by L. C. Davis
I swallowed hard. This wasn't possible. If it really had somehow been Prentice's blood that had saved me, was I even still alive?
"Can you shut that off?" I asked, gesturing to what I assumed was a morphine drip. I needed all my brainpower to think, as much as I appreciated the relief.
She looked at me like I was crazy. "I've never seen a boy your age ask for less of the good stuff. You know, you also broke your leg and sprained your wrist. That's gonna hurt."
I could feel the cast and realized for the first time that my left arm was in a sling. Great. Now I was even more helpless than usual. At least, I hoped I was still helpless.
"It's giving me a really bad headache," I lied.
"Well, you'll have to ask the doctor about that when she comes in. I'll go get her and send your cousin in if I see him."
"Thanks," I muttered. As soon as she left, I pulled the tube from the back of my hand. No way in hell was I meeting the good doctor all doped up. I could vaguely remember Prentice saying she was a hunter.
"Can't I leave you alone for a minute without you causing trouble?" Prentice's voice made me jolt and I paid for it dearly. Pain shot through my chest and arm.
Prentice cut a crisp silhouette in the doorway, and even though his presence should have filled me with terror, his words on the roadside lingered in my mind and my heart swelled at the sight of him.
"Hi." It was the only word I could remember.
He stepped into the room and closed the door behind him. "I see you're awake."
I wasn't sure how to respond to the statement of fact, so I gawked at him like an idiot.
He pulled a chair up beside the bed and sat down, watching me in cool detachment. The glimpse of the man I had seen on the roadside was gone.
"You've caused a bit of a problem for me, Arthur," he said casually.
"I'm sorry?" I tried to tell myself the morphine was causing the palpitations, but even now the sound of my name on his lips made my heart flutter.
"My efforts were enough to keep you alive until we got here, but your neck was broken and your lung was collapsed beyond repair. You would have been dead by sunrise and these backwoods idiots were trying to taint you with human blood," he said in disgust. "Eleanor couldn't break protocol and refuse to approve the transfusion, so we had no choice but to destroy the blood supply."
"But what about those people in the other accident?" I asked, momentarily distracted even though he had all but answered the burning question in my mind.
His blank look told me all I needed to know.
"You knew there were other people who needed blood and you let them die just to cover your tracks?"
"They're human. They die for less every day," he said without batting an eye.
"It was a family," I cried. "What happened to 'family is everything'?"
"Our family," he clarified. "Not that you're in any place to lecture me about family. Not when you tried to desert us. What happened to, 'You can always count on me, Prentice?'"
"The Prentice I loved could," I snapped. The words were out of my mouth before I could stop them and I could only hope he didn't correctly read into them. The knowledge that just down the hall someone was alone in the world now because of me was too sobering to pretend it was all somehow okay. "That Prentice would never have let innocent people die just to cover his own ass. He wasn't a monster like you."
Prentice's face remained perfectly still but he raised his hand so quickly and seamlessly I barely noticed. I cringed in preparation for the impact that never came. After a long moment, I dared to open my eyes to find his hand still raised as he leaned forward, his face set into a promisingly human snarl. The loss of his temper was enough to give me another glimmer of hope and the courage to keep my eyes open.
"Go ahead," I said in a hoarse, trembling voice. "Hit me. All it's going to do is prove to me that I'm right, that you are just like them. That I was right to run from you."
He clenched his jaw and his hand folded into a tight fist. With great restraint, he lowered his hand to his side and his arm trembled with the effort. "You test my patience in ways that shouldn't be possible, Arthur, but I haven't forgotten the promise I made to you when we were young. Even if you have forgotten your end of the bargain, I am a man of my word."
I swallowed hard, unable to believe my guilt trip had worked. "The nurse said you gave me your blood," I said, deciding it was time for a change of subject. "How is that even possible?"
His eyes narrowed dangerously. "The nurse talks too much."
"Is it true?"
He was silent for long enough that I realized he wasn't going to answer. In a way, he already had. My heart sank as the implication became apparent.
"Don't look so devastated, you haven't gone through transition," he said bitterly. "Quite frankly, you don't deserve it."
"But you're undead," I whispered.
"You know I'm not fond of that term," he muttered, leaning forward. When he reached for me I flinched, thinking he had finally decided to hit me. Instead, he slipped his hand into my hospital gown. The heart monitor quickened, alerting the world to my shamelessness. If Prentice noticed, he didn't let on. When he pulled the small circular monitor off my chest, the beeping turned into one long mechanical scream.
He popped a button on his collared shirt and stuck the monitor on his own chest. The monitor picked up a steady rhythm where it had left off and I stared at him in wonder. It was one thing for a hunter's blood to trick vampires into hearing a heartbeat, but a heart monitor?
"You were never supposed to know about this," he said, reattaching the monitor to my chest. "It's a family secret that most hunters will live and die never knowing, but I'm going to make the ill-advised decision to trust your discretion as I have done with the doctor."
"What are you saying?" I asked, trying not to sound so damn hopeful. "You haven't gone through ascension, have you?"
