Chapter 18
Life in the cabin quickly took on a routine. Every morning Liam would head out to chop wood. It’s truly amazing how much you need to heat a small space, and it’s especially difficult to keep up with the demand when you’re using an ax as opposed to a heavy duty chainsaw. Sometimes I helped with the chopping, but not for very long. I normally would say anything a boy can do, I can do better, but chopping wood is an exception to that rule. Especially when the boy in question is Liam I-may-actually-be-a-descendant-of-Paul-Bunyan Cole.
On our first day there I discovered an old, tattered edition of The Foxfire Book along with War and Peace and Anna Karenina. I promptly ignored the two giant tomes, despite not having read anything since Liam bought me a Nicholas Sparks book at a gas station outside Milwaukee and I paid him back by reading a few choice selections aloud. However, up against the magnitude and overwhelming literary-ness of War and Peace and Anna Karenina, even Nicholas Sparks sounded appealing.
The Foxfire Book, on the other hand, quickly became my new best friend. My dad’s father had a full set of them on his bookshelf, and always liked to tell me how when my zombies came to overtake the earth I would need to remember where those books were so I could survive. Turns out, I did need the books to survive, although it was the wilds of Canada forcing me to live without modern amenities instead of the living dead.
We didn’t have a gun, which would have made hunting a bit easier, but I made spears out of limbs from the trees Liam chopped down. Pairing my Shifter super-abilities with the hunting tips I got from The Foxfire Book, I was able to kill something one out of every three hunting trips. Then, once again using the book as a guide, I would dress and cook my kill.
The first time I served Liam something he could actually eat I couldn’t stop smiling long enough to eat any myself. My heart hurt from wanting to call Jase, Charlie, and Talley and relay my many accomplishments, including my new mad cooking skills.
Every afternoon, just before the sun disappeared, we trained. I taught Liam martial arts, and he taught me to fight dirty. I taught him how to use a stick like a bokken, and he taught me how to stab someone with a knife. We both ended up bleeding onto the freshly fallen snow more often than not, and loved every single moment of it.
The only time our schedule changed was in December. I was making an impassioned speech about the injustice of using basket weaving as the go-to easy college major in my head while attempting to coax some splints I made into a hamper when Liam came stomping through the forest, a tiny evergreen tree trailing in his wake.
“What on earth are you doing?” It would have made more sense to hack it to bits where he chopped it down and bring it back piece by piece.
The smile stretched across his face made him look all of five years old. “It’s December sixth!”
“Yes, I saw that on the calendar you insist on etching on the wall.”
His boyish enthusiasm wasn’t the least bit marred by my cynicism. “It’s Saint Nicholas Day!”
“Of course. Saint Nicholas Day.” Whatever that was. “You do remember I’m not Canadian, right?”
The temperature had dropped throughout November, and now we looked forward to days where the high was only three ice cubes below freezing. Rarely did we venture outside without the full regalia of hats, scarfs, and gloves, but Liam had shed his ubiquitous Trapper John hat, letting snow crystals decorate his chestnut and copper hair. His teeth were a brilliant white and his eyes almost silver against the redness of his cheeks.
“Saint Nicholas Day is a European thing, not Canadian,” he said, smile still firmly in place. “My family always celebrated by putting up our Christmas tree and getting candy in our shoes.”
Europeans are so weird.
“So, this is our Christmas tree?” It was a small affair, not nearly as filled out as the fake tree my mom put up every year, but I kept my mouth shut out of fear of sounding too much like Peanuts’ Lucy. Not to mention, I would really hate for a dog - or wolf - to show me up by proving how a little love could make even the scrawniest of trees beautiful.
Our normal daily chores were suspended in favor of getting the tree inside and set up. Once it was firmly in place, I couldn’t help myself.
“O come all ye faithful…” I began.
“Joyful and triumphant…”Liam joined in.
We made it through the first three words of the second verse, and then realized we didn’t know any more.
“Liam?”
“Yeah?”
