“What are you doing?” I hissed at her through clenched teeth.
She peered up at me through her eyelashes. “Well, it’s not like I’m going to let you three go off and start your own Pack without me.”
Our own Pack? That’s what this was? They were asking to come with me?
I made the mistake at looking at Toby, who looked mad enough to punish us all at the same time.
I didn’t have much of a choice. The three of them looked like they were waiting to be knighted, but I seemed to be missing a sword. I had to make do as best as I could.
Relying solely on knowledge gleaned from movies and books, I approached the three of them. “I accept you?” Their heads stayed bowed, so I continued. “And devote myself to you?” Apparently that did the trick, because the three of them stood up in unison.
“What the Hell do you think you’re doing?” Uncle Charles moved through the rest of the Pack in a rage. “Are you going to turn your back on your family for her? She doesn’t want you in her Pack. She can’t even stand to look at you.”
“I owe her,” Charlie mumbled. “I took a life from her, so I owe mine in return.”
“Not much of a trade is it, darling?” he asked me. “You lose your big, strong wolf boyfriend and get this coward instead.”
My skin vibrated with anger, the wolf clawing to the forefront. “I’d rather have him than a useless drunk like you.” I moved between Charlie and his father. “If you want him back, you’ll have to take him from me.”
For a second I thought he might try it, but he finally relented. “He was nothing but a burden anyway.” He looked over my shoulder at his son. “You have an hour to get your stuff out of my house. Anything left, I’ll burn.”
The next few hours flew by in a haze. Talley was also newly homeless, although her mother managed to kick her out without making a big public display specifically designed to humiliate her. She merely suggested Talley not be home when she finished her meeting with Toby.
While I helped Talley throw most of her belongings into black garbage bags, the preferred luggage choice of displaced teens everywhere, Jase helped Charlie. Despite the feelings of blame and betrayal still sitting heavily in my chest, I found myself worrying about them. What if they didn’t get out before Charles’ one hour time limit? What if other members of the Pack decided they didn’t like the idea of them leaving?
I was simultaneously relieved and anxious to see both Jase’s car and Charlie’s truck in my driveway when I got home. I didn’t know what to say or how to act, but fortunately we were too busy to do either.
We spent most of the night rearranging the garage so we could store some of Charlie and Talley’s things, and making room for them in our bedrooms. It was well after midnight when I collapsed across the air-mattress I had been wrestling sheets onto for the last twenty minutes. I was glad girls didn’t have the same issues with sharing a bed as boys. There was no way I had the energy to do that again.
“Can I just fall asleep here?” I asked no one in particular.
“You’re the Pack Leader,” Talley said plopping down on Jase’s bed, which proved she was a much braver soul than me. I might be disorganized and fond of clutter, but Jase had a tendency to grow his own antibiotics on accident. “You get to do pretty much what you want.”
“Yeah, about that.” I tried to sit up, but ended up just rolling around like a drunk turtle flipped on its back. “While I appreciate the sentiment and am very much happy to not be exiled by my lonesome, I’m not really into this whole Pack Leader thing.”
“What do you mean ‘not into this whole Pack Leader thing’?” Jase asked from his closet where he was making room for Charlie’s clothes.
“I mean I’m not Toby, I don’t want be some hard-ass bossing you guys around all the time. Can’t we be a group of equals? This is the United States of America and the twenty-first century after all. That supreme leader stuff went out of style like two hundred years ago.”
“Doesn’t work that way,” Talley said from the cocoon she had made herself out of Jase’s vintage Spider-Man comforter. “There has to be a Pack Leader and in this Pack that’s you.”
“Why? How about Jase?” I dipped my head off the side of the air mattress. “Hey, Jase! Wanna be Pack Leader?”
The door swung open and Charlie came through with an armload of boxes. I realized I was laying across his bed and tried to jump up, which was impossible. I ended up on landing on all fours directly at his feet.
“I pledged my loyalty to you, not Jase,” he said stepping around me. “You’re the Pack Leader, now get off the floor and act like it.”
