Something told Carly her entire life was about to change.
She noticed the speedometer hovering at ninety, and managed, “Gabe, maybe you should slow down.”
He eased his foot off the gas pedal, but otherwise, didn’t acknowledge her.
“What’s out in the woods?” Carly pried. “What’s out in the dark, Gabriel?”
He gripped onto the steering wheel, but said nothing.
“What are you so set on protecting me from?”
Gabe squealed up to Grant Manor and cut the engine. He jumped out of the car, sprinted to the passenger door, and pulled Carly from the SUV. She was too stunned to protest, and, dumbfounded, followed him into her house, down the hall toward the blaring TV in the parlor. Gabe sized up Howard as he exploded into the room.
Howard’s gaze fell to Gabe’s hand in his daughter’s. “Kids? What’s going on?”
“I’m not doing this anymore,” Gabe announced as he let go of Carly’s hand. “I can’t. You have to tell her.”
Howard’s eyes grew wide as he stared up at them.
“Seriously, Mr. Morneau,” Gabe spoke in exasperation. “I’ve done everything you’ve asked. I’ve kept my mouth shut, but I’m not doing it anymore. You have to tell her.”
“Tell me what?” Carly demanded as she wedged herself between them.
Pain was evident on Gabe’s face as he answered, “What you are, Carly.”
“What…? I don’t…”
Gabe leaned down and pointed his finger in Howard’s face. “Are you going to tell her, or should I?”
Howard jumped up from his seat and took a few steps back from Gabe. Was Carly’s dad actually intimidated by a teenager? Either way, he writhed his hands as he slunk back into the corner.
For the first time in her entire life, Carly didn’t trust her own father. “What’s going on?”
“I’ve kept this from you because it was the only way I knew how to protect you,” Howard confessed, shaking his head. “But please believe me when I say that you have nothing to worry about, Carly. Everything’s going to be okay. I can promise you that.”
“Everything’s going to be okay?” Gabe echoed in annoyance, purposefully positioning himself between Carly and her father. “I saw two of them in the woods tonight, Howard, and one of them was bold enough to follow us into town. I understand your wanting to protect Carly, I do, but if you really want to keep her safe, you have to tell her the truth. And you have to do it now.”
Concern filled Howard’s face as it fell. “I… didn’t think it would come to this.”
“What are you talking about?” Carly persisted, grabbing onto Gabe’s shoulder. She spun him around to face her, hoping to finally get the truth. “What followed us into town?”
Gabe’s expression softened as he stared back at her. “They’re called ruskahs, Carly.”
“Ruskahs?” she repeated, trying to wrap her head around the foreign word. “What is that? Some kind of animal or something?”
“Not exactly.”
“Then what the hell is it, Gabriel?”
Gabe’s eyes darted away. “Ruskah is a word from oral tradition—before humans wrote everything down. It refers to a mortal race of supernatural beings. They only come out at night, and they can only be seen by human eyes in moonlight. They’re able to live off animal flesh, but it does nothing to prolong their lives. Their only chance at anything close to immortality is by drinking the fresh blood of a… Well, a shapeshifter.”
The room spun as Carly tried to reconcile his answer. She’d asked for the truth, yes, but had no idea it would be so impossibly fantastical. “A shape—what?”
“A shapeshifter. It’s someone who… by supernatural means… can turn into the form of an animal.”
She understood what he was saying, but didn’t want to believe him. Carly closed her eyes, fighting a wave of nausea as she opened them again. “What are you saying, Gabe? Are you saying I’m…?”
“A shapeshifter?” Gabe finished, glancing back at Howard. “It wasn’t my place to tell you, apparently, but you deserve a straight answer. The truth is, you’re not even a little bit human. Congratulations, Carly, your entire life has been a lie.”
Carly gaped at him as she attempted to reconcile the possibility of such a thing. She didn’t believe in a supernatural world. She didn’t believe she had the power to become something else. And most of all, she didn’t believe her parents could have kept such a secret from her for over sixteen years.
She turned to her father, hoping this was all somehow a sick joke—hoping he would have something else to offer. But his head was buried in his hands, and there were tears streaming down his cheeks. The man who’d shepherded her into the world was falling apart right in front of her—just like he’d done when Mom died.
“Why did you lie to me?” Carly begged.
“I’m so sorry, Carly,” Gabe was quick to apologize. “I’ve hated lying to you—you have no idea how much I’ve hated it—but now I’m telling you the truth.”
“I wasn’t talking to you,” she spat, glaring at her father. “Why did you lie to me, Dad? Why would you keep something like this from me?”
“I’m sorry,” Howard blubbered, weeping into his hands. “I’m so sorry, Carly…”
“I don’t want you to be sorry!” she yelled. “I lost everything, too, you know. When Mom died, I lost everything. And you were keeping this from me the whole time? I don’t know how I’m ever supposed to trust you again.”
Carly allowed her anger to get the best of her and raced for the door. She didn’t know where she’d go, but she couldn’t stay here. She was almost to the hallway when Gabe stopped her, holding her back with unnaturally strong arms.