"Of course I have," he said, clearly offended. "Every other generation, the leader of the Family is chosen by the Patriarch himself, that much you know, but the truth of the selection process has been a guarded secret for centuries. The last leader always claims to find his successor through a vision or a mystical sign, but the truth is that leaders are born, not made. Among other signs, the man chosen by the Patriarch himself bears a key physical difference from the rest that makes his destiny clear."
"The leader goes through a different kind of transition," I murmured. "When he ascends, he's different from the others."
"That's right," he said patiently.
"Then that means you and Grandpa Hugh are still alive," I cried, sitting up. "That's why you're so different from the others. Your souls aren't gone."
He gave me a bored look and pushed me back down. "I still have blood flowing through my veins, yes. According to a hidden portion of the legend, the Patriarch himself breathes second life into his successor's lungs, separating us from the others."
"Then that means it really is you," I pressed. "You're still sentient."
"Bite your tongue, Arthur. You'll be one of those 'nonsentient' souls soon enough. This isn't a status symbol, it's a burden. Knowing that the good of the entire Family rests solely on my shoulders is a constant source of stress. I envy the simple life the others lead and our grandfather hasn't even passed on his authority yet."
"What you're describing is free will, Prentice," I said, unable to stop the dopey smile creeping across my face. "It's not a disease to be eradicated, it's a gift."
He beheld me in equal wonder for a moment before shaking his head. "Sometimes I don't know what I'm supposed to do with you. Apparently, neither does your mother, because I've just been on the phone with her and she says she's washed her hands of you for the last time."
"Finally, some good news."
He gave me a scolding look. "I don't have time for this. My wedding is in two months and not only do I have to look after you and somehow make sure Emily doesn't spend a fortune on solid gold place cards from France, but n
ow I have to find time to coordinate another attack on the Lodge as well. And on top of all that, I have to clean up after the mess you've made here. Do you have any idea how much time this is all going to take?"
"I'm sorry."
He gave me a disbelieving look. "I could do without your sarcasm."
"I'm serious," I said. "Not that I'm sorry for preventing my transition or even stopping the attack, but I'm sorry I caused trouble for you. I wish you just would have let me die. Then everyone would be better off."
His eyes narrowed and he stood. For a moment, I thought he was going to leave, but he unplugged the heart monitor instead. He proceeded to rip the sticky panels off my chest and shrugged out of his coat.
"What are you doing?" I asked warily.
"Getting you out of here," he said, draping his long coat around my shoulders and buttoning it up. He had an embarrassingly difficult time getting the buttons to close around my pudgy midsection, but with my arm immobilized there was little I could do. To add to my humiliation, he lifted me into his arms again and carried me out of the room like a child.
"I haven't been discharged," I whispered, trying to ignore the strange looks we were getting. Prentice whisking me away in his arms was admittedly a prominent fantasy of mine, but it was far more embarrassing than romantic in reality. "You can't just take me home."
"Watch me."
"Excuse me?" called a nurse, stepping into our path. "That boy is a critical ward patient, you're not taking him anywhere.
Prentice looked down at her and his blue eyes did something I had never seen before. They turned golden. At first, I thought it was the morphine making me hallucinate, but the nurse went stiff and the clipboard and water bottle she had been holding fell to the floor.
"Please don't hurt her," I whispered so only he could hear.
He ignored me if he heard me at all. "We're leaving. You're going to fill out the discharge papers and ask Dr. Burns to sign them. You'll apologize to her on my behalf and thank her for her hospitality. If anyone asks questions, you'll make up whatever bullshit excuse you need to shut them up." He glanced down at her name tag. "Does that sound good to you, Brenda?"
She hesitated only a moment before nodding enthusiastically. "Yeah, sounds great, Prentice. Have a nice day."
With that, Brenda waved and disappeared down the hall. As Prentice resumed his path to the nearest side door, I struggled to comprehend what I had just witnessed.
"You're psychic?" I whispered, simultaneously amazed and horrified. One of the chief claims the hunters had always made against the Kingdom of Night was that they used divination and witchery to pervert the natural order of things. Psychic manipulation wasn't exactly a skill hunters learned in school.
"Psychics are unnatural," he said without missing a beat. "It's the life force of the Patriarch that gives me insight and the power to influence the feeble human mind."
I didn't dare argue, not out loud. Prentice put me inside his SUV and I winced. The morphine was wearing off fast. Now I regretted taking the IV out so soon.
I waited until he had started the car and pulled onto the road to ask, "Where are you taking me?"
"Not back to the homestead, that's for sure," he muttered. "I've got a cabin up in Vancouver. We'll stay there until I've figured out what to do with you in the long term."
"Okay," I said, trying to conceal my eagerness. He cast me a withering glance.
"This isn't a vacation. I just need time to regroup and I'm afraid if I take you back home in this condition the others will kill you."
"Can I ask you something?"
"You will, regardless."
"I understand why you didn't let me die on the road," I began. "What I don't understand is why you wouldn't let me go through ascension. Why out your secret just to keep me alive if you want me to become a hunter anyway?"
He kept his gaze fixed on the road as we pulled onto the highway and the names of the nearby Canadian cities came into view. "The circumstance of your death is as important as the ascension process itself. The Patriarch would never have honored such a meaningless death and you would have suffered for it once you woke up."