Chapter 8
My parents didn’t have a problem with the addition of two new kids in their house. Charlie and Talley both spent more time at our house than theirs most summers anyway. I’m guessing they didn’t see it as a big change. Dad simply re-assigned household chores, and Mom promised to buy more groceries on her way home from the hospital. Neither questioned why they were there or how long they intended to stay. Maybe they realized they would really rather not know.
After they both scuttled off to their respective jobs, I was left alone with my new Pack and one very hyper little sister.
“Angel, could you please go upstairs and play?” I asked the prima ballerina jumping and spinning around the table on which I was trying not to lay my head down and go back to seep. I’d spent most of the previous night listening to Talley snore while growing a ginormous crop of ulcers.
Angel pirouetted into the refrigerator, knocking several magnets to the floor. “No,” was her very succinct answer.
“Please? We need to have a grown-up conversation.” And my nerves were going to be non-existent if she didn’t stop moving around so much. We were just two days past the full moon. My wolf-y sense were still tingling, and Angel was causing a sensory overload.
“You can’t have a grown-up conversation. You’re not grown-ups.”
“Angel—”
“I’ll let you play my X-Box,” Jase said, bringing her to an abrupt stop.
“Can I play a shooting game?”
“Yes,” he answered right over the top of my “no.” Angel raced up the stairs, only hearing the answer she wanted.
And then there was complete and utter silence as Jase, Charlie, and Talley all looked at me expectantly. I cleared my throat and searched for something profound to say. Nothing came.
“So, what now?” I asked, sounding exactly like the strong, all-knowing leader I was.
“First,” Jase said, pointing across the table at Talley, “she goes and pledges herself back to the Hagan Pack. With any luck, she’ll get there when Toby is in a forgiving mood.”
“You don’t give orders, Jase.” Talley’s voice was even and calm, but I could see her fingernails digging into her palms. “I’m staying here. End of story.”
“No, you’re going back to where you belong.”
“I belong with the Pack Leader I swore allegiance to.”
Jase half-rose, his arms braced on the table in front of him. “You don’t get that choice. Now go home before it’s too late.” The cords on his neck stood at attention, threatening to break through the skin. I was more than a little afraid for Talley’s well-being.
“Jase, sit. Now.” He scowled, but obeyed. “Now, explain,” I said, certain I was missing some very important piece of information.
Jase and Talley were too busy glaring at each other to respond, so I forced my eyes to the one place I’d been training them not to look all morning.
“How much do you know about Seers?” Charlie asked, barely looking up from his fifth cup of coffee.
I shrugged. “The basics, I guess. Girls with special gifts, passed from mother to daughter. They work with Shifter Packs…” Something occurred to me. “Hey, you’re like my Vice President,” I said to my best friend.
“Exactly.” The death-glare she leveled on Jase turned into a smirk. “And I say I’m staying.”
At that
Jase really did explode. He was around the table and in Talley’s face before his chair smacked the tiled floor with a deafening thwack. “What the hell is your problem? Do you want them to drag you back to that backwoods mountain and force you to squeeze out a litter of pups? Is that what you want? Do you want to go back there?” Jase’s body was literally vibrating with anger.
“Sit!” I commanded, moving between my brother and a now sobbing Talley. “You.” I pointed at Charlie. “Explain. Now.”
“Seers are bound to the Pack their born into. Usually, it’s not a big deal. It’s where they grew up, where they belong.” He gave Talley a small, sad smile and I began to see where this was going. “Talley, however, was born into the Matthews Pack, but grew up with the Hagan Pack. She was originally supposed to go back to the Matthews Pack on her fifteenth birthday, but —”
“But her powers hadn’t developed yet.” I handed Talley a paper towel, unable to locate a tissue.
“Yeah. They still wanted her, but since she wasn’t able to See, they didn’t fight too hard when Toby petitioned to keep her. In the end, they accepted a monetary compensation for their loss.”
“You bought her?”