“I know this is a lot to take in,” Gabe spoke in an even tone. “But you have to believe me, Carly. You have to let me protect you.”
“I can’t believe you,” she contended, struggling in his grasp. How the hell was he so resilient? “I can’t believe any of this this. I just have to get out of—”
And then, in less than a microsecond, Gabe took a step back and morphed from a human into a large, gray and white wolf, right there in her house, as if it were the most casual thing in the entire world. Carly couldn’t calm her racing heart as his pale blue eyes pierced right through her. She had seen him in her dreams night after night, and now here he was, standing before her—a wolf, who also happened to be her best friend.
Just as quickly as he’d changed, Gabe shifted back. Everything about him was the same—same suit, same messy hair, same haunting pale blue eyes. As if none of it had just happened.
“I swear, I’m not going to hurt you, Carly,” Gabe vowed, holding up his hands in surrender. “If it had been up to me, I would have told you the minute you got here. If it had been up to me, I would have told you the minute you were born.”
Carly struggled for her breath as she set her gaze on her father. “You knew all of this when I was born?”
Howard stared at her with watery eyes. “I…”
“You knew all this time, and you didn’t tell me?”
“Your mother and I were trying to protect you,” Howard emphasized. “I know this is a shock, Carly, but Molly and I were both born full blood shapeshifters. As our only daughter, you are also a full blood shapeshifter. You haven’t shifted yet, but it will happen. There’s no escaping it—not when it’s in your bloodline.”
Carly closed her eyes as she took that in. She’d always felt different from the people around her, but she’d never dreamt it was because she was so different. How could she have gone all this time without realizing she was a shapeshifter?
“Because it develops at different times for different people,” Gabe spoke in reply.
“Did you just… read my mind?” Carly asked, popping open her eyes.
“Not exactly.”
“But I thought a question, and you answered it. What exactly was that, Gabe?”
“My hearing is as supernatural as the rest o
f me,” he explained. “If you were upstairs in your room and whispered something, I could hear you. Thoughts work the same way.”
“But how…?”
“It’s not the same with every shifter all the time, but our friendship bonds us. It makes my connection to you stronger, and it makes you easier to hear. Plus, you’re one of us, Carly. We’ve all grown pretty accustomed to hearing one another’s thoughts.”
Carly snickered. “One of you? But I’ve never… changed like you just did.”
“That doesn’t matter. It’s in your blood. It’s a part of you, whether you want it to be or not.”
She tried to compartmentalize that. “And these… ruskahs, they’re after me?”
Gabe tensed. “Yes.”
“Are they after you, too?”
“They know they wouldn’t stand a chance against me. My powers are much too advanced, but you… You’ve never shifted, which makes you vulnerable, and your blood all the more tempting.”
“My blood? You’re saying they want to drink my blood? These… whatever they are?”
“Ruskahs. And yes, they want your blood.”
Carly slinked back into the wall and told herself to breathe. “And what exactly happens if they… get it—my blood?”
“According to legend, if they drink your blood, it’ll prolong their lives by a thousand years,” Gabe answered. “It’s not immortality, but it’s long enough to find another full blood shapeshifter to suck dry. But there’s no way in hell we’ll let that happen, Carly.”
“We?” she repeated, glancing from Howard to Gabe. “Are there more of you? More shapeshifters?”
Gabe looked relieved for some reason. “Yes, there are more of us.”
“Abel?” she guessed. Surely, his cockiness came from somewhere. “Is he one of you?”
“Yes.”
“And Esther?”
“Yes.”
“Crystal?”
“Yes,” Gabe confirmed. “Plus Jeremy, Kyle and Sharla. All seven of us.”
Carly was piecing it together now. “When you said it was just the seven of you no matter what, you meant…?”
“I meant all of us are shifters, and we all stick together. There are other shifter communities in the world, or so we hear, but we’re the only one in the States. We protect our own, and that means you, Carly.”
“But if there are so many of you already, why would the ruskahs want me? Don’t they have plenty of other options?”
“They want a full blood shapeshifter.”
“Well, I’m not the only one, am I?” she spat.
“You’re not,” Gabe confirmed. “There is one more full blood in the group.”
“Well, who is it? We have to tell them they’re in danger.”
“You’re looking at him, and I have been explicitly warned time and again about possible threats to our kind.”
“So you knew these things were coming for me?” Carly challenged.
Gabe glared at Howard. “We’re past that now.”
“We didn’t know for sure,” Howard pleaded.
“I knew,” Gabe insisted, looking back to Carly. “There’s something you need to understand about shifters—youth and raw power have a direct correlation. So while your father’s a full blood shifter, as he loves to remind me, he knows deep down he can’t protect you like I can. He knows deep down his power diminished the moment he created an heir. I sensed something ominous long before you got here, Carly, and I tried to warn Howard—I tried to make him understand how important it is that you find your power. But he decided to control the narrative, and now here we are. I know it might not make any sense right now, but I’m your best protection against the ruskahs until you can shift and fight them yourself.”
She snickered. “And what if I can’t? What if I never become like you?”
