Space. I need space…now! I breathed frantically as I put some distance between us. I managed to slowly wind myself down while Eric lounged around casually on the floor, posed like an ancient Roman sculpture. Modesty seemed not to be of concern.
I turned my body away from him with as much subtlety as I could, and pretended to take great concern in the damage caused by his transformation. Eye contact was out of the question for the remainder of our time together.
“Are you feeling better now?” I whispered.
“No, actually. I’m feeling a little stiff…as it were,” he replied. I didn’t need a reminder of that. I chose to ignore his little innuendo and got down to business.
“You promised me answers, Eric,” I said, somberly. “I need them. Please, tell me who I am. What I am.” I risked a glance in his general direction for effect, being very careful where exactly my vision landed.
He sighed.
“It’s like I told you, Ruby. You’re a werewolf. A very special werewolf to be exact,” he said plainly, voice soft.
“I don’t understand…what…why…how did I not know? How did my parents not know? This stuff is make-believe, urban legend, folklore,” I protested, my voice starting to waver. “They don’t exist.”
“Things like this are you, my dear. You’re going to have to find a way to accept that. We all did.”
“But how does it happen? And why me?” I asked, pleading for answers that would make the news easier to swallow.
“Yours was genetic. You were always meant to be this way, but that isn’t the case for us all,” he said sounding thoughtful.
“If I’ve always been this way, how did I not know it?” I asked, turning to see him out of my periphery.
“Genetic weres don’t express the gene automatically. There has to be an environmental stimulus, a key to unlock that genetic coding. Trauma seems to be the common link.” He paused for a moment before continuing. “Whatever happened to you the night your parents died was more than your mind could handle. The stress forced the expression of the gene. I’m amazed it never happened sooner,” he said, pushing himself up into a seated position. He carefully pulled his legs to his chest to tactfully cover what I was so desperate to both avoid and attack. I needed to get my libido in check.
“But why the blackouts? Are you saying that every time I’ve blacked out since then, it’s had to do with…with…all of this?” I said, flipping my hand through the air in an attempt to express my point.
“It seems to be the case, though it’s bizarre. That’s why I asked Marcus about it. I’d never heard of anything like it before you,” he said, sounding truly perplexed by my uncharacteristic behavior.
“And?” I prodded.
“He explained that you were an altogether different creature. Though you are a werewolf, you’re an anomaly of the species. ‘Special’, I believe he said. Something rare and powerful.” He slowly moved toward me. I heard the soft brushing of his skin on the hardwood as I studiously avoided looking directly at him.
“He thinks the blackouts are coincidental, some function of your visual adaptation, but he isn’t certain. They could be something else entirely.”
“Why would he know so much about me? He doesn’t actually know me at all,” I asked, getting that strange feeling about Marcus at the mere thought of him.
Eric was so close to me that I could feel his breath on the side of my neck as he spoke. I stared at the floor, trying to absorb the information he gave so freely without being distracted.
“Marcus is very old,” he said, winding a loose strand of my hair around his finger repeatedly. “He knows about and has seen things that the rest of us have never been exposed to. He said he recognized you at the party, that you reminded him of someone very close to him.”
“That seems to be a pretty weak determinant of who and what I am,” I countered. “People look like other people all the time. It doesn’t mean anything,” I rebuffed.
I could instantly feel his frustration as well as his loyalty to Marcus crash over me. Marcus was clearly not to be questioned.
“He knows because he’s Marcus,” he said, his voice low and threatening at first. “If you’re hell-bent on further proof, look to your ring. He said it was given to your relative centuries ago. You said it was an heirloom, did you not? Given to you by your parents? One of the few things you valued enough to keep? Tell me that wasn’t because you feel connected to it somehow.”
He was right. All of it. I rarely, if ever, took it off because it felt wrong to be without it. It was safe and familiar, and my only link to my family.
“So what does this mean?” I whispered to the floor.
“It means that Marcus is right. That you are Rouge et Blanc,” he said as he lightly ran his hand down my back in a comforting gesture. My skin flared under his touch, my pulse quickened.
“What is that?” I asked, aware that the literal translation meant red and white, but it still gave me no insight to the implications of that title.
“It’s a werewolf of great power, importance and strength. Marcus believes that you are the only one in existence.”
“OK, so I’m like the Wonder Woman of the werewolf world?” I joked, trying desperately to lighten the gravity of the conversation.
He laughed. Once.
“To be honest, I don’t know much about the RB other than your power is virtually unmatched. That your kind was hunted early on to try to exterminate your power from the face of the earth, and that in wolf form, there is nothing more beautiful…”
“Exterminated? By what? What could take us out if we’re so unbelievably powerful?”
I fully abandoned my no-look policy, and met his stare which was only inches from my face. His eyes went blank for a moment before a fire took up residence behind them, a burning shade of amber full of rage and hate.
“Sean,” was his only reply.
“Huh?” I grunted, whipping my head around in the room, expecting to see Sean standing there. “What about him? Why are you changing the subject?”
“You asked me a question, Ruby. That’s your answer,” he replied with a seriousness that instantly stripped my confusion away.