“We could be the two worst singers in the history of the entire world.” I don’t actually know anything about pitch or harmony or any of those things which signify good singing, but even my tone-deaf ears could hear how much of a train-wreck that was.
“Even worse than that girl who was really happy about it being Friday?”
“Yes. Even worse than Rebecca Black.”
Liam sighed. “I guess that means no more Christmas carols then.”
“What are you talking about? We’re going to sing all the freaking time. Did you know no one else lets me sing? Angel says it hurts her ears, and Jase says I throw off his rhythm. But you…” I poked him in the chest. “You can’t sing either. I can’t screw you up any more than you can screw me up.”
Liam’s laugh was rich and deep, and I briefly wondered how anyone who could sound so good laughing managed to sound so awful when he tried to sing. “And we’re out here in the middle of nowhere. No neighborhood dogs to upset.”
“Exactly! We’re going to become a freaking Disney movie, singing about anything and everything!”
And while that may have been a tiny bit of an exaggeration, we did sing every Christmas carol we knew over the next few weeks. We even decorated the tree. I folded soup labels into little stars and fashioned tinsel out of Pop-Tart wrappers. Liam cut a star out of a Cheerios box and stuck it on top. When Christmas finally rolled around it looked…
Well, it still looked like a really crappy tree covered in trash, but it was our really crappy tree covered in trash.
Christmas morning started like every other non-full moon morning. I woke up wrapped around Liam, burrowed into his warmth. That morning I sent up a silent prayer to Baby Jesus that Santa’s gift to me would be getting to spend a few extra minutes enjoying Liam’s body heat and smell without accidentally waking him up. In the end, though, I didn’t risk it. Yes, the cold sucked, but not as much as having to own up to the fact Liam and I snuggled every night.
I snuck out of the bed and tip-toed across the cabin. From behind the cans on the third shelf of the left cabinet I gathered two wrapped packages. Liam started to stir at the crinkling of paper, and I raced across the room and threw them under the tree. Then, I turned around, gathered as much air as possible into my lungs, and yelled with all my might, “It’s Christmas! It’s Christmas! Santa came! It’s Christmas!”
Liam threw the covers over his head, and I giggled. No wonder Angel did this every year. Torturing people with Christmas Cheer is fun.
Well, it would have been fun if I hadn’t broken my own heart by thinking of the little sister I missed more than geeks miss Firefly.
No, I thought to myself. You need this. Liam needs this. You will have a merry little Christmas, and not in the wrist-slitty Judy Garland way.
I wiped the moisture from my eyelashes and dove onto the bed.
“Come on, Sleepyhead! It’s Christmas!”
“Hey,” came a voice from his cocoon. “Could someone maybe tell me what today is?”
“It’s Chhhhrrrrriiiisssssttttmmmmaaassss!” I yelled, pulling back the covers.
Liam’s glower would have been much more impressive without the twinkle in his eye. “You know, a perky Scout is not only wrong, it’s really disturbing.”
“Up and at 'em, Grinchy McGrinch. I was visited last night by the spirits of Christmas Past, Christmas Present, and Buddy the Elf, and now I want keep Christmas in my heart all year long. Wake up so I get a move on it.”
Of cours
e, mentioning being visited by spirits at night nearly made me cry again. I didn’t know where Alex had gone, but I hadn’t seen him since I fell asleep on the bus a million and a half years ago.
God, was Christmas always this depressing?
“Come on.” The words came out sounding more like an actual desperate plea than barely contained excitement. I plastered an overly wide smile on my face to compensate. “It’s time for Christmas breakfast.”
If Liam noticed my slip in enthusiasm, he didn’t show it. “Oh no, we’re not having spaghetti and maple syrup, are we?”
