looking absolutely terrible on a daily basis. I’m going to turn on the light, okay?”
I clicked on the bedside lamp and looked up at my grandmother. It took everything in me to keep my face expressionless. She looked so sick. Her face was droopy, her skin paper-white, and the normal sparkle in her eyes wasn’t there anymore. In fact, her normally crisp, blue eyes had faded to gray.
“I look that bad?” she chuckled. “It doesn’t surprise me. I probably feel fifty times worse than how I look. But I’m a tough old bitch that refuses to give in to it.”
I gave a slight laugh and walked over, putting my hand on her arm. “Are you ready?”
She nodded and put her hands on the edge of the bed. She stood up, but that was about as far as she got. As soon as she was up on her feet, she began to wobble back and forth and I gripped tightly to her, putting one hand on her waist and setting her back down on the bed. She put her hand to her head and wrinkled her brow. “I just keep getting so dizzy. The whole room spins around me. Then my damned feet don’t want to work.”
I bit the inside of my cheek. “We need to get to the hospital, and I brought Brighton with me. He can help get you down the steps.”
My grandmother glanced up at the door. “That’s what that smell is. I think that’s the same cologne that your grandfather used to wear. I always liked that one. Though it smells a bit different on him.”
I stared at my grandmother, blinking. “Focus, Grandma.”
Her eyes looked like she was getting extremely tired and she nodded. I hurried over to the door and opened it up, sticking my head out. “Could you help us? My grandmother is too weak to stand and we need to get her down to the car.”
Brighton stood up, his shoulders back, his head held high as he walked proudly into the room. I watched as he walked up to my grandmother and put out his hand, shaking hers. Next to him, she looked so tiny and frail, and I had to fight back the tears gathering at my eyes. “It’s nice to meet you. I’m Brighton, and if you don’t mind, I’d like to help you down the stairs.”
At that point, she wasn’t joking anymore, and she just glanced up at him, nodding her head. Without a thought, he leaned down and picked her up carefully, cradling her in his arms. I walked behind them as he walked down the steps, speaking to her so gently and comfortingly as he made his way out of the house and down to the car. My heart swelled watching him with her, finding that the sincerity of his personality was more than genuine.
I climbed in the back with my grandmother and held her hand as Brighton hurried off to the hospital. He pulled up front and ran in, getting a nurse to help us. Knowing my grandmother’s name very well in that town, the hospital attendants hurried out with the stretcher, a pillow, and a big, warm blanket. They got my grandmother up on the bed and we followed them inside as they wheeled her toward the back.
One of the nurses turned around and smiled at me. “We need you to wait right here. We’re going to get your grandmother checked out and make sure that everything is stabilized. When we do, we will come back and get you.”
I nodded, stepping back as the doors closed. I watched through the window as my grandmother’s bed disappeared around the corner. My hands fell to my sides and I turned around, finding Brighton right behind me, his arms out, ready for me. Instantly, he wrapped me in his arms, kissing the top of my head and comforting me in the best way possible. I had always been so independent, but standing there scared in the hospital waiting room, I had no idea what I would’ve done without him.
20
Brighton
It always felt like hospitals took far longer than any other place, but what people didn’t realize was that usually hospitals dealt with things that were much more urgent than the occasional sniffle or broken bone. I could feel the nervousness just rolling off of Lily as she sat close to me in the waiting area, my arm wrapped tightly around her. She watched the television, even though neither one of us could hear it, and occasionally glanced over as someone came in or out of the emergency room. With it being such a small town, it really wasn’t that busy. I was pretty sure that was what made it even more nerve-racking for Lily.
“Lily Tucker?” a doctor said from the doors to the back.
Lily jumped up and hurried over, with me trailing calmly behind her. “I’m Lily. How’s my grandmother?”
The doctor smiled, putting his hand on her shoulder. “She’s going to be fine. She’s definitely got some fire in her, not to mention that she’s incredibly tough. Anybody else with her condition would have probably passed out by now. It seems that she had a couple of things going on which, combined, did not make her feel very well at all. It took me a while to get out here because her blood pressure had dropped and we wanted to stabilize everything before we ran any type of tests. We got her blood pressure back up and it seems your grandmother, first of all, has some sort of virus, th
ough she argues with me against it, saying that she’s been told that her whole life and that, in fact, her very high temperature is not actually a fever, she just runs hot. I will have to say I find it hard to believe that someone has a standing temperature of 104°, but I guess it’s possible.”