"Oh," I said, picking at my wrist brace. "And that matters to you?"
"Of course it does. I've always seen you as more of a brother than a cousin. Considering the fact that your father is gone, the responsibility of ensuring your wellbeing falls to me."
"Brother" pierced my heart more sharply than "faggot" ever had.
I couldn't think of a reply, pithy or otherwise, so I stayed silent. Fortunately, he didn't press me for answers. Normally, I would have been eager to make the most of a long drive alone with Prentice, but suddenly the miles between Hicksville and Vancouver couldn't pass fast enough.
Chapter 3
ARTHUR
My assumption that Prentice's "cabin" in the woods was a chalet like most of the other getaways owned by the Family were turned out to be wrong. When he pulled up to a literal cabin with log walls and a pair of matching rocking chairs out front, I couldn't hide my surprise.
"Not what you were expecting?" he asked wryly, coming around to my side. I braced for the impending humiliation as he lifted me into his arms again.
"Not really after seeing your new house."
"Emily is the one who chose the floor plan," he replied, unlocking the front door to reveal a one-room setup with a single bed in the corner and not much else. There was a fireplace, a sofa with a small coffee table and another table with a set of chairs, but I couldn't imagine Prentice actually living there.
"This is definitely rustic."
"It's still not as cramped as that dorm room of yours," he said, placing me on the sofa. "How are you feeling?"
It seemed strange that he could be so concerned about my comfort after deliberately crashing my car not even a week ago. "Everything hurts," I admitted. "Especially my chest, but it's manageable. How did you know your blood would heal me?"
"Because I've done it once before," he replied. Before I could ask when, he very deliberately changed the subject. "The blood will stay in your system for a while. It's not an instant fix, but it should speed up the healing process."
He pulled a blanket off the back of the couch and draped it around my shoulders. "Stay put. I'm going to check in with Emily and let her know where I'll be for the next week at least. There's no cellular reception out here and I'm afraid there isn't much to do, but boredom wouldn't be the worst thing for you."
A week, maybe more? My heart fluttered as I nodded. "Okay. I'm obviously not going anywhere," I said, pointing to the cast on my leg.
When he left, I made an attempt to get to my feet. Even if my leg was broken, it should still be able to support some weight with the cast. My head swam before I could find out and I collapsed again. Better pace myself, I decided, lying down just for a minute. The couch was cool and plush and I started to yawn.
A small nap wouldn't hurt. After all, the Lodge wasn't in danger anymore. At least, not until the hunter's moon, the date Prentice had originally planned for the attack. That should give the others enough time to sort things out and plan something in the way of a defense. It was far more than I owed them, as I kept reminding myself. Besides, even though it seemed impossible I knew I had a better chance of reasoning with Prentice than getting away from him again.
At least for now.
The sound of the door shutting jarred me awake and I assumed I had only fallen asleep for as long as it took him to call Emily. When he came in carrying a box of pizza, I realized that wasn't the case.
"Evening, sleepyhead," he called in a particularly chipper tone.
"Evening? How long was I out?" I groaned, sitting up slowly. I held my head, as if that would help the dizziness."
He glanced at his watch. "About six hours, give or take. How do you feel?"
"The pain is better but I feel like I just woke up from another coma," I admitted.
"Well, even with my blood in your system you'll have your ups and
downs. I'll change your dressing soon, but first let's get some food into you. The works, right?" he asked, opening the box on the coffee table to reveal a pizza with all my favorite toppings. He pulled out a set of plates and glasses from the cupboard along with a set of cutlery for his pizza. Some things never changed.
"Yeah, perfect. You really left me to go get pizza?"
"I knew you weren't going anywhere." His confidence made me wary. When he returned with a bottle of wine and sat next to me, I stopped caring. "We never did properly celebrate your twenty-first birthday, did we?"
"No," I said carefully. "We don't celebrate any birthdays, remember?"
"This one is important," he said, pouring a glass for me, then one for himself. He raised his glass and urged me to do the same with my good hand. "You're a man now. Eighteen doesn't count, not really. This is also the last year you'll spend as a human, so you should make it count."
I gulped. "I'm going to get to spend the rest of the year as a human?"
"Most of it, anyway. Until the hunter's moon. I've had a long time to think while you were asleep and I don't blame you for what happened."
"No?"
"No, I blame myself."
"For what?"
"For pushing you into it too early," he said. "The timing was off. Your death was meant to take place on the hunter's moon all along. The Patriarch knows all his beloved children well, even better than we know ourselves. I never should have deviated from the plan and rushed things. My weakness is impatience and yours is over-sensitivity, as it always was. I've been neglecting you between all the wedding plans and my new responsibilities right when you needed my guidance the most."
He cupped my cheek in his palm and his slender fingers danced over my skin. It should have been a thrilling gesture, but all it did was fill me with dread. Something had changed in him on his way back. Something bad.
"Emily has agreed to postpone the wedding," he said, making me question my own judgment.
I tried to hide my excitement in vain. "Really? For how long?"
"Until after the hunter's moon, after you're properly prepared for transition."
