Lallo listened quietly, having taken to Damien for some unknown reason, and was pressed against him. He looked at Damien as if he were watching the story materialize in front of Damien’s lips. Dee, on the other hand, would squirm and shout and act out scenes, making slashing motion in the air at the action, demanding higher-pitched voices for the characters, and laughing herself silly in a way that was so contagious that Damien would have to stop sometimes to laugh along.
He wasn’t aware of how much time had passed until he looked up and saw that more of the family had come down. He tensed, looking around warily. Hakan was sitting on the couch, seemingly engrossed in something on his phone as Koko watched TV beside him. There were more voices and laughter coming from the kitchen, but Damien focused his attention on Nadie, who was walking towards him with one of her patented smiles.
“Wanna stay for dinner? We’re making fajitas,” she offered.
“Yes,” replied Lallo for him, whilst Dee screamed “Fajitas!” and shot across the room and into the kitchen. Damien tried to sit up in a series of undignified movements, each one dipping him further into the beanbag as Lallo latched onto his wrist.
“Um, the McKenzies…” Damien started.
“Stay, loser!” Koko interrupted, getting up from the couch and yanking him from both Lallo and the beanbag. “Nobody else appreciates my figurines,” Koko muttered. Lallo crawled out of the beanbag, following his sister into the kitchen as if story time hadn’t happened.
“Dolls,” Hakan smirked automatically, causing Koko to glare at him.
“They’re figurines! See what I mean?” Koko asked Damien imperiously. Damien smiled slightly, but the prospect of dinner hung over his head. He didn’t want to push his luck with the McKenzies.
“I, um, that sounds nice but, like, the McKenzies…” he mumbled. Nadie put a hand on his arm and Damien realized how touchy-feely they all were. Damien didn’t think he’d had this much human contact in…longer than he wanted to even think about.
“Mom has their number now, don’t worry. We’ll call, okay? Dad said he’d drive you back,” Nadie assured. Damien bit his lip but nodded, making Nadie’s smile return. “Cool,” she said, ruffling his hair for a moment before walking away.
Damien glared automatically, trying to flatten his brown hair.
“Urgh, she’s always like that. Come on, let’s go to my room. I don’t normally let people in there but, like, you smell like pack so bad, dude,” she said in a way that obviously sounded completely normal to her, but insane to Damien.
“I smell? Like what?” Damien said, trying to sniff his arm. Koko rolled her eyes.
“It’s good! I don’t know, it kinda…I don’t know. Fits? I don’t know just, stop talking. Let’s go,” she ordered, leaving Damien little option but to follow.
Damien hadn’t known what to expect when arriving at the Salgados’, but this certainly wasn’t it.
To Damien’s amazement and trepidation, the McKenzies agreed to allow Damien to stay for dinner. It was hard to remain drawn into himself, however, in the face of Koko’s powerful personality. Koko’s version of friendly and welcoming was a lot more abrasive than the norm, but Damien could barely reconcile the Koko that chatted excitedly with him about her figurines to the one that seemed to resent every moment of Damien’s presence in her home a few hours ago. Damien suspected that it was a rare sight to witness an outsider in the Salgado household. He felt warm that he was allowed the privilege even though he hadn’t earned it—had won it on a wrong-time, wrong-place mistake. It was nice to pretend, however.
Damien wondered if he smelt like pack because he didn’t have one of his own.
*****
Dinner was an intimidating and overwhelming affair.
As soon as they were called downstairs to eat, Damien was introduced to Cameron, Koko’s dad. He looked even bigger in person, more like a bear than a wolf. His animated face shone a welcoming smile at Damien which almost had him freezing in place.
Damien nodded dumbly as Cameron apologized for not meeting him sooner, having spent the full moon with a neighbouring pack. As they sat down at the table, he went into an abrupt but riveting monologue about the eggplant and its seeming enemy, the flea beetle.