I creased my brow, looking down at the floor so that Lily wouldn’t notice. That was a strange thing for someone to have, a very high resting body temperature. I knew I had one, but that was because of my wolf. I shook away the thought, figuring there were far crazier things out there in the world.
“On top of that,” the doctor continued, “she is dehydrated, and there’s some inflammation in that area of her hip that’s probably been giving her a hard time. We’ve got her on fluids and a mild pain medication for her hip just to make her comfortable while she’s here.”
“Can I see her now?” Lily asked.
The doctor glanced up at me and then back at her, smiling and nodding his head. “Yes, but we’re requesting that just family go back for now.”
Lily nodded. “Thank you. I’ll be right there.”
She turned to me with big, relieved eyes and wrapped her arms around me, hugging me tightly. “Thank you so much for your support. Thank you for getting her here, and being so kind to her.”
I smiled, then leaned down and kissed her on the forehead. “We’ll have plenty of time later to talk. Go see to her and call me when you’ve got her back home. Here are my keys, I’m going to leave the car for you.”
“But how will you get back?”
I smiled. “Luckily for me, this entire town is surrounded by the woods. I want to go see my brothers, anyway, find out what’s been going on in that world.”
She leaned up and kissed me on the cheek as the nurse stepped through the door and held it open for her. “I’ll see you in a little while.”
I stood there with my hands in my pockets, watching until she disappeared behind the doors. I was glad her grandmother was going to be okay. I could tell that Lily was not in the place that she would be able to handle it if something happened to her just yet. Turning, I walked from the emergency room and across the hospital parking lot to the sidewalk. I glanced around before jogging across the street and down through the neighborhood that ended at the woods.
I walked several feet inside, not having spent much time on that side of town, and then undressed, hiding my clothes beneath a pile of leaves. I started out at a jog, finding it a lot simpler to shift if I was already in motion. There was something about it that kept the immense pains and cracks of my bones to a minimum.
Once I was in full wolf form, I came to a stop and sat down, closing my eyes and taking in the sounds of the forest. I breathed deeply, sorting through the different smells, finally finding the faint scent of my brothers in the distance. With a snort, I took off through the woods, heading to where I could find my brother and his pack. Even though I knew I was headed in the right direction, when I found them, I was still incredibly impressed by my skills. I guess they were my wolf’s skills, but since we had decided to join forces, we were sharing them.
As I trotted over into the clearing, I slowed down out of caution, unsure if everyone knew who I was yet. My brother’s voice echoed out in my head. “It’s all right, everyone, it’s our younger brother, Brighton. Arthur, can you just take a trek behind him and make sure no one followed?”
My eyes shifted over to a dark gray wolf who nodded his head and jogged up beside me. We stared at each other for a moment before he rubbed his head against mine and then disappeared into the woods to check my trail. My brothers both came down, rubbing their heads against mine, and helping me to open up my telepathic communication skills.
“What will happen is that anybody who is open to you hearing them will automatically become clear in your mind as if you were at a park. You can hear the people that you are focusing in on, while the others will sound like just chatter in the background,” Eric explained to me.
I took in a deep breath and closed my eyes for a moment, focusing in on the space around me. Very slowly, I began to hear voices and they grew and grew until I could hear the entire pack talking as they trained. I opened my eyes and focused in on one after the other, finding their voices growing louder and then fainter as I moved on to someone else. “That’s pretty cool.”
“Not as cool as you coming out here and showing me exactly what you’re made of,” Christian said from the center of the clearing.
My wolf whined in my head. “It’s okay, boy, we’ve got this. Don’t be nervous.”
Head down, I ran straight for my brother, barely missing him as he dodged me. I came to a skidding halt and tripped over my paws, landing halfway on my face and halfway on my neck. I could hear the rest of the pack chuckle as they gathered around to watch us. I hurried back to my feet and faced off with Christian once again. As we circled each other, Christian would yell out different tactics that he wanted me to try. My first go at them was pretty rusty, considering I had never done anything like that before, but after a couple of times, I was getting pretty good at them. They were steps, different movements that would eventually add up to a full fight.
