by Lynn Red
Couldn’t possibly just be love, could it? No of course not, that’s way too normal.
I didn’t want to say what I was about to say, but my will didn’t seem to exist. “Grandpa?”
“Yeah?” he said back. “You look like you’ve seen a—”
Pushing myself off the couch, I steadied my legs for a second and blinked hard. “I need the keys. I gotta go, uh, Damon needs my help.”
I handed him the phone, intending to show him the message, but I guess I brushed the screen at the last second, because he sucked in a breath and said, “You don’t have any idea where this map is leading, do you?”
“Should I? Just some little cave out in the foothill woods, isn’t it?”
A grim look came over his face. “In a way, yes... I don’t know what to do. No, no you couldn’t know, I suppose.” He had the strangest, distant and concerned voice. I’d never seen him get like this before, except when he told me my parents didn’t make it after the crash.
“About what? You’re scaring me, grandpa.”
He cupped his hands around my face, staring straight into my eyes. “I want to keep you from going. I really do, but I won’t.” He shook his head slowly from side to side. “It’s probably nothing. I hope it’s nothing.” He repeated that – I hope it’s nothing – a couple of times, like he was lost in his own head, echoing his thoughts.
It certainly didn’t do anything to ease my worry, that’s for sure. Scared or not, I had to go. I still didn’t know why exactly, sometimes, why doesn’t matter.
“Are you sure you can drive?” he held up a couple of fingers. “How many do you see?”
“Grandpa,” I said softly, “I’m okay. Three. I don’t know what he needs or anything, but maybe he’s hurt and needs me to get him out of that cave. That’s the thing, I just don’t know, but I’m going to do whatever I can to help my friend.”
Absently, fishing them out of his pocket, Grandpa Joe handed me the keys to the Bronco. “He always was the one you liked the best,” he said. “Out of all the boys you dated, he’s the...”
“I’m sorry,” I said, “I gotta go. See you soon?”
Wordlessly, my grandfather nodded, and might have started to say something else in that detached, spaced-out voice, but I was already gone.
*
It’s a good thing the map was easy to remember, because in all the excitement and confusion, I accidentally left my phone with my grandpa. Ten miles north to the foothill woods and then three miles west, I repeated the directions in my mind over and over as I slowly drove along the hardscrabble to the woods, and then turned off, carefully avoiding the sparse trees.
Only a couple miles in, the ash trees were still distant enough from one another that weaving my hulk of a car through them wasn’t much trouble. Eventually though, about a mile from the spot Damon told me to get to, I couldn’t go any further.
When I turned off the ignition, the old warhorse Bronco kind of whined and coughed then shut off with a jerk. Nothing out of the ordinary, though it never failed to churn my stomach a little when it made all the noises and I was out in the middle of nowhere.
All right, one more mile.
Taking a big breath, I turned away from the car and took that first step. I don’t know why but it felt momentous, like I was making some kind of dramatic stride toward fate or, or maybe destiny. Whatever it was, there was a sense of tension and tightness in the back of my mind, the sort I used to only get right before opening an essay exam test booklet.
The second step was easier, and by the third I was jogging. Looking up, I made a note of exactly where the sun was, and stopped for a second to jot a note in the book that I always had with me... except I’d left it in the car.
Briefly I turned back to the old car, but the urgency of Damon’s message, and that one part of it where he said he needed to see me one last time, stuck in my mind like a thorn in the side of my wrist. I didn’t have time. No time to turn back, no time to do anything but go forward in a straight line and hope he wasn’t crazy, or leading me off into some trap or a prank or a joke.
“Lily?”
The voice I heard was weak, almost shattered sounding, but with a certain strength behind it.
“Damon? Is that you?”
I’d lost track of how far I’d come. The cave he had marked loomed in front of me, but there was at least a hundred feet between where it opened and where Damon sat, leaning against a tree. The first thing I noticed about him was the trickle of blood running down the side of his face from a wound I could barely see where it matted his hair.
