I opened the door to see a vicious-looking Sean looming right over top of me.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, his voice measured and controlled. He had no idea about the shit that had gone down, or if he did, he certainly didn’t let on. I was suddenly terrified of him; he was my assassin. A fever flushed my cheeks in an instant despite my every effort to contain it. Once he knew the truth it would be the end of me. I needed to play the situation up well against he-who-was-not-to-be-trifled-with.
I snapped out of my inner plotting when two large hands encircled my biceps and started to shake me.
“RUBY!” he yelled. “What’s wrong?”
I stood silently, trying to figure out the best plan of action. While I did, his face plunged dangerously near mine as he searched my face for signs of something.
“I…I had a rough night, Sean. I’d really prefer it if you leave. I want to be alone,” I whispered, trying to put on what I thought was my best wounded face.
“Rough night my ass,” he scoffed. “What’s going on with you? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
My acting needed improvement ASAP. I knew his persistence was only beginning and it irritated the shit out of me.
“Really, Sean. I’m so not in the mood for this song and dance with you right now. Go, and I’ll talk to you about it tomorrow,” I demanded, hoping upon hope that he was buying what I was selling.
He took quick inventory of the room. Shit! I’d forgotten what the scene must have looked like. Shredded clothes lay on the living room floor and furniture was askew. I hadn’t noticed earlier; I was too busy trying not to die.
“Who was here?” he asked calmly.
I looked at the floor while rubbing the toes of my shoes together. I didn’t know what the best move was, but I figured lying wasn’t a good game plan as I would have bet money on him knowing that little detail already. He only asked to simply maintain his charade.
“Eric,” I muttered to the floor.
“Why was he here?”
I still couldn’t bring my eyes up to his. “He was worried about me.”
“Why are there ripped clothes on the floor?”
“Something happened,” I whispered, head hung low.
“What did he do to you?” he asked with decidedly more heat in his voice.
I maintained my eye line, trying to find answers in the patterned grain of the hardwood floor.
“TELL ME WHAT HE DID!” he screamed.
I literally jumped, snapping my attention to the hate on his face. The animosity between the two men was more plain to see than ever. I continued to say nothing, hoping that divine inspiration would strike and help me lie my way out of the deteriorating situation, but God clearly had more pressing issues to attend to.
Sean’s face softened slightly, seeing my fear. The killer’s edge diminished, but his body was still coiled with rage.
“If he touched you, I’ll kill him…tear him apart with my bare hands,” he said, trailing off as he broke away from me to angrily investigate my apartment.
“Could you?” I asked under my breath, thinking he was out of earshot.
“What did you say?” he asked, crouched down next to the pile of tattered clothes. Assuming that he couldn’t hear me proved to be a bad move on my part. If only I lacked the power of speech.
He stalked towards me as I frantically thought of things that could replace what I’d said. “Please do,” “would you”, and “me too”, all came to mind, but none came out.
“What did you say?” he repeated, moving so near me that I could feel the heat radiating off of him.
Fuck it.
I figured that I couldn’t wiggle my way out of the hole I’d dug, so I threw caution to the wind. If I was going to die, I was going down fighting, not cowering in a corner.
“Could you?” I asked, raising my fury-filled eyes to his. “Tear him apart, I mean?” I was baiting him and I knew it. Eric had warned me that Sean’s temper was not to be trusted, but I was too far past rational thought to care. A fight was just what I wanted. “You’d have to be pretty strong to literally ‘tear him apart’,” I mocked.
“What’s wrong with you?” he asked with a questioning tilt of his head.
“Wrong with me? Hmm…where do I start? Let’s see. It could be that I just saw a man’s flesh tear open and morph into a wolf, or that the reason I have blackouts isn’t medical at all, but in fact it’s that I have a little condition that makes me a monster when I’m scared, or that someone I trusted, my friend, is actually an assassin sent to kill me!” I yelled. My hysteria hit a crescendo before I paused to take a deep breath, hoping to regain some level of composure - calm people were far more scary. “But maybe it’s just that I broke a nail…who really knows.”
I could feel the anger in my face contorting and warming it while I waited for the shitstorm to hit. During my rant I watched his face slowly change from hurt and concerned to defensive and angry, then eerily calm and collected.
“So I guess your little friend has been busy spilling the beans, so to speak. I’m sorry I missed his little show, but I’ll see him soon enough to discuss his performance.”
“Performance? It wasn’t a play, Sean; I nearly shit my pants!” I snarled, “And you knew. You knew all along!”
“You seem to be blowing this out of proportion,” he said, cool as a cucumber. My temper flared.
“Are you not a killer, or did I blow that out of proportion as well?”
“No, Ruby, that’s true enough,” he said, his lips pressed tightly together.
I went pale at his nonchalance. He was a murderer; Eric was right. My stomach jumped at the thought that everything he’d told me was true.
“Then before we do this, you will clarify some things for me. You owe me that,” I said, puffing my chest up towards his.
A half-smile twitched across his face.
“Before we do what exactly?” he asked, looking down at my aforementioned chest.