Damien was seated in between Koko and Hakan, the latter of which stood out in how much he didn’t stand out. Whilst the rest of his family exuded, Hakan seemed to absorb, a still piece of land amidst a sea storm. Though he seemed used to the chaos and the noise, Damien wondered if Hakan ever felt overshadowed by the vast power of his family’s energy.
People started grabbing food as soon as it was all set on the table in a strange synchronicity that was entropic to Damien but had obvious rhythm and order for the Salgados.
Damien served himself tentatively only when Hakan nudged one of the serving dishes at him with a raised eyebrow. The food was delicious, although disproportionate in the amount of meat there seemed to be. There was only one large plate of mixed vegetables and another of salad, compared to the three massive dishes of different kinds of meat, each cooked with their own delicious and complimentary set of spices.
“Do you guys need to eat more meat than humans?” Damien wondered out loud, tensing a moment later. He had no idea if the whole werewolf thing was supposed to be an unspoken subject or if was rude to pry. Mia didn’t seem fazed, however, smiling at Damien.
“Yeah, we need more iron,” she replied, looking at Koko with exasperated fondness as she tried and failed to close her fajita around the mountain of meat and sauces she had piled into the wrap. “Some more than others,” she added dryly. Damien nodded, but the answer had only made him more curious.
“Why do you need more iron?” he asked.
“Well, we need to eat more of everything in general, but our abilities mean a quicker use of oxygen. Iron’s main role is to help oxygen move around the body, so we need more of that as well,” Mia explained.
“I didn’t know that,” Hakan said.
“Well, most humans don’t know exactly how their bodies work either, so…” Koko said.
“So…what are your abilities?” Damien hedged. There was a moment of silence, and he knew instantly he’d crossed a line. “You don’t have to—I mean, obviously you don’t have to tell me anything, I was just won—”
“No, Damien, it’s okay,” Mia said. She shared a look with Cameron before smiling at Damien. “We’re not used to having people outside the pack know about us, that’s all. To answer your question, our abilities compared to humans are varied. We have enhanced strength and a quicker rate of healing, although these things vary with the person’s level of fitness. We also have enhanced senses, such as hearing and smell. We see better in the dark and are more perceptive to small movements,” Mia explained. Damien sat there a moment, processing.
“Are your senses affected negatively? Like…wolves don’t see as good in colour, so…”
“No. If you think in terms of evolution, it wouldn’t make sense to have lost qualities that are useful, regardless of if they are typically found in humans or in wolves.”
“Oh, yeah. That makes a lot of sense. And you can shift into wolves, right? Can you like…semi-shift?”
“Yes. We call the shift you saw the ‘full-moon shift’. We can also change some of our features, such as claws and fangs, which is our ‘half-moon shift’. It doesn’t mean these shifts are only possible on these moons. Generally, shifts are easier the closer to the full moon you are, and a full-moon shift takes a lot more energy, so some people can only do it when it’s very close, or the night of, the full moon.”
“Oh, wow. And you’re all a…pack?”
“Yes. We are tied to each other with a pack bond. Us, here, is our main pack, but we belong to the wider Salgado pack.”
“And do you have like…a leader? An alpha?”
“Yes—though we don’t call them alphas,” Mia laughed. “I’m the leader of the pack. The Kephalē.”
“Kephalē…”
“Y
es. It’s a word with an interesting history. It means ‘head’ in Greek, but has been translated in some texts as ‘leader’. Linguists dispute this, however, saying that it only means head, as in the head on your shoulders. I like that better, somehow…sort of takes away from the oppressive thinking of hierarchy…but anyway.”
“Wow. You must be, like…how is the Kephalē decided?”
“It has to do with the quality of your Ousía—your spirit. Your essence,” Mia explained. Damien’s head spun with questions.
“Were you…born werewolves?”
“Except Cameron,” Mia said. Damien looked at the man in question, who smiled.
“You were…bitten?” Damien asked. Koko snorted as Hakan shook his head. Damien blushed.
“No. I can see why you would think that, but that’s all Hollywood. Being a shifter—a werewolf—is not infectious. It is not a disease or a curse. It is simply a quality of your Ousía. Most shifters are born, but a very few have conductive enough Ousía to be ritualized into being a shifter.”