He shifted his weight and hacked a ragged, syrupy cough that made my skin crawl. “Y – yeah, it’s me. Good to see you again.”
In spite of his obvious agony, he had one of those huge damn grins plastered on his face. “Really, I didn’t think you’d come, but I hoped.”
“Jesus Christ, Damon!” When I got closer, it was easy to see just how much of a mess he actually was. The side of his head was bloody, one of his lips had a big, cherry-red split down the middle, his clothes were torn to shreds – and he was still wearing the same ones I saw him in a week ago – and it looked like someone punched him straight in the eye about forty times.
“Are you, no wait, that’s just about the dumbest question anyone’s ever asked. Of course you’re not okay. What the hell happened to you? How are you still alive after being... Jesus Christ.”
A huge gash opened across his chest, like a claw or a knife tore through his shirt and the flesh underneath.
“I’m fine,” he said, his eyes twinkling and reflecting the sky. “Just fine now that you’re here. How you doing? Things okay at home?”
I just stared at him, my mouth hanging open and going dry. Damon put his hands on the ground and started straining like he was going to get up. “Uh, no you don’t,” I said, gently pushing him back to the ground. “You’ve lost a lot of blood.”
When he crouched again, I followed a tear in his jeans down his huge, muscled thigh to his knee. Something was missing.
“Where’s that cut? That big, gross cut on your knee, what happened to it?”
He shrugged. “First you’re worried then you bring the inquisition back. You said it wasn’t really that bad last time I talked to you. Must’ve healed, I guess.”
I squinted. “Uh yeah, no, Damon, I told you it wasn’t that bad the same way a doctor tells a person who comes in with a piece of rebar through their chest that it isn’t that bad. You had a cut so bad it had flaps Damon! Flaps!”
He put his hands up in an ‘okay, okay’ gesture. Afterward he glanced down at his knee and ran his finger over where the cut was. “I suppose that did vanish a little more quickly than you’d expect.”
“What’s going on here, Damon? This has been the weirdest day and I’m—”
“Why? Tell me. It’s important.” His voice was earnest. That wasn’t a request.
It sent a little chill down me when he talked like that. So forceful and powerful and... memories tugged at the edges of my consciousness, but nothing specific, just weird sensations. “I, uh, I got a call from the New York Times and they want me to write a story about grandpa’s werewolf stories.”
“Oh, great!” He smiled huge. “You’re a great writer, you know.” He was already starting to speak more clearly, and I swear that a cut I saw before was gone. “Anything else?”
“Yeah,” I said. “But, hey wait a minute, what’s going on with that scrape?” I pointed to a place on his elbow that had been bright red and horribly painful looking when I happened upon him, but when I asked, it was shimmering, and by the time I finished, it was gone.
“What else happened, Lily? I have to know. Did you pass out? Or, like faint?”
I scrunched my eyes and put my hands on my hips. “How did you know? Yeah, after I talked to the lady from the Times, I was sitting on the couch and it felt like a—”
“Felt like something hit you in the stomach?” Damon interrupted and finished my senten
ce for me, but it was a sort of a question. “Is that it?”
“I mean, yeah, I guess. I’ve never fainted before so I figured it was normal.”
“No, that’s not normal.” Damon pushed himself to his feet and groaned in pain as he stretched his shoulder. “Not normal at all. I’ve gotta go, there’s someone I have to see.” He brushed past me, like he was going to leave me standing right there in the middle of the damn woods.
“Damon? I think you owe me some kind of explanation. You made me come out here. Sent me the most dramatic text I’ve gotten in, well at least a week or two, and now you’re just leaving me standing here? What is this bullshit?”
“I,” he paused and swallowed. Another of his cuts started shimmering, and then closed right as I was looking at it. “I’m really sorry about all this, but I’m as confused as you are. I keep blacking out, like, since the last time I saw you, I remember two or three hours out of the week. I’ll wake up, I’ll be like... like this, you know? Torn up and hurt.”