“The Hagan Pack bought her,” Jase answered, still fuming. “And it was a conditional purchase. She was to stay in the Hagan Pack. Now that she’s left, they’ll see the contract as null and void—”
“And they’ll want her back, Super-Seer skills and all.”
Jase’s smile wasn’t pleasant. “You always were the smart one.”
I looked down at Talley, who was finally pulling herself together. “Are they exaggerating?”
She shook her head, eyes downcast.
In all the years Talley and I’ve known each other, I’ve met her father exactly once. There were about three years where Mr. Matthews decided he wanted his daughter to spend six weeks of the summer with him in addition to the week she spent in Eastern Kentucky every Christmas. At the age of eleven, six weeks seemed like a lifetime, and I was convinced I would shrivel up and perish while she was away. My parents, being the kind of loving folks who don’t want to see their child die from loneliness, arranged a family vacation touring the eastern half of the state with a special stop in Frenchburg to visit with Talley.
Angel was a baby, so Mom stayed in the motel room that smelled like rotten eggs while Dad drove Jase and I out to the Matthews’ compound. It was unlike anything I had ever seen before. The whole family lived in a cluster of houses at the end of a road that wound between two mountains. Talley said they called it Matthews Holler, and I wondered if it was because all you had to do was holler out your door to talk to any of your family members.
Mr. Matthews was a rough looking man. His hair was dark and wavy like Talley’s, but it looked like someone in a bad mood attacked it with kitchen shears. His face was weather-worn and etched with a hundred tiny lines. Talley always said her dad was old, much older than her mom, but I never imagined him to be grandpa old. Yet, despite his rough appearance, his blue eyes shone with kindness as I ran up the porch steps and flung my arms around my long-lost best friend.
While Mr. Matthews seemed to like me and my dad well enough, he had very little patience for Jase, who grew fidgety the moment we stopped the car. He refused to sit down, preferring to pace around, constantly looking over his shoulder like he thought a black bear was going to come charging down the mountainside at any given moment. The second time Mr. Matthews snapped at Jase, Dad announced it was time to go.
We took Talley out to dinner at a local restaurant called “Cantuckee Cookin’”, the purposeful misspelling causing major annoyance on my part. Surprisingly, it was Jase who spent the majority of the meal trying to talk our parents into taking Talley back home with us. He was convinced she didn’t belong in that world. Dad patiently tried to explain that just because Appalachian culture was somewhat different than what we were used to, it wasn’t necessarily wrong.
In the end we dropped Talley off at her father’s house, she and I in tears and Jase pouting in the backseat. When Talley told him goodbye, he wrapped his arms around her in a bone-crushing hug and said, “You belong with us, not them.”
At the time I thought he was being really sweet, telling her we were her true family. Of course, I had no knowledge of Shifters, Seers, and Packs at the time. I didn’t realize he was talking about her as if she was a piece of property.
Crap. I honestly didn’t know what we were dealing with, but I did know my best friend wasn’t something to be owned.
“Tal, where do you want to be?”
“Here.” Her chin rose a fraction of an inch. “I want to be here with you, in your Pack.”
“Good.” Because there was no way I could handle Jase and Charlie, especially Charlie, without her. “Then you stay.”
Jase growled. “And what do we do when the Matthews Pack comes to take her back? There is, what? Twenty? Twenty-five of them?”
“Eighteen are Changing,” Talley answered. “There are four little boys, but none of them will be Changing for at least another three or four years.”
“Eighteen versus three. I might not be a math genius, but those sound like some sucky odds to me.”
I found my way back to my chair and half-collapsed into it. “What are our options?”
“Send her back to Toby where she belongs, or get ourselves slaughtered by a Pack of hillbillies.”
“Talley isn’t a slave, Jase. She’s staying here.”
“A slave? Don’t be melodramatic. She’s a Seer. There are rules.”
A sudden flash of anger, the wolf straining under my flesh. “Screw your rules. Talley is staying, end of story. As far as I’m concerned, you’re looking at the new Seer Underground Railroad.”