“One, that’s a dinner meal, not breakfast.” I pulled him up into a sitting position, but only because he let me. “And two, we don’t have any maple syrup because I’m living with the only Canadian in the world who doesn’t know how to make it.” I slid off the bed, only slightly wincing at the sharp sting of coldness on my feet. I had two pair of the super-expensive socks on, but that helps very little when you’re in the middle of the frozen tundra with nothing more than a tiny fireplace to keep you warm. “I do have a special breakfast treat for us, though,” I said, digging around in the cabinet, stretching on my tiptoes to reach behind the barrier of cans I constructed two weeks ago. My hand finally touched cardboard and I pulled it out with a flourish. “Pop-Tarts!”
Liam was across the room before I could even pry them open.
“You said we were out,” he accused, jerking the box out of my hand.
“I lied,” I said, grabbing the box back. “I was saving them for today.” They weren’t cinnamon toast, the traditional Christmas breakfast in the Donovan household, but brown sugar cinnamon Pop-Tarts was as close as I was going to get. When I realized we were down to only one box, I put them back so we would have a special Christmas morning treat. I knew Liam would have found it more of a treat if it had been some ridiculous non-breakfast flavor, like chocolate, but a Pop-Tart was a Pop-Tart, and any Pop-Tart was better than our normal breakfast of plain, no sugar or flavor added, oatmeal.
There was a strong chance I would never eat oatmeal or canned food again once I finally made it back to the real world.
And I would not think about how very little time I would have to eat anything before I would have to face off with Sarvarna and her Knife of Doom once we returned to civilization. It was Christmas. We were going to be festive, damn it.
We each ate a package of Pop-Tarts and agreed to split the last one on New Year’s Day. When I couldn’t stand it anymore, I sent Liam to the tree.
“You bought me presents?” Liam never showed much emotion, but over the months I began to pick up on the slightest change in tone and facial expression and was able to decipher the stronger emotion lying beneath each. The slight widening of the eyes and nearly imperceptible twitching on the right corner of his mouth was new, but I knew what it meant all the same. Liam was touched by my big-hearted kindness. I saw the potential for one of those deep bonding moments Sam and Dean have all the time on Supernatural and reacted quickly.
“Yes, Liam. I went to the mall and grabbed you something from The Gap, but I had to order the other one from Amazon.”
The corners of Liam’s eyes crinkled and there were lines down each of his cheeks were he suppressed a grin. I knew this look well. It meant he was laughing at my awesome wit. Sadly, it was a look I saw on the rarest of occasions, so I allowed myself a moment to bask in its glow before bringing the focus back.
“Open them,” I demanded impatiently.
He tried to take his time. I imagine he is one of those people who carefully lift each corner of a wrapped gift, but since I only had empty potato chips bags to work with, it didn’t take long for him to unwind the top.
He spent a long time looking down into the bag.
“Your socks.”
Liam pulled them out of the bag. “I see.”
“No you don’t.” I leaned over and examined the toe of each before flipping one up for his inspection. “This is the one you hooked on that board by the front door. I darned it for you.”
“You darned my sock? You? Scout Donovan?” This time a full grin spread over his face. “Jase would be so proud to hear how domesticated you’ve become.”
“I cook. I clean. I darn socks. I’m a regular June Cleaver.” I clasped my hands together and batted my eyelashes. “Oh, Liam, do you think Santa brought me a vacuum cleaner? And maybe a new washer and dryer?”
Although, in truth, I would have loved a washer and dryer that would magically work in the forest without electricity. Breaking the ice at the creek where we got our water, hauling up a few buckets to the cabin, heating them in the washtub over our outdoor fire pit, and then scrubbing our clothes with one of the millions of bars of Safe Guard we had was the exact opposite of fun and easy.
“Actually,” Liam said, reaching under the bed. “I think Santa might have brought you something useful.”
When Liam pulled my gift out from under the bed I couldn’t stop the single tear that snuck out of my eye and trailed down my cheek. I wasn’t expecting any gifts from Liam, and the ones I wrapped for him - a darned sock and a bag full of nuts I gathered - hardly showed the same thoughtfulness and level of awesomeness as what he handed me.
“You made a bow?” I plucked the string. It was rustic, but it was a bow. A handful of homemade arrows were still clinched in his hand. “How did you know how to do this?”