His shoulders began to shake with what I could only guess was fear. I closed the distance between him and wrapped my fingers around his wrists. “Let’s get you to town and to a doctor. You shouldn’t be blacking out for no reason, Damon. And how did you know what happened to me with the fainting spell? None of this makes any sense, but I’m pretty sure you aren’t well.”
Damon pushed me back slightly, holding me at arms’ length and staring into my eyes. “There’s something I need to tell you. I know, or, I knew about this, but I guess that I wanted to think it was all... well, that it wasn’t going to happen so soon.”
“What, Damon?” I was getting insistent. “What is it?”
He put a finger to my lips. “If I make you a promise, will you believe me?”
I took a deep breath and let it out through my nose. “Do I have a choice?” That’s the first time I realized my voice was wobbling a little, like I was scared of something. “I just want you to be safe and I want some answers.”
“You already have them,” he said. “You just have to believe what you’ve been thinking about.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
His hands went up my arms, those big hands wrapped around my biceps. God he’s so strong, so huge, how can anyone be this big? He squeezed so hard it hurt, just a little. “I don’t know. I’m sorry, but I don’t know how to explain it. Have you seen Devin?”
“Jesus!” I struggled in his grip, but he held me tight. “What is it with you and Devin? I got a text from Goddamn Caitlyn about him too. Are you two sneaking off in the woods together? I thought you couldn’t stand him.”
He shook his head. “No, no, it’s just that the first time this happened, right before graduation, he was around, I think,” he paused to swallow. “I can’t believe this is happening. Not right now. It’s not supposed to be now.”
“Now what?”
Damon was already turning around. “I’ll be back for you,” he said. “As soon as I know for sure that—”
“Don’t you leave me, Damon!” I shouted at his back.
And then, as he was walking into the mouth of the cave in front of him, Damon fell to the ground, suddenly, like he’d been shot or tripped, but he landed with his hands down, and started running like that, straight into the black hole.
In disbelief, I rubbed my eyes, but then he was just gone without a trace.
A scream, not of anguish or fear, but of pure pissed-off fury boiled up in me, but just as I was about to let it out, I happened to look down and see something glittering in the leaves where I found Damon.
Bending down, I picked it up and turned it around in my fingers, examining my own class ring in the sun.
“Shit,” I swore under my breath.
It was my ring all right, the one I gave him when we were dating.
The one he said he’d lost.
As if my spacy-headed walk back to the Bronco wasn’t bad enough, as soon as I got in and gave the engine its six requisite pumps of gas and it finally turned over, the drive home felt even slower.
And on top of all that, when I finally pulled in to the driveway hoping for a few minutes of quiet before I could sit my grandpa down and ask him a few questions, there was a car sitting out front.
So much for getting started on the story.
“Lily! Why didn’t you ever answer me!” smug, irritating Caitlyn Hodges was sitting in the swing outside the house. In my swing. “Devin’s gone, I haven’t heard from him in a week – ever since graduation – and you’re not talking. What’s going on, Lily?”
Great.
For once, I wished that those dying clicks as the Bronco went to rest lasted a whole lot longer.
“Hey Cat,” I said, trying my best to keep from rolling my eyes too hard. “Why do you think I have any idea where your boyfriend is?”
Six
Damon
“Christ,” Damon swore, standing up for the first time since he went to all fours for a reason he didn’t understand, and ran away from the girl he’d loved for the last two years. He didn’t know why he’d done that, either.
As broken and bloody as he was when he woke up that morning, every single one of his cuts, scrapes, bruises and blisters was gone. His skin was perfect, untouched; his muscles larger than they’d ever been, but not sore even though he just ran about three miles in a bear crawl.
