by S. L. Naeole
“L-iam,” I gasped.
He was standing right there, just three feet away from me looking embarrassed. “Hey,” he said softly.
How long had he been standing there?
“Were you following me?”
He blinked, and threw his hands into his pockets. For a second, his head shook, but then his eyes found mine and we were locked. He opened his mouth. “Yes.”
I was very close to drowning. “Why?”
“Because I was worried about you.”
Like a broken record, I asked him why again.
He moved closer. “I care about you.”
His words were so clear, even though his voice was softer, and it took a while for me to finally speak, even if it was just two words. “You do?”
He stepped even closer. “I do.”
And like an idiot, my brain shut off and my mouth stayed on. “I care about you, too.”
He smiled. It was the first time I’d ever seen him smile because of something I said. “You shouldn’t.”
It was my turn to smile. “I know.”
We started walking again, each of us too nervous to start talking to each other. We’d never had an actual conversation, and I was pretty sure that he was wondering the same thing I was: how the hell did you start a regular conversation with someone you’d only ever argued with?
Then he laughed. He laughed and he laughed, and I looked at him and understood. I laughed, too. We’d fought every step of the way to this point and now didn’t know what the hell to do, so we laughed. It felt good. Weird, but good.
“Can I…can I kiss you?”
Stunned, I stopped walking again. “What?”
It was happening again. He had my face in his hands, and he was looking down at me, his mouth so close I could feel the heat of his breath on my skin and everything in my head was growing foggy.
“Why?” Yes…that’s good. Answer a question with a question. That’ll give me enough time to clear my head.
“Because I didn’t ask the last time,” he answered quickly.
Well that sucked.
“No.”
And my answer sucked even more. His hands dropped away and we started walking again. In just a span of a few minutes, I’d completely destroyed the small bit of progress we’d made with one, two-letter word and he didn’t seem to mind. He didn’t ask why I said no. He just…kept pace. Obviously he wanted me to say no. He’d only asked to see what I’d say.
Well, two could play at this game.
I stopped and grabbed him.
“Fallon, wha-”
My hands were holding onto his head, my thumbs resting against his cheeks. I felt his scar, felt how cold it was compared to the rest of his face. His eyes were wide with deepening colors that shifted with each breath; I just couldn’t tell if it was each of mine or his own. I’d meant to be rough, like he had been. I’d meant to be unfeeling.
But I paused. And then I sighed. And then…
I kissed him. His mouth was still hard. And his lips were still hot. But there was nothing angry about this kiss. There was nothing there but heat. And hands. I felt him pull me into him; it would have taken an act of God to keep me from letting him. His hands were at my back, my neck, my face. His breath was swift and hot against the top of my mouth, and all I knew, all I felt was this overwhelming need to be closer to him.
He tasted like salt. He smelled like the ocean. I couldn’t get enough of it. My fingers moved through his hair and I pulled at him. I pressed my mouth against his even harder than he had. It was a weird desperation that made me do it, but deep inside of me I felt a little scared that the minute we broke apart, everything would go back to the way it was.
Maybe he felt the same way. It almost felt like we were trying to climb inside each other, the both of us fighting to stay in the moment because the world that was waiting just outside of our closed lids and our fused mouths wasn’t going to want us to be together as much as we did. And we did. He moaned, and that sound told me everything.
And when he bit my lip, and his hand grazed against my throat…I didn’t care about the pain.
But then it was over. We broke apart at the same time, him for his own reasons, and me because I was starting to get scared at what was happening between us. One minute we were at each other’s throats and now we were making out in front of – I looked around and gasped – everyone. We’d stopped in front of the Wisteria. Jameson, Sparky, Brenda, and even Audrey were standing out front. I didn’t know what they’d been talking about. All I saw were their expressions.
I straightened up, brushed my hands through my hair, and pulled my shirt down a little. I looked at his friends and then at him. “There, now we’re even.”
He grinned, the lopsided pull of his smile filling me up with an incredible sense of warmth. “We are, huh?”
I looked at him, prepared to nod, when I saw a flash of silver approach. Screams erupted all around me as people began running. My neck began to throb and my heart began to fly in my chest as a large, silver cat charged toward me. I saw pale green eyes in its silver head before I reacted.
My arms wrapped around Liam and I pulled, the two of us falling down and rolling, me over him, him over me, the softness of each other meeting with the hard reality of the wooden walkway beneath us. I held Liam against me as my back crashed into something hard and metal. I heard tires screeching, and more screams further away. The cat was moving down the main road.
Liam was breathing quickly, his body vibrating strangely. His eyes had grown large, his eyebrows looking thicker and blacker than they normally were. I realized that I was breathing rapidly, too, and closed my eyes and tried to calm myself.
I was pulled to my feet, my back dusted off, my hands pressed against my chest as this time, I was engulfed in two strong arms. The activity around us was like a buzz in my ears as I took in the frantic breathing that might have been mine, or maybe it was his.