During the final battle, I got in a few swipes, but in the end, my brother bested me. It wasn’t surprising, though, and from the conversations going on around me, it seemed that the rest of the pack was pretty impressed by my first time out. That made me feel good. I had always been one step behind my brothers, but with this I was just as strong. I just needed to get my coordination down and I was pretty sure I could best my brother.
Christian nudged me and nodded toward Eric on the other side. As we walked, he quieted out the rest of the pack in our heads and blocked anyone from listening to us. “That was really good, especially for your first time. I’m definitely impressed. I know, training seems cliché, but if we want to have any chance of beating the dark wolves without losing too many of our own, it’s really important that we are stronger and faster than they are.”
“Not to mention the fact that they have a bit of an advantage on us since they have magical powers.” The old magic thing made me nervous, but I tried not to show that to Christian. In the end, there was nothing I could do about it, so I needed to be the best fighter I could possibly be.
“That’s right,” Eric chimed in. “Their magic is no joke, and even with some of the best training that we can get, almost anyone who goes up against the pack’s leader loses.”
Christian’s eyes darkened. “And when you lose against a dark wolf, you don’t limp away. You don’t come back. We have incredible healing powers and live very long lives, but some things nothing can survive. And the dark wolves are soul swallowers.”
Shivers ran down my back. “I want to fight. I’m ready. I want to attack these bullies, and I want to make the world safe for us, for Lily, Libby, and all the other humans. I knew there was a reason I was here.”
My brother, Eric, nudged me, a proud-of-me kind of nudge. Christian sat down and raised his paw, putting it on my shoulder. “Your bravery doesn’t surprise me, little brother. You’ve been brave all of your life. But as much as we need you, we don’t want to sacrifice your safety until we know for certain you are ready. You must complete the training with us first.”
It was a reaction that didn’t surprise me in the least. I was irritated by it, and Eric could tell. He nudged me again. “Don’t be upset, Brighton. We are protective of everyone in this pack. It’s important that we keep our family together and in one piece.”
“I understand,” I replied, knowing full well there was no use in arguing.
There had been many conversations over the years where I had argued my point, but I never won. Looking back, many of those times they were right, but this time I didn’t agree with their decision. I was strong, powerful, and just as the pack had whispered in the background, made to fight the forces that threatened us.
Christian took his paw down. “I need you to promise me, a pack promise, that you won’t do anything u
ntil your training is complete and you are released into active status. All of us have had to go through it.”
The rest of the pack had gathered around us and were drawn into the conversation. I glanced around at the others and then lowered my head. “I make this promise. I will not make a move until I am cleared and my training is complete.”
Christian and Eric came forward and pressed their foreheads to mine before dispersing. I was not happy by any means, but my paws were tied. I turned and walked off into the woods, picking up the pace as I left the encampment. My wolf could feel my frustration and picked up the pace, racing through the woods. As I approached the edge of the forest where I had entered, my body shifted, leaving me in my human form as I came to a stop at my hidden clothes.
I pulled them on and flipped up the hood of my sweatshirt. I felt changed, serious, protective. Shoving my hands in my pockets, I looked back into the darkness of the forest, having been there all day, my eyes flashing yellow before I headed out of the woods. I had a long walk back to my father’s house, but it was for the best. The anger was ripe inside of me, and the clear, cool air would hopefully wash it away. I just had to remember that the world wasn’t the same place it used to be; it was darker, more dangerous, and one day I would creep forward from the shadows and protect those I loved in any way I could.
21
Lily
I paced back and forth in the hallway of the hospital outside of my grandmother’s room, my cell phone pressed to my ear, my arm wrapped around my waist. “I know, Mom, she’s going to be okay. I wish you would’ve told me.”
My mom sighed. “You know those are things we don’t talk about. But you’re right, I should’ve told you so that you understood. But now you know, and I need you to keep a closer eye on her. I’m not blaming you for what happened—your grandmother does whatever she wants and then she gets sick, because that’s what she’s done her whole life. Before she didn’t worry about the illnesses out there because they never affected her. Now they do, and she has to act like every other human on earth.”