Life for him was up and down, as it can be. Since he and Lily split last year, it had been mostly down. When his parents moved to Fort Branch, they never said why exactly, just that it was closer to “home” whatever that meant. Only weeks after they’d moved and four days after he and Lily first laid eyes on each other, he met the man he was going to see.
At first, he went to the shriveled, ancient man who went only by Poko from time to time, mostly when his father insisted. Slowly, he’d been told about his people, and why he was different from all his friends. Poko became kind of a rock for Damon, in the years when nothing else helped.
He’d come here – to this cave – and hear stories and tales and parables.
But why was he going to see Poko? Why now? The last time he saw the old man with the tight, dry, leathery skin was almost six months ago. And back then, Poko said he’d call when the time was right.
None of it made the first damn bit of sense, but there he was, pulling himself off the ground and plucking little sticks and bits of pine nettle and tiny rocks out of the skin on his knees – skin that not long ago, was cut so deeply it was hanging open.
The ancient man sat in the dark, next to a fire, deep in the belly of a cave that was a whole lot bigger inside than it looked from the outside. Damon made his way through the winding path and followed the orange flicker until he found where he was going. Sitting down, he watched Poko stroke the faded lines tattooed on his cheeks.
“Sit,” he said. “Look at me.”
Wordlessly, Damon did what he was told. He learned the first time he was brought here that questioning Poko was the quickest way to get hit on the back of the head with a board that he’d ever found.
The cave was orange with the fire’s glow. Poko’s membranous, tanned skin pulled tight over his cheeks and around his eyes, but hung loose under his chin. He sat in this cave, and every time Damon had ever come, he’d been waiting for him.
I wonder if he ever leaves? Or eats?
A smile drifted across Poko’s lips, then vanished with the next lick of flame on the rocks near his feet. His eyes remained closed, which made Damon feel at least a little at peace. As much as he looked up to the old man, those eyes, they did things to Damon he didn’t like.
“You’re here about the,” Poko drifted and turned his head to one side, listening to something Damon couldn’t hear. “Ah, yes, that.” He chuckled softly. “That’s why they always come at first. This one is different though. He’ll make it.”
“I—”
“Quiet,” Poko whispered. “I’m listening to wiser souls than mine. If you want to interrupt them, keep on
chattering. Otherwise,” he flattened his palms against the floor of the cave, pushing a bit of straw nearer the fire. “Good.”
Poko turned his head back and forth, leaning each way in time with a rhythm only he could hear.
“You’ve been fighting,” he finally said. “Do you know this?”
“I – what? I don’t remember anything, that’s why I’m here. I think. I don’t know why I’m here actually, I just got the feeling I should be.”
Poko bounced with a dry, rattling laugh. “I remember. Yes, I remember not remembering. Not knowing why I would wake up in one place cut up and bleeding, and go about to different... What?” He asked the air. “This one...? No, no, that can’t be. He’s a cub.”
God I wish this would just stop.
“You’ve been fighting.” That time it wasn’t a question. “You’ve been fighting and even more than that, you’ve been fighting over your mate. You know this?”
“I’ve been what?” Damon’s jaw dropped open. “Fighting who? And my mate? What are you talking about? I came here to find out why I kept blacking out and waking up in places I didn’t remember going and you’re talking about mates?”
“Hush.”
That whispered words clapped Damon’s mouth shut. The old man had the power to close his mouth for him if he chose to keep on, but he never required that level discipline. Not since the first time, anyway, when Poko clapped his mouth shut so quickly he’d bit his lip bloody. He stared in wonder at the living mummy before him.
Poko’s body was weak with age, but he could transcend that without a second thought.
Damon knew what he was for his whole life, but the changes hadn’t started until he turned fifteen and they’d never been this bad. The first time his dad dragged him down into this cave to meet Poko, it was a week before his fifteenth birthday, and the old man told him everything that was about to happen to his body. If not for that, he would have been lost.
“Who is,” Poko turned his head almost all the way around. “What did you say?” Returning his attention to Damon, he said, “What do you know of Devin?”