“I’m not gonna let anything happen to you,” Liam vowed.
“Good,” I said, shaking. “I’m tired of saving people’s lives; especially my own.”
EPILOGUE
LIAM
The rest of the summer was quiet. The trogs, instead of being scared and canceling their reservations, were excited by the danger of a wild cat on the island. The stories they told as they sat and ate at Grans’ were all ridiculous and exaggerated.
The cat was twelve feet long. It stood ten feet tall. It was white. It was black. It had fangs like a saber-tooth tiger. It had stripes. It had spots. Some even said it had had a saddle.
A news crew from the mainland had arrived and interviewed the trogs and some of us, too. Sparky and Shay both gave contradicting descriptions, while Brenda said she hadn’t seen anything at all. Jameson flirted with the reporter before telling her that the cat was really an alien who came to the rock for vacation. The reporter went missing two days later.
Fallon had to go back to Dr. Phan’s to get her wounds patched up again; she’d popped all her stitches when she’d grabbed me and didn’t want her parents to find out.
“They’ll freak,” she said when I told her it was better if she called them and let them know what had happened.
“They’re gonna find out. This is a small island and the people here have big mouths.”
She shook her head stubbornly. “My mom’s probably already planning to ground me until I’m old enough to vote just for leaving the house. I don’t want her anywhere near me when someone’s putting a needle through my neck.”
Dr. Phan was just finishing up putting the bandage over the fresh stitches when Mr. and Mrs. Timmons arrived. I didn’t even have time to breathe a hello before I was thrown out of the clinic and onto my ass.
“Vangie and I gave you a chance because of your mom. We both wanted to believe that you could see Fallon as something to protect, but you couldn’t even last twenty-four hours.”
“It wasn’t me,” I insisted as I scrambled back to my feet.
&
nbsp; “No, but you know who it was, don’t you?”
If I could’ve answered yes, I would have. But what was clear to me and everyone who was there was that no one knew who the cat was. There wasn’t anyone on the rock who had silver fur. Shay and Sparky might’ve had silver hair, but their fur grew dark when they changed, turning an almost charcoal gray when they were at their best.
Mr. Timmons didn’t want to hear that I didn’t know anything. He probably didn’t even want to hear me speak. I looked at Fallon through the glass. She waved, helpless, as her mother stood beside her like a bodyguard. I waved back before my view of her was blocked by her dad.
The reaction I got when Dad came home was nearly ten times worse, but only because he’d heard about the kiss.
“Are you trying to kill us off?” he’d roared at me while Audrey was taking her shower.
“How would kissing Fallon Timmons do that?”
Dad kicked the chair that was beside him, splintering it and sending it flying against the door. “Are you that dumb? Are you that stupid that you don’t see what happens when you screw around with humans?”
“It was just a kiss. I’m not screwing her! But jeez, even if I was, that’s not gonna kill us off. Mom screwing around sure as hell didn’t,” I blurted.
It was a dumb thing to say. I knew it before my father’s fist hit the side of my head, but feeling that pain, hearing my teeth knock together, and tasting blood in my mouth after biting into the side of my cheek pretty much confirmed it.
“You son-of-a-bitch. You think that what happened hasn’t damaged us? We are a dying breed, Liam. Only half of the girls born here are able to have children. Your mom refused to have any more children after Audrey and Audrey can’t have any kids-”
I had to cut him off. The way he was talking about Audrey like she was some kind of brood mare…I couldn’t let him finish. “We don’t know if she can or can’t. She hasn’t told anyone yet and she doesn’t care either. And Mom didn’t not want to have any more kids; she just didn’t want to have anymore with you.”
I left the house before Dad could say anything else – or do anything else. When I came home the next day, Dad was gone, but he’d left a note on my door telling me to meet him at the boat. I should’ve ignored it; the minute I arrived on the boat, Dad put me to work.
We spent a week on the boat doing repairs. The deck needed to be patched, the hull needed scraping and painting, and the engine needed an entire overhaul. When we couldn’t figure out what was wrong with it, I suggested we get Fallon to help. Part of me did it because I wanted Dad to see that she wasn’t a threat, but the other part of me did it because I wanted to see her.
But, Dad wasn’t interested in having Fallon anywhere near me. Instead, her mom showed up. She and Dad had their heads together as they worked, their voices low as they talked about the boat, about the rock, and about us.
I knew that they both hated the idea of Fallon and me being together, but what I didn’t know was how much. After Mrs. Timmons left, Dad told me we were heading out for a week. He wanted to lay the nets as well as some lobster pods to see how they were doing.
When we got back, Fallon and her mom were gone. Audrey said they’d flown to California to settle the sale of the house there. It was during that time that I had to deal with the questions from Jameson and the others about her.
“Look, I get that you like her, but come on, man. You don’t date your dinner.”
The nods of agreement to Jameson’s comment told me better than anything that my feelings weren’t gonna be considered. If we were gonna be accepted as a couple, it would have to be because she was important to all of us.