“Conductive Ousía?”
“Yes. Although maybe we should save that for another day,” Mia said kindly. Damien nodded immediately, despite having millions of questions vibrating in his stomach and chest.
“This is so cool,” he couldn’t help but say.
A million times he had wished for an adventure. A million times he had read a fantasy book and asked the universe to take him there. He would bargain with it, tell it he knew it would be difficult, that it would be a trial, but that he could take it. Damien had never had good luck in anything. But this? This was the best thing that had ever happened to him.
Cameron boomed a laugh at Damien’s enthusiasm.
“I felt exactly like that when I first found out. Quite a shock, let me tell you. You’re handling it a lot better than me.”
“Well, it’s just so cool! I mean…werewolves? I never would have…although I totally understand why it would be kept a secret. People can be pretty…scary,” Damien said.
For the first time during the dinner, Hakan turned towards him with focus.
“Shouldn’t you be saying that about werewolves? You’ve just been told we’re faster and stronger than you. That our senses are enhanced. Shouldn’t you be a little worried?” he asked, more curiously than unkindly. Damien frowned, thinking back to the first night with Mia. How she too had been surprised at his lack of fear.
“It doesn’t work like that. Just ’cause you can hurt someone doesn’t mean you’re more likely to do it. People’ll find ways to hurt others if they want to. Not having super strength and speed isn’t gonna stop them, and having super strength and speed isn’t gonna cause it. Your mom said that being a werewolf isn’t a curse, or a disease. It doesn’t affect your…soul. Your morals. That’s what decides if you hurt someone. So…yeah. No. You’re not that scary,” Damien said.
Hakan looked at him. The moment stretched and then, suddenly, the clouds parted. Hakan smiled.
Damien’s responding smile felt like a victory.
“Wait…are people angry that I know? Like, the rest of the pack?” Damien asked as the question suddenly popped into his head. The silence that followed was a beat too long. Damien’s stomach sank.
“No,” Cameron said. “Not angry. A little afraid, perhaps. But we have faith in our Kephalē. She sees something in you.”
Damien looked at Mia. Her dark eyes were bright.
“See what?” he asked. She smiled.
“You,” she said simply. Damien frowned, but there was no way to argue against that.
If that was the reason why Damien was allowed in the Salgado house, it wouldn’t hold up for long.
**********
Here is a dream.
You are in the forest. It is dark and it is cold and you do not belong here.
It appears to you like this.
First, there is the smell. A putrid thing inside your nose, that curl of your stomach and clenching of your throat that tells you, something isn’t right. Something inside you is rotting and you can’t stop it. Something is dead inside you and there’s nothing you can do. It bloats before it decays and the soil inside you turns acidic with its waste, with the scent you can’t escape.
Then, there is the taste. A thick paste that rises, choking your throat, coating the back of your tongue. You crouch on the loam and your starving mouth, where spit and bile collect, cannot help but eat from the rotting flesh, the juices staining a pomegranate shape across your neck. It is bitter, bitter. You are always starving. You are always discontent.
You hear it, then. It is a noise that has been around for millennia, that all creatures know: the call of pain, of sorrow, of loss. It rips from the inside out, like the edge of a knife carving raw tendons, like a shard of glass shredding your gums. It’s the slow, thin slicing of your tongue, like a torch held, unflinching, against the tender skin of your underbelly.
And, God, the feel, the feel of it, you wish it were actually pain. You wish it were something, something you could hold onto, that would tell you—I’m real, please, I’m here—but there’s nothing. Every day there is a little less, every day you are more of nothing.
And when you see it, there in the forest air, that shredded emptiness, the darkness that has no exit, that only goes down, down, down, you—
**********
The following months were strange. Most of the time, Damien felt like he was being dragged by a current too strong to fight, across the chiaroscuro landscape of the Salgados and the McKenzies, each with a will much stronger than his own.