I paled, feeling the blood drain out from my face, as if removing the blood supply to my head would keep me from processing that insurmountable information. I felt my mouth moving, but was certain that no sound escaped.
Eric slowly pulled me to him, pressing my body to his. He spoke softly into my ear.
“He’s a murderer, Ruby. I’ve known him a long, long time. He’s capable of unspeakable things, and that’s why I left him and the brothers. You were right to think that there was history between us, and if I had known what you were, I would have never left you in such a dangerous spot. I’m so sorry, Ruby,” he whispered as he rocked me gently.
I was numb. The blows kept coming and I eventually stopped dodging. All I had left to be answered were “why’s”.
“Why would he hurt me? Sean’s my friend…,” I said, my voice sounding hollow and empty. Completely unconvincing, even to myself.
“He would hurt you because it’s his job, his calling…his purpose. He’s a mercenary - an assassin for the brotherhood. Killing you is what he was born to do.”
Ask a stupid question…
20
“Explain,” I demanded, folding my arms in front of my chest. He hesitated slightly as if he was uncertain if he should say anything more. I couldn’t fathom why it mattered; the damage was already done.
“The purpose of the brotherhood is to regulate the werewolf population, and to keep a distinct divide between the supernatural and human worlds,” he said before pausing. “But Sean’s role in that took on a more specific task…to kill RB’s. All of them.”
The emptiness I felt was endless. I was such a fool. Sean had not only been lying to me, stringing me along, but also waiting for the perfect opportunity to carry out whatever plan he’d concocted. I then learned how sharp the sting of betrayal coul
d be. To know that he would eventually kill me was painful enough, but the real torture was that he’d played me, building up a phony friendship to heighten the climax of my death.
My face betrayed my every emotion, judging by Eric’s response. He looked as though he pitied me, but there was an undertone of what appeared to be satisfaction. Satisfaction in knowing that in some small way he was going to stick it to Sean. It was petty, but understandable. I could have, however, done without the pity. I abhorred pity. I didn’t need it.
“So he knows what I am?” I asked, trying to regain my composure.
“Yes,” he whispered. “It would appear that way.”
“So why wait? Why not kill me already?”
“I’m not sure. Marcus and I both are wondering about that,” he replied, running his hand through his hair. “That he’s choosing to do nothing is what concerns me most. He’s sadistic, Ruby. Whatever he’s up to…it isn’t good.” He looked deeply thoughtful, staring away from me for the first time that evening. He really was concerned, which only amplified my own need to panic. He had said Sean was capable of anything. I didn’t want to be on the receiving end of whatever “anything” implied.
I waited silently while Eric sorted some things out in his mind. He snapped his attention back to me, and upon seeing the distress on my face, softened his expression to a tight smile.
“I will do whatever I must to keep you safe. He will not hurt you. Not while I’m alive,” he vowed. That part of me inside that I didn’t fully understand rumbled at his words. I felt at peace knowing that he meant everything he said.
He would die for me.
I had to literally shake my head to regain my train of thought before I rubbed my palm lightly down the side of his face to show my belief in him. My fingertips lightly touched his lips and he kissed them softly.
“I trust you,” I whispered, “but I need you to tell me how you know so much about this. If everything I’ve known to be true about Sean is a lie, I want to really know what you know.”
He leaned in carefully and kissed my mouth, only once, before sitting back. His expression was pained, and I realized that whatever had happened between them left him with an outcome that he didn’t enjoy.
“Sean and I were friends, a long, long time ago. He was my mentor, my trainer, my big brother. My mother died when I was young. I never knew my father. When the brotherhood found me and realized who I was and that I belonged with them, Sean took me under his wing and never left my side.”
I was pretty sure my jaw was sagging down somewhere around my navel. I thought the story was going to illustrate how awful Sean was and why he was a killer, but it started off like a Lifetime movie. That was the Sean I knew.
“At first I didn’t understand who and what he was. I’d heard rumors, locker room type talk of kills he’d made and things he’d done, but never confronted him about it. I’d assumed it just wasn’t true. He was our leader…I couldn’t believe it. Over the years, though, I witnessed more and more of his true nature. I realized that he not only enjoyed killing, he reveled in it. It drove him. He needed it like air to breathe.”
I sat still and silent, filled with an unbridled anticipation and expectant horror. It was like knowing an accident was about to occur in front of me and I was completely unable or unwilling to look away from it.
“The very last kill I saw unraveled my whole world. I went to the Elders, the ones who govern the brotherhood, to share my concerns about his behavior.
Someone needed to let them know that he was going too far, that he needed to be controlled. To my face, they agreed. Later on, they must have told him what I’d done. For this, he punished me.”
“Punished? Punished how? You were trying to protect everyone!” I protested, jumping to my feet.
“We were out patrolling a pack that was allegedly attacking the locals and creating a spectacle of themselves. A fight ensued, and I was left alone surrounded by a dozen or more weres. Some of them were very old, and very skilled. I was bitten and thus infected during the fight. When it was over, I looked up to see Sean watching from afar, smiling. He’d allowed it to happen. He intentionally didn’t come to my aid.”
“But why wouldn’t he? I don’t understand,” I asked, trying to see where the punishment was in Sean’s actions.