Audrey was the key to making that argument and she knew it. “I don’t care what you think we should or shouldn’t do. I care about Fallon. She’s my friend, and she’s my friend because she wants to be my friend, not because I’m her friend’s kid sister.”
“Aud, I-”
“Shut-up, Jameson. You guys are hypocrites, you know that? You don’t like Fallon because she’s different from us, because she’s food. But then you go and draw the line right down the middle between our own: breeder and breather. You’re still waiting too, aren’t you? To find out which side of the line I’m gonna stand on? To find out whether or not I can get pregnant?”
Jameson watched Audrey, nodding his head slowly.
“Well, too bad. I don’t care what I am. I stopped caring because of Fallon and I’m not gonna let it rule my life the way it has everyone else.”
Sparky and Shay had been there, as well as Lola. The silver-haired siblings shrugged, but Lola’s head bounced in agreement. “I worried about it a lot, too.”
Shay looked up in surprise. “But your test came positive.”
Lola’s mouth thinned, and her eyes darted away. “No. I lied.”
“Why?” Sparky and Audrey both asked at the same time while Jameson looked at Lola in surprise.
“Because I didn’t want people to look at me all weird and crap…the way we looked at Audrey,” she said honestly.
That conversation didn’t exactly end in acceptance of me and Fallon being together, but Audrey told me later that when she and Fallon had breakfast at Kimble’s after Fallon had come back from California, Lola actually said “hi” first. It was better than nothing.
But there were days when I worried about whether or not Fallon and I being together really was such a good idea. I kept hearing the arguments in my head against it coming from every side. Dad’s voice, Jameson’s, Fallon’s parents…even Brenda’s voice all battled to rule my thoughts. But none of them were as loud or as real as the memory of Fallon’s warm blood on my lips and the tangy sweetness of it on my tongue.
Nothing else could remind me more than that of just how different we were, or how dangerous that difference was. I hadn’t hunted in almost three months, and the hunger was starting to burn. Audrey said she didn’t understand why I was having such a hard time when she wasn’t, but then again she couldn’t have.
Not when Grans was secretly feeding her human meat in her fish sausage; something I’d learned one day when Dad and Mrs. Timmons were discussing rebuilding the engine on the boat before the winter storms came in.
So I suffered alone, unable to talk to anyone about the roaring hunger within me. Twice, I thought about speaking to Fallon’s parents, but both times I chickened out. Fallon’s dad had made it pretty clear to me that he didn’t want me near his daughter anymore, and her mom had tattooed it into my brain.
Which I guess should’ve made things easier for me, but even as the desire to feed grew, the need to see Fallon and be with her was greater. When she was gone, I imagined her everywhere. When she’d returned, and her parents hovered over her like the cub she was, I’d get Audrey to give her messages for me, little notes that said stupid things like how my hands hurt from scraping barnacles off the boat, or how I missed arguing with her.
She’d write back, and Audrey would sit in her chair, watching me as I’d read Fallon’s responses, waiting for my next message. When I asked her to meet me at the maze, I felt more excited than I had in a long time.
And when she met me, after getting lost and calling out to me, following the sound of my voice until she reached the tiny beach, I…I don’t know. It felt so strange and fantastic, and all she did was smile at me.
That was the first time we’d actually talked. We didn’t have long but I learned what her favorite color was – green – and her favorite movie – Cry Baby – and most importantly, I learned her middle name.
“Wow,” I’d told her sympathetically. “That’s rough.”
“You’re only the second person in the world besides my parents who knows. Well…except for that lady at the mall, but she doesn’t count since all she saw were dollar signs. I don’t know why I told you, but now you can’t tell anyone else or I’ll have to kill you,” she’d said half-jokingly.
She kissed me – a quick puff of lips against mine – and then she was gone.
That had been two days ago. School would start in one. My last note to her told her that I was looking forward to seeing her on the ferry. She’d written back that she would hold my hand and that I’d better not be embarrassed.
It was easy to read those notes and smile, thinking about how easy it all seemed. But always, always, I had to remember that it wasn’t easy at all. It was actually really freaking hard. Tomorrow I’d be surrounded by humans, and for the first time in my life, I wouldn’t be looking at them like a hunter. I wouldn’t be looking at them as nothing but walking trays of meat. It wouldn’t be their blood I was imagining warming my throat or their flesh I was fantasizing burying my teeth into.
I’d already caught my prey.
The hard part was trying not to kill her.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
A big mahalo to Pauline who helped pretty up the words, to the readers who helped half the story come to life, and to the fans who support me as I give birth to these fantastic characters. I’m a blessed person indeed to have such talented and awesome people aboard this journey.
More books from S.L. Naeole
Falling From Grace (Grace Series #1)
Bird Song (Grace Series #2)
Black Halo (Grace Series #3)
Grace of Day (Grace Series #4)
Gossamer (Faeble Novel #1)