In school, everything was more or less as it had always been. The Salgados wouldn’t talk to him there. Nadie and Hakan were both too old to have orbits close to Damien, and Koko was occupied with her own unwelcoming group of friends. Koko talked to him a few times, but Damien saw how her friends looked at her when she did.
There was no way Damien was infecting her with the toxicity of his reputation.
At the Salgado house, however, it was like a window to a different dimension.
Damien would be invited over once a week. It would always be during the school week and never for a sleepover. The McKenzies allowed it for unknown reasons, although if Damien had to guess he would say it probably had something to do with Nicola, the social worker.
His visits to the Salgados’ would pretty much always go the same way.
Damien would start the afternoon doing homework in the kitchen with Koko, periodically getting distracted by one of the twins or by Koko herself. Mia never got angry, all her admonishments sounding soft and teasing compared to the McKenzies’.
Koko was a little temperamental, easily swinging from annoyed to enthused, but Damien didn’t take it personally. She was like that with everybody in the family. Despite this, Damien managed to unwrap Koko, layer by layer.
For example, one thing he found out about her was that she absolutely loved gore. Gore films, gore graphic novels, creepy podcasts and internet stories, documentaries about serial killers, and YouTube videos about historical disasters. Damien was subjected to more of that content than he thought was possible. He was amazed that Mia didn’t catch her. Or maybe she knew and allowed it. It was hard to control a force like Koko.
After they finished their homework, Koko and Damien would go up to her room and pour over all the blood and guts and people driven to the edge, spending a lot of time drawing their own ideas out. Koko had a distinct style, favouring characters with bulbous warts and slobbering mouths and guts spilling out onto the ground. Damien, on the other hand, favoured a more character-centred style, influenced by the aesthetics of the golden age of comics in the 1940s, mixed with the darker, grungier colouring that was more prevalent in the graphic novels of the early 2000s. Damien could tell Koko didn’t usually talk that much about these interests and therefore was far more expressive and enthusiastic than the cool-faced girl she appeared to be in school.
Damien liked spending time with her not only because of this but be
cause, despite how blunt she could be, she didn’t pry into Damien’s personal life. She made rude comments about the way he smelled—or, at least, they sounded rude, although the content of the comment wasn’t usually so—but she didn’t ask.
The one exception to this was one time during dinner, about a month and a half after their first meal together. Cameron had made a comment about what time he was going to drop Damien at the McKenzies’ when Koko had piped up.
“Why do you call them that? ‘The McKenzies’. Sounds weird.”
“Um, cause it’s their name?” Damien answered sarcastically.
“Uh, no it isn’t,” Koko replied, kicking him under the table. “It’s their surname. It sounds like they’re your, like, teachers or something.”
“I dunno, it’s what they wanna be called,” Damien said moodily, looking down at his plate. It didn’t deter Koko at all.
“Yeah, but, isn’t that weird? Aren’t they supposed to be your foster parents—”
“They are not my parents!” Damien shouted before he could stop himself, his glass of water almost toppling over as he slammed his fist against the table. He froze, shame festering in the pit of his stomach as everybody fell quiet after his outburst. He tried swallowing, but his mouth was suddenly dry.
“What’s wrong?” Dee piped up, looking around the suddenly still table. Mia and Cameron shared a look.
“Are they…maybe, are they not very nice, sometimes, Damien?” Cameron asked softly. Damien hunched into himself.
“They’re fine,” he said shortly, remembering a second later what Koko had told him the other day. Werewolves could sense the lies of the untrained, a pattern of sweat and heartbeat and hormones. “What I mean is—what I meant was that, that they’re not my parents. They’re just…I don’t want to talk about it,” he finished in a small voice, his throat feeling strange and tight like there was a lemon wedge stuck there.
“Okay. That’s okay, Damien,” Cameron said, but it still took a while for people to start eating again. It was only when conversation had resurfaced, subdued, that Damien felt he could thaw himself from his position. When he chanced a glance at Koko, she was looking back with a contrite expression, mouthing Sorry at him. Damien gave her half a strained smile. It was the first and last time she brought up the topic.
In This Iron Ground (Natural Magic) Page 4