“You’re already like me, Carly, and it’s not the shifting you have to concern yourself with. That’ll happen when it happens. It’s the changing back into a human part that’s going to be the problem. Especially your first time.”
“It’ll happen when it happens,” Carly mocked as her new reality started to settle in. She looked to her broken pile of a father and shook her head. “When were you going to tell me? Were you ever going to tell me?”
“I… was only doing what I thought was best,” Howard said.
“Your best was lying to your only child her entire life? Sorry if I’m not in the mood to elect you father of the year.” With that, she ran past him into the hallway, ignoring Howard’s pleas as she hurried upstairs to her room.
She packed a few things in her messenger bag and slung it over her shoulder. She didn’t realize Gabe had followed until she walked right into him on her way out the door. “What are you doing in here?”
“Carly, what are you doing?” he asked.
“I can’t stay here. Not with him. Not tonight.”
“Where are you going to go?”
“I don’t know,” she groaned. “But I need space—from him, and from you.”
“I’m sorry, but I can’t let that happen,” Gabe informed her. “Your dad’s scared, and that’s why he kept this from you. I know you’re upset—”
“You both lied, Gabe. You were supposed to be my best friend, and you still lied. I don’t want anything to do with either of you right now.”
“Even so, I’m not going to just let you run off by yourself.”
“Then take me back to the dance,” Carly suggested. “I can find someone else to babysit me for the night. I’m guessing Abel will be up for the job.”
Disappointment crossed Gabe’s face, but just for a moment. “If that’s what you want, Carly.”
“It’s what I want,” she assured him, and stormed down the staircase.
Howard was waiting in the foyer and looked like he had right after Carly’s mother had died—like he was falling apart. Carly had been the one who’d helped him grieve then, but she wasn’t up for it now.
“Carly, please,” Howard pleaded. “If you’ll just let me explain—”
“There’s nothing more to explain,” she interrupted. “You lied, my life’s in danger, and I have no control over anything anymore.”
“Carly—”
“I’ll be back when I’ve cooled off. I need time, Dad.” It wasn’t a request, and she didn’t wait for permission before sprinting out to the Jeep. Gabe snuck in the passenger seat, and though it didn’t escape her that he’d lied, too, she felt better with him close. She stomped on the gas, speeding back into town. “Are the ruskahs out there? Can you see them?”
“They’re not close—not right now,” Gabe affirmed. “But they’re out there.”
“How long will they chase after me?”
“Either until you shift and become strong enough to overpower them, or until they kill you.”
A chill raced over her. The hardest thing she’d faced in her life had been the death of her mother, but now, she was staring down her own mortality—and the view was terrifying. “If they… caught me, how long would I have? I mean, before they killed me?”
Gabe huffed out a sigh. “Carly.”
“I want to know, Gabe. I deserve to know.”
“I can’t say for sure,” he admitted. “But according to legend, not very long.”
Carly concentrated on the road ahead, contemplating what death would be like.
“Don’t,” Gabe pleaded. “Please.”
“Don’t what?”
“You’re not going to die, Carly.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Yes, I do,” he said. “Because I’d give my own life before I ever let anyone or anything take yours.”
ten
There was some stupid hip hop song blaring as Carly made her way through the Homecoming crowd gathered in the Sterling High gym. She marched right up to Crystal and tore her out of Abel’s arms. “I don’t mean to interrupt, but it’s an emergency. Can I stay at your house tonight?”
Crystal looked
from Carly, to Gabe. “Where have you two been? Oh my God, were you guys finally—?”
“We weren’t doing anything,” Carly informed her. “You said before that I could stay at your house. Is that still an option?”
“Yeah, Sharla and Esther are staying the night, too. We’ll all head over there after the dance.”
“Could we maybe head over there right now? I can drive.”
“What’s going on?” Abel questioned, shooting Gabe a stern look.
“What’s going on is that I know,” Carly answered.
“You know…?”
“I know what I am, Abel. And I know what you are, too. I know what Gabe and my father have been lying about. I know everything, and I’m really pissed, and I just want to get out of here. Please.”
“Oh, Carly,” Crystal gasped, throwing an arm around her shoulders. “I’m so sorry we had to lie to you. If there’s anything I can do to help—”
“Can you get me out of here?” Carly asked.
Crystal started toward the exit. “Abel, tell everyone to meet at my house.”
Carly tried not to think about what was in the woods as they walked back out to her Jeep. She fell into the driver’s seat, waiting for Crystal to climb in next to her. She didn’t notice Gabe in the back until she’d started the ignition.
Carly whipped her head around to glare at him. “I don’t need you anymore.”
Gabe leaned back in the seat, making himself comfortable. “I’m making sure you get to Crys’s safe and sound, and there’s nothing you can do about it.”
Carly rolled her eyes and put the Jeep in gear. It hadn’t been Gabe’s idea to lie, but he’d still gone along with it. He’d still kept this from his supposed best friend. Which was why, when Carly made it to Crys’s front porch, she turned to Gabe and announced, “I don’t give a crap what you do with yourself tonight, but you’re not coming inside with us.”
Legacy: Bloodline Book 1 Page 10