“Drop the act, Sean. I’m not going to be played any longer. If you’re going to kill me, respect me enough not insult me first.”
Everything changed in an instant. He looked confused, his posture softened, and he actually took an uncoordinated step backward as if I’d hit him.
Then it was my turn to look confused.
“You are here to kill me, right?” I asked, trailing off quietly.
“You think that’s why I’m here? To kill you? What the fuck has he been telling you?” he asked while truly looking wounded by my comment.
Bullshit.
“You just admitted to being a killer like it was a regular career, Sean! Why wouldn’t I think you were here to kill me? Eric was right about everything else,” I cried.
He said nothing.
“You know what I am, don’t you?” I shouted, unable to hold back the tears that were streaming down my face. “I know what I am, why I have all those blackouts when I’m scared. I also know why you’ve been following me around, trying to get close to me; Eric told me everything.”
I was borderline hysterical, and that border was rapidly disappearing. I flailed my arms while I screamed all my new found information at him. I hit him in the chest, the face, and anywhere else I could connect with until he finally pinned my arms behind my back with one large hand encircling both wrists. I watched his eyes change color as they closed in on mine. They were darkening by the second.
His smile was long gone, replaced by hostility. Looking at him, I realized I’d never really seen him before.
“He lied to you,” he said while I squirmed helplessly in his grasp. I took his squeezing as a sign that I should settle down and did so.
“No, no he didn’t lie. He exposed you for what you really are and why you’re really after me. You’re not my friend at all,” I choked out while the circulation faded in my hands. “You’re a callous and vicious killer who exterminates my kind. I’d make you pay for it if I could.”
“Are you quite finished?” h
e asked, “because you’re really starting to sound like a crazy person, and it’s trying my patience.” I started to say something else but a large hand clasped over my mouth, cutting me off. “It was a rhetorical question, Ruby. You will be quiet now, and you will hear my side of this. You owe me that.”
He slowly removed his hand, waiting for me to pipe up again. He’d taken most of the fight out of me by then, leaving me mostly saddened and scared, awaiting my punishment for merely being.
“So you know everything now, eh? I highly doubt that. I’m going to tell you the whole story from the beginning. You will be quiet and you will listen,” he said, calmly. “I am an assassin Ruby, and I will not suffer your shit with a smile. Am I understood?”
I gulped in agreement and he continued.
“If you really want to know who I am, I’ll tell you,” he said, taking a breath to calm himself further. “I am a member of the Patronus Ceteri, which is loosely translated into English as the ‘protectors of the others’. We have been around for millennia to mediate between the worlds of the natural and supernatural. We are born into this position and many die carrying out its laws,” he said, allowing me to sit on the couch and get more comfortable. With the way he was preparing me, I knew I was in for a doozy of a story.
“I was sent to America in the early 1800’s to be sure that the balance was kept in the New World as it continued to grow and populate. We hadn’t planned well in advance and there were a few…incidents,” he said matter-of-factly.
“Sorry, when did you come here? 1800’s? Is this a joke?” I asked, completely baffled by what he was saying. Eric seemed to leave out the part about Sean being a gazillion years old, or him for that matter.
He frowned and glared at me.
“You’re really trying my patience this evening, Ruby. Most people don’t survive such an affront,” he warned. Point taken. I quickly shut my mouth and listened to what became the most unbelievable story I’d ever heard.
“Like I said, in the 1800’s, my personal job was to make sure that the worlds were balanced and separate in the New World. Weres could not take advantage of humans, and humans couldn’t know about the existence of weres. It was a delicate situation and required constant attention and intervention on both sides. I was responsible for the extermination of rogue wolves, alphas with a penchant for destruction, and the Rouge et Blanc,” he stated.
I opened my mouth to ask some clarifying questions and was met with a rough hand across my mouth to shut it. I got the message loud and clear, sighing loudly before he continued.
“Rogues are wolves who’ve not tolerated the Change well, or were derelict to begin with; the Change will not improve on such a thing. The Alphas are what you’d expect, the leader of a large pack. In the US we try to keep packs to the larger cities, allowing them to blend in. There are no packs in Portsmouth,” he stated.
Boring. I didn’t want a history lesson, I wanted answers.
“The Rouge et Blanc are an anomaly of the werewolf community. They were thought to be extinct, the Patronus Ceteri having systematically wiped out all the ones in existence as well as their line. They were typically killed as children immediately after their Change. They couldn’t be controlled and their powers were too great to leave in the hands of children,” he said. I raised my hand, a la grade school, in a desperate attempt to be allowed to speak. I was nothing short of amazed when he acknowledged me.
“Why are their powers so dangerous?” I asked trying to sound casual, but truly dying to know. Perhaps he could add some specifics that Eric couldn’t.
“Most wolves can be influenced by those around them, especially in a pack setting. Those that are prone to violence, for example, can be balanced by a more submissive mate or pack member. RB’s cannot. All weres in wolf form are extremely strong, fast and ruthless. Apply those characteristics to a child who’s angry that they can’t have ice cream for dinner. Instead of a pout and tantrum, they may go on a rampage through town and kill hundreds. For many reasons, this could not be allowed.”