“Weres cannot be in the brotherhood, Ruby. Being infected had unofficially excommunicated me from the group. They wouldn’t even have waited for the Change to occur,” he said, with a bitter tone. “Sean set me up. I was betrayed by my own family.”
His last comment stung. My ability to both feel his pain and sympathize with it all at once was far too much for me. I ran across the room to find stability against the window frame. My head hung low as I tried to breathe slow and sure breaths. I didn’t want to believe what he told me. Any of it. The Sean I knew, or believed I knew, was nothing like the man Eric described. Was it really all a lie?
“What happened then?” I asked.
“Shortly after my abandonment, I met Marcus. He led me to where I am now. He’s my family now,” he said, rising to join me. “So is his pack.”
No wonder he’d been so upset when I commented about the party. I’d insulted the only people that really ever cared about him. My sensitivity skills were mind-blowing.
“And Sean?” I prompted.
His face darkened from across the room, and I would’ve sworn the temperature dropped about ten degrees.
“He got exactly what he wanted,” he said coolly.
We stared at each other for what seemed like forever. Eric understood pain. It was a trait I appreciated immensely in him.
A blaring sound from the apartment downstairs broke our silence. Cell phone. Eric stirred on the other side of the room, recognizing the ring. He quickly walked towards the door.
“It’s Marcus,” he said, running for the stairs. “It’s his ringtone. I have to take this, Ruby. I’ll be right back.”
I watched his form disappear from the room, but a heaviness remained. I stood frozen - a statue, a breathing, empty shell of who I used to be, or thought I was at least.
I heard Eric’s voice echo through the stairwell, but didn’t even try to discern what he was saying. It didn’t matter. So little did. My life was filled with lies, deceit, and treachery, and not by my doing.
Eric suddenly appeared before me, speaking, though I didn’t seem to hear what he was saying at all.
“Did you get that?” he asked, grabbing my shoulders. “I have to go. I’m so sorry to leave you. I wanted to bring you with me, but it’s a pack matter…I can’t,” he said looking pained by his situation.
I tried to smile.
“I’m sorry. I was thinking,” I said. “Go. I’ll be fine. I’ll drive down in the morning. We can figure out what to do then.”
“Marcus will know,” he said, caressing the side of my face tenderly.
“I hope so,” I replied with a wan smile. He kissed me softly, but pulled away before the heat built up between us.
“And what about Sean?” he asked, suddenly looking ferocious. “I can’t leave you here, Ruby. He can’t be trusted.”
“There’s no reason for me to see him, Eric. It’ll be OK,” I said, leaning my body into his. “If he calls I’ll just give him a lame excuse and tell him I’ll see him tomorrow. He won’t think anything of it. I do that all the time.”
I forced a chuckle.
Eric grabbed my arms firmly, but not aggressively, in response.
“He is not to be toyed with, Ruby. Nor is he easy to lie to. If he calls I want you to leave immediately. Just get in your car and drive. Call me. Marcus will find a way around Sean.”
“You need clothes,” I said absentmindedly as I looked down and realized what he still wasn’t wearing.
“Only you, Ruby, would care about that at a time like this,” he said smiling, brushing away a loose strand of my hair. I shied away and ran downstairs to my room in search of anything that would fit him. A white v-neck men�
��s undershirt and charcoal grey sweats from Old Navy were all I had for menswear. Sometimes I liked to wear extremely baggy clothes.
He threw them on quickly and grabbed his phone and keys.
“Remember,” he said, taking my chin in his hands, “you get in your car and drive like a bat out of hell if he tries to see you.”
“And call you immediately,” I said with the faintest hint of mocking. He furrowed his brow. “I know, I know, he’s not to be trifled with. I don’t have a death wish,” I said, hoping to placate his growing anxiety.
“You’d better not,” he said, stealing a kiss before running out the door. He was off to his home, his family. It made me long for mine.
I stood in the middle of the room, unmoving - I barely breathed. My life had just become surreal, impossible, and one enormous lie. I needed to go, to run somewhere, anywhere to beat back the reality that was rapidly closing in around me. The image of him was burned into my retina, flashing over and over again like a warning. He was trapped somewhere between human and decidedly not, and I realized that was my new reality.
I was too.
I wondered if my blackouts served as a kind way of saving my mind from the reality that I was indeed a monster. I killed those men…that’s how I got away…
A knock on the door snapped me out of my pending meltdown. Every cell in my body froze - only one person would come over unannounced in the middle of the night. Shit…I didn’t lock the door again. My lack of eye for detail was sure to get me killed one day. Maybe sooner than I thought.
Another knock echoed through my apartment more loudly and sharply than the last. He knew I was home. There was no escaping him. He would know if I went for the fire escape, and in the process I would lose the only advantage I had; he didn’t know how much I knew. If I were able to put on the performance of a lifetime, it could save my ass. At least for the night.
His pounding vibrated the wall hangings. As if that wasn’t subtle enough, he hollered my name, demanding that I open the door or he’d do unfavorable things to it to remove it from his path. I pulled myself and my story together as quickly as possible.
Caged Page 11