Jase glared, his jaw tight. “You’re being reckless.”
“And you’re seriously pissing me off.” My nails were digging into the wood of the table, a seriously amazing feat considering it took some effort to knick its surface with a knife. I would probably freak out over the whole monster-like bizarreness of it later, but at the moment I was just grateful to have something to claw into other than Jase’s pretty face.
“You’re the Pack Leader. It’s your job to protect her.”
“It’s my job to be a freaking human being and do the right thing.”
“The right thing? Bullshit. You’re going to do what you always do, what’s right for Scout.”
There are very few humans who can use their arms to hoist themselves onto a table and then jump four feet with pinpoint accuracy, but for a Shifter it’s apparently not a big deal because I managed without giving it much thought at all. Unfortunately, the person I leapt onto was also a Shifter, and the two seconds it took me to complete the move was more than sufficient time for him to prepare a defense. Instead of toppling Jase to the floor, like I planned, I found myself being flung towards the stove.
“Dammit,” I hissed as my hand came down on an eye which hadn’t quite hit the cooled off stage and my knee banged against the cabinet. I knew at least half of my hand was burnt, but I couldn’t feel any pain.
You know how they do that slo-mo thing in superhero movies? The soundtrack goes silent, leaving just Superman and the clicking of the gun, the little flash of fire, and the piece of metal cutting slowly through the air? My Shifter abilities didn’t work that way.
I still heard everything. The hum of electricity running to various kitchen appliances. The woosh of air coming out of the vents. The gunfire, screams, and mildly disturbing giggles coming from Jase’s room where Angel was playing video games. Despite the fact she was upstairs and on the other end of the house, I could still hear the steady sound of her heartbeat just as clearly as the sharp intake of breath from Talley, who was only three feet away. I could hear Charlie’s muttered curse and the soft scrape of Jase’s socks on the tile as he turned towards me.
It should have been too much. It almost was too much, but unlike before my Change, my brain instinctively knew how to filter throug
h and process the plethora of information being thrown at it.
I dropped to the ground just quick enough to feel the breeze from Jase’s fist across the top of my head. There was a slight sting as my burnt hand hit the cold floor, causing me to almost lose balance as I pivoted, bringing my left leg around to sweep Jase’s feet, which were no longer there. There was the briefest look of triumph in his eyes before my fist slammed into his stomach.
From that moment on, there was no holding back. Jase and I had been sparring with one another since we were kids, but this was different. This was a fight, a battle between two Shifters at their most primitive. Every strike was intended to cause harm. And when Jase’s pants began to stain red after his leg crashed through a kitchen chair, I felt joy.
In reality, the fight didn’t last long, but in the heat of the moment I felt as if we had been going at it forever, and might have if the back door hadn’t slammed open admitting one of the few people who could stop my bloodlust cold.
“Scout, stop!” Mom screamed, flying through the mud room towards the melee. “You’re hurting him! Stop!”
And just like that, the otherness that had taken over - the part of me that was nothing but pain and rage, the wolf - was gone. My hands immediately unclenched, one releasing a handful of my brother’s hair while the other freed the arm pinned behind his back. For a moment all I could see was a smear of blood on the blue and white tiles, although I was aware of the shattered furniture and destruction around me.
“Aunt Rebecca, don’t!” Charlie exclaimed from the safety of the formal dining room no one ever used, causing Mom to freeze with one outstretched hand just inches from my shoulder. If the sight of Jase’s blood decorating our once pristine kitchen wasn’t enough to convince me of the animal I had become, the look of fear and disgust on my mother’s face was.
“I’m sorry,” I said, my chin trembling so ferociously I could barely push the words out. “I didn’t mean to do it. I’m sorry.”
Instead of pulling me into a hug and telling me it was going to be okay, she kept her distance, wariness evident in every inch of her posture. “Will you let me check and see how bad he’s hurt?” Instead of answering, I bolted out the door.
Time Mends Page 6