“How long has it been since there’s been one?” I asked, knowing that I was pushing my luck.
“The last one recorded anywhere was in 1897 and it was here in New England,” he said. “He was five years old.”
“So you killed him?”
He nodded.
Terror and anger flowed through my veins. He’d killed my family, my line. He would kill me.
“Why are they called that?” I demanded.
He settled into the sofa across from me and took in a deep breath.
“Rouge et Blanc means red and white in French.”
Duh.
“I’m aware of that. I’ve been through this once already this evening. What I want to know is how that figures into the equation.”
“Which is exactly what I was going to tell you,” he said as his eyes narrowed. “Do not interrupt me again if you wish to know anything.”
He inhaled deeply before continuing.
“They originated in Switzerland in the late 1700’s to the best of our knowledge. They stayed in that area until they became problematic. That’s when the Patronus Ceteri had to step in and…take care of the situation. You have to keep in mind that once the Change takes place, all weres remain that age for the remainder of their existence. The RB’s would never mature beyond the age they were and would remain a threat forever. Because of the nature of what brings about their Change, it tends to happen before the age of ten. Exposure to violence, emotional trauma, abuse, or extreme illness will all bring on the Change. You have to remember that in those times these conditions were commonplace. “
“Never age?”
“No.”
“So I’ll be twenty-eight for the rest of my life?” Or at least the next ten minutes…
“Yes.”
“How old was the oldest RB?” I asked.
“Nine. She Changed two years prior, but her powers were contained to keep her from destroying everyone and everything around her. It was brought to our attention finally and the situation was rectified.
“Rectified? Do you believe this shit coming out of your mouth? You really can justify your behavior, can’t you?” I sneered, hearing the disgust in my own voice. The direness of the situation had sunk in enough to cause unbridled rage. My filter was gone. Whatever I thought of him and his charade was coming out loud and messy. “They were children, Sean, kids! It wasn’t their fault, they didn’t want that kind of power. Did you ever try to help them or did you just mow them down?” I seethed through gritted teeth, fists balling up the couch fabric. He had no conscience. This was just work for him, a task to fulfill. He’d kill me without a glance, a hesitation, a tug at his moral fiber.
He was looking at me strangely, a cross between frustration, sorrow and rage. It wasn’t pretty.
“You have to understand sacrifice for the greater good. It’s been over one hundred years since one existed. There was no knowledge of DNA and genetic coding until very recently. We’d pieced together over the years that it was somehow handed down by parents and we tried to isolate it as best we could. Through genetics we’ve been able to piece together that you have to have two parents with recessive genes for the disease to create an RB child,” he said. “There are only two ways to become a were: genetics, and infection of their blood stream. To the best of our knowledge all the carriers have been eliminated.
“The day I found you in the woods I knew what you were immediately. Being a neowere, you didn’t have much in the way of increased abilities. However, you still survived things that humans could not.”
“So you’ve known this whole time? You’ve known why I’ve had the blackouts and never bothered to tell me it’s because I’m not human? Thanks a lot, asshole!” I shouted. “I’ve been making myself crazy over this for months, and you just stood idly by, pretending to be supportive, when all the while you’ve been enjoying my pain and plotting my death,” I said, staring him down. “I guess it’d make it pretty special, t
oo, since it’s been so long.”
“I wouldn’t plot anyone’s death, so I don’t…”
“CAN IT!” I shouted over him. “How convenient that you just happened to be in the woods that day. Or that you happen to live in the same town as me now. Did you set this up? Did the PC want me Changed?”
I tried desperately to keep my anger in front, and the tears welling up out of sight.
“Did they want to do a little experiment with Ruby the RB and sent you, the big, bad Biology PhD to carry it out?”
I had trusted him. He’d saved me. He was my friend, or so I thought. I wasn’t sure I could survive this level of betrayal. How comforting that I wouldn’t have to survive it for long.
I fell to my knees in despair. He flew at me from across the room where he’d been pacing by the window and yanked me up to stand nose-to-nose with him.
Times up…
“You think I did that to you? You think I attacked you and killed your parents?” he growled as he breathed down my face. “It wasn’t a coincidence that I was there that day at all. I was informed that we had an incident that needed to be cleaned up. You left pieces of those boys all over the clearing, Ruby. You didn’t kill them, you destroyed them. The PC had nothing to do with anything that happened to you.”
I’d had my eyes closed when he grabbed me. It was easier to revert back to the senses I had always counted on, and sight seemed to confuse things still for me. I wanted to die in the dark, as I’d lived. Sean was scaring me something fierce, and I couldn’t stand to look into those ever-darkening eyes and see a person I didn’t recognize as my final vision.
He did nothing, said nothing. I peeked an eye open enough to see a face that more closely resembled the one I knew. I opened the other eye. Still nothing. My nerves took over me and I started to ramble.
“I did kill them…,” I whimpered, unable to conceal the horror and regret I felt. “I remember…I remember now. The bodies. I see them. They’re everywhere. Oh God! I…I…,” Even though they attacked me and slaughtered my parents, I couldn’t stand the thought of being a murderer.
Caged Page 12