You can’t see a Cole man’s embarrassment by looking at his cheeks, but if you pay close attention to the back of his neck, it’s obvious. “I just messed around until I figured it out. It doesn’t shoot exactly straight, and there’s a good chance these arrows will just bounce off the side of whatever you’re shooting instead of actually killing it.”
“I’ll never know if it’s the shoddy workmanship or my complete lack of skill.” I took an arrow, nocked it, shot it at the door, and watched it bounce off the wall, a full three feet away from my target. “I love it,” I said, hugging it to my chest.
Since it was Christmas, we didn’t do our normal chores. Instead, we spent the day eating nuts and taking turns with the bow. By nightfall, Liam could get it to stick into a tree, but not the one he was aiming at, and I could hit my target, but couldn’t ever get it to actually stick.
“Our powers combined,” Liam muttered after the third round ended with the exact same results.
That night we ate a stew Liam whipped up from a rabbit I trapped two days ago and some cans of vegetables. It was the best thing we had eaten in weeks, and had plenty left over for the next few days. Once the sun set, we sat around the fire and spouted lines from our favorite Christmas movies and belted out every holiday song known to man, including “Happy Birthday”.
When we finally went to bed, we lay there like we always did in the beginning, back-to-back, pretending the other didn’t exist. But unlike normal, I didn’t almost immediately drift off to sleep. Instead, I waited until I was sure Liam was out before I finally let go. The tears were hot as fire as they streamed down my face, but cooled quickly on my cheeks in the freezing night air. My heart ached for my family and friends. I thought of the celebration at Gramma Hagan’s house and wondered if Charlie was able to be there, or if he was still in the hospital. I wondered if my parents had gone over to Mrs. Matthews last night, as was our tradition, or if her hatred for all things Scout extended to my parents.
I missed the sound of my father’s voice, the smell of my mother’s perfume. I missed Angel’s unbound enthusiasm and the way Jase knew what I was thinking without so much as a look in my direction. I missed my bed and the under-appreciated joy of central heat.
And then, because I was in the mood to feel sorry for myself, I let my mind wander to Christmas night a year ago. It was the night I found out about the secrets Jase and Charlie hid from me, and the night Alex told me the truth about Shifters. But those things paled in my mind to the memory of a kiss beneath the mistletoe.
I don’t know how long I had been crying when the bed creaked as Liam turned over, bu
t when his arm draped over me and pulled me towards him, I let the momentum roll me over, making a conscious decision to turn towards him for the first time. And while he continued to sleep, I let his shirt soak up all my tears until there were simply no more left inside me.
Chapter 19
After Christmas, the weather took a turn for the frigid. Even with our Shifter tolerance and layers upon layers of clothes, most days we couldn’t venture from the fireplace more than thirty minutes before worrying about frost bite. And even if we could tolerate the freezing temperatures, the snow, which engulfed my entire calf in the smallest of drifts, was hard to navigate. Thanks to Liam, we had enough wood to make it a few months, but he still went out when he could to cut more. I think we both realized what our fate would be if the fire ever went out.
My training continued through those cold, dark months, but it was different. We didn’t have room in the cabin to spar, so we focused on strength building and flexibility. We devised different routines for one another, combining our different styles of fighting to create what Liam referred to as the Mutt Method.
The majority of my training, however, wasn’t physical. Liam knew Shifters from all over the world who had suffered loss at the hands of the Alphas, and he told me each of their stories. I heard about beautiful, laughing girls who went missing out of the blue. Girls with devoted parents and amazing talents who suffered sudden, tragic accidents. I even heard about boys like Spence who hadn’t been able to suppress their powers and avoid unwanted attention. The list of sins the Alpha Pack committed was mind-boggling, and not limited to ridding itself of future competition. They eliminated potential threats wherever they saw them, using their absolute rule to cling to the power they abused most aggrievedly.
The point was clear: Horrible, evil crimes had occurred for decades, if not centuries. Justice needed to be served, and that meant killing the Alphas. After weeks of stories, I thought I was ready for it.
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